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”.

The Mexican Navy announced early this morning that it has caught one of Mexico’s most-sought-after drug kingpins, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, who is the alleged leader of one of Mexico’s largest drug-trafficking organizations.

Costilla, also known as “El Coss,” is the suspected leader of the Gulf cartel and was marched before reporters handcuffed at a press conference early Thursday morning. Jorge Luis Vergara, a marine spokesperson, said the 41-year-old drug lord was detained without any resistance by about 30 marines at 6:00 pm on Wednesday in Tampico, located in the northeast of Tamaulipas State.

Costilla faces an array of charges and was wanted by both Mexican and US authorities. The US State Department had a reward of up to US$5m for his capture.

The arrest is a huge victory for Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on organized crime and comes in the last few months of his reign.

The Gulf cartel has recently been engaging in a bloody battle with rival cartel, Los Zetas, for control of trafficking routes into the US. His capture comes just a week after the arrest of the suspected head of the rival faction, Mario Cárdenas Guillén. Both suspected cartel leaders were arrested in Tamaulipas state, one of the most violent states in Mexico because of battles to seize and solidify control of important cities.

Costilla features predominantly on a wanted list of 37 drug traffickers of which 20 have been captured or killed. Both Mexican and American drug agents stand by their argument that eliminating the heads of cartels weakens them, but in recent history many drug gangs have splintered creating more groups and more violence as they fight for turf. There have been 50,000 deaths, with some estimates far higher, in the last six years.

The Marines have also incorrectly named a suspect before. In June they said they had captured a son of Mexico’s most wanted man Joaquin ‘Shorty’ Guzman, only to later admit that it had not.

However, many throughout Mexico are calling the capture a huge strike against drug-trafficking in the country.

Yesterday, authorities in Mexico found 18 mutilated and decapitated bodies close to Guadalajara, the country’s second largest city. The incident appears to be the latest atrocity in Mexico’s drug war.

It has been reported that some of the bodies were mutilated to such an extent that it is, at this point, impossible to determine their gender, as well as the identity of the victims.

The bodies were found in a motel close to a motorway, in western Mexico. Heads and body parts have also been found due to an anonymous tip off in two abandoned cars on a motorway in the small town of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, reported today.

According to police, a note signed by the Zetas cartel, was found in one of the abandoned cars. Zetas, one of Mexico’s drug cartels, is responsible for some of the worst incidents in the country’s drug war. The note was directed against Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, considered to be the most powerful drug trafficker in the country.

The incident comes amid a series of atrocities between the Zetas cartel and rival groups. Last November 26 bodies were found in three abandoned cars on a central avenue in Guadalajara.

The drug war in Mexico has caused over 50,000 deaths since December 2006.

On Monday 11th January, Mexican newspaper, El Universal, reported that 69 people had died in drug-related violence in the previous 24-hour period. This figure marked the highest daily death toll yet in Mexico’s drug war, bringing 2010’s total number of victims thus far to 283. Of the 69 Mexicans killed, more than a third died in Ciudad Juárez, which borders the Texan city of El Paso. Four people were beheaded, and the face of one victim was discovered stitched to a football.

The bloodshed comes as Mexico’s war on drugs emerges from its deadliest year to date. Although the government has not released official figures, national media say that over 7,600 Mexicans lost their lives in drug-related conflict in 2009, greatly surpassing the then-record tally reached in 2008. According to Mexican officials, since he came to power in December 2006, over 15,000 people have died in President Felipe Calderón’s war on the country’s drug cartels.

Crushing the Cartels

Photo by Angel Morales Rizo

The Mexican Police organize their units in their nationwide attempts to combat the country’s powerful drug cartels.

In the last three years, President Calderón has deployed more than 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal police across 18 states, in an attempt to crush the trafficking groups which are fighting local authorities and battling each other for access to the US market. Some observers, such as former US House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, have likened the situation to a civil war; but President Calderón and numerous Mexican officials have repeatedly insisted that the vast majority of the deaths have been among criminals, not civilians.

