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Mexico's bloody border city
Sunday, August 21, 2005

By MARIA ELENA SALINAS


In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, when the clock strikes midnight, it means no more tequila, no more cerveza, nada.

The security situation in the Mexican border town is such that hundreds of bar owners agreed to close their doors at midnight for one month, risking the bulk of their profits. That's their contribution to the Mexican government's efforts to control a ruthless wave of violence that has left more than 100 people dead in this town since January of this year. Violence is so bad in Nuevo Laredo that the U.S. Consulate closed for business after a shootout between rival criminal gangs who used machine guns, grenades and even a rocket launcher. The consulate reopened a week later when Mexican authorities promised to increase security. They put police officers on bicycles and federal agents in vans to protect the diplomatic mission.

The bloodshed in Nuevo Laredo, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, is the result of a fierce battle between rival drug cartels fighting to control key smuggling routes into the U.S. drug market. The border crossing in Laredo is by far the busiest along the U.S.-Mexico border, and there's a lot more than computers, leather goods and Mexican furniture being imported into the country. Truckloads of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines make their way into the United States every day, leaving a bloody trail behind.

Ironically, competing drug lords are taking advantage of the void left after the Mexican government increased its war against drug traffickers. Since Mexican President Vicente Fox took office in 2000, some 36,000 people have been arrested on drug charges, including 15 leaders of criminal organizations, some of whom still control their business from behind bars.

Among the dead in the latest rash of violence were 15 law-enforcement agents, including a female officer who worked as a radio operator, a City Council member whose cattle had been massacred with an AK-47 at his ranch a month earlier, and a police chief who was gunned down just seven hours after being sworn in. Freedom of the press has become a casualty in the drug war as well. Killings are not investigated by the local media for fear of the consequences. Six journalists have been killed in Nuevo Laredo in the past 18 months, and several others have been kidnapped or threatened.

If it sounds like Nuevo Laredo is out of control, it's because it is. In early June, Fox launched a massive security operation, "Mexico Seguro" ("Safe Mexico"), sending thousands of federal agents and military personnel to different hot spots in the country where almost 800 people have been killed in drug-related violence.

In Nuevo Laredo, the feds took over the police department, suspending more than 700 officers. But despite the government's efforts to curb the violence, dead bodies keep appearing at the border. The next step, according to Eugenio Hernandez, the governor of the state of Tamaulipas, is to have the military take over all security measures. The local newspaper El Mañana reported that Fox would visit Nuevo Laredo at the end of August to announce a new security initiative that would include the creation of a border police unit.

The attorney general is promising to stem the violence in the 15 months left in the Fox administration. And the president himself is calling on the United States to work with Mexico against the organized crime and drug cartels that operate on both sides of the border. "Instead of pointing fingers," Fox said, "offer solutions."

The governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared a state of emergency due to increased drug and human smuggling along their borders with Mexico.

While Fox is correct in demanding cooperation from the United States because it is an enormous consumer of illicit drugs, the Mexican government also needs to accept that it has lost control of the situation and crack down not just on murderous drug cartels but also on corrupt law-enforcement agents who have sold out to organized crime, making things worse.

The security situation, particularly on the border, is deteriorating the already fragile relations between Mexico and the U.S. Under these circumstances, the much-anticipated immigration accord will end up being more a divisive instrument than a cooperation tool between two neighbors.