MEXICO CITY (AP) — For the past six years, Mexico has boasted of its “hugs, not bullets” strategy, during which its leaders avoided clashes with drug cartels that were gradually taking control of large parts of the country. The idea was that social programs, not shootings, would gradually drain the cartel’s pool of gunmen.

Today, one month after the start of the mandate of the new president Claudia Sheinbaum, a series of bloody clashes suggests that the government is quietly abandoning the “no bullets” part of this strategy and is much more willing to use the full force of the Army and the militarized National Guard.

But the challenge Mexico faces today is different from that of the drug war from 2006 to 2012. Cartels today are more diverse, more deeply rooted in migrant smuggling and more willing to use foreign recruits and teenagers to fill their ranks.

All of this has led to a series of violent clashes in which security forces firing on suspected drug cartel convoys end up killing bystanders and migrants, and reporting lopsided death tolls in which the soldiers were not injured but most of the suspects were destroyed.

Sheinbaum carefully avoided using the slogan “hugs, not balls” popularized by his predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office on September 30. After all, she has pledged to continue every one of López Obrador’s policies. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

But Sheinbaum had to do some verbal gymnastics to avoid completely repudiating the policy.

“This is obviously not about hugging criminals, no one ever said that,” Sheinbaum said shortly after taking office. The hugs, she explained, were intended for poor young people, to prevent them from being recruited as cartel gunmen.

“There are traces of a change in tone towards organized crime, but it is too early to tell,” said security analyst Falko Ernst. “It seems unlikely that the Sheinbaum administration will risk a constant and politically inconvenient stream of violent images by banking on a strategy of big balazos (bullets) only,” but there may be a greater willingness to confront “the demonstrations of power the most obvious and the most brazen”. by the cartels.

But it’s hard to imagine Sheinbaum publicly praising the drug lords for their behavior, or saying — as López Obrador did — that she “will tell their fathers and grandfathers” if they cause too much trouble. violence.

Nor has she been willing to tolerate criminals taking police and soldiers hostage, nor has she been willing to boast about the reduction in Mexico’s “lethality index” – the measure of suspects killed, injured or placed in detention, compared to victims on the side of the police – as his predecessor had done. did.

López Obrador reversed the 2019 arrest of drug lord Ovidio Guzmán and ordered his release, after his Sinaloa cartel threatened to plunge the northern city of Culiacan into chaos to secure his freedom . López Obrador said he made the decision to avoid bloodshed.

Sheinbaum’s administration has been a little different. On his first day in office, soldiers in the southern state of Chiapas opened fire on a truck that “resembled one used by criminal groups.” But after shooting at the truck, they only found migrants, including six killed and 10 injured.

Ten days later, Army and National Guard soldiers killed three innocent bystanders while pursuing suspected gunmen. And this weekend, the National Guard opened fire on a truck carrying migrants, killing two Colombians and injuring at least four.

Then there is the uneven death toll: López Obrador has consistently criticized previous administrations for shootings in which all suspects were killed, and very few were captured alive. But in Sheinbaum’s third week in office, Sinaloa soldiers killed 19 drug cartel suspects and arrested one during a confrontation, but suffered no scratches themselves.

And toward the end of his first month in office, soldiers pursuing cartel gunmen who had killed two local police officers killed 17 but lost no soldiers. Most of the dead and 10 of the 15 armed men arrested during the clash were Guatemalans.

“The strategy of hugs not bullets ended some time ago,” said security analyst David Saucedo, pointing to the increase in the number of arrests of high-level suspects linked to drugs and extraditions of suspects. “The U.S. government pressured Andrés Manuel López Obrador to resume capturing high-level drug lords.”

One of the main differences Sheinbaum faces is that Mexican cartels have become involved in the lucrative business of smuggling migrants from faraway countries.

In the past, cartels took a cut from smugglers who transported Central Americans, who made up the vast majority of those crossing through Mexico to reach the United States. These migrants paid hundreds or a few thousand dollars each.

Since smugglers opened a new route through the breach of Darienpeople from further afield are crossing into Mexico and can pay much higher smuggling fees.

Simultaneously, crackdowns on immigration in the United States and Mexico mean that a significant number of Central and South Americans now have no way to enter the United States, the analyst said soldier Juan Ibarrola, noting: “It’s a big business, and it’s a country far away. a more profitable activity than drugs.

Ibarrola says cartels now use migrants both as human shields and sometimes as cannon fodder for their hit squads.

“The recruitment of more foreign fighters is another sign of the progressive worsening of armed conflicts in Mexico,” Ernst said. “If nothing is done to remedy this – just like the use of improvised explosive devices – this is a trend that could develop.”

Expand is exactly what the cartels did during López Obrador’s six-year term, from late 2018 to 2024.

“For six years we have been governed by the policies of a president who did not understand, or who did not realize, that the worst thing he could have done, the worst mistake he could have commit, was to not use legal force against criminal violence,” said Ibarrola, convinced that the policy has now changed.

The other problem Sheinbaum faces is the result of his determination to continue López Obrador’s project. strategy of militarization of Mexican law enforcement – essentially giving soldiers a task they were not trained to do.

With the mix of migrants and drug traffickers, it almost seems a sure recipe for more deaths of innocent bystanders.

“It is a fact that the National Guard is not properly enforcing the rules of engagement when it comes to use of force,” Saucedo said. “They tend to open fire before investigating or attempting to arrest criminal suspects. »