Slaying prompts calls for troops in Mexico City

The leaders of two political parties called Tuesday for army troops to be dispatched to this capital city and its suburbs to fight drug traffickers in the wake of the assassination of a high-ranking official in the attorney general’s office.

President Felipe Calderon promised an “unprecedented battle” against the traffickers, who have killed as many as 1,000 people this year as they fight Mexican authorities while battling one another for control of a lucrative trade in cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin and other illicit drugs. Most of the drugs are shipped to the United States.

The shooting in the political, cultural and media capital of Mexico raised troubling questions about Calderon’s declared war on traffickers, which has included troop deployments to several states and cities, where violence has since spiraled. Newspaper editorials Tuesday accused the president of being unprepared for the backlash.

Jorge Chabat, an author and drug trade expert here, said the public would probably continue to back Calderon’s efforts against the traffickers, despite the recent setbacks.

“It could be argued that Calderon’s offensive has made the violence worse, and that he was not fully prepared for the escalation of violence that followed,” Chabat said. “But the only other alternative was to do nothing. Or to make a deal with the drug traffickers. And that just isn’t possible in a democratic state under the rule of law.”

Police said they had few leads in the shooting of Jose Nemesio Lugo Felix, who had been appointed just weeks ago to head a drug intelligence unit in the federal attorney general’s office. Lugo Felix was killed in a rush-hour ambush Monday a few yards from his office in the southern district of Coyoacan.

“We are witnessing a head-on, unprecedented struggle in the history of our country against organized crime,” said Jorge Triana, a leader of Calderon’s conservative National Action Party in Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly. “We believe that Mexico City has become one of the most dangerous hot spots in the country and that [the authorities] have not acted appropriately.”

Leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico City and surrounding Mexico state joined the call for troops and federal police to deploy in the Mexico City metropolitan area, home to about 20 million people.

Until recently, the country’s widespread drug violence has been a mostly provincial phenomenon centered on border areas and port cities.

But this year has seen several violent incidents in and around Mexico City that were apparently related to drug trafficking, including the deaths of two federal police officers shot April 26 on the highway linking Mexico City with Toluca.

On Tuesday, observers said Lugo Felix’s death could mark a turning point in the nation’s drug war.

“The killing is proof of the enormous power and impunity of organized crime,” said an editorial in the left-leaning La Jornada, which accused the Calderon government of launching its anti-drug offensive without adequate preparation or protection for even the highest officials involved in the operation.

Speaking to hundreds of young people at the National Youth Olympiad in Veracruz, Calderon promised to win the drug war. “We will recover our Mexico, its plazas, parks and streets, which do not belong to criminals, but rather to the children, the youth and the free men of our country,” he said.

The border city of Tijuana and the southern states of Guerrero and Michoacan have been among the places to which army troops and federal police units have been dispatched by Calderon to fight drug traffickers since he took power in December.

Leaders of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which controls Mexico City’s government, called any such deployment in the capital premature.

“The army is the last card we should play,” said Victor Hugo Cirigo, a PRD city lawmaker and the leader of the capital’s Legislative Assembly.

On Tuesday, the head of Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, Jose Luis Soberanes, said the army was unprepared for policing duties. The commission, an official government agency, has received 52 complaints of abuse related to the army presence in Michoacan, Soberanes said.

“What we should do is strengthen the local police -- give them training, equipment -- and substitute the army with police so [the soldiers] return to their barracks,” Soberanes said.

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hector.tobar@latimes.com