Mexican Secretary of Security: "Mexico must seal the cracks where weapons from the U.S. enter the country"
Secretary Alfonso Durazo held a press conference to take stock of Mexico's progress on security on 2019. At the event, the head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection said that combating the smuggling of weapons from the United States to Mexico is a top priority
"While [the weapons] are smuggled into the country, it is our responsibility to seal those sieves through which the weapons pass. It is also true that the criminal networks that introduce them into the country have transnational dimensions, and from them derives the demand that we make on the U.S. to join their efforts in a consistent, permanent, broad, no-haggle way to reduce smuggling," said Durazo.
"The firepower capacity that these weapons provide to the country's criminal organizations not only puts them at an advantage over state, municipal, or federal forces, but also strengthens the organized crime that is affecting U.S. society itself with the introduction of drugs".
Durazo said he will go after the accomplices of Genaro Garcia Luna, who was arrested earlier this month in the U.S., on charges of drug trafficking. The secretary said it would be "naive to claim that he acted alone".
As an example, Durazo cited the failed operation to arrest and immediately release Chapo Guzmán's son, Ovidio, in October, and also recalled the tragedy of the LeBarón family in Sonora, as the weapons used by the attackers who killed members of the Mexican-American family came from the United States.
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"The big weapons that you saw in Culiacán deployed by criminal organizations are of U.S. origin with an aggravating factor, most of them are manufactured exclusively for the use of the military. What is a weapon manufactured for the exclusive use of the U.S. military doing in our country? Then we have to worry together," he said.
Finally, the cabinet member revealed that his aspiration is for the Mexican people to wake up in the morning without being forced to review the country's crime statistics. "In the U.S., the authorities do not wake up to review the crime statistics, nor in Spain or other countries. I am not saying that they do not have problems, rather that the security conditions are sufficiently stable and that is what I would aspire to".
When that happens, he added, he will be able to tell the public that he has started to deliver, but at the moment he is not yet there: "The previous year, the [criminal] growth trend was very high and the year before that was much higher and 2019 the growth rate is lower than in previous years even though, in absolute numbers, the year could close on a slightly higher number".