In Mexico - "The President quotes statistics, and the Mayors are getting killed'.

 

In Mexico, you’d better run for your life

By Silvio Canto, Jr. www.americanthinker.com

It’s been a tough couple of weeks in Mexico, as Pablo Ferri wrote:

Mexico is going through a delicate moment, a situation invisible to statistics. The federal government highlights the progress of its security strategy month after month. Homicides and much of the high-impact crime rate are declining, a reason for celebration after more than 15 years of almost uninterrupted increases. Yet at the same time, a shadow is spreading: the shadow of extortion, a crime practiced by mafias for which authorities seem to have no answer. Where once drug production and trafficking dominated as the main criminal enterprise, extortion schemes are now taking over and becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Extortion cases have risen in recent years, at least in terms of reported complaints, for a crime long known to have a high level of unreported incidents. The executive branch, led by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, launched a special strategy in July to tackle the problem, though its results remain uncertain.

A “situation invisible to statistics,” or the “results remain uncertain”? That’s the best explanation that I’ve heard. As in Chicago, where the local government keeps playing with numbers, the Mexican government keeps telling everyone that crime is down, but no one believes it.

As you may have heard, there were two big murders south of the border. Back to the article:

The assassination of the mayor of Uruapan this past weekend, coupled with the fatal attack a few days ago against Bernardo Bravo, representative of the lemon producers of the Apatzingán Valley in Michoacán, reveals a paradigm shift.

Bravo represented a guild under siege by local criminal organizations. The classic extortion racket — an informal tax paid to crime to allow production, harvest, and distribution — had evolved into a more complex system.

Beyond the extortion fee, criminals sought to act as market regulators, imposing harvest schedules. Furthermore, the criminals were positioning themselves as suppliers of inputs, which farmers were obligated to provide.

Bravo was trying to reach a less exacting agreement. According to information obtained by EL PAÍS, the criminals were asking for two pesos for every kilo of lemons picked and an additional two pesos for every kilo sold, an amount Bravo was trying to lower. The guild leader was also trying to get the criminals to allow them to pick lemons more than three days a week, a recent imposition used to try to control the market price of the citrus fruit. It was in this context that the extortionists murdered Bravo.

The criminals reportedly lured him to a town near Apatzingán, killed him, and took his body back to the municipality where his office was located.

What a story. It’s like one of those black and white movies about the mob, except that this one, south of the border, is for real.

So, what does this mean to us up here, away from the violence? Keep the border under control because it could come here. And of course, keep pressure on the aloof Sheinbaum administration, which continues to deny that this is happening. The president quotes statistics, and the mayors are getting killed.

As my friend, the rancher, told me on the phone: “Esto esta muy peligroso,” or this is very dangerous.