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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2006 
Mexican Officials Fret Over Violence in Resort City of Acapulco
 Hugh Dellios - Chicago Tribune
| | Police and army forensic experts secure the scene after a shootout erupted in a busy street of the resort city of Acapulco, Mexico on Friday Jan. 27, 2006. The shootout, which included the use of fragmentation grenades, left four men dead who may have been federal police agents, investigators said. (AP Photo/Gonzalo Perez) |
Mexico City - With spring break coming and college students making plans, tourism officials in Acapulco are worried that the resort city's image may now include bloody shootouts along with the beach, bikinis and beer parties.
In recent days that image includes this: Four drug traffickers lying dead in the street just five minutes from the hotel zone. Town merchants marching in the streets against drug-related violence. The mayor declaring that he is scared.
President Vicente Fox has sent dozens of federal police agents into Mexico's second-largest tourist resort after a downtown gun battle between police and drug traffickers 10 days ago, as city and state officials have pleaded for help in stopping a turf battle between two violent drug cartels.
Officials warn that the situation could deteriorate to the level of drug violence that has racked Nuevo Laredo and other border towns, even as state officials try to reassure tourists that the violence has not targeted vacationers and their visits will be safe.
"These are lamentable acts that could damage the image of any place," said Agustin Serrano, director general of tourism planning for the state of Guerrero. "These are isolated incidents, but nevertheless, they are a real concern."
Serrano said Acapulco, which is becoming as popular as Cancun for spring breakers, expected an influx of more than 35,000 college students beginning at the end of this month. To date, he said, no hotels have reported cancellations, and 60 percent of the hotel rooms are occupied despite the surge in violence.
More than 5 million tourists visit Acapulco each year, including nearly 1 million Americans and other foreigners. After a number of slow years, the resort's popularity had been picking up again.
But the recent shootout crystallized concerns about drug traffickers in Acapulco and the support they may be getting from corrupt local police. It came as U.S. officials have been more vocal than usual in expressing concerns about drug violence across Mexico.
John Negroponte, the U.S. director of national intelligence, cited Mexico at a congressional hearing Thursday among a list of countries in which drug traffickers threaten to undermine the government. The other countries were Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Haiti and Jamaica.
"A vicious cycle can develop in which a weakened government enables criminals to dangerously undercut the state's credibility and authority," Negroponte said.
Negroponte's remarks followed several criticisms in recent weeks by Antonio Garza, the U.S. ambassador in Mexico, about Mexico's seriousness in dealing with the drug violence. Mexican officials have defended their actions, emphasizing that the United States also has a role in the battle.
"This problem ... isn't attributable to only one of the two countries," Geronimo Gutierrez, a deputy foreign minister, told a radio interviewer in response to Negroponte's comments. "There is demand (for drugs), and there is supply."
Following the Jan. 27 shootout in Acapulco, Fox met with his security cabinet and vowed to increase spending in Mexico's battle against narcotics trafficking. About 200 additional federal agents were sent to the resort city as part of Fox's "Safe Mexico" campaign.
On Friday, Mexico announced the arrest of a top drug capo wanted in the United States. Oscar Arriola Marquez allegedly had been responsible for distributing 2.4 tons of cocaine monthly into several states since 2001.
Mexico's attorney general, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, said at a news conference last week that 18 drug capos had been arrested under Fox. He said those arrests have unleashed turf battles among other capos, but he also asserted that a reduction in cocaine demand in the United States is contributing to the violence.
"Young people (in the U.S.) now prefer synthetic drugs, and that has caused an oversupply of drugs arriving (in Mexico) from Colombia. ... And that is mainly the origin of this violence," Cabeza de Vaca said.
The attorney general said the battle for Acapulco is being fought between the hired guns of two drug cartels. The Sinaloa cartel of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has controlled trafficking since about 2001, but it is being challenged by the Gulf cartel of Osiel Cardenas, who is in prison.
The battle is therefore exactly the reverse of the violent scene in Nuevo Laredo on the Texas border, where the Sinaloa cartel is trying to uproot the Gulf cartel, he said.
Officials say Acapulco has become an important trafficking port for drugs from South America. But it also has developed its own drug consumption problem, with at least 1,000 little "narco stores" on its streets. And the city's tourism trade provides prime opportunities for money laundering.
The shootout began after police responded to reports of an armed convoy in the downtown La Garita neighborhood. When a gunman opened fire, bullets were exchanged for almost an hour, even spraying a nearby church.
By the time it ended, four traffickers lay dead in the street in pools of blood, and one of their vehicles was burning. While police chased traffickers who escaped the scene, city officials went into a state of alert, fearing retaliations.
All four of the dead drug runners were carrying either fake credentials or clothes from a federal police agency. And officials say the Sinaloa cartel had been acting almost with impunity because it had infiltrated the local police ranks.
But Cabeza de Vaca said he saw the shootout as a sign that some officers were beginning to confront the traffickers.
"Before that wasn't the case, because they weren't sufficiently trained or they were colluding in some cases," he said. "This makes us think that the violence can soon be controlled." |
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