The Unreported War in Mexico
15 Men Decapitated in Acapulco
Fifty one people were killed over the weekend in drug-related violence across Mexico. In the beach resort of Acapulco, a gruesome record was set when the bodies of 15 men were found in a local shopping center all of whom had been decapitated. Their severed heads were clumped together nearby. The flurry of homicides add to the more-than 30,000 deaths since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. The daily death toll in Calderon’s failed drug war now exceeds that of Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
Ciudad Juarez has become the murder capital of the world, a fact that is omitted in the US media because its casts doubt on US/Mexico drug policy. President Barack Obama could put an end to the bloodletting by simply changing the policy, but he won’t do that because he supports the militarization of the drug war as enthusiastically as did George W. Bush. So the killing continues unabated.
The uptick in violence can be traced back to the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion US/Mexico program aimed at fighting narco-trafficking. Plan Mexico–as Merida is also called– was signed in 2007 by President Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Calderon. It led to the deployment of more than 50,000 Mexican troops to areas where the drug cartels carry out their operations. Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City, says that the Obama administration has increased its funding of Merida even though 200,000 civilians have fled Juarez, business and tourism have dried up, and the city has devolved into a Mad Max, free-fire zone.
Harold
ACGR's "News with Attitude" 