Pubdate: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX) Copyright: 2007 Austin American-Statesman Contact: http://www.statesman.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/32 EDITORIAL: WAVE OF KILLINGS THREATENS TO SWAMP CALDERON The last thing Mexican President Felipe Calderon needs is an object lesson in the power and reach of the Mexican drug cartels. But he got one last week when a dozen people - including a television reporter and a police chief - were gunned down in a wave of execution-style killings, presumably the work of narcotics traffickers. Amado Ramirez, a Televisa correspondent, was shot in the back three times by an unknown gunman as he left a radio interview on Friday. Also dead in the lastest wave of execution-style killings is Chief Ernesto Gutierrez Moreno. Gutierrez was killed in Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero, which includes Acapulco. The chief was killed while eating dinner in a Chilpancingo restaurant with his wife and son. Intenational journalist groups are calling on Calderon to launch a federal investigation into the death of Ramirez. The same should hold true in all homicides believed to be drug-related. As in the United States, homicides are considered local matters, but this wave of killings calls for a much firmer, federal hand. Since taking office on Dec. 1, Calderon has deployed more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers to drug strong points throughout Mexico, including Acapulco. The effort may pay off eventually, but the narcotics traffickers - as if to mock the president's efforts - continue to stack up bodies throughout the republic. It is a test of wills played out on the nightly news. Though his predecessors have wrestled with the drug cartels, none have done it with as high a profile as Calderon has. So, it is a test of strength and will that the world - and the United States in particular - is watching. Calderon's effectiveness will be judged inside and outside the country by how he handles the drug crisis that is wracking his nation. In this effort he will be able to deploy Mexican police and military, but given the reach of drug cartels, the president might find it lonely going. The expressions of outrage over the killings are largely confined to human rights groups and the Mexican press. Politicians are a little more timid in their condemnations of the evils of drugs and those who purvey them. For the United States, the stakes couldn't be higher. This country is the prime market for the drugs that flow from and through Mexico - and for the accompanying crime and misery the narcotics traffickers export. It is not a war that will be won easily, as the rising death toll attests. Nor will it be as simple as compiling arrest statistics. To win, Calderon is going to have to show the drug traffickers a much more united political establishment than he has been able to put together in the short time he's been president. His brief tenure notwithstanding, Calderon - known as master negotiator - is going to have to move decisively and quickly, because the narcotics lords appear to get stronger by the day and relish public displays of violence to demonstrate not only their power, but their contempt for Mexican authority. - --- MAP posted-by: Steve Heath