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 Editorials | Opinions | January 2008 
Drug Violence Rages in Mexico
 Tad Trueblood - The Spectrum
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 |  | The American public must understand that this situation is no longer about illegal immigration or narcotics trafficking. It is about criminals and smuggling organizations fighting our agents with lethal force to take over a part of American territory so they can conduct criminal activity. |  | | | |
Rival militias battling it out in the streets. Corrupt police and soldiers. High-powered weapons smuggled in from across the border. Executions. Bombings. Kidnapping rings. Beheadings. A growing sense of dispair. "The country is falling apart, little by little. The cities are sinking," says a local commentator.
No, it's not a description of Iraq in 2006. This is Mexico at the beginning of 2008, as competing drug cartels fight viscously over turf, the government tries to crack down with escalating force and drug-related violence surges to new levels. In one of the most recent incidents, the streets of Tijuana became a battleground during an intense shoot-out. Residents of the usually calm La Mesa neighborhood had to run for safety, as a heavy fire fight went on for three hours. Police were confronted with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Afterwards, six kidnap victims were found executed. Part of the same series of clashes saw the district police chief murdered by cartel assassins, along with his wife and daughter. But the shoot-out in Tijuana is the tip of the iceberg.
Last year, President Felipe Calderon and the Mexican government launched a renewed crackdown on drug cartels. The government's emphasis is on the two most powerful criminal organizations, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel. But the process has been brutal and messy, and the cartels are striking back with their most effective methods - corruption and violent intimidation. Beheading has become one of their most gruesome and frequently-used techniques.
On almost a daily basis, Mexican police and soldiers come up against well-armed, paramilitary-style units of drug gangsters. In the first half of this month, beside the street battle in Tijuana, there were also fire fights in the border towns of Rio Bravo, Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa.
A state judge, more than 20 police officers, and at least 10 civilians were reportedly killed in just the first two weeks of January. Not to mention dozens of suspected drug traffickers. The year 2008 could be an even deadlier year than 2007 in Mexico, which saw some 2,500 deaths attributed to narco-violence.
And the bloody scourge is definitely spilling across the border into the United States. Not only do the cartels send hitmen into the U.S. to attack rival gangsters, American law enforcement officers have also been targets. According to the border patrol, violent attacks on their agents along the Mexican border jumped 31 percent last year, to a total of 987 assaults.
The most recent such attack was on Jan. 19, when the driver of a Hummer carrying drugs intentionally ran down and killed an agent near the border of Arizona and California. David Aguilar, chief of the border patrol, declared recently, "The American public must understand that this situation is no longer about illegal immigration or narcotics trafficking. It is about criminals and smuggling organizations fighting our agents with lethal force to take over a part of American territory so they can conduct criminal activity."
Tad Trueblood has more than 20 years of experience in the military. He resides in Santa Clara. |
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