Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2006, 12:39:46 PM
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Today's NY Slimes:
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Today's NY Slimes:
For years, Roger Barnett has holstered a pistol to his hip, tucked an assault rifle in his truck and set out over the scrub brush on his thousands of acres of ranchland near the Mexican border in southeastern Arizona to hunt.
Skip to next paragraph
The New York Times
Hunt illegal immigrants, that is, often chronicled in the news.
?They?re flooding across, invading the place,? Mr. Barnett told the ABC program ?Nightline? this spring. ?They?re going to bring their families, their wives, and they?re going to bring their kids. We don?t need them.?
But now, after boasting of having captured 12,000 illegal crossers on land he owns or leases from the state and emerging as one of the earliest and most prominent of the self-appointed border watchers, Mr. Barnett finds himself the prey.
Immigrant rights groups have filed lawsuits, accusing him of harassing and unlawfully imprisoning people he has confronted on his ranch near Douglas. One suit pending in federal court accuses him, his wife and his brother of pointing guns at 16 illegal immigrants they intercepted, threatening them with dogs and kicking one woman in the group.
Another suit, accusing Mr. Barnett of threatening two Mexican-American hunters and three young children with an assault rifle and insulting them with racial epithets, ended Wednesday night in Bisbee with a jury awarding the hunters $98,750 in damages.
The court actions are the latest example of attempts by immigrant rights groups to curb armed border-monitoring groups by going after their money, if not their guns. They have won civil judgments in Texas, and this year two illegal Salvadoran immigrants who had been held against their will took possession of a 70-acre ranch in southern Arizona after winning a case last year.
The Salvadorans had accused the property owner, Casey Nethercott, a former leader of the Ranch Rescue group, of menacing them with a gun in 2003. Mr. Nethercott was convicted of illegal gun possession; the Salvadorans plan to sell the property, their lawyer has said.
But Mr. Barnett, known for dressing in military garb and caps with insignia resembling the United States Border Patrol?s, represents a special prize to the immigrant rights groups. He is ubiquitous on Web sites, mailings and brochures put out by groups monitoring the Mexican border and, with family members, was an inspiration for efforts like the Minutemen civilian border patrols.
?The Barnetts, probably more than any people in this country, are responsible for the vigilante movement as it now exists,? said Mark Potok, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the groups. ?They were the recipients of so much press coverage and they kept boasting, and it was out of those boasts that the modern vigilante movement sprang up.?
Jesus Romo Vejar, the lawyer for the hunting party, said their court victory Wednesday would serve notice that mistreating immigrants would not pass unpunished. Although the hunters were not in the United States illegally, they contended that Mr. Barnett?s treatment of them reflected his attitude and practices toward Latinos crossing his land, no matter what their legal status.
?We have really, truly breached their defense,? Mr. Vejar said, ?and this opens up the Barnetts to other attorneys to come in and sue him whenever he does some wrong with people.?
Mr. Vejar said he would ask the state attorney general and the county attorney, who had cited a lack of evidence in declining to prosecute Mr. Barnett, to take another look at the case. He also said he would ask the state to revoke Mr. Barnett?s leases on its land.
Mr. Barnett had denied threatening anyone. He left the courtroom after the verdict without commenting, and his lawyer, John Kelliher, would not comment either.
In a brief interview during a court break last week, Mr. Barnett denied harming anyone and said that the legal action would not deter his efforts. He said that the number of illegal immigrants crossing his land had declined recently but that he thought it was only a temporary trend.
?For your children, for our future, that?s why we need to stop them,? Mr. Barnett said. ?If we don?t step in for your children, I don?t know who is expected to step in.?
Mr. Barnett prevailed in a suit in the summer when a jury ruled against a fellow rancher who had sued, accusing him of trespassing on his property as he pursued immigrants. Another suit last year was dropped when the plaintiff, who had returned to Mexico, decided not to return to press the case.
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Still, the threat of liability has discouraged ranchers from allowing the more militant civilian patrol groups on their land, and accusations of abuse seem to be on the wane, said Jennifer Allen of the Border Action Network, an immigrant rights group.
Skip to next paragraph
Michael Mally for The New York Times
Ronald Morales, right, his daughter Angelique Venese and others won a civil suit against Roger Barnett. They said he detained them illegally then pointed a rifle at them after running them off.
Jeffry Scott/Arizona Daily Star
Roger Barnett owns or leases 22,000 acres near the border.
But David H. Urias, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund who is representing the 16 immigrants suing Mr. Barnett, said fewer complaints did not necessarily mean less activity. Immigrants from Mexico are returned to their country often within hours and often under the impression that their deportation ? and chance to try to return again ? will go quicker without their complaints.
?It took us months to find these 16 people,? Mr. Urias said.
People who tend ranches on the border said that even if they did not agree with Mr. Barnett?s tactics they sympathized with his rationale, and that putting him out of business would not resolve the problems they believe the crossers cause.
?The illegals think they have carte blanche on his ranch,? said Al Garza, the executive director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Arizona, a civilian patrol group that, Mr. Garza says, does not detain illegal immigrants but calls in their movements to the Border Patrol. ?The man has had it.?
Mr. Barnett, a retired Cochise County sheriff?s deputy and the owner of a towing business, acquired his ranch in the mid-1990s, buying or leasing from the state more than 22,000 acres.
Almost from the start he took up a campaign against the people crossing the border from Mexico, sometimes detaining large groups and radioing for the Border Patrol to pick them up.
Chuy Rodriguez, a spokesman for the agency?s Tucson office, said the Border Patrol maintained no formal relationship with Mr. Barnett or other civilian groups. Agency commanders, concerned about potential altercations, have warned the groups not to take the law into their hands.
?If they see something, we ask them to call us, like we would ask of any citizen,? Mr. Rodriguez said.
Mr. Barnett?s lawyers have suggested he has acted out of a right to protect his property.
?A lease holder doesn?t have the right to protect his cattle?? Mr. Kelliher asked one of the men in the hunting party, Arturo Morales, at the trial.
?I guess so, maybe,? Mr. Morales replied.
Mr. Barnett has had several encounters with local law enforcement officials over detaining illegal immigrants, some of whom complained that he pointed guns at them. The local authorities have declined to prosecute him, citing a lack of evidence or ambiguity about whether he had violated any laws.
A few years ago, however, the Border Action Network and its allied groups began collecting testimony from illegal immigrants and others who had had confrontations with Mr. Barnett.
They included the hunters, who sued Mr. Barnett for unlawful detention, emotional distress and other claims, and sought at least $200,000. Ronald Morales; his father, Arturo; Ronald Morales?s two daughters, ages 9 and 11; and an 11-year-old friend said Mr. Barnett, his brother Donald and his wife, Barbara, confronted them Oct. 30, 2004.
Ronald Morales testified that Mr. Barnett used expletives and ethnically derogatory remarks as he sought to kick them off state-owned property he leases. Then, Mr. Morales said, Mr. Barnett pulled an AR-15 assault rifle from his truck and pointed it at them as they drove off, traumatizing the girls.
Mr. Kelliher conceded that there was a heated confrontation. But he denied that Mr. Barnett used slurs and said Ronald Morales was as much an instigator. He said Morales family members had previously trespassed on Mr. Barnett?s land and knew that Mr. Barnett required written permission to hunt there.
Even as the trial proceeded, the Border Patrol reported a 45 percent drop in arrests in the Douglas area in the last year. The agency credits scores of new agents, the National Guard deployment there this summer and improved technology in detecting crossers.
But Ms. Allen of the Border Action Network and other immigrant rights supporters suspect that people are simply crossing elsewhere.
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National Guard Commander in Arizona to Testify About Border Confrontation
Monday, January 29, 2007
E-MAIL STORY RESPOND TO EDITOR PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION
PHOENIX — "Stop Stonewalling."
That's the warning from Arizona lawmakers hoping to find out what really happened earlier this month when four Tennessee National Guardsmen reportedly retreated when confronted by armed illegal immigrants along the border south of Tucson.
So far, Guard and U.S. Border Patrol officials have refused to disclose exactly what happened Jan. 3 when gunmen assaulted a Guard lookout post near Sasabe, Ariz. They declined requests from FOX News for copies of incident reports and transcripts of interviews with the men involved.
"Unfortunately, we do not have a report to provide," said Michael Friel, the Border Patrol's chief spokesman in Washington.
Watch FOX News Channel today for live reports on this story by William LaJeunesse
On Monday, Maj. Gen. David Rataczak will appear before the Arizona House Homeland Security Committee to testify about the encounter.
(Story continues below)
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Run-in at the Border "What are they here for if they are going to retreat from people with automatic weapons?" asked Committee Chairman Warde Nichols, who said the incident may send the message that the National Guard will retreat if faced with armed individuals. "It is not in the best interest of Arizona or U.S. border security," he added.
Rep. Steve Gallardo, a Democrat on the committee, said he believed immigration hard-liners would use Rataczak's appearance to push their agenda.
"They are going to try and embarrass him. They are going to fail," Gallardo said.
The incident happened at night, about a quarter mile north of the U.S. border with Mexico. A spokesman for the Arizona National Guard said an undetermined number of armed men approached an E.I.T., or Entry Identification Team, from Tennessee. Dozens of these mobile lookout posts are set up along the border, several are near Sasabe, a popular drug corridor. An E.I.T. is typically manned by four Guard soldiers equipped with radios, night vision and other surveillance gear.
Under existing rules of force signed by the Department of Defense and border state governors, soldiers are not supposed to stop, arrest, or shoot armed illegal immigrants. They are instructed only to look, listen and report their location to the Border Patrol.
"We don't apprehend," said Maj. Paul Aguirre, a spokesman for the Arizona National Guard. "We don't detain. We don't transport."
For that reason, critics say, it is inaccurate to say the National Guard is protecting the border.
While Guard spokesman Paul Aguirre called the encounter a "non-incident," U.S. Border Patrol sources in Tucson familiar with the investigation say something entirely different. They describe a tense, armed confrontation, with both sides lifting their assault rifles to shoulder height.
The sources say 12 men assaulted the Guard position, dressed in black tactical vests and khaki military style fatigues. The unit split into two groups as it approached, with eight men in front and two men flanking the Guardsmen on each side. One of the gunmen came within 35 feet of the observation site, according to investigators' summaries. Surrounded, outmanned and outgunned, the four Guardsmen made a "tactical retreat" to their Humvee and called the Border Patrol, the sources said.
The Border Patrol tracked the armed men back to the border but could not locate them. No shots were fired.
Guard spokesman Aguirre objected to characterizations of the withdrawal as a retreat, saying the soldiers did not run from their post and were not overrun.
The troops monitored the situation, never lost contact with the gunmen and moved to another site to avoid an engagement, Aguirre said.
Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, National Guard officials and some state lawmakers defended the decision to call in the Border Patrol. The governor's office has said the rules allow Guard members to use force when they believe they face an imminent threat and all other means are exhausted.
"I don't think that it's up to the committee to negotiate the rules of engagement," Napolitano said. "Those rules of engagement were negotiated with the National Guard at the federal level."
Border agents interviewed over the weekend believe the group was military trained, and were likely ex-Mexican special forces working for the drug cartels or a rival cartel 'rip-off' squad that steals drug shipments once they've crossed the border.
Initial reports suggested the Guardsmen were unarmed. However, Border Patrol spokesman Gustavo Soto said the teams "had rifles and ammunition from Day One."
That is true for the E.I.T. teams, but local agents say most Guardsmen involved with Operation Jump Start — those resurfacing roads and building fences — are not armed because officials "don't want an incident."
"The stories we've gotten from the National Guard, quite frankly, have changed," said lawmaker Nichols. "What happened that day? Is this isolated incident? Does it happen often armed men come across border in Kevlar vests moving in tactical formation and come within 30 feet of a National Guard post? We need to know."
The four Tennessee Guardsmen involved in the "tactical retreat," or redeployment, will be honored in Tucson Monday in a closed ceremony. An Arizona Guard spokeswoman refused to identify the medal or ribbon or commendation being given out, and said the press was not invited.
The troops were among the 6,400 National Guard members sent to the four southern border states to support immigration agents, and leave the agents with more time to catch illegal immigrants.
The support duties include monitoring border points, assisting with cargo inspection and operating surveillance cameras.
FOX News' William LaJeunesse and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,248124,00.html
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U.S. Border Patrol: Illegal Immigrant Border Arrests Drop
Updated: January 3rd, 2007 09:46 AM EDT
There has been a big drop in arrests along the border in the last few months, NBC 7/39 reported Wednesday. The U.S. Border Patrol said arrests of illegal immigrants dropped by more than a third since National Guard troops have been helping. From July through November, 150,000 fewer people were arrested, a 4 percent decline from the same period last year. A migration expert said the biggest reason for the decrease immigrants' fear of being confronted by U.S. soldiers while trying to cross.
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Mexico: Violence Crossing the Line in Acapulco
Two Canadian tourists suffered minor injuries Feb. 4 when they were struck by stray bullets in an apparent drive-by shooting in Acapulco, Mexico. It was the second violent incident involving Canadian tourists in Acapulco in less than a month, though this time the incident occurred at a hotel. Violence, much of it related to drug wars, has been escalating in the Pacific coastal resort for some time -- and is now beginning to spread to the tourist sector.
The shooting occurred on the ground-level veranda of the Casa Inn Hotel on the main street in the city's tourist district, about half a block from the beach. The Casa Inn is a modest hotel that is popular with older tourists on a budget and college students on spring break. According to reports, the gunman appeared not to be shooting at the tourists, but rather was targeting another man who was walking in front of the hotel. Nonetheless, the incident further demonstrates that the city's growing lawlessness now directly affects foreign tourists. On Jan. 8, a Canadian teenager died after being involved in an incident outside an Acapulco nightclub. Local officials said the boy died in an auto accident, though another official alleged that he was struck by a car while fleeing the club's bouncers and local taxi drivers, who were beating him.
Aside from its popularity among Canadians and other foreign tourists, Acapulco is an entry point for drugs coming from Colombia for shipment to the United States. Because of its geographical importance, Mexico's rival drug cartels are vying for control of Acapulco, which caused violence to spike in 2006. The increase in violence, which has included several gruesome beheadings, forced Mexican President Felipe Calderon to deploy nearly 8,000 federal troops to Guerrero state in January. Although his efforts could have some initial success, they have little chance of stabilizing the situation over the long term, and could even incite more violence as the cartels test his resolve or try to defend their operations against federal troops. This happened in 2005 when then-President Vicente Fox sent a much smaller contingent of 200 troops to the city as part of a nationwide crackdown.
Although it is unclear whether this latest shooting was connected to Acapulco's drug-related violence, it does indicate that criminals no longer consider the once-peaceful tourist zone off limits -- and that the danger level is rising. Moreover, local police, who normally would react forcefully to incidents that can affect tourist revenue, appear quite unable to prevent the violence. As a result, some Canadians are pressuring Ottawa to update its standing travel advisory regarding Mexico, and slumping sales have caused a number of Canadian travel agencies to reduce or cancel package tours to Acapulco.
Acapulco's warring drug cartels -- whose concern is securing the flow of drugs into Mexico for transshipment to U.S. markets -- have little reason to avoid inflicting collateral damage on the city's tourist industry. With the winter tourist season in high gear and spring break crowds soon descending on the beach hotels, Acapulco's already weak law enforcement will have its hands full -- and cannot be counted on to keep the turf wars out of the tourist district.
stratfor.com
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By NATALIA PARRA, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 30 minutes ago
ACAPULCO, Mexico - More than a dozen armed assailants staged and videotaped simultaneous attacks on two offices of the state attorney general Tuesday in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, killing at least seven people.
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The attacks took place before 11 a.m. in two neighborhoods about nine miles north of the tourist zone, said Enrique Gil Mercado, special prosecutor for the attorney general's office in the state of Guerrero, which includes Acapulco.
Four of the victims, including three agents and a secretary, were killed at an office in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood, while three, including two agents and a secretary, were killed in the Ciudad del Renacimiento neighborhood, Gil said.
About eight men armed with assault weapons participated in each attack. Gil said he did not immediately know how many people were wounded. He said all the attackers escaped, including one who fled on foot. Authorities initially said city police stations had been attacked, but later revised the information.
Acapulco government official Felipe Kuri Sanchez said the attackers, dressed in military uniforms, entered the offices and that one of them asked, "Are you the only ones here?"
When the officials responded in the affirmative, some of the assailants opened fire while at least one videotaped the shootings in each office, Kuri said.
Following the attacks, other offices were evacuated as a precaution, Formato 21 radio reported.
Police did not comment on the possible motive for the attacks.
Acapulco has suffered a wave of killings as rival drug cartels fight over coastal smuggling routes and control over a burgeoning local drug market.
Last year, the heads of at least six police officers and alleged drug smugglers were found in the resort and nearby towns.
President Felipe Calderon, who took power in December, has sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers to regions ravaged by drug violence. More than 7,000 troops arrived in the Acapulco region last month.
Tourists have not been immune from the violence.
On Saturday, two Canadians suffered minor injuries after being grazed by bullets fired at the city's Casa Inn Hotel. The two were treated at a hospital and released. Police have not made any arrests in that case.
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By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: February 9, 2007
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8 — Three illegal immigrants were shot to death, three were wounded and others were missing Thursday near Tucson after gunmen accosted them as they traveled north from the Mexican border, the authorities said.
The shootings came a day after gunmen in ski masks and carrying assault-style rifles robbed 18 people who had illegally crossed the border 70 miles to the south, near Sasabe. On Jan. 28 a man driving illegal immigrants from the border several miles from the scene of Thursday’s killings was ambushed and shot to death as the immigrants fled.
The federal and local authorities were investigating whether the spate of shootings was related.
Illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border often encounter bandits, armed civilian patrols and rival smugglers bent on robbing or stopping them.
The violence has been particularly acute in Arizona, which in recent years has become the busiest crossing area for illegal immigrants.
The latest shooting appeared to be the work of bandits, law enforcement officials said, though they said they had not ruled anything out.
Investigators were still piecing together what had happened, but they said they believed that the gunmen had opened fire on the travelers, apparently all from Guatemala, about 7 a.m. along a known smuggling route in a remote area near a mine 20 miles northwest of Tucson.
Their pickup truck crashed, and two of the immigrants, a young man and a teen-age girl, were found inside, dead from gunshot wounds, said Alonzo Peña, the agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona.
The gunmen forced the other immigrants into another vehicle and left, dropping off the wounded, including one person found dead later, along their way, Mr. Peña said. The others who were left were a woman with a gunshot wound in the neck, a 15-year-old girl and a man shot in the fingers.
The man with the hand wound hiked to a nearby mine, and workers there helped him call the police.
Mr. Peña said the authorities were trying to determine how many had been in the group of immigrants and how many were still missing. He said it appeared the smuggler driving the illegal immigrants and a guide had either escaped or were among the group taken captive.
The Associated Press, quoting officials of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, said six or seven immigrants had left with the gunmen.
“There have been similar cases where undocumented migrants have been taken to a location and relatives in Mexico contacted and extortion took place,” Rick Kastigar, the criminal investigations chief for the sheriff’s department, told The A.P.
Mr. Peña said the increase in border security in the past year, including scores of additional Border Patrol agents assisted by National Guard troops, had prompted more immigrants to employ smugglers commanding ever higher prices.
The going rate is about $3,000, or higher for trips from Central America, for a guide to lead immigrants by foot across the Mexican border or in a vehicle, usually through treacherous terrain.
Some smuggling rings, rather than risk capture at the border, have chosen to rob rivals, leading to violence.
“Smugglers look at them as a commodity, a product, and in some cases they would rather rip off a load and try to extort money instead of taking the risk to smuggle,” Mr. Peña said.
The Border Patrol’s Tucson sector has reported that arrests of illegal aliens dropped 11 percent last year and is down 9 percent since October compared with the previous year. Officials at the agency have attributed the decline to additional manpower and newly installed fencing, cameras and sensors deterring crossers, though advocates for immigrants suggest that traffic may have shifted elsewhere.
NY Times
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Mexico: The Looming Fight for Control of Matamoros?
Hundreds of Mexican soldiers briefly patrolled the streets of Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, Feb. 15 as part of the federal government's response to the seizure on the U.S.-Mexican border of a large weapons shipment that passed through the capital. The contents of the cache suggest an effort is under way to equip or reinforce a heavily armed unit of enforcers for one of Mexico's two main drug cartels. The cartels, in other words, appear to be gearing up to fight for ultimate control of Matamoros.
The Mexican attorney general's office announced Feb. 11 that a tractor-trailer containing weapons and an armored pickup was seized by the Mexican army in Matamoros, just south of the U.S. border at Brownsville, Texas. Among the weapons seized were 18 M-16 assault rifles, including at least one equipped with an M-203 40mm grenade launcher, and several M-4 carbines. Also recovered were 17 handguns of various calibers, more than 200 magazines for different weapons, more than 8,000 rounds of ammunition, assault vests and other military accessories. A Nissan Titan pickup truck outfitted with armor and bullet-proof glass also was inside the trailer.
The semi, which was registered in the United States, entered Matamoros from the south after having passed through both Ciudad Victoria and Valle Hermoso. It is unclear where the shipment originated, though it could have come from Central America, or even the United States along a circuitous route designed to avoid police roadblocks and other anti-smuggling measures. Putting soldiers on the streets of Ciudad Victoria, even for a few hours, might have been President Felipe Calderon's way of telling the cartels that authorities know what is going on there.
Matamoros, however, is where the real battle appears to be gearing up. Matamoros is in territory controlled by the Gulf cartel, the main rival of the powerful Sinaloa federation of cartels -- and it is possible the Gulf cartel's enforcers were attempting to prepare for an expected fight with the Sinaloa federation over control of the city's drug-smuggling operations.
One indication of this is the type of weapons and equipment seized. The identical assault vests, load-bearing equipment and other accessories, along with the standardized nature of the rifles -- exclusively variants of the M-16 -- indicate the shipment probably was meant to equip or reinforce a single heavily armed unit rather than an unorganized gang. Therefore, the Zetas -- former Mexican elite soldiers who work for the Gulf cartel as enforcers -- stand out as the mostly likely intended recipient of these weapons. Given their military background, the Zetas would want to have a high degree of standardization in the weapons and equipment they use, and they also would be more comfortable with M-16s, which are standard issue in the Mexican army.
Matamoros is a vital transshipment point, or "plaza," for the movement of drugs and other contraband into the United States from Mexico. From border towns like Matamoros that sit astride highways, high-ranking cartel members known as gatekeepers control the traffic of contraband across the border, collect payments from smugglers and oversee money-laundering operations for the cartels.
Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas, who had run his operation from a Mexican prison since his 2003 arrest, was extradited to the United States in January, which could hinder his efforts to maintain control of the Matamoros region. The Sinaloa federation, then, might have decided to take advantage of the disruption in the Gulf cartel's command structure to make a play for the plaza at Matamoros.
Although Matamoros has not seen much cartel-related violence recently, that could change as the Zetas move to repel attempts by the Sinaloa federation to assert its influence in the city.
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Sorry, no URL for this one, but it seems credible.
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New Threats Arise For Border Agents
Sat Feb 17, 1:52 PM ET
It's not just the number of people coming into the U.S. that is a concern for the Department of Homeland Security, but it's from which countries they are coming.
They cross in the cover of darkness and in broad daylight.
Border Patrol agents in San Diego stop nearly 400 illegal border crossers each day.
"We have five or six a day; that's just on a day shift," said Border Patrol agent Tim Feige.
There is no telling how many they don?t stop.
"We never know what they're here for or what their intentions are," added Feige.
10News joined agents on patrol and saw firsthand what they face. In one incident, two men and one woman tried to sneak by right in front of agents. They first hid and then surrendered. The group turned out to be Mexican citizens with no criminal records, and they were processed and sent back to Mexico.
Because 85 percent of those apprehended by agents are from Mexico, the Department of Homeland Security classifies the others detained as "OTMs," or Other Than Mexican.
"They try to pass themselves off as being from Mexico," said Border Patrol agent Allen Gustafson.
Last year, OTMs came from 148 of the 193 countries in the world. Several came from what Homeland Security terms ?special interest? countries -- countries that are considered a great threat.
10News learned that in the last six months, agents along the Southwest border caught 15 people from Iran, 35 from Pakistan, 12 from Jordan, two from Syria and five from Lebanon. These are numbers Homeland Security would not officially release.
"We're more aware, not only of terrorists, but terrorist weapons," said Gustafson.
Agents who patrol the coastline have radiation detection equipment and try to at least eyeball every incoming boat.
"The busiest time is the fishing months, when there's a lot of boat traffic. Everyone has got a boat out here; they try to blend in with the regular traffic," said Gustafson.
Potential terrorists are not the only concern.
Agents said many violent criminals cross the border.
"In fact, we caught a person who was number 17 on Mexico's most wanted list," said Feige.
A top priority for the Federal Bureau of Investigation is to stop the influx of a notoriously brutal gang called the MS-13 -- the Mara Salvatrucha -- a group linked to violence across California and 32 other U.S. states.
According to reports, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras export members of the MS-13 gang.
10News learned that agents have stopped 26,035 undocumented people from El Salvador, 11,781 from Guatemala and 16,370 from Honduras in the last six months. The two fences that line the U.S.-Mexico border stop car traffic, but agents said they look to slow down the people on foot.
"If we have a group jumping the fence, we can get there twice as fast as maybe one of the bigger trucks can," said Border Patrol supervisor George Gibson.
The goal of agents is to catch those crossing and those who help the crossers.
"They usually use these ladders they weld out of rebar, so one of our objectives is to try and grab that ladder before they get it back south," said Gibson.
It is rewarding but frustrating work. The stakes are high, and every day it is more of the same.
In the last six months, nearly 1,200 people from China were caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally.
Agents said Chinese nationals pay smugglers up to $30,000 for passage to the U.S.
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LBN
OFFICERS OUTGUNNED ON U.S. BORDER: Violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is undergoing what U.S. law-enforcement authorities call "an unprecedented surge," some of it fueled by weapons and ammunition purchased or stolen in the United States. Federal, state and local law-enforcement officials from Texas to California, concerned about the impact of illegally imported weapons into Mexico, say they already are outmanned and outgunned by ruthless gangs that collect millions of dollars in profits by smuggling aliens and drugs into this country.
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There's several worthy reads from Stratfor on Mexico on the Spanish (and English :oops: ) Language Forum, but I've decided to start posting them here from hereonin.
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Mexico: Grenade Attacks In Durango
April 27, 2007 21 37 GMT
Three Mexican army-issue grenades were detonated in the city of Gomez Palacio in the state of Durango on April 27, killing one police officer and injuring four others. One explosion occurred outside the municipal Public Security Office and two happened outside the Attorney General's office. Unidentified men on motorcycles and in light trucks threw the grenades at the offices and also fired machine guns at the Attorney General's office. Police have questioned two unidentified individuals in relation to the bombings as part of an ongoing investigation.
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The Burgeoning Extortion Racket along the U.S.-Mexico Border
U.S. authorities are investigating what appears to be a new extortion scheme that involves the threat of bodily harm to attorneys, bankers and their families in Laredo, Texas. This is yet another sign that the extortion racket is expanding and escalating along the U.S.-Mexico border. Left unchecked, this criminal activity could escalate into violence on the U.S. side, similar to what is occurring now south of the border.
Since mid-April, at least a dozen attorneys and an unknown number of bankers have received phone calls from a man threatening to harm them or their families unless money is paid immediately. The caller, who speaks with a Spanish accent, provides a significant amount of personal information about the targets, such as names, addresses, habits and the birthdates and schools of family members.
The caller then orders the targets to wire a certain amount of money to various Western Union offices in Mexico, threatening that "bad things" will happen if they fail to pay. The amount of the extortion demand is unclear, but the victims are given just 30 minutes to send the money. They are told that if the money is even one minute late, they and their families will suffer the consequences -- a tactic designed to prevent targets from thinking rationally, and thus to increase the chances that they will pay. The tactic apparently has worked, as some victims reportedly have complied with the demands and transferred money.
These calls are very similar to the virtual kidnapping
schemes that are common in Mexico. Both exploit the fear generated by the frequent kidnappings in Mexico and the violence that occurs on both sides of the border. While a typical kidnapping requires the victim to be housed and fed -- and thus usually requires a group of accomplices to successfully execute -- crimes of the virtual nature are cheap and easy to commit, requiring very little physical risk and infrastructure. In essence, this crime takes far less effort than one involving an actual kidnap victim.
It is unclear whether the calls in this latest scheme are originating from the United States or Mexico, and whether the scheme is being perpetrated by a lone criminal or an extortion ring. The tactics, however, are similar to other extortion schemes targeting business owners along the border. The targets of those schemes have had connections to both sides of the border, such as a Mexico resident who owns property in Texas. In one case, a Mexican business owner was shown evidence that the criminals threatening him had surveilled his home in Brownsville, Texas. Considering that bankers and lawyers are the targets of this latest scheme, it appears the extortionists are focusing on those who have the ability to pay higher sums than earlier victims.
In most extortion schemes, the problem often is more widespread than it appears on the surface because victims can be reluctant to involve law enforcement authorities on either side of the border for reasons that include distrust of authorities, fear of the consequences and a desire to avoid publicity. This reluctance already has been seen in cases involving trucking companies operating between the United States and Mexico. Evidence suggests that, when threatened with the hijacking of their shipments, many truckers have found it easier and less damaging to their bottom line to simply pay the criminals rather than involve the authorities.
Unlike in extortion cases involving truckers, or even small-business owners and shopkeepers, however, lawyers have better access to law enforcement assistance -- and are more likely to use it. By targeting this group, then, the extortionists appear fearless of law enforcement involvement. This is cause for concern, especially considering that the extortion payments are being directed to Mexico, where drug cartels and other criminals often have killed lawyers and judges. Having already demonstrated a disregard for the law -- and the attorneys who practice it -- these extortionists could progress to more violent means to influence them.
stratfor.com
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stratfor.com
MEXICO: Proven reserves of crude oil in Mexico are declining and will be exhausted within seven years if the current rate of extraction continues, Mexican state-run oil company Petroleos Mexicanos said in a 2006 annual report released today. U.S.-based consulting firm PFC Energy said that though there are numerous investments for oil exploration, new deposits will take six to eight years to mature, and it is possible Mexico might have to import crude oil.
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Second post
The Washington Times : July 20 , 2007 -- by Stephen Dinan and Jerry Seper
"'Unless we correct the fundamental challenge of the violation of human rights of Latin American or Central American migrants crossing the border into Mexico, it's very hard for me to come up and wag a finger and say you guys should protect the rights of my citizens in this country,' he said, adding that changes to the Mexican law are now pending." Mexico's ambassador to the United States yesterday said previous Mexican officials made a "dumb mistake" by issuing comic books to aid illegal aliens crossing the border, and said his government cannot criticize U.S. treatment of illegal aliens as long as Mexico has harsh laws on its books.
"It's very hard for Mexico to preach to the north what it does not do to the south," Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said in a meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, referring to Mexico's felony penalties for, and sometimes cruel treatment of, those caught crossing its southern border.
"Unless we correct the fundamental challenge of the violation of human rights of Latin American or Central American migrants crossing the border into Mexico, it's very hard for me to come up and wag a finger and say you guys should protect the rights of my citizens in this country," he said, adding that changes to the Mexican law are now pending.
Mr. Sarukhan, who presented his credentials as ambassador to President Bush in February, said his government is taking a new tack since the December inauguration of President Felipe Calderon, who has toned down the public relations push for an immigration bill in the United States and is instead trying to build infrastructure, combat corruption and create jobs to keep workers at home.
"The debate over immigration is an internal debate of the United States, and as such, I hope, this house noted a dramatic shift in the positioning of the Mexican government as of Dec. 1," Mr. Sarukhan said. "I think the previous Mexican government did itself and those that believe in comprehensive immigration reform a lot of damage by the way it tried to position itself publicly in an internal debate in the United States."
In particular, the ambassador criticized past moves to distribute materials aimed at helping illegal aliens safely cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
In 2005, the Mexican government's foreign ministry distributed 1.5 million comic books giving tips to would-be migrants, and last year Mexico's National Human Rights Commission planned to distribute maps to migrants showing water sites they could use during their crossing. The commission scrapped the plans after a U.S. protest.
"That was not my government, and I would say that in hindsight, or even without hindsight -- I was consul general of Mexico in New York at the time these guidelines were delivered -- and I saw this and I said, 'What a dumb mistake,' " the ambassador said, adding that the human rights commission was a nongovernmental body.
"I don't think that's the way that you work synergistically with the United States to co-manage a very complex border."
The new approach was apparent when Mr. Bush and Mr. Calderon met in Mexico in March, and the Mexican leader stressed trying to build new economic opportunities in Mexico as well as working with the U.S. to secure the border.
That's not to say Mr. Calderon didn't want Congress to pass Mr. Bush's immigration bill, which would have created a new guest-worker program and given citizenship rights to the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens already here, a majority of whom are Mexicans. Mr. Calderon called the bill's failure a "grave mistake."
But Mr. Sarukhan said Mexican officials understand Americans' trepidation and desire for a secure border, and he said they are well aware of the consequences if a breach of the U.S.-Mexican border were to be involved in a future attack on U.S. security.
"The day that happens, this relationship as we have known it, is over," he said. "I would say Mexico and the United States are working extremely well in trying to ensure that border is not used to underpin or challenge the national security of the United States."
He said leaders in both nations must work to convince their citizens of the importance and value of a good U.S.-Mexico relationship, and said the countries should search for a uniting factor similar to the way that ethanol is serving as the basis for closer ties to Brazil.
"There is a deep-seated fear in America today that their well-being, the well-being of Americans and their identity as a nation, and the impact of some of the effects of globalization, are making people scared," he said.
Mr. Calderon serves one six-year term as Mexican president, and Mr. Sarukhan said he hopes to be able to show the U.S. Congress at the end of that time that immigration patterns have changed and workers are returning on their own to Mexico to start businesses and rejoin communities.
The ambassador said Mexico's eventual goal is the same as that of the U.S.: "The end game for us, the Mexican government, is to ensure every single Mexican who crosses this border does so legally."
Mr. Sarukhan, a former director of counternarcotics and law-enforcement issues, also said Mexico and the United States need to work together if they hope to better control the flow of drugs into the U.S. and cash and weapons into Mexico.
He described the fight against drug smugglers and organized crime gangs who have brought rampant violence to the U.S.-Mexico border as important to both countries, and said the United States must do its part to "roll back" drug consumption.
He defended remittances, the $23 billion sent back home by Mexicans working legally or illegally in the United States, saying they play "a key role in this stage of Mexican economic development." He pointed to the role of remittances in other nations such as Ireland and Spain when those countries were trying to extend their links to the European Community.
But he said remittances are not the long-term solution for sustained growth in Mexico, particularly because it's an indicator that many of Mexico's best workers have fled the country to find jobs.
"No country can grow if it is not able to hold onto its women and men. Some of them, I don't know if they're talented or not, but they're certainly bold," he said.
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Bombing of Mexican Pipelines Puzzles Security Experts
By Greg Flakus
Mexico CIty
26 July 2007
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The July 5 and July 10 bomb attacks on natural gas pipelines in central Mexico led to the temporary shutdown of factories in several industrial cities and raised fears about the country becoming a target for terrorists. A small leftist insurgent group took responsibility for the attacks, but security experts are still puzzled over the incident and worry about possible future acts of sabotage. VOA's Greg Flakus has more from Mexico City.
Smoke and flames from an explosion at a gas pipeline are seen in the background as a Mexican army truck drives by near Queretaro, Mexico, 10 July 2007
At first, some thought the explosions may have been caused by accidents, but investigators at the bombing sites in north-central Mexico found evidence of sophisticated explosives, and a leftist insurgent group from southern Mexico, the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) claimed responsibility. President Felipe Calderon pledged to protect the infrastructure of the state-owned energy company, Petroleos Mexicanos, called Pemex for short, and he dispatched military units to patrol various pipeline routes.
But the attacks remain a mystery, and speculation continues as to who was really responsible. The EPR had never ventured that far north before and never appeared to have access to the explosives and bomb-making skills that were employed in these attacks.
Political analyst Ana Maria Salazar says she remains baffled by the bombings.
"I do not know what to make of it," she said. "That is part of the problem when you have these acts that are claimed to have been done by armed groups in Mexico, you always have a question in the back of your mind - who did it?"
She says it is possible the EPR might have carried out the attacks in conjunction with other leftist groups currently protesting in the southern state of Oaxaca over various issues. But she says she cannot rule out the possibility that a foreign terrorist group might have had a hand in it.
"There was a threat posted on a Web site a couple of months ago, supposedly by al-Qaida, that was threatening all the countries providing petroleum to the United States, which included Mexico and Venezuela, which made Hugo Chavez very upset, by the way," she added. "So there is that possibility."
Mexico City-based independent energy analyst David Shields is among those who see another possible culprit behind the bomb attacks, the powerful and violent drug trafficking cartels, against which President Calderon launched an offensive shortly after taking office last December.
"Once it was confirmed that these were terrorist attacks, first of all we thought of the drug cartels as the likely authors of these attacks," he explained. "I think we cannot rule out altogether that they were involved."
Shields says government efforts to protect the state-owned energy company's pipes and facilities are necessary, but he says posting soldiers along the pipeline routes will not provide complete protection.
"We know that Pemex has infrastructure of all kinds of pipelines, something like 60,000 kilometers of pipelines all over the country, as well as other kinds of facilities," he added. "I think it would even be out of the question to post a soldier every kilometer. It would be a massive waste of human resources to have people all over the country wherever there are pipelines, wherever there is infrastructure."
Shields says the Mexican government has provided adequate protection to its oil production and export infrastructure, even employing missile-equipped naval vessels to patrol waters near offshore oil platforms. But he says pipelines serving Mexico's own population are much more vulnerable.
"Certainly, none of us are ruling out the likelihood of more attacks, but also what we have to realize is that these attacks on domestic pipelines are affecting the domestic market, they are not affecting exports," he noted. "It would have to be a very different kind of attack and a more sophisticated attack on oil export facilities for oil exports to be interrupted. That seems to be an unlikely scenario."
While Mexico's oil export system may be safe, a continued threat to its domestic energy supply network could cripple important industries and discourage foreign investors who are considering placing plants here. Security experts who have examined evidence from the bombings say the perpetrators knew the attacks would disrupt important industries and that they probably had information from someone inside Pemex as to which pipes to bomb for the most effect.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-07-26-voa51.cfm
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Mexico Security Memo: July 30, 2007
July 30, 2007 21 26 GMT
Renewed Violence in Cartel Territory
Violent flare-ups occurred across much of northern Mexico this week, as Stratfor suggested it would in the previous Mexico Security Memo. The most noteworthy examples include a firefight in the border town of Ciudad Camargo, Tamaulipas state; a cartel shooting death in Ciudad Camargo, Chihuahua state; and three similar shooting deaths in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, where one body showed signs of torture and was wrapped in a sheet with a message pinned to it. In addition, a police official assigned to counternarcotics was found dead July 24 in Navolato, Sinaloa state, with a message from the Zetas pinned to his body, which showed signs of torture. He had been kidnapped a day before with another police officer. Sonora state police reported July 25 that a member of a drug gang was killed July 25 in the city of El Sasabe after being shot twice in the head. It is important to note that these states and most of northern Mexico, in addition to housing several large industrial cities with international companies, are considered cartel territory, and attacks in the region are becoming increasingly frequent.
One southeastern state that recently has become a hot spot for cartel violence is Veracruz. The state has long been important territory for the Gulf cartel, which brings drugs in from the Yucatan Peninsula to the Northeast and ships them on into the United States. However, only in the last few weeks has cartel-related violence increased in the area, including a rise in kidnappings and attacks against government officials. Some of the most recent incidents include the July 26 killing of a municipal official in the town of Zongolica and two firefights in the city of Veracruz on July 25. One possible explanation for the increase in reported violence in Veracruz is that previous incidents went unreported. This is plausible, especially considering claims made by police in Veracruz in June that they had been ordered not to report drug-related violence. However, the brazen nature of these more recent attacks -- firefights in large cities and attacks against government officials -- indicates this is a shift worth monitoring.
Corruption on the U.S. Side
Our reports have consistently documented instances of corruption among Mexico's police and government officials at all levels. However, it is important to note that the cartels' control of the border, and their ability to effectively smuggle drugs and people into the United States, suggests an ability to control officials on the U.S. side of the border as well. Cases in recent years have revealed corruption among U.S. Border Patrol agents, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, city police officers, a Texas sheriff and Texas National Guard members assigned to patrol the border. These cases demonstrate that bribing immigration officials can be done for a relatively small amount of money, and that the officials are often unaware of the contents of the shipments they are allowing to pass through the border. Local law enforcement officers might participate in two ways: either by actively taking part in smuggling activities or by more passively agreeing to look the other way at a certain time and place while smugglers transport illegal shipments. The corruption problem is difficult to combat due to the enormous amount of money associated with the drug trade.
July 23
Authorities in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes state, discovered the body of a man wrapped in a blanket. The man reportedly had been kidnapped several hours before, and his body showed signs of torture.
July 24
Police in Guerrero state reported finding the body of an unidentified individual near the town of Atoyac de Alvarez. The victim had been shot twice in the head.
State police in Mexico state reportedly detained an agent of the Federal Investigative Agency for extortion.
July 25
Workers in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco state, found the body of a woman stuffed in a plastic bag in a rural area.
Two separate firefights between suspected cartel gunmen and security forces were reported in the city of Veracruz, Veracruz state. The engagements resulted in a high-speed chase through the city and the detention of one suspect.
A Catholic priest in Hidalgo state was abducted from church property and later killed by his kidnapper, state officials said. Violence against clergy is rare in Mexico, and the preliminary results of the investigation do not suggest organized crime links.
Mexican army soldiers stopped a tractor-trailer with nearly 12 tons of marijuana on board in Ensenada, Baja California state, and arrested the driver.
July 26
A city official in Zongolica, Veracruz state, was found dead inside her home, bound at the hands and feet. Her brother is a candidate for city office in a nearby town.
Authorities in Michoacan state reported the shooting death of a man in Apatzingan, the wounding of a man in a shooting in Morelia and a kidnapping in Morelos.
A well-known businessman in Veracruz, Veracruz state, was abducted by a group of armed men while he was driving his vehicle. This was the eighth reported kidnapping in the state in July.
A group of about 20 heavily armed men attacked a prison in Juchitan, Oaxaca state, wounding one security guard. An official confirmed that the men were attempting to extract a prisoner, though government officials said no cartel-linked prisoners were being held there.
July 27
Mexican army soldiers exchanged gunfire with armed men in Ciudad Camargo, Tamaulipas state, detaining several suspects. Ciudad Camargo is on the U.S. border.
July 28
A small number of armed men claiming to belong to the Popular Revolutionary Army fired shots at a jail being built in Chiapas state, locked up three guards and painted messages on the building. No one was injured during the attack.
Authorities in Navolato, Sinaloa state, discovered the charred bodies of two men in a vehicle. One of the men appeared to be a federal police commander.
July 29
A Catholic priest in the San Rafael neighborhood of Mexico City was found dead on church property, bound at the hands and feet.
stratfor.com
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WSJ
Mexico's Job-Creation Problem
By JOEL KURTZMAN
August 3, 2007; Page A9
Why do so many Mexicans leave their families, friends and homes to make the arduous journey to the United States?
It's a central question to the immigration debate and is essential for setting workable policies. But it's also a question that has rarely been asked.
After looking at the numbers, what I discovered is that Mexico has a job-creation problem. During President Vicente Fox's six years in office his goal was to create six million jobs across all sectors of the economy. Mr. Fox fell far short of that goal. Between 2000 and 2006, the period when he was in office, Mexico created only 1.4 million jobs. Though accurate figures are difficult to arrive at, the Government Accountability Office estimates that during each year of Mr. Fox's presidency between 400,000 and 700,000 illegal immigrants arrived in the U.S. from Mexico. The number of illegal immigrants from Mexico was roughly equal to the number of jobs Mr. Fox did not create.
If one were to do a CAT scan of Mexico's economy, one would find a country with the potential to become a job creator's paradise. Mexico has far more oil than fast-growing Dubai (a net labor importer) and almost as much as Qatar, another labor importer. If Mexicans working in the U.S. are any indication, Mexico has a work force that is trained and disciplined. With thousands of miles of coastline, Mexico is a tourist haven. It shares a border with its largest trading partner. But even with these positive attributes, Mexico's job-creation engine has stalled.
Research shows that big companies -- especially big Mexican companies -- do not create many jobs. Jobs are created by entrepreneurs who start companies from scratch. To perform their job-creating function, entrepreneurs need access to capital, which is where Mexico falls short. According to the Milken Institute's 2006 Capital Access Index, Mexico ranks a dismal 43rd with regard to capital access out of 122 countries studied. To compare, the U.S., the world's top job-creating developed country, ranks No. 4, and Hong Kong, Asia's most vibrant, entrepreneurial hub, ranks No. 1.
Mexicans with drive, ambition and a willingness to take risks sneak across the border to the U.S. But they don't just come for jobs. They also come for the capital. When these immigrants arrive they don't just sell their labor, many start small businesses in the food, construction, maintenance and landscaping trades. When those businesses are launched, illegal Mexican immigrants hire other illegal Mexican immigrants. A great deal of Mexico's job creation takes place inside the U.S.
Mexico's financial and economic structures fail at providing entrepreneurs with the capital they need to create jobs. The economy is too concentrated, with nearly half of it controlled by a single family -- that of the billionaire Carlos Slim. A handful of other families own the bulk of Mexico's remaining wealth. Mexico's legal and business structures effectively fence off from competition whole sectors of the economy. In telecommunications, petroleum and much of the real-estate and tourism sectors, real competition is restricted. Mexico could jumpstart its job-creation engine by opening these sectors of its economy to real competition.
Mexico's oil wealth is another job-creator's nightmare. It is controlled by a single government-owned company, Pemex. Even with today's high oil prices, Pemex is the world's most heavily indebted oil company and one of the least efficient producers. Pemex -- whose monopoly status is protected by the Mexican constitution -- is so bogged down by bureaucracy, conflicting interests, political meddling and sweetheart union deals, that it has failed to find any new oil reserves in years. It is not that new oil reserves don't exist. Last year, Chevron found huge deposits in the U.S.-portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The problem with Pemex is that it isn't really looking for oil. If Mexico's oil industry were opened up to competition, even within the confines of its constitution, not only would more oil be found, more jobs would be created.
Mexico's financial system is to entrepreneurship what sharks are to a swimmer's beach. Banking, which is conservative and risk-averse, dominates Mexico's financial system, accounting for about 55% of all financial assets, compared with just 24% of all financial assets in the U.S. In the U.S., the capital markets and a diverse array of funds provide most of the capital. If that weren't enough, Mexico's top three banks control 60% of all banking assets. If entrepreneurs are turned down by the first bank, they really have only two more places to apply. For a country its size, Mexico's stock and bond markets are hugely underdeveloped when measured as a percentage of GDP.
Household credit is also scarce in Mexico and amounts to only about 5% of GDP, versus 65% in the U.S. Without access to credit, Mexico's consumer and retail sectors have not grown sufficiently. These sectors could be vibrant job-creation engines if Mexicans had wider access to credit.
But perhaps most strikingly, Mexico has not yet succeeded in building a robust residential mortgage market. Whereas the U.S. has $8.2 trillion outstanding in residential mortgages, Mexico, with a population a third the size of U.S., has just $47 billion outstanding. Not only that, more than half of Mexico's homes are self-built and substandard. As a result, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates Mexico has a housing deficit of five million units. If mortgages were cheap and plentiful -- through the increased use of mortgage securitization tools, for example -- the epicenter of demand for Mexico's trade- and craftsmen would not be California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. It would be in Mexico.
Solving the immigration problem will not happen unless Mexico solves its job-creation problem. To do that, Mexico needs to modernize and open up to competition its antiquated and concentrated economic and financial systems. For decades, Mexico has argued that if it were to do so, America would take over. It's time to dispel that urban myth with a little reality. If Mexico can succeed in providing capital to risk-taking Mexicans, they will create jobs in Mexico, not just in the U.S.
Mr. Kurtzman, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, is co-author of the forthcoming book, "Global Edge: Using the Opacity Index to Manage the Risk of Cross-border Business" (Harvard Business School Press).
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Mexico Security Memo: Aug. 6, 2007
August 06, 2007 18 27 GMT
Accelerating Violence
The violent trend that began several weeks ago in northern Mexico has continued this week and appears to be increasing. Drug-related killings occurred this week in Nuevo Leon, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango states -- all cartel battlegrounds. It is important to note, however, that other regions of the country also experience drug-related violence on a regular basis, such as the southern states of Guerrero and Michoacan.
Territorial control in these two states has long been of strategic importance to the Sinaloa cartel because of the port city of Acapulco, an important port of entry for drugs coming from South America. This control is frequently challenged by rival Gulf cartel operatives, who violently attempt to disrupt the Sinaloa cartel's operations. Examples this week of such violence include the killings of a city official's brother and a city police chief.
Two Dead Agents and Zhenli Ye Gon
Authorities confirmed Aug. 1 that two men found dead the day before in Guerrero state were agents of the Federal Investigative Agency. Federal police officers turn up dead nearly every week in Mexico. These two agents, however, were involved in the investigation of Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese-Mexican businessman accused by the United States and Mexico of supplying pseudoephedrine to Mexican cartels for manufacturing methamphetamine, a phenomenon discussed in a previous Mexico Security Memo.
Since authorities seized more than $200 million in cash -- comprising more than two tons of $100 bills -- from Ye Gon's Mexico City home earlier this year, the case has gained national attention in Mexico. Speaking at a forum on organized crime in Latin America, a Colombian national police official accused Ye Gon of having links to Chinese organized crime and added that the Chinese mafia has set up illegal casinos and money laundering operations in many parts of Latin America. The claims shed light on the complex nature of organized criminal enterprises, which have direct and indirect links to drug trafficking.
An EPR Uptick
The Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which claimed responsibility in July for attacks against oil pipelines in Guanajuato and Queretaro states and against a federal prison in Chiapas state, has increased its operational tempo. Most recently, it placed two small explosive devices in Oaxaca. The increased frequency of attacks is unusual for the EPR, and requires close attention. The Oaxaca bombs were the EPR's fourth attack in as many weeks and as many states. This increased frequency must have demanded a major effort by the EPR, whose actual membership likely numbers in the low hundreds (much lower than it claims).
Even if the EPR is shifting its focus from symbolic targets to strategic economic targets, and even if the group can sustain this increased tempo, it is unlikely to carry out attacks designed to kill. The group so far has been content to conduct attacks that send messages. Even when given the opportunity to cause casualties -- as in the jail attack -- it has not done so. Whether the group will continue the same high frequency of attacks remains unknown. If it does, government facilities, foreign companies, nongovernmental organizations and economic targets throughout the country are at risk of similar attacks.
July 30
A decomposing body was found stuffed in a plastic container in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon state.
The leader of a peasant union in Zacapu, Michoacan state, was found dead with at least three gunshot wounds. He reportedly was abducted July 27 by a group of armed men and was being held for ransom.
Police in Sonora state responding to an anonymous tip found the body of a suspected drug trafficker in the northern city of Caborca. The victim was found shot to death with bound hands.
A man in Atoyac, Guerrero state, died of multiple shotgun wounds.
July 31
Authorities in Cancun, Quintana Roo state, discovered the body of a U.S. citizen of Cuban origin who had been shot multiple times. He reportedly was involved in illegally smuggling Cuban immigrants into Mexico.
The brother of a city official in Arcelia, Guerrero state, was wounded after being shot several times by a group of gunmen.
The body of a man was found wrapped in a blanket with a note pinned on it in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. He had been tortured and shot several times.
Two men were found shot to death in separate incidents in Michoacan state, one in the town of La Huacana and the other in Ziracuaretiro.
Aug. 1
A small explosive device detonated at a department store in Oaxaca, Oaxaca state, while another device was found unexploded at a bank. No one was injured by the bombs, which were claimed by EPR.
Authorities confirmed that two men found dead July 31 in Guerrero state were Federal Investigative Agency agents.
Aug. 2
Officials discovered the body of an unidentified individual in Penjamo, Guanajuato state, who had been shot several times.
Three people died in apparent drug-related killings in Durango state. Two occurred in Tamazula and one in Santiago Papasquiaro.
The body of a man was found in Tlalnepantla, Mexico state, with multiple gunshot wounds and bound hands.
Officials in Sonora state discovered the body of a man shot three times and left on the side of a highway.
Aug. 4
A group of armed men shot and killed the police chief of Paracho, Michoacan state, who was traveling unarmed to the state capital, Morelia.
Police in Paracho, Michoacan state, went on strike following the city police chief's killing, demanding better equipment.
Aug. 5
A senior journalist for El Semanario in Oaxaca state was shot three times.
Authorities in Hacienda Nueva, Aguascalientes state, discovered the body of a man nearly severed at the waist.
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Prosperous Haven in Mexico Is Invaded by Drug Violence
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A01
MONTERREY, Mexico -- Biti Rodriguez could have gone anywhere for her 10-year-old's birthday party. But Incredible Pizza, a mammoth restaurant and fun house tucked into the corner of a strip mall here, offered her something that suddenly has become a consuming obsession: safety.
She herded her daughter, Alejandra, and a dozen other giggling girls through two metal detectors one recent afternoon at this pizza parlor that promises "incredible security for your children," then dumped bags of presents on a table to be probed by a guard. It took a while to actually get inside, but Rodriguez didn't care. She thinks all the extra security is "super bien" -- super good.
Not so long ago, metal detectors at a pizza place would have been unimaginable in Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest metropolitan area, with more than 3.6 million residents. The city once seemed as if it could do no wrong -- two years ago it was named the safest city in Latin America by an international consulting group, it boasted the region's wealthiest residential neighborhood, and it was a strong competitor for the Major League Baseball franchise that became the Washington Nationals.
But in the past year, the drug violence raging across Mexico has landed hard in Monterrey, jarring residents who once felt immune to the shootouts so common in other big Mexican cities.
In the first six months of 2007, Monterrey registered 162 killings, nearly as many as were recorded in all of last year and about 50 more than in all of 2004. But it wasn't just the killings that shook up the Biti Rodriguezes of this city -- it was the brazenness of the killers.
A hit man walked calmly into the landmark Gran San Carlos restaurant, past rows of Monterrey's signature hanging roasted cabrito, or goat, and shot dead a man seated at a table beneath the stained-glass cupola. Gunmen launched volleys of bullets into a popular seafood restaurant at the height of the lunch rush, and police officers were mowed down in broad daylight.
The killings triggered tremors of fear. Newspapers now run daily tallies of slayings. A roadside hotel has advertised bulletproof rooms. Heavily armored cars have become a new status symbol, with corporate chieftains dishing out as much as $400,000 for Mercedes-Benz sedans that ward off not only bullets but also grenades. In the San Pedro Garza Garcia suburb, where hillside palaces rival the mansions of Beverly Hills, a new saying was born: "There are no Tuesdays without killings."
"I can't say Monterrey is the safest city in Mexico anymore -- that would be a lie," Jesús Marcos Giacomán, president of the 122-year-old Monterrey Chamber of Commerce and Tourism, said in an interview. "I can say we're going to make it the safest again."
An Economic Powerhouse
Monterrey wraps around the stunning, rocky peaks of the Sierra Madre, 130 miles southwest of McAllen, Tex. Gleaming towers form its skyline, and U.S.-style malls and upscale restaurants line its wide boulevards.
Known as the "Sultanate of the North" because of its popularity with Middle Eastern businessmen, Monterrey revved into an economic powerhouse after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994. The world's largest cement maker is here, as well as Mexico's biggest beer producer and one of the world's largest glass manufacturers. Major American corporations operate huge plants.
For the past five years, Monterrey stayed mostly peaceful while the rival Sinaloa and Gulf drug cartels fought over territory in other cities near the border, such as Nuevo Laredo. But something more complicated has happened here in the past year, Aldo Fasci Zuazua, deputy attorney general of Nuevo Leon state, said in an interview at his Monterrey office.
For unknown reasons, the local drug lords who warehouse cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana for the big cartels began fighting each other, Fasci said. Their bloody battles unnerved the national and transnational cartels that counted on Monterrey's small-time operators to funnel tons of drugs into the United States.
A business that had run smoothly for years was suddenly a mess, and the national cartels felt compelled to sweep into Monterrey to "restore order," Fasci said. In the vernacular of organized crime, that meant killing people.
Fear Takes Hold
By April, assassinations were so rampant that the U.S. Embassy issued a travel warning for Monterrey noting that "Mexican and foreign bystanders" had been killed in Mexico. The next month, the business magazine America Economia dropped Monterrey from the top of its list of best places to do business in Latin America, a blow for a city that reaped a bonanza of publicity in 1999 when Fortune magazine dubbed it Latin America's top business locale.
Within days of America Economia's piece, Mexican President Felipe Calderón dispatched federal troops to patrol Monterrey's streets, one in a series of military assaults against cartel strongholds across the country.
Monterrey's wealthy -- the city is said to be home to more than a dozen of Mexico's most powerful families -- were well prepared to withstand the violence in their streets. Top corporations began hiring armed security forces. Executives and their families now travel in protective bubbles ringed by bodyguards and live behind high walls fitted with motion sensors and cameras.
But Monterrey's middle class, the pride of a state that boasts that its annual per-capita income of $14,000 is twice the national average, became frantic. Biti Rodriguez cringed each night when she watched the news. In her neighborhood, parents stopped letting their kids walk to school. School administrators tightened rules about who could pick up children.
Authorities know that private schools accept drug dealers' money to educate their kids, but "there's nothing that the government can do about it," Fasci said.
Rodriguez felt compelled to do something she'd never done before: She started locking the doors of her suburban Monterrey home.
Underworld Infiltration
With hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the pockets of drug traffickers, authorities here suspect that organized crime has diversified, investing in criminal enterprises such as kidnapping and the smuggling of illegal immigrants, as well as legitimate businesses such as real estate.
The underworld has infiltrated state and municipal governments and police forces, damaging confidence in public institutions even though about 400 law enforcement officers suspected of corruption have been taken off the streets. One councilman here estimated that as many 200,000 people in the state of Nuevo Leon -- 5 percent of the population -- may be involved directly or indirectly in the drug trade.
Local politicians, especially in the many municipalities that abut Monterrey, say they feel like targets. One recent afternoon, a municipal councilman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he "feels threatened all the time" and that even the most minor decisions become complicating labyrinths that can paralyze local governments afraid of unknowingly angering drug lords.
To protect himself, he conducts extensive investigations, gaming out every possible scenario about the possible ripple effects of his votes. But those inquiries carry risks, too. "If you're asking all these questions," he said, "sometimes these narcos find out and get nervous."
Although he can afford to buy a car, he doesn't. He said driving the same car would make him easy to spot, so some days he grabs a taxi, other days he hops a bus. His route to the office varies from day to day -- it takes much longer, but he feels safer.
His municipality and others around Monterrey suffer from police shortages as officers quit rather than risk their lives at a time when several dozen officers have been killed. Authorities say police victims range from good cops who challenge the cartels to corrupt cops killed for favoring one cartel over another.
José Antonio Samaniego Hernández might have been one of those good cops, his family said in an interview. He survived one assassination attempt but was gunned down three months later while leaving the ramshackle home where he lived in a cramped bedroom with his wife, daughter and mother. Samaniego became a number that day -- execution victim No. 33 of 2007, according to the newspaper Milenio.
But to Anna Calderón Garcia, 15, he was the police officer down the street, the guy in the uniform who stopped to talk to all the kids. He was also one of half a dozen police officers she has known -- either as neighbors or because they spoke at her school -- who have been shot dead. After never hearing a gunshot in her life, Calderón said, she has twice been startled by gunfire. One night while leaving a Wal-Mart, she and friends saw the bodies of two slain policemen lying in the parking lot.
"It changed my life forever," she said. "Now I'm always looking around me, wondering if I might get shot."
While most of the shooting victims in Monterrey have been alleged drug traffickers, innocent victims have also fallen, including a 42-year-old mother of five caught in the crossfire during a gun battle in December.
Kids in Calderón's class, like children in so many other places, once dreamed of being police officers, putting on uniforms, playing a glamorous real-life game of cops-and-robbers. Not anymore. She lives three blocks from a funeral home and cups her ears when she hears sirens. Each time, she said, she whispers to herself: "Another dead one."
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Border Violence Pushes North (LAT)
The Los Angeles Times
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border19aug19,1,46
30356.story> , August 19, 2007
Drug cartels extend their reach into Texas and Arizona. Citizens and
immigrants alike are victimized.
Violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, which has long plagued the
scrubby, often desolate stretch, is increasingly spilling northward into
the cities of the American Southwest.
In Phoenix, deputies are working the unsolved case of 13 border crossers
who were kidnapped and executed in the desert. In Dallas, nearly two
dozen high school students have died in the last two years from
overdoses of a $2-a-hit Mexican fad drug called "cheese heroin."
The crime surge, most acute in Texas and Arizona, is fueled by a gritty
drug war in Mexico that includes hostages being held in stash houses,
daylight gun battles claiming innocent lives, and teenage hit men for
the Mexican cartels. Shipments of narcotics and vans carrying illegal
workers on U.S. highways are being hijacked by rival cartels fighting
over the lucrative smuggling routes. Fires are being set in national
forests to divert police.
In Laredo, Texas, a teenager who had been driving around the United
States in a $70,000 luxury sedan confessed to becoming a Mexican cartel
hitman when he was just 13. In Nogales, Ariz., an 82-year-old man was
caught with 79 kilograms of cocaine in his Chevrolet Impala. The youth
was sentenced to 40 years in prison in one slaying case and is awaiting
trial in another; the old man received 10 years.
In Southern California, Border Patrol agents routinely encounter
smugglers driving immigrant-laden cars who try to escape by driving the
wrong way on busy freeways. And stash houses packed with dozens of
illegal immigrants have been discovered in Los Angeles.
But a huge U.S. law enforcement buildup along the border that started a
decade ago has helped stabilize border-related crime rates on the
California side; a recent wave of kidnappings in Tijuana has been
largely contained south of the border.
The sprawling border has been crisscrossed for years by the poor seeking
work and by drug dealers in the hunt for U.S. dollars. For decades
neither the United States nor Mexico has managed to halt the immigrants
and narcotics pushing north. But with the Mexican government's newly
pledged war on the cartels, and an explosion of violence among rival
networks, a new crime dynamic is emerging: The violence that has hit
Mexican border towns is spreading deeper into the United States.
U.S. officials are promising more Border Patrol and federal firearms
officers, more fences and more surveillance towers along the desert
stretches where the two nations meet.
But law enforcement officials are wary of how this new burst in violence
will play out, especially because the enemy is better armed and more
sophisticated than ever. Among their concerns are budget cutbacks in
some agencies -- including a hiring freeze in the Drug Enforcement
Administration -- and community opposition to the surveillance towers.
Johnny Sutton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said he
would need at least 20,000 new Border Patrol agents in El Paso alone to
hold back the tide. But that is the total number of agents that
Washington hopes to have along the whole border by the end of 2009.
In six years, Sutton's office has tried 33,000 defendants, about 90% of
them on drug and immigration violations. "We're body-slamming them the
best we can," he said.
In Phoenix, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said there were 10,000
inmates in his jail and overflow tents; 2,000 of them are "criminal
aliens" from the border, he said. His deputies are investigating the
deaths of 13 people executed in the desert.
Jennifer Allen, director of Border Action Network, a Tucson nonprofit
that supports immigrants' rights, said Washington and Mexico City need
fresh approaches. "The smugglers are no longer mom-and-pop
organizations. Now it's an industry," she said. "So the violence
increases. That's incredibly predictable."
Raul Benitez, an international relations professor in Mexico City who
also taught at American University in Washington, blames both countries
for the crime wave. As long as Americans crave drugs and the cartels
want money, Benitez said, "security in both directions is jeopardized."
Nestor Rodriguez, a University of Houston sociologist, said people on
both sides of the Rio Grande viewed themselves as one community.
"People say, 'The river doesn't divide us,; it unites us,' " he said.
"When you're at ground zero at the border, you see yourselves as one
community -- for good or bad."
Rodriguez knows. His first cousin, Juan Garza, born in the United States
but trained by criminals in Mexico, ran his own murder-and-drug
enterprise out of Brownsville, Texas. He was executed in 2001 by the
United States.
"Of course there is a spillover of violence into this country,"
Rodriguez said.
"It's pouring across our border, and anybody can get caught up in it."
The small town of Sierra Vista, Ariz., learned firsthand of the rising
violence in 2004, when police chased a pickup carrying 24 illegal
immigrants on the border town's main drag, Buffalo Soldier Trail. Speeds
reached up to 100 mph. The truck went airborne, hit half a dozen cars
and killed a recently married elderly couple waiting at a stoplight.
"It was just the worst kind of tragedy," said Cochise County Atty. Ed
Rheinheimer. "The coyotes [smugglers] are just more willing to either
shoot at the police, fight with the police, or to try to flee."
Even more brazen have been several kidnappings of 50 to 100 immigrants
by rival cartels, which hide them in stash houses in and around Phoenix
until families pay a ransom. One captive's face was burned with a
cigarette, another person nearly suffocated in a plastic bag. A woman
was raped. Fingers have been sliced off and sent back to families with
demands for money.
The border-crime issue became so urgent in Arizona that top officials
met in Tucson in June with their counterparts from Sonora, Mexico.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to help train Sonoran police to
track wire payments to smugglers. Sonoran Gov. Eduardo Bours agreed to
improve police communications with U.S. authorities.
In the first nine months of the fiscal year, Tucson officials have
surpassed last year's record of 4,559 arrests over migrant smuggling.
And so far this year, in tiny Douglas, Ariz., the Mexican consulate has
identified the bodies of five Mexican nationals who died under
suspicious circumstances while crossing into the United States, and he
is awaiting the identification of another five he presumes were Mexicans
as well. There were only seven such deaths last year.
Statewide the picture is equally bleak. Homicides of illegal crossers is
up 21% over last year.
Another visible effect of the cross-border crime wave is the flood of
drugs into the country.
Anthony J. Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA in
Arizona, said records indicated that cocaine and heroin seizures may end
up twice as high as last year. Marijuana seizures are increasing 25%.
Nine months into the current fiscal year, he said, his team had already
seized more pot than all of last year. "And 2006 was a record year," he
said.
In the Tucson sector alone there has been a 71% increase in marijuana
seizures over the last fiscal year, with the Border Patrol reporting
648,000 pounds confiscated since October.
In the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale, Arpaio said, a cartel operative was
openly selling heroin to high school students. "He was getting 150 calls
a day on his cellphone," the sheriff said.
The DEA believes 80% of the methamphetamine in the United States is
coming from labs in Mexico, which were set up after police raids shut
down many of the labs in the U.S.
In Dallas, police are dealing with the deaths of 21 high school students
from "cheese heroin," a mixture of Mexican heroin and over-the-counter
cold medicine. A hit sells for $2 to $5. Several arrests of dealers have
been made; now officials are bracing for the coming school season.
"It's a small packet," said Lt. Tom Moorman of the Dallas Police
Department. "They can carry it in a pack of gum. Very, very small."
Antonio Oscar "Tony" Garza Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, has
issued repeated notes to the Mexican government. Last year he sent an
advisory to American tourists that "drug cartels, aided by corrupt
officials [in Mexico], reign unchecked in many towns along our common
border."
A House subcommittee on domestic security has investigated the "triple
threat" of drug smuggling, illegal border crossings and rising violence,
and it found that "very little" passes the border without the cartels'
knowledge.
The panel found that cartels send smugglers into the United States fully
armored with equipment -- much of it imported to Mexico from the United
States -- including high-powered binoculars and encrypted radios,
bazookas, military-style grenades, assault rifles and silencers, sniper
scopes and bulletproof vests. Some wear fake police uniforms to confuse
authorities as well as Mexican bandits who might ambush them.
The panel's report cited numerous recent crimes. In McAllen, Texas, "two
smuggled women from Central America were found on the side of a road
badly beaten and without clothing. Their captors intimidated the victims
by shooting weapons into the walls and ceiling as they were raped." In
Laredo, Texas, Webb County sheriff's deputies came upon 56 illegal
immigrants locked in a refrigerator trailer; 11 were women, two
children. After six hours, "many were near death by the time they were
rescued."
It was in Laredo last summer where police encountered Rosalio Reta, then
17, a Houston native who fell under the spell of the Gulf Cartel across
the river. Known as Bart, the youth was 13 when he started visiting
Mexico.
"They walk across the bridge," said Laredo Det. Robert Garcia, who
investigated a murder that involved Reta. "They see all the nightclubs
with no age limit. They see the guys their age spending money, throwing
money around, paying for everything. They like the lure, the women, the
fancy cars. They start moving weapons and guns and pretty soon they
start asking for money for hits."
Garcia said Reta told him how he helped break a cartel leader out of a
Mexican prison. From there he moved up to become a hit man and returned
to Texas behind the wheel of a $70,000 Mercedes Benz, Garcia said.
Then last year a Laredo man, Noe Flores, was killed in front of his
home, shot by mistake because the cartel thought Flores was his
half-brother.
In a written statement to police, Reta admitted to driving the car with
two accomplices. One of them, identified by Reta as Gabriel Cardona,
jumped out and "shot two rounds at first," he wrote.
"That was when he fell to the floor and then shot em 13 more rounds and
that was when Jesus Gonzales [the other alleged accomplice] started
shooting from the rear windows.
"Then we left the sene of the crime and we left the car like 3 blocks
away. The work was done for the Gulf Cartel of Mexico."
At trial last month, a witness said Reta and the accomplices were paid a
total of $15,000 for the hit. But the case ended abruptly when Reta
pleaded guilty in return for a 40-year sentence; he had faced 99 years.
Webb County Judge Joe Lopez told the youth: "It's a young life. Come to
terms with your God and your faith, or whatever it may be."
Cardona also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 80 years. Gonzales was
arrested but made bail, and he disappeared back into Mexico.
Reta awaits trial in a second case, involving the ambush slaying in
December 2005 of Moises Garcia, shot in his car in a Laredo restaurant
parking lot as his pregnant wife and family watched helplessly.
-
Following up on the previous post, this from Stratfor:
Mexico Security Memo: Aug. 20, 2007
August 20, 2007 19 46 GMT
Violence Revisits Nuevo Leon, Baja California States
Violence returned to Nuevo Leon state this week with the Aug. 17 discovery near Monterrey of the bodies of two federal law enforcement agents who had been kidnapped the night before. Far to the west, Baja California state also stood out this week as an area to monitor as the commanders of joint local, state and federal security forces confirmed they would continue security operations in the state. Their announcement came in response to claims by a business group that organized crime in the state was reaching record levels, especially kidnapping. It is likely that additional federal resources will be sent to the state as security operations are expanded. As an indication of the level of violence throughout the country, 677 known cartel-related killings took place in Mexico in the first quarter of 2007, according to U.S. counterterrorism sources.
Operation Puma
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced this week the culmination of Operation Puma, an investigation targeting the Gulf cartel's money laundering and distribution networks in Mexico and the United States. The arrest near Dallas of a Gulf "gatekeeper" (a senior cartel member who controls the flow of drugs and revenue in a given locale), along with gatekeepers in the border cities of McAllen and Laredo, illustrates the extent of the cartel's distribution network within the United States.
It is still unclear what impact the arrests will have on the Gulf cartel's operations; new gatekeepers will undoubtedly be brought in and drugs will continue to enter the United States. However, the investigation, which took approximately two and half years and involved multiple agencies and jurisdictions, also demonstrates that U.S. law enforcement is capable of patiently penetrating and investigating drug-trafficking organizations, going after high-ranking leaders and producing results. These kinds of results could lead cartel leaders to implement additional operational security measures to prevent future vulnerability.
Aug. 13
A group of gunmen fired on the municipal police station in Las Vigas, Veracruz state, in the early morning hours. No one was reported injured in the attack.
Media reports were released confirming six drug-related killings in Sinaloa state over the previous two days.
The commander of a joint counternarcotics unit in San Luis Potosi was killed by gunmen armed with AR-15 assault rifles.
Aug. 14
A federal law enforcement agent in Ocosingo, Chiapas state, died after she was shot by gunmen traveling in a vehicle. The agent investigated organized crime.
Three bodies were discovered in a vehicle in Naucalpan, Mexico state, bound at the hands and feet and with visible signs of torture. Two were identified as taxi drivers, who often work with drug dealers to transport narcotics.
Aug. 15
The body of a man was found in Michoacan state bound at the hands and with a note pinned to his chest that read, "For being a thief."
Two armed men kidnapped and held a journalist in Morelos state for several hours and beat him during the ordeal.
Colombian law enforcement detained John Alex Marroquin, a suspected principal figure linking the Tijuana cartel with Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel.
Authorities in Tijuana, Baja California state, began an investigation to determine if the body of a woman found shot to death was related to the recent kidnapping of seven prostitutes in the city.
Aug. 16
A restaurant owner in Tijuana, Baja California state, died after being shot four times by a gunmen who entered his restaurant.
The bodies of two men were found in a vehicle in Mexico City. Both men had been shot several times, and one had been placed in the trunk.
Two men were shot dead in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, in apparently separate incidents during the day.
Aug. 17
Two federal law enforcement agents were found shot to death in Santa Catarina, Nuevo Leon state. Investigators said the agents had been abducted by armed men Aug. 16.
A federal law enforcement agent died after being shot eight times in Morelia, Michoacan state, apparently while leaving his home.
Authorities in Mexico state discovered the body of a man in a vehicle who had been tortured, strangled and blindfolded.
Aug. 19
Authorities in Michoacan state reported the killing of five people in separate incidents, two in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, two around Uruapan and one in Ziracuaretiro.
A group of gunmen in a moving vehicle shot and wounded three individuals in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state.
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This woman has been getting a lot of press over her most recent deportation. Here she is back in Mexico. The "logic" is quite special. :x http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d69_1187877604&p=1 Oy vey! :roll:
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I think Mexico should stop sending drugs and illegals over the border in protest!
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http://patterico.com/2007/09/02/the-state-of-the-mexican-union-is/
The State of the Mexican Nation is … Expanding
Filed under: Immigration — DRJ @ 5:58 pm
[Guest post by DRJ]
From Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s first State of the Nation speech delivered today:
President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying “Mexico does not end at its borders.” The criticism earned Calderon a standing ovation during his first state-of-the nation address.
There’s more:
“We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers,” he said. “The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle … for their rights.”
He also reached out to the millions of Mexicans living in the United States, many illegally, saying: “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”
Even though it’s tempting, I will not respond to this with sarcasm or anger. I will respond with logic (for all the good it will do):
President Calderon,
I have some news that will undoubtedly shock you:
Mexico does end at its borders.
DRJ
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BP defends itself-- and us. Well done!
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dec_1188973780
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Mexico: the Next Colombia?
By Andrew Walden
FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/6/2007
Will Mexico go the way of Colombia? Drug gangs are terrorizing Mexican cities. Severed heads show up on the doorstep of police stations and newspapers—often with warnings from drug gangs targeting officials by name. Over 370 young women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez. Eleven journalists have been murdered in the last year making Mexico the second most dangerous country for journalists—after Iraq.
Hoping to stem the tide, Mexico’s new President Felipe Calderon has ordered federal takeover of corrupt local police departments in cities including Tijuana and Monterrey and several States. In Tijuana, Tabasco, and Oaxaca local and state police were disarmed and their weapons are being checked against evidence from recent murders by ballistics experts. Authorities have announced the arrest of over 1,000 drug suspects and the confiscation of tons of drugs destined mostly for the US market. In late June Calderon’s administration sacked over 300 federal police commanders in an effort to root out corruption.
Calderon and the Bush administration in early August were reported close to signing a new $7 billion cooperation pact with the US which officials went out of their way to claim is not modeled on “Plan Colombia”—the ongoing somewhat successful decade-long effort to beat back Colombia’s notorious narco-guerrillas and the drug trade they protect. According to the Washington Post, US aid would include: “telephone tapping equipment, radar to track traffickers' shipments by air, aircraft to transport Mexican anti-drug teams and assorted training….”
The refusal of US authorities to close off illegal crossings of the US-Mexican border and more thoroughly inspect legal crossings has allowed the creation of a millions-strong class of illegal persons in the US. At the same time the open border has provided an incentive for Mexican drug gangs to open up shop south of the border in order to flood the US with narcotics. Drug use is now on the increase in Mexico as well.
With Mexican drug gangs corrupting police and terrorizing Mexicans, they also provide a possible conduit for terrorist infiltration of the US. Mexico has long been a way station for “OTMs”—Other Than Mexicans—intending to sneak into the US. The human smuggling business is intrinsically linked to the drug smuggling business. With narco-terrorists borrowing a page from al-Qaeda’s playbook—videotaping executions and beheading their victims, there is little reason to think they would hesitate at assisting Islamist terrorists—if the price was right.
Drugs can be a very powerful weapon against a nation. British opium pushers in the 19th century are partly responsible for the collapse of the powerful Chinese empire. The result was decades of chaos and war eventually followed by the genocidal communist dictatorship of Mao Zedong.
In a 20th century parallel to the Opium Wars, Cuba is partly responsible for the formation of the Colombian narco-guerilla gangs and their choice to finance themselves though drug trafficking. In addition to shipping through Cuba to Florida, the Colombians in turn hired Mexican gangs to transship cocaine into Texas and California. Eventually the Mexican gangs began producing, shipping, and selling their own drugs.
Drug violence in Mexico creates one more reason for Mexicans to head north--and about 10% of all Mexicans are now estimated to be illegally in the US with millions more here legally. Drug use already severely marks the entry-level US labor pool which in turn creates greater demand for illegal alien workers. The porous border and the human smuggling expertise created by the crossing of million of illegal aliens create ripe conditions for the drug trade. The drug gangs in turn corrupt Mexican society and create more reasons for Mexicans to leave—and they cycle continues.
A Gallup poll released July 2 measures a hypothetical Clinton vs Giuliani 2008 Presidential race. The poll shows 78% support for Hillary in 2008 among Hispanics without a college education. Among college educated Hispanics, 50% would vote for Rudy. Legal immigration quotas are heavily weighted towards educated persons. This sharp dichotomy between educated and uneducated Hispanic voters would explain why so-called immigration reform efforts are so heavily weighted towards making illegals more comfortable and then granting them amnesty rather than increasing the number of legal immigrants.
Manipulating policy to bring in Democrat voters is not the only political angle in the human smuggling/drug smuggling nexus. Heavy drug use on American campuses makes students more amenable to the paranoid ministrations and anti-American conspiracy theories of leftist professors. The drug trade finances guerilla movements, aids Fidel Castro’s communist regime and destabilizes Latin American countries.
With the effects of the open border now being felt strongly on both sides, Bush and Calderon were expected to announce their plan at a two-day North American summit with conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Quebec August 20 and 21. It didn’t happen, but at least one Democrat jumped the gun and began griping. According to the LA Times, “An aide to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the subcommittee controlling foreign aid expenditures, complained that his office had heard nothing from the White House about a deal.
"’Sen. Leahy believes that in Iraq and beyond, this administration is accustomed to writing checks for hundreds of millions of dollars and expecting Congress to cash them without consultation or question,’ aide David Carle said.”
Other Democrats, notably Rep Henry Cuellar—whose Texas district is hard-hit by the illicit cross-border traffic--back the plan. Cuellar tells the Times, "We finally have a Mexican president who's willing to take brave steps. But if we lose that opportunity, the window will close."
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Mexico: The Evolution of a Guerrilla Group
Bombs exploded early Sept. 10 at five or more points along natural gas pipelines operated by Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) in Veracruz state, forcing the company to suspend shipments to parts of Mexico. The attack, which began with the first blast at about 2:15 a.m. local time and ended about 4 a.m., started fires and led to the temporary evacuation of some 12,000 people from nearby towns.
The attack, which Mexican authorities say was an act of sabotage, comes two months after the guerrilla group Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) claimed responsibility for a similar attack against Pemex pipelines in Queretaro state near Mexico City and in Guanajuato state. In that statement, the group demanded the release of two of its members from prison. One of the lines attacked in July, the one running from Mexico City to Guadalajara, also was struck in the most recent attack. In August, the group planted two bombs in the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca. One device, planted at a Sears store, detonated in the early morning hours, while the other, placed at a Banamex bank branch, did not explode.
EPR, whose core membership is made up mostly of peasants, historically has expressed its anger at the Mexican government by shooting or vandalizing government facilities in the more rural areas of southern Mexico. Occasionally EPR has joined loosely with other leftist groups to plant small improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Mexico City for the purpose of making political statements. Until the summer, however, staging multiple strikes against pipelines seemed beyond the capability of rural farmers.
It appears likely, then, that these attacks are being led by a fairly experienced bombmaker, perhaps an educated Marxist who has associated himself with the group. One indication of this is the lack of reports that unexploded IEDs have been found on the pipelines. Moreover, the attackers have avoided detection and have left authorities no clues. These latest bombings strongly suggest that the EPR -- or at least one of its cells -- has evolved, is expanding its target set and is increasing its operational tempo. This bombmaker likely has the ability to construct IEDs that are more powerful than the devices commonly used by the group. At this time, however, the cell appears to be committed to limiting human casualties.
Pemex increased security at its facilities after the July attacks, but pipelines are generally difficult to secure completely. In addition, the attackers can benefit from the violence occurring in Mexico as a result of the government crackdown on the drug cartels. Mexican security services already have their hands full with the daily cartel violence.
stratfor.com
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Calderónomics
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
September 17, 2007; Page A16
As young Mexicans have poured across the southern U.S. border in recent years, looking for work, a common American refrain has been to blame Mexican economic policy. Even many of us who welcome the new labor for the U.S. economy have also noted that the Mexican government's failure to deepen the economic restructuring begun some 20 years ago has spurred migration, imposing a heavy burden on Mexican society.
This reality has not been lost on President Felipe Calderón. He campaigned in the lead-up to last year's election on a platform that emphasized jobs, promising to deliver the policy changes that would bring them about. Unfortunately, Mr. Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) is only a minority in Congress, and judging by the "reforms" passed there last week, his vision of a modernized Mexico is still a long way off.
It's bad enough that the government's fiscal reform falls so far short of the pro-growth agenda Mr. Calderón promised. But to make matters worse, opposition parties made passing it contingent on a heavily politicized "electoral reform" and a no-strings-attached tax cut for the monopoly, state-owned oil company Pemex. If there is one lesson from this latest legislative struggle between modernizers and Mexico's old guard in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), it's that timidity when confronting dinosaurs doesn't pay.
Mr. Calderón has been carefully choosing his fights in his first year in office. His biggest achievement to date is the reform of the public-sector pension system, a measure that in the medium term will remove the obligations of the large entitlement program from the budget.
Having one win under his belt, Mr. Calderón moved this summer to introduce a fiscal reform designed to close revenue shortfalls. A better course of action, with oil topping $80 a barrel, would have been opening the oil market to private investment. But this would have challenged the theology that says that the inefficient state-owned oil monopoly Pemex is sacred. Mr. Calderón apparently has decided, for now, against questioning that taboo.
Instead, he chose to go after the productive private sector of the economy, where at least some large companies are known to take advantage of a complex, exemption-ridden regime to dodge tax payments. The choice has not been fruitful.
As I reported in my July 2 column, Hacienda Minister (Treasury Secretary) Agustin Carstens, formerly of the International Monetary Fund, chose not to seek growth through lower corporate tax rates and simplification. Instead, he crafted a plan to create a corporate alternative minimum tax. The proposal raised the cost of labor on some part of the work force and complicated the code.
An email I received from the Mexican office of a large multinational investment firm insisted that the plan was not biased against skilled labor. That conclusion implied that the Hacienda proposal was so complicated that even some Mexican experts couldn't figure it out. John A. McLees, tax partner at the law firm Baker McKenzie, collaborated with his Mexican counterpart in Tijuana on a study that argued convincingly that the proposal did indeed raise the cost of labor for salaries between approximately $15,000-$35,000, middle-range pay in Mexico. When workers cost more, companies hire fewer. For a president who ran on an employment platform, it was a disappointment.
If the AMT is intended, as some have speculated, to be an end run toward the goal of a single, low flat-tax, not many are buying it. Most businesses view it as a tax hike and few seem confident that a new tax, once adopted, would ever be abolished.
Thus the administration, normally considered market friendly, found itself without even its natural allies in negotiations with Congress. Meanwhile some of the worst elements of Mexico's corporatist past were preparing to extract a pound of flesh for their support.
The bill that finally passed last week sets the AMT at 16.5%, increasing it to 17.5% in three years. Those rates are lower than originally proposed and the burden on labor has been significantly reduced. The government forecasts a revenue increase of 100 billion pesos ($9 billion) to be used for infrastructure investment and social programs for the poor. But no one expects it to spur much growth. Hacienda forecasts that without the reform Mexico would have grown at 3.5% in 2008 and with the reform it will grow at 3.7%, still an anemic rate for a developing country.
What is yet unknown is how the tax changes might affect investment decisions. Some tax experts are already warning that for U.S. investors, paying the AMT could mean double taxation because it is not an income tax and the tax treaty with the U.S. only covers income taxes.
As part of the bargain in Congress, the PRI opposition forced the government to hand Pemex what amounts to an annual tax cut of 30 billion pesos, to grow to 60 billion pesos by 2010. A reform-minded negotiator might have asked for something in return. Pemex is highly inefficient and not likely to improve without competition. Since there is nothing in the Mexican constitution that gives Pemex the right to the monopoly it has in trading energy products like petrochemicals and gasoline, some competition could be introduced without a constitutional amendment. This was also an opportunity to force reform in Pemex's bankrupt pension plan.
The government also had to give up important ground in an electoral reform. It agreed to fire Luis Ugalde, the head of the supposedly independent Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), and the entire board. The hard-left Revolutionary Democratic Party wanted this in order to delegitimize Mr. Calderón's victory last summer. The PRI dinosaurs wanted it to extract revenge against political rivals who worked with former President Vicente Fox to name Mr. Ugalde. Now they have a say in putting their own nominees on the board. The bargain also tightens restrictions on the use of campaign TV and radio spots, outlawing "negative" advertising -- which the IFE will judge subjectively -- and prohibiting private-sector issue ads. In other words, free speech takes a hit in this reform and the IFE board is politicized. Now the only hope that this constitutional change might be defeated is if more than half of Mexican states refuse to approve it.
If not, Mr. Calderón will have won his watered-down fiscal reform but at a high cost. Mexicans have to hope that he starts to think bigger and bolder. This nibbling around the edges of reform is only going to get him eaten alive by the dinosaurs.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com.
WSJ
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Second post of the day:
Mexico Security Memo: Sept. 17, 2007
September 17, 2007 20 47 GMT
Simple, Sustainable Operations
This past week began with an increasingly common incident: a bomb attack carried out by the leftist guerrilla group Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). Like a series of bombings in July, this incident targeted oil and natural gas pipelines controlled by state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos. In a statement released a day after the bombings, the group claimed responsibility for what it said were 12 explosive devices placed on pipelines in Veracruz and Tlaxcala states Sept. 10 and said further attacks would come. Following the July pipeline attacks and incidents in Oaxaca and Chiapas states, Stratfor observed that EPR had increased its operational tempo and that similar attacks were likely. If the group follows the previous pattern, more attacks will follow in the next several weeks.
This latest bombing further demonstrates how effective EPR has become in its operations. The absence of malfunctioning devices suggests that the group has at least one skilled bombmaker, and the lack of significant investigative leads or arrests by authorities suggests that the group is small and practices good tradecraft in both planning and carrying out the operations it selects, which are simple bombings against soft targets that require few resources. EPR has demonstrated that it is capable of reaching targets anywhere in Mexico, since it had not previously conducted attacks in Veracruz or Tlaxcala. This latest bombing also reinforces the conclusion that EPR will continue to conduct attacks designed to minimize human casualties.
Public Attacks & Beheadings
The northern city of Monterrey, in Nuevo Leon state, was the scene of more drug violence this past week when two federal agents were killed and two were wounded in a gunbattle that also wounded two civilians. The attack in broad daylight was the first significant firefight in the metropolitan area since an attack against a police station in May. The agents in this case had recently arrived as the first part of a group of 1,300 federal agents to carry out "important arrests" of narcotics traffickers in the city. The cartel members to be arrested were likely tipped off by corrupt law enforcement sources and staged a very public attack against the four agents in order to warn federal authorities not to get too close during their deployment in the city. The strategy might have worked; no significant arrests have been reported so far during the operation.
Other high-profile attacks were made against police officials in San Luis Potosi and Taxco, in Guerrero state. The Taxco incident is noteworthy, since this small touristy town has not been the scene of significant drug violence recently, though it is located on a federal highway important for moving drug shipments. The attack also offers an example of the brutality involved in Mexican drug violence, since the police officer abducted in the attack was later beheaded. Another beheading occurred in the neighboring state of Michoacan just a few days later. Nearly everyone kidnapped by drug gangs in Mexico can expect to be tortured before being killed, but as a form of torture, beheadings are still rare. Although most beheadings in Mexico occur after the victim is killed, the practice is still a powerful technique for intimidating authorities.
Sept. 10
A series of bombings claimed by the Popular Revolutionary Army damaged oil and natural gas pipelines in Veracruz and Tlaxcala states. No one was injured in the blasts.
Security around the Ninth Military Zone headquarters in Sinaloa state has been increased over the last several months following death threats against commanding officer Gen. Rolando Eugenio Hidalgo Eddy, local media reported.
Authorities discovered the body of a municipal police commander in Veracruz, Veracruz state, who had been kidnapped the night before.
Sept. 11
A firefight in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, left two federal agents dead and two wounded. The agents reportedly were attempting to flee from two vehicles that were following them, but were cornered in a gas station where a 20-minute gunbattle ensued.
Officials in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, reported two killings related to organized crime. The two unidentified victims had been shot several times.
The body of an unidentified man was found floating in the Gulf of California. He had been stabbed several times and appeared to have been dropped out of an airplane.
Gunmen in several vehicles armed with assault rifles opened fire on a municipal police station in Taxco, Guerrero state, kidnapping one police officer who was later found beheaded.
Sept. 12
Three high-ranking police commanders from Baja California and Baja California Sur states were arrested by agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix for illegally purchasing weapons at a gun show several days before, U.S. officials announced.
A federal agent was ambushed by a group of gunmen and wounded while he was driving his vehicle in Mexico City.
Sept. 13
The public security director for the state of San Luis Potosi was shot dead by gunmen as he was driving his vehicle. His wife and son, who also were in the vehicle, were unharmed in the attack, in which gunmen fired more than 40 rounds.
The son of a labor union boss in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo Leon state, died after being shot several times while driving his vehicle in the Monterrey suburb. He survived a previous attempt on his life in 1998.
Authorities in Hidalgo state discovered the body of a ministerial police commander assigned to a counternarcotics unit in the city of Pachuca. He had been strangled and stabbed in the neck.
Michoacan state officials discovered the decapitated body of a man wrapped in a plastic bag in the city of Los Reyes.
Sept. 14
A police officer in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state, was shot dead by gunmen as he left his home to go to work. A police spokesman said the officer had recently received death threats.
The Mexican navy seized 2.5 tons of cocaine and detained four suspects from a small boat off the coast of Michoacan state. The operation reportedly began after a U.S. aircraft reported a suspicious vessel outside of Mexican territorial waters.
Sept. 15
A Mexican soldier and his brother were shot dead while traveling on a highway near Acapulco, in Guerrero state. The gunmen opened fire on the soldier's vehicle after following them. Another brother was killed by drug traffickers several days before.
Sept. 16
An unidentified man was killed in Tijuana, Baja California state, and his body dumped along a street.
Federal agents near Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, arrested Fernando Cabrera Juarez, described as the liaison between the Juarez cartel and South American drug gangs. The agents making the arrest reportedly cooperated with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as Cabrera fled to Mexico after escaping from U.S. custody.
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We're well past the point of where we should have militarized the borders.
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Agreed-- but IMHO the thought process needs to go much further than this initial step.
Question: Assume we succeed in finding/pressuring out a goodly percentage of the 12 million illegals and send them back to from whence they came-- which in the overwhelming majority of cases is Mexico.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IN MEXICO?
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Hopefully a soft revolution. I'd like to think that the returning Mexicans would have learned some good things about the US system and make much needed reforms in Mexico. There is no good reason for Mexico to be so poor.
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G'morning GM:
That's a very nice hope.
My understanding is that Mexico's population is about 120 million-- i.e. about 10% of them are here. Now imagine those folks back home and restless. Imagine the money that they send home (quite a huge sum and a major factor for the Mexican economy) dried up. Did you follow their most recent election and its aftermath?
This thread here, started relatively recently, has posted mostly on the growing challenge to Mexican society and its government posed by the drug gangs increasing military power, but there is much more than that going on. On our Spanish language forum, there is a thread dedicated to Mexico. Many of the posts are in English. For a serious student of our country's welfare such as yourself, it is recommended reading.
Marc
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Mexico Security Memo: Sept. 24, 2007
September 24, 2007 20 20 GMT
Failing to Meet the Objective
The more than 1,000 federal agents who were sent the week of Sept. 9 to Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, began winding down their operation this past week and pulling out of the city. When the operation began, a top federal official said the aim was to make important arrests in the city -- which meant federal authorities had their sights set on high-ranking members of the Gulf cartel. It is not surprising that the operation ended with few arrests and some of the agents reportedly retreating out of fear for their lives.
A Sept. 11 attack against agents in Monterrey demonstrated that federal forces would face a violent response if they confronted the cartel. Consequently, the only arrests reported during the operation were of members of small criminal kidnapping gangs -- not the big fish police were after. In addition, a group of approximately 200 agents left Monterrey late Sept. 18 and headed for Reynosa, Tamaulipas state; various media reported that the agents' safety was the primary reason for their departure. Despite the police's failure to meet the objective of the Monterrey mission, the heightened security presence did result in a decrease in drug-related killings, which had been on the rise.
The Monterrey operation illustrates the challenges facing federal police forces engaged in counternarcotics operations. The cartels are better armed than police and have sources in every important agency, causing law enforcement to take a defensive rather than offensive stance in their operations. However, police have shown themselves to be fairly effective at quelling other kinds of violence when deployed in large numbers to a specific location. But the cartels understand that such large-scale deployments are temporary and, when possible, will wait to carry out an assassination instead of risking being detected by a passing police patrol.
EPR Graffiti?
Security at Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) facilities was increased in Chihuahua state this past week after officials discovered graffiti from the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) on pipelines near the city of Casas Grandes. Security also was increased in Ciudad Juarez and other cities along the U.S. border. The spray-painted messages were similar to those found near blast sites on the pipelines attacked in July and August in other states. The graffiti suggests EPR is not confined geographically, though it is doubtful the group is planning a Pemex attack in Chihuahua since authorities have been alerted to its presence. EPR has not taken credit for the spray painting, which could have been perpetrated as a hoax by pranksters.
Violence on the U.S. Side
Cartel violence this past week was not limited to Mexico. On Sept. 19, a city councilman from Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, was found shot to death at his home just across the U.S. border in Del Rio, Texas. The victim, an outspoken critic of organized crime and the Zetas, had been shot five times in the head in his garage. Public criticism of the cartels would be enough to draw the attention of cartel hit men, though the councilman was also a retired officer of the now-defunct Federal Judicial Police, an agency that was disbanded because of rampant corruption. There have been no suggestions that the victim himself was corrupt, but simply serving in such an agency would have put him in contact will all kinds of unsavory individuals. Nevertheless, the incident highlights how Mexican-style targeted killings are spreading north across the border.
Sept. 17
Sinaloa state police discovered the dismembered body of an unidentified victim two blocks from the government palace in Culiacan. Several body parts were found in a cooler near the body.
The body of a woman with a single gunshot wound in the back of the head was discovered along a highway in Guanajuato state.
Authorities in Costa Rica, Sinaloa state, found the body of a man who had been shot once in the head at close range.
A woman in Saltillo, Coahuila state, returned home to find three family members dead, including one who had been suffocated by a plastic bag taped over his head.
Mexico City officials arrested members of a kidnapping ring led by a former agent of the Federal Investigative Agency.
Sept. 18
Hidalgo state officials reported finding the body of a woman dumped in a ditch near Tulancingo. She had been shot at least seven times.
Sept. 19
Gunmen on motorcycles killed the Hidalgo state public security secretary as he rode in a vehicle with a driver near Huasca de Ocampo. The driver was wounded in the attack.
Two people died in Caborca, Sonora state, when the vehicle they were riding in was attacked by gunmen, who fired more than 40 shots.
The decomposing remains of an unidentified individual were discovered in La Ermita, Guanajuato state. The victim had been shot once in the back of the head.
Michoacan state officials reported the drug-related shooting deaths of four people in Tocumbo, Tacambaro and Apatzingan.
A city councilman from Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, was found shot to death in his garage just across the U.S. border in Del Rio, Texas. The councilman, a former federal police officer and an outspoken critic of the Zetas, had been shot five times in the head.
Sept. 20
Authorities at an airport in Cali, Colombia, detained two Mexican citizens with more than $4 million hidden in suitcases. The Mexicans had traveled from Mexico City to Panama before arriving in Colombia.
Police in Tijuana, Baja California state, discovered the body of a man who had been shot three times.
Sept. 22
The former mayor of Canelas, Durango state, was wounded by gunfire during an attack on his vehicle.
The body of a man was found in the trunk of a car in an industrial part of Hidalgo state.
Sept. 23
A man's body was discovered near a university in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes state. He had been shot once in the back of the head.
Stratfor.com
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Home Invasion at the National Level
By Phil Elmore
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"Some Mexicans and Mexican-Americans," writes John Tiffany, "want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the United States given to Mexico. They call it the 'reconquista,' Spanish for 'reconquest,' and they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens entering this country as their army of invaders to achieve that takeover." Emphasis added is mine. Tiffany points out that, as we've heard in recent news reports, armed Mexican soldiers (in league with or impersonated by drug traffickers, we are told by Mexico's smirking, lying government, which publishes cartoon tracts explaining to Mexican serfs how to sneak across the border into the U.S.A.) have fired on American Bortder Patrol officers. Illegal immigrants have terrorized American ranchers in border states and the porous Mexican border is an ideal point of entry for Islamist terrorists impersonating Hispanic illegals.
The organization US Border Control reports that, according to something called the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC, fully 30 percent of the nation's two million prison inmates are illegal immigrants. Heather MacDonald, in her 2004 report in the City Journal, wastes no time framing the problem. "Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens," she writes. She goes on to report that 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (1,200 to 1,500 murders) "target" illegal aliens. Up to two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. What's worse, according to MacDonold, is that the Calfiornia Department of Justice has known since 1995 that at least 60 percent of the vicious 18th Street Gang in southern California comprises illegal aliens.
As I write this, it is almost April Fool's day of 2006. We Americans certainly are fools, as our politicians debate a law that is essentially amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. What's worse, the ingrateful national home invaders who are our illegal "immigrant" population consider even this law too harsh, claiming it is a cruel and xenophobic attempt to kick these "immigrants" out of the country, deny them the American dream, prevent them from obtaining health care and education, and generally oppress these hard-working, well-meaning, other-than-white fellow travelers. One presumes these evil lawmakers had to take time out of a busy schedule consisting largely of kicking puppies, to hear the illegal "immigrants" wail and moan over the idea that we might actually start enforcing our borders just a little.
In the last week or so, demonstrators ranging from indoctrinated, ignorant leftist high school students and their former hippie teachers to hundreds of thousands of "reconquista" supporters and their frequently communist sympathizers (waving Mexican flags, no less) marched, chanted, and bitched across the country. The AP reported that tends of thousands of students walked out of schools in California and elsewhere Monday, waving flags (the AP didn't bother to report that these flags were Mexican flags) and chanting slogans to protest "legislation to crack down on illegal immigrants." Protestors at the Capitol in D.C. were arrested and hauled off in handcuffs. California actually celebrates Cesar Chavez day, for pitys' sake, and on that Monday 36,000 brainwashed or Mexican children walked out of school in the Los Angeles area. Perhaps a thousand of these students surrounded Los Angeles' City Hall in order to intimidate L.A. mayor Antonoia Villaraigosa into a meeting at his office.
In Santa Ana, the kids threw rocks and bottles, resulting in 24 arrests. In Detroit, protesters waving Mexican flags marched from city's Hispanic area to the federal building downtown. The message in all these protests -- heralded as a new "civil rights" movement by our nation's more self-destructive pundits -- was clear. If you oppose the invasion of the United States by hordes of illegal immigrants who feel entitled to the social services we provide and for which they do not pay a dime, you oppose "immigrant rights" and you will be intimidated with threats of violence (or silenced through naked, initiated force) until you no longer stand in the way of the foot soldiers of the reconquista.
Communist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez characterized the United States as a "dictatorship" and said that all "Latin American revolutions" (as reported by the Miami Herald Wire Services) "must clash with Washington." He is part of what the AP's Traci Carl calls a "new wave of Latin American leaders -- variously labeled leftist, populist, nationalist, or socialist -- [that] is redefinining politics" south of the US-Mexican border. As these barbarian hordes gather at our southern gates, they share a common belief system -- that the richer, more powerful, more prosperous United States is an "imperialist" and "fascist" nation that should be opposed for daring to deny illegal aliens (and their countries of origin) an equal share of the fruits of U.S. labors. These fruits are, of course, taxes confiscated from U.S. citizens, who are shouldering the terrible social burden of the education, healthcare, and even incarceration of the millions of illegal immigrants burrowing like tapeworms into the American digestive tract.
The American government has failed to solve this problem on many levels. It has failed to preempt the reconquista by failing to protect our borders. It continues to fail by refusing to support programs that target, identify, and imprison or deport illegal aliens who commit violent crimes on U.S. soil. It has further failed by vilifying those who try to defend this nation's borders and culture through direct action, such as the Minutemen (citizens who watch the border in their states in an attempt to prevent further incursions by Mexican and terrorist invaders).
Illegal aliens in the United States are repeatedly, incessantly, characterized as innocent, hard-working people who just want to find a better life for themselves and their families. The imagery of these invaders as hapless would-be citizens fleeing poverty, willing to "do work that Americans simply will not do," is so pervasive that it constitutes a de facto propaganda campaign. Just as "bums" and "winos" have become "the homeless" (who are repeatedly mischaracterized as misunderstood and disadvantaged people who are simply "down on their luck," rather than as the unpredictable, frequently diseased, often drug-addicted or mentally unstable societal predators that they too often are), illegal aliens have become "undocumented immigrants" in an attempt to equate them with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free who walked wide-eyed through the gates at Ellis Island. The fact that they crawled past barbed wire fences, raped a few ranchers' wives along the way, and now accept under-the-table wages while dodging the beleaguered police forces seeking them on murder charges, is dismissed as irrelevant; it does not, after all, fit in with the imagery our popular media strive so hard to create.
The fact is that, legally and morally, illegal aliens have no right to be in the United States. There is no entitlement to a "better life" at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. If you wish to immigrate to this country, you must do so legally or not at all. You are not entitled to anything simply because you have successfully crossed the border without permission; I don't care how long you've been here or whether you've had children since you arrived. We need, quite frankly, to change our citizenship laws. Birth in this country should not be enough to establish legal citizenship if your parents are here illegally in the first place.
I have no right to live and work in Canada, no matter how nice I might find Toronto. I cannot expect to benefit from Canadian social services if I cross the border and then stay in the country instead of returning home. I should not expect not to be ejected if I am found without documentation working as a dishwasher in Ottawa. No matter how entitled I might feel to be there and to stay there, even if I've had illegitimate Canadian children and I've been living in the country for years, I have no right to these things. When I am arrested or deported, my rights are not being violated. Those who protest on my behalf are not fighting for "civil rights" -- they're marching in support of criminal behavior!
If we're going to make utilitarian arguments about amnesty for illegal aliens, the outcome is the same. We may, in fact, be economically dependent on an illegal underclass to perform certain low-end jobs for less than minimum wage. If these workers are removed from our economy, however, the economy will not end. Prices for certain goods will simply rise. I don't know about you, but I'll pay more for an apple if it means there's less chance my wife will be raped by migrant workers. I'll pay more for just about any consumer good if it means the employees I encounter in the store are less likely to be violent felons. I'll pay higher prices at the gates of the New York State fair if it means the toothless carnies running the rides at least speak English.
The crimes committed by illegal aliens completely undercut any argument made for the utility of allowing these invaders to remain within the country, but the economic argument is even more convincing. We simply cannot afford to keep paying for welfare, social services in general, education, and healthcare for "undocumented immigrants" (who, for example, are treated in hospital emergency rooms despite the fact that they have no insurance and cannot pay for treatment). The waves of illegal aliens swamping us are already overrunning our ability to foot the bill for all these things. If we do not protect our borders the financial burden of illegal "immigration" will only become worse.
A home invasion is a particularly brutal crime in which innocent people, believing themselves safe in their dwellings, are attacked by lawbreakers who violate the sanctity of their victims' homes in order to prey on others. The need for self-defense in the face of home invasions is obvious. When violent criminals enter your home uninvited in order to take from you what you do not wish to give and what these criminals have not earned, no reasonable person would fault you for using force -- even lethal force -- to repel the invaders and preserve your family's lives. How are the invading forces of the reconquista any different? Illegal aliens are national home invaders, entering the country without invitation and taking from U.S. citizens what those citizens do not wish to give. The disporportionate population of illegal aliens imprisoned or sought for violent crimes is chilling proof of the very real danger these invaders represent; the financial burden they create, even when on their best behavior, is no less real.
Demand that the United States enforce its borders and its citizenship laws and you will be accused of "hatred." Identify this problem explicitly and you will be called a "xenophobe." Recognize that the illegal immigration problem in the United States is overwhelmingly a Mexican immigration problem, occurring with the explicit support and encouragement of the Mexican government, and you will be called "prejudiced." Objectively acknowledge the violent crimes committed by illegal aliens in the United States and you will be called "racist." This is the propaganda of those who would see us swamped with aliens. This is the mischaracterization of those whose self-destructive policies facilitate the "reconquista," regardless of their recognition of this fact.
We must engage in self-defense on the national level. We must protect ourselves from these invaders. We must fight to keep our families safe from these criminals -- and we must work to ensure that our children and their children have the chance to do the same. The problem is not "immigrants." Illegal aliens are not immigrants at all.
They are home invaders and should be dealt with accordingly.
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Max
Phil's rant probably would have been better posted on the immigration thread. Although I certainly agree with the general gist of many of the points made, I found the general tone and some of the phrasing in particular to be over the top with undertones that I didn't really care for.
It is quite possible to be for our defending our borders, our laws, etc. without hating Mexicans. My own in experience in Mexico is rather extensive and overwhelmingly quite favorable.
Marc
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I just posted it up for general view of what this person found with Mexico's relationship towards the US..I will post the next one in the right forum.
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Mexico Security Memo: Oct. 1, 2007
October 01, 2007 20 23 GMT
Targeting the Feds in Baja
After several assassinations targeting police in central and northern Mexico, the Baja peninsula stood out this past week as a hot spot of violence against federal authorities. Minutes after a police officer in Tijuana, Baja California state, was killed Sept. 24, a group of armed men opened fire on a federal police headquarters in the city, wounding several agents inside. The gunmen, who were armed with assault rifles and traveling in sport utility vehicles, escaped after a 10-minute exchange of gunfire with police. Farther south, in La Paz, Baja California Sur state, a police commander was gunned down outside his house as he was leaving for work. This was the first targeted killing of a police officer in the state this year.
These incidents demonstrate how Mexico's drug violence is reaching into every corner of the state, even typically tranquil places like Baja California Sur. They also suggest that the level of violence is getting worse. Information released by Mexico's attorney general shows that, by mid-September of this year, 2,308 drug killings had already occurred in the country -- more than the total for 2006. Cartel retaliation against increasingly aggressive government forces explains the increase. Higher casualty counts are not how President Felipe Calderon hoped to begin his first term, but they are likely to continue as long as his administration keeps up its campaign against the country's drug traffickers.
More Action in the Yucatan
A Gulfstream II jet loaded with more than 3 tons of cocaine crashed this past week in a remote part of Yucatan state. The flight reportedly originated in Colombia and was monitored by Mexican military aircraft after it entered Mexican airspace. It is still unclear what caused the plane to crash. The pilot, a Mexican, survived and had fled the crash site by the time authorities arrived, though he was later apprehended. Two other individuals were arrested after they attempted to bribe Mexican soldiers, who were securing the site, to allow them to remove the cargo from the plane.
The incident highlights one important way that drugs are being transported from South America to Mexico on their way to the United States. It also illustrates the Yucatan Peninsula's strategic value as a trans-shipment point for drug flights from Colombia and maritime shipments arriving in ports such as Cancun. Though drug violence has been less common in the Yucatan compared to other regions in Mexico, the peninsula is not immune. In addition to the plane crash this past week, a Cuban man suspected of working with drug cartels was found dead in an abandoned car in the heart of Cancun's hotel district. On the same day, several hundred soldiers and federal police arrived in the area. The small size of the force, and the fact that the federal police are part of the Federal Preventive Police and not the Federal Investigative Agency, suggests its mission is to set up highway checkpoints and generally enhance security, rather than serve arrest warrants to high-ranking cartel members.
stratfor
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I watched some of the interview between King and Fox.
Fox of course is happy to jump on the bandwagon as decrying those against massive uncontrolled immigration as racist. This guy has a lot of nerve IMO.
Why is no one discussing why Mexico can't do more to make the way of life better in Mexico. How about creating new jobs there? Again, why is it conditions are so bad in Mexico that so many want to come here? How about that?
It is obviously hopeless. We simply have open borders. Now I hear we are giving out driving licenses to illegals. Next will be voter cards.
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I watched some of the interview between King and Fox.
Fox of course is happy to jump on the bandwagon as decrying those against massive uncontrolled immigration as racist. This guy has a lot of nerve IMO.
Why is no one discussing why Mexico can't do more to make the way of life better in Mexico. How about creating new jobs there? Again, why is it conditions are so bad in Mexico that so many want to come here? How about that?
It is obviously hopeless. We simply have open borders. Now I hear we are giving out driving licenses to illegals. Next will be voter cards.
What??? So now we just them dive in and give them stuff? Whats the point of being born here anymore lol!
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Why is no one discussing why Mexico can't do more to make the way of life better in Mexico. How about creating new jobs there? Again, why is it conditions are so bad in Mexico that so many want to come here? How about that?
Maybe because it's a poor country? Wouldn't you want to come here if you were in their shoes?
I wouldn't call opposition to illegal immigration "racist" by definitely, but that doesn't mean there aren't a LOT of racists on that bandwagon.
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Woof Roger:
My I suggest a reread? The question presented was not "Why are they coming here?". The question presented was "Why do the conditions that push them here exist?".
This seems to me an excellent question.
Most Americans know nearly zilch about Mexico (quick example: Ask 10 Americans to name its president and see how many you get on even the most superficial question like this) explains why no one is discussing CCP's question-- to answer the question requires knowing about Mexico to the point of having a sense of its gestalt.
Until we get to CCP's question, we will continue to furiously go in the circle that presently consumes our attention and our energies.
Marc
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Woof Roger:
My I suggest a reread? The question presented was not "Why are they coming here?". The question presented was "Why do the conditions that push them here exist?".
This seems to me an excellent question.
Most Americans know nearly zilch about Mexico (quick example: Ask 10 Americans to name its president and see how many you get on even the most superficial question like this) explains why no one is discussing CCP's question-- to answer the question requires knowing about Mexico to the point of having a sense of its gestalt.
Until we get to CCP's question, we will continue to furiously go in the circle that presently consumes our attention and our energies.
Marc
I don't even know everything in every state of my Own country..Why would I want to know about Mexico. :?
But I think the current Pres. over there is Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa or something to that effect?
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Woof Roger:
My I suggest a reread? The question presented was not "Why are they coming here?". The question presented was "Why do the conditions that push them here exist?".
This seems to me an excellent question.
OK, so why is Mexico poor? For that matter, why is any country poor?
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Its been 30 years since I studied Mexico in the University (including a semester in a Mexican law school and a summer in a Mexican law firm) and I have been going there with some regularity for 33 years. That said, off the top of my head no names of particular books come to mind. I want to say Alan Riding, but he may have been a NY Times reporter specializing in Mexico- my memory is not clear on this. Anyway, go to Amazon or wherever and start looking. If you come up with a specific list of books you are considering I will be glad to scan their pages in Amazon and offer my suggestion as to which are most likely to be useful.
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Police face Mexican military, smugglers
Armed standoff along U.S. border
By Sara A. Carter and Kenneth Todd Ruiz, Staff Writers
Mexican soldiers and civilian smugglers had an armed standoff with nearly 30 U.S. law enforcement officials on the Rio Grande in Texas Monday afternoon, according to Texas police and the FBI.
Mexican military Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border into the United States, said Chief Deputy Mike Doyal, of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department.
Mexican Army troops had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border -- near Neely's Crossing, about 50 miles east of El Paso -- when Border Patrol agents called for backup. Hudspeth County deputies and Texas Highway patrol officers arrived shortly afterward, Doyal said.
"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal said. "When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us."
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the incident happened at 2:15 p.m. Pacific Time.
"Bad guys in three vehicles ended up on the border," said Andrea Simmons, a spokeswoman with the FBI's El Paso office. "People with Humvees, who appeared to be with the Mexican Army, were involved with the three vehicles in getting them back across."
Simmons said the FBI was not involved and referred inquiries to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE did not return calls seeking comment.
Doyal said deputies captured one vehicle in the incident, a Cadillac Escalade reportedly stolen from El Paso, and found 1,477 pounds of marijuana inside. The Mexican soldiers set fire to one of the Humvees stuck in the river, he said.
Doyal's deputies faced a similar incident on Nov. 17, when agents from the Fort Hancock border patrol station in Texas called the sheriff's department for backup after confronting more than six fully armed men dressed in Mexican military uniforms. The men -- who were carrying machine guns and driving military vehicles -- were trying to bring more than three tons of marijuana across the Rio Grande, Doyal said.
Doyal said such incidents are common at Neely's Crossing, which is near Fort Hancock, Texas, and across from the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
"It happens quite often here," he said.
Deputies and border patrol agents are not equipped for combat, he added.
"Our government has to do something," he said. "It's not the immigrants coming over for jobs we're worried about. It's the smugglers, Mexican military and the national threat to our borders that we're worried about."
Citing a Jan. 15 story in the Daily Bulletin, Reps. David Dreier, R-Glendora, and Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, last week asked the House Judiciary Committee, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the House Homeland Security Committee and the House International Relations Committee to investigate the incursions. The story focused on a Department of Homeland Security document reporting 216 incursions by Mexican soldiers during the past 10 years and a map with the seal of the president's Office of National Drug Control Policy, both of which were given to the newspaper.
Requests by Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee, and Hunter were made in jointly signed letters.
On Wednesday, Chertoff played down the reports of border incursions by the Mexican military. He suggested many of the incursions could have been mistakes, blaming bad navigation by military personnel or attributing the incursions to criminals dressed in military garb.
Mexican officials last week denied any incursions made by their military.
But border agents interviewed over the past year have discussed confrontations those they believe to be Mexican military personnel.
"We're sitting ducks," said a border agent speaking on condition of anonymity. "The government has our hands tied."
- Sara A. Carter can be reached by e-mail at sara.carter@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-8552.
- Kenneth Todd Ruiz can be reached by e-mail at todd.ruiz@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-8555.
http://www.dailybulletin.com/search/ci_3430815
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Are Mexican Soldiers Aiding Drug Smugglers on the Border?
Allan Wall - PVNN
Among the many problems on the US-Mexico border is that of reported Mexican military incursions onto the US side of the border. These incidents raise disturbing questions about US-Mexican relations and the two nations' wars on the drug cartels.
The evidence indicates that elements of the Mexican military are aiding drug smugglers on the border.
Such incursions have been reported for years by US law enforcement offices and by Mexican illegal aliens.
Both governments would prefer not to acknowledge the problem. When pressured, the US downplays it, while Mexican officials deny the incidents, or attribute them to accidental crossings or drug smugglers dressed as Mexican soldiers.
Much of the US-Mexican border is unguarded, trackless desert. So it's not surprising that from time to time a Mexican army vehicle or patrol might take a wrong turn and wind up north of the border.
Doubtless there have been some accidental crossings. But they wouldn't account for the bulk of the incidents, especially considering the reported behavior of these soldiers, which is sometimes aggressive.
As for the "smugglers disguised as soldiers" argument, there may be some cases of that too. But if that were the principal explanation, it could imply that (a) the Mexican Army can't secure its materiel stores, or (b) it can't control the border area, which is hardly reassuring.
A US Department of Homeland Security document in 2006 reported 216 such incursions from 1996-2006. There may be many more.
To begin with, why are there so many Mexican soldiers on the border, anyway? Is the border being militarized?
If the US put a Boy Scout with a water gun on the border, Mexican politicians would decry the "militarization of the border." Nevertheless, the Mexican side of the border is already militarized.
There are 11 Mexican military garrisons on the Mexican side of the US-Mexican border. Moving from west to east, these garrisons are located at Tecate, San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonoyta, Agua Prieta, Ciudad Juarez, Ojinaga, Palomas, Ciudad Acuna, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros.
By the canons of international law, there's nothing wrong with it either. According to the treaties of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Purchase Treaty (1853), which established the current US-Mexico border, each country reserves the right to fortify any part of its side of the border.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Both governments have allowed their common border to become a rather lawless place. I was almost attacked on the border (in an urban area) and literally made a run for the border to escape. Robbery, rape and murder are standard fare on the border, along with the drug smuggling, illegal immigration, and the hundreds of illegal aliens who perish each year on the border.
Add to the mix corrupt Mexican soldiers aiding drug smugglers and you have a real prescription for disaster.
Traditionally, the Mexican military has been regarded as less corrupt as local Mexican police. That's why President Calderon is using the military as the spearhead in his war on the cartels, and many young soldiers have died fighting drug cartels.
Nevertheless, the military has its corruption too. Plenty of military officers, including generals, have been busted for drug corruption over the years. And that's only the ones who've been caught.
The most high-profile case was that of Mexico's anti-cartel czar General Gutierrez Rebollo, who seemed to be doing such an effective job of nabbing drug traffickers. It turned out though, that he was going after one drug cartel while in the service of another. The general was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 71 years in the hoosegow. (That was back in 1997.)
It's also a known fact that deserters from the underpaid ranks of the Mexican military (which has a high desertion rate) have joined the cartels, including some crack troops trained by the USA.
So it's not at all farfetched to assert that Mexican military elements on the border are working for the cartels in smuggling operations. In fact, it would be surprising if such things weren't going on.
Unsurprisingly, ugly and dangerous incidents involving intruding Mexican soldiers and US border patrol (and other law enforcement) agents have already occurred. Border Patrol agents have already been fired upon in such incidents (and they are usually out gunned by Mexican soldiers crossing the border.)
It's not a good situation. Yet neither government seems to want to do anything about it.
PS: Here's an older story in this vein: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,182650,00.html
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Second post of the AM-- in a closely related vein:
Bush proposes massive policing plan for México, isthmus
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
and staff reports
President George Bush Monday asked Congress to approve $550 million in aid to Mexico and Central American states to help them deal with cross-border crime, drug-trafficking and terrorism. The request is part of the administration's nearly $200 billion supplemental funding request for U.S. operations in Iraq and the broader war on terrorism.
The money being sought for Mexico and Central America is only a small fraction of the administration budget request.
But it would be a major increase in U.S. security aid to the region and it is the subject of some controversy in Mexico, which has been traditionally sensitive about security relations with its northern neighbor.
The vast majority of the funding, $500 million, would go to Mexico and is aimed at bolstering what U.S. officials say have been promising efforts by Mexican President Felipe Calderon's government to disrupt drug trafficking gangs and organized crime.
The remaining $50 million would be devoted to similar regional efforts by Central American states. And most of that probably would be directed to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras where the international gang problem is the most serious. The initiative includes all the Central American states and Panamá.
In a telephone conference call with reporters, Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, said he hopes Monday's request will only be a down payment on a three-year U.S. aid effort of nearly $1.5 billion.
Shannon said the United States would provide México with helicopters and surveillance aircraft to support drug interdiction and rapid-response operations by Mexican law enforcement agencies, as well as advanced drug detection and communications equipment.
But questioned about Mexican political concerns, Shannon said the aid package would not involve any U.S. military presence in that country and would not require any change in agreements limiting the number of U.S. law enforcement officials currently involved in liaison work in México.
The aid package, under discussion by the two governments since President Bush met President Calderón in Mexico last March, has been described as Plan México in Mexican press accounts — a reference to the multi-billion-dollar U.S. anti-insurgency aid program for the Bogota government known as Plan Colombia begun in 1999.
However, Shannon dismissed the comparison, stressing that the Mexican government does not face the multiple insurgencies that confronted Colombia at the time, and that the title of the new program has always been the Merida Initiative, named for the site of this year's Bush-Calderón meeting.
Shannon said the proposed U.S. aid effort is small in comparison to the $3 billion committed in recent months by the Calderón government itself.
Mexico has deployed some 20,000 troops and federal police to combat drug cartels, which have been battling among themselves for dominance in gangland violence that has killed hundreds of people this year.
The State Department said that the program is to provide:
• Non-intrusive inspection equipment, ion scanners, canine units for Mexican customs, for the new federal police and for the military to interdict trafficked drugs, arms, cash and persons.
• Technologies to improve and secure communications systems to support collecting information as well as ensuring that vital information is accessible for criminal law enforcement.
• Technical advice and training to strengthen the institutions of justice vetting for the new police force, case management software to track investigations through the system to trial, new offices of citizen complaints and professional responsibility, and establishing witness protection programs.
• Helicopters and surveillance aircraft to support interdiction activities and rapid operational response of law enforcement agencies in Mexico.
• Initial funding for security cooperation with Central America that responds directly to Central American leaders’ concerns over gangs, drugs, and arms articulated during a July security strategies meeting.
• Includes equipment and assets to support counterpart security agencies inspecting and interdicting drugs, trafficked goods, people and other contraband as well as equipment, training and community action programs in Central American countries to implement anti-gang measures and expand the reach of these measures.
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Mexico: Dynamics of the Gun Trade
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
The number of drug-related killings in Mexico in 2007 already has surpassed 2,000, an increase of 300 over the same period last year, according to statistics reported by Mexican media outlets. Moreover, sources familiar with the issue say police officials in some jurisdictions have been purposely underreporting drug-related homicides, suggesting that the real body count is even higher.
In addition to the Mexican drug cartels that engage in torture and killings (at times involving beheadings), armed criminal gangs are notorious kidnappers -- prompting some to call Mexico the "kidnapping capital of the world." This has resulted in a boom for armored car manufacturers and security companies, given that most wealthy people living in the country own armored vehicles, and many employ executive protection teams to provide security for themselves, their families and their homes. Additionally, heavily armed criminal gangs regularly commit armed robberies, muggings and express kidnappings.
The one constant in these violent crimes is guns. Mexico's robust gun culture stretches back to revolutions, counterrevolutions and revolutionary bandits such as Pancho Villa. Because of this culture, guns are common in Mexico -- despite strict gun-control laws and licensing procedures. This demand for guns has created an illicit market that not only is intimately related to the U.S. market for illegal narcotics but also, in many ways, mirrors the dynamics of that market. Drugs flow north and guns flow south -- resulting in handsome profits for those willing to run the risks.
Mexican Laws
Similar to the U.S. Constitution, the 1917 Mexican Constitution guarantees Mexico's inhabitants the right to have "arms of any kind in their possession for their protection and legitimate defense." However, the constitution includes many caveats on private citizens' ownership of guns, prohibiting those "expressly forbidden by law" and those "the nation may reserve for the exclusive use of the army, navy or national guard." Furthermore, Mexican law calls for long prison terms for violators.
Mexico, then, has some of the world's strictest gun-control laws -- making guns difficult to obtain legally. Average citizens who want to purchase guns for self-defense or recreational purposes must first get approval from the government. Then, because there are no private-sector gun stores in the country, they must buy weapons through the Defense Department's Arms and Ammunition Marketing Division (UCAM). In accordance with Mexican law, the UCAM carefully limits the calibers of guns it sells. For example, it does not sell handguns larger than a .380 or .38 Special. Also, under Mexican law, popular handguns such as .357 magnum revolvers and 9 mm pistols are exclusively reserved for the armed forces.
Regardless of these efforts, the illicit arms market has been thriving for decades -- not only because firearm laws are not evenly enforced but also because criminals have found a way to circumvent efforts to stem the flow of guns. Moreover, not all illegal guns are in the hands of cartel members and street criminals. A healthy percentage of them are purchased by affluent Mexicans who are not satisfied with the selection of calibers available through the UCAM. Sources say it is not at all unusual to find Mexicans who own prohibited .357 magnum revolvers or .45 caliber pistols for self-defense against kidnappers and armed robbers. In addition to ballistic considerations, Latin machismo is also a factor -- some Mexican men want to own and carry powerful, large-caliber pistols.
The Mechanics of the Gun Trade
This mixture of the historical Mexican gun culture, machismo, strong desire for guns, lax enforcement of gun laws, official corruption and a raging cartel war has created a high demand for illegal guns. Guns sold on the black market in Mexico can fetch as much as 300 percent of their normal market value -- a profit margin similar to that of the cocaine trafficked by the cartels. The laws of economics dictate that where there is a strong demand -- and a considerable profit margin -- entrepreneurs will devise ways to meet that demand. Of course, the illicit markets are no different from the legitimate economy in this respect, and a number of players have emerged to help supply Mexico's appetite for illicit weaponry.
Millions of Mexicans reside (legally and otherwise) in the United States, and the two countries conduct a staggering amount of commerce (legal and otherwise) across the border. In this context, then, when one considers that there are more gun stores in a typical small town in Texas than there are in all of Mexico City, it should come as no surprise that a large number of the weapons found on the illicit arms market in Mexico originated in the United States. In fact, Mexican officials say that as much as 90 percent of the illegal weapons they seize are of U.S. origin.
The most obvious players in the gun trade are the cartels themselves, which not only have the financial resources to buy guns in the United States but also are in a position to receive guns in trade for narcotics from their distribution contacts north of the border. The traditional pattern for cartel operations over the past few decades has been to smuggle drugs north over the border and return with money and guns -- many times over the same routes and by the same conveyances. In addition to the problem of the notoriously corrupt Mexican customs officials, efforts to stem the flow of guns into Mexico also have been hampered by technological limitations. For example, until recently, Mexican authorities lacked X-ray equipment to inspect vehicles entering the country, and this inspection capacity still remains limited.
The cartels also obtain weapons from contacts along their supply networks in South and Central America, where substantial quantities of military ordnance have been shipped over decades to supply insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. Explosives from domestic Mexican sources also are widely available and are generally less expensive than guns.
Aside from the cartels, other criminal syndicates are dedicated to the arms trade. These groups can range from small mom-and-pop operations involving a few individuals who obtain weapons from family members residing in the United States or Central America to large organizations with complex networks that buy dozens or hundreds of weapons at a time.
As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade. On Sept. 12, three high-ranking police commanders from Baja California and Baja California Sur states were arrested by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents in Phoenix for illegally purchasing weapons at a gun show. (U.S. law prohibits foreigners from buying weapons.) Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.
Although it is illegal for Mexican nationals to buy guns in the United States and for Americans to haul guns to Mexico, entrepreneurs have found a variety of ways to skirt such laws. Perhaps one of the least recognized ploys is plain old document fraud. Fake documents -- which are easily obtained along the border -- range in quality (and price) from poorly rendered counterfeits to genuine documents obtained with the assistance of corrupt government officials. Using such documents, a Mexican citizen can pose as a U.S. citizen and pass the required background checks to buy guns -- unless, that is, the prospective gun buyer was foolish enough to assume the identity of an American with a criminal record.
Perhaps the most common way to purchase guns is by using a "straw-man" buyer (sometimes in combination with document fraud). That is, paying a person with a clean record who has legal standing to buy the gun. This also is a tried-and-true tactic used by criminals in the United States who are ineligible to purchase guns due to prior convictions. The "straw man" in these cases often is a girlfriend or other associate who is paid to buy a gun for them. Also, with so many family relations spanning the border, it is easy for a Mexican citizen to ask an American relative to purchase a gun or guns on their behalf.
While document fraud and straw-man purchases can be used to bypass the law and fool respectable gun dealers, not all gun dealers are respectable. Some will falsify their sales records in order to sell guns to people they know are not legally permitted to have them -- especially if the guns are being sold at a premium price. ATF does conduct audits of gun dealers, but even after a steep decline in the number of federal firearms dealers over the past decade, there still are not enough inspectors to regularly audit the records of the more than 50,000 federal firearms license holders. This lack of oversight and the temptation of easy money cause some dealers to break the law knowingly.
Guns also can be obtained for the Mexican black market through theft. The cartels traditionally have tasked groups of young street thugs in the United States with stealing items (such as pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles) for the cartels to use or resell in Mexico. Now, intelligence reports suggest that these thugs have begun to rob gun stores in towns along the border. One such group is the Gulf cartel-related "Zetitas" (little Zetas), which is active in the Texas cities of Houston, Laredo and San Antonio, as well as other places.
A cartel connection is suspected when the weapons and ammunition stolen are popular with the cartels, such as assault rifles and FN Five-Seven pistols. The FN Five-Seven and the FN P-90 personal defense weapon shoot a 5.7 x 28 mm round that has been shown to penetrate body armor, as well as vehicle doors and windows. Because of this, they recently have become very popular with cartel enforcers, who have begun to call the weapons matapolicias -- police killers. Several police officials have been killed with these guns this year -- though officers also have been killed with .357 magnum revolvers, .45-caliber pistols and AK-47- or M-16-style assault rifles. Still, due to the rising popularity of the 5.7 x 28 mm weapons among cartel gunmen, many of these somewhat esoteric (and excellently manufactured) weapons are acquired in the United States and end up south of the border. Any time one of these weapons is connected to a crime on either side of the border, a cartel link should be considered.
The gun problem in Mexico is similar to the drug problem in the United States in that it is extremely difficult to reduce the supply of the illicit items without first reducing the demand. Any small reduction in the supply leads to an increase in price, which further stimulates efforts to provide a supply. Therefore, as long as the demand for such weapons persists, people will continue to find creative ways to meet that demand and make a profit. With that demand being fed, at least in part, by drug cartels that are warring for control of drug trafficking routes into the United States, the two problems of drugs and guns will continue to be deeply intertwined.
stratfor
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Caveat lector-- its the NY Times:
EL RODEO, Mexico — For years, millions of Mexican migrants working in the United States have sent money back home to villages like this one, money that allows families to pay medical bills and school fees, build houses and buy clothes or, if they save enough, maybe start a tiny business.
But after years of strong increases, the amount of migrant money flowing to Mexico has stagnated. From 2000 to 2006, remittances grew to nearly $24 billion a year from $6.6 billion, ( :-o ) rising more than 20 percent some years. In 2007, the increase so far has been less than 2 percent.
Migrants and migration experts say a flagging American economy and an enforcement campaign against illegal workers in the United States have persuaded some migrants not to try to cross the border illegally to look for work. Others have decided to return to Mexico. And many of those who are staying in the United States are sending less money home.
In the rest of the world, remittances are rising, up as much as 10 percent a year, according to Donald F. Terry of the Inter-American Development Bank. Last year, migrant workers worldwide sent more than $300 billion to developing countries — almost twice the amount of foreign direct investment.
But in Mexico, families are feeling squeezed.
Estrella Rivera, a slight 27-year-old in this stone-paved village in Guanajuato state in central Mexico, was hoping to use the money her husband, Alonso, sent back from working illegally in Texas to build a small clothing shop at the edge of her garden.
But a month ago, Mr. Rivera returned home. His hours at a Dallas window-screen factory were cut and rumors spread that he would inevitably have to produce a valid Social Security number. Now, he works odd jobs or tends cornfields. Mrs. Rivera’s shop is indefinitely delayed, a pile of bricks stacked on the grass.
Like Mr. Rivera, some of the men who went to work in the United States illegally have returned discouraged. And less work means less money to send home — particularly from the southern United States and other areas where Mexican migrants are a more recent presence.
“One out of three people in these new states who was sending a year ago is not sending it home today,” Mr. Terry of the Inter-American Development Bank said. “There are some 500,000 families who aren’t receiving this year.”
Until last year, the American housing trades absorbed hundreds of thousands of migrants, and the hardships of the trip north seemed to pale beside the near certainty of finding work.
Now, the construction slump — along with a year-old crackdown on illegal immigration at the border and in the workplace, and mounting anti-immigrant sentiment in places — has made it even harder for Mexican migrants to reach the United States and land well-paying jobs.
Many experts say it is too early to know if the negligible increase in remittances will continue. Some argue it was to be expected: much of the initial spike in money transfers had resulted from better accounting. In addition, earlier waves of migrants are returning to the houses they built, or they have managed to legalize their status in the United States and bring their families, sending less money back.
But the events of the last year in the United States, political and economic, have also clouded the prospects of many illegal Mexican workers. New walls, new guards and new equipment at the border have dissuaded many from trying to cross and raised the cost for those who try to as much as $2,800. Workplace raids and stories of summary deportations stoke fears among Mexicans on both sides of the border.
Referring to tougher measures in the United States, Primitivo Rodríguez, a Mexican immigration expert, said: “Psychologically, they lead you to save money in case of an emergency. You send less, you save more.”
The shakier economy in many states means that migrants have moved from well-paying steady jobs to work as day laborers.
“In our interviews with families, they say that migrants are now working two or three days when before they worked four or five days,” said David Skerritt, a historian at Veracruzana University.
Rodolfo García Zamora , an immigration expert at the University of Zacatecas, said money transfers to Zacatecas state fell by about 25 percent this year.
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Here in Guanajuato state, remittances have created a peculiar economy in villages tucked among rolling corn and sorghum fields. There are few jobs, yet many houses have stereo systems, washing machines and three-piece living room sets.
A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves
Things are changing, though. Some of the men are back and need cash for seeds and fertilizer to plow long-neglected fields. At the microcredit association operated by a local nonprofit group, the Bajío Women’s Network, loans for agriculture, which barely existed last year, now account for 11 percent of all borrowing.
Women are finding it harder to save, said Evelyne Sinquin, the network coordinator. “The people who have come back can’t work, and the people in the United States are working fewer hours.”
Other than agriculture, the jobs here are in construction, building houses of absentee owners houses along the cobbled streets. Some are modest with a few brick rooms; others are ornate tributes to their absentee owners’ success: gold-painted balconies, the Virgin of Guadalupe etched in a window, Greek columns. Los Emigrantes carpentry shop in nearby La Cuevita sits on a traffic circle adorned with a monument showing several figures, one of them a migrant waving a fistful of dollars.
Not much else flourishes. Three months ago, Mónica Núñez closed her tortilla shop in the village of San Lucas. “Most people went to the United States and sales went down,” she said.
Her husband has been home from Houston for a year, but she has seven brothers and a sister in the United States who still send money. She is planning a new business, perhaps an Internet cafe so people can connect with relatives in the United States.
Less than an hour’s drive away, the city of Querétaro is prospering, turning out home appliances for the world market. But for most people in the villages, education ended after elementary school. An unskilled factory or construction job pays little more than $50 or $60 a week.
With those prospects, the next generation — some of them as young as 15 — seemed to have few doubts about heading to the United States.
Estrella Rivera’s brother Francisco left for the first time when he was 16. Now 21, he recently came home after a year and a half in Orlando, Fla., working in construction. He earned enough to add a floor to his parents’ house, but then he struggled.
“Either there was no work or they did not want to hire somebody without papers,” he said, perched on an old Ford pickup truck with Michigan tags beside his family’s sheep and cow pens.
But he expects to go back again. “To tell the truth, it really is worth the trouble,” he said, recounting a terrifying crossing getting lost in the Arizona desert.
Mrs. Rivera’s husband is not so sure. “It’s really tough to go back,” he said. “Now they lock you up. Before, they grabbed you and sent you back. The laws were never this tough.”
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Mexico Security Memo: Nov. 12, 2007
November 12, 2007 20 30 GMT
Influence on the Border
The U.S.-Mexico border area stood out this past week as a venue for violence by drug cartels and other criminal groups. Several incidents occurred in the Baja California state border town of Mexicali, where the targeted killing of a state police officer was followed two days later by a firefight that left one person dead and two wounded. Farther east, at least one candidate for political office in Tamaulipas state was abducted in Reynosa, a town just across the border from McAllen, Texas.
The notion that drug traffickers are starting to influence local politics in the border area is of particular concern to the United States, where, despite the implementation of various security initiatives, Mexico's drug cartels and criminal groups have continued to expand their networks. The success of the new Merida Initiative -- the joint U.S.-Mexico counternarcotics and border security program -- relies on political cooperation on both sides of the border. Any success is questionable, however, when politicians face criminal opponents as well as political opponents.
Cocaine Haul
Twenty-six tons of cocaine seized this past week in Manzanillo, Colima state, belonged to the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's attorney general said. Together with the more than three tons seized from a drug plane that crashed in the Yucatan in September, the haul makes it clear that Sinaloa has well-established connections with South American cocaine traffickers. This conclusion conflicts with statements made by Mexican government officials that the Gulf cartel is the only Mexican drug trafficking organization capable of maintaining relationships with South American cartels. Following the most recent seizure, Sinaloa is unlikely to break its relationship with its Colombian counterparts, though it will certainly review its security plan for receiving drug shipments in certain ports.
Cartel-Related IEDs?
Also this past week, a small improvised explosive device (IED) detonated in the trunk of a car parked in a hospital parking lot in Toluca, Mexico state. No one was injured in the explosion, though several nearby cars were damaged. The car belonged to a doctor who worked at the hospital. Planting explosives in cars is rare in Mexico, and it is unclear who was responsible for the bombing. Speculation that drug traffickers were behind the incident was prompted by unconfirmed reports that some inmates from a federal prison had recently been moved to the hospital for treatment.
As we have noted previously, though, Mexico's drug cartels are not known for using IEDs. Despite how easy it is to acquire explosives in the country, drug cartels have demonstrated a preference for killing with guns and grenades. One group known for using small IEDs in locations that will not cause casualties is the guerrilla group Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). However, an unclaimed attack on a doctor's car does not match the operational history of EPR, which most recently has focused on bombing oil pipelines. The incident this past week in Toluca was most likely linked to some other crime, such as extortion, and not to drug trafficking or guerrilla activity.
Violent Kidnappings
Several incidents involving businessmen this past week highlight the kidnapping risk in Mexico and how violent those kidnappings can be. A Spanish businessman was released Nov. 4 after being held for nearly two weeks by a kidnapping gang in Mexico City. The kidnappers reportedly cut off two of his fingers and sent them to his family to convince them to pay the ransom. During the actual abduction, gunmen stopped the victim's car and killed his bodyguard.
In what appears to have been a similar incident on Nov. 9, an apparent kidnapping attempt against a businessman in Monterrey ended with his bodyguard being killed and him being wounded. According to reports, gunmen in several vehicles followed the two men as they left a hotel. As the driver attempted to lose them, he drove the wrong way down a one-way street, eventually running into a bus. The gunmen then cornered them and opened fire on their vehicle. These incidents highlight the false sense of security that traditional protective services provide in Mexico and underscore the need for comprehensive security programs that include protective intelligence.
Nov. 5
An official from the National Action Party confirmed that a municipal presidential candidate's campaign manager was abducted by a group of armed men in Tamaulipas state.
A Baja California state police officer was shot to death outside his home in Mexicali by two men who approached him as he was entering his house.
The bodies of two unidentified men who had been shot to death were found in shallow graves in Durango state. Police believe they are two men who were abducted Sept. 27.
Nov. 6
Authorities in Sinaloa state reported two unrelated drug-related killings that occurred in the state capital Culiacan. In one case, an unidentified victim was shot at least 20 times; in the other, gunmen armed with assault rifles shot and killed a man outside his home.
Nov. 7
One person died and two were wounded in a firefight in Mexicali, Baja California state, just across the border from Calexico, California.
A man in Mexico City died when he was shot at point blank range in his vehicle after a group of gunmen blocked his car in the street.
Nov. 8
Federal police in Mexico City arrested Pedro Alfonso Alatorre Damy (aka, Pedro Barraza Urtusuástegui and El Piri), a suspected accountant for the Sinaloa cartel. The arrest reportedly came after an account containing $2.7 million in a Chicago bank was frozen, based on information exchanged between authorities in Mexico and the United States.
A high-ranking official of the Workers Confederation of Mexico, a labor union, was unhurt when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle in Mexico state.
Nov. 9
Two sailors in the Mexican navy were wounded in an ambush outside a supermarket in Tampico, the capital of Tamalipas state. According to reports, gunmen fired shots near a night club in Tampico, then intercepted the military convoy carrying troops to respond to the violence.
Nov. 10
A federal police commander in Coahuila state was wounded when he was shot at least five times by gunmen in two vehicles in the state capital Saltillo.
Nov. 11
An official of the civil aviation authority in Quintana Roo state was found shot to death in Cancun. He had reportedly been kidnapped the night before at a soccer game.
A Mexico state police commander was shot to death outside his home. He was unarmed at the time of the attack.
The body of an unidentified man with three gunshot wounds was found in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
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Mexico Security Memo: Nov. 19, 2007
November 19, 2007 19 22 GMT
Turf Battles
So far this month, one of the deadliest days in Mexico has been Nov. 17, when at least 11 drug-related deaths were reported in six states. From charred bodies discovered in Chiapas state to armed men storming a house to kill two presumed drug dealers in Durango state, the killings provide a snapshot of violence in a country where approximately 2,400 people have died violently so far this year.
The cartel turf battles that produced much of this violence have led to important shifts in cartels' areas of territorial control. The federal attorney general's office reported this past week that the town of Zamora, in Michoacan state, is now in the hands of elements of the Gulf cartel, following a long battle with members of the Sinaloa-linked Valencia cartel. As long as rival gangs continue to fight for control of lucrative smuggling routes, shifts such as this one should be expected to continue -- along with the violence that accompanies them.
Political Violence
One of the biggest challenges to counternarcotics operations in Mexico has been corruption not only of law enforcement personnel but also of government officials. In addition to threatening, killing and kidnapping officials already in office, organized crime groups have demonstrated an interest in influencing the election process. An incident this past week in Michoacan state underscored this trend. On Nov. 16 in Zamora, as the election commission was tallying up the final vote from local elections held Nov. 11, a group of armed men entered the commission's office, threatened members and set fire to documents related to the election. Political candidates and their campaign staffs also have been subject to violence. At least one candidate for office in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, was reportedly abducted before a vote there last week while another candidate's financial adviser was said to have been kidnapped.
The waters of political violence are murky in Mexico, where it is common to hear of politicians dispatching henchmen to intimidate or eliminate their rivals. There is an element of truth to some of these rumors, especially in a country where the presidency and top levels of government were dominated by one political party for more than 70 years. However, drug trafficking organizations also have a strong interest in promoting candidates that are on their payroll. In some cases, politicians might even have knowledge of cartel actions against opponents, and frequently the henchmen hired by political candidates will have ties to the cartels.
Body Snatching
More than 50 armed men entered the city morgue in Ensenada, Baja California state, early Nov. 15 to remove the body of man who had died three days before in a helicopter accident while following the Baja 1000 car race. The heavily armed group reportedly arrived in more than a dozen vehicles, stormed the building and loaded the body into a vehicle, firing assault rifles at police officers before fleeing. Prior to the theft, two unidentified individuals had reportedly attempted to claim the body but authorities did not release it.
Although it appears certain that the body belonged to an important member of the Tijuana cartel, there is official confusion as to who the man was, likely because the body was registered at the morgue under a pseudonym. Initial reports from authorities in Baja California state indicated that the man was Francisco Medardo León Hinojosa, aka El Abulón, a high-ranking lieutenant in the Tijuana organization. Later reports from the federal attorney general's office suggested that the missing body belonged to the son of Alicia Arellano Felix, one of the siblings of the Arellano Felix crime family that runs the Tijuana cartel. Reportedly there had been a strong security presence at the morgue prior to the theft to prevent any such action; the incident highlights how police forces are no match for well-equipped -- and well-informed -- cartels.
Nov. 12
Authorities in Sinaloa state reported finding the body of a man along a highway. He had been bound at the hands and wrapped in a blanket.
Nov. 13
A high-ranking police commander from Acambaro, Guanajuato state, was shot to death while driving along a rural road.
Nov. 14
The director of public security in Toluca, Mexico state, was unhurt following an apparent attempt on his life when two men on a motorcycle fired several shots into his vehicle.
Nov. 15
Two people died and one was wounded in a firefight involving automatic weapons and rival drug-trafficking gangs in Tamazula, Durango state.
Fire crews from Laredo, Texas, crossed the border to assist the Nuevo Laredo fire department in battling more than 20 fires across the city. Under a mutual aid request, a fire department source confirmed that arson was the cause of many of the blazes, which included grassfires and structural fires.
Nov. 16
Two sailors in the Mexican navy were abducted by armed men from a bar in the Pacific port city of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state. A third who resisted the gunmen was wounded.
A plane believed to have been carrying more than 1 ton of cocaine made an emergency landing on a federal highway in Oaxaca state. The crew succeeded in unloading the cargo, setting fire to the plane and escaping before authorities arrived.
Nov. 17
The bodies of a man and woman were found in Jalisco state. Each had been shot in the head.
A city employee discovered the dismembered body of an unidentified person in a dumpster in Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua state. Body parts were found in two suitcases.
Two men were killed in their home in Durango state when armed men entered the residence and shot them several times. Police believe the men owed money to drug traffickers.
Authorities discovered the burned bodies of two unidentified men along a highway in Chiapas state. The men were bound at the hands and appeared to have been tortured.
Nov. 18
A sailor in the Mexican navy was shot to death by several gunmen as he was walking along a street in Acapulco, Guerrero state. He reportedly was able to fire several rounds from a pistol before being killed.
Six armed men entered a hotel in the Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas de los Garza in Nuevo Leon state, stealing an ATM and the hotel safe. The gunmen subdued three employees and four guests during the incident and exchanged gunfire with police as they fled.
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WSJ
Mexican Truck Stop
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
November 26, 2007; Page A20
It's hard to say who came out on top in the Nov. 15 debate among Democratic presidential candidates held in Nevada. But we do know that free trade took a beating. A majority of the candidates disapproved of some or all of the U.S. bilateral and regional trade agreements -- including the North American Free Trade Agreement -- and pledged to reverse the trend toward market opening if given the chance. Hillary Clinton stopped short of promising to undo Nafta but she called for a "trade timeout."
It is troubling to hear the protectionist drumbeat growing louder in the Democratic Party, particularly as it concerns Latin America. The last time Washington adopted an anti-trade bias by signing into law the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930, it set off a world-wide depression -- and a period of isolationism in Latin America that took some 60 years to begin to reverse. Now Democrats seem to be saying that if they can only capture the White House, they are committed to reliving this painful history.
The Democrats' anti-trade agenda is already playing out in Congress, with both houses continuing to block the full opening of the southern border to Mexican long-haul trucks under Nafta. Congress's actions could damage the U.S. economy because Mexico has the legal right to retaliate. What's worse is what this flouting of U.S. commitments to Mexico suggests to the Mexican people about Yankee integrity.
The problem dates back to 1995, when Bill Clinton issued an executive order -- in violation of Nafta, which he had signed into law -- to stop Mexican long-haul trucks from crossing the border. Mr. Clinton was responding to pressure from Teamsters, who didn't want any new competition. He cited safety concerns -- things like substandard drivers and vehicles -- which to this day have never been supported by evidence.
In fact, Mexican trucking companies have a long history of operating in the U.S. and with no notably inferior safety record. Yet their numbers have been limited since 1982, when the Reagan administration announced that until Mexico opened its markets to U.S. competitors, no new licenses would be granted to Mexican carriers. Existing Mexican long-haul trucking businesses had their permits grandfathered, and from 1992-2002 some 1,300 Mexican-domiciled companies -- all of which were majority U.S.-owned -- received "certificates of registration" to deliver "exempt commodities" from Mexico to the U.S.
In other words, there have been plenty of Mexican trucks on U.S. roads all these years -- although not as many as there might be under Nafta. Nevertheless, in a 2002 appropriations bill Congress demanded that they be subject to a new set of safety regulations, some of which are more stringent than U.S. standards. Since that year, the Department of Transportation's Inspector General has audited the safety process at the border annually and has been able to certify that it is working. Mexican carriers are also more heavily insured than their U.S. competitors. Every Mexican truck is required to carry U.S. insurance on top of the insurance it carries in Mexico.
Earlier this year, the DOT analyzed the safety record of Mexican carriers in the U.S. from 2003-2006. It looked at the rate in which trucks received an "out-of-service" designation by DOT inspectors targeting companies with the worst records. The out-of-service rate for U.S. trucks was 23.5%, compared to a rate for trucks from Mexico of 21.29%. Mexican short-haul trucks operating in the border zone also had a better record than the U.S. trucks, with an out-of-service rate of 22.5%.
These statistics ought to be enough to end the debate. But with Teamster pull still strong in Congress, the Bush administration this year offered to introduce a pilot program to allow a limited number of new trucking companies to begin doing business in the U.S. under close DOT scrutiny. The program kicked off on Sept. 6, and there are now seven Mexican companies operating 44 vehicles in the U.S. and four U.S. companies operating 41 vehicles in Mexico. You'd think that those with safety worries would be glad to see such a vigilant approach to the problem. But just after the program started, both the House and the Senate voted to strip its funding in the 2008 budget.
It's not clear whether this budget cut will be sustained. But the effort makes it obvious that Congress is no honest broker. As John Hill, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, told me last week: "Every time we move closer to implementing the provisions of Nafta, Congress adds a new provision. It's hard to hit a moving target."
Mr. Hill also challenges the charge that Mexican trucks are not safe. "We've applied strong enforcement guidelines and Mexico has met them. The opponents of Nafta are looking for any way they can find to drum up fear among Americans, even though Mexican trucks have been operating safely in this country for years."
Mexico doesn't have to sit still for this. In February 2001, a Nafta arbitration panel issued a unanimous decision against the U.S. block on Mexican long-haul trucks. Mexico could retaliate with import tariffs on U.S. goods to the tune of $2 billion. In the Nov. 20 issue of the Latin American business magazine Poder y Negocios, Mexican Secretary of Communications and Transportation Luis Tellez said that his country has not ruled out that possibility.
He also expressed frustration with Congress: "The problem is that the Congress is no longer in the frame of mind in which it sees Nafta as something important or something that the U.S. government has to comply with." There are those in Congress, he said, who don't have a clear idea of what Nafta is and others who don't want to "lose points and Teamster support."
During the free trade bashing in Nevada, Mrs. Clinton said that instead of signing new agreements, we "need to get back to enforcing the ones we have, which the Bush administration has not done." When it comes to Nafta and the Mexican trucks we can all agree on the first part of that statement, but the fault lies with Congress, not the president.
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Targeting Mexico's Drug Cartels: Is the Sinaloa Federation Next?
Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon stepped up pressure on organized crime and drug trafficking organizations nearly a year ago, the hardest-hit organization has been the Gulf cartel. The extradition of cartel leader Osiel Cardenas-Guillen to the United States, the capture of several Gulf lieutenants and the concentrated presence of security forces in the cartel's territory have combined to put much more pressure on Gulf members than on those belonging to its rival, the Sinaloa federation of cartels. But Mexico City could soon begin targeting high-ranking members of the Sinaloa federation.
U.S. counternarcotics sources say Sinaloa leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, is now believed to be hiding out in Pachuca, a city in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo. Guzman has been on the run since he escaped in 2001 from the Puente Grande maximum security prison in Jalisco state. Identifying the location of one of the most elusive drug traffickers in Mexico is a vital step in expanding the scope of the current war against the cartels.
The city where Guzman is believed to be hiding is not the most likely of locations -- perhaps the reason he has successfully eluded law enforcement for so long. Hidalgo state is not near the Sinaloa cartel's home territory of northwestern Sinaloa state, where Guzman is likely to have more friends and associates willing to aid him. Large cities in Sinaloa territory, however, are places where Mexican authorities would focus their search for him. Far from being an isolated village in the middle of nowhere, Pachuca is a state capital, located about 100 miles from Mexico City. Most important, in a country where cartel territory is violently conquered and defended, Pachuca is an essentially neutral region, in which rival drug traffickers do not have a particular interest in extending their influence.
Despite the risks of arrest and attack by rivals, Guzman has not exactly been hiding under a rock. Although his personal security needs are high -- requiring a large contingent of heavily armed bodyguards -- that fact has not stopped him from taking occasional trips over the last few years. One particularly high-profile event was his wedding in Coahuila state in July, for which the local military commander reportedly ordered some of his soldiers to man roadblocks out of the area -- assumingly following a payoff. While romancing his 18-year-old bride, Guzman reportedly flew to her town in one of his six private aircraft after several hundred security guards had locked down the town.
Such high-profile and public movements simply mean that Guzman has been receiving assistance from a variety of official sources. In the world of Mexican organized crime, it is common for high-ranking cartel figures to have law enforcement officers and military personnel on their payrolls. They also typically have strong connections to government officials at all levels, who provide protection in exchange for financial contributions. Guzman has a long history of buying off officials who are in the position to help him. In the Puente Grande prison break, for instance, at least 30 guards were implicated in assisting in the escape.
Since Calderon's crackdown, Mexican authorities have been cooperating more and more with their more capable U.S. counterparts. They most likely focused on the Gulf cartel first because, unlike Sinaloa territory, the area in northeastern Mexico controlled by the Gulf cartel has more important industrial and commercial interests. This kind of coordination could be what is needed to take Guzman into custody.
It is unclear exactly what will happen to the Sinaloa federation once Guzman is out of the picture, though it unlikely will maintain its current form. The Sinaloa cartel leads a federation of smaller drug trafficking organizations, most significantly the Zambada Garcia organization and the Esparragoza organization, both of which are led by former high-ranking Juarez cartel members. With Guzman either dead or in custody, the leaders of these groups could reassess their relationships with the Sinaloa group, resulting in a loss of a significant portion of Sinaloa's territory and limiting its ability to import South American cocaine.
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Iran-Mexico meeting deepens ties to Islam
President Calderon welcomes Khatami in effort to bypass confrontational West
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Posted: December 7, 2007
4:50 p.m. Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Mexican President Felipe Calderon welcomed former Iranian President Mohamed Khatami to Mexico City
In a little notice meeting reflecting growing ties between South America and the Islamic world, Mexican President Felipe Calderon welcomed former Iranian President Mohamed Khatami to Mexico City. The two leaders met Wednesday at Los Pinos, Mexico's official presidential residence, to discuss deepening cultural bonds with the Islamic world in the face of Western notions of a "clash of civilizations.
The visit drew virtually no mention in the press outside of Mexico, even in Iran.
Khatami came at the invitation of the International Center for Dialogue between Civilizations, established in 2006 at the Colegio de San Luis in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi. A notice on the Colegio de San Luis website said Khatami spoke at the center to oppose the main thesis of Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington's seminal 1996 book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order."
In his speech, Khatami proclaimed a "Dialogue among Civilizations," a theme echoing a 2001 U.N. declaration. Similarly, a statement by Calderon emphasized, in diplomatic language, that Khatami was promoting an exchange of opinions "concerning the roads available to promote peaceful co-existence among natures and cultures."
The Mexican newspaper La Jornada echoed the presidential statement: "The government of Mexico shares the conviction that dialogue and negotiation should be promoted as the preferred means to advance agreements."
The radical leftist La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles characterized the Khatami-Calderon meeting as "part of a growing alliance between Mexico, South America and Islam." La Voz de Aztlan also noted, "President Calderon has been worried about the growing racist hostility against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the USA."
The online publication said the visit "may signal the beginning of a new international alignment that may bring into reality what Patrick Buchanan wrote in his new book, 'Day of Reckoning.'"
In July, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met in Tehran with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reflecting Tehran's recent campaign to develop closer ties with Latin America. In September, Ahmadinejad met with Fidel Castro in Cuba, where the communist dictator endorsed the Iranian leader's efforts to further the goals of the Islamic revolution begun by Ayatollah Khomeini.
The International Center for Dialogue between Civilizations was opened in 2006 by Islamic Dawa of Chauen, a militant Shiite Islamic group originally formed in Iraq, and the radical Junta Islamica of Spain.
Chauen is a city in the Mexican province of Marruecos with historic ties to the Berbers in Morocco. The Junta Islamica derives from the descendents of the Moriscos, the Spanish Muslims expelled from Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a group noted for aggressively promoting the rights of Hispanic immigrants, characterizes the Nation of Aztlan, publisher of La Voz de Aztlan, as a "tiny Chicano group that pushes racism and homophobia." Aztlan is the name for the mythical place of origin of the Aztec people. In the politics of Hispanic immigration, Aztlan has come to represent the part of the southwestern United States, including a large part of California, sought by the Reconquista movement for Mexico.
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U.S.: Targeted Officer Killings Crossing the Border?
Police in Arizona were still searching Dec. 14 for two suspects involved in a recent home invasion targeting a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Tucson. The agent told police that he woke early Dec. 9 as four armed men forcibly entered his home. At least one suspect fired at the agent, at which point he retrieved his service weapon and returned fire as the suspects retreated in a sport utility vehicle (SUV). His shots apparently struck at least one of the suspects, who was found shot to death several hours later in a rural area. Another suspect was later detained after police discovered the SUV in flames, apparently set ablaze by the attackers in order to destroy evidence.
Home invasions can have a variety of motives. In this case, the incident very likely involved a failed assassination attempt -- an idea that raises concerns about new forms of violence associated with Mexican organized crime crossing the border.
There are several reasons to believe this home invasion was not a random occurrence but rather an intentional attempt to kill the agent. First, the agent reportedly drove a Border Patrol vehicle that he parked at home every night -- and criminals looking for an easy burglary target are unlikely to pick the home of an armed law enforcement officer. Second, though police have officially said that no motive has been determined, one blog reporting on this incident has described police sources as saying it involved an assassination attempt gone wrong.
This attack, then, was almost certainly associated with some element of Mexican organized crime. Drug trafficking organizations and smuggling groups certainly would have had an interest in targeting the agent, and Mexico's drug cartels are notorious for violent killings targeting police officers and army personnel across Mexico, carried out by highly trained and heavily armed former military members employed by the cartels. For instance, at least seven Mexican police officers were killed and five wounded last week alone in incidents involving grenades, assault rifles, assassinations, and one kidnapping and fatal beating.
Though cartels' hit men have ample resources and there is evidence they have operated cells inside the United States, the suspects in the Tucson case more likely belonged to a U.S.-based gang working on behalf of a Mexican criminal organization.
The fact that the two suspects who have been identified are 19 and 20 years old suggests that they are not the experienced military-trained operatives employed by Mexico's drug cartels. Also, experienced and trained operatives would not have retreated after being fired at by one person -- and, frankly, an attack by more seasoned operatives most likely would not have failed. Even if the attackers had experience targeting poorly-trained police officers in Mexico, it is much more difficult to successfully attack a well-trained U.S. federal law enforcement officer.
Though there is currently no evidence that the agent in this case was involved in illegal activity, it is important to note that many police and government officials targeted for assassination in Mexico have been paid off by a rival criminal organization. Corruption has not been limited to the Mexican side of the border; many low-paid agents in the United States have found themselves facing the dilemma of "plata o plomo" -- "silver or lead" -- which means take a bribe or take a bullet.
Police also are often targeted simply for doing their job. For example, after Mexican police in the border city of Tecate shut down a smuggling tunnel running under the border last week, a group of gunmen entered the home of a Tecate police commander -- who had been on the job less than a week -- and shot him more than 50 times while he lay in bed. His family was unharmed, though this was not the case when a former police officer in Mexico's Sinaloa state was shot to death, along with his wife and three young daughters, at his home several weeks ago.
While targeted killings of police are common in Mexico, they have yet to reach similar levels in the United States. Over the last few years, though, there has been an increasing trend of criminal activity commonplace in Mexico spreading north across the border, including kidnapping, threats against journalists and extortion. This latest incident raises concerns that targeted killings of police officers could be the next form of violence exported across the border.
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Mexico Security Memo: Dec. 27, 2007
Stratfor Today » December 27, 2007 | 2021 GMT
Organized Crime in Baja California
An unknown number of assailants attacked the newly appointed police chief of Playas de Rosarito, Jorge Eduardo Montero Alvarez, on Dec. 18, killing one policeman and injuring at least one other. The attack happened at about 1 p.m. when approximately 10 vehicles pulled up to the building where Montero Alvarez and his bodyguards were getting out of their vehicles and the assailants opened fire with high-caliber weapons. The police repelled the attack, returning fire with AK-47 and R-15 rifles; Montero Alvarez was not hurt. Three vans spotted in the attack were later found abandoned nearby.
The attack followed a Dec. 17 announcement by Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the federal government would aid in a crackdown on organized crime with a deployment by the Mexican military to Playas de Rosarito. The attack was a definite signal of cartel displeasure; similar attacks have occurred elsewhere in connection with major anti-cartel operations. Following the announcement and the attack, an undisclosed number of soldiers arrived Dec. 19 to patrol the city, both tourist areas and high-crime residential areas.
Playas de Rosarito, which adjoins Tijuana in Baja California state, has experienced rising problems with organized crime. Extensive corruption among public officials, including law enforcement officers, has exacerbated this problem. The federal government launched Operation Tijuana in January, sending more than 3,000 troops to battle local drug gangs. The deployment to Playas de Rosarito marks the expansion of the federal mandate to combat organized crime in the Tijuana-San Diego border area.
Border Crossings in Arizona
Arrests of illegal border crossers near Yuma, Arizona, fell more than two-thirds during 2007, in part a result of a variety of new barriers covering a 48-mile stretch of the border. Ranging from simple road barriers to more extensive fencing installations, the Yuma Sector barriers do not form a solid wall along the border, but instead use barricades targeted to meet the needs of the landscape and adjusted as appropriate to the relative accessibility of each area. While the barriers alone have contributed greatly to the drop, other measures like an increased law enforcement presence on the border and threat of jail time for first-time illegal crossings by adults deserve credit, too.
The drop in arrests following the fence-building program in the Yuma Sector represents a significant success, as the sector had experienced a significant growth in arrests in previous years. Although overall arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol along the U.S.-Mexican border fell from 1.4 million to 1.1 million from 1997 to 2006, crossings in the Yuma Sector skyrocketed from 30,000 to 119,000 during the same period. Despite this success, the crossings probably have shifted to other sectors as immigrants seek easier routes, a well-established phenomenon. For instance, although total arrests in the San Diego Sector have fallen by about 142,000 in the last nine years, the reduction has been counterbalanced by crossings elsewhere. Thus, aggregate numbers in the Tucson Sector rose by around 120,000 during the same period.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 that initiated and supports fencing projects like the one in the Yuma Sector underwent substantial changes Dec. 21, as the omnibus spending bill signed in to law by U.S. President George W. Bush contains language that makes fence building nonmandatory and leaves all barrier construction at the discretion of the Homeland Security secretary. The act originally mandated 700 miles of double fencing split among five different sectors. The mandate was modeled after the San Diego method of a two-fence barrier, which was shown to be 95 percent effective in reducing illegal border crossings along a 14-mile stretch of border dividing San Diego and Tijuana from 1992-2004.
Beheadings Spreading to Capital?
The headless bodies of five people have been found in Mexico City since Dec. 17, at least four of whom were customs agents from Mexico City International Airport. Two of the headless agents were discovered wrapped in plastic and stuffed in the trunk of a car in Tlaneplanta, a northern district of Mexico City, El Nuevo Diario reported Dec. 17. The victims’ heads and two severed fingers were left on the street. A finger was placed in one victims’ mouth, while the other was put in the ear of the second victim. Two other bodies were found in similar configurations. Another body had severed hands.
The precision of the beheadings indicate the men were assassinated by professionals, while the placement of the fingers indicates the men were suspected of informing to the police. Although the motive behind the killings remains unclear, they occurred the day after the seizure of half a ton of cocaine at Mexico City International Airport, leading the authorities to suspect the murders came in retaliation.
Beheadings by organized criminal elements are common in Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Michoacán states, where drug cartel operations are widespread. The gruesome tactic has not been used commonly in Mexico City, however. These incidents could be an ominous sign the tactic may be spreading to the heart of Mexico.
Dec. 17
Two decapitated bodies of Mexico City International Airport customs agents were found in Mexico City.
The body of a 18 year-old man with a gunshot wound to the head was found floating in the Lerma River in Guanajuato state.
Two handcuffed bodies were found with evidence of torture in Cancún, Quintana Roo state.
The bullet-riddled bodies of two young men were found in Tijuana, Baja California state. One of the bodies was located inside a vehicle, while the other was found 900 feet away.
A man was killed after being stabbed 25 times in Mexico City. His wife was left alive, but was in critical condition after being stabbed twice by an unknown assailant.
The body of an unidentified man was found in Guerrero state. He had been shot at least 30 times with a variety of weapons that appear to include an AR-15, an AK-47 and at least one handgun.
Dec. 18
Assailants traveling in 10 cars attacked Jorge Eduardo Montero Alvarez, the newly appointed police chief of Playas de Rosarito, Baja California state. Although Montero Alvarez was unharmed, one of his bodyguards was killed and at least one civilian was injured.
Suspected assassins shot and killed three off-duty soldiers and wounded another at a shopping mall in Torreón, Coahuila state, late Dec. 18. An air force member also was injured in the shooting.
Dec. 19
A group used high-powered rifles to attack two men in Nuevo Leon state, injuring the pair.
Two people sitting in a car with foreign plates in Mocorito, Sinaloa, were executed with a .38-caliber gun.
The corpse of a 24-year-old man was discovered with evidence of blunt trauma and a bullet wound from a 9 mm weapon in Culiacán, Sinaloa.
The dead body of a man was found bound with adhesive tape; AK-47 rounds were found around the body.
The body of a farmer was found floating near a dam in the vicinity of the Tandhe community in Hidalgo state. Three suspects have been arrested in connection with the murder.
Dec. 20
The body of a young man who had been stabbed to death was found in Venta de Cruz, Mexico state. The man had been reported missing after he was taken into custody Dec. 9 by individuals who identified themselves as members of the Mexican Federal Agency of Investigations.
The body of a taxi driver who had been shot five times was found in Huasca, Hidalgo state, the fourth killing of a taxi driver in the past two months.
Dec. 21
A taxi driver was found dead in Cuautepec de Hinojosa, Hidalgo state, buried under a pile of rocks. He had been reported missing Dec. 17.
The bodies of two men were found shot in the head in an automobile in Mexico state.
The bodies of a man and his son killed by several unknown assailants in Culiacán, Sinaloa state, were found. The attackers reportedly fired at least 20 rounds at the pair.
Dec. 22
The body of an unidentified middle-aged man was found by authorities in Tijuana, Baja California state. The victim had been shot in the head and face and was tied with a plastic rope.
The bullet-riddled body of an unidentified young man was found in a parking lot in a commercial district in Tijuana, Baja California state. Although police reported to the scene rapidly, they failed to find the perpetrators.
The body of a teacher who had been shot to death was found on the side of a road near El Zapote bridge in Guerrero state. He had been carrying about $800 in pesos; a note was appended to his corpse.
The body of an unidentified man who had been strangled to death was found in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state. The state attorney general’s office initially erroneously identified the man as ex-policeman Alberto González Escobar of Ciudad Juárez, who has been reported missing.
Dec. 24
The body of an unknown man was found shot in the head, naked and bound at the hands and feet in Guerrero state. Evidence indicates the corpse of the man, who had been dead for quite some time, was transported to the site where it was found.
Gunfire killed three people in two separate incidents in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Dec. 25
A gunfight between members of the Mexican army and presumed members of organized criminal groups in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, resulted in two injuries.
Dec. 26
Four people died of gunshot wounds in separate incidents in Tijuana state in a 72-hour period. No suspects have been detained.
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As an Angeleno, news of Rosarito is of particular interest to me:
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_bi_ge/mexico_frightened_tourists
Tourists shun crime-hit Mexico beaches By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 5, 1:24 PM ET
PLAYAS DE ROSARITO, Mexico - Assaults on American tourists have brought hard times to hotels and restaurants that dot Mexican beaches just south of the border from San Diego.
ADVERTISEMENT
Surfers and kayakers are frightened to hit the waters of the northern stretch of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, long popular as a weekend destination for U.S. tourists. Weddings have been canceled. Lobster joints a few steps from the Pacific were almost empty on the usually busy New Year's weekend.
Americans have long tolerated shakedowns by police who boost salaries by pulling over motorists for alleged traffic violations, and tourists know parts of Baja are a hotbed of drug-related violence. But a handful of attacks since summer by masked, armed bandits — some of whom used flashing lights to appear like police — marks a new extreme that has spooked even longtime visitors.
Lori Hoffman, a San Diego-area emergency room nurse, said she was sexually assaulted Oct. 23 by two masked men in front of her boyfriend, San Diego Surfing Academy owner Pat Weber, who was forced to kneel at gunpoint for 45 minutes. They were at a campground with about 30 tents, some 200 miles south of the border.
The men shot out windows of the couple's trailer and forced their way inside, ransacked the cupboards and left with about $7,000 worth of gear, including computers, video equipment and a guitar.
Weber, who has taught dozens of students in Mexico over the last 10 years, plans to surf in Costa Rica or New Zealand. "No more Mexico," said Hoffman, who reported the attack to Mexican police. No arrests have been made.
The Baja California peninsula is known worldwide for clean and sparsely populated beaches, lobster and margaritas and blue waters visited by whales and dolphins. Surfers love the waves; fishermen catch tuna, yellowtail and marlin. Food and hotels are cheap.
News of harrowing assaults on American tourists has begun to overshadow that appeal in the northern part of the peninsula, home to drug gangs and the seedy border city of Tijuana. The comparatively isolated southern tip, with its tony Los Cabos resort, remains safer and is still popular with Hollywood celebrities, anglers and other foreign tourists.
Local media and surfing Web sites that trumpeted Baja in the past have reported several frightening crimes that U.S. and Mexican officials consider credible. Longtime visitors are particularly wary of a toll road near the border that runs through Playas de Rosarito — Rosarito Beach.
In late November, as they returned from the Baja 1000 off-road race, a San Diego-area family was pulled over on the toll road by a car with flashing lights. Heavily armed men held the family hostage for two hours. They eventually released them but stole the family's truck.
Before dawn on Aug. 31, three surfers were carjacked on the same stretch of highway. Gunmen pulled them over in a car with flashing lights, forced them out of their vehicles and ordered one to kneel. They took the trucks and left the surfers.
Aqua Adventures of San Diego scrapped its annual three-day kayak trip to scout for whales in January, ending a run of about 10 years. Customers had already been complaining about longer waits to return to the U.S.; crime gave them another reason to stay away.
"People are just saying, 'No way.' They don't want to deal with the risk," said owner Jen Kleck, who has sponsored trips to Baja about five times a year but hasn't been since July.
Charles Smith, spokesman for the U.S. consulate in Tijuana, said the U.S. government has not found a widespread increase in attacks against Americans, but he acknowledged many crimes go unreported. The State Department has long warned motorists on Mexico's border to watch for people following them, though no new warnings have been issued.
Mexican officials acknowledge crime has threatened a lifeblood of Baja's economy. In Playas de Rosarito, a city of 130,000, police were forced to surrender their weapons last month for testing to determine links to any crimes. Heavily armed men have patrolled City Hall since a failed assassination attempt on the new police chief left one officer dead. On Thursday the bullet-riddled bodies of a Tijuana police official and another man were found dumped near the beach.
"We cannot minimize what's happening to public safety," said Oscar Escobedo Carignan, Baja's new secretary of tourism. "We're going to impose order ... We're indignant about what's happening."
Tourist visits to Baja totaled about 18 million in 2007, down from 21 million the previous year, Escobedo said. Hotel occupancy dropped about 5 percentage points to 53 percent.
Hugo Torres, owner of the storied Rosarito Beach Hotel and the city's new mayor, estimates the number of visitors to Rosarito Beach since summer is down 30 percent.
In the city's Puerto Nuevo tourist enclave, which offers $20 lobster dinners and $1 margaritas, restaurant managers said sales were down as much as 80 percent from last year. One Saturday afternoon in October, masked bandits wielding pistols walked the streets and kidnapped two men — an American and a Spanish citizen — who were later released unharmed. Two people who were with them were shot and wounded.
Omar Armendariz, who manages a Puerto Nuevo lobster restaurant, is counting on the new state and city governments to make tourists feel safer. He has never seen fewer visitors in his nine years on the job.
"It's dead," he said.
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New York Times
January 22, 2008
Mexico Hits Drug Gangs With Full Fury of War
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
RÍO BRAVO, Mexico —
These days, it is easy to form the impression that a war is going on in Mexico. Thousands of elite troops in battle gear stream toward border towns and snake through the streets in jeeps with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on top while fighter jets from the Mexican Navy fly reconnaissance missions overhead.
Gun battles between federal forces and drug-cartel members carrying rocket-propelled-grenade launchers have taken place over the past two weeks in border towns like Río Bravo and Tijuana, with deadly results.
Yet what is happening is less a war than a sustained federal intervention in states where for decades corrupt municipal police officers and drug gangs have worked together in relative peace, officials say. The federal forces are not only hunting cartel leaders, but also going after their crews of gunslingers, like Gulf Cartel guards known as the Zetas, who terrorize the towns they control.
The onslaught has broken up a longstanding system in which the local police looked the other way for a bribe and cartel leaders went about their business.
In Río Bravo, for instance, the state police station sits across the street from a walled compound that until recently was used as a safe house by Zeta gunmen. A deadly gunfight broke out when federal agents tried to arrest men carrying machine guns in a car.
As grenades exploded and gunfire ripped the air, Jesús Vasquez, 65, dived behind the dusty counter of his store. He hugged the concrete and prayed.
“It was ugly,” he recalled. “It’s the first time something like this has happened.”
President Felipe Calderón, who won office in 2006 on a promise to create jobs, has spent most of his first year in office trying to break up organized crime rings. To the consternation of some liberals here, he has mobilized the military to do it, sending 6,000 troops into Tamaulipas state alone.
As those troops, along with thousands of federal agents, have begun putting pressure on drug gangs, the midlevel mobsters and hit men have put up a surprising amount of resistance. Again and again, they have chosen to fight it out rather than surrender.
They have ambushed and killed more than 20 police officers this year. In the past two weeks, four federal agents and three Baja California police commanders have been assassinated, along with the wife and child of one of them, apparently in retaliation for arrests, law enforcement officials said.
That violence has spread to the United States. On Saturday morning, drug-smuggling suspects from Mexico killed an American border patrol agent, Luis Aguilar, 32, when he tried to stop their cars in sand dunes about 20 miles west of Yuma, Ariz., then fled back across the border. Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said the killing demonstrated how Mexican criminal organizations had responded to the crackdown on their operations with increasing brutality.
“The Zetas are defying the state,” said Jorge Chabat, an expert on narcotics trafficking and security at CIDE, a Mexican research group. “This operation in the north of Mexico in recent days has no precedent.”
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Calderón’s strategy will work in the long run. Many of the nation’s most-wanted drug kingpins continue to elude federal forces, often with the help of local police officers.
Some federal officers admit privately that they face an uphill battle as long as local police officers continue to tip off drug gangs about their movements. The threat became clear on Saturday when federal officials arrested four local policemen in Nuevo Laredo, along with seven civilians, and charged them with feeding the Zetas information over police radio frequencies.
“You cannot count on the local police,” said a veteran federal inspector in Reynosa, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job. “The problem lies in the state police. They are completely at the service of these guys.”
In Tamaulipas state, just south of eastern Texas, the government’s focus has been on strangling the Zetas. Founded by former Mexican commandos trained in the United States, the Zetas have long been the professional assassins of the Gulf Cartel, which controls the flow of drugs along the Gulf Coast and across the Texas border. The group is believed to have scores of members, though the exact number is unknown.
The gunmen remain a formidable force, the authorities say. Federal police commanders in the state must stay on the move and keep their location secret to avoid assassination attempts. The state federal attorney general’s office has been vacant for months; officials in Mexico City say they are having trouble filling the post.
Edgar Millán, a federal police commander who is in charge of tracking down the Zetas, said a contingent of 1,200 officers in Tamaulipas searched every day for members of the group, hitting specific targets believed to be safe houses and watching for cars carrying gunmen.
The federal police also run a system of 10 checkpoints on major highways in the eastern half of the state. Most of the time, they stop cars with tinted windows that carry two or more young men, hoping to make it harder for the gunmen to move.
But the Zetas have a sophisticated spy network as well, Commander Millán said in an interview. They employ taxi drivers, store clerks, street vendors and members of the local police to keep them apprised of the movements of federal officers.
Several times in the past four months, the police have been close to capturing the leader of the cartel, Heriberto Lazcano, only to have him slip away at the last moment, Commander Millán said. Two other important reputed cartel leaders, Jorge Eduardo Costilla and Miguel Ángel Treviño, have also eluded capture.
While the Gulf Cartel leaders remain at large, the government scored a success in Sinaloa on Monday when it captured Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, one of five brothers who are high-ranking lieutenants in the Culiacan-based cartel.
Though the big bosses have slipped through the dragnet — the offensive that was started against the Zetas in late November after a prominent local politician was murdered in Río Bravo — it has paid off in many respects, officials said. The police have arrested about 40 reputed members of the gang and seized dozens of machine guns, rifles, side arms, grenades and boxes of ammunition.
The federal police have also begun to submit local police officers to a battery of tests to determine who might be linked to organized crime. Among the tests are polygraphs, drug tests and the vetting of personal finances. The goal is to weed out collaborators.
Many people here say they welcome the federal intervention, even if it means having columns of troops patrol their streets. But others voice doubt that government forces can ever stamp out the cartel, given its infiltration of the local police. All the federal forces have accomplished, they say, is unleashing more violence.
“Living in Mexico has become very difficult,” said one man who had been searched at a roadblock near Matamoros. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of drug dealers. “Even Colombia is looking better.”
Others complain that the presence of soldiers and federal agents, along with the gun battles, has scared away American tourists, an important source of income. Last year, about six million fewer people visited border towns than in 2006; hotel bookings are down and sales of package tours have fallen steeply, according to the Association of Mexican Hotels and Motels.
“A lot of people used to come over the border to eat and buy things,” said Alfredo Tantu, 40, the owner of El Cazador Restaurant near Río Bravo, as the smell of roasting baby goat wafted from his kitchen. “Now, almost no one comes because of all this police action.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/wo...mexico.html?hp
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A federal police officer escorts a man from one of two mansions in Mexico City where 11 suspected hit men allegedly linked to a seized suspected drug cartel leader were arrested.
January 23, 2008
MEXICO CITY -- Local police were relieved of duty Tuesday in the border cities of Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros and Reynosa as army troops disarmed the officers and searched for evidence that might link them to drug traffickers.
In Nuevo Laredo, soldiers surrounded police headquarters at 8 a.m. and ordered officers to remain inside. Federal troops conducted a similar operation in Tijuana last January, at the beginning of an offensive against Mexico's drug cartels and their allies in the police.
During the first 14 months of his rule, President Felipe Calderon has sent federal troops to at least half a dozen states, including Michoacan in the south and Veracruz on the Gulf. Calderon has vowed to break the power of the traffickers, who wield wide influence over local authorities and intimidate local news media.
At least two drug-trafficking organizations are fighting for control of Nuevo Laredo and its border crossings, a lucrative source of income for smugglers. President Vicente Fox, Calderon's predecessor, sent army troops there in 2005.
But the violence has continued unabated. Several observers in Nuevo Laredo say it is an open secret that many police officers cooperate with traffickers.
In an interview this month with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora acknowledged that the Calderon government's purges of federal, state and local police were only the beginning.
"There are municipal police forces that have collapsed and that function more as support staff to organized crime rather than as guardians of public safety," Medina Mora said.
Last week, federal police arrested 11 men in Nuevo Laredo, including four police officers, who were said to be operatives for the so-called Gulf cartel.
On Tuesday, all on-duty police officers were confined to their stations and none patrolled the city, according to news reports. About 300 troops of the army's elite Airborne Special Forces Group established checkpoints throughout the city.
"This is an action that is taking place with the full cooperation of the mayor," said Alberto Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Nuevo Laredo city government.
Mexican military officials said the army would patrol the city with the assistance of state and federal police but declined to comment further.
In Matamoros, 600 police officers were confined to stations and were being questioned by federal authorities, according to media reports.
The similar operation last year in Tijuana lasted three weeks, with more than 3,500 soldiers and federal agents sent into the city. Many police patrolled unarmed, and a few were seen with slingshots until their weapons were returned.
In the months since, violence there related to drug trafficking and organized crime has continued unabated.
At least 17 people were killed in the border city last week, including three senior police officials, one of whom was shot in his home alongside his wife and two daughters.
Federal officials have said privately that many of their most recent shootouts have been with operatives of the Gulf cartel, based in the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros. The cartel has been the most aggressive in efforts to conquer territory from rivals, officials say.
Army special forces troops Tuesday confiscated two dozen assault rifles in a Reynosa "safe house" said to belong to the Gulf cartel and its band of hit men, the Zetas.
A day earlier, federal agents arrested Alfredo Beltran Leyva, allegedly a leader in the so-called Sinaloa cartel, also known as the cartel of the Pacific. And 11 suspected hit men allegedly linked to Beltran Leyva were arrested Tuesday in two mansions on the southern edge of Mexico City.
The suspected cartel operatives were lined up in the living rooms of the two homes. Federal drug officials presented the men to local reporters alongside a small arsenal of seized weapons, including machine guns and grenades.
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Mexico Under Siege
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
February 25, 2008; Page A14
Mexico City
Perhaps it is a sign of a maturing electorate that Barack Obama's past drug use has not become a disqualifying factor in his bid for the presidency. It may signify that Americans are beginning to view the intake of mind-altering substances as a private decision.
For those who embrace the notion of personal responsibility, such a change in public attitudes might be considered progress. But in Mexico, what suggests an increase in tolerance of illegal drug use in the U.S. has a tragic flipside: the gut-wrenching violence that arises when demand meets prohibition. This country is paying dearly for that contradiction.
Under prohibition, only criminals can serve the market for illegal narcotics. And they have a lot of incentive to do so since prohibition pushes prices up. These market dynamics have given rise to transnational crime networks -- modern, savvy businesses run by ruthless killers bent on preserving their income. Anyone who tries to get in the way risks becoming a statistic. Last year in Mexico there were 2,713 homicides attributable to organized crime, up from 2,120 in 2006 -- according to the intelligence arm of the country's attorney general.
It's a pretty grim picture. Yet there is at least one man in Mexico who believes that it doesn't have to be this way. His name is Eduardo Medina Mora, and 14 months ago he chose to accept what some would regard as mission impossible: taking on the job of attorney general with the express goal of restoring order to a nation turned upside down by organized crime.
I interviewed him last year, just 100 days into his new job, and I met with him again two weeks ago to take a reading on progress. He reports that the Mexican state is reasserting itself, though he also warns that the battle is far from won.
Mr. Medina Mora suffers no illusions about his office's capacity to shut off the supply of drugs to the U.S., or for that matter in Mexico, where drug use is on the increase. That's a welcome relief: After decades of a war on drugs claiming thousands of innocent lives, poisoning institutions in developing countries, and raising the incentive for pushing narcotics on children -- all the while delivering not a modicum of success -- the argument for attacking supply to end demand is by now tedious.
Instead, Mr. Medina Mora is a realist. "The objective," he says, "cannot be destroying narcotrafficking or drug-related crime, because demand is inelastic." "It is very important not to lose perspective on the goal," he tells me. "Trying to get rid of consumption and trafficking is impossible, as a bold objective."
This in no way implies surrender on his part. What's important, he says, is that the goal be clearly understood. Instead of focusing on supply, he is concentrating on the suppliers, and specifically their ability to run business empires. It's about removing "the enormous economic and fire power" of the cartels which threaten the Mexican democracy, and "recovering the territory [controlled by organized crime] for the people and the state." This view is not unlike that of Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe, who has led the fight to end the tyranny of organized crime in some parts of his country.
In Mexico, Mr. Medina Mora continues, "there are areas where organized crime disputes the state's exclusive use of force and its power to collect taxes. They are not only shipping drugs but they are involved in extortion, prostitution rings, smuggling goods and people, stealing Pemex [the state-owned oil company] products, and forcing legal businesses to pay protection taxes."
The attorney general's strategy has been to hit these businesses where it hurts most: in their pocketbooks. By studying the way the narcotics market works, his office has used "operational mapping and mapping of their supply and distribution routes" to "put obstacles in the way and block traditional flows." This approach involves tighter controls on air traffic, better technology and smarter inspection systems for shipments from South America.
Mr. Medina Mora says the plan is working, and rattles off a string of captures and seizures, including some 10 drug-trafficking planes -- even one DC-9 -- large enough to carry up to five metric tons of cocaine. Last year he reeled in a 23.5 metric-ton shipment of cocaine coming by sea from the Colombian port of Buenaventura, and broke up a Mexico City operation that allegedly supplied "meth" producers annually with over 100 metric tons of the precursor pseudoephedrine.
The attorney general is rightly proud of this record, and says that lower availability has meant sharp increases in the street price of both cocaine and "meth" in 38 cities in the U.S. -- according to U.S. officials. Still, the seizure scorecard does nothing to prove progress in the battle against drug use, any more than body counts reveal who is winning a war. And as prices rise so do cartel incentives, particularly when demand is notoriously resistant to change.
But going by Mr. Medina Mora's measure of success -- which is damage to organized crime such that it ceases to dominate Mexican territory and society -- there may be progress. Unfortunately, he says, proof of that could come in the form of more violence in the short run. "When this kind of criminal network begins to collapse, the criminals go back to more primitive methods of crime -- kidnapping, car theft and extortion. They fragment and lose control; cells start operating on their own and fighting with each other. Turf becomes very important."
As if to prove his point, two days after we talked a bomb exploded in the trendy neighborhood of Zona Rosa here. A government investigation is ongoing, but there is reason to believe that the device was meant as payback to law enforcement for the arrest two days earlier of seven members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Mr. Medina Mora believes more could be done with greater international cooperation against money laundering, and with a U.S. effort to stem the flow of high-powered weapons into Mexico. Another way, which he is too polite to mention, would be for U.S. authorities to acknowledge that under present policies they are losing their drug war.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
WSJ
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Tijuana Lives up to Its Reputation
The violent city of Tijuana, Baja California state, more than lived up to its reputation for mayhem this past week thanks to a series of incidents that left more than a dozen people dead. In a March 3 incident that sparked a six-hour gunbattle, military forces responding to an anonymous tip arrived at a suspected safe-house only to be met with gunfire as they sought entry. The soldiers established a security cordon around the area and waited for army special forces. The military forces led the raid on the building, and detained several gunmen who had sheltered inside. Later in the week, a police patrol came under fire when it sought to stop a convoy of suspicious vehicles. In another incident, police reported the discovery of five kidnapping victims, including one teenager.
While these kinds of violent incidents have become routine for the city, organized criminal activity in Tijuana has become increasingly fractured over the years. Historically, the city’s criminal networks have been involved with the Arellano Felix crime family. Also known as the Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix organization at one time was among the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico. Following the arrest of several top members in the 1990s, however, the cartel lost much of its power. As a result, many of the smaller gangs that once worked for the cartel lost their source of income, and began expanding their operations to other activities to make money.
An Arellano Felix Brother Returns
The return of one of the cartel’s former leaders could change the equation. Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix was released from a U.S. prison this past week and deported to Mexico, where he became a free man for the first time since 1993. The oldest brother in the family, Francisco Rafael at one time was responsible for organizing cocaine purchases from Colombian suppliers. He was arrested in 1993 by police in Tijuana on weapons charges, and was behind bars in Mexico until 2006, when he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to six years for selling cocaine to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1980. Given credit for time served in Mexico, however, he was released after just two years.
Although Francisco Rafael has been out of the picture for 15 years, it seems likely that he will eventually go back to the family business. It is difficult to determine what impact this change will have on the cartel’s operations, however, especially since his return might not be welcomed by other criminal organizations in the city. One important area to watch is whether the cartel becomes involved in the cocaine business. It has been several years since the Tijuana cartel has been involved in large-scale independent cocaine trafficking, but it is possible that Francisco Rafael’s previous experience in coordinating cocaine purchases could be put to use again. While significant changes to Tijuana’s dynamic will not happen overnight, potential ramifications of the former leader’s return must be watched closely.
Targeting Small Gangs in Monterrey
Police in Nuevo Leon state launched an effort this past week to crack down on several small gangs in the Monterrey area that officials believe are connected to the Gulf cartel. In a series of raids, authorities detained more than 500 people as they swept through areas where these gangs are believed to be operating and selling drugs. But the raids did not produce the results that authorities were looking for. For example, 381 people — including many drug addicts — were detained in one raid, but only one pistol, small quantities of drugs and drug paraphernalia were seized. While it would not be surprising to learn gangs in the Monterrey area are connected with the Gulf cartel, there is no evidence these particular organizations did more than sell drugs on the street.
These raids represent one of the challenges authorities in Mexico face as they battle the country’s drug problem. While drug-dealing gangs like those targeted in Monterrey represent a public safety issue that must be addressed, focusing on them requires diverting people and resources from the mission of hunting down the members of the large cartels that are the heart of the problem.
March 3
One person died and several were wounded during a six-hour firefight between security forces and suspected drug gang members in Tijuana, Baja California.
Five bodies were discovered in a makeshift grave used by a drug-trafficking group in Chihuahua state.
The bodies of two men were found in two separate incidents in Mexico state. One victim had been shot in the head at close range while the other had been shot several times.
Ten assailants killed a candidate for local office in a small town in Guerrero state.
March 4
A raid on an alleged Gulf cartel safe-house in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, resulted in the seizure of seven firearms, 23 fragmentation grenades, nine armored vehicles and body armor.
Authorities in Tijuana, Baja California state, discovered the bodies of five people who had been abducted the day before. At least one of the victims was a minor.
The body of an unidentified man shot in the head at close range was found along a highway in Hidalgo state.
March 5
The bodies of three kidnapping victims were found in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state. The victims, one of whom was a minor, were abducted from their homes March 3.
A man in Tijuana, Baja California state, died after being shot twice in the head while walking.
A Durango state police officer died outside his home when he was shot at least 70 times by gunmen traveling in two vehicles.
A police commander in Nuevo Leon escaped unharmed from an assassination attempt by three men who pursued him as he left work.
A firefight in Torreon, Coahuila state, between military forces and suspected gang members left one gang member dead and another wounded.
Gunmen fired on a group of police officers assigned to a congressman’s protective detail in Oaxaca state. Three officers were wounded; the congressman was not in the city at the time of the attack.
Police in Tijuana, Baja California state, exchanged gunfire with armed assailants traveling in three vehicles.
March 6
The bodies of three unidentified victims were found outside the office of the attorney general in Oaxaca state.
March 7
Authorities in Tijuana, Baja California state, announced the arrest of three men in possession of nearly 100 firearms, 50,000 rounds of ammunition, 23 grenades, and half a ton of marijuana.
Authorities in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima state, seized more than $11 million in $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills in a shipping container aboard a freight ship. The seizure took place after a routine inspection of the ship — which was headed to Panama — revealed irregularities in the container’s paperwork.
A police commander in Oaxaca state was shot dead while sitting in a park cleaning his shoes.
March 8
One soldier and six gunmen were reported dead after a firefight in Chihuahua state.
Two police officers in Jalisco state died when assailants fired on them with automatic weapons.
March 9
A taxi driver in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, was shot dead by a group of gunmen traveling in a vehicle.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/15/AR2008031501013.html
Drug Trade Tyranny on The Border
Mexican Cartels Maintain Grasp With Weapons, Cash and Savagery
Gallery
In Mexico, a Fight Against Drugs and Fear
Drawing on firepower, savage intimidation, and cash, drug cartels have come
to control key parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, as Mexican troops wage a
multi-front war with the private armies of rival drug lords.
» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 16, 2008; Page A01
TIJUANA, Mexico
The killers prowled through Loma Bonita in the pre-dawn chill.
In silence, they navigated a labyrinth of wood shacks at the crest of a dirt
lane in the blighted Tijuana neighborhood, police say. They were looking for
Margarito Saldaña, an easygoing 43-year-old district police commander. They
found a house full of sleeping people.
Neighbors quivered at the crack of AK-47 assault rifles blasting inside
Saldaña's tiny home. Rafael García, an unemployed laborer who lives nearby,
recalled thinking it was "a fireworks show," then sliding under his bed in
fear.
In murdering not only Saldaña, but also his wife, Sandra, and their
12-year-old daughter, Valeria, the Loma Bonita killers violated a rarely
broken rule of Mexico's drug cartel underworld: Family should remain free
from harm. The slayings capped five harrowing hours during which the
assassins methodically hunted down and murdered two other police officers
and mistakenly killed a 3-year-old boy and his mother.
The brutality of what unfolded here in the overnight hours of Jan. 14 and
early Jan. 15 is a grim hallmark of a crisis that has cast a pall over the
United States' southern neighbor. Events in three border cities over the
past three months illustrate the military and financial power of Mexico's
cartels and the extent of their reach into a society shaken by fear.
More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal police are engaged in a
multi-front war with the private armies of rival drug lords, a conflict that
is being waged most fiercely along the 2,000-mile length of the U.S.-Mexico
border. The proximity of the violence has drawn in the Bush administration,
which has proposed a $500 million annual aid package to help President
Felipe Calder¿n combat what a Government Accountability Office report
estimates is Mexico's $23 billion a year drug trade.
A total of more than 4,800 Mexicans were slain in 2006 and 2007, making the
murder rate in each of those years twice that of 2005. Law enforcement
officials and journalists, politicians and peasants have been gunned down in
the wave of violence, which includes mass executions, such as the killings
of five people whose bodies were found on a ranch outside Tijuana this
month.
Like the increasing number of Mexicans heading over the border in fear, the
violence itself is spilling into the United States, where a Border Patrol
agent was recently killed while trying to stop suspected traffickers.
Drawing on firepower, savage intimidation and cash, the cartels have come to
control key parts of the border, securing smuggling routes for 90 percent of
the cocaine flowing into the United States, according to the State
Department. At the same time, Mexican soldiers roam streets in armored
personnel carriers, attack helicopters patrol the skies, and boats ply the
coastal waters.
"The situation is deteriorating," Victor Clark, a Tijuana human rights
activist and drug expert, said in an interview. "Drug traffickers are waging
a terror campaign. The security of the nation is at stake."
Dominated by a Private Army
More than 1,900 miles southeast of Tijuana, the city of Reynosa stretches
along the Rio Grande across from south Texas. This is Gulf cartel country, a
region dominated by the cartel's private army, Los Zetas. Their arsenal
befits a military brigade, exceeding those of some Mexican army units.
===============
Led by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, Los Zetas are a highly disciplined
mercenary squad composed of former elite Mexican troops, including officers
trained by the U.S. military before they deserted. The group has become an
obsession of Calderon's administration, which has sent more than a thousand
troops to Reynosa and neighboring cities.
Soldiers crowd the slender canal bridges that crisscross Reynosa, stopping
drivers at random and staring across the cityscape with their fingers on the
triggers of heavy weapons. The tense atmosphere has led to mistakes.
On Feb. 16, soldiers fatally shot Sergio Meza Varela, a 28-year-old with no
apparent ties to the drug trade, when the car he was riding in didn't stop
at a checkpoint. "You're scared to leave your house," Alejandra Salinas,
Meza's cousin, said in an interview outside the family tire shop. "We're
just in the way."
In Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, the growing Sinaloa cartel is
fighting rivals over smuggling routes. But in Reynosa, police say, only
Mexican soldiers threaten the Gulf cartel's control.
To prepare for battle, Los Zetas have stocked safe houses with antitank
weapons, assault rifles, grenades and other heavy weapons, including some
that Mexican law enforcement authorities believe once belonged to the U.S.
Army.
"How can I fight them?" said Juan Jose Muniz Salinas, Reynosa's police
chief. "It's impossible."
On Feb. 7, soldiers stormed the dusty "El Mezquito" ranch outside Miguel
Aleman, west of Reynosa, and found one of the largest illegal arsenals in
recent memory: 89 assault rifles, 83,355 rounds of ammunition, and plastic
explosives capable of demolishing buildings. Two days later in nearby Nuevo
Laredo, soldiers found a weapons cache that included eight military uniforms
to be used as disguises.
The mounting evidence that cartels have infiltrated many border police
forces has prompted drastic action.
In Reynosa, soldiers disarmed the entire police force in January, leaving
them without weapons for 19 days while ballistics tests were conducted.
Police officers, who make $625 a month, were also forced to provide voice
samples for comparison with recordings of threats made over police radios,
Mayor Oscar Luebbert Guti¿rrez said in an interview.
"It wasn't worth it," said Mu¿iz Salinas, the police chief. "They come after
us, but it's other authorities that are really involved. Look at the state
police, the federal police and the military."
The Enemy Is in the House
It was New Year's Day in Tijuana, the hilly city at America's busiest border
crossing. City workers prepped for celebrations, but Jesus Alberto Rodriguez
Meraz and Saul Ovalle Guerrero, both veteran police officers, had other
plans.
They were going to get rich.
==================
The officers stole one ton of marijuana from the Arellano Felix drug cartel.
But before they could sell the load they were kidnapped. Four days later
their bodies were found, Tijuana's new police chief, Jesus Alberto Capella,
said in an interview.
The killings barely registered in Mexico, numbed by an avalanche of at least
30 police officer murders in the past three months and dozens more in the
past year. Their case illuminates the pervasive police corruption created by
drug money.
One of every two police officers murdered in Mexico today is directly
involved with drug gangs, according to estimates by police officials,
prosecutors and drug experts.
Capella, nicknamed "Tijuana Rambo" because he fought his way out of an
assassination attempt shortly before taking office, estimates that 15
percent of the city's 2,300 police officers work for drug cartels, earning a
monthly stipend as body guards, kidnappers or assassins. In Baja California
alone, Mexican justice officials estimate that 30 percent of the local and
federal police force is on a cartel payroll.
"We have the enemy in our house," Capella said.
The killings in Loma Bonita here were related to a police corruption case,
Capella and other police officials said. A few days earlier, Tijuana police
had killed an officer working as a bodyguard for a drug gang that tried to
rob an armored car.
Cartel assassins, using police radios, vowed revenge. Within a week,
Saldana, his family, and two other officers had been murdered.
Some of the killings have come with specific messages taunting Mexican
author ities.
During one week in mid-February, six bodies were found with signs lashed to
them that included information such as the phone number and address of the
Mexican army office set up to receive tips about organized crime. According
to analysts, such "narco-messages," some of which are carved into the
bodies, are intended to keep residents from reporting tips.
The decline of the Arellano Felix cartel's dominance of Tijuana has had the
unexpected effect of deepening police corruption.
After one brother was assassinated and two others were arrested, a war
erupted because the cartel's new leadership -- including a sister,
Enedina -- refused to share territory with the Sinaloa cartel, a police
official said on condition of anonymity. Once loyal to the Arellano Felix
cartel, some police officers switched sides.
"The police became armed wings of the warring cartels," the police official
said.
===================
At the same time, tighter border enforcement following the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks has made it harder for cartels to smuggle drugs into the
United States. So the cartels developed a local market by giving out free
samples of drugs, according to Clark, the Tijuana-based drug expert and
human rights activist.
The estimated number of addicts in Tijuana doubled from 100,000 in 2004 to
200,000 in 2007, Clark said. The number of small stores or houses where
drugs are sold increased fivefold -- to 20,000 outlets -- over that time.
Each outlet pays protection money to police, so their proliferation meant
more payoffs.
In response, authorities in Baja California and several other border states
have begun giving police lie-detector tests. The questions range from the
innocuous to queries such as "Have you ever worked with a drug trafficker?"
Rommel Moreno Manjarrez, Baja California's attorney general, said in an
interview that out of every 1,000 officers tested, 700 fail.
"It's impossible for the narco to succeed without the help of the police,"
he said. "The success that the narco has been having is because of the
police."
Transformed by Drug Money
About 20 minutes south of Tijuana, high-rise condominiums line the coast
near Rosarito Beach. Once a sleepy hideaway for Hollywood stars, the town
had over time exploded into a gaudy party magnet, drawing tourists to the
beach and the studio where the movies "Titanic" and "Master and Commander"
were filmed.
Rosarito's further transformation has been propelled by drug money and
culture, turning the surfer's haven into a key transshipment point for
cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines. City hall is now an armed
encampment. Soldiers in armored personnel carriers guard the front entrance.
The new police chief, Jorge Eduardo Montero Alvarez, now occupies an office
inside the cordon. His headquarters was rendered uninhabitable by a December
attack.
Investigators believe Rosarito Beach police -- working on behalf of the drug
gangs -- were behind the attack, which killed one of Montero Alvarez's
bodyguards. Days later, Mexican soldiers disarmed the entire 149-officer
Rosarito police force.
"I'm more afraid of the police than the narcos," said Jorge Luis Quinones, a
Rosarito Beach physician and businessman, reflecting a feeling that has
built for years among many of the surrounding area's 150,000 residents.
In June 2006, three Rosarito Beach police officers were beheaded. For Hugo
Torres Chabert, scion of the wealthy family that founded the famed Rosarito
Beach Hotel, it was a grim wakeup call.
Convinced that almost every level of the city's government had become
tainted with drug money, Torres Chabert ran for mayor and won. Soon after
taking office last December, he fired 80 of the city's 500 employees. But he
says he hasn't been able to press for arrests for lack of evidence.
=================
"They were corrupt, but not stupid," he said.
To the children of Rosarito Beach, narco gunmen had already became local
heroes because they drove the fanciest cars, wore the latest styles and
acted like they owned the town. "Black commandos," the drug cartel hit men,
began openly flashing their weapons, snorting cocaine and strutting through
the beach town.
"It became impossible to avoid drug dealers -- your kids go to school with
their kids," Aurelio Casta¿eda, a Rosarito Beach bar owner and merchants
association official, said in an interview. "You'd go to a bathroom in a
bar, and they'd be selling cocaine. They don't even try to hide it, and
there was nothing you could do about it, nobody you could turn to."
Castaneda's once-busy bar, El Torito, is often empty. He says his business
is down 80 percent since 2001, when Rosarito Beach's drug violence spiked,
scaring off most surfers and other tourists.
Beyond the flash of the bars and hotels, Rosarito Beach is a warren of
impoverished neighborhoods where developers, after paying off city
officials, did not bother to install water lines or electrical connections.
The dismal living conditions created fertile recruiting grounds for drug
traffickers, who have found many willing to "mule" their product across the
border for $500 a trip.
But great quantities of drugs stay in Rosarito and are sold at hundreds of
convenience stores or private homes that thrive under police protection. Not
long ago, a Baja California journalist began digging into the problem. The
cartels found out and, in a series of phone calls, threatened to kill him.
It wasn't the first time. He'd had enough. Terrified, the journalist left
the business.
"I was saying to myself, 'This is an important subject,' " the journalist
said on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety. "But I wasn't
willing to lose my life over it."
-
Mexico Security Memo: April 14, 2008
Stratfor Today » April 14, 2008 | 1952 GMT
Related Links
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Operation Chihuahua continues
The security operation that began March 31 in Chihuahua state made little significant progress this past week, echoing a theme that has developed in previous security operations elsewhere in the country. Although the number of drug-related killings has declined since federal forces arrived in the state, the problem has not disappeared, with approximately 10 homicides reported in the area since April 1. Public security in general faces a challenge, as many police units in the state reportedly have stopped conducting routine patrols. As a result, residents in Ciudad Juarez have reported an increase in the number of car thefts and the kidnapping of small-business owners in the downtown area, including those having auto parts stores, restaurants and hardware stores. An official from the state attorney general’s office said the kidnappings could be intended to scare the wealthier business community into paying its “protection” fees to organized crime groups in the city.
Although arrests of high-value Juarez cartel targets have not occurred, the government has claimed several victories that will impact the organization’s capabilities. For example, in what appears to have been a well-planned operation, eight cartel suspects were arrested at the funeral of one of their fellow members this past week. Following aerial surveillance of the cemetery, army special forces descended on the site via helicopter while being fired on by the funeral party. Meanwhile, troops on the ground secured the cemetery’s perimeter and eventually captured all suspects present. The high priority placed on these kinds of operations helps to explain the poor public security in a city being patrolled by the military. Operations such as this require a significant commitment of manpower and resources — and they are a much higher priority for Mexico City than is preventing car thefts.
Mexico’s national defense secretary, citing intelligence acquired by the military, announced this week that the Juarez cartel has plans to undermine the military’s credibility by committing violent crimes against the population while dressed in military uniforms and driving trucks painted to look like government vehicles. He warned that the cartel plans to commit sexual assaults while conducting fake searches of homes, businesses and nightclubs, and then videotape the acts to later leak to the media or post online.
There is no doubt that the Juarez cartel — or other large criminal groups in Mexico — has access to military and law enforcement uniforms and credentials. Cartel members also routinely conduct kidnappings, targeted assassinations and other attacks while purporting to be legitimate authorities. However, a move to begin targeting the civilian population with the specific intention of undermining the government’s credibility would indicate a further shift by the cartels toward insurgent-style tactics.
There is reason, however, to doubt the credibility of the secretary’s statement, which comes as the military is under increasing political scrutiny for alleged human rights abuses. A series of high-profile incidents over the past year involving the unwarranted use of force against civilians has the potential to upset the military’s position as one of the most respected institutions in Mexico. One possibility, then, is that the secretary’s announcement is intended to allow plausible deniability of any future embarrassing incidents involving military personnel. The move could backfire, however, as it will result in a more wary public in areas where the military is currently operating — exacerbating already tense relations in areas where it most needs the cooperation of the population to succeed.
Juarez cartel shifting tactics?
The leftist militant group Democratic Revolutionary Tendency-People’s Army (TDR-EP) released a video message last week opposing the privatization of Mexico’s state-run oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), an idea currently being debated in Mexico City. TDR-EP previously claimed joint responsibility for a series of small bombings in Mexico City in November 2006, though the group’s operational role in the incident is considered to be small to nonexistent. However, the statement echoes a recent message by the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which carried out several successful attacks against Pemex oil pipelines in 2007.
While President Felipe Calderon’s proposed energy reform plan has stirred up heated political debate, it also has the potential to spark a new round of pipeline attacks. Pemex increased its security at many of its facilities in 2007, but the EPR attacks against remote pipelines demonstrated that it is impossible to protect all of the company’s infrastructure. Aside from an unclaimed bank bombing in Mexico City on March 30, EPR has been noticeably — and inexplicably — inactive since the last round of Pemex attacks Sept. 10, suggesting that the group has lost members or resources, affecting its capabilities. However, the intensified debate over energy reform might be all that is needed to begin planning the next attack.
April 7
A group of armed men threw several fragmentation grenades at police during a pursuit in Salvatierra, Guanajuato state.
Authorities in the state have noted an increase in the frequency of grenade attacks over the last several weeks.
Authorities in Acapulco, Guerrero state, discovered the bodies of two unidentified individuals bound at the hands and with gunshot wounds to the head. The bodies were found buried approximately nine feet under a building, and were estimated to have died about a year ago.
The body of a federal agent who had been kidnapped the day before was found in Tijuana, Baja California state, with a gunshot wound to the head and signs of torture.
A man carrying false documents identifying him as a federal law enforcement agent was shot to death by a group of gunmen that fired more than 50 rounds at his vehicle in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Two female reporters from a radio station were shot to death while traveling in a vehicle in Putla de Guerrero, Oaxaca state.
Gunmen traveling in a vehicle fired several shots at a government building in Rosarito, Baja California state.
April 8
Two presumed drug dealers were shot to death by a group of armed men in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state.
Officials from Laredo, Texas, met with their counterparts in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, to discuss a plan to improve security in the two cities. In addition to narcotics trafficking, the officials discussed frequent bomb threats on the international bridges and the recent influx of heavily tattooed members of the Mexican Mara criminal gang.
A bodyguard of the Sinaloa state treasurer died after being shot in the back by several armed men while he was arriving at his home with his 3-year-old son in Culiacan, Sinaloa state.
Several armed men entered a hospital in Navolato, Sinaloa state, and shot a patient who had been admitted several days before after he was wounded in a gun attack.
April 9
Residents in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, reported gunshots fired on their home by several unidentified assailants traveling in a vehicle.
A man was shot to death outside a health club in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, a day after he escaped a kidnapping attempt.
Four suspects were detained following a firefight outside a police station in Tijuana, Baja California state. Authorities said the attack on the building came after police arrested a man and impounded his vehicle.
April 10
Three people, including one minor, traveling together in a vehicle were shot to death by armed assailants in a suburb of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. The driver of the vehicle reportedly returned fire briefly before he died.
The bodies of two men with gunshot wounds were found in a vehicle in Guadalupe Distrito Bravo, Chihuahua state.
Authorities in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state, found the body of a man who appeared to have been killed in another location.
A Baja California state police officer died after he was shot by several armed men while he was driving to work in the border city of Mexicali.
April 11
The bodies of two men who had been abducted several days earlier were found in plastic bags and bound at the hands along a highway in Navolato, Sinaloa state.
April 12
The bodies of three men who had been shot to death in separate incidents were found in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state.
A deputy police chief in Tijuana, Baja California state, was wounded along with a bodyguard after they engaged a group of armed assailants that entered his home, presumably to assassinate him. At least two of the gunmen were killed. The attackers reportedly arrived at his home during a child’s party.
April 13
A police commander died after he was shot by several armed men just north of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
A large banner hung over a street in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, said in part, “Los Zetas operational group wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer you good pay, food, and attention to your family. No longer suffer mistreatment or hunger. “The banner included a telephone number to call for more details. A similar banner appeared the day before in Reynosa.
stratfor
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041901916.html?hpid=sec-world
From Mexico, Drug Violence Spills Into U.S.
Brutality Gives Rise to Formidable New Problems for Both Countries
PUERTO PALOMAS, Mexico -- Javier Emilio Pérez Ortega, a workaholic Mexican police chief, showed up at the sleepy, two-lane border crossing here last month and asked U.S. authorities for political asylum.
Behind him, law and order was vanishing fast. In the four months he had served as Puerto Palomas police chief, drug traffickers had threatened to kill him and his officers if they tried to block the flow of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States, his former colleagues said on condition of anonymity.
After a particularly menacing telephone call, his 10-man force resigned en masse. His bodyguards quit, too. Abandoned by his men and unable to trust the notoriously corrupt Mexican authorities, Pérez Ortega turned to the only place he believed he could find refuge -- the United States, the former colleagues said.
As President Bush meets this week with Mexican President Felipe Calderón in New Orleans, the repercussions of Mexico's battle with drug cartels are increasingly gushing into the United States, giving rise to thorny new problems for Mexican and U.S. officials, as well as the millions of people who live along the border.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in January while chasing suspected traffickers fleeing back to Mexico, AK-47 bullets have been found a half-mile inside U.S. territory after shootouts in Mexican border towns, and wounded Mexican police have been taken to the United States for treatment at heavily guarded hospitals.
Here in Puerto Palomas, a wind-swept desert town south of Columbus, N.M., spillover from Mexico's drug war is measured in bullet-pocked bodies. In the past year, at least 10 gunshot victims have been dumped at the border checkpoint -- taken there by friends or colleagues who believed their only hope of survival lay across the border.
In the calculus of U.S.-Mexican border relations, the living were rushed to medical treatment -- sometimes with law enforcement escorts -- but the dead were not allowed across. Either way, the fallout from Mexico's drug war was being dropped at the doorstep of the United States.
"Mexico's problem is Sheriff Cobos's problem," Sheriff Raymond Cobos, whose jurisdiction in Luna County, N.M., stretches to the border with Puerto Palomas, said in an interview. "No doubt about it."
Cobos ordered a major state highway closed after shootouts in Puerto Palomas and recently sent deputies to monitor the funeral in Columbus of a Mexican man killed in Puerto Palomas. His force goes on alert when drug gangs start shooting in Puerto Palomas, deploying with semiautomatic weapons to the lonely roads and cactus-dotted expanses on the U.S. side of the border. Gunfire is often heard by residents of Columbus, as well as by Border Patrol agents, who have significantly increased their vigilance.
More than 130 miles of rough driving from Ciudad Juarez, Puerto Palomas was once known as a placid outpost marred only occasionally by violence. But since the beginning of the year, more than 30 people have been killed in the town, Puerto Palomas Mayor Estanislao García said in an interview.
Puerto Palomas became strategically important because Ciudad Juarez, the traditional drug-trafficking hub, has been inundated with Mexican army troops sent to contain a war between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels blamed for more than 200 deaths this year.
The cartels probably knew that the Mexican military was coming months before its arrival in late March and saw Puerto Palomas as an acceptable alternative, a high-ranking Mexican federal government official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the campaign against cartels.
"They have their own intelligence operations," the official said of the cartels. "For them, it's like a chess game."
The cartels quickly brought daylight gunfights to the streets and dumped victims around town. In March, Eddie Espinoza, the Columbus mayor, was in a dentist's chair in Puerto Palomas when armed gunmen stormed the office, making off with $2,000.
"They're getting brazen down there," Espinoza, who was unhurt, told reporters.
In the past two years, as cartels spread terror, the population dropped from 12,000 to 7,500, García said. Row after row of abandoned houses line eerily quiet neighborhoods. Tourists, the town's lifeblood, have stopped coming.
"When people stay here, they don't go down to Mexico anymore," Martha Skinner, a former Columbus mayor who owns a bed-and-breakfast three miles from the Mexican border, said in an interview. "They're afraid."
On March 17, several Puerto Palomas police officers quit after being threatened by drug traffickers. García said the officers believed that they were targeted because of an inaccurate Mexican newspaper article that implied they would confront drug gangs.
Within several hours, the entire police force had resigned, rendering the town lawless. Even Pérez Ortega, the stern police chief, left to seek asylum. He awaits a decision in a federal detention center and could not be reached for comment.
Palomas recently recruited a new police chief and nine officers, but they have only two revolvers and two assault rifles for the entire force. The drug traffickers tote automatic weapons and grenades. "Trying to fight the drug traffickers would be like a race in which I was on foot and they were in a car," Salomón Baca, Puerto Palomas's new police chief, said in an interview.
Baca, like his officers, has refused to move his family to Puerto Palomas. The officers all sleep on cots crammed into a backroom of the police station.
Baca, who hopes to move to the United States, is hopeful that his old friend Pérez Ortega will get asylum. For many here, especially as border towns have become shooting galleries, flight to the United States is an ever more pressing dream. But moving north sometimes creates as many problems as it solves.
In 2000, Mauricio Rubio, then a Puerto Palomas police officer, sought asylum. He had been arrested by Mexican state police after helping a New Mexico sheriff's official arrest two men outside Puerto Palomas. The men were suspected of killing a woman in Deming, N.M., and presumably were being protected by corrupt Mexican police.
Rubio and the New Mexico sheriff's official, who also was detained, were released after U.S. diplomats intervened. Afraid that corrupt police would kill him, Rubio and his family asked for, and were granted, permission to live in the United States. But within days, his family was falling apart.
"My daughters were crying all the time, yelling at me and saying, 'Why did you have to get involved in things you shouldn't have been getting involved in?' " Rubio, who now lives in New Mexico, said in an interview.
His wife left him six months later. Since then, he has pined for the cozy feel of his Mexican neighborhood, where everyone knew him. But he is afraid to return -- in the months before he fled, 11 friends in the Ciudad Juarez police force were murdered.
Cobos, the Luna County sheriff, said it is likely that more Mexican police will seek asylum in coming months and years, as the war between drug cartels that has cost more than 5,000 lives in the past two years shows no sign of abating. Asylum requests are long shots at best -- of the 2,611 requests from Mexicans in 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, 48 were granted.
Cobos considers Mexican police officers, especially those who assist U.S. law enforcement in drug cases, perfectly suitable candidates for asylum. But he also worries that increasingly brazen drug cartels will simply slip across the border in pursuit of Mexican police given refuge there and that he is not equipped to combat them.
For that reason, Cobos has a blunt message to any Mexican policeman who wants to live in his county: "I don't want you around."
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0421zetas0421.html
Mexican soldiers recruited to be drug cartel's hit men
Chris Hawley
Mexico City Bureau
Apr. 21, 2008 12:00 AM
MEXICO CITY - One of Mexico's biggest drug cartels has launched a bizarre recruiting campaign, putting up fliers and banners promising good pay, free cars and better chow to army soldiers who join the cartel's elite band of hit men.
"We don't feed you Maruchan soups," said the banner in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, referring to a brand of ramen noodles.
The recruiting effort by the Gulf Cartel reflects how Mexico's fight against traffickers increasingly resembles a real war, 17 months after President Felipe Calderón ordered the army into drug hotspots. Smugglers are now training for battle in shooting ranges, using psychological warfare and fighting the army with machine guns and grenades. advertisementOAS_AD('ArticleFlex_1')
"Army and police-force conflicts with heavily armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat," the U.S. Embassy said last week in a travel warning to Americans.
Earlier this month, fliers began appearing in the border city of Reynosa in Tamaulipas state urging soldiers to defect. They were pasted on telephone poles over government posters that offered rewards to drug informants.
Benefits for recruits
"Former soldiers sought to form armed group; good pay, 500 dollars," the fliers said.
On April 13, a 10-foot-long banner appeared on a pedestrian bridge over Nuevo Laredo's Reforma Avenue, urging soldiers to join the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel's hit squad.
"The Zetas operations group wants you, soldier or ex-soldier," the banner said. "We offer you a good salary, food and attention for your family. Don't suffer hunger and abuse any more."
It listed a cellular-telephone number, which had been disconnected a few days later. The banner was taken down a few hours after it was spotted.
Last Thursday, another banner appeared in the city of Tampico urging soldiers and federal agents to defect.
"Join the ranks of the Gulf Cartel," it said. "We offer benefits, life insurance, a house for your family and children. Stop living in the slums and riding the bus. A new car or truck, your choice.
"What more could you ask for? Tamaulipas, Mexico, the USA and the entire world is Gulf Cartel territory."
Authorities said the signs were probably an attempt to demoralize the soldiers and police, rather than a serious recruiting effort.
"They do these things in public places to create confusion among the authorities themselves," said Ruben Salinas, commander of the Reynosa police department's second division.
Still, recent arrests have shown that defections are a real danger. On Thursday, federal agents detained the Reynosa police commissioner himself, Juan José Muñiz, for questioning because of evidence he was protecting the Zetas, the Mexican Justice Department said. He has not been formally charged.
Military experts said the recruiting campaign, whether genuine or simply aimed at sowing discontent, shows the increasing sophistication of the cartels.
"This is combat between two forces, one regular and one irregular," said Jorge Luis Sierra, a military expert and author of a book about the Mexican special forces.
In recent months:
• Five former cartel recruits identified at least six military-style training sites in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states, the Dallas Morning News reported on March 30. It cited written testimony from the witnesses that was leaked from the Mexican Justice Department.
• On Jan. 19, police discovered a 50-foot-long target range, complete with soundproofing foam, a ventilation system for gun smoke and buckets for spent cartridges, hidden under a house in Tijuana. The house also had a machine shop for assembling and repairing weapons.
• Soldiers on March 17 seized a Jeep Grand Cherokee outfitted with a smoke-screen generator, bulletproofing and a device for spraying spikes onto the road. The vehicle was abandoned by gunmen following a shootout with the army in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
• On Wednesday, Mexican prosecutors formally charged five municipal police officers with being Zetas in the northern state of Coahuila.
• Former Mexican soldier Daniel "Cheeks" Pérez Rojas was captured in Guatemala on April 8 in connection with a shootout there that killed 11 people in Guatemala in March. The Mexican Justice Department says Pérez Rojas is a Zetas leader and that the shootout, some 900 miles from the Gulf Cartel's home turf, showed the international reach of the hit squad. Much of the cocaine smuggled by the Mexican cartels moves first through Central America.
Troop retention
Many of the Zetas are former members of the Mexican army's special forces, the U.S. Justice Department has said.
Some, like Pérez Rojas, came from the Special Forces Airborne Groups, or GAFES, which received U.S. training and surplus American "Huey" helicopters in the 1990s.
Most of the Vietnam War-era helicopters were eventually returned to the United States because of chronic mechanical problems, leaving the commandos frustrated and with few opportunities for advancement. A few decided to switch sides, Sierra said.
The Mexican military has long had a problem with desertion. Between January and September 2007 alone, some 4,956 army soldiers deserted,about 2.5 percent of the force,according to the National Defense Secretariat.
Soldiers are facing more incentive to switch sides because of Calderón's decision to use troops against the drug traffickers, said Arturo Alvarado, a sociologist who studies criminal-justice issues at the College of Mexico.
Calderón began dispatching troops to patrol Tijuana, Juarez, Michoacan state and other trafficking corridors shortly after taking office in December 2006.
Thousands of soldiers have spent months away from their families, patrolling border cities. An army private earns an average of $533 a month, the National Defense Secretariat said in response to a freedom-of-information request in February.
"I don't see why these supposed recruiting (signs) should be a particular worry to the government because the recruiting occurs in other ways," Alvarado said.
"But what's true is that there is enormous desertion in the Mexican army and police force. They should be worried about that and take action to offer better working conditions."
__________________
What use is it to speak of freedom, if people are afraid to make sacrifices for it?
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20...latchy/2917333
By Franco Ordonez, McClatchy NewspapersTue Apr 22, 3:56 PM ET
JUAREZ, Mexico — Daniel Escobedo was driving to school when he stopped for what he thought was a security check at a roadblock in the Mexican city of Juarez , across the border from El Paso, Texas .
Worried about being late for class, he hurriedly handed his driver's license to the two uniformed men, who he thought were police officers.
Moments later, two dark SUVs screeched to a halt. Armed masked men jumped out and grabbed Escobedo, 21. He spent the next six weeks blindfolded, shuttled between safe houses while a drug-gang leader negotiated a ransom with his father, who's a lawyer. He was beaten, shocked and burned until his rescue April 1 by Mexican soldiers who'd been tipped that drug dealers were using the house.
"For a month and a half, I thought I was going to die," Escobedo said.
He's one of a growing number of kidnapping victims here as Mexico's drug gangs seek new business to replace lucrative drug smuggling, which has become more dangerous as Mexican authorities pursue the largest anti-drug-trafficking effort ever in the country.
Corporate security experts estimate that drug gangs are now responsible for 30 to 50 kidnappings a day in Mexico and that ransoms often run to $300,000 if the victim is returned alive. They often hold several victims at a time. Two other victims were being held with Escobedo.
"The narco-kidnappers are not looking for chump change," said Felix Batista , a Miami -based corporate-security and crisis-management consultant who's negotiated the releases of dozens of kidnapping victims throughout Mexico .
"It's a pretty darn good side business."
The phenomenon is spilling over into the United States . Phoenix police investigated more than 350 kidnappings last year, a 40 percent increase from the year before. Most are tied to crackdowns in Mexico , said Detective Reuben Gonzales of the Phoenix police department.
The rise in kidnapping helped prompt a recent warning from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City about the dangers Americans might face as they travel in Mexico . "Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007," across from San Diego , according to the advisory, which was issued April 15 . "Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas."
Mexican officials say the wave of kidnappings is a sign that drug traffickers have been squeezed by President Felipe Calderon's yearlong offensive against smugglers. The president has dispatched 20,000 soldiers around the country to confront what had been growing drug violence that had pushed the number of kidnappings, murders and arms-smuggling cases to record levels.
"Drug trafficking is not producing for them as it did in the past," Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said last month in Washington . "So they are moving into other crimes, such as extortion, kidnapping, car theft."
However, the rise in kidnappings also shows that Mexico's law enforcement problems go beyond narcotics. Distrust of the police, who may be involved in some of the abductions, and fear that victims will be harmed make kidnapping one of Mexico's most underreported crimes.
Mexican officials say that only a third of kidnappings are reported to police, but corporate experts say it's more like one in 10. A public opinion survey by the Center for Social and Public Opinion Studies , an arm of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, found that only 52 percent of Mexican citizens "very probably" would report being crime victims.
"People perceive the justice system is not trustworthy," said Eduardo Rojas , the director of the center's public opinion department. "The failure to report is related to the perception of inefficiency, corruption and injustice that exists in the penal justice system."
That means that drug gangs can kidnap almost with impunity.
Escobedo's father, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern that the kidnappers would target him next, never reported his son's abduction to police after the kidnappers used the young man's cell phone to contact his father. Via a text message, they demanded $100,000 for the student's release. One message, which Escobedo's father showed to McClatchy , read, "if you love your son a lot, find it in cash."
His father was collecting money from friends and relatives to pay the ransom when he received a call from the military at 5 a.m. on April 1 . The soldiers said they'd found his son, who showed his father scabs on his nose, legs, and arms that documented the torture.
"It was 40 days of suffering," his father recalled. "It was 40 days, believe me, that I couldn't sleep, waiting for the kidnappers to contact me again. . . . It was so many days of terror until my son was returned."
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May 8, 2008
Acting Head of Mexico’s Police Killed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:31 p.m. ET
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's acting federal police chief was shot dead Thursday outside his home -- a brazen attack that comes as drug traffickers increasingly lash back at a nationwide crackdown on organized crime.
Edgar Millan Gomez was shot 10 times after he opened the door to his Mexico City apartment complex, where at least one gunman was waiting for him before dawn, the Public Safety Department said. Two bodyguards were also wounded. Millan died hours later in a hospital.
President Felipe Calderon's government said Millan played a vital role in the country's battle against organized crime and denounced ''this cowardly killing of an exemplary official.'' Millan, 41, was named acting chief of the federal police March 1 after his superior was promoted to a deputy Cabinet position, said a police official who was not authorized to give his name. The official said police were investigating and had not yet determined a motive for the pre-dawn attack. One suspect with a record of car theft was arrested.
Mexico has suffered a wave of organized crime and drug-related violence in which more than 2,500 people died last year alone. Since taking office in 2006, Calderon has sent more than 24,000 soldiers to drug hotspots, and Millan was in charge of coordinating operations between the federal police and those troops.
Cartels have responded fiercely to the nationwide offensive, killing soldiers and federal police in unprecedented attacks. But until recently, most of those killings took place in northern Mexico where drug gangs rule large areas of territory. Now criminals appear to be getting more brash with daring slayings in the capital.
George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said Millan's death ''shows the increasing audacity of the cartels.''
''This happened in Mexico City where people like Millan tend to be quite cautious, often sleeping in different houses on different nights, and who have their own security patrols,'' he said. ''When you can get someone like this, no one is safe.''
Millan was the second top federal police official killed in less than a week in Mexico City. A Mexican federal police intelligence analyst was killed on May 2 in an apparent armed robbery attempt outside his home.
In January, police in Mexico City arrested three men with assault rifles and grenade launchers who were allegedly planning to assassinate Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a top prosecutor who oversees the extradition of drug traffickers.
Millan was involved in solving a number of high-profiling kidnappings. In 2000, he helped capture one of Mexico's most feared kidnappers, Andres Caletri, and disband two notorious abduction rings. In 2001, he was named head of anti-kidnapping operations for the Federal Agency of Investigation, Mexico's version of the FBI. Under his direction, agents captured five suspects involved in the abduction of Ruben Omar Romano, the coach of Mexico's Cruz Azul soccer team in 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...Killed.html?hp
==========
Top policeman shot dead in Mexico
A senior Mexican police official has been gunned down in the capital, Mexico City, officials have said.
Edgar Millan Gomez was in charge of co-ordinating national police operations against drugs traffickers.
He was shot nine times outside his home early on Thursday and died later in hospital, officials said. Two of his bodyguards were wounded in the attack.
Police are investigating if the attack was drug-related. Several top policemen have been killed in the past week.
Police said a group of gunmen had attacked Mr Millan.
"They were hunting him," a spokesman for the security ministry told Reuters news agency.
Police have arrested a 34-year-old man in connection with the attack.
Lucrative trafficking routes
Mexico has seen a surge in drug-related killings recently. Last year, 2,500 people were killed; so far this year, 1,100 people have been killed.
Two other senior police officers were killed in Mexico City in separate incidents last week.
And earlier this week, a senior officer in Ciudad Juarez - across the border from the United States - was ambushed as he left police headquarters.
President Felipe Calderon has sent nearly 30,000 soldiers and federal police to fight Mexico's powerful drug cartels since he took office in 2006.
The drugs cartels have fought back by attacking security forces. They are also fighting with each other to control lucrative trafficking routes.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7391128.stm
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Mexico Security Memo: May 12, 2008
Stratfor Today » May 12, 2008 | 2046 GMT
Related Links
a.. Tracking Mexico's Drug Cartels
More High-Level Assassinations
While drug-related violence was widespread around Mexico this past week,
much attention was focused on the capital after two high-profile
assassinations occurred there within two days. In the first, alleged members
of a murder-for-hire gang shot and killed Edgar Millan Gomez on May 8 in his
own home. Millan Gomez was Mexico's highest-ranking federal law enforcement
official, responsible for coordinating much of the federal police
counternarcotics campaign. He reportedly was shot up to eight times at close
range by a gunman armed with two handguns - one of which had a silencer --
who was waiting inside his apartment building. One of Millan Gomez's
bodyguards, who was departing for the evening, was wounded as he apprehended
the gunman. Millan Gomez was the highest-ranking federal official to be
killed since the May 2007 assassination of Jose Nemesio Lugo Felix, also in
Mexico City.
The second assassination involved Esteban Robles Espinosa, head of Mexico
City's judicial police anti-kidnapping unit. Robles reportedly was shot nine
times by four gunmen traveling in a vehicle outside his home.
Although no substantial links have been reported, the Mexican government
suspects the Sinaloa cartel was behind these killings. Indeed, Millan
reportedly had orchestrated the arrest of several Sinaloa enforcers in the
capital earlier this year. These killings - as well as the assassination
last week of two federal police officials in Mexico City - also match the
trend reported last week of increasing cartel activity in Mexico City. The
targeting of federal authorities - especially by the Sinaloa cartel - in
Mexico City has been a key aspect of this activity since the beginning of
the year.
This past week's assassinations prompted Mexican President Felipe Calderon
and other officials to vow the government would not be deterred in the fight
against organized crime. While this increase in killings in Mexico City puts
the government in the position of needing to respond, it probably will not
fundamentally shift the government's strategy. In fact, it is unclear
exactly how the government will be able to respond in a meaningful way.
Without deploying additional military forces - which Calderon so far has
been reluctant to do - Mexico City is resigned to shifting around the
currently available forces - and this means withdrawing them from ongoing
security operations elsewhere.
This sort of response appears to be precisely the outcome that the Sinaloa
cartel or other criminal groups were hoping for, however. If that is the
case, other officials in Mexico City probably will be targeted. As the
cartel prepares for increased pressure from the Mexican government, which is
about to deploy reinforcements to Sinaloa state, greater violence against
federal authorities in other parts of the country can be expected -
especially if the deployment is large enough actually to negatively affect
the Sinaloa cartel's ability to traffic drugs.
Targeting the Son of 'El Chapo'
The Sinaloa cartel was at the center of another high-profile killing in
Mexico this week, also. The son of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman Loera was shot and killed outside a shopping center in Culiacan,
Sinaloa state, in an attack reportedly carried out by more than 40 gunmen
traveling in five vehicles. The son of the Sinaloa cartel's top money
launderer, Blanca Margarita Cazares Salazar, also was killed in the attack.
The Gulf cartel's enforcement arm, Los Zetas, carried out the killing,
according to a Stratfor source in Mexico with ties to the law enforcement
community. Recent reports of a split between Sinaloa and a resurgent Juarez
cartel mean Sinaloa has more than one enemy, however. Watching for where
retaliatory attacks are aimed will be perhaps the best way to figure out who
carried out the attack in Sinaloa - the killing of Guzman's son undoubtedly
will prompt strong reprisals by the Sinaloa cartel, which most likely knows
very well who was behind this incident.
May 5
a.. The Mexican military launched an operation in Chiapas state involving
aircraft and navy ships looking for boats transporting illegal goods.
b.. Authorities in a remote part of Michoacan state discovered two shallow
graves containing the bodies of three individuals who apparently had been
executed.
c.. A tactical intelligence unit of the federal police will be deployed to
Sinaloa state, a state official announced.
d.. The body of a police commander was found with five severed fingers in
Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state.
e.. Authorities in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, reported the shooting death of
a man who may have been shot more than 100 times.
f.. The second in command of a Chihuahua state police agency was shot dead
by several assailants in her garage in Ciudad Juarez.
May 6
a.. One police officer and one gunman died during a firefight between
police and several armed men who had just committed a targeted killing in
Nogales, Sonora state.
b.. Several gunmen shot and killed a police commander in Culiacan, Sinaloa
state. Several stray bullets also struck and killed a civilian bystander at
a nearby gas station.
c.. A police captain in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, died when he was
shot several times while driving his vehicle.
May 7
a.. At least seven people died during a firefight between army forces and
armed men in Villa de Cos, Zacatecas state.
b.. Five people were reported wounded after a group of gunmen opened fire
on a police patrol in Culiacan, Sinaloa state.
May 8
a.. Four people were wounded in the Pronaf district of Ciudad Juarez,
Chihuahua state, after gunmen traveling in a vehicle shot them.
b.. Mexico's federal security Cabinet met to discuss drug violence in
Sinaloa state; one of the officials present said the government intends to
increase the presence of security forces in the state.
c.. Approximately three armed men shot and killed the bodyguard of the
police chief in Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico state.
d.. A Chinese tourist was stabbed to death by an alleged drug dealer
outside a nightclub in Cancun, Quintana Roo state. The victim was seen
arguing with his attacker moments before he was killed.
May 9
a.. Three police officers in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, were wounded
in their patrol car when several armed men shot them.
b.. The chief and deputy chief of police in Sinaloa state resigned their
positions after apparently receiving death threats, media reported.
c.. The local governments of Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California state,
asked the federal police to send a special anti-kidnapping task force to the
cities in order to combat the increasing incidence of extortion-related
abductions there.
d.. A former political leader in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, was
abducted by a group of armed men. Some reports indicate that a current
government official who was with him at the time was wounded during the
kidnapping.
e.. Police in Navolato, Sinaloa state, reported the discovery of seven
bodies with signs of torture. At least one of the victims was a police
officer.
f.. A man and his son were shot dead in an apparently drug-related
shooting incident in Palomas, Chihuahua state; more than 60 shell casings
were recovered from the scene.
May 10
a.. The second highest-ranking police official in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua
state, died after being shot several times while driving near his home. His
name had been on a hit list left in January at a memorial to fallen police
officers in the city.
b.. A soldier was found alive in Jacona, Michoacan state, bound at the
hands and feet and bearing signs of torture.
May 11
a.. Authorities in Huetamo, Michoacan state, reported finding the body of
an unidentified man who appeared to have been shot more than 100 times.
b.. Five people were shot dead in separate incidents in Sinaloa state in
the cities of Culiacan, Salvador Alvarado and Angostura.
c.. The police chief in Amecameca, Mexico state, received a death threat
from a group of several armed men who demanded he discontinue efforts to
halt illegal logging operations in the area.
d.. Five people died in an apparent drug-related shooting incident in
Palomas, Chihuahua state. Authorities reported recovering more than 160
shell casings from the crime scene.
===========================
I don't agree with this one. I think for US intervention to be considered
things would have to get A LOT worse than they are now.
Geopolitical Diary: High Stakes South of the Border
May 13, 2008 | 0440 GMT
The Mexican government has arrested five individuals involved in the killing
of Edgar Millan Gomez, Mexico's highest-ranking federal law enforcement
official. The five men allegedly operated on the orders of the Sinaloa
Cartel. The death of Millan Gomez at his home in Mexico City is the latest
example of the escalation of violence in the ongoing war between the Mexican
federal government and the cartels that control large swaths of Mexican
territory. The assassination of such a high-level target clearly puts
increased pressure on the government.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon's boldest initiative upon taking office 18
months ago was the deployment of thousands of troops to combat Mexican drug
cartels. In doing so, he brought the fight to the doorstep of organized
crime.
Calderon's efforts in combating the cartels have been notable, as he is the
first Mexican president to challenge cartel control of Mexican territory in
a serious way. But his resources are limited. To tackle the threats and
challenges facing the government, Calderon has shifted troops from one place
to another. But any fundamental ramping up of dedicated troops would strain
Mexico's resources.
The shift of cartel violence into the interior of Mexico, and particularly
into Mexico City itself, has been a gradual trend that Stratfor has observed
over the past year. Cartel involvement - particularly by the Sinaloa
cartel - in the capital appears to have increased noticeably since a failed
attack with an improvised explosive device in February. Millan Gomez's
assassination is the latest example of this trend.
Mexico's continued descent into chaos could have enormous implications for
the United States, with the potential to shift considerable U.S. attention
to the Western Hemisphere.
The economic importance of Mexico to the United States is difficult to
overstate. The potential disruption of trade between the two countries -
particularly relevant at a point when the United States is staring down the
maw of a recession - would be a massive liability for the United States.
U.S.-Mexican trade totaled about $350 billion worth of goods in 2007, making
Mexico one of the United States' largest trading partners.
Now, there is a real danger that Mexico's crime situation could spin out of
control. The cartels need stable supply routes to the United States to
secure their drug shipments, while the government is seeking to stem the
tide of violence that has wracked Mexico for decades. The law of unintended
consequences is in play here, and there is a distinct danger that violence
could further spill over into the United States - disrupting trade flows and
border security.
Although the United States may be moving forward with policies like the
Merida initiative, which will lend aid to Mexico's war on the cartels, the
current efforts are limited. U.S. forces are largely preoccupied in Iraq and
Afghanistan. While it would take a great deal to tip the scale toward a U.S.
military intervention in Mexico, we may now be at a point where that has to
be considered given what is at stake.
The last time the United States meaningfully asserted control over a
deteriorating situation in Mexico was in the early 20th century during the
Mexican Revolution, when the United States occupied Veracruz for six months
to protect U.S. business interests. If violence on the border started
hurting the bottom line, the cost of not doing anything would start to
approach the cost of military action. The potential for an escalation of
violence between the cartels and the government spiraling out of control
could tip that balance.
It is unclear what the threshold for U.S. action in Mexico would be. But the
stakes are high. If the United States sees trade flows threatened, and the
security situation deteriorating, Washington might see fit to intervene. And
just because it hasn't done so in a century doesn't mean it will not choose
to do so in the future.
-
http://www.military.com/news/article...=1186032310810
May 14, 2008
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.
In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
"They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases," Ahern told AP.
Ahern said the Mexican officials - whom he didn't name - are being interviewed and their cases are under review for possible asylum.
In the most recent high-level assassination, a top-ranking official on a local Mexican police force was shot more than 50 times and killed. Drug-related violence killed more than 2,500 people last year alone in Mexico.
"It's almost like a military fight," Ahern said Tuesday. "I don't think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border."
As the cartels fight for territory, this carnage spills over to the U.S., Ahern said - from bullet-ridden people stumbling into U.S. territory, to rounds of ammunition coming across U.S. entry ports.
U.S. humvees retrofitted with steel mesh over the glass windows patrol parts of the border to protect agents against guns shots and large rocks regularly thrown at them. At times agents are pinned down by sniper fire as people try to illegally cross into the U.S.
Mexico's drug cartels have long divided the border, with each controlling key cities. But over the past decade Mexico has arrested or killed many of the gangs' top leaders, creating a power vacuum and throwing lucrative drug routes up for the taking.
President Felipe Calderon, who took office in December 2006, responded by deploying more than 24,000 soldiers and federal police to areas where the government had lost control. Cartels have reacted with unprecedented violence, beheading police and killing soldiers.
In general, violence along the U.S. border has gone up over the years. Seven frontline border agents were killed in 2007, and two so far in 2008. Assaults against officers have also shot up from 335 in fiscal 2001 to 987 in fiscal 2007.
There have been 362 assaults against officers during the first four months of 2008, according to Border Patrol statistics. The pattern has been that when more security resources are deployed along the U.S. border, violence against officers spike in response.
Most assaults are along the San Diego and Calexico, Calif., border, as well as the Arizona border near Yuma and south of Tucson.
Now, about 14,000 U.S. border agents work on the southern border, up from more than 9,000 in 2001.
The Bush administration has requested $500 million to fight drug crime in Mexico. Congress is currently considering the proposal.
-
May 13, 2008
Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?
By George Friedman
Edgar Millan Gomez was shot dead in his own home in Mexico City on May 8. Millan Gomez was the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Mexico, responsible for overseeing most of Mexico's counternarcotics efforts. He orchestrated the January arrest of one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, Alfredo Beltran Leyva. (Several Sinaloa members have been arrested in Mexico City since the beginning of the year.) The week before, Roberto Velasco Bravo died when he was shot in the head at close range by two armed men near his home in Mexico City. He was the director of organized criminal investigations in a tactical analysis unit of the federal police. The Mexican government believes the Sinaloa drug cartel ordered the assassinations of Velasco Bravo and Millan Gomez. Combined with the assassination of other federal police officials in Mexico City, we now see a pattern of intensifying warfare in Mexico City.
The fighting also extended to the killing of the son of the Sinaloa cartel leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, who was killed outside a shopping center in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. Also killed was the son of reputed top Sinaloa money launderer Blanca Margarita Cazares Salazar in an attack carried out by 40 gunmen. According to sources, Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the rival Gulf cartel, carried out the attack. Reports also indicate a split between Sinaloa and a resurgent Juarez cartel, which also could have been behind the Millan Gomez killing.
Spiraling Violence
Violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has been intensifying for several years, and there have been attacks in Mexico City. But last week was noteworthy not so much for the body count, but for the type of people being killed. Very senior government police officials in Mexico City were killed along with senior Sinaloa cartel operatives in Sinaloa state. In other words, the killings are extending from low-level operatives to higher-ranking ones, and the attacks are reaching into enemy territory, so to speak. Mexican government officials are being killed in Mexico City, Sinaloan operatives in Sinaloa. The conflict is becoming more intense and placing senior officials at risk.
The killings pose a strategic problem for the Mexican government. The bulk of its effective troops are deployed along the U.S. border, attempting to suppress violence and smuggling among the grunts along the border, as well as the well-known smuggling routes elsewhere in the country. The attacks in Mexico raise the question of whether forces should be shifted from these assignments to Mexico City to protect officials and break up the infrastructure of the Sinaloa and other cartels there. The government also faces the secondary task of suppressing violence between cartels. The Sinaloa cartel struck in Mexico City not only to kill troublesome officials and intimidate others, but also to pose a problem for the Mexican government by increasing areas requiring forces, thereby requiring the government to consider splitting its forces — thus reducing the government presence along the border. It was a strategically smart move by Sinaloa, but no one has accused the cartels of being stupid.
Mexico now faces a classic problem. Multiple, well-armed organized groups have emerged. They are fighting among themselves while simultaneously fighting the government. The groups are fueled by vast amounts of money earned via drug smuggling to the United States. The amount of money involved — estimated at some $40 billion a year — is sufficient to increase tension between these criminal groups and give them the resources to conduct wars against each other. It also provides them with resources to bribe and intimidate government officials. The resources they deploy in some ways are superior to the resources the government employs.
Given the amount of money they have, the organized criminal groups can be very effective in bribing government officials at all levels, from squad leaders patrolling the border to high-ranking state and federal officials. Given the resources they have, they can reach out and kill government officials at all levels as well. Government officials are human; and faced with the carrot of bribes and the stick of death, even the most incorruptible is going to be cautious in executing operations against the cartels.
Toward a Failed State?
There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels. Government officials, seeing the futility of resistance, effectively become tools of the cartels. Since there are multiple cartels, the area of competition ceases to be solely the border towns, shifting to the corridors of power in Mexico City. Government officials begin giving their primary loyalty not to the government but to one of the cartels. The government thus becomes both an arena for competition among the cartels and an instrument used by one cartel against another. That is the prescription for what is called a "failed state" — a state that no longer can function as a state. Lebanon in the 1980s is one such example.
There are examples in American history as well. Chicago in the 1920s was overwhelmed by a similar process. Smuggling alcohol created huge pools of money on the U.S. side of the border, controlled by criminals both by definition (bootlegging was illegal) and by inclination (people who engage in one sort of illegality are prepared to be criminals, more broadly understood). The smuggling laws gave these criminals huge amounts of power, which they used to intimidate and effectively absorb the city government. Facing a choice between being killed or being enriched, city officials chose the latter. City government shifted from controlling the criminals to being an arm of criminal power. In the meantime, various criminal gangs competed with each other for power.
Chicago had a failed city government. The resources available to the Chicago gangs were limited, however, and it was not possible for them to carry out the same function in Washington. Ultimately, Washington deployed resources in Chicago and destroyed one of the main gangs. But if Al Capone had been able to carry out the same operation in Washington as he did in Chicago, the United States could have become a failed state.
It is important to point out that we are not speaking here of corruption, which exists in all governments everywhere. Instead, we are talking about a systematic breakdown of the state, in which government is not simply influenced by criminals, but becomes an instrument of criminals — either simply an arena for battling among groups or under the control of a particular group. The state no longer can carry out its primary function of imposing peace, and it becomes helpless, or itself a direct perpetrator of crime. Corruption has been seen in Washington — some triggered by organized crime, but never state failure.
The Mexican state has not yet failed. If the activities of the last week have become a pattern, however, we must begin thinking about the potential for state failure. The killing of Millan Gomez transmitted a critical message: No one is safe, no matter how high his rank or how well protected, if he works against cartel interests. The killing of El Chapo's son transmitted the message that no one in the leading cartel is safe from competing gangs, no matter how high his rank or how well protected.
The killing of senior state police officials causes other officials to recalculate their attitudes. The state is no longer seen as a competent protector, and being a state official is seen as a liability — potentially a fatal liability — unless protection is sought from a cartel, a protection that can be very lucrative indeed for the protector. The killing of senior cartel members intensifies conflict among cartels, making it even more difficult for the government to control the situation and intensifying the movement toward failure.
It is important to remember that Mexico has a tradition of failed governments, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century. In those periods, Mexico City became an arena for struggle among army officers and regional groups straddling the line between criminal and political. The Mexican army became an instrument in this struggle and its control a prize. The one thing missing was the vast amounts of money at stake. So there is a tradition of state failure in Mexico, and there are higher stakes today than before.
The Drug Trade's High Stakes
To benchmark the amount at stake, assume that the total amount of drug trafficking is $40 billion, a frequently used figure, but hardly an exact one by any means. In 2007, Mexico exported about $210 billion worth of goods to the United States and imported about $136 billion from the United States. If the drug trade is $40 billion dollars, it represents about 25 percent of all exports to the United States. That in itself is huge, but what makes it more important is that while the $210 billion is divided among many businesses and individuals, the $40 billion is concentrated in the hands of a few, fairly tightly controlled cartels. Sinaloa and Gulf, currently the strongest, have vast resources at their disposal; a substantial part of the economy can be controlled through this money. This creates tremendous instability as other cartels vie for the top spot, with the state lacking the resources to control the situation and having its officials seduced and intimidated by the cartels.
We have seen failed states elsewhere. Colombia in the 1980s failed over the same issue — drug money. Lebanon failed in the 1970s and 1980s. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was a failed state.
Mexico's potential failure is important for three reasons. First, Mexico is a huge country, with a population of more than 100 million. Second, it has a large economy — the 14th-largest in the world. And third, it shares an extended border with the world's only global power, one that has assumed for most of the 20th century that its domination of North America and control of its borders is a foregone conclusion. If Mexico fails, there are serious geopolitical repercussions. This is not simply a criminal matter.
The amount of money accumulated in Mexico derives from smuggling operations in the United States. Drugs go one way, money another. But all the money doesn't have to return to Mexico or to third-party countries. If Mexico fails, the leading cartels will compete in the United States, and that competition will extend to the source of the money as well. We have already seen cartel violence in the border areas of the United States, but this risk is not limited to that. The same process that we see under way in Mexico could extend to the United States; logic dictates that it would.
The current issue is control of the source of drugs and of the supply chain that delivers drugs to retail customers in the United States. The struggle for control of the source and the supply chain also will involve a struggle for control of markets. The process of intimidation of government and police officials, as well as bribing them, can take place in market towns such as Los Angeles or Chicago, as well as production centers or transshipment points.
Cartel Incentives for U.S. Expansion
That means there are economic incentives for the cartels to extend their operations into the United States. With those incentives comes intercartel competition, and with that competition comes pressure on U.S. local, state and, ultimately, federal government and police functions. Were that to happen, the global implications obviously would be stunning. Imagine an extreme case in which the Mexican scenario is acted out in the United States. The effect on the global system economically and politically would be astounding, since U.S. failure would see the world reshaping itself in startling ways.
Failure for the United States is much harder than for Mexico, however. The United States has a gross domestic product of about $14 trillion, while Mexico's economy is about $900 billion. The impact of the cartels' money is vastly greater in Mexico than in the United States, where it would be dwarfed by other pools of money with a powerful interest in maintaining U.S. stability. The idea of a failed American state is therefore far-fetched.
Less far-fetched is the extension of a Mexican failure into the borderlands of the United States. Street-level violence already has crossed the border. But a deeper, more-systemic corruption — particularly on the local level — could easily extend into the United States, along with paramilitary operations between cartels and between the Mexican government and cartels.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently visited Mexico, and there are potential plans for U.S. aid in support of Mexican government operations. But if the Mexican government became paralyzed and couldn't carry out these operations, the U.S. government would face a stark and unpleasant choice. It could attempt to protect the United States from the violence defensively by sealing off Mexico or controlling the area north of the border more effectively. Or, as it did in the early 20th century, the United States could adopt a forward defense by sending U.S. troops south of the border to fight the battle in Mexico.
There have been suggestions that the border be sealed. But Mexico is the United States' third-largest customer, and the United States is Mexico's largest customer. This was the case well before NAFTA, and has nothing to do with treaties and everything to do with economics and geography. Cutting that trade would have catastrophic effects on both sides of the border, and would guarantee the failure of the Mexican state. It isn't going to happen.
The Impossibility of Sealing the Border
So long as vast quantities of goods flow across the border, the border cannot be sealed. Immigration might be limited by a wall, but the goods that cross the border do so at roads and bridges, and the sheer amount of goods crossing the border makes careful inspection impossible. The drugs will come across the border embedded in this trade as well as by other routes. So will gunmen from the cartel and anything else needed to take control of Los Angeles' drug market.
A purely passive defense won't work unless the economic cost of blockade is absorbed. The choices are a defensive posture to deal with the battle on American soil if it spills over, or an offensive posture to suppress the battle on the other side of the border. Bearing in mind that Mexico is not a small country and that counterinsurgency is not the United States' strong suit, the latter is a dangerous game. But the first option isn't likely to work either.
One way to deal with the problem would be ending the artificial price of drugs by legalizing them. This would rapidly lower the price of drugs and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them. Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn't going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.
We are not yet at the worst-case scenario, and we may never get there. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, perhaps with assistance from the United States, may devise a strategy to immunize his government from intimidation and corruption and take the war home to the cartels. This is a serious possibility that should not be ruled out. Nevertheless, the events of last week raise the serious possibility of a failed state in Mexico. That should not be taken lightly, as it could change far more than Mexico.
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E-mail Warning in Juarez
While there was a slight increase in the number of murders in Ciudad Juarez over the weekend, it was hardly the bloodbath predicted in an e-mail that began circulating among residents May 22. The anonymous e-mail promised it would be “the bloodiest weekend in the history of Juarez” and warned residents to stay in their homes because gunmen would be shooting at malls, restaurants and other public places.
The e-mail referred to the upcoming violence as “La Limpia” or “The Cleansing,” which prompted Juarez Public Safety Secretary Orduna Cruz to issue a statement urging the citizens of Juarez to stay calm. As it turned out, the most significant murders of the weekend were those of police officers Fabian Reyes Urbina and Carlos Valdez Rodriguez –- both were wearing full uniforms when they were gunned down May 23 while getting into a 1993 Ford Escort. That same day, five bodies were discovered at an intersection wrapped in blankets; two of the five were decapitated and their heads were found in plastic bags next to the bodies — the typical signature of a cartel killing. Press releases from government officials in Chihuahua state put the total number of murders in Juarez over the weekend at 22. Murders for this past week totaled 33, a slight increase from 25 the previous week.
The e-mail warning had its effect in Juarez. Several night clubs and restaurants were closed over the weekend and traffic was scarce on many city streets as most of the residents stayed in their homes. Regardless of the unknown author’s intentions, the e-mail demonstrated that such a warning could have significant economic impact. Some store owners reportedly lost as much as 60 percent of their business over the weekend. Cross-border tourism from Juarez’s sister city, El Paso, Texas, essentially came to halt over the three-day Memorial Day weekend, which is normally a high-traffic holiday.
Target Lists
Banners with the names of 21 state police officials appeared on overpasses and bridges May 25 in Chihuahua City. The names were written in black ink and signed by Gente Nueva, a break-away group from the Gulf cartel that is funded by factions of the Sinaloa cartel, which has been fighting for influence in the area since early 2007. The emblazoned names are reminiscent of the list found at the fallen officer memorial in Juarez in January. Since then, of the 17 officers named, almost half have been assassinated.
May 19
A banner reading “Join us or die,” referring to local police, was posted in Juarez.
Four people thought to be Americans were shot in the head and dumped in a notorious drug-smuggling area of Rosarito.
José Martínez Quiñónez, a top commander of the security arm of the state attorney general’s office in Chihuahua state, was assassinated outside his home in the Juarez suburb of Parral.
May 20
The bodies of two high-level state police officials in Morelos state were found in the trunk of a car on a highway between Cuernavaca and Mexico City. The bodies had single gunshot wounds to the head and showed signs of torture. A note attached to the car read, “This is what happens to those who walk with El Chapo.”
Former army major Roberto Orduna Cruz took over the 1,600-man Juarez police force.
Sixteen people were killed in a firefight in Durango.
May 21
The Mexican military took control of Villa Ahumada, a small town 80 kilometers south of Juarez, after the entire police force quit. Officers were afraid of being assassinated.
May 22
An anonymous e-mail began circulating around Juarez and El Paso advising residents to stay indoors over the upcoming weekend. The e-mail also claimed that recent executions in Juarez were in response to threats made by the Juarez cartel.
The U.S. Senate passed the Merida Initiative, a $400 million aid package designed to help the Mexican government halt drug traffic into the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives passed its own aid package the previous week.
May 23
Fabian Reyes Urbina and Carlos Valdez Rodriguez, two municipal policemen in Juarez, were shot and killed as they were getting into a 1993 Ford Escort.
Juarez police discovered the charred remains of three individuals in a burned out car.
Five blanket-wrapped bodies, two of which had been decapitated, were found in the middle of an intersection in Juarez.
Four decapitated heads were found in four separate ice chests six kilometers outside of Durango.
May 24
Two men were found dead in the Rio Bravo neighborhood in Juarez.
One man was found dead in his SUV in Juarez with over 100 bullet holes in his vehicle.
May 25
A charred body was found in the back of pickup truck in a parking lot in Juarez. Authorities were unable to identify the sex of the body because of the extensive burns.
The unidentified body of a male between the age of 35 and 40 and with five bullet wounds was found at an intersection in Juarez.
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It's Time to Bust the Telmex Monopoly
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
May 19, 2008; Page A13
WSJ
It is a decade overdue, but Mexico finally has a clear path to ending the near-monopoly status of Telmex – Carlos Slim's Telefonos de Mexico. Whether President Felipe Calderón seizes the day will signal just how serious he is about modernizing his country's economy.
The cost to the economy of Telmex's dominance cannot be overstated. Lack of competition is the reason Mexicans pay some of the highest telecom charges in the developed world, according to a report last year by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. It's also the reason Mexicans' access to telephone services – landlines and mobile – is "one of the lowest in the OECD." As a result, while the world forges ahead in the information age, Mexico is being left in the Stone Age.
Mexico finally has a clear path to ending Telmex's near-monopoly. But will President Felipe Calderón seize the opportunity? Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady reports. (May 18)
Good news came last week when the government ordered Telmex to provide interconnection to a key competitor. It is the first time since 1997, when Telmex's monopoly privileges ran out, that the government has been willing to enforce the terms of the 1990 concession title. That is the agreement signed at the time of privatization.
Even so, the ruling does nothing to solve the main cause of Mexico's inefficient and costly telecom market. Until Telmex is forced to provide competitive pricing to non-Telmex carriers that have to use the network, and simple number portability to customers who want to switch to other carriers, competition will not evolve. Telmex should also have to cease its practice of cross-subsidizing its telephony businesses.
Until now, Mr. Slim has been an immoveable object. When his monopoly privileges expired in 1997, regulators tried to make him provide network access, at competitive rates, to the other carriers. But by then he had gotten used to the spoils of the monopoly. Whenever regulators have tried to force competitive practices, he has used the courts to block them.
Mexico's largest special interest is also known for using his influence in the halls of Congress and with the executive. During the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000-2006), a former Telmex employee was miraculously named the minister of communication and transport. Judging from how little was accomplished under Mr. Fox, that minister wasn't shy about looking after his former boss's interests.
THE AMERICAS IN THE NEWS
Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.Until now, Mexicans have been wary of crossing the powerful Mr. Slim, who is said to control 40% of advertising in the country. But the problems caused by Telmex's uncompetitive practices can no longer be ignored. To that end the telecom regulator, known by the Spanish acronym Cofetel, has drafted a proposal aimed at creating an environment where competition can flourish. The initiative calls for interconnection for all competitors at cost-based rates. It would also introduce an institutional framework similar to that of most OECD countries, and bring Mexico into compliance with the World Trade Organization.
