Fire on the border. This weekend, a furious and prolonged shootout erupted in the border city of Reynosa, leaving at least nine people dead. The cause: an operation to capture a kingpin, who, of all places, was watching horse races in Mexico City while the battle raged (he was detained in the nation’s capital the next day). This individual, Cleofas Martínez, is not exactly a major organized crime figure. He is the head of a faction of what was once the Gulf Cartel (CDG) and his crew has been fighting other similar gangs for control of drug routes and extortion rights in Reynosa. Yet an attempt to detain him was enough to produce chaos in a city of 600 thousand inhabitants. Why? - The authorities are stuck on the kingpin strategy. The successor gangs of the CDG or the Zetas are small enough to try to dismantle them whole in one fell swoop, not just cut their head. But that requires a more patient and intelligence-heavy approach than a straight kingpin takedown. Since the capabilities of Mexican agencies are not quite there, they do what they have learned to do (capturing individual capos), even if that creates battle scenes in urban areas.
- Mexican agencies should know by now that trying to take down a kingpin in Tamaulipas leads to a) prolonged shootouts and b) blockades. The same thing has happened time and time again. But still there were no visible preventive measures (such as readying tow trucks to quickly remove blockades). Somehow there is very little institutional learning in Mexican security agencies.
- Tamaulipas has not developed law enforcement institutions that can provide a modicum of peace and order. So the job falls on the armed forces, who tend to be heavy-handed in their dealings with organized crime.
- Fragmentation has yet to run its course in Tamaulipas. No single gang is dominant in the state and no one seems able to impose some order in the criminal underworld. That creates an opening for hyper violent local criminals with very short time horizons.
Bottom line. This is not the first time that gun battles have erupted in the border towns of Tamaulipas. It will certainly not be the last time either. Expect disorder to continue in that troubled state for a long time to come. This and that
Tapping the pipelines. One would have thought that low oil prices would have created a disincentive for fuel theft. One would be wrong. Details here.
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