Darth Wong wrote:It's still not as scary as the drug gangs in Brazil which actually attacked an army base.
No, but maybe
this is, as far as civilian population is concerned:
The Guardian wrote:
Revellers killed in grenade attack on Mexican independence celebrations
* Jo Tuckman
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 September 2008 16.47 BST
* Article history
At least eight people have been killed in a grenade attack on a crowd celebrating Mexican independence in the city of Morelia.
The attack, in which dozens were injured, could signal a new stage in the country's already vicious drug wars.
Two explosions ripped through the crowd of around 30,000 people minutes after they listened to the local governor giving the traditional Grito, or cry of independence.
The authorities did not immediately identify who they thought was to blame, but many observers assumed the involvement of Mexico's drug cartels.
While the country's various leftwing guerrilla groups traditionally shy away from killings, the cartels are deeply immersed in inter-gang wars for the control of trafficking routes, local markets and production.
They are also battling against a nationwide military-led offensive, aimed at reining them in, which began in Michoacan, the central state, of which Morelia is the capital, almost two years ago.
Launched by the president, Felipe Calderon, who comes from Michoacan, the offensive has so far made the violence worse with close to 3,000 people having been killed in drug-related violence so far this year.
Last Friday, 24 bodies were found dumped close to the capital less than two weeks after 12 decapitated bodies were found near the normally tranquil southern city of Merida.
Nevertheless last night's attack on a crowd of families, many of them with small children, would be a major scaling up of the traffickers' challenge to the government. They have so far focused on attacking rivals or members of the security forces.
A decision to attack the Morelia festivities would be about as charged a message as it would be possible to send in deeply nationalistic Mexico, where similar celebrations take place in the main squares of every city and town.
As the grenades were exploding in his home state, Calderon was watching the fireworks over the capital's Zocalo plaza.
He used his speech at the start of yesterday's military parade through the capital, another tradition that took place under heightened emergency security measures this year, to condemn the attackers as "cowards" and "traitors."
Calling for unity across the ideological spectrum he added: "These criminals are condemned to fail because they will have all of Mexico against them."
This happened last year, not far from where I live. Hell, I could have been standing there, going to the
Grito was actually an option I was considering.
As if that weren't enough, a couple of weeks ago,
this other thing happened, in the city where I work, no less:
pr-inside.com wrote:Grenade attack wounds 1 cop, 5 civilians in Mexico
© AP
2009-02-13 06:07:01 -
URUAPAN, Mexico (AP) - Police say assailants hurled a fragmentation grenade at a police patrol in western Mexico, injuring one officer and five civilians.
Police say the attackers threw the grenade from a speeding motorcycle in Uruapan, a city a Michoacan state.
The policeman and two bystanders were seriously wounded in Thursday's attack. The three others had
minor injuries.
Violence has soared and grown more brutal in Mexico as drug gangs battle each other for territory and intensify attacks on police.
Civilians are often caught in the crossfire. A toddler was killed in northern Ciudad Juarez on Thursday when gunmen opened fire on the car she was riding in.
President Calderon says drug violence claimed at least 6,000 lives last year.
Oh, but
Uruapenses weren't all that shocked, since they had seen
this other interesting thing last year:
NY Times wrote:URUAPAN, Mexico — Norteño music was blaring at the Sol y Sombra bar on Sept. 6 when several men in military garb broke up the late night party. Waving high-powered machine guns, they screamed at the crowd to stay put and then dumped the contents of a heavy plastic bag on the dance floor.
The New York Times
Few of the drug-related killings in Uruapan have been solved.
Five human heads rolled to a bloody stop.
“This is not something you see every day,” said a bartender, who asked not to be named for fear of losing his own head. “Very ugly.”
An underworld war between drug gangs is raging in Mexico, medieval in its barbarity, its foot soldiers operating with little fear of interference from the police, its scope and brutality unprecedented, even in a country accustomed to high levels of drug violence.
In recent months the violence has included a total of two dozen beheadings, a raid on a local police station by men with grenades and a bazooka, and daytime kidnappings of top law enforcement officials. At least 123 law enforcement officials, among them 2 judges and 3 prosecutors, have been gunned down or tortured to death. Five police officers were among those beheaded.
In all, the violence has claimed more than 1,700 civilian lives this year, and federal officials say the killings are on course to top the estimated 1,800 underworld killings last year. Those death tolls compare with 1,304 in 2004 and 1,080 in 2001, these officials say.
