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 News from Around the Americas | June 2007 
US Sees No Let-Up in Mexico Drug War Killings
 Reuters
| | Federal policemen guard a crime scene where a man was gunned down inside his garage in the business city of Monterrey June 18, 2007. The police suspect the murder was related to drug gang activity. Victims of drug gang killings in the city number some 83 people so far this year, up from 55 in the whole of 2006. (Tomas Bravo/Reuters) |
The ferocious rate of killings in Mexico's drug war is unlikely to slow despite President Felipe Calderon's military assault on the cartels, a senior U.S. anti-drug official said on Monday.
More than 1,000 people have died this year in a battle between the Mexican government, the Gulf Cartel and an alliance of traffickers from the northwestern state of Sinaloa.
The U.S. official said Calderon's dispatch of 25,000 troops across the country was putting pressure on the cartels but that the rivalry between the gangs was too great for them to stop killing each other.
"Would I anticipate less killings? Not necessarily," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is a significant level of retribution being passed from one group to the other."
The official said drug-trafficking brought an estimated sum of up to $24 billion into Mexico every year. He said the cartels were so desperate to stay in business that they were tipping off the government about each others' activities.
Since Calderon took power in December, armored Humvees have rolled through the streets in hotspots like the western state of Michoacan, where gruesome killings and beheadings by competing local groups tied to the cartels are common.
Violence aside, the official said drug gangs faced a more daunting task in moving their wares to the United States.
"The traffickers must be concerned, more than ever today, about their capability to continue a strong criminal enterprise and that's precisely and exactly where we want them to be," he said. |
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