Calderon calls on Mexico to 'close ranks' against border gangs
Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
MEXICO CITY — With drug violence raging unchecked along the border with Texas and deep into Mexico's heartland, President Felipe Calderon called Wednesday for the country's security forces and citizens to "close ranks" against its powerful criminal gangs.
"It's indeed possible to win the battle," Calderon said at a meeting with Cabinet ministers involved in law enforcement. "But to achieve that, we must remain united. We must close ranks against criminality."
The president announced that more than $600 million in federal funds would be channeled to local and state governments this year to help improve their police forces.
He called for better training of police at the local, state and federal levels; increased cooperation among the country's police forces; and the creation of a system for citizens to inform on drug gangs operating in their communities.
"Fighting delinquency is now a national priority and a duty," Calderon said.
Bloodshed continues
He has made the crackdown on Mexico's drug gangs a cornerstone of his 13-month-old administration. But while the campaign has scored some notable successes — including the seizure of more than 40 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine and other narcotics — it so far has failed to stanch the bloodshed.Two federal police officers were killed Tuesday night in an ambush by suspected drug traffickers in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande near McAllen. On Monday, soldiers and police killed three suspected narco-gunmen in Rio Bravo, a small city 12 miles down river from Reynosa.
Despite the dispatch of thousands of police and soldiers to several violence-plagued areas last year, underworld rivalries killed more than 2,500 people across Mexico, about the same as in prior years.
"These events show us that the battle, as we predicted, has not been easy and that much remains to be done," Calderon said.
The Bush administration has proposed giving Mexico $1.4 billion in aid over the next two or three years for additional Mexican military helicopters, drug-sniffing dogs and telecommunications equipment.
Traffickers now control some local governments and receive protection from politicians. Local and state police have ranked high among the casualties in the recent bloodshed.
Much of the violence has occurred in Tamaulipas state, bordering South Texas from Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico.
This is the territory of the Gulf drug-trafficking cartel and the assassins working for it known as the Zetas. Osiel Cardenas, the organization's reputed head, is jailed in Houston awaiting trial on federal narcotics charges. Calderon ordered him extradited to the U.S. last year.
Founded by deserting special forces soldiers, the Zetas served as bodyguards and assassins for cartel bosses, but a few have become kingpins themselves. Officials say the three gunmen killed Monday in Rio Bravo belonged to a gang loyal to Heriberto Lazcano, nicknamed El Lazcas, who in Cardenas' absence has become one of several top cartel chieftains.
"The assassins have assumed control of the criminal organizations, which has spawned greater violence," Genaro Garcia Luna, Calderon's secretary of public security, said at Wednesday Cabinet meeting.
Began at checkpoint
Calderon ordered 3,500 troops and paramilitary federal police to the border after the assassination nearly six weeks ago in Rio Bravo of politician Juan Guajardo. The former mayor and federal lawmaker was gunned down along with four federal agents acting as his bodyguards.Monday's shootout in Rio Bravo, in which at least 10 policemen and soldiers also were wounded, began when the alleged gunmen flashed their weapons at one of those checkpoints. A firefight ensued, at the checkpoint and again near the municipal police offices.
After the shootout, officials arrested 10 other alleged gunmen — including two men from Detroit and another from Texas — and confiscated a large cache of automatic weapons, grenades and grenade launchers.
The Tuesday attack on the police patrol in Reynosa — the federal police are patrolling that and other cities in pickups — was retaliation for the Rio Bravo gunfight, officials said.
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