Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

Outside View: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency – John P. Sullivan, United Press International (Middle East Times)

Behind the headlines about kidnappings, assassinations and shootouts, the escalating conflict in Mexico between drug cartels, gangs and the police is evolving into a kind of criminal insurgency.

Vying for domination of the lucrative drug trade, the cartels are seeking both market control and freedom from government interference. Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and other border towns are racked with violence. Mexico City itself is not immune. Corruption joins the extreme violence and helps fuel Mexico’s downward spiral.

Drug murders in Mexico have more than doubled this year to nearly 5,400, with 943 occurring in November alone. On Nov. 30 nine decapitated victims of the drug wars were discovered in Tijuana. Within the past few weeks, Mexican “drug czar” Noe Ramirez Mandujano was accused of taking $450,000 in bribes from Sinaloa’s Pacific cartel. Five hundred municipal police in Tijuana were replaced because of fears that they were corrupt. Mexico’s liaison to Interpol, Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas, was arrested under suspicion of leaking information from criminal intelligence databases to the cartels. A newspaper office in Culiacan, Sinaloa’s capital, was also attacked with grenades…

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