Mexican Drug Trafficking (Mexico's Drug War)

Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels.
In January 2012, the Mexican government reported that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels soon after taking office in late 2006.
The official tally, provided by the attorney general’s office, included data only through September 2011, and it showed that drug-related killings increased 11 percent, to 12,903, compared with the same nine-month period in 2010. Still, a government statement sought to find a silver lining, asserting that it was the first year since 2006 “that the homicide rate increase has been lower compared to the previous years.”
But that was unlikely to calm a public scared by the arrival of grisly violence in once-safe cities like Guadalajara and in the region around Mexico City.
In May 2012, the Mexican government detained three high-ranking Army generals, including a former second in command at the Defense Ministry, suggesting the depths to which drug cartels have gone in trying to infiltrate one of the primary forces Mr. Calderón has counted on to combat them.
The three generals, Mexican officials have said, played a role in facilitating drug trafficking, and the accusations against the third general include that he ignored a tip by American drug agents about an imminent airplane delivery of a drug cartel’s cocaine in December 2007.
One of the men arrested, Tomás Ángeles Dauahare, a general who retired in 2008, was the second-highest-ranking official in the Defense Ministry during the first two years of Mr. Calderón’s offensive against drug violence and had been mentioned as a possible choice for the top job. In the early 1990s, he served as the defense attaché at the Mexican Embassy in Washington.
A New President Vows to Reduce Violence
In July 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country from 1929 to 2000, was elected president of Mexico, succeeding Mr. Calderón. He will take office in December 2012.
During his presidential campaign, Mr. Peña Nieto promised a major shift in the country’s drug war strategy, placing a higher priority on reducing the violence in Mexico than on using arrests and seizures to block the flow of drugs to the United States.
Mr. Peña Nieto, while vowing to continue to fight drug trafficking, said he intended to eventually withdraw the Mexican Army from the drug fight. He is concerned that it has proved unfit for police work and has contributed to the high death toll.
He did not emphasize stopping drug shipments or capturing drug kingpins. He suggested that while Mexico should continue to work with the United States government against organized crime, it should not “subordinate to the strategies of other countries.”
Mexican Navy Kills Ruthless Gang Kingpin
In October 2012, the Mexican Navy confirmed that it had killed Heriberto Lazcano, the founder and the principal leader of the Zetas, one of the most violent criminal gangs to terrorize Mexico in years.
But in a striking twist, an armed group quickly stole the body, a state prosecutor said, leaving the authorities struggling to explain how such a major blow against Mexico’s criminal organizations could turn into an illustration of their persistent strength.