Posted on 01/30/2008 3:30:10 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
OAXACA, Mexico - Gunmen shot dead a local police chief and three other people on Wednesday in Oaxaca, a politically tense southern Mexican city where leftists held a months-long siege in 2006.
Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz said the murders were linked to drug smuggling cartels whose violent turf wars killed more than 2,500 people across Mexico last year.
Local police chief Alejandro Barrita was in charge of police units guarding banks and businesses on Oaxaca, a pretty colonial city still scarred by the protests of 2006.
Barrita was killed while he was exercising in a city park. The gunmen also killed his bodyguard and two other people doing exercise in the park, state police director Daniel Camarena told reporters.
Ruiz said the killings were a response to the increased military presence in Oaxaca. President Felipe Calderon has sent 25,000 troops across Mexico to try to control the escalating violence between rival drug gangs.
"This is a result of the fight against organized crime and ... is causing the deaths of our police chiefs," Ruiz told local radio.
Camarena said he was also investigating other motives.
Mexican rebel group Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, bombed natural gas and oil pipelines in 2007 to demand the release of two leftist activists it says were seized by the government in May in Oaxaca.
Oaxaca, a popular stop for European and U.S. tourists, in 2006 faced a violent conflict between state police and protesters calling for Ruiz to resign. (Reporting by Paulina Valencia; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Why can’t California be more like Mexico? It’s just not fair.
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
What is driving all this? Open borders? Access to move drugs across it? Crime caused because of it?
We’re looking at a very dark future, becaue we’re setting it up so this culture (crime) imbeds itself in our society too.
I’ve strolled that park with my wife. We went down to buy some Navajo rugs after seeing them in Santa Fe. Bought em for 10cents to the dollar charged in Santa Fe. That was 15 years ago. Vividly recall the Che posters pretty much on every street corner. A bunch of poor little people. I guess they have more in common with Che than me. Who knows. I do know bunches of them are becoming my community neighbor now. I guess they got capitalist religion on the way up.
The war on drugs is driving all this crime and violence.
Yep, our society would be so much better off if only our populace would just buy every drug known to man.
Thanks.
Where have you been?
It's caused by white anglo saxon protestant insensibility's and xeno/homo/gender - phobic, joingoistic, lazy, dope crazed, community college, small business owners and their exclusive neighbors who torture puppies.
Those people will never accept he world's need for third world thuggery in their neighborhoods - next thing you know they'll even want to carry guns just like the various poor souls who only want to exploit and intimidate people that Americans generally don't want to assault.
LOL, you’re on a roll...
Wife and I visited Oaxaca about 10 years ago. Nice tidy community. We just missed the Oaxaca Radish Festival tho.
I'm mostly so pi%%ed off about the direction this election is going that I've got to fall back on a few giggles.
I hear ya. Same here.
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