Mexico - Mexico’s War Against Drugs Kills Its Police

[Lunar Loops]

This piece is from the New York Times:

Mexico’s War Against Drugs Kills Its Police

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: May 26, 2008

MEXICO CITY — The assassination was an inside job. The federal police commander kept his schedule secret and slept in a different place each night, yet the killer had the keys to the official’s apartment and was waiting for him when he arrived after midnight.

When the commander, Commissioner Édgar Millán Gómez, the acting chief of the federal police, died with eight bullets in his chest on May 8, it sent chills through a force that had increasingly found itself a target.

The police say the gunman had been hired by a disgruntled federal police officer who worked for a drug cartel in Sinaloa State, and the inside nature of the killing underscored just how difficult it is for President Felipe Calderón to keep his vow to clean up police corruption and end the drug-related violence racking Mexico.

Since coming to office in December 2006, Mr. Calderón has sought to revamp and professionalize the federal police force, using it, with the army, to mount huge interventions in cities and states once controlled by drug traffickers.

The result has been mayhem: a street war in which no target has been too big, no attack too brazen for the gangs.

Opposition politicians and even some police officials have begun to question whether the president’s ambition has exceeded his grasp, with dangerous and destabilizing consequences for a country that shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States. Bush administration officials have said Mr. Calderón’s efforts might founder unless the United States Congress approves a $1.4 billion package of equipment and training over three years for Mexico’s police.

Top security officials who were once thought untouchable have been gunned down in Mexico City, four in the last month alone. Drug dealers killed another seven federal agents this year in retaliation for drug busts in border towns. Others have died in shootouts.

Drug traffickers have killed at least 170 local police officers as well, among them at least a score of municipal police commanders, since Mr. Calderón took office. Some were believed to have been corrupt officers who had sold out to drug gangs and were killed by rival gangsters, investigators say. Others were killed for doing their jobs.

The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure. The government has smashed the cartels, he says, forcing a war among the splinter groups. The killing of Commissioner Millán, he has said, was “a desperate act to weaken the federal police.”

“What it signifies is a strategy of some criminal organizations who seek to terrorize society and paralyze the government,” he said last week. “The question is, should we persevere and go forward or simply hide in our offices and duck our heads. No way is the Mexican government going to back down in such a fight.”

The violence between drug cartels that Mr. Calderón has sought to end has only worsened over the past year and a half. The death toll has jumped 47 percent to 1,378 this year, prosecutors say. All told, 4,125 people have been killed in drug violence since Mr. Calderón took office.

But the steady drumbeat of police killings has caused more shock here. On Wednesday, for instance, the second in command of the police in Morelos State and his driver were found dead in the trunk of a car. A placard on the bodies warned against joining the Sinaloa Cartel.

Several terrified local police chiefs have resigned, the most recent being Guillermo Prieto, the chief in Ciudad Juárez, who stepped down last week after his second in command was killed a few days earlier.

“It is not just happening in Ciudad Juárez,” Mayor José Reyes Ferriz, said at the funeral for the deputy commander, Juan Antonio Roman García. “It’s happening in Nuevo Laredo, in Tijuana, in this entire region. They are attacking top commanders to destabilize the police.”

One reason for the surge in violence is that Mr. Calderón and his public security minister, Genaro García Luna, have upset longstanding arrangements between the police and drug traffickers at every level of government, several experts on crime in Mexico said.

Last year, Mr. García Luna removed 284 federal police commanders across the country, replacing them with his own handpicked officers, many from outside the force, who had been trained at a new academy and who had been closely vetted for signs of corruption.

He has also restructured the department, demoting dozens of career officers and putting in command people he trusts — a small circle of highly educated outsiders, most with a background in the military or in Mexico’s espionage service.

Most of these commanders also served under Mr. García Luna in the previous administration of President Vicente Fox as part of the Federal Investigation Agency, or A.F.I., an elite force modeled on the F.B.I.

The agency showed results. President Fox’s government arrested several of the country’s most notorious drug kingpins, among them Osiel Cárdenas, leader of the Gulf Cartel, and Benjamín Arellano Félix, who controlled Tijuana. The arrests caused turmoil inside the cartels and turf wars among them.

