Mexico is suffering from a «pandemic of homicides», with more than 30,000 violent deaths a year, aggravated by the threat of criminal networks and widespread impunity, lamented this Wednesday David Lee, president of Grupo Paladín, a company specializing in security training.
At the opening of the third National Congress on Armoring, organized by the Mexican ballistic industry, the expert warned that this North American country has become a «springboard for drugs» to other nations, which in his opinion adds to the «exalted culture of corruption» prevailing at different levels of the State.
«Of the more than 30 million crimes, we don't report even 7%», Lee pointed out.
In this situation, Lee estimated that what should be done is to promote «citizen participation», with the aim of «supervising and auditing» the work of state and federal officials, as well as the so-called 'hawks' of criminal groups, young people who «in exchange for a weekly fee vigilantly watch over the territories of criminals».
«We must become observers and act with intelligence, and not with more violence, we will be able to reverse this terrible phenomenon», he concluded.
The issue of security in Mexico is a recurring debate that returned to the international stage a few days ago, following the blockades, vehicle burnings and armed attacks recorded in several states in response to the death of Nemesio Oceguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), killed in a federal operation.
According to the president of Grupo Paladín, there is an almost «total» impunity in Mexico, where criminals are «coming out of every single one of our homes».
«We have not instilled in young people any principles nor have we educated them to go out and face an adverse and now perverse world, which on the one hand is victimizing us and, on the other, is dragging us into criminal networks», he said.
The specialist assured that every day more than five kidnappings and ten murders of women and girls occur, while more than 130,000 people remain missing, whom «in our hearts, we hope will appear, but in the depths of our consciousness we know that it will very rarely be so».
Likewise, Lee highlighted that 75% of Mexicans feel that the city they live in is «unsafe» in a context where the homicide rate is 19.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, despite the World Health Organization (WHO) saying that «a rate of ten points is considered an epidemic rate».
«What do we do in a country in which we complain a lot but report little?»
