Mexico’s military ‘surge’ in the war on drugs

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Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed 12,696 of the nation’s 90,000 or so combat-ready soldiers in his five-month-long campaign to stop rival drug gangs from killing each other...and anyone standing in their way.

The exact number of soldiers was disclosed today in response to inquiries by a citizen under disclosure laws similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. While getting such information from Mexican bureaucrats is slower and even more painful than dealing with their pencil-pushing counterparts north of the border, it’s still easier than it used to be under Mexico’s former one-party government.

Calderon’s deployment dramatically favors his home state of Michoacan, where his mom still lives and where rival gangs are fighting over pot and opium poppy farms, as well as access to the Pacific Coast ports where Colombian cocaine shipments arrive.

Michoacan had 4,660 soldiers, one per 851 residents. The neighboring state of Guerrero, where competing traffickers are transforming Acapulco from an old-school resort into a post-modern shooting gallery, has one soldier for every 1,558 residents. At the California border, where dope passes by the ton, Tijuana now has 362 soldiers, about one for every 3,896 of the city’s residents.

Posted by Carlos Martinez and Sam Enriquez in Mexico City