Anticipating a wave of violence in Tijuana with the city's foremost criminal boss now under arrest, the government has deployed 1,000 army troops to the border city.
That sounds like a logical piece of foresight, but one can't help but wonder: if several thousand army troops were incapable of limiting the violence in Juárez, what can we expect one thousand to do if Tijuana's underworld is determined to fight it out for the scraps of Teo's organization? That lack of clarity is another reason why the government should offer some more details and conclusions of the operation in Juárez: why it went wrong, whether or not this was because of the army's complicity or incompetence, whether we can expect it to be any better in Juárez with the Federal Police, and whether the army flooding another city or region can be expected to yield better results in terms of security (the seemingly inevitable spike in abuses that the presence of the army implies being, for now, a separate question).
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4 comments:
Looking at the big picture - I can see why you would question the effectiveness of this deployment. However, at least the Mexican Government is being proactive on this issue. Whether it's effective or not... at least they are not just siting there waiting for something to happen. Nice Blog.
Hi SonoraTim, thanks for reading. I agree with that, all things being equal, better for them to be ahead of the issue rather than waiting for two months.
El Teo is just an upstart. Our foremost criminal bosses are Enedina Arellano Félix, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano, and Jorge Hank Rhon.
The difference between Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana is that the president (Felipe Calderón) wishes to protect the Juárez cartel and to do away with the Arellano-Félix cartel. Just as in the U.S. during the last Prohibition, neither political party has clean hands. The army is not particularly incompetent and its rank-and-file are not complicit, but each area's brigadier-general must follow orders from Mexico City.
Many local attorneys have decried the unconstitutional actions of the federal troops in our area, but to no avail. Yet there is a lighter side to the militarization -- the army is now being joined by armed navy -- we are now being guarded by men with huge nametags on their chests identifying them all as "Marina". (Ironically this was also the Christian name of La Malinche, Hernán Cortés's native mistress.)
"The difference between Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana is that the president (Felipe Calderón) wishes to protect the Juárez cartel and to do away with the Arellano-Félix cartel."
I dont know what to make of the protection conspiracies. Most of the time you here that the army is protecting Chapo in Juarez, I'd not heard that Calderon was siding with Carrillo. I think in general most of them cancel each other out.
In any event, thanks for reading Real Tijuana. Would you say that people there are more comfortable with the navy than with the soldiers?
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