And some people are for open borders?
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Monterrey reeling as 10 slain in week of bloody cartel battles

Web Posted: 03/16/2007 08:51 PM CDT

Sean Mattson
Express-News Mexico Correspondent

MONTERREY, Mexico — Tough-talking politicos and army-patrolled streets have not stopped drug-gang killings that are increasingly targeting law enforcement in Mexico's leading northern city.
Five police officers were among 10 people slain in a half-dozen attacks in Monterrey since Tuesday. In the most brazen, at least three gunmen stormed a jewelry store on a busy downtown avenue Wednesday, killing a police commander, his wife, a customer and a security guard.

The assailants escaped.

The latest wave of killings has this proud industrial center just two hours from the border wondering just how bad things can get.

"If we continue at this pace ... we're going to surpass 100 (execution-style) homicides," said Rodrigo Plancarte, the director of the Nuevo León chapter of Coparmex, one of Mexico's leading chambers of commerce.

"In all of history we haven't had situations of this nature," he said.

Monterrey had been largely unscathed by a bloody turf war between drug cartels that erupted along the Texas-Mexico border more than two years ago.

But at least 13 law officers are among the 28 people killed in 2007 in and around Monterrey. More than 50 executions were registered in the state of Nuevo León last year, according to media tallies.

Few arrests have been made and authorities have become increasingly tight-lipped, refusing to comment Friday on the killing of two police officers in separate attacks in the early hours of the day.

State attorney general Luis Carlos Treviño told local media on Thursday that the police killings could be revenge for disrupting gang activity, for "an active or passive participation" or to "send signals to police departments to try to intimidate them."

Authorities agree the violence stems from a dispute between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, a battle that the Gulf Cartel appears to be winning on the border.

The Gulf Cartel's armed wing, army defectors known as the Zetas, are attacking the Sinaloa Cartel's Monterrey trafficking stronghold. An additional dispute is over local distribution for a growing number of Mexican drug users, say authorities.

Despite a federal and state crackdown, "The problem is if there aren't any arrests, we can't apply the law," said Fernando Kuri, a state legislator with the National Action Party, or PAN, who said it was difficult to understand how killers repeatedly escape from daylight shooting scenes in the middle of a congested city.

Kuri, like many, worries about the city's image in the run-up to a major international exposition and conference it will host later this year.

"What face are we going to show the world if we have a city plagued with crime and murders?" he asked.

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