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ACAPULCO - Frank Sinatra sang wistfully about it and Errol Flynn adopted it as his winter hang-out, but the scenic Mexican resort city of Acapulco is struggling to protect its image as a jet-set paradise.
An outbreak of bloody street violence blamed on warring drug cartels means the city is no longer a darling of celebrities. Heavily dependent on tourism, it has long been struggling to combat the grisly crime wave which last year saw a severed head wash up on a tourist beach and last week led investigators to the chopped-up remains of a man's body in rubbish bin.
The crisis deepened last week with attacks by groups of men disguised as soldiers and armed with AK-47 rifles invading two police stations barely 3km from the main tourist areas, stripping the police officers of their weapons and then opening fire. Three policemen were killed in the first incident. At the second station, a secretary, two police officers and a public prosecutor were killed.
The attacks presented a challenge to the new Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, who since taking office last December has launched an aggressive offensive against drug trafficking cartels, deploying roughly 25,000 federal police and army troops to Acapulco and several other cities where drug violence has grown. Across the nation last year, wars between rival drug cartels killed a record 2000 people.
After an emergency meeting of Calderon's national security cabinet, the Government in Mexico City reiterated its commitment to stemming the bloodshed, promising that it would not "retreat or give up in the face of the attacks by organised crime".
Two of Mexico's largest drug trafficking gangs are engaged in a vicious battle for control in Acapulco, an important way-station for cocaine arriving from Latin America and bound for markets in the United States. Much of the illicit cargo arrives by boat in the city's port area, only a 10-minute drive from the city's famous sweeping bay where most of its hotels, clubs and restaurants are located.
In Acapulco, which has seen an infusion of 8000 troops in recent weeks, as well as elsewhere, federal authorities have been trying to tackle corruption in local police forces amid suspicions that many officers are themselves tied to drug gangs. In the northwestern city of Tijuana, just south of San Diego in California, Government forces confiscated weapons from the entire municipal police force.
But events in Acapulco seem to have made a mockery of Calderon's campaign. It has also raised fresh fears of damage to the tourist industry, which even before last week was reeling after bullets fired into a hotel lobby this month slightly injured two visitors from Canada.
- INDEPENDENT
