| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Calderon Blames Drug Violence on Cartel Rivalry
 Agence France-Presse
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June 16, 2010
| | Mexican Federal Policewomen keep watch during a presentation to the press of alleged drug traffickers of the Beltran Leyva Cartel in Mexico City. (AFP) | |
Mexico City - Mexican President Felipe Calderon blamed battling drug cartels for the upsurge in violence in Mexico that has killed at least 160 people in six days.
Calderon, who has staked his presidency on tackling Mexico's powerful drug gangs, said the eruption of violence was partly the result of cartels regrouping after being hit by his administration's efforts against them.
"We have struck important blows against all the cartels, without exception," Calderon said in a television and radio address to Mexicans late Tuesday.
"This has created division between the criminal gangs, which along with the traditional rivalries and the wars between them has led to these episodes of violence."
The fight against the drug cartels "is not only the president's battle but is that of all Mexicans," Calderon said.
Mexico is being rocked by an unprecedented wave of violence as powerful drug cartels vie for rich drug trafficking routes into the United States.
Nearly 23,000 people have been killed in the country since Calderon's crackdown began in 2006.
The president spoke hours after 15 people were killed when Mexican soldiers engaged suspected drug cartel hitmen in a fierce gun battle in the southern state of Guerrero.
The gun battle in a cemetery in the tourist town of Taxco, some 170 kilometers (100 miles) south of Mexico City, was just the latest in a string of bloody incidents in recent days.
Late last month a mass grave was also uncovered near Taxco, when 55 bodies dumped in an air shaft of an abandoned silver mine were found. It was one of the largest such graves ever discovered in Mexico.
Guerrero state, on the Pacific coast, is an important transit point for illegal shipments of cocaine and heroin arriving from South America en route to the United States, the world's largest illegal drug market.
The gunmen involved in Tuesday's shoot-out were loyal to a drug lord named Edgar Valdez, better known as "La Barbie," the daily El Universal reported on its website, citing an unidentified police source.
The US-born Valdez has been engaged since December in a bloody turf war for the control of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel following the death of one of the cartel leaders.
More than 40 people were killed in separate attacks on Monday, including a prison riot between rival drug gangs in the northwestern city of Mazatlan which left 28 dead.
Mexican authorities blamed the notorious "La Familia" drug cartel for a separate outbreak of violence Monday when 12 police officers were killed in an ambush in western Michoacan state.
The police came under fire as a convoy of uniformed officers traveled by car to Mexico City. Police officials said several assailants were also killed in the shoot-out.
In another attack, a drug cartel kidnapped 12 federal police officers, decapitated them and dumped their bodies on a busy highway.
Michoacan is Calderon's home state, from where he launched a nationwide crackdown against drug-trafficking, deploying some 50,000 troops and police across Mexico, in December 2006.
In an effort to fight the cartels, Mexican authorities have slapped a limit of 4,000 US dollars per month on bank deposits by individuals, aiming to thwart drug traffickers who use the US currency to stash away their illicit profits.
Officials also imposed a limit of 7,000 US dollars for deposits by Mexican businesses making deposits in the currency.
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