Attacking Government Officials

These two stories haven't received a lot of attention: in a border town in Coahuila, gunmen opened fire on a restaurant where a half dozen high level state and municipal officials (including the mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas) were meeting, thankfully without killing anyone. And in Sinaloa, the state Tourism Secretary and his driver were shot to death while driving in Culiacán yesterday.

This here is a pretty good example of the huge differences between Mexico's crime problems and those in the US, and why it's dangerous to use one as a reference point for the other (as I wrote about yesterday). In Mexico, the above were not huge stories (they garnered teasers on the front pages of the national dailies, in some cases accompanied by a short note). This is partly because of the focus on the murder of Melquisedec Angulo's family, but also because they've become run of the mill. Were a meeting of a half-dozen government officials interrupted by gunfire from criminals in the US, it would presumably be a national news story, the public reaction would be one of shock and anger, and there would surely be an immense manhunt. Here? Eh.