Mexican President-Elect Decries Violence

Two men grimace after they were tied up by neighbors who accused them of stealing a man in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, Monday Sept. 25, 2006. Residents of this city have been forced to take justice into their own hands due to the ongoing teachers strike that has paralyzed the city for months and the police are unable to patrol the streets.(AP Photo/Luis Alberto Cruz Hernandez) (Luis Alberto Cruz Hernandez - AP)

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's president-elect says murder and mayhem fueled by drug smuggling have overwhelmed the governments of the nation's capital and key states across the country.

Felipe Calderon said the wave of bloodshed is ravaging state governments controlled by each of Mexico's three major parties. He singled out Mexico City, the northern states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, the southern state of Guerrero and his home state of Michoacan, as being especially hard-hit.

"It seems to me that drug violence has overwhelmed the governments," Calderon said Monday in a radio interview.

Calderon called for legislative and law enforcement efforts to curb drug violence across party lines "in a very coordinated way."

Calderon takes office Dec. 1.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City has long expressed concern about the growing wave of violence along the northern border, where people are gunned down with automatic weapons almost daily, and dozens of Americans have been kidnapped.

Authorities say more than 1,500 people have died in Mexican drug violence so far this year.

Narcotics investigators on both sides of the border attribute the spike in killings to a territorial war between drug gangs battling for control of lucrative smuggling corridors into the United States.

U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza recently warned Americans to use extreme caution when traveling anywhere in Mexico.