Mexican President Felipe Calderón spoke on Tuesday at an event titled "Dialogue for Security: Toward a State Policy."
Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico

Mexican Government Raises Figure For Drug War Deaths For Second Time In Four Months

August 4, 2010 By Staff
Mexican President Felipe Calderón spoke on Tuesday at an event titled "Dialogue for Security: Toward a State Policy."

Mexican President Felipe Calderón spoke on Tuesday at an event titled "Dialogue for Security: Toward a State Policy."

Today in Latin America

Top Story — The Mexican government said Tuesday that 28,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón initiated an offensive against the country’s drug cartels three years ago.

The announcement, made by Mexico’s intelligence service director Guillermo Valdés, marks the second time in four months that the government has increased its estimate of the number of violent deaths caused by the drug war. Calderón said in April that the number of deaths was 22,700, while the Mexican attorney general’s office placed the figure at nearly 25,000 last month, according to CNN.

According to Valdés, Mexican security forces have battled drug gangs almost once a day on average over the last three years.

“It’s inevitable that we must accept that violence keeps growing,” Valdés said.

Meanwhile, security issues continued to plague northern Mexico. An explosive device blew up early Tuesday morning in a market in the Mexican town of Reynosa, on the border with Texas, CNN reports. No casualties were reported.

Reynosa has seen increasingly violence this year, due to rivalry between two drug gangs.

Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

Caribbean

Central America

Andes

Southern Cone

  • The government of Iran rejected Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s offer of asylum to an Iranian woman accused of adultery who was facing execution.
  • MERCOSUR members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay established a common customs code Tuesday during the trade bloc’s meeting in San Juan, Argentina.
  • Almost half of Argentina’s provinces registered below-freezing temperatures over the weekend, with parts of the country posting temperatures colder than Antarctica.

Image: Gobierno Federal @ Flickr.

Subscribe to Today in Latin America by Email

3 Comments

[…] La violencia generada por el tráfico de narcóticos ha causado alrededor de 28,000 muertes violentas, según cifras del gobierno. […]

[…] wonder if the many Muslim-afeared out there have ever looked to the problems on the border between Mexico & America and ever asked themselves “What if America had a border with a Muslim nation that did not […]

[…] war, with 322 people being killed in 31 days, for an outstanding average of 10.3 deaths per day. 28,000 deaths have been reported since the inception of the Mexican Drug war, with ~5,000 deaths in Ciudad Juarez […]

Comments are closed.