Wednesday, February 8, 2023
198 Mexico News
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • BUSINESS NEWS
  • VIDEO NEWS
  • FEATURED NEWS
    • MEXICO USA TRADE NEWS
    • MEXICO EU NEWS
    • MEXICO UK NEWS
    • MEXICO BRAZIL NEWS
    • MEXICO INDIA NEWS
    • MEXICO GULF NATIONS NEWS
    • MEXICO CHINA NEWS
    • MEXICO EGYPT NEWS
    • MEXICO AFRICA NEWS
    • MEXICO NIGERIA NEWS
    • MEXICO THAILAND NEWS
  • POLITICAL NEWS
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CRYPTO
  • AGRICULTURE
  • MORE NEWS
    • MEXICO IMMIGRATION NEWS
    • MEXICO SCHOLARSHIP NEWS
    • MEXICO VENTURE CAPITAL NEWS
    • MEXICO EDUCATION NEWS
    • MEXICO BUSINESS HELP
    • MEXICO PARTNESHIPS
    • MEXICO MANUFACTURE NEWS
    • MEXICO UNIVERSITY NEWS
    • MEXICO JOINT VENTURE NEWS
  • ASK IKE LEMUWA
  • CONTACT
198 Mexico News
  • Home
  • BUSINESS NEWS
  • VIDEO NEWS
  • FEATURED NEWS
    • MEXICO USA TRADE NEWS
    • MEXICO EU NEWS
    • MEXICO UK NEWS
    • MEXICO BRAZIL NEWS
    • MEXICO INDIA NEWS
    • MEXICO GULF NATIONS NEWS
    • MEXICO CHINA NEWS
    • MEXICO EGYPT NEWS
    • MEXICO AFRICA NEWS
    • MEXICO NIGERIA NEWS
    • MEXICO THAILAND NEWS
  • POLITICAL NEWS
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CRYPTO
  • AGRICULTURE
  • MORE NEWS
    • MEXICO IMMIGRATION NEWS
    • MEXICO SCHOLARSHIP NEWS
    • MEXICO VENTURE CAPITAL NEWS
    • MEXICO EDUCATION NEWS
    • MEXICO BUSINESS HELP
    • MEXICO PARTNESHIPS
    • MEXICO MANUFACTURE NEWS
    • MEXICO UNIVERSITY NEWS
    • MEXICO JOINT VENTURE NEWS
  • ASK IKE LEMUWA
  • CONTACT
No Result
View All Result
198 Mexico News
No Result
View All Result

‘We’re Living in Hell’: Inside Fresnillo, Mexico’s Most Terrified City

by 198 Mexico News
August 3, 2021
in MEXICO BRAZIL NEWS
Reading Time: 6 mins read
A A
0
Home MEXICO BRAZIL NEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

[ad_1]

FRESNILLO, Mexico — The violence was already terrifying, she said, when grenades exploded outside her church in broad daylight some five years ago. Then children in town were kidnapped, disappearing without a trace. Then the bodies of the executed were dumped in city streets.

And then came the day last month when armed men burst into her home, dragged her 15-year-old son and two of his friends outside and shot them to death, leaving Guadalupe — who didn’t want her full name published out of fear of the men — too terrified to leave the house.

“I do not want the night to come,” she said, through tears. “Living with fear is no life at all.”

For most of the population of Fresnillo, a mining city in central Mexico, a fearful existence is the only one they know; 96 percent of residents say they feel unsafe, the highest percentage of any city in Mexico, according to a recent survey from Mexico’s national statistics agency.

The economy can boom and bust, presidents and parties and their promises can come and go, but for the city’s 140,000 people, as for many in Mexico, there is a growing sense that no matter what changes, the violence endures.

Ever since Mexico’s government began its war on the drug cartels nearly 15 years ago, murder statistics have climbed inexorably.

In 2018, during his run for president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered a grand vision to remake Mexico — and a radically new way of tackling the violence. He would break with the failed tactics of his predecessors, he said. Instead of arresting and killing traffickers as previous leaders had done, he would focus on the causes of violence: “hugs not bullets,” he called it. He was swept to victory.

But three years after his landslide win, and with his Morena party in control of Congress, the drumbeat of death continues, suggesting that Mr. López Obrador’s approach has failed, fueling in many a paralyzing helplessness.

“We’re living in hell,” said Victor Piña, who ran for mayor of Fresnillo in the June elections and watched an aide gunned down beside him during a pre-campaign event.

Zacatecas, the state Fresnillo is in, has the country’s highest murder rate, with 122 deaths in June, according to the Mexican government. Lately, it has become a national horror show, with cadavers found dangling from bridges, stuffed into plastic bags or even tied to a cross.

Across Mexico, murders have dropped less than 1 percent since Mr. López Obrador took office, according to the country’s statistics agency. That was enough for the president to claim, in a speech last month, that there had been an improvement on a problem his administration inherited. “There is peace and calm,” he said in June.

Many in Fresnillo disagree.

“‘Hugs not bullets’ doesn’t work,” said Javier Torres Rodríguez, whose brother was shot and killed in 2018. “We’re losing the ability to be shocked.”

Among other strategies, Mr. López Obrador has focused on tackling what he sees as the root causes of violence, funding social programs to improve education and employment for young people. His government has also gone after the financing behind organized crime. In October, the authorities said they had frozen 1,352 bank accounts linked to 14 criminal groups, including powerful drug cartels.

But the collection of programs and law-enforcement actions never coalesced into a clear public policy, critics said.

There is “an unstoppable situation of violence and a tragic deterioration of public security in Mexico,” said Angelica Duran-Martinez, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “There’s not a clear security policy.”

Mr. López Obrador has also doubled down on his support for the armed forces, embracing the militarization that also marked previous administrations.

One central pillar of his approach to fighting crime has been the creation of the National Guard, a 100,000-strong federal security force deployed across some 180 regional barracks nationwide. Last week Mr. López Obrador announced that the guard would receive an additional $2.5 billion in funding.

But security experts say the guard, which the president plans to incorporate into the armed forces, has proved ineffective. Without a clear mandate, it has focused more on tackling low-level crime than cartel violence. And as a security force made up of members of the federal police, the military and other security professionals, it has not found cohesion.

“It’s a force that comes out of trying to mix oil and water,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexico City security analyst. “There are a lot of internal struggles, and that has detracted from the performance of the Guard.”

In Fresnillo, the National Guard hasn’t done enough, according to the city’s mayor, Saúl Monreal, a member of the president’s Morena party.

“They’re here, they’re present, they do patrols, but what we really need right now is to be fighting organized crime,” Mr. Monreal said.

Mr. Monreal was re-elected during national midterms in June. This was one of Mexico’s most violent elections on record, with at least 102 people killed during the campaign, yet another sign of the country’s unraveling security.

His family is politically powerful. His brother, David, is governor-elect of Zacatecas. Another brother, Ricardo, leads the Morena party in the Senate and has said he intends to run for president in 2024. But not even the family’s political prominence has managed to rescue the city or the state.

Bordering eight other states, Zacatecas has long been central to the drug trade, a crossroads between the Pacific, where narcotics and drugmaking products are shipped in, and northern states along the United States border. Fresnillo, which sits in the center of important roads and highways, is strategically vital.

But for much of its recent history, residents say they were largely left alone. That began changing around 2007 and 2008 as the government’s assault on the cartels led them to splinter, evolve and spread.

In the last few years, the region has become embroiled in a battle between two of the country’s most powerful organized crime groups: the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Caught in the middle of the fighting are residents like Guadalupe. She can remember sitting on the stoop with neighbors until midnight as a young girl. Now, the city lies desolate after dark.

Guadalupe does not let her children play outside unsupervised, but even that couldn’t stop the violence from tearing her family apart. On the night her son was killed, in mid-July, four armed men stormed into her home, dragging out her son, Henry, and two friends who were sleeping over. There was a burst of gunfire, and then the assailants were gone.

It was Guadalupe who found the teenagers’ bodies.

Now she and her family live in terror. Too scared to stay in the same house, they moved in with Guadalupe’s parents in a different part of town. But the fear remained. Her 10-year-old daughter can barely sleep, she said, and Guadalupe keeps dreaming of her son’s killing. The motive, and the identity of the killers, remain unknown.

Guadalupe has thought about leaving town or even taking her own life. But for now, she sits in her parents’ small, cinder-block house, the curtains drawn, the shadows broken by the candles of a little altar to Henry and his fallen friends.

“There’s nothing here,” she said. “The fear has overwhelmed us.”

[ad_2]

Source link

You might also like

The Unique Way Tequila Is Building Homes In Tequila, Mexico

All Things Investigations: Episode 8 – ABC Enforcement in Mexico and Brazil with Diego Duran and Salim Saud | Thomas Fox – Compliance Evangelist

“Canela Box Nights” Results from Mexico

Tags: cityFresnilloHellLivingMexicosTerrified
Share30Tweet19
Previous Post

Eni adds to Mexico oil position with new Block 10 discovery

Next Post

Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages

Recommended For You

The Unique Way Tequila Is Building Homes In Tequila, Mexico

by 198 Mexico News
July 25, 2022
0

It was more than 20 years ago that Jose Cuervo, now the best-selling brand of tequila in the world, made a decision to commit toward creating a better...

