Posted on 06/12/2007 5:10:24 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
MONTERREY, Mexico, June 12 (Reuters) - A Mexican state lawmaker was shot and killed in the busy center of the violent business city of Monterrey on Tuesday, police said, the latest attack in a surge of killings by feuding drug gangs.
Unknown gunmen sprayed politician Mario Cesar Rios' car with bullets as he drove down a main city avenue, a police spokesman said.
Rios, 44, was a legislator for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the Congress of Nuevo Leon state, where the party holds power.
Some witnesses said Rios survived the attack and drove himself to the hospital but died upon arrival, local media reported.
Monterrey, 150 miles (230 km) from the U.S. border, is Mexico's main business city and was until recently spared the violence that is sweeping Mexico.
But in the last two years gunmen from rival drug gangs fighting to control trafficking routes have moved into the city and carried out a wave of gangland-style murders, including dozens of policemen.
Victims of drug gang killings in the city number some 80 people so far this year, up from 55 in the whole of 2006.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of troops across Mexico in an attempt to rein in the growing power of the cartels, but the violence has not abated.
More than 1,000 killings have been blamed on the drug war so far this year, on a par with some 2,000 in 2006.
Monterrey Ping!
Get ready it is coming to your hometown ... and soon1
Will we be paying for his funeral,and compensating his family?
It’s the least we evil, racist gringos can do.
That is sad. I like Monterrey.
Bush and the ‘Rats and a few traitorous Pubs want to import that culture into the US.
It is very sad. The PRI is a key reason for the corruption, and therefore partially responsible for Mexico’s languid economic growth.
I see their society has not progressed. I was around 6 or 7 years old many, many years ago. My family went to Mexico for a vacation. I remember being in a taxi on the street and a person opened the door and tried to get in with a knife. Welcome to Mexico.
Coming to a barrio near you!
“Get ready it is coming to your hometown ... and soon”
What? We’re going to start shooting politicians in the streets?
Hell, not all “Hispanic” cultures are equal. There are the Spanish, the Cubans, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexicans of Spanish descent, and the Mexicans and Central Americans of Aztec descent and others. By far the worst and most corrupt is any culture from Venezuela and Columbia through Mexico. There is a good reason that those are third world countries and it has nothing to do with the US protecting it’s borders.
Coming soon to a barrio near you.
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