The traffic of huachicol, an evil that does not stop in Mexico

Mexico has reached a limit in the fight against fuel theft. At least that’s what the figures for Pemex, a state-owned company that controls gas and gasoline production, say. According to company reports, the country lost 174,900,000 pesos from January to July due to the huachicol, a figure barely below the 177 million pesos of theft losses suffered in the entire previous year.

As of 2020, the largest number of losses — 169,000,000 this year and 105 last year — were from thefts on the Baja California peninsula. By number of clandestine takings in the products of fuel, the States of Noble and Puebla top the list, situation identical to the one of four years ago. Guanajuato, Veracruz and the State of Mexico also appear in the first places.

However, the figures are lower than those recorded in 2018, when the huachicol became a real problem for several states, such as Puebla or Guanajuato, and also for the federal government, then led by Enrique Peña Nieto (2012 – 2018). In that year, Pemex registered 14,910 clandestine dams that made it lose 2,068 million pesos.

Loss calculations set aside the money spent on repairing holes in the products or the sums needed to keep surveillance operations in conflict zones. According to calculations released by the current administration in December 2018, losses for huachicol reached 60 billion pesos annually, about 3 billion dollars.

As soon as he took office, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, launched a crusade against fuel theft. In January 2019, the president announced the temporary closure of several of the pipelines that distribute fuel across the country. Tanker trucks replaced the products, a decision that slowed the reach and left hundreds of gas stations across the country without gas.

López Obrador ordered the Army to literally encamp on products in some of its sections, such as Guanajuato, which in 2017 and 2018 registered almost 4,000 clandestine prisoners. The situation transcended to the theft of fuel, becoming in addition a problem of public security in some regions, first by the aggressiveness of the groups of thieves and later by the risk that implies to pierce the products.

In these last two years of Peña Nieto’s management, gangs of fuel thieves drilled Pemex pipes with complete impunity, summoning dozens of accomplices with portable cellars, even tank trucks. In areas of Puebla, these robberies took place in broad daylight, provoking the reaction of the authorities. In 2017, hundreds of soldiers arrived in the so-called red triangle of the huachicol, north of the city of Puebla, to try to contain the thieves. The clash between criminals and the military left unprecedented situations in the region, such as shootings and persecutions in the villages. The case of the town of Palmarito was very famous then, a confrontation to shots between criminals and uniformed that was registered in security cameras of some houses of the place. The images showed the brutal exchange of gunfire and, in the end, how a soldier shot one of the wounded criminals.

Occasionally, holes in fuel pipes ended up with hundreds of neighbors queuing up, loading buckets and bottles, trying to bring some free gasoline home. In fact, the closure of the pipes ordered by López Obrador coincided with one of the worst accidents recorded during his term. On January 19, 2019, a clandestine dam opened in a pipe in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, caught fire and exploded, killing 137 people.

The president’s strategy took effect and the number of clandestine prey recorded fell in 2019 and even more so in 2020, coinciding with the pandemic. Now in 2021, it looks like the figure is growing again. The situation is different from that experienced in 2017 and 2018. Although in some regions, as in the case of Puebla, the number of illegal catches recorded in the last 18 months is high, the impact is minimal. From January to July this year, Pemex counted 1185 holes in its products in this state. The losses amounted, however, to just over a million pesos. In Noble, in the same period, there were 2,554 and no losses were registered.

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