Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Mexican drug cartels are looking increasingly like “insurgencies” as escalating violence resembles the war of terror waged against the Colombian government two decades ago.
“It’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narcotraffickers controlled certain parts of the country,” Clinton said today in Washington at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In some cases, the trafficking “is morphing into, making common cause, with what we would consider an insurgency,” Clinton said.
In the past two weeks in northern Mexico, two mayors have been assassinated, a car bomb exploded outside a television station, and 72 migrants were found massacred. In June, a gubernatorial candidate was killed.
Deaths related to drug trafficking have surged during Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s term as the government battles organized crime. Violence related to the narcotics trade has killed more than 28,000 people since Calderon began battling drug gangs when he came to office in December 2006.
While U.S. officials have expressed increasing concern about the scale of violence involving Mexican drug cartels, they have usually avoided suggestions that Mexico may be losing control over its territory.
Calderon ‘Courage’
Clinton, who visited in Mexico in March 2009, today praised Calderon for his efforts in taking on the narcotics kingpins.
“I give President Calderon very high marks for his courage and his commitment,” Clinton said. “This is a really tough challenge.”
Clinton repeated her view that U.S. drug consumption was helping to feed the violence in Mexico. And she said the U.S. was aware of concerns in Central America and the Caribbean about the spillover of the violence.
“We need a much more vigorous U.S. presence” in Central America to help countries improve their law enforcement capacity to fight drug traffickers, Clinton said.
Drug Cartels
The Medellin and Cali cartels were Colombia’s two biggest drug suppliers and smugglers in the 1980s.
Today, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist insurgency, conducts most of the country’s illegal drug trafficking. The FARC, the Spanish acronym for the group, is classified as a terrorist organization in the U.S.
The U.S. has already raised its concern about drug-related violence getting out of control.
U.S. government workers in Monterrey were told last month to send their children back home after a shooting in front of the American Foundation School, and a “high incidence” of kidnappings prompted the State Department to issue an updated travel warning for Mexico.
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