Quadratin

The Mexican newspaper El Universal reports that a man believed to be the new leader of the drug cartel La Familia, Servando Gómez, known as La Tuta, called in to a live television news program in the western state of Michoacán on Thursday and asked for “dialogue” with Mexico’s government, in hopes of agreeing on a “national pact” to end the country’s violent drug war. El Universal posted audio excerpts of the phone call on its Web site.

In the call, the cartel leader said that that La Familia “was created to serve the people of Michoacán” and claimed “all we want is peace and quiet.” He added that the group has nothing against Mexican President Felipe Calderón or his government but they “fight the federal police only because they are bothering our families … fabricating charges and taking innocent people away.”

He also issued this stark warning: “We are a necessary evil. They will never get rid of us. Even if I die, they’ll just replace me. And so it will continue. This will never end. That is why we must reach a consensus, a national pact.”

The Mexican government rejected the offer.

Last weekend, the arrest of a senior figure in a Mexican drug cartel known as La Familia led to a wave of coordinated attacks by the cartel against federal police posts and one military base, killing three federal officers and two soldiers.

The range and extent of the violence across the western state of Michoacán led one respected Mexican columnist, Ciro Gómez Leyva, to compare it to the Tet offensive during the Vietnam war. In a column headlined “El Tet michoacano y el principio del fin” (“The Michoacán Tet and the Beginning of the End”), published on Monday in the newspaper Milenio, Mr. Gómez Leyva wrote:

In the drug war, July 11 seems like a sort of Tet offensive, the synchronized, Hollywood-style offensive by South Vietnamese guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army against U.S. troops in late January 1968 that, despite being described as a military disaster, created the perception that Washington’s formerly invincible army would never win in Vietnam.

The New York Times

Mr. Gómez Leyva noted that in many of the places the cartel struck on Saturday and Sunday, government officials who are accused of protecting them are now in jail. As my colleague Elisabeth Malkin reported, Mexican President Felipe Calderón recently “made Michoacán the front line in a new phase of the drug war when federal authorities arrested 10 mayors and 17 government and police officials, accusing them of protecting drug cartels.”

In the last line of his column, Mr. Gómez Leyva pointed out that the Michoacán cartel “is just one of the four cartels against which the Mexican military and police are fighting in a war that, as of July 10, had claimed 12,800 lives.”

The violence has not abated this week.

My colleague Marc Lacey reported in Wednesday’s paper that the authorities determined that “twelve mutilated corpses discovered late Monday along a mountain road in Michoacán State were off-duty federal police officers.” A caption beneath a shocking, graphic photograph from the crime scene accompanying an article in The Los Angeles Times explains, “The federal police officers found slain in Michoacán state, 11 men and one woman, had been tortured and shot.” A BBC video report on the wave of violence also includes images of the slain officers, who were ambushed when they were off duty, kidnapped and killed.

In response the Mexican government is massing its forces for a counter-offensive in Michoacán. According to this video report by Mexico’s El Universal, which shows federal forces on their way to the state, the force assembled there on Thursday, including federal police officers, soldiers and sailors, is 4,000 strong. As a colleague points out, that is the same size as the Marine force taking part in the current U.S. offensive in southern Afghanistan. The title of El Universal’s video report is taken from a statement made by Rodolfo Cruz López, the commander of the heavily-armed officers boarding a plane for the state, which translates roughly as: “We’re Going to Kick Their Butts.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Mexico’s president said on Tuesday, “We cannot, we should not, we will not take one step backward in this matter.” According to a report from The BBC, Mr. Calderón promised: “The criminals will not be able to intimidate the federal government.”

The L.A. Times notes:

Mexicans seem skeptical. In a new poll, more than half of respondents said they believe the government is losing the war. Only 28% said it is winning, according to the survey, published Tuesday in the daily Milenio newspaper.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that similar scenes were played out in the country’s north, where the mayor of a ranching town was fatally shot in revenge for the arrest of members of a drug cartel: