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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Drug Trade Threatens Mexican Resort Area
 Indira A.R. Lakshmanan - Boston Globe
| | Federal police stand guard at the scene where the bodies of Eusebio Palacios, the head of security for the municipality of Acapulco, and Marcelino Marcelo Garcia, an officer in the Mexican Navy, were found in a car in the resort city of Acapulco July 12, 2006. Both men were kidnapped by heavily armed gunmen two days ago. Picture taken July 12, 2006. (Reuters/Stringer) |
Acapulco, Mexico - The bloody drug violence that has long plagued Mexico along the U.S. border has washed up, literally, on the shores of the country's most famous resort.
In June, a severed head was carried in by a wave and deposited next to a Mexican sunbather and her two horrified children. It was one of six beheadings and scores of execution-style killings and grenade attacks this year to sully the storied beach resort that in its heyday attracted jet-set yachts and celebrity honeymooners.
In July, a military helicopter scoured the coastline daily after the kidnapping of a navy intelligence officer, skirting palm trees over luxury hotels and raising stares from bathers. The navy lieutenant was found beaten to death in the back of a sport utility vehicle alongside the chief of security for City Hall. They were the latest of more than a dozen law enforcement officials in the region believed to be victims of drug cartel assassinations in recent months.
Spiraling drug violence and the infiltration of police forces by organized crime are perhaps the most dangerous of many problems the next president of Mexico will have to confront. Nationwide, battles between cartels claimed 1,003 victims from January through June this year, a body count up by nearly half over the first half of last year, according to El Universal newspaper. An escalating local turf war among cartels is earning this resort unwanted infamy as "Narcopulco." The problem could imperil millions of dollars in tourist revenue and the image of a favored holiday spot for hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.
The Mexican authorities attribute the violence to a battle for control of Pacific entry points for South American cocaine smuggled in by speedboats and small planes. The city boasts a direct route to Mexico City and the United States, and has an increasingly lucrative local market.
Juan Heriberto Salinas, a retired general and the secretary for public security for Acapulco's state of Guerrero, said the unrest was a consequence of growing domestic drug consumption and a fight between cartels for domination of routes and border access.
More cocaine is being smuggled from Colombia via the Pacific than ever before, exploiting Mexico's long and lightly guarded Pacific coast and Acapulco's hidden coves. Fifteen metric tons of cocaine have been intercepted in Guerrero since September in the largest seizures nationwide, Salinas said. The state has long been a producer of high- quality marijuana and the country's top producer of opium poppy.
The violence has not hit tourists, but at least three residents were injured in the cross-fire from two daytime shootouts this year at a busy crossroads above the main beach strip, sowing fear among year-round residents.
At the intersection known as La Garita, dozens of bullet holes pockmarked a church, and the spray-painted outlines of bodies from a shootout between the police and gunmen were visible until recently.
In April and June, four severed heads were left with warnings from one cartel to another in front of a government building on the same corner, including a head belonging to a police officer. Another head was left a few blocks away at City Hall.
Delia Polanco, 51, who owns a corner snack shack, said she had thrown herself to the ground during a January shootout that lasted nearly an hour.
While talking to a reporter, Polanco got a panicked phone call from her husband, who heard a false rumor that there was a fresh shootout under way at the intersection.
"Never in my life have I seen so many deaths. Acapulco was very peaceful," she said, shaking her head.
For many years, the authorities say, Acapulco's drug market was under the control of the Sinaloa Cartel, named for the northern state where it had started. Narcotics trade bosses owned opulent waterfront mansions, dined at expensive restaurants, vacationed in the region with their wives and children, and avoided disturbing the peace.
But open violence increased last year, the authorities say, when the rival Gulf Cartel sent members of its brutal "Zetas" hit squad, assassins formed by rogue former military special forces, to exact payback for incursions by the Sinaloa Cartel onto the Gulf's turf in Nuevo Laredo, along the Texas border.
At least two shootings - the ambush of a policeman and a man from Sinaloa - have occurred on the tourist strip known as La Costera. But the violence has not visibly affected tourism, the region's $1.35 billion leading industry.
