The cartel gunmen may have gone, but they
left their calling cards all over town – scores of burnt-out buildings
and charred vehicles that still carry the acrid stench of melted
plastic.
It's the one topic of local
interest that my taxi driver studiously avoids as we travel into the
center of town from the airport, the terminal teeming with police. The
same topic a young barman will later dismiss lightly, but wildly
inaccurately, as 'the accident.'
It was
certainly no accident. But nobody wants to talk to the gringos about
that, especially when we shouldn't be in this part of Mexico at all after Western governments have warned tourists to avoid the area for anything but 'essential' travel.
I flew to picturesque Puerto Vallarta on
an almost empty plane, usually unthinkable at this time of year. This is
peak season, when holidaymakers from the frozen north pack out its
sun-drenched beaches and pretty streets to listen to mariachi bands over
a margarita or two.
Locals, who depend on tourists for their livelihood, would dearly love that to be the case now.
But
the startling pictures that flashed around the world last month, of a
beach resort resembling a war zone, have seen to that. The US State
Department has this week issued a slew of 'Do Not Travel' advisories to
the thousands intending to travel south for spring-break.
Puerto
Vallarta has long prided itself on being 'la ciudad más amigable del
mundo' (the friendliest city in the world) and has been one of Mexico's
most attractive destinations since Richard Burton and Liz Taylor
caroused there - without their respective spouses - in the 1960s.
Though
it's not so alluring now. The chaos was sparked by the Mexican
government's killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho -
leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Mexico's most feared and most violent criminal organization.
El Mencho (pictured on the cover
of newspapers announcing his death on February 23) was the leader of
the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Mexico's most feared and most violent
criminal organization
With crucial help from US intelligence,
whose government had put a $15 million bounty on his head, Mexican
special forces troops tracked El Mencho's girlfriend when she visited
him at his hideaway in a remote mountain town in Jalisco, the western
Mexican state that includes Puerto Vallarta.
The
drug lord was killed on February 22 – along with 25 troops and even
more cartel gunmen - in the ferocious firefight that followed after they
apprehended him.
In the days that followed, the city became one of the
cartel's chief targets as it retaliated furiously for the death of its
leader - a man so savage that he forced his recruits to commit acts of
cannibalism as an initiation ritual.
As
Mexico's - and possibly the world's - most wanted man, El Mencho had
evaded capture for two decades, even as his rivals ended up behind bars.
Investigators described him as so elusive he was a 'ghost.'
So
it was a significant, if risky victory, for Mexico's President Claudia
Sheinbaum as she faces growing US pressure to tackle the powerful
'narcos' cartels, who President Donald Trump blames for
flooding America not only with drugs – cocaine, heroin,
methamphetamines and especially the deadly synthetic opiate fentanyl -
but also with illegal migrants smuggled across the border.
Inevitably,
the now-leaderless 20,000-member cartel exacted a heavy price the
morning after El Mencho's death, unleashing a country-wide wave of
shootings, roadblocks and arson attacks that spread to 20 of 32 states.
In
the process, El Mencho's henchmen broke with the longtime convention –
generally observed by the cartels and federal officials alike in their
shared desire to keep western governments off their back – of steering
the violence well away from tourists.
Even
Liz Taylor and Richard Burton wouldn't have recognized Puerto Vallarta
on February 22 when, all across town, thick columns of black smoke
billowed into the resort's usually flawless blue sky.
Earlier
that day, young men and teenagers armed with petrol cans and AK-47
assault rifles had suddenly appeared across the city and rode around on
stolen motorbikes for hours - torching cars, buses and lorries as well
as local businesses and petrol stations. They also blocked roads with
burnt vehicles or spikes they threw on the ground. Twenty-three inmates
escaped from the local prison after armed men rammed its gates with a car.
