MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – Mexico’s image has been badly stained by its murderous drugs war, but President Felipe Calderon is vowing to press on and says traffickers would have the upper hand by now if he had not launched his crackdown.
Calderon, who has staked his presidency on crushing drug gangs, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday the bloodshed from cartel infighting was painful but Mexico could not have waited any longer to tackle the problem.
The death toll from drug violence since Calderon set the army on cartels as soon as he took power in late 2006 has soared to around 23,000, and gruesome news coverage of beheadings and torture have sullied Mexico’s international image, worrying Washington, foreign investors and tourists.
Although he admitted the violence is a blow to his country, he insisted it was better to fight the cartels than let them become ever more powerful.
“It would be worse, the image of Mexico as a country totally under the control of criminal groups,” Calderon said, adding that would not let up in his campaign.
“This has to be done because the alternative is to leave people in the hands of criminals, to turn a blind eye, pretend nothing is happening, leave them open territory so they end up finishing off communities,” he said. “That I will not allow.”
Drug gang violence began rising in Mexico a few years after Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, won the 2000 presidential election and ended 71 years of one-party rule, during which organized crime and drug smuggling flourished.
Mexicans generally support Calderon’s drug war — as does the United States, the main market for the cocaine smuggled up from Colombia. But polls show many Mexicans think the cartels are winning the war, and Washington is increasingly anxious.
Many firms surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico earlier this year said they felt less safe than before.
More than a quarter said they were reconsidering their investment plans in Mexico due to security concerns.
“The only battle in which we are not advancing well is the battle of perception. I know I have a lot to do,” Calderon said in a library at his Los Pinos official residence and office, stressing Mexico’s low overall homicide rate.
“The (drug war) death toll is very shocking.”
Despite record drug seizures and arrests as some 70,000 troops and federal police have been deployed across Mexico, violence has escalated to horrifying levels. Manufacturing cities on the U.S. border and tourist resorts towns are being terrorized by shootings and the dumping of mutilated bodies.
Calderon said Mexico was in “full control” of its territory and making faster progress fighting organized crime than other countries had, citing Colombia which took two decades to gain the upper hand over its drug cartels.
But he said the daily bloodshed weighed on him, as bystanders and children get caught up in daylight gun battles between rival cartel hitmen and security forces.
“What hurts me most, what worries me most, are the civilian victims,” Calderon said.
“The treatment is difficult but we have acted in very good time and we are going to resolve the problem even though it will have costs in the short term,” he added.
