Mexico is a contrasts country. A Mexico exists with his beautiful beaches and charming colonial cities. A Mexico with a majestic architecture and extraordinary monuments. The acquaintance in the world for his famous kitchen and the wealth of his art and culture.
On the other hand, there exists a Mexico that is poor, with a cracked judicial system, where there reign the ineffectiveness, the impunity and the corruption. It is a Mexico through that he has lived during the last years besieged by a wave of violence that it has put to the country first of all in the list of the most violent of the world. The country with most of sequestrations and most of journalists' murders in the western hemisphere.

One of the most recent series of murders did holders about the world. Fifty persons were found dead in a period of only one week in the frontier city of Tijuana. But that is not at all when we begin to count the quantity of bodies found in different reports of the country, decapitated, gagged, with shots in the head to the style execution or with torture signs, the majority linked to the drug trafficking.

The numbers are horrifying. In what goes of the year, 3.200 persons have been murdered by the organized crime. That is over 2.675 murders in 2007 and 1.410 in 2006. The increase has the Mexicans disconcerted, considering the intensity with which the Mexican government has tackled his war against the crime.

When the president Felipe Calderón assumed the charge two years ago, he declared the war against the cartels of the drug and turned into his first priority the combat against the crime. He sent the first army to his native Michoacán state, later to the states of Monterrey, Sinaloa and to several frontier cities. The virtual militarization of the country has not produced, nevertheless, the awaited results.

José Reveles, a journalist of investigation of the Mexican newspaper The Financier makes sure that to the Caldron government him the narcoviolencia went away of the hands. "The crime is organized and the government is disorganized", it supports. "The crime – it adds - it is challenging to the government and the only answer of the government is it reactivates". Reveal he believes that the combat against the cartels of the drug has been ineffective due to the absence of a suitable intelligence. "The army and federal agents attack the drug traffickers in the streets; they neither identify them nor chase them with authorization nor attack his financial structure", he makes sure.

The Mexican citizens are full, tired, displeased. Last month, hundreds of thousands dressed themselves of target and went for the streets of the Mexican capital and of other cities of the country to protest against the wave of murders and sequestrations. The statistics on sequestrations are difficult to be necessary since many sequestrations are not brought and are not considered to be a federal crime, but it is anticipated that between 2004 and 2007 the sequestrations increased in 40 per cent.

In an action without precedents, the president Calderón took part in an emergency summit with the mayor of the Mexican capital, Marcelo Ebrard, and several governors to promote a joint effort in the struggle against the crime. But since then the violence has been worse.

During the traditional festivities of the Day of Independence, on September 15 in Morelia, Michoacán, native people of Caldron, two grenades were thrown against a multitude killing 8 and hurting more than 100 persons. This is the clearest sign that the cartels of the drug are already not only fighting between themselves to control territories and routes, but also they are concentrating on innocent persons.

The Mexican citizens must not be imprisoned in their own hearths. They deserve to feel free to enjoy these beautiful beaches and to walk along the streets of his cities with his families, without the fear of being kidnapped or surprised in the firing line inside the furious wars of the drug traffickers. His monuments must be used like a symbol of the pride, not like stages of protests demanding protection of his government. It is a time to calculate the strategy again because this one is not working.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.