Mexico’s drug violence that has killed about 23,000 people could rage until 2014 judging by past anti-crime fights in Italy, Colombia and the US, the government said on Tuesday.
Mexican Security Minister Genero Garcia Luna told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit in Mexico City that the country could not expect a quick victory in the army-backed drug fight launched by President Felipe Calderon in late 2006.
“In every case, the average [time taken to control organized crime] is between six and eight years,” Garcia Luna said in his headquarters in the Mexican capital.
“In the case of Italy, in the case of Colombia, New York and Chicago, the curve was six years on average. In Italy it lasted almost seven years,” he said.
With strong support from Washington, Calderon has sent more than 70,000 soldiers, elite navy units and federal police across Mexico to fight powerful drug cartels fighting over lucrative smuggling routes into the US.
However, despite record drug seizures and arrests, violence has escalated to horrifying levels and once-quiet manufacturing and colonial tourist towns feel terrorized by daylight shootouts between rival gangs and the army.
Some companies are freezing investment along the US border, local business leaders say.
Severed heads and bodies hung from bridges are becoming commonplace from Mexico’s Caribbean to its northern border with the US. A spate of civilian killings, including infants caught up in shootouts between troops and hitmen, has hurt support for Calderon’s drug war.
The killing of three people linked to the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez in March provoked outrage from US President Barack Obama, whose administration is providing Mexico with millions of dollars in anti-drug war equipment and police training.
Garcia Luna said the government was doing all it could to protect the economy from any drug war impact.
He said a decision to switch control of security operations to the federal police and away from the army in Ciudad Juarez was bearing fruit despite a surge in violence last month, with killings spiking to 20 a day in the city across from El Paso, Texas.
“We’ve had federal police [in control] in Ciudad Juarez for almost 20 days ... and we are beginning to see signs of improvement in public security,” Garcia Luna said.
Garcia Luna said a major priority was still the cleaning up of Mexico’s notoriously corrupt and poorly-paid police forces that often work with drug gangs.
He said he aimed to eliminate Mexico’s 2,000 municipal forces that are ill-equipped to deal with heavily armed drug hitmen and create a unified police force based on officers from the country’s 32 states.
Also See: Brazil and Paraguay fight the drug trade with border security
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