Police abuse, public debt and migration: the challenges of the next governor of Coahuila

The State of Coahuila is approaching the polls. On June 4, the entity will elect the next governor among four candidates: Manolo Jimenez, for the PRI, PAN, PRD alliance; Armando Guadiana, for Morena; Ricardo Mejia, for the Labor Party; and Lenin Perez, for the Green Party, in alliance with the local formation Unidad Democratica de Coahuila. Whoever wins the election will have to face a State that has been governed for more than 70 years by the PRI. The legacy that the winning candidate will receive includes low criminal figures compared to the high ones of its neighbors Tamaulipas, Zacatecas or Chihuahua. But he will have to govern an entity with numerous complaints against the state police for abuses, an enormous public debt and great challenges on issues such as the immigration crisis, the search for 3,200 disappeared and an upturn in addictions.

Migration at the hands of organized crime

Migration in Coahuila is regulated by organized crime. This was explained by a group of migrants passing through Saltillo last Wednesday. In almost the entire state, the Northeast Cartel —a splinter of the Zetas— operates freely. The mechanics can work in two ways: through codes to move freely or with kidnapping. If a person wants to cross the entity to reach the border, he can buy codes from the criminals for 500 pesos, says the Venezuelan Veronica. These keys are used to escape unharmed when they are detained by cartel groups. If, on the contrary, the person decides to try it without paying that money, when she is retained by the criminals, it is most likely that she will be kidnapped, says the Honduran Jesus, who experienced a kidnapping firsthand.

“He is our friend, he was here with us a few days ago,” said another Honduran showing a photo on his mobile phone. In the image a man could be seen on his knees holding a sign with the date, behind him someone is holding a knife to his throat. Once the migrant is captured by organized crime, they notify the families in their countries of origin so that they can send money. “They ask for $6,000,” he explained. If they don’t pay, the promise of death falls on them. If they hand over the amount, they can be released on US soil, the group said.

The cartel also acts in collusion with the authorities, they say. Jesus remembered that when the Northeast Cartel kidnapped him in Piedras Negras, on the border with the United States, they held him in a house. “The Fuerza Coahuila patrol came to the house about three times, and the first time I saw them, I thought: they are coming to rescue us. But no, they just arrived, they were watching and they left.

The last side of the coin of the challenges facing the future governor of Coahuila has the face of those who seek a better life. In the midst of the migration crisis and after the elimination of Title 42 on May 11, Central Americans, Africans and Asians who arrive in Mexico to cross into the United States accumulate at the border with no clear future in sight. In between, they try to survive the danger and evade the clutches of organized crime.

Police abuse and glass security

One of the things that those attending the Manolo Jimenez rallies highlighted the most these days was security. A group of people who went to see the PRI candidate last Saturday told this newspaper that they chose the current governor’s dauphin, Miguel Angel Riquelme, because they believe that in this way the “security situation” in which the entity currently. The figures mark the key: while Coahuila registered 391 murders in all of last year, neighboring states saw an escalation in violence: Zacatecas reported 1,360 homicides, Chihuahua reached 2,059 and Tamaulipas 1,190, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Security System public. In addition, the PRI supporters assured that they seek political continuity because transitions usually bring an increase in violence.

However, the PRI was also in command of the state at the beginning of the last decade, when the entity was hit by a wave of disappearances and murders at the hands of the criminal group Los Zetas. Several sources who prefer anonymity out of fear point out that in the southern cities, such as Torreon or Saltillo, large massacres are no longer reported as was the case before because organized crime there does not fight for any plaza, but instead maintains an agreement with the security forces. . At least four people assured that members of the state police are the ones who are now selling drugs at these points.

Beyond the sale of drugs, the state police suffered an avalanche of complaints in recent years for police abuse. The Human Rights Commission of the State of Coahuila admitted in the first four months of this year some 507 complaints for human rights violations. While last year it received some 1,611. Among the most notable are the so-called GATES, the elite group of the police that is also involved in accusations of being in charge of the illegal commercialization of narcotics.

The rise in glass consumption

Another of the issues that the candidates have discussed has been the increase in addictions, specifically in the use of crystal. A couple who prefer not to give their names, and whose son ended up hooked on the glass, told this newspaper this week how the sale currently operates. The young man began to visit bars and nightclubs where state police groups sold him this type of methamphetamine, they say. Once hooked on the drug, he decided to enter one of the rehabilitation centers in the entity.

The latest statistics on the subject have come out of these institutions, which set off alerts about what is happening in the State. The numbers draw how the problem has worsened. Crystal became the most consumed impact drug in the state, above crack, cocaine or inhalants. Another not very encouraging piece of information punctually marks the evolution of the situation during the Riquelme government: the percentage of those who went to care centers and said they used methamphetamines went from 6.7% in the first half of 2017 to 38.7% in end of 2022, according to the Drug Consumption Epidemiological Information System.

Continuity in the search for the disappeared

Ortiz assures that his work has been harmed by the austerity policies of the Government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which implied for them greater delays in judicial investigations —in some cases that already had long delays— and a slowdown in the identification of the remains. humans that are found. The woman adds that the elimination of the Comprehensive Help, Assistance and Reparation trust, which served them to channel resources to carry out the searches, has hit them significantly.

Debt and the Moreiras

Coahuila is one of the most indebted states in the country, in terms of the relationship between debt and economy. The next governor will have to deal with a debt that exceeds 38,121 million pesos. This translates into the loss of 13% of the entity’s income, which is used to pay that debt, according to the estimates of several analysts. This gap in public finances has been one of the darts that the Morena and PT candidates have used against the PRI during the campaign. One of the proposals of Mejia, from the PT, has been to create a special commission to investigate the brothers Ruben and Humberto Moreira, two former PRI governors who are accused of having plundered the State and having sunk it into a million-dollar debt.

“My fight is against moreirato corrupt, my proposal is to put the governors who looted Coahuila, like Humberto and Ruben Moreira, in jail,” said the PT candidate this Thursday in a video on Twitter. Guadiana, for his part, has proposed opening the classified documents of the debt in order to really understand what happened. What is known is that Humberto Moreira irregularly acquired in his administration (2005-2011) a public debt for almost 36,000 million pesos. The State Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation during the Government of his brother (2011-2017), but it was finally dismissed. “We are going to punish those guilty of the mega-debt and all the robberies they did,” the Morena candidate has promised.