* Surge in violence blamed on capture of top cartel member
* Local "La Familia" gang also battling rival Gulf cartel
* Federal minister rejects offer of talks to stem violence
MEXICO CITY, July 16 (Reuters) - Mexico sent 1,000 federal
police and cargo planes loaded with armored cars on Thursday to
Michoacan to help quell a flare-up in drug gang violence that
is challenging President Felipe Calderon in his home state.
They join an anti-drug force of several hundred troops and
federal police in the western marijuana-producing state, where
heavily armed traffickers have unleashed a wave of attacks on
security forces in recent days.
One attack on the weekend, apparently in revenge for the
arrest of a high-level trafficker, left the stripped,
blood-smeared bodies of 12 federal police in a heap by a remote
highway -- the latest victims of drug gang violence that has
killed some 12,800 people across Mexico since late 2006.
The local "La Familia" (The Family) cartel has grown in
strength to control many local police and politicians in
Michoacan, and its brazen attacks are the latest blow in a drug
war that has become a serious worry for investors, tourists and
Washington.
Michoacan was the first state to which Calderon sent troops
in December 2006, when he launched a frontal army assault on
drug gangs immediately after taking office.
But the weekend capture in the state of a top La Familia
"capo" or kingpin has sparked revenge attacks, showing the
cartel has been little affected by the military crackdown.
The troops are scattered across sparsely inhabited
mountains that hide drug plantations and laboratories.
The body armor-clad police reinforcements were expected to
spread out in convoys of pickup trucks backed by armored
vehicles and three Black Hawk helicopters, possibly targeting
cartel safe houses in violence-plagued towns like Uruapan,
where hitmen dumped five human heads in a bar in 2006.
La Familia is battling the rival Gulf cartel from
northeastern Mexico and its feared armed wing, the Zetas, for
control of Michoacan in a war being played out nationally.
The La Familia cartel appears to wield enormous power in
Michoacan. Troops rounded up 10 mayors and a string of police
chiefs in May accused of working for the cartel in one of the
biggest single corruption sweeps of the drug war.
A man claiming to be its operations chief, Servando "La
Tuta" Gomez, called a Michoacan television station this week
and said the group was willing to negotiate with the government
to avoid more killings.
Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont rejected the call and
said the government does not talk with organized crime.
The Familia cartel follows a quasi-religious code of
conduct that bars its members from taking drugs or drinking
alcohol and has contacted the media in the past to claim its
aim is to protect Michoacan from Zeta hitmen.
(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Eric Walsh)
((mica.rosenberg@thomsonreuters.com; +52 55 5282 7159; Reuters
Messaging: mica.rosenberg.reuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: MEXICO DRUGS/SURGE
