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Felipe Calderon Proposes New Strategy for Mexico’s Drug War
 Tracy Wilkinson - Los Angeles Times
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February 12, 2010
| | Mexico's President Felipe Calderon gestures while speaking in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010. Ciudad Juarez, is a northern border city terrorized by drug gang violence. (AP/Alexandre Meneghini) | |
Mexico City — Facing intense political pressure and demands that he resign, President Felipe Calderon traveled to Mexico’s deadliest city Thursday to defend his troubled fight against drug cartels, which critics charge has only intensified the violence.
Angry crowds greeted Calderon as he arrived in a heavily guarded Ciudad Juarez. The president said it was time to launch a much-discussed expansion of the drug war to include efforts aimed at tackling social issues, such as unemployment and addiction.
"I am convinced we have to review what we are doing," Calderon said. "We need a much more integrated approach ... wider actions ... of a social nature. Police and military action alone is not enough."
To underscore the point, Calderon took with him an unusually large contingent of Cabinet members, including the ministers of health, education and public security. However, he was short on details and, in initial remarks, did not earmark money for new programs.
Calderon’s visit to Ciudad Juarez was prompted by the Jan. 31 massacre of at least 15 people, many of them youths, at a high school party, the latest in a spiral of increasingly gruesome bloodshed that has made the border city just minutes from El Paso, Texas, a living hell.
Calderon met with relatives of the victims, but many family members refused to see him. They joined large groups of protesters who lined Juarez streets and waved signs saying, "Out with Calderon!" and "Apologize, then resign!" Police forcefully broke up some of the demonstrations, witnesses said.
In his remarks, Calderon did apologize to families for statements he made in Japan, shortly after the killings, that suggested some of the victims could have been involved in drug gangs.
The expanded program promising jobs and education represented an admission that a guns-only approach has not stopped drug gangs nor reduced killings, especially in Ciudad Juarez. But Calderon has also said he does not plan to withdraw the nearly 10,000 army troops and federal police dispatched to the city early last year.
The Calderon administration has long grappled with what to do about Ciudad Juarez and proposed a new strategy last summer, when government officials acknowledged they were being forced to review procedures that weren’t working.
But they’ve groped for a solution. Even as more troops were poured into the city, the death rate soared — as did accusations of human rights abuses by soldiers. An experimental deployment of putting troops into less-visible positions did not improve security markedly. The new plan was devised in July of last year, Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said, and takes many cues from the strategy used to pacify the once-deadly Colombian city of Medellin.
Ciudad Juarez is a long-neglected city plagued by poverty, corruption and an influx of unskilled workers desperate for jobs. Always saddled with a high murder rate, especially of women, the killings increased exponentially as drug gangs battled for turf and innocents were drawn into the conflict.
Citizens trapped by daily gun battles in the street and rampant extortion and kidnappings have become so desperate that they recently demanded the presence of U.N. peacekeepers, unheard of in nationalistic Mexico, and there have been reports of vigilantism.
Leftist senators said this week they will ask Calderon to consider instituting a curfew in Ciudad Juarez and suspending civil rights as a way to restore order "in the face of such an extraordinary situation."
In an editorial titled "Real solutions, Mr. President," a leading Juarez newspaper, El Diario, questioned whether Calderon’s visit was motivated by the looming election season and said blame for the city’s plight rested not only with the presidency but also with state and local administrations.
"Ciudad Juarez is plunged in the worst devastation of its history," El Diario said, "provoked by the violence of (drug traffickers) in combination with the errors and omissions of those who head all three spheres of government." |
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