Mexico: 24 hours of death

In apparently lawless Mexico, 69 deaths occurred within 24 hours on January 9, making it the most violent day since President Felipe Calderón took office at the end of 2006. So far in 2010, some 283 deaths have been attributed in the ongoing war between authorities and Mexico’s various narcotics cartels. The previous record of such violence was reached on August 17, 2009: 57 deaths.

On January 9, the drug war claimed 26 lives in Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua, which lies across the border from El Paso TX. Juarez is considered the most violent town in Mexico. In 2009, there were 2,635 deaths in Juarez, representing 34 percent of the 7,724 committed nationally in 2009.

In the capital of Chihuahua, there were ten persons killed in four different incidents. There were shootings in Sinaloa, a state in northeast Mexico. A former mayor of Angostura and a companion were murdered, along with two more persons in Culiacán, and in another locality of Sinaloa. In the central Mexican state of Durango, five people were found murdered, and in San Luis Potosí the leader of a group of taxi drivers and his wife were found murdered. Thirteen more such murders were recorded for Mexico City and the surrounding State of Mexico. The rest of the murders occurred in Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, and in the surfing mecca of Baja California.

President Calderón has made the fight against the drug cartels his principal domestic chore, having resorted to using the military to confront heavily armed narcotraffickers. He also expects to eradicate corruption in local police forces, especially, which have long been linked to the traffickers. The military complains that local police often either serve to protect drug gangs or themselves serve as their combatants.