Pubdate: Wed, 17 Mar 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: A3
Copyright: 2010 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Tracy Wilkinson, Reporting from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/Juarez
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico

Mexico Under Siege

CALDERON VISITS AN ANGRY CITY

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's President Faces Citizen Outrage Amid Signs 
His War on Drug Gangs Is Failing

The slayings of three people attached to the U.S. Consulate here 
underscore the failings of Mexico's military offensive against drug 
gangs despite a steady flow of troop reinforcements and personal 
attention from President Felipe Calderon.

Calderon came to Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday for the third time in 33 
days. The trip had been previously scheduled, but its agenda was 
overtaken by the consulate slayings -- the American couple and 
Mexican man are just three of the 500 people killed in the city this 
year alone.

The president encountered angry demonstrations, as on his previous 
visits, and a citizenry that is tense, frustrated and increasingly hopeless.

"We Are Fed Up, Mr. President," read the banner headline in Ciudad 
Juarez's leading newspaper, El Diario.

"More than fed up!" said Irene Bota, a shopkeeper and lifetime 
resident of this city across the border from El Paso. "You should 
have seen what Juarez used to be like. Artists, celebrities, soldiers 
from Ft. Bliss [in El Paso] all came to pass time and enjoy 
themselves. Now no one dares even go outside."

Ciudad Juarez today is the epicenter of unrestrained drug-war 
violence, with the highest homicide and kidnapping rates in the 
country and one of the broadest penetrations of drug-trafficking corruption.

Coroners are overwhelmed by the number of dead. Houses sit vacant, a 
quarter of the city's population, by official estimate, having fled 
in the last two years. Thousands of businesses have shuttered rather 
than pay steep extortion fees to gangs.

Calderon has poured nearly 10,000 army and police troops into the 
city. But far from restoring security, the killings have only soared. 
Killers act with impunity and, if it turns out the Americans were 
targeted because of who they were, with newfound brazenness.

In his trip to Ciudad Juarez on Feb. 11, Calderon was forced to 
publicly recognize that the offensive launched when he took office in 
December 2006 was "not working." Military campaigns had to be 
supplemented with social programs to attack poverty and promote 
education, he said in a remarkable moment of self-criticism. But 
residents complain that the words have not translated into concrete actions.

He was pushed to act by the Jan. 31 massacre in Ciudad Juarez of at 
least 15 mostly young people at a party and by an unusually forceful 
surge in demands from the public for change.

The attacks Saturday on U.S. diplomatic personnel and their families 
- -- and the swift, harsh voice of outrage from the Obama 
administration -- ratcheted up the pressure on Calderon and 
embarrassed his government.

Canada on Tuesday seconded Washington's warning to citizens against 
unnecessary travel to parts of Mexico.

Calderon will be pressed to capture suspects to show that his 
government still has the upper hand. There also will be questions 
north of the border about the United States' cooperation with 
Mexico's fight against traffickers.

Washington has pledged $1.3 billion to Mexico to beef up police and 
the judiciary, but only a fraction of the money has been released.

Mexican politicians were quick to lament the consulate deaths but 
added that the U.S. must share responsibility because its gun dealers 
supply the weapons and its addicts keep the traffickers in business.

The bodies of Lesley Enriquez, a consular official, and her husband, 
Arthur H. Redelfs, were returned Tuesday to family in El Paso. 
Mexican authorities have blamed the killings on the Aztecs drug gang.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said Redelfs' work as an 
officer in the El Paso prison system, where numerous Aztecs gang 
members are held, might have had a role in the killings.

Reyes echoed U.S. officials in pledging to capture the culprits 
quickly, despite the fact that few crimes are ever solved in Mexico.

As Calderon met behind closed doors with security officials here, a 
small demonstration was taking place outside a funeral home. 
Relatives of some of the 28 other people killed over the weekend were 
protesting what they described as the government's negligence and indifference.

"The curious thing about this [consulate] case is that with one huge 
slap from [President] Obama, the entire Mexican state seems to have 
awakened and become determined to make the criminals pay," 
commentator Ricardo Aleman noted. "Never mind that those same 
criminals have killed thousands of young Mexicans, to whose families 
no authority ever promised justice." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake