Mexico has sent soldiers to patrol a suburb of Mexico City to combat escalating drug-related violence that is beginning to encroach on the capital for the first time .
Nezahualcoyotl is an area located to the East of the city centre which has suffered recently from a conflict between two rival drug cartels. Up until now, Mexico City and its suburbs has been one of the areas least affected by gang-related problems.
Since late Wednesday night, 1000 soldiers, federal and state police have been manning the streets in an attempt to restore order in the neighbourhood.
The decision to initiate the military operation, which is being termed ‘Neza’, was taken following the assassination in Nezahualcoyotl last weekend of Jaime Serrano, a local state congressman and member of President Elect Enrique Peña Nieto’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).
The principle drug gang in the neighbourhood is called La Familia. In an interview with Reuters local said “people here have got used to paying these people (the cartels). If you don’t, they say they are going to kill you and your family”.
The required payments range from 100 pesos a day (US$ 7.5) to 8,000 pesos per month (US$ 615) according to local testimony.
However, the reinforcement of the area, which has a population of 1.1 million, is unlikely to yield positive results according to Alberto Islas, a security expert at consultancy Risk Evaluation. He told Reuters that “the military won’t be able to stop the drug-dealing, they won’t stop the piracy and they won’t stop the impunity that exists in Nezahualcoyotl”.
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