Excuses for Racism

Fighting between drug cartels in Cananea, a town near the Arizona border, escalated when 50 men executed four local police officers. USA Today’s story sounds like the scene from a movie (it is below). Mexican President Calderon deployed army troops to control the drug cartels. However, the National Human Rights Commission claims that the army is involved in local crime including rapes and other abuses. The public comments on USA Today’s website are racist and one-sided. Instead of using this horrible event to analyze the real origins of poverty and corruption, these comments use this event to justify their racism and the need for more border control. Not one comment offers a critical anti-racist examination of this issue. Here is the article - I won’t post the comments here; you can see them for yourself.

Mexico arrests 4 gunmen after battles near Ariz. kill 22
HERMOSILLO, Mexico (AP) Police and Mexican army troops arrested four members of a criminal assault force that overran a town near the Arizona border and set off gunbattles and executions that left at least 22 dead in violence linked to drug cartels.

Luis Pena Molina, town secretary of Banamichi, said Thursday that “helicopters are combing the whole area” looking for the remnants of the estimated 50 gunmen who assaulted the nearby town of Cananea, 20 kilometers (30 miles) south of the U.S. border. He said four gunmen had been detained.

The violence began Wednesday, when men armed with assault rifles and riding in 10 to 15 vehicles pulled four lightly armed city police officers out of their cars and executed them in a park.

The assailants fled to the nearby hills with authorities in pursuit. The gunmen ditched their vehicles, commandeered horses and forced ranch hands to serve as guides, according to an account from a man abducted by the armed gang.

An hours-long gunbattle erupted between the gunmen and police and soldiers. Fifteen assailants, five police officers and two local residents were killed.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Mexico | Cananea | Jose Luis Soberanes

The invasion of Cananea — a town that helped spark the 1910 Mexican Revolution when U.S. forces crossed the border to help put down a miners’ strike — showed the brashness and power of Mexico’s ruthless organized crime gangs.

The first outside authorities to arrive in Cananea on Wednesday found an eerie no man’s land where local law enforcement had melted away.

“When the state police arrived, there was not a single municipal police officer,” Sonora state Gov. Eduardo Bours said. “We had to take over the command. There wasn’t anyone there. They had all left.”

Bours added that he had previously asked for a federal investigation of the Cananea police force, apparently to determine whether it was infiltrated by Mexico’s Pacific Coast drug gangs

Federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna blamed a turf battle between the Gulf and Pacific drug gangs.

“An armed command first abducted a police patrol, then went out on the streets of Cananea … abducting policemen,” Garcia Luna told reporters. “It is a group linked to the Gulf cartel, waging a turf battle with the Pacific people, for control of this territory.”

He praised Sonora state officials for their “efficient” response.

While President Felipe Calderon has dispatched thousands of army troops to fight the cartels, critics say troops trained for battle should not be acting as police officers.

The official National Human Rights Commission said Tuesday that there was credible evidence that some of the newly deployed troops committed rapes, illegal searches and other rights abuses.

“Soldiers are not trained to carry out police work,” said Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the rights commission.

In Cananea, there was little debate over the need for army troops: Mayor Luis Carlos Cha Flores had formally requested that federal police officers and army troops be sent to the town to restore order, the government news agency Notimex reported.