Thread: Mexican city reaches 1,000 drug-related killings in 2009

Violence-plagued Mexican city reaches 1,000 drug-related killings

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- Ciudad Juarez set a record this weekend when its toll of drug-related homicides for the year topped 1,000, a distinction the Mexican city did not reach last year until September.

At this point last year, the violence-plagued city across the border from El Paso, Texas, had tallied 596 killings, El Universal newspaper said Tuesday, citing figures from the Chihuahua state attorney general's office.

The city did not reach 1,000 slayings in 2008 until September 16.

Between 1994 and 2006, the death toll never exceeded 300.

According to the state attorney general's office, the death toll this year is: 136 in January, 240 in February, 73 in March, 90 in April, 125 in May, 247 in June and 104 so far in July.

Juarez is not alone. An unprecedented wave of violence has washed over Mexico since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels shortly after coming into office in December 2006. More than 10,000 people have died in that time span, about 1,000 of them police.

The past few days have been particularly bloody.

Two federal police officers were killed in an ambush early Tuesday in Michoacan, the state where coordinated attacks in eight cities over the weekend left three federal police officers and two soldiers dead.

Four police were wounded in Tuesday's ambush, the state-run Notimex news agency reported.

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A federal police station in the Michoacan city of Maravatio was attacked Tuesday morning, news reports said. It was not immediately known whether there were any casualties.

Hours earlier, the bodies of 11 men and one woman were found dumped in a pile on a nearby road. They showed signs of torture and had been executed with a shot to the head, officials said.

Two of the bodies had grenades tied to their hands, a news report said.

Another attack against police in Michoacan occurred late Monday in the city center of Lazaro Cardenas, where gunmen launched three grenades and fired high-caliber weapons at the Sol del PacÃ*fico Hotel. The hotel serves as headquarters for federal police participating in the Operativo Michoacan drug sweep.

A corporal was wounded but no guests were injured, El Universal said.

Sixteen police were wounded in the weekend attacks.

At least 32 people have been killed in Michoacan drug violence in recent days, El Cambio de Michoacan newspaper reported Tuesday.

Nine bodies were found last week on the same road where the corpses were discovered Monday, the newspaper said, and four bodies showing signs of torture were dumped there last month.

Michoacan is in west central Mexico, on the Pacific Coast. Violence also broke out Monday on the other side of Mexico, in Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico.

A confrontation in the city's tourist district left two drug cartel suspects dead and another wounded, the federal Secretariat for National Security reported. Three police and a taxi driver were wounded.

The drug suspects died when a grenade they were about to throw at police blew up inside their armor-plated vehicle.

A 10-minute shootout started when police tried to stop the BMW in which the men were riding. At least 10 vehicles, several businesses and the Cristo del Buen Viaje Catholic church suffered damage, El Universal newspaper reported.

An unprecedented wave of violence has washed over Mexico since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels shortly after coming into office in December 2006. More than 10,000 people have died in that time span, about 1,000 of them police.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... gletoolbar

Cartels now killing at will in Chihuahua
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 07/15/2009 10:45:51 PM MDT



The recent killings of a mayor, anti-crime activists and federal police point to an uneasy shift in tactics by drug cartels as the violence continues at an unstoppable pace across Mexico, officials said.

"You can safely say things have been getting worse. Chihuahua remains the most unsafe state in the country, and Juárez remains the most unsafe city in Mexico," said Tony Payan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"The situation has deteriorated over a year and a half, and it is still getting to the point that it is a free-for-all."

Juárez has a death toll topping 1,000 homicides this year and continues to add double-figures daily.

On Tuesday, the mayor of the central Chihuahua town of Namiquipa was killed, apparently by drug traffickers, in what may be revenge for the capture of 25 members of a paramilitary group.

And on Wednesday, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora met with relatives of northwestern Chihuahua anti-crime activists Benjamin LeBaron and Luis Whitman, who were kidnapped and killed earlier this month. The case is unsolved.

When the Juárez murders erupted in January 2008, Payan was a proponent of the view that people not involved in the drug trade had little to fear.

Payan now describes Chihuahua as a "quasi-failed state" with a government unable to provide basic protection from murders, kidnappings, extortion and other crime. A military deployment hasn't stopped the bloodshed.

Juárez and Chihuahua elected leaders have said efforts will take time to weed out corruption and build a strong and trustworthy police force.
Juárez ended Tuesday with a total of 14 homicides.

Elsewhere in Mexico, law enforcement is also under fire, including in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan where the emerging cartel named La Familia Michoacana brazenly attacked federal police after the arrest of one of its leaders.

Dozens of mayors were arrested on corruption charges earlier this year in Michoacan, which is President Felipe Calderón's home state.

Federal police struck a major blow Friday with the capture of reputed Familia lieutenant Arnoldo "La Minsa" Rueda Median.

After the arrest, the cartel hit back with a brazen counteroffensive, including torturing and killing a dozen federal police officers. In addition, police facilities were hit with grenades and police convoys were ambushed.

"In this fight, we will not quit nor will we doubt," Calderón said Tuesday in response to the attacks in Michoacan.

Federal officials Wednesday announced the capture of the head of one of the cartel's hit squads responsible for the police attacks.

La Familia Michoacana stands out from other cartels because it has a religious component, said George W. Grayson, a government professor specializing in Latin America at the College of William and Mary in Wil liams burg, Va.

"It has a religious orientation, that is, its leaders are claiming they are executing people because it's the Lord's will," said Grayson, who gave a lecture on La Familia Michoacana last month at the DEA Museum in Arlington, Va.

"It has intensive indoctrination of new members. They tell them not to smoke or drink or take drugs. It's a curious mixture," Grayson said in a telephone interview. "Some have compared it to al-Qaida, but that's a stretch."

La Familia Michoacana was originally formed as La Empresa (the business) aligned with the Zetas, the paramilitary arm of the Gulf Cartel, in a fight against the Valencia crime family.

La Familia split from the Zetas in 2006 in a dispute over territorial control, according to Mexico's Ministry of Public Safety. La Familia kept some of the Zetas' tactics.

"Cartel attacks are ... not meant solely to batter the police and the military, but also to sow fear and demonstrate the cartels -- not the government -- are dominant in Mexico," stated a report this summer by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.

The report, "Mexico's Narco-Insurgency and U.S. Counterdrug Policy" by Hal Brand, contends that overall U.S. counterdrug strategy fails in Mexico because it does not do enough to deal with the roots of the cartels' power -- corruption, widespread poverty and inequality, a weak government, high demand for drugs in the U.S. and the illegal flow of weapons across the border.

Grayson said the cartels, unlike leftist insurgents of the 1960s, are not seeking to overthrow the Mexican government.

"The narco-traffickers want to make big money and enjoy impunity," Grayson explained. "... I think they want to so intimidate authorities so life goes back to the way it was in the 1970s and 1980s."

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