MEXICO CITY — The government offered $2 million Monday for information leading to each arrest of 24 top drug lords in a challenge to the cartels’ grip on the country.
The list indicated that drug gangs have splintered into six main cartels under pressure from the U.S. and Mexican governments. The most powerful gangs — the Pacific and Gulf cartels — suffered fractures that have given rise to new cartels, according to authorities.
Mexico’s drug violence has killed more than 9,000 people since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 as gangs battle for territory and fight off a government crackdown.
Some of that violence is spilling over into the United States, especially the Southwest, where kidnappings and killings are on the rise.
The rewards are the largest Mexico has ever offered for top drug lords, said Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. Some leaders, such as suspected Pacific cartel leaders Joaquin Guzman and Ismael Zambada, are targeted by $5 million rewards from the United States.
Calderon’s government has linked the cartels’ fractures to the military crackdown, saying the arrest of drug kingpins has set off internal battles that fueled violence.
The effort sends a message days before a visit from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a month before President Barack Obama visits.
Mexican officials “have been quite defensive about all the talk about Mexico’s being a failed state and that the cartels are controlling more and more territory,” said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. “I see this as an acceleration of Calderon’s policy but with one eye on the upcoming visit of the American leaders.”
