Mexican president's anti-drug offensive heads for Tijuana
More than 3,000 troops and police are sent to stop cartel bloodshed.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-border3jan03,1,7648544.story

Mexican president's anti-drug offensive heads for Tijuana
More than 3,000 troops and police are sent to stop cartel bloodshed.

By Sam Enriquez and Richard Marosi
Times Staff Writers

January 3, 2007

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday opened the second front in his campaign against drug violence, sending 3,300 soldiers, sailors and federal police to the troubled border city of Tijuana.

Tijuana and surrounding communities are a key battleground in the drug cartels' fight to control smuggling routes to the United States. Their bloody rivalries left more than 2,000 people dead in Mexico last year.

Operation Tijuana comes three weeks after Calderon sent troops to his home state of Michoacan, on the Pacific Coast, where federal authorities destroyed 600 acres of marijuana crops and seized more than 6 tons of harvested pot.

Corruption and incompetence among local and state police prompted Calderon, who took office Dec. 1, to promise federal forces to combat Mexico's drug violence. His top security officials said that every state eventually would get relief.

Tijuana and the state of Baja California have suffered increasing numbers of kidnappings and killings of drug traffickers, police officers, business owners and bystanders.

In 2006, nearly two dozen law enforcement officials were killed, including three police officers from Rosarito Beach who were beheaded.

"We won't let any state be hostage to drug trafficking or organized crime," Interior Secretary Francisco Ramirez Acuña said at a news conference Tuesday.

Tijuana's drug trade has long been controlled by the Arellano Felix cartel, once one of the country's most powerful drug-trafficking organizations. The cartel's leadership has been weakened by killings and arrests in recent years, but authorities say the organization and its rivals pose the main threat to peace in Tijuana.

The August capture of the cartel's alleged leader, Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, worsened the violence, as rivals fought to tear off a share of the business.

Recent bloodshed has been notable for its brutality and increasingly professional execution. The Rosarito Beach officers, for example, were abducted by a paramilitary force.

Federal authorities said they would give a weekly count of arrests and drug seizures in Tijuana, as well as a tally of homicides, kidnappings and thefts. Drug cartels are thought to be behind a spree of kidnap-for-ransom schemes targeting businessmen and professionals.

Mexican authorities said troops would remain in Michoacan, a key transport state for cocaine, the country's most lucrative export drug.


sam.enriquez@latimes.com

richard.marosi@latimes.com

Enriquez reported from Mexico City and Marosi from Tijuana. Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez in The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.


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