No one can deny, least of all the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, that there is serious insecurity and violence in large areas of Mexico. It is a structural problem, the main one in the country. But no one can deny either, unless the eight state governments of the PRIAN and the Citizen Movement party report lies, that crimes, particularly homicide, have decreased due to the State’s action against criminals after having risen to the top for 12 years uninterruptedly and after having changed a strategy of war for that of peace that is ongoing.
It is already known: A high-impact crime, such as the murder of Mayor Carlos Manzo Rodríguez in the public square of Uruapan, in Michoacán – or that of the lemon leader Bernardo Bravo days before – generates the perception that State action is not effective throughout the country and that, fueled by media campaigns, wants to make people believe that Mexico is on fire and that crime governs it to, in addition, generate the fiction that with Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto we were better than now.
But Mexico is not on fire nor is it ruled by crime. No serious person, who collects and analyzes information, concludes that. Only sick or lazy minds, who hate data, believe that propaganda. And there are worse ones: Those who, knowing the information, fabricate alternate realities to manipulate for political and ideological reasons.
Of course, the government of the Republic, the current governors and municipal presidents, of whatever political party they are, are responsible for guaranteeing the safety of the inhabitants and the rule of law, but it is the nostalgic ones who repeat, at every turn, the refrain that Calderón was brave and that a firm hand is lacking. They do not even offer condolences to the family of the executed person, because that is what matters least to them.
It must be explained again: What there is in Mexico is a real problem of violence and insecurity that was incubated by decades of governments neglecting the weakest sectors of society, particularly education for young people, at the same time that the demand for all types of drugs in the United States grew, which promoted the creation of criminal groups that have diversified their criminal action to this day.
Before 2006, Mexico already had problems of insecurity and violence in numerous areas of the country – Mexico City reached its peak in 1994 – but Calderón’s “war”, irresponsibly improvised after the electoral fraud, was a watershed that triggered the trail of corpses and covered the national territory with blood. Carlos Manzo himself emphasized it when he was a federal deputy for Morena and whose brother, by the way, is the current undersecretary of the Government of Michoacán.
This war strategy was not only to use, in an unconstitutional manner, do not forget, the Armed Forces against criminal groups and the population, nor to have the drug trafficker Genaro García Luna protect one of the cartels, the Sinaloa, nor to release bullets without planning that killed innocent people, but to apply an economic policy that privileged the elites at the expense of the most vulnerable sectors, especially the young, which was modified in 2018 to replace it with a different and distinguishable nation model.
Calderón’s improvised war strategy, it is more than proven, is what triggered the violence that Mexico still suffers, because Peña Nieto continued it with his own nuances. Only until 2018, a very different strategy was launched. One may criticize the phrase “hugs, not bullets,” and even the lack of forceful actions by Andrés Manuel López Obrador — even the greeting to Joaquín Guzmán’s mother, as if the lady had been a boss — but there was a different orientation to confront the criminal phenomenon.
The official figures provided by the state prosecutor’s offices—what others should be taken into account?—recorded that the rise in crimes was contained in 2019, in the first year of López Obrador’s government, particularly intentional homicide, and in the six-year term a downward trend was observed, a characteristic that was consolidated in the first year of President Sheinbaum, until reaching a drop of 32 percent in October.
It is obvious that crime in Mexico is still not under control, far from it, but it is a lie or nonsense to claim that we are worse than before 2018, when crimes reached their maximum, which is why many Mexicans explored a government option other than that of PRIAN.
López Obrador, in fact, did not fulfill his promise to calm the country, he did not have enough time, but the National Peace and Security Plan, which he announced on November 14, 2018—exactly seven years ago—did mark a fundamental change with the war strategy of Calderón and Peña, especially in social policy to address the causes of insecurity and violence, including the fight against impunity.
And what Sheinbaum has done, with all the adjustments one wants, is to continue that peace strategy of going to the causes of insecurity and violence, with a secretary of police training and vocation, Omar García Harfuch, equipped with legal, institutional and human instruments that were not available during López Obrador’s six-year term.
There may be adjustments and reinforcement of the strategy, but no substantive change in it so that the president and her government fulfill their responsibility to continue reducing violence. This strategy, it is important to emphasize, is part of a nation and development model different from that promoted by PRIAN.
War, therefore, is not an option for the President of Mexico, but it is for those nostalgic for the iron fist. Why don’t the PRIAN and MC governments apply this strategy in their states? In Guanajuato, for example, national leader in murders for many years. Or in Jalisco, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León, Querétaro and Aguascalientes…