Several foreign tourists were gang-raped this week in the resort city of Acapulco, Mexico
- The allegations grabbed headlines across Mexico and around the globe: Hooded gunmen stormed into a beach bungalow and attacked a group of Spanish tourists, authorities said, raping six women and tying up a group of men with cell phone cables and bikini straps.
The high-profile case in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco
this week was a sharp reminder of significant security problems in a
state that has seen violence surge even as homicide numbers in other
hotspots across the country have started to dip.
And it drew renewed
attention to topics that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has
steered out of the spotlight since he took office in December.
As authorities
investigate the alleged crime, experts say the incident shows that even
as Mexico's new government tries to paint a brighter picture and revamp
the country's image, realities on the ground remain complicated -- and,
in some areas, ugly.
A state plagued by warring gangs
For years Guerrero state,
where Acapulco sits, has ranked among the Mexican states with the
highest homicide rates, a crime statistic regularly used by officials
and analysts when discussing the overall security situation. Last
year Guerrero had more reported gun murders than any other state in
Mexico, more than 1,600, according to a federal government tally
released last month.
"While places like Ciudad Juarez have become safer,
other places in the country have seen violence spike up," said
Christopher Wilson, an associate at the Washington-based Mexico
Institute. "Acapulco is one of the areas, and in fact, the entire state
of Guerrero is one of the places, where there's been more violence
recently."
Local authorities said
Tuesday that the alleged rape wasn't tied to organized crime but then
revealed Wednesday that they believe the victims bought drugs from one
or more of the suspects in the days before the alleged attack.
Even if a major criminal organization like Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's
notorious Sinaloa cartel wasn't behind the alleged attack, it's part of
a deep-seated security problem in the region, said Alejandro Hope, a
security analyst at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness think
tank.
"It wasn't El Chapo Guzman," he said, "but I think it was one of the many gangs in Acapulco."
Fragmentation of large
organizations like the once-powerful Beltran Leyva cartel has fueled the
creation of dozens of smaller criminal gangs battling for turf in the
Pacific port city and the surrounding state, Hope said. And even though
many of the groups are more focused on crimes such as extorting business
owners than on drug trafficking, he said, that hasn't stemmed the
violence.
Authorities haven't been
able to get a handle on the problem, said Jorge Chabat, who studies
security at Mexico's Center for Research and Teaching in Economics.
"Basically the
government can't control them," he said. "This is just one example of
the climate of insecurity that Guerrero has been living."
Particular regions of
Mexico -- often those near the border and along lucrative trafficking
routes -- have borne the brunt of the country's drug-related violence.
Nationwide, official
figures indicate violence in Mexico may be declining. In 2012, there
were 20,568 intentional homicides across the country, an 8.5% decrease
from 2011.
"2012 was the first year when it fell, but we are still double where we were in 2007," Hope said.
Experts caution that
reliable statistics are hard to come by. Last year the government
stopped releasing its tally of deaths tied to organized crime, which had
become a measure many used to debate the success of then-President
Felipe Calderon's drug war. Now only more general homicide statistics
are released, without describing the circumstances.
It's unclear whether
Mexico has turned a corner, Wilson said, but the fact that cities like
Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana have seen violence drop gives some hope for
the future.
"If they can turn things
around, then there's no reason why every other city in Mexico can't do
the same thing," Wilson said. "We now have success stories, which we
couldn't say three years ago."
A new president changes the tone
Even if the numbers may be shifting in his favor, Mexico's new president hasn't been talking much about violence.
Right before he took office, Pena Nieto began a trip to the United States in November saying that ties between the neighboring nations must go beyond the drug war
.
In Mexico now, the
once-common government press conferences presenting high-profile cartel
captures seem to be a thing of the past.
"There's a belief that
they have that the criminal groups do sort of take advantage of the
media and the attention in order to create fear, basically, and
therefore space to act with impunity," Wilson said. "So the government
decided deliberately they won't parade recently arrested criminals in
front of the cameras."