Read more

All Things Investigations: Episode 8 – ABC Enforcement in Mexico and Brazil with Diego Duran and Salim Saud | Thomas Fox – Compliance Evangelist

by 198 Mexico News
July 25, 2022
0

Welcome to the Hughes Hubbard Anti-Corruption and Internal Investigations Practice Group’s Podcast, All Things Investigations. In this podcast, Diego Duran, Salim Saud of the Hughes Hubbard Anti-Corruption &...

Read more

“Canela Box Nights” Results from Mexico

by 198 Mexico News
July 23, 2022
0

HERMOSILLO, Sonora, Mexico (July 23, 2022) – Last night’s “Canela Fight Night” series inaugural event was a knockout success, in addition to being a platform to showcase a...

Read more

Brazil, Guyana, Mexico Projects To Offset Declines In Other Areas  | Rigzone

by 198 Mexico News
July 22, 2022
0

In the coming years, upstream capex in Latin America will shift into deeper and deeper water with Brazil, Guyana, and Mexico likely to lead the charge for new...

Read more

Alves joins Mexico’s Pumas on free transfer

by 198 Mexico News
July 22, 2022
0

FC Barcelona player Dani Alves visits the Sydney Opera House with fellow members of the squad during their trip to Australia for a friendly soccer match against the...

Read more
Next Post

Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages

Ranks of Mexican poor swell to reach nearly half the population

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

Unprecedented price hikes put the squeeze on Iranian tenants | Economy News

July 26, 2022

U.S. is sidelined in critical minerals push

July 26, 2022

China, Russia Dominate Nuclear Reactor Construction, IEA Says

July 26, 2022

Credentials for cosmetic surgery centers in Tijuana to be scrutinized

July 25, 2022

New group of 2,000 migrants sets off in southern Mexico

July 25, 2022

New group of 2,000 migrants sets off in southern Mexico :: WRAL.com

July 25, 2022

Ethereum Weekly Exchange Net Flow Points To Growing Accumulation Trend

July 25, 2022

San Diego’s wastewater shows COVID-19 cases about to spike

July 25, 2022
198 Mexico News

198 Mexico News will provide the latest news update as the government facing a growing challenging in preventing Mexico from breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines.

198massmedia Group. USA. 3821 Dominion Drive, Dumfries, USA. 22026.

Toll Free 1 888 642 8433.
Contact: info@198mexiconews.com

LATEST UPDATES

Unprecedented price hikes put the squeeze on Iranian tenants | Economy News

U.S. is sidelined in critical minerals push

China, Russia Dominate Nuclear Reactor Construction, IEA Says

Credentials for cosmetic surgery centers in Tijuana to be scrutinized

New group of 2,000 migrants sets off in southern Mexico

New group of 2,000 migrants sets off in southern Mexico :: WRAL.com

Ethereum Weekly Exchange Net Flow Points To Growing Accumulation Trend

San Diego’s wastewater shows COVID-19 cases about to spike

RECOMMENDED

No Content Available
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA
  • Cookie Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Contact us

Copyright © 2022 - 198 Mexico News.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • BUSINESS NEWS
  • VIDEO NEWS
  • FEATURED NEWS
    • MEXICO USA TRADE NEWS
    • MEXICO EU NEWS
    • MEXICO UK NEWS
    • MEXICO BRAZIL NEWS
    • MEXICO INDIA NEWS
    • MEXICO GULF NATIONS NEWS
    • MEXICO CHINA NEWS
    • MEXICO EGYPT NEWS
    • MEXICO AFRICA NEWS
    • MEXICO NIGERIA NEWS
    • MEXICO THAILAND NEWS
  • POLITICAL NEWS
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CRYPTO
  • AGRICULTURE
  • MORE NEWS
    • MEXICO IMMIGRATION NEWS
    • MEXICO SCHOLARSHIP NEWS
    • MEXICO VENTURE CAPITAL NEWS
    • MEXICO EDUCATION NEWS
    • MEXICO BUSINESS HELP
    • MEXICO PARTNESHIPS
    • MEXICO MANUFACTURE NEWS
    • MEXICO UNIVERSITY NEWS
    • MEXICO JOINT VENTURE NEWS
  • ASK IKE LEMUWA
  • CONTACT

Copyright © 2022 - 198 Mexico News.

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?