Veracruz (Mexico), – After suffering the start of the most violent year in Mexico’s recent history, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador decided on Monday not to change his security strategy one bit and promised that in six months he will begin to produce results.
López Obrador held the daily meeting with his security team in the eastern state of Veracruz, which on Friday returned to suffer a serious episode of violence with the killing of 14 people in the municipality of Minatitlán.
The president attributed that episode to the previous federal and state governments, which maintained a “conspiracy” with organized crime, and promised to reduce crime in the country by six months.
“Violence broke out but we are stabilizing it, not continuing the trend of increased violence, it will take some time but it will start to go down,” he promised.
Six months is the time he needs, he said, to consolidate his security strategy that is based on three points: improving the well-being of citizens, the creation of the National Guard and the eradication of corruption.
“The Mexican is not bad by nature,” said the president, and said that “the fundamental thing is that there is work, you serve the young and there is wellbeing.”
According to the also leader of the leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the scholarship program that his Government is promoting, in functions since December 1, will prevent young people from falling into organized crime networks.
In addition, he recalled that the creation of the National Guard, a new body of public security, will equip the president with thousands of police and soldiers to guarantee the country’s security.
This despite the criticism of civil organizations that have reported numerous cases of human rights violations committed by the Armed Forces during more than a decade that have been carrying out tasks of public security in the context of the fight against drug trafficking.
“When we have a presence throughout the country, which is not there now, we will guarantee public safety,” the president said at a press conference about the future National Guard.
And he assured that the new federal Government will eradicate the corruption that up to now had in all the levels of the administration, that were in league with the organized crime.
“They left the state of the country in a lamentable situation of crisis, corruption and collusion between crime and authorities, this is the inheritance that was received in the country and, particularly, in Veracruz,” lamented López Obrador.
Thirteen people – five women, one children and seven men – died last Friday in an attack that an armed group perpetrated at a private party in Minatitlán. The men were looking to take a subject, but the party attendants tried to prevent it, so they were attacked by gunshots.
On Sunday, an armed group shot dead a mother and her daughter who were traveling by car in the southeastern state of Tabasco in an attack in which two children were injured.
The victims’ family owns a cargo transport company that operates in an area controlled by groups dedicated to the theft of fuel, a crime known in Mexico as huachicoleo.
Mexico reported 8,493 murders in the first quarter of 2019, the highest number since 1997, when this registration began.
Last year, still under the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), there were 33,369 murders, the most violent since 1997.
López Obrador has been criticized in recent days for the lack of results of his security strategy and for having remained silent after the Minatitlan massacre.
“Our adversaries, who were silent like mummies when the country was being plundered and our country became a cemetery, now shout like town cries,” the president reproached.
He also attacked once again against the “fifí press”, in reference to the conservative media that criticize him, and promised that “things will change for the good of Mexico.”
“They would like us to fail but they will stay with the desire,” he said. (EFE).
