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REUTERS
MEXICO CITY
THE SIGHT of vehicles set ablaze by cartels has mostly been confined to lawless stretches of Mexico's provinces, so the appearance of burning buses in Mexico City this week has stoked fears that the drug gangs'violence is spreading to the capital.
The so-called narco-blockade on Thursday in the tough Mexico City suburb of Tlahuac occurred after Mexican marines gunned down eight suspected gangsters in broad daylight, a highly unusual incident that underlined a recent spike in violent crime.
"The authorities have lost control of the situation,"said Jose, a veteran Mexico City policeman who spoke on the condition his surname be withheld.
"Now the cartels are getting stronger, they can't control them any more. That's why they asked the marines to come in."
All told, 206 murder investigations were opened in Mexico City between May and June, making it the bloodiest two month-period on record in the capital, official data show.
Mexico City and its urban sprawl form the economic heart of the country, accounting for roughly a quarter of gross domestic product, according to the OECD, and the rise in violence is a major embarrassment for the Mexican government.
The crime spree mirrors a rising tide of violence nationally that has exposed major law and order shortcomings by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, less than a year before the next presidential election.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, who harbors his own presidential ambitions, has also come under fire for not doing enough to protect the capital, and for saying repeatedly that drug cartels do not operate in the city.
In a news conference, Mancera said the suspects belonged to a"a big, violent criminal organization whose operations were no longer confined to Tlahuac,"noting they traversed the city in armed convoys.
"From my point of view, they didn't have the structures and size that we associate with cartels,"he added.
Mexico's criminal underworld has mutated in recent years, thanks to a prolonged military-led assault that smashed the cartels into hundreds of informal crews with little experience in cross-border trafficking.
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23/07/2017
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