Politics: The Emerging Face of Organized Crime
The attack on an Army unit last week in the town of Palmarito Tochapan in which four soldiers and four civilians were killed during the confrontation, is just the latest incident in a long but accelerating history of fuel theft and smuggling nationwide, and a problem that exemplifies the ways in which organized crime is becoming a less centralized but increasingly violent phenomenon.
The huachicolero gangs, as the fuel thieves are commonly known, have grown from small-scale enterprises that siphoned off fuels into drums or any other suitable container at their disposal, to much more powerful operations backed by security teams and gangs of armed guards and protection from corrupt officials. They enjoy social support in the communities in which they operate, and they bring an upsurge of other violent crimes (especially extortion and kidnapping) in their wake.
The ways to respond to the problem include the government’s ongoing deployment of federal troops and police, and the monitoring of pipelines, but these will prove woefully inadequate if they are not accompanied by other measures. These should include stricter volumetric and financial controls to shut down part of the market through which stolen fuels are being sold even at regular service (petrol) stations as well as making physical changes to pipeline infrastructure along with technologies that would allow for much faster detection of leaks. Most crucially a frontal assault on corruption is needed, starting at Pemex and extending all the way through to state and municipal police forces. As long as there is internal complicity, no external intervention will suffice.
This is an issue of importance beyond the immediate matter of the huachicoleros. In a certain sense, what we are witnessing in Puebla is the future of organized crime in Mexico. We are not looking at the huge, internally cohesive criminal organizations of the past, with visible leaderships, a solid hierarchy and the production and international trafficking of drugs as their core business. Instead, emerging in their place are smaller gangs, with a smaller geographic footprint, considerably more diversified revenue streams and much more violent in the tactics they employ. In order to deal with them it will take more than the Armed Forces. And Puebla could serve as the first laboratory for such a major shift in strategy.
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