The latest blog post from Alejandro Poire, Felipe Calderon’s security spokesman, argued that most Mexicans support the government’s anti-crime policies.
In his seventh article in defense of President Felipe Calderon’s controversial security strategy, Poire said that the country backs their leader’s aggressive combat of organized crime.
“It’s false that the society does not agree that we fight, once and for all, for our security against the criminals,” the piece opens. “The vast majority of the population agrees that we deserve spaces free of violence and fear.”
The comments come in the midst of a peace campaign led by poet Javier Sicilia, who has been harshly critical of Calderon’s policies. Sicilia’s son was killed along with several friends, allegedly by an organized criminal group, in March.
Poire refers to a number of polls over the past several years saying that Mexicans are more worried about crime than any other issue, though he doesn’t identify the polls in question. Although surveys do overwhelmingly show that Mexicans support the direct combat of organized crime, until relatively recently, economic concerns were in fact more pressing, according to many pollsters.
The argument, published on Poire’s governmental blog, is the latest in a series on 10 “myths” — in the government’s eyes — about the drug war. The series aims to push back at some of the opposition’s narratives regarding Calderon’s crime policy. The previous “myth” highlighted by Poire was the idea that the struggle against crime was Calderon’s alone.
See the presidency’s video, to illustrate the blog post, below.