After meeting with UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced Feb. 6 that he would gradually remove army troops from drug enforcement duty, replacing them with newly-trained police units. Use of the military in Mexico's war on the drug cartels has been harshly criticized by rights groups, including the official National Human Rights Commission. However, the official plan still posted to the website of Mexico's Federal Registry says military forces will remain involved in drug enforcement through the end of Calderón's term in 2012. (Bloomberg [2], Feb. 6)
Soldiers searching a house near the border town of Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas, Feb. 7 discovered nine tons of marijuana and a huge cache of arms—including 89 assault rifles, a battlefield machine-gun, grenades, plastic explosives, military uniforms and more than 80,000 rounds of ammunition. Five men guarding the house were arrested. (NYT [3], Feb. 9)
An army colonel and two presumed narcos were killed in a shoot-out in Parácuaro, Michoacán [4], Feb. 7. Two soldiers were also wounded. Soldiers were backing up local police in a raid on drug laboratory (presumably methamphetamine) when they came under fire with AK-47s. (La Jornada [5], Feb. 7)
See our last posts on Mexico [6] and the narco crisis [7].
