Word: monterrey
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Mexico's powerful and bloodthirsty narcomafias, facing a U.S.-backed antidrug offensive by Mexico's military, have in recent years flirted with attacks on American officials. Two years ago, for example, drug gangsters hurled a grenade at the U.S. consulate in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. No one was hurt. But if the March 13 murders were an announcement that the warnings have ended - that the narcos now consider U.S. authorities to be targets just like the local police and politicians they've been gunning down for years - then the Mexican drug war has entered a dimension not seen...
...MONTERREY, MEXICO...
...short term, of course, legalization of marijuana - let alone any other drug - is not going to happen. That explains why Juárez is such an interesting laboratory. More industrious than the border Gomorrah of Tijuana to the west but grittier than the pin-striped boardrooms of Monterrey to the east, the city has long been a Mexican forerunner: it was the site of the Mexican Revolution's first military victory, the nation's first maquiladoras and the first opposition mayor during the PRI's long rule. Can it now take a lead in the drug wars by pioneering police reform...
...Calderón put the army on the front lines of the fight against cartels as soon he took office in December 2006. There are now some 50,000 troops deployed against the gangsters, both in the marijuana-growing mountains and in cities such as Juarez, Monterrey and Tijuana. That campaign has coincided with skyrocketing violence, as criminal gangs wage war on government forces and on one another, leaving more than 5,300 dead last year. Many citizens support the soldiers, whom they see as Mexico's only hope against thugs armed with high-powered rifles and rocket-propelled grenades...
...Protests have been most intense in the industrial city of Monterrey, 140 miles south of Laredo, Texas. Demonstrations there began on Monday, Feb. 9, and as they grew in intensity, they produced clashes between hundreds of protesters and police on Feb. 17. The local state governor, Jose Natividad Gonzalez, accuses the Gulf cartel of orchestrating the disruptions. The crime syndicate is mimicking Mexico's hard left, he says, busing in paid protesters from the barrios to run amok...