Mexico’s wealthiest city struggles with new violence
FEATURE |
MONTERREY — Inhabitants of Mexico’s wealthiest city of Monterrey once feared Mexico City for its notorious crime, but some have now moved there to escape an explosion of violence at home.
Grenade attacks on police, bystanders killed in shootouts, and “narcoblockades” — when drug gang members steal cars to block roads — shook the industrial hub and its northern state of Nuevo Leon last year, where total murders rose 300 percent to 828, with more than 500 blamed on drug violence.
Violence hit new levels this January, when 20 police were killed.
“We had an assassination, execution or murder every six hours,” Eloy Cantu, senator for Nuevo Leon, told AFP.
Authorities blame a spillover from neighboring Tamaulipas state, where a turf war between the Gulf cartel and its former hitmen the Zetas has spread fear and forced entire populations out of villages..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110210com6.html
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