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By Mark Stevenson

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — In just over three weeks in office, President Claudia Sheinbaum has inherited a whirlwind of violence that many believe was sparked by her predecessor’s policy of not confronting drug cartels. drugs and using the army to enforce the law.

Sheinbaum, who took office Oct. 1, would prefer to talk about the government’s plan to require all judges to run for office.

But instead she had to deal with the killing of six migrants by the military on the day she took office and the deaths of three bystanders at the hands of soldiers in the border town of Nuevo Laredo 10 days later. They were killed by Army and National Guard troops pursuing drug cartel suspects.

Sheinbaum’s third week in office was capped by the killing of a crusading Catholic priest who had been threatened by gangs, and a lopsided clash in the northern state of Sinaloa in which soldiers killed 19 drug cartel suspects, but suffered no scratches. It stirred memories of past human rights abuses, such as a 2014 incident in which soldiers killed a dozen cartel suspects after surrendering.

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“All of this is very disappointing and the future looks bleak,” said Santiago Aguirre, director of the Miguel Agustín Pro human rights center. “Everything is falling apart and instead of addressing these priority issues, all the government’s political capital is being wasted on judicial reform that will cause more problems than solutions.”

Sheinbaum said all incidents were being investigated, but she spent only a few minutes in her first three weeks in office talking about them, compared to the hours she spent extolling the virtues of judicial reform. She says electing judges will cure corruption.

But critics point out that the real problem is not corrupt judges who free suspects; it’s the fact that civilian police and prosecutors are so underfunded and poorly trained that more than 90% of crimes never make it to court.

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It was Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – who left office on September 30 – who decided to make the armed forces the centerpiece of his security strategy and abandon the slow, steady work of reforming the police and justice system. to eradicate corruption.

Sheinbaum pledged to continue all of Lopez Obrador’s policies, including the “hugs, not bullets” strategy of not confronting the cartels, but instead seeking to drain the potential pool of recruits through scholarships and professional training programs.

Lopez Obrador failed to significantly reduce Mexico’s historically high homicide rate, but the charismatic former president had a knack for portraying himself as a victim, brushing aside past incidents and blaming media reports on the violence of “sensationalism” intended to defame him.

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But since October 1, the abuses have multiplied so quickly that Sheinbaum has had neither the charisma nor the time to ignore the incidents. A drug cartel set off two car bombs almost simultaneously in Guanajuato state on Thursday, injuring three police officers and scattering burning debris in the streets.

“This puts her and the new administration to the test,” acknowledged Juan Ibarrola, a military analyst close to the armed forces.

There is no denying that Mexican drug cartels are heavily armed and determined to dominate the region. How to respond to this challenge has posed problems for four successive presidential administrations in Mexico.

“It’s unfortunate, but the use of violence by the Mexican government is necessary” to meet the challenge, Ibarrola said.

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As if to illustrate this, on Friday, Mexico’s top civil security official, Omar Garcia Harfuch, recounted a massive attack, which lasted several hours, on Thursday, by a convoy of cartel gunmen traveling in 16 vehicles – some armored – in the state of Guerrero, in the south of the country.

Garcia Harfuch said the attackers used fully automatic machine guns, explosive devices and .50-caliber sniper rifles in the ongoing shootout with soldiers and police.

Here again, the toll is uneven: 17 suspects and two police officers were killed. But the military — which now leads the quasi-military National Guard, the nation’s primary law enforcement agency — appears to be reacting to three weeks of near-relentless bad press.

The Defense Ministry was quick to release photos of bullet holes in military vehicles and noted that three soldiers had been injured in the fighting.

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The northern border town of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, is perhaps the clearest illustration of what happens when a military-led security strategy confronts a heavily armed drug cartel . It was there that the three civilians – including a nurse and an 8-year-old girl – were killed by troops in separate incidents on October 11 and 12.

Raymundo Ramos, president of the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Nuevo Laredo, has fought for years for justice regarding civilian deaths at the hands of military forces.

Asked about October incidents in other parts of Mexico, including the violence-wracked northern state of Sinaloa where rival cartels are fighting, Ramos said he feared the tactics military practice of “shoot first, ask questions later” that was used in Nuevo Laredo. are now spreading throughout the country.

“It’s the same way they operate in Nuevo Laredo,” Ramos said. “These are the same orders throughout the country. “Leave no witnesses, the dead do not speak.”

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