Have ‘Los Pepes’ touched down in Mexico?
Will vigilantes in Mexico succeed where the police and army have failed? Will it take a Mexican “Los Pepes” movement to effectively battle Mexico’s drug cartels? Two recent stories from Mexico hint that Mexico’s “Los Pepes” may have arrived.
The “Los Pepes” I refer to was the shadowy vigilante group that in the early 1990s methodically reduced Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar from a Latin American emperor to a cornered animal. As described in Mark Bowden’s brilliant Killing Pablo, Los Pepes, obviously enjoying access to the full intelligence file on Escobar’s vast organization, systematically murdered or chased into exile the concentric rings of Escobar’s supporting infrastructure. When he was finally gunned down, the former drug emperor was on the run in a Medellin slum with one bodyguard and two pistols. It is not an exaggeration to say that the murderous Los Pepes saved Colombia, where the police, army, and courts — all thoroughly suborned by Escobar — could not.
Will a new generation of Los Pepes be Mexico’s salvation? Some Mexicans, including one city mayor, seem to think so, as described in this recent Wall Street Journal article:
The mayor of the nearby municipality of San Pedro Garza García, Mauricio Fernández, a scion of a wealthy and prominent family, said this week that he created a special group to “clean up” criminal elements in the municipality — even if it had to act outside the law.
His comments came a day after four men who allegedly ran a kidnapping ring in San Pedro were found dead in Mexico City on Saturday. The men, led by Héctor “The Black” Saldaí±a, were believed responsible for multiple kidnappings in San Pedro and neighboring Monterrey, according to police in Monterrey and San Pedro. The four are believed to be tied to a drug cartel, police said.
[…]
“We’re tired of sitting around on our hands and waiting for daddy or mommy [President] Calderón to come to fix our fights. We in San Pedro took the decision to grab the bull by the horns,” Mr. Fernández said in a radio interview. “Even acting outside the limits of my role as mayor, I will end the kidnappings, extortions and drug trafficking. We are going to do this by whatever means, fair or foul.”
Asked if his new squad would operate outside the law, Mr. Fernández said: “In some ways, that’s right. What the criminals want is that they can break every law, but that we have to respect every law. Well, I don’t get that.”
Separately, Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, a Mexican criminal defense attorney who specialized in defending indicted drug cartel members, was gunned down in a Monterrey shopping mall. The guidance for this murder could be found in chapter one of Los Pepes’ playbook.
After Escobar’s death, Los Pepes disappeared, apparently satisfied that its work was complete. In the years since, Colombia’s government has reestablished its authority. Drug exports from Colombia obviously continue, but the cartels and insurgent groups such as FARC no longer are a challenge to state authority.
With this happy example in mind, some of Mexico’s authorities may be tempted to tacitly permit their own Los Pepes to do the work they are unable to do themselves. They will hope that, as happened in Colombia, the vigilantes will disappear after that work is done. There is obviously a lot more that can go wrong with such a plan than can go right. It seems as if Mayor Ferní ndez believes Mexico no longer has a choice.
