MEXICO CITY — The dramatic assassination attempt on Mexico City’s police chief was just the latest and clearest sign that Mexico’s powerful criminal element is bringing the violence it has unleashed on the general population directly to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s door.
More than 35,000 Mexicans were murdered last year, the highest number on record and a grave threat to the president’s ambitious agenda.
Police Chief Omar Garcia Harfuch was nearly added to this year’s murder total Friday when more than two-dozen gunmen executed a carefully coordinated plan to intercept his armored vehicle at dawn with grenades, assault rifles and a .50 caliber sniper rifle on the capital’s grand boulevard. Chief García survived with three bullet wounds and within hours blamed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for the attempt that killed two of his bodyguards and a bystander.
It came less than two weeks after a federal judge and his wife were gunned down in their home in the western state of Colima. The Jalisco gang is also suspected in that attack.
“The cartel declared war on the government of Lopez Obrador,” said Samuel Gonzalez, a security analyst and the man who established the Attorney General’s Office special organized crime unit. “He doesn’t have any other option than to go after them,” because otherwise attacks on high-level government officials could continue.
It didn’t take long for Mr. Lopez Obrador to disagree.
“We’re not going to declare war on anyone,” he said Saturday afternoon in a video broadcast through his social media. “We’re not going to violate human rights. We’re not going to allow massacres. But we’re going to stop these attacks from being orchestrated, and we’re not going to make any agreements with organized crime as we did before.”
The president said the key will be perseverance, with help from the intelligence services, which reportedly gave some warning that Chief Garcia might be targeted by an attack.
“Now we have given great importance to intelligence,” Mr. Lopez Obrador said. “Before, the CISEN (National Intelligence Center) was used to spy on opponents. That is over. Now we have an intelligence center to prevent, and that is why these attacks have been prevented or the most regrettable and serious results of these attacks have been avoided.”
Last year this intelligence showed some problems.
In October, a botched operation to capture a son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in Culiacan, Sinaloa, resulted in the young drug capo’s release after cartel gunmen wreaked havoc on the city. Mr. Lpez Obrador said this month that he ordered the release to avoid more bloodshed.
At the time, Mr. Lpez Obrador pushed aside criticism that it was a sign of weakness that organized crime would continue to exploit. The president responded that his government will not be forced into a drug war.
“This is pacifying the country by convincing, persuading without violence, offering well-being, alternative options, better living conditions, working conditions, strengthening values,” he said then. He asked for one more year to “completely change this.”
First Published: June 28, 2020, 12:00 a.m.
