Mexico’s president wants notorious drug-growing area known as “The Golden Triangle” rebranded as “The Triangle of Good, Hard-Working People”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mentioned Friday he needs to vary the title of a infamous drug-producing space often known as “The Golden Triangle” to “The Triangle of Good, Onerous-Working Individuals.”

The distant, mountainous space in northern Mexico is the place the borders of the three states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango meet.

For many years, drug cartels have used the world to develop marijuana and opium poppies, as a result of a lot of area is troublesome to entry and has little police or military presence.

However López Obrador mentioned Friday throughout a go to to the area that the title unfairly stigmatized residents.

“I do not prefer it, it bothers me that it’s known as the Golden Triangle, and hopefully we are able to all attempt to discover a method to name it ‘The Triangle of Good, Onerous-Working Individuals’ or ‘the area of fine neighbors,’ or one thing like that,” he mentioned.

“This has to vary already as a result of there may be a lot goodness right here, a variety of good, hard-working individuals, as has been mentioned,” the president mentioned.

López Obrador has typically praised drug cartel leaders and in 2019 ordered the release of Ovidio Guzman, one in all “El Chapo” Guzman’s sons, to keep away from bloodshed after Sinaloa Cartel gunmen assaulted the town of Culiacan to attempt to win his launch.

In 2021, López Obrador praised the largely peaceable voting in elections that 12 months and despatched a message of recognition to the drug cartels that gasoline a lot of the nation’s violence.

“Individuals who belong to organized crime behaved very nicely, basically, there have been few acts of violence by these teams,” the president mentioned. “I feel the white-collar criminals acted worse.”

Mexico has been trapped in a spiral of cartel-related violence that has left greater than 340,000 useless since 2006, when the federal government launched a controversial anti-drug operation with federal troops. Final month, authorities mentioned suspected drug cartel gunmen abducted two off-duty female soldiers at gunpoint for a number of hours.

That very same month, López Obrador confirmed that Mexico had dissolved a special unit educated by U.S. authorities to battle drug cartels as a result of it was infiltrated by criminals. 

In March, López Obrador accused common tv reveals of glamorizing the violent drug commerce. He criticized TV collection on platforms equivalent to Netflix, saying they introduced a rose-colored model of the life of drug traffickers. 

He instructed reporters the reveals function “gangs of drug traffickers, with actors, males, stunning ladies, property, the most recent vehicles, jewellery, designer garments, energy.”

Earlier this month, Mexican authorities introduced they captured a suspected leader of the highly effective Jalisco New Technology Cartel (CJNG). Francisco Javier Rodriguez Hernandez, often known as “El Señorón” or “XL” or “Frank,” was apprehended within the vacationer metropolis of Mazatlan, within the northwest state of Sinaloa, in an operation carried out by navy brokers.

The Division of Justice considers the Jalisco cartel to be “one of many 5 most harmful transnational legal organizations on this planet.”   

The pinnacle of CJNG, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, is likely one of the most wished drug lords on this planet, with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration providing $10 million for his arrest.

“He’s the primary precedence for DEA and admittedly for federal regulation enforcement in the USA,” DEA agent Matthew Donahue told CBS News in 2019.

AFP contributed to this report.