By Juan Veledíaz | @velediaz424
Last Thursday, December 14, Guatemalan army officers met with their Mexican counterparts led by General Rubén Dario Díaz Esparza, commander of the 38th military zone based in Tenosique, Tabasco, in the second local meeting of border commanders. These types of meetings are part of the joint mechanism called the High Level Security Group (GANSEG), established between both countries with the purpose of coordinating operations against organized crime activities such as drug trafficking, weapons, migrants and customs fraud.
It was striking that a week later, almost at midnight on Friday the 23rd, a series of coordinated attacks occurred in Villahermosa and Comalcalco, where blockades with burning vehicles, shootings and riots were recorded in the prisons of both Tabasco cities. The messages from the criminal organizations were raised less than a couple of hours from Palenque where the binational military meeting took place and where the President of the Republic Andrés Manuel López Obrador has his residence.
The vacuum of authority and the absence of an explanation about the background of these events put on stage what is at stake in the border area of Tabasco with Guatemala. Today El Ceibo, a border post, is controlled by groups related to the so-called Pacific Cartel, although the routes from there to Veracruz, Oaxaca and the center of the country are mostly under the control of organizations related to the so-called Jalisco Cartel. New generation.
What has happened in recent years in this part of the border is that organized crime has expanded its operations centers on routes for drug trafficking, human and weapons trafficking, vehicle theft, smuggling and customs fraud, according to a document from the Secretary of National Defense on the latest bilateral meetings of the GANSEG dated at the end of 2022. One of the objectives set for this ending year is that coordinated mirror operations would be carried out in border areas to combat the illicit trafficking of migrants.
Despite these purposes, the migration crisis worsened this week with a new caravan made up of around six thousand people that left Chiapas on Sunday the 24th, heading to the northern border, where several ports of entry such as Piedras Negras-Eagle Pass, Matamoros -Brownsville, they have been saturated for several weeks.
The 2024 critical route began with the visit on Thursday the 28th to the National Palace of a high-level US delegation led by Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Security, and National Security Advisor Liz Sherwood. The emphasis on the migration crisis and the consequences for the binational agenda was what was announced as topics in the scheduled meeting with López Obrador. Beyond formalities, American concern once again focused on the inaction of the Mexican government, which seems overwhelmed by the waves of migrants.
The reserved topic is the reports that US agencies have compiled in recent years on the role of Venezuela, Cuba and Russia behind the waves of migrants that are the most thorny issue on the US electoral agenda in 2024.