Despite this, there is no doubt that 2009 was shockingly brutal. Mayor of Ciudad Juárez, José Reyes Ferriz, admitted in an interview with CNN: “This has been a very difficult year; very complicated.” Juárez was worst hit by the violence, leading all other Mexican cities in the number of deaths, with more than 2,575 slayings – a staggering increase on the 1,600 homicides experienced by the city in 2008. Nonetheless, he is optimistic about 2010. The appointment of a new federal attorney general in September has increased personnel in Ciudad Juárez, which in turn has led to more prosecutions, Reyes Ferriz said. He also championed a new state law which makes it harder for crime suspects to plea bargain or receive lenient sentences.

The Heavy Price of Progress and a Corrupt Police Force

However, the government’s strategies continue to raise questions. President Calderón’s extensive deployment of troops has indeed resulted in the seizure of record amounts of drugs, and senior cartel members have been imprisoned or killed. But another consequence has been an explosion of violence, as the drug cartels fight both the army and each other. Human rights groups caution against using the military to enforce law and order. Others argue that if the army loses the battle, or gets so close to the drug cartels that it is itself corrupted, then there is nothing left between the cartels and the government.

There are regular cases of police officers arrested on corruption charges, or being in the pay of the drug gangs. With massive resources at their disposal, the cartels have repeatedly managed to infiltrate the underpaid police, from the grassroots level to the very top. Efforts are underway to rebuild the entire structure of the Mexican police force, but the process is expected to take years, if not decades.

The Mexican government maintains that their current strategies are working, and the violence, however regrettable, can be seen as a reflection of the success of its policy of taking a hard line against drug-running. It suggests that the “monster” has been wounded, and what we are witnessing is a brutal fight between leaderless cartels for fewer spoils.

Coldblooded Conflict: The Beltran Levya Case

Photo by Jesús Villaseca

Bullets confiscated by the Mexican Police force after the capture of two members of a cartel.

Government claims of the success of their approach are thrown into doubt in light of one of the year’s most significant and poignant incidents in the Mexican cartel war. The location and killing of one of the country’s most-wanted drug-lords was considered amongst President Calderón’s greatest victories in his fight against trafficking. However, the raid which ended the life of “Boss of Bosses”, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was followed up by a revenge attack which sent a chilling message to the Mexican military.

On 16th December, Beltran Levya and four members of his cartel were slain in a two hour gun battle with over 200 marines during a Navy raid on an upmarket apartment complex in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. The Beltran Leyva cartel, based on the Pacific coast of the country, is one of Mexico’s most violent and powerful drug gangs. With a US$2.3m bounty on his head, Arturo Beltran Leyva was one of President Calderón’s three most wanted criminals, playing a key role in the importation and distribution of tons of cocaine in the US, as well as large quantities of heroin. Officials say that the Beltran Leyva cartel carried out heinous killings, including numerous beheadings. The gang also successfully bought off public officials and police to protect their business and obtain tips on planned military raids.

In a raid which the president described as: “the result of an immense intelligence effort by the Mexican Navy”, young marine, Melquisedet Angulo Cordova, 30, was wounded and killed by a hand grenade. Hours after his state funeral, the marine’s grieving mother, sister, brother and aunt were mowed down by gunmen in a revenge attack which horrified even those inured to Mexican drug-war brutality. In killing a mother, the cartel seemed to violate the most basic code of conduct that even cold-blooded hit-men and traffickers obeyed.

Security Shortcomings and Fears of a Failed State

Photo by Lenny Montana

Marijuana is one of the drugs the Mexican cartels transport.

Critics said the slaying of the Angulo family members exposed a serious security lapse emblematic of the government’s troubled offensive against the powerful drug cartels. The gunmen evidently had no trouble locating the marine’s home, suggesting they had benefited from inside information, and Mexican security expert, Raul Benitez, opined that “the message was to the military and to the government, that if you hit us hard, we will respond in unprecedented ways.” El Universal columnist, Ricardo Aleman, wrote: “This has shown the inability of the state to offer protection to its frontline troops. We do not have the training, intelligence or other elements to wage this war.”

Javier Ibarrola, an expert on the Mexican military, described the attack as “unprecedented yet also predictable”. “What is really most alarming is that there wasn’t the intelligence to foresee this, to adequately study what the traffickers’ reactions were going to be.” He added that it was no longer possible for the government to dismiss deadly violence as mere “killing among cartels.” “We are not facing a criminal group but a corps of combatants who are going to exact revenge and take territory from the government,” he said on Mexican television. “The government is not prepared for this. Presidential speeches do not scare them.”

