In Many Parts Of Mexico, Government Ceded Battle To Cartels

Speaker 1: 00:00 Officials say 14 people died as residents took cover. Well, soldiers and the cartel clashed over the government's capture of El Chapo son in Kaliya con last week, Mexican soldiers were outnumbered and outgunned. They had to release El Chapo sun over Dio, Guzman Lopez to stop the gunfire. The move is being met with relief from residents and criticism from those who say this will only embolden the cartel of Mead. Professor at the Kroc school of peace studies at the university of San Diego worked in the area and joins us to talk about all that's unfolded. Professor Mead, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. So tell us about the work you've done in Culiacan. Speaker 2: 00:39 Well, we've been leading a certificate program and applied piece education basically playing our part as academics and the growing peace movement and [inaudible]. And that's one of the things that makes this event so striking. Um, we have lots of friends who, you know, were terrified, trapped in various places, but we've also seen the flowering of a movement of people who are really working to prevent violence and things had been getting way better in [inaudible] over the last three years. It's one of the only places in Mexico where violence has gone down and this really came to a sort of crashing halt at three 30 on Thursday afternoon. Speaker 1: 01:13 And you had planned to travel there to continue this work on Friday a day after the violence erupted, right? Speaker 2: 01:18 Yeah, I w I was supposed to be there for our conference this week and uh, um, it was really, um, it was really surprising and I was literally like finishing my talk and packing my bag when a whole bunch of friends message and said, don't come. And you know, there was no decision to be made. All the flights were canceled, the airport was closed. I mean, this was a really serious outbreak of violence. Speaker 1: 01:36 As you mentioned, the situation in the city had dramatically improved in the last couple of years prior to Thursday's incident. Um, why do you think that is? Speaker 2: 01:45 I think there are a couple of things going on. I mean some of the major, cause I have to do with the drug war itself. Um, have their own independent variables and it has to do with what's going on in the world of, of organized crime. And it looked like there was a kind of adjustment within the CLO of cartel. They weren't fighting amongst each other so much, so things had kind of calmed down. But I also think that a large civil society movement, a new structure in the state government for dealing with and preventing crime, some change over in the politics in the city and really at collaborative ethos to start working on violence prevention. I think that was really taking root too. And so I think it's kind of both. Speaker 1: 02:20 So with things, you know, they were headed in the right direction. So what was your initial reaction when you first saw the explosion of violence in clue Yukon on Thursday? Speaker 2: 02:29 You know, I was just stunned and uh, you know, like a lot of people, um, I was also really hungry for good information. And there just was none. I mean that was one of the most amazing things here is you could sit here and scroll through Twitter and see videos of people with really heavy weapons, you know, Browning, MTS, 50 caliber sniper rifles, AR, fifteens in unmarked Vilo vehicles all around the city. You could see smoke coming from all different locations you get here, you know, gunfire, really, really loud explosions of gunfire and not coming from one location. It was coming from all over the city. So there's just this incredible sense of chaos. And it really didn't abate until far into the evening when we finally had some confirmation that they had corralled or arrested in some fashion. There's still some debate about that. Uh, OVO Guzman Lopez, and then decided to let him go on the end of the day. Speaker 2: 03:21 So tell us about El Chapo sun. Oh, video Guzman Lopez. Has he taken over the Sinaloa drug cartel since its father's arrest? No. And that's one of the most interesting pieces of this story, that this was not one a, this is a person who's important and obviously from an important family, but he is not, you know, the de facto leader of the cartel in any way, shape or form. He's an important figure in the cartel. And I think American authorities in the indictment that they released last February, um, you know, lay that out. He's involved in drug trafficking for sure, but this was not one of the heads of the cartels. And that's one of the things I think made this so surprising, the fact that it was so much violence and so quickly and so in, in such an organized fashion. I mean, Guttman literally came out of the woodwork. Speaker 2: 04:04 They had 19 different, uh, major intersections that they closed down every entrance and exit from the city. They surrounded a military base, they surrounded another federal base and they surrounded the federal prosecutor's office. And this all happened, you know, in a, in a matter of, um, of minutes, literally within an hour of the, the, this arrest. So really, really quickly. Oh, video Guzman Lopez was released to stop the violence in Korea. Con Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez. Obrador has been widely criticized for this move. Uh, what's your opinion of that? Well, I think the criticism is somewhat misplaced and it's not that he doesn't bear blame, but that wasn't the important decision. I mean, they basically had to let him go at that point. That was not a difficult decision. The decision we should be scrutinizing is why they undertook the operation in the first place. I mean, you have to understand that this was done at three 30 in the afternoon on a Thursday in the commercial center of a city of a million people. Speaker 2: 04:59 They put thousands of people's lives at risk to do this. They did it with no backup plan, no plan for getting them out of here. And we got confirmation today that they didn't inform state or local authorities that they were planning to do this. So they essentially gave them no opportunity to shut down the neighborhood or take other measures where they could've protected ordinary civilians or done things like reinforced. For example, the prison were 50 prisoners busted out of the prison at the same time and were running through the streets and we're armed and picked up by the cartel. And at this point again, we still don't know why they went after Guzman Lopez. I mean, I think that they, that they, um, they had some good intelligence. I would presume they knew where he would be. And this is someone who's on a, the most wanted list and has an indictment against him in the United States. Speaker 2: 05:45 I mean, I think the fact that they went after him shouldn't be a surprise and it may have been in some narrow sense the right thing to do, but it's how they did it. And it's also the information that they put on. I have to say, I do the strongest criticism the federal government should be about that. First of all, the night that this happened, they said things that have proven to be just untrue. You know, they said that this was a routine patrol and that they stumbled across him when they took fire from a house that no one believes that. And they basically walk that back. And then in the aftermath, you know, they haven't said, for example, if they ever really took him into custody or not, there's a very strong narrative that maybe they did and they in fact let him go from the prosecutor's office, not from this, this house in a suburban neighborhood. Speaker 2: 06:28 We really don't know the answer to that, but the lack of transparency and the fact that they've tried to turn this into some political tasks where the president comes out and says, you know, I value the lives of the people of [inaudible] more than this arrest. Well, the actions of federal government demonstrate that that wasn't true and that initial decision to go after them. It doesn't mean that this government is responsible for this Enlo cartel. They certainly are not. This is a a, you know, a problem that they inherited from their predecessors, but they've got a level with people. Because the worst thing that could happen here is a loss of confidence in the government or the authorities generally, or a turn towards author Attarian measures, which we've seen in plenty of places, including Tijuana, including qualities. And the results of that have been just more bloodshed and violence. So we really need the government to level with everybody and they need to start talking about building coalitions. We need the state and locals to be on board with this stuff. We need more alliances and less infighting. I've been speaking to professor EV Mead at the Kroc school of peace studies at the university of San Diego. Professor Mead, thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me on.