That's a marked change
from his predecessor, Calderon, who announced a crackdown on cartels
shortly after taking office in December 2006. The war on drugs became a hallmark of his presidency,
and the death toll from drug-related violence during his tenure had
soared to more than 47,500 when the government stopped releasing updated
figures in early 2012 -- his last year in office. In farewell speeches,
Calderon noted that 25 of Mexico's 37 most wanted criminals had been
apprehended on his watch.
"The government of Pena
Nieto is trying not to talk about the issue of violence," said Chabat.
"It's a strategy to change perceptions."
The reason is clear,
said George W. Grayson, who studied Mexico's ruthless Zetas cartel for
his 2012 book "The Executioner's Men."
"You don't want to talk about your crazy aunt in the attic. ... They want to shift the narrative," he said.
On the campaign trail last year, Pena Nieto vowed to reduce violence and said he'd take a different tack -- an election promise that played well with voters in a country weary of a drug war with a growing body count.
But two months into his six-year presidency, analysts say it's still unclear how he'll accomplish that goal.
"What he wants to crack
down on are kidnappings, extortion, what's more likely to affect average
people. There's been no secret that he wants to move in that direction
and use more of a scalpel than a broad sword in combating the cartels,"
Grayson said, "and he seems to have sent a subliminal message to the
cartels saying that if you just conduct your business and don't disturb
civilians, we're not going to ignore you, but you're not a top
priority."
Pena Nieto has stressed that fixing social and economic problems will foster peace
in Mexico, and he's made some security policy shifts. He started his
term by eliminating the public safety ministry and placing the federal
police it once controlled under the interior ministry's power.
He's also discussed a
plan to divide the country into regions to tackle security problems and
to create a new national gendarmerie force, which could eventually send
Mexico's military out of the streets and back into their barracks.
But the time frame for
those changes is uncertain. And in the meantime, discussing violence
less doesn't make the longstanding systemic problems fueling it go away,
Chabat said.
"It is important for any
government to talk about other topics, like the economy. But you can't
negate what is happening, what people are still experiencing," he said.
'We are left with no other choice'
In some areas of Mexico, residents are tired of waiting for the government to step in to solve their problems.
"What we are seeing in a
lot of parts of the country is a vacuum of the state ... and the
proliferation of private security corps, of paramilitary groups," Chabat
said. Incidents like the tourist attack in Guerrero will only do more
to promote that approach, Chabat said, noting that it raises worrying
concerns about abuses by vigilantes taking the law into their own hands.
"The government is overcome. ... That's the tragedy," he said. "There is no short-term solution."
As word of this week's rape allegations in Acapulco spread, a group of people in one nearby neighborhood took a vote on Tuesday.
If local, state and
federal officials can't track down and apprehend those responsible, they
decided they'll take matters into their own hands.
"We are going to have to
rise up with weapons. ... We cannot wait until they keep destroying the
port of Acapulco with these kinds of incidents," said Sergio Mejia,
president of a 35-member association of restaurant and business owners
in Acapulco's Bonfil beach community. "We think the government is very
timid, very slow. If there is no immediate response, it leaves us no
choice but to join the fight and set up checkpoints on the street
corners."
Months ago, he read
about other groups in the region taking similar steps, forming
paramilitary self-defense groups of masked men that patrol the streets.
At first, it seemed extreme. Now, it sounds sensible, he said.
In this area where the
economy relies on tourism, he said, residents are tired of waiting for
authorities to take action. But it's not just that a high-profile crime
targeting tourists is bad for business.
"Today they were
foreigners," said Mejia, who owns a restaurant that specializes in
serving up freshly caught seafood. "Tomorrow it could be our families."
Guerrero is named for a
military general who fought for Mexico's independence from Spain. It's
also the Spanish word for warrior.
If the government can't protect them, Mejia says it's time for the state's residents to fight back.
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