Narco terrorism in Mexico

NY Times:

A massacre here two weeks ago has turned this once sleepy town into a ghostly emblem of the drug violence that has swept Mexico over the last year and a half, gutting local police forces, terrifying citizens and making it almost impossible for the authorities to assert themselves.

On the night of May 17, dozens of men with assault rifles rolled into town in several trucks and shot up the place. They killed the police chief, two officers and three civilians. Then they carried off about 10 people, witnesses said. Only one has been found, dead and wrapped in a carpet in Ciudad Juárez.

The entire municipal police force quit after the attack, and officials fled the town for several days, leaving so hastily that they did not release the petty criminals held in the town lockup. The state and federal governments sent in 300 troops and 16 state police officers, restoring an uneasy semblance of order. But townspeople remain terrified.

“Yeah, we’re afraid, everyone’s afraid,” said José Antonio Contreras, a 17-year-old who was threatened by the gunmen. “Nobody goes out at night.”

Tourists driving south from Texas to the Pacific Coast beaches pass through Villa Ahumada on Highway 45. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when this dusty town on the railroad tracks was best known for its roadside burrito stands, its good cheese and its having recorded one of the coldest temperatures in Mexico — 23 below zero in January 1962.

In recent years, however, it also became a way station along one of Mexico’s major drug smuggling routes. Villa Ahumada lies about 85 miles south of El Paso on the main highway from the city of Chihuahua to the border city of Ciudad Juárez.

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That town is a long way from the Pacific. I suspect there are a lot fewer Texas tourist in the area now.

There is much more to the story. The reporter eventually gets a lead on the killers. Hopefully the Mexican authorities will read the paper and run down the leads. They don't seem to be too good at doing that on their own.

They are trying much harder these days and it is violence like this that makes the assistance Bush has offered Mexico so important and makes the resistance to that assistance by the Democrats so inexplicable. Gov. Perry and New Mexico Gov. Richardson have also urged the Democrats to approve the aid package, but they appear to have sold out to the labor bosses who are completely unrealistic about the problem.