Latin
America:
Mexican
Army
Invades
Nuevo
Laredo,
Detains
Police
Force
as
Cartel
Violence
Hits
Border
City
6/17/05
The Mexican Army was patrolling the streets of Nuevo Laredo earlier this week after a steady drumbeat of drug prohibition-related violence reached a spectacular double crescendo last week. First, newly sworn-in police chief Alejandro Dominguez was gunned down June 8, the same day he was sworn in, making him the seventh Nuevo Laredo law enforcement officer to be killed this year and the 50th person killed in the violence this year in Nuevo Laredo. Then, three days later, a group of Nuevo Laredo municipal police opened fire on a convoy of Federal Investigative Police (PFI) coming to beef up security in the city of half a million, seriously wounding one fed. By Monday, faced with both the brazen attacks and rising press attention north of the border, Mexican President Vicente Fox had sent in the cavalry. Hundreds of Mexican soldiers and agents of the Federal Preventive Police (PPF) assumed police powers in the city, establishing roadblocks, some cruising around in armored vehicles, as more than 700 Nuevo Laredo police were detained and 41 who were involved in the attack on federal police were shipped to Mexico City for questioning. The cops were corrupt, the Fox administration said. "There are very clear signs of a relationship between elements of the Nuevo Laredo police and drug smuggling, hence the decisive action," government spokesman Ruben Aguilar told journalists in the capital. "Operation Secure Mexico," as the Mexican government dubbed it, will also be expanded to other border cities, the Mexico City daily La Jornada reported Tuesday. It follows a similar push earlier this year, as the government attempted to wrest control of its prisons from drug traffickers. When suspected traffickers struck back by murdering six prison employees in the border town of Matamoros, Fox sent in the troops. But as has been the case with innumerable previous shows of force against the traffickers, things soon return to business as usual. Throughout this week, the PPF and PFI agents began the process of investigating the local cops, subjecting them to questioning and drug tests in an effort to weed out police linked to drug trafficking. Nuevo Laredo police have spent the week cooped up in their barracks, stripped of their guns, their police cars, even their police-issue cell phones and radios. Thirteen of the 41 sent to Mexico City after the attack on the feds were already the subject of criminal investigations, federal officials said. The border violence is an unintended consequence of President Fox's aggressive campaign against trafficking organizations. Tough law enforcement action has whittled the number of so-called cartels down from seven to two, but the forced consolidation of the $20-30 billion a year industry has come with no apparent impact on the flow of drugs to the north and with a death toll of around 500 so far this year as rival traffickers settle accounts. The drama on the border couldn't come at a better time for US drug warriors seeking to blame Mexico for US drug problems. On Tuesday, Rep. Mark Souder's anti-drug subcommittee held hearings on Mexico, with Souder worrying aloud that groups that smuggle drugs into the US could also smuggle terrorists or nuclear weapons. DEA assistant administrator for intelligence Anthony Placido told the committee that Mexico remained the number one conduit for marijuana and cocaine coming into the US and that the primary reason was corruption. "The single largest impediment to seriously impacting the drug trafficking problem in Mexico is corruption," Placido said in written testimony prepared for the hearing. "In actuality, law enforcement in Mexico is all too often part of the problem rather than part of the solution. This is particularly true at the municipal and state levels of government," he said. Later that same day, President Fox announced that he would soon introduce legislation to more severely punish corrupt police found to be in cahoots with the drug cartels. Law enforcement, he said, "must be the best example of behavior and not those who, by colluding with organized crime, let society down." But in a land where police are ill-paid and the wealth and murderousness of the traffickers are legendary, it's still a tough call for Mexican cops. The saying goes that the choice is simple, "plata o ploma," silver or lead, the bribe or the bullet. Meanwhile, the violence on the border continues. Wire services reported two more killings in Nuevo Laredo this week and five more in the downriver border city of Reynosa, all reportedly drug prohibition-related.
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