Pubdate: Wed, 01 May 2013
Source: USA Today (US)
Copyright: 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/625HdBMl
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: David Agren

MEXICO IS SHIFTING FOCUS TO ECONOMY, NOT DRUG CARTELS

ACAPULCO, MEXICO Catholic priest Jesus Mendoza ministers to a 
working-class neighborhood in the hills of Acapulco that is a world 
away from the tourist resort destination below.

He says one parishioner had three of his daughters abducted for a 
$2,500 ransom. Business owners are being forced to pay off 
extortionists. And 120 parishioners are either missing, kidnapped or 
have been killed over the past six years.

When President Obama arrives in Mexico on Thursday, he will encounter 
a country that is still suffering from widespread violence against 
ordinary citizens from organized criminal and drug cartels - but he 
will also find that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took 
office Dec. 1, has little interest in talking about crime or getting 
more help from the United States to combat it.

"This new government has a media strategy to minimize the subject of 
violence as the country's main problem and give the impression that 
good times are coming, beginning with their actions," Mendoza says.

That campaign, Mendoza and others say, is to market Mexico to the 
world by tamping down talk of a country where drug kingpins control 
whole districts with unremitting violence and portray Mexico as an 
emerging economic power and safe haven for foreign investment.

That strategy was on display this week when the Interior Ministry 
announced that U.S. federal law enforcement agencies will no longer 
be allowed to work directly with its police and intelligence 
departments but must go through the ministry itself. The move is part 
of several aimed at preventing crime rather than undertaking 
large-scale operations to eliminate the drug kingpins who are a 
primary concern of the United States.

Mexico's drug syndicates are the No. 1 supplier of illegal drugs into 
the United States. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has said 
Mexican cartels are also infiltrating drug-selling operations in 
major U.S. cities and taking over.

According to a 2011 Justice Department report, the Mexican drug 
cartels "represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States."

Obama visits Mexico on Thursday and Friday for meetings expected to 
touch on economic issues as much the security situation. The Pena 
Nieto administration intends to emphasize matters such as achieving 
structural changes in the energy sector and tax system, creating jobs 
and cultivating the Mexican economy.

"He is downplaying the number of murders," says George Grayson, 
Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "He wants 
to turn the debate to social and economic issues."

Pena Nieto has stopped publicizing the high-profile arrests and 
police actions trumpeted in previous administrations.

Though the arrests made headlines in the United States, less well 
known are the 65,000 Mexicans killed and 25,000 people missing from 
the cartels' war against one another and the government's operations 
to break them.

Pena Nieto has ended the perp walks in which captured cartel kingpins 
are paraded before the news media. The military no longer invites the 
media here to witness soldiers burning marijuana plantations and 
tanks rolling over seized weapons.

Mexican news media are downplaying the violence, too. The Observatory 
for Coverage of Violence reported that the words "organized crime" 
were published 50% less frequently on newspaper front pages and have 
appeared 70% less often on television since Pena Nieto took office in December.

Yet some Mexico newspapers report that villagers in some states are 
forming armed self-defense groups to defend their homes and families 
and businesses.

Mendoza, the Acapulco priest, says the groups are indicative of the 
frustrations felt by ordinary Mexicans over the absence of the 
authorities. He is not optimistic that things will change soon.

"This violence developed over decades," he says. "It's not going to 
be resolved in one six-year term, even if there's a correct strategy."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom