Drug war in Palamos

Times:

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Cartel assassins can outgun most lawmen in Palomas, and so confident were the killers that after the initial strike they drove around the block and returned to finish off two wounded survivors.

“I was trying to help them,” said one man who had rushed to the scene.

Like most of the town's residents he did not wish to be named. “Three were dead but there were still two alive. One had been hit in the leg, the other the head. They were conscious and one asked me to get hold of his family. But then the gunmen came back and shouted at me to get away. As I ran they killed them both.”

Palomas is no stranger to violent death. Straddling a main contraband route across the Mexican-US border, the settlement has historically been a preserve of cattle rustlers, liquor, marijuana and gun smugglers long before cocaine rode into town.

Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary general, used Palomas to send a raiding party into America in 1916. Until recently it was common to have between eight and ten fatal shootings each year in the town, whose population is little more than 7,500.

This year, though, as Mexico finds itself riven by a savage inter-cartel drug war that has already resulted in more than 1,100 deaths nationwide, the death toll has soared.

Since January 37 Palomas residents have been shot dead. Another 17 have been abducted and are still missing. Nine inhabitants were killed last week alone. The violence grew two months ago after the local crime boss in Palomas, Humberto del Hierro, disappeared.

Once affiliated with the dominant Juárez cartel, del Hierro's loyalties had vacillated after the rival Sinaloa cartel sought to take over Palomas's lucrative cross-border drug-smuggling business. The combination of American guns and dollars, Colombian cocaine, government corruption and internal feuding caused by the arrest of a few mid-level cartel chiefs has since sparked the tinder into an all-out war. It is now unclear which cartel controls Palomas.

In response to the wider national crisis, the casualties of which have included scores of police officers, President Calderón has deployed 25,000 troops to ten Mexican border cities since the start of the year. Despite the arrival of 200 soldiers in Palomas in March the violence has continued unabated.

“I can't explain it,” said Father José Abel Retana, the town's outspoken priest and solitary figure of leadership. “I thought with the arrival of soldiers peace would come but it hasn't.

“The soldiers know who the people are who control this territory. Now some people are wondering if the army or Government are also behind the killings.” Complicit or not, local policemen are outgunned and out financed by the cartels. The 11 officers in Palomas have only three revolvers, two decrepit rifles and two patrol cars between them. In March their commander walked across the border into the US claiming political asylum after receiving death threats.

“This is the worst violence I have ever seen in 22 years of service,” said his replacement, Commandante Salomon Baca. “Anyone can get a weapon here.

They have got AK-47s. Thank God we haven't had to confront them yet and I hope to God we never do.” To date confronting the cartels is the last thing on the minds of the local lawmen. One patrol car happened to be close to the location of Sunday morning's shootings, but its immediate response to the sound of gunfire was to speed away from the scene.

Local people have no confidence in the ability of either the police or military to contain the situation, and none is willing to offer information to the authorities for fear of their lives.

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There is much more.

The so called human rights groups who think the police should be able to manage this situation are too ignorant of the facts to comprehend how wrong they are. The troops that Mexico sent are also inadequate to the task. Until they can get enough there to protect the people, they are not going to solve the problem.

It is curious to me why these cartels cannot share transit points. I guess competition doesn't work in the drug trade.