Mexico: brazen daylight shootout turns Guadalajara into war zone

Witnesses said the shootout seemed like something straight out of an action movie: heavily armed men swarmed a posh Japanese restaurant, where a former state prosecutor was leaving after a long lunch. Luis Carlos Nájera’s bodyguards returned fire and a gun battle ensued on the streets of a trendy neighbourhood in the Mexican city of Guadalajara.

Fifteen people were injured in the attack and subsequent narcobloqueos – roadblocks made by torching buses and other vehicles to hamper police operations – left 15 injured. An eight-month-old baby boy died after suffering severe burns in a bus attack; his mothersuffered burns to 90% of her body.

Miraculously, Nájera, currently the Jalisco state employment secretary, escaped with an injured hand. He later told a press conference he saw several suspicious characters enter the restaurant and ordered his bodyguards to block the entrance with his bulletproof vehicle. State officials say six suspects were arrested.

Even in a country accustomed to daily tales of crime and violence – each seemingly more spectacular than the last – shaky video footage of the shooting quickly went viral.

“Terror in Guadalajara”, the front page of El Universal read on Tuesday morning.

Mexico declared war on drug cartels in late 2006 and deployed soldiers to neglected corners of the country to curb their activities. The crackdown has cost more than 200,000 lives, left more than 30,000 people missing and appears to be escalating: Mexico reported 2,720 homicides in April, a 25% increase on the same month in 2017.

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Mexico's war on drugs

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Why did Mexico launch its war on drugs?

On 10 December 2006, Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s war on drugs by sending 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacán, where rival cartels were engaged in tit-for-tat massacres.

Calderón declared war eight days after taking power – a move widely seen as an attempt to boost his own legitimacy after a bitterly contested election victory. Within two months, around 20,000 troops were involved in operations.

What has the war cost so far?

The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico spent at least $54bn on security and defence between 2007 and 2016. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption. 

But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, over 250,000 people have been murdered, more than 40,000 reported as disappeared and 26,000 unidentified bodies in morgues across the country. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses including torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances by state security forces.   

Peña Nieto claimed to have killed or detained 110 of 122 of his government's most wanted narcos. But his biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – was the recapture, escape, another recapture and extradition of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. 

Mexico’s decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite indisputable evidence of human rights violations. 

Under new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, murder rates are up and a new security force, the Civil Guard, is being deployed onto the streets despite campaign promises to end the drug war.

What has been achieved?

Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. Officials say 25 of the 37 drug traffickers on Calderón’s most-wanted list have been jailed, extradited to the US or killed, although not all of these actions have been independently corroborated.

The biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – under Peña Nieto’s leadership was the recapture, escape and another recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence.

Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP

It has also brought shootouts to the most affluent neighbourhoods of cities such as Guadalajara, long considered a home to the families of drug cartel bosses.

The brazen attack, which sent bystanders scurrying on Avenida Chapultepec shortly after 5pm, was the latest in a string of violent incidents in Mexico’s second-largest city, and the surrounding Jalisco state.

The attacks, which have included massive narcobloqueos, ambushes on police officers and the kidnapping and killing of students, have horrified Mexico and stirred suspicions over whether authorities are unable or simply unwilling to act.

“Today Guadalajara is going to sleep with cars burning and a shootout in broad daylight on one of its most beautiful avenues, where previously there had only been people dancing, art vendors and couples strolling. Such fucking helplessness,” one local tweeted.

At least 105 public officials have been killed in Jalisco state since 2013, including politicians and the state tourism secretary, according to the newspaper El Universal.

Before becoming employment secretary, Nájera worked in policing and later as attorney general, but was forced to step down after one of Mexico’s most notoriously violent drug factions, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, set Guadalajara ablaze with 29 narcobloqueos in May 2015.

That month, the cartel flexed its muscles in an ambush on a police convoy in which 15 officers were killed and the shooting down of a government helicopter.

Observers say it is now engaged in two simultaneous turf-wars: one with a splinter group called Nueva Plaza, the other for territories once controlled by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former Sinaloa Cartel boss who is facing trial in the United States.

“They’ve killed police chiefs, mayors, state secretaries … this doesn’t happen in a context where you have mere common crime,” said Francisco Rivas, director of the National Citizen Observatory, an anti-crime non-government organisation. “This happens in a context where you have organized crime, extremely powerful, that is controlling territory.”

In March three local students disappeared in Guadalajara after unwittingly filming an alleged narco property for a school project. Authorities claim their bodies were dissolved in acid, although the students’ families have doubts.

As police hunted the perpetrators of the latest explosion of violence, a local journalist lamented her city’s fate: “At what point did my beautiful Guadalajara become a war zone?” she wondered.