Acambaro: A car bomb abandoned outside a police station in the western Mexican city of Acámbaro wounded three people, prosecutors in the violence-stricken state of Guanajuato said Thursday.
They said another explosion occurred in the nearby town of Jerecuaro, but no one was injured.
The nearly simultaneous attacks in two different towns located about a half-hour away from each other suggested the involvement of drug cartels that have been waging bloody turf battles for years in Guanajuato.
Despite the violence, newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged to continue her predecessor’s “hugs, not bullets” approach. Sheinbaum said Thursday that he ordered the military “not to have confrontations” with the cartels.
“We are not going to return to a war against drug traffickers,” Sheinbaum said.
But it takes two to tango, and his administration already appears to be caught in a war-like situation with cartels in several states, whether he likes it or not, just three weeks after taking office.
Significant explosion, serious matter.
The car bomb in Acambaro was large enough to send parts of the burned vehicle across a tree-lined dividing strip on the street in front of the police station, according to photographs distributed by municipal police.
The powerful explosion apparently blew out windows and doors of nearby homes.
It was the most serious car bomb attack against authorities in Mexico since June 2023, when a cartel used a car bomb to kill a National Guard officer in the nearby city of Celaya.
In July 2023, a drug cartel in the neighboring state of Jalisco detonated a coordinated series of seven roadside bombs that killed four police officers and two civilians.
The improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, had apparently been placed in holes dug in the road.
Similar incidents increase in Mexico
The use of car bombs, improvised explosive devices and bomb-delivering drones illustrate the increasingly overt, military-style challenge posed by the country’s drug cartels.
Sheinbaum has pledged to continue the policy of his predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of avoiding confrontations with drug cartels. Before leaving office on September 30, López Obrador publicly called on gangs to keep violence down and offered training programs aimed at reducing the number of young recruits to the cartels.
The policy did not result in any significant reduction in Mexico’s historically high homicide levels.
Sheinbaum faces a sharp rise in violence simultaneously in the northern state of Sinaloa, the southern state of Chiapas and in Guanajuato, the state that has had the highest number of homicides in Mexico.
Sheinbaum, who took office Oct. 1, has said he will make reducing violence in Guanajuato a priority and said Thursday’s attacks were being investigated.
But David Saucedo, a security analyst based in Guanajuato, said the government has not recognized the scope of the problem. Sheinbaum and other officials almost always respond to violence with common phrases such as “investigations are underway” or “the issue is being addressed.”
“In the federal and state governments there is resistance to talking about narcoterrorism, because they think it will create a bad image for the country,” Saucedo said. “The truth is that Mexico already has a bad image in terms of crime and violence.” The problem is becoming more acute for the Mexican government, as drug cartels and violence in Mexico have become an issue in the upcoming US presidential election.
“There are voices within the government that think that talking about narcoterrorism would add fuel to conservative sectors in the United States that want to send the US military to fight the cartels,” he said.
Saucedo said the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, which has spent years fighting the Jalisco cartel for control of the state, was likely behind Thursday’s explosions.
“Although these attacks in Acámbaro and Jerecuaro are part of a local (cartel) strategy, they are also intended to be a message from the criminal gangs to the president and the governor, that they will continue in the battle and continue fighting for Guanajuato,” he noted.
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