The insufficiency of the government’s efforts deepens in gravity with increasing suggestions that the country is close to becoming a failed state – claims which the Mexican government vehemently reject. As yet, the violence does not appear to be having a significant effect on the economy; however government ministers do concede that the stakes are high. Economy Secretary, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, said that if the cartels were not confronted, Mexico ran the risk of having a drug-runner as its next president.

‘Crime Stoppers’

Photo by Gustavo Tuxmemento

The Mexican Police stand guard.

With this fear in mind, Mayor José Reyes Ferriz has looked in a new direction for a means of crushing the cartels in Ciudad Juárez: At the beginning of 2010, the city started working with ‘Crime Stoppers International’, a community-based private organisation which receives anonymous tips from residents and passes them along to law enforcement authorities. The organisation has 1,200 programmes worldwide, and Mexico is the first country in Latin America to work with them. ‘Crime Stoppers’ president, Gary Murphy, points out that the Canada-based organisation guarantees anonymity: Tipsters will call an 800 number that does not have caller ID, and the calls will not be answered in Mexico or the US, but in an undisclosed nation. Reyes Ferriz believes it was a necessary step, because Juarez residents lost confidence in the police a long time ago. Murphy states: “This way they can pass along the information and not have to worry about the repercussions.”

A Downward Spiral

However, each piece of progress made towards bettering the situation seems only to be met by another round of bloodshed, as the spiral of Mexico’s organised crime appears to worsen. By the middle of 2009, crime rates had dropped in the country’s westernmost city, Tijuana, which was hailed by some as a success story in Mexico’s war on drug cartels. The city’s leading crime fighters – Army Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica and Secretary of Public Security Julian Leyzaola – were named “men of the year” by Baja California’s leading news weekly, and President Calderón praised the city’s efforts as a model for the rest of the country.

Less than two weeks into 2010, and the bodies were once again piling up in the morgue. Three teenagers in school uniforms were gunned down by automatic weapons, four people were decapitated, at least ten were killed in drive-by attacks, and five were kidnapped, including two security guards and a prominent businessman.

As the violence surges, law enforcement officials in the city have remained mostly silent. To some observers, their renitence betrays a sense of impotence; as though the authorities have exhausted their tough rhetoric. In a silence thick with fear, Mexico’s citizens look to the year ahead in the hope that 2009’s devastating death tolls will not be surpassed. Worse still, Victor Clark, the director of the Binational Centre for Human Rights in Tijuana, describes the country’s terrifying descent into a state ravaged by “acts of violence which appear more and more like narco-terrorism.”

Leonidas Vargas, a notorious Colombian drug trafficker, was shot dead in his hospital bed in the Spanish capital of Madrid yesterday. Spanish authorities suspect the motive to be the settling of accounts between rival drug-trafficking organisations.

The incident occurred just before 8pm when a gunman entered Vargas’ room at the Doce de Octubre hospital and fired four shots at him when he was sleeping. Witnesses saw two men enter the fifth floor shared room and one take out a pistol with a silencer.

Vargas (alias ‘El Viejo’ – ‘The Old Man’) had been arrested in a Madrid hotel in July 2006 and was on bail awaiting trial. He was hospitalised on 2nd January this year, and was undergoing treatment for lung disease.

Spanish authorities had initially arrested him for carrying a fake Venezuelan passport and later charged him in connection with the seizure of 500kg of cocaine.

Vargas had been on the list of the top 19 wanted drugs traffickers in Colombia, with a reward of US$5m offered for his capture.

Born in 1949 in Caquetá, in the southwest of Colombia, in the 1990s he was considered to be the boss of the Caquetá cartel, a zone with a high presence of Farc guerillas, with whom he had alliances.

Álvaro Caro Melendez, chief of the anti-narcotics police in Colomba, said that “Vargas was the one who began cocaine negotiations with the Farc guerillas for exportation to the US”.

The scale of Vargas’ wealth was revealed when US$29m worth of property was seized from him by the Colombian state.