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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2005 
Experts Fear Drug Violence May Grow In Acapulco
 Laurence Iliff - The Dallas Morning News
| | Federal police officers carry out security checks on cars in the resort city of Acapulco on Thursday. (Photo: Jesϊs Trigo/Cuarto Oscuro.com) |
Acapulco - Mexicans' favorite beachfront playground could be turning into a sandy battleground as a wave of drug-related violence moves south from Nuevo Laredo, further stretching law enforcement resources, officials and analysts said.
On Thursday, politicians in the state of Guerrero were negotiating with the federal government to make Acapulco the first beach resort to receive teams of federal agents and soldiers as part of the Operation Safe Mexico program created for drug hotspots like Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas state on the Texas border, and Culiacan, Sinaloa.
Already, 100 federal police have arrived to boost security, officials said. Acapulco is on the Pacific Coast, 250 miles south of Mexico City.
The state's new governor, Zeferino Torreblanca, said federal help is needed in light of some two dozen suspected drug-related killings in recent months. But he said he doesn't want army tanks along stunning Acapulco Bay, where 1.5 million tourists visit every year - including 150,000 Americans.
"There have never been these types of high-impact executions in such open, public places," said state Attorney General Eduardo Murueta.
But the spreading violence, which could be linked to the Nuevo Laredo-based Gulf cartel, threatens far more than Acapulco's tourism.
A growing drug battle in Acapulco could be a bold new challenge to President Vicente Fox, who has declared an all-out war on the drug lords - to the delight of Washington and to the dismay of some analysts who fear Mexico is heading the way of violence-ravaged Colombia.
"The army can fight the drug traffickers if the fight is limited to the northern part of the country, as it has been," said Javier Ibarrola, a military analyst and columnist for the Mexico City newspaper Milenio. "But if you open up fronts in the north, in the south, on the Pacific, on the Gulf, then you spread the army thin and take away their strength."
He cited recent killings attributed to the Gulf cartel's feared enforcers, the Zetas, in the central state of Jalisco and the arrest of 10 suspected Zetas and the seizure of dozens of high-powered weapons - designated by the government for military use only - in neighboring Michoacan.
Nationwide, about 820 people have been killed in drug-related violence this year, according to media reports.
Ibarrola said the drug traffickers' actions in Acapulco could be a deliberate attempt to embarrass Fox and divert attention away from other drug hotspots.
"This is a reaction to the Safe Mexico program" in Nuevo Laredo and elsewhere, he said.
Norm Townsend, a senior FBI agent in Laredo, Texas, said the level of violence across Mexico, particularly in Nuevo Laredo, "is the kind of violence we haven't seen before."
Another senior U.S. law enforcement official said the violence along the border and now in Acapulco presents "very big headaches" for the Mexican government. "Those headaches can easily turn into a major security crisis for Mexico," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the Tijuana newspaper Zeta, said Mexico's sensationalist media have exaggerated the importance of drug violence in general and the power of the Zetas in particular.
So has a government that wants to appear engaged in a tough but worthwhile fight, said Blancornelas, a pioneer in the coverage of drug trafficking. In fact, the narcos are mostly fighting among themselves, he said; if they wanted to take on the government, they would start killing politicians.
"I think what is happening in Acapulco are problems between local groups," he said. "The only place where people feel real panic is Nuevo Laredo."
A spokesman for President Vicente Fox, Ruben Aguilar, said that the government would not back down in its fight against the drug lords under any conditions.
"In the fight against organized crime, no one can yield or give up," Aguilar said. "It is a fight for the future and well-being of our children."
The deployment of federal security forces to Acapulco comes a week after the assassination of a top state law enforcement official in the tourist zone, and after weeks of drug-related killings against lower-ranking police. Fragmentation grenades were launched twice against a state police station near a popular beach area, Puerto Marques, at the height of the summer tourist season.
Murueta, the state attorney general, said that there have been 14 suspected drug-related killings this year and that five of the victims were police. He said there was no way of knowing whether any Zetas were operating in Acapulco.
Acapulco Mayor Alberto Lopez Rosas said the drug violence in the resort city of 1 million has come just in the last several weeks and is limited in scope.
"What is happening here is not that serious. There are pockets (of drug violence) but they are being attended to by the federal government," he said.
Lopez Rosas said tourists are safe.
During summer vacation season, none of the half million tourists who visited Acapulco was affected by drug violence or any other kind, Lopez Rosas said.
Acapulco, a major port where police have seized AK-47s from China and shiploads of cocaine from Colombia, is no stranger to drug traffickers. The state of Guerrero, with ample amounts of rain, sun and dirt-poor farmers, is known for both marijuana and heroin production.
In the past, however, traffickers divided up the country into so-called plazas where they were free to operate in peace and with police protection, analysts said. With Fox's jailing of the nation's top capos over the last five years, a fight for those plazas has ensued.
Acapulco also is not alone in outbursts of drug-related violence in tourist zones. Resort areas like Cancun and Mazatlan have had occasional drug hits in bars or nightclubs. But they have been sporadic.
The simmering battle in Acapulco came to full boil last week with the killing of the top state law enforcement official, Julio Carlos Lopez Soto, who was gunned down in the heart of the tourist zone after leaving a popular steak house, La Mansion.
One of his bodyguards, Pedro Noel Villeda Aguilar, said he was captured by the killers, beaten, and told to memorize a message.
"That there were already in Acapulco 120 elements of the Zetas in order to (eliminate) Los Pelones and others who had participated in the distribution of money given to the (slain) deputy director," Villeda Aguilar said.
Local media suggested that Los Pelones, allied with Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, had paid state and local police up to a half million dollars for protection and that the rival Zetas were getting revenge.
The message, Villeda Aguilar said, came from the brother of jailed Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas. The brother, Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas, is known as "Tony Tormenta."
Blancornelas, the Tijuana editor, said the Zetas have never sent a message through a living "survivor" of one of their attacks. Indeed, he said, they have never deliberately left any survivors.
The slain police official, Lopez Soto, had participated days earlier in the seizure of an important arms cache that included eight AK-47 rifles, several high-caliber handguns and fragmentation grenades, police said.
The stash was found in an upscale condo development, La Cima, which has an unparalleled view of the Acapulco Bay below.
Staff writer Alfredo Corchado in Nuevo Laredo contributed to this report. |
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