Former President Calderon Doesn't Want to Talk About the Bloody Drug War He Helped Start Christopher Woody - Business Insider
go to original October 5, 2016

Wearing a military cap and jacket, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, center, walks with state and military officials to meet with federal forces involved in ongoing anticrime operations in Apatzingan, Michoacan, in January, 2007. Calderon sent 7,000 troops to his home state of Michoacan immediately after taking office on December 1. (AP/Guillermo Arias)

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon left office almost four years ago, but during his six-year term he presided over one of the most violent periods in modern Mexican history.

Taking office in 2006, Calderon initiated a military-backed crackdown on organized crime that led to peaks in violence between 2010 and 2012.

Calderon left office in 2012, and homicide rates have fallen and risen again under his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Calderon, in the eyes of many, is tied to the growth of violence over the last decade, but it doesn't appear he's interested in discussing it.

While taking questions recently in Tamaulipas, a northeastern Mexican state racked by violence, Calderon was asked, "Do you feel some responsibility for the insecurity in Tamaulipas, Mr. President?"

His reply, after a brief pause: "Another question, please."

When Calderon assumed office in December 2006, after narrowly defeating leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, he "really embraced and sort of projected a more prominent role for the military,” David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego and director of the school's Justice in Mexico program, told Business Insider late last year.

Calderon “signaled his intention to give the military a prominent role in domestic security and particularly counter-drug operations,” Shirk said.

Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, had deployed troops to Tamaulipas in 2005, but Calderon soon doubled down on this tactic, making it part of a broader, more forceful strategy to crackdown on organized crime and drug trafficking.

Read the rest at Business Insider

Related: Mexico Drug War: Blame the President for Soldiers' Deaths (Mexico Voices)

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