The trouble is that Mr. Slim has already shown that he can litigate to eternity anything coming from the regulator. So even if the new regulation is adopted, Telmex is likely to use the injunction process to block its effectiveness. That is, unless Mr. Calderón trades Mr. Slim something for his cooperation.
Economic giants have gigantic appetites, and Mr. Slim's needs to be fed again. Having consumed Mexican telephony, he now wants to begin eating into the television market by delivering video. But the terms of his 1990 purchase of Telmex strictly forbid such an expansion.
So all the Calderón government has to do to tame the Telmex beast is to enforce the terms of the existing title concession. This would mean that the company would have to adopt accounting practices that avoid cross-subsidization. It also would mean making it clear to Mr. Slim that the Telmex concession title prohibits the provision of television services.
If Telmex wants to change the terms of that original contract so it can compete in video, Mr. Calderón should exact a price. If the company otherwise complies with its original obligations, the Cofetel plan can be put on the table, along with a fee, as the cost of a television license.
Standing firm on this point is important to the future of both television and telephony in Mexico. Right now cable companies are trying to deliver telephone services, but Telmex's interconnection rates are making it difficult to compete. Mr. Slim will crush these midsized competitors if he is allowed to offer video without opening telephony.
The Slim dynasty cannot prosper if it cannot expand into television. If Mexican regulators get smart and begin to aggressively privatize the wireless spectrum, its odds are even slimmer. That's why this is the moment to drive a stake through the heart of the Telmex monopoly. If Mr. Calderón passes up the chance, he will seal his own fate as a reformer and practically guarantee that Mexico will fail to live up to its potential in the next decade.
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Drug Massacre Leaves a Mexican Town Terrorized
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: May 31, 2008
VILLA AHUMADA, Mexico — A massacre here two weeks ago has turned this once sleepy town into a ghostly emblem of the drug violence that has swept Mexico over the last year and a half, gutting local police forces, terrifying citizens and making it almost impossible for the authorities to assert themselves.
In Villa Ahumada, Mexico, on May 18. The night before, dozens of gunmen killed six people in the town, including two civilians who were together in a pickup truck, and abducted others.
On the night of May 17, dozens of men with assault rifles rolled into town in several trucks and shot up the place. They killed the police chief, two officers and three civilians. Then they carried off about 10 people, witnesses said. Only one has been found, dead and wrapped in a carpet in Ciudad Juárez.
The entire municipal police force quit after the attack, and officials fled the town for several days, leaving so hastily that they did not release the petty criminals held in the town lockup. The state and federal governments sent in 300 troops and 16 state police officers, restoring an uneasy semblance of order. But townspeople remain terrified.
“Yeah, we’re afraid, everyone’s afraid,” said José Antonio Contreras, a 17-year-old who was threatened by the gunmen. “Nobody goes out at night.”
Tourists driving south from Texas to the Pacific Coast beaches pass through Villa Ahumada on Highway 45. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when this dusty town on the railroad tracks was best known for its roadside burrito stands, its good cheese and its having recorded one of the coldest temperatures in Mexico — 23 below zero in January 1962.
In recent years, however, it also became a way station along one of Mexico’s major drug smuggling routes. Villa Ahumada lies about 85 miles south of El Paso on the main highway from the city of Chihuahua to the border city of Ciudad Juárez.
Mexico’s drug violence has by now become so pervasive that it is infecting even small communities like this one, which has fewer than 9,000 residents.
Around the country in the last 18 months, more than 4,000 people have been killed in similar attacks and gun battles, even as President Felipe Calderón has tried to take back towns where the local police and officials were on the payroll of drug kingpins.
This week, seven federal officers died in a gun battle with cartel henchmen when they tried to enter a house in Culiacán, Sinaloa, a city notorious for its traffickers. The officers had been sent to the city, along with 2,700 other soldiers and agents, to track down a reputed drug kingpin believed to have ordered the assassination of the acting federal chief of police, who was killed in Mexico City on May 8.
When the police arrived, banners were hung in the city taunting the officers and saying the reputed kingpin, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, reigned supreme in Culiacán.
In Villa Ahumada less than two weeks after the massacre, people remained so cowed that even the mayor and his police commissioner declined requests to be interviewed. When asked who the gunmen were and why they had come, most of the residents who were interviewed shook their heads and whispered that spies were everywhere. In private, however, some acknowledged that the town had long been home to narcotics traffickers in league with a reputed drug dealer, Pedro Sánchez Arras.
Frightened residents, who did not want to be identified, said Mr. Sánchez’s agent in the town was Gerardo Gallegos Rodelo, a 19-year-old tough guy who went around with an armed posse. It was rumored that he and Mr. Sánchez had links to a drug cartel in Ciudad Juárez that is controlled by the Carrillo Fuentes family. Law enforcement officials did not confirm the claim.
Several residents said Mr. Gallegos and Mr. Sánchez had also seemed to enjoy good relations with the local police. People shrugged and tolerated the arrangement. The town was peaceful, after all, some said. It seemed best to leave well enough alone.
“Wherever you are in Mexico these days there are drug dealers, not just here,” explained Raúl Moreno, 64, a day laborer. “They didn’t bother anyone. No one bothered them.”
The trouble started, people here say, when Mr. Gallegos was killed in a shootout with a group of reputed gangsters in Hidalgo del Parral, in the southern part of Chihuahua State, on April 6.
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Two days later, the army swooped in on his funeral in Villa Ahumada and arrested dozens of people in attendance, taking into custody a police commander, Adrián Barrón, among others. It remains unclear what those detained will be charged with, the attorney general’s office said.
The arrest seemed to set in motion the trouble in Villa Ahumada. Late on the Saturday night four days after Mr. Sánchez’s arrest, said Mr. Contreras, the 17-year-old, he and several other boys were dancing at a party for a friend in a hall just off the main square when they heard the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire.
He hurriedly left the party with his girlfriend and mother, but they ran into three cars full of heavily armed men, he said. Spewing death threats, the men forced the three to lie on the ground. He waited for the shots, but the cars roared off. One of the men called out, “We’ll be back.”
For three hours, the gunmen roamed the town in six pickups and sport utility cars. They strafed a used car lot with bullets. They pumped more than 75 rounds into two men riding in a truck. One was Julio Armando Gómez, the manager of a roast chicken place. The other was Mario Alberto González Castro, 41, who sold tickets at the bus station.
Mr. González’s wife, who asked to be identified only by her nickname, Cuquis, said she had gone looking for her husband when she heard the shooting and found his lifeless body oozing blood in the car. Her hands trembled with fear when she was asked who might be behind the killing; then she broke down, saying she had told the police what she knew and could not say anything else. “He was innocent, innocent above all else,” she said through her sobs.
The gunmen caught up to the police chief, José Armando Estrada Rodríguez, and two officers, Óscar Zuñiga Dávila and José Luis Quiñones Juárez, who were sitting in their patrol car at a gas station. The attackers killed the three men with 26 shots from an assault rifle, officials said.
Also killed was Luis Eduardo Escobedo Ruiz, 21, who happened to be pulling into a parking lot near the gas station. More than 100 shells were found outside his car.
Privately, some residents speculated that the attackers came from a rival drug cartel intent on dislodging the Carrillo Fuentes family from Ciudad Juárez and the cities along the route down through Chihuahua State to Sinaloa State. Some whisper it was Joaquín Guzmán, an accused drug kingpin known as “El Chapo,” who sent the commandos. Others mention the Zetas, feared hired killers in the employ of the Gulf Cartel.
“They are getting rid of all the people connected to Pedro Sánchez,” said one young man, requesting anonymity for fear of the cartels. “All the police worked for Pedro.”
The state authorities say they still have little information about what happened, much less whom the gunmen worked for. The fearful silence of residents makes it hard for investigators to make progress, Eduardo Esparza, a spokesman for the state attorney general, said.
“At this moment, we have no lines of investigation,” he said. “It’s hard to get information. The families of the victims refuse to talk, mainly out of terror. One can’t advance at a good pace. There are lots of barriers.”
One measure of those barriers is that the state police have been informed of only two kidnappings on the night the raiders came to town, but several residents insisted that at least 10 people were missing.
The townspeople say they feel a pall hanging over them. The roadside restaurants and vendors of cheese say fewer people stop in the town, apparently out of fear. Soldiers in Humvees with mounted machine guns patrol the streets.
Some residents said they were stunned that the entire police force of more than 20 officers had stepped down. Many say the town will never be able to afford the cost of a more professional force that could stop future attacks.
“One feels very disillusioned with the government,” said the owner of a popular restaurant, who has spent her life in the town. “There is no one who seems to be able to do anything.”
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http://tijuana.usconsulate.gov/tijuana/warning.html
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Independent.co.uk
Mexico’s war on drugs: Journey into a lawless land
With 1,400 dead this year alone, and gangs pinning up 'wanted' posters naming police they wish to see killed, Mexico's war on drugs is spiralling out of control. Richard Grant risked his life to travel through the mountains of the Sierra Madre – the most dangerous region of all – and witnessed the terrifying slide into anarchy
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
If someone had come up to me in my early twenties, when men are supposed to be at their most reckless, and offered me a fortune to go into a place like the Sierra Madre, I would have thought about it for about three seconds before saying no. But after years spent reporting gangs in South Central LA, where I had a gun pointed at me for the first time, the Zapatista uprising in southernmost Mexico, and riots in Haiti, my acceptable level of risk kept rising. I had begun to think the Sierra Madre would not be that dangerous, and besides, I was curious about the nature of anarchy. The forbidden mystique of the Sierra got the better of me.
The Sierra Madre Occidental, the Mother Mountain range of the Mexican West, begins just south of the Arizona border and extends for nearly 900 miles. It contains no cities or large towns, only two paved roads and almost nothing in the way of law and order. This rugged cordillera has always defied the efforts of governments – Aztec, Spanish and Mexican – to enforce control, and it is now one of the biggest production areas in the world for marijuana, opium and heroin, and a staging point for Colombian cocaine.
It is not the sort of place where you can just turn up without an introduction, and I spent years trying to make contacts who could take me in under their protection. Time and again, I was told that it was too dangerous to take a gringo into the mountains, because the drug lords were feuding, or battling the army. Finally, I found a way to get into the Sierra Madre, spent four months travelling down the range and was extremely lucky to escape from the mountains without getting killed.
Along the way, I glimpsed Mexico's future. In the past 18 months, and particularly in the last two weeks, the murderous narco-anarchy I saw in the Sierra Madre has gone nationwide. President Felipe Calderon has gone to war against Mexico's drug cartels, all of which were started by Sierra Madre clanfolk who came downhill – and he is now discovering that the Mexican state isn't strong enough to defeat them.
In Mexico City, cartel gunmen assassinated the nation's police commander in the grounds of his home. In the state of Chihuahua, drug gangs have, in the past fortnight, put up hit lists and wanted posters with names and photographs of police commanders, and offers of reward money for their deaths. In the border city of Juarez, the list was posted on a police memorial statue. No one dared take it down, and so far 17 names have been crossed off it – dead.
The narcos are also feuding with other, with 1,400 drug-related murders so far this year, and many towns and cities are under a virtual curfew. Several police departments have resigned en masse in terror, and three police commanders have fled to the United States requesting asylum. President Calderon is claiming signs of progress, but it looks like the whole nation is unravelling, turning feral, descending into lawlessness.
****
The morning I left for the Sierra Madre, the sun was shining brightly. With my guide, I crossed the border at Douglas, passed through two Mexican army checkpoints looking for guns and drugs, then entered the foothills. My grand adventure was under way at last.
Crossing the line into the state of Sonora, I made my first stop in the town of Yecora. A three-piece band was playing on a flatbed truck and a crowd of 30 or 40 people had gathered. I love norteño music.
I parked and rolled the window down. It was good, raw, soulful, caterwauling norteño. A hundred years ago, they sang corridos in the Sierra about famous bandits, outlaws, revolutionaries, or particularly bloody feuds and heroic-tragic deaths. Now they sing about the drug lords, who sometimes commission the songs out of vanity, and events both real and imagined from the lives of drug growers, local bosses, regional traffickers, smugglers, dealers, pilots, assassins. There's a great deal of macho bragging and posturing, and despite the accordions and polkas, the music form it most resembles is gangsta rap.
I walked over to the back of the crowd as the band was singing a narcocorrido about some drug lord who was the king of the Sierra, with many houses, fine women and impressive machine-guns.
The next song had hardly begun when three drunk men with twitching lips came up to me. They offered to sell me marijuana at $100 a kilo, premium quality, good price, "special for you". When I said I had just pulled over to hear the music they got very suspicious and accused me of working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which is something you never want to hear in the Sierra Madre. I laughed it off with as much casual disdain as I could muster, said that I was a British tourist, bid them a sudden farewell and concentrated on maintaining a relaxed and deceptively speedy gait as I walked back to my truck.
I drove all the way out of the mountains without stopping again. Late that night, with enormous relief, I collapsed at a motel. I was safe.
Soon afterwards, I arrived in the town of Alamos. It would take a while to find someone willing and able to take me deeper into the mountains from there. Crossing the Sierra on a paved and well-travelled highway was one thing, but going into the mountains above Alamos by myself was different.
I studied the calm, impassive expressions on the faces of the grandmothers sitting in their doorways, the young couples arm in arm, the off-duty drug dealers standing outside the cantina, wearing silk shirts decorated with pictures of roosters, scorpions, pick-up trucks, AK-47s and the Virgin of Guadalupe.
I went into a cantina called Casino Señorial, a big concrete barn with the walls painted Tecate red and gold, white plastic tables and chairs and a giant, pulsating, multicoloured jukebox in the corner. The place was three-quarters full with men, and I could tell from the hard faces, lean shanks and tyre-tread sandals that most of them had come down from the Sierra.
On the wall behind the bar was a stuffed mountain lion, caught in the act of tearing the throat out of a stuffed deer. Fake blood was smeared around the wound and splattered down the wall. I sat down at the bar and ordered a caguama, a giant sea-turtle, or in this case a quarter-gallon bottle of Tecate beer.
Three women appeared and paraded on the concrete floor on stiletto heels. The whores collected money from the bartender and fed it into the jukebox. The music was all narcocorridos – "I'm one of the players in the Sierra where the opium poppy grows... I like risky action, I like to do cocaine, I walk right behind death with a beautiful woman on each arm... I've got an AK-47 for anyone who wants to try me..."
A group of men beckoned me over to their table. One of them was clearly in charge, a big, paunchy man with a glassy-eyed smile and a magnificent Roman nose. The others called him El Pelicano, The Pelican, and warned me that he and the younger man next to him were cops from the region.
I pulled up a chair and sat down and The Pelican thumped his empty caguama on the plastic table. The bartender scurried over with a fresh one and The Pelican looked at me to pay. They all looked ripped on cocaine, including the two cops.
Their lips were writhing and they were chewing at their tongues and guzzling down beer at a crazy pace. Five minutes after it arrived, the caguama was empty and The Pelican thumped it down on the table. Again I paid and five minutes later I paid again, and so on for the next 20 minutes.
They started making motions, as if lifting a key or a spoon to their nostrils. "Do you like perico?" asked the younger cop. Cocaine was perico, parakeet, because it made you chatter without knowing what you were saying.
"Not now, thank you," I said. Call me paranoid, but the idea of doing cocaine with Mexican cops made me nervous.
I got up to go to the bathroom and the two cops followed me in there. Then The Pelican raised his forefinger to stop me leaving, took out a plastic bag of cocaine, scooped a little mound on the end of his pocket knife and offered it to me.
They wanted me to buy some, which looked like a classic Mexican set-up: I would buy the cocaine, the cops would bust me and extort a large bribe, which they would then spend on cocaine. My instincts were telling me to leave but I didn't know how. To leave a Mexican drinking session before it reaches its natural conclusion, which is absolute drunkenness, is considered rude and disrespectful, and in the rougher parts of the Sierra it is a frequent cause of homicide.
The Pelican thumped down another empty caguama and I pulled out my wallet again and found that it was empty. A godsend!
I showed it to everyone at the table, thanked them for their fine company and outstanding hospitality and assured them that my house was at their orders if they were ever in Tucson.
I got up to leave and The Pelican said: "No, we need more perico. We need more beer. You can get more money from the wall of the bank. We are friends. Or are you too proud to drink with Mexicans?"
"We are friends without doubt," I said. "And there are no better people in all the world to drink with than Mexicans. I will go to the bank and get money from the wall."
I made my reeling exit, and headed towards and into the welcoming darkness of my guest-house.
****
The old adobe town of Urique was founded by a gold prospector in 1690. The sun was behind the canyon wall and the long dusk had begun. Behind Rafael's restaurant was a garden with some fruit trees and white plastic tables and chairs. There, I met two young men called Pancho and José. They had gel-spiked hair and were wearing cargo pants and Nike trainers.
"You want to buy some?" said Pancho without further ado, referring to the local marijuana, "$100 a kilo."
"Ah, no thank you."
"How about grenades? I have some good grenades and a rocket for them."
"The rocket shoots the grenades?"
"Yes. It works very well, very strong." He held up his arm and slapped it.
"It's not my business, but why would anyone need rocket-propelled grenades in Urique Canyon?"
Pancho gave me the patient, pitying look. "Helicopters," he said. "Sometimes the army comes in helicopters. We used to string cables across the canyons to bring them down, but these work much better."
"But I don't need to shoot down any helicopters."
"Hombre, you can use them for anything you want. If there are bandits on the road ahead, you stop and – BOOM!"
"How about some parakeet?" chimed in José. "We can get some right now from Pancho's aunt."
"No thank you. But tell me, how are the police here? Do they make trouble?"
"There is no problem," said José. They both grinned. "My brother is a police officer and we are training to be police officers ourselves."
Not so long ago, the largest town in each municipio would have a single resident comisario, or police officer, and he was responsible for law and order over hundreds of square miles of rugged, roadless mountains. His only real work was to confiscate moonshine, then sell it back to the townsfolk out of his office. That was the extent of the law unless there was a killing and the killer was considered too dangerous or troublesome for the victim's family members to kill. In that case, the local people would send for the judiciales, the state police, and they would ride up into the Sierra on mules.
Now, there are stations of municipal police officers in places like Urique and Chinipas. Pancho and José would soon be joining their ranks. Once they had their badges, guns and the power of arrest, their potential earnings would increase. Units of the state police and AFI (Mexico's equivalent of the FBI) were stationed in the Sierra Madre now, too, but this didn't mean that law and order had arrived. It usually meant more armed, ruthless men in town looking for a piece of the drug action – and a rise in teenage pregnancies and drink-driving accidents.
Trying to distinguish between police officers and drug traffickers can be a futile exercise in Mexico. The traffickers don't just buy protection against arrest; they hire state and federal policemen to transport loads for them and carry out executions.
Where once there was a relatively simple form of lawlessness in the Sierra, now things are more complicated, based on shifting arrangements of corruption financed by organised crime, linked to global black markets and affected by national and international politics. There are enormous amounts of money at stake now, and this was what drew the law into the Sierra Madre and also made it imperative to co-opt the law and keep it at bay.
****
Baborigame was an ominous, grim-looking town in a wide valley with heavily logged mountains around it. When Randy, another of my guides, first came here in the early 1990s, there was no law and no electricity, and a killing almost every night. The arrival of the law had resulted in a decline in the murder rate in town, and an increase in the murder rate out in the ranches.
The torrent of drug money that had flowed through Baborigame in the 1980s and 1990s had left almost no trace. The streets were unpaved and potholed. The drains didn't work. Aside from a few "narco" houses with bright paint and fancy wrought-iron fences, people lived in squalid shacks and adobes.
By this point in my journey I was tired and run down and I had lost tolerance for machismo. It is the root of the worst evil in Mexico, the real reason why men kill each other and rape women in such horrifying numbers. Not that those numbers are available; according to The Washington Post, fewer than 1 per cent of rapes are reported in Mexico.
In the Sierra Madre the practice known as rapto – a man kidnapping a girl and forcing her to marry him – is commonplace. This is what happened to Chana, a woman I met. From Coloradas de la Virgen, she was now living in Baborigame. Raped at 15 and made pregnant, she had to marry the rapist so he could help her to raise the child. She had another child with her rapist husband and then he was murdered, leaving her with two children to raise. It happens to thousands of women like Chana every year. It is indefensible, but it is the code of the mountains.
Back near Alamos, I picked up another guide, Gustavo. One of his jobs was doing clerical and translating work for the municipio, or county police department, and this gave him access to the murder reports and crime statistics from the area. I started looking into the numbers.
The population of the municipio was approximately 23,000, with 9,000 in Alamos, 3,000 in San Bernardo and the rest scattered in small mountain villages and ranches. Gustavo said they were averaging 90 reported murders a year, and that it was safe to add at least another 20 unreported murders to that figure. Let's call it 100 murders a year, committed by a population of 23,000.
I knew that Mexico's overall murder rate was twice that of the United States, but here was a rural county with a murder rate eight times higher than the most homicidal US cities.
We drove into a village of about two dozen shacks, most of them built out of crudely woven sticks and dried mud with palm-thatch or corrugated tin roofs. More often than not, they also had a solar panel, a TV satellite dish and a big American pick-up parked out front.
"With the money from your first crop you buy clothes, jewellery and guns," said Gustavo. "I can assure you that every one of these huts has at least one pistol and one rifle inside. Then you buy your truck, your solar, your satellite and TV. The last thing you spend money on is the house."
We drove on to the next village, Aguacaliente. It looked deserted. We walked along the stream looking for the hot springs that gave the village its name. A middle-aged man appeared in a blue shirt and white hat and walked down the banks holding a bucket. "That's a woman's job," said Gustavo. "He was sent down here to see what we're doing."
The man introduced himself as Señor Espinoza and we all shook hands. Gustavo ran through his clan credentials. With no prompting, Señor Espinoza started talking about the soldiers. "We had a nice crop growing in the hills and we were ready to pick it when the army came with planes and helicopters and a captain that could not be fixed."
"It is these new college-educated army officers," said Gustavo.
"There are a couple of them near Alamos who can't be fixed. They are not reasonable men," said Espinoza. "We used to grow a lot of opium here and the army have stopped that too. It makes no sense. The army and the federales were getting their share, the politicians were getting their share from the mafia, the gringos were getting their drugs and the people here were able to make a living. It was a good system for everybody and now it is broken. Even if we get a reasonable captain during the next harvest, we have no money now and will not be able to fix things with him."
He bid us a courteous farewell, apparently satisfied that we were harmless. We walked back to the truck and sat in the cab making peanut butter sandwiches.
"Gustavo," I said, looking in the rear-view mirror. It didn't look good. There were two young men leading horses directly towards us and they had very hard stares on their faces. Gustavo looked over his shoulder. Two more men appeared and then all four of them pulled down their hats, and when Gustavo saw that, with a piece of bread half-smeared with peanut butter on his knee, he said, "Go, go, go! Go now! Go!"
I started the engine and slewed out of there, fish-tailing in the sand.
****
The largest component of Mexico's economy is still drug trafficking, estimated at about $50bn. According to a leaked study conducted in 2001 by Mexico's internal security agency CISEN, if the drug business was somehow wiped out, Mexico's economy would shrink by 63 per cent.
As Gustavo pointed out, the drug business was not a healthy occupation or a good influence on society. It makes boys neglect their schooling and any other ambitions they might harbour. It causes men to die young and violently and worsens corruption.
Coming back across the Cuchujaqui river in the gathering dark, tired and beaten up from a long day on bad roads, Gustavo spoke. "The thing about Mexico is that everyone is out to get everyone else, except within your family and very closest friends. We live with our senses and suspicions on full alert. Maybe someone thinks your wife is prettier than his so he whispers something to the police, or the mafia, and the next thing the police are planting drugs in your truck and you're going to jail for 10 years, or there's a bullet in your head and you may never know why."
He paused a moment and let out a long sigh: "I don't know if you can understand what it is like to live this way."
© Richard Grant 2008. Extracted from Bandit Roads, to be published tomorrow (Little, Brown, £16.99). To order the book for the special price of £15.99 (inc P&P), call Independent Books Direct on 0870 079 8897
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As Porfirio Diaz said some 100 years ago, "Poor Mexico; so far from God and so close to the United States."
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Poor Americans, so close to Mexico, and with a still unsecured border.......
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http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/10869/
**Content Warning-graphic photos from Mexico's drug violence**
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"Poor Americans, so close to Mexico, and with a still unsecured border......."
A witty rejoinder GM, and entirely valid-- we are in complete agreement about the border and that Mexico's inability to have opportunity for its people within its own borders presents profound problems for us.
I would also add that if Americans weren't buying the cocaine that we do, the drug trade would not be what it is. (For the record, in my opinion our "War on Drugs" is a tremendous mistake.)
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Border battle brews over Mexico's undersea oil
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Unable to develop its deepwater wells and crowded by foreign energy giants, the nation weighs opening up a key industry.
By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2008
U.S. GULF OF MEXICO -- Eight miles north of the maritime border with Mexico, in waters a mile and a half deep, Shell Oil Co. is constructing the most ambitious offshore oil platform ever attempted in the Gulf of Mexico.
As tall as the Eiffel Tower, the floating production facility will be anchored to the ocean floor by moorings spanning an area the size of downtown Houston. Slated to begin operating late next year, this leviathan known as Perdido (or Lost) will cost billions and be capable of pumping 100,000 barrels of crude a day.
But Perdido's most-notable achievement may be to compel Mexico to loosen its 70-year government monopoly on the petroleum sector, thanks to a phenomenon Mexicans have dubbed the "drinking straw effect."
Mexicans fear that companies drilling in U.S. waters close to the border will suck Mexican crude into their wells. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis' fictional oilman in "There Will Be Blood" likened the concept to siphoning a rival's milkshake.
"When they take petroleum from the American side, our petroleum is going to migrate," Sen. Francisco Labastida Ochoa, head of the Mexican Senate's Energy Committee, told the newspaper Milenio recently.
Oil isn't a simple commodity in Mexico. It's a powerful symbol of national sovereignty. Rancor over foreigners profiting from its hydrocarbons -- namely America's Standard Oil -- led Mexico to nationalize its industry in 1938. The state-owned oil company Pemex is forbidden by law from partnering with outsiders to exploit a drop of Mexican crude.
But for a growing chorus of Mexicans, sharing a milkshake is preferable to watching your neighbor drink it up. Mexico has no viable deepwater drilling program to match U.S. efforts near the maritime border. And it lacks an iron-clad legal means to defend its patrimony. Some are urging their government to partner with the U.S. to co-develop border fields or risk losing those deposits.
Mexican Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel has spoken repeatedly of her desire to negotiate such a pact. Cross-border fields are a hot topic in Mexico's Congress. Lawmakers are embroiled in a heated debate on how to strengthen Pemex, which provides 40% of Mexico's tax revenue but whose slumping output is alarming the nation.
Proposed legislation would still ban partnerships. But the consensus to permit some exception in the gulf region is growing as oil companies move closer to Mexican territory. The U.S. has issued drilling rights on dozens of parcels less than 10 miles from Mexican waters. Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, plus independents including Houston's Bois d'Arc Energy, have secured acreage adjacent to the boundary.
"The pressure is forcing [legislators] to do something," said Mexico City attorney David Enriquez, a maritime law expert who will testify at a Senate hearing today on transborder reservoirs. "It's the one area where they are unified."
It's unclear whether big shared deposits even exist in the Gulf of Mexico. Historically, the region's deepwater finds have been isolated pockets of petroleum, not mega-fields.
Officials at the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates U.S. offshore production, said they had no knowledge that any gulf reservoirs now under development crossed the international divide.
Shell, which is developing its Perdido platform with Chevron and BP, said the deposits they were targeting were confined to U.S. territory.
Mexicans are skeptical. A recent editorial cartoon showed a greedy Uncle Sam sucking from a straw plunged deep into the gulf. But Pemex hasn't done the seismic and drilling work needed to determine if there is crude on its side.
All the more reason, Enriquez said, for Mexico to collaborate with the U.S. to find out what lies near the 470-nautical-mile gulf border and end all the speculation.
A spokesman for Minerals Management said his agency had worked with Mexico before on boundary issues and was open to discussing cross-border fields. "It's the neighborly thing to do," said Dave Cooke, deputy regional supervisor for resource evaluation for the agency in New Orleans.
Oil and gas fields straddle international borders all over the globe. Countries typically strike a "unitization agreement" to share the costs to extract the deposits and split the proceeds based on how much lies in each nation.
Britain has partnered with the Netherlands and Norway in the crowded North Sea. Australia and East Timor have a unitization agreement. So do Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea.
But the U.S. and Mexico have long skirted the topic, given their prickly history with oil.
Until recently, such an agreement wasn't necessary. Both nations had plenty of shallow-water reserves to keep them occupied. Low oil prices didn't justify the exorbitant costs of deepwater drilling, where a single well can cost $100 million or more.
But exploding crude prices and advances in seismic technology now have oil companies pushing into the farthest reaches of the U.S. gulf. Private operators snapped up a record $3.7 billion worth of leases at Mineral Management Services' March auction, virtually all of them in deep water.
Since 1992, firms have drilled more than 2,100 wells at depths greater than 1,000 feet in the U.S. gulf. Pemex has drilled seven deepwater wells since 2004, none of which is producing, and none is likely to for years.
Therein lies the nation's predicament. Mexico is the world's sixth-largest crude producer, but production is in its fourth straight year of decline. Mexico could become a net oil importer within a decade if it doesn't find new reserves fast.
Cantarell, a shallow-water gulf field in southern Mexico, is drying up after more than a quarter-century of production. April output averaged just over 1 million barrels a day, less than half of its peak in 2003.
Pemex says there are billions of untapped barrels in Mexico's deep waters. But it lacks the capital and know-how to go after them.
A bill being pushed by President Felipe Calderon's administration would make it easier for Pemex to hire the expertise it needs. But deep-water projects cost billions and can take a decade to come on line. Oil majors typically want a share of any crude that they find -- a standard industry practice forbidden by Mexico's constitution.
It's unclear whether a constitutional change would be necessary to let Mexico forge a unitization agreement with the United States. But industry experts said a deal would make sense for both sides.
Companies working in U.S. waters wouldn't have to worry about Mexico taking legal action if it were determined that Mexican crude was ending up in their wells. International law and commercial custom dictate that communal reservoirs be shared. But the U.S. has not ratified a key United Nations treaty on maritime law, which could complicate Mexico's effort to pursue any complaint over pilfered crude.
Nevertheless, oil companies don't like surprises, said Michelle Foss, chief energy economist at the University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology. "You're not going to put a billion dollars at risk if . . . you might have to suspend operations because of an international dispute," she said.
A unitization deal would give Pemex a chance to learn from deepwater veterans who have been working the gulf for decades. There is pipeline infrastructure on the U.S. side, eliminating the need for Mexico to duplicate such a costly effort.
Yet critics such as Mexican opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador say border fields are the first step in opening Mexico's energy sector to foreigners and privatizing Pemex. Calderon denies it.
As Mexico mulls its next move, the U.S. is hitting the gas. Its gulf crude production averages 1.3 million barrels daily and is projected to rise to as much as 2.1 million barrels a day by 2016, thanks to Perdido and other deepwater projects.
Shaped like a giant tin can, Perdido will be anchored in 8,000 feet of water, making it the deepest so-called spar in the world. The movable structure, with up to 150 workers, will tap oil at three fields, Silvertip, Tobago and Great White.
"The easy oil is gone," said Russ Ford, Shell's technical vice president for the Americas.
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Mexico Security Memo: June 16, 2008
Stratfor Today » June 16, 2008 | 2330 GMT
Related Links
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Targeting Children
Twelve-year-old Alexa Belen Moreno was found shot dead in the back of an abandoned sport utility vehicle June 9 in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Police later reported that Moreno and two other young girls had been kidnapped in a park near where Moreno’s body was discovered. The three girls reportedly were kidnapped to be used as bargaining tools with rival groups, but the scenario changed when the kidnappers were intercepted by a rival group. The kidnappers proceeded to use the three as human shields as they engaged in a gun battle with the rival faction, resulting in Moreno’s death and the injury of another of the girls.
While violence has been aimed at young people before, even the cartels largely eschew the tactic. (La Linea, an alliance of corrupt police officials that acts as the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, later left a note next to the corpse of an individual stating, “This is what happens to those who involve the innocent.”)
The child kidnappings and the killing of Moreno reveal a trend seen before with the Arellano Felix Organization, aka the Tijuana Cartel. As the Tijuana cartel began to dissolve under pressure from multiple sources, elements of it diversified their criminal interests into different areas such as kidnapping.
The split between the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez cartel over the Juarez plaza has been well documented, and is the source for the majority of the violence taking place in the border town. While the Sinaloa cartel continues to fracture, we will likely see the remaining Sinaloa elements in Juarez either move elsewhere or adopt this practice of diversifying their criminal enterprises. However, the narcotics trade will still be the central focus for these factions because that is where the most money is to be made.
Cuban Illegal Immigrants Abducted
A bus carrying 33 Cuban nationals guarded by National Institute of Migration (INM) guards was hijacked June 11 by an unknown number of armed men on the Palenque-Ocosingo road 140 kilometers (about 87 miles) outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state. The 33 Cubans were arrested in Cancun earlier in the week when the boat they were traveling in was intercepted by the INM. They were on the bus along with other Central American detainees traveling to an immigration detention center in Tapachula.
Cuban Ambassador to Mexico Manuel Aguilera de la Paz revealed that elements of the “Miami Mafia” were behind the hijacking in Chiapas. Human trafficking has been a large money-maker for the Cuban mafia, especially the Miami syndicate, for some time now. Recently, human smugglers have begun to take different routes through Mexico and across its porous border with the United States due to increased patrols by the U.S. Coast Guard along the Florida coast. Cuban nationals must only be present at the border and be able to identify themselves as a Cuban national to be granted asylum in the United States; they do not have to cross the border first. Families pay members of the Miami Mafia between $10,000-$15,000 per person to transport loved ones from Cuba to the United States, making this group of Cuban nationals quite valuable at just under $500,000. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office later announced that the Miami Mafia possibly could be cooperating with Los Zetas, using plazas controlled by the Zetas to transport Cubans to the U.S. border.
(click to view map)
June 9
The Police Chief of Jaltipan, a city southeast of Veracruz, was murdered by a group of armed men inside his home as he returned from work in the afternoon.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza announced an “Arms Crusaders” program to prevent cross-border arms transactions; he also announced the exchange of real-time intelligence between Mexican and U.S. authorities.
June 10
The corpse of Jorge Velazquez, the chief of security for Reclusorio Sur — a Mexico City prison — was found wrapped in a blanket on the side of the street in the Iztapalapa area of Mexico City. Authorities believe his murder resulted from a prison drug deal gone wrong. Prison officials later confiscated all cell phones belonging to prison inmates.
June 11
The head prosecutor for Mexico City announced that two kidnapping gangs still operating openly in the city are responsible for four recent abductions that remain under investigation.
Mexico’s attorney general said violence in the struggle against drug trafficking has not reached its peak yet, but will decline over the next few years.
June 12
Citizens of Morelia, frustrated with the inactivity of local law enforcement, posted three signs around town warning criminals not to commit petty crimes.
An informant provided the Mexican Attorney General’s office with information connecting high-ranking Public Security Secretariat official Juan Guadalupe Aguilar to Sergio Villareal — aka El Grand — a high-ranking member of the Beltran Leyva group with connections to the Los Zetas.
June 13
The bodies of a young married couple executed in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, were discovered in a house on a ranch, bound with gunshot wounds to the backs of their heads. This was the second such incident in a week in Michoacan.
June 14
“Commando Negro” leader Rosario Flores Rojas was captured outside Ensenada, Baja California state, in a joint operation between the Mexican Army and state law enforcement officials. Commando Negro has protected drug traffickers, operated a kidnapping ring and been involved in various incidents of score-settling.
June 15
Five people died in a shootout between two rival drug gangs and federal, state and local officials in Ciudad Obregon and Navajoa, Sonora States.
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**Their troops in action?**
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/jd_interviews.mp3
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/ma1.pdf
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/ma2.pdf
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/ma3.pdf
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/06/23/20080623abrk-homeinvasion0623-ON.html
Man killed in home invasion; drugs suspected
by Ali Pfauser - Jun. 23, 2008 04:34 PM
Six men with guns and body armor ambushed and killed a man in his Phoenix home Sunday, firing over one hundred rounds into the house.
No one else was injured. Investigators believe the house was being used to sell marijuana and the shooting was not random. Nevertheless, the large amount of ammunition alarmed authorities.
"We have seen an increasing amount of these type of violent crimes in the past five months," Phoenix Police Sgt. Joel Tranter said. "We want the public to realize that these types of crimes will not be tolerated in Phoenix."
Phoenix police officials gave the following details about the case: Special Assignments Unit detectives were near the area of 83rd Avenue and Encanto Boulevard when they heard gunshots coming from a neighborhood. The detectives began to drive toward the gunshots where they were directed by neighbors to a nearby house.
Once inside the home, detectives discovered the body of Andrew Williams, 30, shot numerous times, Phoenix Police Detective Cindy Scott said.
As police searched the gunshot-riddled house they determined over 100 rounds of various calibers of ammunition were used.
Police also recovered marijuana and body armor from the house.
As more investigators came to help, they noticed a red Chevrolet Tahoe driving suspiciously in the neighborhood. Detectives followed the vehicle to 7th Street and Coronado Road where Daniel Garcia-Saenz, 24; Manual Garcia-Trejom, 25; and Rodolfo Madrigal Lopez, 19, jumped out and ran from the vehicle before being apprehended by authorities.
All three suspects were wearing law-enforcement-like body armor. Helmets and various weapons were recovered from the suspect's vehicle.
Police believe there are three more suspects still outstanding in the case, Scott said.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Phoenix Police Department at 602-262-6141 or 480-WITNESS.
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/26/outrage-our-friends-in-mexico-release-suspect-in-border-patrol-officers-murder/
More from our "amigos".
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Mexican Cartels and the Fallout From Phoenix
July 2, 2008
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Late on the night of June 22, a residence in Phoenix was approached by a heavily armed tactical team preparing to serve a warrant. The members of the team were wearing the typical gear for members of their profession: black boots, black BDU pants, Kevlar helmets and Phoenix Police Department (PPD) raid shirts pulled over their body armor. The team members carried AR-15 rifles equipped with Aimpoint sights to help them during the low-light operation and, like most cops on a tactical team, in addition to their long guns, the members of this team carried secondary weapons — pistols strapped to their thighs.
But the raid took a strange turn when one element of the team began directing suppressive fire on the residence windows while the second element entered — a tactic not normally employed by the PPD. This breach of departmental protocol did not stem from a mistake on the part of the team’s commander. It occurred because the eight men on the assault team were not from the PPD at all. These men were not cops serving a legal search or arrest warrant signed by a judge; they were cartel hit men serving a death warrant signed by a Mexican drug lord.
The tactical team struck hard and fast. They quickly killed a man in the house and then fled the scene in two vehicles, a red Chevy Tahoe and a gray Honda sedan. Their aggressive tactics did have consequences, however. The fury the attackers unleashed on the home — firing over 100 rounds during the operation — drew the attention of a nearby Special Assignments Unit (SAU) team, the PPD’s real tactical team, which responded to the scene with other officers. An SAU officer noticed the Tahoe fleeing the scene and followed it until it entered an alley. Sensing a potential ambush, the SAU officer chose to establish a perimeter and wait for reinforcements rather than charge down the alley after the suspects. This was fortunate, because after three of the suspects from the Tahoe were arrested, they confessed that they had indeed planned to ambush the police officers chasing them.
The assailants who fled in the Honda have not yet been found, but police did recover the vehicle in a church parking lot. They reportedly found four sets of body armor in the vehicle and also recovered an assault rifle abandoned in a field adjacent to the church.
This Phoenix home invasion and murder is a vivid reminder of the threat to U.S. law enforcement officers that stems from the cartel wars in Mexico.
Violence Crosses the Border
The fact that the Mexican men involved in the Phoenix case were heavily armed and dressed as police comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed security events in Mexico. Teams of cartel enforcers frequently impersonate police or military personnel, often wearing matching tactical gear and carrying standardized weapons. In fact, it is rare to see a shootout or cartel-related arms seizure in Mexico where tactical gear and clothing bearing police or military insignia is not found.
One reason for the prevalent use of this type of equipment is that many cartel enforcers come from military or police backgrounds. By training and habit, they prefer to operate as a team composed of members equipped with standardized gear so that items such as ammunition and magazines can be interchanged during a firefight. This also gives a team member the ability to pick up the familiar weapon of a fallen comrade and immediately bring it into action. This is of course the same reason military units and police forces use standardized equipment in most places.
Police clothing, such as hats, patches and raid jackets, is surprisingly easy to come by. Authentic articles can be stolen or purchased through uniform vendors or cop shops. Knockoff uniform items can easily be manufactured in silk screen or embroidery shops by duplicating authentic designs. Even badges are easy to obtain if one knows where to look.
While it now appears that the three men arrested in Phoenix were not former or active members of the Mexican military or police, it is not surprising that they employed military- and police-style tactics. Enforcers of various cartel groups such as Los Zetas, La Gente Nueva or the Kaibiles who have received advanced tactical training often pass on that training to younger enforcers (many of whom are former street thugs) at makeshift training camps located on ranches in northern Mexico. There are also reports of Israeli mercenaries visiting these camps to provide tactical training. In this way, the cartel enforcers are transforming ordinary street thugs into highly-trained cartel tactical teams.
Though cartel enforcers have almost always had ready access to guns, including military weapons such as assault rifles and grenade launchers, groups such as Los Zetas, the Kaibiles and their young disciples bring an added level of threat to the equation. They are highly trained men with soldiers’ mindsets who operate as a unit capable of using their weapons with deadly effectiveness. Assault rifles in the hands of untrained thugs are dangerous, but when those same weapons are placed in the hands of men who can shoot accurately and operate tactically as a fire team, they can be overwhelmingly powerful — not only when used against enemies and other intended targets, but also when used against law enforcement officers who attempt to interfere with the team’s operations.
Targets
Although the victim in the Phoenix killing, Andrew Williams, was reportedly a Jamaican drug dealer who crossed a Mexican cartel, there are many other targets in the United States that the cartels would like to eliminate. These targets include Mexican cartel members who have fled to the United States due to several different factors. The first factor is the violent cartel war that has raged in Mexico for the past few years over control of important smuggling routes and strategic locations along those routes. The second factor is the Calderon administration’s crackdown, first on the Gulf cartel and now on the Sinaloa cartel. Pressure from rival cartels and the government has forced many cartel leaders into hiding, and some of them have left Mexico for Central America or the United States.
Traditionally, when violence has spiked in Mexico, cartel figures have used U.S. cities such as Laredo, El Paso and San Diego as rest and recreation spots, reasoning that the general umbrella of safety provided by U.S. law enforcement to those residing in the United States would protect them from assassination by their enemies. As bolder Mexican cartel hit men have begun to carry out assassinations on the U.S. side of the border in places such as Laredo, Rio Bravo, and even Dallas, the cartel figures have begun to seek sanctuary deeper in the United States, thereby bringing the threat with them.
While many cartel leaders are wanted in the United States, many have family members not being sought by U.S. law enforcement. (Many of them even have relatives who are U.S. citizens.) Some family members have also settled comfortably inside the United States, using the country as a haven from violence in Mexico. These families might become targets, however, as the cartels look for creative ways to hurt their rivals.
Other cartel targets in the United States include Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement officers responsible for operations against the cartels, and informants who have cooperated with U.S. or Mexican authorities and been relocated stateside for safety. There are also many police officers who have quit their jobs in Mexico and fled to the United States to escape threats from the cartels, as well as Mexican businessmen who are targeted by cartels and have moved to the United States for safety.
To date, the cartels for the most part have refrained from targeting innocent civilians. In the type of environment they operate under inside Mexico, cartels cannot afford to have the local population, a group they use as camouflage, turn against them. It is not uncommon for cartel leaders to undertake public relations events (they have even held carnivals for children) in order to build goodwill with the general population. As seen with al Qaeda in Iraq, losing the support of the local population is deadly for a militant group attempting to hide within that population.
Cartels have also attempted to minimize civilian casualties in their operations inside the United States, though for a different operational consideration. The cartels believe that if a U.S. drug dealer or a member of a rival Mexican cartel is killed in a place like Dallas or Phoenix, nobody really cares. Many people see such a killing as a public service, and there will not be much public outcry about it, nor much real effort on the part of law enforcement agencies to identify and catch the killers. The death of a civilian, on the other hand, brings far more public condemnation and law enforcement attention.
However, the aggressiveness of cartel enforcers and their brutal lack of regard for human life means that while they do not intentionally target civilians, they are bound to create collateral casualties along the way. This is especially true as they continue to conduct operations like the Phoenix killing, where they fired over 100 rounds of 5.56 mm ball ammunition at a home in a residential neighborhood.
Tactical Implications
Judging from the operations of the cartel enforcers in Mexico, they have absolutely no hesitation about firing at police officers who interfere with their operations or who dare to chase them. Indeed, the Phoenix case nearly ended in an ambush of the police. It must be noted, however, that this ambush was not really intentional, but rather the natural reaction of these Mexican cartel enforcers to police pursuit. They were accustomed to shooting at police and military south of the border and have very little regard for them. In many instances, this aggression convinces the poorly armed and trained police to leave the cartel gunmen alone.
The problem such teams pose for the average U.S. cop on patrol is that the average cop is neither trained nor armed to confront a heavily armed fire team. In fact, a PPD source advised Stratfor that, had the SAU officer not been the first to arrive on the scene, it could have been a disaster for the department. This is not a criticism of the Phoenix cops. The vast majority of police officers and federal agents in the United States simply are not prepared or equipped to deal with a highly trained fire team using insurgent tactics. That is a task suited more for the U.S. military forces currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These cartel gunmen also have the advantage of being camouflaged as cops. This might not only cause considerable confusion during a firefight (who do backup officers shoot at if both parties in the fight are dressed like cops?) but also means that responding officers might hesitate to fire on the criminals dressed as cops. Such hesitation could provide the criminals with an important tactical advantage — an advantage that could prove fatal for the officers.
Mexican cartel enforcers have also demonstrated a history of using sophisticated scanners to listen to police radio traffic, and in some cases they have even employed police radios to confuse and misdirect the police responding to an armed confrontation with cartel enforcers.
We anticipate that as the Mexican cartels begin to go after more targets inside the United States, the spread of cartel violence and these dangerous tactics beyond the border region will catch some law enforcement officers by surprise. A patrol officer conducting a traffic stop on a group of cartel members who are preparing to conduct an assassination in, say, Los Angeles, Chicago or northern Virginia could quickly find himself heavily outgunned and under fire. With that said, cops in the United States are far more capable than their Mexican counterparts of dealing with this threat.
In addition to being far better trained, U.S. law enforcement officers also have access to far better command, control and communication networks than their Mexican counterparts. Like we saw in the Phoenix example, this communication network provides cops with the ability to quickly summon reinforcements, air support and tactical teams to deal with heavily armed criminals — but this communication system only helps if it can be used. That means cops need to recognize the danger before they are attacked and prevented from calling for help. As with many other threats, the key to protecting oneself against this threat is situational awareness, and cops far from the border need to become aware of this trend.
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Mexico: The Early Signs of a Failed State?
By Congressman Tom Tancredo
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Mexican law enforcement officials are walking into U.S. ports of entry in increasing numbers to seek political asylum, and the flow may soon become a flood as Mexico's battle with the drug cartels intensifies. Our first instinct is to welcome them, but there is more at stake than humanitarian sentiments.
The problem is that if our immigration laws are stretched to grant asylum to law enforcement personnel on the grounds that their own government cannot protect them, any Mexican threatened by these violent criminal gangs can claim the same right of asylum.
U.S. immigration law does not easily accommodate these law enforcement cases because they are fleeing threats from organized crime – the Mexican drug cartels – not political persecution by their government. If our laws are stretched to accept thousands of refugees from drug cartel violence, it will only exacerbate Mexico's problems.
We can sympathize with the Mexican police chief or prosecutor who lands on a cartel hit list because he will not play ball with them. The Mexican federal government seemingly cannot protect him and his family, so he flees to El Paso or Nogales and seeks asylum. The number of such asylum applications more than doubled in the first six months of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, but very few have been approved. What will happen if we do not accept these asylum applications as a humanitarian gesture? What will happen if we do?
The rising number of asylum seekers from Mexican law enforcement and the professional classes is a new phenomenon, not merely another facet of our open borders fiasco. These people are not swimming the Rio Grande or sneaking across the Sonora desert. They are walking into our border ports of entry from Texas to California and asking for protection. We must respect them for following our laws and doing it the right way. But we must also ask some hard questions before throwing open our gates. Humanitarian concerns must be balanced against other considerations – because the fate of Mexico hangs in that balance.
What happens to Mexico if all the good cops flee to the U.S. or Europe and the only ones left are working hand-in-glove with the criminals? What are the consequences if all the honest judges and prosecutors flee and only dishonest ones are left in charge of the courts? What happens if honest businessmen find it easy to flee to San Diego, Houston or Phoenix and only those who will do the cartels' money laundering are running the nation's trucking companies, farms, and banks?
The unpleasant truth is that this new refugee problem is the sign of a deep crisis not in the Mexican economy but in the Mexican political system itself. Mexico exhibits mounting signs of a "failed state," a political system that cannot satisfy the most basic conditions of civic order such as safety in one’s streets, home, school, and workplace. Failing states begin to hemorrhage people and their assets. The middle class begins to flee – doctors, lawyers, accountants, business owners, teachers, and of course, law enforcement officials, who are the first targets of criminal organizations.
These new "civic disorder refugees" are not like the millions of unemployed or underemployed who leave Mexico to a find a job and a better life. These middle class citizens have jobs – often good jobs by Mexican standards – but they do not have security for themselves or their families. They would much prefer to stay in Mexico but they cannot do so safely, so they flee.
If police chiefs and judges cannot be protected from the cartels, then how can ordinary citizens feel safe? If we open the gates to everyone who has a "credible fear" of the cartels, the Border Patrol will no longer have to worry only about people jumping the fence. Thousands will be waiting in line at one of over 300 ports of entry.
This new "emigration from fear" poses an urgent challenge for Mexico. If Mexico wants to win its battle against the drug cartels, it must begin by reforming its police and criminal justice systems so that honest cops, judges and mayors – and journalists – can do their jobs without undue fear of retaliation. To his credit, President Calderon has begun to tackle this problem.
Military operations against the cartel strongholds are probably necessary, but they can never be a substitute for a functioning criminal justice system. Mexican citizens must be able to trust the local police, and local police must be able to trust their government to protect them from gangster-terrorists.
The United States must not become an automatic escape valve for honest officials threatened by cartel violence. If that happens, Mexico will lose its most valued civil servants and become increasingly a militarized (and polarized) society.
Mexico is not yet a failed state, but if humanitarian sentiment and special interest pleadings in the U.S. block sound immigration policy – as happens all too often in American law and politics – we will hasten that tragic development.
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Significant Seizures
The Mexican government has made several large seizures of narcotics, materials and cash in recent weeks throughout Mexico. One of the biggest was the July 25 discovery of 8,000 drums of chemicals used to make synthetic drugs in a warehouse in Guadalajara, in Jalisco state. Some of the barrels contained ephedrine and others acetone, two key ingredients in the manufacturing of crystal methamphetamine.
Methamphetamine production is one of the more profitable enterprises in which Mexican drug cartels are involved, and the so-called Mexican “super labs” are responsible for an estimated 80 percent of the methamphetamine on the streets in the United States. It is important to note the growing importance of Mexican-made methamphetamine, the production of which has increased dramatically since 2005, when the United States began restricting the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. It is also important to recognize that one Mexican super lab is able to produce the same amount of the narcotic as hundreds of the small mom-and-pop meth labs common in the United States. The price of methamphetamine is comparable to that of powder cocaine in the United States, and with the cartels able to produce the synthetic narcotic themselves, they can keep a larger portion of the profits than when they act merely as middlemen transporting narcotics from South America.
In any case, someone in the methamphetamine business will not be pleased about the July 25 seizure, and some form of violent payback will likely occur in the coming weeks and months. This could be the attempted assassination of a high-profile law enforcement official with connections to the seizure, or even an attempt to reclaim the seized goods. In the past, the cartels have contracted with assassination gangs like El Nica, which is believed to have been involved in the May 1 murder of Roberto Velasco Bravo, director of investigations for the federal police’s sensitive investigations unit, and the May 8 murder of Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting head of the federal police. However, many of these gangs have been dismantled by the government. Therefore, the cartels will either contract with a new gang or send in cartel enforcers, in which case large amounts of firepower will likely be employed.
It is hard to say when an act of retaliation will occur. Millan was involved in a car chase that nearly captured Arturo Beltran Leyva outside of Cuernavaca, in Morelos state, and it was only a matter of hours before Milan was assassinated outside his home in the Guerrero colony of Mexico City. In an attempt to reclaim their “property” Los Zetas, who have diversified their interests to include human smuggling, are credited with the hijacking of a Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) bus carrying 33 undocumented Cubans in Chiapas state only a couple of days after they were detained by the INM in Cancun, Quintana Roo. The Cubans were later detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on the U.S. side of the border. In other cases, the time between seizures or arrests and retaliation has been weeks or even months. Although it is hard to predict the timing of a retaliatory strike, it is important to note that the cartels can act swiftly
when they see a need to.
Foreign Kidnappings
Reports began surfacing this past week of foreign nationals being kidnapped for ransom in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, which shares a border with Texas and is home to the Gulf Cartel. On July 12, five South Korean nationals were kidnapped and held for a $30,000 ransom in the city of Reynosa. South Korean officials negotiated their release on July 22. South Korean officials refused to comment on whether the ransom was paid. It was later reveled that the five were planning to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally to seek employment in the United States.
On July 21, a 19-year-old American citizen named Roel Rolando Ramirez was rescued from room 226 of the Hotel California in the Mexican town of Miguel Aleman, in Tamaulipas state. The son of a New Mexico rancher, Rolando Ramirez lived in the Texas border town of Rio Grande City, where he was forced into a car and blindfolded after reportedly being tricked by a friend into stopping his truck. Rolando Ramirez was then taken to the Hotel California where he was told to call his father and ask for $200,000 to be wired to bank accounts in Mexico for his safe return. Rolando Ramirez’s father then alerted the state police, and they were able to rescue Ramirez and arrest his captors.
Cartels typically target only their enemies in kidnapping attempts, but with the security situation along the U.S.-Mexican border in a state of flux, the cartels may be looking for other ways to make money. It would not be surprising to see cartels engage in kidnapping for ransom to help finance their narcotics operations, which have been constrained on both sides of the border. The Arellano Felix Organization (aka the Tijuana cartel) and the paramilitary group Los Zetas have both engaged in kidnapping for ransom when federal police and military operations severely hampered their drug trafficking activities. Also, it is important to note that human traffickers will sometimes hold their “cargo” hostage for additional funds. The illegal nature of human trafficking makes it difficult for awaiting family members to go to the proper authorities to report such situations.
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July 21
Roel Rolando Ramirez was rescued after he was kidnapped July 17 in Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas state. Rolando Ramirez’s father alerted state police after his son phoned him for the ransom. Police were able to locate Rolando Ramirez in a hotel in Miguel Aleman and arrest the kidnappers.
Two men were killed with AK-47s outside of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. Authorities say the assassins were traveling in a truck on a state highway when they opened fire on the two men.
July 22
Five South Korean nationals were set free after they were kidnapped by a gang and spent 10 days detained in an undisclosed location in Reynosa. A $30,000 ransom was demanded but South Korean officials declined to comment on whether or not it was paid.
Los Zetas were presumed to be responsible for the deaths of three state police agents in Campeche state. The three officers were leaving a restaurant around midday in Ciudad del Carmen when the gunmen opened fire.
July 23
Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes received two letters threatening his life from Gente Nueva, a paramilitary group last known to be associated with El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel. In one of the letters, the group accuses Reyes of siding with Carrillo Fuentes and the Juarez cartel and of “collaborating with the AFP.”
July 24
Twenty-one ministerial police officers resigned from departments in Culiacan, Mazatlan and Guasave, in Sinaloa state.
Salvador Barreno, director of the prison system in Juarez, Chihuahua state, was shot some 60 times by an armed group outside his home. He died at the scene.
July 25
Federal authorities seized four residences of Jesus Ernesto Sauceda Felix (aka El Chapo Sauceda), who is presumed to have been behind a drive-by shooting that killed eight innocent people, including a 15-yeqr-old girl, almost two weeks ago in Guamuchil, in Sinaloa state.
Federal police and elements of the Mexican military found 8,000 drums of chemicals used to make synthetic drugs in the basement of a warehouse in Guadalajara, Jalisco state.
The body of Pablo Aispuro Ramírez, a municipal police officer in Culiacan, was found hanging in a tree wearing a sombrero with a message pinned to his chest. He was reported kidnapped July 17.
July 26
Federal agents seized five large-caliber weapons, 17 magazines and 388 rounds of ammunition in a raid on a residence in Ejido, in Sonora state. Authorities say the residents of the home, members of the Sinaloa cartel, were planning an assault on rival groups.
July 27
A shooting in a prison 47 kilometers from Navolato, in Sinaloa state, left one prisoner dead and two others injured. A pistol was reportedly smuggled into the prison for the targeted assassination of Victoriano Araujo Payan, the brother of Gonzalo Araujo Payan, a former high-ranking Sinaloa cartel member who reportedly committed suicide in 2006.
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I have only one question after reading this thread. How can anyone defend these people coming into the U.S illegally?
Not all the bleeding heart slogans in the world will change the fact that the U.S is spending more tax dollars then it is taking on, mostly on social programs and initiatives that would not need to be in place if the general population were more self sufficient.
Cities are literally on the verge of bankruptcy, and still more uneducated, non english speaking people pour across the U.S mexican border that these financially unstable cities and states will have to suppport.
Does it not bother you guys that there are hundreds of thousands of good, english speaking, university educated people waiting to legally enter the U.S who will be more then happy to pay taxes and give to society instead of taking?
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Mex military points guns at US BP agents :x :x :x
http://www.local2544.us/
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Mexico Security Memo: Aug. 4, 2008
Stratfor Today » August 4, 2008 | 2110 GMT
Related Links
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Another Bloody Milestone
In the past week, the number of cartel-related homicides in Mexico surpassed 2,630 for the year, approximately the number of killings in the country during all of 2007. The country’s cartel war has intensified so much in 2008 that it has taken only seven months to claim the same number of victims that were killed in 12 months in 2007, which was a record year for drug violence.
While there are few corners of the country immune to organized-crime activity, much of the current violence is concentrated in areas where authorities have disrupted the largest criminal groups. The growing violence may simply be the price that must be paid for the government’s successes in targeting the cartels.
And there have been successes. A Mexican press report published in the past week detailed the progress the government has made in its operations against the Sinaloa cartel. Over the past two months, according to the report, authorities have investigated presumed money-laundering establishments, taken down a series of “transmission antennae” that formed part of the cartel’s communications network, and seized nearly 200 vehicles, an airplane, various weapons and currency worth more than $12 million.
None of these events alone represents a significant blow to the cartel. New money laundering networks can be set up, new police commanders bribed, and cellular phones can be used instead of radios. Continued over time, however, these kinds of successes would certainly disrupt the cartel’s business operations. With the security operations in Sinaloa state only a few months old, it remains to be seen how long the authorities can maintain their current operational tempo. One vulnerability of the operation is the absence of important industry or tourism in Sinaloa state, which makes the area a relatively low priority for security. There are many more important parts of the country that could emerge as hotspots and quickly draw security forces from their current assignments in Sinaloa.
Colombian Drug Trafficker Captured
Authorities in Mexico announced this past week the arrest of Ever Villafane Martinez, a Colombian drug trafficker believed to be the link between the Beltran Leyva organization in Mexico and the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia. Villafane Martinez was arrested in Mexico City, where he had lived under an alias and operated a real estate business for several years. Authorities believe he fled Colombia sometime in 2001, when he escaped from a maximum security prison while awaiting extradition to the United States.
Much is unknown about the inner workings and external relationships of the Beltran Leyva organization and the exact role played by Villafane Martinez, which makes it difficult to assess the potential impact of his arrest. On one hand, if he was one of several mid-level members managing the cocaine flow from South America, any effects will likely be short-lived. On the other hand, if he had a management role high in the organization, or was the organization’s sole connection to its Colombian suppliers, the coming investigation into his financial records and Colombian acquaintances could have a lasting impact.
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July 28
A group of armed men opened fire on a police headquarters building in Lerdo, Durango state, killing two officers who were standing outside at the time of the attack.
The former police chief of San Juanito, Chihuahua state, died when he was shot 10 times by a group of gunmen chasing him in his vehicle.
A police patrol car forming part of a convoy transporting an alleged drug trafficker in Oaxaca, Oaxaca state, was intentionally rammed by an SUV driven by several armed men. Authorities believe the incident was an attempt to stop the convoy and rescue the suspect. The rescue attempt was unsuccessful and the alleged drug trafficker was kept in custody.
A police officer in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, was shot to death while driving by gunmen traveling in two vehicles that blocked his path and opened fire. After fleeing the scene, the gunmen returned to ensure that the victim was dead by shooting him in the head at close range.
July 29
Authorities in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes state, reported the targeted killing of a former police officer. In a separate incident, a jeweler in the city was abducted by armed men from a restaurant where he was dining with his family.
July 30
Six members of a family — including two girls, ages 7 and 8 — were discovered dead in their home by unknown assailants in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco state. Five of the victims had been shot in the head at close range, while the other was apparently killed by a knife. Authorities have suggested that the crime may have been motivated by robbery, since one of the victims had recently withdrawn a large amount of cash from a bank.
A federal police commander in Mexicali, Baja California state, was arrested by authorities in Los Angeles, Calif., on charges related to organized crime. The commander had reportedly fled to the United States with his family following the recent assassination of federal agents in Mexicali and amid rumors that he would be targeted next.
A police commander in Coacalco, Mexico state, was kidnapped from his home by six men armed with assault rifles.
A city official in charge of public works in Amatlan, Veracruz state, was shot to death by unknown assailants while driving his vehicle.
July 31
The chief of homicide investigations in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, died when he was shot in the head at close range as he was leaving his home.
One person died and another was wounded in Ecatepec, Mexico state, when their vehicle was fired upon by gunmen traveling in two SUVs with federal police insignia on the side. Authorities recovered more than 150 shell casings from the scene.
Aug. 1
Authorities in Pajacuaran, Michoacan state, found the body of an unidentified man bound at the wrists and with three gunshot wounds to his head.
Two men died and a female police officer was wounded by gunfire attributed to gang members in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state.
The bodies of two unidentified men were found with gunshot wounds to the head in Nogales, Sonora state. In nearby Cananea, the charred bodies of two men were discovered in a burned vehicle.
Aug. 2
The body of an unidentified man with signs of torture and at least one gunshot wound in the face was found in Nextlalpan, Mexico state. A note criticizing the Michoacan state-based criminal group La Familia was reportedly found with the body, though the contents were not released.
Aug. 3
The bodies of four federal agents were found inside a car along a road in Queretaro, Queretaro state. Authorities reported that the agents had been abducted the day before in San Luis Potosi state.
Federal police in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, arrested three alleged drug traffickers after a pursuit and firefight that began when the suspects attempted to flee from the agents.
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WSJ
THE AMERICAS
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Mary Anastasia O'Grady is a member of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board and editor of the "Americas," a weekly column that appears every Monday in the Journal and deals with politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada.
Ms. O'Grady joined the paper in August 1995 and became a senior editorial page writer in December 1999. She became a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. She previously worked as an options strategist, first for Advest Inc. and then for Thomson McKinnon Securities in 1983. She moved to Merrill Lynch & Co. in 1984 as an options strategist and was also a product manager and a sales manager for Merrill Lynch Canada and Merrill Lynch International during her 10 years with the company.
In 1997 Ms. O'Grady won the Inter American Press Association's Daily Gleaner Award for editorial commentary, and in 1999 she received an honorable mention in IAPA's opinion award category. In 2005 she won the Bastiat Prize for journalism, which honors writers who promote the institutions of a free society. Ms. O'Grady, who was born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., received a bachelor's degree in English from Assumption College and an M.B.A. in financial management from Pace University.
Mexico Pays the Price of Prohibition
August 18, 2008
With the world fixated on Vladimir Putin's expansionist exploits in Georgia, a different sort of assault against a democracy south of the U.S. border is getting scant attention. But it is equally alarming.
Mexico is engaged in a life-or-death struggle against organized crime. Last week six more law enforcement officials were killed in the line of duty battling the country's drug cartels. This brings the death toll in President Felipe Calderón's blitz against organized crime to 4,909 since Dec. 1, 2006. A number of the dead have been gangsters but they also include journalists, politicians, judges, police and military, and civilians. For perspective on how violent Mexico has become, consider that the total number of Americans killed in Iraq since March 2003 is 4,142.
Kidnapping and armed robbery numbers have also soared. In Tijuana, a kidnapping epidemic has provoked an exodus of upper-middle-class families across the U.S. border in search of safety.
As this column has pointed out many times, one reason that security has so deteriorated in the past decade is the demand in the U.S. for illegal narcotics, and the U.S. government's crackdown on the Caribbean trafficking route. Mexican cartels have risen up to serve the U.S. market, and their earnings have made them rich and well-armed.
The victims of last week's killing spree include the deputy police chief of the state of Michoacan and one of his men, a detective in the state of Chihuahua, and a deputy police chief in the state of Quintana Roo. As of July, 449 police and military officers have died in the Calderón offensive, further underscoring the price Mexico is paying for the U.S. "war on drugs." But the costs go well beyond the loss of life.
AP
Doctors hold banners during a demonstration against a recent wave of crimes and kidnappings in Tijuana, Mexico.
In a developed country like the U.S., prohibition takes a toll on the rule of law but does not overwhelm it. In Mexico, where a newly revived democracy is trying to reform institutions after 70 years of autocratic governance under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the corrupting influence of drug profits is far more pernicious.
According to Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, part of the explanation for the kidnapping surge can be traced to the success of the government's squeeze on the drug runners. He told me in February that he expected the pressure to produce a fragmentation of the cartels, turf wars and an increase in other criminal activities to replace shrinking profits in drug trafficking.
If true, the kidnapping spree might be a sign that Mr. Medina Mora's strategy is working. But when federal investigators recently fingered Mexico City police in the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Fernando Martí, the son of a wealthy entrepreneur, Mr. Medina Mora's theory lost some credibility. Rather than being the work of demoralized criminals, kidnapping, in the capital anyway, appears to be just one business run by a well-oiled machine with institutional links.
Ricardo Medina, a leading Mexican opinion writer and the editor of El Economista, the country's top financial daily, told me on Thursday the case shows that "independent of the shooting war on drugs there is the problem of institutions being infiltrated by criminals and corrupted."
Even captured criminals often go free, Mr. Medina says, and all branches of government share responsibility for this crisis of impunity. It is true that judges can be intimidated or bribed. But it is also true, for example, that under Mexican law kidnapping is not a federal crime, and therefore must be handled by local authorities. Often victims do not want to press charges because there is a perception that the local police and local governments are in on it.
That perception has been strengthened in the Martí case, but the problem of impunity is hardly new. As Mr. Medina wrote in El Economista on Friday, "impunity is in view of everyone, day after day. We all see it even to the point of smiling ironically or shrugging our shoulders."
Why hasn't this problem been tackled? One possible explanation in Mexico City is that the district police and the rest of the district's bureaucracy represent an important constituency for the ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD). If the PRD's base prefers the status quo, there is a high political cost to challenging it.
Drug profits going to organized crime only complicate the matter. Writing in the latest issue of the Milken Institute Review, former U.S. foreign service officer Laurence Kerr takes a page out of U.S. history. "America has been in Mexico's shoes: flush with the bounty of illegal liquor sales, organized crime thoroughly penetrated the U.S. justice system during Prohibition. As long as Americans willingly bury Mexican drug traffickers in greenbacks, progress in constraining the trade is likely to be limited." Regrettably, Mexico's institutional reform will also be limited and the death toll will keep climbing.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
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Violence in Juarez Persists
The bloody turf battles that have been waged for the better part of this year in the northern state of Chihuahua — and in the border city of Ciudad Juarez in particular — continued this past week. The usual cadence of violence in the state was punctuated by two particularly brutal incidents. In the first, eight men armed with assault rifles fired shots at the outside of a drug rehabilitation clinic in Juarez, then entered the building and opened fire again, killing eight people and wounding six others. In the second, at least 13 people — including a 1-year-old child — were killed when a dozen armed men entered a dance hall in Bocoyna, Chihuahua state, and fired indiscriminately at about 100 people celebrating a family gathering. Details of the family’s identity were not released, making it difficult to assess why the family would have been targeted.
The attack on the drug rehab center follows a similar attack during the previous week that left two dead. If the attacks were designed as intimidation to ensure a market of addicts for local distribution of narcotics, it is more likely that a local street gang would have conducted them — as they would have more to lose than would major drug trafficking cartels with markets north of the border. It is also possible, however, that those managing the clinics engaged in other activities detrimental to a cartel or local gang, or refused to cooperate with a local cartel presence. Regardless, the confluence of various criminal groups in the Juarez area and their struggle for control of the city will ensure that incidents like this continue.
Sinaloa Cartel Activities in Central America
Authorities in Costa Rica announced this past week the arrest of a Cuban-American and a Costa Rican believed to control overland drug trafficking routes in Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua for the Sinaloa cartel. Authorities seized more than 600 pounds of cocaine from a warehouse during the arrest. The capture follows the seizure earlier this past week in Nicaragua of more than 1.5 tons of cocaine that belonged to a then-unidentified Mexican cartel, as well as the arrest of several Mexican nationals in Panama in possession of more than 150 pounds of cocaine. Authorities do not know how long the cartel had operated the route, but suggested that the Mexicans had only recently arrived in Central America. Reportedly, a lack of trust on their part drove them to more closely oversee the smuggling operation.
The increasing presence of Mexican drug traffickers in Central America is a shift that we have observed over the past year, as maritime and airborne routes to Mexico have become more difficult to use without detection. Several details of these most recent investigations offer keen tactical insight into how drugs are moved from South America to Mexico. Drugs on the route detected in this case, for example, enter Costa Rica via highway through an international port of entry and are kept several days in a safe-house near the border. The shipment is then transported overland across the entire country, entering Nicaragua on horse or on foot at a remote part of the international border. The shipment is then carried to the inland Lake Nicaragua, where is it picked up by boat and transferred to another vehicle as it continues on to Honduras.
Besides these tactical details, this incident offers an opportunity to consider the overall state of the drug trade. It is a testament to the current power of Mexican cartels in general that it is the Mexican groups — and not Colombian groups or others — that have extended their reach into Central America. This reach will not only prove useful for drug trafficking purposes, but also probably will be exploited for delivering drugs to the emerging consumer markets in much of Latin America. The shifts in cartel activity are also a testament to improvements in Mexican aerial and maritime interdiction.
Federal Police on Strike
Several hundred federal police agents in four states carried out a brief work stoppage Aug. 15, demanding additional days off, better pay and more powerful weapons. The strikes — which were carried out by agents assigned to Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, and Tabasco states — left some airport posts in Guanajuato and highway checkpoints elsewhere temporarily abandoned. The Aug. 15 strikes appear to have been a response to the announcement from Mexico City this past week that federal agents would no longer accrue vacation days, therefore making more agents available for duty. The strikes also follow a demonstration this past week by more than 700 federal agents attending a training academy in San Luis Potosi who walked out of class in protest of lax security at the academy. (Several agents have been kidnapped and ambushed in recent weeks while attending the academy.)
Work stoppages, protests and walkouts have become common among state and local Mexican police forces over the past year, as an increase in cartel attacks on police has made the job too dangerous for officers to settle for the salary and working hours they signed on for. Strikes by federal police agents, however, are much less frequent — and their spread could potentially have a devastating impact on the government’s strategy in the cartel war. One clue as to how the government might react to expanded strikes can be drawn from an example we highlighted last week. Following the killing of four federal agents in Michoacan state, a federal police commander there alluded to agents’ concern for safety when he reassuringly announced the arrival of reinforcements and a “change in strategy” to prevent future targeting of agents. A more cautious approach to combating the country’s drug cartels is simply one option of many, which President Felipe Calderon’s administration are likely considering to prevent this latest headache from becoming a more pressing concern.
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Aug. 11
A group of alleged drug cartel enforcers verbally threatened reporters in the parking lot of a newspaper building in Nogales, Sonora state.
Three men driving along a highway in Durango state died when they were shot by men armed with assault rifles.
One person died and another was wounded when the vehicle they were traveling in failed to stop at a highway checkpoint in Sonora state. Authorities said the checkpoint — located just a few miles from a federal policy building — had been erected by an organized criminal group.
Authorities discovered the body of a police commander in Huaniqueo, Michoacan state, who was reported kidnapped several days before.
A deputy police chief in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo state, and his bodyguard died when they were shot outside the chief’s home.
Aug. 12
Federal authorities revealed that six officials in the anti-organized crime unit (SIEDO) of the federal attorney general’s office were arrested the previous week on charges of spying for the Beltran Leyva drug trafficking organization. An investigation that began several months ago based on military intelligence uncovered a Beltran Leyva counterintelligence ring inside SIEDO that was leaking classified information on cases and upcoming operations.
A deputy police chief in Tepalcatepec, Michoacan state, died when he was shot multiple times by armed men traveling in a vehicle.
Two federal police officers died during a firefight with armed men along a highway in Sinaloa state.
The body of an evangelical pastor who was kidnapped July 23 was found buried behind a safe-house in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. The kidnappers initially demanded $200,000, but the family could only pay about $20,000.
Aug. 13
The charred body of an unidentified man who had apparently been shot multiple times was found in the tourist town of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco state.
Two owners of a shipping company were kidnapped simultaneously in separate incidents in Poza Rica, Veracruz.
Aug. 14
A group of approximately 20 armed men traveling in 10 vehicles evaded capture after a prolonged pursuit by police in Tijuana, Baja California state.
A firefight between military forces and armed men in Rincon de Romos, Aguascalientes state, left at least one soldier and two gunmen dead.
Authorities in Sonora state reported that a gunbattle between smuggling gangs in Cananea left one person dead and at least three wounded.
Aug. 15
Authorities in Aguascalientes state reported the kidnapping of four people, including the police chief of Tepezala, a judge and police commander in the state capital Aguascalientes.
A severed, blindfolded head was found in Ecatepec, Mexico state.
One person died and another was wounded in a firefight between alleged alien smuggling groups in Mexicali, Baja California state.
At least 25 homicides were reported in separate incidents in Chihuahua state during a 36-hour period.
Two police officers were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt in Puebla, Puebla state, during which gunmen fired more than 80 rounds. Some reports indicate the officers were bodyguards for a deputy state attorney general.
Aug. 16
Hit men suspected of having ties to a drug cartel opened fire on a family gathering in the town of Creel, Chihuahua state, near the U.S. border, killing 13 people. Masked gunmen fired on the dance hall where a family gathering was taking place. The Mexican government sent 160 federal police and soldiers to the town after the attack.
Aug. 17
A firefight between federal police and gunmen traveling in three vehicles along a highway in Colima state left at least one dead.
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SOURCE = http://www.khou.com/topstories/stori...f.5e63638.html
Mexican police chief slain 24 hours after replacing predecessor
03:15 PM CDT on Saturday, August 23, 2008, Associated Press
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- A northern Mexican town’s police chief was killed Friday just 24 hours after replacing a predecessor whose slaying had prompted the rest of the force to quit out of fear of drug gangs.
Jesus Blanco Cano’s bullet-ridden body was found at a ranch near the town of Villa Ahumada in Chihuahua state, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of El Paso, Texas, said Alejandro Pariente, a spokesman for the regional deputy attorney general’s office.
He had been beaten, blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back. Twelve bullet casings were found at the scene.
Cano, 40, had been on the job for just a day. The previous police chief, two other officers and three residents were killed in May when 70 gunmen barged into Villa Ahumada, a town virtually taken over by drug gangs.
The rest of its 20-member police force quit in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over. The town had slowly been recruiting new police and was without a police chief until Blanco took the job. The troops eventually left.
Mayor Fidel Chavez met Friday with state police, but nobody at this office could be reached for comment. Chavez had fled after the May attack, taking refuge in the state capital of Chihuahua City, but he returned after soldiers recovered the town.
Mexico’s powerful drug cartels have stepped up attacks against police in response to a military and police crackdown, beheading some officers and killing others outside their homes. Several towns and cities, particularly in the north, have struggled to hold together their police forces.
The mayor of Ciudad Juarez, a town just north of Villa Ahumada, announced a plan this week to recruit soldiers to replenish its depleting police force. Many police in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, have been killed after their names appeared on hit lists left in public. Others whose names appeared on the lists have quit.
Since taking office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 25,000 troops and federal police to retake drug hotspots across the country.
But homicides, kidnappings and shootouts have only increased. In Chihuahua state –home base of the powerful Juarez drug cartel— more than 800 people have been killed this year, a surge from less than 400 during the first half of 2007.
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Mexicans feeling pinch as income stream from U.S. slows
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Mexicans feeling pinch as income stream from U.S. slows
10:52 PM CDT on Monday, September 22, 2008
By LAURENCE ILIFF / The Dallas Morning News
DEMACÚ, Mexico – Luis Martínez went from being a successful Dallas businessman to a struggling alfalfa farmer in rural central Mexico because of a North Texas crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Now, that crackdown is squeezing towns across Mexico as immigrant unemployment grows in the U.S. and money sent home declines at a record rate.
The Oak Cliff resident of 20 years was deported after a traffic stop in Carrollton near his recycling workshop. Immigration officials said he had violated his residency by leaving the country without permission – to attend a funeral in Mexico – during the lengthy wait for his green card.
Now in the alfalfa fields of his boyhood, Mr. Martínez, 43, faces a fate similar to hundreds of thousands of his countrymen who have been deported or who returned home after losing their jobs: a massive loss of income.
"You make $10 an hour over there and $10 a day here in Mexico," said Mr. Martínez, who added that in addition to his recycling business he has Dallas property and pays U.S. taxes.
A growing number of deportations, along with rising unemployment, are forcing Mexicans to further tighten their belts as remittances sent home dropped by nearly 7 percent in July compared with a year earlier. That's the biggest one-month fall on record as measured by Mexico's central bank.
Although some analysts question how the remittances are measured and suggest some may have made it back to Mexico under the central bank's radar, they agree that the effects of immigrant unemployment and deportations are increasingly being felt from Dallas to Demacú.
"Hispanic unemployment is likely to go up all the way to December before it comes down," said Manuel Orozco, who is head of a remittance project at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
Of the 500,000 Hispanics who have lost their jobs since January 2007, he estimates 60,000 are illegal immigrants from Mexico. Some have been forced to take jobs that pay much less. "I have interviewed migrants, and they tell me they lost a job in construction at $15 an hour and now are washing dishes for $7 an hour," he said.
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities are deporting Mexican immigrants at a rate not seen in 50 years, including more than 208,000 "removals" from the U.S. interior in the current fiscal year, which ends this month.
"Deportations are a serious matter that has an effect on the money flows [to home countries]," Mr. Orozco said.
Because about 90 percent of immigrant earnings stays in the U.S., the deportations and job losses affect both sides of the border, authorities say."It means that the money not being sent back is not being generated here," said David J. Molina, an economics professor at the University of North Texas. "To a large extent, I would argue that that slowdown is not good for either side of the border."
But some differ. Jean Towell, Dallas president of Citizens for Immigration Reform, said falling remittances illustrate two things.
"It does show that enforcement, plus the economy, are working together to make it harder for the illegal aliens to stay in the country," she said. "For the people who receive remittances, of course, it's a bad thing. They rely on that since their country doesn't seem to be able to take care of the economy well enough so that people have a sustained rate of living."
In Demacú and in Dallas, the tough times for immigrants in the U.S. are felt house by house.
While Mr. Martínez toils in alfalfa fields, his wife is in Dallas. In Demacú, his 82-year-old mother, Gregoria, used to receive a little money each month from a nephew, but that's gone. Mr. Martínez's sister Julia said she too has lost income from children in the U.S., but she's not sure if it's because of hard times or because they have gotten married and moved on with their lives.
Another sister, Edith, said the children she teaches in elementary school depend on remittances from relatives in the U.S., but while the amount may have fallen, the money continues to flow like always, which encourages further immigration.
"These kids want to follow in the footsteps of their fathers – to leave, so they can build a house back home and have a car," she said.
Mr. Martínez said he is making the best of the family alfalfa business, looking for new markets and new ways to boost the slim profits. Maybe he'll be able to send money to the U.S. someday, he joked.
"I'm used to hard work, so it's not so bad," he said during a break from raking dry alfalfa into piles and lifting them into a truck. "Imagine if I had worked in an office."
And it's not just the lost money that he needs to put his daughters through school. It's his lost life in Dallas since his return to Mexico.
"It's very difficult. It's 20 years you have been gone, and when you come back, your friends are not here," Mr. Martínez said.
The stalled construction projects around Demacú are a clear sign, he said, that times are getting tougher for immigrants in the U.S.
"This town has maybe 50 or 60 young people that are working over there, and they have projects that are going on here, construction of houses and stuff like that, but because so many people there are being taken out of the country, it's affecting us a lot," said Mr. Martínez.
He called Dallas a city with "a small-town spirit" and the United States "a nation blessed by God." For those, and many other reasons, he is working his way back through the immigration service while hoping U.S. policies toward immigrants become more tolerant.
"We have hope something will happen in the U.S.A., something that can give us the opportunity to go back and keep working over there," he said. "I spent 20 years of my life in that country, so that means I am part of that country."
Staff writer Dianne Solis in Dallas contributed to this report.
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North American Union - It's Coming
By William H. Calhoun
If you have not read the news in a few months, you may be unaware: there are plans to create a North American Union, whereby Mexico, the United States and Canada will eventually become a single country, with a single currency and a single superhighway system.
Construction on the NAFTA Superhighway, encompassing I-69 and directed by NASCO, has already begun in two states. It will run from central Mexico, through the middle of the United States, through Kansas City, and up into Canada. It will be four football fields wide, off limits to most Americans, and run by foreign companies.
The mechanism to implement the NAU is the SPP (Strategic and Prosperity Partnership of North America), which was settled between President Bush, President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin during their March 2005 summit meeting in Waco, Texas. Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice has been instrumental in setting the SPP plans in motion. The North American Union will modeled after ultra-liberal European Union, and put in place by administrative regulations under the SPP umbrella.
Outraged by this plan, four patriotic Congressmen (Reps. Virgil H. Good, Walter B. Jones, Ron Paul, and Tom Tancredo) have introduced H. Con. Res. 487, which states that "the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada." In the last few weeks, patriot Americans from all over the United States have been telephoning their Congressmen demanding that H. Con. Res. 487 be put to a vote and passed in 2007.
Nevertheless, cheerleaders for the Bush Administration deny that any plans for a North American Union exist. Neocon Michael Medved says that "there's no reason at all to believe in the ludicrous, childish, ill-informed, manipulative, brain dead fantasies about a North American Union. The entire chimera has been conjured up to scare people over nothing...."
If there are no plans for a North American Union, then why did four of the most patriotic Congressmen see it necessary to introduce H. Con. Res. 487? And if it is not real, then what would H. Con. Res. 487 harm? Legislation preventing a "chimera" certainly cannot present any danger. Why are neocon Trotskyites like Medved becoming so emotionally unstable over a bill to prevent a "chimera"?
To any discerning mind, plans for a North American Union do exist. One only need to look at the wording of SPP documents, or look at the NASCO website. It has been set in motion. As Cicero famously said, "patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides?"
How have we come to this place? The NAFTA agreement can be seen as the beginning, which the wisest recognized as a disaster from day one. Historically, conservatives have opposed free trade, and they should. It is destroying our economy, it is undermining our sovereignty, and it is national suicide. Many in the GOP, however, have been "neoconned" on this issue.
To see the connection between free trade the dissolution of the USA under the North American Union, only need to read Karl Marx. On Jan. 9, 1848, in "On the Question of Free Trade," Marx said, "...in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade."
Notice, Marx's celebration of the breaking up of "old nationalities." Such a statement is similar to GW Bush's claim that the USA is not an "actual place," but an "idea." Neocons celebrate this Marxist notion of a "propositional nation," because it removes the historic prerequisites of nationhood: borders; a common language, history and genealogy; blood and soil; kith and kin; and genophilia (instinctive attachment to family and tribe).
It is thus that GW Bush and others have so adamantly supported the third-world invasion of American, and why many predict that the 700-mile fence will not be built. The U.S.-Mexico border must be abolished for the implementation of the North American Union.
It is all about profit and cheap labor, and big business adamantly supports the prerequisite of the North American Union: the third-world invasion of America. During the Cold War, big business sided with many conservatives to oppose Marxism. Now, however, most large corporations side with the internationalist Left.
In the 1950s, when our country was invaded, President Eisenhower responded with "Operation Wetback" and deported around a million invaders in a single year. Today, however, politicians say they are unable. Rather, they are unwilling.
Some of the greatest traitors in American history are right before our eyes: GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Linda Chavez, Alberto Gonzales, Carlos Gutierrez, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Linda Sanchez, Robert Menendez, Luis Gutierrez, Solomon Ortiz, and the list goes on and on. These miscreants have chosen Mexico, multicultural political correctness, and big business over hard-working Americans. They have betrayed Middle America.
And what can be done to stop this North American Union (aka, treason)?
Call and write your Congressmen, and demand a real patriotic President in 2008, like Duncan Hunter or Tom Tancredo.
We are under attack - both from within and without. Prepare for the oncoming madness! Stop the North American Union! Stop the third-world invasion!
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William H. Calhoun is a writer, paleoconservative, poet-warrior in the classical sense, farmer on his ancestral estate, and graduate of the University of Chicago. He can be reached at williamhcalhoun@yahoo.com
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http://www.applian.com/flvplayer/liveleak.php
I don't think we heard the last of this. It will be repackaged, put on a new coat of paint, and back on the agenda! With little or no media coverage at all, most people are not even aware of this!
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Bullet Proof Clothes In Mexico
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By Marc Lacey
Published: October 6, 2008
MEXICO CITY: Exclusive clothing boutiques line Avenida Presidente Masarik here. A Burberry coat? A Corneliani suit? A Gucci scarf? Have enough pesos, and they are yours.
But tucked on a leafy side street in the Polanco neighborhood is a shop unlike the others, one whose bustling business says much about the dire state of security in this country. At Miguel Caballero, named after its Colombian owner, all the garments are bulletproof.
There are bulletproof leather jackets and bulletproof polo shirts. Armored guayabera shirts hang next to protective windbreakers, parkas and even white ruffled tuxedo shirts. Every member of the sales staff has had to take a turn being shot while wearing one of the products, which range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $7,000, so they can attest to the efficacy of the secret fabric.
"If feels like a punch," a salesman said of the shot to the stomach he received.
Just who is willing to fork over thousands of dollars for these chic shields? Customers include Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, not to mention assorted royalty, movie stars and other VIP's.
As Mexico grapples with an increase in drug-related violence, sales are steadily on the rise, the company said, though it declined to provide precise figures.
Those who duck into the private boutique, passing first through a metal detector, run the gamut.
There is the surgeon who finishes work at the hospital late and feels vulnerable while walking through the parking lot to his car. Now, that potential burglar can take a shot at him with a .38-caliber revolver, a 9-millimeter pistol or a submachine gun and still not pierce his lightweight, heat-resistant and quite fashionable coat.
There is the newspaper distributor who has scores of employees who collect papers from him in the wee hours of the morning to drop at doorsteps across the capital. He stopped at the boutique the other day for a jacket that can keep him in business even if someone tried to knock him off and take the rolls of cash he carries around.
There is the bullfighter who is scared not of bulls but of bullets and consequently ordered a matador's suit that can withstand gunfire.
Then there are Mexican politicians and business executives, some who have received threats and others who want to supplement their existing security measures, which in many cases already include bulletproof cars, home alarm systems, round-the-clock bodyguards and panic buttons.
"What we offer is one more chance at life," said Javier Di Carlo, the marketing manager, as he showed off the top-of-the-line Black collection in a private fitting room. "We don't want people to say to the criminal, 'Shoot me.' Nobody should feel like Superman. But if the criminal does shoot, we give our customers a chance to run away."
There is a whole lot of shooting going on in Mexico today. Every day, the papers are full of victims, bodies lying out in grotesque poses with bullet wounds all about. Some are garden-variety crime victims, but the drug cartels that control much of the Mexican countryside are behind the overwhelming majority. They pay off politicians and police officers and act as shadow governments in town after town along their transit routes. Cross them, and they do not hesitate to pull the trigger.
The rash of drug violence, together with a surge in kidnappings for ransom, has shaken everyday Mexicans. Ask a stranger for directions on the street these days, and fear is the first emotion that crosses the person's face. He or she might recover enough to describe how to go this way or that.
Studies have shown that more and more anxious Mexicans are pouring their money into defensive measures. Families and businesses across Mexico invest $18 billion in private security measures, a recent study by the Center for Economic Studies of the Private Sector found. Some people are trying to get their hands on weapons, which are tightly regulated here but widely available on the black market. To some, bulletproof fashion is the logical next step.
Still, not everybody is lining up. Jon French, a former State Department official who now runs a security company in Mexico City, said he considered the bulletproof luxury items more about ego than anything else. Most of the killings that fill the front pages — there have been 3,000 this year alone — are drug traffickers killing rivals, he pointed out.
"Certain members of the well-to-do class here have a tendency to be ostentatious," French said. "You see it in their bodyguards and chase cars. Some of this is so while at the country club they can talk about how protected they are. Now they can say, 'Look, I'm wearing body armor!' "
But Caballero, who opened the Mexico store two years ago and has since expanded with branches in Guatemala City, Johannesburg and London, counters by telling of his loyalty club program for clients. Called the Survivor's Club, it is open to anyone whose life was saved by wearing one of his protective garments. Its rolls, he said in a telephone interview from Bogotá, are on the rise.
To lower the chance that he is outfitting the bad guys, Caballero runs background checks on customers, checking their names against lists of fugitives compiled by the United States and Mexican governments. He points out that the clothing is not designed for the kind of warfare that is breaking out in some parts of Mexico, where drug assassins have used rocket launchers and grenades to wipe out rivals.
A bulletproof polo shirt is meant more to repel random street violence, of the kind that seemed as if it just might break out just around the corner from Caballero's shop the other day.
Fernando Arias Carmona, a salesman, wore one of the protective leather coats while he sat at a café on Masarik being photographed. People looking on inquired into what was the fuss was about. When told that Carmona's fashionable jacket was bulletproof, a man at the next table reached into his own jacket and said, "Let me test it out."
Fortunately, though, the man pulled out only with his fingers in the shape of a pistol.
Then, looking at the coat again, he said, "I want one of those."
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Mexico Security Memo: Oct. 6, 2008
Stratfor Today » October 6, 2008 | 2034 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
More Murders in Tijuana
Tijuana saw a dramatic increase in violence over the past week. A total of 64 people were killed in cartel-related violence in the northwestern border city between Sept. 26 and Oct. 5, making the week the most violent for Tijuana in recent memory. Tijuana was the deadliest city in Mexico during the first quarter of 2008, with firefights and kidnappings a common occurrence. But this past summer was a relatively quiet one for Tijuana, perhaps because of military deployments there in May or because of an agreement between the warring factions.
The latest round of murders was particularly public and gruesome. Bodies with signs of torture were stacked next to a primary school and most had their tongues cut out. Later in the week, six bodies were discovered elsewhere in the city dissolving in barrels of sulfuric acid. Nearly every body was accompanied by a message to “El Ingeniero,” or Fernando Sanchez Arellano, the leader of the fractured Arellano Felix Organization (AFO). The Baja state attorney general’s office says members of the Sinaloa federation are behind the killings.
Fractured and weakened by arrests, the AFO is not in a position to hold the lucrative Tijuana plaza. Just to the north lie San Diego and Los Angeles, California, the two cities that drive the huge cocaine market in southern California. With the AFO weakened, it appears that the Sinaloa federation has been able to poach on its territory.
Sinaloa’s presence in Tijuana is nothing new. Its battles with members of the AFO earlier this spring are what led to military deployments there in May. Although it is too soon to tell, Sinaloa may be mounting a fresh offensive in Tijuana after concentrating on the city of Juarez during the summer. This is notable because Juarez has been relatively quiet for the past couple of weeks. Although murders still occur there every few days, this is not nearly as frequent as in some weeks in the summer, when 30 to 40 murders was the norm.
Opening up a second front in Tijuana raises the question of the future of Juarez. While the violence there will undoubtedly continue, if Sinaloa is shifting its focus to a weakened Tijuana, it could signal that some kind of deal has been struck in Juarez. Stratfor received information at the end of September indicating that the situation in
Juarez would be resolved in a very bloody fashion. While large-scale violence did not materialize, the resolution might have.
Argentine Arrests in Paraguay
On Oct. 1, Jesus Martinez Espinoza, the presumed leader of a Sinaloa cartel cell in Argentina, was arrested on charges of passport falsification and possession of ephedrine, along with two other Mexican nationals, in a hotel in Asunción, Paraguay. Martinez Espinosa was wanted in Argentina for leading a group of Mexican drug traffickers that reportedly operates several methamphetamine labs in Buenos Aires. According to Argentine press reports, Mexican nationals with ties to the Sinaloa cartel have begun to take over the local methamphetamine market in Buenos Aires. The high-profile murder of a Buenos Aires pharmacist who reportedly supplied the Mexican nationals with Indian ephedrine (a precursor ingredient to methamphetamine) brought a lot of media attention to the issue, prompting the Argentine government to act.
Over the past two months, the Argentine government has led a crackdown on the distribution and production of synthetic drugs throughout the country, and especially in Buenos Aires. The vast majority of those arrested have been Mexican nationals. According to investigators in Paraguay, it looks as though synthetic drugs are manufactured in Argentina, smuggled across the border into Paraguay then shipped to Mexico for ultimate distribution in the United States.
The connection between the Mexican nationals in Argentina and the Sinaloa cartel remains unclear. There are conflicting reports about whether the Mexicans are under direct orders from the senior Sinaloa leadership or if they are just a franchise backed financially by the Sinaloa cartel. Either way the presence of Mexican nationals actively involved in the synthetic drug market in Argentina further indicates that Mexican drug traffickers are spreading their involvement over the continent. The murder of the pharmacist was a way of making their presence known.
(click to view map)
Sept. 29
Catalino Ortuño Duarte, a Party of the Democratic Revolution candidate for the Guerrero state congress, was shot in the back and killed as he was travelling through the village of El Naranjo in Guerrero State.
The Mexican Chamber of Commerce threatened not to pay taxes to Ciudad Juarez because city authorities are unable to ensure the security of organized trade. The Mexican Chamber of Commerce also began negotiations with the FBI to advise local businesses on security measures.
Eighteen people were killed in Tijuana, and the bodies of 12 victims were dumped in a vacant lot next to a primary school.
The counselor of the National Chamber of Road Freight in Veracruz state reported that over the past three years assaults on the state and federal highways in the state have risen 25 percent.
Two 17-year-olds were shot to death in Zapopan, Guadalajara state, when their red Corvette was intercepted by three assailants in a silver Suburban.
The Mexican navy seized a shrimp boat carrying four tons of cocaine in the Gulf of Tehuantepec. The boat, which left from Mazatlan, Sinaloa, was being escorted by an unknown number of speed boats which fled the area when the navy appeared.
A gun fight between two rival groups of drug traffickers in Cajeme, Sonora state, left three dead.
Sept. 30
The secretary of public security in Tijuana announced the seizure of 19 firearms, four vehicles and several uniforms that had been stolen from various Mexican law enforcement agencies.
Six bodies were found dissolving in three different barrels of sulfuric acid in Tijuana. Two other bodies were discovered in barrels of acid later in the day.
Thirty armed commandos stormed a private airstrip in Navolato, Sinaloa state, subdued a local policeman who was guarding the airstrip and stole five Cessna airplanes that reportedly had been seized by the Mexican military in counternarcotics operations earlier in the year.
The attorney general of Guatemala said Guatemala is in favor of the Mexican prosecution of Daniel Perez Rojas, reportedly the number two of Los Zetas, and that Guatemala supports his extradition, which has been requested by Mexican authorities.
Oct. 1
Argentine police conducted some 11 raids on various hotels in Buenos Aires, searching for eight Mexican nationals involved in trafficking ephedrine.
The bodies of two males reported missing Sept. 26 were found on the La Costerita highway with several bullet wounds and signs of torture.
Federal agents arrested eight suspected members of the Gulf cartel at a restaurant in the Juarez colony of Mexico City.
President Felipe Calderon sent a reform package to the Mexican congress in an attempt to overhaul the country’s security apparatus.
Oct. 2
Paraguayan authorities arrested three Mexican citizens and seized five kilos of ephedrine at the Silvio Pettirossi International Airport.
Ten people were murdered in Chihuahua state, four in Ciudad Juarez. The death toll in Ciudad Juarez alone for the year stands at 1,075, with more than 1,400 people killed in Chihuahua state during the same period.
A police officer was shot four times in Navolato, Sinaloa state, but his life was spared thanks to his bullet proof vest.
Eight bodies were dumped in a vacant lot in an industrial Park in Tijuana, Baja California state. The bodies showed signs of torture and their faces were wrapped in duct tape.
A group of armed men set fire to five buildings and kidnapped two people in the northern part of Chihuahua state.
One person was killed and one injured as a group of gunmen attempted to kidnap a father and his son in the San Pedro municipality of Nuevo Leon.
Oct. 3
The manager of a television station in Juarez, Chihuahua state, was detained by the military for driving an armored truck.
Three people were killed in attacks in Culiacan, Sinaloa state.
Four bodies were discovered near Vicente Guerrero, Durango state, near the border with Zacatecas.
Five bodies were discovered in the Guadalupe Victoria colony of Tijuana, two of which had been decapitated.
Oct. 4
The mayor of Ixtapan, Mexico state, a common weekend getaway for Mexico City residents, was executed. Los Zetas are the lead suspects.
Narcomessages appeared in Oaxaca offering rewards for the capture of Jesus Mendez Vargas and Enrique Tlacaltel and saying that members of La Familia participated in the Sept. 15 grenade attacks in Morelia, Michoacan.
Eight bodies were discovered in various parts of Tijuana, two of which had been decapitated. Narcomessages were found nearby.
Oct. 5
Some 7.2 million pills of pseudoephedrine were seized at the airport in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, in a shipment from Calcutta, India.
Víctor Manuel Álvarez, a lieutenant in the Beltran Leyva Organizations, will be extradited to the United States on charges of possession with intent to distribute five kilograms of cocaine.
Two men were killed in Sonora at different locations. One was shot to death in Nogales by two gunmen and the other was gunned down in Hermosillo as he was driving his jeep.
A 30-year-old man was gunned down in his Chevrolet truck as he was driving down the Boulevard Insurgentes in Tijuana. The man was accompanied by a woman who was wounded and transported to a local hospital.
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Mexico: Commercial Paper and a Tortured Budget
Stratfor Today » October 18, 2008 | 1555 GMT
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images
Mexico’s 50-peso notesSummary
The security situation in Mexico has been dire for some time. Now the global financial crisis threatens to push the country into uncharted territory as the government struggles to prop up the economy while fighting a war against some of the wealthiest and most organized criminals in the world.
Analysis
The Mexican government issued $3.9 billion in guarantees for Mexican commercial paper Oct. 17, Reuters reported. The move follows failed attempts by the Mexican cement company Cemex and Mexican units of American automakers to issue some $76 million in bonds. These developments are a sign of troubled times as Mexico feels the effects of the global financial crisis. The Mexican government had already injected $8.3 billion into the markets to prop up the peso. Putting all this money forward will strain an already-tortured government budget that is dependent on a failing oil industry and must support a critical war against drug cartels.
The most vulnerable aspect of the Mexican economy is its exposure to the declining U.S. market — particularly in Mexico’s export sector. Over 80 percent of Mexico’s exports go to the United States, and the emerging U.S. recession is sure to throw this trade relationship into chaos.
Mexico is also heavily linked to the U.S. economy through remittances. Mexicans working in the United States send approximately $24.3 billion per year back home — or about 3 percent of the gross domestic product. Declines in reported remittance rates have already been reported throughout Central American states, which rely heavily on these wealth transfers. As the U.S. economy shrinks, and competition for low-wage positions increases, illegal immigrants will be pushed out of the job market, and remittances to Mexico will decline even further.
Finally, Mexico is highly exposed to the financial crisis because of the shrinking pool of global credit and the growing number of nervous investors. On the one hand, this has caused a rapid devaluation of the Mexican peso as investors rapidly pull capital from third-world markets and dump it into safer markets (i.e., the U.S. dollar). On the other hand, we have seen the results of a rapidly shrinking pool of international credit as wealth has disappeared, banks have stopped lending and investors have panicked.
This has manifested itself in Cemex’s inability to issue corporate paper, which has been a serious cause for concern in Mexican business circles. Mexico’s banks are particularly vulnerable to shrinking global capital. About 80 percent of its banking sector is controlled by foreign entities, which means that 80 percent of domestic credit is subject to the whims of the international credit pool. Any serious threat to such a large portion of the banking sector could cause a collapse of the banking system.
But the economic situation is not the only threat to Mexico’s stability. Mexico is deeply embroiled in a war against violent drug cartels that control substantial portions of the country. The death toll in 2008 alone has risen to over 3,100 and appears likely to hit 4,000 by the end of the year. And the war is not free. The government’s ability to respond effectively to an economic crisis while funding a massive military and law enforcement effort is low — and the scarcity of funds could loosen public support for the cartel war as people look to solve their basic economic needs.
Moreover, a downturn in the economy will only exacerbate the security situation in Mexico. As jobs in the United States become scarce, many of the illegal Mexican migrant laborers there will be left jobless. Many will return to Mexico, where employment opportunities are no better. There is already some anecdotal evidence that reverse illegal migration into Mexico has become much more noticeable. The return to Mexico of thousands of unemployed young workers will flood the Mexican labor market.
There is no question that increased poverty and unemployment will contribute to a worsening security situation in Mexico. Ordinary criminal activities such as theft will likely increase, which could boost organized crime. Options in the legitimate economy will be few, but the underground economy — in drugs or other inelastic commodities — could flourish during a downturn. Indeed, a declining economy will make the cartels the only game in town, and rising unemployment will provide them with an excellent recruiting opportunity.
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Mexican cartels dominate the Americas
As the most powerful drug trafficking force in the region, Mexican organized crime has spread far beyond the country in search of supplies for drugs to meet US demand, Sam Logan writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Sam Logan for ISN Security Watch
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Assassinations related to drug trafficking in Mexico are on pace to pass 4,000 this year. By any count, violence in Mexico is at historical highs, and it is bad for business. Since the end of 2007, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon increased government pressure on organized crime, both the Sinaloa and the Gulf cartels have reached beyond Mexican boundaries to source supplies, secure trafficking routes and kill rivals.
Heavy pressure on Colombian drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) opened the door for Mexicans to control a greater share of the cocaine supply chain. They now control cocaine routes out of Colombia from Andean ports to wholesale points well inside the United States. But pressure on supply routes and other areas of operation inside Mexico has forced these DTOs abroad. Guatemala, Peru and Argentina are a natural fit - corruption thrives and there is little to no government presence on borders and in many pockets of the country.
As Mexican criminals reach beyond their country to expand control over various drug-trafficking routes in the Americas, they bring a decades old violent brand of business - money or a bullet. Honor and pride push them further to kill anyone who cheats or betrays. Beyond the blood is a trail of dirty money that further corrupts, where Mexican DTOs have been linked to the electoral campaign of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina.
"Mexican drug traffickers go into locations where there are no laws or regulations," Michael Sanders, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington DC, told ISN Security Watch.
With billions of dollars to spend, little serious competition and a de facto presence in a number of countries, it is not a far stretch to consider that Central and South America have already become their domain.
The release valve
Pressure in Mexico has forced DTOs there into Guatemala, a neighboring Central American country that serves as a release valve, where they operate alternative supply routes with little trouble from the local government.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom publicly claimed on 5 September that his office and residential space was bugged by at least seven listening devices. Days later, few were surprised to learn one of his top intelligence officers, Gustavo Solano, was behind the espionage. Colom blamed the breech in security on the powerful influence of organized crime. Analysts believe the information gathered from the listening devices was sold to members of Los Zetas operating in Guatemala.
At least 300 members of Los Zetas operate in eight of Guatemala's 22 departments, according to Guatemalan news reports and a 17 October article in Mexican daily El Universal. The Guatemalan National Police believe there is a concentration of Mexican organized crime along the Guatemalan-Mexico border in the Peten department, on the country's stunted Caribbean coast, and placed in strategic locations on the borders with Honduras and El Salvador.
A 25 March shoot-out in the Guatemalan department of Zacapa left 11 dead, most of them Guatemalan criminals. Authorities believe the Zetas, formerly the military arm of the Gulf Cartel, consolidated power in the Central American country on that day, taking control over an old Gulf Cartel supply route that since at least 2004 has taken advantage of low altitude air space between two mountain ranges with no radar coverage to bring in planes. Most of this activity today is concentrated in the Sayaxche municipality of Peten, conveniently located on the border with Mexico and just miles away from a well-paved Mexican highway that leads north into the Mexican state of Chiapas, another area closely controlled by Los Zetas.
The other focus of Calderon's government offensive, the Sinaloa Cartel, has taken heavy losses due to the presence of thousands of soldiers in the states of Michoacan, Sinaloa and Sonora, the DTO's primary areas of operation.
Members of this cartel - once considered run solely by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman - in the past few years have branched into the methamphetamine business. The Sinaloa Cartel and other, smaller Mexican DTOs, now supply at least 80 percent of all methamphetamines consumed in the US according to the DEA's Sanders.
To launder proceeds from the sale of cocaine and meth (also known as "crystal" or "ice"), members of the Sinaloa Cartel have worked through front companies in Panama to move money back into Colombia where they are constantly pushing for more control up the supply chain.
"The Mexicans are in Colombia to purchase cocaine directly from coca labs to lower their costs," Roman Ortiz, director of Security and Post-Conflict Studies with Bogota-based Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP), told ISN Security Watch in a recent phone interview.
Mexican DTOs, likely members of the Sinaloa Cartel, are active in Peru for the same reason, as recent violence in Peru suggests Mexican organized crime has joined with what the Peruvian government calls the Shining Path to spur coca leaf and poppy production in the country's highlands.
Backup in the Andes
By 15 October, a number of alleged Shining Path attacks left 17 people dead, 15 of them soldiers. Analysts in Peru believe these attacks may be related to the presence of Mexican DTOs who have hired back country militants to protect their supply routes out of the mountains, especially in the Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica and Junin provinces of Peru - provinces where the Shining Path has caused trouble in the past.
Peru is considered South America's number two source for cocaine and poppy, the raw material source for heroin. Poppy fields, grown at high altitudes in Peru for opium collection, have been considered an illicit cash crop since 2005, when the Peruvian National Police announced the presence of some 5,000 acres of poppy flowers cultivated at over 15,000 feet in the country's southern highlands.
Between January and October 2008 the National Police registered seizures of 103 kilograms of opium paste, indicating the continued presence of poppy cultivation. Over roughly the same period, Peruvian police seized some 20 tonnes of cocaine, worth over US$2 billion according to Reuters and local reports.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime concluded in its 2007 Andean coca survey that production in Peru is up by four percent in Peru, compared to five percent in Bolivia and 27 percent in Colombia.
In early September, Peruvian police seized three tonnes of cocaine hidden in 200 separate bumpers used by boats to prevent damage when docking. At the time of the seizure, a concurrent operation in eight separate points in Lima netted 30 men (some of them Mexican) and Peruvian police believe were working directly for the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a 6 September article in Peruvian daily El Comercio.
South American ephedrine supply
When the Mexican government passed a law on 2 July making all cold medicines that use ephedrine and pseudoephedrine illegal, methamphetamine traffickers, in need of the same precursor chemicals to cook their drugs, were forced to look south.
Not weeks after the Mexican law came into effect, Argentine police arrested on 18 July nine Mexicans and one Argentine who had rented a luxury residence in the Buenos Aires suburbs to cook methamphetamines. A month later, authorities discovered a warehouse where tanks of ephedrine were stored. The meth lab and ephedrine storage tanks were directly linked to the Sinaloa Cartel.
At the top of the Argentine methamphetamine racket was Jesus Martinez Espinoza, an operator with the Sinaloa Cartel who traveled to Argentina to secure a source of ephedrine for methamphetamine production locally in Argentina and abroad in Mexico. He relied on three Argentine men, including Sebastian Forza, who had deep connections in the pharmaceutical industry, as his principal suppliers of ephedrine.
"Argentina can legally import 37 tonnes of ephedrine," the DEA's Sanders told ISN Security Watch, adding, "in 2006 Argentina imported 5 tonnes of ephedrine, and in 2007 Argentina imported 26 tonnes." Still 11 tonnes under the legal limit.
When Martinez's scheme began to unravel in mid July, his local connections had to go. All three Argentine businessmen disappeared on 7 August. Their bodies were found six days later in a ditch outside of Buenos Aires. Forza and the other two were handcuffed and sprayed with bullets. The triple homicide shocked Argentines, who are not accustomed to such assassination-style murders. The news catalyzed a massive investigation that led to Martinez's arrest in Asuncion, Paraguay, just hours before he was to board a flight to Mexico.
Investigations into Forza's past found a long line of bounced checks and deep debt. One of his former associates killed himself. And along with one of the other men allegedly killed by Martinez's men, Forza contributed as much as US$118,000 to the electoral campaign of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Taking over
Over the course of 2008, Mexican organized crime has been tied not only to the triple-homicide in Buenos Aires and the bugging of the office and bedroom of the Guatemalan president, but also to the deaths of five Mexican men, found with their throats slit in Birmingham, Alabama; the kidnapping of a six-year-old boy in Las Vegas, Nevada; and possibly violence in the Peruvian high country.
Between the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels, Mexican organized crime has proven ties with local operators in a list of countries from the US south through Central and South America, including Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Argentina.
"When considering methamphetamines, Mexican organized crime is the strongest in the region," Sanders said, pointing out that the countries in Latin America with relaxed chemical import regulations will likely become targets for Mexican DTOs in the future.
"South America has become increasingly part of [Mexico's] hunting grounds, and Guatemala is already deeply involved," Bruce Bagley, chairman of the Department of International Studies at the University of Miami, told ISN Security Watch adding, "these guys are not deterred by borders."
The only other criminal organization that has had this breadth of reach and disregard for national sovereignty was the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Billions more in profits, and potentially thousands more operatives with no political ideology, poise Mexican drug traffickers to become the region's next major security challenge.
Today these criminal groups represent the number one threat to national security in Mexico. Tomorrow, other countries such as Guatemala, Peru and Argentina may make the same claim.
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second post of the morning
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MEXICO CITY -- In what could be one of Mexico's worst cases of drug-related
corruption in a decade, Mexican officials alleged that a drug cartel
infiltrated the highest levels of Mexico's attorney general's office, paying
people there as much as $450,000 a month to get sensitive information about
antidrug activities.
The Sinaloa cartel, based in Mexico's western Sinaloa state, may even have
placed a mole inside the U.S. embassy in Mexico City who fed the drug lords
information from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to a
copy of an arrest warrant reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and reported
earlier by Mexican newspaper El Universal.
View Full Image
Agency France-Presse/Getty Images
Mexican police with alleged members of a drug cartel arrested in Mexico City
this month.
"We are currently investigating this issue along with our Mexican
counterparts," a DEA spokesman said.
Two senior Mexican antidrug officials were arrested in recent weeks in
connection with the scandal and charged with crimes related to drug
trafficking, officials said on Monday. At the time of his arrest in early
October, one of the men, Fernando Rivera, was deputy director general of
intelligence at the attorney general's organized-crime unit. Officials said
Mr. Rivera was the main liaison between the attorney general's office and
the Mexican army in coordinating antidrug efforts. The other person arrested
was Miguel Colorado, the technical coordinator of the antidrug unit. His
duties included assigning federal agents to various raids against drug
cartels.
Lawyers for the men couldn't immediately be identified; in Mexico, most
court trials are closed to the public until a verdict is issued, making
contact with defendants and identifying their lawyers difficult.
Many federal agents have died during raids in the past few years, and others
have been murdered by cartel hit men, officials say.
In total, some 35 officials from the organized crime unit have been arrested
and are being investigated, officials said. Officials said they had dubbed
the continuing investigation "Operation Clean-Up."
The scandal reflects the difficulty of President Felipe Calderón's efforts
to crack down on Mexico's drug cartels. Mexico is the main trans-shipment
point for cocaine entering the U.S., U.S. and Mexican officials say, and is
widely seen as having overtaken Colombia's drug war in importance. So far
this year, an estimated 3,700 people have died in violence from the drug
war, most of them involved in the drug trade, according to counts kept by
Mexican news organizations.
Since taking office in November 2006, Mr. Calderón has deployed tens of
thousands of soldiers to different parts of Mexico to wrest back control of
areas under the cartels' sway. But since the crackdown, the number of deaths
related to drug violence has increased, according to the Mexican government.
The emerging scandal may be one of the most serious instances of drug
corruption to emerge since 1997 when Gen. Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo was
arrested shortly after being named head of Mexico's antidrug agency. Gen.
Gutiérrez was convicted of being in the pay of drug lord Amado Carrillo
Fuentes, known as the "Lord of the Skies," who later died while undergoing
plastic surgery.
The scandal is likely to be a setback for deepening cooperation between
Washington and Mexico City in the war on drugs, observers say. Under the
"Merida Initiative," the U.S. government will provide Mexico with $400
million in equipment and training a year for the next three years. Both
sides have said cooperation is much better nowadays than in the past --
especially in the wake of the 1997 scandal.
Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said the scandal would lead to an
overhaul of how his agency recruits, trains, and checks on its employees.
Mr. Medina Mora suggested that the investigations could yet implicate more
high-ranking officials.
"The investigation continues and we do not rule out that there are other
people who could have taken part in crimes that will be called to account,"
Mr. Medina Mora said. An adviser to Mr. Medina Mora said he hoped with the
arrests, officials had cut out "70% of the cancer" in the institution.
The investigation started as far back as December, according to a Mexican
government official, when the names of some Mexican officials began
surfacing in documents seized during raids of drug gangs.
In late June and early July, a Mexican former U.S. Embassy employee in
Mexico City was arrested and later testified that he had passed along
critical information to the Beltrán Leyva gang, a key part of the Sinaloa
cartel, in exchange for money. The witness, code-named "Felipe," also
accused several high-ranking Mexican officials, including Mr. Rivera.
"Felipe" said in his testimony that on one occasion, he was paid $30,000
from a man code-named "19" who worked with the Beltrán Leyva gang in
exchange for providing information about coming arrests of cartel members.
Deputy Attorney General Marisela Morales said Monday that higher-ranking
officials got much more money than "Felipe." She accused Messrs. Rivera and
Colorado of receiving "payments from $150,000 to $450,000 a month" for
information that would enable the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel to avoid
"searches, investigations, and arrest warrants" as well as obtain
information about rival drug gangs.
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com
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October 18, 2008 | 1555 GMT
Summary
The security situation in Mexico has been dire for some time. Now the global financial crisis threatens to push the country into uncharted territory as the government struggles to prop up the economy while fighting a war against some of the wealthiest and most organized criminals in the world.
Analysis
The Mexican government issued $3.9 billion in guarantees for Mexican commercial paper Oct. 17, Reuters reported. The move follows failed attempts by the Mexican cement company Cemex and Mexican units of American automakers to issue some $76 million in bonds. These developments are a sign of troubled times as Mexico feels the effects of the global financial crisis. The Mexican government had already injected $8.3 billion into the markets to prop up the peso. Putting all this money forward will strain an already-tortured government budget that is dependent on a failing oil industry and must support a critical war against drug cartels.
The most vulnerable aspect of the Mexican economy is its exposure to the declining U.S. market — particularly in Mexico’s export sector. Over 80 percent of Mexico’s exports go to the United States, and the emerging U.S. recession is sure to throw this trade relationship into chaos.
Mexico is also heavily linked to the U.S. economy through remittances. Mexicans working in the United States send approximately $24.3 billion per year back home — or about 3 percent of the gross domestic product. Declines in reported remittance rates have already been reported throughout Central American states, which rely heavily on these wealth transfers. As the U.S. economy shrinks, and competition for low-wage positions increases, illegal immigrants will be pushed out of the job market, and remittances to Mexico will decline even further.
Finally, Mexico is highly exposed to the financial crisis because of the shrinking pool of global credit and the growing number of nervous investors. On the one hand, this has caused a rapid devaluation of the Mexican peso as investors rapidly pull capital from third-world markets and dump it into safer markets (i.e., the U.S. dollar). On the other hand, we have seen the results of a rapidly shrinking pool of international credit as wealth has disappeared, banks have stopped lending and investors have panicked.
This has manifested itself in Cemex’s inability to issue corporate paper, which has been a serious cause for concern in Mexican business circles. Mexico’s banks are particularly vulnerable to shrinking global capital. About 80 percent of its banking sector is controlled by foreign entities, which means that 80 percent of domestic credit is subject to the whims of the international credit pool. Any serious threat to such a large portion of the banking sector could cause a collapse of the banking system.
But the economic situation is not the only threat to Mexico’s stability. Mexico is deeply embroiled in a war against violent drug cartels that control substantial portions of the country. The death toll in 2008 alone has risen to over 3,100 and appears likely to hit 4,000 by the end of the year. And the war is not free. The government’s ability to respond effectively to an economic crisis while funding a massive military and law enforcement effort is low — and the scarcity of funds could loosen public support for the cartel war as people look to solve their basic economic needs.
Moreover, a downturn in the economy will only exacerbate the security situation in Mexico. As jobs in the United States become scarce, many of the illegal Mexican migrant laborers there will be left jobless. Many will return to Mexico, where employment opportunities are no better. There is already some anecdotal evidence that reverse illegal migration into Mexico has become much more noticeable. The return to Mexico of thousands of unemployed young workers will flood the Mexican labor market.
There is no question that increased poverty and unemployment will contribute to a worsening security situation in Mexico. Ordinary criminal activities such as theft will likely increase, which could boost organized crime. Options in the legitimate economy will be few, but the underground economy — in drugs or other inelastic commodities — could flourish during a downturn. Indeed, a declining economy will make the cartels the only game in town, and rising unemployment will provide them with an excellent recruiting opportunity.
========
November 5, 2008 | 0332 GMT
Mexican Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino died Nov. 4 when the plane he was traveling in crashed three minutes before it was scheduled to land at the Mexico City International Airport, according to an official statement.
The LearJet 45 crashed near a major intersection in the capital, and reportedly occurred when the plane was on a normal approach path to the airport, when it should have been flying at an altitude of almost 1,000 feet. Also reported dead in the crash is the former director of federal organized crime investigations, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos. The plane was traveling from San Luis Potosi state, where Mourino had attended the signing of a security agreement between several states. CNN and TV Azteca reported that eyewitnesses said the plane exploded in midair, but this has not been confirmed.
It is unclear at this point what caused the crash. El Universal has reported that this same plane had a mechanical problem in 2005; however, this says little, since the plane appears to have been functioning over the past three years. Weather seems to have played no role in the accident. While mechanical failure or pilot error are likely causes, it is important to consider the possibility that foul play was involved, especially considering the escalating violence in Mexico’s war against the country’s drug cartels. Indeed, the Mexican army appears to be examining the potential for sabotage, as it reportedly has secured the San Luis Potosi airport where the flight originated and has begun an investigation.
If this crash does turn out to have been an act of sabotage carried out by one of the cartels, the implications of such an attack would be tremendous. If (and we do emphasize if here) the cartels are behind this, such an attack would be a direct hit against Mexico’s central government. The government would be forced to respond, most likely by drawing in troops from the border regions where the army is currently fighting the cartels to the interior to secure Mexico and prevent it from becoming a failed state. Also, considering Mexico’s economic situation, Mexico City would be stuck trying to prevent insolvency while trying to provide security. With only so many resources, Mexico would have to make some hard decisions indeed.
This situation will need to be monitored to determine the cause of the crash. Signs that would indicate the Mexican government believes the plane was sabotaged are the shutting down of air traffic and the ordering of drastic troop redeployments.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
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#1 Yesterday, 09:48 PM
ex-racer
Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: San Francisco, TX. I mean Austin...
Posts: 222
Mexico Seizes Hundreds of Drug-Cartel Weapons in Record Raid
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ok, so who is thinking about responding with "they better not check out my basement"? you should go to this link and check out the extra photos. i like the gold plated desert eagle.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449045,00.html
Friday, November 07, 2008
AP
Nov. 7, 2008; Soldiers stand guard around a presentation of arms captured in an operation against the Gulf cartel in Mexico City.
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican army on Friday announced that it has made the largest seizure of drug-cartel weapons in Mexico's history.
The cache of 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of TNT were seized on Thursday at a house in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, Mexican Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales said.
"The seizure ... is the largest in the history of Mexico involving organized crime," Morales told reporters at Defense Department headquarters, where the army displayed hundreds of rifles, pistols, and shotguns, and laid out rows of grenades and crates of ammunition.
Morales said the largest previous bust involved a cache of 280 weapons found in 1984.
The weapons in this latest seizure belonged to the Gulf drug cartel, an official said after Morales made her statement. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Soldiers detected the cache when they chased suspects into the home after the men refused orders to stop, Morales said. Three suspects were detained.
It was unclear whether the raid was related to an FBI intelligence report obtained by a Texas newspaper in October that warned the Gulf cartel was stockpiling high-powered weapons in Reynosa to prepare for possible confrontations with U.S. law enforcement. Morales did not take questions from reporters.
The man who allegedly leads the cartel's hit squad in the area, Jaime Gonzalez Duran, was mentioned in the FBI report as having ordered dozens of hit men to the Reynosa area as part of those plans.
Gonzalez Duran was arrested in Reynosa on Friday.
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No worries. Obama will give them amnesty and a "path towards citizenship" in exchange for their votes in 2012.
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Worrying Signs from Border Raids
November 12, 2008
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Last week, the Mexican government carried out a number of operations in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, aimed at Jaime “El Hummer” Gonzalez Duran, one of the original members of the brutal cartel group known as Los Zetas. According to Mexican government officials, Gonzalez Duran controlled the Zetas’ operations in nine Mexican states.
The Nov. 7 arrest of Gonzalez Duran was a major victory for the Mexican government and will undoubtedly be a major blow to the Zetas. Taking Gonzalez Duran off the streets, however, is not the only aspect of these operations with greater implications. The day before Gonzalez Duran’s arrest, Mexican officials searching for him raided a safe house, where they discovered an arms cache that would turn out to be the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history. This is no small feat, as there have been several large hauls of weapons seized from the Zetas and other Mexican cartel groups in recent years.
The weapons seized at the Gonzalez Duran safe house included more than 500 firearms, a half-million rounds of ammunition and 150 grenades. The cache also included a LAW rocket, two grenade launchers and a small amount of explosives. Along with the scores of assorted assault rifles, grenades and a handful of gaudy gold-plated pistols were some weapons that require a bit more examination: namely, the 14 Fabrique Nationale (FN) P90 personal defense weapons and the seven Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles contained in the seizure.
Matapolicias
As previously noted, the FN Five-Seven pistol and FN P90 personal defense weapon are very popular with the various cartel enforcer groups operating in Mexico. The Five-Seven and the P90 shoot a 5.7 mm-by-28 mm round that has been shown to be effective in penetrating body armor as well as vehicle doors and windows. Because of this ability to punch through body armor, cartel enforcers call the weapons “matapolicias,” Spanish for “cop killers.” Of course, AK-47 and M-16-style assault rifles are also effective at penetrating body armor and vehicles, as are large-caliber hunting rifles such as the 30.06 and the .308. But the advantage of the Five-Seven and the P90 is that they provide this penetration capability in a much smaller — and thus far more concealable — package.
The P90 is a personal defense weapon designed to be carried by tank crew members or combat support personnel who require a compact weapon capable of penetrating body armor. It is considered impractical for such soldiers to be issued full-size infantry rifles or even assault rifles, so traditionally these troops were issued pistols and submachine guns. The proliferation of body armor on the modern battlefield, however, has rendered many pistols and submachine guns that fire pistol ammunition ineffective. Because of this, support troops needed a small weapon that could protect them from armored troops; the P90 fits this bill.
In fact, the P90 lends itself to anyone who needs powerful, concealable weapons. Protective security details, some police officers and some special operations forces operators thus have begun using the P90 and other personal defense weapons. The P90’s power and ability to be concealed also make it an ideal weapon for cartel enforcers intent on conducting assassinations in an urban environment — especially those stalking targets wearing body armor.
The Five-Seven, which is even smaller than the P90, fires the same fast, penetrating cartridge. Indeed, cartel hit men have killed several Mexican police officers with these weapons in recent months. However, guns that fire the 5.7 mm-by-28 mm cartridge are certainly not the only type of weapons used in attacks against police — Mexican cops have been killed by many other types of weapons.
Reach Out and Touch Someone
While the P90 and Five-Seven are small and light, and use a small, fast round to penetrate armor, the .50-caliber cartridge fired by a Barrett sniper rifle is the polar opposite: It fires a huge chunk of lead. By way of comparison, the 5.7 mm-by-28 mm cartridge is just a little more than 1.5 inches long and has a 32-grain bullet. The .50-caliber Browning Machine Gun (BMG) cartridge is actually 12.7 mm by 99 mm, measures nearly 5.5 inches long and fires a 661-grain bullet. The P90 has a maximum effective range of 150 meters (about 165 yards), whereas a Barrett’s listed maximum effective range is 1,850 meters (about 2,020 yards) — and there are reports of coalition forces snipers in Afghanistan scoring kills at more than 2,000 meters (about 2,190 yards).
The .50-BMG round not only will punch through body armor and normal passenger vehicles, it can defeat the steel plate armor and the laminated ballistic glass and polycarbonate windows used in lightly armored vehicles. This is yet another reminder that there is no such thing as a bulletproof car. The round is also capable of penetrating many brick and concrete block walls.
We have heard reports for years of cartels seeking .50-caliber sniper rifles made by Barrett and other U.S. manufacturers. Additionally, we have noted many reports of seizures from arms smugglers in the United States of these weapons bound for Mexico, or of the weapons being found in Mexican cartel safe houses — such as the seven rifles seized in Reynosa. Unlike the P90s, however, we cannot recall even one instance of these powerful weapons being used in an attack against another cartel or against a Mexican government target. This is in marked contrast to Ireland, where the Irish Republican Army used .50-caliber Barrett rifles obtained from the United States in many sniper attacks against British troops and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
That Mexican cartels have not used these devastating weapons is surprising. There are in fact very few weapons in the arsenals of cartel enforcers that we have not seen used, including hand grenades, 40 mm grenades, LAW rockets and rocket-propelled grenades. Even though most intercartel warfare has occurred inside densely populated Mexican cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo — places where it would be very difficult to find a place to take a shot longer than a few hundred meters, much less a couple thousand — the power of the Barrett could be very effective for taking out targets wearing body armor, riding in armored vehicles, located inside the safe house of a rival cartel or even inside a government building. Also, unlike improvised explosive devices, which the cartels have avoided using for the most part, the use of .50-caliber rifles would not involve a high probability of collateral damage.
This indicates that the reason the cartels have not used these weapons is to be found in the nature of snipers and sniping.
Snipers
Most military and police snipers are highly trained and very self-disciplined. Being a sniper requires an incredible amount of practice, patience and preparation. Aside from rigorous training in marksmanship, the sniper must also be trained in camouflage, concealment and movement. Snipers are often forced to lie immobile for hours on end. Additional training is required for snipers operating in urban environments, which offer their own set of challenges to the sniper; though historically, as seen in battles like Stalingrad, urban snipers can be incredibly effective.
Snipers commonly deploy as part of a team of two, comprising a shooter and a spotter. This means two very self-disciplined individuals must be located and trained. The team must practice together and learn how to accurately estimate distances, wind speed, terrain elevation and other variables that can affect a bullet’s trajectory. An incredible amount of attention to detail is required for a sniper team to get into position and for their shots to travel several hundred meters and accurately, consistently strike a small target.
In spite of media hype and popular fiction, criminals or terrorists commit very few true sniper attacks. For example, many of our sniper friends were very upset that the media chose to label the string of murders committed by John Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo as the “D.C. Sniper Case.” While Mohammed and Malvo did use concealment, they commonly shot at targets between 50 and 100 meters (about 55 yards to 110 yards) away. Therefore, calling Mohammed and Malvo snipers was a serious insult to the genuine article. The assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the killing of Dr. Bernard Slepian, also have been dubbed sniper attacks, but they actually were all shootings committed at distances of less than 100 meters.
Of course, using a Barrett at short ranges (100 meters or less) is still incredibly effective and does not require a highly trained sniper — as a group of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives special agents found out in 1993 when they attempted to serve search and arrest warrants at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The agents were met with .50-caliber sniper fire that ripped gaping holes through the Chevrolet Suburbans they sought cover behind. Many of the agents wounded in that incident were hit by the shrapnel created as the .50-caliber rounds punched through their vehicles.
While it is extremely powerful, the Barrett is however a long, heavy weapon. If the sniper lacks training in urban warfare, it might prove very difficult to move around with the gun and also to find a concealed place to employ it. This may partially explain why the Mexican cartels have not used the weapons more.
Moreover, while the Zetas originally comprised deserters from the Mexican military and over the years have shown an ability to conduct assaults and ambushes, we have not traditionally seen them deploy as snipers. Today, most of the original Zetas are now in upper management, and no longer serve as foot soldiers.
The newer men brought into the Zetas include some former military and police officers along with some young gangster types; most of them lack the level of training possessed by the original Zetas. While the Zetas have also brought on a number of former Kaibiles, Guatemalan special operations forces personnel, most of them appear to be assigned as bodyguards for senior Zetas. This may mean we are not seeing the cartels employ snipers because their rank-and-file enforcers do not possess the discipline or training to function as snipers.
Potential Problems
Of course, criminal syndicates in possession of these weapons still pose a large potential threat to U.S. law enforcement officers, especially when the weapons are in the hands of people like Gonzalez Duran and his henchmen. According to an FBI intelligence memo dated Oct. 17 and leaked to the media, Gonzalez Duran appeared to have gotten wind of the planned operation against him. He reportedly had authorized those under his command to defend their turf at any cost, to include engagements with U.S. law enforcement agents. It is important to remember that a chunk of that turf was adjacent to the U.S. border and American towns, and that Reynosa — where Gonzalez Duran was arrested and the weapons were seized — is just across the border from McAllen, Texas.
Armed with small, powerful weapons like the P90, cartel gunmen can pose a tremendous threat to any law enforcement officer who encounters them in a traffic stop or drug raid. Over the past several years, we have noted several instances of U.S. Border Patrol agents and other U.S. law enforcement officers being shot at from Mexico. The thought of being targeted by a weapon with the range and power of a .50-caliber sniper rifle would almost certainly send chills up the spine of any Border Patrol agent or sheriff’s deputy working along the border.
Armed with assault rifles, hand grenades and .50-caliber sniper rifles, cartel enforcers have the potential to wreak havoc and outgun U.S. law enforcement officers. The only saving grace for U.S. law enforcement is that many cartel enforcers are often impaired by drugs or alcohol and tend to be impetuous and reckless. While the cartel gunmen are better trained than most Mexican authorities, their training does not stack up to that of most U.S. law enforcement officers. This was illustrated by an incident on Nov. 6 in Austin, Texas, when a police officer used his service pistol to kill a cartel gunman who fired on the officer with an AK-47.
While the arrest of Gonzalez Duran and the seizure of the huge arms cache in Reynosa have taken some killers and weapons off the street, they are only one small drop in the bucket. There are many heavily armed cartel enforcers still at large in Mexico, and the violence is spreading over the border into the United States. Law enforcement officers in the United States therefore need to maintain a keen awareness of the threat.
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November 17, 2008
For More of Mexico’s Wealthy, Expenses Include Guards
By MARC LACEY
MEXICO CITY — When José hops into his Ferrari, presses his Ferragamo loafer to the floor and fills the night air with a deep roar, his bodyguards hustle into a black sport utility vehicle with their weapons at the ready, tailing their fast-moving boss through the streets.
José, a business magnate in his 30s who said he was afraid to have his full name published, makes sure his two children get the same protection. Bodyguards pick them up from school and escort them even to friends’ birthday parties — where the bodyguards meet other bodyguards, because many of the children’s classmates have similar protection.
With drug-related violence spinning out of control and kidnappings a proven money-maker for criminal gangs, members of Mexico’s upper class find themselves juggling the spoils of their status with the fear of being killed.
Dinner party chatter these days focuses on two things that are making their lives, still the envy of the country’s masses, far less enviable: the financial crisis, which is chipping away at their wealth, and the wave of insecurity, which is making it more perilous for them to enjoy what remains.
Mexico’s violence afflicts both rich and poor, but the nation’s income gap is so pronounced that criminals scour the society pages for potential kidnapping victims, for whom they demand, and often receive, huge sums in ransom. A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that Mexico had the largest divide between rich and poor of the group’s 30 member nations, virtually assuring that wealthy targets stand out.
Wealthy Mexicans have long hired bodyguards, but experts say the numbers of those seeking protection have jumped since President Felipe Calderón challenged the drug cartels, bringing unprecedented levels of related violence — which had been mainly confined to the areas bordering the United States — into the major cities.
High-profile and sometimes gruesome crimes have stoked people’s fears.
In one of the worst cases, a 5-year-old boy from a poor family was plucked from a gritty market this month and killed by kidnappers, who injected acid into his heart.
Early this month, white-coated doctors in Tijuana protested after one of their own, a prominent kidney specialist, was plucked from outside his office by heavily armed men. He has since been released.
“It’s out of control,” said Dr. Hector Rico, the leader of the local medical association.
Confronted by the irate doctors at a public meeting, José Guadalupe Osuna Millán, the governor of Baja California State, said the answer to the rising insecurity was to come together and fight.
“We’re not going to cede one millimeter of territory to these criminals,” he said of the federal government’s war on drug traffickers.
But hundreds of well-off families along the border have become so consumed by their fears that they have moved out of Mexico, at least temporarily, often using business visas granted because of their work in the United States.
“It’s a bad feeling to have to leave your country behind,” said Javier, a prosperous Tijuana businessman, who moved his family across the border to San Diego last year after a group of armed men tried to kidnap him. “But I didn’t really have a choice.” He insisted that his last name not be used, out of fear that criminals might track him.
“There’s an exodus, and it’s all about insecurity,” said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, an anthropologist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. “A psychosis has developed. There’s fear of getting kidnapped or killed.
“People don’t want to live that way,” he continued, “and those who can afford it move north.”
Still, most of the wealthy have chosen to stay put, hiring armies of protectors to continue enjoying their gilded lives.
Although there are few firm figures for the number of Mexicans employed to guard their fellow citizens — most security companies ignore requirements to register with the government — experts say business is booming for the estimated 10,000 security companies operating in the country.
In the border state of Chihuahua, the Mexican Employers’ Association recently reported a 300 percent increase in the number of bodyguards. In that violence-torn state, some luxury hotels now offer their guests bodyguards and bulletproof vehicles.
For many affluent families, the guards and bulletproof cars, homes and even clothing have become a way of life. Some Mexicans say the protection has even become a status symbol.
In Mexico City, some people being protected by men wearing earpieces strut along in designer clothes, using their armed guards to clear a path.
A stylish woman at a Starbucks in the well-off Coyoacán neighborhood held out her cappuccino the other day while chatting with friends. A member of her two-man security detail discreetly slipped a cardboard sleeve on the cup so that the woman’s fingertips were protected, along with the rest of her.
“It’s a different life,” said José, the well-protected Ferrari driver, who agreed to provide a glimpse of that life. “I’ve gotten used to it.”
Indeed, José hands out designer clothing and other expensive gifts to his family’s two dozen or so bodyguards and invites them to his mother’s house weekly for a meal. He is being benevolent but also practical, given that many crimes in Mexico are inside jobs.
“I want them to feel like they’re part of the family,” he said. “And if something happens to me, I want them to react. They won’t risk their life for a paycheck. They will risk their life for a friend, for family.”
Some security consultants and academics point out that at least the upper crust has options, while other Mexicans must rely on law enforcement agencies, known for their corruption and ineffectiveness, to protect them from the violence. Many families who struggle to make ends meet find their loved ones grabbed for ransom. And shootouts between traffickers and the police and soldiers pursuing them erupt with no regard for the income level of bystanders.
“There’s reason for everyone to be fearful,” said Dr. Alonso, the Tijuana anthropologist, who hears gunfire at night in his middle-class neighborhood and, like many others, rarely ventures out after dark.
Despite José’s expensive clothing, eye-catching jewelry and luxury home in the hills, he insists that his family is different from many others in their income bracket.
“We’re not nouveau riche,” he said with a huff. “Those people want guards to show how important they are.”
As for the Ferrari, which he acknowledged is the opposite of discreet, José said it was the car’s engine that attracted him to it. “It’s not to sit back and have everyone look at me,” he said. “It’s to drive.”
But people do gawk. And José’s bodyguards worry about the attention his rare sports car attracts on the roads of Mexico.
“Of course, he shouldn’t be driving himself,” one of José’s bodyguards said. “But he’s like a presidential candidate who likes to go into crowds. Our function is to provide the security around the life he’s living.”
That life includes late-night stops at exclusive nightclubs and humble taco shops. José understands what he puts his guards through, because he completed bodyguard training in Guatemala to learn what his employees should be doing.
José also conducts background checks before hiring his bodyguards and sends them for regular refresher courses, meaning they are a cut above the run-of-the-mill Mexican bodyguard, who might be a washout police officer or soldier with modest training and little discipline for the job.
Javier, the businessman who now lives north of the border, said he did not believe bodyguards were the answer.
“One bodyguard, two bodyguards, even three of them can’t do anything with these criminals, who come in groups of 20 with high-powered arms,” he said. “If they want to hunt you down, they will get you.”
Even José is taking a break from Mexico. He recently headed to Canada with his family, for what he insisted was a respite rather than an abandonment of his country.
“I’m not running away,” he said. “I have an opportunity, and I’ll be back. But I’m not going to miss the insecurity. Not at all.”
Especially appealing, he said, was that his 6-year-old son would be able to ride his bike to school instead of being escorted in a bulletproof vehicle driven by a private paramilitary force.
“For my children, they don’t understand,” José said. “They’re happy to have these guys around. When they get out of school, there’s someone to take their backpack. There’s always someone around to play. I try to teach them that this isn’t normal. It shouldn’t be this way.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/wo...mexico.html?hp
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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1858151,00.html?imw=Y
In Mexico, a Theme Park for Border Crossers
By Ioan Grillo / Parque Alberto Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008Tour guide Poncho leads a night walk for Saturday night revelers
Alan Gonzalez for TIME
Men in border-patrol caps tackle a young Mexican to the ground amid jagged rocks and cacti. "You need papers to come to this country. This is not a game!" shouts one agent as he yanks the man's arms behind his back, almost tearing them from his shoulders. It looks like a scene on the U.S. border that would get human rights groups yelling. But actually, it is a game, and it takes place in the mountains of central Mexico. All of the participants are Mexicans, many of whom have paid to be part of the re-enactment of the arrest, part of a border-crossing experience for Saturday-night revelers.
The so-called night hike in the highlands of Hidalgo state is a curious testimony to Mexico's identity as an emigrant nation, in which enormous numbers of young men and women continue to risk their lives sneaking into "El Norte" for a perceived better life. Every weekend, dozens of participants pay about $20 apiece to scramble up hills, slide down ravines and run through tunnels pursued by siren-blaring pickup trucks and pumped-up border-patrol agents shouting in accented English. (See pictures of the fence between the U.S. and Mexico.)
To many outsiders, this seems an odd way to enjoy a night out. But the participants and organizers all say it is both a great deal of fun and an important way to raise consciousness about the migrant experience. "It was fantastic. It totally exceeded my expectations," says medical saleswoman Araceli Hernandez, nursing a bite from a giant ant and brushing off dust after the five-hour slog. "But it makes me feel sad thinking about what the real migrants go through."
The hike was started four years ago by a group of Hnahnu Indians on their ancestral lands. Some of the poorest people in Mexico, the Hnahnu first began crossing into the U.S. in the late 1980s, and within a decade most of their young had left their ramshackle villages in search of dollars. While the fruits of the exodus transformed the Hnahnu's home landscape, allowing migrants to build walled mansions and paved roads, it also divided the community, separating families by thousands of miles and an ever more fortified border. The Hnahnu of the Parque Alberto community then began an eco-tourism project as a local jobs program so more of their people could stay home. The border-crossing simulation soon became their most famous attraction.
"We wanted to have a type of tourism that really raised people's understanding," says founder Alfonso Martinez, who dresses in a ski mask and goes by the name Poncho. "So we decided to turn the painful experience all of us here have gone through into a kind of game that teaches something to our fellow Mexicans." Poncho and other ski-masked comrades play polleros, or chicken herders — the human smugglers who guide wannabe migrants over the deserts and rivers into the U.S. Having made the real journey dozens of times to work as a gardener in Nevada, Poncho is well versed in mimicking the polleros' tactics closely. He moves swiftly over the side of the mountain, commanding participants with authority and ordering them to hold tight in the brambles for long periods and then suddenly sprint for miles.
In hot pursuit are the migra, or border-patrol agents, played by other Hnahnu. Most migrants have been nabbed at least once and know well what it feels like to get a pair of handcuffs slapped on after days of exhausting travel. The actors play their nemeses with energy and zest, tearing across fields to get the migrants and insulting them in a colorful language: "Don't you speak Spanish. You are not in Mexico now, my friend. Tell me who the boss is."
The participants are mostly middle-class professionals and students from Mexico City and other urban areas. While many have friends or family who have crossed illegally into the U.S., they all say they will not do it themselves: the simulated border-crossing is adventure enough for them. At one point the group walks through a nest of giant ants that bite people's legs. One girl starts screaming after injuring herself on the trip and has to be supported by friends as she hops along. The group slides down a steep ravine, a particularly hard task in the middle of the night, and many come through with cuts and bruises. But by the time the group arrives at the base camp and sings a lively rendition of the Mexican national anthem, no one complains that it was too hard.
Poncho hopes the experience will be life-changing for the participants. With the night-hike tours, he envisions himself as a revolutionary fighting for a better world. In a final pep talk, he drills the group about their class differences and how they can overcome them. "What do you call our ethnic group?" he asks in a booming voice. "You call us Indians, and say we are lazy and ignorant. Don't worry, I'm used to it. This experience is about showing we are human beings."
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...guns-to-agent/
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/...10312008_7.xml
http://www.voanews.com/english/archi...01-26-voa1.cfm
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/20...s-neighborhood
and most damning of all:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/20...ursion-reports
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Mexico Security Memo: Nov. 17, 2008
Stratfor Today » November 18, 2008 | 0014 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Mexicans Detained in Buenos Aires-Area Cocaine Seizure
Federal police in Argentina made one of the largest narcotics seizures in the South American country in recent years on Nov. 13, when they confiscated 752 kilograms of cocaine from a warehouse in the San Miguel area just north of Buenos Aires. In addition to the cocaine seizure, three Bolivian nationals and two Mexican nationals were taken into custody. The cocaine is thought to have come from Colombia and to have been destined for Europe. The tip that led to the seizure allegedly originated from Federico Faggionatto Marquez, the lead investigator into ephedrine smuggling involving Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. In recent months, Argentine officials have made several arrests of suspected Sinaloa cartel members, including the reported head of the ephedrine smuggling operation, Jesus Martinez Espinoza, who was arrested in Paraguay and extradited to Argentina on Nov. 14 to face narcotics-related charges.
The United States still remains the largest and most lucrative drug market for the Mexican cartels. But the increased law enforcement presence along the U.S.-Mexican border could have prompted the Sinaloa cartel to diversify its markets by shifting its focus southward, something suggested by evidence of increased Sinaloa operations in South America. Argentine officials have only been investigating Sinaloa’s presence in the South American country since August, so it probably will take some time before the full extent of the Sinaloa cartel’s operations and presence in South America is known.
Doubts Over Plane Crash Investigation
In a poll conducted by the periodical Milenio, 56 percent of Mexicans told surveyors that they believe the plane crash that killed Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino and former Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos was not accidental. According to Stratfor sources, that sentiment is echoed among many members of the Mexican government as well. The Mexican government asked the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to help with the investigation, which reassured most observers that the investigation would be handled competently.
Even though the results finding pilot error were handed over by a reputable U.S. agency, the cartels’ demonstrated ability to assassinate high-level Mexican federal employees has left many Mexicans skeptical of government claims that the Nov. 4 crash was an accident. Doubts over official explanations of political figures’ deaths are not new for Mexico. For example, many Mexicans still doubt Mexican government claims that a lone gunmen shot Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio at a campaign rally in Tijuana, Baja California, in March 1994, instead suspecting that the Arellano Felix Organization ordered the assassination.
(click to view map)
Nov. 10
The mayor of Ciudad Juarez said he favors allowing citizens to use firearms to protect themselves.
The United States began the process of requesting the extradition of Jamie “El Hummer” Gonzalez Duran, who faces drug-trafficking charges in the United States.
In a survey conducted by Milenio.com, 56 percent of those questioned believe the plane crash that killed Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino was not accidental.
Three bodies with bound hands and feet, blindfolded, and showing signs of torture were discovered below a dam near Durango, Durango state.
Citizens of the indigenous community of Cheranastico, Michoacan, kidnapped 17 Paracho municipal policemen in protest of the arrest of Juan Escamilla Lucas for arms violations.
A group of armed commandos kidnapped 27 workers from a ranch in northern Sinaloa state.
Mexican military members confiscated nearly 1 ton of marijuana in the Huetamo municipality of Michoacan state.
Three men with high-powered rifles attacked members of the Mexican military’s 76th Infantry Battalion conducting an operation Chihuahua state, during which the military personnel seized 12 tons of marijuana.
Nov. 11
Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said that the Mexican government has underestimated the true power of the drug cartels.
Four alleged leaders of the international street gang MS-13 were detained in the southern state of Chiapas following an anonymous tip that led police to their safe house.
A confrontation between peasants and indigenous villagers in Chiapas state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez left one woman dead and nine others in police custody. Authorities also seized various firearms and magazines.
Twenty-seven day laborers kidnapped from a ranch in northern Sinaloa state on Nov. 10 were released. The ranch involved reportedly is connected to the crime family of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who heads the Juarez cartel.
The burned bodies of two individuals were found along the federal Acapulco highway in Guerrero state.
One male and one female prison guard were shot dead in a local jail in Culiacan, Sinaloa.
Nov. 12
Mexican military personnel decommissioned a cocaine processing laboratory near the center of Culiacan, Sinaloa.
Mexican military personnel detained 22 policemen of various ranks for alleged connections to drug-trafficking organizations.
Six heavily armed assassins executed the director of public security for the city of Patzcuaro, Michoacan, as he left the public security department headquarters.
Mexican army personnel seized more than 120 firearms of various calibers, 1,500 rounds of ammunition and about 140 pounds of marijuana during operations in eastern Michoacan state.
Mexican army personnel guarded the offices of the Anti-Organized Crime Unit of the Mexican attorney general’s office as 21 police officers arrived from Baja California state for investigation into their presumed connections to drug trafficking.
Federal police seized more than 2 tons of marijuana, two firearms and three vehicles during operations in Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas state.
Nov. 13
Municipal police arrested 13 presumed members of the Milenio cartel in Tonala, Guadalajara, traveling in three trucks. Police seized 13 long arms, three short arms, various fragmentation grenades, and body armor with Federal Investigations Agency insignia.
Baja California state has asked for U.S. assistance in the search for ten municipal policemen associated with drug trafficking.
In three separate operations, police in Chiapas detained 13 men and women belonging to three different kidnapping gangs: “El Aguila,” “La Zorrita” and “Los Melendez.”
The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, was closed after gunshots were heard near the building; consulate operations were suspended indefinitely.
Elements of the Mexican military seized 19 airplanes, various aeronautical equipment and several weapons reportedly used by drug traffickers in Cajeme, Sonora.
A body riddled with bullet holes was discovered in the Lomas de Guadalupe neighborhood of Culiacan, Sonora.
Nov. 14
A group of armed men stormed an immigration checkpoint in San Pedro Tapanatepec, Oaxaca state, kidnapping 12 women of Central American origin. State police officials indicated that the group might be linked to Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel.
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) members in the Mexican Senate have proposed reforms that will provide police officers and government officials with guarantees of protection during and after their commissions and entitle them to pensions. In response to an increase in infiltration of the police by drug cartels and attacks against authorities, PRI Sen. Francisco Herrera said that the safeguard will help “return to society not only hope, but also confidence in the security of the state,” El Milenio reported.
A group of armed men in Tijuana, Baja California state, shot four men and one woman. Shell casings found at the scene indicate the gunmen used 7.62mm-by-39mm and 2.23 caliber weapons, the police said.
Speaking in Acapulco, Mexican President Felipe Calderon praised the Mexican navy for recent success in the war against the drug cartels; naval cocaine seizures have reached nearly 43 tons.
Four people were shot and killed in two separate incidents in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, including a former farm leader and former alderman of the Democratic Revolutionary Party. The first incident involved a roadside shooting by gunmen armed with 9 mm pistols. The other incident involved a double execution with AK-47 rounds.
Elements of the State Judicial Police arrested three alleged members of the La Familia Michoacana criminal organization in Teoloyucan, Mexico state for allegedly threatening employees of the public safety department.
A group of armed men attacked a political convoy on one of the main avenues in Tijuana, Baja California state. Authorities reported that no one was injured during the incident.
Nov. 15
A man was found dead in the town of Churumuco, Michoacan state; the victim had two bullets in his skull.
Guerrero state Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca Galinso confirmed a report from a commanding officer of the Federal Investigations Agency that organized criminal elements are funding at least two social organizations in Guerrero state. The organizations’ names were not specified.
Five people were killed in Tijuana; two were shot with assault rifles at a restaurant, one man was shot dead in a pool hall, and two bodies were found in the street.
Nov. 16
Mexican drug dealers have established bases of operation in 42 of the 50 U.S. states, Mexican newspaper Milenio reported Nov. 16, citing Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) findings. According to the DEA, Mississippi, Virginia, West Virginia, Montana, Alabama, Arkansas, Vermont and South Dakota are the only states that Mexican drug dealers do not occupy. The report indicates that the Juarez cartel is present in at least 21 states, including the U.S.-Mexican border states; the Sinaloa cartel in 17; the Tijuana cartel in 15; and the Gulf cartel in 13.
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The Barrio Azteca Trial and the Prison Gang-Cartel Interface
November 19, 2008
By Fred Burton and Ben West
Related Links
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
On Nov. 3, a U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, began hearing a case concerning members of a criminal enterprise that calls itself Barrio Azteca (BA). The group members face charges including drug trafficking and distribution, extortion, money laundering and murder. The six defendants include the organization’s three bosses, Benjamin Alvarez, Manuel Cardoza and Carlos Perea; a sergeant in the group, Said Francisco Herrera; a lieutenant, Eugene Mona; and an associate, Arturo Enriquez.
The proceedings represent the first major trial involving BA, which operates in El Paso and West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The testimony is revealing much about how this El Paso-based prison gang operates, and how it interfaces with Mexican drug cartel allies that supply its drugs.
Mexico’s cartels are in the business of selling drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the United States. Large amounts of narcotics flow north while large amounts of cash and weapons flow south. Managing these transactions requires that the cartels have a physical presence in the United States, something a cartel alliance with a U.S. gang can provide.
Of course, BA is not the only prison gang operating in the United States with ties to Mexico. Prison gangs can also be called street gangs — they recruit both in prisons and on the street. Within the United States, there are at least nine well-established prison gangs with connections to Mexican drug cartels; Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos, the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate are just a few such groups. Prison gangs like BA are very territorial and usually cover only a specific region, so one Mexican cartel might work with three to four prison or street gangs in the United States. Like BA, most of the U.S. gangs allied with Mexican cartels largely are composed of Mexican immigrants or Mexican-Americans. Nevertheless, white supremacist groups, mixed-race motorcycle gangs and African-American street gangs also have formed extensive alliances with Mexican cartels.
Certainly, not all U.S. gangs the Mexican cartels have allied with are the same. But examining how BA operates offers insights into how other gangs — like the Latin Kings, the Texas Syndicate, the Sureños, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and transnational street gangs like MS-13 — operate in alliance with the cartels.
Barrio Azteca Up Close
Spanish for “Aztec Neighborhood,” BA originated in a Texas state penitentiary in 1986, when five inmates from El Paso organized the group as a means of protection in the face of the often-brutal ethnic tensions within prisons. By the 1990s, BA had spread to other prisons and had established a strong presence on the streets of El Paso as its founding members served their terms and were released. Reports indicate that in the late 1990s, BA had begun working with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa Federation drug trafficking organization, which at the time controlled drug shipments to Ciudad Juarez, El Paso’s sister city across the Rio Grande.
According to testimony from several different witnesses on both sides of the current trial, BA now works only with the Juarez cartel of Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes, which has long controlled much of Mexico’s Chihuahua state and Ciudad Juarez, and broke with the Sinaloa Federation earlier in 2008. BA took sides with the Juarez cartel, with which it is jointly running drugs across the border at the Juarez plaza.
BA provides the foot soldiers to carry out hits at the behest of Juarez cartel leaders. On Nov. 3, 10 alleged BA members in Ciudad Juarez were arrested in connection with 12 murders. The suspects were armed with four AK-47s, pistols and radio communication equipment — all hallmarks of a team of hit men ready to carry out a mission.
According to testimony from the ongoing federal case, which is being brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, drugs are taken at discount from the supplier on the Mexico side and then distributed to dealers on the street. These distributors must then pay “taxes” to BA collectors to continue plying their trade. According to testimony from Josue Aguirre, a former BA member turned FBI informant, BA collects taxes from 47 different street-level narcotics operations in El Paso alone. Failure to pay these taxes results in death. One of the murder charges in the current RICO case involves the death of an El Paso dealer who failed to pay up when the collectors arrived to collect on a debt.
Once collected, the money goes in several different directions. First, BA lieutenants and captains, the midlevel members, receive $50 and $200 per month respectively for compensation. The bulk of BA’s profit is then transferred using money orders to accounts belonging to the head bosses (like Alvarez, Cardoza and Perea) in prison. Cash is also brought back to Ciudad Juarez to pay the Juarez cartel, which provided the drugs in the first place.
BA receives discounts on drugs from the Juarez cartel by providing tactical help to its associates south of the border. Leaders of Carrillo Fuentes’ organization in Juarez can go into hiding in El Paso under BA protection if their lives are in danger in Juarez. They can also order BA to track down cartel enemies hiding in El Paso. Former BA member Gustavo Gallardo testified in 2005 that he was sent to pick up a man in downtown El Paso who had cheated the Juarez cartel of money. Once Gallardo dropped him off at a safe house in El Paso, another team took the man — who was bound with rope and duct tape — to Ciudad Juarez, where Gallardo assumes he was killed.
BA and the World of Prison Gangs
Prison gangs are endemic to prison systems, where safety for inmates comes in numbers. Tensions (usually along racial lines) among dangerous individuals regularly erupt into deadly conflict. Prison gang membership affords a certain amount of protection against rival groups and offers fertile recruiting ground.
Once a prison gang grows its membership (along with its prestige) and establishes a clear hierarchy, its leader can wield an impressive amount of power. Some even wind up taking over prisons, like the antecedents of Russian organized crime did.
It might seem strange that members on the outside send money and answer to bosses in prison, since the bosses are locked up. But these bosses wield a great deal of influence over gang members in and out of prison. Disobedience is punishable by death, and regardless of whether a boss is in prison, he can order a hit on a member who has crossed him. Prison gang members also know that if they end up in prison again — a likely outcome — they will once again be dependent on the help of the boss to stay alive, and can perhaps even earn some money while doing time.
BA’s illegal activities mean its members constantly cycle in and out of prison. Many BA members were involved in smaller, local El Paso street gangs before they were imprisoned. Once in prison, they joined BA with the sponsorship of a “godfather” who walks the recruit through the process. BA then performs a kind of background check on new recruits by circulating their name throughout the organization. BA is particularly interested in any evidence that prospective members have cooperated with the police.
Prison authorities are certainly aware of the spread of BA, and they try to keep Mexican nationals separated from known BA members, who are mostly Mexican-American, to prevent the spread of the gang’s influence. BA has organizations in virtually every penitentiary in Texas, meaning that no matter where a BA member is imprisoned, he will have a protection network in place. BA members with truly extensive prison records might personally know the leader of every prison chapter, thus increasing the member’s prestige. Thus, the constant cycling of members from the outside world into prison does not inhibit BA, but makes its members more cohesive, as it allows the prison system to increase bonds among gang members.
Communication challenges certainly arise, as exchanges between prisoners and those on the outside are closely monitored. But BA seems to have overcome this challenge. Former BA member Edward Ruiz testified during the trial that from 2003 to 2007, he acted as a clearinghouse for jailed members’ letters and packages, which he then distributed to members on the outside. This tactic ensured that all prison communications would be traceable to just one address, thus not revealing the location of other members.
BA also allegedly used Sandy Valles New, who worked in the investigations section of the Office of the Federal Public Defender in El Paso from 1996 to 2002, to pass communications between gang members inside and outside prison. She exploited the access to — and the ability to engage in confidential communications with — inmates that attorneys enjoy, transmitting information back and forth between BA members inside and outside prison. Taped conversations reveal New talking to one of the bosses and lead defendants, Carlos Perea, about her fear of losing her job and thus not being able to continue transmitting information in this way. She also talked of crossing over to Ciudad Juarez to communicate with BA members in Mexico.
While BA had inside sources like New assisting it, the FBI was able to infiltrate BA in return. Josue Aguirre and Johnny Michelleti have informed on BA activities to the FBI since 2003 and 2005, respectively. Edward Ruiz, the mailman, also handed over stacks of letters to the FBI.
BA and the Mexican Cartels
As indicated, BA is only one of dozens of prison gangs operating along the U.S.-Mexican border that help Mexican drug trafficking organizations smuggle narcotics across the border and then distribute them for the cartels. Mexican drug trafficking organizations need groups that will do their bidding on the U.S. side of the border, as the border is the tightest choke point in the narcotics supply chain.
Getting large amounts of drugs across the border on a daily basis requires local connections to bribe border guards or border town policemen. Gangs on the U.S. side of the border also have contacts who sell drugs on the retail level, where markups bring in large profits. The current trial has revealed that the partnership goes beyond narcotics to include violence as well. In light of the high levels of violence raging in Mexico related to narcotics trafficking, there is a genuine worry that this violence (and corruption) could spread inside the United States.
One of the roles that BA and other border gangs fill for Mexican drug-trafficking organizations is that of enforcer. Prison gangs wield tight control over illegal activity in a specific territory. They keep tabs on people to make sure they are paying their taxes to the gang and not affiliating with rival gangs. To draw an analogy, they are like the local police who know the situation on the ground and can enforce specific rules handed down by a governmental body — or a Mexican cartel.
Details emerging from the ongoing trial indicate that BA works closely with the Juarez cartel and has contributed to drug-related violence inside the United States. While the killing of a street dealer by a gang for failure to pay up on time is common enough nationwide and hardly unique to Mexican drug traffickers, apprehending offenders in El Paso and driving them to Ciudad Juarez to be held or killed does represent a very clear link between violence in Mexico and the United States.
BA’s ability to strike within the United States has been proven. According to a Stratfor source, BA is connected to Los Zetas — the U.S.-trained Mexican military members who deserted to traffic drugs — through a mutual alliance with the Juarez cartel. The Zetas possess a high level of tactical skill that could be passed along to BA, thus increasing its effectiveness.
The Potential for Cross-Border Violence
The prospect for enhanced cross-border violence is frightening, but the violence itself is not new. So far, Mexican cartels and their U.S. allies have focused on those directly involved in the drug trade. Whether this restraint will continue is unclear. Either way, collateral damage is always a possibility.
Previous incidents, like one that targeted a drug dealer in arrears in Phoenix and others that involved kidnappings and attacks against U.S. Border Patrol agents, indicate that violence has already begun creeping over from Mexico. So far, violence related to drug trafficking has not caused the deaths of U.S. law enforcement officials and/or civilians, though it has come close to doing so.
Another potential incubator of cross-border violence exists in BA’s obligation to offer refuge to Juarez cartel members seeking safety in the United States. Such members most likely would have bounties on their heads. The more violent Mexico (and particularly Ciudad Juarez) becomes, the greater the risk Juarez cartel leaders face — and the more pressure they will feel to seek refuge in the United States. As more Juarez cartel leaders cross over and hide with BA help, the cartel’s enemies will become increasingly tempted to follow them and kill them in the United States. Other border gangs in California, Arizona and New Mexico probably are following this same trajectory.
Two primary reasons explain why Mexican cartel violence for the most part has stopped short of crossing the U.S. border. First, the prospect of provoking U.S. law enforcement does not appeal to Mexican drug-trafficking organizations operating along the border. They do not want to provoke a coordinated response from a highly capable federal U.S. police force like the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or FBI. By keeping violence at relatively low levels and primarily aimed at other gang members and drug dealers, the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations can lessen their profile in the eyes of these U.S. agencies. Conversely, any increase in violence and/or the killing of U.S. police or civilians would dramatically increase federal scrutiny and retaliation.
The second reason violence has not crossed the border wholesale is that gangs like BA are in place to enforce the drug-trafficking organizations’ rules. The need to send cartel members into the United States to kill a disobedient drug dealer is reduced by having a tight alliance with a border gang that keeps drugs and money moving smoothly and carries out the occasional killing to maintain order.
But the continued integrity of BA and its ability to carry out the writ of larger drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico might not be so certain. The Nov. 3 trial will undermine BA activity in the crucial trafficking corridor of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez.
The indictment and possible incarceration of the six alleged BA members would not damage the gang so badly — after all, BA is accustomed to operating out of prison, and there must certainly be members on the outside ready to fill in for their incarcerated comrades. But making BA’s activities and modus operandi public should increase scrutiny on the gang and could very well lead to many more arrests.
In light of the presence of at least two FBI informants in the gang, BA leaders have probably moved into damage control mode, isolating members jeopardized by the informants. This will disrupt BA’s day-to-day operations, making it at least temporarily less effective. Stratfor sources say BA members on both sides of the border have been ordered to lie low until the trial is over and the damage can be fully assessed. This is a dangerous period for gangs like BA, as their influence over their territory and ability to operate is being reduced.
Weakening BA by extension weakens the Juarez cartel’s hand in El Paso. While BA no doubt will survive the investigations the trial probably will spawn, given the high stakes across the border in Mexico, the Juarez cartel might be forced to reduce its reliance on BA. This could prompt the Juarez cartel to rely on its own members in Ciudad Juarez to carry out hits in the United States and to provide its own security to leaders seeking refuge in the United States. It could also prompt it to turn to a new gang facing less police scrutiny. Under either scenario, BA’s territory would be encroached upon. And considering the importance of controlling territory to prison gangs — and the fact that BA probably still will be largely intact — this could lead to increased rivalries and violence.
The Juarez cartel-BA dynamic could well apply to alliances between U.S. gangs and Mexican drug-trafficking organizations, such as Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos in Houston, the Texas Syndicate and Tango Blast operating in the Rio Grande Valley and their allies in the Gulf cartel; the Mexican Mafia in California and Texas and its allies in the Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels; and other gangs operating in the United States with ties to Mexican cartels like Mexikanemi, Norteños and the Sureños.
Ultimately, just because BA or any other street gang working with Mexican cartels is weakened does not mean that the need to enforce cartel rules and supply chains disappears. This could put Mexican drug-trafficking organizations on a collision course with U.S. law enforcement if they feel they must step in themselves to take up the slack. As their enforcers stateside face more legal pressure, the cartels’ response therefore bears watching.
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It is kind of sad really.
Mexico City is a beautiful city; cosmopolitan, cultured, fabulous restaurants and beautiful architecture and wonderful people.
I have been there a few times and always enjoyed it very much.
That being said, I did a photo shoot with a very rich Korean girl this past weekend here in LA. Previously, she lived in Mexico City. i asked
her why her family moved to LA and she said she had been kidnapped for ransom three times in Mexico City. Their house was a fortress; it was no way to live.
And they obviously lived in a very nice section of town.
We take safety for granted, but it is not always available.
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Mexico Has Made Big Strides on Economic Policy Calderón was smart enough to hedge against falling oil prices.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Much has been written about the "cultural" divide between Norte Americanos and Latinos. But with the burst of the asset bubble, we've learned that politicians, north and south, react similarly in the face of economic crisis.
This commonality occurred to me over breakfast in New York last week with Mexico's minister of finance, Agustin Carstens. The University of Chicago-trained economist was explaining the rationale behind President Felipe Calderón's "stimulus" package. I kept thinking about President-elect Barack Obama's promised further spending spree on this side of the border. The Mexican version is not nearly as ambitious but the concept is the same. "He's taking my money in order to spend it better than I can," a Mexican friend shot back sardonically when I asked him his views on Mr. Calderón's plan. We're all keynesianos now.
The Keynesian theory, calling for government spending as a way to boost aggregate demand during economic downturns, has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises. But it endures because of its political expediency. It is the best excuse ever invented to expand government. It is both frightening and discouraging to hear politicians offering more Keynes at a time when what is most needed is a way of restoring the appetite of the private sector for risk.
Yet the news from Mexico is not all bad. As I listened to Mr. Carstens discuss his government's economic options, what also came through is how different Mexico is from 15 years ago. These changes may keep the country from backsliding under the strain of the current financial panic.
To be sure, Mr. Carstens believes in the state's capacity to stimulate economic activity. "If you can get the economy going and you have the instruments to do it, it is important that you use them," he told me. Then he added a historic footnote: "But we have limits to how much we can borrow and finance prudently." He went on: "Thinking that we are going to run a fiscal deficit without thinking of how we will finance it? That would be irresponsible."
For a country that has repeatedly gotten itself into fiscal and monetary trouble by running up big budget deficits, this is a tectonic shift in thinking. It is true that Mr. Carstens's predecessor, Francisco Gil-Diaz, also kept a tight grip on the purse strings during the government of Vicente Fox. But for a Mexican finance minister to be worried about excessive borrowing during a global economic slump of the magnitude now expected is a meaningful departure from tradition.
It isn't the only new-found prudence in Mexico. Twenty five years ago when oil prices skyrocketed, Latin oil producers spent the windfall as fast as it flowed in -- and more besides. Now Mexico takes a different approach. Earlier this year when Maya crude -- Mexico's main blend for export -- was topping $120 per barrel, Mr. Carstens instructed his team to begin using derivatives to lock in a floor price of $70 per barrel. "Prices had risen to such a high level that the only direction left was down," he explained to reporters in Mexico City last month.
In today's Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
America's Other Auto IndustryMessing With Malpractice Reform
TODAY'S COLUMNISTS
Information Age: Let's Move Intelligence Out of the 1970s
– L. Gordon CrovitzThe Americas: Mexico Has Made Big Strides on Economic Policy
– Mary Anastasia O'Grady
COMMENTARY
Lessons From 40 Years of Education 'Reform'
– Louis V. Gerstner Jr.Deepak Blames America
– Dorothy RabinowitzEgypt's Jew Haters Deserve Ostracism in the West
– Amr BargisiWith this hedge, Mexico has covered its net oil exports for 2009 at $70 while Maya crude is now trading around $45. What is important here is not that Mr. Carstens's hedge worked but that this time an oil boom didn't turn into a government binge.
Yet another big change in Mexico is on the trade front. By now most economists recognize that closing domestic markets in hard times only makes things worse. But candidate Obama's campaign vow to force protectionist changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement demonstrates the constant temptation for politicians to protect special interest groups from foreign competition.
Yet while Mr. Obama and Congress are talking up more trade barriers, Mr. Calderón's government is going the other way. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru, last month, the Mexican president warned that changes to Nafta would damage both sides of the border. Mexico has numerous free trade agreements but Mr. Carstens told me at breakfast that working to lower tariffs on imports from non-FTA countries is a Calderón priority.
With these advances Mexico may muddle through this recession. But there are also grave risks to its strategy. The much-touted reform of state-owned oil monopoly Pemex is too timid to boost output in the near term. Elsewhere Mr. Carstens says he is working toward eventual tax cuts and simplification of the tax code but adds that now is not the time to go there. The trouble is that as he waits for the right time, the private sector could decide that the cost of doing business in Mexico is just too high. That will leave Mexico more dependent on Mr. Carstens's strategy of government spending out of the treasury and state-owned "development" banks. That would be a throwback to an unrewarding past.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
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ospitals Now a Theater in Mexico’s Drug War
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December 5, 2008
Hospitals Now a Theater in Mexico’s Drug War
By MARC LACEY
TIJUANA, Mexico
The sedated patient, his bullet wounds still fresh from a shootout the night before, was lying on a gurney in the intensive care unit of a prestigious private hospital here late last month with intravenous fluids dripping into his arm. Suddenly, steel-faced gunmen barged in and filled him with even more bullets. This time, he was dead for sure.
Hit men pursuing rivals into intensive care units and emergency rooms. Shootouts in lobbies and corridors. Doctors kidnapped and held for ransom, or threatened with death if a wounded gunman dies under their care. With alarming speed, Mexico’s violent drug war is finding its way into the seeming sanctuary of the nation’s hospitals, shaking the health care system and leaving workers fearing for their lives while trying to save the lives of others.
“Remember that hospital scene from ‘The Godfather?’ ” asked Dr. Héctor Rico, an otolaryngologist here, speaking about the part in which Michael Corleone saves his hospitalized father from a hit squad. “That’s how we live.”
An explosion of violence connected with Mexico’s powerful drug cartels has left more than 5,000 people dead so far this year, nearly twice the figure from the year before, according to unofficial tallies by Mexican newspapers. The border region of the United States and Mexico, critical to the cartels’ trafficking operation, has been the most violent turf of all, with 60 percent of all killings in the country last month occurring in the states of Chihuahua and Baja California, the government says. And it has raised fears that violence could spill across the border, because dozens of victims of drug violence have been treated at an El Paso hospital in the last year.
The federal government argues that the rising death toll reflects President Felipe Calderón’s aggressive stance toward the cartels, which has forced traffickers into a bitter war over the dwindling turf that remains.
In fact, most of the deaths do appear to be the result of infighting among traffickers. But plenty of innocent people are dying too, and the spate of horrifying killings — bodies are routinely decapitated or otherwise mutilated and left in public places with handwritten notes propped up nearby — has left people from all walks of life worried that they might be next.
“If a patient is in the E.R. bleeding, we should be focused on the wounds,” said Dr. Rico, who has led doctors in street demonstrations to protest the rising violence in and around Tijuana, where 170 bodies were discovered in November alone, the bloodiest month on record. “Now we have to watch our backs and worry about someone barging in with a gun.”
Doctors feel particularly vulnerable. When they leave their offices, they say they face the risk of being kidnapped and held for ransom, as about two dozen local physicians have been in the last few years. Doctors also complain about receiving blunt threats from patients or patients’ relatives. “Sálvame o te mato,” save me or I will kill you, is what one orthopedic surgeon said he was told by a patient, who evidently did not grasp the contradiction.
Adding to the anxiety, hospitals and health care workers have to notify the authorities when a patient comes in with a gunshot or knife wound, a legal requirement that the traffickers know well. That leads to further threats.
Then, there is the risk of shootouts.
Authorities suspect that the killers and the victim in the intensive care unit at the private hospital, Hospital del Prado, had links to the drug cartels that are wreaking so much havoc across Mexico. Nowhere to be found were the police, who received a call from the hospital authorities when the shooting victim, who was in his 20s, first arrived, as is required by law. The police did not show up until after the gunmen had come and gone and bullet casings littered the hospital floor.
Hospital General de Tijuana, the city’s main public hospital, has twice been ringed by police officers and soldiers in the past 20 months. The first time, in April 2007, gunmen stormed the building either to rescue a fellow cartel member who was being treated in the emergency room or to kill a rival, said the police, who were not certain which scenario it was. Two police officers were killed, and all but one of the gunmen got away.
A video taken by a hospital worker revealed a terrifying scene, with two state police officers firing inside the emergency room to protect patients while doctors, nurses and others cowered in closets, under gurneys and wherever else they could find cover.
An elderly woman in a wheelchair is seen hiding under a blanket, while a patient in a hospital gown is sprawled on the floor near his hospital bed.
Meanwhile, panicked patients were escorted out of the building, some with IVs in their arms, to a nearby sports field.
The second time was this past April, when soldiers in camouflage ringed Hospital General de Tijuana, shutting it down while doctors treated eight traffickers who were wounded in various shootouts in the city. The Mexican Army was apparently trying to prevent a repeat of the 2007 shootout. In a recent third episode, soldiers were sent to the hospital for a bomb scare.
“Fear has become part of our lives,” said one of the doctors at Hospital General de Tijuana, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from organized-crime figures. “There’s panic. We don’t know when the shooting is going to break out again.”
The violence is already affecting service, as hospitals armor themselves with more police officers and guards. To protest the spate of killings, some doctors closed their offices for a day in November. And Tijuana clinics are closing earlier on a regular basis, with more and more doctors shunning late-night medical care as too risky.
In Ciudad Juárez, which abuts El Paso, the local Red Cross hospital called a halt to 24-hour emergency service earlier in the year after gunmen killed four people who were being treated for gunshot wounds. Emergency service now ends at 10 p.m.
Paramedics in Ciudad Juárez temporarily stopped treating gunshot victims one day in August after receiving death threats over their emergency radios. They resumed ambulance service later the same day, but only after they were provided armed police escorts.
An episode that took place in the early morning hours of Oct. 5 in Tijuana shows the complicated new environment in which health care workers find themselves. After a major shootout, two wounded men were carried to Clínica Londres, a private health clinic that was closed for the night. There was a lone nurse inside the locked facility, tending to the patients there, and she initially did not open up to the small group of anxious people outside.
The nurse was not qualified to treat gunshot victims, and the clinic did not offer emergency care. But the crowd outside included two men dressed in law enforcement uniforms, who banged menacingly on the door.
Frightened of the men in uniform — criminals routinely wear police uniforms in Mexico — she eventually relented, she told authorities. What happened next is shrouded in confusion.
Tipped off, the army and the police arrived at the clinic and asked the nurse and two other employees who had since arrived if they were treating gunshot victims, and they were told no. Then, hearing a groan from another room, the authorities discovered the two wounded men — the men in uniform had already fled — and accused the health care workers and the group of people who arrived with the patients of having links to the drug traffickers.
The clinic workers, who have been detained for two months while authorities decide whether to charge them, deny that they did anything wrong. “It is not true that this is a narco-clinic,” said their lawyer, Rafael Flores Esquerro.
Another Tijuana doctor, Fernando Guzmán Cordero, has also found himself denying connections to traffickers. Dr. Guzmán, a prominent general surgeon, was kidnapped in April and suffered a bullet wound to his leg. But the kidnappers released him 36 hours later, even giving him cab fare home.
Then two weeks later, after another Tijuana shootout, a group of gunshot victims were taken to his clinic for treatment. In radio call-in shows and on Internet chat sites, local residents wondered whether the traffickers were now in cahoots with Dr. Guzmán, something he vehemently denied.
“People can say whatever they want,” he said. “They say I kidnapped myself or made a pact with them. They say a million things. I know who I am. Why would I get involved with criminals?”
The problem everyone in Tijuana faces, no matter their line of work, is that they might be associating with traffickers without even knowing it. Doctors say they now screen their patients carefully. Traffickers pay well and in cash, but they are not worth the trouble they bring, doctors say.
But hospitals do not have that luxury. “We’re not judges,” said Carolina Aubanel Riedel, whose family owns Hospital del Prado. “We treat those who arrive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/wo...mexico.html?hp
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Jewelry store patrons murdered as a part of the ongoing Mexican drug war:
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-monterrey7-2008dec07,0,2178649.story?track=rss
Quite graphic.
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Stratfor
Part 1: A Critical Confluence of Events
December 9, 2008 | 1213 GMT
Summary
Mexico is facing the perfect storm as the global financial crisis begins to
impact the country's economy and as the government's campaign against the
drug cartels seems to be making the country even less secure. Mexico also
faces legislative elections in the coming year, which will involve much
jockeying for the 2012 presidential race. The political implications of the
financial crisis will be reflected in a decline in employment and overall
standard of living. In a country where political expression takes the form
of paralyzing protest, the economic downturn could spell near-disaster for
the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Analysis
Editor's Note: This is the first part of a series on Mexico.
Mexico appears to be a country coming undone. Powerful drug cartels use
Mexico for the overland transshipment of illicit drugs - mainly cocaine,
marijuana and methamphetamine - from producers in South America to consumers
in the United States. Violence between competing cartels has grown over the
past two years as they have fought over territory and as the Mexican army
has tried to secure the embattled areas, mainly on the country's periphery.
It is a tough fight, made even tougher by endemic geographic, institutional
and technical problems in Mexico that make a government victory hard to
achieve. The military is stretched thin, the cartels are becoming even more
aggressive and the people of Mexico are growing tired of the violence.
At the same time, the country is facing a global economic downturn that will
slow Mexico's growth and pose additional challenges to national stability.
Although the country appears to be in a comfortable fiscal position for the
short term, the outlook for the country's energy industry is bleak, and a
decline in employment could prompt social unrest. Complications also loom in
the political sphere as Mexican parties campaign ahead of 2009 legislative
elections and jockey for position in preparation for the 2012 presidential
election.
Economic Turmoil
As the international financial crisis roils economies around the world,
Mexico has been hit hard. Tightly bound to its northern neighbor, Mexico's
economy is set to shrink alongside that of the United States, and it will be
an enormous challenge for the Mexican government to face in the midst of a
devastating war with the drug cartels.
The key to understanding the Mexican economy is an appreciation of Mexico's
enormous integration with the United States. As a party to the North
American Free Trade Agreement and one of the largest U.S. trading partners,
Mexico is highly vulnerable to the vagaries of the U.S. economy. The United
States is the largest single source of foreign direct investment in Mexico.
Even more important, the United States is the destination of more than 80
percent of Mexico's exports. A slowdown in economic activity and consumer
demand in the United States thus translates directly into a slowdown in
Mexico.
In addition to the sale of most Mexican goods in the U.S. markets, the
United States is a major source of revenue for Mexico though remittances,
and together these sources of income provide around a quarter of Mexico's
gross domestic product (GDP). When Mexican immigrants send money home from
the United States, it makes up a substantial portion of Mexico's external
revenue streams. Remittances to Mexico totaled US$23.9 billion in 2007,
according to the Mexican Central Bank. The slowdown in the U.S. housing
sector has brought remittances down during the course of 2008 from highs in
the middle of 2007. As of the end of September 2008, remittances for the
year were down by US$672.6 million from the same period in 2007.
The decline in remittances is being matched by a slowdown in Mexico's
economy across the board. The Mexican government estimates that Mexico's GDP
will slow from 3.2 percent growth in 2007 to 1.8 percent in 2008. Given that
the U.S. economy is sliding into recession at the same time, this is likely
only the beginning of the Mexican slowdown, and growth is expected to bottom
out at 0.9 percent in 2009.
With growing pressure on the rest of the economy, the prospect of rising
unemployment is perhaps the most daunting challenge. So far, unemployment
and underemployment in Mexico has risen from 9.77 percent in December 2007
to 10.82 percent in October 2008, (some 27 percent of the workforce is
employed in the informal sector). But slowed growth and declining demand in
the United States is sure to cause further declines in employment in Mexico.
As happened in the wake of Mexico's 1982 debt crisis, Mexicans may seek to
return to a certain degree of subsistence farming in order to make it
through the tough times, but that is nowhere near an ideal solution. The
government has proposed a US$3.4 billion infrastructure buildup plan to be
implemented in 2009 that will seek to boost jobs (and demand for industrial
goods) throughout Mexico, although it is not clear how quickly this can take
effect or how many jobs it might create.
Further compounding the employment issue is the possibility of Mexican
immigrants returning from the United States as jobs disappear to the north.
Stratfor sources have already reported a slightly higher-than-normal level
of immigrants returning to Mexico, and although it is too early to plot the
trajectory of this trend, there is little doubt that job opportunities are
evaporating in the United States. As migrants return to Mexico, however,
there are very few jobs waiting for them there, either. This presents the
very real possibility that the available jobs will be in the black markets,
and specifically with the drug cartels. Demand for drugs persists despite
economic downturns, and the business of the cartels continues unabated.
Indeed, for the cartels, the economic downturn could be an excellent
recruitment opportunity.
The turmoil in U.S. financial markets has directly damaged the value of the
Mexican peso and has caused a loss of wealth among Mexican companies.
Mexican businesses have lost billions of dollars (exact figures are not
available at this time) to bad currency bets. Mexican companies in search of
extra financing have had trouble floating corporate paper, which has forced
the government to offer billions of dollars worth of guarantees. The upside
to this is that a weaker currency will increase the attractiveness of
Mexican exports to the United States vis-à-vis China (for a change), which
will boost the export sector to a certain degree.
The fluctuating peso has also forced the Mexican central bank to inject
about US$14.8 billion into currency markets to stabilize the peso.
Nevertheless, the peso has devalued by approximately 22.6 percent since the
beginning of 2008. Partially as a result of the currency devaluation,
inflation appears to be rising slightly. The government has reported a
12-month inflation rate of 6.2 percent, through mid-November. This is
actually fairly low for a developing nation, but it is the highest inflation
has been in Mexico since 2001.
Mexico's financial sector is highly exposed to the international credit
market, with about 80 percent of Mexico's banks owned by foreign companies,
and the banking sector has been unstable in recent months. Foreign capital
has, to a certain degree, fled Mexican investments and banks as capital
worldwide veered away from developing to developed markets, in response to
the global financial crisis. The result is a decline in investments across
the board, and there was a sharp decline in the purchase of Mexican
government bonds. After a four-week fall in bond purchases, the Mexican
government announced a US$1.1 billion bond repurchase package Dec. 2 in an
attempt to increase liquidity in the capital markets and lower interest
rates. Although investors were not responsive, it is an indication that the
government is taking its countercyclical duties seriously.
As the government seeks to counter falling employment and other economic
challenges, it will need to lean heavily on its available resources. The
central bank holds US$83.4 billion in foreign reserves, as of Nov. 28, and
can continue to use the money to implement monetary stabilization. Mexico
also maintains oil stabilization funds that total more than US$7.4 billion,
which provides a small fiscal cushion. The 2009 Mexican federal budget calls
for the first budget deficit in years - amounting to 1.8 percent of GDP -
and has increased spending by 13 percent from the previous year's budget, to
US$231 billion.
Some 40 percent of this budget is reliant on oil revenues generated by
Mexican state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Despite the
fall in oil prices, Mexico has managed to secure its energy income through a
series of hedged oil sales contracts. These contracts will sustain the
budget through the duration of 2009 with prices set from US$70 to US$100 per
barrel. Mexico is a major exporter of oil - ranked the sixth largest
producer and the 10th largest exporter. The energy industry is critical for
the economy, just as it is for the government.
In the long term, however, Mexico's energy industry is crippled. Due to a
history of restrictive energy regulations, oil production is falling
precipitously (primarily at Mexico's gigantic offshore Cantarell oil field),
with government reports indicating that production averaged 2.8 million
barrels per day (bpd) between January and September, which is far from
Mexico's target production of 3 million bpd. Thus, even if Mexico has
secured the price of its oil through 2009, it cannot guarantee its
production levels in the short term, and perhaps not in the long term.
To try to boost the industry's prospects, the Mexican government has passed
an energy reform plan that will allow Pemex to issue contract agreements to
foreign companies for joint exploration and production projects. The
government has also decided to assume some of Pemex's debt in order to ease
the company's access to international credit in light of the tight
international credit market.
These changes could help Mexico pull its oil production rate out of the
doldrums. However, most of Mexico's untapped reserves are located either in
deep complex formations or offshore - environments in which Pemex is at best
a technical laggard - making extraction projects expensive and technically
difficult. With the international investment climate constrained by capital
shortages, foreigners barred from sharing ownership of the oil they produce
and the price of oil falling, it is not yet clear how interested foreign oil
companies will be in such partnerships.
The decline in the energy sector has the potential to produce a sustained
fiscal crisis in the two- to three-year timeframe, even assuming that other
aspects of the economic environment (nearly all of which are beyond Mexico's
control) rectify themselves. The slack in government revenue will have to be
taken up through increased taxes on other industries or on individuals, but
it is not yet clear how such a replacement source of revenue might be
created.
The overall political implications of the financial crisis will be reflected
in a decline in employment and the standard of living of average Mexicans.
In a country where political expression takes the form of paralyzing
protest, the economic downturn could spell near-disaster for the
administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
The Shifting Political Landscape
In power since 2000, the ruling National Action Party (PAN) has enjoyed a
fairly significant level of support for Calderon both within the
legislature - where it lacks a ruling majority - and in the population at
large, particularly given the razor-thin margin with which Calderon won his
office in 2006. The Calderon administration has launched a number of reform
efforts targeting labor, energy and, of course, security.
Although the PAN has maintained an alliance with the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) for much of Calderon's administration, this is a
unity that that is unlikely to persist, given that both parties have begun
to lay out their campaigns for the 2012 presidential election.
For the ruling party, there are a number of looming challenges on the
political scene. Mexico has seen a massive spike in crime and drug-related
violence coincide with the first eight years of rule by Calderon's PAN after
71 straight years of rule by the PRI. To make things worse, the global
financial crisis has begun to impact Mexico - through no fault of its own -
and the impact on employment could be devastating. Given the confluence of
events, it is almost guaranteed that Calderon and the PAN will suffer
political losses going forward, weakening the party's ability to move
forward with decisive action.
So far, Calderon has been receiving credit for his all-out attack on the
drug cartels, and his approval ratings are near 60 percent. As the economy
weakens and the death toll mounts, however, this positive outlook could
easily falter.
The challenge will not likely come from the PAN's 2006 rival, the
Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD). The PRD gained tremendous media
attention when party leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost the
presidential election to Calderon and proceeded to stage massive
demonstrations protesting his loss. Since then, the PRD has adopted a
less-radical stance, and the far-left elements of the party have begun to
part ways with the less radical elements. This split within the PRD could
weaken the party as it moves forward.
The weakening of the PRD is auspicious for Mexico's third party, the PRI,
which has been playing a very careful game. The PRI has engaged in
partnerships with the PAN in opposition (for the most part) to the leftist
PRD. In doing so, the PRI has taken a strong role in the formation of
legislation. However, the PRI's prospects for the 2012 presidential election
have begun to improve, with the party's popularity on the rise. As of late
October, the PRI was polling extremely well - at the expense of both the PAN
and the PRD - with a 32.4 percent approval rating, compared to the PAN's
24.5 percent and the PRD's 10.8 percent.
In the short term, the June 2009 legislative elections will be a litmus test
for the political gyrations of Mexico, a warm-up for the 2012 elections and
the next stage of political challenges for Calderon. As the PRI positions
itself in opposition to the PAN - and particularly if the party gains more
seats in the Mexican legislature - it will become increasingly difficult for
the government to reach compromise solutions to looming challenges. Calderon
is somewhat protected by his high approval ratings, which will make overt
moves against him politically questionable for the PRI or the PRD.
Although a great deal could change (and quickly), these dynamics highlight
the potential changes in political orientation for Mexico over the next
three years. In the short term, the political situation remains relatively
secure for Calderon, which is critical for a president who is balancing the
need for substantial economic resuscitation with an ongoing war on domestic
organized crime.
Mexico's most critical challenge is the convergence of events it now faces.
The downturn in the economy, the political dynamics or the deteriorating
security situation, each on its own, might not pose an insurmountable
problem for Mexico. What could prove insurmountable is the confluence of all
three, which appears to be in the making.
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second post of the day:
WHY ARE MEXICAN PASSPORTS SHOWING UP IN MUMBAI, INDIA?
By Todd Bensman
The San Antonio Express-News
Three Afghani Muslim men caught posing as Mexican nationals last month while
en route to Europe were part of a human smuggling operation and carried what
are now believed to be altered but genuine Mexican passports for which they
paid $10,000 each, Indian investigators told The San Antonio Express-News.
An ongoing transcontinental investigation, which now involves Mexican and
Indian authorities, began Feb. 11 when a suspicious airport customs official
in Kuwait noticed the three Afghanis, traveling under Mexican pseudonyms,
could not speak Spanish during a layover on their air trip from New Delhi,
India to France.
The three Afghani travelers were detained and deported to India, where they
remain in custody while Mexican and Indian authorities try to learn about
their backgrounds, where they were going and who sold the apparently real
government-issue passports. A U.S. source confirmed the FBI and Immigration
and Customs Enforcement investigators also are looking into the matter.
At issue to some U.S. national security experts is whether another of
Mexico's embassies and consulates abroad might be implicated in selling
travel documents to people from countries like Afghanistan where terrorist
organizations are active, a circumstance that potentially could bring
terrorists to American borders. It wouldn't be the first time a Mexican
embassy was implicated in such an affair.
In 2003, a Mexican investigation into a Lebanon-Mexico human smuggling
operation produced firings and indictments of Mexican embassy personnel in
Beirut for allegedly selling travel documents to Lebanese citizens. One man
who bought a Mexican visa for $3,000 turned out to be a ranking Hezbollah
operative smuggled over the California border in the trunk of a car. Mahmoud
Kourani was convicted in 2004 of supporting the terrorist group from
Detroit.
Interdicting U.S.-bound travelers from the Middle East "was our number one
concern," said recently retired FBI Assistant Legal Attaché James Conway,
who for four years after 9-11 oversaw the bureau's counterterrorism programs
in Mexico City. "That's the national security concern from our southern
flank."
Travelers from Islamic countries carrying passports that are valid but
altered with fake names and photographs are among the most difficult to
detect, he said. In the black markets of human smuggling, real national
passports with embedded security bar codes rank among the most valuable
travel documents because they enable their bearers to more easily slip
through airport inspections.
==============
"If you've got a Mexican passport you've already crossed the bridge," Conway
said. "And you can become part of the flood of people who cross into the
U.S. If terrorists wanted to exploit the infrastructure in place, they can.
It's there."
TERRORISTS OR REFUGEES?
V.G. Babu, superintendent of immigration police at Cochin International
Airport, told the Express-News in a telephone interview the passports were
genuine government-manufactured passports and that the three men admitted to
buying them for $10,000 each in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, which
hosts a Mexican consulate office.
Babu said the three men initially tried to convince Indian authorities that
they were Mexicans. But the story quickly fell apart when two of the three
couldn't prove they spoke Spanish, he said.
"We broke them," because of the language issue, he said, and handed the men
over to federal Indian police for further investigation.
Investigators learned that a third Afghan who did speak some Spanish had
more than casual dealings with the Mexican embassy personnel in New Delhi
and was known to speak several languages, according to one Indian news
report.
Babu said he could offer no further details. Mexican foreign service
officials would only confirm that a multi-ministry investigation was
underway.
The Mexican Embassy in New Delhi declined to comment on the case. However, a
Feb. 16 Newindypress.com report cited New Delhi-based Ambassador Rogerlio
Granguillhome as confirming to Indian authorities that the passports were
likely real and asking that the documents be handed over so they can be
traced to their origins at an embassy or consulate office.
Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for Mexico's embassy in Washington D.C., also
would not answer questions specific to the investigation. But he did say his
government "has applied strong measures and invested considerable resources
to continuously improve the security of its travel documents."
"Mexico is a committed partner with the U.S. in ensuring . our borders are
not used to threaten or undermine our common security," Alday said in an
email.
Whether the Afghanis are connected to terrorist organizations battling with
American troops in Afghanistan and how they obtained the passports remain
unknown as the obscure investigation unfolds.
But Afghanistan is one of 43 predominantly Islamic nations listed by the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security as "countries of special interest"
because Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups operate in them.
Many Afghans caught crossing the U.S. southern border in recent years have
been determined to be economic immigrants, not terrorists, but many others
are presumed to have crossed and not been caught. Between 2002 and 2006, the
U.S. border patrol caught about 63 Afghanis crossing the borders, according
to agency capture data.
Conway, the former FBI legal attaché to Mexico, said that during his tour
the FBI got many "hits" running the names of captured immigrants from those
countries through terror watch list databases. He declined to elaborate,
citing national security rules against disclosure, and it remains unknown
what was learned of those individuals. But terrorists have illegally crossed
into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada since the mid 1990s.
THE WEAK LINK
The India case highlights concern felt among homeland security officials
since 9-11 about a continuing stream of immigrants from countries of
interest who illegally cross U.S. borders every year using Latin American
travel documents, often provided by paid human smugglers.
The chief concern, according to current and former FBI and ICE agents
familiar with the issue, is how well Latin American countries police the
supplies of travel documents emanating from their embassies and consulates
in Islamic countries.
According to federal court records from prosecutions of Middle Eastern
smugglers, thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese and citizens of many other
Islamic countries have been able to travel illegally to Latin American
countries, then over U.S. borders. They were often able to do so by using
real travel documents originating from embassy offices of Mexico, Guatemala,
Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru.
Conway said the ability to obtain real passports from any of those countries
represents a high danger.
================
"If you've got diplomatic establishments, like in Beirut, handing out
passports, there's little you can do," he said. "They come to Mexico, dress
like Mexican businessmen and you think they're going to pop up on our radar
screen? Absolutely not. They're going to walk on through."
In recent years, U.S. authorities have sought to make Central- and South
American countries more aware of the security threat presented by their
consulate offices and embassies. But some of those countries, such as
Venezuela and Guatemala, have proven less than responsive when asked to
tighten controls on foreign service personnel stationed abroad.
Among countries south of the U.S., Mexico has proven to be among the most
cooperative, Conway and other federal agents who have worked
counterterrorism programs there have said. Mexico has collaborated
extensively with American agencies to interdict travelers from countries of
interest, going so far as to allow American agents to interrogate captured
detainees inside Mexican facilities.
As part of those efforts, the Mexican government has taken some steps to
fortify confidence in its embassy personnel. For instance, after an
investigation in 2003 Mexico purged its Beirut embassy of personnel thought
to have been supplying travel documents to a Lebanese human smuggling
operation run by Salim Boughader, a Lebanese-Mexican.
Then, after U.S. courts were through convicting Boughader of smuggling
hundreds of Lebanese into Mexico for journeys over the U.S. border, Mexico
prosecuted and convicted him.
Mexico also has intensified a program of vetting its consuls and actively
monitoring the activities of staff elsewhere. Last year, the Express-News
reported that Iraqis and other citizens of the region had offered hundreds
of thousands of dollars in bribes to Mexico's honorary consul to Jordan, for
travel visas that would get them to Mexico and then the U.S. (SEE BREACHING
AMERICA SERIES)
Raouf N. El-Far, a Jordanian businessman who was appointed Mexico's honorary
consul to Jordan in 2004, said he refused all offers. He also said he
underwent an intensive intelligence background check before his appointment,
part of a new program at the time.
Still, word that three Afghans caught using passports to pose as traveling
Mexican nationals struck counter-terrorism expert Steven Emerson as lucky -
and alarming.
"If these three Afghanis figured out how to infiltrate under false Mexican
identifies, you can be sure that Islamic terrorists have done the same,"
said Emerson, who runs the Washington D.C.-based Investigative Project on
Terrorism.
"This needs to be investigated by Congress and the FBI."
Express-News reporter Sean Mattson in Mexico contributed to this report
=================
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In Mexico, Assassins of Increasing Skill
Well-Coordinated Cartel Hits Show Greater Sophistication
A forensics team examines the scene of Huerta's murder. Assassins fired 85 rounds at Huerta's SUV, hitting him 40 times. No nearby vehicles were hit by stray bullets.
By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 12, 2008; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR2008121103540.html
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The hit was fast, bold, lethal. Jesús Huerta Yedra, a top federal prosecutor here, was gunned down last week in a busy intersection 100 yards from the U.S. border in a murder of precise choreography.
In Mexico's chaotic drug war, attacks are no longer the work of desperate amateurs with bad aim. Increasingly, the killings are being carried out by professionals, often hooded and gloved, who trap their targets in coordinated ambushes, strike with overwhelming firepower, and then vanish into the afternoon rush hour -- just as they did in the Huerta killing.
The paid assassins, known as sicarios, are rarely apprehended. Mexican officials say the commando squads probably travel from state to state, across a country where the government and its security forces are drawing alarming conclusions about the scope and skill of an enemy supported by billions of dollars in drug profits.
"They are getting very good at their jobs," said Hector Hawley Morelos, coordinator of the state forensics and crime laboratory here, where criminologists and coroners have been overwhelmed by more than 1,600 homicides in Juarez this year. "The assassins show a high level of sophistication. They have had training -- somewhere. They appear to have knowledge of police investigative procedures. For instance, they don't leave fingerprints. That is very disturbing."
Alejandro Pariente, the spokesman for the attorney general in Chihuahua state, said, "They are called organized crime for a very good reason. Because they are very organized."
In Ciudad Juarez, a tough industrial city across the river from El Paso, where 42 people have been killed in the last week, the morgue serves as a grim classroom for the study of drug violence along the border.
In an interview last week, a busy coroner in the forensics lab spoke while performing an autopsy. A dozen dead men awaited final exams, sprawled on metal tables, their bodies pebbled with fat bullet holes, open eyes staring at fluorescent bulbs. The men were all eventually classified as "organized crime" homicides, which account for the majority of deaths in Ciudad Juarez, the most violent city in Mexico.
On Monday, federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said there have been 5,376 drug-related killings this year in Mexico, double last year's number. Later that evening, Victor Hugo Moneda, who led Mexico City's investigative police agency, was killed in an ambush as he was exiting his car at his home in the capital. The assailants, using a car and motorcycle, fired 22 shots, according to police.
In the Juarez morgue, the three walk-in freezers are filled to capacity with more than 90 corpses, stacked floor to ceiling, in leaking white bags with zippers. After a few months, those who are not identified are buried in a field at the city cemetery at the edge of the desert.
"The patterns that we often see with organized crime homicides are high-caliber weapons, multiple wounds, extreme trauma," said Alma Rosa Padilla, a chief medical examiner, who completes as many as five full autopsies each day. "They don't go to the hospital."
One U.S. anti-drug law enforcement officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he works in Mexico, said, "The Mexican army has had a problem with deserters. So have the police, including special anti-crime units. They are now working for the other side."
More than a dozen top Mexican law enforcement officials have been detained recently for allegedly working for the drug cartels, including Noé Ramírez Mandujano, the nation's former top anti-drug prosecutor. He was arrested last month on suspicion of accepting $450,000 in exchange for sharing intelligence with traffickers.
===============
In Mexico, Assassins of Increasing Skill
According to information released Thursday by the Mexican congress, more than 18,000 soldiers have deserted the Mexican army this year. In the last three years, 177 members of special-forces units have abandoned their posts, and many went to work for organized crime.
Recently, Chihuahua Gov. José Reyes Baeza said that hired gunmen who have been arrested confessed that they carried out executions for 1,000 pesos per killing, about $75.
Weapons pour over the border here from Texas, bought illegally from street gangs or legally at sporting goods stores in the United States. Last month, the Mexican army made the largest seizure of illegal firearms and military-type weapons in more than two decades, uncovering a cache of 540 rifles, 165 grenades and 500,000 rounds of ammunition in a house in Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen, Tex.
According to Mexican officials, rifles stolen from Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army post in El Paso, end up on the streets of Juarez. At the forensic laboratory, the ballistics team pulled out a dozen weapons, including AK-47s, AR-15s, M-16s and other military-grade arms.
"I think that the government is simply overwhelmed. The cases are coming in fives and tens now, and it is probably very hard to keep up," said Tony Payan, an expert on the drug trade and professor at the University of Texas in El Paso. "The government is on the defensive. The thugs have the upper hand here. They probably perfect their techniques faster than the government can find the experts or the resources to combat them."
Huerta's murder was a bold strike. He was the second-ranking federal prosecutor in the state. Recently, the 40-year-old lawyer was handed the case of slain journalist Armando Rodríguez, a veteran police reporter at El Diario newspaper who was killed by a gunman in front of his house last month in Ciudad Juarez. The reasons behind Huerta's killing remain unknown.
When forensic investigator David García and his partner arrived in their white van 15 minutes after the shooting on the afternoon of Dec. 3, the municipal police were marking the perimeter of the crime scene with yellow tape and the first soldiers were arriving to stand guard.
The sunny, broad intersection of Arizona Street and Boulevard Pope John Paul II abuts the Rio Grande and is a five-minute drive from a main bridge into El Paso. Easily visible across the river was a picket line of U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.
Huerta was riding in the passenger seat of a new silver-colored Dodge Journey SUV with Texas plates, which had stopped at a red light. The car was driven by a secretary at the prosecutor's office, Marisela Esparza Granados. When García arrived, the splintered windshield wipers on the vehicle were still struggling to operate.
The intersection around the Dodge was littered with spent shells. García and his partner, who carry clipboards but no weapons, methodically photographed the scene and collected 85 casings, all in the caliber consistent with the account some witnesses told police -- that two hooded men from two vans pulled in front of the Dodge and opened fire with AK-47s.
The criminologists at the forensic lab were struck by several details. First, they suspected that Huerta was followed by at least one, and perhaps several, chase vehicles, which would have helped the gunmen get into position to ambush Huerta. They knew the car Huerta would use and his route, the investigators said.
Second, the criminologists were impressed with the precision, speed and audacity of the attack.
When it rolled to a stop at the traffic light, Huerta's vehicle was surrounded by other cars at a crowded intersection. But no other vehicles were hit by stray bullets. Later, Hawley, the lab coordinator, pointed out the tight pattern of gunfire pocking the SUV's windshield.
"You see they hit where they aim. He was the target. Not her," Hawley said. The assassins concentrated their fire directly at Huerta, who was not wearing a bulletproof vest. "If they know they're wearing a bulletproof vest, they ignore the chest and shoot the head," he added.
The autopsy revealed that Huerta had been struck at least 40 times, most in the chest. The passenger seat of the SUV was soaked with blood. The secretary, Esparza, was struck only three times, though a neck wound was fatal.
In the crime laboratory, the shell casings were examined by the ballistics team and recorded. The bullets are almost always from the United States. The assassins do not trust bullets made in Mexico, Hawley said, adding, "The American bullets are better."
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9 Headless Bodies Located in Southern Mexico
Sunday, December 21, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470710,00.html
ACAPULCO, Mexico — Authorities found the decapitated bodies of nine men in the southern state of Guerrero on Sunday, and some of the victims have been identified as soldiers. State Public Safety Secretary Juan Salinas Altes said the bodies were found on a major boulevard in the state capital, Chilpancingo, just a few hundred yards from where the state governor was scheduled to participate in a traditional religious procession later in the day. Salinas Altes said experts are still trying to identify the bodies, but he said a still-undetermined number of them are soldiers. An army base is located nearby.
Mexico has been hit by a rising wave of drug-fueled violence, and officials estimate that more than 5,300 people have died in organized-crime-related slayings so far in 2008. Mexican drug cartels have increasingly taken to chopping the heads off their victims, who include rival traffickers or lawmen. On Aug. 28, a dozen decapitated bodies were found outside Merida, the capital of Yucatan state.
Two other severed heads were found on the same boulevard in Chilpancingo on Dec. 7 alongside a sign reading: "Soldiers who are supposedly fighting crime, and they turn out to be kidnappers. This is going to happen to you."
Scores of police and soldiers have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in late 2006. While Mexican criminal gangs once appeared to steer clear of confrontations with the army, they now often openly attacking soldiers.
In May 2007, gunmen linked to a drug gang killed five soldiers in an ambush in the neighboring state of Michoacan.
Also Sunday, federal police reported they had captured three suspected cartel hit men in the border city of Tijuana. The suspects allegedly had six assault rifles and about 3,500 rounds of ammunition at the home where they were caught.
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Friday, Dec. 26, 2008
By Ioan Grillo / Mexico City
For a confessed drug cartel hood whose alias is "The Nut Job," Marco Vinicio Cobo is remarkably calm and plain-looking. Sitting in the blue-walled interrogation room of a Mexican army base, the chubby, goatee-bearded 30-year-old coolly describes his work for the Zetas, a feared paramilitary force responsible for thousands of brutal murders. And even when he details how his bosses kidnapped and chopped the head off a soldier, he appears relaxed and unemotional, as if he were discussing the weather. But despite the unsettling indifference of its tone, Cobo's confession — of which a video has been obtained by TIME — offers some extraordinary insights into how the cartels have grown into a formidable threat to the Mexican government, outwitting and outgunning the armed forces in great swathes of the country.
In the statement made on video following his arrest in southern Mexico last April, Cobo explains how the cartels use a disciplined cell structure with a vertical, military-style chain of command to control thousands of men at arms. "I began as an H — the code they use for Hawk," he says. "After a time, I became a Central. I gave information to all the local H's in the community." He also reveals how his "family" stays one step ahead of the authorities by paying a vast network of informants, from local journalists to high-ranking federal agents. (See images of fighting crime in Mexico City)
In the worst year for Mexican law enforcement in recent history, cartel gunmen have killed more than 500 police and military personnel, including eight soldiers who were beheaded near Acapulco on Sunday. Cobo's own life story also sheds light on the machinations of the crime empires behind this killing spree. From a lower-middle class family, Cobo had worked for a while as a journalist in the poor state of Oaxaca before joining the cartel in his late 20s because it was the best job opportunity available. "They first paid me $300 a fortnight, and then it went up to $400," he explains. "The money was deposited at the local Elektra [a chain store that provides low-cost banking]". His modest wage shows how many cartel foot soldiers such as Cobo live a world apart from the extravagant kingpins with their million-dollar mansions and fleets of luxury cars, but it was still five times the country's minimum wage. And it's the swelling of the narco armies with tens of thousands of low-paid recruits that helps explain the scale of the bloodshed here, with more than 5,300 drug-related killings over the past year alone.
Cobo claims he first came into contact with the Zetas while covering crime for the small-town newspaper Sol del Istmo. "Journalists were threatened," he said. "One time, they told me not to publish a story about some men who were arrested with guns. They said the story couldn't come out." When he joined up with these gangsters, he said his first job was to monitor the local roads. Later he helped set up the abductions of any cartel targets on those routes. "They kidnapped people who had committed what they said was a crime," he said. "Many were people who worked as drug traffickers." He lost count of how many victims they abducted, but said three had had been killed and buried in the yard of a suburban house.
The Zetas act as the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel and extort payments from anyone who moves narcotics through their territories. The Oaxaca coast, where Cobo joined, is strategically important in trafficking routes of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. It is also the thinnest point between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. "The Gulf Cartel controls the drug trade along the Gulf of Mexico and dominates the movement of drugs into this country primarily through Texas," said Michele M. Leonhart, Acting Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in a recent statement. "They are known, even among their rivals, for their extreme violence."
As a "Central", Cobo had 13 "Hawks" under his command. Above him were Second Commanders. The Zeta ranking system is based on the Mexican military, which is unsurprising considering that the organization was founded by soldiers from the army's special forces who defected to the gangsters in the late 1990s. Cobo knew his superiors only by aliases, in order to protect their identities. "There was Franco, Tarzan, Texas, and Zorro," he said. He saw a book with names of dozens of police under the unit's payroll, he said, including officers from many nearby towns and federal agents stationed there. The corrupt police were also given aliases, including Papa and Brother.
In late March, Cobo's unit kidnapped a military officer, decapitated him and stuck his body out on a road, along with several bags of cocaine and about $2,000 in cash. "Franco told me that the officer was from military intelligence and he was getting too close," Cobo said. "The drugs and the money were planted so it would seem like he was involved in narco trafficking." Following the slaying, soldiers arrested Cobo and 13 others, along with semi-automatic rifles and radio equipment. His confession led the military to the suburban house where they dug up the bodies he had mentioned. Cobo was eventually sent to a civilian prison, where he awaits his court date on organized crime charges. Federal prosecutors declined to comment on whether his cooperation will lead to a more lenient sentence.
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...868666,00.html
__________________
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Mexico: Cartel Sources in High Places
Stratfor Today » December 29, 2008 | 1834 GMT
A Mexican army major has been arrested for allegedly passing information to the Beltran Leyva drug-trafficking organization. The arrest represents a double blow to the Mexican government and demonstrates the reach of the country’s cartels.
Mexican army Maj. Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez was arrested the week of Dec. 21 for allegedly assisting Mexican drug trafficking organizations for $100,000 per month, the Mexican attorney general’s office announced Dec. 26. Gonzalez was assigned to the Presidential Guard Corps, the unit responsible for protecting Mexico’s president. Based on statements from a former cartel member turned witness code-named “Jennifer,” the attorney general’s office has accused Gonzalez of passing information related to the activities and travel plans of Mexican President Felipe Calderon to the Beltran Leyva organization (BLO). Gonzalez also stands accused of leaking military intelligence, training BLO hit men through a private security company and supplying military weapons to various drug-trafficking organizations, including Los Zetas.
In light of other high-level Mexican government corruption charges over the past months, this case is unsettling but certainly does not come as a surprise.
The revelation that Gonzalez was providing intelligence and materials to drug cartels represents a double blow to the Mexican government. First, the fact that a member of an army unit responsible for protecting the president was passing information about presidential movements to the cartels exposes a potentially fatal gap in Calderon’s protective detail. While it is not known what specific information Gonzalez had access to, or what exact details he was passing to the cartels, this is a security breach at the highest level. According to the attorney general’s office, the informant Jennifer has said the cartels were tracking the president’s movements with the intent of avoiding the high level of government security that surrounds him, but had no specific plan to target Calderon. But capability is more important than intent, as intent can change quickly. Tracking Calderon’s movements to avoid him could easily have been altered to targeting Calderon if the need arose.
It is unclear exactly how involved Gonzalez was in the daily movements of Calderon. Because he was on the staff, it is safe to assume that he was at least involved in briefings and the general movements of the president, but this information would not necessarily be enough for the cartel to have been able to assassinate Calderon. Most valuable to such a plot would have been information related to presidential transport strategy, namely, how the guard worked to protect Calderon, how it arranged transportation, and how it gathered intelligence on specific threats. Insights into how the guard operated would have given the cartels a glimpse into Calderon’s security vulnerabilities — something far more dangerous to Calderon than simply the knowledge of where the president would be at any given time.
The second aspect of the blow is that Gonzalez apparently had been on the cartel payroll since 2005, during which time he held different positions in the government. As he changed assignments, he was kept on as a cartel asset, and the nature of his involvement with the cartels changed. It is entirely feasible that he fed information on other departments of the army (not just the Presidential Guard Corps) over his three-year relationship with the cartels.
A primary reason for the Mexican government to rely on the military to fight the cartels is because state and local law enforcement are considered far too corrupt to be trusted. One of the military’s strengths was its perceived lower level of corruption due to its low-level involvement with the cartels, but this case (along with other military corruption arrests this year) confirms that members of the Mexican military also are prone to corruption.
More details must emerge about Gonzalez’s exact role in the Presidential Guard Corps and the nature of the intelligence he passed to the BLO in order to more accurately assess the threat he posed to the president. Even so, the fact remains that the cartels’ intelligence capabilities have extended to those charged with protecting Mexico’s president — and hence to Mexico’s political stability.
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Border webcams
http://www.blueservo.net/
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http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/05/bracing-for-more-border-disorder/
Bracing for more border disorder
By Michelle Malkin • January 5, 2009 11:45 AM
I wrote at the end of my year-end state of the borders column last week that blood-stained reality clarifies the mind.
Two new MSM articles on the increasing chaos on the southern border underscore the point.
The NYTimes weighs in with “Kidnappings in Mexico Send Shivers Across Border.”
Four hooded men smashed in the door to the adobe home of an 80-year-old farmer here in November, handcuffing his frail wrists and driving him to a makeshift jail. They released him after relatives and friends paid a $9,000 ransom, which included his life savings.
The kidnapping was a dismal story of cruelty and heartbreak, familiar all across Mexico, but with a new twist: the daughter of this victim lived in the United States and was able to wire money to help assemble his ransom, the farmer, who insisted that he not be identified by name, said in an interview.
A string of similar kidnappings, singling out people with children or spouses in the United States, so panicked this village in the state of Zacatecas that many people boarded up their homes and headed north, some legally and some not, seeking havens with relatives in California and other American states.
“The relatives of Mexicans in the United States have become a new profit center for Mexico’s crime industry,” said Rodolfo García Zamora, a professor at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas who studies migration trends. “Hundreds of families are emigrating out of fear of kidnap or extortion, and Mexicans in the U.S. are doing everything they can to avoid returning. Instead, they’re getting their relatives out.”
The reported rush into the United States by people from the state of Zacatecas is another sign that Mexico’s growing lawlessness is a volatile new factor affecting the flow of migrant workers across America’s border. The violence is adding a new layer of uncertainty to the always fraught issue of Mexican emigration, already in flux because of the economic downturn in the United States.
Academics and policy makers on both sides of the border, who are watching closely for shifts in migration patterns, say it is too early to know the long-term impact of either the drug-related violence or the loss of jobs by thousands of migrant workers in the United States. But so far, earlier predictions of an exodus of out-of-work Mexicans back to their hometowns seem to have been premature.
Instead, it appears that the pattern in the state of Zacatecas — where many people have family in the United States — may be a good indicator of what is happening throughout Mexico. The country’s spiraling criminality appears not only to be keeping some Mexicans in the United States, but it may also be leading more Mexicans to flee their country. “It’s a toxic combination right now,” said Denise Dresser, a political scientist based in Mexico City. “Mexicans north of the border are facing joblessness and persecution, but in their own country the government can’t provide basic security for many of its citizens.”
And the Dallas Morning News reports: “Mexico’s drug violence expected to intensify in ‘09.”
Drug-related violence in Mexico, already at unprecedented levels, is expected to escalate further this year, with targets likely to include top Mexican politicians and law enforcement agents and possibly even U.S. officials, according to diplomats and intelligence experts on both sides of the border.
The warning underscores the difficult choices confronting President Felipe Calderón as he takes on drug cartels while weighing the implications of growing casualties in a year of midterm elections and a slowing economy.
It also reflects rising concern among U.S. officials and analysts about the deteriorating security situation, corruption among Mexico’s top crime fighters, and the vulnerability of the military to possible corruption in battling cartel gangs.
As the war against cartels escalates in 2009, so will the threats, particularly against U.S. officials and other Americans, officials, analysts and diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza, said in recent interviews.
“Calderón must, and will, keep the pressure on the cartels, but look, let’s not be naïve – there will be more violence, more blood, and, yes, things will get worse before they get better. That’s the nature of the battle,” Garza said. “The more pressure the cartels feel, the more they’ll lash out like cornered animals.
“Our folks know exactly how high the stakes are,” Garza said. He advised Americans traveling to Mexico to check State Department travel alerts at www.state.gov.
A U.S. intelligence official based along the Texas border warned that U.S. officials, American businessmen and journalists will “become targets, if they’re not already.”
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Wednesday, 07 January 2009
MEXICO'S BAZAAR OF VIOLENCE
The most likely existential security threat to the United States isn't likely to originate from southwest Asian terrorists or a conventional war with China. Instead, it will originate from Mexico's open source insurgency as:
The Mexican state becomes hollow and unable to maintain any semblance of control over its territory. Fiscal bankruptcy, driven by declining oil revenues and a global economic depression, will eliminate any remaining legitimacy it has with the countryside (already tenuous due to extreme income stratification).
The narco-insurgency in the northern provinces morphs into a national open source insurgency with thousands of small groups all willing to fight/corrupt/intimidate the government. Many, if not most, of these groups will be able to power themselves forward financially due to massive flows of money from black globalization. The result will be a diaspora north to the US to avoid the violence.
Economic failure, a loss of legitimacy and economic deprivation in the US creates an environment for the rapid proliferation of domestic groups willing to fight the government in order to advance their economic interests. Catalyzed by connections to Mexico's functional and lucrative bazaar of violence (read "Iraq's Bazaar of Violence" for more on how this works), these groups carve out their own territory in the US. Experience shows that once these groups gain a foothold, they become nearly impossible to defeat (although they can be co-opted).
Sam Dillon, writing for the NYTs, provides us with a good waypoint check on this scenario. Here is a good example of how quickly the infection can spread:
Jerez, a town of 60,000 a few miles northwest of Felipe Angeles in Zacatecas, was until recently a calm place, largely untouched by organized crime, said Abel Márquez Haro, a grocery wholesaler. But recently, scores of men driving Chevrolet Suburbans and carrying automatic rifles established a menacing presence, threatening residents on the street and extorting businesspeople. The identities of the men remain a mystery, but many people in the town say they assume they are traffickers who have abandoned another Mexican state, perhaps to avoid an army crackdown.
The article goes on to explain how these groups are targeting family members of immigrant workers in the US via kidnapping/extortion. The result has been that workers that would have normally returned during an economic downturn, aren't returning due to safety concerns (and many are trying to bring the rest of their families north to safety). NOTE: IF your are wondering how a global depression might impact national security, this is it (I suspect that the biggest hew and cry will be over how the fiscal crisis has led to the rapid defunding of hideously expensive conventional weapons systems, of no use to this threat). If you want spice, think about the implications of an economic collapse of Pakistan (needs to borrow), Russia (needs $70+ oil), and China (needs growth in US consumer spending).
Posted by John Robb on Wednesday, 07 January 2009 at 07:45 AM
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U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of Mexico is possible
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 01/13/2009 03:49:34 PM MST
President-elect Barack Obama listens as Mexico's President Felipe Calderon makes a statement to reporters in Washington, Monday, Jan. 12, 2009. Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats. (AP photo)EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How
This image provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shows a poster of 10 people identified as rival drug traffickers locked in a violent battle for control of Tijuana, Mexico. They include Fernando Sanchez Arellano, described by the DEA as leader of the Arellano Felix cartel, and his archrival, Eduardo Teodoro Garcia Simental. Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats. The report is one in a serious focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. (AP Photo/DEA)that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities.
In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said "Predictions about the future are always risky ... Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America."
The report is one in a serious focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico.
Despite such reports, El Pasoan Veronica Callaghan, a border business leader, said she keeps running into people in the region who "are in denial about what is happening in Mexico."
Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon instructed his embassy and consular officials to promote a positive image of Mexico.
The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present.
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.
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http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354
U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of Mexico is possible
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 01/13/2009 03:49:34 PM MST
Related story: 2,000 fresh troops sent to Juarez as violence continues
EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities.
In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said "Predictions about the future are always risky ... Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America."
The report is one in a series focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico.
Despite such reports, El Pasoan Veronica Callaghan, a border business leader, said she keeps running into people in the region who "are in denial about what is happening in Mexico."
Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon instructed his embassy and consular officials to promote a positive image of Mexico.
The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present.
More stories on the violence in Mexico
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.
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Geopolitical Diary: Obama's Mexico Challenge
Mexican Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont on Wednesday criticized a recent U.S. Joint Forces Command report that warns of the potential for the Mexican state to collapse and says a devolution of control in Mexico would require U.S. intervention. Gomez Mont's statement, along with growing concern throughout the United States over the stability of Mexico, is yet another reminder of the challenges facing the Mexican government -— and the incoming presidential administration of Barack Obama.
As violence in Mexico soars to record levels —- more than 5,700 people died in organized crime-related violence in 2008 — the U.S. government has gradually begun to note the severity of the situation. Though Washington certainly has been waiting for the transition to a new administration, there has been a shift in the way Mexico is being discussed in policy circles -– as seen with the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and National Security Council have all, in one way or another, expressed similar concerns that Mexico might collapse under the strain of the drug cartel violence, or that there could be significant spillover of violence into the United States.
To some extent, the Obama team has signaled that it is heeding these warnings of the situation brewing south of the border. Mexican President Felipe Calderon is the only foreign head of state to meet so far with Obama, whose inauguration is next week, and the two expressed hopes for mutual cooperation in coming years. And Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton said during her confirmation hearing that the new administration will seek greater involvement with Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
Crafting a Latin America policy from whole cloth will be a challenge for the Obama administration, as the region's relationship with the United States fell into a state of neglect under the Bush administration. Clinton promised that the Obama administration would use energy partnerships to secure a close relationship with Latin America —- a particularly important policy goal, given that Venezuela and Mexico are among the top five suppliers of oil to the United States. Obama's administration also plans to do away with travel and remittance restrictions Bush has levied against Cuba.
But Mexico's volatile security situation remains among the most significant potential challenges the new administration will face, and it is not clear whether there is a great deal more that can be done on the issue. With connections strengthening between U.S. street gangs and Mexican cartels, the problem of Mexican violence is by no means limited to the Mexican side of the border.
This is not to say that the U.S. government has done nothing; the Merida Initiative allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to improve training and equipment for Mexican law enforcement. But Merida is just the highest-profile of a series of initiatives the Bush administration has been quietly implementing with Mexico over the last few years. There also have been record increases in extraditions, expansions of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) administrative presence in Mexico and increased intelligence sharing. Greater funding for local U.S. law enforcement and Border Patrol officers has facilitated operations along the U.S. side of the border and helped to reduce some of the flow of weapons into Mexico, and has significantly impacted border traffic patterns. This means that the low-hanging policy options available to a U.S. president already have been implemented. What remain are the more difficult decisions.
For example, one of the Mexican government's top complaints concerns the flow of illegal weapons: The United States is the No. 1 source of illegal weapons in Mexico (although there is a significant flow through Central America). Many of those weapons are purchased legally and untraceably at gun shows inside the United States. Sources within the Mexican government consider greater funding for programs like Operation Gunrunner, which funds arms interdiction on the U.S. side of the border, to be one of the main areas in which the Obama administration could have a significant impact. However, the chance that substantial changes to the U.S. approach on gun and weapons regulations will be made in the name of a partnership with Mexico appear low.
But inflexibility is not limited to the United States. Mexico's reluctance to permit U.S. law enforcement freedom in operations or to allow the presence of U.S. military advisers hamstrings agencies, like the DEA, which have proven highly effective in combating organized crime in countries like Colombia. Mexicans recall the U.S. invasions of their country in 1914 and 1916, during the Mexican Revolution. Many blame the United States for breaking the back of the Mexican government by forcing the military to split its deployment into fighting Zapatista rebels in the south and Pancho Villa to the north. Mexico, as a whole, is therefore loath to allow U.S. troops to tread its soil in the new century.
The possibility of genuine U.S.-Mexican cooperation in combating the violence plaguing Mexico raises more questions than it answers. But without a notable change in the patterns of violence that would make a policy shift more urgent — for instance, a shift to targeting civilians on either side of the border, or the assassination of key leaders in Mexico — there seems to be little that can be done without expending a great deal of political capital. And with the other challenges, including a resurgent Russia and chaotic Pakistan, facing the Obama presidency, significant shifts in Mexico policy do not seem likely in the near future.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599187151600
Mexico Media on High Alert After Drug-Gang Attack on Televisa
AP – Officials examine a car related to an attack on the offices of the television company Televisa in Monterrey, …
Editors at Televisa, the world's most popular Spanish-language network, were having a lively news meeting in the northern Mexico city of Monterrey when they heard a series of pops followed by a thunderous explosion. Running outside, the editors realized the top breaking news item had come straight to them. The pops were bullets sprayed from Kalashnikov automatic rifles directly into the faÇade of their offices. The blast was from a fragmentation grenade. Next to the debris was a message scrawled on cardboard: "Stop just broadcasting us. Also broadcast the narco politicians," it said.
The Jan. 6 assault on Televisa's offices was the latest in a series of attacks on Mexico's media as the nation writhes in an orgy of drug-related bloodshed. Out of a record 5,300 deaths from beheadings, assassinations and massacres last year, eight of them were murdered Mexican journalists, making Mexico the most dangerous country for their trade in the hemisphere. Furthermore, many reporters in cities on the front lines of the drug war say they are systematically threatened, beaten and offered bribes because of their coverage of organized crime. (See pictures of the war on crime in Mexico City.)
But even by such appalling standards, the Televisa attack stood out in the way the assailants so blatantly tried to dictate the coverage of Mexico's television giant, which is probably the most powerful media organization south of the Rio Grande. Earning about 75% of Mexico's broadcast advertising, Televisa has long had an overwhelming influence on the nation's political life. Presidents, lobbyists and rising politicians all fight hard for space on its nightly noticiero, which regularly breaks leading stories. "Televisa has the equivalent political clout of ABC, NBC and CBS combined," says Mexican media investigator Raul Trejo. "When the narcos threaten this organization, they are showing they see no limits in their power."
Counting revenues of some $3.5 billion a year, Televisa is headed by Emilio Azcarraga Jean, 40, who inherited the empire from his father Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, who was known as "El Tigre" because of his white-streaked hair and fierce character. The network catapulted onto the world stage by exporting its steamy telenovelas, which have been translated into more than 50 languages from Korean to Romanian. Critics lambasted the network for giving uncritical support to the government during decades of one-party rule. However, since the advent of multiparty democracy in 2000, Televisa has given fairly equal airtime to competing candidates.
In the past year, Televisa has broadcast daily coverage of the drug war, filming scenes of corpses, firefights and arrests amid the battles between trafficking warlords and government forces. However, it has not led any groundbreaking exposÉs on the cartel empires or their networks of political corruption. "We do not hold back from reporting anything. But at the same time, we do not do detective work because we are not policemen," says Francisco Cobos, news editor at Televisa Monterrey, who witnessed the Jan. 6 blasts.
Televisa has also resisted showing the messages that the cartels write or print on blankets, which are strewn over bridges and hung on public walls as part of their campaign of terrorism. Known as narco mantas (capes), many messages in recent months have accused the administration of President Felipe CalderÓn of working with the Sinaloa cartel based on Mexico's Pacific Coast. Monterrey is home to the rival Gulf cartel, which is believed to be behind many of these messages.
Soldiers and federal police guarded the Televisa offices in the days following the attack, while Mexican and international media organizations poured out condemnations and demanded the apprehension of the assailants. "Solving this attack will be a new test for the government, which wants to make it a federal crime to use violence against the press," said Paris-based Reporters Without Borders in a news release.
Cobos said there are no plans for Televisa to change its coverage. However, in a statement on television, he said staff will take more safety measures. "I think we will continue doing our job in the most efficient way possible but with the precautions that these types of messages [require us to take]," he said. "Men of organized crime, I want to tell you that we don't have anything against you. We are communicators. We are journalists. We are dedicated to informing, and as such, my colleagues don't want to be in the middle of these bullets."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599187151600
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El Paso Times
Jan 15, 2009
Daniel Borunda
http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11463340
A group calling itself the Comando Ciudadano por Juárez, or the Juárez Citizens Command, is claiming it will kill a criminal every 24 hours to bring order to the violent crime-plagued city.
The announcement of the supposed group was the first known case of possible organized vigilantism in Juárez as police and the military have been apparently unable to stop a plague of killings and other crimes.
"Better the death of a bad person than that they continue to contaminating our region," the news release stated in Spanish.
The supposed group issued a news release via e-mail stating it is nonpartisan and funded by businessmen fed up with crime. The group, also calling itself the CCJ, said it would issue a manifesto in the coming days and would set up a system where residents can electronically send information about criminals.
"Our mission is to terminate the life of a criminal every 24 hours ... The hour has come to stop this disorder in Juárez," the CCJ stated.
The announcement comes as Juárez struggles with a wave of homicides, extortions, carjackings, robberies and other crimes that began last year. Business people, teachers, medical professionals and others were targeted by extortionists in the last year as crime surged due in a part to a war between drug cartels. There were more than 1,600 homicides in Juárez last year. There have been more than 40 homicides already this year, including 10 on Wednesday.
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Potential Vigilante Violence in Chihuahua State
An e-mail began circulating around Chihuahua state this past week purportedly authored by a group calling itself the Juarez Citizens Command (CCJ). The group, which claims to be supported by local businesses affected by the sharp rise in violence in Ciudad Juarez, vowed to kill one criminal every 24 hours to end the lawlessness in the city. The e-mail also stated that within several days the CCJ would distribute a manifesto calling on all citizens fed up with the violence to join the cause. A Stratfor source in the Mexican government reported that Mexican authorities have reason to believe the e-mail is not a hoax, and that they are exploring two theories regarding who sent it. One maintains that a small group of citizens and business owners sent the message, while the more credible theory maintains that a criminal group aiming to use the e-mail as cover for action sent the message.
One way to measure whether the CCJ represents a true vigilante group will be to examine the criminal associations of their victims, assuming, of course, they actually attack criminals. If the CCJ’s victims are all associated with one criminal syndicate, it will be hard to believe that it is not simply an existing criminal group using the CCJ as cover. But whether the CCJ is in fact taking action will be extraordinarily difficult to determine in a city like Ciudad Juarez, where more than 1,700 people died in 2008. Given the regular violence of criminals killing criminals in the city, the significance of the CCJ has yet to be determined.
If the e-mail actually marks the founding of a new vigilante group in Juarez, this would not be Mexico’s first brush with vigilantism in response to drug violence. La Familia organization in Michoacan state began as a local vigilante response to drug trafficking in the state. Several years after its founding, however, the group has evolved into one of the state’s most notorious kidnapping and drug-trafficking groups, and one of its factions was even implicated in the Sept. 15 grenade attack against civilians in Morelia. The example of La Familia highlights the security implications of vigilante violence, where as organized criminal violence continues to spin out of control, a group of armed citizens joining the fray will only complicate matters.
Increased Robbery, Theft From Acapulco Businesses
The leader of a business organization in Acapulco, Guerrero state, released a statement this past week describing an increase in robberies and thefts over the past year. According to the organization’s records, close to 100 percent of local businesses had suffered losses from criminal groups. He added that three local distributors of dairy products alone had experienced 2,000 such incidents in the city during 2008, amounting to a collective loss of close to $1 million. The majority of robberies appear to be occurring in suburban areas of the city, where armed gangs assault distribution trucks as they make deliveries, though unarmed thefts at warehouses and offices also appear to have been occurring.
This report is the latest example of how Mexico’s deteriorating security situation is affecting business operations. As Stratfor has observed over the past year, the collapse in law and order in much of the country has meant that other criminal groups not involved in the drug trade are able to operate with impunity. Indeed, the Acapulco business organization observed that most crimes against businesses go unpunished, and that when its findings were reported to the police officials, they were taken aback by the staggeringly high number of crimes against businesses. The rising costs of higher security and losses due to criminal activity exacerbate an already deteriorating economic situation in Mexico, and will make it more difficult for businesses to recover once the overall economic situation begins to improve.
While Acapulco’s port facilities historically have made the city an important intake point for South American-produced drug shipments, the city has experienced relatively low levels of cartel-related activity over the past six months. And businesses in a relatively calm city such as Acapulco experiencing such high crime rates does not bode well for businesses in cartel hotspots such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.
Security Breach in a Target-Rich Environment
Police in Morelia, Michoacan state, arrested a man armed with a handgun this past week inside the state’s legislative building during an event where state Gov. Leonel Godoy was speaking. The man was arrested after someone in the crowd accidentally bumped into him, felt the gun concealed under his clothes, and alerted security personnel, who detained the man without incident. Along with Godoy, the state’s chief justice, the head of the state legislature and 40 legislators also were present. The armed man was identified as having a criminal record, and is accused of murdering an attorney in Monterrey in 1986.
Authorities eventually released the man after finding no evidence he intended to attack anyone at the event. Even if this incident was not an assassination attempt, a security breach such as this highlights the vulnerability of many officials in Mexico. That an armed man was allowed to enter an event with Godoy — who reportedly has been threatened before — in a controlled environment underscores the problems with executive security in Mexico. While Mexican President Felipe Calderon and some high-ranking federal officials certainly have more robust protective security programs, the relatively low levels of security around, for example, the country’s congressmen and governors, is not much of a deterrent to an attack on them or their families. So should criminal organizations in Mexico choose to escalate their fight against the government, they will find themselves in a target-rich environment.
Jan. 12
The Hidalgo state public security office announced plans to begin equipping its police officers with large-caliber weapons and possibly even grenades to help them confront criminal groups.
Authorities in Torreon, Coahuila state, found the body of an unidentified blindfolded man with one gunshot wound to the head and another to the neck.
Officials in La Huerta, Jalisco state, reported the death of the town’s police chief. Three men had shot him as he left home the night before.
The body of an unidentified man was found in a vacant lot in Los Mochis, Sinaloa state, bearing signs of torture on his body. Police believe he had been strangled.
Mexican army forces raided a house in Tijuana, Baja California state, seizing more than $1 million, as well as some 100 pounds of methamphetamines, cocaine and heroin.
Jan. 13
Federal police in Acapulco, Guerrero state, established a series of highway checkpoints in various parts of the city. Officials said the checkpoints were designed to look for stolen vehicles, but that inspections looking for drugs and weapons would also be conducted.
Police in Tijuana, Baja California state, found the smoldering body of a woman burned beyond recognition. Elsewhere in the city, police found the body of an unidentified man wrapped in a blanket.
Jan. 15
Federal police in Veracruz, Veracruz state, reported discovering the body of an unidentified man with at least one gunshot wound to the head.
Armed men traveling in a vehicle shot and killed an unidentified man after first chasing him through the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. The gunmen shot him multiple times after he lost control of his car and crashed.
Mexican navy forces captured a small boat in the Sea of Cortez several miles off the coast of Sinaloa state with traces of marijuana on board.
Jan. 16
Authorities in Oaxaca, Oaxaca state, announced the capture of three members of a gang associated with Los Zetas accused of having participated in at least five kidnappings in the state.
A former Chihuahua state police officer died after being shot multiple times while driving through Ciudad Juarez.
Some 100 federal police officers arrived in Matamoros, Coahuila state, to support ongoing efforts against organized criminal groups in the state.
Authorities in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo state, found six fragmentation grenades inside an abandoned pickup truck along a highway.
A police commander in Pihuamo, Jalisco state, died when he was shot multiple times while driving. His son was wounded in the attack.
Jan. 18
A police officer in Sonoyta, Sonora state, died after an armed man approached him and shot him twice in the head at close range before fleeing in a waiting vehicle.
Five people died during a firefight that erupted during a wedding celebration near Acapulco, Guerrero state. Authorities said the motive remains unclear.
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New police chief's head left at station
Published: Jan. 20, 2009 at 8:53 PMOrder reprints | Feedback
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- The head of a new local police commander was left in an ice bucket at his police station in the Ciudad Juarez area, Mexican authorities said Tuesday.
The city, which lies just across the border from El Paso, Texas, in the state of Chihuahua, has one of the highest homicide rates in Mexico. El Universal reported that Martin Castro Martinez was one of 15 people killed execution-style in 24 hours.
Castro Martinez was abducted Saturday, four days after he became police chief in the suburb of Praxedis G. Guerrero. Five other officers and a civilian man were also snatched.
The police chief's head was left at the police station Sunday afternoon. A message threatened the Sinaloa Cartel with violence from La Linea, the drug cartel dominant in Chihuahua.
The bodies of six young men who appeared to be between the ages of 17 and 20 were found in Santa Isabel. They appeared to have been tortured.
Eight other bodies have been found in the area, El Universal said.
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Summary
Output at Mexico’s state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos fell 9 percent in 2008, its fastest drop since World War II. The company is unlikely to reverse that decline anytime soon, either.
Analysis
Oil output at Mexico’s state oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), dropped 9 percent in 2008 to about 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd). This is down from 3.08 million bpd in 2007, and from Pemex’s all-time high of about 3.8 million bpd in 2004.
The drop is largely due to declining production at Mexico’s massive Cantarell field, which at about 900,000 bpd is responsible for about a third of total Pemex output. And with limited capability to conduct deep offshore drilling, an unstable investment climate and an energy industry subject to heavy legal restrictions, Pemex is unlikely to reverse its production decline in the short term.
The 2008 decline in production at Pemex translates into a revenue loss estimated by Bloomberg of $20 billion for the state-owned firm. And Pemex effectively has staked its profitability on the Cantarell field — as has the Mexican government: Mexico City finances around 40 percent of its budget from Pemex revenues.
Production at Cantarell, the world’s third-largest field, began in 1979. Its location in waters 100-130 feet deep off Mexico’s southeastern coast meant that Pemex did not need to develop any significant deep-water drilling capability. When it began to face the issue of declining production in the 1980s, Pemex undertook short-term measures by injecting nitrogen into the field’s reservoirs to maintain pressure. But Pemex never developed a deep-water drilling capability that would have allowed it to exploit new fields further offshore (where half of Mexico’s crude reserves are found).
Making up for declining production at Cantarell will be nearly impossible in the short to medium term, though. Pemex simply lacks the money or indigenous technical capability to tap deep-water offshore fields that would enable it to significantly reverse a production decline. And it faces a constitutional bar on forming partnerships with foreign oil companies that would allow foreign enterprises to own part of their oil output. This rules out joint-venture or production-sharing agreements, which are common methods of attracting foreign investment. Although attempts to enact constitutional changes to allow these agreements have failed, the Mexican government passed an energy reform package in October 2008 that will restructure Pemex to increase efficiency and allow it to hire international oil companies to increase the country’s access to technological expertise.
However, there are challenges that face this reform process. In the first place, the implementation of these reforms is going slowly, and some reforms will depend on a consensus among Mexico’s three political parties, which is nearly always a difficult process. Furthermore, the international investment climate is extremely shaky in the wake of the U.S. financial crisis and the ongoing global economic downturn. This means it could be difficult for Pemex to secure the financing it needs to hire outside expertise, and political infighting coupled with high levels of persistent corruption will not make investors more comfortable. Given these challenges, new production under the energy reform plan will be slow in coming.
Production at Cantarell is expected to decline by a further 500,000 bpd over the next several years. To compensate for Cantarell’s decline, Pemex wants to try to squeeze additional output from existing fields (it has production rigs in fields nearby and in water depths similar to Cantarell, as well as rigs at smaller, onshore fields).
But to significantly boost output, on the level of 500,000 bpd or more, Pemex aims to open up new onshore and offshore fields. Onshore development is occurring in Mexico’s Veracruz and Puebla states. Production there, while projected at 500,000 bpd, is not expected to come online before 2021, however. Offshore exploration is more promising in terms of tapping crude reserves (estimated at 24 billion barrels), but Pemex lacks a large-scale capability to lift crude from deep-water levels. Though Pemex has drilled to depths of 3,000 feet, its two existing deep-water platforms — plus three on order expected to arrive in 2010 — are not expected to bring production from deep-water fields online before 2015. Even then, production is expected to yield less than 100,000 bpd.
These declines in crude production will lead to reduced revenues not only for the company, but more critically, for the Mexican government, and the challenge could not come at a more dangerous time. Mexico is embroiled in a war against drug cartels. The country’s security situation deteriorated enormously over the course of 2008, and shows no signs of letting up. At the same time, the global economic downturn has created rising unemployment in Mexico, a pessimistic growth outlook and calls from Mexicans for the government to find solutions, and find them quickly. Should the decline in production not be counterbalanced by increased production at existing fields, or should the decline accelerate, Mexico will find itself in an increasingly unstable fiscal position as challenges mount and resources dwindle.
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A murder in the Mexican state of Chihuahua last week horrified even hardened crime stoppers. Police Commander Martin Castro's head was severed and left in an ice cooler in front of the police station in the town of Praxedis with a calling card from the Sinoloa drug cartel.
According to Mexico's attorney general, 6,616 people died in drug-trafficking violence in Mexico last year. A high percentage of those killed were themselves criminals, but many law enforcement agents battling organized crime were also murdered. The carnage continues. For the first 22 days of this year the body count is 354.
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President Felipe Calderón began an assault on organized crime shortly after he took office in December 2006. It soon became apparent that the cartels would stop at nothing to preserve their operations, and that a state commitment to confrontation meant that violence would escalate.
As bad as the violence is, it could get worse, and it is becoming clear that the U.S. faces contagion. In recent months, several important American voices have raised concerns about the risks north of the border. This means there is hope that the U.S. may begin to recognize the connection between American demand for prohibited substances and the rising instability in Mexico.
The brutality of the traffickers is imponderable for most Americans. Commander Castro was not the first Mexican to be beheaded. It is an increasingly popular terror tactic. Last month, eight soldiers and a state police chief were found decapitated in the state of Guerrero.
There is also plenty of old-fashioned mob violence. As Agence France Presse reported on Jan. 19 from Chihuahua, 16 others -- besides Commander Castro -- died in suspected drug-related violence across the state the same night. Six bodies were found, with bullet wounds and evidence of torture, in the state capital. Five of the dead were police officers. On the same day, Reuters reported that Mexican vigilante groups appear to be striking back at the cartels.
Tally all this up and what you get is Mexico on the edge of chaos, and a mess that could easily bleed across the border. The U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., warned recently that an unstable Mexico "could represent a homeland security problem of immense proportions to the United States." In a report titled "Joint Operating Environment 2008," the Command singles out Mexico and Pakistan as potentially failing states. Both "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse . . . . The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels."
The National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 says that Mexican drug-trafficking organizations now "control most of the U.S. drug market," with distribution capabilities in 230 U.S. cities. The cartels also "maintain cross border communication centers" that use "voice over Internet Protocol, satellite technology (broadband satellite instant messaging), encrypted messaging, cell phone technology, two-way radios, scanner devices, and text messaging, to communicate with members" and even "high-frequency radios with encryption and rolling codes to communicate during cross-border operations."
A report by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the former drug czar, makes similar observations. "The malignancy of drug criminality," he writes, "stretches throughout the U.S. in more than 295 cities." Gen. McCaffrey visited Mexico in December.
Here is how he sees the fight: "The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG's, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 cal sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns."
How is it that these gangsters are so powerful? Easy. As Gen. McCaffrey notes, Mexico produces an estimated eight metric tons of heroin a year and 10,000 metric tons of marijuana. He also points out that "90% of all U.S. cocaine transits Mexico" and Mexico is "the dominant source of methamphetamine production for the U.S." The drug cartels earn more than $25 billion a year and "repatriate more than $10 billion a year in bulk cash into Mexico from the U.S."
To put it another way, if Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state, look no further than the large price premium the cartels get for peddling prohibited substances to Americans.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
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By Peter Millard and Matthew Cowley
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Petroleos Mexicanos's $2 billion bond sale on Tuesday was oversubscribed threefold, underscoring strong investor interest in Mexico's state oil company despite disappointing operating results last year.
Pemex originally planned to place $1 billion or more in 10-year paper on Tuesday. A syndicate banker familiar with the bond sale said around $6 billion in orders came in, allowing Latin America's largest oil producer to increase the size of the deal.
Pemex, which saw oil production drop 9% last year, said it will use the money for investments and to pay off debt coming due this year.
Pemex needs the money - oil production has plummeted 26% since peaking in 2004. The company plans to boost investments by 8% this year, to $19.4 billion, in an effort to develop new oil fields that will compensate for the giant Cantarell field, where output is falling at an alarming rate of 30% a year.
On Tuesday the company said in a filing that net losses in 2008 will surpass 2007 losses due to the sharp drop in oil prices and the depreciation of the local peso currency against the U.S. dollar.
Pemex has a heavy tax load and often has to sell imported fuel at a discount, eroding profits from oil exports.
Despite the ugly operating results, an energy reform approved last fall helped drive demand for the Tuesday bond sale, said the syndicate banker. The reform makes it easier for Pemex to issue debt and streamlines bureaucracy at the state-run oil monopoly.
The simple structure of the bond - it was issued by Pemex instead of its Project Funding Master Trust affiliate - also made it attractive to investors.
The bond carried a coupon of 8% and was sold at 98.313% of face value to yield 8.25%, equivalent to a spread of 570.70 basis points over U.S. Treasury notes of a similar maturity, according to a term sheet provided by a fund manager.
The strong demand for the issue is good news for both Pemex and the federal government, said UBS economist Gabriel Casillas, noting that Pemex and Mexican sovereign debt prices often move in synch.
"Perhaps after these good results, the federal government will try to issue some debt," said Mexico City-based Casillas.
On Dec. 18, Mexico's government sold $2 billion in 10-year global bonds with a 5.98% yield, raising enough money for about 32% of Mexico's 2009 foreign debt servicing needs.
Gianna Bern of Brookshire Advisory and Research, an energy, economics and consulting firm near Chicago, said Pemex probably hoped to sell at a lower yield, but noted that the company needs to raise cash when it can to help pay for its aggressive investment budget.
With much of the developed world selling debt to finance fiscal stimulus packages, emerging market issuers like Pemex risk getting crowded out of the market.
"A $2 billion issuance is a fiscal imperative given the size of their 2009 capital plan," said Bern. "Under the current market conditions, they need to take advantage of any opening."
The syndicated banker said the pricing came in at the tighter end of guidance, which was 8 1/4 to 8 3/8.
Moving forward Pemex will be competing with companies like Brazilian oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR), or Petrobras, for scarce liquidity in global markets.
On Tuesday Petrobras Chief Financial Officer Almir Barbassa said the company could sell more than $1.5 billion in bonds in the first quarter of this year to help pay off a $5 billion bridge loan. Petrobras will need to raise $8 billion to $9 billion in the capital markets over the next two years.
Pemex is expected to refinance around $5 billion of debt that comes due this year, and the company has said it will increase its total debt to the tune of $3 billion in 2009, reversing a two-year stretch of reducing its debt load.
As of the end of September, Pemex's total bonds and bank loans fell 3.1% on the year to $48.2 billion.
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Mexican gunmen forcibly take back seized planes
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Around the World
Washington Post, Thursday, October 2, 2008; A20
Gunmen Steal Impounded Planes
Police in Mexico said 20 heavily armed men stole five small planes the army had seized in anti-drug operations. The gunmen tied up a police officer who was guarding the Cessna planes in the state of Sinaloa, then flew them out of a local airfield.
From News Services
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TUCSON — Drug smugglers parked a car transport trailer against the Mexican side of the border one day in December, dropped a ramp over the security fence, and drove two pickup trucks filled with marijuana onto Arizona soil.
Drug smugglers from Mexico burned their truck and the marijuana it carried before fleeing from border agents in Arizona.
As Border Patrol agents gave chase, a third truck appeared on the Mexican side and gunmen sprayed machine-gun fire over the fence at the agents. Smugglers in the first vehicles torched one truck and abandoned the other, with $1 million worth of marijuana still in the truck bed. Then they vaulted back over the barrier into Mexico’s Sonora state.
Despite huge enforcement actions on both sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican marijuana trade is more robust — and brazen — than ever, law enforcement officials say. Mexican drug cartels routinely transported industrial-size loads of marijuana in 2008, excavating new tunnels and adopting tactics like ramp-assisted smuggling to get their cargoes across undetected.
But these are not the only new tactics: the cartels are also increasingly planting marijuana crops inside the United States in a major strategy shift to avoid the border altogether, officials said. Last year, drug enforcement authorities confiscated record amounts of high potency plants from Miami to San Diego, and even from vineyards leased by cartels in Washington State. Mexican drug traffickers have also moved into hydroponic marijuana production — cannabis grown indoors without soil and nourished with sunlamps — challenging Asian networks and smaller, individual growers here.
A Justice Department report issued last year concluded that Mexican drug trafficking organizations now operated in 195 cities, up from about 50 cities in 2006.
The four largest cartels with affiliates in United States cities were the Federation, the Tijuana Cartel, the Juarez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel.
“There is evidence that Mexican cartels are also increasing their relationships with prison and street gangs in the United States in order to facilitate drug trafficking,” a Congressional report from February 2008 stated. Intelligence analysts were detecting increased Mexican drug cartel-related activity in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Seattle and Yakima, Wash. — areas that used to be controlled by other ethnic networks.
Smuggling is still most conspicuous in the Southwest, which has been home to Mexican traffickers for more than two decades. From Nogales, Ariz., recently, a reporter watched as smugglers across the border, in hilltop stations, peered through binoculars at the movements of American Border Patrol agents. The agents gunned their trucks along the barrier looking for illegal crossings.
About noon, border agents saw a 60-pound bale of marijuana drop over the fence.
“That kind of thing happens every day here,” said Agent Michael A. Scioli, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.
For the cartels, “marijuana is the king crop,” said Special Agent Rafael Reyes, the chief of the Mexico and Central America Section of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “It consistently sustains its marketability and profitability.”
Marijuana trafficking continues virtually unabated in the United States, even as intelligence reports suggest the declining availability of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs that require extensive smuggling operations.
By combining smuggling with domestic production, the cartels have sustained the marijuana trade despite the onslaught of enforcement actions on both sides of the border. From 2000 through 2007, Mexican authorities arrested about 90,000 drug traffickers, more than 400 hit men and a dozen cartel leaders, according to a 2008 Congressional report. The United States extradited 95 Mexican nationals last year. Seizures in the first half of 2008 outpaced the average seizure rate from 2002 to 2006.
But the price has been high. Tensions have increased among the cartels, which are warring over lucrative drug routes through Mexican border towns like Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales, Sonora. More than 6,000 people, including hundreds of police officers, were killed by drug-related violence in Mexico in 2008. United States Border Patrol agents are also reporting more violent confrontations with traffickers.
As the Mexican government and American authorities have hardened the border, drug cartels are increasing production just north of it to avoid resorting to smuggling.
Many of the largest marijuana plantations are hidden on federal and state parklands, federal authorities say. Bill Sherman, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in San Diego, said the authorities were also finding an increasing number of farms in Imperial and San Diego Counties, an area traffickers traditionally avoided because of the presence of border guards, various police agencies and Camp Pendleton, a Marine base.
“We’re seeing a lot more grows down here now,” Mr. Sherman said. “That is a shift.”
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Drug enforcement agents uprooted about 6.6 million cannabis plants grown mostly by cartels in 2007, one-third more than the plants destroyed in 2006. In California, the nation’s largest domestic marijuana producer, the authorities eradicated a record 2.9 million plants by the end of the marijuana harvest in December.
Yet enforcement officials say they see no discernible reduction in the domestic supply. Prices have remained relatively steady even as the potency of marijuana increased to record levels in 2007, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center, a Justice Department analysis agency.
Mr. Reyes also noted that Mexican traffickers in the United States were choosing hydroponic marijuana, which is more potent, profitable and easier to hide because it can be grown year round with sunlamps. (A pound of midgrade marijuana sells for about $750 in Los Angeles, compared with $2,500 to $6,000 for a pound of hydroponic marijuana.) He noted a case last year in Florida in which Cuban growers used several houses in a single Miami tract development to supply hydroponic marijuana to Mexican traffickers.
Kathyrn McCarthy, an assistant United States attorney in Detroit, said Mexican traffickers in Michigan were trading Colombian cocaine for hydroponic marijuana from British Columbia to sell in the United States. In Washington State, now the second biggest domestic producer of marijuana, Mexican cartels are growing improved varieties of outdoor marijuana to compete with BC Bud and other potent indoor plants.
Last year, narcotics officers discovered 200,000 high-quality marijuana plants growing amid leased vineyards in the Yakima Valley. The Northwest has traditionally been the province of Asian hydroponic networks.
Despite increased planting, the cartels still rely on smuggling. Near Nogales, Ariz., Mr. Scioli pointed out several cross-border tunnels, one of which extended from the backyard of a house, under the fence and into Mexico 40 yards away. Another series of cross-border tunnels made use of existing sewer lines or drainage pipes. They were among the nine smuggling tunnels drug enforcement agents have discovered there since 2003.
Despite the fact that the authorities are discovering more marijuana production inside the United States, most of the cartels’ leadership remains in Mexico and, for now, so does most of the violence. Still, recent photographs from Mexico of the decapitated heads of Mexican policemen play in the minds of law enforcement officials on this side of the border, who are vigilant for signs of spillover.
The Mexican police in Sonora “are stuck between two warring cartels,” said Anthony J. Coulson, a federal drug enforcement agent. “The cops are being killed as pawns. They’re being used to show how much power and control the cartels have.”
Mr. Reyes, the special agent, said, “The violence is happening because of the pressure we’ve exacted, but it does not fuel any increase or decrease in marijuana.”
No one sees a quick end of the violence in Nogales, Sonora.
Sheriff Tony Estrada of Santa Cruz County said there was so much violence on the other side of the border that many Mexican police officers and politicians had become virtual refugees in Nogales, Ariz.
“The violence has left a large contingent of police on this side of the border,” Sheriff Estrada said. “The killing will stop when somebody dominates. When somebody takes control.”
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second post of the day:
Mexico: Diplomacy Among Sinaloa's Cartels?
Stratfor Today » January 30, 2009 | 2218 GMT
Summary
The Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 29 that drug-related murders in Sinaloa state, Mexico, dropped from 120 in December 2008 to 40 from Jan. 1-29. Reportedly, the decrease in violence occurred as a result of a truce between rival cartels in Sinaloa. Stratfor sources have confirmed that several Mexican cartels held two sit-down talks, but it is not clear that a truce was reached. However, the decrease in violence suggests that some level of diplomacy is occurring.
Analysis
The Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 29 that drug-related killings in Mexico’s Sinaloa state dropped from 120 in December 2008 to 40 within the first 29 days of January. The reported cause for this drop in drug-related deaths was a truce between rival cartels the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltran Leyva organization. Stratfor sources have confirmed that several Mexican cartels did indeed hold two sit-down meetings, but that (contradicting press reports) they did not reach any widespread truce. The decrease in violence, however, suggests that a low level of diplomacy may be taking place.
The report of decreased violence in Sinaloa state came three days after El Siglo de Durango, a regional newspaper in Mexico’s Durango state, reported that representatives of the El Mayo and Sinaloa groups sat down in December with representatives from the Beltran Leyva, Arellano Felix and Carillo Fuentes groups to discuss a cease-fire, as the unprecedented level of inter-cartel violence in 2008 was bad for business. The Beltran Leyva brothers were once allied with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his Sinaloa Cartel, but they operated separately in 2008. The two groups’ fighting over drug trafficking routes in western Mexico resulted in running battles that accounted for many of the 5,376 drug-related murders in Mexico in 2008. By May 2008, the Mexican military was called into Sinaloa state to help quell the violence.
Nationwide, violence dropped from historical highs in November to more normal levels in December 2008 and rose again in January, but certain states saw the number of reported deaths decrease in the same time period. Just as the number of drug-related killings dropped from December 2008 to the end of January in Sinaloa state, in Juarez they dropped from 150 in December 2008 to 80 during the first 25 days of January. These two areas, hotspots in the Sinaloa Cartel’s battle with Beltran Leyva (in Sinaloa state) and Carillo-Fuentes (in Juarez), can be viewed as two primary fronts in Mexico’s cartel conflicts. The fact that the rate of killings there dropped in January (even though the national rates were up) offers support for the claims that the cartels have reached a limited cease-fire.
Rumors about cartel cooperation have surfaced before and have quickly dissipated. Occasionally Mexico’s various criminal groups have even reached broad truces and alliances, though more often than not these agreements quickly break down. The fierce competition over territory and drug-trafficking gateways along the U.S.-Mexican border offers strong motivation to continue fighting rather than cooperate. Even if the groups reached some sort of agreement, an enduring settlement is unlikely.
However, such a truce would have great significance in the Mexican government’s war against the cartels. In 2008, several cartel factions were fighting each other and the Mexican military — a situation that created bloody multi-front wars in which cartels had to divide their resources. If the cartels work out a deal to reduce the fighting among themselves (even if the motivation is only to improve business), it would mean that they could reroute resources that otherwise would be used to fight each other. This means they would have more money to use to bribe officials, more resources to focus on intelligence-gathering operations and lower prices for the narcotics that they traffic. A truce among the cartels would make an already challenging situation for the Mexican military even more complicated, as the military would no longer be able to use the “divide and conquer” tactic in its war against the cartels. While a drop in overall violence would be welcomed by the Mexican government, a long-lasting cartel peace would carry its own risks for the government.
Ultimately, cooperation could also become a strategy for the cartels to combat the government. If the cartels could move from not fighting each other to actively collaborating on undermining the government, they could pose a serious threat to the Mexican state. As mentioned above, many factors make this type of broad cooperation rather unlikely — honor among thieves is a fickle thing — but there are incentives for cooperation as well.
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Taken from another forum:
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...guns-to-agent/
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/...10312008_7.xml
http://www.voanews.com/english/archi...01-26-voa1.cfm
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/20...s-neighborhood
and most damning of all:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/20...ursion-reports
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All but the voanew link did not work? My conspiricy alarm is going off :-D :-o :wink:
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An updated version of the previous Stratfor report:
Hints of a Possible Cartel Cease-fire
Violence related to organized crime continued across Mexico this past week. Among the more noteworthy incidents was the discovery of three severed heads inside a cooler just outside Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. Meanwhile, some 20 armed men shot and killed two police officers in San Miguel Totolapan, Guerrero state, then set fire to two buildings before fleeing. And in Durango, Durango state, a group of gunmen traveling in at least one vehicle shot and killed two people.
While violence in most of the country continues at a level we have come to expect, Sinaloa state registered a noticeable decrease in homicides. This decline also coincided with reports that Mexico’s major drug-trafficking organizations had reached at least a limited cease-fire as a result of several meetings held in December. Rumors of such meetings and truces are quite common in Mexico, and more often than not, such agreements quickly break down. Nevertheless, the situation warrants monitoring, especially considering that this has been a year of flux in cartel relationships, and any new truces or alliances could have a significant impact on the country’s security environment.
