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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2005 
Bitter Mexico Drug War Breaks Out In Acapulco
 Alistair Bell - Reuters
| | A Mexican federal police officer, one of hundreds called in to restore order in Nuevo Laredo after a series of drug shootouts, guards the Nuevo Laredo customs office. (Photo: Guillermo Arias) |
Mexico City - A fierce fight between Mexican drug cartels that has killed more than 600 people this year has now hit the Pacific beach resort of Acapulco with gangland executions and grenade attacks on sun-kissed streets.
At least four people were murdered in the city of a million people this week as two rival gangs battle for control of marijuana and opium production in the surrounding mountains.
The federal government urged spooked regional authorities on Thursday to stand firm against veteran drug barons, whose feud has already engulfed cities on the U.S.-Mexican border.
"This is completely new for us," Acapulco's mayor, Alberto Lopez Rosas, told Reuters by telephone. "It is an upsetting situation which has surprised all of us in Acapulco."
More used to the sound of margarita glasses clinking than the crack of assault weapons, the resort was rocked last week by the killing of a senior detective, shot dead by a top hitman known as "Tony Tormenta" (Tony Storm) from the Gulf Cartel of northeastern Mexico.
Drug gang members also threw grenades at a police station this week, although no one was hurt.
Police say the Gulf Cartel and traffickers from the state of Sinaloa, fighting for control of border routes into the United States, are now slugging it out over the production of marijuana and heroin in the western states of Michoacan, Jalisco and Guerrero, a poor mountainous area where Acapulco is located.
The coast around Acapulco is on the smuggling route for South American cocaine on its way by sea to the United States. Police often seize bales of cocaine in coves nearby.
The fight between the Gulf Cartel and an alliance from the western state of Sinaloa has caused Mexico a diplomatic, as well as security, headache.
The United States has complained several times this year that cities on the border are unsafe.
Washington briefly shut its consulate in the lawless city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Texas, after drug gangs clashed with bazookas, grenades and heavy machine-gun fire.
Acapulco's mayor said tourists had not been affected by the violence there.
"We've have had no complaints, no incidents in relations to our visitors," he said.
The government urged Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca to stay the course in the fight against drug trafficking. Torreblanca has been criticized for saying he cannot fight the drug traffickers on his own.
"No one, least of all a political leader, can give up their responsibility in the fight against organized crime," government spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters.
Federal police have dispatched elite forces to Acapulco in recent days and Torreblanca asked the government on Thursday to boost security in the state even further.
President Vicente Fox's government, which has arrested several cartel leaders, vowed it would press on with its campaign against drug barons.
"We are not going to give up. We cannot give up on this action that the government has decided to take. It will go on until the last day of this administration," Aguilar said. |
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