Mexican drug war inches its way north (Aug. 20)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
It is disturbing to read that the front in the Mexican drug war has moved to Monterrey, one of Mexico’s most beautiful and most prosperous cities. The people of Monterrey are well-educated and productive, and the city is well planned and well-governed. Or, at least it was.
Now, local business leaders are putting full-page ads in newspapers, pleading with President Felipe Calderon to send troops to defend the city against drug violence.
The Associated Press reports that the mayor of Santiago, a suburb of Monterrey, was kidnapped and murdered by drug thugs disguised as police. The AP says Santiago has been a favorite getaway for residents of Monterrey, but that is no longer the case.
The Wall Street Journal reports that drug gangs are regularly using tractor-trailer trucks to block arterials in Monterrey, making it harder for police and fire trucks to respond to calls for help. A grenade was thrown at a television station.
If President Calderon reads the ad from the burghers of Monterrey, there will be little he can do to respond. Mexico’s armed forces already are stretched beyond their breaking points.
And the drug gangs keep expanding their wars against one another and the country’s public safety establishment, fueled by a constant flow of drug money, much of it from the United States.
Those same drug gangs are drifting north. We’re already dealing with their outliers here in Madera County. The 45,000-plant marijuana grow discovered this week north of Madera was just one example of Mexican drug gangs at work here. Had that marijuana been sold, much of the millions of dollars it would have fetched likely would have ended up in Mexican drug lords’ hands, either as cash or guns.
The United States pretends it isn’t in this war, but it is. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just sent 250 National Guard troops to help protect the border. Before long, we will need 100 times that many.
