NEWSWEEK: Children targeted in Mexicos Drug War
October 27, 2008 by pablo
As I wrote about this past spring, there is a startling trend emerging in Mexico’s ongoing war with the drug cartels. Project Libertad is tracking this trend and will continue to blog about these stories in an effort to bring attention to it. This hidden war affects all of us, not just the citizens of Mexico.
Below is the beginning of the article, with a link to the full article here. Please pass on this article and thank you for supporting Project Libertad.
Violence is rising in Mexico’s drug war, and the victims include cartel members—and now children.
Michael Miller
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 3, 2008
Guillermo Arias / AP
Mexico is no stranger to violence. But when men dressed in black tossed grenades into crowds celebrating Mexican Independence Day in Morelia in September, it marked a new stage in a national nightmare. A country long accustomed to bloody feuds between powerful drug cartels, Mexico now faces the prospect of an all-out drug war in which innocents are no longer off-limits. The grenade attack in Morelia killed eight and injured 100, raising the death toll from drug violence this year to more than 3,700—a figure more reminiscent of Iraq or Afghanistan than the United States’ neighbor.
While the vast majority of those killed are affiliated with the drug cartels, dozens if not hundreds of innocents have been killed in the past year. Among them: a little girl in Ciudad Juarez; six people in front of a recreation center, also in Juarez; a 14-year-old girl in Acapulco; two small children in Tijuana. The violence has become so bad that last week U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to Puerto Vallarta to meet with her Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, and told her that tackling drug crime was a “national-security priority” for both countries.
The violence is a reaction to President Felipe Calderón’s aggressive moves against the cartels. When he came to power in 2006, he needed “a signature issue that would make him look strong,” says Shannon O’Neil, a Mexico expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and announced he would use federal troops to target narcotraffickers. He argued that the offensive would reduce drug-related violence and weaken the influence of drug cartels. But as the body count climbed upward, Calderon’s strategy shifted. The military surge had turned into a war to eradicate the drug trade—something most experts agree is nearly impossible. Bodies have been piling up ever since. In 2006, between 1,500 and 2,000 people were killed; this year the toll is already at 3,725.
For the complete article, please click here.
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