In a visit to the White House, President Felipe Calderón insisted that America’s demand for illegal drugs is the major source of the fighting and urged Congress to ban the sale of assault weapons that are being shipped back into Mexico.
Relations between the United States and Mexico have often flared up over issues like American protectionism, human-rights abuses by Mexico’s army, drug violence over the border and the flow of guns and cash southward, according to The Economist. But President Calderón says the new law approved in Arizona last month, which requires state police to check immigration status of any “suspicious” individuals, marks a new nadir.
Back in Mexico, Calderón’s party lost some ground in the mid-terms last July and will have to answer to voters again in local elections this summer. It is unlikely that he will obtain the big policy reforms needed to address Mexico’s economic and security troubles. Furthermore, the fighting between the drug cartels is intensifying, with a high profile murder of political figure Mr. Fernández de Cevallos, and the government’s insistence that things are getting better has fallen on deaf ears.
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Max Chen contributed to this article.