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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2008 
Mexico Hurls Additional Forces Into the War Against Narcotics Gangs
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
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| | Mexican federal policemen prepare to fly to Culiacan from Mexico City's airport May 28, 2008. Drug traffickers killed seven Mexican policemen on Tuesday, the latest slayings in a wave of police murders as the army wages a battle against cartels. Police searching a drug hide-out in Culiacan in the Pacific state of Sinaloa were shot at from inside the building by the traffickers, who also threw a grenade, the government said. (Reuters/Henry Romero) | | |
Culiacan, Mexico — The Mexican government rushed federal police reinforcements Wednesday to this cradle of the country’s drug trade, a day after gunmen killed eight officers in a shootout on a residential street.
The 200 new officers join 2,000 soldiers and federal police who’ve patrolled Culiacan, the base of the Sinaloa drug cartel, and the nearby mountains for the past month in an attempt to quell surging violence.
Noting that his officers often are outgunned and outmaneuvered by cartel gunmen, a senior federal police official called for better intelligence and more powerful weapons for his men.
“We can’t do it without intelligence,” said Gen. Rodolfo Cruz, the national coordinator for federal police units. “We have to act against specific targets.”
Cruz said his police also “need machine guns” to stand up to gunmen armed with automatic rifles, grenades and other weapons. But Cruz, a retired army general, vowed: “We’re not going to lose here.”
Culiacan, notorious as a breeding ground for many of Mexico’s most notorious criminals, has seen similar federal crackdowns come and go over the decades, with little lasting effect on the area’s drug trade.
But this year has been a particularly violent one for the city of about 750,000 people because one-time allies among the gang leaders have turned on one another.
More than 330 people have been killed here since Jan. 1, including at least 107 slain in May. Thirty-five local, state and federal police also have died.
That makes Sinaloa state and its capital one of the country’s most violent areas in 18 months of bloodshed. More than 4,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006 — nearly 1,400 this year.
Calderon has deployed more than 25,000 troops and police into Mexico’s narcotics-smuggling and production states. The forces spend most of their time patrolling streets, guarding checkpoints and conducting occasional raids on suspected safe houses.
“It has to calm down, it just has to,” said a middle-aged man plastering over the bullet holes on the front of his whitewashed house, which stands across the street from the shootout the day before where the eight federal police agents were killed.
“We can’t continue on like this,” said the man, who declined to give his name because he said he feared for his safety. “Everyone is afraid.”
Tuesday’s gunfight, the deadliest for the federal police in memory, began with an anonymous call about a safe house in the neighborhood. When two patrol vehicles responded, they were met with heavy fire from inside the residence.
Seven officers were killed at the scene, some by fragmentation grenades thrown by the gunmen, and four others were wounded. One of the injured officers died of his wounds Wednesday.
Backup units were summoned, and the police eventually prevailed, killing one of the gunmen and capturing two others, including a teenage boy. Others in the house are believed to have escaped.
Police originally linked the gunmen to the organization of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of Sinaloa’s better-known gangland chiefs. But Cruz said Wednesday that they appeared to be loyalists of Arturo Beltran Leyva, a longtime ally of Guzman’s who appears to have broken with him.
“There are many different gangs right now,” Cruz said. “These are groups that are breaking up.”
Dudley Althaus is a Houston Chronicle reporter in Mexico. |
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