Mexico Under Siege

Calderon Had Been Focused on a Military Offensive Targeting Drug
Figures and Corrupt Police. Now Officials Are Being Questioned to See
How Far the Cartels Have Penetrated 'Local Political Elites.'

The detention this week of more than two dozen local officials in
Michoacan on suspicion of aiding a narcotics cartel marks a new tack
in Mexico's bloody drug war, a strategic shift that Wednesday sent
nervous politicians running for cover.

Ten mayors and 17 other officials were swept up Tuesday in raids by
federal authorities, and were interrogated Wednesday in Mexico City.
Ricardo Najera, spokesman for the federal attorney general's office,
said the officials are suspected of having ties to La Familia, one of
Mexico's most violent drug syndicates.

President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug gangs when he took
office in December 2006, saying that traffickers had "overwhelmed" a
number of local governments.

But he had focused his energies primarily on a military offensive,
deploying 45,000 soldiers and federal police officers. Top drug
gangsters have been killed or captured, and federal authorities have
also targeted for arrest corrupt law enforcement officers.

But tainted politicians remained largely untouched. And in states like
Michoacan, federal authorities allege, local politicians aid and abet
traffickers who produce and transport billions of dollars' worth of
drugs, most of it to the U.S.

"If the accusations are confirmed," the daily El Universal said in an
editorial, "we will have incontrovertible proof that the cartels have
entirely penetrated the country's local political elites."

The state prosecutor for Michoacan, Miguel Garcia Hurtado, resigned
Wednesday and turned himself in for questioning.

Dismantling the local support networks -- in city halls, police
departments, state governments -- is a crucial step in the larger war,
analysts say.

"It is at the local level that traffickers have their most important
protection," said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based security analyst.
"They don't buy off the president of the republic. They buy off the
local officials, the mayors, the police chiefs."

Calderon may have decided he would never make sufficient inroads
against drug violence without taking on local politicians. But it is
unclear whether he can or will sustain the effort.

And in some quarters, Calderon's motives and timing were being
questioned. Mexico is 40 days away from nationwide legislative
elections in which the president's National Action Party, or PAN, may
take big losses.

"You cannot forget the political context in which this is taking
place," said Samuel Gonzalez, an analyst who served as Mexico's top
anti-drug prosecutor in the 1990s. "You can run the same operation
three, five, 10 times, and you still won't get results" because the
problem is so widespread.

The Michoacan raids scooped up six mayors from the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which poses the greatest electoral
challenge to Calderon's party now. Two mayors with Calderon's PAN and
two with the leftist opposition Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD,
were also detained.

Michoacan state Gov. Leonel Godoy, also of the PRD, complained that he
was not notified before the raids. Leaving him out of the loop raised
suspicion that he too might be implicated. Among those detained were a
key advisor to Godoy; his brother also was questioned by the army but
was not arrested, his brother told a Michoacan newspaper.

Godoy on Wednesday denied any connection to drug traffickers but also
said he was not willing to submit himself to investigation because he
was "democratically elected and will only do so if required to
constitutionally."

Mexico's laws make it next to impossible to prosecute a sitting
governor.

Godoy said he tried to find out what was happening Tuesday when he
heard that gunmen were hauling officials from their offices and homes.
When such actions are reported, he said, "You never know if these are
operations being carried out by