Talk of a Shift in Strategy
Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told a group of legislators this past week that the United States and Mexico are finalizing a new strategy for the fight against the cartels that will be launched in the next few days, according to several press reports. The new strategy will focus on slowing the flow of weapons and money crossing into Mexico from the United States, one Mexican legislator said, adding that it would involve a change in actions in two current hot spots of violence: Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, and Tijuana, Baja California state. Another Mexican congressional source told reporters that Mexico City and Washington have been in contact regarding how to combat organized crime. During the meeting, several congressmen from northern Mexican states reportedly complained to Medina Mora about the continuing violence in their districts and the general lack of progress in the cartel war. Also this past week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered a top-down review of border policy, which includes customs, immigration and other law enforcement functions.
While at first glance these reports suggest that Mexico and the United States might soon adopt a new approach to fighting the cartels, it is important to recall that this is not the first time the Mexican government has considered a so-called shift in strategy. In many cases, such reports often turn out to be intended to show the Mexican public and congress that the federal government is considering all options and pursuing a coherent strategy. It would appear that is the case with these latest reports as well, especially given that breaking up weapons trafficking networks in the United States — something law enforcement north of the border has been engaged in for a long time — is hardly a new strategy. Nevertheless, Medina Mora’s statement could be an indication of a U.S. reassessment of the situation, something Stratfor has been looking for from the new Obama administration.
Sinaloa Cartel Operations in Nicaragua
The Sinaloa cartel continues to operate drug-trafficking routes in Nicaragua and is looking to recover its operations along the country’s Pacific coast, Nicaraguan national police chief Aminta Granera reported this past week. Granera said that the majority of Sinaloa operatives are Nicaraguan nationals from the eastern part of the country who operate in the west, citing recent arrests and small cocaine seizures in the western cities of Rivas, Chinandega and Villanueva (though the Chinandega arrest also involved Salvadoran nationals). She added that the trafficking routes involve land and maritime components, and that most small boats tend to sail in international waters to avoid running into Nicaraguan authorities.
Despite Granera’s description of the arrests, it appears that they have had little impact on the Sinaloa cartel’s operations there. The routes and trafficking patterns described by Granera closely match previous arrests and seizures associated with Sinaloa operations in Nicaragua. In addition, Granera’s description of arrest locations suggests that Sinaloa continues to operate the same routes as before, presumably still relying on private vehicles to carry small shipments from Costa Rica to El Salvador. While the arrests will be a nuisance to the organization, there is no reason to think the routes cannot quickly be restored.
Jan. 26
Assailants armed with assault rifles shot and killed two men in Zapopan, Jalisco state.
Mexican army officials reported discovering and destroying a marijuana field and clandestine airstrip near Jilotlan de los Dolores, Jalisco state, believed to have been used by the Sinaloa cartel.
Authorities at Panama City’s international airport reported the arrest of a Mexican man in possession of $430,464 that he failed to declare upon arriving on a flight from Mexico City.
At least five gunmen shot and killed five motorcyclists at a seafood restaurant in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. At least 10 others were killed in separate incidents in the state.
Mexican officials confirmed that alleged Sinaloa operative Lamberto Verdugo Calderon died in a firefight with Mexican army forces in Sinaloa state on Jan. 22.
Jan. 27
Federal police arrested one Russian and one Cuban citizen, both reportedly U.S. residents, on charges of human smuggling in Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas state.
Jan. 28
Authorities in Cosoleacaque, Veracruz state, discovered the body of an unidentified man bearing signs of torture.
Several gunmen in a vehicle shot and killed three unidentified people in La Mesa, Baja California state.
Police near Durango, Durango state, found the body of a man who had been kidnapped several days before. Authorities believe he had been beaten to death.
Several gunmen shot and killed two police officers in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state.
Authorities recovered more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as assorted firearms and grenades, from a safe house in Culiacan, Sinaloa state.
Jan. 29
Mexican army forces raided a safe house in a suburb of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, seizing some seven vehicles and undisclosed documents.
Feb. 1
At least one assailant shot and killed a police officer in Guadalupe y Calvo, Chihuahua state.
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Another deadly Mexican syndicate
ISN Link
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=95963
La Familia is extremely volatile because of its diverse components and bloodthirsty fanaticism, George W Grayson writes for FPRI.
By George W Grayson for FPRI
The death toll related to narco-trafficking in Mexico more than doubled last year, from 2,275 in 2007 to 5,207 in 2008. An increasingly important contributor to this ghastly mayhem is the shadowy Michoacana family, or La Familia. Its center of operations is the Pacific Coast state of Michoacan, home to trafficking routes and sophisticated factories for producing methamphetamine, as well as the port Lázaro Cárdenas, an open sesame for drug imports.
Although organized several years earlier, La Familia burst into the limelight on September 6, 2006, when 20 masked desperados stormed into scruffy Sol y Sombra night spot in Uruapan, Michoacan, fired shots into the air, ran up to the second floor from where they tossed five human heads onto the black and white dance floor.
They left behind a message, written on cardboard: “The family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.”
Club owner Carlos Alvarez nervously defended the assailants. “These men didn’t come here to hurt anyone, they work against bad people, those men whose heads they cut were like bugs,” reported National Public Radio.
Victor Alejandro, the owner of a small shop across the road from the dance hall, says he’s afraid to be seen talking to a stranger. “There are informants everywhere,” he says.
The day before, the killers had seized their victims from a mechanic’s shop and hacked off their heads with bowie knives while the men writhed in pain. “You don’t do something like that unless you want to send a big message,” said a US law enforcement official.
A similar self-righteous message appeared at the foot of a black cross in Apatzingan, in the heart of the Tierra Caliente, which embraces 32 municipalities at the intersection of Michoacan, Guerrero, and Mexico State. In this highly productive zone, La Familia, Los Zetas paramilitaries linked to the powerful Tamaulipas-based Gulf Cartel, and the local Milenio Cartel of the Valencia family engage in bloody warfare for control of growing areas and transit routes.
In addition, Michoacan finds the several criminal organizations fighting for the cocaine and precursor chemicals for methamphetamine that arrive through Lázaro Cárdenas, the state’s largest port, or through nearby entry points. This was the gateway for multimillionaire Chinese-Mexican Zhenli Ye Gon, who is now under arrest in the US, to import chemicals for the meth production in the super-laboratories throughout the state. The port of Lázaro Cárdenas’ importance lies in its strategic location: Half of Mexico’s population lives within some 300 kilometers of this coastal city.
Origins
Various currents have fed into the heterogeneous organization, which emerged in 2004 with the stated “mission” of eradicating trafficking in meth, or “ice,” and other narcotics, kidnappings, extortion, murder-for-hire, highway assaults, and robberies, according to one of its founders, Nazario “The Craziest One” Moreno González. La Familia may have begun as vigilantes determined to thwart the manufacture and transport of meth by the Michoacan-based Milenio Cartel, a stalwart ally of Joaquín “Shorty” or “The Uncle” Guzmán Loera and his Sinaloa Cartel, the major competitor to his Gulf counterparts.
There is also the possibility that they sprang to life to prevent Los Zetas from entering their bailiwick. Narco-criminal Carlos Rosales Mendoza, formerly a member of the local Milenio cartel, switched his loyalty to the Gulf Cartel. In response to his new ally’s request, Gulf boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillen dispatched Los Zetas led by Efraín Teodoro Torres or “Zeta 14” and Gustavo “The Erotic One” Gonzalez Castro, to help Rosales Mendoza protect his plaza at La Union, a municipality in Guerrero near Petacalco and Lázaro Cárdenas on the Pacific Coast.
Another Gulf Cartel accomplice was Carlos Pinto Rodríguez, a native of Huerta de Gámbara in the Tierra Caliente. Pinto Rodríguez became even more violent after his son died in a shoot-out. After Rosales Mendoza participated in an unsuccessful attempt to free Cardenas Guillen from La Palma high-security prison, the Army captured him at his attractive residence in the Colonia Lomas de Santa Maria, Morelia, on 24 October 2004. EsMas and Reforma reported that Rosales Mendoza offered a huge bribe if his captors would release him.
In reaction to Los Zetas’ incursion, Juan Jose “The Grandfather” Farías, leader of the local Rural Guards, a uniformed Mexican army auxiliary linked to the 43rd Military Zone in Apatzingan, took the offensive. He sought to expel the intruders from his region as if he were an agent of the French Resistance fighting the Nazis. Meanwhile, he was suspected of being a major narco-trafficker in the region. He is believed to have worked with Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, also called Nemesio, who is the cousin of Abigaíl and Jose Mendoza Valencia, relatives of Armando Valencia Cornelio, the chief of the Milenio Cartel until his imprisonment in La Palma.
In retaliation for Farias’ opposition, Los Zetas decapitated cheese-maker Raúl Farías Alejandres, a relative of The Grandfather, on 4 September 2006. A note next to the corpse warned: “One by one you go falling. Greetings. La Familia sends its regards.” Four more beheadings followed.
The Grandfather, the intrepid Zeta fighter who owns restaurants, hotels, and orchards, has disappeared, perhaps because the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is investigating his possible connections Ye Gon. He and his followers are allied with the Valencias and the Sinaloa Cartel.
In 2007, Uriel Farías Álvarez, The Grandfather’s brother and a PRI stalwart, won a landslide victory for the mayorship of Tepalcatepec, which, along with Aguililla, Apatzingan, and Buenavista Tomatlán, lies in a drug-smuggling corridor that connects the Tierra Caliente with Jalisco. He pooh-poohs the idea that he or his relatives have ties to the underworld: “My brother only kept a lookout on orders of the Army. And as a result they said he was a narco.”
How La Familia describes its goals
Handwritten, poorly-spelled, enigmatic missives showed up next to the decapitated heads in Uruapan as part of its intense propaganda campaign designed to intimidate both foes, terrorize the local population, and inhibit action by the government. Like Los Zetas, La Familia disseminates news of its deeds nationally by conventional media as well as by internet videos and carefully placed banners.
On the heels of the Uruapan atrocity, La Familia took out a half-page advertisement in newspapers claiming to be crime-fighters. El Sol of Morelia and La Voz de Michoacan both ran the group’s manifesto. Such expressions of civic virtue aside, 18 of 32 police officers in the Tepalcatepec area resigned after receiving death threats from La Familia, while local newspapers exercise self-censorship concerning the sinister band.
On 18 August 2006, the organization decapitated Jesús Rodríguez Valencia, a member of the Milenio Cartel, placing the following message next to his cadaver: “All that rises falls of its own weight, it would be like this, the family greets you.” Three months later, the police discovered two bodies on the Zamora-La Barca highway, next to which was a note that said: “For those who sell ice. This is divine justice. Sincerely, La Familia.” “Divine justice. No to the meth makers, La Familia,” was the text discovered alongside a body found on the Jacona-Los Reyes highway. The message appeared on a green card, reflecting the color that La Familia uses on its emblems, placards, and communications.
In all, authorities attributed 17 decapitations to La Familia in 2006 alone. Between the murder of Rodriguez Valencia that August and 31 December 2008, La Familia killed scores, if not hundreds, of people. There were 233 executions in Michoacan, most of whose victims belonged to one criminal band or another.
What may have begun as a small group of armed men on the prowl to protect their children from meth has turned into a major criminal outfit that is just as well-armed and organized as any top-tier drug smuggling organization in Mexico.
The Attorney General’s Office claims that elements of organization not only sell narcotics in many of the municipalities of their home state, but also seek to dominate the distribution route to the US border that snakes through territory traditionally in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel. To this end, they have established safe houses as refuges for their traffickers at strategic points along the route northward. While originating in Michoacan, La Familia has extended its activities to Mexico State, where it controls or has conducted operations in numerous municipalities.
Spreading conflict
La Familia has corrupted and or intimidated law-enforcement personnel. In August 2008, a drug distributor in the Valle de Toluca accused Jose Manzur Ocana, the well-connected former PGR delegate in the state, of providing protection to Los Zetas and La Familia. Although placed in a witness-protection program, the informant was among those executed in the La Marquesa bloodbath discussed below.
In early November 2008, 100 local police in Chalco, just outside Mexico City, demanded the dismissal of their chief, Carlos Adulfo Palafox, whom they accused of having ties with La Familia. Mexico State’s Attorney General Alberto Bazbaz also cited Jesús Garcia Carrasco, commander of the state’s Judicial Police, as a possible collaborator after he reportedly received 70,000 pesos per month to provide information to La Familia.
La Familia’s rivals have struck back. In August 2008, three bodies, bearing grotesque torture marks and their hands and feet tied, turned up in San Pablito in the Tultepec municipality. The “narco-message at the scene stated: “All of the Michoacan Family will die, but I leave [these bodies] so that you believe me.” In September 2008, enemies pumped 18 bullets into the body of José Luis “El Jaguar” Carranza Galván, whom the PGR identified as a principal operator of La Familia.
La Familia has not made all police kowtow. After law-enforcement agents took into custody Miguel “The King” Carvajal in the Valle de Bravo in January 2008, they received a telephone death threat if they “touched” their prisoner. In a similar vein, El Rey told the police: “don’t hit me [for] I come in the spirit of peace; my chiefs are now in conversations with your commanders to strike a deal.” Despite this bravado, the extortionist and hit man for La Familia remained behind bars.
In September 2008, in the Nicolás Romero municipality authorities captured Lázaro “The Indian” Bustos Abarca Nicolas Romero, who commanded a band of 20 kidnappers linked to La Familia. Ten days later, the PGR reported the murder of 24 people in La Marquesa park in Mexico State. Officials hypothesized that the murders arose from a clash between La Familia and the Beltran Leyva brothers over control of Huixquilucan, a strategic plaza for drug shipments. In mid-November, the federal police took into custody Pedro Jaime Chávez Rosales, former director of public safety for the municipality, who was believed to be involved in the multiple executions.
In Mexico City, on 31 July 2008, a body was found in the trunk of a Chevrolet Corsa parked in the capital’s southern borough of Coyoacan. A note attached to the corpse said: “For not paying. Sincerely, La Familia."
The western boroughs of Miguel Hidalgo and Cuajimalpa also have become a zone for money-laundering and drug transit, exciting a raging conflict among Colombian traffickers, Los Zetas, and La Familia. The competitors dispatch their foes with high-powered weapons, decapitations, and asphyxiation with plastic bags. Next to three bodies discovered in September 2008 lay the message: “I was victim of a kidnapping by those who call themselves La Familia Michoacana; thus, I am carrying out justice by my own hand.”
Grenade attack in Morelia
The PGR initially accused La Familia of carrying out the 15 September 2008, grenade attack in Morelia’s Melchor Ocampo plaza. Authorities advanced the theory that the fanatical band sought to attract a greater contingent of federal police and military to the state in order to thwart Los Zetas from consolidating their trafficking routes.
In response to such allegations, the organization immediately revved up its public relations apparatus. It dispatched a text message to local reporters and residents denying participation in the tragedy and placing the blame on Los Zetas, which responded with its own communiques in the form of banners unfurled in prominent spots in Puebla, Reynosa, Cancun, Oaxaca, and Nuevo Laredo.
It offered a US$5 million reward in dollars, Euros, or another currency to anyone who could help capture members of La Familia, which it alleged produced the mayhem: “The Gulf cartel energetically condemns the September 15 attack against the Mexican people. We offer our aid for the arrest of the leaders who call themselves ‘La Familia’.” The narco-banners specifically mentioned such chiefs as Moreno Gonzalez, Jesús “El Chango” Méndez Vargas, and Enrique “El Kiki” Tlacaltepetl.
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The Gulf organization followed up this challenge by placing a red ice chest in the center of Lázaro Cárdenas. The head of a member of its sworn enemies lay inside the container, next to which a green poster proclaimed: “Greetings Chayo, Rogaciano and Changa [reference to leaders of La Familia]. This is for the collection of queers who support the terrorists of La Familia; we do not kill innocent people; we kill terrorists like this one … We don’t kidnap and we want neither to work with you nor to have contact with you and those you rely on … Thanks for those who are supporting us. Sincerely: Gulf Cartel 100 percent.”
Journalists for Proceso magazine reported that the police received an anonymous tip indicating the whereabouts of the alleged perpetrators of the violence. After meeting with members of La Familia near the Cuitzeo security barracks, authorities seized, blindfolded, handcuffed, and arrested three Zetas for the tragedy. Family members of the prisoners claimed that they were subjected to physical and psychological torture. In the words of a sister and wife:
“They asked him why he had thrown the grenades, which he denied. Later they tied his hands with packing tape and beat him with boards. He told us that later they dragged him to a river and left him there all night. He also says that they had him with his arms up all day, always blindfolded.”
The newspaper Milenio has reported the appearance of La Familia in Guanajuato, where it emulates the Italian mafia by controlling the small outlets that sell cocaine and marijuana to individuals. When a local distributor refused to cooperate, he was killed. In the past, Juan José “The Blue One” (so called because of his bluish skin color) Esparragoza Moreno, an ally of El Chapo, controlled Guanajuato. In a negotiation between capos, El Azul relinquished the plaza to La Familia, thus avoiding violent confrontation. Dominance in Guanajuato helps La Familia impede its rivals’ access to Michoacan.
Organization and resources
Journalist Richard Ravelo asserts that the 4,000 members of La Familia were born and raised in Michoacan, that they earn between US$1,500 and US$2,000 per month, and that they are well connected with state and local officials. They reportedly attend church regularly, carry Bibles, and distribute the Good Book in local government offices.
They claim to enjoy grassroots’ support because they provide assistance to campesinos, construct schools, donate books, prevent the sale of adulterated wine, and employ “extremely strong strategies” to bring order to the Tierra Caliente. Thus, they offered a contrast to the Milenio Cartel, which has recruited outsiders called Antizetas.
They acquire resources by selling protection to merchants, street vendors of contraband, hotels, local gangs, and small-scale drug sellers. Rather than speak in terms of extortion, La Familia claims to “protect” its clients. Members the organization wear uniforms, carry arms, and drive vehicles similar to those of the Federal Agency of Investigation. This allows them greater freedom to move around their areas of interest.[13] Still, leaders of the group have become so brazen that they have designed their own outfits to mark their identity and distinguish their members from adversaries.
Reports indicate the fragmentation of La Familia, whose leadership - known as “Los Sierras” - holds sway in the Tierra Caliente. These factions include: Los Historicos, who have links with Los Zetas; “Los Extorsionistas, composed of businessmen and growers who concentrate on extorting money from anyone from surgeons to municipal mayors; Los Cobradores de Deudas (“Debt Collectors”), who are allied with the Milenio and Sinaloa cartels and who traffic in meth; and An unnamed group that concentrates on selling pirated films and DVDs.
La Familia’s current leaders, Bible-toting fanatics Moreno Gonzalez and Mendez Vargas, may have direct or indirect ties with devotees of the New Jerusalem movement. Dionisio “The Uncle” Loya Plancarte, once a Zeta, now presents himself as the spokesman for the organization.
The 53-year-old Michoacan native, who manages press and public relations for La Familia, claims that through kidnappings and executions the cartel is ensuring “a peaceful climate for law-abiding citizens.” In addition, he cited as his organization’s principal targets “El Chapo Guzman and the Beltran Leyva brothers because they were responsible for methamphetamine addiction in Michoacan communities.”
In October 2008, authorities captured Wenceslao Álvarez Álvarez, an ally of La Familia who ran an international operation out of Nueva Italia, a Michoacan municipality where, ironically, in November 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas established the first communal farm, promising to make it a model of progress for the nation. Like many other growers in the Tierra Caliente, Álvarez Álvarez produced avocados. He claims to have turned to narco-trafficking to avenge the 1999 kidnapping and murder of his father by a vicious local gang, Los Arcila. Led by Jorge Álvarez Arcila, a local farmer, and Daniel Farias, the former warden of the Patzcuaro prison, these brigands enjoyed impunity as they carried out a dozen kidnappings in the Tierra Caliente between 1996 and 2000.
Alvarez Alvarez’s cocaine network allegedly extended from Colombia through Guatemala and Mexico to Atlanta and other US cities. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has identified him as a lieutenant of Miguel “El L-40” Treviño Morales, a top figure in Los Zetas. Álvarez Álvarez called the charges against him “false,” insisting that he was only a grower of tomatoes, peppers, mangos, and other crops on land rented by his entire family. In addition to his underworld exploits, he also has an interest in “Los Mapaches” of Nueva Italia, a second-division soccer team that he purchased for 1 million pesos.
Conclusion
The group known as La Familia bears similarities to Colombia’s United Self-Defense Forces (AUC), an amalgam of rightwing vigilantes, rural self-defense militia, former military and police personnel, who oppose anyone believed to be supportive of the guerrillas belonging to the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC).
The religious zeal of La Familia manifests itself in preference for executions over negotiations. So strong is the organization that it has gained a major beachhead in Michoacan, eclipsed Los Zetas in Mexico state, crossed swords with the ruthless Beltran Leyva brothers in Mexico state, and ousted a faction of the Sinaloa cartel from Guanajuato. La Familia is extremely volatile because of its diverse components and bloodthirsty fanaticism.
Mexico’s heavily armed, vicious groups are increasingly conducting operations north of the Rio Grande. Too long ignored by Washington, this threat from the Mexican cartels - and their Andean suppliers - must become a priority of the Obama administration.
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16 illegals sue Arizona rancher
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...izona-rancher/
An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home. His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as "the avenue of choice" for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.
Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday. The lawsuit is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in a dry wash on the 22,000-acre ranch, when he approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by a large dog.
Attorneys for the immigrants - five women and 11 men who were trying to cross illegally into the United States - have accused Mr. Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape.
The immigrants are represented at trial by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which also charged that Sheriff Dever did nothing to prevent Mr. Barnett from holding their clients at "gunpoint, yelling obscenities at them and kicking one of the women."
In the lawsuit, MALDEF said Mr. Barnett approached the group as the immigrants moved through his property, and that he was carrying a pistol and threatening them in English and Spanish. At one point, it said, Mr. Barnett's dog barked at several of the women and he yelled at them in Spanish, "My dog is hungry and he's hungry for buttocks."
The lawsuit said he then called his wife and two Border Patrol agents arrived at the site. It also said Mr. Barnett acknowledged that he had turned over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998.
In March, U.S. District Judge John Roll rejected a motion by Mr. Barnett to have the charges dropped, ruling there was sufficient evidence to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. Mr. Barnett's attorney, David Hardy, had argued that illegal immigrants did not have the same rights as U.S. citizens.
Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home. Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.
Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil - which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their "clients" to keep them running.
He said he carried a pistol during his searches for the immigrants and had a rifle in his truck "for protection" against immigrant and drug smugglers, who often are armed.
A former Cochise County sheriff´s deputy who later was successful in the towing and propane business, Mr. Barnett spent $30,000 on electronic sensors, which he has hidden along established trails on his ranch. He searches the ranch for illegal immigrants in a pickup truck, dressed in a green shirt and camouflage hat, with his handgun and rifle, high-powered binoculars and a walkie-talkie.
His sprawling ranch became an illegal-immigration highway when the Border Patrol diverted its attention to several border towns in an effort to take control of the established ports of entry. That effort moved the illegal immigrants to the remote areas of the border, including the Cross Rail Ranch.
"This is my land. I´m the victim here," Mr. Barnett said. "When someone´s home and loved ones are in jeopardy and the government seemingly can´t do anything about it, I feel justified in taking matters into my own hands. And I always watch my back."
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/12/mexican-drug-cartels-make-phoenix-2-in-world-for-kidnappings/
Just commiting the horrific crimes Americans aren't willing to do....
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,491964,00.html
Thursday , February 12, 2009
By Joshua Rhett Miller
As drug cartels continue to terrorize Mexico, Texas officials are planning for the worst-case scenario: how to respond if the violence spills over the border, and what to do if thousands of Mexicans seek refuge in the United States. Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said a multi-agency contingency plan is being developed, and it will focus primarily on law enforcement issues, including how to handle an influx of Mexicans fleeing violence.
"At this point, what we're focusing on is spillover violence," Cesinger told FOXNews.com Thursday. "The immediate concern, if any, would be that."
More than 5,300 people were killed in Mexico last year in connection to criminal activity, and some experts predict things will get worse. Along with Pakistan, Mexico was identified in a Department of Defense report last year as a country that could destabilize rapidly. If that were to happen, officials are concerned that the drug violence could cross the Rio Grande into southern Texas.
Cesinger said the plan currently does not address a potential flood of refugees, though "It may be something that comes into consideration. "Worst-case scenario, Mexico becomes the Western hemisphere's equivalent of Somalia, with mass violence, mass chaos," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "That would clearly require a military response from the United States."
Carpenter, who recently authored a study entitled "Troubled Neighbor: Mexico's Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States," said Mexican government could collapse, although it's unlikely.
"That's still a relative longshot, but it's not out of the question," Carpenter said. "It's obviously prudent for all of the states along the U.S.-Mexican border and the military to consider that possibility and not get blindsided should it happen."
Some lawmakers in Texas have begun questioning how to deal with a potentially massive influx of Mexican citizens.
"Do you strengthen the borders so people cannot get in by the thousands every day, or do you create detention centers where people are held until their status is determined?" asked state Sen. Dan Patrick. "This is a potential refugee problem..."
"Let's pray that this does not develop in Mexico," Patrick told FOXNews.com. "However, when you hear the president of the United States cast dire warnings on our country, that even our financial system could collapse, it makes you think. If the United States can face catastrophe, obviously Mexico could as well.
"We have to seriously consider that as a remote possibility, so therefore, we need to have a plan."
Patrick called upon Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McGraw to present a comprehensive plan to the state's Legislature.
McGraw, who reportedly told lawmakers at a recent border security meeting that fears of Mexico's collapse were "well-grounded," was unavailable to comment Thursday, Cesinger said.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff indicated last month that the continuing violence has prompted plans for civilian and military law enforcement should it spread into the United States.
Chertoff said the plan calls for armored vehicles, aircraft and teams of personnel along border hotspots. Military forces, however, would be summoned only if civilian agencies like the Border Patrol were unable to control the violence, the New York Times reported.
DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the department began developing the plan last summer to address a "broad spectrum of contingencies that could occur" if the violence escalates.
"This violence is happening because the [Felipe] Calderon administration is doing the right thing by cracking down on powerful drug cartels," Kudwa said in a statement. "The cartels are, predictably, fighting back to protect their lucrative criminal livelihood. This plan doesn’t change or otherwise supersede existing authorities; it plans for how a number of government organizations would respond and coordinate if local resources were to be overwhelmed."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is "continuing to develop that plan," Kudwa said Thursday.
Meanwhile, Tim Irwin, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said he was unaware of any plans in Texas to prepare for an influx of Mexicans seeking refuge. Theoretically, Irwin said, a Mexican citizen could go to a border crossing and seek asylum based on fears of returning home amid the ongoing drug wars.
"It's a valid claim to make, but you'd need to back that up," Irwin said. "That would start the process."
Irwin said the individual would be initially detained and given a "credible fear interview" to determine if his or her concerns are valid. If
so, they could be eventually be released into the United States. But Carpenter said the worst-case scenario — a "sudden surge" of up to 1 million refugees in addition to the hundreds of thousands who enter illegally each year — would be daunting.
"That would be very difficult to handle," Carpenter told FOXNews.com. "I suspect what'd you see fairly soon is an attempt to seal the border as much as possible. That would probably be the initial response, along with the building of additional facilities [to detain the Mexican refugees]. But nobody wants to see that happen."
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Our insane drug policies line the pockets of our enemies while seriously impinging on American liberties. CATO outlines below the impact of these policies. Full article can be found at the link below.
Troubled Neighbor: Mexico's Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States
by Ted Galen Carpenter
U.S. officials, alarmed at the growing power of the Mexican drug cartels, have pressured the government of Felipe Calderón to wage amore vigorous anti-drug campaign. Calderón has responded by giving the army the lead role in efforts to eliminate the drug traffickers instead of relying on federal and local police forces, which have been thoroughly corrupted by drug money. Washington has rewarded Calderón’s government by implementing the initial stage of the so-called Mérida Initiative. In June 2008, Congress approved a $400 million installment modeled on Plan Colombia, the anti-drug assistance measure for Colombia and other drug-source countries in the Andean region. That program, now in its ninth year, has already cost more than $5 billion, without significantly reducing the flow of drugs coming out of South America. The Mérida Initiative will likely cost billions and be equally ineffectual.
Abandoning the prohibitionist model of dealing with the drug problem is the only effective way to stem the violence in Mexico and its spillover into the United States. Other proposed solutions, including preventing the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico, establishing tighter control over the border, and (somehow) winning the war on drugs are futile. As long as the prohibitionist strategy is in place, the huge black market premium in illegal drugs will continue, and the lure of that profit, together with the illegality, guarantees that the most ruthless, violence-prone elements will dominate the trade. Ending drug prohibition would de-fund the criminal trafficking organizations and reduce their power.
While U.S. leaders have focused on actual or illusory security threats in distant regions, there is a troubling security problem brewing much closer to home. Violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and shows signs of becoming even worse. That violence involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations as they seek to control access to the lucrative U.S. market. To an increasing extent, the violence also entails fighting between drug traffickers and Mexican military and police forces.
The carnage has already reached the point that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans traveling in Mexico. U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico’s border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even more troubling, the violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America.
Full piece here: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa631.pdf
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By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer Julie Watson, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 17, 4:56 pm ET
VILLA AHUMADA, Mexico – For people caught inside Mexico's drug corridors, life is about keeping your head down and watching your back, especially when the sun dips behind the cactus-studded horizon.
No town knows this better than Villa Ahumada, where the entire police force quit after 70 cartel hit men roared through last spring, killing the police chief, two officers and three townspeople.
Residents were left defenseless again last week when gunmen returned and kidnapped nine people, despite the soldiers manning checkpoints far outside town.
"This was a mellow town where we would walk along main street at night. But now we're too scared to even go out," said Zaida de Santiago.
For this lanky 14-year-old, everything changed last May 17. She was dancing at a neighbor's ranch when gunfire shattered the night. The party's hosts turned off the lights and silenced the music. The guests stood frozen, ears trained to the sound of automatic weapons as the gunmen raced down gravel streets in their SUVs.
When the sun rose hours later, the party guests learned that armed cartel commandos had killed the police chief and five others. Soon after, the rest of the 20-member force quit in fear.
"That day will always remain burned in my mind," Santiago said.
Federal investigators say Villa Ahumada is a key stop along one of Mexico's busiest drug smuggling routes, where the Sinaloa cartel has been challenging the Juarez gang for control. The military staffs checkpoints miles outside town, and soldiers and federal police roll through each day, but residents are largely left on their own.
Sliced by a railroad and the Pan-American Highway heading straight to the U.S. border, the town is one of many outposts across Mexico — many of them too small to appear on maps — that cartels need to dominate in order to ensure passage of their U.S.-bound loads of marijuana and cocaine. The town of 15,000 is about 80 miles south of El Paso, Texas.
"In the small towns, the narcos want to have an open sesame," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "They want to be able to pass through as they see fit, and they've got the muscle to enforce that, but it's unfortunate for the residents. This is where you've got enclaves of failure."
Cartels treat these towns as fiefdoms — in some communities, everyone from the furniture owner to the barman to local officials pay a kind of tax to the gunslingers, border expert Victor Clark said. The extortion not only gives gangs an extra income, it also makes clear who's boss.
"In land occupied by organized crime, society's rules are completely altered," said Clark, a lecturer at San Diego State University who has studied one such town in the Mexican state of Baja California. "This is their territory, and you pay them for protection, or they will kill you."
Villa Ahumada has been without a city police force since May, unable to find anyone brave enough to take the job. Even Mayor Fidel Chavez fled for a time to the state capital, Chihuahua City, last year. After the army and state police pledged to have more of a presence in town, he returned and put 10 residents in charge of reporting suspicious activities to the authorities.
But there was little these unarmed citizen patrols could do when heavily armed assailants in black ski masks drove SUVs into town last week, kicking in doors and carting off nine residents in blindfolds.
They called state authorities, closed their office and fled.
The gunmen had already executed six of the hostages near a desolate ranch called El Vergel, about 30 minutes north of town, by the time soldiers swooped in. The other three kidnapped men were rescued as soldiers rappelled into the desert from helicopters to chase those fleeing on foot.
By the time the shooting stopped, 14 suspected pistoleros and one soldier were dead, and townspeople felt more desperate than ever.
"We want some authority here. They kill here and no one does anything," complained a frail 67-year-old woman, gripping a cane as she walked past crumbling adobe homes.
Her daughter stopped her from giving her name, warning: "They might kill our entire family if you do."
Villa Ahumada is a town where scruffy dogs amble down gravel streets alongside slow-moving pickups. The economy depends on highway travelers stopping to eat at countless wooden burrito stands, but business has dropped by 50 percent since last week's violence, and the mayor has criticized the media for harming tourism. He declined repeated requests by The Associated Press for an interview.
Many townspeople have turned to God for answers, said the Rev. Fernando Nava, who presides over the Roman Catholic church.
"Fathers have lost sons, sons have lost fathers," he said. "This is affecting families, which is what the church is concerned about."
Some residents are stepping forward despite the risks to demand more safety. Nine men applied to be police officers this week as part of a renewed effort by the state of Chihuahua to establish a presence in town.
"These are all people from the town who want peace and security for their families," said Manuel Rodriguez of the Chihuahua State Public Safety Department. He was administering an exam Monday designed to evaluate their skills, character and psychological stamina, with questions like: "Do you consider men and women equal?" and "What would you do if there was an attempt on your life?"
Ismael Rivera, a lifelong resident, decided to apply after spending seven months as an unarmed guard.
"A lot of us don't know how to read or write," said Rivera, donning a black baseball cap with the word "guard" emblazoned in yellow across the front. "But they are going to give us the chance to study and work at the same time."
Rivera keeps an eye on things from the former police station, a small office where a yellow note on the wall lists the cell phone of a state police officer. Taped above it is a list of telephone numbers of federal officers. A toy Spider-Man and a picture of Jesus Christ adorn another wall. A bike with "police" painted on its rusty frame leans against the fence outside.
Joining the force is an opportunity to do something for his three children, but Rivera admits he's nervous.
"Of course, you are scared," he said. "You go home and you think about quitting."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7896094.stm
Here is BBC vid on the blocking of the border by Mexican protesters :?
BBC Story from link above
Protests block US-Mexico border
Hundreds of people in Mexico have blocked key crossings into the US in protests against the deployment of the army fighting drug traffickers.
Traffic was brought to a halt on a number of bridges in several border towns in northern Mexico.
The protesters accused the army of abuse against civilians. Government officials said the blockades had been organised by drug gangs.
The army was sent into border towns in 2006 to control rising drug violence.
Violence continued on Tuesday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez where three police officers were shot dead by unidentified gunmen.
More than 5,000 people were killed in drug-related violence last year, Mexican officials say.
Powerful drug cartels have been fighting both each other and federal forces as they battle to control the immensely lucrative routes trafficking cocaine and other drugs from Colombia to the US via Mexico.
Up to 40,000 troops are currently deployed against trafficking cartels.
In some parts of the country, the army has taken over the role of the police, which have often proved easily corrupted when bribed or threatened by the gangs, says the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City.
Calderon's vow
The protesters blocked bridges in Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa.
Huge quantities of Colombian cocaine are sent to the US via Mexico
They chanted "Soldiers out!" and "Stop abuse by the PFP [Federal Preventative Police]!"
The demonstrators also shut roads in the industrial city of Monterrey.
Many of the protesters said border towns had become more dangerous since President Felipe Calderon sent the army in.
But the governor of one state - Nuevo Leon - said he believed the Gulf drugs cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, were behind the border protests.
"There are reasons to believe it has to do with the Gulf cartel and the group known as the Zetas," Governor Natividad Gonzalez said.
Human rights activists say there are legitimate complaints about reported abuses by the troops, including alleged cases in which army patrols have fired on civilians at checkpoints.
President Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of troops along the border, vowing to destroy drug cartels.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jag1RMi2E4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz2YzLL-0vc&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sNLieyWwrA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIf80MWzNW4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnYbA4cDqLM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSkK6JbFx6k
When Mexico collapses, will this be happening on the streets of cities in the Southwest? Phoenix already is second in the world to Mex City in kidnappings.
And the Demogogue Party (and Bush-McCain) seeks to solidify its virtually filibuster proof majorities by making citizens of literally tens of millions of Mexicans.
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When Mexico collapses, will this be happening on the streets of cities in the Southwest?
**Yes**
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elpasotimes.com
EL PASO - The El Paso Police Department is investigating alleged threats against Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, who reportedly moved his family to El Paso for safety reasons, Det. Carlos Carrillo said Monday.
"We received information that the Juárez mayor lives in El Paso, and that possibly they were going to come to El Paso to get him," Carrillo said. "He has not asked us for our help, but it's our duty to protect any resident of our city who may be under threat."
Juárez police said written threats against Reyes Ferriz and his family were left in different parts of Juárez after ex-police chief Roberto Orduña Cruz resigned Friday.
The threats were written on banners the Juárez drug cartel has used to send messages to the police and others.
In light of the threats, Juárez city spokesman Sergio Belmonte said the mayor has increased security for himself and other city officials.
Chihuahua state officials said they are going to call a news conference later Monday to provide more details about Sunday's shooting attack that killed one of Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza Terrazas' bodyguards.
The bodyguard who was killed while defending another state official was identified as Alejandro Chaparro Coronel.
Officials said one of the armed men who allegedly killed Chaparro was injured and taken to a hospital. The Chihuahua governor, who drove his own vehicle, with the bodyguards behind him, said earlier he did not know whether the attack was against him or stemmed from a traffic-related dispute between his guards and the armed suspects.
"We cannot speculate and will comment only about what we know," the governor said.
Fernando Alvarez Monge, Chihuahua state coordinator of Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) called for "a speedy, transparent and efficient investigation into the attack against the Chihuahua governor's security convoy."
Reyes Baeza and Reyes Ferriz belong to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
In 2001, Patricio Martinez Garcia, the Chihuahua state governor at the time, survived an assassination attempt by the Juárez drug cartel.
The FBI had warned him in advance about the cartel's plans, and then President Vicente Fox blamed the cartel for the attack on Martinez. A Chihuahua state policewoman was imprisoned in connection with the attack.
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Who here guessed the answer to this one raise your hand. :roll:
Mayor pays tribute to slain officers
Juarez bridge protesters were paid, officials say
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 02/19/2009 12:00:00 AM MST
Mexican officials characterized Tuesday's protests at the international bridges as suspicious, while Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz condemned the deaths of four police officers killed in an ambush, also on Tuesday.
In a news conference Wednes day, Ferriz said one of those killed, police director Sacramento Perez Serrano, 49, had been recruited last July from the interior of Mexico to help reorganize the Juárez police force.
Perez was in charge of police operations.
Before the mayor's conference, officials removed banners with threatening messages aimed at police that had been placed in various parts of the city.
"These three officers, along with the police director, lived and died in the line of duty, and gave their lives to the country," Ferriz said. "Until his last day, (Perez's) only goal was to serve the public.
"Juárez Police Chief Roberto Orduño Cruz profoundly laments the loss of a man who lived and served our country with conviction, the same as the officers who died at his side."
Perez, who was a former Mexican army captain with a law degree, will be buried with honors, along with police Officers Antonio Arias Feria, Vicente Mata Beltran and Francisco Javier Reyes Moreno.
Officials said the officers were traveling by truck to the Babicora police station when they were attacked by a group of armed men around 5 p.m. Tuesday at Ejercito Nacional and Paseo de la Victoria, near the U.S. Consulate.
On another matter, Joint Operation Chihuahua issued a statement alleging that the protests that temporarily shut down three border bridges Tuesday -- about four hours before the policemen were killed -- were carried out by people "who received money for their participation" in the protests.
Officials said several people were observed Tuesday filling up buses with paid protesters to march against the military's crackdown on the Mexican drug cartels.
Joint Operation Chihuahua also confirmed that on Feb. 10 authorities detained taxi driver Oswaldo Muñoz Gonzalez, who reportedly inspired the protests, and that he is being investigated in connection with marijuana and weapons found in his possession.
About 20 Juárez taxi drivers took part in Tuesday's bridge blockades, officials said.
Joint Operation Chihuahua also cautioned the public against being used by others to take part in protests intended to discredit soldiers who were sent to Juárez to fight drug cartels.
Similar protests against the Mexican army, which has been accused of abuses, have occurred in other cities besides Juárez.
Last week, Nuevo Leon Gov. Natividad Gonzalez Paras said in a news conference that protests against the military operations in Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas and Veracruz "were organized and financed by the Gulf cartel Zetas," the drug organization's enforcement arm.
More than 5,000 people died last year as a result of drug violence in Mexico, including 1,600 in Juárez.
Diana Washington Valdez
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Mexico Security Memo: Feb. 23, 2009
Stratfor Today » February 23, 2009 | 2248 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Chihuahua governor’s convoy attacked
As organized crime-related violence continued throughout Mexico this past week, the country’s death toll for the first 51 days of 2009 rose above 1,000, according to tallies maintained by Mexican news outlets. While this is the earliest in a calendar year that the 1,000 mark has been reached, it represents a slightly slower pace than the final months of 2008, when the number of homicides rose from 3,000 to 4,000 in 48 days and from 4,000 to 5,000 in 42 days.
Violence continued in Mexican cities along the U.S. border and elsewhere; one particularly noteworthy incident occurred in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state, when several armed men exchanged gunfire with bodyguards protecting the Chihuahua state governor. The incident occurred the evening of Feb. 22 as the governor was driving to his home after making a personal visit, which he was described as doing every Sunday evening. The governor reportedly was driving his own armored vehicle and was escorted by a security detail traveling in two other vehicles.
According to information released by the governor, as his convoy approached a stoplight, one of the governor’s security guards stopped approximately five armed men traveling in two vehicles nearby. Officials said that after the bodyguards stopped the two suspect vehicles and identified themselves as police officers — not as protective agents assigned to the governor — the men in the suspect vehicles opened fire on them. During the firefight the governor managed to drive off unhurt, but the exchange of gunfire left at least one protective agent dead and two wounded. Several reports indicate that all of the gunmen managed to escape, though at least one was believed to have been wounded during the firefight.
Based on the available information, it is difficult to conclude that this was in fact an attack on the governor. Indeed, the governor’s emphasizing that his protective agents identified themselves as police officers seemed intended to imply that the gunmen thought they were simply attacking police officers — hardly unusual in Chihuahua — and were unaware that the governor was nearby. That the governor’s vehicle was apparently not attacked lends credence to this theory, though it bears mentioning that in many previous assassination attempts in Mexico the target’s security details were neutralized before the targets were attacked.
Despite these details, several aspects of this case suggest it was much more than coincidence. That the governor appeared to have been following a routine travel pattern would have made him vulnerable to attack at that time. In addition, the governor had received several threats in the past, including banners that appeared outside his residence last year naming him and the attorney general as supporting rivals of the Sinaloa cartel. Incidents such as this bear careful monitoring, especially in the context of cartel attacks against high-ranking government officials in Mexico, which have left many federal, state and local officials dead but have yet to claim the life of a governor.
Maritime drug trafficking
The Mexican navy released new information this past week regarding the Feb. 12 seizure of a Mexican-flagged fishing boat loaded with some 7 tons of cocaine. According to officials, the boat was initially detected and stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard more than 700 miles off the Mexican coast. U.S. Coast Guard authorities boarded the suspect vessel, inspected it, discovered the cocaine and transferred custody of the boat and four Mexican crew members to the Mexican navy in Mexican territorial waters. Officials further stated that all four crew members were from Sinaloa state, and that the boat was registered in the port city of Mazatlan, Sinaloa state. Officials said the boat sailed from Mazatlan during the first few days of February.
This incident bears several similarities to the last large-scale maritime seizure of cocaine off the coast of Mexico. During the previous incident, in September 2008, the Mexican navy interdicted a Mazatlan-registered fishing boat manned by Mexican nationals and loaded with some 4 tons of cocaine off the coast of Oaxaca state. As in the most recent incident, the boat was captured within weeks of sailing from Mazatlan.
In both cases it is unclear where the boats had traveled, though the quantity of cocaine aboard suggests that they received their loads in a source country — such as Peru or Colombia — and not a transit corridor like Central America. Another likely possibility is that the boats had received their shipments not on land but at sea, having transferred the cocaine from another boat — perhaps a Colombian semi-submersible vessel. Several such boats have been known to deliver shipments directly to Mexican ports, while others frequently make deliveries in international waters. It is difficult to draw any conclusions without more information on the vessels’ range and speed capabilities, but the short time between the boats’ departure from Mexico and their capture suggests that they would not have had enough time to travel all the way to South America.
Assuming that the same Mexican drug cartel was involved in both cases, it appears that despite the loss of the September shipment, the traffickers managed to possess the resources, connections and willingness to continue using the similar smuggling methods and routes. Furthermore, these incidents underscore the diversified approach that Mexican traffickers take to smuggling cocaine from South America to Mexico; even as overland shipping through Central America has increased during the last 18 months, these incidents make it clear that maritime drug trafficking remains alive and well.
Click to view map
Feb. 16
A government official from Guadalupe, Chihuahua state, died when she was shot multiple times in a store.
Feb. 17
A gunbattle in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, left at least seven people dead. Several reports suggest that Gulf cartel member Hector Manuel Sauceda Gamboa died during the incident. The firefight occurred the same day that anti-military protests — allegedly organized by drug-trafficking organizations — took place in Tamaulipas and two other states.
A deputy police chief in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, died when he was shot multiple times. Two of his bodyguards also died during the attack.
A police commander in Cardenas, Tabasco state, died when he was shot several times by armed men in two vehicles as he arrived at his home.
A series of firefights in Torreon, Coahuila state, left some six people dead. Police said the various incidents appear to involve the same group of criminals traveling in a vehicle.
Feb. 18
Several men armed with assault rifles shot and killed an unidentified man in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, as he exited his vehicle.
Authorities in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, found the bodies of two unidentified men wrapped in blankets inside a car.
Police near Culiacan, Sinaloa state, found the body of one unidentified man with several gunshot wounds lying next to two abandoned luxury vehicles.
Feb. 19
At least seven people were reported killed in Chihuahua state, including four in Ciudad Juarez. The killings bring the state’s total for February to 160, surpassing January’s total of 159.
Feb. 20
Two men were arrested near Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state, in possession of 66 fragmentation grenades, which they said they planned to transport to Morelia, Michoacan state. The grenades appeared to have been manufactured by Israel and sold to the Guatemalan government.
Two men opened fire on a vehicle belonging to the federal electrical committee in Comitan, Chiapas state.
At least four men were reported killed in separate incidents in Tijuana, Baja California state. In one case, the body of a man with several gunshot wounds was found inside a vehicle.
The police chief in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, resigned from his position amid threats that more police officers would be killed if he remained in his position.
Feb. 21
A group of heavily armed men threw two grenades at a police building in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, wounding at least five people.
A firefight between two criminal groups in Pueblo Nuevo, Durango state, left some 10 people dead.
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It always amazes me how the simplest solutions are often overlooked or for that matter ignored. Here is one more for the books.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aeDOQwKqpI
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Nice find Tom.
===============
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Last week we discussed the impact that crime, and specifically kidnapping, has been having on Mexican citizens and foreigners visiting or living in Mexico. We pointed out that there is almost no area of Mexico immune from the crime and violence. As if on cue, on the night of Feb. 21 a group of heavily armed men threw two grenades at a police building in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, wounding at least five people. Zihuatanejo is a normally quiet beach resort just north of Acapulco; the attack has caused the town’s entire police force to go on strike. (Police strikes, or threats of strikes, are not uncommon in Mexico.)
Mexican police have regularly been targeted by drug cartels, with police officials even having been forced to seek safety in the United States, but such incidents have occurred most frequently in areas of high cartel activity like Veracruz state or Palomas. The Zihuatanejo incident is proof of the pervasiveness of violence in Mexico, and demonstrates the impact that such violence quickly can have on an area generally considered safe.
Significantly, the impact of violent Mexican criminals stretches far beyond Mexico itself. In recent weeks, Mexican criminals have been involved in killings in Argentina, Peru and Guatemala, and Mexican criminals have been arrested as far away as Italy and Spain. Their impact — and the extreme violence they embrace — is therefore not limited to Mexico or even just to Latin America. For some years now, STRATFOR has discussed the threat that Mexican cartel violence could spread to the United States, and we have chronicled the spread of such violence to the U.S.-Mexican border and beyond.
Traditionally, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations had focused largely on the transfer of narcotics through Mexico. Once the South American cartels encountered serious problems bringing narcotics directly into the United States, they began to focus more on transporting the narcotics to Mexico. From that point, the Mexican cartels transported them north and then handed them off to U.S. street gangs and other organizations, which handled much of the narcotics distribution inside the United States. In recent years, however, these Mexican groups have grown in power and have begun to take greater control of the entire narcotics-trafficking supply chain.
With greater control comes greater profitability as the percentages demanded by middlemen are cut out. The Mexican cartels have worked to have a greater presence in Central and South America, and now import from South America into Mexico an increasing percentage of the products they sell. They are also diversifying their routes and have gone global; they now even traffic their wares to Europe. At the same time, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations also have increased their distribution operations inside the United States to expand their profits even further. As these Mexican organizations continue to spread beyond the border areas, their profits and power will extend even further — and they will bring their culture of violence to new areas.
Burned in Phoenix
The spillover of violence from Mexico began some time ago in border towns like Laredo and El Paso in Texas, where merchants and wealthy families face extortion and kidnapping threats from Mexican gangs, and where drug dealers who refuse to pay “taxes” to Mexican cartel bosses are gunned down. But now, the threat posed by Mexican criminals is beginning to spread north from the U.S.-Mexican border. One location that has felt this expanding threat most acutely is Phoenix, some 185 miles north of the border. Some sensational cases have highlighted the increased threat in Phoenix, such as a June 2008 armed assault in which a group of heavily armed cartel gunmen dressed like a Phoenix Police Department tactical team fired more than 100 rounds into a residence during the targeted killing of a Jamaican drug dealer who had double-crossed a Mexican cartel. We have also observed cartel-related violence in places like Dallas and Austin, Texas. But Phoenix has been the hardest hit.
Narcotics smuggling and drug-related assassinations are not the only thing the Mexican criminals have brought to Phoenix. Other criminal gangs have been heavily involved in human smuggling, arms smuggling, money laundering and other crimes. Due to the confluence of these Mexican criminal gangs, Phoenix has now become the kidnapping-for-ransom capital of the United States. According to a Phoenix Police Department source, the department received 368 kidnapping reports last year. As we discussed last week, kidnapping is a highly underreported crime in places such as Mexico, making it very difficult to measure accurately. Based upon experience with kidnapping statistics in other parts of the world — specifically Latin America — it would not be unreasonable to assume that there were at least as many unreported kidnappings in Phoenix as there are reported kidnappings.
At present, the kidnapping environment in the United States is very different from that of Mexico, Guatemala or Colombia. In those countries, kidnapping runs rampant and has become a well-developed industry with a substantial established infrastructure. Police corruption and incompetence ensures that kidnappers are rarely caught or successfully prosecuted.
A variety of motives can lie behind kidnappings. In the United States, crime statistics demonstrate that motives such as sexual exploitation, custody disputes and short-term kidnapping for robbery have far surpassed the number of reported kidnappings conducted for ransom. In places like Mexico, kidnapping for ransom is much more common.
The FBI handles kidnapping investigations in the United States. It has developed highly sophisticated teams of agents and resources to devote to investigating this type of crime. Local police departments are also far more proficient and professional in the United States than in Mexico. Because of the advanced capabilities of law enforcement in the United States, the overwhelming majority of criminals involved in kidnapping-for-ransom cases reported to police — between 95 percent and 98 percent — are caught and convicted. There are also stiff federal penalties for kidnapping. Because of this, kidnapping for ransom has become a relatively rare crime in the United States.
Most kidnapping for ransom that does happen in the United States occurs within immigrant communities. In these cases, the perpetrators and victims belong to the same immigrant group (e.g., Chinese Triad gangs kidnapping the families of Chinese businesspeople, or Haitian criminals kidnapping Haitian immigrants) — which is what is happening in Phoenix. The vast majority of the 368 known kidnapping victims in Phoenix are Mexican and Central American immigrants who are being victimized by Mexican or Mexican-American criminals.
The problem in Phoenix involves two main types of kidnapping. One is the abduction of drug dealers or their children, the other is the abduction of illegal aliens.
Drug-related kidnappings often are not strict kidnappings for ransom per se. Instead, they are intended to force the drug dealer to repay a debt to the drug trafficking organization that ordered the kidnapping.
Nondrug-related kidnappings are very different from traditional kidnappings in Mexico or the United States, in which a high-value target is abducted and held for a large ransom. Instead, some of the gangs operating in Phoenix are basing their business model on volume, and are willing to hold a large number of victims for a much smaller individual pay out. Reports have emerged of kidnapping gangs in Phoenix carjacking entire vans full of illegal immigrants away from the coyote smuggling them into the United States. The kidnappers then transport the illegal immigrants to a safe house, where they are held captive in squalid conditions — and often tortured or sexually assaulted with a family member listening in on the phone — to coerce the victims’ family members in the United States or Mexico to pay the ransom for their release. There are also reports of the gangs picking up vehicles full of victims at day labor sites and then transporting them to the kidnapping safe house rather than to the purported work site.
Drug-related kidnappings are less frequent than the nondrug-related abduction of illegal immigrants, but in both types of abductions, the victims are not likely to seek police assistance due to their immigration status or their involvement in illegal activity. This strongly suggests the kidnapping problem greatly exceeds the number of cases reported to police.
Implications for the United States
The kidnapping gangs in Phoenix that target illegal immigrants have found their chosen crime to be lucrative and relatively risk-free. If the flow of illegal immigrants had continued at high levels, there is very little doubt the kidnappers’ operations would have continued as they have for the past few years. The current economic downturn, however, means the flow of illegal immigrants has begun to slow — and by some accounts has even begun to reverse. (Reports suggest many Mexicans are returning home after being unable to find jobs in the United States.)
This reduction in the pool of targets means that we might be fast approaching a point where these groups, which have become accustomed to kidnapping as a source of easy money — and their primary source of income — might be forced to change their method of operating to make a living. While some might pursue other types of criminal activity, some might well decide to diversify their pool of victims. Watching for this shift in targeting is of critical importance. Were some of these gangs to begin targeting U.S. citizens rather than just criminals or illegal immigrants, a tremendous panic would ensue, along with demands to catch the perpetrators.
Such a shift would bring a huge amount of law enforcement pressure onto the kidnapping gangs, to include the FBI. While the FBI is fairly hard-pressed for resources given its heavy counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence and white-collar crime caseload, it almost certainly would be able to reassign the resources needed to respond to such kidnappings in the face of publicity and a public outcry. Such a law enforcement effort could neutralize these gangs fairly quickly, but probably not quickly enough to prevent any victims from being abducted or harmed.
Since criminal groups are not comprised of fools alone, at least some of these groups will realize that targeting soccer moms will bring an avalanche of law enforcement attention upon them. Therefore, it is very likely that if kidnapping targets become harder to find in Phoenix — or if the law enforcement environment becomes too hostile due to the growing realization of this problem — then the groups may shift geography rather than targeting criteria. In such a scenario, professional kidnapping gangs from Phoenix might migrate to other locations with large communities of Latin American illegal immigrants to victimize. Some of these locations could be relatively close to the Mexican border like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, San Diego or Los Angeles, though they could also include locations farther inland like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, or even the communities around meat and poultry packing plants in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Such a migration of ethnic criminals would not be unprecedented: Chinese Triad groups from New York for some time have traveled elsewhere on the East Coast, like Atlanta, to engage in extortion and kidnapping against Chinese businessmen there.
The issue of Mexican drug-traffic organizations kidnapping in the United States merits careful attention, especially since criminal gangs in other areas of the country could start imitating the tactics of the Phoenix gangs.
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Top Mexico police charged with favoring drug cartel
02:49 PM CST on Saturday, January 24, 2009
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY – President Felipe Calderon's war on drug trafficking has led to his own doorstep, with the arrest of a dozen high-ranking officials with alleged ties to Mexico's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa Cartel.
The U.S. praises Calderon for rooting out corruption at the top. But critics say the arrests reveal nothing more than a timeworn government tactic of protecting one cartel and cracking down on others.
Operation Clean House comes just as the U.S. is giving Mexico its first installment of $400 million in equipment and technology to fight drugs. Most will go to a beefed-up federal police agency run by the same people whose top aides have been arrested as alleged Sinaloa spies.
"If there is anything worse than a corrupt and ill-equipped cop, it is a corrupt and well-equipped cop," said criminal justice expert Jorge Chabat, who studies the drug trade.
U.S. drug enforcement agents say they have no qualms about sending support to Mexico.
"We've been working with the Mexican government for decades at the DEA," said Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Obviously, we ensure that the individuals we work with are vetted."
Agents who conduct raids have long suspected Mexican government ties to Sinaloa, and rival drug gangs have advertised the alleged connection in banners hung from freeways. While raids against the rival Gulf cartel have netted suspects, those against Sinaloa almost always came up empty – or worse, said Agent Oscar Granados Salero of the Federal Investigative Agency, Mexico's equivalent of the FBI.
"Whenever we were trying to serve arrest warrants, they were already waiting for us, and a lot of colleagues lost their lives that way," Salero said.
The U.S. government estimates that the cartels smuggle $15 billion to $20 billion in drug money across the border each year.
Over the last five months, officials from the Mexican Attorney General's office, the federal police and even Mexico's representatives to Interpol have been detained on suspicion of acting as spies for Sinaloa or its one-time ally, the Beltran Leyva gang. An officer who served in Calderon's presidential guard was detained in December on suspicion of spying for Beltran Leyva.
Gerardo Garay, formerly the acting federal police chief, is accused of protecting the Beltran Leyva brothers and stealing money from a mansion during an October drug raid. Former drug czar Noe Ramirez, who was supposed to serve as point man in Calderon's anti-drug fight, is accused of taking $450,000 from Sinaloa.
Most of such tips are coming from a Mexican federal agent who infiltrated the U.S. embassy for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel. No such infiltrators have been found for the Gulf cartel, which controls most drug shipments in eastern Mexico and Central America. Sinaloa controls Pacific and western routes.
The DEA's Courtney agrees that there has been a greater crackdown on the Gulf Cartel in both the U.S. and Mexico, with more than 600 members of the gang arrested in September. But he declined to answer questions about Mexico favoring Sinaloa.
Calderon has long acknowledged corruption as an obstacle to his offensive, which involved sending more than 20,000 soldiers to battle drug trafficking throughout the country. The U.S. aid plan includes technology aimed at improving the way Mexico vets and supervises police.
The president vows to create a "new generation of police," consolidating agencies under Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, who heads all federal law enforcement.
That's what worries Granados Salero and other agents. So many of Garcia Luna's associates are under suspicion of Sinaloa ties that many wonder how he could not have known.
Calderon has publicly backed Garcia Luna, calling him "a man of great capacity."
"Obviously, if there was any doubt about his honesty, or any evidence that would call into question his honesty, he would certainly no longer be the secretary of public safety," the president said recently.
But some see the alleged Sinaloa ties with Garcia Luna's lieutenants as an old tactic used widely under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years with a tight fist. Officials in the past preferred to deal with one strong cartel rather than many warring gangs – what Calderon faces now. More than 5,300 people died in drug-related slayings in 2008.
"I fear that Secretary Garcia Luna ... is working on the idea that once one cartel consolidates itself as the winner, that is, Sinaloa, the violence is going to drop," said organized crime expert Edgardo Buscaglia, who tracks federal police arrests and has studied law enforcement agencies' written reports.
Garcia Luna has denied being involved in corruption. He has acknowledged that authorities in the past chose the path of managing cartels. But in an interview with the newspaper El Sol, he said that approach only strengthens the gangs in the long run.
Others say the high number of Sinaloa infiltrators is a reflection of the two cartels' very different styles.
The Gulf cartel is led by military-trained hit men so violent that they reportedly planned to attack even U.S. law enforcement agencies.
"They don't necessarily try to build networks of corruption. They prefer networks of intimidation," said Monte Alejandro Rubido, who leads Mexico's multi-agency National Security System.
Sinaloa, on the other hand, appears to use bribery and infiltration at least as much as its gunmen. Cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman bribed his way out of a Mexican prison in 2001, provoking suspicions the government was on his side.
Many Mexicans worry about giving so much money and power to a still corrupt force. Of more than 56,000 local and state police officers evaluated between January and October last year, fewer than half met the recommended qualifications, Calderon reported to Congress in early December. No similar numbers are available for federal police.
Agents like Granados Salero wonder who is in charge of police integrity.
"We agents find out about a lot of things," he said, "but who can we turn to?"
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http://www.washingtontimes.com...soldiers-in-cartels/
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100,000 Foot Soldiers in Mexican Cartels
March 3, 2009
by Sara A. Carter
To dilute the will to win is to destroy the purpose of the game. There is no substitute for victory.
--General Douglas MacArthur
The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers - an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.
'It's moving to crisis proportions,' a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels' 'foot soldiers' are on a par with Mexico's army of about 130,000.
The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died - more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.
The death toll dwarfs that in Afghanistan, where about 200 fatalities, including 29 U.S. troops, were reported in the first two months of 2009. About 400 people, including 31 U.S. military personnel, died in Iraq during the same period.
The biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the 'Federation' or 'Golden Triangle,' and its main rival, 'Los Zetas' or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo,Texas, borderlands.
The two cartels appear to be negotiating a truce or merger to defeat rivals and better withstand government pressure. U.S. officials say the consequences of such a pact would be grave.
'I think if they merge or decide to cooperate in a greater way, Mexico could potentially have a national security crisis,' the defense official said. He said the two have amassed so many people and weapons that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is 'fighting for his life' and 'for the life of Mexico right now.'
As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added.
Other U.S. officials and Mexico specialists agreed with this assessment.
Michael V. Hayden, who left as CIA director in January, put Mexico second to Iran as a top national security threat to the United States. His successor, Leon E. Panetta, told reporters at his first news conference that the agency is 'paying ... a lot of attention to' Mexico.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CBS' '60 Minutes' on Sunday that 'the stakes are high for the safety of many, many citizens of Mexico and the stakes are high for the United States no doubt.'
In a December interview with The Times, President Bush said his successor would need to deal 'with these drug cartels in our own neighborhood. And the front line of the fight will be Mexico.'
A State Department travel advisory last month seemed timed to caution U.S. students contemplating spring breaks south of the border.
'Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades,' the advisory said.
Independent analysts warn that narco-terrorists have infiltrated the Mexican government, creating a shadow regime that further complicates efforts to contain and destroy the cartels.
'My greatest fear is that the tentacles of the shadow government grow stronger, that the cartels have penetrated the government and that they will be able to act with impunity and that this ever stronger shadow government will effectively evolve into a narco-state,' said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington.
The Mexican Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on the drug war.
Mr. Calderon, however, has adamantly denied assertions that Mexico is becoming a failed state.
The Mexican government has 'not lost any part - any single part - of the Mexican territory to drug cartels,' he recently told the Associated Press.
His comments run counter to the impressions of U.S. law enforcement officials and some Mexican journalists reporting in Ciudad Juarez, a city just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
On a recent morning here, the once-bustling border town of 1.3 million was more like a ghost town.
'It's empty,' said a vendor of freshly baked tortillas and salsa, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Maria. 'We are in a losing war against the narco-traffickers. My business is dying, and soon it will join the graveyard of businesses that have had to close down. No one comes Juarez anymore.'
More than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since last year. The number continued to climb as The Times visited, with more than 20 deaths in one week.
In response to the challenge, U.S. and Mexican authorities have stepped up raids on cartel members in both countries.
Last week, U.S. and Mexican forces arrested 755 people, including 52 in the United States associated with the Sinaloa cartel. However, cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman is still at large. He is thought to be living in Sinaloa and protected by hired gunmen and Mexican federal officials on his payroll, said a U.S. law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing intelligence operations.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spokesman Garrison Courtney said last week's raids put a dent in cartel operations but that public attention to the crisis has been long in coming.
'If we don't start paying attention, the violence - which has already spilled into the U.S. - is going to get worse,' Mr. Courtney said. 'This is a shared interest between the United States and Mexico to go after these drug traffickers.'
In recent years, however, U.S. officials have been reluctant to share information with Mexican counterparts, fearing that they will leak to the cartels.
DEA officials interviewed by The Times said the Sinaloa cartel employs Mexican federal officials, while other cartels pay off local governments and police.
'Many times, what you see isn't really what's going on,' said a DEA official, who asked not to be named because of the nature of his work. 'Many times the death of federal officers or local police isn't a cartel making the hit, but the cartels themselves in the government fighting one another. The same thing has happened to the Mexican army, where the cartels have also bought loyalty to move dope into the U.S.'
Mr. Courtney said the Mexican cartels have 'evolved into the Colombian cartels of the 1980s. Even the government's reaction to what's going on there right now and over the last five years is what the government of Colombia faced when they went after Pablo Escobar. Juarez has seen an escalation in that same type of brutal violence.'
Escobar was a Colombian drug lord who died in 1993.
More than 2,000 Mexican army soldiers and 425 federal police are patrolling in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located. More than 45,000 Mexican troops have been engaged in the drug war since Mr. Calderon took office in 2006.
Mr. Carpenter said the use of the Mexican military may be backfiring.
'I said at the time when Calderon called the military to take the lead role in confronting the cartels that he was undertaking a massive gamble,' Mr. Carpenter said. 'It is clear now that he is losing that gamble if he has not already lost it.'
A U.S. counterterrorism official said, however, that the severity of the crisis was bringing the U.S. and Mexican governments closer and that the CIA will work closely with Mexico if asked for guidance.
'Both countries have a common interest in clamping down on the cartels, and that has shaved away some of the underlying historical tensions in what has long been a close relationship with Mexico,' said the official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named. 'The Mexicans understand - perhaps more so than at any time in recent memory - that we are genuine about taking these people on.'
Meanwhile, thousands of Mexicans daily cross the Santa Fe bridge, which connects Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, ironically one of the safest U.S. cities.
'Why should we have to live like this?'asked Maria, the vendor. 'Why do our children have to die, while our neighbors live like nothing is happening? Every day we pray for something different, for peace. Every day our prayers are left unanswered.'
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Mexico: Spring Break Travel and Security Risks
Stratfor Today » March 5, 2009 | 1257 GMT
CECILIA DEL OLMO/AFP/Getty Images
A Mexican federal police officer at a checkpoint in the resort city of AcapulcoSummary
As spring break season approaches, warnings about travel to Mexico invite a closer look at security in the country’s popular resort cities.
On March 2, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives became the latest government agency to release an alert warning citizens of the risks associated with visiting Mexico. In previous weeks, the U.S. State Department and the Canadian foreign affairs department also have issued travel alerts, and several American universities have urged their students to avoid visiting Mexico during the spring break season.
The impetus for these warnings, of course, is the continuously deteriorating security situation in Mexico created by ongoing drug cartel violence and the government’s response. On one hand, the bulk of this violence is concentrated in specific areas far from the country’s coastal resort towns, and thousands of foreign tourists visit the country each year, encountering at most only minor security issues. On the other hand, organized crime-related violence is extremely widespread in Mexico, and there are few places in the country that do not carry significant security risks. Firefights between soldiers and cartel gunmen armed with assault rifles have erupted without warning in small mountain villages and in large cities like Monterrey, as well as in resort towns like Acapulco and Cancun. In addition, it is important to understand the risks associated with traveling to a country that is engaged in ongoing counternarcotics operations involving thousands of military and law enforcement personnel.
While there are important differences among the security environments in Mexico’s various resort areas, as well as between the resort towns and other parts of Mexico, there also are some security generalizations that can be made about the entire country. For one, Mexico’s reputation for crime and kidnapping is well-deserved, and locals and foreigners alike often become victims of assault, express kidnappings and other crimes. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the general decline in law and order, combined with large-scale counternarcotics operations that occupy the bulk of Mexico’s federal forces, has created an environment in which criminals not associated with the drug trade can flourish. Carjackings and highway robberies in particular have become increasingly common in Mexican cities along the U.S. border and elsewhere in the country — an important risk to weigh for anyone considering driving through the area.
Other security risks in the country come from the security services themselves. When driving, it is important to pay attention to the military-manned highway roadblocks and checkpoints that are established to screen vehicles for drugs or illegal immigrants. On several occasions, the police officers and soldiers manning these checkpoints have opened fire on innocent vehicles that failed to follow instructions at the checkpoints, which are often not well-marked. In addition, Mexico continues to face rampant police corruption problems that do not appear to be improving, meaning visitors should not be surprised to come across police officers who are expecting a bribe or are even involved in kidnapping-for-ransom gangs.
Along with the beautiful beaches that attract foreign tourists, many well-known Mexican coastal resort towns also offer port facilities that have long played strategic roles in the country’s drug trade. Drug traffickers have used both legitimate commercial ships as well as fishing boats and other surface vessels to carry shipments of cocaine from South America to Mexico. In addition, many drug cartels have often relied on hotels and resorts to launder drug proceeds. Because of the importance of these facilities, drug-trafficking organizations generally seek to limit violence in such resort towns — not only to protect existing infrastructure there, but also to avoid the attention that violence affecting wealthy foreign tourists would draw.
But despite the cartels’ best intentions, there remains great potential for violence in many of these resort areas. For one, the Mexican government occasionally conducts arrests and raids against suspected drug traffickers in resort cities, and it is all too common for these criminals — armed with assault rifles and grenades — to violently resist capture, sometimes leading to protracted firefights and pursuits throughout the town. Second, many of these areas are disputed territory for the country’s warring cartels, and these ongoing turf battles can easily get out of hand. In either case, collateral damage to innocent bystanders is a very real possibility, as two Canadian tourists discovered in Acapulco in February 2007 when they were wounded during a drive-by shooting.
While security issues are a concern in almost every area of Mexico, the various coastal resort communities have unique characteristics that influence the type of crime and cartel activity seen there.
Cancun
Cancun has historically been an important port of entry for South American drugs transiting Mexico on their way to the United States. It traditionally has been an operating area for the Gulf cartel and its former enforcement arm, Los Zetas. Today, Zeta activity in the area remains very high, though drug flow through the region has tapered off as aerial and maritime trafficking have decreased. Consequently, the Zetas operating in the area have branched out to other criminal enterprises, such as alien smuggling, extortion and kidnapping. There also have been suggestions that many members of the Cancun city police have been on the Zeta payroll; these rumors surfaced after the February assassination of a retired army general on charges that he was involved in the killing. These developments brought new federal attention to the city, including rumors that the federal government planned to deploy additional military troops to the region to investigate the local police and conduct counternarcotics operations. Few, if any, additional troops have been sent to Cancun, but ongoing shake-ups in the law enforcement community there have only added to the area’s volatility.
Acapulco
Along with Cancun, Acapulco has been one of Mexico’s more violent resort cities during the last few years of the cartel wars. Rival drug cartels have battled police and each other within the city as well as in nearby towns. The nearby resort town of Zihuatanejo, for example, recently experienced a police strike after several officers there were targeted in a series of grenade attacks in February. Suspected drug traffickers continue to attack police in Zihuatanejo, and at least six officers have been killed within the past week.
Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta’s location on the Pacific coast makes it strategically important to trafficking groups that send and receive maritime shipments of South American drugs and Chinese ephedra, a precursor chemical used in the production of methamphetamine, much of which is produced in the surrounding areas of the nearby city of Guadalajara. It is believed that several of Mexico’s largest and most powerful drug cartels maintain a presence in Puerto Vallarta and the nearby municipality of Jarretaderas for the purposes of drug trafficking. Despite this presence, however, incidents of cartel violence in Puerto Vallarta are relatively low. Threats from kidnapping gangs or other criminal groups are also lower in this resort city than in the rest of the country, and, like elsewhere, there is no indication that Americans or other international tourists are specifically targeted.
Mazatlan
Mazatlan, located just a few hundred miles north of Puerto Vallarta, has been perhaps the most consistently violent of Mexico’s resort cities during the past few months. It is located in Sinaloa state, one of the country’s most violent areas, and the bodies of victims of drug cartels or kidnapping gangs appear on the streets there on a weekly basis. As in other areas, there is no evidence that the violence in Mazatlan is directed against foreign tourists, but the sheer level of violence means the potential for collateral damage is high.
Cabo San Lucas
Located on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, Cabo San Lucas has been relatively insulated from the country’s drug-related violence and can be considered one of the safer places in Mexico for foreign tourists. Although historically it has been a stop on the cocaine trafficking routes, Cabo San Lucas’ strategic importance decreased dramatically after the late 1990s as the Tijuana cartel lost its contacts with Colombian cocaine suppliers. As a result, the presence of drug traffickers in the area has been limited over the last five years. That said, it is still part of Mexico, and the city experiences problems with crime — including organized crime and kidnappings. Within the last year, for example, police have dismantled at least two kidnapping gangs in Cabo San Lucas, and in nearby La Paz, the son of a local airline owner was shot to death by several men armed with assault rifles
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U.S., Mexico: Forming a Border Response
STRATFOR Today » March 15, 2009 | 1452 GMT
U.S President Barack Obama, along with other prominent U.S. officials, is discussing the possibility of sending U.S. National Guard troops to the border with Mexico. The National Guard already has experience along the border, specifically during an anti-illegal immigration operation from 2006 to 2008. But so far, talk surrounding this latest possible deployment indicates that it would focus on providing security to border areas where spillover violence from Mexico is occurring. While it is not clear exactly what would trigger a National Guard deployment, defining the threat along the border and formulating possible responses is the first step toward creating a national policy on the topic.
Analysis
Several statements have been released during the first six weeks of the Obama administration that demonstrate its concern about the situation in Mexico and its intent to formulate a policy to address the Mexican border issue. President Barack Obama said March 11 that he was “going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense” and what circumstances would trigger their deployment. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said March 12 that her department intends to “make some significant movements to the southwest border.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates also has commented on the possibility of more cooperation between Mexico and the United States.
Over the past year, the U.S. government has become increasingly interested in the security situation in Mexico. Spillover of violence into the United States is already occurring, as evidenced by Mexican drug-trafficking enforcers invading a home in Phoenix and killing a delinquent drug dealer on June 22, 2008, and by constant cross-border provocations against U.S. Border Patrol agents, from rock-throwing to gunshots targeting Border Patrol agents.
It is clear that Mexican drug cartels have a degree of influence over crime in the United States, since so much criminal activity in the United States is drug-related. With Mexican drug cartels serving as the primary source of drugs for the U.S. market, it is inevitable that the organized criminal groups in Mexico establish some level of control and supervision over their U.S. criminal allies.
These connections, however, remain at the level of a law enforcement challenge. Presently, the problem is one faced by local and state authorities and, according to Napolitano, will continue to be the first line of attack for the Obama administration. At this point it is not yet clear what would trigger the use of the contingency plans being formulated by the Obama administration. Essentially, it is clear that the influence of the Mexican drug cartels is spreading throughout the United States, and particularly in the border states, it is not clear at what point the federal government becomes involved in coordinating a comprehensive response.
There are several possible scenarios that would trigger a response from the United States. One possible scenario would be a dramatic increase in the use of violence by cartel-linked gangs in the United States, like the Mexican Mafia or Barrio Azteca, mirroring their counterparts in Mexico. Other scenarios could include more violent and specific targeting of law enforcement officers on the U.S. side of the border, obvious incidents of Mexican drug traffickers crossing the border to carry out assaults in the United States, massive migration from Mexico in the case of state collapse or a similar, major security-related catastrophe.
If the situation required, the National Guard has the ability to provide support to law enforcement agencies so that they can better perform their jobs. Napolitano has said that federal support would consist of border-enforcement teams, more intelligence analysts and increased vehicle searches. This is similar to how Mexico’s military is currently assisting police, and how the Italian military was deployed to Sicily in 1992 to secure areas in order to allow police to carry out their work against La Cosa Nostra. The National Guard also has heavier firepower than police forces, which could be used suppress the kind of running gunbattles that frequently occur in Mexico but do not take place in the United States.
National Guard assets like helicopters, armored personnel carriers and aerial surveillance platforms would also contribute to law enforcement efforts along the border. But what the National Guard does not do is operate as a law enforcement agency. It cannot make arrests, and it cannot conduct investigations. The National Guard is simply a tool best used for stabilizing situations that have gotten out of control, or for enhancing government manpower and logistical capacity.
The National Guard has been sent to the border before. From June 2006 to July 2008, Operation Jump Start involved the deployment of 6,000 guardsmen to assist the Border Patrol in stemming illegal immigration traffic. Since then, governors of border states have been utilizing their state National Guard assets to assist in counternarcotics efforts. However, these efforts are relatively small, with less than 1,000 national guardsmen deployed across all four southern border states, and focus on assisting counternarcotics operations. A federally orchestrated response could draw on the deep reserves of National Guard members across the country for the purpose of national security.
Most importantly, drafting a federal plan (or at least talking about drafting a plan) to address violence spilling over into the United States will help build a national strategy on how to handle Mexico, including defining the breaking point that would force the United States to act more aggressively. Plans for securing the border are just one part of the administration’s policy toward Mexico, which Obama has said his administration will define within the next few months.
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Three civilians — including one Norwegian tourist — were wounded March 19 in Taxco, Mexico, as two men armed with assault rifles abducted an unidentified man near the city’s main plaza. During the kidnapping, which occurred near a Red Cross fundraising event, the gunmen fired indiscriminately into the air and in the direction of the crowd, presumably to force them to scatter so the gunmen could drive away. Two of the three wounded civilians apparently had been struck directly by bullets or ricochets, while the third appeared to have injured her leg while escaping from the kidnappers’ vehicle as it drove off. Such scenes have become commonplace in Mexico over the last few years, and collateral damage is really nothing new. This incident in Taxco, however, highlights the risks associated with foreign tourists visiting Mexico as it experiences a deteriorating security situation.
STRATFOR has warned of the violent situation in Mexico and the risk of foreign tourists getting caught in the crossfire. The perpetrators behind the March 19 incident certainly were not targeting foreigners specifically; their target appears to have been a local man outside a nearby silver retailer, possibly an employee. While there is always the chance that the man was somehow involved in drug trafficking and was targeted for failure to pay a debt or for working for a rival cartel, it is also possible that he was simply one of the thousands of victims picked up annually by Mexico’s many kidnapping gangs.
But the rampant violence carried out by gangs of all professional levels is exactly the kind of threat foreigners can fall victim to. The incident on March 19 is reminiscent of a similar one in that occurred in February 2007, when a Canadian couple was injured in Acapulco as gunmen opened fire on a man walking near the hotel where the couple was staying. Injuring foreign tourists raises the international profile of Mexico’s violent drug war and rampant kidnapping problem, as the problem rises above the level of just gang-on-gang violence or “those who had it coming to them.” The negative publicity is bad for both the government and the country’s organized crime groups. This incident, however, underscores the potential for foreigners to unintentionally get caught in the crossfire during the daily violence that occurs throughout the entire country.
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Its the NY Slimes, so caveat lector. For example the canard about the US's gun rights being the cause of the supply of the cartels' grenades, automatic guns, etc. These are MILITARY weapons whose provenance is most likely MILITARY sources e.g. Central America, Venezuela, etc. And, btw how did the Zetas get their beginning? They were trained by the US military-- and the solution, now that the violence comes to America, is to disarm the American people?!?!?!?! :x :x :x
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TUCSON — Sgt. David Azuelo stepped gingerly over the specks of blood on the floor, took note of the bullet hole through the bedroom skylight, raised an eyebrow at the lack of furniture in the ranch-style house and turned to his squad of detectives investigating one of the latest home invasions in this southern Arizona city.
A 21-year-old man had been pistol-whipped throughout the house, the gun discharging at one point, as the attackers demanded money, the victim reported. His wife had been bathing their 3-month-old son when the intruders arrived.
“At least they didn’t put the gun in the baby’s mouth like we’ve seen before,” Sergeant Azuelo said. That same afternoon this month, his squad was called to the scene of another home invasion, one involving the abduction of a 14-year-old boy.
This city, an hour’s drive north of the Mexican border, is coping with a wave of drug crime the police suspect is tied to the bloody battles between Mexico’s drug cartels and the efforts to stamp them out.
Since officials here formed a special squad last year to deal with home invasions, they have counted more than 200 of them, with more than three-quarters linked to the drug trade. In one case, the intruders burst into the wrong house, shooting and injuring a woman watching television on her couch. In another, in a nearby suburb, a man the police described as a drug dealer was taken from his home at gunpoint and is still missing.
Tucson is hardly alone in feeling the impact of Mexico’s drug cartels and their trade. In the past few years, the cartels and other drug trafficking organizations have extended their reach across the United States and into Canada. Law enforcement authorities say they believe traffickers distributing the cartels’ marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs are responsible for a rash of shootings in Vancouver, British Columbia, kidnappings in Phoenix, brutal assaults in Birmingham, Ala., and much more.
United States law enforcement officials have identified 230 cities, including Anchorage, Atlanta, Boston and Billings, Mont., where Mexican cartels and their affiliates “maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors,” as a Justice Department report put it in December. The figure rose from 100 cities reported three years earlier, though Justice Department officials said that may be because of better data collection methods as well as the spread of the organizations.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has asked for National Guard troops at the border. The Obama administration is completing plans to add federal agents along the border, a senior White House official said, but does not anticipate deploying soldiers.
The official said enhanced security measures would include increased use of equipment at the ports of entry to detect weapons carried in cars crossing into Mexico from the United States, and more collaboration with Mexican law enforcement officers to trace weapons seized from crime scenes.
Law enforcement officials on both sides of the border agree that the United States is the source for most of the guns used in the violent drug cartel war in Mexico.
“The key thing is to keep improving on our interdiction of the weapons before they even get in there,” said Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security and the former governor of Arizona, who will be testifying before Congress on Wednesday.
Familiar Signs
Sergeant Azuelo quickly began to suspect that the pistol whipping he was investigating was linked to a drug dispute. Within minutes, his detectives had found a blood-spattered scale, marijuana buds and leaves and a bundle of cellophane wrap used in packing marijuana.
Most often, police officials say, the invasions result from an unpaid debt, sometimes involving as little as a few thousand dollars. But simple greed can be at work, too: one set of criminals learns of a drug load, then “rips” it and sells it.
“The amount of violence has drastically increased in the last 6 to 12 months, especially in the area of home invasions, “ said Lt. Michael O’Connor of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department here. “The people we have arrested, a high percentage are from Mexico.”
The violence in the United States does not compare with what is happening in Mexico, where the cartels have been thriving for years. Forbes recently listed one of Mexico’s most notorious kingpins, Joaquin Guzmán, on its list of the world’s billionaires. (No. 701, out of 793, with a fortune worth $1 billion, the magazine said.)
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But a crackdown begun more than two years ago by President Felipe Calderón, coupled with feuds over turf and control of the organizations, has set off an unprecedented wave of killings in Mexico. More than 7,000 people, most of them connected to the drug trade or law enforcement, have died since January 2008. Many of the victims were tortured. Beheadings have become common.
At times, the police have been overwhelmed by the sheer firepower in the hands of drug traffickers, who have armed themselves with assault rifles and even grenades.
Although overall violent crime has dropped in several cities on or near the border — Tucson is an exception, reporting a rise in homicides and other serious crime last year — Arizona appears to be bearing the brunt of smuggling-related violence. Some 60 percent of illicit drugs found in the United States — principally cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine — entered through the border in this state.
The city’s home-invasion squad, a sergeant and five detectives working nearly around the clock, was organized in April. Phoenix assembled a similar unit in September to investigate kidnappings related to drug and human smuggling. In the last two years, the city has recorded some 700 cases, some involving people held against their will in stash houses and others abducted.
The state police also have a new human-smuggling squad that focuses on the proliferation of drop houses, where migrants are kept and often beaten and raped until they pay ever-escalating smuggling fees.
“Five years ago a home invasion was almost unheard of,” said Assistant Chief Roberto Villaseñor of the Tucson Police Department. “It was rare.”
Web of Crime
Tying the street-level violence in the United States to the cartels is difficult, law enforcement experts say, because the cartels typically distribute their illicit goods through a murky network of regional and local cells made up of Mexican immigrants and United States citizens who send cash and guns to Mexico through an elaborate chain.
The cartels “may have 10 cells in Chicago, and they may not even know each other,” said Michael Braun, a former chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Elizabeth W. Kempshall, who is in charge of the drug agency’s office in Phoenix, said the kind of open warfare in some Mexican border towns — where some Mexican soldiers patrol in masks so they will not be recognized later — has not spilled over into the United States in part because the cartels do not want to risk a response from law enforcement here that would disrupt their business.
But Mrs. Kempshall and other experts said the havoc on the Mexican side of the border might be having an impact on the drug trade here, contributing to “trafficker on trafficker” violence.
For one thing, they say, the war on the Mexican side and the new border enforcement are disrupting the flow of illicit drugs arriving in the United States. The price of cocaine, for instance, a barometer of sorts for the supply available, has surged.
With drugs in tighter supply, drug bosses here and in Mexico take a much harder line when debts are owed or drugs are stolen or confiscated, D.E.A. officials said.
Although much of the violence is against people involved in the drug trade, law enforcement authorities said such crime should not be viewed as a “self-cleaning oven,” as one investigator put it, because of the danger it poses to the innocent. It has also put a strain on local departments.
Several hours after Sergeant Azuelo investigated the home invasion involving the pistol whipping, his squad was called to one blocks away.
This time, the intruders ransacked the house before taking a 14-year-old boy captive. Gang investigators recognized the house as having a previous association with a street gang suspected of involvement in drug dealing.
The invaders demanded drugs and $10,000, and took the boy to make their point. He was released within the hour, though the family told investigators it had not paid a ransom.
“You don’t know anybody who is going to pay that money?” the boy said his abductors kept asking him.
The boy, showing the nonchalance of his age, shrugged off his ordeal.
“No, I’m not scared,” he said after being questioned by detectives, who asked that his name not be used because the investigation was continuing.
Growing Networks
Not all the problems are along the border.
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The Atlanta area, long a transportation hub for legitimate commerce, has emerged as a new staging ground for drug traffickers taking advantage of its web of freeways and blending in with the wave of Mexican immigrants who have flocked to work there in the past decade.
Last August, in one of the grislier cases in the South, the police in Shelby County, Ala., just outside Birmingham, found the bodies of five men with their throats cut. It is believed they were killed over a $450,000 debt owed to another drug trafficking faction in Atlanta.
The spread of the Mexican cartels, longtime distributors of marijuana, has coincided with their taking over cocaine distribution from Colombian cartels. Those cartels suffered setbacks when American authorities curtailed their trading routes through the Caribbean and South Florida.
Since then, the Colombians have forged alliances with Mexican cartels to move cocaine, which is still largely produced in South America, through Mexico and into the United States.
The Mexicans have also taken over much of the methamphetamine business, producing the drug in “super labs” in Mexico. The number of labs in the United States has been on the decline.
While the cartel networks have spread across the United States, the border areas remain the most worrisome. At the scene of the pistol-whipping here, Sergeant Azuelo and his team methodically investigated.
Their suspicions grew as they walked through the house and noticed things that seemed familiar to them from stash houses they had encountered: a large back room whose size and proximity to an alley seemed well-suited to bundling marijuana, the wife of the victim reporting that they had no bank accounts and dealt with everything in cash, the victim’s father saying over and over that his son was “no saint” and describing his son’s addiction problems with prescription drugs.
A digital scale with blood on it was found in a truck bed on the driveway, raising suspicion among the detectives that the victim was trying to hide it.
The house, the wife told them, had been invaded about a month ago, but the attackers left empty-handed. She did not call the police then, she said, because nothing was taken.
Finally, they saw the cellophane wrap and drug paraphernalia and obtained a search warrant to go through the house more meticulously.
The attackers “were not very sophisticated,” Sergeant Azuelo said, but they somehow knew what might be in the house. “For me, the question is how much they got away with,” he said. “The family may never tell.”
All in all, Sergeant Azuelo said, it was a run-of-the-mill call in a week that would include at least three other such robberies.
“I think this is the tip of the iceberg,” Detective Kris Bollingmo said as he shined a light through the garage. “The problem is only going to get worse.”
“We are,” Sergeant Azuelo added, “keeping the finger in the dike.”
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tral America: An Emerging Role in the Drug Trade
March 26, 2009
By Stephen Meiners
As part of STRATFOR’s coverage of the security situation in Mexico, we have observed some significant developments in the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere over the past year. While the United States remains the top destination for South American-produced cocaine, and Mexico continues to serve as the primary transshipment route, the path between Mexico and South America is clearly changing.
These changes have been most pronounced in Central America, where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have begun to rely increasingly on land-based smuggling routes as several countries in the region have stepped up monitoring and interdiction of airborne and maritime shipments transiting from South America to Mexico.
The results of these changes have been extraordinary. According to a December 2008 report from the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center, less than 1 percent of the estimated 600 to 700 tons of cocaine that departed South America for the United States in 2007 transited Central America. The rest, for the most part, passed through the Caribbean Sea or Pacific Ocean en route to Mexico. Since then, land-based shipment of cocaine through Central America appears to have ballooned. Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Stephen McFarland estimated in an interview with a Guatemalan newspaper that cocaine now passes through that country at a rate of approximately 300 to 400 tons per year.
Notwithstanding the difficulty associated with estimating drug flows, it is clear that Central America has evolved into a significant transshipment route for drugs, and that the changes have taken place rapidly. These developments warrant a closer look at the mechanics of the drug trade in the region, the actors involved, and the implications for Central American governments — for whom drug-trafficking organizations represent a much more daunting threat than they do for Mexico.
Some Background
While the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere is multifaceted, it fundamentally revolves around the trafficking of South American-produced cocaine to the United States, the world’s largest market for the drug. Drug shipment routes between Peru and Colombia — where the vast majority of cocaine is cultivated and produced — and the United States historically have been flexible, evolving in response to interdiction efforts or changing markets. For example, Colombian drug traffickers used to control the bulk of the cocaine trade by managing shipping routes along the Caribbean smuggling corridor directly to the United States. By the 1990s, however, as the United States and other countries began to focus surveillance and interdiction efforts along this corridor, the flow of U.S.-bound drugs was forced into Mexico, which remains the main transshipment route for the overwhelming majority of cocaine entering the United States.
A similar situation has been occurring over the last two years in Central America. From the 1990s until as recently as 2007, traffickers in Mexico received multiton shipments of cocaine from South America. There was ample evidence of this, including occasional discoveries of bulk cocaine on everything from small propeller aircraft and Gulfstream jets to self-propelled semisubmersible vessels, fishing trawlers and cargo ships. These smuggling platforms had sufficient range and capacity to bypass Central America and ship bulk drugs directly to Mexico.
By early 2008, however, a series of developments in several Central American countries suggested that drug-trafficking organizations — Mexican cartels in particular — were increasingly trying to establish new land-based smuggling routes through Central America for cocaine shipments from South America to Mexico and eventual delivery to the United States. While small quantities of drugs had certainly transited the region in the past, the routes used presented an assortment of risks. A combination of poorly maintained highways, frequent border crossings, volatile security conditions and unpredictable local criminal organizations apparently presented such great logistical challenges that traffickers opted to send the majority of their shipments through well-established maritime and airborne platforms.
In response to this relatively unchecked international smuggling, several countries in the region began taking steps to increase the monitoring and interdiction of such shipments. The Colombian government, for one, stepped up monitoring of aircraft operating in its airspace. The Mexican government installed updated radar systems and reduced the number of airports authorized to receive flights originating in Central and South America. The Colombian government estimates that the aerial trafficking of cocaine from Colombia has decreased by as much as 90 percent since 2003.
Maritime trafficking also appears to have suffered over the past few years, most likely due to greater cooperation and information-sharing between Mexico and the United States. The United States has an immense capability to collect maritime technical intelligence, and an increasing degree of awareness regarding drug trafficking at sea. Two examples of this progress include the Mexican navy’s July 2008 capture — acting on intelligence provided by the United States — of a self-propelled semisubmersible vessel loaded with more than five tons of cocaine, and the U.S. Coast Guard’s February 2009 interdiction of a Mexico-flagged fishing boat loaded with some seven tons of cocaine about 700 miles off Mexico’s Pacific coast. Presumably as a result of successes such as these, the Mexican navy reported in 2008 that maritime trafficking had decreased by an estimated 60 percent over the last two years.
While it is impossible to independently corroborate the Mexican and Colombian governments’ estimates on the degree to which air- and seaborne drug trafficking has decreased over the last few years, developments in Central America over the past year certainly support their assessments. In particular, STRATFOR has observed that in order to make up for losses in maritime and aerial trafficking, land-based smuggling routes are increasingly being used — not by Colombian cocaine producers or even Central American drug gangs, but by the now much more powerful Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Mechanics of Central American Drug Trafficking
It is important to clarify that what we are defining as land-based trafficking is not limited to overland smuggling. The methods associated with land-based trafficking can be divided into three categories: overland smuggling, littoral maritime trafficking and short-range aerial trafficking.
The most straightforward of these is simple overland smuggling. As a series of investigations in Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua demonstrated last year, overland smuggling operations use a wide variety of approaches. In one case, authorities pieced together a portion of a route being used by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel in which small quantities of drugs entered Costa Rica from Panama via the international point of entry on the Pan-American Highway. The cocaine was often held for several days in a storage facility before being loaded onto another vehicle to be driven across the country on major highways. Upon approaching the Nicaraguan border, however, the traffickers opted to avoid the official port of entry and instead transferred the shipments into Nicaragua on foot or on horseback along a remote part of the border. Once across, the shipments were taken to the shores of the large inland Lake Nicaragua, where they were transferred onto boats to be taken north, at which point they would be loaded onto vehicles to be driven toward the Honduran border. In one case in Nicaragua, authorities uncovered another Sinaloa-linked route that passed through Managua and is believed to have followed the Pan-American Highway through Honduras and into El Salvador.
The second method associated with land-based trafficking involves littoral maritime operations. Whereas long-range maritime trafficking involves large cargo ships and self-propelled semisubmersible vessels capable of delivering multiton shipments of drugs from South America to Mexico without having to refuel, littoral trafficking tends to involve so-called “go-fast boats” that are used to carry smaller quantities of drugs at higher speeds over shorter distances. This method is useful to traffickers who might want to avoid, for whatever reason, a certain stretch of highway or perhaps even an entire country. According to Nicaraguan military officials, several go-fast boats are suspected of operating off the country’s coasts and of sailing outside Nicaraguan territorial waters in order to avoid authorities. While it is possible to make the entire trip from South America to Mexico using only this method — and making frequent refueling stops — it is believed that littoral trafficking is often combined with an overland network.
The third method associated with land-based drug smuggling involves short-range aerial operations. In these cases, clandestine planes make stops in Central America before either transferring their cargo to a land vehicle or making another short flight toward Mexico. Over the past year, several small planes loaded with drugs or cash have crashed or been seized in Honduras, Mexico and other countries in the region. In addition, authorities in Guatemala have uncovered several clandestine airstrips allegedly managed by the Mexican drug-trafficking organization Los Zetas. These examples suggest that even as overall aerial trafficking appears to have decreased dramatically, the practice continues in Central America. Indeed, there is little reason to expect that it would not continue, considering that many countries in the region lack the resources to adequately monitor their airspace.
While each of these three methods involves a different approach to drug smuggling, the methods share two important similarities. For one, the vehicles involved — be they speedboats, small aircraft or private vehicles — have limited cargo capacities, which means land-based trafficking generally involves cocaine shipments in quantities no greater than a few hundred pounds. While smaller quantities in more frequent shipments mean more handling, they also mean that less product is lost if a shipment is seized. More importantly, each of these land-based methods requires that a drug-trafficking organization maintain a presence inside Central America.
Actors Involved
There are a variety of drug-trafficking organizations operating inside Central America. In addition to some of the notorious local gangs — such as Calle 18 and MS-13 — there is also a healthy presence of foreign criminal organizations. Colombian drug traffickers, for example, historically have been no strangers to the region. However, as STRATFOR has observed over the past year, it is the more powerful Mexico-based drug-trafficking organizations that appear to be overwhelmingly responsible for the recent upticks in land-based narcotics smuggling in Central America.
Based on reports of arrests and drug seizures in the region over the past year, it is clear that no single Mexican cartel maintains a monopoly on land-based drug trafficking in Central America. Los Zetas, for example, are extremely active in several parts of Guatemala, where they engage in overland and short-range aerial trafficking. The Sinaloa cartel, which STRATFOR believes is the most capable Mexican trafficker of cocaine, has been detected operating a fairly extensive overland smuggling route from Panama to El Salvador. Some intelligence gaps remain regarding, for example, the precise route Sinaloa follows from El Salvador to Mexico or the route Los Zetas use between South America and Guatemala. It is certainly possible that these two Mexican cartels do not rely exclusively on any single route or method in the region. But the logistical challenges associated with establishing even one route across Central America make it likely that existing routes are maintained even after they have been detected — and are defended if necessary.
The operators of the Mexican cartel-managed routes also do not match a single profile. At times, Mexican cartel members themselves have been found to be operating in Central America. More common is the involvement of locals in various phases of smuggling operations. Nicaraguan and Salvadoran nationals, for example, have been arrested in northwestern Nicaragua for operating a Sinaloa-linked overland and littoral route into El Salvador. Authorities in Costa Rica have arrested Costa Rican nationals for their involvement in overland routes through that country. In that case, a related investigation in Panama led to the arrest of several Mexican nationals who reportedly had recently arrived in the area to more closely monitor the operation of their route.
One exception is Guatemala, where Mexican drug traffickers appear to operate much more extensively than in any other Central American country; this may be due, at least in part, to the relationship between Los Zetas and the Guatemalan Kaibiles. Beyond the apparently more-established Zeta smuggling operations there, several recent drug seizures — including an enormous 1,800-acre poppy plantation attributed to the Sinaloa cartel — make it clear that other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are currently active inside Guatemala. Sinaloa was first suspected of increasing its presence in Guatemala in early 2008, when rumors surfaced that the cartel was attempting to recruit local criminal organizations to support its own drug-trafficking operations there. The ongoing Zeta-Sinaloa rivalry at that time triggered a series of deadly firefights in Guatemala, prompting fears that the bloody turf battles that had led to record levels of organized crime-related violence inside Mexico would extend into Central America.
Security Implications in Central America
Despite these concerns and the growing presence of Mexican traffickers in the region, there apparently have been no significant spikes in drug-related violence in Central America outside of Guatemala. Several factors may explain this relative lack of violence.
First, most governments in Central America have yet to launch large-scale counternarcotics campaigns. The seizures and arrests that have been reported so far have generally been the result of regular police work, as opposed to broad changes in policies or a significant commitment of resources to address the problem. More significantly, though, the quantities of drugs seized probably amount to just a drop in the bucket compared to the quantity of drugs that moves through the region on a regular basis. Because seizures have remained low, Mexican drug traffickers have yet to launch any significant reprisal attacks against government officials in any country outside Guatemala. In that country, even the president has received death threats and had his office bugged, allegedly by drug traffickers.
The second factor, which is related to the first, is that drug traffickers operating in Central America likely rely more heavily on bribes than on intimidation to secure the transit of drug shipments. This assessment follows from the region’s reputation for official corruption (especially in countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala) and the economic disadvantage that many of these countries face compared to the Mexican cartels. For example, the gross domestic product of Honduras is $12 billion, while the estimated share of the drug trade controlled by the Mexican cartels is estimated to be $20 billion.
Finally, Mexican cartels currently have their hands full at home. Although Central America has undeniably become more strategically important for the flow of drugs from South America, the cartels in Mexico have simultaneously been engaged in a two-front war at home against the Mexican government and against rival criminal organizations. As long as this war continues at its present level, Mexican drug traffickers may be reluctant to divert significant resources too far from their home turf, which remains crucial in delivering drug shipments to the United States.
Looking Ahead
That said, there is no guarantee that Central America will continue to escape the wrath of Mexican drug traffickers. On the contrary, there is reason for concern that the region will increasingly become a battleground in the Mexican cartel war.
For one thing, the Merida Initiative, a U.S. anti-drug aid program that will put some $300 million into Mexico and about $100 million into Central America over the next year, could be perceived as a meaningful threat to drug-trafficking operations. If Central American governments choose to step up counternarcotics operations, either at the request of the United States or in order to qualify for more Merida money, they risk disrupting existing smuggling operations to the extent that cartels begin to retaliate.
Also, even though Mexican cartels may be reluctant to divert major resources from the more important war at home, it is important to recognize that a large-scale reassignment of cartel operatives or resources from Mexico to Central America might not be necessary to have a significant impact on the security situation in any given Central American country. Given the rampant corruption and relatively poor protective security programs in place for political leaders in the region, very few cartel operatives or resources would actually be needed if a Mexican drug-trafficking organization chose to, for example, conduct an assassination campaign against high-ranking government officials.
Governments are not the only potential threat to drug traffickers in Central America. The increases in land-based drug trafficking in the region could trigger intensified competition over trafficking routes. Such turf battles could occur either among the Mexican cartels or between the Mexicans and local criminal organizations, which might try to muscle their way into the lucrative smuggling routes or attempt to grab a larger percentage of the profits.
If the example of Mexico is any guide, the drug-related violence that could be unleashed in Central America would easily overwhelm the capabilities of the region’s governments. Last year, STRATFOR considered the possibility of Mexico becoming a failed state. But Mexico is a far stronger and richer country than its fragile southern neighbors, who simply do not have the resources to deal with the cartels on their own.
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So top bankers smoked a peace pipe with President Barack Obama on Friday and agreed, however vaguely, to go along with his bailout plan. It is unlikely the powwow ended banker-baiting in Washington.
Why? Because our political leaders see the public's angst as an opening for a government takeover of key elements of the economy, finance in particular. In this way, they are not unlike Latin America's 20th century populists who railed against economic liberty, recklessly grew the state's power, and left a trail of want and misery in their wake. Modern day Mexico is a cautionary tale.
There the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled a corporatist state for 70 years and finally got voted out in 2000. Now, the old guard of the party is trying to launch a comeback. While most Mexicans see the economic contraction as a crisis, PRI "dinosaurs" (not unlike White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) view it as an opportunity. It offers them a chance to regain power and again practice the potent politics of economic nationalism.
A made-to-order issue has presented itself with the U.S. government's new 36% ownership of Citigroup. Since Citi owns Mexico's Banamex, the U.S. is now part owner of the second-largest Mexican bank. Mexico's banking law forbids this: "Foreign entities that exercise governmental functions may not, in any manner, invest in or participate in the capital stock in commercial banks."
Mary O'Grady discusses the consequences of Mexico's opportunism during the current crisis. (March 30)
President Felipe Calderón's government has taken the position that, rather than being an intended purchaser of Banamex, the U.S. is an accidental owner as a result of a rescue. Such "exceptional" circumstances have to be expected if Mexico's banking system is to be open to international investors. The forced unloading of Banamex at a fire-sale price would be the same as announcing to the world that the country's banking system is no longer open to non-Mexicans. This would reduce competition, consumer choice and needed foreign investment.
To keep governments out of the banks in the long run but also keep the banking system attractive to foreign investment, the ministry of finance (Hacienda) has proposed a change in the law that would give governments three years to divest stock acquired in a rescue. After three years the holding company (in this case Citi) would have to publicly offer at least 25% of the Mexican bank (Banamex) on the Mexican bolsa. At the end of six years, if the U.S. were still a Citigroup owner, the number would move to more than 50%.
A good solution to an unforeseen problem? Not if you agree with the PRI that Mexico was a better place when it was closed to foreign competition. Writing in Mexico's El Universal under the headline "Hacienda: Flunked in Law and Nationalism" on March 23, diehard priístas Jesús Silva Herzog (secretary of Hacienda 1982-1986) and Francisco Suárez Dávila (a former undersecretary of Hacienda) tore into the government's proposal. Congress, they wrote, must defend the banking law and promote "the Mexicanization and sale of Banamex."
The champion of this idea in Congress is the leader of the PRI in the Senate, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who also has grand presidential ambitions. His strategy, which is as old as the PRI itself, is to play on public fears about the U.S. as a powerful northern neighbor that threatens Mexican sovereignty. With the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo still fresh in the national psyche, atavistic politicians like Mr. Beltrones seem to think they can generate a popular backlash against the U.S. Doing it just months before midterm elections doesn't hurt either.
Or so the PRI may think. But this is a dangerous game given the economic importance of the bilateral relationship. What is more, there are suspicions that the party's motivations may go well beyond love of the flag. The Mexican press has been speculating that there are domestic interests, close to the PRI, who might like to buy Banamex in a close-out sale. If that's what's going on, it won't be kept a secret. The revelation will inflict great harm on Mexico's investment profile.
The PRI may feel it has some support from Mexico's Central Bank Gov. Guillermo Ortiz, who has worried aloud about foreign-owned banks restricting credit to Mexicans. But Mexican business columnist Enrique Quintana, writing in the daily Reforma, reported last week that in January, except for Spanish-owned Santander, foreign-owned banks did not cut credit. Instead, Banamex and Bancomer (also Spanish-owned) had increased credit while a number of domestically owned banks cut back. Perhaps Mr. Ortiz would make better use of his bully pulpit by advocating policies that would attract capital to Mexico, not frighten it away.
Surely kicking out foreigners during a crisis has a feel-good component to it, just as piling on bankers in Washington does. But in today's global economy, the cost of such behavior goes straight to the bottom line. Let's hope the PRI figures that out before it does real damage to Mexico.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elec...umber-claimed/
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The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.
You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."
-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
In fact, it's not even close. By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.
-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.
- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.
-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.
-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.
-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.
'These Don't Come From El Paso'
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.
"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."
Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."
Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.
"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Boatloads of Weapons
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.
In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.
Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.
"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."
"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"
But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.
"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."
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Mexico Security Memo: April 13, 2009
Stratfor Today » April 13, 2009 | 2148 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Reported Downturn in Violence
Mexico’s National Public Security Council (CNSP) released figures the week of April 5 describing a decline in organized crime-related homicides during the first three months of 2009. A CNSP official reported that there were 1,960 such killings in the first quarter of 2009, compared with 2,644 during the final three months of 2008. The statistics reportedly appeared in an official CNSP document delivered to the Interior Secretariat that also included a national assessment and a more detailed analysis of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Baja California states — the areas that have accounted for most of the violence over the past year.
Chihuahua state accounts for some of the most drastic reductions in violence since February. The state registered 625 organized crime-related homicides during the first quarter of this year, down 26 percent from 842 during the last three months of 2008. Ciudad Juarez recorded a 39 percent decrease over the same period, from 547 killings to 331. Not surprisingly, the turning point appears to have been the February deployment of more than 7,500 military and federal police reinforcements to the area to support and expand the ongoing security operations. From February to March there was a 56 percent reduction in homicides in the state.
These statistics confirm STRATFOR’s assessment regarding the security situation in Ciudad Juarez and the rest of Chihuahua state, that the overwhelming number of troops deployed there would result in a significant decline in violence. More important, however, the statistics reinforce the Mexican government’s thinking about the violence by providing justification for the somewhat risky strategy of deploying such a large portion of available troops to such a small area. Mexico City is eager to take advantage of this kind of positive reporting as an example of how effective the government’s strategy has been, especially since U.S. President Barack Obama plans to meet in Mexico with President Felipe Calderon during this coming week to discuss, among other topics, increasing bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics and security issues.
And although the CNSP numbers are impressive in the comparisons provided, they are less impressive in a broader context. At an average of 881 killings per month, the last quarter of 2008 was by far the most violent during the last few years, to the point of being anomalous. Although a quarter-to-quarter comparison shows a significant decrease in drug-related violence, the first quarter of 2009 is still above average over the span of Calderon’s anti-cartel campaign, which began in December 2006.
April 6
One Mexican national was among a group of people arrested in Zulia, Venezuela, when authorities seized two small airplanes suspected of being used to transport drugs to Mexico.
Mexican army forces exchanged gunfire with suspected drug traffickers in Palomas, Chihuahua state, as the soldiers moved in to seize some 100 pounds of marijuana.
An armed robbery at a business in Queretaro, Queretaro state, ended in a firefight between the robbers and responding police officers that left two wounded, including at least one civilian tourist bystander who was at a nearby restaurant.
A city official in San Pedro Jicayan, Oaxaca state, died after being shot multiple times by several armed men while working in her home.
Some 20 armed men entered a hospital in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, and extracted a patient who had been admitted earlier in the day after being wounded in a firefight. Three police officers guarding the patient were disarmed by the gunmen.
A police officer in Badiraguato, Sinaloa state, died when he was shot once in the chest by a man armed with a shotgun during a firefight that began as several officers tried to stop and search a vehicle.
April 7
Mexican army officers raided a safe house in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, recovering more than $3 million in cash, 30 firearms, 2,000 rounds of ammunition and 179 watches.
Police in Acapulco, Guerrero state, found a severed head wrapped in tape next to a note, the contents of which were not released.
The bodies of two men with multiple gunshot wounds were found inside a vehicle in a canal in Guasave, Sinaloa state.
April 8
Three men died when they were shot multiple times by several assailants armed with assault rifles in a car wash in Gomez Palacio, Durango state.
Mexican army forces conducted a series of raids on buildings in several towns in Zacatecas state. In one building searched in Ojacaliente, soldiers recovered 14 cartridges of Tovex 11 explosives.
At least 10 suspected drug traffickers were discovered in a laboratory used to produce synthetic drugs and detained by police in Apatzingan, Michoacan state.
April 9
Zeta member Israel “El Ostion” Nava Cortez died during a firefight with soldiers in Fresnillo, Zacatecas state. Nava had worked as a bodyguard for high-ranking Zeta leader Miguel “Z-40” Trevino Morales and is suspected of working to secure territory for Los Zetas in Aguascalientes and Zacatecas states.
April 11
One police officer died and another was wounded when they were shot several times while driving in Tijuana, Baja California state.
April 12
One police officer died during a firefight with four armed men traveling in four luxury vehicles near Arcelia, Guerrero state.
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Mexico Security Memo: April 20, 2009
Stratfor Today » April 20, 2009 | 2149 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
A Possible Clue to El Chapo’s Whereabouts
A Roman Catholic archbishop in Durango state sparked a minor controversy this past week by publicly stating that Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera lives near the small town of Guanacevi, Durango, as everyone knows except the authorities. The claim came as he was criticizing the government for not adequately investigating reports of organized criminal activity. The statement prompted inquiries from several politicians, and brought a response from the federal attorney general’s office that anyone with such information about criminals or fugitives was obligated to come forward. The archbishop later clarified that he was simply repeating rumors he had heard from his parishioners, and that he had no firsthand knowledge of El Chapo’s whereabouts.
Given Guzman’s legendary status, rumors and myths about him are in no short supply. Over the past two years, he has been said to be hiding in several spots in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and even Brazil. Against this backdrop and given the lack of supporting evidence, it is difficult to judge the credibility of the archbishop’s statement. Even so, it is among the more plausible theories regarding Guzman’s potential whereabouts.
Guanacevi is a small town in the eastern foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. The western edge of this range extends into eastern Sinaloa state, considered the home of the Sinaloa cartel and Guzman himself. The rugged terrain associated with this area makes road access difficult, decreasing the likelihood that an army patrol might pass by at random. Moreover, authorities pursuing someone through this region on foot or in a vehicle would be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis locals given their lack of knowledge of the various routes through mountains.
While it is certainly possible that the rumors about Guzman living near Guanacevi are just that, STRATFOR would not be surprised to learn that he spends at least part of his time in this area. But had he been living near Guanacevi, he most certainly has moved on by now given the archbishop’s statement.
Prison Convoy Attacked in Nayarit State
At least six federal agents and two prison employees reportedly were killed April 18 when their convoy came under attack by an estimated 30-40 armed men around 2 p.m. local time. The agents were transporting nine prisoners — including Geronimo “El Primo” Gamez Garcia, an important member of the Beltran Leyva drug trafficking organization (BLO) — from the Nayarit state airport to a federal penitentiary some 20 miles away. This was the final leg of a transfer of these prisoners, who had been held in a federal facility near Mexico City. Although the agents ultimately delivered all nine prisoners to their destination, the fact that the attack occurred and caused so many casualties highlights the vulnerabilities associated with these types of convoys as they are operated at present.
Based on various media accounts and statements from federal officials, it appears the convoy may have been ambushed at multiple points along the route, with the attackers also pursuing the convoy on one occasion and engaging it from the rear. The first incident reportedly occurred less than 1 mile from the airport exit, and began with the attackers driving a large agricultural truck onto the two-lane road in an attempt to block its path. The convoy was traveling at a high rate of speed, however, and managed to avoid the truck and to continue driving as two teams of assailants armed with assault rifles opened fire on the convoy from each side of the road.
This initial ambush appears to have disabled at least three convoy vehicles, killing at least two federal agents and two officials from the prison. One SUV reportedly pursued what remained of the convoy, firing on it several times before pulling away. Several reports also describe two additional attacks on the convoy at other points along the route to the prison, though federal officials have not confirmed this.
While this is certainly not the first time gunmen have attacked prisoner transfer convoys in Mexico, this particular incident appears to have involved a high degree of pre-operational planning and tactical intelligence. That no prisoners were reported wounded during the various gunbattles, for example, suggests that the gunmen knew what vehicles the prisoners were riding in and avoided firing at those vehicles. This assumes, of course, that the objective of the attack was to rescue one of the prisoners, not to capture him for interrogation and execution. In addition, the assailants also had foreknowledge of which prisoners were to be transferred — something reportedly kept secret even from the federal agents assigned to the convoy.
The BLO has a history of high-ranking penetrations of federal law enforcement. Of all the drug cartels in Mexico, they seem to have the best intelligence network inside the federal government. Considering that this attack looks to have been a well-planned attempt to free a high-ranking BLO member, it appears that intelligence network remains intact.
Click image to enlarge
April 13
Authorities in Venustiano Carranza, Michoacan state, found the body of an unidentified woman with a single gunshot wound to the head.
A sixteen-year-old boy died in Celaya, Guanajuato state, when a police officer shot him once in the chest and fled with several other officers. Authorities are investigating possible motives.
One man died when multiple assailants shot him several times as he sat outside his home in Guasave, Sinaloa state.
Mexican soldiers exchanged gunfire with a group of men in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, after responding to an anonymous tip regarding armed men in the area. Authorities reported no casualties and no arrests, but seized an assortment of firearms and grenades from an abandoned vehicle at the scene.
April 14
Federal authorities announced the arrest in Tecpan de Galeana, Guerrero state, of Ruben “El Nene” Granados Vargas, a lieutenant of the Beltran Leyva drug trafficking organization responsible for various cartel activities in the region.
Authorities in Santa Ana, Sonora state, seized an assortment of firearms and ammunition from a series of safe houses, including what appears to be an M2 Browning .50 caliber and an M1919 Browning .30 caliber, though a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives official told reporters that the guns were actually semi-automatic variants of those weapons that came from U.S. sources.
April 15
One soldier and 15 alleged drug traffickers died during an eight-hour gunbattle in a remote area near San Miguel Totolapan, Guerrero state. An unknown number of suspects were also detained after the firefight in possession of eight vehicles, assorted assault rifles, grenades and two .50-caliber Barrett rifles.
April 16
Authorities found the bodies of three people bearing signs of torture in the trunk of a car in Petatlan, Guerrero state. The victims were reported kidnapped from Zihuatanejo two days before.
The body of an unidentified man was found in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, with a note signed by La Familia warning against cooperating with Los Zetas. Two bodies with similar messages were found the following morning.
April 17
Police in San Lucas, Michoacan state, found the bodies of four unidentified men; three of the victims had been beheaded.
April 19
Authorities in Morelia, Michoacan state, arrested some 44 members of La Familia crime organization. One of the suspects detained was Rafael “El Cede” Cedeno Hernandez, who stands accused of managing the organization’s activities in Lazaro Cardenas, as well as of running a religious group designed to recruit and indoctrinate new members.
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May 4, 2009 | 1953 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Swine Flu Update
The swine flu outbreak continued to dominate the Mexican government’s attention this past week as all nonessential businesses and government offices were ordered to close for five days in order to limit the potential spread of the virus.
The most recent information released by government health authorities states that the outbreak has reached its peak and entered a state of decline. While it is difficult to take that statement at face value, it sets the stage for a general resumption of government and economic activity throughout the country this coming week.
Tijuana Cops in the Crosshairs
Police in Tijuana, Baja California state, went on heightened alert this past week after a series of attacks in left seven officers dead and at least two wounded. The four attacks occurred within 45 minutes of each other during the evening of April 27, and began when a group of men armed with assault rifles opened fire on four police officers outside a convenience store, where the police had been called to investigate reports of a robbery. As the officers were exiting the building and heading to their patrol cars, an unknown number of assailants opened fire on them from several vehicles, killing all four officers.
Shortly thereafter, gunmen carried out three other attacks on police, killing two officers near their patrol car and one officer on a motorcycle. The final attack took place at a police building, where one officer died and another was wounded. It is unclear whether the attacks involved more than one team of assailants, though the reported timing of some of the incidents would have made it logistically difficult for one group to attack all of the targets, considering that each occurred in a different neighborhood.
While Tijuana consistently has been among the most violent cities in Mexico, the first few months of 2009 had shown a noticeable decline in violence, particularly regarding attacks on police. Before this past week, the number of officers killed in organized crime-related violence in the city was seven, which means the April 27 attack doubled the number of officers killed this year. It also means these attacks represent a significant event in terms of organized crime violence, and one that will have a meaningful impact on the city’s security situation, especially as it affects police morale. Officers already have reduced solo police patrols or required military escorts when venturing out into the city. Over the long term, these types of attacks have the potential to incite strikes and work stoppages, and could easily lead to increasing requests by city and state officials for additional federal resources.
Legalizing It?
Mexico’s congress approved a bill this past week that would decriminalize possession of personal-use quantities of illegal substances and open the door for state governments to pass and enforce laws aimed at combating retail-level drug dealing. Currently, all drug laws in Mexico are federal, and thus it falls to federal authorities to handle enforcement and prosecution. This bill, which was proposed by President Felipe Calderon, appears to be designed to reduce the burden on federal law enforcement and the attorney general’s office, which have become overwhelmed over the past few years by the country’s raging cartel war.
While Mexico’s federal police would certainly benefit from a reduced workload, it is not clear that this bill would have much real impact. It is important to recall that even though domestic drug consumption in Mexico appears to be gradually increasing, the country’s fundamental drug problem is still one of transshipment of wholesale quantities of drugs to the United States — one of the largest consumption markets in the world. Because of this, it is likely that the number of arrests and prosecutions potentially eliminated by this bill would be very low.
Click to view map
April 27
A police commander in Tenosique, Tabasco state, died when he was shot multiple times while driving to his home.
Four people traveling in a vehicle in Puerto Penasco, Sonora state, were shot to death by a group of assailants traveling in another vehicle.
The mutilated body of a man was found near a government building in Huatusco, Veracruz state.
One person died at an alleged cartel safe house in Uruapan, Michoacan state, when a group of gunmen fired and threw a fragmentation grenade inside.
April 28
Authorities in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, reported three separate organized crime-related homicides, including one man who was shot to death in the doorway of his home.
Authorities reported that one suspected drug grower was killed during a firefight with soldiers near Durango, Durango state.
A federal agent assigned to drug dealing cases was reported killed in Gomez Palacio, Durango state.
April 29
Authorities in Mexico City announced the arrest of Gulf cartel member Gregorio “El Goyo” Sauceda Gamboa in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state.
At least three people died in separate incidents in Tijuana, Baja California state, including a labor attorney who was shot to death in his office.
A police officer was reported to have been kidnapped while he was driving to work in Poanas, Durango state.
Authorities found the body of a police commander along a highway near Charo, Michoacan state. He had been shot multiple times.
April 30
The father of a Mexican baseball league player was reported kidnapped in Tijuana, Baja California state.
May 2
Acting on an anonymous tip, authorities found the bodies of five unidentified people in plastic bags below a bridge near Chilpancingo, Guerrero state. Officials suspect they had been dropped from the bridge.
May 3
The decomposing bodies of four unidentified people were found in shallow graves in Pilcaya, Guerrero state.
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From New York Times:
May 17, 2009
Men Dressed as Police Free Mexican Inmates
By MARC LACEY
MEXICO CITY — Armed men dressed as Mexican federal police officers entered a heavily guarded prison in the northern state of Zacatecas early Saturday morning and freed more than 50 inmates, many of whom were believed to be drug traffickers allied with the powerful Gulf Cartel, the authorities said.
The huge jailbreak, which took place about 5 a.m., was an embarrassment to the government of President Felipe Calderón, who has touted the arrests of thousands of drug traffickers over the last two years as evidence that organized crime groups were on the defensive.
The team of criminals who gained entry to the prison in Cieneguillas showed how vulnerable Mexican institutions remain.
The men arrived in a caravan of 15 vehicles with police markings as well as in a helicopter, according to news reports. To gain entry, the gunmen claimed that they were carrying out an authorized prisoner transfer.
After subduing the guards, they left with 53 of the prison’s 1,500 inmates, in an operation that lasted only minutes, officials said.
After they got away, police officers and soldiers swarmed the state, closing many roads as they searched for the fugitives, El Sol de Zacatecas, a local newspaper, reported.
Gov. Amalia García Medina of Zacatecas told reporters that there were indications that prison guards and their supervisors, who were being held for investigation, might have been complicit in the jailbreak.
It would not have been the first time. One of Mexico’s top drug lords, Joaquín Guzmán, known as El Chapo, escaped from a maximum security prison in 2001 in a getaway that investigations found was possible only with the aid of dozens of prison guards. Mr. Guzmán, who was named this year to the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires, hid in a laundry cart.
Mexican authorities are well aware of the vulnerability of their prisons. Mr. Calderón has dramatically increased the number of top drug traffickers extradited to the United States in recent years, to reduce the likelihood that they will continue to run their operations from behind bars or, worse still, find a way out.
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A Counterintelligence Approach to Controlling Cartel Corruption
May 20, 2009
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
Rey Guerra, the former sheriff of Starr County, Texas, pleaded guilty May 1 to a narcotics conspiracy charge in federal district court in McAllen, Texas. Guerra admitted to using information obtained in his official capacity to help a friend (a Mexican drug trafficker allegedly associated with Los Zetas) evade U.S. counternarcotics efforts. On at least one occasion, Guerra also attempted to learn the identity of a confidential informant who had provided authorities with information regarding cartel operations so he could pass it to his cartel contact.
In addition to providing intelligence to Los Zetas, Guerra also reportedly helped steer investigations away from people and facilities associated with Los Zetas. He also sought to block progress on investigations into arrested individuals associated with Los Zetas to protect other members associated with the organization. Guerra is scheduled for sentencing July 29; he faces 10 years to life imprisonment, fines of up to $4 million and five years of supervised release.
Guerra is just one of a growing number of officials on the U.S. side of the border who have been recruited as agents for Mexico’s powerful and sophisticated drug cartels. Indeed, when one examines the reach and scope of the Mexican cartels’ efforts to recruit agents inside the United States to provide intelligence and act on the cartels’ behalf, it becomes apparent that the cartels have demonstrated the ability to operate more like a foreign intelligence service than a traditional criminal organization.
Fluidity and Flexibility
For many years now, STRATFOR has followed developments along the U.S.-Mexican border and has studied the dynamics of the cross-border illicit flow of people, drugs, weapons and cash.
One of the most notable characteristics about this flow of contraband is its flexibility. When smugglers encounter an obstacle to the flow of their product, they find ways to avoid it. For example, as we’ve previously discussed in the case of the extensive border fence in the San Diego sector, drug traffickers and human smugglers diverted a good portion of their volume around the wall to the Tucson sector; they even created an extensive network of tunnels under the fence to keep their contraband (and profits) flowing.
Likewise, as maritime and air interdiction efforts between South America and Mexico have become more successful, Central America has become increasingly important to the flow of narcotics from South America to the United States. This reflects how the drug-trafficking organizations have adjusted their method of shipment and their trafficking routes to avoid interdiction efforts and maintain the northward flow of narcotics.
Over the past few years, a great deal of public and government attention has focused on the U.S.-Mexican border. In response to this attention, the federal and border state governments in the United States have erected more barriers, installed an array of cameras and sensors and increased the manpower committed to securing the border. While these efforts certainly have not hermetically sealed the border, they do appear to be having some impact — an impact magnified by the effectiveness of interdiction efforts elsewhere along the narcotics supply chain.
According to the most recent statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration, from January 2007 through September 2008 the price per pure gram of cocaine increased 89.1 percent, or from $96.61 to $182.73, while the purity of cocaine seized on the street decreased 31.3 percent, dropping from 67 percent pure cocaine to 46 percent pure cocaine. Recent anecdotal reports from law enforcement sources indicate that cocaine prices have remained high, and that the purity of cocaine on the street has remained poor.
Overcoming Human Obstacles
In another interesting trend that has emerged over the past few years, as border security has tightened and as the flow of narcotics has been impeded, the number of U.S. border enforcement officers arrested on charges of corruption has increased notably. This increased corruption represents a logical outcome of the fluidity of the flow of contraband. As the obstacles posed by border enforcement have become more daunting, people have become the weak link in the enforcement system. In some ways, people are like tunnels under the border wall — i.e., channels employed by the traffickers to help their goods get to market.
From the Mexican cartels’ point of view, it is cheaper to pay an official several thousand dollars to allow a load of narcotics to pass by than it is to risk having the shipment seized. Such bribes are simply part of the cost of doing business — and in the big picture, even a low-level local agent can be an incredible bargain.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 21 CBP officers were arrested on corruption charges during the fiscal year that ended in September 2008, as opposed to only 4 in the preceding fiscal year. In the current fiscal year (since Oct. 1), 14 have been arrested. And the problem with corruption extends further than just customs or border patrol officers. In recent years, police officers, state troopers, county sheriffs, National Guard members, judges, prosecutors, deputy U.S. marshals and even the FBI special agent in charge of the El Paso office have been linked to Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Significantly, the cases being prosecuted against these public officials of all stripes are just the tip of the iceberg. The underlying problem of corruption is much greater.
A major challenge to addressing the issue of border corruption is the large number of jurisdictions along the border, along with the reality that corruption occurs at the local, state and federal levels across those jurisdictions. Though this makes it very difficult to gather data relating to the total number of corruption investigations conducted, sources tell us that while corruption has always been a problem along the border, the problem has ballooned in recent years — and the number of corruption cases has increased dramatically.
In addition to the complexity brought about by the multiple jurisdictions, agencies and levels of government involved, there simply is not one single agency that can be tasked with taking care of the corruption problem. It is just too big and too wide. Even the FBI, which has national jurisdiction and a mandate to investigate public corruption cases, cannot step in and clean up all the corruption. The FBI already is being stretched thin with its other responsibilities, like counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence, financial fraud and bank robbery. The FBI thus does not even have the capacity to investigate every allegation of corruption at the federal level, much less at the state and local levels. Limited resources require the agency to be very selective about the cases it decides to investigate. Given that there is no real central clearinghouse for corruption cases, most allegations of corruption are investigated by a wide array of internal affairs units and other agencies at the federal, state and local levels.
Any time there is such a mixture of agencies involved in the investigation of a specific type of crime, there is often bureaucratic friction, and there are almost always problems with information sharing. This means that pieces of information and investigative leads developed in the investigation of some of these cases are not shared with the appropriate agencies. To overcome this information sharing problem, the FBI has established six Border Corruption Task Forces designed to bring local, state and federal officers together to focus on corruption tied to the U.S.-Mexican border, but these task forces have not yet been able to solve the complex problem of coordination.
Sophisticated Spotting
Efforts to corrupt officials along the U.S.-Mexican border are very organized and very focused, something that is critical to understanding the public corruption issue along the border. Some of the Mexican cartels have a long history of successfully corrupting public officials on both sides of the border. Groups like the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) have successfully recruited scores of intelligence assets and agents of influence at the local, state and even federal levels of the Mexican government. They even have enjoyed significant success in recruiting agents in elite units such as the anti-organized crime unit (SIEDO) of the Office of the Mexican Attorney General (PGR). The BLO also has recruited Mexican employees working for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, and even allegedly owned Mexico’s former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who reportedly was receiving $450,00 a month from the organization.
In fact, the sophistication of these groups means they use methods more akin to the intelligence recruitment processes used by foreign intelligence services than those normally associated with a criminal organization. The cartels are known to conduct extensive surveillance and background checks on potential targets to determine how to best pitch to them. Like the spotting methods used by intelligence agencies, the surveillance conducted by the cartels on potential targets is designed to glean as many details about the target as possible, including where they live, what vehicles they drive, who their family members are, their financial needs and their peccadilloes.