Police officers are pictured in front of torched cars in Zapopan, Mexico, following the death of El Mencho
Businesses in Puerto Vallarta were also set ablaze
Members of the Mexican Navy patrolling the streets of Puerto Vallarta on February 24
The
violence across Mexico was primarily a show of force - a declaration of
who really runs the country, some say - rather than an attempt to do
serious injury. The businesses that were targeted in Puerto Vallarta
were groceries, pharmacies and banks rather than government buildings.
'They
hit our food, health and transport,' said Luis, a local waiter. 'They
wanted to tell people, 'We're not going to hurt you, but we're going to
make you struggle.'
The worst damage, he added ruefully, was done to the city's tourist economy, on which at least 70 percent of the local population relies.
Nobody
appears to have been killed in Puerto Vallarta – drivers were bundled
out of their vehicles before they were set alight - and the police
appeared anxious to avoid a huge gun battle in a resort that at this
time of year is packed with thousands of tourists, mainly from Canada
and the US, and visiting cruise ships. The city is also an increasingly
popular place for Americans to retire.
Whatever
reason for their being in Puerto Vallarta, the gringos were ordered to
take shelter in their barricaded hotels, homes or rented apartments, and watch or listen to the mayhem unfolding.
Some
tourists fled for the airport, a US visitor describing his taxi driver
kissing his rosary in terror as he wildly dodged burning buses to get
there before it closed due to the violence. Three hundred stranded
travelers had to be driven back to the city under heavy police escort.
When
Puerto Vallarta's airport reopened, Scottish academic Robin Clugston
and his wife, Erin, joined the queue with their two young children for
one of the 'rescue flights' that had been laid on, theirs heading back
to their home in Edmonton, Canada.
They said
they'd spent 48 hours confined to the resort where they were staying.
They were 'insulated' from the violence but could see the huge plumes of
smoke fires start rising across the city. 'The doorman said that it was
rubbish-burning day', he told me. 'The staff were nervous but they
handled it very professionally. We certainly saw some agitated people.'
Even so, the family, who were on their first visit to Mexico, said they 'will be absolutely coming back.'
A Canadian guest at the luxury hotel, which was one of Richard Burton's former homes, said some fellow guests were crying as
tensions mounted inside. 'The staff locked the entrance but we
definitely heard what sounded like gunshots. You started to wonder about
escape routes if they broke in,' he told me.
The violence across Mexico was
primarily a show of force - a declaration of who really runs the
country, some say - rather than an attempt to do serious injury
Some tourists fled for the airport, and 300 stranded travelers had to be driven back to the city under heavy police escort
Even Liz Taylor and Richard
Burton wouldn't have recognized Puerto Vallarta on February 22 when, all
across town, thick columns of black smoke billowed into the usually
flawless blue sky
Guadalajara,
Jalisco's capital and Mexico's second biggest city, was similarly
targeted by the cartel. The beautiful colonial city is another popular
tourist trap, and dozens were sent scrambling for cover the same week
following a false alarm that the narcos were attacking the airport.
The
city is set to host some of the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches – another
looming nightmare for Mexican officials anxious to portray their country as sufficiently safe for the globe's most popular sports event.
Although
I encountered plenty of tourists who were not perturbed by the violence
and more than ready to return, others have vowed never to come back to
Mexico, let alone Puerto Vallarta – fearful of what the cartel might do
the next time.
And in the case of the
uniquely cold-blooded Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), they can
reassure themselves that they got off very lightly.
After
all, when the cartel wants to make a point forcefully, it usually does
so by beheading victims and leaving their remains in plastic
bags by the roadside or hanging mutilated body parts from bridges. In a
country where more than 120,000 people remain missing, kidnap and rape
are standard business practice for the CJNG.
Its rise to power and notoriety has been
marked by unspeakable acts of savagery. In 2011, it dumped 35 bound and
tortured bodies in the streets of the city of Veracruz during evening
rush hour. Two years later, its foot soldiers raped, killed and set fire
to a ten-year-old girl whom they believed – mistakenly - was a rival's
daughter. In 2015, the cartel killed a man and his pre-teen son by detonating sticks of dynamite taped to their bodies.
