STUDY: MEXICANS SUPPORT DRUG WAR

Most Mexicans continue to endorse President Felipe Calderon's war
against the drug cartels, even as violence has wracked their country
since he launched the offensive in 2006, according to a study
released last week.

Fully 80 percent of Mexicans said they back the use of the army to
fight drug traffickers -- compared with 83 percent in 2009, according
to a survey conducted by the Global Attitudes Project of the Pew
Research Center. Opposition to Calderon's use of the army increased
slightly from last year, from 12 percent to 17 percent.

A little more than half of Mexican citizens, 55 percent, say they
believe the Mexican military is making progress against the cartels,
while 22 percent said they think it is losing ground, the report states.

The approval ratings, though down from last year, show that a
majority of Mexican nationals believe in Calderon's tactics, said
Richard Wike, associate director of the Pew project.

"I think what we see in this survey and some of the research we have
done in Mexico is that people are very concerned about (the drug)
issue," Wike said. Mexican citizens "want to do something about it.
They largely support Calderon's efforts to fight the drug war. They
approve of using the Mexican army to fight the drug traffickers, and
they believe the army is making progress."

But George Grayson, a government professor at the College of William
and Mary in Virginia, said the results of the study are a little misleading.

The armed forces remain among the nation's most respected
institutions, including churches and universities, he said. But that
high approval rating has to be taken into context because Mexicans
know the country's police forces are corrupt at every level of government.

"If there is anyone that is going to have to cross swords with
militarized crime, it is going to have to be the military," said
Grayson, who wrote a book on the drug war, "Mexico: Narco Violence
and a Failed State?"

In other words, "no hay mas opciones," he said. There are no other options.

Researchers in the Pew study conducted face-to-face interviews of
1,300 adults in April and May. Other polls show lower positive
ratings for the Mexican army, but approval remains relatively high. A
survey conducted by the Mexican daily newspaper Milenio found that
support for the armed forces had dropped by 11 points in two years,
from 83 percent in 2007 to 72 percent in 2009.

Much of the endorsement for the military comes from business leaders
who want the national government to quell the violence, said Anthony
Knopp, a history professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville
and Texas Southmost College.

"I don't think there is any going back to the tolerance of the drug
trade," he said. "The cartels are just too much engaged in battling
each other and the government's forces. Consequently, the businessman
wants more goverment action in the form of police and military."

Accounts vary, but more than 28,000 people have been killed in
drug-related violence in Mexico since Calderon took office. Deaths
this year are at 7,500, with 2,053 deaths in the state of Chihuahua
and 421 in Tamaulipas, according to Agencia Reforma, a Mexican news agency.

Calderon launched the war against the drug cartels when he took
office in an effort to regain control of the country. For most of the
20th century, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the
PRI, ruled Mexico, and cartels paid off politicians at all tiers of
the government, Grayson said.

But the cartels back then "followed certain rules of the game," he
said. "They did not kidnap, they did not sell drugs in Mexico, they
showed respect to police officials, and they did not trespass on each
other's territory or product lines."

When they did, the central government "would come down on them, like
a ton of bricks," he said. But over time, drug traffickers grew to
overcome politicians' control, and power became decentralized -- the
chaos escalated when the PRI lost control of the presidency.

Now the majority of the fighting is taking place in Nuevo Leon,
Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, as three of Mexico's drug cartels -- the
Gulf Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Michoacana--fight
against the Zetas, which once served as the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel.

For Knopp, the tragedy lies in the fact that the government "had to
do something, had to take action."

"A sovereign nation could not exist with a parallel illegal
government functioning in terms of the cartels," Knopp said. Thus,
Calderon summoned the military, but what the resolution is now, he
and other experts said, they do not know.

At an international bridge in Brownsville, Irma Alicia Martinez
Cepedo said she does not know either, but she has hope. Carrying back
groceries to her home in Matamoros, she said she believed Calderon's
actions had been necessary.

"Maybe the illegal drug trade is never going to end, but I think he
is doing the right thing" said the 43-year-old woman in Spanish. "We
need to remain united for a better Mexico, a better United States."