Thursday, April 1, 2010

Army to Leave Juárez

Felipe Calderón has announced that the army will be leaving Juárez over the next couple of weeks. The army contingent will be replaced by 4,500 Federal Police troops and 3,000 local police. I wonder if this reflects a broader de-emphasis of the army in domestic security, or if it merely means that Calderón's government has concluded (and with reason!) that it hasn't worked in Juárez. These types of questions wouldn't linger unanswered if the government had a decent communications strategy, but unfortunately it does not.

More than 90 percent of respondents to an Imagen poll said that they thought the removal of the army will not make Juárez any less violent.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

April Fools? Between Daniel Ortega resigning and the FARC collaborating with the CIA, I'm all confused.

pc said...

Now you lost me...Ortega resigning? What did I miss. I haven't been this confused since Dia de los Santos Inocentes, when I believed that Beckham was on his way to America.

Unknown said...

just some april fools jokes that momentarily had me going WHAAA!!?? then chuckling softly to myself. tough day to be an international news blogger.

pc said...

right no question, it was easy to get burned. I actually did a google search on Ortega, but I stopped short of actually passing the info along as fact.

Ken said...

I'm late in reading this, but, the more recent news that the FBI has concluded that El Chapo has won his fight for Ciudad Juárez cast this in a new light. Perhaps the army is pulling out because its proxy force has already won?

pc said...

Hi Ken, thanks for reading...

You might be right, but I'm not sure how much stock I put into the army/Calderon putting its thumb on the scale for Chapo story. I took it more as a sign that the government is finally giving up on the army as a force for a safer Juarez, more of an outgrowth of the reassessment following the January massacre. But I guess those ideas are not mutually exclusive, so ir might be a little of both.