Beyond partisan affiliations, the priority is to consolidate peace in the capitals of the 31 entities of the Mexican Republic. The Fourth Transformation confronts the security crisis that overwhelms it with a strategy that seeks to restore the social fabric and combat the structural causes that triggered it.
For the mayors of the capital, who have only 36 months to offer results to their constituents, the approaches to preserve public order are more pragmatic than ideological. The “single police” model has been outdated for a long time. The National Guard patrols the streets of the most insecure areas of the country and the state and municipal police forces must coordinate tasks, standardize protocols and carry out forceful actions, in the face of increasing levels of citizen demand.
Last weekend, the 23 members of the Association of Capital Cities of Mexico deliberated on the most effective public policies to prevent crime and provide public security services, in the areas determined by Article 115 of the Constitution. Luis Donaldo Colosio, from Monterrey; Enrique Galindo, from the capital of Potosí, and Marco Bonilla, from Chihuahua, shared their experiences on the training and professionalization of public security forces in their municipalities, in addition to the hosts. Kristian Hölge, representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Mexico, gave them a keynote address.
In Mexico City, insecurity has spread in the last 10 months. In the Benito Juárez mayor’s office, an average of 4.7 high-impact crimes are recorded per day. This represents 30% more than the index registered in Tláhuac.
According to the report “Criminal Incidence by the Mayor’s Office”, prepared by the government of Mexico City, the daily average of high-impact crimes in the entire city is 73. Benito Juárez, where PAN member Santiago Taboada governs, the commission of high-impact crimes rose 6% in the first quarter of 2022. The increase arises from the comparison between the crime rates of the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of the current one. The only two municipalities that presented higher increases were Tláhuac and Magdalena Contreras. By way of contrast, Cuauhtémoc, Cuajimalpa, and Venustiano Carranza reduced those same high-impact crime rates by more than 10 percentage points.
Public security models, put to the test. In Tamaulipas, the PAN administration headed by Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca signed agreements with the five US agencies in charge of combating organized crime to reduce the incidence of crime in the border area.
At the other end of the country, Yucatán —where PAN Mauricio Vila governs— presumes to have the lowest rates of intentional homicides and criminal acts among the 32 states. In Quintana Roo, surveillance includes joint tasks of state and municipal authorities, according to the geographical regions in which the peninsular entity is divided.
The Riviera Maya is included in the northern zone and the actions of crime prevention and arrest of those responsible for assaults on businesses and passers-by are included in the Orion Operation. And the C5 is the bet of the administration of Carlos Joaquín González to collect intelligence information, persecute criminals and protect the residents of the entity and foreign visitors.
Side effects
OPENING. About to complete 30 years of professional career, Enrique Méndez de Hoyos offers an individual exhibition of photographs and film-art that, due to its theme, is timely and challenging. “Where does the portrait of the natural world—its forests and its birds—end, and does landscape begin understood as the artist’s pictorial or photographic vision, as representation? Can we distinguish between a photograph of a bird, its shadow image, and a bird that was created from a green screen? Information is available at: almanaquefotografica.com
Journalist
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Journalist and columnist for El Economista, author of Doña Perpetua: Elba Esther Gordillo’s power and opulence. Elba Esther Gordillo against the SEP.