In this edition of RADICALES, journalists Daniela Barragán, Álvaro Delgado and Héctor Alejandro Quintanar spoke about the murder of Carlos Manzo and everything that happened after this unfortunate event that has generated indignation in various sectors of society and that forces us to review the security strategies promoted by the Government of President Claudia Sheinbaum to combat the problem. What to do about the violence that exists in Mexico?
Mexico City, November 4 (However).- The murder of Mayor of UruapanMichoacan, Carlos Manzoreignited the national debate on the security strategy of the President Claudia Sheinbaum. While sectors of the opposition insist on reviving the “hard hand” and directly confronting criminals, other sectors warn that returning to the war against drug trafficking It would be repeating a mistake that plunged all of Mexico into more than a decade of violence.
This morning, during the presentation of a peace plan for Michoacán in response to criticism from the opposition that questions the security policy in Mexico after the murder of Carlos Manzo, President Claudia Sheinbaum He stated that the federal government will never return to the drug war strategy that it implemented. Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.
“War means permission to kill. War means that extrajudicial executions are allowed. What does an extrajudicial execution mean? That an element of a Mexican Armed Force can shoot a person simply by presuming that he is a criminal, not in self-defense, but having the order to execute. That was the war against drugs: extrajudicial executions. And they still dared to say that there was collateral damage, that is, people who They died in that process, because it was part of the war and it was justified. We will never have that strategy. First, because we are humanists and we do not believe that extrajudicial execution is a solution. […] That leads to nothing because that is injustice and does not build a humanist society, and we are foolish in building a humanist society within the Law,” he said.
In this regard, Héctor Alejandro Quintanar considered that the immediate reaction of certain conservative sectors responds more to an attempt to politically capitalize on the tragedy than to a genuine concern for security.
“A certain generalized reaction on the right, in the commentacratic and partisan opposition, is to construct a kind of martyr; since they do not have leadership, they now seek to champion a martyr,” he explained.
The academic warned that this discourse is dangerous because it pushes towards a scenario of escalation and “a request to return to the idea of a strong hand, of visible physical confrontation.”
“That is the most worrying thing about the matter,” he added, “because today we already have plenty of evidence to think about what happened from 2006 to today.”
Quintanar recalled that the so-called war against drug trafficking initiated by Felipe Calderón was not a tactical error, but a strategy that ended up weakening the State.
“What happened in 2006 was not only an improvised war, but rather turning the country over to drug trafficking, to crime, and hiding that with an olive green uniformed façade,” he said. The result was an outbreak of violence “that grew by 300 percent at a time when violence in the country was on the decline.”
From another perspective, journalist Álvaro Delgado called for expanding the analysis beyond the violent event itself and reviewing the security models in dispute.
“This despicable fact places us in the obligation to analyze not only two strategies to combat violence in our country, but also to identify the two national projects,” he stated. He recalled that the war strategy initiated by Felipe Calderón and continued by Enrique Peña Nieto “yields very negative results,” while the peace strategy promoted by the governments of the Fourth Transformation must be measured by its effectiveness and its results on the territory. “The discussion should be which of the two strategies really works… whether to attack with war or fight with intelligence and addressing the causes,” he stated.
Delgado emphasized that the results of the war strategy promoted by Calderón and continued by Peña Nieto are measurable, as is the pacification policy undertaken by the governments of the Fourth Transformation.
“The discussion should be which of the two strategies really works, considering that in Mexico we have a serious problem of insecurity and violence in many areas of the country,” he noted.
The journalist recalled that in regions such as Michoacán, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Chiapas and the State of Mexico there are areas under the control of criminal groups that operate as parallel authorities. In this context, Delgado raised a dilemma:
“Should we attack those areas that are in the power of organized crime with a war strategy? Or should we fight them with intelligence, address the causes that generate them or how we do it? What I am saying is that the war strategy that Felipe Calderón began and Peña Nieto continued shows very negative results.”
For her part, journalist Daniela Barragán warned about the risk of recycling failed formulas with the new Plan Michoacán announced by the federal government.
“This is not the first time that the solution to a problem in Michoacán has been proposed with a special plan. With Peña Nieto, a presidential commissioner, Alfredo Castillo, was sent and it was a complete fiasco,” he recalled.
Barragán pointed out that the current challenge for the Government is to demonstrate that the federal strategy “is going to be done differently from what has already been done.”
Barragán considered that, although the issue is serious, “it has been used in the media to take responsibility away from the governors of Morena,” and stressed that the president and state leaders “must assume their role.”
“There is a lot of talk about what the President can do, but I think it is also time for the Morena governors to start coming out. I think it is time for the President not only to start putting the Michoacán plan into motion, it is not new, but it should be new in terms of effective implementation, but also in starting to talk about the responsibilities that the governors have.”