Mexico Drug War: 9 Killed In Michoacan Over The Weekend

The western Mexican state of Michoacan has been ravaged by violence since the beginning of former President Felipe Calderon's drug war in 2007. This weekend it experienced a bout of violence that left nine men dead Saturday. Members of the armed services discovered the bodies near the border of Jalisco, a Michocan attorney general spokesperson told Reuters. The deaths are believed to be linked with the Knights Templar, a fear drug cartel that has wreaked so much havoc in the state that residents have formed civilian-led vigilante groups to deal with the cartel. The Knights Templar is involved in trafficking drugs and terrorizing towns in the state.

Preliminary investigations find that the men were tied up and shot. The victims have not yet been identified. Just one day prior, eight people were found killed in the Mexican state of Guerrero, which borders Michoacan. Their deaths are also believed to be linked to the Knights Templar. In another part of the state that same day, eight more bodies were discovered in a mass grave. The body count in Mexico's drug was has exceeded 75,000. Current President Enrique Peña Nieto has come under scrutiny for failing to make good on his campaign promise to bring an end to the violence. His strategy for dealing with the drug was has not changed since Calderon's presidency, though some defended the slow progression in saying that the course of the drug war is impossible to change in such a short time.

"The strategy of the military is exactly the same," Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said Sunday. "It's not a failure of the new government. It's the reality they face ... Changing strategy is a very slow process. In the short term, you have to act against the drug-trafficking leaders."