Marisol Valles — tal vez puede

The Municipio of Guadalupe Distrito Bravo Praxedis G. Guerrero*  in northern Chihuahua (bordering Texas) has more than it’s share of insecurity.  The sprawling, sparsely populated municipality (more or less equivalent to a county in the United States) has been the scene of heavy fighting between the Sinaloa “cartel” and the “La Linea” gang for control of smuggling routes.  Three Guadalupe Distrito Bravo municipal officials have been murdered since the gang-war broke out in 2008.

The only candidate to step forward to command the public security force was Marisol Valles García, a twenty-year old criminology student.  The new sheriff in town (and the youngest police chief in Mexico) oversees a tiny department that at most can provide two shifts of patrol officers per community.  Chief Valles points out that her brief doesn’t call for her to fight the “drug war”, but that her force of  local patrol officers, who at most can ameliorate the ravages of criminality associated with the smuggling rings, are often the only law and order available to rural residents.

Her goals are modest — crime prevention programs for schools and neighborhoods, “neighborhood watch” type patrols and possibly more bicycle police.  And, I wouldn’t wonder,  high grades on her criminology tests.

* Thanks to Gio Acosta for correcting this.  I was working from a news brief, and — though the geographic name didn’t look right, I ran with what seems to be a police district code name for the area.  Still, it’s my fault for not checking the municipio name.  (26-October-2010)