Thursday, March 17, 2011

On whose side is the Mexican Army?

As a grim reminder of what is occurring in Mexico, 53 people were killed the other day, in various gruesome ways, by “sicarios” (assassins) battling over the obscenely lucrative drug trade. One of the national newspapers, El Universal  has the count for those killed since January 2011 at 1575 while another periodical, La Reforma places it much higher at 2370. Both of these periodicals will be proven wrong when the Mexican government next releases it's statistics, number which will inevitably be much higher than those reported by the media (as has been the case in the last couple of years). The overall total of those killed has now eclipsed 37,000 since December '06 and, for 2011, the daily average of narco-related killings stands at 35.

Of the security forces deployed in Calderon’s war it is the military, who are supposedly the ones on the front lines of this war but, oddly enough, have the fewest casualties (at 224) far less than the police, who are also combating the narcos, and have the higher death count (at 2521). But, it is the 37000+ civilians who have been slain, as well as the towns and families, who bear the brunt of the government's failed policies. One family in particular has been, and continues to be, the targets of unknown assassins, as 3 more members of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz's family were gunned down the other day. Marisela was the woman activist who was murdered in front of the office of the governor of Chihuahua where she had camped for many months to protest the release of her daughter’s killer, and whose brother was gunned down days later and the family business burned to the ground. This family is the public face of the strife that confronts Mexico, the embodiment of the horrors afflicting Juarez, and a stark example of the absolute ineffectiveness of the government to protect its citizens, either from criminals or rogue elements of the security forces in its employ.

What was once a whisper is now being openly stated, that the Mexican army is the biggest drug gang in the country. And, with the correlation of violence increasing wherever it is deployed, with no sign of abating, it seems to be not too far-fetched to think such thoughts.


For a map of the killings: click: Narco-killings
Website: WM Consulting

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