Mexico bar fire: Veracruz arson attack kills more than two dozen; drug cartels suspected


The Washington Post


Soldiers gather near the bar where at least 25 people died in a fire in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. (Angel Hernandez/Reuters)

MEXICO CITY — At least 25 people were killed in an attack on a bar in the Mexican state of Veracruz when assailants apparently locked the doors and emergency exits of the popular White Horse Nightclub, and then set the building on fire.

The attack comes during a year of record violence for Mexico, in which 14,603 people were killed between January and June. The Mexican government, under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has struggled to piece together an effective security strategy, even as criminal organizations claim new ground, killing members of rival groups and civilians in the process.

On Wednesday morning, López Obrador condemned the attack and suggested that authorities might have been complicit, a shocking addendum to his message of consolation.

“This is the most inhuman thing possible,” López Obrador said. “It is regrettable that organized crime acts in this manner,” he said, before adding, “It is more regrettable that there may be collusion with authorities.”

Photos of the bar taken in the aftermath of the attack, which occurred at around 10:30 p.m., show a charred interior with bodies on the ground. People were seen embracing outside the bar, behind police tape.

Some early reports said the fire had been started with homemade bombs. López Obrador, in his morning news conference, said, “The criminals went in, closed the doors, the emergency exits, and set fire to the place.”

“The majority died of suffocation,” said Veracruz Gov. Cuitláhuac García, on the “Sergio y Lupita” radio program Wednesday morning.

The bar is in the port city of Coatzacoalcos, which has been plagued by violence, in part due to fractures within the Zetas criminal organization. Last week, a 4-month-old child was critically wounded in a shootout.

In recent years, Mexico has faced the dual challenges of building a large, effective security force capable of cracking down on crime, as well as a judicial system that can hold the guilty accountable. On both fronts it has struggled, with Veracruz a jarring example. The state police force is 61 percent smaller than it should be, López Obrador said this month.

The state is meant to receive 7,200 members of the newly formed national guard — a mix of different federal and state security agencies. But many of those officers have been dispatched on an immigration enforcement mission, part of a U.S.-Mexico deal to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the U.S. border. López Obrador had once spoken of the national guard as a potential vanguard in the fight against organized crime.

Other parts of Mexico have also seen dramatic violence in recent weeks. Earlier this month, cartels were blamed for a gruesome attack in the western city of Uruapan, where 19 mutilated corpses were put on display. Last week, a Catholic priest, the Rev. José Martín Guzmán Vega, was fatally stabbed in the northern city of Matamoros. Across the country, four journalists have been killed in the past month alone.

“The fact that 2019 is on pace to be the most violent year does not come out of nowhere. We have seen how violence has been progressively increasing,” said Francisco Rivas, director general of the national citizen observatory, a research organization. He added that the increase is a product of an “incapacity of the state, lack of identification of the problem, with no clear goals or strategies.”

“The president says we are improving, but we are worse than ever before,” Rivas said.

Within hours of Tuesday’s attack, López Obrador suggested that the perpetrator had previously been “arrested and released.”

“There is a problem that needs to be investigated regarding the actions of the prosecutor’s office in Veracruz, and we are telling the attorney general to look into this matter,” he said at Wednesday’s news conference.

López Obrador did not mention any individuals by name, but he appeared to be referencing a statement from García, the Veracruz governor, who tweeted about the man he suggested was behind the attack.

“The indications of the deplorable crime in the Coatzacoalcos bar suggest that one of the material authors is Ricardo ‘N’ a.k.a. ‘la loca’ who was detained by Veracruz security forces in July of this year and was released in less than 48 hours by the state attorney general,” Garcia wrote.

But the state attorney general promptly put out a statement contradicting García’s account. “A tragedy should not be used to distort facts and confuse public opinion,” the statement said.

It went on to say that Ricardo N. was twice detained and released by the federal government — on July 18 and Aug. 7 — not the state attorney general’s office. That dispute sheds light on fractures within Mexico’s judicial system, with blame shifting between state and federal authorities.

Veracruz authorities said they are still searching for the attackers.

The deadly attack came nearly eight years to the day after the Zetas drug cartel started a fire at a casino in the northern city of Monterrey, killing 52 people.

Mary Beth Sheridan and Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.


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