Mexico's willing drug fighter

Los Angeles Times
By Sam Enriquez
STR, AFP/Getty Images
January 28, 2007

MEXICO CITY - The U.S. war on drugs has seldom seen a more willing recruit than Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Since taking office last month, Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers to half a dozen states, where they have pulled up pot plants and opium poppies by the hectare and searched thousands of vehicles at military roadblocks. He also has fast-tracked the extradition of men reputed to be among the hemisphere's biggest kingpins. But unfortunately for the Mexican leader, who put the drug-trafficking battle at the top of his nation's domestic agenda, the issue that once was a staple of U.S. political speeches has fallen so far off the radar that for the first time in years it didn't warrant a mention in President Bush's State of the Union address. Drug-related violence, meanwhile, has gone from bad to gruesome in Mexico, where traffickers have tossed hand grenades at enemies and left severed heads as messages. More than 2,000 Mexicans died in such carnage last year, according to media tallies.