Last
year, the cartel was discovered to have an 'extermination ranch' with
underground crematorium ovens where 200 pairs of shoes were found.
The bodies of others are dumped in drainage canals or dissolved in acid.
The
cartel has been able to equip itself like a modern army. It has no
compunction about killing the police and military, thwarting a previous
attempt to capture El Mencho by shooting down an army chopper with a
rocket-propelled grenade.
Its rapid ascent to become Mexico's most powerful crime group was attributed not only
to its sickening ruthlessness but to its success in convincing many
ordinary Mexicans, who are sick of local gang warfare, that it was in
their interests to accept control by a single, all-powerful cartel.
And
its success owed much to the blood-spattered single-mindedness of
59-year-old El Mencho and his talent for sensationalist acts of violence
against rivals and government forces.
The
son of poor avocado growers, he was being paid to protect cannabis
fields by the time he was in his teens and later moved to the US where
he was jailed for drugs offences.
He returned to Mexico where,
astonishingly, he was able to get a job as a state police officer
before rising through the ranks of the Milenio cartel and eventually
setting up his own organization some 15 years ago.
El
Mencho wasn't only brutal to his enemies. Many of his 'sicarios,' or
killers, were recruited after answering conventional job adverts only to
be threatened with death if they didn't join. El Mencho ensured
recruits were sufficiently inured to the extreme violence expected of
them by forcing them to eat body parts from the cartel's victims as an
unspeakably twisted initiation rite.
The cartel is now an international, multi-billion-dollar operation with trafficking routes in dozens of countries on six continents.
Inevitably,
successive Mexican presidents have shied away from declaring all-out
war on the hideously formidable cartels (especially when previous
efforts have been undermined by corrupt officials tipping off the drug
barons).
Guadalajara is set to host some of the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks at a press conference following the killing of Cervantes, or El Mencho
However,
the current incumbent, left-winger Claudia Sheinbaum, increasingly
doesn't have that option. Donald Trump has gone so far as to threaten
her country with direct military action if she doesn't crush the Jalisco
New Generation and rivals like the Sinaloa cartel.
Fentanyl, a super-powerful synthetic opioid, is responsible for nearly 70 percent of America's overdose deaths. The drug has devastated towns and cities across the US and, rightly, is a particular concern for Washington.
It's
particularly attractive to cartels as it's cheap to produce and highly
addictive. A kilo of fentanyl is worth $20,000 (£14,800) – and half as
much again if you can sell it as far away as New York.
Trump
has threatened to unilaterally bomb fentanyl labs in Mexico and cut the
cartels off from the international financial system. In January, when
he launched a military strike on Venezuela, he warned that Mexico was
next.
Critics counter that cartels are like the mythological
many-headed hydra and that destroying one will simply produce another,
or more likely several more, battling for supremacy.
The
only effective solution, they say, is either to legalize the drugs
(which, given their deadliness, is most unlikely) or to tackle America's
soaring demand for them.
Caught
between rapacious criminals and a rapacious US president, the embattled
Claudia Sheinbaum risks sparking a bloody war with the cartels if she
continues to come down hard on them and, potentially, military
confrontation with America if she doesn't.
At least she should be able to rely on her formidable security chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch,
a former Mexico City police chief whom the cartels shot three times in
2020 and who now sleeps next to his office desk with an armed soldier
outside his door. Under his leadership, the government says it is
arresting cartel members and destroying drug labs at nearly four times
the rate of the previous administration.
And
yet, Mexico's implacable cartels have a history of coming out on top.
There was, President Sheinbaum confidently insisted last month, 'no
risk' to fans coming to Mexico for the World Cup. How she could be so
certain, just a few days after cartel gunmen brought fear and destruction to the heart of its tourism industry, is anyone's guess.
