Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Big Gangs Are in Mexico City

The Federal Police says that, contrary to local government declarations, Mexico's biggest syndicates operate in the capital. Included among the groups are the Zetas, La Familia, Sinaloa, Juárez, the Gulf, the Pacific South, and what's left of La Barbie's group. It's odd that the response to "No cartels operate in Mexico City" was essentially, "All of them do". It would be hard to contradict someone more overwhelmingly, and you get the feeling that the Federal Police statement was a middle finger to the capital city government. In any event, that's interesting in as far as it goes, but as I said here, I think they are chasing the answers to the wrong questions with this debate.

5 comments:

malcolm beith said...

i think they're responding to my blog post. But in all seriousness, I think they're full of it, and it's a political move against Ebrard. Makes him look weak on security ahead of 2012 (and as former police chief he still has that haunting lynching incident). Watch for reports of "how Ebrard let the cartels operate in the capital and turned a blind eye" stories in coming year or so.

pc said...

Yeah that makes some sense. You'd think from a naked political calculus (assuming the FP is willing to do the PAN's dirty work), hitting EPN along the same lines would be more important. Then again, with EPN so likely to win, maybe they don't want to piss him off, and he has some significant ties already among the FP and the like.

Mexfiles said...

Geeze, I'm in agreement with both Patrick and Malcolm about the same thing on the same day! Three out of three foreign observers agree...

pc said...

Which probably means we are all wrong!

Fred Dawes said...

The zetas made by the US Government about 10 years ago.