TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) – Days of widespread drug cartel arson and shootings in four states last week have left Mexicans wondering why drug cartels have exploded and what they want.
The attacks killed 11 people, including a young boy and four radio station employees who were shot at random in the streets of the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, on Thursday.
Two days earlier, more than two dozen convenience stores belonging to a well-known national chain were set on fire in the northern state of Guanajuato.  Cars and buses were destroyed and burned in the neighboring state of Jalisco.  And two dozen vehicles were seized and set on fire in California border towns on Friday.
The federal government has deployed soldiers and National Guard troops to calm residents’ fears, but the outbreaks of violence have raised questions about President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s approach of placing all responsibility for security in the hands of the military rather than civilian police forces.
Some have been quick to label the arsons and attacks as terrorism, while the government has denied it.  Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez said: “These are not terrorist attacks.  you don’t need to exaggerate the facts.’
But it is not clear what the target was.
“I think the orders given to these gunmen were to cause chaos,” said Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope.  “Create chaos, create uncertainty, create fear, shoot at anything that moves.  This is something that causes horror.”
But Hope added: “Terrorism involves a political objective.  I don’t know what the political goal is in this case.”
López Obrador suggested on Monday that the attacks were part of a political conspiracy against him by opponents he describes as “conservatives” and argued that there is “no big problem” with security.
“I don’t know if there was a connection, a hidden hand, if this was set up,” he said.  “What I do know is that our opponents, the corrupt conservatives, are helping black propaganda.”
Defense Secretary Luis Crescencio Sandoval later said the cartels had attacked because they were weakened.  “They want to still feel that they are strong and they create violent situations where through publicity they send messages that they are still strong,” he said.
Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero sounded very different when she made a strange public appeal Friday to cartels to stop targeting innocent citizens.
“Today we are telling the organized crime groups that commit these crimes that Tijuana will remain open and take care of its citizens,” Caballero said in a video.  “And we also ask them to settle their debts with defaulters, not with families and hard-working citizens.”
The streets of central Tijuana were busy Monday after an unusually quiet weekend of canceled medical appointments and closed restaurants.
On Monday morning, pedestrians waited more than three hours to enter the United States at the San Ysidro border crossing that connects Tijuana to San Diego.  There was no visible increased security presence in downtown Tijuana.
Omar Garcia, who runs a stand selling souvenir clothing near the border crossing in Tijuana, said tourism evaporated over the weekend.  He was encouraged by Monday’s heavy traffic, but said the violence could turn into a financial jolt to his business.
“They’re hits that come occasionally,” said Garcia, 34, who has been selling souvenirs at the border crossing since he was a small boy.  “We are 100% dependent on tourism.  If they are afraid, they don’t come.”
Jose Andres Sumano Rodriguez, a professor and security expert at North Border College in Matamoros, a city on the Texas border, said the decision to target civilians was deliberate.
The cartels “have learned that when they push the side of creating terror and attacking civilians, it gets them good results,” he said.  “It’s often much more effective to do that than to go head-to-head with the armed forces, where they’re almost always going to lose.”
Security analyst David Saucedo called the attacks “narco-terrorism” and said the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was behind the violence in the states of Guanajuato and Baja California.
Saucedo said there has been a change in Mexico’s drug policy since last year, when soldiers at roadside bases simply watched cartels fight for control of the western state of Michoacan with drones, IEDs and land mines.
Saucedo said the change may have angered the cartels.
Mexico has made more efforts to arrest drug lords, something Lopez Obrador previously said he was not interested in.  Mexican marines captured fugitive drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero in July after years on the run for the 1985 killing of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
And seizures in Mexico of meth labs and the synthetic opioid fentanyl have skyrocketed in recent months.
“There has been a change in strategy to fight the drug cartels.  “Andres Manuel (Lopez Obrador) has been criticized a lot recently for his ‘hugs, not bullets’ strategy,” Saucedo said.  “I think because of pressure from Joe Biden, he’s changing that and agreeing to arrest high-profile drug traffickers.”
The spark that ignited the chaos in Jalisco and Guanajuato last week was apparently the military coming to a meeting involving a boss from the Jalisco cartel.  Sandoval, the defense secretary, said the soldiers were unaware and were simply trying to intercept a cartel convoy.
“The narco-terrorism of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is a reaction to the president’s change in strategy,” Saucedo said.  “If the Mexican president continues with this strategy of arresting high-ranking members of the Jalisco cartel, the Jalisco cartel is going to respond with acts of narco-terrorism in the states it controls as part of its vast empire.”
Sandoval said there has been no change in strategy.
“It’s not that we’re looking for the leader … it’s not that business is focused on certain levels of the organization,” he said.
“We need to know where to use this force, where to use it, the number of people we need to send to reinforce, the specific places and know where we need to act to be able to guarantee security,” Sandoval said .
He denied the government was unresponsive, noting that in 19 of Mexico’s 32 states the National Guard already has superior numbers to state authorities.  “It is part of a strategy that has already been designed and we will implement accordingly.”
Such terrorist acts have happened before.  In June of last year, a faction of the Gulf Cartel entered Reynosa on the Texas border and killed 14 people that authorities identified as “innocent civilians,” as part of an effort to overthrow a rival faction that controlled Reynosa.
Ana Vanessa Cardenas, coordinator of the international relations program at Anahuac Mayab University in Merida, said that with any other president half of the security cabinet would have been kicked out, international experts consulted and the new security strategy continued.  But he does not expect any change from López Obrador, whom he considers to be in denial.
“We have seen a complete militarization of security and the country, which is the last step,” Cardenas said.  “If we have already reached the last security step we have an increase in violence, murders, drug control, then where do we go?”
Sanchez reported from Mexico City.  Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.