MEXICO CITY — MEXICO CITY (AP) — US Ambassador Ken Salazar on Wednesday lashed out at Mexico’s failure to accept help in the fight against drug cartels, claiming the country had “closed the doors” to security cooperation.
At a press conference, Salazar issued his sharpest criticism yet of rampant violence, police corruption and the Mexican government’s misguided attitude that “there is no problem.”
“If they just say, ‘There’s no problem, we have these statistics to show people there’s no problem,’ that’s not based on reality,” Salazar said. “There is a very big problem.”
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Salazar’s statements.
Salazar mentioned the violence of recent days in the northern state of Sinaloa as an example. Sinaloa Police Chief Gerardo Mérida said on Wednesday that authorities there found a pile of between five and seven bodies on the side of the road, but were still counting body parts to see how many there were.
“There is a pile of different bodies. With what we found we identified five bodies, but some are in pieces, they are dismembered, there are mentions of seven,” Mérida said.
Sinaloa’s controversial governor, Ruben Rocha, seemed to characterize Mexico’s attitude when he said Tuesday — after a similar number of dead bodies were dumped on roadsides — that “we’re doing fine, we’ll get over this soon.”
Salazar countered that in Sinaloa “the dead are everywhere.”
Salazar had previously defended many of the Mexican government’s actions, but now says former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “hugs, not bullets” The strategy of not confronting the cartels ‘didn’t work’.
López Obrador left office on September 30, but his successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum, has vowed to continue the policy even under her leadership troops appear more willing to open fire.
Fighting broke out between two factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel after two drug capos – one from each faction – flew to the United States and were arrested on July 25.
Drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López were arrested in the United States after flying there in a small plane.
Zambada later claimed he had been kidnapped and forced onto the plane by Guzmán López, sparking a violent battle between Zambada’s faction and the “Chapitos” group led by the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Mexico later blamed the United States for detaining the capos, saying it had caused the outbreak of violence. Salazar said Mexico also ended anti-drug cooperation afterward.
“From that point on, it completely accelerated and the Mexican government closed its doors,” Salazar said. The ambassador also criticized efforts by both López Obrador and Sheinbaum to downplay the problem of crime and violence, claiming the problem was being exaggerated and that crime statistics were declining.
Salazar did not clarify why he thought the Mexican government figures were unreliable, but in recent days the government appears to have changed the way it reports homicide figures.
“The reality for the Mexican people, and that is for business people, members of the press like you who work on the streets, those who have farms, like the rancher who was killed this weekend in Sinaloa because he was a leader, they don’t . live with safety,” Salazar said.
The ongoing violence “is a very serious problem in Mexico and saying there is no problem, blaming someone else, blaming the United States, is obviously not (the solution),” he continued.
He also accused López Obrador of refusing “$22 million,” an apparent reference to López Obrador’s decision to withdraw from the Merida Initiative, a U.S.-funded program to donate money to Mexican police to train and equip.
“It was rejected because of ideological issues and other explanations,” Salazar said. López Obrador said at the time that he did not want American helicopters and weapons, but at that time most of the American money went to training, professionalization and legal reforms.
After taking office on December 1, 2018, so did López Obrador cut police funding and gave the Army, Navy, and militarized National Guard the leading role in law enforcement.
“The police are becoming corrupt because they don’t make enough to live on,” Salazar said. “You can’t pay a police officer next to nothing and expect him to do his job.”
Salazar was previously known for defending López Obrador despite its continued efforts to militarize law enforcement, concentrate power, eliminate regulatory and supervisory agencies, and support Mexico’s public corporations, even at the expense of U.S. corporations.
It was unclear whether Wednesday’s critical turn in his rhetoric was in any way related to Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s US presidential election. Trump has long been fiercely critical of Mexico.
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