The path of violence

In October 2019, when elements of the then Federal Police and the Armed Forces, without a single shot fired, apprehended Ovidio Guzmán in Culiacán, Sinaloa, the other sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and the followers of Ismael Zambada García "El Mayo", violently took over the Sinaloa capital.

Criminal commandos with long weapons even intimidated military installations, and caused terror among the population by taking over streets, burning vehicles, and threatening to murder innocent people. The path of violence taken at that time by the Sinaloa Cartel managed to break the President of the Republic.

Indeed, minutes after Ovidio Guzmán was arrested, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had not even been in office for a year, ordered the release of the drug lord to avoid "rivers of blood" and death.

The event marked the then incipient Lopezobrador government. In Mexico, moreover, the Attorney General's Office did not have (and does not have) an arrest warrant for the Sinaloa drug lord. The only one in existence both in 2019 and 2022 is the one issued for extradition purposes at the request of the United States Attorney General's Office, in a case against the junior opened in July 2017, in which he is accused of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the United States.

Three years later, the armed forces did it again... and so did the Sinaloa cartel.

On the morning of Thursday, January 5, in a SEDENA operation, which did not include local corporations as announced, and without an arrest warrant from the Mexican prosecutorial system, Ovidio Guzmán was arrested in Culiacán, Sinaloa. The fact that the narco-junior was in the same place where he was apprehended in 2019 reflects the level of impunity he felt he possessed. There was no need to flee if he had already been released once.

The lesson of 2019 for the Sinaloa cartel was the path of violence. If criminal power is shown, terror is caused among the population, the federal policy of "hugs, not bullets" will be more in force , to achieve the task of acting with impunity.

The violence with which on Thursday, January 5, 2022, the Sinaloa Cartel managed to close airports, the State Congress, sports, government, recreational and civic activities, and to call on the people of Sinaloa to take shelter in their homes and not go out, has its origin in that presidential order of 2019 to free the son of "El Chapo". If they already succeeded once, why not try a second time.

The criminal deployment of the Sinaloa cartel in several municipalities, particularly in Culiacán, was impressive. Convoys of men holstered with long guns were everywhere, burning vehicles, closing roads, setting up gun battles. A commercial airplane was hit by bullets, a rescue attempt en route, the death of a policeman and injuries to others.

But what stood out the most was the absence of the Army or the National Guard in the hours following the capture. Culiacan, Mazatlan, Los Mochis, among other districts, were left in the hands of the organized crime of the Sinaloa cartel. The local authorities could do little or nothing as they were deeply infiltrated by drug trafficking, the reality is that it is the same criminal structure that controls the forces of law and order.

It is not the first time that the federal forces flee from a criminal attack, in fact the President of the Republic has urged them to do so, not to affect the criminals because they are also people, or to maintain the policy of "hugs, not bullets", particularly when they are outnumbered and outgunned, as was the case in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on January 5, 2023.

The empty streets, the closed businesses, the paralyzed activities, the closed airports, the Sinaloa government's instruction for a pause in all sectors, is evidently based on the premise that the terror of drug trafficking prevails over the rule of law, vilified by the absence of action by the federal and armed forces to apprehend the narco-terrorists and safeguard the population, bringing order .

The path of violence, the Sinaloa Cartel is demonstrating , is the one that organized crime has to follow to control states and municipalities, especially under the protection of a passive National Guard when it comes to protecting the population.

Three years after the first frustrated arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, it is surprising that neither the Armed Forces, nor the National Guard, nor the Attorney General's Office, nor the Security Secretariat, have taken that act of terror as a basis for strategically planning the second operation, with measures to contain the organized crime that they have already confronted in the past.

Under these conditions, either the violence that plagues Culiacán, which severely affects the social, political and economic life of the state, with an extension to other states, is the product of an inefficient operation that was not based on the lessons learned in 2019, or it was effectively an improvised measure, violently successful, to apprehend a drug lord that Mexican justice does not pursue, but the United States does.

This column was published in the opinion section Sortilegioz in Semanario Zeta and was reprinted with permission of the author.

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