Mayors shot, slain as gangs pursue control
Mexican city leaders can turn a blind eye or risk cartel wrath
By TIM JOHNSON, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Sept. 24, 2010, 11:01PM

MEXICO CITY — As if Mexicans needed more evidence that criminal groups are trying to hijack the political life of the nation, it came with a ferocious triple-whammy punch in the past 24 hours.

Assailants shot and seriously wounded the mayor-elect of a town in the border state of Chihuahua on Friday afternoon, less than a day after commandos in Nuevo Leon state executed a sitting mayor, making him the 10th municipal chief slain so far this year.

In Mexico City, a fugitive legislator with drug charges pending against him sneaked into Congress and took his seat, automatically obtaining immunity from prosecution.

4 killed in 5 weeks
Attacks on mayors are quickening, a sign that drug cartels are seeking to intimidate politicians and neutralize them when they interfere with criminal activity.

Gunmen outside a veterinary clinic in Gran Morelos, a town in the high desert west of Chihuahua City, shot and seriously wounded Mayor-elect Ricardo Solis Manriquez, the websites of the Reforma and El Universal newspapers said.

Solis, elected in early July, is to take office on Oct. 9.

Earlier in the day, eulogies poured in for Prisciliano Rodriguez Salinas, a mayor who was slain outside his ranch house in a rural area of Nuevo Leon state.

Four mayors have been killed in the past five weeks alone. The new attacks roiled the political arena, a sign that politicians long complacent toward drug trafficking are feeling heat. Rodriguez, 53, was elected mayor of Doctor Gonzalez, 30 miles northeast of the industrial city of Monterrey, by a coalition headed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the once-dominant force that is now the largest opposition party.

President Felipe Calderon issued a statement Friday morning pledging that his government "will not ease up on criminal groups."

Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said members of an "armed command" had ambushed Rodriguez outside his rural home in Doctor Gonzalez, and shot him with a .223-caliber assault rifle and a 9 mm handgun.

Garza y Garza described the region, which is less than a two-hour drive from the Texas border, as "a conflict zone" due to fierce rivalries between drug cartels.

Dodging bullets
The mayors of cities and towns in regions of Mexico that cartels dominate face pressure to turn a blind eye on criminal activity. Given a choice of "plomo" or "plata" - a lead bullet or a cash payoff - some mayors become virtual allies of the criminal groups.

Mayors also direct 2,022 municipal police departments, and Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna said in early August that drug cartels were paying an estimated $100 million a month in bribes to corrupt municipal police officers.

On Thursday, television networks broke into programming to show legislator Julio Cesar Godoy taking his seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies. He skirted a federal police cordon aiming to capture him outside Congress, thus avoiding arrest and taking his seat, automatically winning immunity from prosecution.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/7217419.html