When he took office, President Calderón merged the investigative agency with the existing federal police force and put Mr. García Luna in charge. Over the past 18 months, the new force has recruited heavily among college students and former soldiers. The government has raised the starting pay for officers and greatly improved training.

But even with about 3,000 new recruits, the Calderón administration has yet to purge the force of thousands of career officers with roots in the old force, which was rife with corruption. Many of these officers have dubious loyalties and made money from graft, especially those assigned to highways, ports and airports, according to criminologists and police officials.

“To train these people and get them out on the streets is going to take at least a couple of years,” said Bruce Bagley, a professor at Miami University who has studied drug trafficking throughout Latin America. “That leaves much of the rotten core of the police still in place.”

At the same time, Mr. Calderón and his predecessor have largely dismantled the state security apparatus that kept an iron grip on Mexico for decades when it was ruled by a single party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The Intelligence Agency and the Interior Ministry have been stripped of their extensive networks of informants.

As a result, some critics say, the new federal police force not only lacks the intelligence it once had, but is full of disgruntled officers and commanders who have lost their positions or, in some cases, their sources of graft.

One of those officers was José Antonio Martín Montes Garfias, the man whom investigators accuse of hiring an assassin to kill Commissioner Millán. Officer Montes Garfias had long worked at Mexico City’s international airport, one of the main entry points for cocaine and chemicals used to make methamphetamine, and he was suspected of protecting shipments for the Sinaloa Cartel. Commissioner Millán had him transferred.

The police also say Mr. Montes Garfias had a hand in the killing of Roberto Velasco Bravo, the chief of the organized crime division in the public security department, on May 1. When he was arrested, Mr. Montes Garfias had documents from several cars used by other top-ranking federal police officials, showing names, license plates and models.

Prosecutors say corrupt officers also tipped off gunmen who killed Omar Ramírez, a high-ranking A.F.I. commander, last September as he drove on a busy street in downtown Mexico City. Mr. Ramírez had left his office for an urgent meeting at an unusual hour, yet the gunmen knew his route. Prosecutors say he was killed for making too much progress in investigating the Gulf Cartel.
Yet some police commanders say corrupt officers are less of a problem than the lack of information about drug dealers. They also complain that the intelligence arms of the military and the police do not share information until they are on the point of making a raid, for fear of leaks.

Commissioner Javier Herrera Valles oversaw President Calderón’s efforts to restore order in various states for 10 months until he was demoted last February after openly criticizing the operations in a letter to the president.

Mr. Herrera maintains that the federal police are acting on wisps of information, like tips from anonymous callers. They have very little hard evidence from undercover officers, wiretaps or surveillance. The operations consist mostly of stopping trucks at checkpoints and endless patrols through neighborhoods, he said.

“They don’t have any good intelligence gathering,” he said in an interview. “We were patrolling without any direction. Going in circles, nothing else.”

Mr. Calderón and his top security officials disagree. They point out that the government has made record seizures of cocaine, marijuana and caches of arms over the last year and a half. They have also arrested scores of people alleged to be hired guns for the cartels, along with a handful of high-level drug dealers.

Antonio Guzmán, who commands the 640 federal agents sent in recent weeks to Sinaloa to hunt the gang leaders believed to have been behind Commissioner Millán’s killing, denied that the killings of police officials had dampened his officers’ spirits.
“It hasn’t affected morale,” Mr. Guzmán said as he patrolled the streets at the head of a column of four pickups full of heavily armed officers in black garb with machine guns and flak jackets. “We know what we are getting into here. If anything we have more desire to win, because we cannot permit this to continue.”

He acknowledged the leaders of the Sinaloa gangs were probably long gone, having fled to the mountains or to other states. He said the real reason his force had been sent in was to instill confidence in residents that the government could protect them.
Yet residents said the patrols and checkpoints only helped as long as they were there. Several said that the drug dealers in the neighborhood were well known, but that no one dares name them to the police. “We don’t mess with them,” said Wilfredo Valenzuela, 35, a mechanic.

Alma Rosa Camacho López, 42, the janitor at a local grade school, said that as soon as the federal officers leave, the drug dealers come out of hiding. “We need the government to be on top of these people all the time,” she said. “When they leave the same problem will come back and we will be in the same fix as before.”

[stoneinfocus]

Some are corrupt? Mexico? -All are corrupt!

The new chief is letting-off his men to the slaughter of the gangs (by braking the rules of the survival /compromise between the police and the multi million drug-business), for some police equipement and a multi million dollar cheque from Amerika and a fat portion of lies and propaganda.

-and the problems of Mexico aren´t addressed, by an Amerika sposnsored drug-war, in which the new police chiefs are being corrupted by Amerika.

Wonder how a poor, corrupt, then with Amerika´s striking power equipped police-army will behave in this country. America was always quite intelligent and keen in consituting governments in foreign countries.

[Expat98]

Mexican drugs: a smarter approach

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Only lightly noted on this side of the border, our neighbor Mexico is engulfed in bloody, violent combat with and between death-dealing drug cartels.

In a stunning reversal for President Felipe Calderón's crusade to subdue the drug trade and its perpetrators, Edgar Gomez, the national police chief and lead anti-cartel crusader, was assassinated this month outside his Mexico City home. "This could have a snowball effect, even leading to the risk of ungovernability," Mexico City sociologist Luis Astorga told The Washington Post.

Yet it's hardly unique. More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal police are struggling against the private armies of rival drug lords. Literally hundreds of officials and police have been murdered in the struggle.

Talk about a national security issue for the United States! We share a 2,000-mile border with Mexico; it's our second-largest trade partner, especially huge in agriculture. Millions of families are related across the border; thousands of Mexicans regularly cross over for work.

There's a U.S. response before Congress right now. It's President Bush's request for a so-called Merida Initiative — a $1.4 billion, three-year program to undergird the Mexican government's anti-drug efforts with helicopters and other military equipment, training for Mexican police forces, plus phone-tapping, mail-inspection and Web surveillance.

But there's substantial congressional skepticism about aid that could flow to the notoriously unaccountable, often corrupt, Mexican military and police forces. And then the tough, basic question: Realistically, how much could U.S. aid of roughly $500 million a year do to stem the gargantuan illegal drug trade that now flows across the Mexican border — about $23 billion a year by U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates?

And is the problem really Mexico — or our demand for drugs?

There are three much smarter steps that a rational United States would take.

First, face up to where the Mexican cartels get their weapons of death. Virtually all, including pistols, grenades, high-powered ammunition and assault weapons such as the AK-47, are smuggled from U.S. territory, across the border into Mexico, where the gangster elements pay premium prices for them.

The weapons are often purchased legally at gun shows in Arizona and other states where loopholes permit criminals to buy guns without background checks.

Our obvious answer: Seal all gun show sales loopholes, requiring checks on every purchaser. And reinstate the U.S. ban on assault-gun purchases that Congress, under gun-lobby pressure, let expire in 2004.

A second smart move: Reduce demand for drugs on the U.S. side through treatment for addicted individuals. Consider cocaine alone. The RAND Corporation found that dollar for dollar, drug treatment is 10 times more effective at reducing its use than drug interdiction.

Our big mistake: Making Mexico the villain when it's really the victim. And it's "a familiar game," notes Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance:

"U.S. leaders blame another country for our failure to reduce drug misuse here at home. That country escalates its war against drugs but asks the U.S. to pick up part of the tab. Aid is given, but it ends up having no effect on the availability of drugs in the United States. Politicians in Washington point their fingers again, and the cycle continues."

Indeed, patterns of the international narcotics trade show that whenever some source of production or smuggling route gets clamped down, drug production and drug-trafficking gangs quickly regroup.

Third and most basic of all: recognize that while prohibition of socially disallowed drugs can increase their cost, it can never halt demand. Desire for mind-altering substances is virtually built into the human psyche.

Americans might recall the counsel of the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who learned the immense dangers of repressing demand as he watched America's misadventure into alcohol prohibition, and how it triggered the Al Capone-era wave of gang wars:

"Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials. ... Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and nonusers alike."

So now comes the Merida Initiative — fueling the drug wars, foisting the consequences of our misguided prohibition onto an already beleaguered neighbor. Will we never learn?

Neal Peirce's column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times.

His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...lpeirce27.html

[stoneinfocus]

Taken from Konkret; March 2008 edition, from "Guns, Drugs & Friends", by Andreas Knobloch, habitant of Mexico City, free journalist.

[...] when one highly ranked Police officer, Baritta Ortiz, was found shot dead, rumors evolved, which were making Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR -Revolutionary forces of the People of Oaxaca) or Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos Oaxaca (APPO -Congergation of the people of Oaxaca) responsible for the murder.

These instituions, before, made Calderón responsible for convictions, disapparance of persons and torture, during a public meeting of the APPO from August-Nov. 2006.

In fact, the murder could be better ascribed to organized crime.

Due to the militarisation, a true war has emerged between the drug-cartels and the military at the broder in the north. Troops, heavy machine guns and the airforce flying patrol, soldiers in fighting-outfit.

It is this militarisation since the election of President Felipe Calderón, in December 2006, which explains the rapid rise of atrocities and murder.

He changed the constitution in 2007 in ways, to legalize home-searches, phone-tapping and arrestings, without prior approval of a judge, if organised(drug-) crime was suspected.

While police and federal police are not capable of fighting the drug-cartels, military intervention seems to be the next logical step.

Despite desertion is a problem (100.000 militarys deserted from 2000-2006 and further 17.000, since Calderón), Calderón is stating, that there was no security problem evolving from this and there was no connection to corruption and the drug-business.

The military is now doing, what should be the work of the police and the state-attorney.

The results are at a historical high: 21.000 arrests of suspected drug-dealers, 51 tons of cocaine and money.

But on the other side, it´s the civil population which has to suffer increasingly from the violence, and the military intervention is endangering the democracy and its institutions.

Human Rights Watch, dedicated in a year´s review of 2007, a whole coloumn to civil rights violations, conducted by the military in its war against drugs:

Dozens of unmotivated arrests and mistreatments, sexual assaults, like in one case, the sexual abuse of 4 minors by soldiers, or the killing of a 5 membered family in their house, which was shot by the military, thereunder 3 children.
The anticipation of the military has led to major violations of human rights, illegal arrests, torture(widespread) and the freedom of speech is endangerd, due to the murder of journalists, migrants are being drangsalized and executions being made, while the revenge of the drug-cartels hits the police.

The National Comissioner of Human rights (CNDH), José Luis Soberanes Fernández, claims, that during Calderón, a climate of violence had emerged and the juristictional system leaves the crimes of the military to itself.

The war-scenario, with all its murders, makes it look like the government had lost the war against drugs.

Despite these problems, Calderón is keeping his line, in which combatting the drug-business will remain the duty of the military, per decrete, until 2012.

Behind closed doors, he decided to cooperate on this subject with the the USA Bush-administration: 1,5 billion dollars of help are promised, 500 millions in 2008 alone, for weapons, high explosives, planes, choppers and drug detection software and computers, strenghthening of witness-protection programs, and for building an effective system of justice, fighting corruption and for building a trustworthy police.

Opposed to the "Plan Colombia" the USA will not show military presence itself, as that could be seen as too invasive, by the people. This plan is called the "Meridia initiative: Guns, Drugs and Friends".

Together with plan "Plan Puebla-Panamá" (PPP) and plan "Alianza para la Seguridad y la Prosperidad de América Norte" (ASPAN -Alliance for Security and Prosperity of North Amerika), Meridia will most likely create an economisation of military inverventions and para-militarisation of internal conflicts, lately to be seen at the war of lower intensities against the guerilla organisation EZLN and EPR.

It seems, as with "Plan Colombia", there will be no solution, but exaggeration of the problem and its causes, and will lead to a higher repression of social protests.

Repressions now are being put on left-wing organisations, like in Oaxaca, or the putting-down of the miner´s strike in Canannea.
The influence of the drug-cartels on financial institutions, police and bureaucracy remains unchanged.

Calderóns war doens´t address the real problems, but is the problem itself, as it leaves behind the improtant questions like poverty, corruption, social causes and unequal carrer chances, education, as well as the fact, that it ´s getting uncontrollable and out of his hands.


