Janice R. Andrews
Thursday, after deadly fights between rival groups in the Sinaloa gang, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the United States was to blame for the recent rise in cartel violence in Sinaloa. At least 30 people have died in these fights in Culiacan, the city of the northern state, in the last week.
Major drug gang leaders were arrested in the U.S. at the end of July, which led to a power struggle that has spread to the city and is still going on. Members of the cartels continue to fight with each other and with the police, leaving a line of dead bodies in their wake. In Culiacan, cops have found bodies on busy streets during the middle of the day, with blood pools marking the places where people had been killed.
To confirm that the U.S. government is partly to blame for the chaos, López Obrador said in his morning meeting, “Yes, of course… for having carried out this operation.” Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a high-ranking member of the cartel, and Joaquín Guzmán López, son of the notorious Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, were both arrested, he said. This led to the violence. The two men, Guzmán and Zambada, were caught near El Paso, Texas, where they had been taken against their will.
Residents of Culiacan are still on edge as the war between drug cartels gets worse. A lot of parents have chosen to keep their kids inside because they are afraid of what might happen outside. Even though schools are back in session, not many kids are going because they are afraid of getting caught in the gunfire.
López Obrador said that the U.S. officials should not have arrested Zambada without consulting with anyone else first, as this “was totally illegal” and not in line with international law. He warned that the actions that caused unrest in Sinaloa were a direct result of those actions, which hurt the relationship between the two countries. News reports say that Mexican officials are thinking about charging people who helped catch Zambada.
Also, the rising violence is a big problem for López Obrador, who has long supported his “hugs not bullets” method to dealing with drug cartel violence. The goal of this approach was to avoid direct fights with drug gangs, but it has been harshly criticised because violence has not stopped. The president thinks that drug gangs mostly respect civilians, but the ongoing violence shows that he is wrong. Drug cartels are using more and more violent methods, such as roadside bombs, armoured cars, and drones.
Now that López Obrador’s time is over, the violence in Sinaloa is a stark reminder of how complicated Mexico’s drug war is and how things are getting worse between the U.S. and Mexico because of it. While the president calls for talks and unity, many people in Sinaloa are left to deal with the scary fact that drug cartels control their neighbourhoods.
