Police in a troubled Mexican municipality have been equipped with slingshots and stones after state officials stripped officers of their weapons.
Only 30 officers of the 130-member police department in Alvarado, on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, have passed control tests and been deemed fit for service, prompting the Veracruz state public secretariat to disarm the force, media reported.
Mayor Bogar Ruiz Rosas said the force was made up of mostly new hires, who were scheduled to start training in the state police academy. Mexican media showed the mayor handing out catapults and small bags of rocks to officers, in a symbolic act of protest.
He insisted the disarming of local police in Alvarado was a political vendetta ahead of the 1 July elections on the national and state levels.
“This can only be understood as something political and we have to be prepared to do work in a professional manner,” Ruiz said in a ceremony, where he handed police officers slingshots and small bags of rocks.
The state governor, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, who belongs to a rival party and whose son is running to replace him, told media a council coordinating security in the state confiscated the force’s weapons because its members were not accredited.
Veracruz has been the setting for a string of horrors over the past decade, including forced disappearances, mass graves containing the remains of hundreds of people and the murders of at least 20 journalists.
Why did Mexico launch its war on drugs?
On 10 December 2006, president 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 across the country.
What has the war cost so far?
The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico has spent at least $54bn on security and defence since 2007. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption at every level.
But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, around 230,000 people have been murdered and more than 28,000 reported as disappeared. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses by security forces.
As the cartels have fractured and diversified, other violent crimes such as kidnapping and extortion have also surged. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by violence.
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.
How is the US involved?
Mexico’s decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the huge injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite growing evidence of serious human rights violations.
Yunes’ predecessor as state governor, Javier Duarte, was detained on corruption charges, while his former prosecutor and public security secretary have been arrested on accusations of participating in schemes to commit forced disappearances.
The online news organisation Animal Politico noted the slingshot ceremony took place near a site where 47 skulls had been discovered in a clandestine grave.
Fixing police forces across Mexico has also proved difficult – something analysts attribute to politicians preferring to pawn off security problems on the army rather than investing in local law enforcement.