Note from my side: "Get it?-Pars pro toto, this is the reason for a war, the foundation of a distracting problem, which shades the real-world problems, resulting in problems of individuums and their civil rights and distribution of money to the people.
A society, influenced by these lies, will carry them into the smallest detail, into every facette of life, which is, as well, e.g. the cause for addiction-treatment to fail.It´s meant to fail, as a sensibilisation to the real world problems and setting the priority onto them, would make an addiction secondary, but life and the "real world" problems, like education, equanity and liberty & happyness(autonomy of the individual), the priotity, whicgh would make addiction-treatment nearly obsolee. Addiction -to this- was and if such a minor problem and a hindrance to solving these priority problems and life is, what an addicted is(and we all are) truly seeking, that we wouldn´t have any worthy problems with addiction, neither had we addicted with problems coming from their addiction, or were we unwilling to resolve, not for crimson moral, but for getting at the true problems of social living.Follow-ups of these war-distractions is anti-semitism, racism, sadism, hipocracy, flood of laws, talents to waste.

[old hippie 56]

Did everyone know a travel alert had been issued for the border region by the State Dept.?

This information is current as of today, Fri Jun 06 2008 06:33:57 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time).

Mexico

April 14, 2008

This Travel Alert updates information for U.S. citizens on security situations in Mexico that may affect their activities while in that country. This supersedes the Travel Alert for Mexico dated October 24, 2007, and expires on October 15, 2008.
Violence Along The U.S.-Mexico Border
-------------------------------------
Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, Mexican police forces, criminal justice officials, and journalists. However, foreign visitors and residents, including Americans, have been among the victims of homicides and kidnappings in the border region. In its effort to combat violence, the government of Mexico has deployed military troops in various parts of the country. U.S. citizens are urged to cooperate with official checkpoints when traveling on Mexican highways.
Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades. Confrontations have taken place in numerous towns and cities in northern Mexico, including Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California, and Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua. The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted.
Armed robberies and carjackings, apparently unconnected to the narcotics-related violence, have increased in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007. Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas.

Criminals are armed with a wide array of sophisticated weapons. In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles.
U.S. citizens are urged to be especially alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region. While Mexican citizens overwhelmingly are the victims of these crimes, this uncertain security situation poses risks for U.S. citizens as well. Thousands of U.S. citizens cross the border safely each day, exercising common-sense precautions such as visiting only legitimate business and tourist areas of border towns during daylight hours. It is strongly recommended that travelers avoid areas where prostitution and drug dealing occur.
Criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Tijuana. There is no evidence, however, that U.S. citizens are targeted because of their nationality.

U.S. citizen victims of crime in Mexico are urged to contact the consular section of the nearest U.S. consulate or Embassy for advice and assistance.

[Expat98]

^^Normally you can ignore State Department travel alerts. But I would not ignore this one.

[old hippie 56]

Been talking to some of my Mexican friends, they all saying the same thing. Stay away from the border. Where they usually drive down to see their folks, they're flying to Monterey or Mexico City and catching the bus.

[stoneinfocus]

the latter news-article makes it look so smooth and seems the drug-cartels
were the cause, insetad Calderón and his stromtrooper army (which now, obviously, is paid off by the drug-lords to a great degree and is now fighting its oposing army).

Also, it doesn´t mention, that Calderóns army is responsible for murder, killing of journalists, torture and executions as well. / Is there any non-NWO media, or journalists, doing their jobs? -actually must be hard times for them, as they might get killed by any kind of party, or they are alreaey dead.

[Expat98]

An article suggesting that the approach Mexico is taking to fighting the drug cartels may be losing popular support. Remember, this is the country that was very close to decriminalizing drug possession a couple of years ago.

***

MEXICO DRUG WARS

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, June 7, 2008

By LAURENCE ILIFF and ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – President Felipe Calderón is losing the fight against drug traffickers on the field of public opinion, two polls this week show, as he faces calls to change tactics and the possible collapse of an anti-drug package with the U.S.

The surveys show that most Mexicans still support Mr. Calderón's actions in taking on the narcos. His approval rating remains high, at just over 60 percent.

