Asia-Pacific
Mexicans hope drug lord's arrest may turn tide
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-09-01 11:31
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MEXICO CITY - Mexico paraded one of its most violent drug lords on Tuesday after a police raid that President Felipe Calderon's government hopes will mark a breakthrough in its campaign against powerful cartels.
In a sign of the widening violence, eight people were killed in the Caribbean resort of Cancun early on Tuesday when suspected drug hitmen threw Molotov cocktails into a bar on the city's outskirts, the local attorney general's office said.
In Mexico City, masked police paraded a handcuffed Valdez before reporters. Wearing a green polo shirt and jeans, the man nicknamed "La Barbie" for his fair complexion grinned openly as officials discussed his capture near Mexico City on Monday.
"This operation closes a chapter in drug trafficking in Mexico," senior federal police official Facundo Rosas told local television.
Six other men, including another Texan, were arrested with Valdez and police found weapons, vehicles, cocaine and cellphones at a safe house guarded by cartel gunmen.
Washington declined to say whether it would push for Valdez to be sent to face trial in US courts where he has been indicted for drug trafficking.
"The federal police plan is to first process him here in Mexico for alleged crimes ... and then there are the cases pending outside the country, especially the United States," said Rosas.
Yet the arrest is unlikely to end the bloodshed that presents a growing image problem for Mexico as it struggles out of recession and seeks to hold on to tourist revenues.
More than 28,000 people have died since Calderon launched his crackdown in late 2006. The violence shows no sign of stopping as gangs battle for control of smuggling routes.