Fighting drugs and making a stand in Culiacan

Houston Chronicle ^ | June 1, 2008 | DUDLEY ALTHAUS

[SwinneySwitch]

Federal troops lock down region in effort to bring gangsters to heel

CULIACAN, MEXICO — Automatic weapons at the ready, the platoons of federal police officers descend from the transport planes and high-step as neatly as majorettes into the searing heat of this violent city.

Gen. Rodolfo Cruz, short, fit and wearing the same starched blue uniform as his troops, puts the policemen through their paces as television cameras whirr.

"Here we are, showing our faces," says Cruz, 65, a career army officer, who sprinkles conversations with English phrases learned during military training in Oklahoma. "I fight crime, I put on my uniform and show my face. I don't go around hidden."

Frustrated with the rising death toll from a resilient criminal insurgency, President Felipe Calderon appears ready to make a stand in Culiacan, a sprawling northern city that's long been an incubator for Mexico's drug gangs. With the fresh units having flown in the past week, nearly 3,000 soldiers and militarized officers of the federal police now patrol Culiacan and nearby communities in Sinaloa state, struggling to bring rival gangs to heel.

"At some point, you have to cut the cancer out," a U.S. counter-narcotics official tells a reporter in Mexico City. "President Calderon realizes it must be cut out before it cuts you out."

Similar surgical efforts have been tried over the years in Sinaloa, as well as elsewhere in Mexico. All have won remission, but ultimately failed. The current attempt meets with frustrated shrugs.

"The federal forces are insufficient to stop organized crime," declares an editorial in El Debate, a leading newspaper here. "One can't live in Culiacan now. Insecurity is pervasive."

Eight federal policemen were killed last week when they attempted to raid a gangster safe house in a middle-class Culiacan neighborhood.

[SwinneySwitch]

"More than 330 people have been killed gangland-style in Sinaloa this year, including 36 local, state and federal police."

[B Knotts]

Yeah...what do we need a border fence for, anyhow? </sarcasm>

[fabian]

God bless them....now if more drugies over here would become real Americans we could stop the illegal drugs from coming in in a bigger way.

[TKDietz]

There is just too much money to be made for any crackdowns to ever be more than superficially successful. We’ll see them step up the drug war though, it’s happening already down there. They’ll take out a few people, seize what seems like huge amounts of drugs, declare victory and this whole uproar will die down. All the while the drugs will flow pretty much the same as ever. As long as there are billions and billions of dollars to be made we’ll never make it stop.