She’s only 20 years old, has a baby son and is still in college — but now she’s also the top cop in one of the most dangerous towns in Mexico.
Marisol Valles Garcia was sworn in Monday as police chief of the border city of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero — which has been plagued by horrific drug-trade bloodshed — after literally everyone else considered for the job refused to take it out of terror of becoming the next target.
“We’re all afraid in Mexico now. We can’t let fear beat us,” said the brave, or foolhardy, Valles Garcia after being sworn in to protect the 9,149-resident town — where eight people were slaughtered in the past week alone.
“I took the risk because I want my son to live in a different community to the one we have today. I want people to be able to go out without fear, as it was before,” said the petite new chief — who amazingly won’t carry a weapon in her new job.
Praxedis is part of the Juarez valley region, where the 2,500 drug-related murders so far this year have made it the most violent region in Mexico.
The city, whose proximity to Texas makes it a prime smuggling point for narco-traffickers, has had its former mayor and some of its police officers slain as the rival Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels wage a fierce battle for dominance.
Valles Garcia, who is studying criminology in nearby Ciudad Juarez — the nation’s most dangerous city — took a month to consider whether she should become police chief in her home town.
“She was the only person to accept the position,” said the mayor’s office.
Valles Garcia said she did so because she wants to return the now-ravaged city to the way it used to be.
“Praxedis was different in the time of its oldest residents — people walked the streets at night, they knew each other, they talked and met up,” she said.
Valles Garcia’s daunting task will be made even more difficult by the small size of her police force.
She is overseeing just 13 agents — nine of them women — who have a single working patrol car, three automatic rifles and a pistol at their disposal.
Because of that, Valles Garcia will have to leave most, if not all, of the actual fighting with drug cartels to the federal police, and concentrate her meager manpower and firepower on winning the hearts and minds of residents.
“The weapons we have are principles and values, which are the best weapons for prevention,” she told CNN en Español. “Our work will be pure prevention.”