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Mexican officials sweat as drug-war tactics shift
The detention this week of more than two dozen government officials in Michoacán state on suspicion of aiding a narcotics cartel marks a new tack in Mexico's bloody drug war, a strategic shift that sent nervous politicians running for cover.
5/28/09|The Seattle Times| by Tracy Wilkinson

MEXICO CITY — The detention this week of more than two dozen government officials in Michoacán state on suspicion of aiding a narcotics cartel marks a new tack in Mexico's bloody drug war, a strategic shift that sent nervous politicians running for cover.

Ten mayors and 18 other officials were interrogated Wednesday in Mexico City after being swept up in raids by federal authorities a day earlier.

Ricardo Najera, spokesman for the federal attorney general's office, said the officials were suspected of having ties to La Familia, one of Mexico's most violent drug syndicates.


A federal police officer escorts Javier Ortiz, an alleged member
of La Familia, one of Mexico's most violent drug syndicates.
Some 28 Mexican mayors and local public officials were rounded
up Tuesday during raids.

President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug gangs when he came to power in 2006, saying traffickers had "overwhelmed" a number of local governments.

Until now, he had focused primarily on a military offensive, deploying 45,000 army and federal police forces throughout Mexico. Top drug gangsters have been killed or captured, and federal authorities have targeted corrupt law-enforcement officers for arrest.

But tainted politicians remained largely untouched. In Michoacán and other states, federal authorities allege, local politicians aid and abet traffickers who produce and transport billions of dollars' worth of drugs, mostly to the United States.

"If the accusations are confirmed," the daily El Universal said in an editorial, "we will have incontrovertible proof that the cartels have entirely penetrated the country's local political elites."

On Wednesday, the state prosecutor for Michoacán, Miguel García Hurtado, resigned and surrendered for questioning. Michoacán is a major marijuana-growing region where drug gangs long have been said to control scores of municipalities.

Dismantling the local support networks — in city halls, police departments, state governments — is a crucial step in the larger war, analysts said.

"It is at the local level that traffickers have their most important protection," said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based security analyst. "They don't buy off the president of the republic. They buy off the local officials, the mayors, the police chiefs."

In some quarters, Calderón's motives and timing were questioned. Mexico is 40 days from legislative elections in which the president's National Action Party, or PAN, may take big losses.

"You cannot forget the political context in which this is taking place," said Samuel Gonzalez, an analyst who served as Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor in the 1990s. "You can run the same operation three, five, 10 times and you still won't get results," because the problem is so widespread, he said.

The Michoacán raids scooped up six mayors from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for decades and which poses the greatest electoral challenge to Calderón's party.

Two mayors from Calderón's PAN and two from the leftist opposition Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD, also were detained.

Michoacán Gov. Leonel Godoy, of the PRD, complained bitterly that he was not notified in advance of the raids. Leaving him out of the loop raised suspicions that he, too, might be implicated.

Among those detained were a key adviser to Godoy. His brother was questioned by the army but was not arrested, a Michoacán newspaper reported.

Godoy on Wednesday denied any connection to drug traffickers but said he did not plan to submit himself to investigation because he was "democratically elected and will only do so if required to constitutionally."

Mexico's laws make it next to impossible to prosecute a sitting governor.

Godoy said he tried to find out what was happening Tuesday morning when he heard that masked gunmen were hauling officials from their offices and homes.

When such actions are reported, he said, "you never know if these are operations being carried out by authorities or by the organized criminals."