Culiacán, Mexico – before the morning, a principal elementary in the capital of Sixteen in Mexico is various chats of the word shootouts or other incidents. If there is danger, he sends a message to his students’ parents suspended classes.
It is not only the new routine of Culiacán, a 1 million residents in the last six months of Cattel fields in Sinaloa.
Violence is limited hours to bury the dead. Bands playing big parties now play for money at intersections. Any powerful sound sends kids getting tough for cover. And those who live in moving front lines are afraid of their life every day.
This is the first long time of violence touching Culiacán residents because Cartel’s overall domination. Today, many residents thank the pressure used by the US President Donald Trump to obtain Mexico to follow cartels and others hope that the steady time is their protector.
‘Tired of a bullet’
It started in September, more than a month after a “el May” in Sinaloa – says he kidnapped by one of the sons Joaquín “El Chapo” El Chapo “El Chapo”
It opens a power struggle between both Cartel factions and the unspoken agreement of non-attacking residents without opening in drug trading.
There are carjackings, kidnapping, innocent caught in crossfires and cartel roadblocks where gunmen scan cell phones to people looking for any tracking on the other side. According to government data, there are over 900 killings since September.
A resident of Costa Rica, a small town in the southern capital, tracking the front line line on the horizon: on one side “wastes.” He, like most others, asked not to be known for danger.
An old man there said he saw the gunmen two of the two streets.
And sometimes people lose. Julio Héctor Carlillo, 34, never arrived at home from visiting a relative in the late January. According to his brother-in-law, Mario Beltrán, his only transgression does not respect self-inflicted curfews in locals.
Her family does not dare to set signs for their search, instead of keeping social platforms. A search conjunction searched for lost finding a body undergoing DNA test.
“In no time in the last 30 to 40 years there are crime stats, we have many families who have disappeared (relatives),” said Miguel Calderón in State Council of State Security. Others just picked up, interrogated and released, but others ended the wall of the faces of Culican’s Cathedral.
“Truly, we’re very tired, very tired of being among the bullets,” said a 38-year-old small business owner who has imposed his own family security protocol: no cycle for their 18-year-old son, including to visit his girlfriend, and track in real time Through his cell phone.
Their 7-year-old daughter asked in the morning: “‘Daddy, can I go to school today? Have you ever checked (Facebook)?'”
“There are things you don’t keep kids,” he said.
US: The solution or problem?
How Mexican authorities respond to the cruelty changed last month and the locals believe that Trump is.
At the beginning of this, Mexico led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meditating on cartel violence and no interest to go to cartel leaders. His close ally, did the Rubén Rubén Rahcha. Rocha’s spokesman, Feliciano Castro, continued to stop the violence by catching Zambada.
Things changed when Trump won the election. The closure of illegal immigration and going after drug dealers are one of his campaign promises and threatened him to impose 25% tariff on Tuesday. The new President of Mexico Claudiaum has already shown himself ready to make a more aggressive hand of cartels, especially the southern, whose main business is Fendanyl.
The number of security operations and arrests in Sinaloa increases and now has direct federal handling of all security actions.
“We have not seen such a lot of day surgery against the cartels,” says Ishmael Bojórquez, a veteran of Sixteen who motivates the organization of López Obrador’s hands.
In December, the authorities were covered more than a ton of fendanyl in the sixth at least 286 pounds of all Mexico in the first six months of 2024.
In the last 10 days in February, authorities have been broken by 113 synthetic drug labs, according to the initial state data. Authorities do not clarify if they make fentanyl or methamphetamine. It doesn’t know what, if there is, US intelligence role.
In Culiacán, authorities took over 400 cartel surveillance cameras, double what authorities have authorized.
Recent actions weakened two cartel factions but could not stop the government if it would like to do it, Bojórquez said.
“I don’t think (Trump) have a lot of power to do that … but I am grateful,” said the owner of a beer store stopped at a checkpoint.
A 55-year-old woman sitting on a bench watching a forensics team loading the body in a killed in a truck. Before, he attended a mass for his son-in-law killed five months later by a wandering bullet as he walked with his daughter with some blocks.
“We left home but we didn’t know if we returned,” he said.
Overcome fear, strengthening peace
In the halls of Socrates Elementary School in Downtown Culiacán, the signs explain what to do if a shootout and drill children suddenly fall into the ground if the alarm sounds.
Princuncuman Victor Manuel Aispuro said he couldn’t recall what it wanted to have nearly nearly 400 students at school. About 80 families fled to town and have days not more than 10 children attended. She has a decision every day if there are in-person classes.
The last time he closed the late month when severe fires and low-flying helicopters were paniced by residents. Two key cartel members were arrested.
In January, one of his students, a 9-year-old boy, killed with his 12-year-old sister and their father in a carjacking. Thousands of residents bring the streets to a rare public display.
In a workshop, a nongovernmental ex-police organization leads students through an exercise that wrote what is frightening them. One listed spiders, gun shots and white trucks (the preferred cartel transport). One said he was afraid to move or kill.
“People are full of a sense of collective distress, anxiety, social anger and other crisis,” as Calderón, the Citizen Security Group coordinator. He said he hopes it can eliminate the complexity of citizens, which many years have seen the cartel as protectors, heroes or numbers to follow.
