Mexico’s war on drugs

Matalon: A top police narcotics investigator is laid to rest in Tijuana. As his grieving family looks on, dozens of policemen yell in unison. �My Boss, My Boss� the men yell. This was one of more than a dozen funerals held this week as Mexico’s police and Army do battle across the country with the Sinaloa and Gulf drug cartels.

Car of assassinated police commanderCar of assassinated police commander

The cartels are also squaring off against each other. On a single day last week, 17 corpses — bound, gagged and shot to death — were found across Mexico. Police say all were victims of a group of Army deserters who now work as enforcers for the cartels. Last week in Tijuana, schools and neighborhoods were evacuated as a firefight broke out when the Army tried to arrest a man they’d sought for months, a senior cartel gunman and money-launderer. He escaped �apparently after being tipped off by local police, but was caught a few days later. During the shootout, 2 children and the wife of a police officer were murdered, apparently in retaliation for the arrests of cartel members days earlier.

Ana Maria Salazar is a former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense in charge of anti-narcotics operations in the Clinton Administration. She now works as a political consultant in Mexico.