Two deadly shootouts between Mexican law enforcement and cartels last week underscore how the countryโs drug war continues to rage on, driving more Mexican migrants to seek asylum in the United States.
Last Monday, 13 police officers were killed in an ambush in the Mexican state of Michoacรกn when they were attempting to serve a single warrant. On Thursday, the city of Culiacรกn in the cartel stronghold of Sinaloa became a war zone. A military operation to arrest a son of imprisoned cartel leader El Chapo was met with armed cartel members who shut the city down and took soldiers hostage.
But these extraordinary incidents aren't really typical of recent drug violence in Mexico, said University of San Diego professor Ev Meade.
Instead, violence has been focused on members of civil society, like politicians and activists. Meade has studied peacebuilding efforts in Mexico amidst the drug war.
โItโs not that thereโs more violence either, because the actual quantities of violence ebbs and flows,โ Meade told KPBS. โItโs that ordinary civilians, and particularly people who are doing any kind of civic activity that seeks to reinforce the rule of law. Theyโve become targets in a way that they hadnโt been 10 years ago.โ
RELATED: University Of San Diego: Mexicoโs Violence Isnโt Just About Drugs
As the violence has become more distributed throughout society in Mexico, the number of Mexicans arrested at the U.S. southern border has steadily risen, bucking a yearslong decline.
Mexicans arrested by U.S. Border Patrol at the southern border rose by 25% from the end of July to the end of September, according to statistics compiled by the Washington Post.
In immigration court in San Diego, many Mexican asylum-seekers hail from the rural state of Michoacรกn.
โEspecially in these rural communities, I think people just feel incredibly vulnerable,โ Meade said. โI mean, if you look at the last election cycle and the level of political violence, itโs incredible. There were almost 500 incidents of violence against politicians and poll workers, just leading up to the 2018 election. Weโve had more than 80 mayors killed in Mexico since the drug war intensified.โ
With Mexican President Andrรฉs Manuel Lรณpez Obrador facing calls to intensify his response to cartel violence, Mexico is once again at a crossroads for how to stop the killing. Both increased enforcement, or allowing the cartels to continue to target wide swaths of society, will probably lead to further bloodshed.
