Will the Hillary Clinton Mexico visit bring a drug war shift?
A high-level US delegation meets with Mexican officials today to discuss bilateral strategies for tackling the drug war. But will there be any changes during the Hillary Clinton Mexico visit?
People walk across a US-Mexico border crossing in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, March 17. Will the visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Mexico City today to discuss US aid for Mexico to fight organized crime bring any changes?
Miguel Tovar/AP
Mexico City
The visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Mexico City today to discuss US aid for Mexico to fight organized crime underscores a sense of urgency in Washington after an American couple was slaughtered in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez earlier this month.
But many hope the high-level delegation, which includes Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, also marks a new strategy by both countries to stem violence that appears to be closer than ever to US soil and that has propelled swaths of Mexico into a state of crisis.
“It’s a way of really showing the US commitment to helping and enabling this fight, but it’s also to transmit serious concerns about the limitations of the approach,” says David Mena Alemán, director of international studies at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, of Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s dispatching of more than 45,000 military and federal police across the country to fight organized crime. “The consequences are getting way out of hand.”
IN PICTURES: Mexico's drug war
