Word: mexicanized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...taken many years for Mexico to finally make that admission, decades in which the country's powerful and violent drug cartels have been allowed to terrorize far too many neighborhoods in too many cities like Juárez. Summoning his army to fill in for unreliable cops, Mexican President Felipe Calderón has brought the fight to the gangs, but their furious backlash has left more than 7,000 Mexicans murdered since the start of last year - almost 2,000 in Juárez alone. Still, through the fog of the drug war, especially on the bloodied border, it has become clearer...
...only a third of the cash is directed at the more important software of police reform. It is police officers, not soldiers, who staff the kind of investigative bodies that bring down organized crime. Says Payan: "This effort is doomed to fail if it's not accompanied by effective [Mexican] cops, and Washington isn't treating that as a large enough piece of the puzzle yet." Reyes agrees. "The U.S. needs to assure that police forces along the border are sufficiently robust," he says, "precisely so they'll be the first line of defense...
Juárez civic leaders like Vargas have long called for the kind of Mexican police and judicial reform that both countries are only now starting to make a priority. Meanwhile, Americans like El Paso County sheriff Richard Wiles want the U.S. to renew the assault-weapons ban that George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress allowed to expire in 2004. If it doesn't, they fear, the few Black Hawk helicopters that Washington ships to Mexico's antidrug warriors won't make up for the thousands of AK-47 rifles and even rocket-propelled grenades pouring into the hands...
...troops. Calderón's supporters insist the brutal counteroffensive by the gangs is a sign that they were rattled. Critics call the relentless violence proof that Calderón took a baseball bat to a hornet's nest but wasn't ready for the hornets - and point out that the Mexican army is not particularly well trained for the urban-guerrilla nature of drug wars. Either way, by last year Washington had become alarmed at Mexico's slaughter: Congress approved $400 million in aid for Mexico's drug war, the first installment of what is supposed to be a three-year...
American officials say privately they're waiting to see whether reform programs like that of Reyes are serious and whether other Mexican mayors and governors will finally join the effort. Juárez's mayor, who is shadowed by six assault-rifle-toting bodyguards, has ousted half his old police force through drug tests, polygraphs and other "confidence exams." Under his pact with Calderón, Reyes now has to recruit more than 2,000 new cops, who, he says, will be among Mexico's best paid and educated. (Aside from a starting annual salary of $9,000 - twice the usual...