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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2007 
Mexico Raises Troop Salaries in Drug Crackdown
 Reuters
| | Soldiers waging a nationwide offensive against drug traffickers will get a pay hike of nearly 50 percent this year in a bid to insulate them from corruption, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced Monday. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
Mexico gave the military salary increases of almost 50 percent on Monday to reward it for leading the fight against violent drug gangs.
President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to combat drug cartels in several states since he took office last December.
"Our armed forced are first in the line of battle, and each soldier, without respite, has faced up to this battle against organized crime," Calderon told troops in a ceremony to mark army day.
The monthly pay of rank-and-file troops will increase to about $472 from $318, backdated to the start of the year, he said. Other ranks will get similar raises proportionate to their salaries.
More than 2,000 people were killed last year in a feud between rival drug gangs for control of smuggling routes to the United States.
Six people were killed in drug gang-style murders over the weekend in the northern state of Chihuahua alone, including three men found dead in the trunk of a car, according to media.
Mexico's poorly paid police are often paid off by drug gangs.
"The challenges that the country faces today are enormous ... and for that reason, as supreme commander, I have ordered a redoubling of efforts in the job of protecting people and the nation," Calderon said.
The government said on Sunday it would send more troops to the northeastern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, near Texas, to carry out vehicle searches and other operations. Navy ships have been ordered to patrol the Gulf coast looking for drug shipments.
Tamaulipas is home to the infamous Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico's two main drug-smuggling gangs. Nuevo Leon's normally placid capital, Monterrey, has been rocked by the drug murders of at least 14 active or former police officers this year.
Soldiers manned checkpoints on Monday in Monterrey, the home of some of Mexico's largest corporations such as Cemex, the world's third largest cement maker.
Troops and federal police forces are also patrolling roads in the states of Michoacan, Guerrero, Durango, Sinaloa, Coahuila and Baja California, including the border city of Tijuana.
(Additional reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez) |
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