Security forces found the body of a slain mayor on Wednesday near Mexico’s richest city, days after he was abducted by increasingly brazen drug cartels.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his presidency on a faltering drug war, condemned the “cowardly assassination” of Edelmiro Cavazos, the mayor of a town on the outskirts of Monterrey, an industrial center with close US business ties.
“The murder of Edelmiro is an outrage and forces us to redouble our efforts to fight these cowardly criminals,” Calderon wrote on a Twitter update.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Cavazos, 38, an US-educated mayor from Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, was found dumped on a rural road outside his town of Santiago. He was blindfolded and his hands were tied.
Alejandro Garza, the attorney general in the border state of Nuevo Leon, which includes Santiago and Monterrey, 230km from Texas, said Cavazos was shot three times and accused drug cartels of being responsible for the killing.
Nuevo Leon Governor Rodrigo Medina urged Calderon to send more troops to Monterrey and surrounding areas, echoing a plea from Mexican business groups published in newspapers across the country.
Medina said this week that Cavazos, who took office last year, was probably targeted for his efforts to clean up Santiago’s corrupt police force, part of a nationwide effort to curb endemic police graft.
The mayor of the wealthy San Pedro Garza Garcia municipality, part of Monterrey, said drug gangs had threatened Cavazos late last year.
“When the mayor took office, he told me that criminal groups had gone to see him, saying: either you join us or we eliminate you,” Mayor Mauricio Fernandez told local radio.
Santiago, a popular weekend getaway for Monterrey residents, has also become a staging post for drug gangs smuggling narcotics into the US.
Mexican Interior Minister Francisco Blake arrived in Monterrey and held talks with officials. Cavazos was due to be buried yesterday.
The death of Cavazos, a father of three who was taken from his home by hitmen masquerading as police officers on Sunday night, marks the first attack on an official by cartels in Nuevo Leon.
Drug violence has surged in Monterrey, where per capita income is double the national average, since a dispute between the powerful Gulf cartel and its former armed wing the Zetas turned into all-out war at the start of this year.
That turf war is also terrorizing neighboring Tamaulipas state, where a candidate for governor was killed in June, the highest level political murder in Mexico in 16 years.
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