Friday, February 27, 2009
MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Felipe Calderon vowed Thursday to win the war against the world’s most powerful drug gangs before his term ends in 2012 and disputed U.S. fears that Mexico is losing control of its territory.
In interviews with The Associated Press, Calderon and his top prosecutor said the violence that killed 6,290 people last year — and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of 2009 — is a sign that the cartels are under pressure from military and police operations nationwide, as well as turf wars among themselves.
“To say that Mexico is a failed state is absolutely false,” Calderon said. “I have not lost any part — any single part — of the Mexican territory.”
Calderon, a Harvard-educated conservative, said smuggling cannot be eliminated as long as Americans continue to use drugs but believes he can beat back the cartels by 2012 to a point that the army and federal police can withdraw and leave the problem in the hands of local law enforcement.
Calderon easily switched between English and Spanish in an hourlong interview at the colonial National Palace. Sitting in a chair decorated with Mexico’s national symbol — an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a serpent — he was relaxed and jovial.
Mexico bristled when the U.S. Joint Forces Command put Mexico on par with Pakistan, saying both were at risk of “rapid and sudden collapse.” That and other reports have put a global spotlight on Mexico’s growing violence and put political pressure on Calderon to change tactics. Calderon dismissed any such suggestions.
Calderon sent the army and federal police out into drug strongholds on his first day in office in December 2006, promising to turn a tide in a war that was seeing increasingly brazen tactics such as beheadings, assassinations and the attempt to control local governments.
Since then, Mexico has spent $6.5 billion on top of its normal public security budget, but that falls short of the $10 billion Mexican drug gangs bring in annually, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said.