Chihuahuan Gov Corral Brags about Security Advances in Wake of Zaragoza Confrontations and Beheadings

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: El Diario

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Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua:  Prosecutor General César Peniche today attributed the clash last Sunday on the Ignacio Zaragoza-Buenaventura highway, to a confrontation between the "La Línea" group of the Juarez Cartel with the Sinaloa Cartel or "Los Chapitos", he said. 

He said that both organizations are fighting over the route of drug trafficking in the northwest of the state and for that reason the confrontation occurred, which according to the official balance was three people burned, two shot to death and four decapitated. The dead were of CDS but still unidentified.

Peniche said that the confrontation did not originate in the place where the vehicles and bodies were found because there are traces, he said, that one of the trucks advanced several kilometers with the tires punched.

He indicated that the situation was already controlled by agents of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Security Commission to prevent the advance of the criminal groups. 

He said that the route of the transfer of drugs was traditionally controlled by one of the organizations that recently experienced an internal rupture and part of the "disbanded" was the opposite group that has been seizing the routes.

                                                  Governor of Chihuahua Javier Corral
Meanwhile:
From Ciudad Juarez :    Despite the upsurge in violence in the western part of the state, Governor Javier Corral assured that the police intervention of the State in those municipalities has been successful. 

Questioned about the latest confrontation that left five executed and decapitated in the highway Ignacio Zaragoza on Sunday, the president said there is a considerable drop in homicides in Chihuahua and awarded praise to his administration. 

"Really in the state, particularly in the northern zone and specifically in Juarez, we have managed to kill homicides in an important way. Last month we had a 60 percent low in the state, " he presumed. 

He added that the decrease also reached the mountain municipalities.

"If a corporation is depleting its forces, its capabilities, its weapons, its vehicles to criminals, logically it is attacked against that corporation. That is why they have gone against us, we are the ones who are really facing the problem, "he stressed. 

But the face of security that Chihuahua has is another.

The scene of Sunday's confrontation says it, with a couple of trucks wrapped in flames in the middle of the road, two bodies of civilians shot to death and three more burned corpses. See Chivis Post from Oct 15.

On this, Corral said that the information they have so far is that it was a confrontation between groups, "the executions that are made around the disputes over the plazas."

One of the territories most affected by the increase in violence and especially by the registration of crimes of a political nature is the same western area, where murders have been increasing since February 2017, just when the intervention in the area by state forces replaced the municipal forces by decree. 

In May of this year, prosecutor César Augusto Peniche Espejel acknowledged that the Sinaloa Cartel "enters and leaves" Chihuahua very easily from Sonora. 

Still a few days ago, alleged members of the Cartel of "El Tigre" boasted the weapons they have, including assault rifles and even grenade launchers, in a video uploaded to social networks.

That armed group, which operates in the sierra between Chihuahua and Sonora, until Cuauhtémoc, has caused much of the violence in that region, in addition to being responsible for multiple homicides, according to statements by the authorities. 

Even with these signs of violence, Corral said: "Then there is a considerable drop of homicides in the state. 

"It's a very encouraging sign because it points out that people saw a fundamental change. There are municipalities where state intervention follows and there are others where only the commanders, particularly in Cuauhtémoc will for no reason leave the police command post and go out on patrol for they are outgunned and outmanned. " he said. 

He said that the aggressions against state elements are due to the fact that they are the only ones that have faced violence, "as never before".

"Let's see, if any corporation has faced the aggression of crime is the State Security Commission and the State Agency for Research," he noted. 

The governor said that although they do not have police force status and that they can not cope, they have managed to contain the insecurity. However, he also accused the federal government of withdrawing support for Chihuahua. 

He said that in 2010 Juarez had a number of no less than 6,000 elements of the Federal Police and had peaks of up to 10,000. Now there are less than 500, he said.

He stressed that when he took office in October 2016, there were nine states with high crime incidence problems, but to date they are 27 states.

"The problem became a national problem, almost in the whole territory, and then 2017 was the year with more homicides and the most violent in recent decades, "he said. 

Corral said that a new model of coordination and distribution of federal forces in the country is required. He even affirmed that if there is effective coordination he is willing to accept the single command proposed by the elected president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

"What we are very hopeful about is that the change of government produces a better distribution of federal forces in the entities and effective coordination based on trust and real exchange of strategies and information," Governor Corral added.