Mexico deploys National Guard in capital’s subway after accidents
- Safety incidents plague Mexico City’s metro system, North America’s second largest
- Thousands of National Guard members will be deployed amid sabotage worry
The mayor of Mexico City announced 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 on Thursday, but did not say, that it could involve some form of sabotage.
“In recent months, incidents have been occurring that we categorise as not normal,” Sheinbaum said, adding that she had asked President Andres Manuel Lopez 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.
Mario Alberto Hernandez, the head of one of the city’s 195 subway stations, said that “this decision is more about politics than anything that would be useful here”. He described the system’s lack of spare parts as so severe that “they are cannibalising old, discarded trains to get spare parts”.