Calderon: Violence price worth paying in drug war

Mourners bury the body of murdered immigrant Miguel Carcamo in El Guante September 2, 2010. Carcamo, 43, the father of four children, travelled illegally for the first time to the US on August 3. According to Honduras" Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Carcamo was one of the 21 Honduran immigrants murdered and identified so far at Tamaulipas, Mexico, where a series of firefights with drug gang members have occurred. [Agencies]

MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon tried to rally frustrated Mexicans behind his increasingly bloody drug war Thursday, saying he knows violence has surged under his watch, but arguing that it is the price of confronting powerful and brutal cartels.

Calderon delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address two days after his government brought down the third major kingpin in less than a year. But it also came less than two weeks after the massacre of 72 migrants near the US border, which laid bare how freely drug traffickers operate in pockets of the country, no matter how many capos are captured.

"I am well aware that over the past year, violence has worsened," Calderon said. "But we must battle on."

Calderon has struggled to maintain support for a fight that was hugely popular when he first deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to drug-cartel strongholds across the country in late 2006.