Mexico’s top security official has claimed significant advances in the country’s fight against drugs.
Genaro García Luna, minister of public security, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the recorded number of arrests, as well as seizures of arms, drugs and cash, since the administration of the centre-right President Felipe Calderón assumed power were “without precedent”.
He also said the government’s operational capacity remained intact in spite of rising levels of violence.
Last week several police officers were murdered, including Edgar Millán, one of Mr García Luna’s closest confidantes.
“It’s going well,” he said. “We’ve landed some hard punches against the criminal structures.”
In the 18 months since he came to power, Mr Calderón has made counter-narcotics operations a priority. Donning military uniforms at the start of his tenure, he ordered thousands of troops into Mexico’s cities, towns and countryside to re-establish control over regions he claimed had been overrun by organised crime.
In spite of several important successes, however, drug-related murders have climbed to almost 1,200 so far this year – higher than during the same period for 2007. Violence along the US border has been particularly intense, worrying US residents nearby and causing concern in Washington.
Three more policemen were slain in the border state of Coahuila on Wednesday and a group of at least 40 armed men attacked a police station in Sinaloa state, killing a civilian and injuring a policeman.
Several businesses were forced to close temporarily this week in another part of Sinaloa following heavy clashes between rival drugs gangs.
The US Congress is set to vote on a multi-million-dollar counter-narcotics initiative in the next few days and possibly as early as this week. The first allocation could be worth as much as $500m.
Approval, however, is by no means assured, with some opponents highly critical of alleged police and army involvement in trafficking.
Mr García Luna said the recent leap in violent crime was in part a reflection of successful government policy and, in particular, the arrest and extradition of some of the country’s cartel leaders.
“When you remove the head of an organisation you create internal and violent power struggles,” he explained.
But he admitted that the wave of killings was also the result of changing patterns in the drugs trade. The most important of these was increasing US demand for methamphetamines, a synthetic substance used increasingly by young Americans. Mexico’s drugs cartels have traditionally made their money from transporting and distributing Colombian cocaine.
“They [the cartels] are fighting for control of this business and that creates violence,” said Mr García Luna.
