Guerrero Still Sees Violence Ten Years Later
December 11 marks the tenth anniversary of the War on Drugs in Mexico. In December 2006, President Felipe Calderón deployed over 6,500 soldiers to the state of Michoacan for the purpose of defeating drug cartels. Now the neighboring state of Guerrero is at the center of Mexico’s cartel violence. The southern state is one of the poorest in Mexico with a poverty rate of 65 percent in 2014. It also happens to be the largest producer of opium in Mexico, and cartels there are taking advantage of this now that the U.S. has begun to decrease its consumption of cocaine and marijuana produced in Latin America.
According to The Guardian, the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel, hands out its product to smaller trafficking gangs for distribution, and the decentralized system is the main cause of the escalation of violence in Guerrero. The fact that Mexican cartels are now focusing on refining opium production to satisfy the market raises the stakes in the drug trade and consequently maintains the high levels violence in the state.
Guerrero recently experienced a weekend of increased homicides. On November 21, El Economista reported that over 23 homicides occurred throughout the state in under 24 hours. The same week, on November 25, 32 bodies were discovered in 20 clandestine graves scattered throughout a hillside in the municipality of Zitlala.
Daily security threats affect communities in Guerrero. Schools are often temporarily closed due to extortion and death threats from gangs. Civilian vigilante groups, in an attempt to protect their communities in the face of drug violence, clash in their own turf wars as well, creating a state of fear and chaos.
In the midst of the misery engulfing the state, Guerrero continues to make positive strides in addressing violence. According to Mexican prosecutors, authorities arrested a leading drug trafficker of the Sinaloa Cartel on November 29.
On December 3, Governor of Guerrero Héctor Astudillo Flores tweeted, “We want our state to live in harmony and problems to be solved through dialogue with concrete objectives in favor of Guerrero.” Flores tweeted this after a truce was made between the Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero (UPOEG) and the Frente Unido por la Seguridad y el Desarrollo de Guerrero (FUSDEG), two community vigilante groups that clashed in a confrontation over control of land on November 24.
Overall, intentional homicide rates declined in Mexico from 2011 according to World Bank data.
Still, however, the reality is that Mexicans face an overwhelming sense of insecurity and a lack of trust in the government regarding the War on Drugs. Acapulco, formerly known as a major travel destination for Mexicans and foreigners alike, is now Mexico’s most violent city and the fourth most violent city in the world. Furthermore, the War on Drugs has left at least 80,000 people dead in Mexico since 2006, according to CNN.
A possible solution to the new opium wars in Guerrero could be the legalization of opium cultivation for medicinal use, a policy that Governor Flores has openly supported. According to a report published by Proceso in May, Flores stated, “The administration of Enrique Peña Nieto itself has announced that it is looking into the proposal.”
Until the Mexican government comes up with more effective solutions to the country’s billion dollar drug trade, the state of Guerrero has no other alternative but to resiliently face the violence.
