Taking Back Mexico’s Streets

The attempted assassination of editor Jesus Blancornelas in Tijuana on Thursday is another dark reminder of the violence sweeping Mexico. Almost every day, the people awake to horrifying accounts of new criminality. Murder, mayhem, holdups and political assassinations have taken root. It’s clear that a strenuous attempt to eradicate this lawlessness can wait not a moment longer. And yes, the buck stops at the presidential palace.

President Ernesto Zedillo must lead his people in a counteroffensive to restore safety to the streets. Without the support of the citizenry, all the president’s soldiers and police cannot even begin to reestablish the rule of law. Much of society has been cowed, losing the will to rise to its own defense. The crime wave washes the country day and night, from the capital to villages. Seldom in Mexican memory has there been such a collapse of order.

With the arrival of democracy in the past decade, the power structure that steered Mexican life for many decades, albeit sometimes abusively, was atomized. The old methods of control were broken. Now, the presidency and its security apparatus are no longer an omnipresent fact of life. In Los Pinos, the presidential palace, Zedillo at this point does not have the power of his predecessors to know what’s going on in the streets and control it.

Now there are new and powerful parallel powers that challenge the system on a daily basis and quite often come out of the confrontation with most of the points. They are well known. Drug barons, police corrupters, hijackers, kidnapers, assassins. And there are, of course, frequent regional political upheavals.

Violence comes with different faces in different places. There is an ongoing political and religious crisis in the southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco and Guerrero. In the north, drug-related killings have multiplied in Chihuahua, Sonora and Baja California.

Blancornelas, the Tijuana editor, is expected to survive his wounds, but three other journalists have been killed this year and 20 more have been assaulted. Kidnapping for ransom has become a thriving industry practiced by professionals and amateurs alike in the states of Jalisco, Sinaloa and Morelos.

In the national capital, Carlos Monsivais, historian and cultural icon, laments that “the criminals have taken away the city.” With the police establishment either impotent or in league with the criminals, vigilantism has been one recourse. A group of outraged citizens lynched a suspected rapist and passed a videotape of the killing on to the local television station. Mexicans of all classes know that cruel acts of this sort are no answer. Only a renewed alliance between the citizenry and properly trained and controlled security forces--a national neighborhood watch, backed by a courageous judiciary--can turn the tide. Thousands marched Saturday in a Mexico City protest against crime, a healthy sign of disgust and determination. “Ya Basta!” was their slogan--”Enough’s Enough!” Indeed.