Mexico News-June 8

Posted by The Generals on June 12, 2011, 12:21 am
206.116.64.118

Subject: Mexico News DAILY June 08, 2011 LatinNews Daily - 08 June 2011 Mexico admits more blood, sweat and tears Development: On 7 June the attorney general for the state of Chihuahua said that drug trafficking gangs had at least 14,000 armed men deployed in the state. Significance: This statement underlines how little progress the federal government has made against the gangs. On 6 June Mexico’s foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, had told the Organization of American States (OAS) that the government would not defeat the gangs “any time soon.” Key points: • Two other unrelated events show the strength of the gangs. A raid on a drug addicts’ rehabilitation centre in Torreón, Coahuila, left 11 people dead. Coahuila goes to the polls to elect a governor on 3 July. The second event was the arrival of the Peace Caravan, led by a poet, Javier Sicilia, in Monterrey, one of the cities bearing the brunt of the war against the gangs. Sicilia wants the government to withdraw the army from the war against the gangs, effectively conceding defeat. • The foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, was speaking at the OAS summit in San Salvador. She gave no indication of when the government, which declared war on the gangs when taking office on 1 December 2006, would be able to declare victory. • The statement by Carlos Manuel Salas, Chihuahua’s attorney general, is the first guess at the armed strength of the gangs. He said that the gangs had 9,000 armed men in Ciudad Juárez and 5,000 in Chihuahua City. He said that 5,000 of the gangsters in Ciudad Juárez belonged to Los Aztecas, which work for the Juárez gang, while the rest were mostly employed by the Sinaloa gang. Sicilia’s Peace Caravan is due to arrive in Ciudad Juárez on 10 June.

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