Historically, many foreign intelligence services are known to use ethnicity in their favor, heavily targeting persons sharing an ethnic background found in the foreign country. Foreign services also are known to use relatives of the target living in the foreign country to their advantage. Mexican cartels use these same tools. They tend to target Hispanic officers and often use family members living in Mexico as recruiting levers. For example, Luis Francisco Alarid, who had been a CBP officer at the Otay Mesa, Calif., port of entry, was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison in February for his participation in a conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens and marijuana into the United States. One of the people Alarid admitted to conspiring with was his uncle, who drove a van loaded with marijuana and illegal aliens through a border checkpoint manned by Alarid.
Like family spy rings (such as the Cold War spy ring run by John Walker), there also have been family border corruption rings. Raul Villarreal and his brother, Fidel, both former CBP agents in San Diego, were arraigned March 16 after fleeing the United States in 2006 after learning they were being investigated for corruption. The pair was captured in Mexico in October 2008 and extradited back to the United States.
‘Plata o Sexo’
When discussing human intelligence recruiting, it is not uncommon to refer to the old cold war acronym MICE (money, ideology, compromise and ego) to explain the approach used to recruit an agent. When discussing corruption in Mexico, people often repeat the phrase “plata o plomo,” Spanish for “money or lead” — meaning “take the money or we’ll kill you.” However, in most border corruption cases involving American officials, the threat of plomo is not as powerful as it is inside Mexico. Although some officials charged with corruption have claimed as a defense that they were intimidated into behaving corruptly, juries have rejected these arguments. This dynamic could change if the Mexican cartels begin to target officers in the United States for assassination as they have in Mexico.
With plomo an empty threat north of the border, plata has become the primary motivation for corruption along the Mexican border. In fact, good old greed — the M in MICE — has always been the most common motivation for Americans recruited by foreign intelligence services. The runner-up, which supplants plomo in the recruitment equation inside the United Sates, is “sexo,” aka “sex.” Sex, an age-old espionage recruitment tool that fits under the compromise section of MICE, has been seen in high-profile espionage cases, including the one involving the Marine security guards at the U.S Embassy in Moscow. Using sex to recruit an agent is often referred to as setting a “honey trap.” Sex can be used in two ways. First, it can be used as a simple payment for services rendered. Second, it can be used as a means to blackmail the agent. (The two techniques can be used in tandem.)
It is not at all uncommon for border officials to be offered sex in return for allowing illegal aliens or drugs to enter the country, or for drug-trafficking organizations to use attractive agents to seduce and then recruit officers. Several officials have been convicted in such cases. For example, in March 2007, CBP inspection officer Richard Elizalda, who had worked at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry, was sentenced to 57 months in prison for conspiring with his lover, alien smuggler Raquel Arin, to let the organization she worked for bring illegal aliens through his inspection lane. Elizalda also accepted cash for his efforts — much of which he allegedly spent on gifts for Arin — so in reality, Elizalda was a case of “plata y sexo” rather than an either-or deal.
Corruption Cases Handled Differently
When the U.S. government hires an employee who has family members living in a place like Beijing or Moscow, the background investigation for that employee is pursued with far more interest than if the employee has relatives in Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana. Mexico traditionally has not been seen as a foreign counterintelligence threat, even though it has long been recognized that many countries, like Russia, are very active in their efforts to target the United States from Mexico. Indeed, during the Cold War, the KGB’s largest rezidentura (the equivalent of a CIA station) was located in Mexico City.
Employees with connections to Mexico frequently have not been that well vetted, period. In one well-publicized incident, the Border Patrol hired an illegal immigrant who was later arrested for alien smuggling. In July 2006, U.S. Border Patrol agent Oscar Ortiz was sentenced to 60 months in prison after admitting to smuggling more than 100 illegal immigrants into the United States. After his arrest, investigators learned that Ortiz was an illegal immigrant himself who had used a counterfeit birth certificate when he was hired. Ironically, Ortiz also had been arrested for attempting to smuggle two illegal immigrants into the United States shortly before being hired by the Border Patrol. (He was never charged for that attempt.)
From an investigative perspective, corruption cases tend to be handled more as one-off cases, and they do not normally receive the same sort of extensive investigation into the suspect’s friends and associates that would be conducted in a foreign counterintelligence case. In other words, if a U.S. government employee is recruited by the Chinese or Russian intelligence service, the investigation receives far more energy — and the suspect’s circle of friends, relatives and associates receives far more scrutiny — than if he is recruited by a Mexican cartel.
In espionage cases, there is also an extensive damage assessment investigation conducted to ensure that all the information the suspect could have divulged is identified, along with the identities of any other people the suspect could have helped his handler recruit. Additionally, after-action reviews are conducted to determine how the suspect was recruited, how he was handled and how he could have been uncovered earlier. The results of these reviews are then used to help shape future counterintelligence investigative efforts. They are also used in the preparation of defensive counterintelligence briefings to educate other employees and help protect them from being recruited.
This differences in urgency and scope between the two types of investigations is driven by the perception that the damage to national security is greater if an official is recruited by a foreign intelligence agency than if he is recruited by a criminal organization. That assessment may need to be re-examined, given that the Mexican cartels are criminal organizations with the proven sophistication to recruit U.S. officials at all levels of government — and that this has allowed them to move whomever and whatever they wish into the United States.
The problem of public corruption is very widespread, and to approach corruption cases in a manner similar to foreign counterintelligence cases would require a large commitment of investigative, prosecutorial and defensive resources. But the threat posed by the Mexican cartels is different than that posed by traditional criminal organizations, meaning that countering it will require a nontraditional approach.
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Pasted here from the Israel thread-- I also note that Tecate beer has an ad, the exact words of which slip my mind with a similar riff:
:x :x :x
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An Absolut Outrage
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, April 08, 2008 4:20 PM PT
The Border: A vodka maker's ad campaign in Mexico is more than a marketing faux pas that offends many Americans. There's a real movement out there that feels our Southwest is really occupied Mexico.
The first rule of marketing is know your customer base. So when the makers of Absolut vodka began an ad campaign in Mexico featuring what a map of North America might look like "In An Absolut World," it was well aware it might appeal to many Mexicans there and here.
The ad by the Swedish Absolut Spirits Co. features an 1830s era map where Mexico includes California, Texas, Arizona and other southwest states. The U.S. border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 and before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo saw the Mexican territories of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico ceded to the U.S.
The campaign taps into the national pride of Mexicans, according to Favio Ucedo, creative director of the leading Latino advertising agency in the U.S., Grupo Gallegos.
"Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land," the Argentine native said of the Absolut campaign, "so this is their way of reclaiming it. It's very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea."
This isn't the first ad campaign targeted at what some Mexican activists call the "Reconquista" movement of those who dream and work toward the day when the American Southwest will be reconquered. To them, illegal aliens crossing the U.S. border are merely returning home.
In 2005, a Los Angeles billboard advertising a Spanish-language newscast showed the Angel of Independence, a well-known monument in Mexico City, in the center of the L.A. skyline, with "CA" crossed out after "Los Angeles" and the word "Mexico" in bold red letters put in its place.
The activists working for this cause actually see themselves as "America's Palestinians" and view the Southwest as their Palestine and Los Angeles as their lost Jerusalem.
An editorial in the newspaper La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles stated: "There are great similarities between the political and economic condition of the Palestinians in occupied Palestine and that of La Raza in the southwest United States."
The editorial went on to say: "The similarities are many. The primary one, of course, is the fact that both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have used military means to conquer and occupy our territories."
A key player in the "Reconquista" movement is the National Council of La Raza. Its motto: "For the Race, everything. For those outside the Race, nothing."
Few caught the significance of the warmly received words of then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo before the Council in Chicago on July 27, 1997:
"I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders." During a 2001 visit to the U.S., President Vincente Fox repeated this line, calling for open borders and endorsing Mexico's new dual-citizenship law.
A secondary group in the "Reconquista" movement is an Hispanic student activist group known as MEChA, for Movimento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan).
It has spent the last three decades indoctrinating Latino students on American campuses, claiming that the American Southwest was stolen and should be returned to its rightful owners, the people of Mexico, under the name "Nation of Aztlan."
Aztlan is the mythical place where the Aztecs are said to have originated.
Former MEChA members include Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was officially endorsed by La Raza for mayor and awarded La Raza's Graciela Olivarez award. Another MEChA member is former California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who delivered the keynote address at La Raza's 2002 annual convention.
We have an idea: Let's build the border fence and pay for it by selling ad space, even to an ideologically driven company such as the makers of Absolut vodka. We'll drink to that.
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Mexico Security Memo: June 22, 2009
Stratfor Today » June 22, 2009 | 2214 GMT
The Mexican military increased the number of troops deployed to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, by 1,500 June 20, as part of the ongoing joint law enforcement and military operation to combat drug cartels. The new deployment brings the total number of troops deployed in Juarez to 5,500, with 1,300 troops patrolling surrounding areas. The boost in troops in the troubled border town demonstrates the Mexican government’s high level of commitment to maintaining a large deployment in Juarez, and comes at a time when the security situation is deteriorating.
The initial troop increase to Juarez in March succeeded in significantly reducing violence, with an average of only two deaths per day by late March. However, over the past several weeks violence has surged to an average of more than eight homicides per day. STRATFOR sources in Juarez say declining violence between the large cartels (Sinaloa and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization), which remain the military’s main focus, was the primary reason for the initial drop and that the recent violence is associated with increased competition among local drug dealers. It is possible that the government is seeking to combat the rise of smaller organizations with the recent deployment, but the operational goals of the deployment have not been divulged.
Additionally, a little over 5,000 cadets from a Mexican military academy arrived in the Golden Triangle region of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango states, to assist troops already in the region in counternarcotics operations such as eradicating crops and establishing check points. Rugged and sparsely populated, the Golden Triangle is the center of marijuana production for many drug trafficking organizations. The deployment of cadets indicates how thinly spread the Mexican military’s resources are — but it also provides an excellent training opportunity for the cadets. There are roughly 2,500 troops and federal law enforcement agents already in the region, and this deployment represents a significant increase of boots on the ground, but the cadets’ lack of experience will likely limit their roles.
Narco Sharks from Costa Rica
On June 16, Mexican authorities in the port city of Progreso, Yucatan state, seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine concealed inside some 100 dead sharks that had been shipped inside a refrigerated cargo container. The drugs were reportedly detected by customs and naval personnel performing a routine inspection. The shipment, which appeared to be intended for a company in Tonala, Jalisco state, that manufactures shark-skin goods, was sent on a commercial transport ship from Costa Rica, where the company had recently opened an office to facilitate its import needs. A Mexican navy official said it appears the shipment was organized by the Gulf cartel and that a member of Los Zetas was to be responsible for escorting the shipment once it reached Progreso.
Following the discovery of the cocaine in Mexico, authorities in Costa Rica launched a series of investigations both in the city where the shipment originated and at a hotel compound farther south. Police there eventually arrested three Costa Rican citizens and named two Mexican men suspected of organizing the operation but who have so far evaded capture.
The presence of Mexican cartels in Central America is something STRATFOR has been tracking for some time. Among the more noteworthy aspects of this case is the supposed presence of Gulf cartel operatives inside Costa Rica. Until now, all investigations of Mexican cartels in the country have appeared to point exclusively to the Sinaloa cartel. If, in fact, this latest shipment was a Gulf cartel or Zeta operation, it would be stronger evidence of another Mexican drug trafficking organization operating inside Costa Rica — a development that could have negative implications for the country’s security environment. Not only would it increase the potential for corruption among local police and other officials, it also could lead to violent turf battles between the two Mexican cartels on Costa Rican soil.
June 15
A shipping entrepreneur was found murdered and handcuffed in a union office in Veracruz, Veracruz state. Police said the victim was handcuffed minutes before he was executed.
A methamphetamine laboratory was discovered by members of the Mexican army in a remote cave in Michoacan state, making it the sixth such facility found in the state in June.
A police commander was found executed with a single gunshot wound to the head at his home in Acapulco, Guerrero state. Authorities believe he was shot with his own weapon.
Members of the Mexican military arrested Juan “El Puma” Manuel Jurado Zarzoza, the reported head of Los Zetas in Cancun, Quintana Roo state. Juardo was allegedly part of the group of attackers that carried out the assassination of retired Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quinones.
June 16
A firefight between members of a local kidnapping gang and members of various law enforcement agencies in Uruapan, Michoacan state, resulted in the death of three kidnappers. Police received a report of a kidnapping minutes before intercepting the vehicle the kidnappers were driving. The man who was kidnapped before the incident was subsequently rescued.
Authorities found the bodies of seven unidentified people in Gomez Palacio, Durango state. The victims appeared to have been tortured but did not have gunshot wounds.
Three bodies were found in Guasave, Sinaloa state, with multiple gunshot wounds.
June 17
A deputy police chief in Tijuana, Baja California state, was shot to death by several armed men.
The attorney for a Gulf cartel suspect arrested in 2002 was shot to death in downtown Veracruz, Veracruz state, by several armed men.
June 18
The bodies of three men were found inside a vehicle in Cancun, Quintana Roo state, with a sign that read, in part, “We are the new group ‘Zeta killers’ and we are against kidnapping and extortion, and we are going to fight against [Los Zetas] in every state for a clean Mexico.”
Eight police officers were wounded in Puebla, Puebla state, when the vehicle they were riding in was fired upon by several armed men.
June 19
Gunmen traveling in several vehicles opened fire and threw fragmentation grenades at an ambulance that was carrying an alleged gang member to a hospital in Morelia, Michoacan state.
June 20
Four people were shot to death in separate incidents in Acapulco, Guerrero state, including one victim who had recently been released from prison.
An attempted traffic stop in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, led to a firefight between police and drug gang suspects that left at least on person dead.
June 21
Federal police agents at a highway checkpoint near Las Choapas, Veracruz state, seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine from a large truck. Authorities believe the truck was heading to Mexico City.
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By DAVID LUHNOW
WSJ
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's former ruling party made a strong comeback in midterm elections Sunday, defeating President Felipe Calderón's conservative party and setting the stage for more gridlock in a country already politically divided, early returns showed.
With roughly a third of the votes counted, the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, won 35% of the vote compared with 27% for Mr. Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN, in the race for 500 congressional seats, 565 mayors and six governorships.
The biggest loser on the day was the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, which came within a hair of winning the presidency in 2006. Early returns showed it winning just 12% of the vote. Smaller parties and blank votes made up the rest of the tally.
"It's a big victory for us and sets us up well for 2012" presidential elections, said PRI official Pedro Joaquin Coldwell.
Mr. Calderón congratulated the PRI and called on all parties to put aside their own interests and work for the country. "We have to be able to raise our heads and look beyond ... our party or personal interests," he said.
The PRI, written off by pundits after a third-place finish in the 2006 presidential vote, did well largely thanks to voter apathy and its well-oiled party machinery at the local level. If early returns held, the PRI was expected to gain more than 100 seats in the lower house at the expense of the PRD and PAN.
The election came at a time when Mexico seems down in the dumps. Mexico's economy has been one of the world's hardest hit from the global recession because of its reliance on the U.S. as a market for manufacturing exports. Mexico's economic output is expected to drop at least 5.5% this year compared with last year -- the biggest decline since the aftermath of the country's peso crash in 1995.
Adding to a sense of trouble, the country is in the grips of an all-out war between the government and drug cartels. The violence has claimed 12,000 lives since Mr. Calderón took power in December, 2006. Throw in the recent outbreak of the A/H1N1 flu, falling oil output, a steady stream of corruption scandals at all levels, and a struggling national soccer team -- and you get a recipe for malaise.
"I'm voting for the least bad option given our poor choices," said Ana Luisa Torres, a 57-year-old homemaker who was casting her ballot for Mr. Calderón's PAN. "Mexico is not doing well, and we aren't changing things here fast enough."
Another voter, 65-year-old retiree Luis Peña, said he voted for the PRI because the PAN "showed it doesn't know what to do with power."
As a sign of voter disillusion, as many as 7% of the ballots cast were left intentionally blank as a protest against all major parties. Leading intellectuals had organized the drive as a message to the parties to put aside rivalries.
Mexico's Green Party snared 7% of the votes, but not from any environmental proposal. Its campaign was based on support for instituting the death penalty.
Mr. Calderón's party would have suffered a bigger defeat were it not for his war on drug cartels, which has involved sending 45,000 army troops to various states. The drive remains popular among voters, despite the violence.
"Mexicans are willing to put up with the violence in the short term if they feel the government is dedicated to stopping the narcos," said Roy Campos, head of polling firm Consulta Mitofksy.
Analysts say the election outcome actually has more to do with the dynamics of Mexico's political system than a referendum on Mr. Calderón. Simply put, voters in Mexican midterm elections focus on local issues and candidates, and parties tend to revert to their historic average for results.
"When turnout is low for midterms, it benefits the PRI, because they have the biggest party structure in Mexico," says Luis de la Calle, a former Mexican trade official and political consultant.
The contest was a lot more quiet than the presidential election of 2006, which resulted in a vote that was "too close to call" for days. When Mr. Calderón was finally declared the winner, his losing opponent, Andres Manuel López Obrador of the PRD, refused to concede and took to the streets with his supporters.
In the time since, Mr. López Obrador has yet to call Mr. Calderon "president," and has alienated many voters with his hard-line stance. Squabbling between rival factions has also hurt the party.
Mr. López Obrador's antics have helped pave the way for the return of the PRI. Although the former ruling party has yet to change its stripes out of power and remains dominated by special interests and backroom deals, polls show it is no longer the least admired major party, as it was for several years. That dubious distinction now belongs to the PRD, Mr. Campos says.
After the vote, whether Mexico can get unstuck again will largely depend on the inner workings of the PRI, itself a collection of interests and different groups vying for power. Several key PRI leaders may decide that to compete effectively in the presidential vote of 2012, the party needs to show voters it can govern responsibly.
"There may be incentives for things to get better," says Mr. de la Calle. Mr. "Calderón will be under pressure to show he's not a lame duck, and PRI needs to show it can accomplish something."
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Mexico: Economics and the Arms Trade
July 9, 2009
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
On June 26, the small Mexican town of Apaseo el Alto, in Guanajuato state, was the scene of a deadly firefight between members of Los Zetas and federal and local security forces. The engagement began when a joint patrol of Mexican soldiers and police officers responded to a report of heavily armed men at a suspected drug safe house. When the patrol arrived, a 20-minute firefight erupted between the security forces and gunmen in the house as well as several suspects in two vehicles who threw fragmentation grenades as they tried to escape.
When the shooting ended, 12 gunmen lay dead, 12 had been taken into custody and several soldiers and police officers had been wounded. At least half of the detained suspects admitted to being members of Los Zetas, a highly trained Mexican cartel group known for its use of military weapons and tactics.
When authorities examined the safe house they discovered a mass grave that contained the remains of an undetermined number of people (perhaps 14 or 15) who are believed to have been executed and then burned beyond recognition by Los Zetas. The house also contained a large cache of weapons, including assault rifles and fragmentation grenades. Such military ordnance is frequently used by Los Zetas and the enforcers who work for their rival cartels.
STRATFOR has been closely following the cartel violence in Mexico for several years now, and the events that transpired in Apaseo el Alto are by no means unique. It is not uncommon for the Mexican authorities to engage in large firefights with cartel groups, encounter mass graves or recover large caches of arms. However, the recovery of the weapons in Apaseo el Alto does provide an opportunity to once again focus on the dynamics of Mexico’s arms trade.
White, Black and Shades of Gray
Before we get down into the weeds of Mexico’s arms trade, let’s do something a little different and first take a brief look at how arms trafficking works on a regional and global scale. Doing so will help illustrate how arms trafficking in Mexico fits into these broader patterns.
When analysts examine arms sales they look at three general categories: the white arms market, the gray arms market and the black arms market. The white arms market is the legal, aboveboard transfer of weapons in accordance with the national laws of the parties involved and international treaties or restrictions. The parties in a white arms deal will file the proper paperwork, including end-user certificates, noting what is being sold, who is selling it and to whom it is being sold. There is an understanding that the receiving party does not intend to transfer the weapons to a third party. So, for example, if the Mexican army wants to buy assault rifles from German arms maker Heckler & Koch, it places the order with the company and fills out all the required paperwork, including forms for obtaining permission for the sale from the German government.
Now, the white arms market can be deceived and manipulated, and when this happens, we get the gray market — literally, white arms that are shifted into the hands of someone other than the purported recipient. One of the classic ways to do this is to either falsify an end-user certificate, or bribe an official in a third country to sign an end-user certificate but then allow a shipment of arms to pass through a country en route to a third location. This type of transaction is frequently used in cases where there are international arms embargoes against a particular country (like Liberia) or where it is illegal to sell arms to a militant group (such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC). One example of this would be Ukrainian small arms that, on paper, were supposed to go to Cote d’Ivoire but were really transferred in violation of U.N. arms embargoes to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Another example of this would be the government of Peru purchasing thousands of surplus East German assault rifles from Jordan on the white arms market, ostensibly for the Peruvian military, only to have those rifles slip into the gray arms world and be dropped at airstrips in the jungles of Colombia for use by the FARC.
At the far end of the spectrum is the black arms market where the guns are contraband from the get-go and all the business is conducted under the table. There are no end-user certificates and the weapons are smuggled covertly. Examples of this would be the smuggling of arms from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Afghanistan into Europe through places like Kosovo and Slovenia, or the smuggling of arms into South America from Asia, the FSU and Middle East by Hezbollah and criminal gangs in the Tri-Border Region.
Nation-states will often use the gray and black arms markets in order to deniably support allies, undermine opponents or otherwise pursue their national interests. This was clearly revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, but Iran-Contra only scratched the surface of the arms smuggling that occurred during the Cold War. Untold tons of military ordnance were delivered by the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba to their respective allies in Latin America during the Cold War.
This quantity of materiel shipped into Latin America during the Cold War brings up another very important point pertaining to weapons. Unlike drugs, which are consumable goods, firearms are durable goods. This means that they can be useful for decades and are frequently shipped from conflict zone to conflict zone. East German MPiKMS and MPiKM assault rifles are still floating around the world’s arms markets years after the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist. In fact, visiting an arms bazaar in a place like Yemen is like visiting an arms museum. One can encounter century-old, still-functional Lee-Enfield and Springfield rifles in a rack next to a modern U.S. M4 rifle or German HK93, and those next to brand-new Chinese Type 56 and 81 assault rifles.
There is often a correlation between arms and drug smuggling. In many instances, the same routes used to smuggle drugs are also used to smuggle arms. In some instances, like the smuggling routes from Central Asia to Europe, the flow of guns and drugs goes in the same direction, and they are both sold in Western Europe for cash. In the case of Latin American cocaine, the drugs tend to flow in one direction (toward the United States and Europe) while guns from U.S. and Russian organized-crime groups flow in the other direction, and often these guns are used as whole or partial payment for the drugs.
Illegal drugs are not the only thing traded for guns. During the Cold War, a robust arms-for-sugar trade transpired between the Cubans and Vietnamese. As a result, Marxist groups all over Latin America were furnished with U.S. materiel either captured or left behind when the Americans withdrew from Vietnam. LAW rockets traced to U.S. military stocks sent to Vietnam were used in several attacks by Latin American Marxist groups. These Vietnam War-vintage weapons still crop up with some frequency in Mexico, Colombia and other parts of the region. Cold War-era weapons furnished to the likes of the Contras, Sandinistas, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity movement in the 1980s are also frequently encountered in the region.
After the civil wars ended in places like El Salvador and Guatemala, the governments and the international community attempted to institute arms buy-back programs, but those programs were not very successful and most of the guns turned in were very old — the better arms were cached by groups or kept by individuals. Some of these guns have dribbled back into the black arms market, and Central and South America are still awash in Cold War weapons.
But Cold War shipments are not the only reason that Latin America is flooded with guns. In addition to the indigenous arms industries in countries like Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela has purchased hundreds of thousands of AK assault rifles in recent years to replace its aging FN-FAL rifles and has even purchased the equipment to open a factory to produce AK-103 rifles under license inside Venezuela. The Colombian government has accused the Venezuelans of arming the FARC, and evidence obtained by the Colombians during raids on FARC camps and provided to the public appears to support those assertions.
More than 90 Percent?
For several years now, Mexican officials have been making public statements that more than 90 percent of the arms used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States. That number was echoed last month in a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico (see external link).
External Link
GAO report on arms trafficking to Mexico
(STRATFOR is not responsible for the content of other Web sites.)
According to the report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican officials in 2008. Out of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them, (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure comes from the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by the Mexicans or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. The 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing.
In a response to the GAO report, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote a letter to the GAO (published as an appendix to the report) calling the GAO’s use of the 87 percent statistic “misleading.” The DHS further noted, “Numerous problems with the data collection and sample population render this assertion as unreliable.”
Trying to get a reliable idea about where the drug cartels are getting their weapons can be difficult because the statistics on firearms seized in Mexico are very confusing. For example, while the GAO report says that 30,000 guns were seized in 2008 alone, the Mexican Prosecutor General’s office has reported that between Dec. 1, 2005, and Jan. 22, 2009, Mexican authorities seized 31,512 weapons from the cartels.
Furthermore, it is not prudent to rely exclusively on weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing as a representative sample of the overall Mexican arms market. This is because there are some classes of weapons, such as RPG-7s and South Korean hand grenades, which make very little sense for the Mexicans to pass to the ATF for tracing since they obviously are not from the United States. The ATF is limited in its ability to trace weapons that did not pass through the United States, though there are offices at the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency that maintain extensive international arms-trafficking databases.
Mexican authorities are also unlikely to ask the ATF to trace weapons that can be tracked through the Mexican government’s own databases such as the one maintained by the Mexican Defense Department’s Arms and Ammunition Marketing Division (UCAM), which is the only outlet through which Mexican citizens can legally buy guns. If they can trace a gun through UCAM there is simply no need to submit it to ATF.
The United States has criticized Mexico for decades over its inability to stop the flow of narcotics into U.S. territory, and for the past several years Mexico has responded by blaming the guns coming from the United States for its inability to stop the drug trafficking. In this context, there is a lot of incentive for the Mexicans to politicize and play up the issue of guns coming from the United States, and north of the border there are U.S. gun-control advocates who have a vested interest in adding fuel to the fire and gun-rights advocates who have an interest in playing down the number.
Clearly, the issue of U.S. guns being sent south of the border is a serious one, but STRATFOR does not believe that there is sufficient evidence to support the claim that 90 percent (or more) of the cartels’ weaponry comes from the United States. The data at present is inclusive — the 90 percent figure appears to be a subsample of a sample, so that number cannot be applied with confidence to the entire country. Indeed, the percentage of U.S. arms appears to be far lower than 90 percent in specific classes of arms such as fully automatic assault rifles, machine guns, rifle grenades, fragmentation grenades and RPG-7s. Even items such as the handful of U.S.-manufactured LAW rockets encountered in Mexico have come from third countries and not directly from the United States.
However, while the 90 percent figure appears to be unsubstantiated by documentable evidence, this fact does not necessarily prove that the converse is true, even if it may be a logical conclusion. The bottom line is that, until there is a comprehensive, scientific study conducted on the arms seized by the Mexican authorities, much will be left to conjecture, and it will be very difficult to determine exactly how many of the cartels’ weapons have come from the United States, and to map out precisely how the black, white and gray arms markets have interacted to bring weapons to Mexico and Mexican cartels.
More research needs to be done on both sides of the border in order to understand this important issue.
Four Trends
In spite of the historical ambiguity, there are four trends that are likely to shape the future flow of arms into Mexico. The first of these is militarization. Since 2006 there has been a steady trend toward the use of heavy military ordnance by the cartels. This process was begun in earnest when the Gulf Cartel first recruited Los Zetas, but in order to counter Los Zetas, all the other cartels have had to recruit and train hard-core enforcer units and outfit them with similar weaponry. Prior to 2007, attacks involving fragmentation hand grenades, 40 mm grenades and RPGs were somewhat rare and immediately attracted a lot of attention. Such incidents are now quite common, and it is not unusual to see firefights like the June 26 incident in Apaseo el Alto in which dozens of grenades are employed.
Another trend in recent years has been the steady movement of Mexican cartels south into Central and South America. As noted above, the region is awash in guns, and the growing presence of Mexican cartel members puts them in contact with people who have access to Cold War weapons, international arms merchants doing business with groups like the FARC and corrupt officials who can obtain weapons from military sources in the region. We have already seen seizures of weapons coming into Mexico from the south. One notable seizure occurred in March 2009, when Guatemalan authorities raided a training camp in northern Guatemala near the Mexican border that they claim belonged to Los Zetas. In the raid they recovered 563 40 mm grenades and 11 M60 machine guns that had been stolen from the Guatemalan military and sold to Los Zetas.
The third trend is the current firearm and ammunition market in the United States. Since the election of Barack Obama, arms sales have gone through the roof due to fears (so far unfounded) that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress will attempt to restrict or ban certain weapons. Additionally, ammunition companies are busy filling military orders for the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. As anyone who has attempted to buy an assault rifle (or even a brick of .22 cartridges) will tell you, it is no longer cheap or easy to buy guns and ammunition. In fact, due to this surge in demand, it is downright difficult to locate many types of assault rifles and certain calibers of ammunition, though a lucky buyer might be able to find a basic stripped-down AR-15 for $850 to $1,100, or a semiautomatic AK-47 for $650 to $850. Of course, such a gun purchased in the United States and smuggled into Mexico will be sold to the cartels at a hefty premium above the purchase price.
By way of comparison, in places where weapons are abundant, such as Yemen, a surplus fully automatic assault rifle can be purchased for under $100 on the white arms market and for about the same price on the black arms market. This difference in price provides a powerful economic incentive to buy low elsewhere and sell high in Mexico, as does the inability to get certain classes of weapons such as RPGs and fragmentation grenades in the United States. Indeed, we have seen reports of international arms merchants from places like Israel and Belgium selling weapons to the cartels and bringing that ordnance into Mexico through routes other than over the U.S. border. Additionally, in South America, a number of arms smugglers, including Hezbollah and Russian organized-crime groups, have made a considerable amount of money supplying arms to groups in the region like the FARC.
The fourth trend is the increasing effort by the U.S. government to stanch the flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico. A recent increase in the number of ATF special agents and inspectors pursuing gun dealers who knowingly sell to the cartels or straw-purchase buyers who obtain guns from honest dealers is going to increase the chances of such individuals being caught. This stepped-up enforcement will have an impact as the risk of being caught illegally buying or smuggling guns begins to outweigh the profit that can be made by selling guns to the cartels. We believe that these two factors — supply problems and enforcement — will work together to help reduce the flow of U.S. guns to Mexico.
While there has been a long and well-documented history of arms smuggling across the U.S.-Mexican border, it is important to recognize that, while the United States is a significant source of certain classes of weapons, it is by no means the only source of illegal weapons in Mexico. As STRATFOR has previously noted, even if it were possible to hermetically seal the U.S.-Mexican border, the Mexican cartels would still be able to obtain weapons from non-U.S. sources (just as drugs would continue to flow into the United States). The law of supply and demand will ensure that the Mexican cartels will get their ordnance, but it is highly likely that an increasing percentage of that supply will begin to come from outside the United States via the gray and black arms markets.
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By DAVID LUHNOW
MEXICO CITY -- Twelve undercover federal police agents were captured, tortured, and executed by a relatively new and dangerous Mexican cartel calling itself La Familia, or The Family, officials said Tuesday.
The killings are a major psychological blow to President Felipe Calderón's war on drugs. The bodies of 11 men and one woman were found by locals on the side of a highway in Mr. Calderón's home state of Michoacán on Monday. The victims had their hands and feet tied, showed signs of torture, and had all been shot in the head at close range.
The agents had been in Michoacán to gather intelligence on the cartel, said Monte Alejandro Rubido, the government's top spokesman on security issues. Officials said they believed the killings were connected to the weekend capture of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, one of the cartel's major operators. "We have reinforced our operations in several states and we will not retreat a single step in our fight against organized crime," Mr. Rubido said at a news conference.
Since the Saturday arrest, gunmen believed to be working for the cartel have gone on a rampage, attacking police stations, army patrols and hotels in several different cities in Michoacán with grenades, AK-47s and AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. The attacks killed two soldiers and six other federal police agents, and wounded a further 18 agents.
Together with the executions, the toll from three days of violence climbed to 18 federal police agents killed, as well as the two soldiers -- not including about a dozen other civilian victims, police said. That would mark one of the bloodiest single episodes against federal forces since Mr. Calderón launched a crackdown on drug cartels shortly after taking power in December 2006.
The violence highlights the increasing power, brazenness, and operational capability of Mexican cartels like La Familia. Within a day of Mr. Rueda's arrest, gunmen attacked a hotel where police were staying in Apatzingán, federal police barracks in the tourist town of Pátzcuaro, a police base in Huetamo, and a police convoy on a rural road -- all in different parts of the state.
Since Mr. Calderón took power, more than 12,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related killings.
The killings could raise political pressure on Mr. Calderón to retreat in the battle against drug lords. While the war on drugs is popular, many opposition politicians say it is only stirring up trouble and causing more violence. On Monday, leftist senator Carlos Navarrete called on Mr. Calderón to scale back the war on drugs, partly because traffickers could target senior law-enforcement and government officials.
The killings are also a major blow to the Federal Police. Mr. Calderón's government has invested millions in training, technology and arms for the agency, a two-year-old institution being fashioned after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. It has been part of a national effort to clean up police agencies that have traditionally been corrupted by drug cartels.
Federal police have been dispatched across Mexico in joint operations with the military to take on drug organizations in areas where the local and state police are suspect. The officers work in two- to three-month shifts before being sent to a new hot spot. The reasoning is that if they are there any longer, the risk that the officers might succumb to offers of money or threats by the drug gangs becomes too great.
Responding to the violence, Mr. Calderón said that the cartels were increasingly desperate due to the crackdown by the federal government, which has included sending 45,000 troops to patrol cities. "In these cowardly attacks, brave members of our federal forces have lost their lives," Mr. Calderón said Tuesday. "They have fallen thinking it is possible to construct a safer Mexico. They have fallen fighting for the safety of all of us." A new poll by Mexican pollster GCE, however, showed that 51% of Mexicans believe the cartels have the upper hand in the drug war, while only 29% think the government is winning.
Of Mexico's major drug cartels, perhaps none is as dangerous as La Familia, a relatively obscure trafficking organization that has gained notoriety in the past year. Founded in part by a charismatic leader who preaches family values, the cartel first gained attention in 2006 in grisly fashion: By rolling the severed heads of five men onto a dance floor at a Michoacán disco, along with a hand-scrawled note warning off rival traffickers.
La Familia has tried to cast itself as a Robin Hood-type cartel, a quasi-legitimate business that gives back money to the poor, abides by a code of ethics such as not selling certain drugs like methamphetamines in Michoacán, and metes out justice to its enemies only when it is double-crossed. Experts say it recruits heavily among recovering drug and alcohol addicts. It has published manifestoes in local newspapers. One golden rule: "family" members of traffickers should be off-limits to both other traffickers and the federal government.
"It's a bit like a cult, a mixture of evangelicals with new-age self-help that gives members a sense of belonging and creates a very disciplined organization," says Alberto Islas, a security consultant based in Mexico City.
Federal officials say the cartel has infiltrated the state government to a shocking degree. Soldiers arrested 10 mayors in Michoacán, as well as 17 police chiefs, in May.
—Paul Kiernan and John Lyons contributed to this article.
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com
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Congressman-elect Julio Cesar Godoy is suspected of helping protect La Familia, accused of killing 16 officers recently. That has brought pressure on his half-brother, Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy.
By Ken Ellingwood
July 16, 2009
Reporting from Mexico City -- Last week, Julio Cesar Godoy was a congressman-elect. This week, he is a fugitive.
Mexican authorities say Godoy, a half-brother of Michoacan state Gov. Leonel Godoy, helped provide protection for La Familia, the drug-trafficking gang that has waged war on federal police across the state in recent days, killing at least 16 officers.
Officials have an arrest warrant but apparently can't find the younger Godoy, an attorney who was elected to Congress on July 5 as a candidate of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
Feeling political heat, Gov. Godoy on Wednesday called on his sibling to turn himself in and confront the accusations. Godoy said his half-brother lived in a modest house, drove a used Volkswagen and showed no signs of links to organized crime. The two last spoke weeks ago, the governor said.
"He has to present his evidence if he is innocent," Godoy said in a radio interview. "If he is guilty, let them punish him with the full weight of the law."
The younger Godoy has not been seen in public since the campaign closed July 1. He didn't show up to vote on election day nor, after his victory, to collect the official notification that he had been elected to Congress.
Authorities, who did not specify when the arrest order was granted, announced the allegations Tuesday as part of the investigation into a string of attacks in Michoacan against federal police officers since Saturday. The attacks, including the slayings of 12 federal officers whose bodies were dumped near a highway, appeared to be in retaliation for the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, described as one of the gang's top three figures.
Officials say Saul Solis, a failed Green Party candidate for Congress, is also being sought for his alleged role as liaison between the crime group and officials and businessmen in Michoacan.
The allegations add new force to concerns over how thoroughly drug traffickers have infiltrated Mexico's political system, especially in smuggling crossroads such as Michoacan.
"Cartels like La Familia are born, grow and reproduce thanks to narco-politics, thanks to the complicity of those in power and the cloak of impunity that protects them," columnist Ricardo Aleman wrote Wednesday in El Universal newspaper.
The charges against Julio Cesar Godoy brought fresh pressure on his half-brother. Gov. Godoy, a member of the same political party, already faced questions after the state's attorney general and other aides were among 30 local and state functionaries arrested in May over suspected ties to La Familia.
The governor has dismissed the arrests as an election-season stunt by the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party. And he rejected fresh calls to resign.
"I won't give them the pleasure," Godoy said Wednesday.
Monte Alejandro Rubido, a national security spokesman, said that a senior gunman arrested in the recent attacks revealed details about La Familia's structure. He said Julio Cesar Godoy and Solis worked for the group's alleged operations chief, Servando Gomez Martinez, who lives in Michoacan.
A man who said he was Gomez Martinez phoned a public affairs television show in Michoacan on Wednesday and called on Calderon to reach an accord with La Familia.
Hours later, Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont rejected the purported overture, saying Mexico would not negotiate with any criminal group.
ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
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The Role of the Mexican Military in the Cartel War
July 29, 2009
By Stephen Meiners and Fred Burton
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske is in the middle of a four-day visit this week to Mexico, where he is meeting with Mexican government officials to discuss the two countries’ joint approach to Mexico’s ongoing cartel war. In prepared remarks at a July 27 press conference with Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, Kerlikowske said Washington is focused on reducing drug use in the United States, supporting domestic law enforcement efforts against drug traffickers and working with other countries that serve as production areas or transshipment points for U.S.-bound drugs.
Absent from his remarks was any mention of the U.S. position on the role of the Mexican military in the country’s battle against the drug cartels. Kerlikowske’s visit comes amid a growing debate in Mexico over the role that the country’s armed forces should play in the cartel war. The debate has intensified in recent weeks, as human rights organizations in Mexico and the United States have expressed concern over civil rights abuses by Mexican troops assigned to counternarcotics missions in various parts of the country.
The director of Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission, for example, has encouraged the new legislature to re-examine the role of the Mexican military in the country’s cartel war, saying that the current approach is clearly not working. The number of citizen complaints against soldiers has increased over the last few years as the troops have become actively engaged in counternarcotics operations, and the commission director has expressed hope for greater accountability on the part of the armed forces.
Citing similar concerns, and the fact that such citizen complaints are handled by the military justice system — which has reportedly not successfully prosecuted a case in years — the independent U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her not to certify Mexico’s human rights record to Congress, which would freeze the disbursement of a portion of the funds for the Merida Initiative, a U.S. counternarcotics aid package for Mexico.
More important than any possible funding freeze from Washington, though, is the potential response from the Mexican government. President Felipe Calderon has emphasized that the use of the military is a temporary move and is necessary until the country’s federal police reforms can be completed in 2012. Legislative leaders from both main opposition parties complained last week that Calderon’s approach has unnecessarily weakened the armed forces, while the leader of the Mexican senate — a member of Calderon’s National Action Party — said the legislature will examine the role of the military and seek to balance the needs of the cartel war with the civil rights of the Mexican people. In addition, the president of Mexico’s supreme court has said the court plans to review the appropriateness of military jurisdiction in cases involving citizen complaints against soldiers.
Domestic debate and international criticism of Calderon’s use of the military are not necessarily new. Indeed, Calderon was defending his approach to representatives of the United Nations back in early 2008. However, the renewed debate, combined with recent changes in the Mexican legislature, have set the stage for a general re-examination of the Mexican military’s role in the cartel war. And while it is still unclear exactly where the re-examination will end up, the eventual outcome could drastically change the way the Mexican government fights the cartels.
More than Just Law Enforcement
Since taking office in December 2006, Calderon’s decision to deploy more than 35,000 federal troops in security operations around the country has grabbed headlines. While previous presidents have used the armed forces for counternarcotics operations in isolated cases, the scope and scale of the military’s involvement under Calderon has reached new heights. This approach is due in no small part to the staggering level of corruption among federal police. But primarily, the use of the military is a reflection of the many tasks that must be performed under Calderon’s strategy, which is far more complex than simply putting boots on the ground and requires more than what traditional law enforcement agencies can provide.
This broad range of tasks can be grouped into three categories:
The first involves duties traditionally carried out by the armed forces in Mexico, such as technical intelligence collection and maritime and aerial monitoring and interdiction. These tasks are well-suited to the armed forces, which have the equipment, training and experience to perform them. These are also key requirements in the country’s counternarcotics strategy, considering that Mexico is the primary transshipment point for South American-produced cocaine bound for the United States, the world’s largest market for the drug.
The second category includes traditional civilian law enforcement and judicial duties. Specifically, this includes actions such as making arrests, prosecuting and convicting defendants and imposing punishment. With the exception of the military routinely detaining suspects and then turning them over to law enforcement authorities, the tasks in this second category have remained mainly in the hands of civilian authorities.
The final category is more of a gray area. It involves tasks that overlap between Mexico’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies, and it is the area over the last few years in which the Mexican military has become increasingly involved. It is also the area that has caused the most controversy, primarily due to the fact that it has brought the troops into closer contact with the civilian population.
Some of the most noteworthy tasks in this final “gray” category include:
Drug-crop eradication and meth-lab seizures. In addition to being the main transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine, Mexico is also estimated to be the largest producer of marijuana and methamphetamines consumed in the United States. The U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center estimates that more than 17,000 tons of marijuana were produced in Mexico during 2007, most of which was smuggled into the United States. Similarly, seizures of so-called meth superlabs in Mexico over the last few years — some capable of producing hundreds of tons annually — underscore the scale of meth production in Mexico. The destruction of marijuana crops and meth production facilities is a task that has been shared by both the military and law enforcement under Calderon.
Immigration and customs inspections at points of entry and exit. Thorough inspections of inbound and outbound cargo and people at Mexico’s borders have played a key role in some of the more noteworthy drug seizures during the last few years, including the country’s largest cocaine seizure at the Pacific port of Manzanillo in November 2007. Similar inspections elsewhere have led to significant seizures of weapons and precursor chemicals used in the production of meth. In many cases, the Mexican armed forces have played a role in either stopping or inspecting suspect cargo.
Raids and arrests of high-value cartel targets. Beyond simply stopping the flow of drugs and weapons into and out of Mexico, the federal government has also sought to disrupt the powerful organizations that control the drug trade by arresting drug cartel members. Given the federal police’s reputation for corruption, highly sensitive and risky operations such as the arrest of high-ranking cartel leaders have more often than not been carried out by the military’s elite Special Forces Airmobile Group (GAFE). In most cases, the suspects detained by GAFE units have been quickly handed over to the attorney general’s office, though in some cases military personnel have been accused of holding suspects for longer than necessary in order to extract information themselves.
General public safety and law enforcement. The rise in organized crime-related violence across Mexico over the last few years has been a cause for great concern both within the government and among the population. A central part of the federal government’s effort to curb the violence has been the deployment of military forces to many areas, where the troops conduct such actions as security patrols, traffic stops and raids as well as man highway checkpoints. In some cities, the military has been called upon to assume all public-safety and law-enforcement responsibilities, disarming the local police force while looking for police links to organized crime. Another part of this militarization of law enforcement has involved the appointment of military officers — many of whom resign their commission a day before their appointment — to law enforcement posts such as police chief or public safety consultant.
It is this final trend that has led to most of the concerns and complaints regarding the military’s role in the cartel war. The federal government has been mindful of these concerns from the beginning and has tried to minimize the criticism by involving the federal police as much as possible. But it has been the armed forces that have provided the bulk of the manpower and coordination that federal police agencies — hampered by rampant corruption and a tumultuous reform process — have not been able to muster.
A Victim of its Own Success
The armed forces’ greater effectiveness, rapid deployment capability and early successes in some public security tasks made it inevitable that its role would evolve and expand. The result has been a classic case of mission creep. By the time additional duties were being assigned to the military, its resources had become stretched too thin to be as effective as before. This reality became apparent by early 2008 in public-safety roles, especially when the military was tasked with security operations in cities as large and as violent as Ciudad Juarez.
Even though the Mexican military was not designed or trained for law-enforcement duties or securing urban areas, it had been generally successful in improving the security situation of the smaller cities to which it had been deployed throughout 2007. But by early 2008, when soldiers were first deployed to Ciudad Juarez en masse, it became clear that they simply had too much on their plate. As the city’s security environment deteriorated disastrously during the second half of 2008, the military presence there proved incapable of controlling it, an outcome that has continued even today, despite the unprecedented concentration of forces that are currently in the city.
In addition to the military’s mission failures, it has also struggled with increasing civil rights complaints from citizens. In particular, soldiers have been accused of unauthorized searches and seizures, rough treatment and torture of suspects (which in some cases have included police officers), and improper rules of engagement, which have led several times to civilian deaths when soldiers mistook them for hostile shooters. In many cities, particularly in northern and western Mexico, exasperated residents have staged rallies and marches to protest the military presence in their towns.
While the military has certainly not acted flawlessly in its operations and undoubtedly bears guilt for some offenses, these complaints are not completely reliable records of the military’s performance. For one thing, many cartel enforcers routinely dress in military-style clothing and travel in vehicles painted to resemble military trucks, while many also have military backgrounds and operate using the tactics they were taught. This makes it difficult for residents, during the chaos of a raid, to distinguish between legitimate soldiers and cartel members. More important, however, is the fact that the Mexican drug cartels have been keenly aware of the threat posed to them by the military and of the controversy associated with the military’s involvement in the cartel war. For this reason, the cartels have been eager to exploit this vulnerability by paying residents to protest the military presence and spread reports of military abuses.
Outlook
As the Mexican congress and supreme court continue the debate over the appropriateness of the military in various roles in the cartel war, it is important to recall what the armed forces have done well. For all its faults and failures, the military remains the most reliable security tool available to the Mexican government. And continued problems with the federal police reforms mean that the military will remain the most reliable and versatile option for the foreseeable future.
Any legislative or judicial effort to withdraw the armed forces from certain tasks will leave the government with fewer options in battling the cartels and, ultimately, in an even more precarious position than it is in now. The loss of such a valuable tool in some areas of the cartel war would force the government to fundamentally alter its strategy in the cartel war, most likely requiring it to scale back its objectives.
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2 Men Killed Execution-Style at Mexican Beach Resort
Monday , September 28, 2009
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico —
Two Canadian men were shot to death in execution-style killing outside an apartment building in the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta, authorities said Monday.
Witnesses told police that a gunman approached Gordon Douglas Kendall and Jeffrey Ronald Ivans outside the building they were staying in and shot Kendall, according to Jalisco state prosecutor Guillermo Diaz.
The gunman then chased Ivans to the pool area and shot him. Witnesses said two other gunmen arrived minutes later and repeatedly shot the dead or dying Canadians, Diaz said. The men fled and no arrests have been made.
Diaz said Ivans was carrying a handgun, though he apparently was not able to use it before he was shot. It is unusual for people in Mexico, particularly foreigners, to carry handguns. It was not clear if Ivans had a permit.
Rest of article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,...est=latestnews
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Mexico Security Memo: Nov. 23, 2009
Stratfor Today » November 23, 2009 | 2323 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
La Familia Michoacana Cell Indicted in Chicago
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald announced Nov. 18 that 15 defendants allegedly working for La Familia Michoacana (LFM) had been indicted in Chicago, Ill. The indictment stems from the joint U.S.-Mexican federal law enforcement operation that ended Oct. 22 known as Project Coronado, a 44-month-long operation that netted 1,186 individuals in 19 states along with 1,999 kilograms of cocaine and $33 million.
The indictment charged the individuals based in Chicago for conspiring with an unnamed commander based in Michoacan state, Mexico to distribute large quantities of cocaine and funnel proceeds from drug distribution back to Mexico. The operator in Michoacan formed a command-and-control group to oversee the distribution of drugs in Chicago and northern Illinois, made up of the six charged in the indictment as well as smaller-scale distributors personally approved by the commander. The Chicago cell maintained residential property where it clandestinely stored and transferred cocaine and cash proceeds to and from retail operations in Chicago and other towns in northern Illinois. The cell fronted cocaine to their distributors and were paid once the consumer sales were made — indicating a high level of trust and cooperation between the traffickers and the distributors. Members of the cell also maintained ledgers documenting transactions with their distributors and tracked inventory at the various stash houses. The commander, according to the indictment, required his associates in Chicago to report to him on the cell’s distribution activities and collection of cash proceeds.
The details revealed in the Nov. 18 indictment indicate that LFM has had a deeper involvement in the U.S. narcotics network than previously thought. It was known that LFM was trafficking cocaine through Mexico and even across the border into the United States, but the activities of the Chicago cell show that LFM was also heavily involved in the smaller-scale distribution of drugs far from the U.S.-Mexican border, in addition to their known large-scale, cross-border trafficking activities. This shows that LFM had a reach all the way to the neighborhood streets of Chicago and other U.S. cities, not just the highway networks and metropolitan hubs that facilitate the large-scale flow of drugs throughout the United States.
Unusual Arrests in Cancun
Police arrested 12 members of Los Pelones gang in Cancun Nov. 17 on charges that they were responsible for at least seven murders in the city in recent months. Los Pelones is the enforcement arm of the Sinaloa cartel, and was formed to counter the physical force of rival Los Zetas, whom Sinaloa has fought frequently over territory. Los Pelones has an established presence in western Mexico, where the Sinaloa has its main operations, but this is the first case that STRATFOR is aware of in which Los Pelones members were active in Quintana Roo state, in eastern Mexico.
The Yucatan Peninsula is known to be Los Zetas territory and so the presence of Los Pelones members indicates a challenge to Los Zetas for control over the region. Cancun has typically avoided the large-scale violence seen elsewhere in Mexico due to its importance to the tourism industry and, as a result, a strategic hub for money laundering. The presence of a competing enforcement cell in Cancun could raise the potential for more violence in the resort town but, in addition to facing resistance from Los Zetas, the gang will also contend with the local police, which, due to rampant corruption, may very well be cooperating with Los Zetas
(click here to enlarge image)
Nov. 16
Federal police arrested Pedro Cabadas Duran, a U.S. citizen, on the Mexico City-Nogales highway near the border of Nayarit and Sinaloa states (near Tecuala, Nayarit) on suspicion of transporting several firearms illegally. After a routine traffic stop, police discovered an AK-47, two AR-15s and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition in Cabadas’s vehicle.
Nov. 17
Soldiers dismantled a drug lab in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco state, seizing approximately 10 kilograms of a substance believed to be methamphetamine.
Nov. 18
The body of an unidentified man was found hanging from a footbridge over a highway in San Pedrito, Jalisco state. Police discovered his hands were bound with rope but did not find any identification documents on his body.
Unknown gunmen injured Sinaloa Public Security Director of Protection Services Rafael Gaxiola Penuelas in the Toledo Corro neighborhood of Culiacan, Sinaloa state.
Approximately 500 protesting farmers clashed with security forces near the governor’s offices in Pachuca, Hidalgo state. The protesters demanded the release of two persons and financial support for regional agriculture. Two federal agents were injured in the incident.
Soldiers discovered a drug lab in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state, and confiscated 260 grams of pure heroin, 4.5 kilograms of base heroin and 24 gallons of processing chemicals.
Nov. 19
Police arrested former public security chiefs Amador Medina Flores, Alejandro Esparza Contreras and Jose Santos Almaraz Ornelas in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. The three men are suspected of links to drug trafficking organizations.
Nov. 20
Police arrested suspected La Familia Guanajuatense section leader Cristobal Altamirano Pinon in Leon, Guanajuato state. Pinon was arrested alongside suspected assassin Humberto Alvarez.
Soldiers detonated two grenades remaining from an attack on the state attorney general’s offices in Celaya, Guanajuato state. The attack was attributed to La Familia Guanajuatense.
Nov. 21
Police in Mexico City arrested an officer assigned to the Mexico City International Airport for suspected links to the Beltran Leyva Organization. The officer is suspected of links to several persons transporting drugs between Panama and Mexico.
Nov. 22
Five bodies were discovered in an abandoned truck in Culiacan, Sinaloa state. The bodies were not immediately identified and their state of decomposition made it difficult to determine a cause of death.
Police rescued four persons who were tortured and thrown into a sewer by unknown assailants in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Three suspected drug traffickers injured Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state residents Sada Garza and Rodrigo Martinez Flores after opening fire at the intersection of Yucatan and Lago de Tamiahua Streets in the Independencia neighborhood.
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Mexico Security Memo: Dec. 7, 2009
Stratfor Today » December 8, 2009 | 0006 GMT
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Zeta Prison Break
Presumed members of Los Zetas staged a brazen prison raid Dec. 4 in Escobedo, Nuevo Leon state, killing two state police officers guarding the prison and freeing 23 inmates. At the same time in nearby Juarez, Zetas engaged a Mexican military unit in a firefight in an apparent attempt to distract the superior security force away from the prison. While details are still coming in, the incident highlights the uphill battle the Mexican government is fighting as it tries to professionalize its law enforcement ranks.
The firefight in Juarez resulted in the deaths of 12 members of Los Zetas, including Ricardo “El Gori” Almanza Morales, the group’s regional leader in Monterrey. Nevertheless, the engagement served its purpose. As the firefight was under way, a Chevrolet pickup truck rammed the gates of the prison in Escobedo, whereupon armed men entered the facility and killed the two guards. The men then were able to free the prisoners, who included 16 former Garcia municipal police officers charged with colluding with organized crime after an investigation into the death of the Garcia police. Members of the federal police unit charged with guarding the prison were inexplicably off-site eating, leaving the prison very vulnerable.
Los Zetas have shown before that they will go to great lengths to protect and rescue fellow members and associates. A similar well-planned and coordinated operation took place in May in Zacatecas that freed more than 50 prisoners, although not a single shot was fired. This indicated that several — if not all — of the prison guards were complicit in the operation. The use of diversionary tactics in Juarez suggests a similarly high level of operational planning and coordination in the Escobedo prison break. It is also testament to the extent to which Los Zetas have penetrated local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and further indicates the level of corruption that still exists as Mexican President Felipe Calderon continues his security reforms.
A March Against Violence in Ciudad Juarez
On Dec. 6, in Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua state, some 5,000 citizens took to the streets during noon hour to protest the presence of the Mexican military and federal police and the high levels of violence in the city. The citizens were complaining that the presence of the federal forces has served only to fuel the violence rather than suppress it and that the federal personnel were running protection rackets against businesses and private citizens. The presence and use of the Mexican military on the streets of Mexican cities has come under increased scrutiny as allegations of human rights violations have mounted and its effectiveness has come into question.
Violence has continued to rise in the Juarez metropolitan area despite its having the highest concentration of security forces in the country — some 8,500 personnel. Nevertheless, more than 2,200 organized-crime related deaths have occurred so far this year. Still, the military seems to be the only viable option for the Mexican government, at least at the moment. While the military is not immune to corruption, Mexican law enforcement agencies are notoriously more corrupt, and none more so than the Juarez police (the enforcement arm for the Juarez cartel, La Linea, consists of former and current Juarez police officers).
The cartels have not ignored the public’s frustration over the Mexican military operating in its midst. Cartels have gone as far as to pay private citizens to protest the military’s presence. While there is no indication that there was any cartel involvement in the Dec. 6 protests in Juarez, the cartels undoubtedly are taking note and will likely leverage the growing public frustration.
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Nov. 30
Two men were reportedly kidnapped by a group of armed men in Ecuandureo, Michoacan state. Their bodies were later found with several gunshot wounds.
Three Mexican nationals were arrested in the Panama City International Airport for trying to smuggle cocaine inside their stomachs. The group was allegedly coming from Bolivia and bound for Guadalajara, in Jalisco state.
A kidnapping victim of Los Zetas who was rescued Nov. 25 from a safe house in Cancun, Quintana Roo state, and had agreed to cooperate with authorities, was found decapitated.
Dec. 1
Six men were kidnapped by a group of armed men in Ecuandureo, Michoacan.
Four individuals set fire to 28 vehicles that were supposed to be delivered to the Tijuana Municipal Public Security Secretariat in Tijuana, Baja California state.
An Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) activist was gunned down by a group of several armed men at a restaurant inside the Nuevo Santa Fe Hotel in Oaxaca, Oaxaca state.
Edgar Enrique Bayardo de Villar, former director of operations for the Federal Preventive Police and an informant for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was assassinated by two men in a Starbucks cafe in Mexico City.
Dec. 2
Three men were found dead with their hands and feet bound in separate locations around the city of Acapulco, Guerrero state. On two of the bodies were messages from Arturo “El Jefe de Jefes” Beltran-Leyva.
A fragmentation grenade detonated outside the Union de Isidoro Montes de Oca Municipal Investigative Police station in Guerrero state. There were no reported injuries or damage reported.
The body of a man showing signs of torture and 30 stab wounds was discovered in the Tiamba neighborhood of Uruapan, Michoacan state.
Roberto Torres Salinas, director of operations for the Public Security Secretariat in Gomez Palacio, Durango state, was assassinated by a group of armed men. Torres Salinas reportedly was shot more than 50 times as he arrived at his home.
Dec. 3
Federal police arrested 13 men who allegedly worked for the Arellano Felix Organization to construct a smuggling tunnel in Tijuana, Baja California, that ran under the border into the United States.
Members of the federal police arrested three individuals reportedly associated with a kidnapping cell of the La Familia Michoacana organization in Morelia, Michoacan.
A municipal police patrol in San Francisco de los Romo, Aguascalientes state, was ambushed by a group of armed men. Two of the officers were killed and three were wounded.
The U.S. Department of Treasury designated 22 individuals and 10 companies associated with the Beltran-Leyva Organization as “specially designated narcotics traffickers.” This effectively freezes any of the designees’ financial assets in the United States and forbids any U.S. citizens from conducting financial or commercial transactions with individuals or companies listed.
The brother of Joel Torres Felix, a PRI leader in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, was gunned down by a group of armed men in the southern outskirts of Culiacan.
Five people were killed, including a federal police agent and commander, in a firefight between state and federal law enforcement agencies and suspected drug traffickers at a safe house in Coyuca de Catalan, Guerrero.
Dec. 4
Members of the anti-kidnapping force of the Morelos attorney general’s office arrested six members of the kidnapping gang Los Yeseros in Cuernavaca.
A federal police agent was gunned down in Escuinapa, Sinaloa state, by a group of men travelling in a car armed with AK-47s.
Los Zetas staged an operation to free 23 of their associates from a prison in Escobedo, Nuevo Leon, killing two guards in the process. A diversionary fire fight with a military unit in Juarez resulted in 12 Zetas being killed, including Monterrey Zeta leader Ricardo “El Gori” Almanza Morales.
Dec. 5
Members of the Mexican army and navy detained nine suspected kidnappers who had hours earlier kidnapped a truck driver and stole his load of 30,000 liters of diesel.
Mexico extradited Francisco Javier Mora to the United States to stand trial for the trafficking of cocaine and methamphetamine and Fermin Bucheta Temich to be tried for the sexual abuse of a minor.
Dec. 6
A group of armed men assassinated a man outside his home in Uruapan, Michoacan.
The Mexican Navy announced the seizure of 262 kilograms of cocaine and four speed boats and the arrest of nine individuals after a joint U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican navy operation in the Pacific Ocean near the Mexico-Guatemala border.
Some 5,000 citizens of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, took to the streets to protest the presence of the Mexican military and federal police and the high levels of violence in the city.
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Retrofitted Vehicles Offer Window Into Mexico’s Cartels
By MARC LACEY
Published: December 12, 2009
CULIACÁN, Mexico — Federico Solórzano is no used car salesman, but he seemed to be getting into the part as he made the rounds of a well-stocked car lot the other day.
The Mexican Army has confiscated more than 700 vehicles in Sinaloa, including custom-made choppers and a classic Chevy painted like a Chicago police car.
“This is a 2009 Lincoln S.U.V.,” he said, gesturing toward a decked-out vehicle to his right. “Over there, we have two Corvettes. Here’s a Smart car.”
He was dressed in camouflage, and affixed to his shoulder were a golden eagle and single star, which gave away his real job as a Mexican Army general. But besides commanding the counternarcotics troops here in Sinaloa, the northwestern state that is the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking, General Solórzano also manages a huge used-car lot made up of vehicles the army has seized in Sinaloa over the past three years.
It turns out that much can be learned about the drug traffickers that the Mexican Army is combating by examining the 765 vehicles crowding the military base here awaiting disposition from the courts. If you are what you drive, drug dealers are devious, malicious, extravagant and quite conscious about security.
In some of the impounded vehicles, traffickers have installed hidden compartments, trap doors and fake sidewalls to hide drugs, drug profits and the arms they use to protect them.
“We noticed the screws here weren’t right,” said General Solórzano, pulling off a fake rear bumper from what appeared a garden-variety pickup truck. Hidden inside, he said, were cocaine and guns.
“And look at this,” he said, walking on to a Ford pickup, where he said $3 million in cash was recovered in November 2008.
Many of the vehicles that are seized during drug busts or traffic stops turn out to be armored. While bulletproofing is not illegal, General Solórzano said vehicles that had been sealed with metal and inch-thick glass raised the suspicion of soldiers and prompted them to search more vigorously for contraband.
The fact that some cars have been on the lot for as long as three years is a sign of the plodding nature of judicial proceedings in Mexico, where critics say guilt and innocence do not necessarily correlate to convictions and acquittals. Eventually, cars that are linked to criminal activity will be sold or given to government agencies for their use.
In the meantime, though, they fill General Solórzano’s lot, where oversize Hummer-like vehicles able to navigate rugged country roads are clearly a favorite. Luxury brands predominate, but they are mixed with rusted-out Buicks and vanilla Volkswagens.
“I have Jaguars; I have a Rolls Royce,” said the general, a 34-year military veteran, rattling off his top-end models. “This is a Mercedes. That, over there, is a classic Cadillac.”
Drug dealers are not all work and no play, which is clear from the motorcycle section of the lot. There are custom-made choppers with impossibly long front ends, a handmade bike retrofitted with an engine pulled from a pickup and a ghastly black machine in which the handlebars are made to resemble bones.
Classic cars are popular, including a refurbished Chevy painted like a Chicago police car from the Al Capone days.
The devious nature of the traffickers can be seen in some of the weaponry they install, which General Solórzano suspects is done in their own chop shops. Traffickers put a turret in one truck, allowing them to raise a machine gun through the roof while remaining safely inside a bulletproof chamber below.
Traffickers have also added fog machines to the back of their vehicles, allowing them to lose the authorities in a cloud of smoke. Another way they stymie the pursuing federal police is by pulling a lever on the dash and unleashing a cascade of twisted and sharpened nails.
As of January 2009, the Mexican government reported that it had seized 14,441 vehicles nationwide, on top of huge quantities of drugs, money and guns. The fact that the army keeps these vehicles on its bases instead of in an impound lot is telling, too. Drug gangs have sometimes carried out armed assaults to try to get the vehicles back, perhaps because so much money has been spent retrofitting them.
In a twist on that, men suspected of being traffickers attacked a car lot in Tijuana recently in what the authorities described as an effort to intimidate the police. The assailants used gasoline to burn 28 trucks at a Mazda dealership that were in the process of being purchased for use as police transport vehicles. Six of them were destroyed.
And cars are not the only form of transportation that the cartels will bend over backward to recover. Last year, a group of about 20 men stormed a small air field in Sinaloa and made off with five small planes that had been seized by the army months before. The army now keeps such planes under armed guard, with nearly 100 of them tethered to the runway at the airport here in Culiacán.
What can make the seizures depressing for the military is the fact that many of vehicles taken from criminals are newer, faster and better equipped than the troop carriers the army uses.
“They have money,” the general said, rubbing his fingers together.
Meanwhile, a tow truck rolled through the base pulling a sports utility vehicle, increasing General Solórzano’s inventory to 766.
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MEXICO CITY — It had been an elaborate farewell to one of Mexico’s fallen heroes.
The mother of a slain Mexican sailor, Irma Córdova Palma, center right, and his aunt, Josefa Angulo Flores, center, attended his funeral on Monday. Hours later, gunmen killed the women.
Mexican troops on Tuesday surrounded a home in Villahermosa where gunmen killed four relatives of a Mexican sailor who died last week in a special forces assault that killed a drug lord.
Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova, a special forces sailor killed last week during the government’s most successful raid on a top drug lord in years, received a stirring public tribute in which the secretary of the navy presented his mother with the flag that covered her son’s coffin.
Then, only hours after the grieving family had finished burying him in his hometown the next day, gunmen burst into the family’s house and sprayed the rooms with gunfire, killing his mother and three other relatives, officials said Tuesday.
It was a chilling epilogue to the navy-led operation that killed the drug lord, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and six of his gunmen. And it appeared to be intended as a clear warning to the military forces on the front line of President Felipe Calderón’s war against Mexico’s drug cartels: not only you, but your family is a target as well.
Prosecutors, police chiefs and thousands of others have been killed in the violence gripping Mexico, with whole families sometimes coming under attack during a cartel’s assassination attempt. But going after the family of a sailor who had already been killed is an exceedingly rare form of intimidation, analysts say, and illustrates how little progress the government has made toward one of its most important goals: reclaiming a sense of peace and order for Mexicans caught in the cross-fire.
“There will be more reprisals, both symbolic ones and strategic ones,” said Guillermo Zepeda, a security expert with the Center of Research for Development, in Mexico City. “They will take revenge against not only the top people, but anybody who participates.”
The military and police forces who have been fighting the drug war typically cover their faces with ski masks to protect their identities. But the government generally releases the names of police officers and soldiers who have been killed in the drug war.
Responding to the killings on Tuesday, Mr. Calderón said, “These contemptible events are proof of how unscrupulously organized crime operates, attacking innocent lives, and they can only strengthen us in our determination to banish this singular cancer.”
The gunmen killed Ensign Angulo’s mother, Irma Córdova Palma, and his sister Yolidabey, 22, just after midnight on Tuesday as they slept, said Tabasco State officials. An aunt, Josefa Angulo Flores, 46, died on her way to the hospital and Ensign Angulo’s brother Benito died shortly after he was admitted to the hospital. Another sister, who was not identified, was injured.
Ensign Angulo, 30, was killed Dec. 16 when military forces surrounded an upscale apartment complex in the city of Cuernavaca, an hour’s drive south of Mexico City, and cornered Mr. Beltrán Leyva, who American and Mexican officials say was one of Mexico’s most violent drug lords.
Although Mr. Calderón called the death of Mr. Beltrán Leyva a significant victory in the drug war, federal officials warned almost immediately that it could spawn more violence.
Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez told reporters the morning after the raid against Mr. Beltrán Leyva that his subordinates would battle among one another to take his place at the head of the cartel that bears his name.
But what officials did not expect was that among the first victims would be the innocent.
Throughout the three-year-old drug war, Mexican officials have argued that only a tiny percentage of the dead are noncombatants. Indeed, the vast majority of the dead are believed to be members of drug gangs settling scores. Half of the bodies are not even claimed by their families, government officials have said.
But the government has also proved to be powerless to protect many of its own forces in the drug war, much less innocent bystanders. In just one case in July, gunmen suspected of being cartel members killed 12 federal police officers in the western state of Michoacán in retaliation for the arrest of one of their leaders.
The killings on Tuesday underscore how vulnerable civilians are. Many local police forces are corrupted by drug money, officials say, and even when they are not, they are no match for the drug gangs’ firepower.
In one of the most frightening attacks directed at civilians, suspected cartel members threw grenades into a crowd celebrating Independence Day in the president’s hometown in 2008, killing eight people. It seemed to crystallize the fear that the cartels could strike wherever and whenever they wanted, despite the deployment of thousands of troops against them.
Analysts said that new levels of narcoterrorism were possible as the drug gangs tried to spread fear among those fighting them.
“Any objective could be vulnerable,” Mr. Zepeda, the security expert, said. “The state should be expecting it.”
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
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Drug cartels tighten grip; Mexico becoming 'narco-state'
Rising lawlessness echoes state of '90s-era Colombia
by Chris Hawley - Feb. 7, 2010 12:00 AM
Republic Mexico City Bureau .
MEXICO CITY - For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town.
Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered.
Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy.
Across Mexico, the continuing ability of traffickers to topple governments like Tancitaro's, intimidate police and keep drug shipments flowing is raising doubts about the Mexican government's 3-year-old, U.S.-backed war on the drug cartels.
Far from eliminating the gangs, the battle has exposed criminal networks more ingrained than most Americans could imagine: Hidden economies that employ up to one-fifth of the people in some Mexican states. Business empires that include holdings as everyday as gyms and a day-care center.
And the death toll continues to mount: Mexico saw 6,587 drug-related murders in 2009, up from 5,207 in 2008 and 2,275 in 2007, according to an unofficial tally by the respected newspaper Reforma.
Cartels have multiplied, improved their armament and are perfecting simultaneous, terrorist-style attacks.
Some analysts are warning that Mexico is on the verge of becoming a "narco-state" like 1990s-era Colombia.
"We are approaching that red zone," said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime at the Autonomous Technological University of Mexico. "There are pockets of ungovernability in the country, and they will expand."
For the past decade, he said, parts of Mexico have been sliding toward the lawlessness that Colombia experienced, in which traffickers in league with left-wing rebels controlled small towns and large parts of the interior through drug-funded bribery and gun-barrel intimidation.
In the latest sign of the cartels' grip, on Wednesday the National Action Party of President Felipe Calderón announced it was calling off primary elections in the northern state of Tamaulipas because drug traffickers had infiltrated politics.
And in Chihuahua, the government is redeploying troops from the embattled city of Juarez to the countryside because of fears that the cartels are cementing their control in smaller border towns.
Even Calderón, who a year ago angrily rebutted suggestions that Mexico was becoming a "failed state," is now describing his crackdown as a fight for territory and "the very authority of the state."
"The crime has stopped being a low-profile activity and has become defiant . . . . plainly visible and based on co-opting or intimidating the authorities," he told a group of Mexican ambassadors last month. "It's the law of the 'bribe or the bullet.' "
Towns on the ropes
In places like Tancitaro, population 26,000, the battle already may be lost.
In the past year, gunmen killed seven police officers, murdered a top town administrator and kidnapped others, said Martin Urbina, a city official. The reasons were unclear - most of the town leaders are in hiding and could not be reached for comment - but the drug traffickers were apparently demanding the removal of certain police officers, Urbina said.
When the traffickers kidnapped the two officials' fathers on Nov. 30, it was the last straw.
"If someone comes and puts a pistol to your head, what are you going to do?" said Gustavo Sánchez, who was appointed by the Michoacan state governor as interim mayor after the mass resignation. "It's happening in all of the states, not just here."
In Vicente Guerrero, in Durango state, 34 of 38 police resigned after the police chief and four officers were kidnapped. The victims have not been found.
In the border town of Puerto Palomas, the police chief fled to the United States and asked for asylum in March, saying Mexican officials could not protect him. In October, traffickers killed the town administrator in Puerto Palomas.
In the northern town of Namiquipa, traffickers killed the mayor and two top town officials last year. Police there are woefully outgunned, police Chief Jesus Hinojosa said. There are only 15 weapons for 39 police officers.
Often the cartels target city officials they believe are cooperating with federal authorities, said Juan Manuel Bautista, the City Council secretary in the western town of Novolato, where traffickers have killed 25 police, two city councilmen and a town administrator in the past two years.
Other times, they are simply lashing back at the most convenient targets, he said.
"In these small-town governments, everyone knows your business and who you are," Bautista said. "If they want to take revenge on you, it's easy."
Even when governments replace police chiefs, mayors and town councils, it's often only a matter of time before the replacements are bribed, intimidated at the barrel of a gun or killed, and the scenario repeats itself, said Bernardo Gonzalez Arechiga, an expert on crime at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Advanced Studies.
In May, federal officials arrested 10 mayors in Michoacan state on charges of protecting smugglers.
In June, Mauricio Fernández, a mayoral candidate in the wealthy Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia, was recorded telling a meeting of supporters that he had negotiated a truce with the Beltrán Leyva gang as a way of guaranteeing security in the town. Fernández later denied any contact with the gang. He easily won the July 2 election.
Financial octopus
The attempt to dismantle the cartels has created a new appreciation for how deep their financial networks go, said Joel Kurtzman, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.
In many towns, smugglers pay for playgrounds and other things the government cannot afford. Bank loans are expensive and hard to get in Mexico, a lingering effect of the country's bank crises during the 1990s, so traffickers have stepped in to provide small-business loans.
"What people did not recognize in Mexico was how deeply ingrained in both the economy and society the drug trade was," Kurtzman said. "So it's not as if the drug traders are unpopular - they're looked at in many cities like Robin Hoods."
Since 2006, the number of Mexican citizens and companies on the U.S. Treasury's blacklist of suspected drug smugglers has nearly doubled, from 188 to 362.
They are as varied as a day-care center in Culiacan, a gym in Hermosillo and an electronics company in Tijuana. There are meat packing plants, horse stables, dairies, hotels, a mining company and gasoline stations.
Dozens of those companies are still operating because Mexican prosecutors lack few legal tools to shut them down, Buscaglia said.
In March, the financial magazine Forbes included Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán in its list of the world's billionaires for the first time. Guzmán, the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, was listed at No. 701 with a net worth of about $1 billion.
In fact, Guzmán's cartel and other gangs probably bring in $3.8 billion just to Sinaloa state alone, said Guillermo Ibarra, an economist who used bank and government statistics to compile an estimate this year.
That is 20 percent of the state's economy, twice as much as all of its factories put together. The drug trade employs about a fifth of the state's 2.6 million population, either directly or indirectly, he said.
"It trickles down to construction, to car sales, you name it," Ibarra said. "Drug money ends up everywhere."
The cartels' criminal activities also are becoming more diverse, Buscaglia said.
La Familia Michoacana, which produces methamphetamine at clandestine laboratories in Michoacan state, has broadened into prostitution, protection rackets and software piracy.
Street vendors in Mexico now sell music CDs and DVDs stamped with "FM," the gang's logo.
Likewise, the Zetas, once the elite hit men of the Gulf Cartel, now run kidnapping-for-ransom rings in Mexico City and steal gasoline from government pipelines. Pemex, the state-run oil company, says it lost $747 million in stolen fuel in 2008.
Gangs going strong
The cartels also have found ways to defend their core drug business by moving marijuana farms to U.S. national parks, finding new smuggling routes through Africa and into Europe, and strengthening their supply lines in Central America.
Drug prices and purity in the United States, the main measure of trafficking, shows the crackdown is having only mixed results.
Cocaine prices in the United States jumped from $132 a gram to $182 a gram from September 2007 to September 2008, the latest date for which the Drug Enforcement Administration has released numbers.
But during the same period, methamphetamine got stronger and cheaper, dropping from $213 per gram to $184 per gram.
To offset tighter border security, Mexican traffickers are setting up marijuana farms on public lands in California, Washington and Oregon, a U.S. Department of Justice report said in July. The number of marijuana plants seized in the United States soared from 3.2 million in 2004 to 8 million in 2008.
Their product is also improving, the report said: Marijuana potency in 2008 was the highest it has ever been.
The cartels also are expanding into new territory.
Since 2008, Mexican drug smugglers have been arrested in Australia, New Zealand and the African nations of Sierra Leone and Togo. U.S. prosecutors say the Gulf Cartel has struck deals with the New York mob and the Ndrangheta Mafia of Italy to smuggle cocaine into Europe.
In the United States, cartel operatives have been detected in 195 cities, as distant as Anchorage, Alaska, and as small as Ponca City, Okla., a report by the U.S. Justice Department said.
In Arizona, the Sinaloa Cartel has operations in Phoenix, Tucson, Douglas, Glendale, Naco, Nogales, Peoria, Sasabe, Sierra Vista and Yuma. The Gulf Cartel also has some operatives in Nogales, and the Juarez Cartel has outposts in Phoenix, Tucson and Douglas, the report said.
Buscaglia said his research has turned up links to Mexican traffickers in 47 countries worldwide.
"Mexico has become an exporter of instability," he said.
At the same time, the cartels are acquiring weapons that are "increasingly more powerful and lethal," the U.S. Government and Accountability Office said in a June report.
Five rocket launchers, 271 grenades, 2,932 assault rifles, a submarine loaded with cocaine, and an anti-aircraft gun complete with blast shield were all seized by Mexican authorities between March 2008 and August 2009.
In September, traffickers fired an anti-tank rocket at soldiers while trying to free a comrade who had been detained.
The gangs also are getting better at carrying out coordinated, military-style operations.
On July 11 and 12, La Familia launched 15 attacks in eight cities on police stations and a police bus, killing 14 officers.
And on May 16, Gulf Cartel gunmen freed 53 prisoners in a commando-style raid on a prison in Zacatecas state.
Prolonged war
Calderón and the Obama administration insist that the Mexican government still has the upper hand against the cartels.
"We have a serious problem, but the good news is that we're confronting it, and better yet, we're making progress," Calderón told the ambassadors last month.
But in the past year, doubts have been growing.
A report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command warned in January 2009 that Mexico was ripe for a "rapid and sudden collapse" because of the drug cartels. And in a report to the West Point military academy, former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey said the cartels could "overwhelm the institutions of the state and establish de facto control over broad regions of northern Mexico" within eight years.
Former President Ernesto Zedillo, writer Carlos Fuentes, former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda and the former chief of Calderón's National Action Party have publicly questioned the president's strategy.
In Colombia, the government was able to re-establish control in rural areas by eliminating a "demilitarized" zone that had been granted to the leftist guerrillas, renewing attacks on them and spraying coca fields with pesticides. The United States has helped with $5.8 billion in aid since 2000.
But in Mexico, the government needs to focus on the prosecution of crimes instead of flooding the streets with troops, Buscaglia said.
Only about half of detainees are ever convicted, and most are low-level thugs, not the money launderers, accountants and managers who keep the cartels running.
Of the more than 53,000 arrests since the crackdown began, only 941 are in Sinaloa, despite the fact that that state is the heart of one of the biggest smuggling empires, Buscaglia said.
The government also needs laws allowing authorities to shut down suspected money-laundering operations and seize their assets without going through a criminal trial, he said.
Only three things could change the balance, said Ray Walser, an expert on Latin America at the conservative Heritage Foundation: a massive increase in U.S. drug aid, a large addiction-treatment program in the United States or the legalization of drugs in the United States.
None of these measures seems to be on the horizon, Walser said.
"The problem that Calderón has in winning this war will be that he can't offer the citizens courts, mayors and policemen that are safe and honest and not corrupt," Kurtzman said.
"As a result, this is likely to remain a stalemate with a lot of killing on both sides for a long time."
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CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico—This violent border city is turning into a ghost town.
Bloodshed from Mexico's warring drug cartels has sent those with means fleeing this former boomtown. Restaurants have moved north to Texas. The dentists who served Americans with their cheap procedures have taken their equipment south. Even the music is dying here.
Jerome Sessini for The Wall Street Journal
Some 400,000 residents have fled Juárez after two years of drug-related killings, bringing desolation to downtown, seen in December, and beyond.
."The musicians haven't left yet, but they do their shows in El Paso now," says Alfonso Quiñones, a Juárez concert promoter who is trying to organize a jazz festival in the city.
No solid number exists for the exodus, a matter of debate among Juárez's leaders. But the city's planning department estimates 116,000 homes are now abandoned. Measured against the average household size of the last census, the population who inhabited the empty homes alone could be as high as 400,000 people, representing one-third of the city before the violence began.
That would mark one of Mexico's largest single exoduses in decades.
"The problem is that we don't have the rule of law here," says Lucinda Vargas, an economist who runs a civic group called Plan Estratégico de Juárez.
Juárez finds itself in the crossfire between two rival drug gangs, the local Juárez cartel and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, both of whom want to control the city to smuggle drugs into the U.S., the world's biggest drug-consuming market, and capture a lucrative and growing local drug market.
In 2008, roughly 1,600 people were killed here, up from a few hundred annually in previous years. President Felipe Calderón decided to send federal police and some 7,000 troops to quell the dispute. The move hasn't worked: Last year, the death toll reached 2,600 people, making it Mexico's most violent city. There have been an estimated 500 homicides this year.
The latest high-profile blow to the city came on March 13, when three people associated with the U.S. Consulate in Juárez were gunned down in an incident that drew outrage from presidents on both side of the border.
Juárez isn't alone in its troubles with drug gangs, which operate with near complete impunity in much of northern and western Mexico. On Friday, residents of Mexico's northern business capital, Monterrey, awoke to nightmarish traffic after heavily armed men believed to be linked to drug gangs commandeered several trucks and buses and used them to block eight strategic traffic points around the city.
Juárez's gradual emptying has been hastened and deepened by a recession in a border economy that is hogtied to that of the U.S.
Just 2½ years ago, Juárez was one of Mexico's engines of growth, a magnet of manufacturing with an easy entry point into the U.S. The North American Free Trade Agreement had helped to expand Juárez into the base for assembly plants that accepted parts for everything from consumer electronics to plush toys, and shipped the finished products back to America tariff-free.
Since 2005, 10,600 businesses—roughly 40% of Juárez's businesses—have closed their doors, according to the country's group representing local chambers of commerce.
Ciudad Juárez's new reality is told on its empty streets. Along residential block in a subdivision called Villas de Salvarcar, hardly a home appears left occupied.
"I don't know when they left," said a woman selling clothes in a garage sale for her few remaining neighbors. She declined to give her name, simply pointing to the block behind her where 15 teenagers were killed on Jan. 31 while they watched a football game. The massacre was a case of mistaken identity: Drug gangs had been targeting another party, authorities later said.
Down the street, the bloodstained walls of the home had been washed clean a few days ago, residents said. But bullet holes remained in the walls and neighbors nervously kicked at the dirt as a police car, permanently stationed along the block, rolled by.
The rising towers of El Paso, visible from downtown Juárez, offer a stark contrast along with a promise of security just across the border bridge. Among those with a home in El Paso is Juárez's mayor, José Reyes Ferriz. Mr. Reyes uses the home only for his work as an attorney on the other side of the border, his spokesman said. But he added: "It's very common to have a [second] house in El Paso."
Guillermo Marcedo, 70 years old, keeps to one side of the border. Born in Juárez, he now drives a taxi in El Paso. Like many of his colleagues, he will rarely take clients to Mexico, fearing an attack.
Having arrived in the 1990s when the border had been quiet, Mr. Marcedo has moved as many relatives as he can into the U.S. "I had to think of my family," he says from behind the wheel on a recent day. Two weeks ago, the last member of his immediate circle, a son who works as a psychologist for the Juárez government, received permission from the U.S. to make the move.
Not all who want to leave, especially the poor, have been so lucky. With bank loans more difficult to get and mortgage interest rates high, the Texas town has fallen out of reach for even some well-heeled Mexicans.
"A lot of them do not have established credit [because] they had no intention of ever living here," says Sandie Leal, an El Paso real-estate agent who recently struggled to cobble together bank statements and other documents for a Mexican client. The client was offered an interest rate of 9%, Ms. Leal says, which he turned down, but has opted to rent in the city.
Whether they rent or buy across the border, much of the town's middle class has left it, says Oscar Cantú, publisher of the local newspaper El Norte. Two weeks ago he sent reporters knocking door-to-door in the town's wealthy neighborhoods, and says they turned up roughly 3,000 empty homes. "There was a lot of speculation about how many people had gone—we counted," he said.
In one such subdivision, residents had scrawled graffiti, pleading with the government for help. "Defend us, I want to live," says one. "We had been the hope, the light," reads another. "Don't lie to us, Calderón."
It remains to be seen when—if ever—Juárez's departed residents return. Ms. Vargas, the economist, expects many will cross back from El Paso when the drug situation calms and the economy picks up. "They're waiting it out," she says.
But for his part, Mr. Marcedo, the driver, says he intends to die in the United States.
Write to Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com
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I think this gets it right:
Mexico and the Failed State Revisited
April 6, 2010
By George Friedman
STRATFOR argued March 13, 2008, that Mexico was nearing the status of a failed state. A failed state is one in which the central government has lost control over significant areas of the country and the state is unable to function. In revisiting this issue, it seems to us that the Mexican government has lost control of the northern tier of Mexico to drug-smuggling organizations, which have significantly greater power in that region than government forces. Moreover, the ability of the central government to assert its will against these organizations has weakened to the point that decisions made by the state against the cartels are not being implemented or are being implemented in a way that would guarantee failure.
Despite these facts, it is not clear to STRATFOR that Mexico is becoming a failed state. Instead, it appears the Mexican state has accommodated itself to the situation. Rather than failing, it has developed strategies designed both to ride out the storm and to maximize the benefits of that storm for Mexico.
First, while the Mexican government has lost control over matters having to do with drugs and with the borderlands of the United States, Mexico City’s control over other regions — and over areas other than drug enforcement — has not collapsed (though its lack of control over drugs could well extend to other areas eventually). Second, while drugs reshape Mexican institutions dramatically, they also, paradoxically, stabilize Mexico. We need to examine these crosscurrents to understand the status of Mexico.
Mexico’s Core Problem
Let’s begin by understanding the core problem. The United States consumes vast amounts of narcotics, which, while illegal there, make their way in abundance. Narcotics derive from low-cost agricultural products that become consumable with minimal processing. With its long, shared border with the United States, Mexico has become a major grower, processor and exporter of narcotics. Because the drugs are illegal and thus outside normal market processes, their price is determined by their illegality rather than by the cost of production. This means extraordinary profits can be made by moving narcotics from the Mexican side of the border to markets on the other side.
Whoever controls the supply chain from the fields to the processing facilities and, above all, across the border, will make enormous amounts of money. Various Mexican organizations — labeled cartels, although they do not truly function as such, since real cartels involve at least a degree of cooperation among producers, not open warfare — vie for this business. These are competing businesses, each with its own competing supply chain.
Typically, competition among businesses involves lowering prices and increasing quality. This would produce small, incremental shifts in profits on the whole while dramatically reducing prices. An increased market share would compensate for lower prices. Similarly, lawsuits are the normal solution to unfair competition. But neither is the case with regard to illegal goods.
The surest way to increase smuggling profits is not through market mechanisms but by taking over competitors’ supply chains. Given the profit margins involved, persons wanting to control drug supply chains would be irrational to buy, since the lower-cost solution would be to take control of these supply chains by force. Thus, each smuggling organization has an attached paramilitary organization designed to protect its own supply chain and to seize its competitors’ supply chains.
The result is ongoing warfare between competing organizations. Given the amount of money being made in delivering their product to American cities, these paramilitary organizations are well-armed, well-led and well-motivated. Membership in such paramilitary groups offers impoverished young men extraordinary opportunities for making money, far greater than would be available to them in legitimate activities.
The raging war in Mexico derives logically from the existence of markets for narcotics in the United States; the low cost of the materials and processes required to produce these products; and the extraordinarily favorable economics of moving narcotics across the border. This warfare is concentrated on the Mexican side of the border. But from the Mexican point of view, this warfare does not fundamentally threaten Mexico’s interests.
A Struggle Far From the Mexican Heartland
The heartland of Mexico is to the south, far from the country’s northern tier. The north is largely a sparsely populated highland desert region seen from Mexico City as an alien borderland intertwined with the United States as much as it is part of Mexico. Accordingly, the war raging there doesn’t represent a direct threat to the survival of the Mexican regime.
(click here to enlarge image)
Indeed, what the wars are being fought over in some ways benefits Mexico. The amount of money pouring into Mexico annually is stunning. It is estimated to be about $35 billion to $40 billion each year. The massive profit margins involved make these sums even more significant. Assume that the manufacturing sector produces revenues of $40 billion a year through exports. Assuming a generous 10 percent profit margin, actual profits would be $4 billion a year. In the case of narcotics, however, profit margins are conservatively estimated to stand at around 80 percent. The net from $40 billion would be $32 billion; to produce equivalent income in manufacturing, exports would have to total $320 billion.
In estimating the impact of drug money on Mexico, it must therefore be borne in mind that drugs cannot be compared to any conventional export. The drug trade’s tremendously high profit margins mean its total impact on Mexico vastly outstrips even the estimated total sales, even if the margins shifted substantially.
On the whole, Mexico is a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade. Even if some of the profits are invested overseas, the pool of remaining money flowing into Mexico creates tremendous liquidity in the Mexican economy at a time of global recession. It is difficult to trace where the drug money is going, which follows from its illegality. Certainly, drug dealers would want their money in a jurisdiction where it could not be easily seized even if tracked. U.S. asset seizure laws for drug trafficking make the United States an unlikely haven. Though money clearly flows out of Mexico, the ability of the smugglers to influence the behavior of the Mexican government by investing some of it makes Mexico a likely destination for a substantial portion of such funds.
The money does not, however, flow back into the hands of the gunmen shooting it out on the border; even their bosses couldn’t manage funds of that magnitude. And while money can be — and often is — baled up and hidden, the value of money is in its use. As with illegal money everywhere, the goal is to wash it and invest it in legitimate enterprises where it can produce more money. That means it has to enter the economy through legitimate institutions — banks and other financial entities — and then be redeployed into the economy. This is no different from the American Mafia’s practice during and after Prohibition.
The Drug War and Mexican National Interests
From Mexico’s point of view, interrupting the flow of drugs to the United States is not clearly in the national interest or in that of the economic elite. Observers often dwell on the warfare between smuggling organizations in the northern borderland but rarely on the flow of American money into Mexico. Certainly, that money could corrupt the Mexican state, but it also behaves as money does. It is accumulated and invested, where it generates wealth and jobs.
For the Mexican government to become willing to shut off this flow of money, the violence would have to become far more geographically widespread. And given the difficulty of ending the traffic anyway — and that many in the state security and military apparatus benefit from it — an obvious conclusion can be drawn: Namely, it is difficult to foresee scenarios in which the Mexican government could or would stop the drug trade. Instead, Mexico will accept both the pain and the benefits of the drug trade.
Mexico’s policy is consistent: It makes every effort to appear to be stopping the drug trade so that it will not be accused of supporting it. The government does not object to disrupting one or more of the smuggling groups, so long as the aggregate inflow of cash does not materially decline. It demonstrates to the United States efforts (albeit inadequate) to tackle the trade, while pointing out very real problems with its military and security apparatus and with its officials in Mexico City. It simultaneously points to the United States as the cause of the problem, given Washington’s failure to control demand or to reduce prices by legalization. And if massive amounts of money pour into Mexico as a result of this U.S. failure, Mexico is not going to refuse it.
The problem with the Mexican military or police is not lack of training or equipment. It is not a lack of leadership. These may be problems, but they are only problems if they interfere with implementing Mexican national policy. The problem is that these forces are personally unmotivated to take the risks needed to be effective because they benefit more from being ineffective. This isn’t incompetence but a rational national policy.
Moreover, Mexico has deep historic grievances toward the United States dating back to the Mexican-American War. These have been exacerbated by U.S. immigration policy that the Mexicans see both as insulting and as a threat to their policy of exporting surplus labor north. There is thus no desire to solve the Americans’ problem. Certainly, there are individuals in the Mexican government who wish to stop the smuggling and the inflow of billions of dollars. They will try. But they will not succeed, as too much is at stake. One must ignore public statements and earnest private assurances and instead observe the facts on the ground to understand what’s really going on.
The U.S. Strategic Problem
And this leaves the United States with a strategic problem. There is some talk in Mexico City and Washington of the Americans becoming involved in suppression of the smuggling within Mexico (even though the cartels, to use that strange name, make certain not to engage in significant violence north of the border and mask it when they do to reduce U.S. pressure on Mexico). This is certainly something the Mexicans would be attracted to. But it is unclear that the Americans would be any more successful than the Mexicans. What is clear is that any U.S. intervention would turn Mexican drug traffickers into patriots fighting yet another Yankee incursion. Recall that Pershing never caught Pancho Villa, but he did help turn Villa into a national hero in Mexico.
The United States has a number of choices. It could accept the status quo. It could figure out how to reduce drug demand in the United States while keeping drugs illegal. It could legalize drugs, thereby driving their price down and ending the motivation for smuggling. And it could move into Mexico in a bid to impose its will against a government, banking system and police and military force that benefit from the drug trade.
The United States does not know how to reduce demand for drugs. The United States is not prepared to legalize drugs. This means the choice lies between the status quo and a complex and uncertain (to say the least) intervention. We suspect the United States will attempt some limited variety of the latter, while in effect following the current strategy and living with the problem.
Ultimately, Mexico is a failed state only if you accept the idea that its goal is to crush the smugglers. If, on the other hand, one accepts the idea that all of Mexican society benefits from the inflow of billions of American dollars (even though it also pays a price), then the Mexican state has not failed — it is following a rational strategy to turn a national problem into a national benefit.
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Gunmen Abduct 6 From Hotels In Northern Mexico
OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
POSTED: Wednesday, April 21, 2010
UPDATED: 10:45 pm CDT April 21, 2010
MEXICO CITY -- Dozens of gunmen burst into a Holiday Inn and another hotel in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey Wednesday, searching from room-to-room and abducting at least six people, prosecutors said.
Nuevo Leon state attorney general Alejandro Garza y Garza said that between 20 and 30 gunmen abducted four guests and a receptionist from the 17-story Holiday Inn in Mexico's industrial hub, which has seen a surge in violence recently.
The gunmen had with them a handcuffed man who led them to the fifth floor, Garza y Garza said. The assailants stormed room 517 where an Asian guest was staying, realized he wasn't who they were looking for and left, he said.
The group then searched at least seven more rooms on the fifth floor, apparently looking for specific targets, before going across the street to the Hotel Mision where they abducted a receptionist, the attorney general said.
Those abducted included three male guests who registered at the Holiday Inn as businessmen from Mexico City and a woman registered as from the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.
Garza y Garza said a private security guard who was outside the Holiday Inn has been reported missing but that it remains unclear if he was abducted by the gunmen.
Organized crime was likely behind the attacks, the state attorney general said.
"A lot of what we're going through right now is part of a readjustment among cartels," Garza y Garza told a news conference in Monterrey.
Still, it was not clear exactly what motivated the abductions or who the victims were.
Local media reported that the gunmen hijacked several trucks and used them to barricade two main avenues about 15 blocks from the hotels, presumably to prevent authorities from reaching the area. But Garza y Garza said police were still investigating that.
He said the attackers stole a computer containing the Holiday Inn's hotel registry and the hotel's security videos.
The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey denied media reports that an American woman had been kidnapped from the Holiday Inn, and it repeated warnings to U.S. citizens to be wary of violence in Nuevo Leon state.
Violence by battling drug cartels has become increasingly intrusive in Monterrey, where drug cartels have tried to confound police and soldiers by blockading roads with stolen, sometimes-burning vehicles.
Authorities say the violence is the result of a split between the Gulf cartel and its former ally, the Zetas drug gang.
On March 19, two university students were killed in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen and soldiers outside the gates of their campus.
Since those shootings, at least three U.S. universities have suspended their exchange studies programs in Monterrey.
In one wealthy suburb on Monterrey, the mayor created a group of private crime fighters, unaffiliated with police and paid with donations by local businessmen -- a security force he now says will be disbanded.
Mayor Mauricio Fernandez of San Pedro Garza Garcia said the group was "smeared" by allegations it might itself be involved in illegal activities.
He previously said the group would perform "rough work, I would call it cleansing" and suggested it might operate outside the law.
Elsewhere, police found the bound bodies of two men in the Mexican city of Cuernavaca, alongside a banner that threatened to kill 25 more drug cartel members.
Police said the killings are part of a battle between traffickers Hector Beltran Leyva and U.S.-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as "La Barbie."
Cuernavaca police said the bodies were found early Wednesday outside a bar.
A message left near the cadavers said 25 of Beltran Leyva's henchmen are being held and interrogated in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco and would be executed soon.
Late Wednesday, a clash between soldiers and gunmen in a Mexico City suburb left two alleged gunmen dead, said Guadalupe Sanchez, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutor in Mexico state.
In the border city of Tijuana, the Mexican army seized about 19 tons of marijuana that was packed and ready to be shipped north of the border, Gen. Alfonso Duarte said Wednesday.
State police reported that three men were found shot to death Tuesday in a taxi in Acapulco. It was unclear whether they were related to the drug dispute.
An estimated 22,700 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a U.S.-backed military crackdown on drug cartels.
Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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ARMED ARIZONAS By Massad Ayoob
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ARMED ARIZONANS
Particularly after the recent murder of an Arizona rancher who had turned in to authorities a quantity of drugs he’d found cached on his property, Arid Zoners have taken to arming themselves with a new level of determination. They are well aware that they may find themselves up against VERY heavily armed people: see the photo below taken by law enforcement at what was reported to be a Zeta Cartel training camp just south of the border.
A good friend of mine who is heavily into teaching concealed carry classes in Southern Arizona, and supplemental courses for soldiers out of Fort Huachuca, with whom he is very well connected due to his own long and honorable Army service, tells me there is much interest among the ranchers in learning defensive employment of military style rifles. Makes sense to me. I’ve seen a recovered firearms training manual recovered by US law enforcement from cartel members, which indicates that they are attempting to train themselves to a military Special Forces standard. Folks with combat skills like these will be moving fast and taking advantage of hard cover: this makes it important to have a gun in the car that can send bullets punching through auto bodies and heavy, tempered window glass. Multiple, fast-moving targets require lots of ammo, too: twenty-round and larger magazines make sense here.
The US Border Patrol is struggling valiantly to contain the problem, but is short of manpower and budget. THIS VIDEO shows some of the scope of the problem.
During our sojourn on the border, we had an M4 in the car, and also my idea of an ideal “car gun,” Springfield Armory’s super-handy, super-controllable SOCOM-16 semiautomatic rifle in caliber 7.62mm NATO. Didn’t need it, of course, but it provided a sense of being ready for the worst…
Could such hardware ever be necessary on American streets? FBI Director Robert Mueller knows the answer. Read IN ITS ENTIRETY his 2009 speech HERE where he discusses the possibility of an American Mumbai.
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19 slain at Mexico rehab clinic, 16 in second city
By OLIVIA TORRES and DANICA COTO Olivia Torres And Danica Coto – Fri Jun 11, 11:57 pm ET
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – At least 30 gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation center in a Mexican border state capital and opened fire, killing 19 men and wounding four people, police said. Gunmen also killed 16 people in another drug-plagued northern city.
The killings marked one of the bloodiest weeks ever in Mexico and came just weeks after authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned silver mine, presumably victims of the country's drug violence.
The bullet-riddled bodies of 14 men and two women were found Friday in different parts of Ciudad Madero, a city in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where violence has surged this year amid a turf battle between the Gulf cartel and its former ally, the Zetas gang of hit men. Authorities earlier said 20 were killed but reduced that to 16. Police had no information on suspects. It was the deadliest day in Tamaulipas drug violence since 18 gunmen were killed during a series of coordinated attacks on soldiers in April.
Another round of killings occurred late Thursday at the Faith and Life center in Chihuahua city, about 210 miles (350 kilometers) south of Ciudad Juarez and the border with El Paso, Texas, state police spokesman Fidel Banuelos said.
On Wednesday, unidentified assailants killed one man and wounded another at a rehab center in Ciudad Juarez, which has become one of the world's most deadly cities because of drug violence.
More than 60 people have died in mass shootings at rehab clinics in a little less than two years. Police have said two of Mexico's six major drug cartels are exploiting the centers to recruit hit men and drug smugglers, often threatening to kill those who don't cooperate. Others are killed for failing to pay for drugs or betraying a dealer.
The men at the Faith and Life center were roused out of bed shortly before 11 p.m. and placed face-down along a hallway, the center's director, Cristian Rey Ramirez, told The Associated Press.
Ramirez was alerted to the attack by a telephone call from the center's pastor.
"He tells me, 'You know what, come here because they just killed everyone,'" Rey said. "There was no warning."
The attackers left messages accusing the victims of being criminals, Banuelos said.
Four other people were hospitalized, two in critical condition and two in serious condition, officials said. Most of the victims ranged in age from 30 to 40, with some older, and included a blind man, said the Rev. Rene Castillo, a minister who gives weekly sermons at the center, which opened 11 years ago.
"Everyone is so scared now," he said. Violence is "all everyone talks about, especially with all the threats that have been made," he said.
It was the first such attack on the center, although two men and a woman were kidnapped there in April 2008 while attending a memorial service, Banuelos said. The three-story, baby-blue concrete building houses addicts for 90 days, although some of those attacked had been there for up to two years, Castillo said.
Among the victims was Jose Luis Zamarron Barraza, a heroin addict who arrived home a year ago from the U.S., said a relative who declined to give her name out of fear. She did not know Zamarron's age. He entered the center a year ago, she said.
"The only crime he committed was to use drugs and want to get clean," she said. "He was really happy because he was about to leave. ... He almost made it."
President Felipe Calderon, whose war with drug cartels has seen nearly 23,000 people killed since he took office in late 2006, issued a statement condemning the shootings.
"They are outrageous acts that reinforce the conviction of the need to fight criminal groups who carry out such barbaric acts with full legal force," he said.
The federal government promised in February to invest $7.7 million in rehab centers and related programs in Ciudad Juarez. But plans for Mexico's first government-run drug rehab center have stalled for unknown reasons.
The government did open two small offices in Ciudad Juarez two months ago that provide counseling and prevention services.
Chihuahua state Health Secretary Octavio Martinez Perez said the Faith and Life center had a license and regularly met all state requirements.
"It is regrettable and tragic," he said.
In other presumably drug-related violence, authorities discovered three bodies, one of which had been decapitated, in the Pacific Coast state of Guerrero on Thursday and Friday.
One of the bodies was found Friday in the town of Iguala accompanied by a note. Police did not reveal what it said.
A second body was found Thursday in the town of Tecoanapa leaning against a cement post, its head placed between its knees, police said. Attached to that body was a message written on cardboard whose contents authorities declined to release.
The third body was found Thursday with signs of torture in Taxco, a colonial-era tourist town known for its silver jewelry. In late May, authorities discovered a mass grave in an abandoned silver mine on the outskirts of Taxco that had become a dumping ground for apparent victims of Mexico's drug violence. Authorities found 55 bodies before ending their search last weekend.
Also in Guerrero, two gunmen died Thursday after attacking a military convoy while two brothers, including a 16-year-old boy, died Friday during an ambush. No further details were available.
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Associated Press Writer Olivia Torres reported this story from Ciudad Juarez and Danica Coto from Mexico City. AP Writer E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/22/mexican-gangs-permanent-lookouts-parkland/
Mexican Gangs Maintain Permanent Lookout Bases in Hills of Arizona
By Adam Housley
Published June 22, 2010
| FOXNews.com
Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, federal agents tell Fox News.
The scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios -- all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time.
Click here for more on this story from Adam Housley.
“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement," said an agent who patrols the area and asked not to be named. "We (federal border agents), as well as the Pima County Sheriff Office and the Bureau of Land Management, can attest to that.”
Much of the drug traffic originates in the Menagers Dam area, the Vekol Valley, Stanfield and around the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. It even follows a natural gas pipeline that runs from Mexico into Arizona.
In these areas, which are south and west of Tucson, sources said there are “cartel scouts galore” watching the movements of federal, state and local law enforcement, from the border all the way up to Interstate 8.
“Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers," a second federal agent told Fox News by e-mail. "The danger is out there, with all the weapons being found coming northbound…. someone needs to know about this!”
The agents blame part of their plight on new policies from Washington, claiming it has put a majority of the U.S. agents on the border itself. One agent compared it to a short-yardage defense in football, explaining that once the smugglers and drug-runners break through the front line, they're home free.
“We are unable to work any traffic, because they have us forward deployed," the agent said. "We are unable to work the traffic coming out of the mountains. That traffic usually carries weapons and dope, too, again always using stolen vehicles.”
The Department of Homeland Security denies it has ordered any major change in operations or any sort of change in forward deployment.
“The Department of Homeland Security has dedicated unprecedented manpower, technology and infrastructure resources to the Southwest border over the course of the past 16 months," DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said. "Deployment of CBP/Border Patrol and ICE personnel to various locations throughout the Southwest border is based on actionable intelligence and operational need, not which elected official can yell the loudest.”
While agents in the area agree that southwest Arizona has been a trouble spot for more than a decade, many believe Washington and politicians “who come here for one-day visit” aren’t seeing the big picture.
They say the area has never been controlled and has suddenly gotten worse, with the cartels maintaining a strong presence on U.S. soil. More than ever, agents on the front lines are wearing tactical gear, including helmets, to protect themselves.
“More than 4,000 of these agents are deployed in Arizona," Chandler says. "The strategy to secure our nation’s borders is based on a 'defense in depth' philosophy, including the use of interior checkpoints, like the one on FR 85 outside Ajo, to interdict threats attempting to move from the border into the interior of our nation.”
Without placing direct fault on anyone, multiple agents told Fox that the situation is more dangerous for them than ever now that the cartels have such a strong position on the American side of the border.
They say morale is down among many who patrol the desolate area, and they worry that the situation won't change until an agent gets killed.
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This site is a completely unknown quantity, but the pictures seem to tell quite a story.
http://www.claytonmspaparazzi.com/2010/06/13/look-what-they-found-near-the-texanmexican-border.html
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IMHO far and away the stupidest part of the WOD is the criminalization of marijuana.
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second post
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/c...nt?oid=1172836
Cannabis Cultivation
U.S. Forest Service land is increasingly fertile ground for pot plants grown by Mexican cartels
Media references to Mexican drug cartels are invariably followed by some variation of the phrase "spill over into this country." Those five words are key to the flak currently being sent up by the federal government—most recently by Janet Napolitano, former Arizona governor and now head of the Department of Homeland Security.
She wants you to believe the feds have a plan to respond should Mexican cartel violence "spill over into this country."
Spill over? It's already here, in our border communities, as well as in the 230 cities across the nation where the cartels are active. The wave of home invasions in Tucson and the kidnappings in Phoenix aren't the result of Tupperware parties gone bad.
Even our public lands are being hit, especially in the Tonto National Forest around Payson, 90 miles northeast of Phoenix.
Between 2006 and 2008, the Gila County Narcotics Task Force took down 43 pot farms, eradicating 82,904 marijuana plants, says Task Force commander Johnny Sanchez. All but a handful were on Tonto land.
All of the farms larger than 1,000 plants were apparently operated by Mexican drug organizations. The workers are usually Mexican nationals brought across the border for that purpose. They might arrive at a grow site in April and live there until harvest in October.
These men are considered "high-value assets," according to a Forest Service criminal investigator who asked for anonymity. They're generally from rural, marijuana-growing areas in Mexico, such as Michoacán, which means they're experienced in the drug trade and capable of surviving outdoors.
But at harvest time, the cartel acquires additional workers, sometimes by kidnapping them off the streets of Phoenix and hauling them to Payson to work off smuggling debts. Others are brought across the border on the promise that they'll be set up with some unnamed job. They're driven out to the forest and—only then—told of their new "employment." The forest investigator says these "farm workers" are often armed. Gunfire has erupted in the Tonto at least twice.
In September 2005, bear hunters approached a pot farm along Deer Creek, in the Mazatzal Wilderness, and were fired upon by cartel guards. The hunters returned fire and retreated to notify police.
The following year, a Forest Service tactical team raided a site in the same area and took fire from a guard carrying a semiautomatic rifle. Two men were arrested, and one escaped. The rifleman, a Mexican national who was shot in the abdomen, was eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The investigator worries about possible encounters in which ordinary Americans trying to enjoy the outdoors could accidentally walk into trouble.
"If you're a hiker or a hunter carrying a gun, and you stumble into one of these areas, and they mistake you for somebody else, shooting can easily erupt," says the investigator. "I wish I could tell you it's not dangerous, but I can't."
In 2007, officers found a grow site a mile and a half from a Boy Scout camp 12 miles north of Payson. A Scout leader out hiking spotted the marijuana and notified police.
Cartel workers live in camps consisting of canvas tarps for shelter or branch lean-tos set against a canyon wall. They eat rice and beans cooked on camping stoves and get resupplied by men who march in with backpacks full of provisions.
The farms, usually at ravine bottoms or on hillsides, are irrigated by gravity-fed piping systems connected to natural springs or waterfalls as much as 5 miles away.
"These areas are so remote, it kicks our butts to get into them, and they usually hear us coming," says Sanchez, adding that guards sometimes rig access trails with trip wire strung with spoons or cans that rattle when disturbed.
So far, Arizona lawmen have not encountered booby traps, as has happened in California's national forests. About 57 percent of all marijuana grown on American public land originates there, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
In July 2007, John Walters, then head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the Washington Times: "America's public lands are under attack. Instead of being appreciated as national treasures, they are being exploited and destroyed by foreign drug-trafficking organizations and heavily armed Mexican marijuana cartels."
The Sequoia National Forest, in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, 350 miles from the border, has been a dangerous battlefield in the drug war. In August 2008, Walters visited Sequoia and said law enforcement had eradicated 420,000 marijuana plants in that forest in the previous eight years.
The first pot farms at Sequoia were discovered in 1998. The first raids on cartel-run grow sites in Tonto occurred in 2002.
But they've been found on other Arizona public lands as well. The Forest Service investigator said the Coconino Forest, around Flagstaff, eradicated 4,200 plants in 2008.
No farms have been discovered in the Kaibab Forest above Grand Canyon. "But we had a dramatic increase in activity last year in Southern Utah," says the investigator. "If they're in Southern Utah, they're probably in Kaibab, too."
No farms have been discovered in Southern Arizona's Coronado Forest, either, due to the lack of water, says Keith Graves, former district ranger in Nogales, now border liaison between the forest and the federal Secure Border Initiative.
The Tonto gets hit hard because of its proximity to Phoenix, where drug organizations thrive. It also has good water sources; Highway 260, which cuts through the forest, makes for easy re-supply.
One advantage of growing marijuana in the United States is that it bypasses border security. But U.S.-grown pot also draws a heftier price because it's often a better grade. "And they're less likely to have to deal with competing smuggling organizations, so it's cheaper," says the forest service investigator.
But the farms take a big toll on the environment. Cartel workers cut down trees and brush, causing erosion, and divert streams to access water. They leave behind piles of trash, as well as human waste and even banned pesticides smuggled up from Mexico that can wash into streams after rains.
Task Force Commander Sanchez, who has worked narcotics enforcement for 20 years, expects the problem to eventually "spill over" onto the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache reservations, as well as other reservations well beyond the Tonto.
"I don't think this will slow down," he says. "We're not winning the war on drugs, I can tell you that."
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Third post of the day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXs8gRI70oo
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You'll note that when prohibition ended, the organized crime entities involed in bootlegging did not disappear in a cloud of smoke.
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But they were substantially diminished, yes?
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They went into other criminal enterprises. Were weed to become legal in the entire US tomorrow, they'd double down into meth, coke and whatever else would be profitable.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/19/eveningnews/main1636846.shtml
The epidemic of meth use is still rampant because the drug is still plentiful on America's streets. Why?
"They just came across into Mexico to start production," said Fuillermo Gonzalez of the Tijuana Police Department.
This deadly drug is now a growth industry for Mexico's deadly drug cartels. They're replacing small U.S. kitchen labs with Mexican super labs. The cartels are smuggling ephedrine from China, India and Europe and cooking up huge quantities of cheap meth — including an especially potent variety, Mexican Ice. Then the cartels smuggle it north to U.S. users.
"They're making quite a lot of money off of meth," Gonzalez said. "They are pretty much using the same routes that they've used in the past with cocaine and with marijuana."
By some estimates, as much at 80 percent of the meth on U.S. streets comes from Mexico. Agents see more of it at the border. Meth seizures are up 106 percent in a year at the border crossing near San Diego.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/etc/updmexico.html
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Understood, but my understanding is that A LOT fewer people do meth than smoke pot.
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Yes, but do you think any of the cartels will hang up their guns and go into lawn care as a result?
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I dunno, what happened when they ended Prohibition?
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The Great Depression of the 1930s did not affect the business of organized crime to the degree it affected many aspects of the legitimate economy. After Prohibition ended in 1933, major criminal organizations diversified and became increasingly powerful in the process. Gambling, loan-sharking, and the growth industry of narcotics distribution became important sources of criminal revenue as repeal threatened the proceeds from the illegal sale of alcohol.
An increasingly significant area of enterprise during this period was "racketeering." While the term may be defined many different ways, it generally refers to the variety of means by which organized crime groups, through the use of violence (actual or implied), gain control of labor unions or legitimate businesses. Often, though, the relationships that joined organized crime groups to unions or legitimate business were mutually advantageous. The leadership of a labor union, for example, might seek to exploit the violent reputation of those involved in organized crime in order to pressure an employer to meet a demand for concessions. Similarly, a business owner might attempt to control the competitive character of the legitimate marketplace or to avert labor troubles through affiliation with those willing to use violence and intimidation in the pursuit of economic goals. The International Longshoremen's Association and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are among the best known examples of labor organizations affected by racketeering.
Read more: Organized Crime - History http://law.jrank.org/pages/1624/Organized-Crime-History.html#ixzz0s4Vn85OW
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So they got out of the booze biz as there was no money in it?
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After Prohibition ended in 1933, major criminal organizations diversified and became increasingly powerful in the process. Gambling, loan-sharking, and the growth industry of narcotics distribution became important sources of criminal revenue as repeal threatened the proceeds from the illegal sale of alcohol.
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So they got into the drug biz 'cause there was money in it?
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Organized criminal groups tend to engage in activities that they estimate will be profitable.
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Yup. And they must thank their lucky stars that the US has opted to make some substances illegal as it ensures them a jaw dropping bottom line.
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Is there anything you don't want legalized? Can you foresee any unpleasant consequences that might result from legalization?
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Yes, I can foresee all sorts of problems. Alas they are eclipsed by the pathologies the current regimen brings daily.
Is there any number of citizens incarcerated, any amount of citizens killed, any degree of rights trampled upon that isn't acceptable collateral damage where the WOD is concerned?
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-090323-drug-cartels-immigrants,0,4929405.story
WASHINGTON — Mexican drug cartels and their vast network of associates have branched out from their traditional business of narcotics trafficking and are now playing a central role in the multibillion-dollar-a-year business of illegal-immigrant smuggling, U.S. law-enforcement officials and other experts say.
The business of smuggling humans across the Mexico border has always been brisk, with many thousands coming across every year. But smugglers affiliated with the drug cartels have taken the enterprise to a new level -- and made it more violent -- by commandeering much of the operation from beginning to end from independent "coyotes," according to these officials and recent congressional testimony
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Yes, I can foresee all sorts of problems. Alas they are eclipsed by the pathologies the current regimen brings daily.
Is there any number of citizens incarcerated, any amount of citizens killed, any degree of rights trampled upon that isn't acceptable collateral damage where the WOD is concerned?
If you think the rule of law is expensive, try living without it.
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Almost as expensive as living with the rule of failed law, ask the millions incarcerated at what, an average of 100K ea per annum? I guess all the corpses this failed prohibition has generated are cheap by comparison as the families take care of planting 'em.
35 years ago I could score just about any psychoactive substance you could name in the halls of my high school. These days my kids can do the same, for the most part at a cheaper cost adjusted for inflation. Than, goodness for the WOD, eh? Is there some measure by which it hasn't failed by?
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Want me to repost the polling for drug legalization?
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Like the more people who are wrong the righter the wrong is?
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Lets continue this on the War on Drugs thread please.
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D9GLQI9G1.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/latin_america/10485228.stm
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/
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Rarick, No I don't favor merging U.S.of A. with Mexico or any other failed third world nation. I would favor however if New Mexico the state would vote to change its name to Not-Mexico to remove some of the confusion along our southern border.
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Rarick: "Just throwing a what if subject (unification US/Mexico) out there to maybe help define some of the problems, get people thinking... Another concept for a solution?"
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Also just thinking aloud, but war comes to mind. Limited strikes at limited targets of the staging areas on the other side of the border that are being used to invade our country, after we take what steps we can on our side. To the extent that this is criminal traffic that is organized and operational on both sides of the border I would see us as wholly justified in protecting our country against invasion.
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Mexico
Mexican State and Ministerial Police raided a safe house that allegedly belonged to Los Zetas in Las Hortensias neighborhood of Tapachula, Chiapas, on 30 June 2010. Authorities seized two armored vehicles, fragmentation grenades, and multiple high caliber weapons. An explosive device was dismantled. (Clearly these were bought in some Texas gun store , , ,)
Mexico
Narco banners signed by Carteles Unidos (United Cartels) were posted on 27 June 2010 in select areas of Guadalajara, Jalisco. These messages, directed to the Governor of Jalisco, read: "With all due respect Mr. Governor, this information is true, let us kill all these criminals that have dismembered innocent people in our State.”
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CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico—Two Americans were driving back to El Paso, Texas, last December after an afternoon across the border in Ciudad Juárez. A few blocks from the border, they were surrounded by Mexican army trucks and pulled from their Dodge Ram.
Mexico's military says it found two suitcases full of marijuana in the cab of the pickup truck. Two soldiers later testified that they drove the two Americans to a military compound on the outskirts of town, questioned them briefly, then turned them over to civilian authorities. The Americans were charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell.
Those two men—Shohn Huckabee, 23 years old, and Carlos Quijas, 36—are being held in a Ciudad Juárez jail. They tell a different story about what happened that night. They say Mexican soldiers planted the marijuana in their truck. When they arrived at the military base, they say, they were blindfolded, tied up, hit with rifle butts, shocked with electricity and threatened with death.
Shohn Huckabee in jail in Ciudad Juárez, where he faces drug charges after an encounter with soldiers.
Mexico's military is leading President Felipe Calderón's war against the nation's drug cartels, and Ciudad Juárez has emerged as one of the bloodiest battlegrounds. Nationwide, drug violence has claimed more than 25,000 lives since 2006—with government security forces accounting for an estimated 7% of the dead. In June alone, 103 police and soldiers were killed.
As the death toll rises, however, so have complaints about the military's tactics in trying to break the drug cartels' stranglehold on Mexican society. The human-rights office of the state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juárez is located, is investigating some 465 cases of alleged abuse and torture of Mexican citizens by soldiers. Gustavo de la Rosa, the office's ombudsman in Ciudad Juárez, says he knows of about 70 cases in which soldiers are alleged to have planted evidence, including some involving suitcases packed with marijuana.
Allegations of mistreatment of suspects have caught the eye of the U.S. Senate committee that oversees financial aid to Mexico for its war on drugs. In an internal report, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says it received allegations of serious human-rights violations in Ciudad Juárez last year. The report cites an unidentified young man picked up in El Paso who said he was arrested by the Mexican military in Ciudad Juárez and beaten and shocked. The man said he was released after the military concluded he had no useful information about trafficking, the report says.
Mr. Huckabee says he was subjected to similar tactics. "I believe what was done to me was torture," he said in an interview. "When I did not answer their questions, they shocked me with a wire that was in my hands. My whole body froze up. The pain went from bearable to a point where I couldn't even talk."
Mexican prosecutors say the two men were caught red-handed. Two soldiers involved in their arrest testified at their trial that they counted 99 packages of marijuana in the suitcases, weighing more than 100 pounds.
Messrs. Huckabee and Quijas say they've never been involved with drugs and would never have tried to cross the border with two suitcases of marijuana. During their trial, they produced three witnesses who testified that they saw soldiers put suitcases into Mr. Huckabee's truck. A verdict is expected this month. Each man faces up to 25 years in prison.
Representatives of Mexico's military and of President Calderón turned down requests for interviews. In a written response to questions from The Wall Street Journal, the army said it briefly took the Americans to the military compound but didn't torture them. "We categorically deny that soldiers use these methods, and say their actions are in total adherence to the law," the statement said.
The army previously has dismissed complaints of abuse as the work of people allied with drug traffickers who want to drive soldiers out of Ciudad Juárez. "Many times they make human-rights complaints because they want to limit our capacity for action and besmirch the institution," said Brigadier Gen. Jesús Hernández Pérez, commander of the 4th Artillery Regiment, in an interview late last year.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed nine residents of Ciudad Juárez—some of whom had been convicted of crimes—who said they were tortured by soldiers at the main army camp on the outskirts of the city.
A 33-year-old forklift operator said he had a firearm pointed to his head and was told he would be killed during a 48-hour interrogation. Two brothers, ages 53 and 56, said the military put plastic bags over their heads, shocked them and staged mock executions. A 25-year-old construction worker said soldiers used a Taser to shock his testicles. A 54-year-old diabetic rancher said he was blindfolded, beaten and shocked on his testicles, elbows and hands. He showed a reporter scars.
Between 2006 to 2009, complaints to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission about the military grew tenfold, to about 4,000, including allegations of robbery, rape, torture and killing. The allegations threaten to undermine public support for President Calderón's military campaign against traffickers. Some 50,000 soldiers now patrol the country.
In its statement, the military said it doesn't use torture under any circumstance. In Mexico, soldiers answer to their own military court system and not to civilian authorities, which means states can't prosecute them for abuse.
The case of the two Americans comes as political tensions along the U.S.-Mexico border have risen over issues such as illegal immigration and the trafficking of U.S. firearms into Mexico. Under the 2007 Merida Initiative, the U.S. agreed to provide Mexico with $1.3 billion to fight drug traffickers, including more than $420 million for the Mexican military. U.S. lawmakers have threatened to withhold 15%—nearly $200 million—if there are human-rights violations or other problems.
Mr. Huckabee grew up in El Paso. Friends recall he didn't have much taste for Ciudad Juárez, which before the escalating violence was known locally for teenage partying. On weekends, he was likely to be found hunting with his father or riding his dirt bike in the desert.
When he was 18, he borrowed money to start a small construction company, Site Solutions, a business that consumed much of his time. In 2008, he got married.
Records searches in El Paso County and in New Mexico reveal that Mr. Huckabee had been charged with speeding and illegal dumping, but contain no indication of involvement with drugs. The records showed no criminal trouble for his close friend Mr. Quijas, whom Mr. Huckabee had gotten to know on construction jobs.
On Dec. 18, Mr. Huckabee finished work midday and prepared to head to Ciudad Juárez to take his father's pickup truck for some inexpensive repair work, he and his father say. With him was Mr. Quijas, who says he had asked for a ride across the border to visit an ill grandfather.
Mr. Huckabee says he dropped Mr. Quijas off around 1 p.m., then drove to a repair shop and waited there. The repairs were finished around sunset, close to 5 p.m., according to the mechanic who did the work.
Mr. Huckabee says he made his way through rush-hour traffic and found Mr. Quijas at Abraham Lincoln Street, not far from the Bridge of the Americas leading into Texas. Around 6:40 p.m., the two say, they were passing Los Caballos, a well-known monument of running horses, when their car was surrounded by three Mexican military trucks.
"They grabbed us and threw us under a bench" in the back of a truck, says Mr. Huckabee. Their shirts were pulled over their heads as blindfolds, they say. The soldiers drove about a half hour to a military compound.
The two Americans were ordered out. Mr. Huckabee says a soldier pulled his wedding ring off his finger. (Neither the ring nor a cellphone taken earlier have been returned, he says.) The two men were separated. Each was examined by a doctor.
Mr. Quijas, who speaks both Spanish and English, says his eyes were wrapped with medical gauze. An interrogator, he says, asked him about the whereabouts of various people, using nicknames he didn't recognize. He says his interrogator threatened that some other men would force him to talk.
Mr. Quijas was moved to another room, he says, where his hands and feet were tied. He was wetted down with water, and he could hear the hum of a machine, he says.
Then someone shocked him with a metal rod on his testicles, neck, legs, back and anus, he says. He was taken back to the interrogator, questioned, then shocked again, he says.
Elsewhere, Mr. Huckabee, who speaks little Spanish, was being questioned, too. He was still blindfolded. His interrogator, he says, put objects in his hand, including what seemed to him to be drug paraphernalia, and asked him, in broken English, where they came from. He says he replied that he didn't know. Soldiers struck him repeatedly with the butt of a rifle, he says. Someone put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, he says, but it wasn't loaded.
Briefly, the two Americans were put together in a cold room. Then, Mr. Huckabee, still blindfolded, was taken away again, he says. He says he heard a voice telling him, in fluent English, that he had been caught with marijuana, cocaine and guns. He says he was told to put a wire into his hand.
When he denied knowing about the marijuana, he says, he was shocked. He was shocked repeatedly during the questioning, he says. "They said they could electrocute me if I didn't answer the truth," he says.
Court documents say the two men were booked between midnight and 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 19—roughly five or six hours after the time they say they were arrested. They were charged with drug possession and transferred to the municipal prison.
The following day, in a statement entered into the court record, Mr. Huckabee said he had been hit by soldiers and given "electric shocks." He says he discussed his treatment when visited by a U.S. consular officer on Dec. 19. A U.S. official says Mr. Huckabee didn't mention mistreatment until Dec. 28.
American officials say U.S. consulates see numerous cases every year of Americans arrested in Mexico, and the consulates don't get involved in defending them. Consular officials informed Mr. Huckabee's family that they couldn't represent their son or offer legal advice.
Neither Mr. Huckabee nor Mr. Quijas made a formal complaint with U.S. or Mexican authorities, saying they feared retaliation by soldiers then working at the jail. In the trial, they accused their captors of torture. The soldiers denied doing so.
Two medical examinations describe the condition of the Americans following their arrest. The first, conducted by a military doctor the night they were detained, found "no apparent harm" on either man. The military said the exam took place at 10:45 p.m.
Another doctor, Dr. Hugo Tabares, examined the men at 2:50 the following afternoon, after they were handed over to civilian authorities. He found bruising on both men, according to a report he filed that day. He reported a reddish-brown bruise on Mr. Huckabee's chest and several bruises on Mr. Quijas's right arm and left leg.
In a brief interview in his office, Dr. Tabares said there were "various bruises" on Mr. Huckabee's body that "could have been caused the previous day." He declined to speculate on the cause of the injuries. In a statement to the court, on Feb. 3, Dr. Tabares said the bruising had been "caused by a blunt instrument or object."
The military said in its statement to the Journal that it didn't know of Dr. Tabares's exam and had no comment on it.
In the Mexican judicial system, testimony isn't given in an open courtroom before a jury, but in office cubicles in front of lawyers. Typically, neither the judge nor the defendant is present. The judge rules based on the transcript and case file.
The trial of the two Americans unfolded in scattered hearings over the past six months. Two soldiers involved in the arrest testified that they searched the vehicle because the Americans were "acting nervously." The search, prosecutors said, turned up the two suitcases filled with a substance that later testing showed was marijuana. Prosecutors said it belonged to the two men.
Testimony from three Mexican witnesses at the scene—people who said they didn't know the Americans—contradicted the army's version of events.
José Antonio Bujanda, 21, told the court on Feb. 26 that he saw soldiers pull over Messrs. Huckabee and Quijas while he was washing windows of cars lined up to cross the bridge into Texas. He said he saw soldiers plant the suitcases in Mr. Huckabee's gray Dodge Ram.
"The two soldiers went to their own truck. I saw them take out two suitcases, then put them in the gray truck," he said.
Abraham Antero Torres, a 19-year-old candy seller, testified that he saw the same. "The military men that were behind took out two black traveler's suitcases and put them into the Ram, and that was it," he said.
A third witness, Fernando Monsiváis, another window washer, told the court: "The soldiers put the suitcases in the truck, the young men's truck."
Mr. Bujanda was shot and killed in front of his home by an unknown assailant on July 2. Attempts to reach Messrs. Torres and Monsiváis to comment were unsuccessful.
Alejandro Dominguez, a fingerprint expert hired by Mr. Huckabee's family, testified in March that the marijuana packages showed no signs of his fingerprints.
Court transcripts show a contradiction between when the Americans say they were arrested, at 6:40 p.m. on the road, and the official military account, which puts the time three hours later in a parking lot alongside the road. Under the military's timeline, the pair were arrested, taken to the base, then immediately taken to civil authorities, as Mexican law requires, leaving no time for lengthy interrogation.
A record of Mr. Huckabee's cellphone calls that evening, provided by his family, appears consistent with his account. The bill shows calls made throughout the day, ending at 6:38 p.m., minutes before he says he was arrested.
