| | |  Editorials | Issues 
Drug Violence, Deaths in Mexico Have Spread to Once-Safe Regions
 Lauren Villagran - DallasNews.com
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June 20, 2010
 |  | The violence remains part of the ongoing realignment among cartels, which became acute after the federal government took down kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva six months ago.
- Phil Williams |  | | |
Mexico City – Best known for the sleepy beach towns that dot its coastline, Mexico's western state of Nayarit is now facing the kind of brutal drug violence that has plagued the Texas-Mexico border for years.
Nayarit is just north of Puerto Vallarta, a destination point for many Americans, where year-round sunshine nourishes beaches and ample fields of tomatoes, pinto beans and tobacco.
But on Friday, Nayarit Gov. Ney González Sánchez abruptly suspended the school year 15 days early as frantic parents expressed concerns about an unusual spike in violence, including a shootout in a shopping center parking lot.
So far this year, the number of killings in Nayarit has topped 100 – more than in the past four years combined, with 30 in just the past week.
"I really thought the situation would have improved by now," said Phil Williams, an expert on organized crime at the University of Pittsburgh. "The violence remains part of the ongoing realignment" among cartels, which became acute after the federal government took down kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva six months ago.
Nationwide, the bloodshed has gone from bad to worse, and regions once considered safe are succumbing to violence. From the western state of Michoacán, where 12 federal agents were killed on Monday, to the tourist town of Taxco, where 55 bodies were uncovered in an abandoned mine, to the embattled northern border, the killings have continued and no end is in sight.
On Friday, officials in the resort city of Cancún said the remains of 12 people had been found in nearby caverns. The dead were believed to be victims of the paramilitary group known as the Zetas.
On Saturday, gunmen struck near the Texas border, killing the mayor of Guadalupe, Jesús Manuel Lara Rodríguez, as he left his home in nearby Ciudad Juárez.
Overall, more than 300 people were killed in the past week, bringing the number of killings nationwide to more than 5,200 in the first six months of 2010, according to the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.
"We're in a situation in which the country is seeing acts of violence not seen in 100 years, not since the revolution," said Juan Francisco Torres Landa, general secretary of the organization Mexicans United Against Delinquency. "It's unacceptable."
President Felipe Calderón's decision to send more than 40,000 soldiers into cities and towns to combat drug cartels has been controversial from the start. Once held up as a national icon, the military has been plagued by complaints of human rights abuses.
Anger over military abuses reached a head recently after Mexico's National Human Rights Commission found that soldiers had killed two boys, ages 5 and 9, in the northern state of Tamaulipas, bordering Texas.
The commission's findings contradicted the military's own inquiry, which concluded that the boys were killed by a grenade during a clash between the military and criminal gangs.
Lauren Villagran is a freelance journalist in Mexico City. |
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