(Catherine Rampell’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/21.)
In 2010 a 20-year-old criminology student with a new baby volunteered for a job no
one else would take: chief of police in the tiny Mexican border town of Práxedis Gilberto Guerrero, a place overrun by rival drug gangs. (To give you a sense of either the courageousness or foolhardiness of her decision: her predecessor had been tortured and beheaded.) The international news media
quickly anointed this remarkable young mother, Marisol Valles García, as “the bravest woman in Mexico.” She proceeded by publicly withdrawing from the drug war, which she said she would leave to the feds; hiring more female officers, who didn’t carry guns; and focusing her police force’s efforts on community building and teaching family values, which she hoped would keep the gangs at
bay.
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