MEXICO CITY, June 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mexico’s president vowed to investigate the border shootings that left 19 dead over the weekend, even as the latest homicide figures showed a rebound in killings nationwide.
President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said evidence indicated that 15 of the victims were innocent bystanders. The other four dead were suspected gunmen from a group that drove into the northern border city of Reynosa and opened fire indiscriminately.
“Everything indicates that it was not a confrontation, but rather a commando that shot people who were not involved in any conflict,” Lopez Obrador said.
The government of Tamaulipas state, where Reynosa is located, said in a statement there was evidence the killings involved “organised crime”, which in Mexico is generally used to refer to drug cartels. Cartels in the Reynosa area have become increasingly involved in migrant trafficking or charging protection fees to migrant traffickers.
Reynosa is located across the border from McAllen, Texas, and has been the scene of fighting between factions of the Gulf cartel. But those disputes usually target rival gunmen or security forces. The dead in the Saturday attack included taxi drivers, workers and a nursing student.
Authorities are still investigating the motive, though in the past, drug cartels have sometimes used random killings of civilians to turn up the heat on rival gangs, or intimidate local authorities.
Lopez Obrador asked federal prosecutors to take over the case and pledged “a thorough investigation.”
The killings Saturday in Reynosa, and the latest nationwide homicide figures, suggest that Lopez Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” crime strategy is doing little to decrease killings.
There were 2,963 homicides in May, the latest month for which figures are available, higher than May 2020 and well above the numbers that prevailed when Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018.
The government says homicides declined 2.9 per cent in the first five months of 2021 compared to 2020, but that may be because January and February of this year were marked by Mexico’s worst coronavirus wave, when public activities were curtailed.
Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca called the Reynosa victims “innocent citizens,” and said “Criminal organisations must receive a clear, explicit and forceful signal from the Federal Government that there will be no room for impunity, nor tolerance for their reprehensible criminal behavior.”
The attacks sparked a deployment of the military, National Guard and state police across the city.
Lopez Obrador has sought to avoid confrontations with drug cartels, at one point releasing a top trafficker to avoid bloodshed. He prefers to focus on addressing underlying social problems like youth unemployment.
Earlier this month, Lopez Obrador praised the drug cartels for not disrupting the June 6 mid-term voting, even though three dozen candidates were killed during the campaigns.
“People who belong to organised crime behaved very well, in general, there were few acts of violence by these groups,” the president said. “I think the white-collar criminals acted worse.” — NNN-AGENCIES
