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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2007 
Drug Violence Surges in Mexico
 Alfredo Corchado - Dallas Morning News
| | Mexican soldiers discuss a weapon permit after finding a pistol at a vehicle checkpoint on the outskirts of the resort town of Acapulco. Mexican federal police are patroling the hotel zone of Acapulco day and night to prevent an outbreak of drug gang violence from affecting tourism. (Reuters/Andrew Winning) |
Mexico City – A Monterrey police officer was gunned down in her patrol car Friday, hours after a state police commander was killed nearby. The deaths came three days after a hail of gunfire directed at a jewelry shop killed another officer, his wife, a bystander and the shop owner.
But the violence this week was not limited to Monterrey.
The body of an El Paso resident was discovered Thursday in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso. A former military general survived an assassination attempt Wednesday in the Gulf state of Tabasco. A head was left outside the state security office Thursday near the Tabasco capital of Villahermosa.
And so went one of the bloodiest weeks of drug hits in Mexican history.
More than 50 people, many of them police officers, were gunned down throughout the week, signaling a renewed surge in violence and more brazen tactics by drug traffickers as they reassemble and secure territories to distribute illegal drugs.
To do that, they generally target police officers, some of them corrupt agents working for rival cartels. Of the 470 people killed this year in drug-related violence, 58 have been police officers, according to Jose Arturo Yañez Romero, a crime expert at Mexico City's Police Formation Institute. That's an average of six people a day killed since the start of the year. "This is the bloodiest week in Mexico, particularly against police officers," said Mr. Yañez, who cited figures from Mexico City's El Universal newspaper. "And it will only get worse."
President Felipe Calderón said the violence is a backlash against a crackdown he initiated shortly after taking office Dec. 1. More than 24,000 federal police and soldiers have been sent to eight drug strongholds across the country. Although the show is impressive, no big kingpins have fallen.
"We have launched a frontal fight against organized crime. We are not going to leave our lives in the hands of criminals," Mr. Calderón said. "We are fighting to save our children from the talons of drugs and the danger of organized crime."
The violence comes in the same week that President Bush vowed to reduce U.S. demand for drugs, which he in part blamed for the drug violence in Mexico.
"I made it very clear to the president that I recognize the United States has a responsibility in the fight against drugs," Mr. Bush said during his visit with Mr. Calderón. "And one major responsibility is to encourage people to use less drugs."
The immensity of the drug trade was laid out in the form of more than $200 million in cash that was seized by police in Mexico City's plush Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood.
The stacks and stacks of $100 bills were laid next to 200 thousand euros and 157,000 pesos in dramatic photos released by the attorney general's office Friday. Seven people were arrested.
Meanwhile, the wave of shootings has prompted mass police resignations in several key states – among them, more than 300 in Nuevo León and dozens more in the state of Chihuahua, two states that border Texas, 26 in the northwestern state of Sonora.
Monte Alejandro Rubidio García, an undersecretary at the Public Safety Ministry, warned that drug kingpins will not "give in so easily."
"They will battle hand-in-hand to defend their territory," he said, as viable drug smuggling routes become fewer and more hotly contested. Mr. Rubidio García said the killings are a "reflection that the crackdown is a success because the criminal structures are cracking," but he added that it will be "extremely difficult" for the crime wave to subside this year.
Critics say Mr. Calderón's achievements are superficial. "This isn't so much about a response to the government's crackdown," Mr. Yañez said. "This is about cartels flexing their muscles and securing distribution routes. Drug trafficking is so lucrative – we're talking billions and billions of dollars – that the government cannot make a dent."
The government's strategy, according to Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Norte de Ciudad Juárez newspaper, "is not to dismantle the cartels, or finish them off, but rather to force them to the negotiating table to talk. Business, meantime, goes on, but at a greater cost to human life," he said, noting that 63 people have been killed in Juárez this year.
But the worst part of the killings, said Mr. Yañez, is this: "There is total impunity. No one has been arrested. It's open season on cops, and no one seems to give a damn."
acorchado@dallasnews.com - Staff writer Laurence Iliff contributed to this report. |
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