But by a 2-to-1 margin, Mexicans believe that the powerful and well-armed drug cartels are outgunning the government even as the army takes a high-profile and unprecedented role.

One of the regions particularly hard hit by the narcos' turf war – with police and soldiers stuck in the crossfire – has been Ciudad Juárez.

Analysts generally supportive of Mr. Calderón's courage in taking on the cartels and their paramilitary enforcers say it's tough to swallow the government's victorious message amid greater violence, including more beheadings.

Public opinion is critical to Mr. Calderón's strategy for the war since he has made it a cornerstone of his 18-month presidency – and because he is asking for sacrifice from the Mexican people, especially families of the more than 450 police killed over that period, analysts said.

One apparent casualty of Mexican public opinion is a proposed $1.4 billion U.S. aid package known as the Merida Initiative. The U.S. Congress both reduced funding for the first year and then added human rights conditions that made it unacceptable to its southern neighbor.

Mexico has threatened to turn down the first year of the program if the final version contains the human rights edicts.

"Public opinion always matters," said political columnist Juan José Huerta, who gives Mr. Calderón high marks for disrupting drug cartel operations and having a long-term strategy to chip away at their operations.

But the reality on the ground is jarring, he said.

"The wave of attacks against police has been so overwhelming in the last weeks," he said, "that people are in shock."

Mr. Huerta said the government should change its message and protect the police better.

"You have to say it's a frontal assault without saying it necessarily implies the death of government forces," he said. "That is the wrong emphasis."

Cartel war like Iraq?

As the number of drug-related deaths during Mr. Calderón's administration has passed 4,000, war fatigue has started to set in, say the drug war's toughest critics, who compare it to the slow but steady erosion of support for the Iraq war among Americans.

Nightly media images of poorly trained police getting mowed down has not helped, analysts said.

In one incident late last month in Culiacán, Sinaloa, an anonymous caller reported armed men in an area known for drug activity.

About 20 federal police rushed to the scene only to be ambushed with fragmentation grenades and gunmen shooting from all directions.

Eight federal police officers died, the most in a single day. And news reports played up the fact that they appeared to have been outsmarted and outgunned by a much smaller group of narcos, only one of whom died in the shootout.

"The Mexican war is not so different from the Iraqi one," wrote columnist Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez. "Both interventions served the presidents to show determination and courage to face a fearsome enemy. ... But beyond the determination shown by president Calderón at the beginning of his term, it's not clear what he's seeking nor how he can evaluate the effect of his policies."

This week's surveys were published in two influential Mexico City newspapers, Reforma and El Universal.

El Universal said 56 percent of respondents in the national poll gave the upper hand to the cartels compared with 23 percent for the government.

The Reforma poll has almost identical numbers and something more ominous: eroding support for how Mr. Calderón is handling the fight.

Forty-two percent of respondents had a "favorable" opinion of Mr. Calderón's performance – the lowest percentage since the tracking poll began in September 2007 – and nine percentage points lower than in March.

Legalization backed

About 36 percent disapproved of his handling of the drug war, up from 31 percent in March. The poll had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.5 percentage points.

El Universal also had an interesting nugget that Mr. Huerta said may have to be explored over the long term – majority support for the legalization or decriminalization of some drugs in an attempt to weaken cartels.

At the epicenter of the drug fight – Culiacán – Margarito Ayala Barón, 54, had a message for Mr. Calderón: "I admire your guts, but get a new team."

He runs an auto repair shop and said most of his clients have ties to the cartels.

With the police and military crackdown in the capital of Sinaloa state, the home base of the Sinaloa cartel, Mr. Ayala Barón figures he's lost more than 30 percent of his business. But he's not complaining.

"I would rather lose some of my business than lose my country," he said. "But I don't know that the president has the support of his own people. He doesn't have anyone backing him up because corruption is endemic."

Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Norte newspaper in Ciudad Juárez, said the perception that the cartels are better prepared than the police is accurate.

"The police are practically nonexistent because they're so afraid they will be next. They don't even bother to use their radios anymore because they fear the radios are tapped. The government looks overwhelmed."

U.S. officials say they understand the concerns of Mexicans concerned that organized crime is actually winning the war.

