Linchamientos en México. Mexican town that lynched alleged kidnappers by Tom Phillips

En la película Vice se nos muestra como Dick Cheney, después de que dos aviones se estrellasen contra la torres gemelas, ve una oportunidad en lo que otros ven como un problema. A partir de ahí, la trama se desarrolla para mostrar como Cheney aprovecha esa oportunidad. Pero la otra cara de la moneda, el problema, también se desarrolla.

Hoy publica The Guardian que, en México, patrullas ciudadanas, hartas de secuestros, han linchado a un grupo de delincuentes. Mientras, Bolsonaro declara que ‘criminals should die in the streets like cockroaches’. El problema de la delincuencia organizada, especialmente al sur de Estados Unidos ha sido la cara B de una oportunidad para muchos gobernantes. Cierto que también es la cara B de la inoperancia de otros con mejores intenciones. Pero sea como sea ese problema ha crecido hasta situaciones insostenibles y, nuevamente, personajes como Bolsonaro o Duterte (la frontera sur de Estados Unidos es muy larga) lo recogen como una oportunidad. En medio, la respuesta visceral y coyuntural de la población que puede ser comprensible –lo comprensible no tiene que ser compartible- pero no deja de ser una evolución de pogromos, quema de brujas, gusto por las ejecuciones y otros divertimentos populares.

'People have had enough': Mexican town that lynched alleged kidnappers

Shocking act in Tepexco is just one example of wider malady blighting countries from Bolivia to Brazil

Tom Phillips in Tepexco

Wed 21 Aug 2019 05.00 BST Last modified on Wed 21 Aug 2019 05.01 BST

Socorro Muñoz fled indoors as the laurel-lined square outside her shop became a public execution ground one sunny afternoon in early August.

Fled indoors: huyó al interior

Laured-lined square: marco adornado con laurel

“I didn’t want to see,” the 62-year-old storekeeper explained as she relived the moment a tide of Latin American lynchings swept into Tepexco’s picturesque Plaza de la Constitución, leaving seven alleged kidnappers dead.

Witnesses say many in this farming community felt differently and had packed the square to watch a massacre they call simply “los hechos” or “the events”.

The dead included three suspected gang members – one a teenager – who were dragged from a local police station, interrogated and strung up from a rusty yellow basketball hoop as the crowd bayed for justice, and for blood.

Strung up: colgado

Rusty: oxidado

Bay: clamar

“My goodness, the 16-year-old kid, they hanged him and then brought him down – but he was still breathing. He was still alive,” Muñoz recounted in horror. “And when the people saw, they started shouting: ‘Put him up again! Put him up again!’ And so they put him up again. It was terrible. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

The lynchings, which took place in the Mexican state of Puebla on 7 August, were the latest expression of a regional malady blighting countries from Bolivia to Brazil, whose far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, recently declared criminals should “die in the streets like cockroaches”.

Malady blighting: plaga que azota

Most weeks Latin American newspapers feature chilling tales of mob justice, often committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens and increasingly coordinated on social media and filmed on smartphones. In one recent case in the Brazilian Amazon, vigilantes smashed their way into a police station with sledgehammers in search of a suspected killer, before hacking him to death with machetes and scythes.

Chilling tales: relatos espeluznantes

Mob justice: justicia vengativa

Law-abiding citizens: ciudadanos de orden respetuosos de la ley.

Smashed their way: se abrieron paso

Sledghammer & scythes: mazos y guadañas

But Mexico, which last year registered a record 35,964 murders and where only a tiny fraction of crimes are solved, has been particularly affected.

The number of lynchings almost tripled here last year, jumping from 60 incidents in 2017 to 174 – 58 of which resulted in deaths. In the first half of this year that trend has continued with security expert Eduardo Guerrero counting at least 42 killings.

“It is truly alarming,” said Elisa Godínez Pérez, a Mexican anthropologist who studies lynchings. “There are regions like Puebla where the situation is practically out of control.” (…)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/21/they-hanged-him-the-mexican-town-tepexco-that-lynched-alleged-kidnappers

“Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd”.