Posted on 02/20/2007 3:46:27 PM PST by NormsRevenge
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Heavily armed Mexican police, backed by helicopters, locked down the capital's most notorious neighborhood on Tuesday as part of the latest offensive against rampant drug trafficking.
Hundreds of officers with assault rifles lined the Tepito neighborhood's main artery, searching passing motorists.
Police had stormed the district, a warren of scruffy homes and market stalls, last week and seized a tenement complex known as "The Fortress" -- reputedly a major cocaine and marijuana distribution center.
President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to fight drug gangs in their strongholds along the Pacific coast and near the U.S. border since he took office in December.
The Mexico City operation was run by a political rival, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who vowed to fight drug selling in the often chaotic metropolis.
"We're going to do it everywhere. We have to start in the most difficult place," Ebrard told reporters. "We don't want them bringing drugs in and poisoning young people."
"The Fortress" and another housing complex expropriated by the city were like drug malls where dealers operated freely, he said. City hall plans to turn the complexes into a creche, drug rehabilitation center and school.
As police blocked the entrance to "The Fortress" on Tuesday, angry neighbors barraged officers with threats.
Sitting on bicycles as they talked on cellphones, youths in sunglasses glared at the police and smoked marijuana openly within steps of officers searching passing motorcyclists.
DEADLY TRADE
More than 2,000 people died throughout Mexico last year in a fight between two rival gangs for control of the domestic drug market and trafficking routes to the United States.
Washington has expressed strong support for the crackdown on cartels that ship heroin, South American cocaine and methamphetamine across the U.S.-Mexican border.
But the United States has stayed largely on the sidelines of Mexico's drug war, unlike in Colombia where it gives hefty financial support to military campaigns against cartels and rebels who smuggle narcotics.
While drug sales in Tepito are small compared with amounts moved by the main cartels, the neighborhood is also a hub for pirated DVDs and CDs, as well as illegal weapons.
"Here, drugs and firearms are moved on motorbikes, and murders are committed from the backs of motorbikes," said a senior police officer, Julio Cesar Sanchez, after his men took away a suspect found with a small amount of marijuana wrapped in newspaper.
Sanchez said most residents of Tepito, also renowned for producing some of Mexico's best boxers, were hard-working sellers of legal goods and that most of the drug-running was the work of outsiders.
Taco vendor Maria Hernandez, standing beside a vat of sizzling meat and offal, said she was glad the police had come down hard on the traffickers but that days with officers in the streets had also hurt sales by honest merchants.
"It's good that they're catching the dealers," she said. "But this affects us all."
...and everyone was so "down" on Calderon... "same old mexico, they were heard to say...."
You suppose the Mexican Government will try to take back Nuevo Laredo and other mainline border towns? (I didn't say "mainstream".)
Mexico is another place that needs a troop surge!
Wow, This is the Barrio where Vicente Fox went to eat his tacos after bowing his knees to the Virgen of Guadalupe. I'm glad at last they are getting serious about this, TEPITO for those in Mexico know that is the hub of illicit activities.
That just doesn't sound very appetizing to me.
This was done purely for PR - nothing of substance is going to change in Mexico. It is corrupt from top to bottom.
I think it was PR as well. This is so that our government can point to the Calderon "drug war" as a need to reply with amnesty for the 10% of their population living here.
Oh please, this is just more re-arranging of the Titanic deck chairs.
The only way to win this fight:
(A) Legalize all drugs
OR
(B) Militarize the border, which would reduce demand here and choke off the supply
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