Army hunts for three missing soldiers in Jalisco since helicopter was shot down on Friday.
A weekend of coordinated violence convulsed Mexico’s second-largest city and a famed beach resort town in the latest sign of the emergence of a powerful and aggressive drug cartel.
Soldiers and police in Jalisco state searched on Sunday for three soldiers who have been missing since gunmen presumed to belong to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel shot down a Mexican army helicopter on Friday, killing three soldiers and injuring 12.
The chopper was shot down as soldiers, marines, and federal and state police began an operation to take down the Jalisco cartel, capture its leaders and improve security in the state, officials said.
“A new and military powerful cartel is appearing, and opening up a new front in the war against drugs in Guadalajara and Jalisco,” said Raul Benitez, a security analyst at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The flare-up of violence in Guadalajara, a city of 1.5 million people in a metropolitan area of 4.5 million, and the resort town of Puerto Vallarta is the latest setback for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The government has been determined to show that Mexico is a modern, emerging economy, but its inability to control areas where criminal gangs continue to exert control have frustrated these efforts.
[…]
