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Mexico’s spreading drug violence

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Pamela Starr writes in Opinion today:

In the interest of national security, the United States must aggressively police its border with Mexico. But the cause of concern is not the northward flow of migrants and drugs. Rather, our focus should be on the southward flow of arms and ammunition that is fueling an explosion of drug-related violence in Mexico and that could soon threaten U.S. interests. Already this year, nearly 4,000 people have been killed in Mexico as warring drug cartels intensify their battle for control of drug markets and transportation routes, according to the newspaper Reforma. That’s more than triple the total for 2002 and a 65% increase on the tally for all of 2007. Murder is now producing a death toll appropriate to a country in the throes of a civil war. Meanwhile, raw brutality increases as well. In newspaper headlines, the once unthinkable is now commonplace: decapitations; the slaughter of entire families, including infants; massacres of two dozen individuals at a time; and recently, the targeting of innocents with hand grenades in Morelia, Michoacan. Kidnapping and extortion has also skyrocketed, transforming Mexico into the abduction capital of the Americas and creating a palpable sense of insecurity in the nation. Mexicans are scared, and Americans should be too.

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Pamela Starr is a senior lecturer in international relations and public diplomacy at USC, an adjunct fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy and a senior fellow at USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy.

Read the rest of Pamela Starr’s column on Mexico’s drug violence here.

Click here to go to our special report on the drug-related violence in Mexico, ‘Mexico under Siege’.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

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