Pubdate: Sun, 02 Dec 2012
Source: Gulf Daily News (Bahrain)
Copyright: 2012 Gulf Daily News.
Contact:  http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2979
Author: Herbert Grimes

THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE...

When the body of Dr Maria Santos Gorrostieta was found on a roadside 
west of Mexico City this month, it bore the marks of torture.

Her wounds were a final insult from drug gangs whose only response, 
from the moment she challenged them, had been barbarity.

She ran for and won the mayoralty of the small town of Tiquicheo, 
knowing it would bring terror and possibly death from the cartels 
whose war with the state has cost 45,000 lives over six years.

By the time of her murder at 36, she had already lost her first 
husband to gunmen.

A second assassination attempt left her horribly scarred. The third 
time, she was driving one of her two daughters to school when ambushed.

Onlookers said she begged for the girl to be spared as she was led away.

Each death in Mexico's drug war is a tragedy, but the cartels' 
remorseless targeting of small-town mayors and police chiefs for 
daring to denounce them is especially harrowing.

It is also proof of a limitless courage amid the carnage.

More than two dozen mayors have died. Of the seven women who have 
held such offices under outgoing President Felipe Calderon, three 
have been assassinated, a fourth is missing and a fifth, 21, has fled 
to the US for her safety.

Mexico has a chance to make a fresh start and ensure that these 
sacrifices were not in vain.

When new President Enrique Pena Nieto was sworn in for a six-year 
term, he introduced a new security strategy based on crime reduction 
rather than confronting the cartels.

This has prompted inevitable anxieties. It is feared that Nieto will 
be tough on crime, but not in its causes.

The Obama administration worries that Nieto, from the Institutional 
Revolutionary Party (PRI) that ruled the country for 70 years until 
2000, will rekindle the PRI's old tacit bargain with the cartels that 
bought stability in return for corrupt collusion with the drug trade.

This is the sort of bargain many voters yearn since the alternative 
under Calderon has proved so horrifying.

Publicly, his successor says there will be no deals. Instead he has 
promised 40,000 new parliamentary "gendarmes" and an expanded federal 
police force.

Extra resources mist be part of any winning strategy, but as things 
stand, Nieto cannot afford them.

Mexico's tax take is among the lowest in the western hemisphere.

Colombia, whose success in lowering drug violence is so often cited 
as a model for Mexico, started with a better tax collection system 
and built on it.

A levy on the assets of the richest one per cent earmarked for 
security was the cornerstone of President Alvaro Uribe's plan to win 
back Colombia from its cartels.

Mexico has a larger, richer elite, but so far no commitment from it 
to help end the security apartheid that shields them and terrorises the poor.

President Obama and Nieto met last week to launch a political 
relationship that may determine the outcome of a conflict neglected 
by the world in favour of those in the Middle East.

Both men must contend with factions bent on legalising drugs, and 
others convinced of the need for a total crackdown.

Both seek a debate on legalisation without supporting it.

That debate is vital, for this much is clear: six more years of the 
weary, blood-soaked status quo is no way to honour the memory of Dr Gorrostieta.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom