Mexicans mourn mayor, government vows crackdown

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexicans carrying candles and flowers paid tribute on Thursday to a mayor killed by drug hitmen, while officials vowed a tough response to increasingly bold cartels but resisted calls for more troops.

Soldiers stood guard as hundreds of grieving residents filed into a funeral parlor in a tourist town near Monterrey, Mexico's most affluent city, to honor Edelmiro Cavazos, abducted on Sunday and found on a rural road three days later.

"We are so afraid. How much worse can this get?" asked Maria Trinidad Silva, 70.

Mourners placed flowers near the mayor's coffin in the cobblestone central square of Santiago, a popular weekend destination for residents of Monterrey, the northern city that is home to some of Mexico's biggest companies.

President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his presidency on a faltering drug war, condemned the killing, the latest cartel attack sending a chilling message to public officials across Mexico, and dispatched his interior minister to Monterrey.

Calderon is struggling to convince skeptical business and political leaders his campaign against powerful drug gangs is making headway despite a death toll topping 28,000 people since late 2006, and scant signs Mexico has turned a corner.

In a televised meeting in Mexico City with political leaders, Calderon defended his war on sophisticated cartels, whose drug revenues may be as high as $40 billion a year.

"Edelmiro's death is another reason to continue the fight against organized crime with everything we've got," he said, saying corrupt local police in Mexico and lax gun laws in the United States were also to blame for such bloodshed.

GROWING FEAR

Cartels have begun to target higher profile public figures, as they did in June in Tamaulipas state when a popular gubernatorial candidate was gunned down ahead of state polls.

Such attacks may aim to ensure local politicians like Cavazos, a 38-year-old, U.S.-educated mayor who had been working to clean up police corruption, don't go after drug capos or the corrupt officials working with them.

Fear is growing in Monterrey, once a model city known for its close U.S. business ties and gleaming office towers. Now, it is being pulled toward the center of the drug war.

Drug violence has surged in and around Monterrey since a dispute between the powerful Gulf cartel and its former armed wing the Zetas turned into all-out war this year.

Interior Minister Francisco Blake, speaking in Monterrey late on Wednesday, pledged a "head-on assault" against cartels, but stopped short of responding to local business and political leaders' calls for thousands more troops in Nuevo Leon state, which includes Monterrey, 140 miles from Texas.

Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 troops across Mexico since taking office in December 2006 and has boosted the well-armed federal police force to more than 30,000 agents.

Some Santiago residents booed Nuevo Leon Governor Rodrigo Medina as he paid his respects to Cavazos on Wednesday evening, and several people called on him to resign, reflecting growing frustration across Mexico with escalating violence.

"Soldiers and federal and state police reacted late (to Cavazos' death) ... but business people in Nuevo Leon hope that military reinforcements will put an end to this unstoppable crime wave," wrote analyst Miguel Angel Granados Chapa in Monterrey's main daily, El Norte.

(Editing by Missy Ryan and Jerry Norton)