Politics: Mexico in a weak position to face US demands
It is still unclear why gunmen brutally murdered three women and six children in the northern border state of Sonora, but their deaths on November 4 have broad political and security implications, both domestically and on the level of Mexico-US relations.
Beyond the tragic details of this case, and given the October 17 failure in Culiacán, where federal forces were humiliated by forces from the Pacific Cartel, the murders that horrified the world last week were just the latest in a long line of developments that have laid bare multiple structural deficiencies in Mexico’s security and justice apparatus, and in the current government’s handling of organized criminal violence.
In addition to the degree of impunity criminal gunmen have long enjoyed, the current administration has failed to put any priority on investigating and prosecuting acts of extreme violence, massacres or multiple homicides, much less the killing of members of vulnerable groups such as women and children. Moreover, it is unclear how the government could quickly respond to such threats as much of the country, especially rural areas, lacks even the pretense of any serious police protection.
Such obvious weaknesses in the country’s security capabilities and policies, the recent victims’ dual nationalities, and their killing in relative proximity to the US border have left a Mexican government that has long bent over backward to try and avoid the wrath of the Trump White House in an especially delicate situation, especially now that many conservative politicians and media outlets in the United States, including the Wall Street Journal, have begun clamoring for the US to take direct action to track down the perpetrators of last week’s murders. In that light, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador would be wise to try to take the initiative by proposing new arrangements for reviving bilateral security cooperation agreements.
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