Mexico

Mexico’s President Under Pressure Over ‘Hugs not Bullets’ Cartel Policy

 

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is under sustained pressure to rethink his non-confrontational security strategy amid lingering questions over the botched arrest of a son of Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzmán.

Ovidio Guzmán was briefly held in the northern city of Culiacán last month, but was freed after hundreds of gunmen launched a wave of attacks on security forces and blocked roads with burning vehicles.

The show of strength shocked even the most hardened observers of organized crime in Mexico.

Ismael Bojórquez, editor of the investigative Sinaloa weekly Río Doce described the moment as a watershed. “Life goes on, yes, but not in the same way,” he wrote in an editorial. “We don’t know if this will now be the reaction every time criminal groups feel threatened – and we know even less what the federal government intends to do about it.”

 

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