"We shouldn't fool ourselves," said White House drug czar John Walters. "Their goal is not only to destroy rule of law in Mexico. If you live along the border, you should know their goal is to destroy rule of law in the United States."

liliff@dallasnews.com; acorchado@dallasnews.com


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...2.464c733.html

[Shiacmkmleer]

MONTERREY, Mexico, June 8 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers offered on Sunday to ease conditions tied to a $1.4 billion drug-fighting plan for Mexico and Central America after the Mexican government called it a threat to sovereignty.

Mexico has rejected the so-called Merida Initiative proposed by President George W. Bush because of demands by the U.S. Congress that the aid -- which includes helicopters and encrypted communication devices -- be subject to monitoring.

U.S. lawmakers also want to include human rights oversight in the three-year package, which Mexico says is unacceptable. Mexico is also upset by plans to reduce the dollar amount of aid from the original proposal.

But at a meeting of U.S. and Mexican lawmakers in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on Sunday, both sides agreed to try to save the drug plan and soften the conditions. One way to do this could be to turn them into recommendations.

"We are going to fix the current wording in the proposal," U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters in Spanish. "Yes, we're going to change it," he replied when asked if U.S. lawmakers would drop the conditions.

The U.S. Senate wants the plan, which does not involve cash, to ensure Mexican soldiers accused of crimes be tried in civilian courts. It also wants Mexican federal officials to take on state and local anti-drug roles, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says.

The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon says it rejects any conditions because Mexico is undergoing its own police and judicial reform and its army is waging a deadly war with heavily armed drug gangs.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in drug violence so far this year across Mexico in cartel turf wars, a faster pace than in 2007, when around 2,500 people died over the year.

"There is a good disposition (on the part of U.S. lawmakers) to modify the language in such a way that it is accepted on this side," said Sen. Rosario Green, a former Mexican foreign minister.

The Merida Initiative would originally have offered Mexico $500 million during the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, and $50 million to Central America. But now U.S. lawmakers want to cut Mexico's share to as low as $350 million and offer up to $100 million to Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

INITIATIVE 'VITAL'

A senior U.S. anti-drug official urged the U.S. Congress to pass the Merida Initiative because of the scale of the narcotics war. "The Merida Initiative is vital," the official told Reuters in an interview. "The hold-ups in Congress are not good. It could be seen we're letting Mexico down."

The official, who declined to be named, predicts drug violence in Mexico will continue its surge because a powerful coalition of drug gangs led by Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, is collapsing.

Internal conflicts, greed and pressure by Mexico's military are causing a split among gangs from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, with each group seeking new alliances to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States.

"The Sinaloa cartel is weakened, divided ... . There are internal disputes, rivalries, betrayals," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters in an interview. "You're going to see more violence."

"It is getting worse because police are engaging, because cartels want to create fear and because of attacks between rivals. It's going to get worse before it gets better." (Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Mexico City; Editing by Eric Walsh)

http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSN08472126

[stoneinfocus]

Originally Posted by Expat98

An article suggesting that the approach Mexico is taking to fighting the drug cartels may be losing popular support. Remember, this is the country that was very close to decriminalizing drug possession a couple of years ago.

This is the most frightening thing: they show us an easy way out, and it seems like everything would ease up, and then smash it all down, with all brutality, that´s given.
Like telling us: "You want it nice, smooth and easy?
Here´s what you get!-and we´ve got enough poor assholes, fantatics and dumb slaves, we can abuse and turn to that."

[Panthers007]

Okay. Now let's see what Mexico has that U.S. interests might really want.

We know the "War On Drugs" is a cover-up. We know that the biggest drug-pushers/importers are the U.S. Intelligence groups themselves. And these are not stupid people - per see. So what are they really up to? They knew that this action would lead to the equivalent of a new Mexican Revolution. And we know that the USA is fond of setting up puppet-regimes run from some basement in Washington, D.C. So what does the Mexican land hold that is of great worth to US corporate interests?

Follow that rabbit down the hole, and to the bank, and you will know what the planned outcome of all this bloodshed and slaughter truly is. War On Drugs my ass.

[old hippie 56]

Probably the damn oil and natural resources they have.