June 27, 2010|By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times Reporting from Morelia, Mexico — As dozens of gunmen fired more than 2,700 deafening rounds of ammunition, Minerva Bautista crouched on the floor of her heavily armored SUV, screaming into her radio for backup and thinking one thing: "I know help will come."
But when the minister of security for Michoacan state heard the rounds begin to penetrate her car's armor, sending pieces of metal into her back "like fiery sparks," her faith faltered. And when one of her badly injured bodyguards asked her to take care of his family, she lost hope.
"They didn't just want to kill us," she said later. "They wanted to destroy us."
A seemingly interminable 15 minutes after the attack began in a narrow highway pass that night in April, rescuers finally arrived.
It was one of the most brazen assaults on a top state official in President Felipe Calderon's nearly 4-year-old offensive against drug cartels. But there is an even darker side to the story, one that exposes a fundamental flaw in the war: So deep is drug-financed corruption, the lead suspects in the attack on Bautista are the very police she commands.
Four people were killed, but Bautista, 36, suffered only relatively minor wounds. At least as remarkable as her survival is the fact that she has returned to the top security job here in Calderon's home state, where a notorious drug gang called La Familia has penetrated most police and judicial bodies.
She no longer lives at home with her parents but in a safe house, and she moves around with a mini-army of soldiers as guards. Public knowledge of her schedule is kept deliberately vague; her once customary visits to city halls, neighborhoods, schools and prison yards now curtailed. And she has had to recalibrate how, and whom, to trust.
"Of course I am afraid … but I have an even greater conviction now to keep working," Bautista told The Times in her first post-attack interview with a non-Mexican publication.
"If I don't do it, another colleague will have to," she said. "It would be a very negative message to the people of Michoacan if authorities, faced with this situation, say, 'Let's get out of here.'"
