Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
While in Gaza, the death toll exceeds 20,000, in Mexico, the death toll in 2023 is approaching 30,000. President Lopez Obrador has diplomatically called for a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas group in Gaza. But when he refers to insecurity in his country, he flatly denies there is a problem and blames others for any violence. He does not take responsibility for anything.
The death toll from the invasion of Israeli troops into the Gaza Strip is terrifying. As of this writing, 20,000 and counting are reported. Most are children and women. Of course, these figures include Hamas terrorists.
The number of journalists and reporters killed in that war is more significant than in any other contemporary conflict, including the war in Ukraine. Israeli troops involved in the invasion of Gaza numbered around 30,000. They are facing the Hamas terrorist group, which would have between 30,000 and 40,000 fighters. Israel estimates that it has killed about 4,000 Hamas militants.
President Lopez Obrador has remained curiously neutral in this conflict, limiting himself to calling the parties to a ceasefire. This is something that none of the parties to the conflict seem to accept or promote.
The contrast with his stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is remarkable, where the President has expressed his open support for Russia against Ukraine, even admiring Putin, as Trump does.
Undoubtedly, his attitude is influenced by the interest that his candidate for the Presidency of the Republic receives the support and vote of the Jewish community settled in the country. Under other circumstances, he would indeed support Hamas and the Kazaryan position, just as Putin does at present.
In both the Ukrainian and Gaza conflicts, Lopez Obrador has clear sympathies for the Russian positions and rejects those adopted by Washington.
Putting aside his ideological preferences, AMLO also had a domestic situation in the country that contrasted his “international” positions.
Violence in Mexico is rampant. There is not a single poll that gives credence to the presidential claim that people are “happy, happy, happy”. All polls, even the purchased ones, confirm the opposite: Mexicans are “afraid, sad, uneasy”. Insecurity is the country’s central concern, and this is confirmed region by region.
The polls confirm a majority approval of the person as President, although they disapprove of him as ruler. The President has negative numbers in security, corruption, health, and education.
The debate on his supposed strategy against citizen insecurity, which he has called “hugs, not bullets”, has been a resounding failure. The data confirms it. This six-year term is the most violent since data on intentional homicides have been recorded.
Despite Morena’s political propaganda against it, Calderón’s “war” was not as terrible or bloody as López Obrador’s “war”. Here are the facts:
Salinas’ intentional deaths: 35 daily, one every 41 minutes, 76,767 dead;
Zedillo: 37 daily, one every 38 minutes, 80,671 dead;
Fox: 28 daily, one every 52 minutes, 60,280 dead;
Calderón: 55 daily, one every 26 minutes, 120,463 deaths;
Peña: 71 daily, one every 20 minutes, 156,066 dead;
AMLO: 95 daily, one every 15 minutes, 175,101 deaths.
Salinas, Zedillo, and Fox faced the situation of organized crime in an initial stage in Latin America and the world. However, there was a change in the structure, financing, and firepower of organized crime, especially drug trafficking, throughout the region. National and especially international conditions facilitated the growth and influence of Mexican cartels in drug trafficking. The opening of borders to free trade and the decline of the Colombian cartels, together with new technologies that literally created new synthetic drugs, requiring new trade routes for the supply of their precursors, were the factors that created a different criminal reality.
One thing is the political propaganda used by AMLO against Calderon, and another, much more relevant, is the reality on the ground. It is necessary to ask ourselves, what is the use of the supposed daily presidential security meetings when the reality and the data confirm a constant deterioration of the security situation in the country? Entire areas of the country are in the hands of organized crime, and the noticeable characteristic in all these cases is the absolute absence of the Mexican State.
The case of Texcaltitlán is symbolic of the entire southern part of the State of Mexico, where the Familia Michoacana rules, robs, rapes, and charges a toll on any business, agricultural producer, or mining activity it finds in its path. There is no rule of law in this area of the State of Mexico, nor is there in large swaths of the rest of the country.
A massacre occurs every 19 hours in Mexico. A massacre is defined as the violent death of three or more people. Large areas of the country are under the domination of irregular forces led by one of the cartels operating throughout the country. Between January 2020 and November 2023, 2,121 massacres were registered in Mexico.
Is it necessary to review the states of the republic under siege by the cartels? In other words, is any state in the country not under siege by organized crime? The absolute answer is no! The case of Texcaltitlán is emblematic and can be generalized to the entire national territory.
The same is true for the practice of free journalism. It lives under a double threat of harassment: by the Mexican State, starting with the President of the Republic, and also by organized crime. Mexico is internationally recognized as one of the most dangerous countries for journalism. In Mexico and Gaza, the lives of journalists are in danger every day.
While President López Obrador plays diplomatic politics in the case of the war between Gaza and Israel, in the case of the national deaths caused by organized crime, he mocks them, scorns them, and accuses them all, especially the young ones, of being drug addicts or traffickers. And he pretends to disappear the disappeared.
Sardonic mockery constantly paints the presidential face as a man without empathy. And yet, there are more dead in Mexico than in Gaza.
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