MEXICO: Mexican government sends troops to violent state of Michoacan as Attorney General announces plans to broaden fight against drug violence

Record ID: 303289

  • Title: MEXICO: Mexican government sends troops to violent state of Michoacan as Attorney General announces plans to broaden fight against drug violence
  • Date: 15th December 2006
  • Summary: (LATIN) MICHOACAN, MEXICO (DECEMBER 13, 2006) (REUTERS) MILITARY CHECKPOINT SOLDIERS VERIFYING DOCUMENTS CITIZENS BEING SEARCHED AT A MILITARY CHECKPOINT SOLDIERS ASKING PEOPLE TO PASS THROUGH PEOPLE BEING CHECKED SOLDIERS SEARCHING TRUCK SOLDIERS LETTING VEHICLES PASS THROUGH SOLDIER SEARCHING CAR FOR DRUGS SOLDIER LOOKING FOR NARCOTICS AT AGUILILLA CHECK POINT SOLDIERS CHECKING PEOPLE AND VEHICLES HELICOPTER FLYING OVER ZONE OF OPERATION FEDERAL POLICE WATCHING THE MUNICIPALITY VARIOUS OF CITIZEN'S PACKAGES AND PURSES BEING CHECKED BY POLICE FEDERAL POLICE ON HIGHWAYS
  • Embargoed: 30th December 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA28EAXTIHBLEBYL4WL6F4MF2Y6
  • Story Text: Mexico announced plans on Thursday (December 14) to broaden its fight against feuding drug gangs, saying it would dispatch soldiers to other areas after sending 7,000 troops and police to one violence-plagued state this week.
    More than 500 hundred people have died since January in drug-related violence in Michoacan, the home state of new President Felipe Calderon, part of a power struggle between rival cartels across Mexico that has killed about 3,000 people in the last two years.
    Calderon's government this week sent soldiers, federal police and Navy forces to Michoacan to try to recapture areas controlled by the gangs and destroy opium and marijuana plantations. The gangs are fighting for control of lucrative drug routes and plantations.
    "It's clear to the federal government," Calderon told soldiers, military and government officials at a Mexico City military base. "We cannot allow any state in the Republic (of Mexico) to be a hostage of drugs trafficking, organized crime or common crime."
    At least one suspected trafficker was killed in a battle with troops in the western state on Wednesday, the government said.
    The violence in Mexico stems from a feud between groups linked to two drug gangs, the Gulf Cartel from the country's northeast and an alliance of traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa.
    The Sinaloa gang is led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from a high-security prison in 2001, just weeks after Calderon's predecessor President Vicente Fox took office.
    But Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said the same strategy that has been applied to Michoacan will be used in other areas.
    "The integral strategy consists not only in capturing the cartel leader, but in dismantling their ability to create value and impunity," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told reporters Evidently we are going to be in a more effective fight if we dismantle the criminal organizations. That's the objective, because if we don't dismantle the operational capacity of organized crime, we will not be successful, even if we capture the leaders. Because of that, the strategy to fight drug trafficking is different now from the one we had in past. It takes past experience, but puts it in an integral perspective, looking at the logic of their economic activity, of the added value that drug trafficking produce"
    Fox, whose term ended last month, later announced the "mother of all battles" against narcotics smugglers but did not extensively use the military to fight the traffickers. Despite some high-profile arrests, Fox failed to stop a surge in the killings.
    The ruthlessness of the gangs, who in one infamous attack rolled five severed heads onto the dance floor of a nightclub in Michoacan in September, has shocked even crime-hardened Mexico.
    The violence has spread from northern border states where marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine are smuggled into the United States, to Pacific coastal regions like Michoacan and tourist resort Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero.
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