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Monday 24 July 2017
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Mexico City sees drug-war-style violence come to the capital

By MARK STEVENSON towed behind the vehicle,
Associated Press were used for the block-
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Burnt- ades. Police hauled off 47
out vehicles. Road block- of them and arrested 16
ades. A raging gun battle suspects, many of them
between armored marines carrying their helmets.
and gang members that Operators of the unregu-
left eight dead. lated rickshaws “appar-
Such scenes have been ently maintained links with
common in border cities drug dealing, involving dis-
like Reynosa and Nuevo tribution,” Mexico City po-
Laredo, and figures re- lice said in a statement.
leased Friday show the Officials estimate there are
death toll from Mexico’s about 5,000 of the unof-
drug war has reached new ficial cabs in the borough
heights this year. But resi- and have tried to elimi-
dents of the capital were nate then in the past. But in
stunned this week to see outlying areas where roads
that kind of mayhem in are rough, the rickshaws
their own city. remain the transportation
Thursday’s shootout, along of choice for many resi-
with the recent emer- dents who can’t afford to
gence in a working class Residents and motorcycle taxi drivers stop to look at marines blocking the area where a suspect- own a car or pay a regular
neighborhood of an ap- ed drug gang leader and seven others were killed in a shootout in the Tlahuac district of Mexico taxi fare.
parent group of “vigilan- City, Thursday, July 20, 2017. Mexico City residents were stunned by the sight of drug-war-style Raul Benitez, a security
tes” — styled after self-de- violence, including burnt-out vehicles and road blockades by gang-sympathizing motorcycle expert at the National
fense militias that rose up taxi drivers, in the nation’s capital, sights that had previously been seen only in violence-wracked Autonomous University of
cities like Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo.
against a drug cartel in the (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Mexico, said the gang, led
western state of Michoa- by man nicknamed “The
can — have left authori- Eyes,” employed a network
ties scrambling to maintain was the appearance of or- headline Friday. violence in at least 20 years of those drivers to distribute
their long-held claims that ganized roadblocks put up The nation’s capital once — even worse than the drugs and act as lookouts.
drug cartels don’t operate by gang members or sym- looked on the drug war as previous peak year of 2011. “They were using high-
in Mexico City. pathizers to impede the a battle fought in outlying But unlike 2011, when the powered rifles, not pistols,
Thursday’s shootout saw movements of police. City states. Not anymore. The violence was largely con- which justified the govern-
some 1,300 police and officials said gang mem- capital’s violence is still far centrated in border states ment’s decision to use the
marines deployed on the bers hijacked about five from the worst, though its like Chihuahua and Tam- marines,” Benitez said.
streets of Tlahuac, a poor buses or trucks, and video murder rate went up by aulipas — where Reynosa The marines, considered
borough on the southeast- images showed teams of 21 percent in the first six and Nuevo Laredo are Mexico’s most elite troops,
ern outskirts that was a rural motorcyclists parking their months of this year, ac- located —homicides are have been deployed in
area until a few years ago. vehicles to shut down an cording to the newly re- now on the rise throughout other urban settings be-
Photos from the scene expressway and then set- leased government secu- the entire country, making fore, using helicopter-
showed the slain suspects ting fire to a bus after the rity statistics. much of the country look mounted machine guns
were carrying assault rifles passengers fled. Those show homicides over like a hotspot. against drug suspects. But
instead of the pistols usu- “The narco-blockades the first half of the year in- In Thursday’s clash, swarms outside of occasional pa-
ally used in most armed come to Mexico City,” creased 31 percent over of motorcycle rickshaws, a trols or other operations,
crimes in Mexico City. the newspaper El Univer- the same period last year, form of taxi with a cano- they are seldom seen in the
Perhaps most shocking sal wrote in a front-page in the worst bout of such pied metal seating unit capital such numbers.q