Pena Nieto Appointment of Green Party Leader to Head Crime Prevention Is Nonsensical Sergio Aguayo - Reforma
go to original September 17, 2015

If fighting violence is a priority for this government, naming Arturo Escobar y Vega as the person responsible for preventing crime and encouraging citizen participation is sovereign nonsense. In his last report, president Enrique Peña Nieto again praised his policy of "social prevention of violence and crime." According to his statistics, in "cities with more than 100,000 residents where these prevention efforts operate, homicides have gone down 35 percent." I do not know the factual accuracy; I agree that the policy was working.

When this administration began, I praised the professionalism and experience of a high percentage of staff in public security, here and in other spaces. I found the emphasis on prevention a wise choice. As I investigate national security, I maintained an intellectual dialogue with professionals from this sector. In the case of the creators of the prevention program (Roberto Campa, Eunice Rendón and Lucila Guerra, among others), we agreed on the urgent need to improve knowledge of Mexican social capital.

With funds managed by the Undersecretary of Prevention, the Collective of Security Analysis with Democracy (Casede) and the System of Opinion and Market Intelligence (SIMO) they carried out in ten cities the first survey in Latin America designed to detect the values that lead people to support legality and institutions or illegality and organized crime. I also participated in the design and interpretation of this survey because the then undersecrertary, Campa, agreed that the results be made public (at a seminar at he College of Mexico [where the author is a professor], in October 2014).

Because I know the subject, I view the selection of Arturo Escobar y Vega as Undersecretary of Prevention and Citizen Participation as a barbarity. The opinion is common enough that not even his immediate boss, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, was excited to report on his incorporation into the Secretariat of Government Relations. In the stenographic record of the event, the Secretary was throwing incense on the biographies of other officials and seriously praised the prevention program. About Escobar he was laconic: "His extensive experience as a legislator stands out."

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Rachel Alexander

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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