Mexico sending 2,500 agents into troubled border town

[High Plains]

Source: Houston Chronicle

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — The government of President Felipe Calderon on Thursday began a military surge of more than 2,500 soldiers and federal agents into this besieged border community in an attempt to tamp down a bloody drug war that has authorities jittery on both sides of the border.

The crackdown comes as a senior U.S. law enforcement official cautioned that Juarez faces a prolonged drug war — much like Nuevo Laredo in recent years — that's gradually spilling over into the Texas side of the border.

"Operation Chihuahua" — named after Mexico's biggest state, nestled against New Mexico and Texas — is aimed at restoring law and order in a region that many say has grown lawless. Nearly 200 people have been killed since Jan. 1 in this city of 1.2 million, as the Sinaloa cartel tries to run out the long-entrenched Juarez cartel out of power.

"In this fight, Chihuahua is not alone," said Mexico's Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, who was accompanied by the nation's secretary of defense, attorney general, Chihuahua's governor and the mayor of Ciudad Juarez. "In this battle, no group will be able to withstand the government's force."

The buildup of soldiers began Wednesday evening and will continue through Saturday.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/5654942.html

[High Plains]

1. Lame headline. Not "agents" but soldiers, not "border town" but Ciudad Juarez

[High Plains]

2. The levels of violence in Mexico's prohibition wars is almost Iraq-like.

Nearly 30,000 Mexican army troops deployed at various hot spots.

59 people killed in the prohibition wars between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday, nine more by Tuesday, who knows how many since then?

200 people killed in the wars in Ciudad Juarez so far this year alone.

Bodies of informants thrown in front of army posts with mutilated hands in their mouths and warnings for army generals.

RPG attacks, heavy weaponry, beheadings, lots of dead cops/lots of corrupt cops

And Mexico continues to pay the price for America's war on the drugs it hates to love (or loves to hate).

[Bobbieo]

3. The violence is being carried to towns all along the borderr!!!

[High Plains]

4. From the Drug War Chronicle today:

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/529

Latin America: Bloody Easter Weekend in Mexico's Drug Wars

Drug War Chronicle, Issue #529, 3/28/08

Prohibition-related violence in Mexico took no break for the Easter holiday, with 59 people killed in the three-day period between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday, according to Mexican press reports compiled by New Mexico State University's Frontera NorteSur (FNS) news service. The victims included former and current policemen, four soldiers, street-level drug dealers, used car salesmen, and an American citizen, Cuban-born Humberto Flores, who was gunned down in Cancun.

The violence ran the length and breadth of the country, with killings occurring in the northern border states (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas), the center (Guanajuato, Mexico state), the Yucatan peninsula (Quintana Roo), the east coast (Veracruz), and the Pacific Coast (Oaxaca, Guerrero, Sinaloa). As FNS noted: "Once again, the geographical pattern of killings demonstrates how organized crime has extended its violent reach to virtually every nook and cranny of the country."

But there are hotspots, and one of them is Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande River from El Paso. Nearly two dozen killings took place there over Easter weekend, including four people found burned to death at Los Lamentos ("The Regrets"), Chihuahua, on the New Mexico border. The police chief there crossed the US border into New Mexico seeking asylum after his deputies quit, saying he feared drug traffickers.

Further down the river in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, the body of Araceli de la Cruz, a 47-year-old woman kidnapped March 13, was dumped in front of an army post blindfolded and with a mutilated hand stuffed in her mouth. Accompanying the body was a note addressed to a Mexican army general warning of the fate that befalls informers.

In the past two years, as the Mexican government has undertaken massive offensives against the drug trafficking organizations, and the cartels have fought among themselves for control of lucrative franchises, the death toll has been around 2,000 a year. It looks as if 2008 is on, if not ahead of, the pace. And the killing continues: Nine more murders were reported in Ciudad Juarez by mid-week this week.

Drug War Issues Source Countries - Border - Policing
Consequences of Prohibition Crime & Violence
Politics & Advocacy Federal Government

[Peace Patriot]

5. Gee, wherever the "war on drugs" goes, the result is...more drugs, more violence

and a massive boondoggle for "law enforcement" and the police state.

$5.5 BILLION of U.S. tax dollars to Colombia, and the result...more cocaine than ever, with the added plus, from the Bushite point of view, that the Colombian government, military and closely tied paramilitaries ALSO slaughter thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, political leftists and human rights workers, on behalf of Occidental Petroleum, Drummond Coal, Chiquita and other global corporate predators.

And the same thing will happen to--is happening to--Mexico, with its new billions in "war on drugs" money--more death, more violence, more illicit drugs and weapons trafficking, and state repression of social movements and leftists, for instance, the crushing of the teachers' union strike in Oaxaca.

Interestingly, Guatemala just elected its first progressive government, ever, and the progressives won on a platform of a SANE approach to drug trafficking and violence--social justice and ordinary, good government police work (not a "war"--just CLEAN government, and a CLEAN justice system). Their key poster showed two open hands. The key poster of their fascist opposition--which called for a police state "crackdown"--was an "iron fist." The "open hands" won! I hope it's a trend. It certainly is in South America, where country after country is rejecting the murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" and adopting SANE government policies of social justice and good police work--and are actually succeeding at curbing major drug traffickers.

[musiclawyer]

6. CONCACAF Women soccer olympic qualifying there in April

to boot. Mexico does not want anything embarassing happening there while this international soccer tournament takes place. There will be tons and tons of people in Ciudad Juarez who normally don't go there.