Down in Mexico, the political assassinations are getting gorier and gorier:
This time, two small-town politicians were found stoned to death in Michoacan, a western state mired in the country’s drug war. Mayor Gustavo Sanchez and city adviser Rafael Equihua, who served in 26,000-strong city of Tancitaro, were found in an abandoned pickup, reports the AP. Sanchez is the fifth city leader killed in the last six weeks.
Tancitaro’s city council chief was killed last year, prompting the mayor and seven other officials to quit, citing threats by drug cartels. Local cops soon stopped showing up for work, prompting the entire squad to be fired, while state police and federal soldiers took over security. Sanchez had served as mayor since January.
And the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting theory about why small-town mayors have been the targets of narco-assassinations—basically, traffickers could move into a small town, set up shop, bribe the local police chief and his tiny staff, and do their business with impunity while the mayors looked the other way.
But new focus on governmental corruption is putting the mayors in a pinch. If they continue to collaborate with traffickers, they face legal punishment. If they refuse to collaborate, they face assassination.
- Iker Merodio on Flickr
That sounds plausible, but let’s push it further—if narco-gangs turn being a mayor for the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, the party of president Calderon, who has been intent on ramping up the drug war) into the most dangerous job in the country, it shouldn’t be hard to get their own narco-mayors elected instead.
When Secretary Clinton called the narco-war an “insurgency,” she wasn’t kidding (despite Obama’s attempt to hush her up).
The narco-gangs know that their best ally is governmental complicity. And if they can rule areas of Mexico with their own narco-party that will go easy on their production and trafficking activities, why not go for it? And what better way to clear the path for narco-politicians than to terrorize everybody else into shutting up and getting out of the way?
These mayoral assassinations aren’t about what individual mayors did or didn’t do—they’re about sending a message to mayors everywhere: play ball, resign, or die.
It’s a terror campaign.
Meanwhile, Secretary Clinton’s State Department is recommending that the US withhold some of its drug-war aid money (about 15 percent, or $26 million) until Mexico cleans up some of its human-rights problems—beating suspects to death, drunk soldiers firing on children, that kind of thing.
Pity the small-town Mexican voter: torturers to the left, torturers to the right.
This is exactly why Richard Conlin must be prosecuted. There is no limit to how far this type of thing can go once you let the rule of law begin to erode.
I wonder how many blogs down there are giving a bystander account? The U.S. can afford to send someone on a stipend. If someone really believes in their passion for curing the drug war, they should at least put their “life on the line” (I’m sure many people in Mexico reside somewhat happily). Americans, in addition to being fat and lazy, are also too comfortable in their cozy journalistic niche. I’m not “going after” you Mr Kiley, your reporting seems to be just that, reporting, not heavy with storytelling opinion, not a prescription for how i, and your readers, have to act or vote.
i’m beat, off for a dip in the Columbia.
@1 is correct.
You’re still not getting your overpriced tunnel.
I don’t get how reducing the drug-war aid money by 15% is going to help. Sounds like it’s not helping at all at 100%. Better to stop all payments and pursue another strategy.
The obvious solution is changing US drug policy to eliminate illegal demand, but since that won’t ever happen, that $170 million could fund quite a few assassins. Terror is an effective tool. Why let the bad guys have the monopoly on it?
$170 million would build a lot of tidal, wind, and solar installations and help us end the other wars too. If spent in America.
Failed narco-state. Be prepared for an American invasion & occupation.
Plan Merida (where that money comes from) basically just gives contracts to US arms and software companies to produce things for Mexico, it doesn’t actually give Mexico any money. Mostly it’s helicopters and police training. Those of us fat lazy Americans who are working in Mexico see the human rights violations first hand– indigenous women raped by soldiers, teenagers killed at military check points because they were wearing military style boots, people beaten and tortured to force them to confess to crimes they didn’t commit… the list goes on and on. Most Mexicans really prefer that the government leave the cartels well enough alone– less violence and terror for everyone. If the US really cared at all we would end ALL funding to Plan Merida until Mexico cleaned up its shit.