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发帖数: 4055 | 1 In Mexico, train robberies harken back to days of Jesse James
By Andrea Navarro and Nacha Cattan | Bloomberg News Jul 28, 2018 Updated
8 hrs ago (…)
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Head southeast from Mexico City for about four hours and you will come upon
Acultzingo, an impoverished, dusty town nestled against the rugged peaks of
the Sierra Madre. Most inhabitants work the land for a living, growing corn
and avocados and raising cattle and pigs.
They also rob trains. Lots of trains. So many, in fact, that Acultzingo (
pronounced ah-coolt-ZEEN-go) is the train robbery capital of not only Mexico
but arguably the world.
Over the past year alone, 521 crimes were committed against cargo trains in
the town. And a chunk of those incidents bore no resemblance to the run-of-
the-mill petty crime seen in the bigger cities of northern Mexico —
vandalizing a train car or stealing railway signs. These were massive,
choreographed affairs that often started with a low-tech trick that dates to
the days of the Wild West — piling rocks up high on the tracks — and
involved small armies of thieves who descended on the derailed cars in waves
to cart off the loot.
They’ve swiped tequila, shoes, toilet paper, tires, whatever they could get
their hands on. One particularly violent incident alone, which derailed
dozens of train cars a few miles east of Acultzingo, saddled the railroad
giant GMexico Transportes with more than $15 million in losses. And at Mazda
Motor’s offices in Mexico City, executives got so sick of hearing about
how parts were being stripped from their vehicles that they started shipping
some of them through the region by highway. Analysts estimate this tacks 30
percent on their transportation costs. (Mazda declined to provide figures.)
Security forces are so overwhelmed by the sheer number of attackers that a
sense of impunity prevails in the area, said political-risk analyst
Alejandro Schtulmann, who heads Mexico City-based consultancy EMPRA: “The
problem is getting worse all the time.”
The extreme lawlessness has led some Mexico observers to wonder whether the
country is something of a failed state struggling to rule over the entirety
of its territory. Homicides are at a record high, and kidnappings are on the
rise. Reining this crime in, at least somewhat, will soon be the task of
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the populist leader who rolled to a landslide
election victory this month in part on his pledge to restore law and order.
But the train-heist boom underscores just how tricky this assignment will be
. The phenomenon really took off only recently, after federal authorities
managed to crack down on another crime wave — in the fuel market — in the
same area. As soon as some of the huachicoleros, as the gangs are known,
were driven out of the stolen-fuel business, they shifted into train robbery
, giving the whole thing a certain whack-a-mole feel.
“We saw a mutation in organized crime,” says Benjamin Aleman, head of the
country’s railway regulator.
It can be a bit surprising to hear that professional train robbers still
roam the Earth. Their heyday, of course, was the 19th century, when the
likes of Jesse James and Butch Cassidy were marauding their way across the
American West. A few decades later, the young caudillo Doroteo Arango —
better known as Pancho Villa — terrorized railroad engineers on the other
side of the Rio Grande.
The robberies largely faded into lore as trains got faster and harder to
raid. Nowadays it’s difficult to even track down the heist data in much of
the world. But of those countries where it’s available, Mexico reports the
most, according to Sensitech, a subsidiary of United Technologies that
monitors supply-chain logistics.
The outbreak is concentrated in southeastern Mexico - in Veracruz, where
Acultzingo is located, and in the neighboring state of Puebla. All the
ingredients are there: Poverty is rampant, the mountains provide natural
cover, and a steady supply of cargo earmarked for export rumbles right
through the heart of the region en route to the nearby port in Veracruz.
When gangs aren’t stacking up rocks on the tracks, they’re derailing the
trains by sabotaging the brakes — a technique that can cause even more
grisly car pileups and injuries. They’ve also started inviting the
townspeople to partake in the spoils. This both earns their loyalty, experts
say, and gains the bandits an added layer of protection against police
officers and soldiers tempted to open fire.
Grainy video images taken by local media depict the same scene playing out
over and over again: dozens of people storming a derailed train like a
colony of ants while outnumbered officers look on helplessly.
It’s easy to persuade locals to join in, Schtulmann said. Like the people
who took up arms against the military in neighboring Chiapas state two
decades earlier, many of them feel neglected by the politicians back in
Mexico City. “Communities argue that the rich are getting richer and poor
poorer,” Schtulmann said, “so it’s social justice.”
For corporate Mexico, it’s a growing headache. Eduardo Solis, head of the
country’s auto industry association, called the situation “simply
unacceptable” at a press conference last month. Audi, which ships as many
as 3,300 cars a day to the Veracruz port from its plant in Puebla, said the
thefts have had a “big impact” on its distribution operations: “Every car
we make has a client waiting for it.”
No official estimates of economic losses have been roughed out yet, but
Schtulmann said the costs can be seen in things like rising freight and
insurance rates and the way that the government and railroad operators must
spend more on security in the area.
Mazda’s solution, shipping some cars by highway, may not prove a long-term
fix. Enrique Gonzalez, head of Mexico’s trucking association, was granted a
July sit-down with Lopez Obrador in which he pressed the president-elect to
appoint a special prosecutor to fight highway theft. The nation’s fleet of
trucks, Gonzalez said, is under attack day and night. |
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