As soon as Mexican security forces arrived at the home, the Sinaloa cartel mobilized, dispatching convoys of gunmen in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, seizing main roads and highways.
At least 49 prisoners escaped from detention. Meanwhile, the Mexican soldiers and police had no backup, according to Durazo.
Videos quickly emerged of gun battles across the city and incinerated cars sending plumes of smoke into the sky. One video appeared to capture the prison break. Another showed schoolchildren taking cover behind a car. Another showed a confrontation between a truckload of soldiers and cartel members, who vastly outnumbered them.
Eight soldiers were detained. At least eight people were killed. A helicopter took gunfire.
Thousands of Mexicans watched the videos in real-time.
“The [cartel] deployed across the city,” López Obrador said at the news conference, explaining the threat posed by the cartel and the “many citizens at risk.”
Top security officials “decided to protect the lives of people, and I was in support of that,” he said.
By evening, not long after a mug shot of Guzmán circulated online, news spread that he had been released back to the cartel. Three other cartel members were detained and then released along with Guzmán, part of a “political deal,” according to a senior military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the matter.
Thursday’s disaster was, for many Mexicans, the most vivid distillation of López Obrador’s security policy, which still includes high-level targeted operations, but also entails a willingness to concede to a criminal organization to avoid violent retaliation.
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