No sale

A rough day for Secretary of Governance (Home Secretary or Homeland Security chief) iJuan Camilo Mouriño, Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna and Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora yesterday.  All three made public promises to resign if they couldn’t resolve the crime issue within a reasonable time period.

David Agren covered the trio’s appearance before the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday.  Basically, the Deputies ripped them new assholes:

“Deficiency, demagoguery and disorder are the three brushstrokes that paint the entire picture of crime fighting in this administration,” said Deputy César Camacho Quiroz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

“It´s evident that its work has been deficient.”

Others went even further in their condemnations. Members of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Convergence party chanted, “Resign!” as Mouriño spoke, while other members of the two parties held up signs reading, “Let´s save Mexico. Resign.”

Agren, being an upstanding member of the “mainstream media” has to be fair and balanced (or at least deferential to the powers that be). I don’t.

Attorney General Medina Mora told Reuters that the grenade attack in Moralia, which he was trying to claim was the work of “la Familia” was now the work of either the Zetas or la Familia, or a dispute between the two, and a fight for territorial control.  What’s galling isn’t that what Medina Mora is saying is “I don’t have a fuckin’ clue” but that he is trying to spin this as a success in the Administration’s anti-crime strategy of creating a wedge between various organized crime groups.  As I’ve said, indiscriminate attacks on civilians are not these gangsters’ style… nor would they benefit from such a crime.  And gangsters expanding their territory — and widening their attacks — can’t be seen as a success in anyone’s book.

Absent any evidence — or even logical reasoning for the claim — it’s no less plausible than the claims made in a communique from the EPR — the old guerrilla group off in the hills that was accused of coordinated attacks on PEMEX oil pipelines (and never really pursued).  The ERP blames the attack on the government itself, trying to justify a military presence and the use of force in leftist Michoacan.