Carlos Garcma Pelaez, 35, a bartender at Disco Beach, where the floating head was found, said most people shrug off the bloodshed, "because so far, it's been a war between police and narcos."
ACAPULCO, Mexico The bloody drug violence that has long plagued Mexico along the U.S. border has washed up, literally, on the shores of the country's most famous resort.
In June, a severed head was carried in by a wave and deposited next to a Mexican sunbather and her two horrified children. It was one of six beheadings and scores of execution-style killings and grenade attacks this year to sully the storied beach resort that in its heyday attracted jet-set yachts and celebrity honeymooners.
In July, a military helicopter scoured the coastline daily after the kidnapping of a navy intelligence officer, skirting palm trees over luxury hotels and raising stares from bathers. The navy lieutenant was found beaten to death in the back of a sport utility vehicle alongside the chief of security for City Hall. They were the latest of more than a dozen law enforcement officials in the region believed to be victims of drug cartel assassinations in recent months.
Spiraling drug violence and the infiltration of police forces by organized crime are perhaps the most dangerous of many problems the next president of Mexico will have to confront. Nationwide, battles between cartels claimed 1,003 victims from January through June this year, a body count up by nearly half over the first half of last year, according to El Universal newspaper. An escalating local turf war among cartels is earning this resort unwanted infamy as "Narcopulco." The problem could imperil millions of dollars in tourist revenue and the image of a favored holiday spot for hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.
The Mexican authorities attribute the violence to a battle for control of Pacific entry points for South American cocaine smuggled in by speedboats and small planes. The city boasts a direct route to Mexico City and the United States, and has an increasingly lucrative local market.
Juan Heriberto Salinas, a retired general and the secretary for public security for Acapulco's state of Guerrero, said the unrest was a consequence of growing domestic drug consumption and a fight between cartels for domination of routes and border access.
More cocaine is being smuggled from Colombia via the Pacific than ever before, exploiting Mexico's long and lightly guarded Pacific coast and Acapulco's hidden coves. Fifteen metric tons of cocaine have been intercepted in Guerrero since September in the largest seizures nationwide, Salinas said. The state has long been a producer of high- quality marijuana and the country's top producer of opium poppy.
The violence has not hit tourists, but at least three residents were injured in the cross-fire from two daytime shootouts this year at a busy crossroads above the main beach strip, sowing fear among year-round residents.
At the intersection known as La Garita, dozens of bullet holes pockmarked a church, and the spray-painted outlines of bodies from a shootout between the police and gunmen were visible until recently.
In April and June, four severed heads were left with warnings from one cartel to another in front of a government building on the same corner, including a head belonging to a police officer. Another head was left a few blocks away at City Hall.
Delia Polanco, 51, who owns a corner snack shack, said she had thrown herself to the ground during a January shootout that lasted nearly an hour.
While talking to a reporter, Polanco got a panicked phone call from her husband, who heard a false rumor that there was a fresh shootout under way at the intersection.
"Never in my life have I seen so many deaths. Acapulco was very peaceful," she said, shaking her head.
For many years, the authorities say, Acapulco's drug market was under the control of the Sinaloa Cartel, named for the northern state where it had started. Narcotics trade bosses owned opulent waterfront mansions, dined at expensive restaurants, vacationed in the region with their wives and children, and avoided disturbing the peace.
But open violence increased last year, the authorities say, when the rival Gulf Cartel sent members of its brutal "Zetas" hit squad, assassins formed by rogue former military special forces, to exact payback for incursions by the Sinaloa Cartel onto the Gulf's turf in Nuevo Laredo, along the Texas border.
At least two shootings - the ambush of a policeman and a man from Sinaloa - have occurred on the tourist strip known as La Costera. But the violence has not visibly affected tourism, the region's $1.35 billion leading industry.
Carlos Garcma Pelaez, 35, a bartender at Disco Beach, where the floating head was found, said most people shrug off the bloodshed, "because so far, it's been a war between police and narcos." |
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