LeBaron family says to take U.S. helps, and Canadian help do something about drug cartels

Nov. 8, 2019 por Isolda Barrera

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Nine family members of the LeBaron family were massacred a couple of days ago by drug cartels in the Mexican state of Sonora. The victims were 3 women and 6 children. Family of the victims are completely distraught and horrified at the events and are urging to take the help that the U.S. government is offering to fight the drug cartels.

The victims belonged to three families of dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship born to breakaway Mormon communities founded in the north of Mexico several decades ago, and mourners came from thousands of miles to pay their last respects.

Sadness and anger gripped grieving relatives, and some urged Mexico’s leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to accept U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer to help crush the gangs. The family urges Mexico to overcome their pride, and accept outside help or international coalition, like the United Nations, to stamp out the cartels.

The family compares the situation in the state of Sonora like a war field similar to Afghanistan. Mexico has had more than 250,000 Mexicans have been killed in the mounting violence that has gripped the country since 2007, many of them victims of drug related violence.

Julian LeBaro, relative of the victims and a local activist, said he would welcome outside assistance to find the killers, adding that he didn’t think Mexico’s government was capable of stopping violence and impunity.

The killings follow a series of mass shootings that have piled pressure on Lopez Obrador to make good on his 2018 election campaign pledge to end years of violence. However, he has resisted taking a tougher line with the gangs, instead pursuing a strategy of non-confrontation he calls “hugs not bullets” and arguing he can end violence by addressing the root causes of crime such as poverty and joblessness.

Support for Mexican President Lopez Obrador has slipped to its lowest level since he took office nearly a year ago, dragged down by security lapses, a tracking poll showed on Friday.

President Lopez Obrador said he believed that Mexico could resolve its security problems without foreign “intervention,” but he has opened the door to FBI cooperation provided the country’s national sovereignty is not violated.

Still seven out of Mexico’s 32 regions accounted for about half the murders registered through September, official data shows, and a series of mass shootings in past weeks have little by little destroyed the confidence in Lopez Obrador’s strategy to reduce record homicide levels.

Lopez Obrador has tried using a less confrontational approach to restoring order after more than a decade of gang-fueled bloodletting that claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people in Mexico. He has focused on tackling root causes of crime, such as poverty and joblessness, but murders have continued to climb.

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