Mexico says suspected leader of drug cartel is in custody

MEXICO CITY —  The Mexican military said Sunday that it had detained a leader of a drug cartel, the first major arrest since President Felipe Calderon sent more than 6,000 troops to a western state terrorized by drug gangs.

Elias Valencia, a suspected head of the Valencia cartel, was arrested with four other people Friday at a mountain ranch near the town of Aguililla in Michoacan state, said Gen. Cornelio Casio, one of the officials in charge of the offensive.

Last week, Calderon ordered more than 6,000 soldiers, marines and federal police to his home state of Michoacan, which has seen a wave of drug-related killings and beheadings.

The violence is the result of a turf war between the Valencia gang and the rival Gulf cartel over lucrative marijuana plantations and smuggling routes for cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States.

Mexican investigators said Valencia was one of several figures running the cartel since his father, Armando, was arrested in 2003.

Soldiers found Elias Valencia and the others with hundreds of pounds of marijuana and numerous weapons, Casio said.

Aguililla, about 225 miles southwest of Mexico City, has been a key stronghold of the Valencia cartel. The winding mountain roads into the town are perfect for ambushes. Assailants have killed 10 police officers in two recent attacks.

Under the new offensive, soldiers supported by helicopters and armored vehicles with machine-gun turrets comb the area looking for drug traffickers and plantations.

On Wednesday, troops clashed with suspected traffickers protecting a marijuana crop, killing one man and arresting another. On Saturday, soldiers arrested a man accused of being a key Sinaloa cartel lieutenant in the western city of Guadalajara.

Calderon, elected in July on a law-and-order platform, wants the army to step up a crackdown on drug traffickers nationwide.

Drug violence has killed about 2,000 Mexicans this year.

Many security experts say it will take more than brute force to stop the cartels, which earn billions of dollars supplying the U.S. drug market.

Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, who stepped down Dec. 1, sent thousands of troops to battle cartels, make drug seizures and arrest high-profile traffickers without significantly reducing the quantity of narcotics crossing into the United States.

Critics of Fox’s crackdown say it created a power vacuum in the cartels, leading to increased violence as rivals fought to replace the arrested leaders.