Posted on 09/22/2012 9:19:38 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
Mexico has sent soldiers to patrol a suburb of Mexico City for the first time to combat a rise in drug-related violence that is beginning to encroach on the capital.
From late Wednesday, a combined force of around 1,000 soldiers, federal police and local police took to the streets of Nezahualcoyotl on the capital's eastern flank, which has suffered from a dispute between two rival drug cartels.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon's fight against drug gangs has overshadowed his administration, and the deployment in Nezahualcoyotl brings the conflict into the home state of his successor Enrique Pena Nieto, who takes office in December.
The local government's request for troops in the sprawling municipality in the State of Mexico follows the murder there this weekend of Jaime Serrano, a local state congressman and member of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Some Nezahualcoyotl residents told Reuters they had been extorted by criminals identifying themselves as members of the La Familia drug gang.
"Things are getting worse and worse here," said one local man, who asked not to be named. "People here have got used to paying these people (the cartels). If you don't, they say they're going to kill you and your family."
Mexico City and its immediate surroundings have been among the areas least affected by the bloody turf wars between drug gangs and their clashes with security forces, which have killed around 60,000 people over the past six years.
In 2012, the national death toll from the drug violence has eased somewhat, according to a tally by newspaper Reforma.
But the bloodletting has crept up in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico, where just over half of the population of the capital's urban area live.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.chicagotribune.com ...
The cartels must be getting into the White European Mexican neighborhoods now....not just the Mestizo and Indigena neighborhoods.
I think the Mexican govt is now dropping pantloads
This is not good kids.
Unexpected and spontaneous.
The drug cartel leaders are in a similar position, if any became El Presidente they would have to accept a less powerful office.
Nope most of Neza is pretty poor and indigenous. Crap hole in fact.
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