DRUG VIOLENCE TARNISHES MEXICO'S INTERNATIONAL IMAGE

The US State Department Has Issued a New Travel Advisory Warning of
'Large Firefights' Across the Country.

Mexico has an image problem. It has long been internal - with
newspaper headlines and nightly news broadcasting the menacing notes,
severed heads, and bullet-riddled bodies that are the byproducts of a
deadly drug war raging across the country.

But now Mexico's vicious reputation has gone international.

In the past week, international newscasts have focused on protests
along the US-Mexican border against soldiers battling drug gangs,
which officials say were organized by drug gangs themselves. Then a
chilling note left for the police chief of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's
most violent city, made headlines around the globe: Step down, it
stated, or one police officer will be killed every two days.

Hours later, Roberto Orduna resigned after a police officer and jail
guard were murdered and left with signs on their bodies that said
more people would be killed until he stepped down.

Now the US State Department has issued a new travel advisory, warning
of "large firefights" across the country.

"Recent Mexican Army and police confrontations with drug cartels have
resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons
and grenades," it reads.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 40,000 troops
across the country to fight drug traffickers battling each other for
lucrative drug routes into the US since he took office in December
2006. His popularity surged when he launched his first offensive in
his home state, Michoacan.

According to a recent report by the United Nations, Mexico spent $25
billion in 2007 to fight drug cartels, representing a 24 percent
increase from 2006. But drug cartels have responded with
"unprecedented violence," that report reads.

Now, critics are increasingly questioning whether Mr. Calderon's
strategy is the right one. Some 6,000 have been killed since last
year, double the number from the previous year, with 78 soldiers and
500 police among the victims. Violence last week points to a similar
trend for 2009.

On Saturday, two grenades were hurled at a police station in
Zihuatenejo, on Mexico's Pacific coast, wounding one officer and four
civilians. That followed a grenade assault earlier in the week on a
police patrol in western Michoacan State that wounded five civilians
and an officer.

The drug gangs have seemed impervious to government offensives. They
instead have gotten bolder.

Last week, hundreds of residents blocked bridges in border cities in
protest of abuses waged by soldiers - blockades that officials say
were spurred by drug traffickers.

Calderon vowed to "continue fighting organized crime, without pause
or mercy," he said last week during a speech on Mexico's Army Day.
"Mexico faces a historic challenge in converting itself into a safe
country, a country of true law and order."

The violence has been worst at the border. Ciudad Juarez is at the
center of the battles, registering a third of all drug-related
homicides in the country last year, as well as more than 17,000 car
thefts and 1,650 carjackings in 2008.