Mexican Narcoviolence Spills into U.S. Elections

The murder of the acting chief of Mexico's federal police amid an unprecedented wave of drug gang attacks on security officials will soon become a major issue in the U.S. presidential candidates' escalating war for Hispanic votes.

Until now, Republicans and Democrats had tried to make as little noise as possible about the Bush administration's Mrida Initiative, a request for $500 million to help Mexico fight its drug cartels. They hoped to pass it quietly, fearing that a high-profile debate would stir up political passions on both sides of the border and kill the proposal.

But with drug war violence in Mexico escalating to record levels in recent memory, that's changing fast.

Likely Republican candidate Sen. John McCain will probably try to cut into the Democrats' growing lead among Hispanics by saying that their proposal to reduce the Mrida Initiative by up to $190 million amounts to ''abandoning'' Mexico at a time when President Felipe Caldern's government is facing a bigger than ever attack from the drug cartels.

It may be much like when McCain blamed Democrats for ''abandoning'' Colombia by resisting ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement. Only that, in Mexico's case, the political stakes at home are higher because more than 65 percent of the more than 10 million Hispanic voters are of Mexican origin.

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