Abstract
The violent struggle between the government and Mexico’s drug cartels
appeared to have reached a new
level of ferocity in December 2008 when
eight soldiers and one former police commander were
kidnapped and
decapitated in Guerrero state, in apparent retribution for the earlier death
of three drug
cartel members in a clash with soldiers in the town of
Teloloapan. The heads were left before dawn in a
busy street in
Chilpancingo, another nearby town, with a note that said ‘for each
member that you kill, we
are going to kill ten of yours’. The
incident caused outrage, with President Felipe Calderón insisting
that
the victims’ deaths would not be in vain and that no stone
would be left unturned to hunt down those
responsible. The President
insisted that ‘we will not stand down and there will be no truce with
enemies
of the state’. At the same time as the Guerrero incident, 19
people were killed in drug-related violence in
Chihuaha state, mostly in
Ciudad Juarez on the US border, considered Mexico’s most violent city.
Areas
close to the US border were seen as particularly volatile as the
gangs were fighting for control of key
trafficking routes into the US.
Ciudad Juarez had been the scene of a battle between the local Juarez drug
cartel, led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and the rival Sinaloa cartel led by
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.
On a national level the
main fighting had been between these two cartels and a third, based around
the
Gulf of Mexico in the east of the country. Newspapers calculated that
over 5,300 people were killed in
drug related violence during 2008, a year
in which the government deployed 45,000 troops across the
country to crack
down on the gangs. The number of deaths was double the figure for 2007.
Mexico maintains a small defence industry focusing mainly on the production of
small arms and
ammunition. Efforts to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency
through co-operation with foreign firms
floundered as a result of the
economic difficulties of the early 1980s. Since then, Mexico has relied
mainly on foreign, and in particular US, arms manufacturers for its
large-scale weapons systems
requirements.
Given that the US guarantees
against external threats, Mexico has never needed a very large army. The
armed forces are, however, in need of modernisation – Mexico’s
army has no battle tanks in its inventory.
Mexican armed forces continue
to monitor rebel enclaves and strongholds, mounting occasional
‘search
and destroy’ missions and making arrests; generally,
however, there is a stalemate. Regardless of the
internal protests Mexico
can rely on US support, political and military, to assist with security
issues: good
news given the condition of Mexico’s defence
industry.
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