Drug war intensifies in Mexico

[ErnstBlofeld]

AFP:

 

 

]Mexico (AFP) – Mexico's blood-soaked drug war intensified in northeastern Tamaulipas state over the weekend, with fresh violence attributed to the Zetas, the drug cartel blamed for slaughtering 72 illegal migrants.

 

In the latest flareup, unidentified gunmen murdered the mayor of Hidalgo, a small town in the western part of state, which borders Texas, a source in the state prosecutor's office said.

 

Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, 46, was shot to death while he was driving his car, the source said. His four-year-old daughter was seriously wounded in the attack, the source said.

 

Leal Garcia had taken office in January 2008 and was supposed to step down on December 31. The town of 25,000 people is located 60 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of the state capital, Ciudad Victoria.

 

Much of the violence in the area is blamed on the Zetas, a brutal, well-trained group of former elite Mexican army commandos that the US government calls the most dangerous organized crime syndicate in Mexico.

 

Attacks were reported in the coastal city of Tampico late Saturday, where two people were wounded when a police station was bombed.

 

Hours earlier two bombs exploded near a morgue in Reynosa, on the US border, where the bodies of the Central and South American migrants -- 58 men and 14 women -- slain Tuesday were being kept. Fifteen people were injured in the blast, local media reported.

 

Two car bombs exploded in Ciudad Victoria on Friday, one outside a major TV station and the other outside the public transport offices. Both caused material damage but no victims.

 

And a government official probing the massacre went missing Friday along with a police officer. Unconfirmed news reports said that their bodies were found Saturday on a road near the ranch where the migrants were gunned down.

 

These attacks are a direct challenge to the government, Mexican analysts said Sunday.

 

The Zetas emerged in the late 1990s as hired guns for the powerful leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas.

 

After Cardenas was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007, the Zetas broke off and began a turf war with their former employers for control of drug smuggling routes into the lucrative US market.

 

"It's clear that the Zetas are behind those explosions," said Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.

 

"They didn't expect anyone to survive (the massacre) and now they are reacting with these attacks by challenging the Mexican state," he told AFP.

 

The slaying of the migrants "takes place in the specific context in the northeast where two (illegal) organizations are fighting," said Alejandro Poire, government spokesman on security issues.

 

The sole survivor of Tuesday's massacre, an 18 year-old Ecuadoran man, said the Zetas kidnapped the group and demanded that the migrants work for them as hit men for 2,000 dollars a month. The group refused, and were slaughtered.

 

According to Poire, the Zeta's attempt to recruit the migrants is a sign that the group has weakened. "There is evidence that these organizations have entered a phase of downfall and destruction," said Poire.

 

The survivor was in a Mexico City military hospital over the weekend under protection and awaiting a trip back to Ecuador.

 

Diplomats from Brazil, Ecuador and three Central American countries were in Tamaulipas on Saturday helping local police identify the slain migrants, Mexican officials said.

 

As of Sunday, 14 Hondurans, 13 Salvadorans, five Guatemalans and a Brazilian had been identified.

 

Mexican marines discovered the slain migrants after a gun battle with suspected Zetas near the town of San Fernando late Tuesday. Three Zetas were killed and one was captured in the fighting, officials said.

 

The slaughter spotlights the risks taken by hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to reach the United States each year.

 

An estimated 400,000 migrants transit through Mexico every year, most of them victims of trafficking by gangs, according to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.

 

Mexican government officials have said that drug gangs are increasingly extorting and kidnapping migrants to raise money because a controversial government clampdown on organized crime has eaten into their other sources of revenues.

 

Turf wars between Mexico's seven major drug cartels and government forces have killed at least 28,000 people since President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to crack down on the illegal trade in December 2006.

 

 

 

 

 

[AceRimmer]

Even if it were Dubya or McCain, we'd have regular Army and Marines on the border to back up the Guard and Border Patrol, because this is quickly spiraling out of control, and it's already poured from Mexico to our side. This is escalating because the cartels, like Iran, Russia, North Korea and the Chicoms see our Apologist-in-Chief for the weak leader he is.