The soldiers had apparently panicked at the speeding Hummer and attacked it from two sides, killing both the civilians and their own troops in the cross fire.
"These soldiers are idiots. What protection do they give us?" Maldonado asked, staring at the dirt road where the killings had taken place. "They should get out of our communities and back to their barracks."
The debacle in Santiago in Sinaloa state, a stronghold of drug traffickers, is one of a series of blunders by Mexican soldiers waging a bloody campaign against narcotics cartels — a crackdown that the U.S. Congress is looking at supporting with up to $1.6 billion. Since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and sent out 25,000 troops to take on the mafias, soldiers have killed at least 13 unarmed civilians. In the latest incident this month, soldiers shot dead two men speeding through a checkpoint in Chihuahua state along with another motorist who was unfortunate enough to be driving behind them. The public was also shocked when troops shot dead two women and three children traveling to a funeral in Sinaloa in 2007. [Time [3]]
Amazingly, Drug Czar John Walters boasted [2] yesterday that Mexico's drug war will "protect human rights," even though he personally opposed [4] requiring Mexican authorities to uphold human rights standards.
As frustrating as it is to consider that we're subsidizing the killing of innocent people across Mexico, let's not forget that it's happening here, too [5].