Down in Mexico, President López-Obrador is committed to his "hugs, not bullets" policy.  He looks to the camera with a straight face and doubles down on the approach.  In the streets and neighborhoods, his citizens are hearing something like "shoot them, shoot them" as cartel gangs fight one another for territory.

According to Mark Lorenzana, the AMLO years will go down as the bloodiest in Mexican history:

In just over four years, and with still 17 months to go, the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is on track to be the bloodiest six-year presidential term in the history of Mexico.

To date, there ha[ve] been 154,000 homicides under López Obrador's watch, practically the same number registered in the previous six-year term of former President Enrique Peña Nieto, which registered 157,158 murders between 2012 and 2018.

"During the government of Felipe Calderón, during the so-called Drug War, the country had experienced 121,613 homicides, then the bloodiest six-year term at that time," wrote journalist Héctor de Mauleón, in his Wednesday, April 26, opinion column for Mexican daily newspaper El Universal.

Needless to say, murders under López Obrador's watch have already exceeded Calderón's entire six-year term by a whopping 22 percent.

"The figures presented by the National Citizen Observatory (ONC) are devastating," continued De Mauleón. "According to Francisco Rivas, director of the ONC, in this six-year term 'all records were already broken for the majority of violent crimes.'"

The numbers are awful, but there is a larger question.  The bulk of this violence is cartel-oriented, and López-Obrador continues to avoid the problem.  His approach toward drug cartels leaves many Mexicans, and I assume many in Washington, asking questions about his intentions.  It's obvious that engaging criminal groups isn't reducing violence.  In other words, he is avoiding the subject and letting hundreds of Mexicans die.

And killing they are!

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Image: Andrés López-Obrador.  Credit: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.