MEXICO CITY (AP) — The mayor of Mexico City announced Thursday that 6,060 National Guard officers will be posted in the city’s subway system after a series of accidents that officials suggested could be due to sabotage.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said mechanical problems in recent months may have been due to “not normal” causes. She appeared to suggest but did not say, that it could involve some form of sabotage.
“In recent months, incidents have been occurring that we categorize as not normal,” Sheinbaum said, adding that she had asked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to dispatch the quasi-military National Guard and he agreed.
The mayor said Guard officers would be posted at subway stations “and some other facilities” in the system and would be there “for some months.”
She did not explain how the Guard officers, mostly drawn from the army and assigned to law enforcement, could help control a situation that appears to be caused by maintenance, design, or operational flaws.
The Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez human rights center said the announcement “is concerning because it is obvious that this agency reproduces the military’s problems with a lack of transparency and excessive use of force.”
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The subway system said the officers would not be armed, but internet users wondered whether adding 6,000 more bodies to the mix will worsen the severe crowding often seen in the city’s trains and subway platforms.
Accidents on the subway have been a recurrent embarrassment for Sheinbaum, who is considered the most likely candidate of López Obrador’s Morena party to succeed him in the 2024 elections. Like the president, Sheinbaum often ascribes setbacks to a conservative conspiracy against her.
López Obrador was somewhat more specific, saying the Guard would be there to prevent “provoked,” or intentional accidents.
“What we want is for there not to be psychosis, for people not to have to worry about some accident in the subway, and that it could have been provoked,” the president said.
“If they call that militarization or whatever, then we will take responsibility for that,” he said.
The latest accident came Saturday, when two subway trains collided while between stations, killing one person and injuring dozens. Local media reported there had previously been signaling problems on that stretch of track.