The brutal deaths of Americans in Mexico have come on the heels of a violent few weeks.

Syracuse University News
Nov 5 · 3 min read
Dr. Gladys McCormick

Gladys McCormick, an Assistant Professor of History in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, specializes in the political and economic history of Latin America and the Caribbean with a focus on corruption, drug trafficking, and political violence. McCormick is available to provide insight on this issue.

McCormick is the author of “The Last Door: Political Prisoners and the Use of Torture in Mexico’s Dirty War,” published in the journal The Americas (January 2017), and “The Logic of Compromise: Authoritarianism, Betrayal, and Revolution in Rural Mexico, 1935–1965” (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). She is currently working on two books: one detailing the history of torture in Mexico since the 1970s, and the other a co-authored overview of drug trafficking in Latin America.

Here are Dr.McCormick’s comments on the deaths of American citizens in Mexico:

“Yesterday, members of an organized criminal network ambushed a Mormon family traveling from the state of Sonora to their home community across the border in Chihuahua and killed at least nine of them, including children. The family belonged to the LeBarón Mormon clan that has lived in this area for over six decades. For months now, they have been targeted for extortion and kidnapping by organized crime. When one of the sons was kidnapped recently, the family flat out refused to pay the million-dollar ransom. Though he was subsequently released, two more adult sons were murdered soon after in retaliation. Law enforcement’s inability to help the community led the family to talk about setting up their own self-defense group.

Yesterday’s massacre came on the heels of others these past few weeks. In October, suspected cartel gunmen shot and killed thirteen police officers in Michoacán. Fifteen people were shot dead in a confrontation between members of the security forces and organized crime in Guerrero. The security forces — led by members of the military and the newly-created National Guard captured and then released Ovidio Gúzman, the son of El Chapo, in Culiacán, Sinaloa. This was a clear and very public victory for the Sinaloa Federation and showed the people of the area who was in charge.

While AMLO’s security cabinet develops a comprehensive security plan to tackle organized crime and drug trafficking, his government has neglected to address the growing epidemic of more specific and related crimes that are affecting a vast number of Mexicans. Extortion, for example, is wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of small and medium business owners in a range of locales, such as Celaya and Tijuana, that have recently witnessed escalating levels of violence. Taking on extortion, as a form of more discrete problems than wholesale organized crime or drug trafficking, focuses the efforts of law enforcement on more specific and ostensibly manageable targets. Even though extortion fits into the broader web of organized crime, such a targeted approach would net high visibility among society and make use of a scaled allocation of available resources.

Yes, AMLO partly inherited a crisis born out of years of mismanagement and bad decision-making. He also lacks many of the tools necessary to tackle it as well as weakened institutions to oversee the rule of law. Nevertheless, he and his cabinet owe the Mexican people a security plan that is not light on the details and moves beyond political theatre to capitalize on the fact he still retains so much critical support among his base.”

Syracuse University News

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