Mr. de la Rosa, the ombudsman of the state human-rights office in Ciudad Juárez, offers one theory about why the truck was stopped. A Mexican relative of Mr. Quijas whose name is similar, he says, is believed to be involved in the drug trade in town. Mr. de la Rosa speculates that the arrest may have been a case of mistaken identity. Mr. Quijas, who says he doesn't know his relative well, says that when he arrived at the jail, other inmates confused him with the relative.
Mr. de la Rosa says that if the soldiers confused Mr. Quijas with his relative, they wouldn't necessarily be inclined to turn him loose once they discovered his true identity. Winning a conviction, he says, would undermine potential complaints from the two men about abuse.
In its statement, the military said there was no confusion over the men's identities.
As they await a verdict, the two Americans share a cell with four other prisoners on the second floor of the Ciudad Juárez Center for Social Readaptation. The crowded facility houses some dangerous men. In June, three prison employees were shot by gang members.
Mr. Huckabee says defending himself in a foreign land hasn't been easy. A translator recruited for one hearing this spring, according to the transcript, said: "I don't speak English very well." The hearing continued.
Mr. Huckabee has been through five defense lawyers, none of whom speaks English. One lawyer who reviewed the case said recently he believed that crimes result from "demons entering the body and taking control, as Paul says in the Bible." One of his lawyers was shot and wounded in May, while exiting the prosecutor's offices.
—José de Córdoba contributed to this article.
Write to Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com
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Mexico Security Memo: July 19, 2010
July 19, 2010 | 2011 GMT
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Torreon Massacre and Overall Violence
A group of armed men traveling in some eight sport utility vehicles arrived just after midnight July 18 at the Italia Inn, a popular party venue just outside Torreon, Coahuila state, where a birthday party was taking place. The gunmen entered the facility and indiscriminately fired some 166 rounds at party guests who were dancing to a live band. A total of 18 people were killed, with 12 men and five women dying at the scene and one woman succumbing to her injuries later.
The Coahuila attorney general’s office did not say which criminal organization was responsible for the attack, but STRATFOR sources in Mexico claim the attack was in retaliation for the failure of the Italia Inn’s owner to pay extortion fees. The Comerca Lagunera metropolitan area of Mexico, which includes Torreon, Coahuila state, and Gomez Palacio, Durango state, is contested by the Los Zetas organization and Sinaloa cartel, and either group may have been responsible for the attack.
This incident is just the latest in the increasing number of extraordinarily violent attacks that have occurred this year in Mexico. The Mexican government estimated the death toll from organized crime-related violence from January through June 2010 to be 7,048 — only 700 deaths fewer than 2009’s annual total and dramatically more than death counts previously reported by the Mexican media, most of which have been between 6,000 and 6,500.
The violence throughout Mexico shows no sign of slowing, either. The Calderon administration insists its countercartel strategy is still playing out and will be re-evaluated in December 2010. The current strategy in place in Juarez is said to be the intended strategy nationwide, but the death toll from organized crime-related violence in Juarez has already surpassed 1,500 with nearly five-and-a-half months left in 2010 (the total in 2009 was 3,014). In the near term, the Mexican government has shown no signs it intends to change the strategy before its set evaluation date, but if the current trends in violence hold, Mexico would be on pace to well surpass the previous 2009 annual record for organized crime-related killings.
Juarez Explosion Controversy
Conflicting reports continue to emerge about a small improvised explosive device (IED) allegedly planted by the La Linea gang inside a car in Juarez, Chihuahua state, and used against Mexican security forces the evening of July 15. The Mexican government has allowed members of the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau (ATF) and FBI to inspect the scene, along with ATF canine explosive detection teams, and both agencies have collected evidence to be processed in the United States.
Press reports from Mexico and around the world continue to refer to the device as a “car bomb,” which would mark an unprecedented escalation in tactics, though there is no evidence to support this claim. STRATFOR sources in the Mexican government have indicated that federal law enforcement and military personnel involved in the investigation continue to contradict each other about everything from the composition of the device to the exact sequence of events, showing the confusion even within the government. In addition, there are unsubstantiated rumors circulating that accuse the Mexican government of attempting to cover up the true sequence of events for political reasons, given the wide variety of possible scenarios being reported as well as the erroneous claim by a variety of Mexican officials and agencies that the device was a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).
A Mexican military spokesman for the fifth military zone claimed July 18 the device used in the attack on Mexican security forces consisted of approximately 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of commercial-grade explosives — though the military had stated July 16 that the device was composed of 10 kilograms of C-4 high explosives. Regardless of the composition of the device (though a reliable STRATFOR source in the Mexican government has confirmed the explosive substance to have been an industrial explosive gel known as TOVEX), crime scene photography and news footage of the aftermath of the blast do not support the claim that a 10-kilogram device was used. Several car windows in the immediate vicinity of the purported VBIED were not blown out and the chassis of the vehicle in which the IED was placed was intact, though it suffered a great deal of damage from the resulting fire.
Additionally, the use of the term “car bomb” or VBIED implies a new capability for the Mexican cartels, which, in STRATFOR’s judgment, they have yet to demonstrate. The blast and the damage observed fell more in line with a very small IED, or even a couple of hand grenades, placed inside of a car. One possible reason for using the terms VBIED and “car bomb” is to scare the residents of Mexico and the U.S. border region for political and/or financial purposes. Several groups stand to gain from the increased fear of this “new cartel capability” such as the Juarez and Chihuahua state governments, press outlets, private security companies, U.S. border state governments and law enforcement agencies. Also, claiming that La Linea — and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (VCF) for which it is an enforcement arm — are now using indiscriminate terror tactics like detonating bombs will play to the advantage of their rivals, the Sinaloa cartel, in the minds of civilians. Such tactics are likely to increase collateral damage inflicted on civilians as well as draw the Mexican government’s attention more squarely on La Linea and the VCF and away from Sinaloa operations in the region.
(click here to view interactive graphic)
July 12
One person was killed, three were injured and three were arrested after a car chase in Zapopan, Jalisco state. During the incident, a group of gunmen reportedly attacked two people with firearms and grenades after a car accident. A firefight also occurred between police and the suspected criminals.
July 13
Authorities announced the arrest of nine suspected members of the Sinaloa cartel, including Jorge Antonio Arias Flores, in the municipality of Xalisco, Nayarit state. Arias Flores is believed to be the head of the Sinaloa cartel for Nayarit state.
Police discovered three bodies hanging from two bridges in Cuernavaca, Morelos state. Several messages were found near the bodies and the crime was attributed to the Cartel Pacifico Sur (CPS).
Residents of the Las Arenillas neighborhood of Santiago Tepatlaxco, Mexico state, discovered the bodies of two men wrapped in sacks.
The Guanajuato state attorney general’s office announced the capture of seven suspected LFM kidnappers who are linked to eight kidnappings and four murders in the state.
July 14
Police in the municipality of Netzahualcoyotl, Mexico state, spotted a man loading a suspicious package into a vehicle and arrested him after a car chase into the Gustavo A. Madero neighborhood of Mexico City. Police discovered 12 firearms, 45 magazines and 657 rounds of ammunition in the vehicle.
Three people were shot to death in their vehicle after leaving a party in Culiacan, Sinaloa state.
One soldier and three suspected criminals were killed during several firefights in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. Two people were arrested after the incident and authorities seized approximately 31,600 rounds of ammunition.
July 15
Five people suspected of carrying out an express kidnapping were arrested in the municipality of Apodaca, Nuevo Leon state.
The decapitated body of an unidentified man was discovered near the central market in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state. The victim’s fingers had been severed.
Six suspected La Familia Michoacana members were arrested during a raid on a house in the Heroes Tecamac neighborhood in Tecamac, Mexico state.
One state security agent was killed and two others were injured after approximately 15 gunmen attacked a vehicle transporting a prisoner in Otumba, Mexico state.
July 16
Police arrested 13 people and seized several firearms during a riot in the municipality of Othon P. Blanco, Quintana Roo state. The rioters were led by a government official from the municipality of Subteniente Lopez, Quintana Roo state, and were believed to be aiding the smuggling of firearms and drugs into Mexico from Belize.
The unidentified bodies of two men bearing signs of torture were discovered in the municipality of Iztapalapa, Mexico state.
Three members of the same family, including an infant, traveling by car in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, were killed in a drive-by shooting by unidentified gunmen.
July 17
The Secretariat of National Defense announced the arrest of six suspected CPS members during a raid on a safe-house in Cuernavaca, Morelos state. Some of the suspects are believed to have been responsible for several recent murders in Cuernavaca.
Two policemen were killed and three were injured after being attacked by unidentified gunmen in the municipality of Santiago, Nuevo Leon state.
Four policemen were killed in an ambush by unidentified gunmen in the municipality of Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Police in Tijuana, Baja California state, seized approximately 500 kilograms of marijuana during a raid in the Guadalupe Victoria neighborhood. One suspect was arrested during the incident.
July 18
Unidentified gunmen killed a police commander in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco state, during a drive by shooting in a convenience store parking lot.
Soldiers in the municipality of Culiacan, Sinaloa state, arrested two men after a car chase. The suspects had reportedly fired at a military patrol in the area.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: July 19, 2010 | STRATFOR
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Mexico: Prison guards let killers out, lent gunsAP - <unday, July 25, 2010 3:08:33 PM By MARK STEVENSON Mexico: Prison guards let killers out, lent gunsPhoto By AP
Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.
After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.
"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director ... to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.
The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.
Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.
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The final paragraph is drivel, but overall the piece is an interesting read nonetheless.
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Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations
August 3, 2010
By George Friedman
Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration went into effect last week, albeit severely limited by a federal court ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court undoubtedly will settle the matter, which may also trigger federal regulations. However that turns out, the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context.
Until the Mexican-American War, it was not clear whether the dominant power in North America would have its capital in Washington or Mexico City. Mexico was the older society with a substantially larger military. The United States, having been founded east of the Appalachian Mountains, had been a weak and vulnerable country. At its founding, it lacked strategic depth and adequate north-south transportation routes. The ability of one colony to support another in the event of war was limited. More important, the United States had the most vulnerable of economies: It was heavily dependent on maritime exports and lacked a navy able to protect its sea-lanes against more powerful European powers like England and Spain. The War of 1812 showed the deep weakness of the United States. By contrast, Mexico had greater strategic depth and less dependence on exports.
The Centrality of New Orleans
The American solution to this strategic weakness was to expand the United States west of the Appalachians, first into the Northwest Territory ceded to the United States by the United Kingdom and then into the Louisiana Purchase, which Thomas Jefferson ordered bought from France. These two territories gave the United States both strategic depth and a new economic foundation. The regions could support agriculture that produced more than the farmers could consume. Using the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river system, products could be shipped south to New Orleans. New Orleans was the farthest point south to which flat-bottomed barges from the north could go, and the farthest inland that oceangoing ships could travel. New Orleans became the single most strategic point in North America. Whoever controlled it controlled the agricultural system developing between the Appalachians and the Rockies. During the War of 1812, the British tried to seize New Orleans, but forces led by Andrew Jackson defeated them in a battle fought after the war itself was completed.
Jackson understood the importance of New Orleans to the United States. He also understood that the main threat to New Orleans came from Mexico. The U.S.-Mexican border then stood on the Sabine River, which divides today’s Texas from Louisiana. It was about 200 miles from that border to New Orleans and, at its narrowest point, a little more than 100 miles from the Sabine to the Mississippi.
Mexico therefore represented a fundamental threat to the United States. In response, Jackson authorized a covert operation under Sam Houston to foment an uprising among American settlers in the Mexican department of Texas with the aim of pushing Mexico farther west. With its larger army, a Mexican thrust to the Mississippi was not impossible — nor something the Mexicans would necessarily avoid, as the rising United States threatened Mexican national security.
Mexico’s strategic problem was the geography south of the Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo). This territory consisted of desert and mountains. Settling this area with large populations was impossible. Moving through it was difficult. As a result, Texas was very lightly settled with Mexicans, prompting Mexico initially to encourage Americans to settle there. Once a rising was fomented among the Americans, it took time and enormous effort to send a Mexican army into Texas. When it arrived, it was weary from the journey and short of supplies. The insurgents were defeated at the Alamo and Goliad, but as the Mexicans pushed their line east toward the Mississippi, they were defeated at San Jacinto, near present-day Houston.
The creation of an independent Texas served American interests, relieving the threat to New Orleans and weakening Mexico. The final blow was delivered under President James K. Polk during the Mexican-American War, which (after the Gadsden Purchase) resulted in the modern U.S.-Mexican border. That war severely weakened both the Mexican army and Mexico City, which spent roughly the rest of the century stabilizing Mexico’s original political order.
A Temporary Resolution
The U.S. defeat of Mexico settled the issue of the relative power of Mexico and the United States but did not permanently resolve the region’s status; that remained a matter of national power and will. The United States had the same problem with much of the Southwest (aside from California) that Mexico had: It was a relatively unattractive place economically, given that so much of it was inhospitable. The region experienced chronic labor shortages, relatively minor at first but accelerating over time. The acquisition of relatively low-cost labor became one of the drivers of the region’s economy, and the nearest available labor pool was Mexico. An accelerating population movement out of Mexico and into the territory the United States seized from Mexico paralleled the region’s accelerating economic growth.
The United States and Mexico both saw this as mutually beneficial. From the American point of view, there was a perpetual shortage of low-cost, low-end labor in the region. From the Mexican point of view, Mexico had a population surplus that the Mexican economy could not readily metabolize. The inclination of the United States to pull labor north was thus matched by the inclination of Mexico to push that labor north.
The Mexican government built its social policy around the idea of exporting surplus labor — and as important, using remittances from immigrants to stabilize the Mexican economy. The U.S. government, however, wanted an outcome that was illegal under U.S. law. At times, the federal government made exceptions to the law. When it lacked the political ability to change the law, the United States put limits on the resources needed to enforce the law. The rest of the country didn’t notice this process while the former Mexican borderlands benefited from it economically. There were costs to the United States in this immigrant movement, in health care, education and other areas, but business interests saw these as minor costs while Washington saw them as costs to be borne by the states.
Three fault lines emerged in United States on the topic. One was between the business classes, which benefited directly from the flow of immigrants and could shift the cost of immigration to other social sectors, and those who did not enjoy those benefits. The second lay between the federal government, which saw the costs as trivial, and the states, which saw them as intensifying over time. And third, there were tensions between Mexican-American citizens and other American citizens over the question of illegal migrants. This inherently divisive, potentially explosive mix intensified as the process continued.
Borderlands and the Geopolitics of Immigration
Underlying this political process was a geopolitical one. Immigration in any country is destabilizing. Immigrants have destabilized the United States ever since the Scots-Irish changed American culture, taking political power and frightening prior settlers. The same immigrants were indispensible to economic growth. Social and cultural instability proved a low price to pay for the acquisition of new labor.
That equation ultimately also works in the case of Mexican migrants, but there is a fundamental difference. When the Irish or the Poles or the South Asians came to the United States, they were physically isolated from their homelands. The Irish might have wanted Roman Catholic schools, but in the end, they had no choice but to assimilate into the dominant culture. The retention of cultural hangovers did not retard basic cultural assimilation, given that they were far from home and surrounded by other, very different, groups.
This is the case for Mexican-Americans in Chicago or Alaska, whether citizens, permanent residents or illegal immigrants. In such locales, they form a substantial but ultimately isolated group, surrounded by other, larger groups and generally integrated into the society and economy. Success requires that subsequent generations follow the path of prior immigrants and integrate. This is not the case, however, for Mexicans moving into the borderlands conquered by the United States just as it is not the case in other borderlands around the world. Immigrant populations in this region are not physically separated from their homeland, but rather can be seen as culturally extending their homeland northward — in this case not into alien territory, but into historically Mexican lands.
This is no different from what takes place in borderlands the world over. The political border moves because of war. Members of an alien population suddenly become citizens of a new country. Sometimes, massive waves of immigrants from the group that originally controlled the territory politically move there, undertaking new citizenship or refusing to do so. The cultural status of the borderland shifts between waves of ethnic cleansing and population movement. Politics and economics mix, sometimes peacefully and sometimes explosively.
The Mexican-American War established the political boundary between the two countries. Economic forces on both sides of the border have encouraged both legal and illegal immigration north into the borderland — the area occupied by the United States. The cultural character of the borderland is shifting as the economic and demographic process accelerates. The political border stays were it is while the cultural border moves northward.
The underlying fear of those opposing this process is not economic (although it is frequently expressed that way), but much deeper: It is the fear that the massive population movement will ultimately reverse the military outcome of the 1830s and 1840s, returning the region to Mexico culturally or even politically. Such borderland conflicts rage throughout the world. The fear is that it will rage here.
The problem is that Mexicans are not seen in the traditional context of immigration to the United States. As I have said, some see them as extending their homeland into the United States, rather than as leaving their homeland and coming to the United States. Moreover, by treating illegal immigration as an acceptable mode of immigration, a sense of helplessness is created, a feeling that the prior order of society was being profoundly and illegally changed. And finally, when those who express these concerns are demonized, they become radicalized. The tension between Washington and Arizona — between those who benefit from the migration and those who don’t — and the tension between Mexican-Americans who are legal residents and citizens of the United States and support illegal immigration and non-Mexicans who oppose illegal immigration creates a potentially explosive situation.
Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.
Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not. The land was seized from Mexico by force, territory now experiencing a massive national movement — legal and illegal — changing the cultural character of the region. It should come as no surprise that this is destabilizing the region, as instability naturally flows from such forces.
Jewish migration to modern-day Israel represents a worst-case scenario for borderlands. An absence of stable political agreements undergirding this movement characterized this process. One of the characteristics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is mutual demonization. In the case of Arizona, demonization between the two sides also runs deep. The portrayal of supporters of Arizona’s new law as racist and the characterization of critics of that law as un-American is neither new nor promising. It is the way things would sound in a situation likely to get out of hand.
Ultimately, this is not about the Arizona question. It is about the relationship between Mexico and the United States on a range of issues, immigration merely being one of them. The problem as I see it is that the immigration issue is being treated as an internal debate among Americans when it is really about reaching an understanding with Mexico. Immigration has been treated as a subnational issue involving individuals. It is in fact a geopolitical issue between two nation-states. Over the past decades, Washington has tried to avoid turning immigration into an international matter, portraying it rather as an American law enforcement issue. In my view, it cannot be contained in that box any longer.
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The last paragraph is a bland sounding sound bite that is profoundly wrong.
This is absolutely NOT a matter for negotiation with Mexico, or even for the Mexican president to opine in front of the US Congress. Who comes to America is to be decided by AMERICA. :x :x :x
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Sorry, but I am not going to give an inch here. No negotiations or agreements are necessary or in the slightest bit appropriate.
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Sorry but I am not following your point at all. How on earth does it get to a shooting war between the America and Mexico?
Not to say that there is not plenty of violence, but it looks more like this:
Mexico's Juarez Cartel Gets Desperate
August 5, 2010
By Scott Stewart
On Aug. 3, the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, Mexico, reopened after being closed for four days. On July 29, the consulate had announced in a warden message that it would be closed July 30 and would remain closed until a review of the consulate’s security posture could be completed.
The closure appears to be linked to a message found on July 15, signed by La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel. This message was discovered at the scene shortly after a small improvised explosive device (IED) in a car was used in a well-coordinated ambush against federal police agents in Juarez, killing two agents. In the message, La Linea claimed credit for the attack and demanded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and FBI investigate and remove the head of Chihuahua State Police Intelligence (CIPOL), who the message said is working with the Sinaloa Federation and its leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. The message threatened that if the intelligence official was not removed by July 30, La Linea would deploy a car bomb with 100 kilograms of high explosives in Juarez.
The deadline has now passed without incident and the consulate has reopened. Examining this chain of events provides some valuable insights into the security of U.S. diplomatic facilities as well as the current state of events in Juarez, a city that in recent years has experienced levels of violence normally associated with an active war zone.
Security Standards
When considering the threats in Juarez that led to the closure of the U.S. consulate, it is useful to examine the building itself. The consulate is housed in a new building that was constructed in accordance with security specifications laid out by the U.S. State Department’s Standard Embassy Design (SED) program, standards first established by the Inman Commission in 1985. This means that the building was constructed using a design intended to withstand a terrorist attack and providing concentric rings of security. In addition to an advanced concrete structure and blast-resistant windows, such facilities also feature a substantial perimeter wall intended to protect the facility and to provide a standoff distance of at least 100 feet from any potential explosive device. This standoff distance is crucial in defending against large vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) because such a device can cause catastrophic damage to even a well-designed structure if it is allowed to get close to the structure before detonation. When combined, a heavy perimeter wall, sufficient standoff distance and advanced structural design have proved very effective in withstanding even large attacks.
The U.S. Consulate in Juarez is a well-designed building with adequate standoff. Certainly, the building could withstand the type of attacks that the cartels in Mexico have conducted to date, which have largely consisted of armed assaults, grenade attacks (the U.S. consulates in Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo have been attacked using hand grenades in the past two years) and occasional attacks involving small IEDs.
The building and its perimeter would also likely withstand a VBIED attack of the size threatened by La Linea, but such an attack in not something the U.S. government would want to risk. Despite the security design of the Juarez consulate, a VBIED attack would likely cause substantial damage to the facility and could result in the deaths of people outside the building. Perhaps the most vulnerable people during such an attack would be the hundreds of Mexican citizens (and other foreigners) who visit the consulate every day to apply for immigrant visas. Juarez and Mexico City are the only two U.S. diplomatic posts in Mexico that issue immigrant visas and both have a very heavy flow of visa applicants. U.S. consulates also frequently have a number of American citizens who visit each day in search of consular services.
Such visitors are screened at a security facility located on the edge of the consulate’s perimeter in order to keep weapons from entering the consulate complex. This screening facility/waiting area lacks standoff distance and would provide a soft target vulnerable to an attack. The local guards who provide perimeter security for the facility and screen visitors would also be vulnerable. The concern over the vulnerability of visitors was evidenced in the warden message that announced the Juarez consulate’s closure. In the message, people were urged to avoid the area of the consulate during the closure, which not only would reduce the risk of collateral damage if an attack occurred but would also give security personnel less activity to monitor for potential threats.
One other intriguing point about the security at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez and its closure due to La Linea’s VBIED threat is that the incident did not occur at a diplomatic post in a far-away terrorist hotspot like Yemen, Iraq or Pakistan. The U.S. Consulate in Juarez is located less than seven miles from downtown El Paso, Texas.
Desperate Measures
As we noted some months back, there have been persistent rumors that the Mexican government has favored the Sinaloa cartel and its leader, Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka “El Chapo.” This charge has been leveled by opposing cartels (like Los Zetas and the Juarez cartel), and events on the ground have seemingly supported the accusations, despite occasional indications to the contrary, like the July 29 death of Sinaloa operative Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal in a shootout with the Mexican military.
Whether or not such charges are true, it is quite evident that the Juarez cartel believes them to be so, and has acted accordingly. For example, in March, three local employees of the U.S. Consulate in Juarez were murdered, two of whom were U.S. citizens. According to the Mexican newspaper El Diario, a member of the Los Aztecas street gang was arrested and has confessed to his participation in the murders. Los Aztecas and its American cousin, Barrio Azteca, are both closely linked to the Juarez cartel. According to El Diario, the arrested Azteca member said that a decision was made by leaders in the Barrio Azteca gang and Juarez cartel to attack U.S. citizens in the Juarez area in an effort to force the U.S. government to intervene in the Mexican government’s war against the cartels and act as a “neutral referee,” thereby helping to counter the Mexican government’s favoritism toward El Chapo and the Sinaloa Federation.
Then, in the wake of the July 15 IED ambush in Juarez, La Linea left the message threatening to deploy a VBIED in Juarez if the FBI and DEA did not investigate and remove the head of CIPOL. Using an IED in an ambush to get the world’s attention (which it did) and then threatening to attack using an even larger device is further evidence that the Juarez cartel believes the Mexican government is favoring Sinaloa.
And this brings us to the current situation in Juarez. The Juarez cartel is wounded, its La Linea enforcer group and Los Aztecas ally having been hit heavily in recent months by both the Mexican government and Sinaloa forces. The last thing the group wants to do is invite the full weight of the U.S. government down upon its head by becoming the Mexican version of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel, which launched a war of terror upon Colombia that featured large VBIEDs and resulted in Escobar’s death and the destruction of his organization. In a similar case closer to home for the Juarez cartel, one of that cartel’s predecessors, the Guadalajara cartel, was dismantled after the U.S. government turned the full force of its drug enforcement power against the organization following the 1985 torture and execution of U.S. DEA special agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Intervention by the U.S. government prompted by the Juarez cartel not only would focus on the organization in Mexico but also would likely result in U.S. law enforcement going after the organization’s assets and personnel inside the United States, which could be devastating for the cartel.
The current leader of the Juarez cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, is the nephew of Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, one of the leaders of the Guadalajara cartel and one of the Mexican traffickers arrested in 1985 and convicted of killing Camarena. Fonseca Carrillo was also convicted of murdering two American tourists in Guadalajara in 1985 and a host of other charges. Now in his late 70s and reportedly suffering from cancer, Fonseca Carrillo will die in prison. Because of this family history, there is very little doubt that Carrillo Fuentes realizes the potential danger of using such tactics against the U.S. government.
And yet despite these dangers, both to the organization and to himself, Carrillo Fuentes and his followers have apparently tried to draw the U.S. government deeper into the conflict in Juarez (though they have been careful so far not to assassinate any U.S. diplomats or conduct any large and indiscriminate terrorist attacks). At present, the Juarez cartel seems to be walking a tight line of trying to get the U.S. government’s attention in Juarez while not doing anything too provocative.
These actions reflect the desperate situation in which the cartel finds itself. In practical terms, an increase in U.S. activity in Juarez would not only hurt Sinaloa but also impact the ability of the Juarez cartel to traffic narcotics. Although the FBI has already noted that it believes Sinaloa now controls the flow of narcotics through Juarez, the willingness of the Juarez cartel to suffer this type of impact on its own operations indicates that the organization believes the deck is stacked against it and that it needs an outside force to help counter the combined efforts of the Sinaloa Federation and the Mexican government.
For its part, the U.S. government has not shown the willingness to become more actively involved in Juarez, nor does it have the permission of the Mexican government to do so. The Mexicans are very protective of their sovereignty, and the U.S. government has shown that it will not overstep its bounds unless it is provoked by an incident like the Camarena murder. This means that the limited threats and attacks the Juarez cartel has been using are unlikely to result in any real increase in the U.S. presence in Juarez.
Ordinarily our assessment would be that the various Mexican cartels learned from the Camarena case and Escobar’s experience in Colombia and have been very careful not to provoke the U.S. government and to avoid being labeled narco-terrorists. It simply would not be good for business, and the cartels are, in fact, businesses, even though they specialize in an illicit trade. That said, in the recent past, we have witnessed cartels doing things inside Mexico that used to be considered taboo, like selling narcotics on Mexico’s domestic market, in an effort to raise money so they can continue their fight for control of their territory. (Their ability to make money has been affected not only by the cartel wars but also by drug interdiction efforts.) We have also seen cartels that are desperate for cash becoming increasingly involved in human smuggling and in kidnapping and extortion rackets.
It will be important to watch the Juarez cartel closely over the next few months as the United States refuses to become more involved and as the cartel becomes increasingly desperate. We believe the Sinaloa Federation and the Mexican government will continue aggressively to target the remnants of the Juarez cartel. Faced with this continued onslaught, will the Juarez cartel choose to go quietly into the night and allow Sinaloa to exercise uncontested control over the Juarez plaza, or will it in desperation undertake an even more audacious attempt to draw the United States into Juarez? Killing U.S. consulate employees has not succeeded in increasing the U.S. presence, and neither has threatening a VBIED, so it may feel compelled to take things up a notch.
Although we have not yet seen a VBIED deployed in Mexico, explosives are readily available in the country, and the July 15 attack demonstrated that La Linea has the ability to deploy a small IED in a fairly sophisticated manner. It is quite possible that La Linea could use that same technology to craft a larger device, even a VBIED. The capability, then, seems to be there for larger attacks. This leaves the intent part of the threat equation. It will be important to see, above all, if desperation pushes Carrillo Fuentes and the Juarez cartel to take the next, large step.
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Mexico Security Memo: Aug. 16, 2010
August 16, 2010 | 2123 GMT
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Televisa Grenade Attacks
Members of Los Zetas attacked the local television affiliates of the Televisa media company in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, late Aug. 14 and early Aug. 15. The attackers used hand grenades in the Monterrey attack and 40 mm grenade launchers in Matamoros. The attacks reportedly caused minor damage to both buildings and injuries in Monterrey, where paramedics examined two people who received superficial wounds inside the Televisa station.
The Televisa Matamoros station, located on the corner of Manuel Cavazos Lerma Boulevard and Calle Fresno in the Paseo Residencial colony, was attacked first, at around 9 p.m. local time Aug. 14. An unknown number of armed men reportedly fired upon the building with a grenade launcher from a nearby pedestrian bridge. A grenade detonated near the second story of the building, causing minor damage to building’s facade. The Televisa Monterrey building, located on Calle Albino Esparza, was attacked at approximately 1:15 a.m. local time Aug. 15. A member of Los Zetas traveling in a pickup truck reportedly threw a fragmentation hand grenade as the truck passed near the building’s entrance. The grenade detonated under a Toyota Tacoma that was parked along the street, causing significant damage to the Tacoma and minor structural damage to the front of the Televisa building. The windows were blown out of a photography studio across the street from the Televisa Monterrey building.
This is the third known attack on the Televisa Monterrey building that Los Zetas have conducted in the past two years. The same facilities were attacked with gunfire and a fragmentation grenade the night of Oct. 12, 2008 — the same night of an attack on the U.S. Consulate. Then on Jan. 6, 2009, the same tactics were employed in another attack on the Televisa building, though a narcomanta was left at the scene saying in Spanish, “Stop reporting on us. Also report on narco officials. This is a warning.”
The morning of Aug. 14, members of the Mexican military reportedly shot and killed the leader of Los Zetas in Monterrey, known only as “El Sonrics,” and three other members of Los Zetas in a car chase and firefight in southern Monterrey, though there has been no official confirmation of the incident. (El Sonrics is thought to have taken over as leader of Los Zetas in Monterrey after Hector “El Tori” Luna Luna and his brother, Esteban “El Chachis” Luna Luna, were captured by Mexican military forces in June and July, respectively.) As the firefight reportedly began, up to 13 major intersections in the Monterrey metropolitan area reportedly were blocked off by members of Los Zetas, who had hijacked vehicles and positioned them in the middle of the intersections. This is a common tactic that Los Zetas use when a high-value member of the organization is under pressure or has been captured by Mexican security officials. It is currently unclear if El Sonrics’ reported death is directly related to the attacks on the Televisa Monterrey and Matamoros locations, but Televisa’s coverage of the firefight earlier in the day could have provoked a retaliatory attack from Los Zetas.
Televisa is the largest media conglomerate in Latin America outside of Brazil. It has perhaps the largest viewing audience throughout Mexico and therefore shapes the perception of millions of Mexican citizens. This degree of influence makes Televisa an obvious target as criminal groups seek to manipulate the coverage of organized crime-related incidents. Televisa has been the focus of several organized crime-related attacks; most recently, a Televisa news crew was kidnapped in Durango state July 26 by members of the Sinaloa cartel under orders from its leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, to force the crew to broadcast prepared messages, photographs and videos from the Sinaloa cartel. The crew was rescued by a Federal Police operation July 31. The July 26 kidnapping and these recent attacks in Monterrey and Matamoros underscore a recognition by the cartels of the amount of influence Televisa coverage on their activities has and their willingness to attempt to influence and coerce certain aspects of that coverage.
Federal Police Hunt ‘La Barbie’
Nearly 300 Mexican Federal Police agents, with support from a helicopter, launched a series of raids on luxury apartment buildings in the Bosque de Las Lomas colony of western Mexico City in search of former Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) enforcer Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal the afternoon of Aug. 9. Valdez, a U.S. citizen, has been locked in a heated battle with former BLO lieutenant and current Cartel Pacifico Sur leader Hector “El H” Beltran Leyva over territory that was under BLO control before the death of BLO leader Arturo Beltran Leyva in December 2009 — primarily in Morelos, Mexico and Guerrero states.
The operation targeting Valdez is similar to other large operations that netted other high-value cartel targets like Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Simental. The Aug. 9 operation indicates that Mexican intelligence and security forces are closing in on Valdez, and the most wanted U.S. citizen in Mexico could be captured in the very near future. An operation like this likely would not have been organized without ample, time-sensitive, actionable intelligence on Valdez’s exact location. Cartel figures’ organizational rivals often provide such information to authorities, and Valdez has plenty of rivals.
(click here to view interactive map)
Aug. 9
Unidentified gunmen ambushed a prison transport vehicle in Tlaltizapan, Morelos state, killing a prisoner. A guard was killed and another was injured during the attack.
Two dismembered bodies were discovered in trash bags in Amecameca, Mexico state. The victims’ eyes had been taped shut and a message signed with the initials “FM” was discovered near the bodies.
Aug. 10
Police freed a kidnapping victim and arrested two suspected kidnappers from a residence in the Sagitario II neighborhood of Ecatepec, Mexico state.
Police discovered two severed legs believed to belong to a woman’s body floating near a dike in Toluca, Mexico state.
Colima state Gov. Mario Anguiano Moreno said that the deaths of three policemen in Manzanillo, Colima state, could be due to a local power struggle between La Familia Michoacana and the Nuevo Milenio cartel. Anguiano Moreno cited the testimony of suspects in custody to back his claims.
Aug. 11
Soldiers freed four kidnapping victims held in a residence in southern Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
Five people were killed on a ranch in Villa Ahumada, Chihuahua state. The victims had all been shot to death, and shell casings of various calibers were found near the bodies.
Unidentified gunmen killed the nephew of former National Action Party leader Manuel Espino in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. The victim, identified as Hugo Francisco Zamora Ochoa, was killed in a parking lot as he entered his vehicle.
Aug. 12
Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a man and a woman from their residence in the Barrio del Parque neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. The attackers reportedly shot at the house for approximately 30 minutes before leaving with the two victims.
Aug. 13
Police arrested five suspects allegedly linked to the kidnappings of three journalists in Durango state. The suspects, who are allegedly members of the Sinaloa cartel, were arrested in Ciudad Lerdo, Durango state.
Hector Alvarez Sandoval, the lead homicide investigator of the municipal police in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes state, was assassinated as he sat inside his vehicle outside his home.
Aug. 14
Around 300 Federal Police support agents arrived in Gomez Palacio and Ciudad Lerdo, Durango state, bringing the total number of Federal Police in the Comarca Lagunera region to nearly 500.
Federal Police detained four members of the Los Fabila kidnapping group in simultaneous operations in Guanajuato state.
A brief firefight erupted in north Morelia, Michoacan state, resulting in the death of one man. Reports indicate that the victim was able to wound two of his attackers.
Aug. 15
A group of Los Zetas hit men reportedly killed seven people in the Los Altos region of Jalisco state before returning to Zacatecas state.
U.S. Custom and Border Protection officials seized a total of 136 kilograms (nearly 300 pounds) of cocaine from a Dodge Nitro attempting to cross the Reynosa-Hidalgo International Bridge along the Tamaulipas state-Texas border.
The bodies of six men were found in the back of a pickup truck in the small village of Tierra Alta near the Oaxaca-Veracruz state line. Two of the victims had single gunshot wounds to the back of the head, and the other four were reported to have had several gunshot wounds across their bodies.
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AP by Mark Stevenson
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday.
The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.
"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," the Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor."
Mexican drug cartels often use vacant lots, ranches or mine shafts to dump the bodies of executed rivals or kidnap victims. The Navy did not give details on the victims' identities, who had killed them or whether the bodies had been buried... more at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38843735/ns/world_news-americas
P.C.
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Stratfor:
Suspected members of a drug trafficking cartel set up several roadblocks in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, after armed men entered a juvenile holding facility in Escobedo, Milenio reported Aug. 26. Roadblocks were reported on the highway to Miguel Aleman, in San Nicolas and on the Lopez Mateo Avenue. At least one roadblock has been cleared by police.
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If I read this correctly, the impunity is such that in order to facilitate the mission the narcos set up roadblocks while invading a govt. facility to spring their captured comrades , , , :-o
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I wonder if Mexico has hit the tipping point where the narcos have more money, soldiers than the Mexican gov't.
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AP by Mark Stevenson
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday.
The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.
"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," the Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor."
Mexican drug cartels often use vacant lots, ranches or mine shafts to dump the bodies of executed rivals or kidnap victims. The Navy did not give details on the victims' identities, who had killed them or whether the bodies had been buried... more at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38843735/ns/world_news-americas
P.C.
Woof,
An update:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704913704575454033356912888.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
P.C.
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Prosecutor in the case now dead , , ,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704147804575455663134960250.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_world
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Woof,
I'm telling you folks if we don't get control of our border this is going to become a regular occurrence in our towns and cities.
http://www.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/mexicocrimedrugsviolence (http://www.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/mexicocrimedrugsviolence)
P.C.
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Yup.
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I agree.
That said, a question: Why hasn't this already happened?
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The cartels are laying the groundwork by building alliances with US gangs and working to corrupt law enforcement.
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http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/256618
Ex-Mexican Army In Phoenix AZ Home Invasion Up
By Gar Swaffar.
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The consensus of opinion from the Phoenix, Arizona police is that at least some of the six cross border raiders were ex-Mexican Army personnel involved in the home invasion homicide on Monday.
The thoughts of the Phoenix Police officers are that the drug cartels are now performing cross border home invasion raids and murders north of the border i.e. Arizona. The past few months have been difficult for the Mexican Police and some of the drug cartel members who have assumed room temperature. As a result, some members of the remaining Mexican drug cartels are moving parts of their operations into the United States.
The home invasion on Monday, where a homeowner, 30-year-old Andrew Williams was murdered and as many as 100 rounds were fired at the home.
The Phoenix Police Department (PPD) documents linked here describe military tactical ops control. Complete with window raking, suppressive firing, and door breaches (busting in.)
The documents also appended suggest the home invaders were prepared to take the battle to the PPD, but ran out of ammunition prior to the arrival of the first PPD officers.
This nearly full scale battle which took place at 8329 W. Cypress St. Phoenix AZ. is presumed by the PPD to be only the beginning of the problem. Some reports indicate the drug cartels are interested in finding a safer place to do business than Mexico.
The issue of cross border raids has been gaining notoriety over the past five months, the trend appears to be on the rise with no end in sight at this point.
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http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_corruption.html
Judith Miller
The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement
The drug cartels extend their corrupting influence northward.
Customs and Border Protection agents have been bought off by drug dealers.
Leslie Hoffman/AP Photo
Customs and Border Protection agents have been bought off by drug dealers.
Beheadings and amputations. Iraqi-style brutality, bribery, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. More than 7,200 dead—almost double last year’s tally—in shoot-outs between federales and often better-armed drug cartels. This is modern Mexico, whose president, Felipe Calderón, has been struggling since 2006 to wrest his country from the grip of four powerful cartels and their estimated 100,000 foot soldiers.
But chillingly, there are signs that one of the worst features of Mexico’s war on drugs—law enforcement officials on the take from drug lords—is becoming an American problem as well. Most press accounts focus on the drug-related violence that has migrated north into the United States. Far less widely reported is the infiltration and corruption of American law enforcement, according to Robert Killebrew, a retired U.S. Army colonel and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. “This is a national security problem that does not yet have a name,” he wrote last fall in The National Strategy Forum Review. The drug lords, he tells me, are seeking to “hollow out our institutions, just as they have in Mexico.”
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The Barrio Azteca Trial and the Prison Gang-Cartel Interface (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081119_barrio_azteca_trial_and_prison_gang_cartel_interface) is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
The Barrio Azteca Trial and the Prison Gang-Cartel Interface
November 19, 2008 | 2130 GMT
By Fred Burton and Ben West
Related Links
* Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
On Nov. 3, a U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, began hearing a case concerning members of a criminal enterprise that calls itself Barrio Azteca (BA). The group members face charges including drug trafficking and distribution, extortion, money laundering and murder. The six defendants include the organization’s three bosses, Benjamin Alvarez, Manuel Cardoza and Carlos Perea; a sergeant in the group, Said Francisco Herrera; a lieutenant, Eugene Mona; and an associate, Arturo Enriquez.
The proceedings represent the first major trial involving BA, which operates in El Paso and West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The testimony is revealing much about how this El Paso-based prison gang operates, and how it interfaces with Mexican drug cartel allies that supply its drugs.
Mexico’s cartels are in the business of selling drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the United States. Large amounts of narcotics flow north while large amounts of cash and weapons flow south. Managing these transactions requires that the cartels have a physical presence in the United States, something a cartel alliance with a U.S. gang can provide.
Of course, BA is not the only prison gang operating in the United States with ties to Mexico. Prison gangs can also be called street gangs — they recruit both in prisons and on the street. Within the United States, there are at least nine well-established prison gangs with connections to Mexican drug cartels; Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos, the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate are just a few such groups. Prison gangs like BA are very territorial and usually cover only a specific region, so one Mexican cartel might work with three to four prison or street gangs in the United States. Like BA, most of the U.S. gangs allied with Mexican cartels largely are composed of Mexican immigrants or Mexican-Americans. Nevertheless, white supremacist groups, mixed-race motorcycle gangs and African-American street gangs also have formed extensive alliances with Mexican cartels.
Certainly, not all U.S. gangs the Mexican cartels have allied with are the same. But examining how BA operates offers insights into how other gangs — like the Latin Kings, the Texas Syndicate, the Sureños, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and transnational street gangs like MS-13 — operate in alliance with the cartels.
Barrio Azteca Up Close
Spanish for “Aztec Neighborhood,” BA originated in a Texas state penitentiary in 1986, when five inmates from El Paso organized the group as a means of protection in the face of the often-brutal ethnic tensions within prisons. By the 1990s, BA had spread to other prisons and had established a strong presence on the streets of El Paso as its founding members served their terms and were released. Reports indicate that in the late 1990s, BA had begun working with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa Federation drug trafficking organization, which at the time controlled drug shipments to Ciudad Juarez, El Paso’s sister city across the Rio Grande.
According to testimony from several different witnesses on both sides of the current trial, BA now works only with the Juarez cartel of Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes, which has long controlled much of Mexico’s Chihuahua state and Ciudad Juarez, and broke with the Sinaloa Federation earlier in 2008. BA took sides with the Juarez cartel, with which it is jointly running drugs across the border at the Juarez plaza.
BA provides the foot soldiers to carry out hits at the behest of Juarez cartel leaders. On Nov. 3, 10 alleged BA members in Ciudad Juarez were arrested in connection with 12 murders. The suspects were armed with four AK-47s, pistols and radio communication equipment — all hallmarks of a team of hit men ready to carry out a mission.
According to testimony from the ongoing federal case, which is being brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, drugs are taken at discount from the supplier on the Mexico side and then distributed to dealers on the street. These distributors must then pay “taxes” to BA collectors to continue plying their trade. According to testimony from Josue Aguirre, a former BA member turned FBI informant, BA collects taxes from 47 different street-level narcotics operations in El Paso alone. Failure to pay these taxes results in death. One of the murder charges in the current RICO case involves the death of an El Paso dealer who failed to pay up when the collectors arrived to collect on a debt.
Once collected, the money goes in several different directions. First, BA lieutenants and captains, the midlevel members, receive $50 and $200 per month respectively for compensation. The bulk of BA’s profit is then transferred using money orders to accounts belonging to the head bosses (like Alvarez, Cardoza and Perea) in prison. Cash is also brought back to Ciudad Juarez to pay the Juarez cartel, which provided the drugs in the first place.
BA receives discounts on drugs from the Juarez cartel by providing tactical help to its associates south of the border. Leaders of Carrillo Fuentes’ organization in Juarez can go into hiding in El Paso under BA protection if their lives are in danger in Juarez. They can also order BA to track down cartel enemies hiding in El Paso. Former BA member Gustavo Gallardo testified in 2005 that he was sent to pick up a man in downtown El Paso who had cheated the Juarez cartel of money. Once Gallardo dropped him off at a safe house in El Paso, another team took the man — who was bound with rope and duct tape — to Ciudad Juarez, where Gallardo assumes he was killed.
BA and the World of Prison Gangs
Prison gangs are endemic to prison systems, where safety for inmates comes in numbers. Tensions (usually along racial lines) among dangerous individuals regularly erupt into deadly conflict. Prison gang membership affords a certain amount of protection against rival groups and offers fertile recruiting ground.
Once a prison gang grows its membership (along with its prestige) and establishes a clear hierarchy, its leader can wield an impressive amount of power. Some even wind up taking over prisons, like the antecedents of Russian organized crime did.
It might seem strange that members on the outside send money and answer to bosses in prison, since the bosses are locked up. But these bosses wield a great deal of influence over gang members in and out of prison. Disobedience is punishable by death, and regardless of whether a boss is in prison, he can order a hit on a member who has crossed him. Prison gang members also know that if they end up in prison again — a likely outcome — they will once again be dependent on the help of the boss to stay alive, and can perhaps even earn some money while doing time.
BA’s illegal activities mean its members constantly cycle in and out of prison. Many BA members were involved in smaller, local El Paso street gangs before they were imprisoned. Once in prison, they joined BA with the sponsorship of a “godfather” who walks the recruit through the process. BA then performs a kind of background check on new recruits by circulating their name throughout the organization. BA is particularly interested in any evidence that prospective members have cooperated with the police.
Prison authorities are certainly aware of the spread of BA, and they try to keep Mexican nationals separated from known BA members, who are mostly Mexican-American, to prevent the spread of the gang’s influence. BA has organizations in virtually every penitentiary in Texas, meaning that no matter where a BA member is imprisoned, he will have a protection network in place. BA members with truly extensive prison records might personally know the leader of every prison chapter, thus increasing the member’s prestige. Thus, the constant cycling of members from the outside world into prison does not inhibit BA, but makes its members more cohesive, as it allows the prison system to increase bonds among gang members.
Communication challenges certainly arise, as exchanges between prisoners and those on the outside are closely monitored. But BA seems to have overcome this challenge. Former BA member Edward Ruiz testified during the trial that from 2003 to 2007, he acted as a clearinghouse for jailed members’ letters and packages, which he then distributed to members on the outside. This tactic ensured that all prison communications would be traceable to just one address, thus not revealing the location of other members.
BA also allegedly used Sandy Valles New, who worked in the investigations section of the Office of the Federal Public Defender in El Paso from 1996 to 2002, to pass communications between gang members inside and outside prison. She exploited the access to — and the ability to engage in confidential communications with — inmates that attorneys enjoy, transmitting information back and forth between BA members inside and outside prison. Taped conversations reveal New talking to one of the bosses and lead defendants, Carlos Perea, about her fear of losing her job and thus not being able to continue transmitting information in this way. She also talked of crossing over to Ciudad Juarez to communicate with BA members in Mexico.
While BA had inside sources like New assisting it, the FBI was able to infiltrate BA in return. Josue Aguirre and Johnny Michelleti have informed on BA activities to the FBI since 2003 and 2005, respectively. Edward Ruiz, the mailman, also handed over stacks of letters to the FBI.
BA and the Mexican Cartels
As indicated, BA is only one of dozens of prison gangs operating along the U.S.-Mexican border that help Mexican drug trafficking organizations smuggle narcotics across the border and then distribute them for the cartels. Mexican drug trafficking organizations need groups that will do their bidding on the U.S. side of the border, as the border is the tightest choke point in the narcotics supply chain.
Getting large amounts of drugs across the border on a daily basis requires local connections to bribe border guards or border town policemen. Gangs on the U.S. side of the border also have contacts who sell drugs on the retail level, where markups bring in large profits. The current trial has revealed that the partnership goes beyond narcotics to include violence as well. In light of the high levels of violence raging in Mexico related to narcotics trafficking, there is a genuine worry that this violence (and corruption) could spread inside the United States.
One of the roles that BA and other border gangs fill for Mexican drug-trafficking organizations is that of enforcer. Prison gangs wield tight control over illegal activity in a specific territory. They keep tabs on people to make sure they are paying their taxes to the gang and not affiliating with rival gangs. To draw an analogy, they are like the local police who know the situation on the ground and can enforce specific rules handed down by a governmental body — or a Mexican cartel.
Details emerging from the ongoing trial indicate that BA works closely with the Juarez cartel and has contributed to drug-related violence inside the United States. While the killing of a street dealer by a gang for failure to pay up on time is common enough nationwide and hardly unique to Mexican drug traffickers, apprehending offenders in El Paso and driving them to Ciudad Juarez to be held or killed does represent a very clear link between violence in Mexico and the United States.
BA’s ability to strike within the United States has been proven. According to a STRATFOR source, BA is connected to Los Zetas — the U.S.-trained Mexican military members who deserted to traffic drugs — through a mutual alliance with the Juarez cartel. The Zetas possess a high level of tactical skill that could be passed along to BA, thus increasing its effectiveness.
The Potential for Cross-Border Violence
The prospect for enhanced cross-border violence is frightening, but the violence itself is not new. So far, Mexican cartels and their U.S. allies have focused on those directly involved in the drug trade. Whether this restraint will continue is unclear. Either way, collateral damage is always a possibility.
Previous incidents, like one that targeted a drug dealer in arrears in Phoenix and others that involved kidnappings and attacks against U.S. Border Patrol agents, indicate that violence has already begun creeping over from Mexico. So far, violence related to drug trafficking has not caused the deaths of U.S. law enforcement officials and/or civilians, though it has come close to doing so.
Another potential incubator of cross-border violence exists in BA’s obligation to offer refuge to Juarez cartel members seeking safety in the United States. Such members most likely would have bounties on their heads. The more violent Mexico (and particularly Ciudad Juarez) becomes, the greater the risk Juarez cartel leaders face — and the more pressure they will feel to seek refuge in the United States. As more Juarez cartel leaders cross over and hide with BA help, the cartel’s enemies will become increasingly tempted to follow them and kill them in the United States. Other border gangs in California, Arizona and New Mexico probably are following this same trajectory.
Two primary reasons explain why Mexican cartel violence for the most part has stopped short of crossing the U.S. border. First, the prospect of provoking U.S. law enforcement does not appeal to Mexican drug-trafficking organizations operating along the border. They do not want to provoke a coordinated response from a highly capable federal U.S. police force like the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or FBI. By keeping violence at relatively low levels and primarily aimed at other gang members and drug dealers, the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations can lessen their profile in the eyes of these U.S. agencies. Conversely, any increase in violence and/or the killing of U.S. police or civilians would dramatically increase federal scrutiny and retaliation.
The second reason violence has not crossed the border wholesale is that gangs like BA are in place to enforce the drug-trafficking organizations’ rules. The need to send cartel members into the United States to kill a disobedient drug dealer is reduced by having a tight alliance with a border gang that keeps drugs and money moving smoothly and carries out the occasional killing to maintain order.
But the continued integrity of BA and its ability to carry out the writ of larger drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico might not be so certain. The Nov. 3 trial will undermine BA activity in the crucial trafficking corridor of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez.
The indictment and possible incarceration of the six alleged BA members would not damage the gang so badly — after all, BA is accustomed to operating out of prison, and there must certainly be members on the outside ready to fill in for their incarcerated comrades. But making BA’s activities and modus operandi public should increase scrutiny on the gang and could very well lead to many more arrests.
In light of the presence of at least two FBI informants in the gang, BA leaders have probably moved into damage control mode, isolating members jeopardized by the informants. This will disrupt BA’s day-to-day operations, making it at least temporarily less effective. STRATFOR sources say BA members on both sides of the border have been ordered to lie low until the trial is over and the damage can be fully assessed. This is a dangerous period for gangs like BA, as their influence over their territory and ability to operate is being reduced.
Weakening BA by extension weakens the Juarez cartel’s hand in El Paso. While BA no doubt will survive the investigations the trial probably will spawn, given the high stakes across the border in Mexico, the Juarez cartel might be forced to reduce its reliance on BA. This could prompt the Juarez cartel to rely on its own members in Ciudad Juarez to carry out hits in the United States and to provide its own security to leaders seeking refuge in the United States. It could also prompt it to turn to a new gang facing less police scrutiny. Under either scenario, BA’s territory would be encroached upon. And considering the importance of controlling territory to prison gangs — and the fact that BA probably still will be largely intact — this could lead to increased rivalries and violence.
The Juarez cartel-BA dynamic could well apply to alliances between U.S. gangs and Mexican drug-trafficking organizations, such as Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos in Houston, the Texas Syndicate and Tango Blast operating in the Rio Grande Valley and their allies in the Gulf cartel; the Mexican Mafia in California and Texas and its allies in the Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels; and other gangs operating in the United States with ties to Mexican cartels like Mexikanemi, Norteños and the Sureños.
Ultimately, just because BA or any other street gang working with Mexican cartels is weakened does not mean that the need to enforce cartel rules and supply chains disappears. This could put Mexican drug-trafficking organizations on a collision course with U.S. law enforcement if they feel they must step in themselves to take up the slack. As their enforcers stateside face more legal pressure, the cartels’ response therefore bears watching.
Read more: The Barrio Azteca Trial and the Prison Gang-Cartel Interface | STRATFOR
The Barrio Azteca Trial and the Prison Gang-Cartel Interface (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081119_barrio_azteca_trial_and_prison_gang_cartel_interface) is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
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I am afraid that my question has been answered. :cry:
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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7206,css.print/pub_detail.asp
War on the Southern Border: Cartels, Terrorists are Winning
August 30, 2010 - Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, US Army (Ret)
There was a time a time when the municipality of San Fernando in northeastern Mexico was known for farming, fishing and a quiet way of life. Today, it is associated with death. This week, a young Ecuadorean with bullet holes through his shoulder and cheek told the story of how he and his travelling companions on their way to the US in search of work had been kidnapped in San Fernando by the Zetas, one of Mexico’s drug cartels. Even Monterrey, the country’s industrial center known until recently for its peaceful lifestyle, has been turned upside down with terror. The past few months have seen an increase in so-called “narco-bloqueos” or impromptu roadblocks by drugs gangs to create maximum chaos in the selected cities and thwart any local authority to keep the peace.
“They pulled us out of the truck violently and demanded money,” The young Ecuadorian told authorities after managing to escape. “They said that they were Zetas and that they would pay us $1,000 every two weeks [if we joined them] but we didn’t accept and they opened fire.” Mexican authorities confirmed the account when they discovered in a remote and semi-derelict grain warehouse 72 bullet-ridden bodies with their hands tied and eyes bandaged. Among them was a woman in the final stages of pregnancy.
Revelations of what has now been confirmed as the worst massacre since Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president, declared war on organized crime almost four years ago have focused international attention on the country’s drug war like never before. They have underlined the extent to which the cartels have moved into other avenues of crime, such as extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking. And they have left Mexicans with the increasing feeling that the government is losing the war.
It used to be possible to pay little heed to Mexico’s drugs cartels, which supply an estimated 80-90 per cent of the cocaine consumed in the US, as well as a substantial chunk of marijuana, methamphetamines and heroin. Today, the violence resulting from bloody inter-cartel battles over local markets and international smuggling routes affects just about everyone.
Less than a week ago, police found four decapitated bodies hanging from a bridge in a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a weekend getaway about an hour from Mexico City prized for its climate of eternal spring. The victims’ genitals had been hacked off and their little fingers removed. Nearby, police found a calling card left by the South Pacific Cartel, a relatively new drugs syndicate.
Remember the “plaza”, that sunlit square complete with bubbling fountain in the middle that forms any self-respecting image of a Mexican town? Today, it means a local territory for dealing drugs.
Dar piso - The literal translation of “dar piso” is to “give floor” (to something). Today it means to kill someone or to “take them out”. Narco- Perhaps the most flexible term in the new vocabulary is the prefix “narco”.
Try “narcocandidato”, the term for describing a corrupt politician. Or “narcofiesta”, a party of rabble-rousing music, pretty girls and plenty of white cowboy hats held by and for drug traffickers. Then there is the somewhat older term “narcocorrido”, a ballad whose lyrics are specifically about mafia culture. Things got so bad this week that Coparmex, a national confederation of 36,000 businesses that account for one-third of Mexico’s economic output, demanded that federal, state and municipal governments fulfilled their obligations to protect citizens. Mexico’s security arrangements are a patchwork of institutions – there are more than 1,600 separate police forces dotted around the country – with little or no information-sharing and notoriously vulnerable to bribes and corruption.
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I agree.
That said, a question: Why hasn't this already happened?
Woof,
Along with this criminal infrastructure being quietly built on our side of the border the cartels gave standing orders in the past that the killing of Americans and American law enforcement was forbidden because the public uproar might cause the border to be sealed and hurt business and they don't want the DEA and FBI after them any harder than they already are. The shooting of the rancher and bullets hitting City Hall in El Paso, proves the wisdom of that ban but they can't control everything that happens and recent pressure on the Mexican side has cause the cartels to become even more violent than before. Of course if time goes by without another American being killed the public will go back to sleep and the cartels will go about business as usual and our politicians will count the votes they might be getting by keeping the border unsecured and we get closer to becoming a third world narco state. And of course none of our politicans or cops can be corrupted by all this money and if their kids are kidnapped or wives threaten with being killed, they won't give in to the demands of the cartels, oh no. And if they don't give in, the cartels won't start assassinating American Mayors and slaughtering American citizens. No, that could never happen. Besides the important thing is that certain politicians get the hispanic vote and certain individuals and companies get cheap labor. That's what is important. We shouldn't be focusing on this anyway, the real problem is that AZ law and the human rights travesty that might cause. I mean they could hurt someones feelings! What a bunch of racist! How dare they try to enforce our immigration laws, hell they might actually stop some of this and we can't have that! :-P
Oh have you heard the latest about the report from our State Department to the UN? www.abc15.com/dpp/news/state/brewer-condemns-report-to-un-mentioning-arizona-law
P.C.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/31/signs-in-arizona-warn-of-smuggler-dangers/
Reconquista!
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http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/72068
Arizona Now Has ‘Whopping 30’ National Guard Troops and 15 Billboard Signs Warning Citizens About Drug Cartels Operating on Public Lands
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Woof,
Coming soon to your local paper. We have got to seal our border and now! I don't care who's political agenda gets side tracked, I don't care if we pay more for our veggies or anything else that comes from cheap labor and I don't care if the rest of the world thinks we should have unlimited, uncontrolled immigration to our human rights abusing imperial capitalist state! Close the F'in border!
http://www.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100923/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico_journalists
P.C.
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Mexico Security Memo: Sept. 27, 2010
September 27, 2010 | 1936 GMT
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Arrest of El Tigre
Mexican Federal Police agents arrested Margarito “El Tigre” Soto Reyes and
eight other integral members of the Sinaloa Federation in an operation in
Zapopan, Jalisco state, the afternoon of Sept. 25. Soto Reyes assumed
control of the Sinaloa Federation’s methamphetamine trafficking, production
and supply chain after the death of Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal in
a Mexican military operation July 29. The U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency reported that Soto Reyes was responsible for sending
nearly half a ton of methamphetamine to the United States each month after
procuring precursor chemicals (pseudoephedrine and ephedrine) via the “South
Pacific” route — from Argentina through Peru, Panama and Central America to
Mexico — and manufacturing the drug in rural drug labs in west-central
Mexico. Several key operational players in the organization’s
methamphetamine logistical and manufacturing line were among the eight
arrested with Soto Reyes:
a.. Juan Pedro Mora, who allegedly was responsible for procuring precursor
chemicals from suppliers in South America, often posing as a veterinarian
representative;
b.. Martin Terrazas Leyva, who was in charge of Soto Reyes’ personal
affairs and security as well as monitoring shipments of narcotics;
c.. Hilarion Diaz Rosas, who reportedly was responsible for the physical
security for the various large-scale drug laboratories where the
organization would manufacture large quantities of methamphetamine; and
d.. Maximino Martinez Sanchez, who allegedly was responsible for the
organization’s massive drug manufacturing operations in the large and often
rural drug labs.
The others arrested with Reyes reportedly were employees at the drug labs.
El Nacho’s death in July appeared to decapitate the leadership of the
Sinaloa Federation’s methamphetamine production operations, possibly
damaging relationships with suppliers and trafficking contacts, but it did
not really affect the organization’s capacity to produce and traffic
methamphetamine. The operation that netted Soto Reyes and his top
operational leaders likely has done more damage to the Sinaloa Federation,
as it will be incredibly difficult to replace the operational knowledge and
expertise taken out of commission by the arrests, and it will certainly
impede the organization’s ability to produce and traffic methamphetamine in
the short term. Furthermore, the detailed knowledge and information that
could be gleaned from those arrested Sept. 25 likely will lead to follow-on
raids and arrests of other Sinaloa Federation operational assets.
The Sinaloa Federation arguably has been the biggest producer and trafficker
of methamphetamine in Mexico for the past several years, but its reduced
operational capacity could result in other organizations like La Familia
Michoacana (LFM), which also has a history of methamphetamine production in
the region, moving in and taking a larger portion of the Mexican
methamphetamine production market. Even though LFM and the Sinaloa
Federation are part of the New Federation alliance with the Gulf Cartel
against Los Zetas, business operations typically are seen as more important
than these types of cartel agreements and could be a point of contention
between the two organizations.
Attacks on Mayors in Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua
Unknown gunmen shot and killed Prisciliano Rodriguez Salinas, the mayor of
Doctor Gonzalez, Nuevo Leon state, and another city employee in an ambush
near the entrance of Rodriguez’s ranch outside the city around 9:30 p.m.
local time Sept. 23. Doctor Gonzalez is a small rural agricultural community
about 56 km (35 miles) east of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, and is located
in a region that has been rife with conflict between Los Zetas and the New
Federation and has seen numerous Mexican military operations. Several people
were brought in for questioning in the shooting, including three brothers
who were involved in a land dispute with Rodriguez, but all have since been
released. The ambush style of the attack on Rodriguez bears the hallmark of
a cartel-sanctioned operation; however, no group has officially been accused
of being behind the attack.
Also, Ricardo Solis Manriquez, the mayor-elect of Gran Morelos, Chihuahua
state, was shot multiple times in the head in an attack inside a business
along the Cuauhtemoc-Chihuahua highway around 1:30 p.m. local time Sept. 24
by a group of armed men in two cars. Solis underwent seven hours of
emergency surgery and is reportedly in critical condition in the intensive
care unit.
Rodriguez is the second mayor to have been killed in two months in Nuevo
Leon state after the death of Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos Leal, whose
body was found Aug. 18 after he was reported kidnapped. The recent attacks
on elected officials in both Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua state continue to show
the brazenness of criminal groups operating in the region and that no
position of authority in the region is safe from the reach of these groups.
While no motive for the attacks on Rodriguez and Solis has been declared
officially, and there has been no indication that either mayor was working
with a criminal organization, it is common for organized crime groups to
target their rivals’ support structure, which has included local law
enforcement and local elected officials in past cases. With endemic
corruption still a large issue, particularly in these two regions of Mexico,
it cannot immediately be ruled out that these two mayors were simply working
for the wrong side of the cartel conflict taking place in their respective
regions.
Click to view map
Sept. 20
a.. Unidentified gunmen killed a former coordinator for the state attorney
general’s office in Durango, Durango state. The victim had resigned from his
post three days earlier.
b.. Police discovered five dismembered bodies in Tanhuato, Michoacan
state. The letter “J” had been carved into the victims’ backs.
c.. A woman was killed in the Benito Juarez neighborhood of
Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico state, by an unidentified gunman. The attacker shot
the victim once in the chest.
Sept. 21
a.. Police in the municipality of Tlajomulco de Zuniga discovered a
severed head and a dismembered body next to a sign warning that the remains
were booby trapped with explosives. No explosives were found at the scene.
b.. Residents of Ascension, Chihuahua state, beat two suspected kidnappers
to death.
c.. Four men died in an ambush in the municipality of Atotonilco de Tula,
Hidalgo state.
d.. Unidentified gunmen killed two children of Ecologist Green Party of
Mexico President Sonia Hernandez in Otatitlan, Veracruz state.
Sept. 22
a.. Unidentified gunmen attacked a ministerial police station in the
Urdiales neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. No injuries were
reported.
b.. Two severed heads were discovered near the entrance to the settlement
of “El 30” in the municipality of Acapulco, Guerrero state.
c.. Unidentified gunmen killed three people at a seafood restaurant in San
Ignacio, Sinaloa state.
Sept. 23
a.. Police arrested Carlos Barragan Figueroa, a suspected leading figure
of Los Zetas, in Cancun, Quintana Roo state. Barragan Figueroa is suspected
of ordering an attack on a bar, which resulted in the deaths of eight
people.
b.. Seven people were killed during a firefight between suspected
organized crime groups in Acapulco, Guerrero state. Soldiers arrested five
policemen at the scene who were allegedly accompanying a group of gunmen.
Sept. 24
a.. Authorities announced the arrest of a suspected La Linea gunman
identified as “El 7,” who is believed to have participated in the killing of
an El Diario journalist in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, in 2008.
b.. Police discovered the mutilated body of an unidentified man in a
drainage canal in the Anahuac neighborhood of San Nicolas de los Garza,
Nuevo Leon state.
c.. Two suspected cartel gunmen were killed during a firefight with
soldiers in the municipality of General Teran, Nuevo Leon state.
Sept. 25
a.. Unidentified gunmen killed the Mexican Roma community patriarch in a
Mexico City hospital.
b.. Four men suspected of dismembering two people were arrested in
Zapotlanejo, Jalisco state, after a firefight with police.
c.. Police arrested suspected Sinaloa cartel member Margarito “El Tigre”
Soto Reyes in Zapopan, Jalisco state. Soto Reyes is believed to be the
successor to Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal.
Sept. 26
a.. Soldiers arrested the leader of Los Zetas in Quintana Roo state,
identified as Jose de Fernandez Lara Diaz, and seized several weapons, 1.35
million pesos (more than $107,000) and $36,000.
b.. Police found the bodies of four men abandoned near a highway in
Cuernavaca, Morelos state. A message near the victims attributed the crime
to the Cartel Pacifico Sur.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Sept. 27, 2010 | STRATFOR
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SANTIAGO, Mexico — The Mexican government is preparing a plan to radically alter the nation’s police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime.
The proposal, which the president’s aides say is expected in the coming weeks, would all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a “unified command.” It comes at a critical moment for President Felipe Calderón, who faces mounting pressure from the United States and within Mexico to demonstrate progress in defeating the drug cartels.
He has already hurled the military into the fight, using soldiers to buttress the federal police and battle the drug traffickers, but violence continues to soar and corruption among the nation’s police forces remains a constant, fundamental scourge.
Police departments around the country, filled with underpaid, undertrained officers, are heavily infiltrated by criminal organizations or under the thumb of mayors, often simply escorting local officials rather than patrolling the community, according to a report by Mexico’s Senate last month.
Mr. Calderón’s new plan would eliminate what are now wide variations in police training, equipment, operations and recruitment in favor of a single national standard, helping the government field a more professional, cohesive force to work alongside its soldiers and agents fighting the drug war.
The approach has its pitfalls, though. State authorities, which would now control the local police forces in coordination with the federal police, are hardly immune to corruption themselves, and municipal officials are suspicious of surrendering autonomy. It is also unclear how dishonest officers will be weeded out of the new chain of command.
But the government is running out of options, and the public’s worries have only intensified with a recent rash of assassinations.
Here in this pastel-splashed colonial town, it was a shock to most residents when the popular mayor was bundled into a sport utility vehicle in August and found dead days later. It was less of a surprise that several local police officers were accused of the murder.
Eleven mayors have been killed this year. Just this week, the mayor of Tancitaro was found dead from a blow with a stone . The previous mayor and several town officials had already resigned after threats from drug traffickers and complaints that the police were ineffective; the state and federal authorities took over enforcement because the 60-member police force was believed to be enmeshed in crime.
Several mayors here in northeastern Mexico now spend the night in the United States out of concern that the local police cannot protect them, state officials confirmed.
Until now, Mr. Calderón’s main approach has been to draw on the military and the federal police, but the strategy has come under withering criticism for its human rights record. The State Department withheld funds from Mexico under an antidrug initiative for the first time this year partly because of abuses.
The military has been accused of unlawful killings, torture, seizures and indiscriminate fire that has killed innocents.
“We are still waiting for justice,” said Juan Carlos Arredondo, the uncle of one of two students killed in Monterrey by soldiers, who claimed they were criminals and, according to a report by the National Human Rights Commission, manipulated the crime scene to make it look that way.
Last week, Human Rights Watch sent a scathing letter to Mr. Calderón, accusing him of sitting silent in face of evidence that military abuses “have grown significantly with each year of your presidency.”
Mr. Calderón’s aides remain confident that their strategy is making progress and are counting on the police reform to help make the kind of turnover that the president has been promising.
Despite talk in Washington about increasing the role of the United States military here — small teams have advised the Mexican military for several years — Mr. Calderón’s chief security spokesman, Alejandro Poiré, ruled that out.
“This a matter in which we need to rebuild our own institutions,” he said, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the fight against traffickers here was taking on the characteristics of an “insurgency,” angering Mexican officials. President Obama contradicted her the next day.
Since Mr. Calderón took office, the federal police have expanded to more than 30,000 officers from about 6,000, and have often swooped in with the military to take over policing from local officers deemed corrupt or under the control of drug gangs.
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The government’s new plan would place local police departments under the command of governors, preserving the closely guarded autonomy of the states and allowing the authorities to more easily move people to trouble spots.
Mr. Calderón announced in June that he would propose constitutional changes for the measure this year and recently held “public dialogues” to help build support. He has proposed spending $2.4 billion next year to carry it out, which might allow for higher salaries and help steer officers away from corruption.
“That is one of the deficits of the last 20 or 30 years of Mexico’s political development, that we didn’t build the police institutions to prevent crime,” Mr. Poiré said.
Officials in Monterrey, a city of two million, recently reported that its police force stood at 350 officers, half what it was a year ago because of dismissals and resignations.
While the new approach would make law enforcement more accountable to state leaders, analysts note that state forces — and even the federal police, where nearly a tenth of the force has been dismissed this year for suspected corruption and other problems — do not have great records themselves.
“The problem is the state governments are not exactly clean,” said John Ackerman, editor of the Mexican Law Review. “It can hardly be worse than the municipal level, but the state has problems too.”
Here in Santiago, the police force has dwindled to about 20 from 160 a year ago, with state and federal police filling the gap, according to the mayor, Bladimiro Montalvo. Residents like Gonzalo Almaguer, a 62-year-old retiree, say they hardly go out anymore, especially at night. “This was a peaceful town but now you don’t know who to trust; it is like the rest of the country,” said Mr. Almaguer, one of the few people in the central plaza last week.
Mayor Montalvo said he worried most about the 50 percent drop in tourism because of the swelling violence around his town, including shootings and kidnappings in nearby Monterrey that prompted the State Department to pull children of its workers out of the country.
“I don’t think so,” he said when asked if he worried for his safety. “Something can happen, but if you are orderly and respectful that is something they will respect,” he said of criminal organizations. He then dashed off, driven away in a sport utility vehicle by two bodyguards.
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At this point in Mexico, it's worth a try.
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Mexico Security Memo: Oct. 4, 2010
October 4, 2010 | 2056 GMT
:
20 Tourists Kidnapped in Acapulco
A group of armed men traveling in four cars reportedly kidnapped 20 Mexican
tourists in the Costa Azul neighborhood of Acapulco, Guerrero state, only
600 meters (about 650 yards) from the popular tourist spot of Costera Miguel
Aleman, at around 4:30 p.m. local time Oct. 1. The victims were from a group
of 22 tourists traveling in four vehicles from Morelia, Michoacan state.
They had stopped near Cristobal Colon and Fernando de Magallanes streets
while two individuals from the group sought lodging. The group consisted of
mechanics, masons, painters and their families, but all were reportedly
linked to the sale of scrap iron. While the two individuals sought a hotel,
some 30 armed men in six SUVs took the remaining 20 tourists captive.
The two remaining tourists did not contact Acapulco law enforcement
authorities until the following morning. They said they saw the kidnappers,
who were armed with assault rifles, line the victims against a wall before
forcing them into the SUVs and departing the scene. Authorities have
reportedly searched the tourists’ four vehicles for clues regarding who
carried out the kidnapping. The federal attorney general’s office has since
opened two separate cases in Michoacan and Guerrero states and solicited the
help of the federal police, naval and army intelligence branches in the
region to help find the 20 kidnapped tourists.
Acapulco has been the most violent of Mexico’s major tourist destinations
for several years now. Multiple drug trafficking organizations have laid
claim to the territory or have significant operations in the city and the
surrounding region. The port of Acapulco is not traditionally a major
commercial shipping hub, but a tremendous amount of boat traffic travels in
and out of Acapulco Bay and the surrounding waters and lagoons, making it an
ideal location for shipments of cocaine and other narcotics. La Familia
Michoacana (LFM), the Sinaloa Federation, and the Beltran Leyva Organization
(BLO) and its factions have all fought for control of the city, but violence
previously had been limited to people connected to organized criminal
activities.
Though Mexican authorities have yet to name suspects in the case, the show
of force and the manner in which these 20 tourists were taken bears the
hallmarks of an organized crime group. Large organized crime groups tend to
carry out kidnapping for ransom when they need quick cash to sustain
operations. Recently, elements of the BLO operating in the city have
experienced major setbacks in terms of leadership and operational
capability, suggesting it might have played a role. That the group of
tourists hailed from Morelia, Michoacan — the home base of LFM, BLO’s main
rival in Acapulco — may also have played a role in this incident.
Monterrey Grenade Attacks
A string of grenade attacks in the Monterrey metropolitan area late the week
of Sept. 27 capped a week of similar attacks in other hot spots along the
South Texas-Mexico border. Early in the week, a group of armed men threw a
fragmentation grenade at the facade of the Public Security Secretariat
building in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, late Sept 27. Later, two people
were injured when a group of armed men threw a grenade outside city hall in
Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, the afternoon of Sept. 29. Then, the Monterrey
area saw three incidents in which fragmentation hand grenades detonated near
security infrastructure or diplomatic facilities the evening of Oct. 1. The
first occurred near a prison facility, the second near a federal
courthouse — injuring a guard outside the facility — and the third near the
U.S. Consulate. The following night, a group of armed men in two trucks
reportedly threw a hand grenade into a group of people walking outside the
Guadalupe (part of the Monterrey metro area) city hall at around 11:15 p.m.
Oct. 2. The blast, which hit a popular town square, injured between 15 and
20 people, several of whom were children.
The grenade attacks all occurred in territory disputed by Los Zetas and the
Gulf cartel and its allies in the New Federation. Mexican authorities have
not specified who they think carried out the attacks. Los Zetas were
implicated in a similar grenade attack during the annual El Grito
celebration in Morelia, Michoacan state, in 2008. Eight people were killed
and more than 100 were injured in that incident. While nothing suggests Los
Zetas carried out this attack, a recent Mexican naval operation in Matamoros
and Reynosa netted nearly 30 members of the Gulf cartel, a large arms cache
and several hundred thousand dollars and pesos. This would be motivation
enough for the Gulf cartel to lash out against government targets, but the
Gulf cartel has not been known to target civilians indiscriminately.
Regardless of who is responsible, these incidents continue to underscore the
increasing level of insecurity in the Monterrey metro area and in
northeastern Mexico in general. As this insecurity persists, we can expect
to see criminal groups further exploit the civilian population for
territorial and financial gains, especially if both groups continue to
experience operational losses.
Click to view map
Sept. 27
a.. Unidentified gunmen attacked the Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state,
Public Security Secretariat office with a grenade. No injuries were reported
and the building was only slightly damaged.
b.. One soldier and four suspected cartel gunmen were killed during a
firefight in the municipality of Coahuayana, Michoacan state.
c.. Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a university student from the parking
lot of the Valle de Atemajac University in Guadalajara, Jalisco state.
Sept. 28
a.. Federal police announced the arrest of suspected La Linea cell leader
Jose Ivan Contreras Lumbreras in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. Contreras
is believed to have participated in a July 15 car bomb attack.
b.. Three people were injured in a firefight between members of two labor
unions in Boxite, Mexico state. The two unions were competing for contracts
in road construction.
c.. Unidentified gunmen in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco state, killed a father and
son during an ambush on their vehicle.
Sept. 29
a.. Two people were injured in a grenade attack on the city hall in
Matamoros, Tamaulipas state.
b.. Three unidentified people in a vehicle were killed in a firefight with
soldiers in Gomez Palacio, Durango state. One of the vehicle’s occupants was
arrested after attempting to flee.
c.. Four suspected cartel gunmen were killed in a firefight with soldiers
in Cerralvo, Nuevo Leon state. Soldiers freed four people in a separate
operation against suspected kidnappers in Cerralvo.
Sept. 30
a.. One person was killed during a firefight between unidentified people
in a bar in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state.
b.. Authorities announced the arrests of six suspected LFM members
believed involved in carjackings in Salamanca, Guanajuato state. The
suspects allegedly belonged to an LFM cell that operated in the
municipalities of Yuriria, Moroleon and Uriangato.
c.. Four policemen were kidnapped from a bar in Netzahualcoyotl, Mexico
state, and later shot and dumped into a nearby river. One of the victims
survived.
Oct. 1
a.. Soldiers in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, killed two suspected cartel
gunmen and seized 4,000 rounds of ammunition and 20 kilograms (about 44
pounds) of cocaine.
b.. Police at the Mexico City International Airport arrested a man who had
swallowed 81 capsules of cocaine. The suspect was initially screened for
nervous behavior during a document inspection.
c.. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents discovered a suspected
smuggling tunnel in Nogales, Arizona. The tunnel extended approximately 15
meters into the U.S. side of the border.
Oct. 2
a.. The Mexico City attorney general’s office announced the arrests of two
people allegedly responsible for the murder of the Mexico Roma patriarch on
Sept. 27. Both suspects are members of the national Roma community.
b.. Fourteen suspected members of criminal groups were killed in a
firefight in the municipality of Otaez, Durango state.
c.. The body of an unidentified man was found in the Quinta Velarde
neighborhood of Guadalajara, Jalisco state. The body had a message attached
to its stomach with a knife. The message attributed the crime to a group
called “La Limpieza,” which means “The Cleaning.”
d.. Twelve people were injured in a grenade attack near city hall in
Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon state.
Oct. 3
a.. Two people were killed and four others were injured in a firefight in
Nextipac, Jalisco state. Several intoxicated state investigative agents were
reportedly involved in the shooting.
b.. Soldiers arrested eight suspected members of Los Zetas in Guadalupe,
Nuevo Leon state. The suspects were arrested after a military patrol chased
three vehicles attempting to flee in the Tamaulipas neighborhood.
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Good thing we've secured that southern border.....
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It seems parts of Mexico is doing well. Their stock market keeps hitting record highs.
10.5.10
MEXICO CITY (Dow Jones)--Mexican stocks charged higher to a record close Tuesday, propelled by gains in U.S. equities and shares of media conglomerate Televisa (TV, TLEVISA.MX).
The IPC index of leading issues finished up 0.6% at 34,257 on volume of 215 million shares worth 7.35 billion pesos ($588 million), beating its previous closing high of 34,134 on April 15. The index briefly touched a new intraday high of 34,359 points around midday before retreating.
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Maybe it is a way for the narco money to launder itself?
Monterrey is the heartland of Mexican industry/business/entrepeneurialism. The descent into narco-anarchy there bodes very poorly for Mexico.
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Hmmm while you know far more about Mexico than I, as one who investigates fraud for a living,
the stock market is a very poor choice to launder money.
The Blue Chip Mexican Companies are leading the stock market.
Further, my point was that the stock market is a pretty good leading indicator of the economy.
We read about the violence and drugs, but economically, Mexico is doing just fine. We need to
look at the good, not just the bad.....
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Well, I certainly don't investigate fraud for a living, but my general impression is that the Mexican equivalent of the SEC is not a real powerhouse bureaucracy. Anyway, I certainly don't insist on the point-- it was simply something that popped into my head.
Do you happen to have handy any general data on the Mexican economy as a whole?
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Mexico's economy is doing better.
Bloomberg
Mexico’s Economy to Expand 3.87% in 2010, Survey Says (Update1)
March 01, 2010, 12:07 PM EST
MORE FROM BUSINESSWEEK
Mexican Peso Rises to Five-Week High on U.S. Economic Outlook
Mexico Keeps Rate at 4.5% for Fifth Meeting on Tame Inflation
Mexico’s Central Bank Keeps Rate Unchanged at 4.5% (Update2)
Mexico Ministry May Increase 2010 GDP Forecast Again (Update1)
Mexico’s Peso Appreciates as Output Falls Less Than Forecast
By Jens Erik Gould
March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mexican economists increased their 2010 growth estimates after the government raised its forecast for this year and indicators such as industrial output and retail sales rose for the first time in more than a year.
Mexico’s gross domestic product will expand 3.87 percent in 2010, according to a monthly central bank survey of economists released today, up from last month’s 3.28 percent estimate. The government raised its 2010 GDP forecast to 3.9 percent from 3 percent last month.
Latin America’s second-biggest economy is recovering on increasing exports and improving domestic demand after it contracted 6.5 percent in 2010, the worst annual slump since 1932. The recession in the U.S., which buys about 80 percent of Mexico’s exports, crippled the $1.09 trillion economy last year as a decline in exports led to job losses and falling production.
I didn't know Mexico had an SEC! :-)
A few rich still hold the reigns of the country’s highly concentrated economy, where one or two firms dominate key sectors like television, telephones, cement, and food distribution. Half of the country’s 107 million people live in poverty. Mexico is home to both the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, whose fortune is estimated at about $53.5 billion, and about 20 million Mexicans who live on less than $3 per day.
Upper-middle class Mexicans today are firmly implanted in the developed world, with iPhones, modern apartments, high education levels and small families. They sometimes feel ignored amid all the talk of violence: Mexico’s nationwide murder rate, after all, is a relatively low 14 per 100,000, well below the average for Latin America.
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"Mexico’s nationwide murder rate, after all, is a relatively low 14 per 100,000, well below the average for Latin America."
According to this table in the Economist the murder rate in Mexico is not much higher than the US's and much lower than El Salvador. That said I think the murder rates are still mostly due to drugs in these countries? Perhaps politics?
http://www.economist.com/node/16964155?story_id=16964155
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JDN:
Thank you for the data.
1) Per chance do you have the population growth rates, the number entering the labor force each year, the number of jobs created at the current rate of growth, etc?
2) I get the point about the comparative murder rates, but
a) is the data accurate? Often Mexican data is even less acurrate than ours. How many people do we have in the US
and how many murders? Same question for Mexico? Is the Mexican number being used consistent with the
numbers being quoted for the narco wars?
b) Apart from that I submit the proposition that a murder of a government official, police chief, DA, policeman, their
family members, etc. is a far more socially destructive phenomenon than the sort of murders we have here in the
US.
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Crafty,
I do not have population growth rate data, labor data etc. I did notice in my reading that many authors gave credit to NAFTA
for Mexico's success. One could wonder is this at America's expense? But that is another topic.
As for the murder rate, it seems reasonably accurate and is accepted by most authorities.
The data is based upon homicides per 100,000 of population therefore it is a fair comparison.
It does include the narco wars; imagine if they did not exist?
I guess that tells you what a nice and tranquil nation Mexico truly is except for the narcotic business...
Further, while all murder is bad, I absolutely agree with you that "a murder of a government official, police chief, DA, policeman, their
family members, etc. is a far more socially destructive phenomenon than the sort of murders we have here in the
US."
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/14/92181/in-mexicos-murder-capital-residents.html
Ciudad Juarez, the sprawling Mexican metropolis of 1.3 million people across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Murder City, probably the most dangerous city in the world outside a declared war zone.
Already this year, 686 people have been murdered here. Residents hunker in trepidation. Most answer cell phone calls only from people they know to avoid random extortion attempts. Instead of going out on the town, they hold private parties — and only with close friends.
Those residents who can afford to leave have left.
"The exodus is dramatic," said Gustavo de la Rosa, the local ombudsman for the Chihuahua State human rights commission. "There are at least 20,000 abandoned houses, and maybe up to 30,000."
Americans have reason to be concerned, too. The U.S. does about $1 billion a day of trade with Mexico, and nearly one-sixth of that trade goes through the Juarez-El Paso region.
Crime in Juarez also threatens to bleed across the border. Criminal gangs working for drug cartels already operate on both sides of the border, and in a sign of the growing risks, on March 13 gunmen killed three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Juarez. The sky-high murder rate is driven by two rival groups — the Juarez cartel and the Sinaloa cartel — and their battle for control of drug smuggling into the U.S.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/14/92181/in-mexicos-murder-capital-residents.html#ixzz11dIDBNPY
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Recently I worked with Customs & Border Protection. Some interesting tales were told over lunch and dinner.
The situation at the border is serious folks.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125427225
Journalist Charles Bowden, who details a city in collapse in his new book about Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, says that at first glimpse the border town looks like a flat tapestry of one-story buildings.
"It can be an illusion at first," he tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. "You'll see an Applebee's; you'll see a Radisson, a Denny's. You'll think everything's all right.
"What you don't see until you look closely is 100,000 people who've lost their factory jobs; 40 percent of the businesses have folded in the last year; 25 percent of the houses have been abandoned. And, of course, there's the killings," he says.
The killings are the focus of Bowden's new book, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields. Most recently, the city was in the news after three people associated with the U.S. consulate were gunned down and killed.
But the reality is that on most days killings in Juarez don't make the front page. They've become, as Bowden has called it, "part of the ordinary noise of life."
Bowden says a recent study in Chihuahua state, in which Juarez is the largest city, found that 40 percent of young males harbored the ambition to become contract killers. He says half of any young man's peer group will be neither in school nor employed.
The drug industry makes $30 billion to $50 billion a year and is second only to petroleum among Mexico's lucrative exports.
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Not denigrating the terrible violence in Mexico on the border, but it is worth repeating;
overall Mexico is a reasonably safe place.
Many cities in America are worse.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934323.html
And some places like Compton only 30 minutes from my place are much worse. Compton - 67/100,000 (murders/population)
Note, Compton is even statistically worse per 100,000 than Ciudad Juarez cited above.
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My first job when I moved to LA was serving subpoenas-- including in Compton, Watts, and East Los Angeles.
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No wonder you pursued Practical Martial Arts as a career path! :-D
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I was working for a private investigation agency that had a large case it was developing against a conspiracy of lawyers and chiropractors that had a network of folks who would create car accidents with a technique known as "Swoop and Squat". They would load a car with willing low lilfes. The driver would swoop in front of a nice car driven by a likely victim (e.g. an older woman driving a Mercedes) and stomp on the brakes, thus creating a rear end collision by the nice car. The many passengers of the car would claim various soft tissue injuries requiring lots of chiro treatment. Of course they simply pocketed the money they were promised and disappeared, and the chiros and their enforcer thugs the lawyers would bill the insurance company.
Where I fit in was to find the disappeared passengers and serve them so they could be deposed. It was an interesting job-- too bad it didn't pay enough :wink:
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Los Zetas Guatemala Confrontation
Members of the Guatemalan military clashed with suspected members of the Mexican drug trafficking organization Los Zetas in the jungles of Guatemala’s Peten department near the village of El Remate, leaving two Zetas dead, another two captured and a Guatemalan soldier injured the night of Oct. 5. Official reports indicate that a convoy of 10 vehicles (some of them armored) carrying eight to 10 Zetas each was traveling down a jungle road when it encountered a Guatemalan military patrol, at which point the Zetas opened fire on the soldiers. The Zeta convoy reportedly was based out of the village of El Chal (a significant distance away) and allegedly was searching for those responsible for stealing a cocaine shipment a few weeks ago. The group got lost on the jungle roads, however, before it stumbled upon the military patrol. As of Oct. 6, Guatemalan National Police had confiscated nine of the 10 vehicles, and were continuing to search from remnants of the Zetas with the help of the Guatemalan special operations forces unit known as Los Kaibiles.
While confrontations between Mexican drug trafficking organizations and foreign militaries are fairly rare, it is not surprising that they occur. STRATFOR has tracked the southward push of Mexican drug trafficking organizations into Central America and South America for some time, with an emphasis on the Zetas’ and Sinaloa Federation’s push into the Central American trafficking scene. Los Zetas operate almost exclusively throughout the vast swaths of jungle from western to northeastern Guatemala, where they receive shipments of cocaine from South America on hundreds of clandestine airstrips throughout the region. Los Zetas also have established several training camps in the area where both Mexican and Central American recruits receive varying degrees of tactical training on drug trafficking.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of the incident was its proximity to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, a popular tourist destination. Several thousand people visit the ruins every year, with the vast majority of these tourists flying into nearby Flores and then traveling on the road from Flores to Tikal National Park. Tourist buses have been hijacked and the passengers robbed before, but the large amounts of cash the tourists brought to the local economy and the resulting pressure against this kind of banditry minimized such incidents. Increased confrontations in the region between cartel elements and Guatemalan security forces would likely cause a decline in tourism not unlike the blow to Mexico’s tourism industry dealt by the widespread violence in that country — and many tourists already were avoiding Guatemala due to fears of violence.
Hidalgo State Heating Up?
Hidalgo state police discovered a narcomanta (a banner with a message from a drug cartel) signed by Los Zetas hanging from a pedestrian bridge between two prominent state government buildings early Oct. 5. In it, the Zetas declared their rivalry with the Gulf cartel and La Familia Michoacana, adding that they do not to kill or extort the people of Hidalgo. Later, at around 5 a.m. Oct. 7, the decapitated and quartered bodies of two men believed associated with the Zetas were found near Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo state, near a narcomanta signed by the Gulf cartel and La Familia Michoacana reading “Welcome to Hidalgo.”
Hidalgo traditionally has been one of Mexico’s quieter regions, though it has experienced fleeting bouts of cartel violence. The region serves as a popular trans-shipment location for narcotics and alien smuggling as part of the Gulf route from Central America to the Texas-Mexico border and traditionally was Gulf cartel territory. After Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel split earlier this year, their conflict slowly has spread in regions where their operations overlap. These types of tit-for-tat assassinations and public displays of mutilated bodies often signify a declaration of war. Similar narcomantas from both Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel appeared in Reynosa and other parts of Tamaulipas before violence significantly escalated between the two groups in February and March. The events in Hidalgo could thus foreshadow a new wave of violence in the coming weeks as a new front in the Los Zetas-Gulf cartel conflict.
(click here to view interactive map)
Oct. 4
The Mexican navy announced the seizure of 5,683 kilograms (about 12,500 lbs.) of marijuana from several abandoned vessels in Talchichilte Island, Sinaloa state.
Authorities announced the seizure of 77.5 kilograms of marijuana from a vehicle in the municipality of Silao, Leon state. Three people were arrested during the incident.
Naval security forces and customs agents seized approximately 100 kilograms of cocaine at the port of Manzanillo, Colima state. The shipment was discovered in a container that arrived from Callao, Peru.
Oct. 5
Police discovered the body of an unidentified man wrapped in plastic bags in the municipality of Tezoyuca, Mexico state.
Unidentified gunmen killed a man inside his home in the Tlalpan neighborhood of Mexico City and kidnapped four members of his family who were later found inside an abandoned car shot dead.
Soldiers freed 14 kidnapping victims from a vehicle at a roadblock near the San Miguel Bridge in Coahuila state. The driver of the vehicle was arrested.
Oct. 6
Soldiers arrested two people in the Valle del Sur neighborhood of the municipality of Juarez, Nuevo Leon state. The suspects were interrogated and subsequently led the troops to a safe-house where authorities freed a kidnapping victim.
Unidentified gunmen killed two men traveling in a car on Madero Avenue in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. A group of unidentified armed men later arrived at the scene to recover the bodies, causing police to retreat temporarily.
Unidentified gunmen killed one policeman and injured seven in an ambush in Coyuca de Catalan, Guerrero state.
Unidentified gunmen attacked an armored vehicle belonging to a restaurant owner in Leon, Guanajuato state, slightly injuring the owner. Police later arrested two suspected members of the Sinaloa cartel in connection with the attack.
Oct. 7
Soldiers killed two gunmen during a firefight in a rural area of the municipality of Paras, Nuevo Leon state.
Authorities discovered a dismembered body near the settlement of Tres Palos in Acapulco, Guerrero state, along with a message warning “those who back the Beltran Leyva cartel and Daniel Encinas.”
Two dismembered bodies were found in the municipality of Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo state. A message attributing the crime to the Gulf Cartel and La Familia Michoacan was found nearby.
Police found the severed head of a kidnapped man in the El Troncal de Villa Union neighborhood of Mazatlan, Sinaloa state.
Oct. 8
Unidentified gunmen attacked a house in the Unidad Nacional neighborhood of Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas state with grenades, destroying a vehicle in the garage.
Six suspected cartel gunmen were killed and one soldier was injured during a firefight in Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas state.
A vehicle accidentally triggered an improvised explosive device in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state, injuring one person and damaging several buildings.
Unidentified gunmen killed the mayor of Martires de Tacubaya, Oaxaca state.
Oct. 9
Soldiers in Salvatierra, Guanajuato state, arrested two suspected cartel members after discovering three bodies in their vehicle during a traffic stop.
Police discovered the bodies of two men the Los Puestos neighborhood of Tlaquepaque, Jalisco state. The two victims had been shot to death.
One policeman was injured during a grenade attack on the Public Security Secretariat headquarters in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
Oct. 10
Two suspected cartel gunmen were killed during a firefight with soldiers in the municipality of General Teran, Nuevo Leon state.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Oct. 11, 2010 | STRATFOR
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http://policelink.monster.com/news/articles/146982-mexican-investigator-was-beheaded-to-intimidate-cops?utm_source=nlet&utm_content=pl_c1_20101014_bathroom
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LFM Connection to 20 ‘Tourists’ Kidnapped in Acapulco
A group of 20 tourists from Morelia, Michoacan state, reportedly kidnapped Oct. 1 in the Costa Azul neighborhood of Acapulco, Guerrero state, was sent on orders from La Familia Michoacana (LFM), Reforma reported Oct. 26, citing Mexican federal security sources. According to the report, LFM sent 22 men to Acapulco (two of the men eluded capture) to “heat up” the region as part of its struggle with its rivals from the Cartel de la Sierra, headed by Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal. Some of their objectives reportedly included assassinating the mayors of Acapulco and nearby San Marco and attacking area schools. Mexican authorities learned that Valdez Villareal had ordered the kidnapping of the 20 during the interrogation of Isidro “El Quirri” Juarez Solis, allegedly the plaza boss for the Acapulco region for the Cartel de la Sierra, whom they detained several days after the 20 were kidnapped.
As STRATFOR noted when reports of the kidnapping emerged Oct. 1, inconsistencies in the initial reports made it seem dubious that those kidnapped were merely tourists, and the Michoacan origins of this group along with the current violence in Acapulco gave the incident the hallmarks of cartel conflict.
The Cartel de la Sierra is the name used by the Valdez Villarreal faction of the former Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO), which has operated throughout the region for several years now first for the Sinaloa federation, then for the BLO and now independently. LFM has operated in the Acapulco region for several years, too, but has never had the level of influence that the Valdez Villarreal organization has had. LFM has attempted to wrest control of Acapulco several times, causing periodic spikes of violence and spectacular firefights with rival organizations and Mexican security forces.
There have been at least 21 deaths in the Acapulco region in the wake of the disappearance of the LFM-linked group, and likely more that have gone unreported. The deployment of these 22 LFM operatives, with ambitious objectives even by Mexican standards, reveals another push by LFM in the Acapulco region, with the 21 reported deaths likely the beginning of a new wave of violence between Valdez Villarreal’s organization and LFM. This new LFM offensive could see the Valdez Villarreal organization lose its status as the dominant organization in the region, especially given the recent arrests of senior Valdez Villarreal leadership, especially that of La Barbie himself in August.
October was Juarez’s Deadliest Month of 2010
A total of 350 people were killed in the Ciudad Juarez metro area during October, according to the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s Office, making it the deadliest month of 2010 to date. According to the Attorney General’s Office, Juarez has seen some 2,387 drug trafficking-related deaths in 2010 against 2,666 for the entire state of Chihuahua — and those are only the ones reported. To give some perspective, 2009 was believed to have been the deadliest year on record for the state of Chihuahua, with 2,754 drug trafficking-related deaths. Now, 2010 — which has yet to have a month with fewer than 100 deaths — is on pace to break that record.
No part of the Juarez metro area has been left untouched by the seemingly endless violence despite hosting the largest deployments of Mexican federal security forces, including both Federal Police and members of the military. The violence stems from a three-front war involving the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (VCF), aka the Juarez cartel, and the Sinaloa Federation headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. U.S. and Mexican law enforcement have both indicated that the Sinaloa Federation appears to have gained a tactical advantage in the Juarez region and is now the region’s primary trafficker. This appears to have provoked the VCF to employ more extreme tactics, such as deploying vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices against Mexican security forces.
Nothing suggests the violence in Juarez will slow soon, as the three-way war dynamic is not likely to change in the near term. With the Sinaloa Federation appearing to be the dominant cartel in the region, however, the VCF simply cannot maintain the pace at which it is currently operating indefinitely given its current resources. It may take several months or even years for the Sinaloa federation to either co-opt or eliminate the VCF, but it appears that one of those outcomes will be inevitable.
(click here to view interactive map)
Oct. 25
Soldiers arrested four police officers in two separate incidents in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, for allegedly spying on military operations for criminal organizations.
Police arrested eight suspected kidnappers linked to approximately a dozen kidnappings in Mexico City. The suspects were arrested in the municipalities of Ecatepec and Tecamac.
Oct. 26
The bodies of five men were found in the municipality of Temixco, Morelos state. The victims were allegedly associates of Edgar Valdez Villarreal; police found a message at the scene attributing the crime to Cartel Pacifico Sur.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seized 57 kilograms of heroin from a bus driven by a U.S. citizen at the Laredo border crossing.
The unidentified bodies of three men and a woman were found in the municipality of San Andres Huayapam, Oaxaca state. The victims bore signs of torture and were partially buried.
Several armed men broke into a morgue in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, to steal the body of a man who died in a firefight earlier in the day.
Oct. 27
Six police officers were injured in a grenade attack against the police headquarters in Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas state.
The bodies of three men and a woman were discovered in Acapulco, Guerrero state. The four victims had been blindfolded and bore signs of torture.
Unidentified gunmen killed 15 people at a carwash in Tepic, Nayarit state. The private secretary for the Nayarit state attorney general was reportedly injured during the attack.
Police in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Tijuana, Baja California state, seized approximately 1.5 tons of marijuana and arrested three suspects. The seizure reportedly occurred after soldiers checked two suspicious vehicles during a routine patrol.
Oct. 28
Unidentified gunmen killed five people during an attack on buses carrying factory workers in Caseta, Chihuahua state.
Soldiers in Xalisco, Nayarit state, killed one suspected cartel gunman and arrested 17 others allegedly linked to the murders of 15 carwash employees in Tepic, Nayarit state.
Nine policemen were killed during an ambush in Jilotlan, Jalisco state. One officer was reported missing after the incident.
Oct. 29
Six suspected gunmen allegedly working for an unidentified criminal organization were arrested at an unidentified location along the Monterrey-Saltillo highway. Police seized several automatic rifles, a grenade launcher, several bulletproof vests and 11 communication radios.
Soldiers arrested six suspected CPS gunmen at a safe house in Tejalpa, Morelos state.
Police arrested Francisco Javier Gomez Meza, director of the Puente Grande prison in Jalisco state, for alleged links to organized crime.
Oct. 30
Two suspected cartel gunmen died in Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon state, after several grenades in their vehicle reportedly exploded after their vehicle crashed during a firefight with soldiers.
Unidentified gunmen killed four people at a bar in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state.
Farmers in Ixtlan de los Hervores municipality, Michoacan state, discovered three bodies in an abandoned vehicle.
Police discovered the burned body of Canadian citizen Daniel Allan Dion in the municipality of Eduardo Neri, Guerrero state.
Oct. 31
Unidentified gunmen injured three people in the 15 de Septiembre neighborhood in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
Unidentified gunmen killed the deputy police commander of Ometepec, Guerrero state.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Nov. 1, 2010 | STRATFOR
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Networked Intelligence | 9 November 2010
Mexico - 400 cities lacking operational police force
According to Mexican Minister of the Interior Francisco Blake Mora, there are at least 400 cities out of 2,449 without an operational police force. (October 2010)
Mexico - Public officials arrested for ties to La Familia Michoacana
On 31 October 2010, Jose Luis Avalos Rangel, Municipal President of Tzitzio from 2005 to 2007, and four other men were arrested in Charo, Michoacan, for alleged ties to La Familia Michoacana. In a separate incident, the Director of the Water Commission (CAPALAC) of Lazaro Cardenas, Roman Mendoza Valencia, was arrested for his alleged ties to La Familia Michoacana in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan.
Mexico - La Familia Michoacana improves access to California
La Familia Michoacana’s recently formed alliance with the Arellano Felix organization (AFO) gave them an entrance route into the United States by way of Tijuana. La Familia, which dominates the market of methamphetamines, initiated the alliance with the AFO, which would help move methamphetamine through Baja California into California. (November 2010)
Mexico - Six Americans killed within five days
The U.S. Department of State confirmed on 2 November 2010 that six US citizens from El Paso, Texas were killed in separate attacks in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico between 29 October 2010 and 2 November 2010. In total, 47 Americans were murdered in Mexico in the first half of 2010.
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I'm not following this point , , , :?
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My thinking exactly. We agree 100%.
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Federal Deployment to Tamaulipas
The Mexican government is reported to have significantly augmented federal security forces in the northern Tamaulipas border region with a deployment of both Mexican army troops and Federal Police agents, bringing the number of federal security forces in the region to nearly 3,000. These forces, which have been arriving since Nov. 13, will be primarily deployed to the areas around Ciudad Mier, Camargo, Nuevo Guerrero, Miguel Aleman and Diaz Ordaz, or more generally in the rural stretch between the major metropolitan areas of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo along the Tamaulipas-South Texas border. This deployment will be in addition to the Mexican Marine forces already deployed to the region, as well as the Mexican army operating in the military’s 7th and 8th zones, which are headquartered in Escobedo, Nuevo Leon and Reynosa, respectively. Additionally, there are reports that a Mexican special operations unit will be deployed from Mexico City to the Tamaulipas border region as well to conduct high-risk operations, possibly targeting high-value cartel targets. Military officials also have indicated that they will be establishing checkpoints in the region and will be inspecting 100 percent of both passenger and cargo vehicles.
Though the new deployment of federal forces to the area is sizable, the total number of federal forces in the region pales in comparison to other federal security operations, such as Coordinated Operation Chihuahua, which boasts close to 10,000 forces deployed primarily in northern Chihuahua. The Tamaulipas deployment also will allow particular branches of the military and Federal Police to have more specified roles in the operations. According to Mexican military officials, Mexican Marines will primarily be tasked with intelligence operations and to a lesser extent will conduct joint patrols with the army and Federal Police. The Federal Police will base the majority of their operations in more urban areas, including Reynosa, Matamoros and to a lesser extent Nuevo Laredo. Mexican army personnel will primarily be tasked with operations in the more rural areas, including checkpoints outside urban centers.
This deployment comes at a time when tensions between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas are high in large part due to the Nov. 5 death of Gulf cartel leader Antonio Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas Guillen. Tony Tormenta’s death set in motion a likely offensive on the part of Los Zetas to retake control of the Tamaulipas-South Texas border region lost earlier in the year to the Gulf cartel and their allies in the New Federation.
Los Zetas have made bold moves in battleground like Ciudad Mier, Camargo and Miguel Aleman. The group has all but taken over portions of these towns, forcing residents to flee in the wake of Tony Tormenta’s death. One such brazen takeover reportedly occurred Nov. 5 in Ciudad Mier, where alleged members of Los Zetas were reported to be running through the streets screaming that all the residents in the area must vacate the city or be killed. More than 300 people are estimated to have left the city reportedly seeking shelter in nearby Miguel Aleman, where at least two temporary housing settlements have been set up. It appears that Los Zetas are using both of these small towns as a staging area for a possible assault on the much larger Reynosa metropolitan area some 65-80 kilometers (40-50 miles) to the southeast.
The death of Tony Tormenta could not have come at a worse time for the Gulf cartel. The Gulf cartel was part of the New Federation alliance which included La Familia Michoacana (LFM) and the Sinaloa Federation, but developments in the past three months have strained the relationship between the three, with the once-powerful alliance reduced to a non-aggression agreement between the Gulf cartel and its two former allies. LFM fell out of the Sinaloa Federation’s favor after attempting to move in on the methamphetamine production and trafficking market in Jalisco and Colima states after the death of Sinaloa No. 3 Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal in July. LFM’s defense of its territory in its home state of Michoacan also has drawn Sinaloa’s ire. The Sinaloa Federation has been of little help to the Gulf cartel in recent months as Sinaloa has been dedicating large amounts of its resources and focus to the conflict in Juarez. The group traditionally has held very little influence in the Tamaulipas region.
Further leaving the Gulf cartel exposed, in the months leading up to the death of Tony Tormenta, Mexican federal security forces dealt a serious blow to cells associated with the Gulf cartel leader, arresting more than 50 operatives and making numerous weapons and cash seizures. This leaves the remaining Gulf cartel leader, Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sanchez, and the cells associated with him extremely vulnerable to any Los Zetas offensive.
With the increase in tensions and posturing between Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel along with the influx of Mexican federal security forces in the region, violence in the Tamaulipas border area is likely to escalate in the weeks to come. The deployment of more federal security forces increases the likelihood that they will come in contact with one of the two criminal groups operating in the region, resulting in firefights between criminals and security forces. Additionally, aside from the obvious risk of bodily harm from being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, this likely increase in fighting and along with the expanded presence of security forces will present significant disruptions to businesses and visitors in the region. Narco-blockades, a tactic both Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel use, create an elevated degree of risk of carjacking (especially for high-profile vehicles such as SUVs, trucks and tractor trailers) as well as logistical complications from the resulting traffic jams. Logistical issues also will arise from the 100 percent inspection rate at the military checkpoints that have been and will be established in the region and from the military personnel manning the checkpoints’ lack of training in interacting with civilians.
(click here to view interactive map)
Nov. 8
Soldiers in Zapopan, Jalisco state, killed two men and arrested another during a firefight at a suspected methamphetamine lab. A passerby was injured during the incident.
Unidentified gunmen killed the police commander of the municipality of Pabellon de Arteaga, Aguascalientes state, as he drove near his home.
Nov. 9
Police seized 531 kilograms (about 1,170 pounds) of marijuana from a steel shipment in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. Authorities said the drugs arrived from Leon, Guanajuato state. No arrests were made during the incident.
Security forces in Acapulco, Guerrero state, discovered the decapitated bodies of two police officers near the settlement of La Venta. The victims’ tongues had been removed and both bodies bore signs of torture.
Police discovered several body parts in a plastic bag floating in a sewage ditch in Ecatepec, Mexico state. Local residents called the police after spotting a dog carrying a human hand in its mouth.
Soldiers in Piedras Negras, Coahuila state, freed 10 kidnapped migrants and arrested six suspected kidnappers during a raid on a house.
Police in Puente de Ixtla, Morelos state, arrested a suspected associate of Edgar Valdez Villarreal. The suspect allegedly controlled drug trafficking routes through central Mexico.
Nov. 10
Suspected LFM members hung banners in Zitacuaro, Maravatio and Ciudad Hidalgo, Michoacan state, stating the cartel’s alleged intent to disband and seek a truce with the government.
Officers from the state attorney general’s office discovered the bodies of two men in a house allegedly owned by the Beltran Leyva Organization in Bosques de Las Lomas neighborhood of Mexico City.
Soldiers arrested two municipal policemen in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon state, for allegedly surveilling a security forces raid on a motel.
Unidentified gunmen fired at the offices of the El Sur newspaper in Acapulco, Guerrero state. No injuries were reported.
Nov. 11
Unidentified attackers threw two grenades at the state security and roads offices in Gomez Palacio, Durango state. No injuries were reported in the attack.
Police found the body of a man in the trunk of an abandoned car in the Coyoacan neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. The victim had been shot in the head.
Police in Santa Rosa, Morelos state, arrested three suspected high-ranking associates of Edgar Valdez Villarreal after a car chase that began in Oaxtepec, Morelos state, after the three suspects failed to stop at a police roadblock.
Nov. 12
One suspected cartel gunman was killed in a firefight with soldiers in the Terminal neighborhood in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state. The shooting began when a convoy of suspected gunmen did not heed the soldiers’ order to stop.
Three severed heads were discovered outside a municipal government office in Chalchihuites, Zacatecas state. A message claiming the crime was revenge for a previous homicide in Chalchihuites was left near the heads.
Police arrested seven people suspected of working as lookouts for Los Zetas in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
Nov. 13
Police discovered the bodies of two men and a woman hanging from a bridge in Tepic, Nayarit state. A message was discovered near the bodies.
The bodies of two unidentified men were found in the trunk of an abandoned car in the municipality of Cuautla, Morelos state.
Unidentified gunmen killed a Chihuahua state prison official as he drove with his son in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. The child was injured during the attack.
Nov. 14
Police discovered five bodies in an orchard in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood of Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Five people were killed and eight were injured when a group of unidentified gunmen opened fire on patrons at a bar in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120806379.html
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Yes, that is what happens when the rule of law breaks down. When the gov't does not provide justice, people make their own.
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A Near Miss for El Chapo?
Mexican media reported Dec. 13 that Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera may have narrowly escaped a Mexican army raid on a party the night of Dec. 10-11 in the Campestre neighborhood of Delicias, Chihuahua state. El Diario cites unofficial, unidentified sources as saying Guzman was attending the party, and El Digital reports the operation was targeting him but that units from the 5th military zone that first arrived on the scene were ordered to wait for backup from the 42nd military zone before they could initiate the raid.
This hesitation may have allowed Guzman to flee, though there also is no confirmation, only statements by unnamed sources, that he was even present at the party. The El Digital sources said the order to wait was given so the 42nd zone could share credit for the capture, which indicates that the hesitation was not due to lack of firepower — making it an unusual order, given the target’s value.
STRATFOR
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What are the odds the person giving the orders to wait is corrupt? Just saying very fishy.
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Mexico and the Cartel Wars in 2010
December 16, 2010
Editor’s Note: This week’s Security Weekly is a heavily abridged version of STRATFOR’s annual report on Mexico’s drug cartels. The full report, which includes far more detail and diagrams depicting the leadership of each cartel along with our updated cartel map, will be available to our members on Dec. 20.
By Scott Stewart
In our 2010 annual report on Mexico’s drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of the past year and provide an updated description of the dynamics among the country’s powerful drug-trafficking organizations, along with an account of the government’s effort to combat the cartels and a forecast of the battle in 2011. The annual cartel report is a product of the coverage STRATFOR maintains on a weekly basis through our Mexico Security Memo as well as other analyses we produce throughout the year. In response to customer requests for more and deeper coverage of Mexico, STRATFOR will also introduce a new product in 2011 designed to provide an enhanced level of reporting and analysis.
In 2010, the cartel wars in Mexico have produced unprecedented levels of violence throughout the country. No longer concentrated in just a few states, the violence has spread all across the northern tier of border states and along much of both the east and west coasts of Mexico. This year’s drug-related homicides have surpassed 11,000, an increase of more than 4,400 deaths from 2009 and more than double the death toll in 2008.
Cartel Dynamics
The high levels of violence seen in 2010 have been caused not only by long-term struggles such as the fight between the Sinaloa Federation and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization (also known as the Juarez cartel) for control of the Juarez smuggling corridor but also from the outbreak of new conflicts among various players in the cartel landscape. For example, simmering tensions between Los Zetas and their former partners in the Gulf cartel finally boiled over and quickly escalated into a bloody turf war along the U.S.-Tamaulipas state border. The conflict has even spread to states like Nuevo Leon, Hidalgo and Tabasco and has given birth to an alliance between the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf cartel and La Familia Michoacana (LFM) called the New Federation.
Last December, it appeared that Los Zetas were poised to make a move to assume control over much, if not all, of the Gulf cartel’s territory. The Gulf cartel knew it could not take on Los Zetas alone with its current capabilities so in desperation it reached out to its main rivals in Mexico — the Sinaloa Federation and LFM — for help, thus forming the New Federation. With the added resources from the New Federation, the Gulf cartel was able to take the fight to Los Zetas and actually forced its former partners out of one of their traditional strongholds in Reynosa. The New Federation also expanded its offensive operations to other regions traditionally held by Los Zetas, namely the city of Monterrey and the states of Nuevo Leon, Hidalgo and Veracruz.
This resulted in Los Zetas being pushed back on their heels throughout the country, and by June it looked as if Los Zetas’ days might be numbered. However, a chain of events that began with the July 28 death of Sinaloa Federation No. 3 Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel served to weaken the alliance and forced the Sinaloa and LFM to direct attention and resources to other parts of the country, thus giving Los Zetas some room to regroup. The situation along the border in eastern Mexico is still very fluid and the contest between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas for control of the region will continue in 2011.
(click here to enlarge image)
The death of Arturo Beltran Leyva in December 2009 in a Mexican marine raid led to a vicious battle between factions of the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) for control of the group, pitting Arturo’s brother, Hector Beltran Leyva, against Arturo’s right-hand man, Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal. The war between the two BLO factions ended with the arrests of the leadership of the Valdez Villarreal faction, including La Barbie himself on Aug. 30, and this faction has been heavily damaged if not completely dissolved. Hector’s BLO faction adopted the name Cartel Pacifico Sur (CPS), or the South Pacific Cartel, to distance itself from the elements associated with Valdez that still clung to the BLO moniker. The CPS has aligned itself with Los Zetas against Sinaloa and LFM and has actively fought to stake a claim to the Colima and Manzanillo regions in addition to making inroads in Michoacan.
After being named the most violent organized-crime group in Mexico by former Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora in 2009, LFM has been largely a background player in 2010 and was active on two main fronts: the offensive against Los Zetas as part of the New Federation in northeastern Mexico and the fight against elements of the CPS and Los Zetas in southern Michoacan and Guerrero states, particularly around the resort area of Acapulco. LFM and CPS have been locked in a heated battle for supremacy in the Acapulco region for the past two years and this conflict shows no signs of stopping, especially since the CPS appears to have recently launched a new offensive against LFM in the southern regions of Michoacan. Additionally, after the death of Sinaloa leader El Nacho Coronel in July and the subsequent dismantlement of his network, LFM attempted to take over the Jalisco and Colima trafficking corridors, reportedly straining relations between the Sinaloa Federation and LFM.
LFM has been hard hit in the latter months of 2010, its losses on the battlefield amplified by the arrest of several senior operatives in early December. The Dec. 10 death of LFM spiritual leader Nazario “El Mas Loco” Moreno Gonzalez will further challenge the organization, and STRATFOR will be carefully watching LFM over the next several weeks for additional signs that it is collapsing.
Two former heavyweights on the Mexican drug-trafficking scene have continued a declining trajectory in 2010: the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization/Juarez cartel (VCF) and the Arellano Felix Organization/Tijuana cartel (AFO). The VCF continues to lose ground to the Sinaloa Federation throughout Chihuahua state, most notably in the Ciudad Juarez area. The VCF’s influence has largely been confined to the urban areas of the state, Juarez and Chihuahua, though it appears that its influence is waning even in its traditional strongholds (Sinaloa now appears to be moving narcotics through the Juarez smuggling corridor). Following a bitter war between two factions of the AFO, the organization is a shell of its former self. While the AFO faction under the leadership of Fernando “El Ingeniero” Sanchez Arellano emerged victorious over the faction led by Eduardo “El Teo” Garcia Simental, who was a Sinaloa Federation proxy, it appears that Sanchez Arellano has reached an agreement with Sinaloa and is allowing it to move narcotics through Tijuana.
In the past, these sorts of agreements have proved to be temporary — one need only look at recent history in Juarez and the cooperation between Sinaloa and the VCF. Because of this, it is likely at some point that the Sinaloa Federation will begin to refuse to pay taxes to the AFO. When that happens, it will be important to see if the AFO has the capability to do anything about it.
The death of El Nacho Coronel and the damage-control efforts associated with the dismantlement of his network, along with the continued focus on the conflict in Juarez, forced the Sinaloa Federation to pull back from other commitments, such as its operations against Los Zetas as part of the New Federation. On the business-operations side, Sinaloa has made inroads in other regions and other continents. As noted above, the organization also has reportedly made progress in extending its control over the lucrative Tijuana smuggling corridor and is making significant progress in asserting control over the Juarez corridor.
Over the past few years, Sinaloa has gained control of, or access to, smuggling corridors all along Mexico’s northern border from Tijuana to Juarez. This means that Sinaloa appears to be the group that has fared the best over the past few years amid the intensifying violence. This would apply more specifically to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera and his faction of the Sinaloa Federation, which has benefited greatly by events since 2006. In addition to the fall of external foes like the AFO and Juarez cartels, he has seen the downfall of strong Sinaloa personalities who could have risen up to contest his leadership, men like Alfredo Beltran Leyva and El Nacho Coronel. Sinaloa members who attract a lot of adverse publicity for the federation, such as Enrique “El Cumbais” Lopez Acosta also seem to run into bad luck with some frequency. Additionally, STRATFOR sources continue to report a sustained effort by the Sinaloa Federation to expand its logistical network farther into Europe and its influence deeper into Central America and South America.
Escalation
Some of the groups that have borne the brunt of the cartel wars, such as Los Zetas, the AFO and the VCF, have seen a decrease in their ability to move narcotics. This has forced them to look for other sources of income, which typically means diversifying into other criminal enterprises. A steady stream of income is important for the cartels because it takes a lot of money to hire and equip armed enforcer units required to guard against incursions from rival cartels and the Mexican government. It also takes money to purchase narcotics and to maintain the networks required to smuggle them from South America into the United States. This reliance on other criminal enterprises to generate income is not a new development for cartel groups. Los Zetas have long been active in human smuggling, oil theft, extortion and contract enforcement, while the VCF and AFO have traditionally been involved in extortion and kidnap-for-ransom operations. However, as these groups found themselves with their backs against the wall in 2010, they began to escalate their criminal fundraising operations. This increase in extortion and kidnapping has had a noticeable effect on businesses and wealthy families in several cities, including Monterrey, Mexico’s industrial capital. The wave of kidnapping in Monterrey even led to the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey ordering the departure of all minor dependents of U.S. government personnel beginning in September.
Some of the more desperate cartel groups also began to employ improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in 2010. The VCF has made no secret about its belief that the Federal Police are working for and protecting the Sinaloa Federation in Juarez. Following the July 15 arrest of a high-ranking VCF lieutenant, VCF enforcers from La Linea conducted a fairly sophisticated ambush directed against the Federal Police using a small IED hidden inside a car containing a cadaver that the attackers called in to police. The blast killed two Federal Police agents and injured several more at the scene. La Linea attempted to deploy another IED under similar circumstances Sept. 10 in Juarez, but Federal Police agents were able to identify the IED and call in the Mexican military to defuse the device. La Linea has threatened to use more and larger IEDs but has yet to follow through on those threats.
There were also three small IEDs deployed in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state, in August. On Aug. 5, a substation housing the rural patrol element of the Municipal Transit Police was attacked with a small IED concealed inside a vehicle. Then on Aug. 27, two other IEDs placed in cars successfully detonated outside Televisa studios and a Municipal Transit Police station in Ciudad Victoria. The Ciudad Victoria IED attacks were never claimed, but Los Zetas are thought to be the culprits. The geographic and cartel-territorial disparity between Ciudad Victoria and Juarez makes it unlikely that the same bombmaker is responsible for all the devices encountered in Mexico this year.
To date, the explosive devices deployed by cartel groups in Mexico have been small, and La Linea and the Ciudad Victoria bomber did show some discretion by not intentionally targeting large groups of civilians in their attacks. However, should cartel groups continue to deploy IEDs, the imprecise nature of such devices will increase the risk of innocent civilians becoming collateral damage. This will be especially true if the size of the devices is increased, as La Linea has threatened to do. The cartels clearly have the skills required to build and deploy larger devices should they so choose, and explosives are plentiful and easy to obtain in Mexico.
Outlook
The administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dismantled several cartel networks and captured or killed their leaders in 2010, most notably Sinaloa No. 3 Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal and Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal. While such operations have succeeded in eliminating several very dangerous people and disrupting their organizations, however, they have also served to further upset the balance of power among Mexico’s criminal organizations. This imbalance has increased the volatility of the country’s security environment by creating a sort of vicious feeding frenzy among the various organizations as they seek to preserve their own turf or seize territory from rival organizations.
Calderon has also taken steps to shift the focus from the controversial strategy of using the Mexican military as the primary tool to wage war against the cartels to using the newly reformed Federal Police. While the military still remains the most reliable security tool available to the Mexican government, the Federal Police have been given more responsibility in Juarez and northeast Mexico, the nation’s most contentious hot spots. Calderon has also planted the seeds to reform the states’ security organizations with a unified command in hopes of professionalizing each state’s security force to the point where the states do not have to rely on the federal government to combat organized crime. Meanwhile, the Mexican Congress has take steps to curb the ability of the president to deploy the military domestically by proposing a National Security Act that would require a state governor or legislature to first request the deployment of the military rather than permitting the federal government to act unilaterally.
The successes that the Calderon administration has scored against some major cartel figures such as La Barbie and El Nacho in 2010 have helped foster some public confidence in the war against the cartels, but disruptions to the balance of power among the cartels have added to the violence, which is clearly evidenced by the steep climb in the death toll. As long as the cartel landscape remains fluid, with the balance of power between the cartels and the government in a constant state of flux, the violence is unlikely to end or even recede.
This means that Calderon is at a crossroads. The increasing level of violence is seen as unacceptable by the public and the government’s resources are stretched to the limit. Unless all the cartel groups can be decapitated and brought under control — something that is highly unlikely given the government’s limitations — the only way to reduce the violence is to restore the balance of power among the cartels. This balance can be achieved if a small number of cartels come to dominate the cartel landscape and are able to conduct business as usual rather than fight continually for turf and survival. Calderon must take steps to restore this balance in the next year if he hopes to quell the violence and give his National Action Party a chance to maintain power in the 2012 Mexican presidential elections. In Mexico, 2011 promises to be an interesting year indeed.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/clarence-williams/cops-bust-la-familia-members.html
Cops bust "La Familia" members
By Clarence Williams
D.C. police and federal officials have arrested eight men with ties to Mexico's La Familia drug cartel who sought to set up operations in the Washington metro area, law enforcement officials said.
Authorities also have seized millions of dollars worth of methamphetamine as part of the investigation.
Undercover police and ICE agents arrested the men on federal conspiracy charges last week and the authorities are expected to make a formal announcement on Wednesday. Investigators served search warrants in three states and arrested the men Dec. 10, during raids which netted pounds of crystal meth and dozens of gallons of liquid meth, the sources said.
Authorities seized an estimated $5 million worth of crystal meth during raids near Atlanta. Officials also recovered six pounds of marijuana, three guns, and more than $15,000 in cash, from raids in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina and in Temple Hills.
The investigation followed a purchase by a police informant and an undercover officer of a kilo of cocaine and five pounds of crystal meth in mid-November, from a local trafficker in the D.C. area, the law enforcement officials said.
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IED attack on Police in Nuevo Leon
A small improvised explosive device (IED) detonated around 1 p.m. Dec. 17 inside a sport-utility vehicle outside the Zuazua Public Security Secretariat offices (the equivalent of a municipal police station) in Zuazua, Nuevo Leon state. In addition to destroying the vehicle, the blast injured at least three people and damaged several surrounding vehicles. A message attributed to the Sinaloa Federation and Gulf cartel addressed to “Zeta Police” was found shortly thereafter near the site of the explosion that read, “The state of Nuevo Leon does not guarantee the security of its citizens in the state, and more than a thousand kidnappings are not reported for fear of the authorities. Eleven more car bombs are waiting to be detonated to bring justice for the kidnapped, for the police and corrupt officials are aware.” Nuevo Leon authorities have been quick to say the claim of 11 more IEDs is false, but have offered little in the way of proof. Additionally, authorities have not officially said whether they believe area drug-trafficking organizations were involved in the attack, despite the very public message.
This attack is the year’s fifth successful deployment of an IED against a specified target in Mexico; one occurred in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, and three occurred near Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state. While there has not been any indication as to the composition or exact size of the device, photographic evidence of the blast scene indicates that the device was relatively small and on the scale seen with other devices deployed in the country this year.
The enforcement arm of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (VCF) organization, La Linea, was responsible for the Juarez IED on July 15, and the group indicated after the attack that it would continue its “car bomb” campaign as long as the Federal Police continued to support the Sinaloa Federation, which the VCF accuses the police of doing. Despite these warnings, only one other IED was deployed in Juarez, a few weeks later, and the Mexican military was able to render it safe before it detonated. However, it appears from the message left near the scene and the geographic disparity between Juarez and Nuevo Leon that entirely different actors were responsible for the Dec. 17 incident.
The message falls in line with the strategy pursued by the New Federation alliance. In the spring, elements of the New Federation began taking the fight against Los Zetas to their stronghold in the Monterrey metro region, targeting not only Los Zetas members and operatives but also their support network in the region, including local politicians and local and regional police.
It remains to be seen whether the Sinaloa Federation and the Gulf cartel will actually follow through with a sustained bombing campaign against law enforcement believed to be associated with Los Zetas. If the groups do follow through with their pledge to deploy 11 more IEDs, it would be a significant escalation in the tempo of these types of attacks. While IED attacks in the country thus far have been discriminating in their targeting, the imprecise nature of IEDs greatly increases the risk of civilian casualties.
Nuevo Laredo Prison Break
A prison break the morning of Dec. 17 at the Center for Social Readaptation (CERESO) in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, led to the escape of between 141 and 192 prisoners (the latest figure reported was 151). This is merely the latest in a string of prison breaks in Tamaulipas since January; the total number of prisoners having escaped in the state this year is more than 300.
In the Dec. 17 escape, the prisoners (reportedly both federal and local), working with complicit guards, were able to exit the prison facilities through a service entrance into waiting vehicles. Additionally, the prison director was reported missing the morning of Dec. 17. Multiple source reports indicate Los Zetas were the primary orchestrators of the escape, with some STRATFOR sources saying Los Zetas’ motivation was to augment their forces in the region. The prisoners were reportedly told that once released, they either must work for Los Zetas or be killed. Additionally, STRATFOR sources said the nephew of Los Zetas No. 2 Miguel “Z-40” Trevino Morales was one of the escapees from the CERESO unit.
Los Zetas have experienced several setbacks throughout much of 2010, with several regional plaza bosses and numerous operatives being killed or apprehended. However, developments in the last few months have weakened the Gulf cartel and the New Federation’s grip on Tamaulipas border region, and Los Zetas appear to be poised to regain some of their lost ground, particularly in the Reynosa and Matamoros regions. If the reported ultimatum for the freed prisoners is correct, this influx of forces for Los Zetas could provide the necessary resources to begin a campaign to retake these lost areas. However, the true number of prisoners that will actually go to work for Los Zetas remains to be seen; some likely will renege on their promise and slip back into Mexican society — only now with a bounty on their heads.
(click here to view interactive map)
Dec. 13
Unidentified gunmen shot a man to death during a suspected kidnapping in the Jardines Universidad neighborhood of Guadalajara, Jalisco state.
The body of an unidentified person was discovered near Tlajomulco, Jalisco state. The body was wrapped in a blanket tied together with a string and had a bag over its head.
Dec. 14
Four police officers were reportedly shot to death by a fellow police officer in Cancun, Quintana Roo state. The attacker later committed suicide.
Police found a decapitated body in the trunk of a car in the Ejidos de San Agustin neighborhood of Chimalhuacan, Mexico state. The victim’s head had been placed on the trunk lid.
Two decapitated bodies were found on a soccer field in Huixquilucan, Mexico state.
Dec. 15
In a recorded message released to a TV station, La Familia Michoacana (LFM) leader Servando Gomez Martinez called on his followers to continue fighting and called for more marches against the federal government. Gomez Martinez also confirmed the death of Nazario Gomez in Michoacan state during the week of Dec. 13.
The dismembered body of a man was found in several bags in Guadalajara, Jalisco state. A handwritten sign near the victim attributed the crime to the Jalisco Cartel, New Generation.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the arrests of eight suspected members of LFM in Georgia and North Carolina. One of those arrested is believed to be the primary supplier of illegal drugs for LFM in Washington.
Unidentified gunmen shot and injured two police officers in Allende, Nuevo Leon state.
Authorities were alerted through an anonymous call about three boxes allegedly containing explosives that were placed near separate hospitals in Cuernavaca, Morelos state. The boxes contained clocks inside and were designed to give the appearance of being explosive devices.
Dec. 16
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on a police guard post in the Roma neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, but did not cause any injuries.
One suspected cartel gunman was killed and two bystanders were injured during a firefight between soldiers and gunmen in the La Estanzuela neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
Dec. 17
Unidentified gunmen kidnapped two employees from the nightclub where they worked in Acapulco, Guerrero state. The victims were later discovered shot to death.
