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[Prof.Gringo]

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) � Rafael Echevarria had a steady factory job, a modest home of his own, and enough cash to occasionally take his family to McDonald's. It was a good life until the drug war hit Ciudad Juarez, followed by two robberies at his house, extortion at his daughter's school, and finally, the shootout on the bus.

When the firing began, 6-year-old Valeria dove to the floor, breaking a tooth. There was so much blood from her mouth wound, her parents thought she'd been shot.

The next day, the couple and their two children boarded a flight back home to Veracruz, along with 1,600 others who had once moved north for work in foreign assembly plants and now were fleeing south in search of safety. The Veracruz state government paid for the flights, and assured the drug war refugees that there would be jobs, education and housing.

At the time, it seemed to the Echevarrias like the only solution.

Then the drug war followed them home.

Military offensives against the drug cartels and turf battles among crime syndicates have pushed the war into areas once considered quiet. A year after their hopeful flight, the Echevarrias are not only caught anew in a crush of violence, but still without the promised help.

In Juarez, the Echevarrias had a house and a van. In Veracruz, they've had to pawn their appliances and move to a concrete hut to make ends meet. The trade of solvency for safety was a fake choice, because in Juarez, Echevarria said, "We would have been living well.

"Now we're in a hole. And it's very difficult to get out."

The Echevarrias are among thousands of Mexicans who make up the internal diaspora trying to escape drug violence that seems to migrate rather than cease, with more than 45,000 troops fighting cartels and more than 40,000 dead by many counts.


Recent survey results by Parametria found that 1.6 million Mexicans have moved because of drug violence since 2006. One study by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre put the number at 230,000 in 2010, estimating that half fled to the United States.

Another study, by demographer Rodolfo Rubio at Colegio de la Frontera Norte, says 200,000 people left Juarez alone for other Mexican cities between 2007 and 2010.

http://news.yahoo.com/mexico-drug-war-refugees-escape-more-bloodshed-134952947.html

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

I have just deleted two inappropriate postings.

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As long as they do not violate board policies and rules, different points of view are permitted here regardless of whether or not it agrees with your personal opinion. In the same manner, your point of view is permitted here whether or not others agree with you.

Any future instances of postings being deleted for the reasons cited above will result in severe sanctions for those members who posted such messages.

Es verdad.

[Prof.Gringo]

"Just 10 days into his term, on Dec. 11, 2006, Calderon sent 6,500 troops to his home state of Michoacan to battle drug cartels. The government needed to act decisively, he said, to prevent organized crime from taking over the country.

Over the next five years, he deployed 45,000 troops, made major hits on the leadership of at least five cartels and spent nearly $46 billion fighting organized crime, his defining domestic policy.

Since then, chaos has exploded on the ground in once-quiet places across the country, including Veracruz. As authorities cracked down in one spot, violence moved to another. When cartel leaders were arrested, the gangs dissolved into more violent splinter groups fighting in areas where corrupt local authorities did not fight back.

The warring splinter groups have allowed two major cartels to take over most of the territory.

The death toll has grown from 2,000 in 2006 to more than 45,000 by many counts. Calderon says the government was reacting to violence that was already heating up among cartels, not the cause of it.

Meanwhile, drugs continue to flow into the United States. According to various U.S. drug reports, cultivation of marijuana and poppies is up. Mexico continues to be a source of 95 percent of all cocaine going into the United States and remains the primary foreign source of marijuana and methamphetamine.

One of main result of the five-year war is that Mexicans live with a new kind of fear.

"They're afraid when they leave their houses," said pollster Roy Campos, adding that one in six Mexicans knows someone killed by drug violence. "We no longer just watch it on television, we feel it."



Calderon, who leaves office in December 2012, has promised to leave a secure police force. To root out corruption, the federal government has been pushing an elaborate process for vetting all of Mexico's 460,000 police officers.

According to federal figures, only 16 percent have been vetted so far, and only 8 percent of the total passed the background checks and tests. In Veracruz, a state even Calderon conceded had been handed over to the Zetas, 14 percent of state police had been evaluated as of the end of the September, and 6 percent of municipal police. The number who passed was not available, but less than a month after the 35 bodies were dumped, authorities announced the firing of nearly 1,000 state police officers for failing their tests.

About 45,000 troops have been deployed, plus several thousand more from the Navy infantry, or marines. More than 45,000 people have been killed by several counts, though the government stopped giving figures on drug war dead when they hit nearly 35,000 a year ago.

With each military and federal police crackdown, the violence moves to a new location. The breaking up of cartels and disruption in the balance of power has led to the growth of two major cartels, Sinaloa and the Zetas."


http://news.yahoo.com/violence-tops-results-mexicos-5-yr-drug-war-145236727.html