Violence getting out of hand in Mexico

The title to this post may be stating the obvious, but the past few days have been especially sanguinary and brutal in the battles between police and drug gangs in Mexico.

According to local media reports, over 120 people were killed in the past week due to gang violence including at least 21 people in the western state of Sinaloa. Authorities estimate that on Thursday alone 16 people were killed in separate incidents including the execution of a police chief in Chihuahua.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon has continued to stand by his aggressive anti-crime plan; “we are determined to recover streets that never should have ceased being ours,” said Calderon in May while attending the memorial of a slain officer. Yet the seemingly out-of-control violence has increasingly claimed the lives of innocent civilians and has had a very strong impact on migration into the U.S.:

Dozens of Mexicans — including police officers, businessmen, at least one prosecutor and a journalist — are asking for political asylum in the U.S. in a desperate and probably hopeless bid to escape an unprecedented wave of drug-related killings and kidnappings south of the border…

"It's hard. I've been doing this work for 25 years. I've been a reporter for 25 years," said newspaperman Emilio Gutierrez Soto, who is seeking asylum. "We had a life there, a house, my family. It's my country. But it's not safe for a journalist."

Image- AFP (Policemen carry on the coffins of three officers killed…in Culiacan, Sinaloa State”)

Sources- Los Angeles Times, The Latin Americanist, Houston Chronicle, Newsday.com, La Plaza, Canada.com, Monsters & Critics