Pubdate: Sat, 26 May 2012
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2012 The Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Michael Weissenstein

MEXICO'S DRUGWAR MAY TRY NEWTACK

Presidential Hopeful to Focus on Reducing Violence

Mexico City (AP) - Shortly after sunrise last month in the border 
city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van 
outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between 
Mexico's two most-powerful drug cartels.

Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. 
Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen 
mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The 
decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 
miles from the U.S. border.

The man who appears likely to become Mexico's next president says he 
can ease the waves of violence consuming the country by changing the 
focus of its six-year offensive against organized crime.

The administration of President Felipe Calderon has targeted the top 
ranks of the country's drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to 
capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons, often in 
close coordination with the U.S.

Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a double-digit lead five weeks before the 
July 1 election, says his top security priority will not be arresting 
the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of 
dollars of narcotics each year into the United States.

Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government's 
resources on reducing homicide, kidnapping and extortion - the crimes 
that do the most damage to the greatest number of Mexicans - by 
flooding police and troops into towns and cities with the highest 
rates of violent crime.

"This doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to other crimes, or 
that we don't fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this 
time is diminishing violence in the country," Pena Nieto said in a 
recent interview.

Pena Nieto's campaign said drug cartels could still be attacked, 
particularly if they carry out murders, kidnappings and extortion, 
but arresting their leaders will no longer be the focus of government efforts.

"Each administration chooses its operational objectives, and the 
objective per se is not the extradition or capture of big bosses, or 
the burning of seized drugs," said Pena Nieto's campaign coordinator, 
Luis Videgaray.

Some observers say that a strategy to reduce violence above all else 
could mean that drug dealers who conduct their businesses discreetly 
will be quietly left alone.

"I think that it's very clear that he's moving in the direction of 
concentrating the resources that the federal state has (toward) 
fighting crime and violence that affect people in Mexico ... as 
opposed to concentrating the resources on combating drug 
trafficking," said former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. "If you 
have scarce resources and you're focusing them on A, you're not 
focusing them on B."

Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish 
initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 70 years until it lost the 
presidency in 2000, and high-ranking party figures and their 
relatives were often accused of striking deals with cartels in 
exchange for political protection. Opponents have been quick to say 
that Pena Nieto will go back to that old PRI model.

"They've shown themselves to be absolutely tolerant of organized 
crime," Josefina Vazquez Mota told Spanish newspaper El Pais in a 
recent interview. Vazquez Mota is running on the presidential ticket 
for the National Action Party.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom