Breathe
By Adela Navarro Bello
This past week, Baja California has been the scene of horrendous crimes perpetrated by drug cartels that, through force, violence and lead, have been gradually taking over territories to the detriment of society, and in some cases, with the complicity of police officers.
The bloody criminal war between Sinaloa Cartel groups in Culiacan, with Los Mayos outraged because Los Chapos handed over their father to US authorities, has resulted in hundreds of murders and disappearances, and has begun to spread to other states, including Baja California.
In the Mexicali Valley, as stated in a report published in this edition of ZETA, Los Chapitos have achieved what they have been trying to do for many years: establish themselves in the area bordering the state of Sonora, and from there control criminality in northwest Mexico. As may be evident, they didn't do it the easy way, leaving many dead along the way and a trail of blood and shell casings in their wake.
In three years of government, Governor Marina del Pilar Avila Olmeda has not been able to combat insecurity or reduce the levels of violence in the state. In a few days her third Secretary of Security, another Mexican Army General commissioned to the area, will take office.
The first was General Gilberto Landeros, who failed to coordinate with the State Attorney General's Office and was changed due to the lack of results due to this lack of coordination. The second was General Leopoldo Aguilar Durán, who managed to antagonize municipal commanders, take over police in the municipalities and relieve them of their duties to investigate them, but he also failed to achieve a purge and a drop in crime rates in the State.
The third in the position will arrive in the first days of February: General Laureano Carrillo Rodriguez, but not with a good record, at least not of results; his last assignment prior to the one in Baja California was in Celaya, Guanajuato, a city so unsafe that it has taken from Tijuana the first places among the most violent in the country. However, the Army, not the governor, has entrusted her with another of the areas hardest hit by organized crime, Baja California.
In addition to using bullets, threats and blood to settle Los Chapitos in the Mexicali Valley and from there direct their illicit business to the rest of BC, the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation is waging an extensive war against Sinaloa in three other municipalities: Tecate, Ensenada and Tijuana.
In the excess of terror that gives them impunity, on Sunday, January 26, the CJNG kidnapped a Tecate food merchant. Within hours, they abandoned his severed body in a rugged area of that municipality, and later, his head was left in a cooler in another municipality in Ensenada. In both cases, there were threatening messages from the CJNG to elements of the CDS, and in the middle, police colluded with the latter.
Added to this unhealthy war between cartels is the fact that Baja California's municipal police have not been properly accredited in the Control, Evaluation and Confidence Tests, which is evident in the accusations of police officers as accomplices of drug trafficking cells, or with the apprehension of elements in the commission of crimes that they should prevent, or by the results of the tests, as in the case of Tecate, where practically 50 percent of the corporation did not pass them.
Baja California is being taken over by the cartels and the crimes are already affecting citizens who have nothing to do with the cartels or their criminal cells. An investigator explained to ZETA about the case of the kidnapped and murdered man in Tecate, that the hypothesis that they are deprived of their freedom because they are involved in the illicit business, on this occasion had no place, given that the man was an honest, hardworking person dedicated to the sale of seafood, but they suspected that some of his clients belonged to the Sinaloa Cartel, which was perceived by the Jalisco criminals and they attacked an innocent man.
In spite of the elaborate checkpoints of the three levels of government, the drug cartels in Baja California have free transit from one municipality to another. There is the case of Sunday, January 26, when they murdered the restaurateur in Tecate, threw his severed body, but the head was transported in vehicles for 106 kilometers, even crossing the Wine Route, to drop it off at the port of Ensenada. This is a bomb that will explode at any moment, as has happened in Sinaloa, due to the collusion of local governments, hand in hand with the national government, with drug trafficking structures.
According to official figures, the year 2024 closed in Baja California with 2,401 people violently murdered. In 30 days of January 2025, 180 people have been executed in the State. 29 of them innocent people, women, children, honest workers.
The escalation of violence goes hand in hand with the omissive attitude of a State Attorney General's Office that argues that its responsibility is not to prosecute organized crime and drug trafficking, where most of the intentional homicides originate, but it is also unable to combat drug dealing, the basis of drug cartels and which is legally within its power to prosecute. The same as the unpunished cartels expand their territorial power in the face of an evidently failed strategy from the Secretariat of Citizen Security, which is already on its third head and has zero continuity.
The growing cartel violence, acts of terror with narco-gangs and assassinations, require a comprehensive strategy that works. Otherwise, the criminal outbreak will be unstoppable on this northern border.
*Editor of the weekly ZETA
Among the many awards he has received are:
International Press Freedom Award 2007, in New York, United States.
Ortega y Gasset Award 2008, granted by El País of Spain, Perfil International Press Freedom Award 2009, Editorial Perfil of Argentina.
Anna Politkovskaja Award, Festival Internazionale de Ferrara, Italy, 2009.
Medal of Honor for Service to Journalism for ZETA, by the University of Missouri, in 2010.
Journalistic Courage Award by the International Women in Media Foundation in 2011.
Included in Newsweek magazine's list of the 150 Bravest Women in the World in March 2012.
Journalist of the Year by the Professional Journalists Association of San Diego, California, in 2012.
Included in Foreign Policy magazine's list of 100 Global Thinkers in November 2012.
Named as one of the 50 most powerful women in Mexico by Forbes magazine in September 2013 and 2014.
Person of the Year 2014 by Grupo 21 of Tijuana, Baja California.
She was named one of Mexico's 100 leaders in the 100th anniversary of El Universal newspaper in 2016.
Maria Moors Cabot Award -in its 2021 edition-, an award administered by the School of Journalism at Columbia University in the United States.
Only Mexican participant in the Forum on Security and Journalism, convened by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in February 2016.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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