Mexico & Nafta - October 2006 (ISSN 1741-444X)

The president-elect, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, called for better coordination between the country's various police forces to reduce the number of drug related killings. In the past 20 months at least 2,500 people have been killed in drug related violence. 

A senior member of Calderón's transition team, speaking anonymously to the Spanish news agency, Efe, said on 22 September that the "dispersed and disorganised Mexican police forces were losing the battle against organised crime." On 21 September, Calderón himself said that the growing violence of organised crime was threatening the security of Mexico itself. The US concurred, talking of the "brutal criminality" in Mexico. 

Although Mexico has 385,000 policemen they are answerable to different authorities, mostly state and municipal. Only 21,000 of them work for the federal government's organised crime unit which is charged with combating drug traffickers, kidnappers and terrorists. Most security experts say that President Vicente Fox's much hyped México Seguro plan, which targeted three particularly hot trouble spots (Tamaulipas, Baja California and Sinaloa) before being rolled out more or less across the country has failed. In most states the murder rate has continued to rise after México Seguro started. 

Bribiescas: A court ruled that a book by the Argentine journalist, Olga Wornat, about the two sons of President Vicente Fox's wife, Marta Sahagún, by her first husband, had caused them "moral damage." Wornat accused the two Bribiesca brothers, Manuel and Jorge Alberto, of profiting from their mother's influential position as Mexico's First Lady. Wornat's claims were made in her book, Crónicas Malditas.