MEXICO CITY — Nearly 500 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars this year, according to media reports here, despite a crackdown on the illicit trade by President Felipe Calderon.
The dead include dozens of police officers, the daughter of a retired army general, and a suspected cartel hit man in the northern city of Monterrey left with a knife sticking out of his chest and a message to local officials affixed to his body.
"Attorney General: Don't be a fool," the note said. It accused local officials of protecting Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, the bitter rival of the Gulf cartel, which is based in the border state of Tamaulipas. "This is just the beginning."
According to a tally kept by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, along with other media reports, the number of drug-related killings had reached 492 by Friday.
Calderon's government, which took power in December, promised a get-tough approach against the drug trade, which claimed more than 2,000 lives last year.
This year, Calderon sent troops into the southern states of Guerrero and Michoacan, and to the border cities of Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo.
In Tijuana, federal forces disarmed the police in January in a bid to fight widespread corruption in the municipal force.
But the measures have been criticized by many observers here.
"These operations are not designed to directly confront the organized crime groups," said Jose Arturo Yanez, a researcher at the Professional Police Training Institute in Mexico City. "They are designed to have an effect in the media, so that the federal government can be seen in action."
Still, the government has scored some key successes. In January, Mexico extradited 15 suspected drug cartel leaders to the United States, including Osiel Cardenas, who was reputed to have been running the Gulf cartel from his cell at a maximum-security Mexican prison.
And last week, Mexico's organized crime unit confiscated more than $207 million in cash from alleged methamphetamine producers operating in a Mexico City mansion.
This week, authorities revealed that they had miscounted the cash and added more than $1 million to the total.
The huge haul included just 50 counterfeit U.S. $100 bills, authorities said. Karen P. Tandy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, praised the raid as "the result of tremendous police work by Mexican law enforcement."
