Econ_May_05

The Economist

May 5th 2018

The Americas 35

claims that 80% of murders in the state are

related to fuel theft. In January the head of

securityat anoil refinery in the cityofSala-

manca was killed. Car theft can also be le-

thal. In 2011 less than 2% of the state’s vehi-

cle thefts involved violence, according to

government data; last year 26% did.

Mexico’s location, between South

America’s coca fields and the United

States’ drugs market, makes it vulnerable.

But the persistence of violence is the fault

of a weak state, and especially of inade-

quate policing, prosecution and courts.

Widespread corruption greatly worsens

the problem (see next story). Rather than

correcting those defects, recent govern-

ments have cracked down ineptly.

Police investigate just a quarter of mur-

ders. In part that is because there are too

few police. The interior ministry has set a

target of 1.8 police for every 1,000 people.

Only Mexico City and the state of Tabasco

have met it. Police and officials are under-

paid, and thus tempted to work for crimi-

nals rather than against them. They are

also poorly trained. In many states, more

than 90% of arrests are of suspects caught

red-handed, which shows that police have

little capacity to investigate crimes more

than an hour or two after they happen.

Another problem is co-ordination.

Mexico has municipal, state and federal

police forces, plus the army, which Presi-

dents Calderón and Peña pressed into ser-

vice against criminals. In many states mu-

nicipal and state-level police donot use the

same radio frequencies and therefore can-

not communicate. The army resents being

asked to chase domestic criminals, a job it

thinks the police should do. Municipal po-

lice, used to issuing traffic tickets and pur-

suing burglars, find themselves investigat-

ing fuel theft, which is a federal crime.

Areas where violence has surged re-

cently are especially unprepared to deal

with it. Guanajuato has one forensics spe-

cialist per10,000 crimes; the national aver-

age is18. Police numbers there are less than

a quarter of the interior ministry’s stan-

dard. While the number of murders in

Apaseo El Grande has risen tenfold since

2015, the number of municipal police has

increased by just ten, to 100. Ricardo Ortiz,

the mayor of nearby Irapuato, says that

many policemen are threatening to quit to

earn more than their miserable average

wage of14,000 pesos amonth.

Mr Peña’s efforts to improve policing

have largely failed. He proposed creating a

40,000-strong force that would establish

control over areas infested by crime. But

the government cut back its funding and

the army refused to let civilians command

it. The force now has fewer than 5,000

troops. Both Mr Calderón and Mr Peña

tried to raise standards and solve the co-or-

dination problem by introducing “

mando

único

” (single command), the takeover of

the country’s1,600municipal police forces

by the 32 state forces. But congress blocked

Mr Peña’s plan to make this compulsory.

States have adopted it in piecemeal fash-

ion, withmixed results. In Apaseo El Gran-

de, where 30 state and 33 military police

showed up at the turn of the year to cope

with the surge in murders, patrols stopped

briefly because of amix-up over the force’s

fuel budget. More worryingly, frets the

mayor, Gonzalo González, the state and

federal police don’t know the region.

A more promising initiative is a reform

ofthe criminal-justice system,which is tak-

ingplace graduallyacross the country. This

shifts courtroom procedures away from

document-based decision-making by a

judge to argumentative methods used in

the United States. This makes it harder for

prosecutors to obtain a conviction (in the

few cases that go to trial). In the long run it

should improve lawenforcement by oblig-

ing police to work harder to obtain evi-

dence. But politicians complain that the

new procedure, plus a new law that pre-

vents police from lockingup people caught

with illegal weapons, is allowing more

criminals onto the streets.

The presidential candidates have pre-

sented plans that are old, vague or inade-

quate. The twomainmoderate candidates,

Ricardo Anaya of the conservative Nation-

al Action Party and José Antonio Meade,

the nominee of Mr Peña’s Institutional

Revolutionary Party, see the need to im-

prove law enforcement but say little about

how they would do it. In the debate Mr

Anaya criticised the priority that Mr Peña

and Mr Calderón (a member of his party)

gave to capturing kingpins. He promised to

“dismantle and not just decapitate” crimi-

nal organisations. Mr Meade would “qua-

druple the state’s investigative capacity”.

Mr López Obrador, the strong favourite,

regards criminal justice as a branch of eco-

Mexico’s murdered mayors

Open season

NA sunny day inOaxaca, the capital

of a southernMexican statewith the

same name, themayor of a nearby vil-

lagewas due tomeet

The Economist

talkabout doing the job after his prede-

cessorwasmurdered. He did not show

up. The night before a bullet had

smashed awindowof his house. “I’m

scared,” he said in amessage.

Between 2010 and 2017, 42mayors

weremurdered inMexico (see chart), 12

of them in the state ofOaxaca. A further

tenmayors or ex-mayors have been

killed this year. Amayor is11 timesmore

likely than an ordinary citizen to be a

murder victim, says David Shirkof the

University of SanDiego in California.

Some perish because they fight cor-

ruption and organised crime. Others die

because they sidewith a gang, becoming

targets of its rivals. In 2008 an ex-mayor

ofHidalgo, north ofMonterrey, was

killed by his son, who discovered they

were sleepingwith the samewoman. In

Oaxaca, a rural statewhere drug gangs

areweak, manymayors have been killed

in disputes over land between villages.

Themurdered predecessor of the

no-showmayor had beenmaking im-

provements such as providing drinking

water. This angered a

cacique

(local boss),

who thought themayorwasmuscling in

on his turf. His successor dropped some

of the projects.

Mayors’ growing power, and gangs’

newbusiness activities, have increased

the risk. Mayors gained control over local

finances in the 1980s and1990s and great-

er autonomy afterMexico became a

democracy in 2000. Old-style gangs

worry about shipping drugs alongmo-

torways and across borders, both areas of

federal responsibility. As they branch out

into extortion and local drug-dealing,

they come up against mayors. These are

more vulnerable than federal and state

officials, who have better protection.

Enrique Vargas, head of the country’s

association ofmayors, wants to change

that. He has asked the federal govern-

ment to provide armed bodyguards for

mayorswho have been threatened, and

to set up an emergency telephone line to

the secretary of the interior. That might

help. About1,600 townswill choose

mayors in a general election scheduled

for July1st. Thesemayorswill do a better

job if they don’t have toworry that a

contentious decisionwill get themkilled.

OAXACA

It is11times riskier to be aMexicanmayor than an ordinarycitizen

Municipal mayhem

Source: Justice in Mexico Project

Mexico, assassinations

2002 05

15 17

Mayors

Former mayors

Mayoral candidates

Vice-mayors & mayors-elect

nil

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