Security in Mexico

Security in Mexico

Raising the stakes

by T.W. | MEXICO CITY

A CASINO in the troubled northern city of Monterrey was set alight yesterday afternoon, in an attack that officials say killed 40 people. Some reports said that armed men had burst in and doused the Casino Royale with flammable liquid. Others said the men had thrown grenades. At the time of writing some people were reportedly still trapped inside.

Some 40,000 people have been killed so far in Mexico’s heightened drug war, which is nearing five years old. In spite of the violence, Mexico’s economy has been doing reasonably well. Though the border with the United States has seen the worst of the fighting, trade between the two countries is at an all-time high. Crucial to keeping the investment and visitors flowing is the fact that the violence has been highly concentrated—most of the murders taking place in a handful of municipalities—and that most of the victims, we are told (without hard evidence, mind you) are people who are themselves involved in organised crime.

That is why yesterday’s casino attack presents three worries. Firstly, it did not take place in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night: the Casino Royale is on one of Monterrey’s main highways, close to the centre, with several well-known hotel chains within a few blocks. Chasing Los Zetas and co. around the desert is one thing; failing to keep order in the middle of one of Mexico’s richest cities, at four in the afternoon, is a more serious problem, and one that will cause people to raise the dreaded F-word again. (For what it’s worth, I still don’t think Mexico as a whole is anywhere near meeting that description. But a handful of its 31 states are perilously close.)

Secondly, if 20-plus people have been killed, it is likely that some of the victims have nothing to do with the drug war. Foreign visitors can tell themselves (and their insurance companies) that there is nothing to worry about if the people dying are all either villains or innocent people whose jobs draw them into the chaos. But if public buildings are being torched or shot up, as a city-centre bar was last month in Monterrey, the jitters will quickly, and rightly, spread.

Finally, attacks on nightspots in the past have been linked to disputes between rival gangs over the right to sell drugs. The motives for the Casino Royale attack remain unclear. The only whiff of dodginess about the place is the city mayor’s statement that it had been operating without some of the necessary permits. It may never have seen so much as a joint on its premises. But places such as bars and casinos are more at risk of getting mixed up in the drugs business than they used to be. Mexico’s mutation from one of Latin America’s safest countries to a fairly violent one (still narrowly safer than Brazil on average, but with some seriously dangerous hotspots) has coincided with its change from a simple transit country to one where drugs are also dealt locally. Mexico’s ports and border-crossings have always been in dispute among the big players in the drugs business. If every nightclub and street corner is now to be scrapped over by small-time retailers, it will do nothing to make Mexico’s cities safer.