Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Guadalajara -
Seventy-seven months ago, on Dec. 11, 2006, former president Felipe Calderón sent federal troops marching into Michoacán state, and wrote the first chapter of what has become known as Mexico's drug war. More than six years later he remains vilified both at home and abroad for his controversial decision to use military forces as street cops.
This week Calderón's successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, repeated the performance - out of desperation. There is plenty of reason to argue that nothing has changed. There is plenty of reason to believe that things are far from getting better, not only in Michoacán but in neighboring Guerrero, which has been on the verge of civil meltdown this spring. Oaxaca and other states could go down the same road.
Since Monday army and marine units have been pouring into the "Free and Sovereign State of Michoacán de Ocampo," wedged along Mexico's southwest Pacific coast between Jalisco to the north and Guerrero to the south. Michoacán is home to about four and a half million people, many of whom eke out the most minimal existence by picking limes in the state's abundant orchards. But even that has become almost impossible in recent months.A well entrenched drug cartel, Los Caballeros Templarios, controls many parts of Michoacán, and has since Calderón's days in office. But the Templarios no longer enjoy absolute dominion. Powerful organized crime groups from neighboring states, especially Jalisco, are staking their own claims to lucrative drug trafficking routes and a share of the plaza, which has led to a sharp increase in violence in the region since Peña Nieto took office Dec. 1. Death toll in Jalisco-Michoacán violence rises to 28.
Michoacános decided they had had enough earlier this year. After years of imploring officials to clean up the state and dislodge traffickers and their roving execution squads, the first citizen police forces, called autodefensas or policías comunitarias, appeared in some towns in late January. The new PRI administration, through its high profile security adviser, quickly announced it would not tolerate them. Peña Nieto's drug war czar says no to Mexican militias.
Armed with old rifles, rusty shotguns, an occasional revolver and at times axes, clubs and machetes, the Michoacán militias did surprisingly well. They drove the Templarios out of some communities and forced them to regroup in others. Cartel operatives complained the autodefensas were nothing more than insurrectionists who had been armed by and were working for competing gangs, a theme which the administration peddled as well. While there may have been isolated instances of that, the militias seemed mainly interested in restoring a measure of law and order to towns where anarchy reigned.
Infuriated by the growing presence and power of the autodefensas, the Templarios focused all of their attention on a few communities where they brazenly displayed their power vis-à-vis the government's. In selected towns of Michoacán's remote and aptly named Tierra Caliente ("hot lands"), Templarios seized control of everything. No one was permitted to enter or leave without permission, heavily armed patrols set up check points along highways and daily commerce was brought to a screeching halt. Grocery stores ran out of food, service stations saw their fuel supplies exhausted and the shelves of convenience stores were quickly emptied. Gunmen went door to door, collecting the weekly "rent" from anyone old enough to have a job, further economically stressing the masses. It was designed to be a Templarios tour de force, and it succeeded. Michoacános begged for government intervention.
Out of time and out of options, Enrique Peña Nieto sent several thousand federals into the state this week, just as his predecessor did 10 days after he took office in 2006. It must have embarrassed the new president, who has repeatedly talked of a different drug war strategy, one which would "end the violence and bring peace to Mexico." Now things have come full circle. Old strategies are being reexamined and old plays are being rerun, in default of anything better. From the captain's chair in Los Pinos, the horizon must look very different to the 46 year old president than it did a year ago. He finally understands, perhaps, why Calderón chose a tactic which brought him little more than infamy.
Yesterday Peña Nieto's powerful secretary of government, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, said federal forces would remain in Michoacán "until there is peace." That could be a very long time. In a press conference, the secretary was hard pressed to explain how Peña Nieto drug war approach materially differs from the previous administration's. His three talking points were anemic, almost embarrassing.
Who is in charge of Michoacán now? While the arrival of troops in Tierra Caliente was overwhelmingly an occasion for celebration in most towns, some autodefensas, fearful that the exit of government forces is only a matter of time, refused to surrender their pathetic weapons. Soldiers arrested four of them and delivered them to judicial authorities. In angry response militia forces "took into custody" 28 troops - including a general - and hauled them to the community "people's stockade." Late in the day an exchange was arranged, seven soldiers being released for each militia man handed over. The army said it would be willing to sit down with locals to discuss shared responsibility for regional security, at the same time government officials continued to insist citizen militias will be disarmed and disbanded.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Enrique Peña Nieto now understands that.
May 26 - An uneasy calm prevails today in Michoacán's Tierra Caliente, as federal troops and police reluctantly share patrol duties with local autodefensas, who refuse to be disarmed. Inhabitants of the region continue to suffer, trapped between drug cartels, citizen militias and a government which has done far too little, they contend. La guerra de pobres en la Tierra Caliente michoacana.
May 30 - La autodefensa es legítima is well worth the read, by a columnist who persuasively argues that "we're witnessing the unraveling of the Mexican state."
July 30 - Michoacán, el escenario de la ingobernabilidad; Michoacán, al borde del Estado fallido
Aug. 16 - Autodefensas y autoaniquilación del Estado (El Informador)
May 23 - Civilian militias soar, with citizen police now patrolling 50 counties in 13 Mexican states
Related MGR reports
July 28 - Mexican vice admiral killed in further Michoacán violence
July 25 - Federals will remain in Michoacán, promises Peña Nieto
Apr. 11 - Mexico's "policías comunitarias" will prompt some to argue Failed State theories
Feb. 1 - In drug war Mexican army is the solution, not the problem
Dec. 24 - Christmas Eve narco violence wracks Jalisco and Michoacán states; 7 police officers dead
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Very astute... fine reportage.
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