Mexico Under Siege

CALDERON VISITS AN ANGRY CITY

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's President Faces Citizen Outrage Amid Signs
His War on Drug Gangs Is Failing

The slayings of three people attached to the U.S. Consulate here
underscore the failings of Mexico's military offensive against drug
gangs despite a steady flow of troop reinforcements and personal
attention from President Felipe Calderon.

Calderon came to Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday for the third time in 33
days. The trip had been previously scheduled, but its agenda was
overtaken by the consulate slayings -- the American couple and
Mexican man are just three of the 500 people killed in the city this
year alone.

The president encountered angry demonstrations, as on his previous
visits, and a citizenry that is tense, frustrated and increasingly hopeless.

"We Are Fed Up, Mr. President," read the banner headline in Ciudad
Juarez's leading newspaper, El Diario.

"More than fed up!" said Irene Bota, a shopkeeper and lifetime
resident of this city across the border from El Paso. "You should
have seen what Juarez used to be like. Artists, celebrities, soldiers
from Ft. Bliss [in El Paso] all came to pass time and enjoy
themselves. Now no one dares even go outside."

Ciudad Juarez today is the epicenter of unrestrained drug-war
violence, with the highest homicide and kidnapping rates in the
country and one of the broadest penetrations of drug-trafficking corruption.

Coroners are overwhelmed by the number of dead. Houses sit vacant, a
quarter of the city's population, by official estimate, having fled
in the last two years. Thousands of businesses have shuttered rather
than pay steep extortion fees to gangs.

Calderon has poured nearly 10,000 army and police troops into the
city. But far from restoring security, the killings have only soared.
Killers act with impunity and, if it turns out the Americans were
targeted because of who they were, with newfound brazenness.

In his trip to Ciudad Juarez on Feb. 11, Calderon was forced to
publicly recognize that the offensive launched when he took office in
December 2006 was "not working." Military campaigns had to be
supplemented with social programs to attack poverty and promote
education, he said in a remarkable moment of self-criticism. But
residents complain that the words have not translated into concrete actions.

He was pushed to act by the Jan. 31 massacre in Ciudad Juarez of at
least 15 mostly young people at a party and by an unusually forceful
surge in demands from the public for change.

The attacks Saturday on U.S. diplomatic personnel and their families
- -- and the swift, harsh voice of outrage from the Obama
administration -- ratcheted up the pressure on Calderon and
embarrassed his government.

Canada on Tuesday seconded Washington's warning to citizens against
unnecessary travel to parts of Mexico.

Calderon will be pressed to capture suspects to show that his
government still has the upper hand. There also will be questions
north of the border about the United States' cooperation with
Mexico's fight against traffickers.

Washington has pledged $1.3 billion to Mexico to beef up police and
the judiciary, but only a fraction of the money has been released.

Mexican politicians were quick to lament the consulate deaths but
added that the U.S. must share responsibility because its gun dealers
supply the weapons and its addicts keep the traffickers in business.

The bodies of Lesley Enriquez, a consular official, and her husband,
Arthur H. Redelfs, were returned Tuesday to family in El Paso.
Mexican authorities have blamed the killings on the Aztecs drug gang.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said Redelfs' work as an
officer in the El Paso prison system, where numerous Aztecs gang
members are held, might have had a role in the killings.

Reyes echoed U.S. officials in pledging to capture the culprits
quickly, despite the fact that few crimes are ever solved in Mexico.

As Calderon met behind closed doors with security officials here, a
small demonstration was taking place outside a funeral home.
Relatives of some of the 28 other people killed over the weekend were
protesting what they described as the government's negligence and indifference.

"The curious thing about this [consulate] case is that with one huge
slap from [President] Obama, the entire Mexican state seems to have
awakened and become determined to make the criminals pay,"
commentator Ricardo Aleman noted. "Never mind that those same
criminals have killed thousands of young Mexicans, to whose families
no authority ever promised justice."