On top of all, though a tad exaggerated, there's
this other matter:
The Guardian wrote:
Mexico is in free fall
With cartels taking over cities and killing all anti-drug officials, the country is crying out for help – but is unlikely to get it from the US
o David Rieff
o guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 February 2009 22.00 GMT
o Article history
Shortly before the US elections last November, then vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden was widely criticised for predicting that an Obama administration would almost certainly be tested by what he called a "generated" international crisis, in much the way that the Soviet Union "tested" John F Kennedy shortly after he assumed office. Biden did not point to a specific region of the world, but mentioned the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Russia as the likeliest sources of trouble for the new president.
Impolitic or not, Biden's anxieties seem to have informed several of the administration's early foreign policy decisions. These include his own extension of an olive branch to Russia at the recent Munich security conference, and Barack Obama's appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan – and of George Mitchell to a similar post for Israel-Palestine.
But, as pressing as the Middle East, south Asia, and Russia (as well as Iran and North Korea) are, another crisis far closer to home could create as much peril as a nuclear-armed Iran, an aggressively resurgent Russia, or even an Islamist-dominated Pakistan.
That crisis is located in Mexico, which is in free fall, its state institutions under threat as they have not been since at least the Cristero uprising of the late 1920s and possibly since the Mexican revolution of 1910. While the Obama administration is obviously aware of what is happening south of the Rio Grande, the threat simply does not command the attention that its gravity requires.
The crisis consists in nothing less than an effort by the major drug cartels to tame and suborn the Mexican state, and not just in the strip along the US border, though the epicentre of the crisis is there. Obviously, the cartels' leaders do not have designs on Mexico's presidential palace. But, through a policy of terror extending from Oaxaca in the south, through Acapulco on the Pacific coast, and up to the great border cities of Tijuana and Juarez (Mexico's sixth and seventh most populous cities, respectively), they have made it abundantly clear that they are trying to achieve impunity.
The only recent parallel in Latin America was a similar effort 15 years ago by the Colombian drug cartels. That disguised coup failed – barely – and there is no guarantee that the result will be similar this time around in Mexico.
Journalists with long experience of war zones report being more worried about their safety in Mexico border than when they were in Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq, though much of the violence is internecine. Of the thousands who have been killed, often after being horribly tortured, many, if not most, have been members of the drug cartels and their families.
But it is the campaign of targeted assassination against any Mexican official who seems to pose a serious threat to the cartels' operations that makes the crisis so dire. First, in May 2007, the cartels killed Jose Nemesio Lugo Felix, the general co-ordinator of information at the national centre for planning and analysis to combat organised crime. Soon after, a hitman murdered Edgar Milan Gomez, Mexico's highest ranking federal police official.
In November, 2008, a plane carrying Juan Camilo Mourino, Mexico's national security adviser, crashed under mysterious circumstances. And very recently, the retired General Mauro Enrique Tello Quinones, one of the most decorated officers in the Mexican army, was abducted, tortured, and killed less than a week after assuming a new position as anti-drug chief in the resort city of Cancún.
For all the lip service paid to relations with Mexico (and, indeed, with Latin America more generally) from Franklin D Roosevelt to Obama, the truth is that developments in Mexico have always had short shrift from US presidents. Illegal immigration is a major issue, to be sure, as is the drug trade. But the US government has always regarded them as domestic American issues rather than as crucial foreign policy concerns.
It is emblematic that while Obama has received Mexican President Felipe Calderón, the White House only recently announced that one of his first foreign trips would be to Mexico. And incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton was asked almost nothing about Mexico at her confirmation hearing, and she emphasised relations with Mexico neither in her own statement nor in those she has made since assuming her post.
Indeed, the conventional wisdom in the US is that Mexico policy regarding illegal immigration and drugs will be the province of the new homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano (herself a former border state governor). Meanwhile, the treasury and commerce departments will be handle trade policy concerning Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
This is the way Mexico policy has been run for decades. And, offensive as this has been to Mexican sensibilities – and harmful to finding long-term solutions to America's immigration dilemma – these complacent arrangements have never presented so clear and present danger as they do today.
Good thing they at least have certified the Mexican government for proving they're really trying to fight drug trafficking. Phew.
