Calderon's dead-end war

(Posted by Uriel Rivera)

In Ciudad Juarez this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderon insisted that appearances notwithstanding, drug violence had begun to recede thanks to the yearlong presence of 10,000 Mexican troops in the border city.

Yet according to his own government's figures, there have been 536 executions in Juarez since Jan. 1, which is 100 more than during the same period last year.

And the violence is not localized to a few border towns like Juarez. Over a holiday weekend in Acapulco this month, 34 people were assassinated in drug-related incidents; nearly 20 suffered the same fate in the drug-producing state of Sinaloa; and perhaps most poignant, two graduate students from Mexico's premier private university, Monterrey Tech, lost their lives March 19, victims of crossfire as the Mexican military pursued drug cartel members at the entrance to the campus.



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-castaneda25-2010mar25,0,5018841.story