Mexico’s new president announces a security plan amid a wave of violence

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Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday announced a security strategy aimed at combating the most dangerous criminals in the country’s six most violent states and strengthening national intelligence capacity.

Sheinbaum, a former mayor of the capital, took office last week and has made security a priority amid a wave of violence in multiple states across the country.

The strategy was one of the first measures the president outlined. She has appointed a former chief police officer, Omar García Harfuch, to take charge of implementing the plan. He will oversee a strengthening of the country’s intelligence apparatus under a new national system with more field agents and analysts.

The plan will focus on “neutralizing” the criminals who commit violence in areas with high crime rates, with federal authorities evaluating police, prosecutors and state-level prison systems.

Polls show that high levels of violence have become the biggest concern of ordinary Mexicans.

This past week, a mayor in the state of Guerrero was murdered and beheaded; the military engaged in open gun battles with drug traffickers in Sinaloa state; and twelve murders were reported in one municipality in the state of Guanajuato.

García Harfuch said Sheinbaum’s strategy was a “continuation” of the policies of recently departed leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The former president’s “hugs, not bullets” approach, which focused on the root causes of violence and avoiding confrontations between security forces and criminals, has been widely criticized.

Security analysts say this has led organized crime groups to increase their territorial control across the country, with the number of murders and missing people reaching record highs.

López Obrador’s term also coincided with a low point in security cooperation with the US. Security in the two countries is intertwined, with American weapons flowing south to Mexican drug trafficking groups that send deadly drugs, such as fentanyl, north.

The former president has given the Mexican military enormous power, giving it enormous economic responsibilities, from managing customs to airports. He also replaced the federal police with a new National Guard and placed it under the care of the Ministry of Defense.

As a result, García Harfuch will have no direct control over the security forces and will instead have to work with the military, which has traditionally been reluctant to share information with civilian agencies and state governments.

In 2020, gunmen tried to kill García Harfuch, then Mexico City’s police chief. He survived the assassination attempt, but travels with a security detail.

U.S. officials have expressed optimism that security cooperation could improve under Sheinbaum’s administration, based on their experiences with her and her officials.

Mexico’s homicide rate first rose in 2008, during Felipe Calderón’s presidency, when he waged open war against drug cartels. There is also a long history of corruption, with government officials being on the payroll of the powerful drug trafficking groups.

This history has some Mexicans wary of a full-scale offensive against them.

“The war against the drug cartels is not coming back, we are not looking for extrajudicial killings,” Sheinbaum said on Tuesday. “We will use prevention, attention to causes and intelligence and physical presence.”