A decapitated head was discovered wrapped in cloth inside a bag outside a bar near Texcoco, Mexico state.
A car with explosives inside was detonated outside a police station in Zuazua, Nuevo Leon state. Approximately 151 inmates escaped from a prison in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. The director of the prison was reported missing after the escape.
Dec. 18
Federal security forces arrested four police officers suspected of participating in an attack on other police forces in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon state on Dec. 16. Ten other officers had been arrested Dec. 17 for their alleged participation in the attack.
An e-mail sent to news outlets by a group calling itself the “Ex-Mysterious Disappearers” announced that former legislator Diego Fernandez de Cevallos will be freed soon by his kidnappers.
Dec. 19
Unidentified gunmen forced security personnel to pull back from a crime scene where a decapitated body was present in Juarez, Nuevo Leon state. The gunmen reportedly arrived to recover the body.
Military authorities announced the seizure of a suspected methamphetamine lab in the municipality of Tuxpan, Jalisco state.
Authorities announced the arrest of suspected Colombian drug trafficker Jerson Enrique Camacho Cedeno in an unspecified part of Mexico. Camacho Cedeno is allegedly linked to Los Zetas.
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http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7716583-breaking-lone-female-police-officer-kidnapped-in-juarez-valley-of-mexico
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gArzGbiOwhFhAgcHZWx1MZy8h82Q?docId=f188a3da00a1427093d4332a026a9b47
AP IMPACT: Mexico says its troops killed US man
(AP) – 1 day ago
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Joseph Proctor told his girlfriend he was popping out to the convenience store in the quiet Mexican beach town where the couple had just moved, intending to start a new life.
The next morning, the 32-year-old New York native was dead inside his crashed van on a road outside Acapulco. He had multiple bullet wounds. An AR-15 rifle lay in his hands.
His distraught girlfriend, Liliana Gil Vargas, was summoned to police headquarters, where she was told Proctor had died in a gunbattle with an army patrol. They claimed Proctor — whose green van had a for-sale sign and his cell phone number spray-painted on the windows — had attacked the troops. They showed her the gun.
His mother, Donna Proctor, devastated and incredulous, has been fighting through Mexico's secretive military justice system ever since to learn what really happened on the night of Aug. 22.
It took weeks of pressuring U.S. diplomats and congressmen for help, but she finally got an answer, which she shared with The Associated Press.
Three soldiers have been charged with killing her son. Two have been charged with planting the assault rifle in his hands and claiming falsely that he fired first, according to a Mexican Defense Department document sent to her through the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
It is at least the third case this year in which soldiers, locked in a brutal battle with drug cartels, have been accused of killing innocent civilians and faking evidence in cover-ups.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/0824/mexico-quietly-decriminalizes-drug-use
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Woof,
They say it's completely safe for Americans to come down and spend their money; let's vacation elsewhere, anyway. :-P
P.C.
www.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_drug_war_mexico;_ylt=AihUsJsi7EUcCHjQkAc8Y8eROrgF;_ylu=X30DMTJzN
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U.S. Executive Kidnapped in Monterrey
A heavily armed group kidnapped a U.S. citizen early the morning of Jan. 4 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, in an incident apparently not yet reported in open source media in Mexico. The victim, who reportedly worked for a U.S.-based company with operations in Monterrey, apparently was driving a company-issued armored luxury vehicle at the time of the kidnapping, according to STRATFOR sources.
The victim was traveling through Monterrey when up to three vehicles blocked his passage. The attackers’ first vehicle, which had local Mexican law enforcement markings and lights, cut the victim off from the front, while a second vehicle blocked the victim’s vehicle from the rear. According to STRATFOR sources, a third vehicle then blocked the victim’s vehicle from the side, leaving him boxed in against the curb.
At this point, an unknown number of heavily armed assailants emerged from the vehicles and approached the victim. The victim was quickly removed from his vehicle and placed in one of the attacker’s vehicles.
The victim was severely beaten during the ordeal, and was released later in the evening in the nearby city of Escobedo, Nuevo Leon state, just north of Monterrey. No ransom was demanded, indicating that the attackers’ main objective was stealing the armored luxury vehicle.
Armored cars are especially sought-after items by organized crime elements, who see them as offering safety. Multinational corporations sometimes share this view of armored cars, despite problems emerging from a lack of training in their use. As with any luxury vehicle, driving an armored luxury vehicle significantly raised the U.S. citizen’s profile, thereby making him or her a target for such an operation.
This operation demanded at least minimal pre-operational surveillance of the victim’s routes and routine. The tactics the kidnappers demonstrated show that they were highly trained. Initial reports indicate that at least some, if not all, of the assailants involved in the Jan. 4 incident were members or former members of the local municipal police departments in Escobedo or San Nicolas. Los Zetas have routinely employed municipal officers in these areas for this type of activity.
STRATFOR has been anticipating an escalation in kidnappings in the Monterrey area. This is due to the large concentration of wealth in the region and to the defensive posture the Zetas have had to assume due to their ongoing conflict with the New Federation in the Monterrey area. The rise in kidnappings in Monterrey over the past six months has alarmed the U.S. diplomatic community there, forcing the departure of all minor dependants of all U.S. diplomatic personnel from the region.
The incident shows the Zetas are in fact focusing on kidnapping operations in the region. With an apparent new push by the New Federation to target Los Zetas’ support network (mainly local police and journalists working for the Zetas), a continuation of this trend is likely, as Los Zetas seek additional funds and resources to combat the New Federation offensive. This attack also underscores the need to maintain a minimal profile in contested criminal environments in Mexico such as Monterrey and to employ the use of countersurveillance techniques such as surveillance detection routes and varying routines and routes, as the attacker likely keyed in on the victim’s daily routine.
Acapulco Massacre
Authorities in Acapulco, Guerrero state, found 15 bodies, 14 of them decapitated and one partially decapitated, along a sidewalk Jan. 8 near the commercial center of Plaza Sendero. Two notes accompanying the corpses were signed “El Chapo,” a reference to Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. The armed men reportedly arrived several hours earlier in multiple SUVs, according the Mexican newspaper Milenio, which cited eyewitnesses. Shopkeepers and citizens were ordered to leave or be shot. The fountain in the plaza reportedly flowed red after the armed men sought to wash the blood from the 15 bodies off of their hands and equipment. Ten more bodies were found around the Acapulco metro area during the same time period, most of which had multiple bullet wounds to the head and chest.
Acapulco has been the scene of numerous gruesome murders over the past year or so. The majority of that fighting stemmed from conflicts between the Beltran Leyva Organization/Cartel Pacifico Sur (CPS) and La Familia Michoacan. Notes attributed to El Chapo suggest a shift in the cartel dynamic in the Acapulco region. The Sinaloa Federation has not fought over the Acapulco area since early 2008, when the newly formed BLO effectively kicked forces loyal to El Chapo out of the region. The latest incident suggests El Chapo and the Sinaloa Federation might be seeking to stake a claim to the region once again.
Even so, the beheadings and gruesome tactics on display Jan. 8 are more reminiscent of those employed by CPS members, especially in the Acapulco region. Cartels have been known to leave notes falsely attributing blame for crimes to distract authorities or to shift public opinion against a rival cartel. Whatever the case here, another layer of conflict may have emerged in the complex and ever-changing cartel environment in the Acapulco region.
(click here to view interactive graphic)
Jan. 3
Unidentified gunmen injured a police officer during a patrol in Taxco de Alarcon, Guerrero state.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed the deputy director of public security for Empalme, Sonora state as he drove.
Soldiers killed three gunmen during a traffic stop in the Palmira neighborhood of Apatzingan, Michoacan state.
An unidentified gunman shot and killed the interim director of Sonora state prisons as he left home in Hermosillo, Sonora state.
Jan. 4
Police in Tlajomulco de Zuniga, Jalisco state, discovered a severed pair of feet.
A group of unidentified gunmen killed three construction workers from the same family at a job site in the municipality of Quechultenango, Guerrero state.
Security forces in Mexico City arrested David Romo, the leader of the church of “Holy Death” (aka La Santa Muerte) for allegedly receiving ransom payments obtained from a group of suspected kidnappers.
The bodies of four men shot dead were discovered in the municipality of Tepehuanes, Durango state. Two of the bodies were inside an abandoned vehicle.
Jan. 5
The bodies of two unidentified men were discovered in Tocumbo, Michoacan state. The victims had been blindfolded and bore signs of torture. One of the bodies had had several fingers severed and bore a gunshot wound to the forehead.
Unidentified gunmen ambushed and injured two police officers in the municipality of Santa Catarina, Nuevo Leon state.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a police officer riding a motorcycle in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon state.
Soldiers in Zuazua, Nuevo Leon state, killed two suspected gunmen during a firefight. One police officer was injured during the incident.
Jan. 6
Unidentified attackers attacked the Topo Chico prison in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, with firearms and grenades. No injuries were reported.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed the public security director of Taretan, Michoacan state, as he drove to Ziracuaretiro, Michoacan state, with his family. The director’s wife and children were not injured.
Police in the municipality of Lerdo, Durango state, discovered a common grave with seven bodies.
Jan. 7
Unidentified gunmen stole four vehicles from a used car lot in the Valle de Linda Vista neighborhood of Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon state. The attackers reportedly also kidnapped the business owner.
The body of Saul Vara Rivera, the mayor of Zaragoza, Coahuila state, was discovered in the municipality of Galeana, Nuevo Leon state. Vara Rivera, who apparently was shot dead, had been missing since Jan. 5.
Police in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, arrested Felipe Zurita Cruz, a suspected drug trafficking route operator for the Sinaloa cartel.
Four suspected criminal gunmen were killed during a firefight with police in Tepic, Nayarit state. Three gunmen, two police officers and a civilian were injured.
Jan. 8
Security forces discovered 15 decapitated bodies in Acapulco, Guerrero state. Three messages alluding to Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin Guzman Loera were found at the scene of the crime.
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on a municipal police post in Acapulco, Guerrero state, injuring a police commander and two secretaries.
Five people were injured in an attack by unidentified gunmen on a police post in General Teran, Nuevo Leon state.
Jan. 9
Military authorities announced the arrests of 18 suspected kidnappers in the municipality of Rioverde, San Luis Potosi state.
Police discovered three bodies hanging from a bridge in the Benito Juarez neighborhood of Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Jan. 10, 2011 | STRATFOR
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GUADALUPE DISTRITO BRAVOS, Mexico — Her uncle, the mayor who gave her the job nobody else wanted, warned her to keep a low profile, to not make too much of being the last remaining police officer in a town where the rest of the force had quit or been killed. But in pictures for local newspapers, Érika Gándara, 28, seemed to relish the role, posing with a semiautomatic rifle and talking openly about the importance of her new job.
“I am the only police in this town, the authority,” she told reporters.
Then, two days before Christmas, a group of armed men took her from her home, residents say, and she has not been seen since.
It was an ominous punctuation mark on the wave of terror that has turned this cotton farming town near Texas into a frightened outpost of the drug war. Nearly half of its 9,000 residents have fled, local officials say, leaving block after block of scorched homes and businesses and, now, not one regular police officer.
Far from big, infamous cities like Ciudad Juárez, one of the most violent places in the Americas, the war with organized crime can batter small towns just as hard, if with less notice.
The cotton towns south of Juárez sit in territory disputed by at least two major drug trafficking groups, according to government and private security reports, leading to deadly power struggles. But the lack of adequately trained police officers, a longstanding crisis that the government has sought to address with little resolution, allows criminal groups to have their way.
“Small cities and towns are really highly impacted,” said Daniel M. Sabet, a visiting professor at Georgetown University who studies policing in Mexico. “They offer strongholds organized crime can hold and control.”
Some towns consider themselves so vulnerable that they have gone out of their way not to antagonize criminals. Believing that those involved in organized crime would be less inclined to harm women — and because fewer men are willing to take the job — local officials have appointed a handful of women in the past year to senior police ranks in small cities and towns here in Chihuahua, the country’s most violent state.
After a spate of violence in a neighboring town, Praxédis Guerrero, local officials selected a 20-year-old college student in November as police chief to run the force of nine women and two men, hoping that criminal networks would see her as less threatening.
Marisol Valles, the young police chief, has made it clear that she leaves major crimes to state and federal authorities to investigate. Really, she said, she just reviews civil infractions issued by other officers and rarely leaves the office. “I am more like an administrator,” said Ms. Valles, who does not carry a gun or wear a uniform.
But the criminals have not discriminated. Hermila García, the woman appointed police chief of Meoqui, a small city in central Chihuahua, was killed on Nov. 30 after only a month in the job.
Guadalupe tried to put a nonthreatening face on law enforcement by appointing Ms. Gándara chief in October. But it appears that she tried — or at least talked about — taking the job more seriously, to the regret of her uncle, Mayor Tomás Archuleta. He had good reason to counsel a low profile: He took office after his predecessor was killed last summer, part of a wave of assassinations of local officials across Mexico.
“I told Érika, ‘Be careful,’ to not make waves,” Mr. Archuleta said, openly frustrated by the picture of her with the rifle. Like Ms. Valles, her role is more to issue citations, leaving serious crimes to state and federal authorities.
Guadalupe has plenty of them to investigate. There are as many abandoned homes and businesses — several of them gutted — as occupied ones. One recent morning, four homes smoldered from an attack and two people had been shot dead with high-powered weapons, the bullets leaving several gaping holes in cinder-block walls.
Few people here leave their homes after 5 p.m., and see soldiers and police officers only briefly after a major crime or when they are guarding the monthly delivery of government pension checks for retirees.
“We lock ourselves in most of the time,” said Eduardo Contreras, 26, as he watched residents douse and pick through the embers of their smoldering homes.
In a voice choked with tears, María Torres, 70, who grew up here, said, “This is so sad what has happened here,” as she carried a sign for a church service.
Mr. Archuleta, the mayor, said the town mainly gets its protection from soldiers based at a recreation center in Praxédis Guerrero. Maybe, Mr. Archuleta suggested, not having local police officers is better. He said local residents had told him that common crimes like burglary had dropped out of fear of drawing the attention of a military patrol.
“There aren’t any” minor crimes, he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper.
But townspeople disputed that, complaining that the soldiers or state and federal police officers were rarely seen except after major violence had occurred.
“There is no police, no fire department, no social services, nothing here,” said the middle-aged matriarch from one burned-out home, declining to give her name for fear of reprisals. “People get away with everything here. Nothing gets investigated, not even murders.”
Not long afterward, a four-truck caravan of federal police officers arrived from another town, hopping down from their vehicles, taking notes and asking her and other family members for a word. The family refused even to open the gate for the police, apparently out of fear of being seen talking to them, and the officers moved on. The officers appeared to be taking stock, driving from crime scene to crime scene and taking notes, but not mounting a forensic investigation.
At the site of the double murder in the morning, one officer dabbed at a pool of blood and body fluid on the driveway with a stick; another picked up a piece of flesh and playfully tossed it at a companion.
Ms. Gándara may not have investigated much deeper. Local police officers in small towns usually play a mostly preventive role, refereeing minor disputes, handling the town drunk and quieting rowdy teenagers, city managers said. Many are not armed.
Mr. Archuleta would say little else about his niece, Ms. Gándara, citing an investigation by the state prosecutor’s office, which would not comment on a motive. But he noted that he had turned to her when nobody else would take the job. She had experience as a security guard and appeared not to be involved in any criminal activity, he said.
“Who knows what people do in their private lives,” he said, “but I did not think she was involved in anything.”
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Summary
Baja California state, with its lucrative port of entry into the United States in Tijuana, is among the most sought-after territory for Mexico’s drug cartels. For years the state was controlled by the Arellano Felix Organization until that group’s disintegration and the rise of perhaps Mexico’s most powerful cartel, the Sinaloa Federation. Learning from its past experience, the Sinaloa Federation has moved over the past year to decentralize control among autonomous cells in order to prevent any single faction from becoming too dominant, and breaking off to form its own rival cartel, which has already led to a more stable security environment in the region.
Analysis
The criminal landscape in Mexico’s Baja California state has changed dramatically over the past year, and so have the internal workings of arguably the most powerful cartel in Mexico, the Sinaloa Federation. Dominated by the Arellano Felix Organization (AFO) in the 1990s and early 2000s, crackdowns by the Mexican government and internal divisions in the AFO led to the eventual rise of the Sinaloa Federation in Baja California in late 2010.
Taking its own experience with internal divisions into account, the Sinaloa Federation has adjusted its approach, decentralizing control and ensuring that no one faction becomes powerful enough to split from its parent organization and hold the lucrative Tijuana port of entry into the United States and its surroundings for itself. Despite the increase in organized criminal activity in the region over the past few months, this move has led to a more predictable security environment in the greater Baja California region — a drastic change from only a year ago.
Throughout the 1990s, Tijuana was controlled by the AFO, but a string of arrests and deaths of senior leaders of the groups — namely the Arellano Felix brothers, who made up the core leadership of the AFO beginning in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s — left the group’s operational capability severely diminished. Internal fighting between the faction loyal to the Arellano Felix brothers’ successor, Fernando “El Ingeniero” Sanchez Arellano, and those loyal to the group’s top enforcer, Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Simental, led to a further degradation of the organization in the beginning of 2008. This conflict sparked incredible levels of violence in the region, until the Garcia Simental faction was dismantled by the Mexican Federal Police in January 2010. Out of desperation, Garcia Simental attempted to win back power by reaching out to the Sinaloa Federation for backing against Sanchez Arellano, knowing that the Sinaloa Federation had been trying to move into the lucrative Tijuana region for several years.
The strategy failed and the Garcia Simental faction was marginalized by Mexican security forces, but this left the AFO under Sanchez Arellano extremely weak, with only a few remaining cells still operating in the region. In the latter half of 2010, the Sinaloa Federation used the opening Garcia Simental had given it to solidify control over parts of western Baja California state, namely the Tecate and Mexicali regions, putting Sinaloa in prime position to seize Tijuana. The AFO knew it could not withstand another lengthy battle to retain control of its home territory against a much larger force with vast resources, and a deal was struck between the two organizations. The deal allows both organizations to operate independently and includes a nonaggression pact, securing for the Sinaloa Federation its long-awaited access to the lucrative port of entry into the United States.
As the Sinaloa Federation prepared to send its assets into the region in early 2010, it implemented a business plan for Tijuana that differed from its previous approach. Rather than have a traditional plaza boss who heads several cells and coordinates shipments of illicit goods across the border, the Sinaloa Federation sent numerous autonomous cells to work in the same area under the direction of Sinaloa No. 2 Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia. This information was finally made public by the Tijuana publication Zeta Tijuana (no association with the criminal organization Los Zetas) after it was able to obtain information from the interrogation of an aspiring Sinaloa cell leader in Tijuana, Jesus “El Tomate” Israel de La Cruz, who was arrested Jan. 4.
According to Israel de La Cruz, this new business structure with multiple autonomous cells working together was adopted after the Beltran Leyva brothers, who formed an important faction within Sinaloa, became too powerful and split from the Sinaloa Federation in 2008. A similar instance occurred with the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization in Juarez. This strategy is intended to prevent one cell leader from becoming too powerful, and therefore to keep them dependent on the parent organization, the Sinaloa Federation.
While this approach has generally stabilized the Tijuana region compared to the situation from 2008 to 2010, there is still some dissonance among the cells. A record 134-ton marijuana seizure in October 2010 resulted from a dispute between cell leaders over who was to smuggle which portion into the United States. Somehow, word of the massive shipment made its way to the Mexican military and law enforcement, resulting in the multimillion dollar seizure. After an enforcement sweep left numerous associates dead, business was back to normal.
Undoubtedly, there will be brief flare-ups of violence anywhere organized criminal activity is present — it simply comes with the territory of any illicit business — and there will be spikes in violence again in Tijuana. These two factors — Sinaloa’s decentralized approach, which prevents new rivals from springing up from within a cartel, and the agreement in place in Tijuana between the Sinaloa Federation and the AFO — have led to a more predictable operating environment not only for the cartels, but for the people and businesses of Tijuana, and have given the organizations operating in the area a set of rules to play by. That being said, historically, these types of agreements have been fleeting in nature, as they are often only followed as long as they are convenient to all parties involved. The question is not if the agreement will stay in place but how long it will prevail.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-01-19-column19_ST_N.htm
SAN DIEGO — Many Americans see Mexico as a dysfunctional family in the neighborhood. With the start of a new year, and a new Congress, President Obama needs to persuade the American people to see Mexico in a different light — as one of the most explosive countries in the region capable of creating a major foreign policy crisis for the U.S. There's no better time to start than with Obama's upcoming State of the Union address.
Thanks to Mexico's narco nightmare, our backyard is on fire. According to figures recently released by Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chavez, the number of deaths in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took
office four years ago has surpassed 30,000.
You can chalk up a few of those killings to a notorious drug cartel hit man who has admitted to beheading his victims — even though he isn't old enough to shave. A few weeks
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The author of the piece is a raza-ist advocate for open borders and amnesty. Gee, maybe if we secured the borders first.....
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Lets see now:
"On this side of the border, President Obama must:
"•Deploy the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border, not to combat illegal immigration as George W. Bush did but to help secure the area and ward off drug violence."
Is this even lucid?
"•Reboot and refocus the stale war on drugs with a new emphasis on curbing Americans' consumption that includes instructing the Justice Department to push for stiffer penalties for casual users of marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs."
Hello? We've been there, done that. America has the largest percent of its population incarcerated of any nation on earth by far, and a large % of those are there for crimes.
"•Reverse a dangerous and wrongheaded administration policy, recently detailed by The Washington Post, of not requiring gun dealers on the border to report bulk sales of high-powered semiautomatic rifles — the guns of choice for drug dealers."
Actually the guns of choice are ones unavailable to the American people; they are the military ones brought by defectors from the Mexican Army (indeed, this is where the Zetas, trained by the US government, began) and bought on in illegal international markets. Maybe if the Mexican PEOPLE's right to bear arms were recognized, the narcos couldn't act with such impunity?
"•Start discussing the drug war in Mexico, with the American people, as a potential national security threat. What's going on in Mexico is not just limited to Mexico. Already, the Mexican drug cartels are spreading their operations and power into neighboring countries, such as Guatemala, Peru and Colombia."
Duh! -- WHICH IS A MAJOR REASON WE SHOULD BE CONTROLLING THE BORDER!!!
"How to help Mexico
"With regard to Mexico, Obama should:
"•Provide additional U.S. military advisers to train the Mexican army in counterinsurgency tactics and the taking down of drug lords.
Is this really the issue?
"•Ride herd on the $1.6 billion over three years that Congress provided to the Mexican government in the Merida Initiative but which has been slow to arrive, and make sure every dime gets to Mexico where it can be used to fight the cartels."
Where it will no doubt be put to good and honest use :roll:
"•Be prepared to hand over whatever other kind of support Calderon requires to quash the insurgency, including U.S. troops if necessary.
Anyone with a scintalla of knowledge about Mexican political culture and basic reasoning skills or better would know that this would be explosive! Indeed, IMHO it could imperil the survival of the political order itself. Also, a hot news flash: The narcos don't walk around in uniforms or wear signs saying "I am a narco".
"•Dole out some tough love to our neighbors by making the case to Mexican officials — whether they want to hear it or not — that their situation does indeed compare with Colombia 20 years ago but that they can learn valuable lessons from it.
What does this mean?
"U.S. leaders have been much too timid in dealing with this crisis.
Duh.
"That has to stop.
Duh.
"After all, Americans are subsidizing this war. We buy the drugs that keep the cartels in business, and we provide the guns that keep the drug traffickers armed to the teeth. This is our baby, and it's time we owned up to it.
Certainly the American market is a sine qua non here, but so too are the extraordinay profits that are a result of our War on Drugs. Maybe, instead of peeing into the wind we should look at decriminalizing/legalize & regulate the drugs so as to take the big profits out of it all.
Ruben Navarrette Jr., a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, is a syndicated
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For decades, we've been providing money, training and equipment to Mexican law enforcement and military to fight the narcos.
Many times, Mexico has created a "New, uncorrupted law enforcement agency" to wage war. And soon enough, "la mordida" was the way of doing business in the new agency.
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By Scott Stewart
For several years now, STRATFOR has been closely watching developments in Mexico that relate to what we consider the three wars being waged there. Those three wars are the war between the various drug cartels, the war between the government and the cartels and the war being waged against citizens and businesses by criminals.
In addition to watching tactical developments of the cartel wars on the ground and studying the dynamics of the conflict among the various warring factions, we have also been paying close attention to the ways that both the Mexican and U.S. governments have reacted to these developments. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects to watch has been the way in which the Mexican government has tried to deflect responsibility for the cartel wars away from itself and onto the United States. According to the Mexican government, the cartel wars are not a result of corruption in Mexico or of economic and societal dynamics that leave many Mexicans marginalized and desperate to find a way to make a living. Instead, the cartel wars are due to the insatiable American appetite for narcotics and the endless stream of guns that flows from the United States into Mexico and that results in Mexican violence.
Interestingly, the part of this argument pertaining to guns has been adopted by many politicians and government officials in the United States in recent years. It has now become quite common to hear U.S. officials confidently assert that 90 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican drug cartels come from the United States. However, a close examination of the dynamics of the cartel wars in Mexico — and of how the oft-echoed 90 percent number was reached — clearly demonstrates that the number is more political rhetoric than empirical fact.
By the Numbers
As we discussed in a previous analysis, the 90 percent number was derived from a June 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico (see external link).
According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.
The remaining 22,800 firearms seized by Mexican authorities in 2008 were not traced for a variety of reasons. In addition to factors such as bureaucratic barriers and negligence, many of the weapons seized by Mexican authorities either do not bear serial numbers or have had their serial numbers altered or obliterated. It is also important to understand that the Mexican authorities simply don’t bother to submit some classes of weapons to the ATF for tracing. Such weapons include firearms they identify as coming from their own military or police forces, or guns that they can trace back themselves as being sold through the Mexican Defense Department’s Arms and Ammunition Marketing Division (UCAM). Likewise, they do not ask ATF to trace military ordnance from third countries like the South Korean fragmentation grenades commonly used in cartel attacks.
Of course, some or even many of the 22,800 firearms the Mexicans did not submit to ATF for tracing may have originated in the United States. But according to the figures presented by the GAO, there is no evidence to support the assertion that 90 percent of the guns used by the Mexican cartels come from the United States — especially when not even 50 percent of those that were submitted for tracing were ultimately found to be of U.S. origin.
This point leads us to consider the types of weapons being used by the Mexican cartels and where they come from.
Types and Sources of Guns
To gain an understanding of the dynamics of the gun flow inside Mexico, it helps if one divides the guns seized by Mexican authorities from criminals into three broad categories — which, incidentally, just happen to represent three different sources.
Type 1: Guns Legally Available in Mexico
The first category of weapons encountered in Mexico is weapons available legally for sale in Mexico through UCAM. These include handguns smaller than a .357 magnum such as .380, .38 Super and .38 Special.
A large portion of this first type of guns used by criminals is purchased in Mexico, or stolen from their legitimate owners. While UCAM does have very strict regulations for civilians to purchase guns, criminals will use straw purchasers to obtain firearms from UCAM or obtain them from corrupt officials. It is not uncommon to see .38 Super pistols seized from cartel figures (a caliber that is not popular in the United States), and many of these pistols are of Mexican origin. Likewise, cartel hit men in Mexico commonly use .380 pistols equipped with sound suppressors in their assassinations. In many cases, these pistols are purchased in Mexico, the suppressors are locally manufactured and the guns are adapted to receive the suppressors by Mexican gunsmiths.
It must be noted, though, that because of the cost and hassle of purchasing guns in Mexico, many of the guns in this category are purchased in the United States and smuggled into the country. There are a lot of cheap guns available on the U.S. market, and they can be sold at a premium in Mexico. Indeed, guns in this category, such as .380 pistols and .22-caliber rifles and pistols, are among the guns most commonly traced back to the United States. Still, the numbers do not indicate that 90 percent of guns in this category come from the United States.
Additionally, most of the explosives the cartels have been using in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Mexico over the past year have used commercially available Tovex, so we consider these explosives to fall in this first category. Mexican IEDs are another area where the rhetoric has been interesting to analyze, but we will explore this topic another time.
Type 2: Guns Legally Available in the U.S. but Not in Mexico
Many popular handgun calibers, such as 9 mm, .45 and .40, are reserved for the military and police and are not available for sale to civilians in Mexico. These guns, which are legally sold and very popular in the United States, comprise our second category, which also includes .50-caliber rifles, semiautomatic versions of assault rifles like the AK-47 and M16 and the FN Five-Seven pistol.
When we consider this second type of guns, a large number of them encountered in Mexico are likely purchased in the United States. Indeed, the GAO report notes that many of the guns most commonly traced back to the United States fall into this category. There are also many .45-caliber and 9 mm semiautomatic pistols and .357 revolvers obtained from deserters from the Mexican military and police, purchased from corrupt Mexican authorities or even brought in from South America (guns made by manufacturers such as Taurus and Bersa). This category also includes semiautomatic variants of assault rifles and main battle rifles, which are often converted by Mexican gunsmiths to be capable of fully automatic fire.
One can buy these types of weapons on the international arms market, but one pays a premium for such guns and it is cheaper and easier to simply buy them in the United States or South America and smuggle them into Mexico. In fact, there is an entire cottage industry that has developed to smuggle such weapons, and not all the customers are cartel hit men. There are many Mexican citizens who own guns in calibers such as .45, 9 mm, .40 and .44 magnum for self-defense — even though such guns are illegal in Mexico.
Type 3: Guns Not Available for Civilian Purchase in Mexico or the U.S.
The third category of weapons encountered in Mexico is military grade ordnance not generally available for sale in the United States or Mexico. This category includes hand grenades, 40 mm grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic assault rifles and main battle rifles and light machine guns.
This third type of weapon is fairly difficult and very expensive to obtain in the United States (especially in the large numbers in which the cartels are employing them). They are also dangerous to obtain in the United States due to heavy law-enforcement scrutiny. Therefore, most of the military ordnance used by the Mexican cartels comes from other sources, such as the international arms market (increasingly from China via the same networks that furnish precursor chemicals for narcotics manufacturing), or from corrupt elements in the Mexican military or even deserters who take their weapons with them. Besides, items such as South Korean fragmentation grenades and RPG-7s, often used by the cartels, simply are not in the U.S. arsenal. This means that very few of the weapons in this category come from the United States.
In recent years the cartels (especially their enforcer groups such as Los Zetas, Gente Nueva and La Linea) have been increasingly using military weaponry instead of sporting arms. A close examination of the arms seized from the enforcer groups and their training camps clearly demonstrates this trend toward military ordnance, including many weapons not readily available in the United States. Some of these seizures have included M60 machine guns and hundreds of 40 mm grenades obtained from the military arsenals of countries like Guatemala.
But Guatemala is not the only source of such weapons. Latin America is awash in weapons that were shipped there over the past several decades to supply the various insurgencies and counterinsurgencies in the region. When these military-grade weapons are combined with the rampant corruption in the region, they quickly find their way into the black arms market. The Mexican cartels have supply-chain contacts that help move narcotics to Mexico from South America and they are able to use this same network to obtain guns from the black market in South and Central America and then smuggle them into Mexico. While there are many weapons in this category that were manufactured in the United States, the overwhelming majority of the U.S.-manufactured weapons of this third type encountered in Mexico — like LAW rockets and M60 machine guns — come into Mexico from third countries and not directly from the United States.
There are also some cases of overlap between classes of weapons. For example, the FN Five-Seven pistol is available for commercial purchase in the United States, but the 5.7x28 armor-piercing ammunition for the pistol favored by the cartels is not — it is a restricted item. However, some of the special operations forces units in the Mexican military are issued the Five-Seven as well as the FN P90 personal defense weapon, which also shoots the 5.7x28 round, and the cartels are obtaining some of these weapons and the armor-piercing ammunition from them and not from the United States. Conversely, we see bulk 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm ammunition bought in the United States and smuggled into Mexico, where it is used in fully-automatic AK-47s and M16s purchased elsewhere. As noted above, China has become an increasingly common source for military weapons like grenades and fully automatic assault rifles in recent years.
To really understand Mexico’s gun problem, however, it is necessary to recognize that the same economic law of supply and demand that fuels drug smuggling into the United States also fuels gun smuggling into Mexico. Black-market guns in Mexico can fetch up to 300 percent of their normal purchase price — a profit margin rivaling the narcotics the cartels sell. Even if it were somehow possible to hermetically seal the U.S.-Mexico border and shut off all the guns coming from the United States, the cartels would still be able to obtain weapons elsewhere — just as narcotics would continue to flow into the United States from other places. The United States does provide cheap and easy access to certain types of weapons and ammunition, but as demonstrated by groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, weapons can be easily obtained from other sources via the black arms market — albeit at a higher price.
There has clearly been a long and well-documented history of arms smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border, but it is important to recognize that, while the United States is a significant source of certain classes of weapons and ammunition, it is by no means the source of 90 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican cartels, as is commonly asserted.
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GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Armed men opened fire and hurled a grenade into a crowded nightclub early Saturday, killing six people and wounding at least 37 in a western city whose former tranquility has been shattered by escalating battles among drug cartels.
The attack in Mexico's second-largest municipality took place just hours after a shootout between soldiers and presumed cartel gunmen left eight people, including an innocent driver, dead in the northeastern city of Monterrey. Monterrey is Mexico's third-largest city.
In the Guadalajara attack, assailants in a Jeep Cherokee and a taxi drove up to the Butter Club, located in a bar and restaurant district popular with young people, and sprayed it with bullets. Some of the men then got out of the taxi and threw a grenade into the nightclub entrance, said a police official. The gunmen fled after the pre-dawn attack, he said.
Three were killed at the scene and three more died later in hospitals, said Medical Services Director Yannick Nordin. A Venezuelan and a Colombian were among the dead.
While there have been isolated grenade attacks around the city, Saturday's was the first to be thrown into a crowd and cause so many injuries.
The U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara recently warned U.S. citizens not to drive at night in parts of the city after suspected drug-gang members burned vehicles and blocked streets.
Such alerts have become common for highways in some areas of northern and western Mexico, but not for Guadalajara, which is known more for its mariachi music and tequila than as a focal point of a drug war that has claimed nearly 35,000 lives since 2006.
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By JOSé DE CóRDOBA And DAVID LUHNOW
MEXICO CITY—An agent for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was shot and killed and another agent wounded by unknown gunmen in central Mexico on Tuesday, according to U.S. officials.
The men were driving from Mexico City to Monterrey in the central state of San Luis Potosi when they were attacked.
(Marc: This is the major north-south road of Mexico) U.S. officials condemned the attack and said they would work with Mexican counterparts to bring the assailants to justice.
"Let me be clear: any act of violence against our ICE personnel…is an attack against all those who serve our nation and put their lives at risk for our safety," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement.
The wounded agent was shot in the arm and leg and was in stable condition, Ms. Napolitano said. U.S. officials would not speculate about the motive for the attack.
The incident is sure to raise fresh concerns about Mexico's deteriorating security in Washington and elsewhere. Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed at least 34,000 lives in the past four years as rival drug gangs have fought for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes.
Video Archive: Turmoil in Mexico
Deadly Party in Mexico
Drive-by Killings at Mexico Car Wash
Shootout at Mexico Rehab Center
Police Chief Killed in Mexico
."In terms of the U.S. law enforcement community, this will greatly raise the significance of Mexico," said George Grayson, an expert on Mexico and drug trafficking at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
In a statement, Mexico's foreign ministry said that Mexico's federal police were working with San Luis Potosi state authorities to bring the crime's perpetrators to justice. Mexico "energetically condemns this grave act of violence and expresses its solidarity with the government of the United States and with the families of the attacked persons," the statement said.
Attacks on U.S. officials are rare.
In 1985, the torture-murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Enrique Camarena, strained bilateral ties and ultimately led to the arrest of several high-ranking Mexican drug lords.
More recently, in December, a U.S. border patrol agent was fatally shot just north of the border in Arizona while trying to catch bandits who target illegal immigrants cross the border.
And three people with ties to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, including a pregnant consular employee, were killed in March, prompting the State Department to tighten security at its diplomatic missions in northern Mexico.
View Full Image
Pulso Newspaper, San Luis Potosi, Mexico
Mexican federal police vehicles at the scene where two ICE agents traveling in a car were shot Tuesday.
.The U.S. provides equipment and some training to Mexican security forces under the $1.4 billion Merida Plan, and U.S. intelligence is credited with helping Mexico catch a score of leading drug kingpins in the past two years.
ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, routinely investigates narcotics smuggling as well as money laundering, organized crime and human smuggling.
Violence between organized crime gangs in Mexico is spreading far beyond northern states where most of the killings take place, affecting Mexico's northern business capital of Monterrey, Mexico's second city of Guadalajara, and even into tourist resorts like Acapulco.
San Luis Potosi has also gotten caught up in the violence, with a spate of recent drug-related killings. A shootout in a major supermarket as well as a leading university in the state capital caused panic among residents last week.
Drug gangs have also branched out into activities like human smuggling. Last year, a gang massacred 72 Central and South American migrants who were on their way to the U.S.
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Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart examines the attack on two Immigration and Custom agents in Mexico on Feb. 15 and explains why the case is not likely to cause a strong response from the U.S. Government.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Here at STRATFOR we’re closely watching an incident that happened on Feb. 15 in which two special agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, were shot in an incident in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
The incident occurred yesterday afternoon as the two agents were traveling in a late-model suburban north of Mexico City in the state of San Luis Potosi, very close to the city by that same name. the reports that we’ve received so far indicate that the two agents were stopped at what they thought was a military checkpoint along the road, and as they pulled their armored vehicle over to the side of the road and rolled down their window, one of the gunmen who was manning the checkpoint opened fire on them, killing the driver and wounding the second agent.
Many people and the press are going to make parallels between this case and the case of Kiki Camarena, a DEA agent who was killed back in 1985. However the circumstances surrounding these two incidents are quite different. The Camarena case was very intentional and the bosses of the Guadalajara cartel had Camarena specifically targeted and kidnapped. Once he was kidnapped then they tortured him, revived him using a medical doctor, and tortured him some more in order to try to get information pertaining to the source network he was running in Mexico. The Camarena case was very brutal, very intentional and of course raised a lot of ire on the American side of the border. The DEA launched a huge operation called Operation Leyenda, or legend, to go after the jefes of the Guadalajara cartel.
Now in this current case it appears that what we had, were two ICE agents who were traveling in a vehicle that was very attractive for the cartels. We know really that the vehicles the cartels covet the most for their operations are the large crew cab pickup trucks. Indeed we saw some missionaries attacked a couple weeks ago, as they were traveling on a highway and they tried to escape a carjacking attempt by the cartels who wanted that vehicle.
As we look at the circumstances surrounding this case it really appears that it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time for the agents and that it was really a case of cartel, low-level cartel gunmen responding to encountering two U.S. law-enforcement agents inside that vehicle when they stopped at the checkpoint. Therefore we don’t think that it was an intentional case planned by high-level cartel planners. Certainly there’s always more that the U.S. government can do in Mexico, but they’re restrained by the sovereignty of Mexico and really the sensibilities of the Mexican people to American incursion, they really see Americans as a threat. So the bottom line is while the U.S. will respond to this case, we really don’t think we will see the urgency and severity of the U.S. response that we did in the Camarena case.
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I saw this morning that the ICE agent recently murdered in Mexico was killed by a Texas bought AK; the second such killing in recent events according to the article.
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Mexican President Felipe Calderon is visiting the United States March 2 and March 3. We thought it would be a good time to discuss the unique threat assessment that will be written pertaining to President Calderon’s visit.
Calderon’s visit comes at a very critical time with the confluence of issues that are taking place not only inside of Mexico, but in the United States, which makes this threat assessment much more difficult than any current head of state visiting. We’ve had the recent high-profile killings of Americans in Mexico such as David Hartley on Falcon Lake, the missionary killing and the recent Zeta killing of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent. You have the politics of the immigration issue, as well as the politics of guns, meaning the guns flowing into Mexico from the United States and the domestic politics of that issue in general. Another element that will be factored into the threat assessment, regardless of the likelihood of this occurring, would be the cartels’ ability to pay for high-priced mercenaries or assassins to carry out some sort of attack.
One other aspect that is also factored into the threat assessment is the radical fringe link to domestic groups of concern. Specifically the Secret Service will be calling their database looking for adverse intelligence on individuals that have surfaced in connection to the immigration or gun issue that may have made threats against public officials. This issue is a significant one on the heels of the shooting of the congresswoman in Tucson, Arizona. Another element that would be factored into the threat assessment would be president Calderon’s statements as recent as last week, where he raised the issue of drug consumption in the United States fueling cartel violence, as well as the United States government not doing enough to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico.
Given all the concern surrounding Calderon’s visit to the United States, there will be an effort to minimize public exposure and at any kind of event that is open, you will find enhanced screening for firearms specifically to mitigate the risk from these unknown variables — such as another John Hinckley surfacing — that may not have raised the awareness of the secret service in Washington.
The “Above the Tearline” aspect is the politics of Calderon’s visit at this moment in time due to the confluence of events that have taken place, make this threat assessment much more complex, and also raises the risks to President Calderon.
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America's Third War: Texas Farmers Under Attack at the Border
By Kris Gutiérrez
Published March 03, 2011
| FoxNews.com
In Texas, nearly 8,200 farms and ranches back up to the Mexican border. The men and women who live and work on those properties say they’re under attack from the same drug cartels blamed for thousands of murders in Mexico.
“It’s a war, make no mistake about it,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said. “And it’s happening on American soil.”
Texas farmers and ranchers produce more cotton and more cattle than any other state, so Staples is concerned this war could eventually impact our food supply, and calls it a threat to our national security.
“Farmers and ranchers are being run off their own property by armed terrorists showing up and telling them they have to leave their land,” Staples said.
To raise awareness, Commissioner Staples launched the website ProtectYourTexasBorder.com. It’s a place where frustrated and scared farmers can share their stories.
One Texas farmer, who asked not to be identified, said it’s common for him to see undocumented immigrants walking through his property.
“I see something, I just drive away,” he said. “It is a problem, I’ve learned to live with it and pretty much, I’ve become numb to it.”
Another farmer, Joe Aguilar, said enough is enough. After walking up on armed gunmen sneaking undocumented immigrants into the United States through his land, Aguilar decided to sell his farm.“It’s really sad to say, you either have to beat ‘em or join ‘em and I decided not to do either,” Aguilar said.
Aguilar's family farmed 6,000 acres of land along the Texas-Mexico border for nearly 100 years.
“Our farmers and ranchers can’t afford their own security detail,” Staples said. “We’re going to become more dependent on food from foreign sources. Americans don’t like being dependent on foreign oil, they won’t stand for being dependent on foreign food.”
For more on the battle at our border, visit http://www.ProtectYourTexasBorder.com.
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EL PASO, Texas—Journalist Emilio Gutierrez and thousands of other Mexicans seeking asylum in the U.S. want protection they say their government can't provide. But, for the U.S., granting such requests carries practical and political risks.
Mr. Gutierrez, who accuses the Mexican military of threatening him, is part of a growing community of asylum seekers, largely centered around El Paso. The latest is Marisol Valles, the former police chief of Mexican border town Práxedis G. Guerrero, who fled to the U.S. last week from the town where her predecessor had been beheaded by drug traffickers.
Some experts say the asylum requests put the U.S. in a thorny position, caught between human-rights goals of supporting those in danger and standing by Mexico, a key ally who says it is capable of protecting its own citizens.
Since Mexico opened its war on drug cartels in 2006, its relationship with the U.S. has grown closer. The two countries now share intelligence, coordinate border security and are linked by a $1.4 billion U.S.-sponsored aid package known as the Mérida Initiative aimed at strengthening Mexican institutions' fight against organized crime.
"When you're granting asylum, you're admitting in effect that the government is going to persecute someone, or is too weak to give that person protection from others who could," said Stephen Legomsky, an asylum expert at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
And with violence that has killed more than 34,000 people in Mexico since 2006, many see a potential for a rise in asylum requests if the U.S. appears amenable to them.
Other practical concerns work against asylum seekers. For example, many arrive in the U.S. without paperwork and find themselves under the same scrutiny and procedures as immigrants who are caught crossing illegally.
Among the pending asylum cases are those of a family of an activist slain by unknown attackers and a television cameraman who was once kidnapped by a drug cartel and says the government can't stop it from happening again. Getting asylum in the U.S. isn't easy for Mexicans. In 2010, Mexicans made 3,231 asylum requests and the U.S. granted 49; the previous year, 2,816 requests were made with 62 granted.
Mr. Gutierrez's case is particularly charged because of his accusations against the military.
Last year, Mexico received $450 million in drug-fighting aid from the Mérida Initiative that directed much of the money toward its military. One requirement: The Mexican military must have no record of human-rights abuses or a portion of the funds will be withdrawn.
Mr. Gutierrez, 47 years old, worked as a journalist in northern Mexico for more than 25 years before he sought asylum in the U.S. in 2008.
In 2005, he wrote an article about accusations that soldiers had broken into rooms at a hotel in a small border town and stolen items including jewelry and food.
After the story was published, the journalist says he was threatened by a man who identified himself as a colonel and another whom he recognized as a general. "They said I'd written three articles about the military and there would not be a fourth," he said.
Mr. Gutierrez stopped writing about the military. But he launched complaints about his treatment, one which was published in an unsigned front-page story describing the incident and a second that was filed with Mexico's human-rights commission.
In 2008, the Mexican government sent the military into northern border areas and Mr. Gutierrez says his troubles returned.
One night in May that year, he says soldiers broke down his door unexpectedly and began what they said was a search for drugs and weapons. Nothing was found, but he says he was warned to "behave himself."
His newspaper published a front-page story on the incident and photos of the damage. A few months later, Mr. Gutierrez says a friend who was dating a soldier said that his life was in danger.
Shortly after, Mr. Gutierrez and his 15-year-old son crossed into the U.S., telling border guards that he wanted asylum. He and his son were separated and put into detention centers. Mr. Gutierrez was held for eight months, and his son for two. After being released, the two moved to Las Cruces, N.M., an hour's drive from El Paso.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security appointed a prosecutor to the case to argue that Mr. Gutierrez should be deported back to Mexico. The agency declined to comment on the case.
Mexico's military, in response to written questions, said it is aware of the complaints, but has found no evidence of wrongdoing and isn't pursing an investigation.
Mr. Gutierrez's case is set to be determined by an immigration judge next year.
"I will be killed if I go back to Mexico," Mr. Gutierrez said on a recent day at a law office a short drive from the border.
Write to Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-mexico-guns-20110311,0,2534184.story
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In this case, Mexico has the right to be pissed.
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In this case, Mexico has the right to be pissed.
True GM. There is still plenty of blame to go around though.
IMHO, both countries should start hanging people on both sides of the law, that are found to be contributing to this. I have an old, grandmotherly lady friend, that makes my lunch in a dirt shack everyday, and she suffers from people on both sides of the law.
I understand why criminals kill other criminals. I understand why LEO puts on a badge to protect others. Criminals and Leo's that are party to killing innocents on the other hand, are the lowest of the low.
People like these need to start being removed permanently. It is no different when someone is found to be gunning down an LEO. At least the Leo's and the criminals asked for it. The innocent people did not.
My two cents.
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I want congress to question the BATFE chain of command under oath. If this is the way it's being reported, a lot of firings and/or prosecutions need to happen.
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I want congress to question the BATFE chain of command under oath. If this is the way it's being reported, a lot of firings and/or prosecutions need to happen.
I agree. My only problem with that is that in this case (and others), bureaucracy and people's political careers, wind up directly affecting people trying to do nothing other than wash their clothes at the laundromat and getting them killed.
If you're on either side and caught engaging them in this behavior, done deal. Hang them.
There are a lot of agents, police officers, and soldiers that put their lives on the line honourably, only to have people like these (including sitting politicians), sully all that they sacrifice.
This world has too many "humanitarian" rules that protect these idiots (both sides of the law).
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Demand for Mexican Security Firms’ Services Soars
Friday, March 11, 2011 | Borderland Beat Reporter Buggs
Mexico’s private security companies saw demand for their services soar 25 percent in 2010 due to a surging crime rate and requests for protective service by businesses and individuals during the Christmas holidays, an industry association said.
Security companies’ payrolls grew about 25 percent last year because of rising demand in parts of the country that are doing well economically, the 150-member National Association of Private Security and Associated Industry Executives said.
“Housing units, shopping centers, security for trucks and bodyguards were the segments with the highest volume,” the trade group said.
Association members saw demand for security services rise in the states of Mexico, Nuevo Leon, Guerrero, Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, Puebla, Morelos and Michoacan, as well as in the Federal District, the trade group said.
Security was expanded by clients affected by burglaries, the theft of merchandise from shopping centers and department stores, truck hijackings and kidnappings. Security firms have grown by offering a complete portfolio of services, ranging from security guards to risk analysis and the installation of security systems, association president Arnulfo Garibo said.
Providing protection for cargo trucks is the area with the fastest-growing demand because security firms helped prevent more than 300 highway robberies, association spokesman David Garcia said. Robberies fell 70 percent, Garcia said, adding that security firms worked with other industries and used satellite monitoring, armor plating and logistics techniques to protect trucks.
Source: EFE
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Agenda: Mexican Drug Cartels
April 15, 2011 | 2156 GMT
Click on image below to watch video:
Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart looks at the potential for an escalation of violence as Mexican drug cartels fight for power and control.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Colin: More than 230 American cities have now been affected by the presence of Mexican drug cartels. This weekend, Australia’s Crime Commission reported that the cartels have taken ahold of organized crime syndicates in cities like Sydney and Melbourne. In Mexico, the seemingly unstoppable violence continues. A few days ago we had the gruesome discovery of at least 116 bodies in mass graves near the city of San Fernando, just 100 miles away from the Texan border. And, perhaps as evidence of more violence to come, we have the erection of concrete car-bomb barriers outside the busy United States consulate in Monterrey.
Welcome to Agenda. Joining me this week to discuss Mexican security is Scott Stewart. Scott, let’s start with this latest security measure. Has this building been targeted before, and is there intelligence that it’s about to be hit by a large car bomb?
Scott: Well first of all yes, the U.S. consulate general in Monterrey has been targeted before by attacks but these have been attacks using hand grenades and small arms, and that’s something different from a large car bomb attack. At this point we don’t believe there is any imminent car bomb threat to that facility, or any other U.S. facilities in Mexico for that matter.
Colin: Why would a cartel want to escalate the battle and invite the further wrath of the United States?
Scott: The Mexican cartels certainly don’t shy away from violence. We see them regularly beheading and dismembering people. However they tend to try to target most of their violence against opponents of the fellow cartels or against government employees, and a lot of times the government employees that they target are actually working for opposition cartels. So there’s really a relation there between the targeting. We have not seen the Mexican cartels really get into widespread attacks against the public at large. They have really tried to target their violence. And in times where we have seen them have incidents where there’s been indiscriminate violence, or violence that has impacted negatively on their public image - things like the Falcon Lake shooting - we have seen the cartels come down hard on operatives that made those mistakes and that brought the heat down upon the cartel.
One thing to remember is that these cartels are not terrorist groups. They are really businesses, and they’re organized crime organizations. So their end is making money. That is their objective. And anything that gets in the way of that objective, bringing down massive heat upon them, is bad for business, and they try to shy away from that sort of activity.
Colin: Are the authorities making any progress in their fight against the cartels?
Scott: Well, I think it depends on how one defines progress. Certainly, they have been arresting the heads of certain cartels and they have been disrupting the operations of some of these cartels. For example, over the last five or six years, organizations such as the Arellano-Felix organization, which is also known as the Tijuana cartel; another organization, the Juarez Cartel or the VCF, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization; they’ve both been decimated. Likewise, we’ve seen the Beltran Leyva organization decapitated and split up. So, they’re making headway against certain organizations, but at the same time, the largest cartel, Sinaloa cartel, that is headed up by a gentleman by the name of El Chapo, “the short one,” Sinaloa has been getting stronger and stronger. And they are really becoming more of a regional hegemon in the cartel landscape. And right now, they control the border from Tijuana all the way over to Juarez, for the most part. And they are acting to increase their control over that area. So while certain cartels have been weakened, other cartels, like Sinaloa, have become stronger.
Of course, one other measure of progress against the cartels would be violence. And indeed, we have not seen violence come down at all. This fracturing, this splintering of these cartel organizations, has really led to more fighting. What happens is, when a cartel organization has very good control of an area - or what we call a plaza, a smuggling corridor - there’s generally peace in that area. But when they become weakened and another organization comes in and tries to take over there territory, that’s when you see the violence, that’s when you see the fighting. And of course the death toll then will increase. So as some of these organizations have been weakened, others have tried to move in. And that has escalated the violence.
Colin: How safe is it for a businessperson to go to Mexico now, and where should they avoid?
Scott: There are certain hotspots right now. Indeed, in Acapulco at this present time we have a three-way struggle for control of that city between three factions of the former Beltran Leyva organization. One that now calls itself the Cartel del Pacifico Sur, the South Pacific Cartel; another faction has gone on to form this independent cartel of Acapulco; and still another little faction has gone and they’re working with Sinaloa. And so you have these three organizations fighting each other for control of Acapulco, which generally in the past had been a very popular tourist resort.
Likewise, in the Northeast we see a lot of violence right now in places like Monterrey. And one of the reasons that Monterrey is so concerning is because it is really the industrial heart of Mexico. You have not only large Mexican corporations that are headquartered there, but also U.S. companies have gone down into Monterrey in order to manufacture. The things that make Monterrey attractive to businesses, the fact that they have good lines of communication and roads, and then of course lines of communication to the U.S. border to ship stuff, also makes it an ideal place to control as a drug organization. If you can control Monterrey, you can control the flow of a lot of goods and a lot of contraband to the border. So we really expect to see a lot of continued violence in the Northeast in the coming months.
Colin: Scott, thank you. Scott Stewart there, ending Agenda for this week.
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Last week, Margarita Crispin, a female officer working on the border, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for taking $5 million in bribes for allowing vehicles with marijuana to come through her point of entry. Today we’re going to look at the increase in corruption cases along the U.S. and Mexican border.
In the last five years, nearly 80 U.S. border patrol and customs and border protection officers have been arrested for corruption. The up tick in the arrests along the border are in parallel to the enhanced physical security measures that have been put into place with the laser focus on border security efforts. For example, walls and fences had been built along the border, along with unmanned surveillance vehicles such as drones. On the technology front, very sophisticated license plate readers, which can very quickly identify cartel suspects or stolen automobiles, as well as the enhanced SIGINT capability, which is the intercept of text messages, cellular telephone calls and email between cartel suspects in Mexico and the United States. As a result of the enhanced physical security measures along the border, the cartels are operating as a foreign intelligence agency, utilizing the exploitation of human capital, human assets, people, to provide intelligence to their organizations.
From an exploitation perspective, cartels are utilizing the principle of MICE. The “M” in MICE stands for money, and as we look at the corruption cases on the border, clearly the bulk are as a result of money: paying bribes to law enforcement officers throughout the border. “I” is ideology and we don’t see that being used along the border. “C” is compromise, and we have seen evidence of that surfacing, primarily using sex as a tool to compromise law enforcement officers. “E” is for ego and in that case it is the promotion or looking at individuals that think they deserve a better position and haven’t gotten that inside their police department or government agency, but we haven’t seen a lot of ego being used along the border.
To recap, looking at the acronym of MICE, money and compromise are the primary drivers for the border corruption. The Above the Tearline aspect is there really needs to be an aggressive background investigation process engaged with any law enforcement personnel working the border, with routine and thorough updates. The polygraph can also play an important part here with a line of questioning focusing on finances, extravagant lifestyle, multiple vacations, as well as other kinds of suitability issues that could surface. The use of an updated background investigation process, combined with the polygraph, can be used to help stem the tide of corruption that appears to be increasing along the border
Click for more videos
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Third post of the morning
The Perceived Car Bomb Threat in Mexico
April 13, 2011
By Scott Stewart
Related Special Topic Page
Tracking Mexico’s Drug Cartels
On April 5, Mexican newspaper El Universal reported that a row of concrete Jersey barriers was being emplaced in front of the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, Mexico. The story indicated that the wall was put in to block visibility of the facility, but being only about 107 centimeters (42 inches) high, such barriers do little to block visibility. Instead, this modular concrete wall is clearly being used to block one lane of traffic in front of the consulate in an effort to provide the facility with some additional standoff distance from the avenue that passes in front of it.
Due to the location and design of the current consulate building in Monterrey, there is only a narrow sidewalk separating the building’s front wall from the street and very little distance between the front wall and the building. This lack of standoff has been long noted, and it was an important factor in the decision to build a new consulate in Monterrey (construction began in June 2010 and is scheduled to be completed in January 2013).
The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey has been targeted in the past by cartels using small arms and grenades. The last grenade attack near the consulate was in October 2010. However, the Jersey barriers placed in front of the consulate will do little to protect the building against small arms fire, which can be directed at portions of the building above the perimeter wall, or grenades, which can be thrown over the wall. Rather, such barriers are used to protect facilities against an attack using a car bomb, or what is called in military and law enforcement vernacular a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).
That such barriers have been employed (or re-employed, really, since they have been used before at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey) indicates that there is at least a perceived VBIED threat in Mexico. The placement of the barriers was followed by a Warden Message issued April 8 by the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey warning that “the U.S. government has received uncorroborated information Mexican criminal gangs may intend to attack U.S. law enforcement officers or U.S. citizens in the near future in Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and San Luis Potosi.” It is quite possible that the placement of the barriers at the consulate was related to this Warden Message.
The Mexican cartels have employed improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the past, but the devices have been small. While their successful employment has shown that the cartels could deploy larger devices if they decided to do so, there are still some factors causing them to avoid using large VBIEDs.
Some History
The use of IEDs in Mexico is nothing new. Explosives are plentiful in Mexico due to their widespread use in the country’s mining and petroleum sectors. Because of Mexico’s strict gun laws, it is easier and cheaper to procure explosives — specifically commercial explosives such as Tovex — in Mexico than it is firearms. We have seen a number of different actors use explosive devices in Mexico, including left-wing groups such as the Popular Revolutionary Army and its various splinters, which have targeted banks and commercial centers (though usually at night and in a manner intended to cause property damage and not human casualties). An anarchist group calling itself the Subversive Alliance for the Liberation of the Earth, Animals and Humans has also employed a large number of small IEDs against banks, insurance companies, car dealerships and other targets.
Explosives have also played a minor role in the escalation of cartel violence in Mexico. The first cartel-related IED incident we recall was the Feb. 15, 2008, premature detonation of an IED in Mexico City that investigators concluded was likely a failed assassination attempt against a high-ranking police official. Three months later, in May 2008, there was a rash of such assassinations in Mexico City targeting high-ranking police officials such as Edgar Millan Gomez, who at the time of his death was Mexico’s highest-ranking federal law enforcement officer. While these assassinations were conducted using firearms, they supported the theory that the Feb. 15, 2008, incident was indeed a failed assassination attempt.
Mexican officials have frequently encountered explosives, including small amounts of military-grade explosives and far larger quantities of commercial explosives, when they have uncovered arms caches belonging to the cartels. But it was not until July 2010 that IEDs began to be employed by the cartels with any frequency.
On July 15, 2010, in Juarez, Chihuahua state, the enforcement wing of the Juarez cartel, known as La Linea, remotely detonated an IED located inside a car as federal police agents were responding to reports of a dead body inside a car. The attack killed two federal agents, one municipal police officer and an emergency medical technician and wounded nine other people. Shortly after this well-coordinated attack, La Linea threatened that if the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation did not investigate and remove the chief of the Chihuahua state police intelligence unit — who La Linea claimed was working for the Sinaloa Federation — the group would deploy a car bomb containing 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives. The threat proved to be an empty one, and since last July, La Linea has deployed just one additional IED, which was discovered by police on Sept. 10, 2010, in Juarez.
The Sept. 10 incident bore a striking resemblance to the July 15 Juarez bombing. The device was hidden in a vehicle parked near another vehicle that contained a dead body that was reported to police. The Sept. 10 device appears to have malfunctioned, since it did not detonate as first responders arrived. The device was noticed by authorities and rendered safe by a Mexican military explosive ordnance disposal team. This device reportedly contained a main charge of 16 kilograms of Tovex, and while that quantity of explosives was far smaller than the 100-kilogram device La Linea threatened to employ, it was still a significant step up in size from the July 15 IED. Based upon the amount of physical damage done to buildings and other vehicles in the area where the device exploded, and the lack of a substantial crater in the street under the vehicle containing the device, the July 15 IED appears to have contained at most a couple of kilograms of explosives.
Seemingly taking a cue from La Linea, the Gulf cartel also began deploying IEDs in the summer of 2010 against law enforcement targets it claimed were cooperating with Los Zetas, which is currently locked in a heated battle with the Gulf cartel for control of Mexico’s northeast (see the map here for an understanding of cartel geographies). Between August and December 2010, Gulf cartel enforcers deployed at least six other IEDs against what they called the “Zeta police” and the media in such cities as Ciudad Victoria in Tamaulipas state and Zuazua in Nuevo Leon. However, these attacks were all conducted against empty vehicles and there was no apparent attempt to inflict casualties. The devices were intended more as messages than weapons.
The employment of IEDs has not been confined just to the border. On Jan. 22, a small IED placed inside a car detonated near the town of Tula, Hidalgo state, injuring four local policemen. Initial reports suggested that local law enforcement received an anonymous tip about a corpse in a white Volkswagen Bora. The IED reportedly detonated when police opened one of the vehicle’s doors, suggesting either some sort of booby trap or a remotely detonated device.
The damage from the Tula device is consistent with a small device placed inside a vehicle, making it similar to the IEDs deployed in Juarez and Ciudad Victoria in 2010. The setup and the deployment of the IED in Tula also bear some resemblance to the tactics used by La Linea in the July 2010 Juarez attack; in both cases, a corpse was used as bait to lure law enforcement to the scene before the device was detonated. Despite these similarities, the distance between Tula and Juarez and the makeup of the cartel landscape make it unlikely that the same group or bombmaker was involved in these two incidents.
Car Bombs vs. Bombs in Cars
The IEDs that have been detonated by the Mexican cartels share a very common damage profile. The frames of the vehicles in which the devices were hidden remained largely intact after detonation and damage to surrounding structures and vehicles was relatively minor, indicating the devices were rather small in size. The main charges were probably similar to the device found in a vehicle recovered from an arms cache in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, on Sept. 10, 2010 — a liquor bottle filled with no more than a kilogram of commercial explosives.
In fact, most of the devices we have seen in Mexico so far have been what we consider “bombs in cars” rather than “car bombs.” The difference between the two is one of scale. Motorcycle gangs and organized crime groups frequently place pipe bombs and other small IEDs in vehicles in order to kill enemies or send messages. However, it is very uncommon for the police investigating such attacks to refer to these small devices as car bombs or VBIEDs. As the name implies, “vehicle borne” suggests that the device is too large to be borne by other means and requires a vehicle to convey it to the target. This means the satchel device that prematurely detonated in Mexico City in February 2008 or the liquor-bottle charge recovered in Guadalajara in September 2010 would not have been considered VBIEDs had they been detonated in vehicles. None of the devices we have seen successfully employed in Mexico has been an actual VBIED, as defined by those commonly used in Iraq, Pakistan or Afghanistan — or even Colombia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The only explosive device we have seen that even remotely approached being considered a VBIED was the 16-kilogram device discovered in Juarez in September 2010. This means that those who are referring to the devices deployed in Mexico as VBIEDs are either mistaken or are intentionally hyping the devices. Claiming that the cartels are using “car bombs” clearly benefits those who are trying to portray the cartels as terrorists. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, there are both political and practical motives for labeling the Mexican drug cartels terrorists rather than just vicious criminals.
That said, the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization and the Gulf cartel have demonstrated that they can construct small devices and remotely detonate them using cellphones, Futaba radio-control transmitters and servos (as have the still unidentified groups responsible for the Tula attack and the radio-controlled device recovered in Guadalajara in September 2010). Once an organization possesses the ability to do this, and has access to large quantities of explosives, the only factor that prevents it from creating and detonating large VBIED-type devices is will.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s in Colombia, powerful Colombian drug trafficking organizations such as the Medellin cartel used large-scale terrorist attacks in an effort to get the Colombian government to back off on its counternarcotics efforts. Some of the attacks conducted by the Medellin cartel, such as the December 1989 bombing of the Colombian Administrative Department of Security, utilized at least 450 kilograms of explosives and were incredibly devastating. However, these attacks did not achieve their objective. Instead, they served to steel the will of the Colombian government and also caused the Colombians to turn to the United States for even more assistance in their battle against the Colombian cartels.
A U.S. government investigator who assisted the Colombian government in investigating some of the large VBIED attacks conducted by the Medellin cartel notes that Medellin frequently employed Futaba radio-control devices in its VBIEDs like those used for model aircraft. A similar Futaba device was recovered in Guadalajara in September 2010, found wired to the explosives-filled liquor bottle inside the car. This may or may not provide the Mexican authorities with any sort of hard forensic link between the Mexican and Colombian cartels, but it is quite significant that the Futaba device was used in an IED in Mexico with a main explosive charge that was much smaller than those used in Colombia.
On April 1, 2011, the Mexican military discovered a large arms cache in Matamoros. In addition to encountering the customary automatic weapons, grenades and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the military also seized 412 chubs (plastic sleeves) of hydrogel commercial explosives, 36 electric detonators and more than 11 meters of detonation cord. (The Mexican government did not provide photos of the explosives nor the weight of the material recovered, but chubs of gel explosives can range in size from less than half a kilogram to a couple of kilograms in weight.) This means there were at least a hundred kilograms of explosives in the cache, enough to make a sizable VBIED. Given that the cache was located in Matamoros and appears to have been there for some time, it is likely that it belonged to the Gulf cartel. This, like other seizures of explosives, indicates that the reason the Gulf cartel has used small explosive devices in its past attacks is not due to lack of explosives or expertise but lack of will.
Assessing the Threat
When assessing any threat, two main factors must be considered: intent and capability. So far, the Mexican cartels have demonstrated they have the capability to employ VBIEDs but not the intent. Discerning future intent is difficult, but judging from an actor’s past behavior can allow a thoughtful observer to draw some conclusions. First, the Juarez cartel has been hard-pressed by both the Mexican government and the Sinaloa Federation, and it is desperately struggling to survive. Despite this, the leaders of that organization have decided not to follow through with their threats from last July to unleash a 100-kilogram VBIED on Juarez. The Juarez cartel is not at all squeamish about killing people and it is therefore unlikely that the group has avoided employing VBIEDs for altruistic or benevolent reasons. Clearly, they seem to believe that it is in their best interests not to pop off a VBIED or a series of such devices.
Although the Juarez cartel is badly wounded, the last thing it wants to do is invite the full weight of the U.S. and Mexican governments down upon its head by becoming the Mexican version of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel, which would likely happen should it begin to conduct large terrorist-style bombings. Escobar’s employment of terrorism backfired on him and resulted not only in his own death but also the dismantlement of his entire organization. A key factor in Escobar’s downfall was that his use of terrorism not only affected the government but also served to turn the population against him. He went from being seen by many Colombians as almost a folk hero to being reviled and hated. His organization lost the support of the population and found itself isolated and unable to hide amid the populace.
Similar concerns are likely constraining the actions of the Mexican cartels. It is one thing to target members of opposing cartels, or even law enforcement and military personnel, and it is quite another to begin to indiscriminately target civilians or to level entire city blocks with large VBIEDs. While the drug war — and the crime wave that has accompanied it — has affected many ordinary Mexicans and turned sentiment against the cartels, public sentiment would be dramatically altered by the adoption of true terrorist tactics. So far, the Mexican cartels have been very careful not to cross that line.
There is also the question of cost versus benefit. So far, the Mexican cartels have been able to use small IEDs to accomplish what they need — essentially sending messages — without having to use large IEDs that would require more resources and could cause substantial collateral damage that would prompt a public-opinion backlash. There is also considerable doubt that a larger IED attack would really accomplish anything concrete for the cartels. While the cartels will sometimes conduct very violent actions, most of those actions are quite pragmatic. Cartel elements who operate as loose cannons are often harshly disciplined by cartel leadership, like the gunmen involved in the Falcon Lake shooting.
So while the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey may be erecting Jersey barriers to protect it from VBIED attacks, it is likely doing so based on an abundance of caution or some bureaucratic mandate, not hard intelligence that the cartels are planning to hit the facility with a VBIED.
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Mexico’s TCOs Recognized as ‘Narco-terrorists’
By: Anthony Kimery
04/21/2011 ( 9:25am)
Testifying before the Senate Committee on Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee last week, William Wechsler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for counter-narcotics and global threats, told lawmakers that the US is directly assisting Mexico’s military to carry out "counter-narcoterrorism missions."
Clearly, Wechsler was implying that Mexico’s narco-cartels, which Homeland Security Today has pointed out today have morphed into transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) – the same types of TCOs that elsewhere in the world directly support insurgent and Islamist terrorist organizations – have become terroristic by nature.
Wechsler disturbingly told lawmakers that "TCOs are becoming increasingly networked as they form relationships with each other and at times with insurgent or terrorist groups,” and that “these relationships range from tactical, episodic interactions at one end of the spectrum, to full narcoterrorism on the other. This ‘threat networking’ also undermines legitimate institutions in ways that create opportunities for other threats. TCOs are increasingly diversifying into other forms of criminal activity in order to spread risk and maximize potential profit. In some regions, for example, drug trafficking TCOs also engage in kidnapping, armed robbery, extortion, financial crime and other activities."
And these are the much broader criminal enterprises that Mexico’s TCOs are now engaged in, as Homeland Security Today has reported.
Wechsler said that with regard to “emerging threats closer to home, Mexico continues to confront escalating drug-fueled violence particularly along its northern border with the US Gunmen associated with drug trafficking organizations routinely carry out sophisticated attacks against Mexican law enforcement and military personnel.”
Wechsler said “it is important to recognize that when we discuss the transnational nature of this threat, this includes criminal activities that take place outside as well as within the United States. For instance, the influence of Mexican TCOs extends well beyond the Southwest border to cities across the country such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Detroit. Unfortunately, coordination of domestic and international activities can be especially challenging. Such coordination is, however, also increasingly important in an age when criminal globalization, threat networking, and diversification are making distance and borders less important.”
“The Department of Defense’s counternarcotics support to Mexico is implemented primarily through US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and includes training, equipment and information sharing as well as indirect support to units of the Mexican armed forces with counter-narcoterrorism missions,” Wechsler stated. “We are also working with US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) and USNORTHCOM to develop a joint security effort in the border region of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Most of DoD’s cooperation with Mexico falls under the Department’s counternarcotics program, and we expect to allocate approximately $51 million in FY2011 to support Mexico.”
“This allocation is a dramatic increase from previous funding levels for Mexico,” Wechsler noted, adding that “before 2009, for example, funding for Mexico was closer to $3 million a year.”
The escalation in funding and assistance highlights the equally escalating nature of the threat that the TCOs pose to the US homeland, according to US intelligence officials involved in understanding the ties between Mexican-based TCOs and Islamist terrorist organizations long established throughout Latin America, including Central America.
Continuing, Wechsler told the subcommittee that “Central America continues to face increasing pressure from drug trafficking and related violent crime, largely as a result of the progress that has been made by the governments of Mexico and Colombia in confronting these organizations. A Congressional Research Service report published this March illustrated this graphically by mentioning that, despite the incredible drug-fueled violence in Mexico, the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants for all Central American nations is significantly higher (with the exception of Costa Rica). These trends are directly attributable to illicit trafficking of all forms of contraband such as drugs, weapons, bulk cash, counterfeit and stolen goods and persons.”
Wechsler stressed that “these law enforcement issues have important ramifications for the national security of Mexico, the nations of Central America and the United States. The Central American Citizen Security Partnership, announced by President Obama in El Salvador last month, seeks to ‘address the social and economic forces that drive young people toward criminality.’ The implication for DoD is that we will work even harder to broaden and deepen our interagency and international partnership approach and take a holistic view of security. As always, DoD will play a supporting role to the overall strategy, led by the White House and the State Department, avoiding any over-emphasis on military responses.”
Continuing, Wechsler said “I recently traveled to West Africa to get a first-hand look at a region where weak governance is increasingly being exploited by drug traffickers as they target the lucrative and growing European market for cocaine. This trend has a number of important national security implications, such as undermining governance and stability in the region and providing a funding stream to Western Hemisphere criminal organizations that traffic drugs to the United States.”
A short-term strategic analysis performed by the Pentagon several years ago concluded that the very situation that exists in Mexico today could cause this nation to become unstable and unravel, at which point it would pose a direct national security threat to the US mainland.
“Drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime have become a truly global phenomenon,” Wechsler stated, pointing out that “the globalization of the legitimate economy has benefitted the illicit economy in many of the same ways. Today, nearly every country in the world now suffers to some degree from illegal drug consumption, production, or drug-related corruption and violence. Where once DoD’s counternarcotics efforts were focused in the Western Hemisphere, today we are supporting counternarcotics activities worldwide - most notably in Afghanistan and with its neighbors, but also in places such as West Africa and Central and Southeast Asia.”
"The transnational illicit drug trade is a multi-faceted national security concern for the United States,” Wechsler stated. “The drug trade is a powerful corrosive force that weakens the rule of law in affected countries, preventing governments from effectively addressing other transnational threats, such as terrorism, insurgency, organized crime, weapons trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking and piracy."
Continuing, Wechsler said "many of the global and regional terrorists who threaten interests of the United States finance their activities with the proceeds from narcotics trafficking. The inability of many nations to police themselves effectively and to work with their neighbors to ensure regional security represents a challenge to global security. Extremists and international criminal networks frequently exploit local geographical, political, or social conditions to establish safe havens from which they can operate with impunity."
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Mexican drug cartels continue to war with one another and with the government. While the situation has long been fluid, the past 18 months have seen the Sinaloa Federation rapidly expand at the expense of other groups. The following are key events in the evolution of Mexico’s cartel landscape over the last four and a half years:
(click here to view interactive slideshow)
December 2006: Mexican President Felipe Calderon takes office, promising to fight back against drug cartels. His first two years in office show strong successes against the cartels, with large drug seizures and the capture of several organizations’ leaders. The government’s chief target is the Gulf cartel, the most powerful in Mexico.
December 2008: A two-yearlong campaign by the Calderon government against the Gulf cartel has left it crippled. The cartel’s enforcement arm, Los Zetas, splintered off in spring 2008 and now controls much of what used to be Gulf territory. The government’s success is a double-edged sword, however: The decline of the Gulf cartel has left a large power vacuum, encouraging other organizations — and factions within those organizations — to fight to increase their influence.
December 2009: As the government pressures powerful cartels, the situation in Mexico becomes more volatile and two distinct but interconnected wars begin to emerge: the government’s fight against the cartels, and the cartels’ fights between and among themselves. The geography of cartel influence does not change significantly, though one notable exception to this is the rise of the infamous La Familia Michoacana (LFM), which has captured media attention by marrying drug-trafficking activities to a pseudo-religious ideology.
May 2010: A major rift emerges in the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) after the death of leader Arturo “El Jefe de Jefes” Beltran Leyva. Two factions emerge, one under Arturo’s brother, Hector, and the other made up of elements of the BLO’s brutal enforcement wing and run by Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal.
December 2010: Tensions between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas also have boiled over into open war in the country’s east, with the Gulf cartel reaching out to its former rivals in Sinaloa as well as LFM to align under the name “New Federation” and pushing Los Zetas from one of their traditional strongholds, Reynosa, though not out of Nuevo Laredo or Monterrey. In its weakened state, Los Zetas began increasing operations outside the normal scope of drug trafficking, such as kidnapping for ransom, and giving rise to a trend that STRATFOR eventually would dub Mexico’s third war: that of the cartels on the Mexican public. Cartel-related violence in the country reaches new heights, with more than 11,000 deaths on record.
April 2011: Violence continues to rise in all parts of the country. The Sinaloa Federation continues to expand its territory north and east, taking over areas formerly under the influence of the Carrillo Fuentes Organization and the Arellano Felix Organization. With the help of Sinaloa, the Gulf cartel has been able to repel offenses from Los Zetas in Reynosa and Matamoros, though the Zetas are proving resilient. LFM appeared to implode in January, but now a large subset of the former LFM seems to have simply rebranded itself as the “Knights Templar.” Its size and capabilities remain unclear.
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Gunbattles in Matamoros
A series of gunbattles flared up May 5 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, resulting in the emplacement of several cartel roadblocks in and around the city. This is a tactic not typically employed by the Gulf cartel, which controls that territory. One of the battles started in the street in front of the Tamaulipas state police building just before 7:30 a.m. and continued for almost an hour.
According to the state attorney general’s office, the firefights involved federal troops and unidentified cartel gunmen, but there is conflicting information and evidence of a third significant element: Los Zetas. Posts on Internet forums and Twitter describe gunfire and explosions that morning in several areas of Matamoros and along the 50 kilometers (30 miles) of highway between Matamoros and Valle Hermoso. The series of roadblocks included one blockade very near the Matamoros side of the Veterans International Bridge point of entry, which caused a temporary closure of the southbound lanes of the point of entry by U.S. authorities.
What is significant about these events is the use of trailers and vehicles to block roads after the gunbattles, which is a tactic regularly employed by Los Zetas. Matamoros is home turf for the Gulf cartel, and the presence of roadblocks indicates the possibility that the fighting was a significant probe by Los Zetas. Information posted on the Internet by possible witnesses indicated that the battles involved two cartel groups — gunmen connected to Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen (incarcerated in a U.S. federal penitentiary but known to still be running many Gulf operations via proxies) and a contingent of Zetas gunmen. The placement of the roadblocks after the main battle and the running gunbattle from southern Matamoros to Valle Hermoso make it likely that Zetas gunmen were involved.
Judging from the reported events, and what is known of Zetas tactics, it appears they successfully penetrated the Gulf’s outlying surveillance posts surrounding the city and pushed into central Matamoros, nearly to the U.S. border. Last February, in the last major round of Zetas incursions into Matamoros, the violence remained at a sustained level for a couple of weeks. It is likely that this latest probing action will be followed by a series of battles in the next week or two, and extreme caution should be exercised by anyone conducting business in the region.
Arrests in Mexico City
Federal authorities arrested Jose Efrain Zarco Cardenas and another suspect May 7 in Mexico City. Zarco Cardenas was the latest leader of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA), and according to Mexican media reports he was restructuring CIDA and working to forge alliances with the Gulf cartel and the hybrid group La Familia Michoacana/Knights Templar. Media reports also suggest that Zarco Cardenas may have been headed to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, to acquire weapons, drugs and/or money from the Gulf cartel.
Despite its name, CIDA’s area of influence stretches beyond the local Acapulco area. STRATFOR sources recently indicated that CIDA has as many as 180 gunmen in Morelos state distributed in three groups and covering a triangular region about 65 kilometers south of Mexico City, with the triangle’s corners centered on the cities of Cuernavaca, Cuautla and Amacuzac.
The arrest and possible incarceration of CIDA’s leader could further destabilize the cartel, but not enough is known about its membership to rule out the possibility that it can withstand the loss. Given the group’s shaky footing in the Pacific coast areas of Guerrero and southern Michoacan states, where it has been marginalized, CIDA’s apparently strong presence in the triangular area south of Mexico City may be the result of an effort to rebuild its membership and strength. This could mean a CIDA resurgence over the next three to six months, and if that occurs we will expect to see the group try to re-establish itself in strength in the Acapulco seaport area.
Firefight on Falcon Lake
A firefight reportedly occurred the afternoon of May 9 on Falcon Lake, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border between Laredo and McAllen, Texas. Although few details have emerged about the incident, a Mexican navy patrol on the lake apparently encountered a group of Zetas gunmen on an island about 3.5 kilometers from Nueva Ciudad Guerrero. A gunbattle began, and marines reportedly were called in to reinforce the navy patrol. It is unclear whether any gunmen were captured, though 12 gunmen and one marine reportedly were killed. Mexican forces seized 19 firearms, including a Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle and a 5.56 mm light machine gun.
STRATFOR’s initial take on the significance of this event is that Los Zetas appear once again to have ramped up their marijuana-smuggling operations across Falcon Lake. Following the shooting of David Hartley in September 2010, there was an increase in law enforcement and military patrolling of the lake on both sides of the border, and it was apparent that Zetas operations had withdrawn while the organization lay low. Now Los Zetas appear to be using the islands again, in the same area of the lake where they were last summer when they encountered the Hartleys (who reportedly were sightseeing at the Old Guerrero church ruins). The area is remote, with few residents, and Los Zetas need more smuggling routes to increase revenue in order to buy more weapons and train more gunmen. With hot weather setting in, the increasing number of U.S. citizens plying the lake in watercraft should heed the warnings and stay well away from border buoys and not venture anywhere near the Mexican side.
(click here to view interactive map)
May 2
Soldiers in the La Hacienda neighborhood of Apodaca, Nuevo Leon state, chased and killed two suspected cartel gunmen in a car. A third gunman reportedly escaped, leaving behind a suitcase full of ammunition.
Security forces arrested nine suspected members of the Cartel Nueva Generacion in the municipality of Tequila, Jalisco state. The men were arrested with 17 firearms, four bulletproof vests, 14 radios and approximately 4,140 rounds of ammunition.
Local residents found the body of a man wrapped in a blanket in the Jardines de la Silla neighborhood of Juarez, Nuevo Leon state. The victim had been shot in the head.
A group of unidentified gunmen shot and killed a police officer, injured two others and stole seven firearms from municipal police officers during three separate incidents in the municipality of Acapulco, Guerrero state.
May 3
Police found four decapitated bodies in an abandoned car in the San Antonio neighborhood of Cuautitlan Izcalli, Mexico state. A message was left near the victims’ severed heads saying they were murdered for “working with the H and the CC.” In the place of a signature on the message were three question marks. Reports indicated that the message came from Cartel del Centro.
Police found the bodies of four men who had been shot to death in the town of Tablillas San Dimas, Durango state.
May 4
Unidentified gunmen kidnapped three highway patrol officers in Linares, Nuevo Leon state. Three gunmen were reportedly killed in the incident.
Workers at a department store in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state, discovered a dismembered body in the store parking lot. A message attributing the crime to “El Sapo Guapo,” an alleged local leader of La Familia Michoacana, was found near plastic bags containing the body parts.
The Public Security Secretariat announced that federal police officers freed 16 migrants being held hostage in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state.
Unidentified gunmen in Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico state, shot and killed two police officers in a drive-by shooting. The content of a message found near the officers’ bodies was not reported.
May 5
Unidentified gunmen in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, used stolen vehicles to block several roads, including Pedro Cardenas, Sendero Nacional, Canales, Sexta, Portes Gil and the Ignacio Zaragoza International Bridge.
The decapitated body of a man wrapped in plastic bags was found in the Ciudad Cuauhtemoc neighborhood of Ecatepec, Mexico state. The victim’s head was found a short distance from the body.
Unidentified gunmen wearing uniforms similar to those worn by federal police officers shot and killed two men and two women travelling in a car in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. The victims were shot after a brief chase.
Police in Pachuca, Hidalgo state, arrested 20 people, including five police officers, for alleged links to Los Zetas.
Soldiers arrested 23 police officers in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon state, for alleged links to organized crime.
May 6
Unidentified gunmen travelling in two vehicles shot and killed six people outside a taco stand in the municipality of Ebano, San Luis Potosi state.
Soldiers in the Nuevo Leon Estado de Progreso and Agropecuario neighborhoods of Escobedo, Nuevo Leon state, freed nine people held hostage and killed one suspected cartel gunman. Two other suspects were arrested during the raid. The soldiers had been searching for gunmen believed to be responsible for a firefight in Escobedo earlier in the day.
Authorities found the decapitated body of a man wrapped in a blanket in the El Refugio neighborhood of Durango, Durango state. The victim’s head was found in a different location.
Federal police arrested Jose Efrain Zarco Cardenas, the leader of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, in Mexico City along with another suspect.
May 7
Soldiers in the municipality of Poncitlan, Jalisco state, seized approximately 720 kilograms (1,600 pounds) of methamphetamine and more than 3,000 liters (800 gallons) of chemicals at a drug lab.
Unidentified gunmen opened fire in a seafood restaurant in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, killing a man and injuring a woman.
Federal police officers in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, stopped a pickup truck for speeding and discovered that two Guatemalans traveling in the vehicle had no identity documents. The people in the vehicle led police to a house from which 16 migrants were seized.
May 8
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed the former deputy director of prevention and social re-adaptation in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Unidentified gunmen traveling in two vehicles shot and killed a prison guard in the San Ignacio neighborhood of Durango, Durango state.
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By Scott Stewart
As one studies Mexico’s cartel war, it is not uncommon to hear Mexican politicians — and some people in the United States — claim that Mexico’s problems of violence and corruption stem largely from the country’s proximity to the United States. According to this narrative, the United States is the world’s largest illicit narcotics market, and the inexorable force of economic demand means that the countries supplying the demand, and those that are positioned between the source countries and the huge U.S. market, are trapped in a very bad position. Because of this market and the illicit trade it creates, billions of dollars worth of drugs flow northward through Mexico (or are produced there) and billions of dollars in cash flow back southward into Mexico. The guns that flow southward along with the cash, according to the narrative, are largely responsible for Mexico’s violence. As one looks at other countries lying to the south of Mexico along the smuggling routes from South America to the United States, they too seem to suffer from the same maladies.
However, when we look at the dynamics of the narcotics trade, there are other political entities, ones located to Mexico’s north, that find themselves caught in the same geographic and economic position as Mexico and points south. As borderlands, these entities — referred to as states in the U.S. political system — find themselves caught between the supply of drugs flowing from the south and the large narcotics markets to their north. The geographic location of these states results in large quantities of narcotics flowing northward through their territory and large amounts of cash likewise flowing southward. Indeed, this illicit flow has brought with it corruption and violence, but when we look at these U.S. states, their security environments are starkly different from those of Mexican states on the other side of the border.
One implicit reality that flows from the geopolitical concept of borderlands is that while political borders are clearly delineated, the cultural and economic borders surrounding them are frequently less clear and more dynamic. The borderlands on each side of the thin, artificially imposed line we call a border are remarkably similar in geographic and demographic terms (indeed, inhabitants of such areas are often related). In the larger picture, both sides of the border often face the same set of geopolitical realities and challenges. Certainly the border between the United States and Mexico was artificially imposed by the annexation of Texas following its anti-Mexico revolution as well as the U.S. annexation of what is now much of the U.S. West, including the border states of Arizona, California and New Mexico, following the Mexican-American War. While the desert regions along the border do provide a bit of a buffer between the two countries — and between the Mexican core and its northern territories — there is no geological obstacle separating the two countries. Even the Rio Grande is not so grand, as the constant flow of illicit goods over it testifies. In many places, like Juarez and El Paso, the U.S.-Mexico border serves to cut cities in half, much like the Berlin Wall used to do.
Yet as one crosses over that artificial line one senses huge differences between the cultural, economic and security environments north and south. In spite of the geopolitical and economic realities confronting both sides of this borderland, Texas is not Mexico. The differences run deep, and we thought it worthwhile this week to examine how and why.
Same Problems, Different Scope
First, it must be understood that this examination does not mean to assert that the illicit narcotics market in the United States has no effect on Mexico (or Central America, for that matter). The flow of narcotics, money and guns, and the organizations that participate in this illicit trade, does have a clear and demonstrable impact on Mexico. But — and this very significant — that impact does not stop at the border. This illicit commerce also impacts the U.S. states north of the border.
Certainly the U.S. side of the border has seen corruption of public officials, cartel-related violence and, of course, drug trafficking. But these phenomena have manifested themselves differently on the U.S. side of the border.
In the United States there have been local cops, sheriffs, customs inspectors and even FBI agents arrested and convicted for corruption. However, the problem is far worse on the Mexican side, where entire police forces have been relieved of their duties due to their cooperation with the drug cartels and where systematic corruption has been traced all the way from the municipal mayoral level to the Presidential Guard, and even to the country’s drug czar. There have even been groups of police officers and military units arrested while actively protecting shipments of drugs in Mexico — something that simply does not occur in the United States. And while Mexican officials are frequently forced to choose between “plata o plomo” (Spanish for “silver or lead,” a direct threat of violence meaning “take the bribe or we will kill you”), that type of threat is extremely rare in the United States. It is also very rare to see politicians, police chiefs and judges killed in the United States — a common occurrence in Mexico.
That said, there certainly has been cartel-related violence on the U.S. side of the border with organizations such as Los Zetas conducting assassinations in places like Houston and Dallas. The claim by some U.S. politicians that there is no spillover violence is patently false. However, the use of violence on the U.S. side has tended to be far more discreet on the part of the cartels (and the U.S. street gangs they are allied with) than in Mexico, where the cartels are frequently quite flagrant. The cartels kill people in the United States but they tend to avoid the gruesome theatrics associated with many drug-related murders in Mexico, where it has become commonplace to see victims beheaded, dismembered or hung from pedestrian walkways over major thoroughfares.
Likewise, the large firefights frequently observed in Mexico involving dozens of armed men on each side using military weapons, grenades and rocket-propelled grenades have come within feet of the border (sometimes with stray rounds crossing over onto the U.S. side), but these types of events have remained on the south side of that invisible line. Mexican cartel gunmen have used dozens of trucks and other large vehicles to set up roadblocks in Matamoros, but they have not followed suit in Brownsville. Cities on the U.S. side of the border are seen as markets, logistics hubs and places of refuge for cartel figures, not battlefields.
Even when we consider drug production, it is important to recognize that the first “super labs” for methamphetamine production were developed in California’s Central Valley, not in Mexico. It was only pressure from U.S. law enforcement agencies that forced the relocation of these laboratories south of the border. Certainly, meth production is still going on in many parts of the United States, but the production is being conducted in mom-and-pop operations that can produce only relatively small amounts of the drug, usually of varying quality. By contrast, Mexican super labs can produce tons of meth that is of very high (almost pharmacological) quality. Additionally, while Mexican cartels (and other producers) have long grown marijuana inside the United States in clandestine plots of land, the quantity of marijuana the cartels grow inside the United States is far eclipsed by the industrial marijuana production operations conducted in Mexico.
Even the size of narcotics shipments changes at the border. The huge shipments of drugs that are shipped within Mexico are broken down into smaller lots at stash houses on the Mexican side of the border to be smuggled into the United States. Then they are frequently broken down again in stash houses on the U.S. side of the border. The trafficking of drugs in the United States tends to be far more decentralized and diffuse than it is on the Mexican side, again in response to U.S. law enforcement pressure. Smaller shipments allow drug traffickers to limit their losses if a shipment is seized, and using a decentralized distribution network allows them to be less dependent on any one link in the chain. If one distribution channel is rolled up by the authorities, traffickers can shift their product into another sales channel.
Not Just an Institutional Problem
Above we noted that the same dynamics exist on both sides of the border, and the same cartel groups also operate on both sides. However, we also noted the consistent theme of the Mexican cartels being forced to behave differently on the U.S. side. The organizations are no different, but the environment in which they operate is very different. The corruption, poverty, diminished rule of law and lack of territorial control (particularly in the border-adjacent hinterlands) that is endemic to the Mexican system greatly empowers and emboldens the cartels in Mexico. The operating environment inside the United States is quite different, forcing the cartels to behave differently. Mexican cartels and drug trafficking are problems in the United States, but they are problems that can be controlled by U.S. law enforcement. The environment does not permit the cartels to threaten the U.S. government’s ability to govern.
A geopolitical monograph explaining the forces that have shaped Mexico can be found here. Understanding the geopolitics of Mexico is very helpful to understanding the challenges Mexico faces and why it has become what it is today. This broader understanding is also the key to understanding why the Mexican police simply can’t be reformed to solve the problems of violence and corruption. Certainly, the Mexican government has aggressively pursued police reform for many years now, with very little success. Indeed, it was the lack of a trustworthy law enforcement apparatus that led the Calderon government to turn to the military to counter the power of the Mexican cartels. This lack of reliable law enforcement has also led Calderon to aggressively pursue police reform. This reform effort has included unifying the federal police agencies and consolidating municipal police departments (which have arguably been the most corrupt institutions in Mexico) into unified state police commands, under which officers are subjected to better screening, oversight and accountability. Already, however, there have been numerous instances of these “new and improved” federal- and state-level police officers being arrested for corruption.
This illustrates the fact that Mexico’s ills go far deeper than just corrupt institutions. Because of this, revamping the institutions will not result in any meaningful change, and the revamped institutions will soon be corrupted like the ones they replaced. This fact should have been readily apparent; the institutional approach has been tried in the region before and has failed.
Perhaps the best example of this failure was the “untouchable and incorruptible” Department of Anti-Narcotics Operations, known by its Spanish acronym DOAN, which was created in Guatemala in the mid-1990s. The DOAN was almost purely a creation of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The concept behind the creation of the DOAN was that corruption existed within the Guatemalan police institutions because the police were undertrained, underpaid and underequipped. It was believed that if police recruits were carefully screened, properly trained, well paid and adequately equipped, they would not be susceptible to the corruption that plagued the other police institutions in the country. So the U.S. government hand-picked the recruits, thoroughly trained them, paid them generously and provided them with brand-new uniforms and equipment. However, the result was not what the U.S. government expected. By 2002, the “untouchable” DOAN had to be disbanded because it had essentially become a drug trafficking organization itself and was involved in torturing and killing competitors and stealing their shipments of narcotics.
The example of the Guatemalan DOAN (and of more recent Mexican police reform efforts) demonstrates that even a competent, well-paid and well-equipped police institution cannot stand alone within a culture that is not prepared to support it and keep it clean. In other words, over time, an institution will take on the characteristics of, and essentially reflect, the environment surrounding it. Therefore, significant reform in Mexico requires a holistic approach that reaches far beyond the institutions to address the profound economic, sociological and cultural problems that are affecting the country today. Indeed, given how deeply rooted and pervasive these problems are and the geopolitical hand the country was dealt, Mexico has done quite well. But holistic change will not be easy to accomplish. It will require a great deal of time, treasure, leadership and effort. In view of this reality, we can see why it would be more politically expedient simply to blame the Americans.
Read more: Corruption: Why Texas is Not Mexico | STRATFOR
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Last week, gun battles between warring drug cartels in the central Mexican state of Michoacán lasted three days, brought down a police helicopter, caused a small flood of refugees, and took an as-yet undetermined toll in lives.
It's almost a surprise the story made the news at all. "The conflict was slow to get out because local media in states like Michoacán have largely stopped covering the carnage on orders from drug gangs," reported The Journal's David Luhnow and José de Córdoba on Friday. More than 20 reporters have been killed in Mexico since the drug wars began in earnest in 2006. Last year, Mexico tied Iraq, and was second only to Pakistan, in journalist fatalities.
Then there is the numbing regularity with which news of drug-related atrocities dominates the international media's coverage of Mexico. The decapitation of 27 Guatemalan farm hands by the Zetas gang two weeks ago. The 146 corpses discovered in April in mass graves in the state of Durango. The hanging in March of five victims from bridges in the resort town of Mazatlan. The apparently deliberate killing in February of U.S. immigration officer Jaime Zapata (and the shooting of his partner) on a highway north of Mexico City.
And on, and on, and on.
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to Mexico becoming another failed state. To wit, the "failed state" boomed.
In 2010, a year when there were more than 15,000 drug-related killings (up by nearly 60% from the year before), the economy grew by 5.5%—the fastest rate in a decade. The Mexican peso appreciated against the dollar. Inflation was essentially flat. Foreign reserves rose to $113 billion. Twenty-two million tourists visited the country. Trade with the U.S. reached an all-time high of nearly $400 billion. In Ciudad Juárez, where 3,000 people were killed last year, the maquiladora industries added some 20,000 jobs. The percentage of the population living below the poverty line declined to 47.4% in 2008 (the last year for which the World Bank has data) from 63.7% a decade earlier. Literacy rates surpassed 90%. Life expectancy continues to rise to near-First World levels.
In the U.S., sociologists are puzzling over the paradox of falling crime rates in an era of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. The Mexican paradox appears to be the reverse.
Then again, what most people consider a paradox is simply the crash of reality against our own unexamined clichés and preconceptions.
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Bloomberg News
Felipe Calderón, president of Mexico
.Consider the idea that crime in Mexico is out of control. The homicide rate in Mexico (about 12 per 100,000 in 2009) was more than twice that of the U.S. (five per 100,000) but well below Brazil's rate of 20.5 in 2008, to say nothing of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where it's about 50. In Mexico City, home to some 20 million people, the murder rate actually fell over the last decade. In 2009, it was about one quarter of the rate in Washington, D.C.
So how shall we define "out of control"? And what shall we make of the fact that the vast majority of the victims of Mexico's drug wars are themselves members of drug gangs? "They constitute a portion of population, that is worse than useless in any community," said Abraham Lincoln about the gamblers of Vicksburg in 1838. "And their death, if no pernicious example is set by it, is never a matter of reasonable regret with anyone." Something similar might be said of the drug cartels in their current orgy of mutual annihilation.
Then there's the idea that Mexico would have been better off had it never picked a fight with the cartels. I grew up in that Mexico, in which a corrupt and authoritarian government made its peace with—and took its cut from—the cartels.
That Mexico, built on conspiracies of silence and fear, could not survive the country's transition to democracy. It's no surprise that, even now, in the fifth year of his presidency and after 34,612 deaths, Felipe Calderón has an approval rating of 54%. Mexicans have no shortage of misgivings about his methods, but not many are proposing a viable alternative to taking the cartels head on. And by "viable," that means something other than the fantasy of expecting Ron Paul to win the presidency and end the war on drugs. Not that libertarians will ever stop proposing that utopia as their sole idea in what otherwise amounts to a feckless counsel of despair.
Last week I asked former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe whether Mexico can defeat the narcos. "Colombia is a typical case demonstrating that we can win," he answered—with the statistics to prove his case. He stressed that the key to winning was what he called a "permanent pedagogy" to convince people that the war on the cartels is "a necessary fight, not a partisan cause."
Mr. Uribe rescued Colombia from a plight far worse than what Mexico confronts today. But the central challenge is the same: how to establish a rule of law that has the legitimacy of consent and the courage of its convictions. Doing just that was Mr. Uribe's achievement, and it remains Mr. Calderón's challenge. Not much of a paradox here. Mexico's current prosperity is the bet that its market-friendly policies won't soon be betrayed by a government that can be cowed or seduced by criminals.
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From a retired USMS friend:
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At least 14,000 "armed criminals" are in the northern Mexican cities of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, working for the drug cartels that are fighting for control of smuggling routes into the United States, Chihuahua state Attorney General Carlos Manuel Salas said.
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RF: Based upon approx. 650 soldiers per rifle battalion (the number back in my day), that's like 21 battalions of narco gunmen in those two cities...
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Money-Laundering Targets
Another significant facet of Monterrey’s strategic value to the cartels made the news May 25 when four casinos were robbed. Heavily armed gunmen reportedly emptied out the cashier cages at Casino Hollywood, Casino Royale, Casino Red and Casino Miravalle Palace, all in the same general area between Monterrey proper and the westside city of San Pedro Garza Garcia.
Los Zetas are currently fighting with the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels for Monterrey. The Zetas hold the city, but the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels want to take it because it sits astride intersecting smuggling corridors for drug and human trafficking. But that is only part of the story. The greater Monterrey area has about three dozen casinos, most of the more than 40 casinos in northeast Mexico. To an extent that no other business sector can be, large casino operations are essential to laundering the billions of dollars generated by Mexico’s cartels. Clearly, the tit-for-tat operations in which Gulf and Zetas elements target each other’s vital support networks appear to have been elevated to a higher level with bigger stakes.
Mexican media have indicated that “millions” were taken in the heists, but no source has quantified how much money was taken or whether the currency was in pesos or U.S. dollars. Furthermore, the reports have offered confusing or conflicting information about the order in which the heists occurred, so much so that a sequence may not be easily determined. In this situation, however, such tactical details are less important than the larger implications of the apparently well-coordinated heists.
Last January, the Casino Royale was the scene of an apparent effort to eliminate two high-profile members of the Juarez cartel who were gambling in the casino. Gunmen entered the establishment and started firing hundreds of rounds, but the reported targets got away — and later were apprehended by authorities. Almost as an afterthought, one online report mentioned in its last sentence that “in the confusion” the casino’s cashier cage was robbed and all of the casino’s security-camera tapes disappeared. STRATFOR has found no direct link in the media between the January shooting-robbery and the May robbery at Casino Royale. But we find the events more than coincidental. In all likelihood, the first heist in January was a test run for the coordinated multi-casino robberies conducted May 25.
Certainly, U.S. interdiction efforts have put a financial strain on all of the Mexican cartels, making casino robberies a tempting proposition, but the successful theft of millions of dollars or pesos may only have been a bonus on top of the larger reward of hitting a rival cartel at a vulnerable spot: its money-laundering operations.
Two years ago, Monterrey was something of a neutral zone where all top cartel families made use of the affluent stability and superior schools and medical care. In late January 2010, however, Los Zetas started consolidating their hold on the city after declaring open war on their former parent organization, the Gulf cartel. Last summer, after taking losses on the border at Reynosa and Matamoros, Los Zetas retreated to Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey. In Monterrey, the Zetas forces were entrenched for about two weeks when Hurricane Alex roared into the Rio Grande Valley and catastrophic flooding demolished huge sections of the city’s transportation arteries — effectively pulling up the drawbridge behind the Zetas.
Despite the heavy Zetas presence, Monterrey’s longer history as relatively neutral ground means that the casinos robbed May 25 were likely laundering funds for any number of drug trafficking organizations. The Zetas’ control of the Monterrey metropolitan area does not equate to exclusive use of its black market infrastructure, and dozens of large casinos have far more strategic worth as money-laundering operations than they do as extortion targets.
On the Quiet Coahuila Front
With the exception of Torreon and Saltillo, Coahuila state has been fairly quiet in Mexico’s cartel wars. The state is sparsely populated, lacks high-volume interstate highway arteries and remains largely undisputed Los Zetas territory. But several recent events along with an increasing Mexican military presence could point to a coming change in Coahuila’s security conditions.
According to official government news releases and confirmed by STRATFOR sources in the region, there has been a gradual increase in the deployment of military assets to Coahuila and in military activities in 2011. Mexican marines seized just over a ton of cocaine at a ranch northwest of Monclova on May 24. Then on June 1, Mexican army personnel found 38 narcofosas, or hidden graves, in the village of Guerrero, 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Piedras Negras. It is not yet clear how many victims were disposed of at the Guerrero site — the meter-deep pits contained thousands of bits of charred human bones, metal buckles, buttons, and other personal items, and three 55-gallon drums also were found in which human bodies had been cremated. Also on June 1, the Mexican military uncovered a large cache of firearms and munitions on a farm in Nadadores, including 161 weapons and 92,039 rounds of ammunition of various calibers.
By no means are these recent events in Coahuila unique for Mexico, but the increase in military personnel and operations in the sparsely populated state is notable. As that military presence grows, STRATFOR expects significant clashes between Los Zetas and Mexican troops over the next few months. In Mexico, cartels have demonstrated that they will absorb a low level of losses as “the cost of doing business.” However, losses can reach a point where they are no longer acceptable to an organization, and violent countermeasures tend to result. In the quieter areas of Coahuila, particularly in the western and northern parts of the state where the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels have not bothered to contest Zetas control, Los Zetas may soon respond to the Mexican government’s inroads with direct and violent action against the military.
(click here to view interactive map)
May 31
Unidentified people asphyxiated a man and abandoned his body in a vacant lot near the Francisco Madero avenue in Cancun, Quintana Roo state. The victim was tortured and beaten before being killed.
Soldiers arrested four men in Acapulco, Guerrero state, for transporting a dismembered body in the trunk of a car. A fifth suspect managed to escape. The men had been stopped at a military roadblock but attempted to flee and crashed into another car.
June 1
Unidentified gunmen in the Dale neighborhood of Chihuahua, Chihuahua state, shot and killed Fernando Oropeza, the former deputy director of a low-risk prison. Oropeza had resigned from his post after a clandestine bar was discovered at the prison.
Two people were killed and one was injured in a firefight between suspected members of drug trafficking gangs in the Region 233 neighborhood of Cancun, Quintana Roo state. The incident reportedly began when six members of a criminal gang arrived at a food vendor’s stall and opened fire on several members of a rival group identified only as “LGD.”
Relatives of journalist Noel Lopez identified his body among those found in a mass grave in Chinameca, Veracruz state. Lopez had last been seen headed to Soteapan on March 8.
June 2
Unidentified gunmen in the Jardines de Oriente neighborhood of Chihuahua, Chihuahua state, opened fire on a municipal police vehicle, killing a police officer.
Federal police officers arrested Candido Ramos Perez, the suspected head for Cartel Pacifico Sur of the Cuernavaca “plaza” in Morelos state, during vehicle inspections on the Cuernavaca-Mexico City highway near the southern boundary of the Federal District. A suspected cartel lookout riding in Ramos Perez’s vehicle also was arrested.
June 3
Military authorities announced the seizure of 161 firearms and 92,039 rounds of ammunition reportedly belonging to Los Zetas in the municipality of Nadadores, Coahuila state.
Security guards at the Sinaloa state government palace in Culiacan discovered a severed head and hands on the building’s exterior stairs. A preliminary report stated that the victim could be a state police officer.
The Mexican prosecutor general’s office announced the seizure of two large containers holding 80 barrels of monomethylamine, a precursor used to manufacture chemical drugs, at container-ship facilities in Manzanillo, Colima state. Another 80 barrels were seized from a separate ship, bringing the total amount of precursors seized to 34,848 kilograms.
June 4
Soldiers arrested Jorge Hank Rhon, a former mayor of Tijuana, Baja California state, during a raid in response to a citizen complaint. Approximately 50 firearms were seized from Rhon’s house.
Federal police announced the arrest of Victor Manuel Perez Izquierdo, the head of Los Zetas in Quintana Roo state, during an operation in Cancun. Ten other members of Los Zetas were arrested along with Perez Izquierdo. Authorities said the operation resulted from the arrests of 10 Zetas in Cancun on May 28.
June 5
Military authorities announced the seizure of four armored vehicles and 23 tractor-trailers during raids on vehicle workshops in Reynosa and Camargo, Tamaulipas state.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed the municipal police commander of Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, in the San Angel neighborhood as he headed to his house.
Police in the Mitras Norte neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, discovered the bodies of two men hanging from a pedestrian bridge. Signs bearing undisclosed messages to members of a criminal group were found near the bodies.
Unidentified people abandoned a taxi with a dismembered body outside a police station in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon state. A message found in the vehicle included a threat to the mayor of Guadalupe, warning that she would be next.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Casino Attacks in Monterrey | STRATFOR
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Narco gangster reveals the underworld-Houston Chronicle
Narco gangster reveals the underworld
Cartels have taken cruelty up a notch, says one drug trafficker: kidnapping bus passengers for gladiatorlike fights to the death
By DANE SCHILLER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
June 13, 2011, 12:26AM
The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.
In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.
In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.
Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges.
His words are not those of a federal agent or drawn from a news conference or court papers.
Instead, he offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem — a mafioso who mingles among crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government.
If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity.
Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?"
"They cut guys to pieces," he said.
The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said.
In the vicinity of the Mexican city of San Fernando, nearly 200 bodies were unearthed from pits, and authorities said most appeared to have died of blunt force head trauma.
Many are believed to have been dragged off buses traveling through Mexico, but little has been said about the circumstances of their deaths.
The trafficker said those who survive are taken captive and eventually given suicide missions, such as riding into a town controlled by rivals and shooting up the place.
The trafficker said he did not see the clashes, but his fellow criminals have boasted to him of their exploits.
Killing 'for amusement'
Former and current federal law-enforcement officers in the U.S. said that while they knew Mexican bus passengers had been targeted for violence, they'd never before heard of forcing passengers into death matches.
But given the level of violence in Mexico — nearly 40,000 killed in gangland warfare over the past several years — they didn't find it tough to believe.
Borderland Beat, a blog specializing in drug cartels, reported an account in April of bus passengers brutalized by Zeta thugs and taunted into fighting.
"The stuff you would not think possible a few years ago is now commonplace," said Peter Hanna, a retired FBI agent who built his career focusing on Mexico's cartels. "It used to be you'd find dead bodies in drums with acid; now there are beheadings."
Even so, Hanna noted, killing people this way would be time-consuming and inefficient. "It would be more for amusement," he suggested. "I don't see it as intimidation or a successful way to recruit people."
Hidden behind designer sunglasses and a whisper of a beard, the trafficker interviewed by the Houston Chronicle talked at a restaurant's back table. He had silver shopping bags filled at Nordstrom, but seemed anything but a typical wealthy Mexican on a Texas shopping trip.
As a condition of the interview, he asked that he be referred to only as Juan.
He has worked as a drug-trafficker in Northern Mexico for more than a decade, he said, but has grown tired of gangsters running roughshod over each other and innocent civilians.
Juan, who has worked with the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, the two major drug organizations that control territory along the South Texas-Mexico border, said that back home, he sleeps with a semiautomatic rifle by his bed and a handgun under his pillow.
"It is like the Wild West. You can carry a gun and you are Superman," he said of gangsters and killing at will. "Like everybody says, it is out of control now. We have to put a stop to it."
A recent U.S. Senate report contends the Zetas are the most violent of Mexico's cartels. Its members are believed to be responsible for the recent killing of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was shot on a Mexican highway.
'They brag about it'
Just on Thursday, authorities in Mexico said they arrested members of the Zetas and seized 201 automatic weapons, 600 camouflage uniforms and 30,000 rounds of ammunition.
"I am not defending the Sinaloa or the Gulf Cartel," Juan said of the Zetas' main rivals. "I earn more money with the Zetas, but I know the (crap) they do," he said. "They brag about it."
With the recent killing of the ICE agent and perhaps other attacks, the Zetas also are breaking the golden rule for Mexican traffickers: Don't kill Americans, he said. It brings too much heat.
If the Zetas are crushed, violence will lessen, he said, and Mexico's older cartels will go back to the older way of doing business - dividing up territory and agreeing not to clash with each other.
Death toll has exploded
Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was the chief of international operations, said Mexican gangsters used to understand that violence should be used sparingly.
"They love brutality," Vigil said of the Zetas. "They do not care whether you are a police officer, a trafficker or an innocent bystander.
"The drug-trafficking organizations are eventually going to have to deal with the Zetas."
The death toll has exploded since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and dispersed military troops throughout the country to fight the cartels. The resulting battles have wrought carnage among local politicians, soldiers, gangsters and civilians alike.
As for the military, Juan said, "They are not helping," noting that the soldiers, like the gangsters, seem to kill whoever they want.
He also discussed some of the finer points of drug trafficking.
Checkpoints no problem
"We don't hide it," he said, telling stories of openly off-loading tractor-trailer rigs of cocaine in parking lots. "These are not lies. Everybody in Mexico knows it."
Even the checkpoints Mexican officials operate along the highways between Central Mexico and the border do not pose much of a problem, Juan said.
The trick, he confided, is to send someone in advance to bribe a commander so a drug load won't be bothered.
"It is better to tell them," he said. "It will cost you more if they catch it."
Tries not to be flashy
As for how he's been able to survive a decade, Juan said the secret is not being greedy or flashy enough to draw attention from other gangsters, who these days show no hesitation to cut down rivals.
He said he can quickly size up in a bar or cafe who is likely to be a trafficker, from the money they spend to the way they talk, sit or eat.
"You can tell in a restaurant or anywhere - that guy is moving dope," Juan said.
Other keys to longevity in the business: knowing your place in the Mexican underworld's hierarchy and not giving the impression you are making more money or interested in taking a chunk out of another gangster's livelihood.
"You keep doing the work you do," Juan said. "Stay at your level."
Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/topstory/7607122.html#ixzz1PGAG4aVk
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Narco gangster reveals the underworld-Houston Chronicle
Narco gangster reveals the underworld
Cartels have taken cruelty up a notch, says one drug trafficker: kidnapping bus passengers for gladiatorlike fights to the death
By DANE SCHILLER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
June 13, 2011, 12:26AM
The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.
In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.
Amazing, in a horrific sort of way. Good thing that border is secure!
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By Scott Stewart
We talk to a lot of people in our effort to track Mexico’s criminal cartels and to help our readers understand the dynamics that shape the violence in Mexico. Our contacts include a wide range of people, from Mexican and U.S. government officials, journalists and business owners to taxi drivers and street vendors. Lately, as we’ve been talking with people, we’ve been hearing chatter about the 2012 presidential election in Mexico and how the cartel war will impact that election.
In any democratic election, opposition parties always criticize the policies of the incumbent. This tactic is especially true when the country is involved in a long and costly war. Recall, for example, the 2008 U.S. elections and then-candidate Barack Obama’s criticism of the Bush administration’s policies regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. This strategy is what we are seeing now in Mexico with the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) criticizing the way the administration of Felipe Calderon, who belongs to the National Action Party (PAN), has prosecuted its war against the Mexican cartels.
One of the trial balloons that the opposition parties — especially the PRI — seem to be floating at present is the idea that if they are elected they will reverse Calderon’s policy of going after the cartels with a heavy hand and will instead try to reach some sort of accommodation with them. This policy would involve lifting government pressure against the cartels and thereby (ostensibly) reducing the level of violence that is wracking the country. In effect, this stratagem would be a return of the status quo ante during the PRI administrations that ruled Mexico for decades prior to 2000. One other important thing to remember, however, is that while Mexico’s tough stance against the cartels is most often associated with President Calderon, the policy of using the military against the cartels was established during the administration of President Vicente Fox (also of PAN), who declared the “mother of all battles” against cartel kingpins in January 2005.
While this political rhetoric may be effective in tapping public discontent with the current situation in Mexico — and perhaps obtaining votes for opposition parties — the current environment in Mexico is far different from what it was in the 1990s. This environment will dictate that no matter who wins the 2012 election, the new president will have little choice but to maintain the campaign against the Mexican cartels.
Changes in the Drug Flow
First, it is important to understand that over the past decade there have been changes in the flow of narcotics into the United States. The first of these changes was in the way that cocaine is trafficked from South America to the United Sates and in the specific organizations that are doing that trafficking. While there has always been some cocaine smuggled into the United States through Mexico, like during the “Miami Vice” era from the 1970s to the early 1990s, much of the U.S. supply came into Florida via Caribbean routes. The cocaine was trafficked mainly by the powerful Colombian cartels, and while they worked with Mexican partners such as the Guadalajara cartel to move product through Mexico and into the United States, the Colombians were the dominant partners in the relationship and pocketed the lion’s share of the profits.
As U.S. interdiction efforts curtailed much of the Caribbean drug flow due to improvements in aerial and maritime surveillance, and as the Colombian cartels were dismantled by the Colombian and U.S. governments, Mexico became more important to the flow of cocaine and the Mexican cartels gained more prominence and power. Over the past decade, the tables turned. Now, the Mexican cartels control most of the cocaine flow and the Colombian gangs are the junior partners in the relationship.
The Mexican cartels have expanded their control over cocaine smuggling to the point where they are also involved in the smuggling of South American cocaine to Europe and Australia. This expanded cocaine supply chain means that the Mexican cartels have assumed a greater risk of loss along the extended supply routes, but it also means that they earn a far greater percentage of the profit derived from South American cocaine than they did when the Colombian cartels called the shots.
While Mexican cartels have always been involved in the smuggling of marijuana to the U.S. market, and marijuana sales serve as an important profit pool for them, the increasing popularity of other drugs in the United States in recent years, such as black-tar heroin and methamphetamine, has also helped bring big money (and power) to the Mexican cartels. These drugs have proved to be quite lucrative for the Mexican cartels because the cartels own the entire production process. This is not the case with cocaine, which the cartels have to purchase from South American suppliers.
These changes in the flow of narcotics into the United States mean that the Mexican narcotics-smuggling corridors into the United States are now more lucrative than ever for the Mexican cartels, and the increasing value of these corridors has heightened the competition — and the violence — to control them. The fighting has become quite bloody and, in many cases, quite personal, involving blood vendettas that will not be easily buried.
The violence occurring in Mexico today also has quite a different dynamic from the violence that occurred in Colombia in the late 1980s. In Colombia at that time, Pablo Escobar declared war on the government, and his team of sicarios conducted terrorist attacks like destroying the Department of Administrative Security headquarters with a huge truck bomb and bombing a civilian airliner in an attempt to kill a presidential candidate, among other operations. Escobar thought his attacks could intimidate the Colombian government into the kind of accommodation being in discussed in Mexico today, but his calculation was wrong and the attacks served only to steel public opinion and government resolve against him.
Most of the violence in Mexico today is cartel-on-cartel, and the cartels have not chosen to explicitly target civilians or the government. Even the violence we do see directed against Mexican police officers or government figures is usually not due to their positions but to the perception that they are on the payroll of a competing cartel. There are certainly exceptions to this, but cartel attacks against government figures are usually attempts to undercut the support network of a competing cartel and not acts of retribution against the government. Cartel groups like Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) have even produced and distributed video statements in which they say they don’t want to fight the federal government and the military, just corrupt officers aligned with their enemies.
This dynamic means that, even if the Mexican military and federal police were to ease up on their operations against drug-smuggling activities, the war among the cartels (and factions of cartels) would still continue.
The Hydra
In addition to the raging cartel-on-cartel violence, any future effort to reach an accommodation with the cartels will also be hampered by the way the cartel landscape has changed over the past few years. Consider this: Three and a half years ago, the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) was a part of the Sinaloa Federation. Following the arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva in January 2008, Alfredo’s brothers blamed Sinaloa chief Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, declared war on El Chapo and split from the Sinaloa Federation to form their own organization. Following the December 2009 death of Alfredo’s brother, Arturo Beltran Leyva, the organization further split into two factions: One was called the Cartel Pacifico del Sur, which was led by the remaining Beltran Leyva brother, Hector, and the other, which retained the BLO name, remained loyal to Alfredo’s chief of security, Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal. Following the August 2010 arrest of La Barbie, his faction of the BLO split into two pieces, one joining with some local criminals in Acapulco to form the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA). So not only did the BLO leave the Sinaloa Federation, it also split twice to form three new cartels.
There are two main cartel groups, one centered on the Sinaloa Federation and the other on Los Zetas, but these groups are loose alliances rather than hierarchical organizations, and there are still many smaller independent players, such as CIDA, La Resistencia and the CJNG. This means that a government attempt to broker some sort of universal understanding with the cartels in order to decrease the violence would be far more challenging than it would have been a decade ago.
Even if the government could gather all these parties together and convince them to agree to cease hostilities, the question for all parties would be: How reliable are all the promises being made? The various cartels frequently make alliances and agreements, only to break them, and close allies can quickly become the bitterest enemies — like the Gulf cartel and its former enforcer wing, Los Zetas.
We have heard assertions over the last several years that the Calderon administration favors the Sinaloa Federation and that the president’s real plan to quell the violence in Mexico is to allow or even assist the Sinaloa Federation to become the dominant cartel in Mexico. According to this narrative, the Sinaloa Federation could impose peace through superior firepower and provide the Mexican government a single point of contact instead of the various heads of the cartel hydra. One problem with implementing such a concept is that some of the most vicious violence Mexico has seen in recent years has followed an internal split involving the Sinaloa Federation, such as the BLO/Sinaloa war.
From DTO to TCO
Another problem is the change that has occurred in the nature of the crimes the cartels commit. The Mexican cartels are no longer just drug cartels, and they no longer just sell narcotics to the U.S. market. This reality is even reflected in the bureaucratic acronyms that the U.S. government uses to refer to the cartels. Up until a few months ago, it was common to hear U.S. government officials refer to the Mexican cartels using the acronym “DTOs,” or drug trafficking organizations. Today, that acronym is rarely, if ever, heard. It has been replaced by “TCO,” which stands for transnational criminal organization. This acronym recognizes that the Mexican cartels engage in many criminal enterprises, not just narcotics smuggling.
As the cartels have experienced difficulty moving large loads of narcotics into the United States due to law enforcement pressure, and the loss of smuggling corridors to rival gangs, they have sought to generate revenue by diversifying their lines of business. Mexican cartels have become involved in kidnapping, extortion, cargo theft, oil theft and diversion, arms smuggling, human smuggling, carjacking, prostitution and music and video piracy. These additional lines of business are lucrative, and there is little likelihood that the cartels would abandon them even if smuggling narcotics became easier.
As an aside, this diversification is also a factor that must be considered in discussing the legalization of narcotics and the impact that would have on the Mexican cartels. Narcotics smuggling is the most substantial revenue stream for the cartels, but is not their only line of business. If the cartels were to lose the stream of revenue from narcotics sales, they would still be heavily armed groups of killers who would be forced to rely more on their other lines of business. Many of these other crimes, like extortion and kidnapping, by their very nature focus more direct violence against innocent victims than drug trafficking does.
Another way the cartels have sought to generate revenue through alternative means is to increase drug sales inside Mexico. While drugs sell for less on the street in Mexico than they do in the United States, they require less overhead, since they don’t have to cross the U.S. border. At the same time, the street gangs that are distributing these drugs into the local Mexican market have also become closely allied with the cartels and have served to swell the ranks of the cartel enforcer groups. For example, Mara Salvatrucha has come to work closely with Los Zetas, and Los Aztecas have essentially become a wing of the Juarez cartel.
There has been a view among some in Mexico that the flow of narcotics through Mexico is something that might be harmful for the United States but doesn’t really harm Mexico. Indeed, as the argument goes, the money the drug trade generates for the Mexican economy is quite beneficial. The increase in narcotics sales in Mexico belies this, and in many places, such as the greater Mexico City region, much of the violence we’ve seen involves fighting over turf for local drug sales and not necessarily fighting among the larger cartel groups (although, in some areas, there are instances of the larger cartel groups asserting their dominance over these smaller local-level groups).
As the Mexican election approaches, the idea of accommodating the cartels may continue to be presented as a logical alternative to the present policies, and it might be used to gain political capital, but anyone who carefully examines the situation on the ground will see that the concept is totally untenable. In fact, the conditions on the ground leave the Mexican president with very little choice. This means that in the same way President Obama was forced by ground realities to follow many of the Bush administration policies he criticized as a candidate, the next Mexican president will have little choice but to follow the policies of the Calderon administration in continuing the fight against the cartels.
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Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart looks at the implications of the arrest of drug cartel leader Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas or “El Chango.”
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
In today’s Dispatch we’re going to be looking at the arrests yesterday in Aguascalientes State, of Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, “El Chango” (the monkey), the leader of one of the factions of the La Familia Michoacana cartel.
To understand what the arrest of El Chango means, we have to really go back and look at the flow, or really the context, of what has been happening with the Mexican cartels over the last year. A year ago this time, the La Familia or, as we call them, “LFM,” (La Familia Michoacana), the LFM cartel was an up-and-coming cartel, it was rising in power and prominence, and it had banded together with two other powerful cartel groups, the Sinaloa Federation and the Gulf Cartel, to assist them in their battle against the Zetas and their allies.
Now one of the things that we’ve seen happen over the years with the Mexican cartels is that when any one figure — especially in the Sinaloa Federation — gets too powerful, they have a tendency to run into accidents, and that’s what we saw happen last July. There was a gentleman by the name of Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, “El Nacho.” Ignacio Coronel had an issue with the authorities, was taken out, and this created a vacuum in Jalisco and Guadalajara. Now at this time what happened is we had the LFM cartel saw that vacuum of power that was started by the removal of Ignacio Coronel, and they decided to move in and try to assume control of Jalisco and Guadalajara. This then initiated a war between the Sinaloa Federation and the LFM for control of this very lucrative place. As LFM began fighting with Sinaloa, we saw Sinaloa Federation becoming really dominant and getting the upper hand in that fight, and that struggle culminated in the death, late last year, of the leader of the LFM, a guy by the name of Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, “El Mas Loco,” (the craziest one).
Following the death of El Mas Loco, what we saw happen was that it devolved into two different organizations that were basically coalescing around different powerful leaders — lieutenants of El Mas Loco. The first of these lieutenants was Jose Mendez Vargas, “El Chango.” The second one was Servando Gomez, “La Tuta,” (the teacher). La Tuta’s faction began using the name the Knights Templar. The other organization — the faction that formed around El Chango — kept using the name La Familia. So over the last few months, as these organizations have formed up, we’ve seen them locked in a very bloody battle for control of Michoacan. So over the next weeks and months we’re going to be watching for indications of which way this is going to be going: whether or not this LFM faction will be able to stay united, whether they’ll be able to be able to fend off the offensive of the Knights Templar, and whether or not they could become more closely allied with Los Zetas.
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El Chango’s Arrest
The leader of a faction of La Familia Michoacana (LFM) — the faction that continues to use the LFM name — was arrested June 21 without incident in Aguascalientes state in central Mexico. At the time of his arrest, Jose de Jesus “El Chango” Mendez Vargas and his branch of the LFM were under heavy pressure from the other LFM faction, known as the Knights Templar (KT) and led by Servando “La Tuta” Gomez Martinez, as well as from Mexican authorities and the Sinaloa Federation.
Mendez Vargas’ arrest clearly is a short-term blow to his faction of LFM, but it is too early to tell if it will result in the end of the group. More important, it is unclear what effect it will have on the battle for control of the drug flow through Michoacan state.
Mendez Vargas’ faction of the LFM is the weaker of the two currently fighting for control of the LFM territory and business. In fact, STRATFOR sources and media reports indicate that Mendez Vargas’ faction was losing the battle against the Knights Templar. Mendez Vargas’ forces had experienced some significant losses in the weeks prior to his arrest, and banners posted by the Knights Templar alleged that Mendez Vargas was so desperate that he had even reached out to his former enemies in Los Zetas for assistance.
Presently, it appears that the Knights Templar has placed itself in a position to assume control of the LFM empire. The Knights Templar is a local organization with local support, and many of its members have a long history of close ties to the community. However, after being weakened by the fight with Mendez Vargas’ faction, it is not altogether clear if the Knights Templar will have the strength to fend off a renewed push by its enemies in the Sinaloa Federation. It is also possible that the remnants of Mendez Vargas’ organization will become even more closely aligned with Los Zetas, which will allow the Zetas to expand their presence in Michoacan by working through locals. All this means that the capture of Mendez Vargas may have removed one cartel leader, but it will likely do little to quell the violence in the state.
Troops in Tamaulipas
Around 2,800 Mexican soldiers deployed during the week of June 19 to 22 cities in Tamaulipas state along the U.S.-Mexico border. The objective of the deployment is to put the military in charge of security operations in the state while stamping out corruption in local police forces. After relieving all officers of duty, the military will conduct interviews and drug tests on new officers to determine who will receive further training and continue in law enforcement. Many of the officers who are not rehired likely will begin working for the cartels.
The military has taken control in Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros and San Fernando, border towns that saw violence increase just last week, along with the state capital of Victoria. An audacious raid in Matamoros by Los Zetas on June 17 looked to be an indication that the violence was only going to get worse in Tamaulipas. In this context it is not surprising that the Tamaulipas state government felt the need to ask the federal government for help.
The government position is that the presence of the military in Tamaulipas will lead to a decrease in violence. However, statistics on murders in Juarez, Chihuahua state, where the military took control in early March 2009, are evidence that military deployments do not necessarily correlate with a reduction in violence. In 2008, prior to the deployment, there were 1,600 murders in Juarez attributed to organized crime, according to Spanish newspaper Diario Universal. In 2009, the number went up to 2,650. The attorney general’s office in the state’s northern zone reported 3,200 murders in 2010, and as of June 15 there were already 1,500 murders on record for 2011.
The military cannot be everywhere at once, and it would take far more than 2,800 soldiers to secure the entire state of Tamaulipas. Cartels know the military presence will not last forever, so while there occasionally can be direct conflicts, more often the cartels will hunker down and wait for the military to leave or simply strike where the military has no presence.
Also, the Mexican military cannot risk being in a location too long because it faces the same corruptive forces that continually destroy the police departments. The longer the military comes in contact with those forces, the harder it is to guarantee soldiers are not being corrupted. The value of the military is that it has long been kept separate from the drug war and therefore has not been the focus of the cartels’ corruption efforts. This is already changing, and authorities must be careful with using the military to fight the war.
Another issue is that populations tend to tire of the presence of soldiers, who lack the police skills and training necessary to manage a civilian population. An extended deployment increases the chances of an incident that could upset the locals, and at the very least it is a hindrance to civilians’ daily lives.
The arrival of the military in Tamaulipas state is not a guarantee of security and tranquility. Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel are currently locked in a brutal battle for control of the northeast. The way they fight their battle may be altered a bit due to the presence of the military, but we believe that based on the experience of past military deployments in places such as Juarez, the violence between the two groups will continue despite the deployment.
(click here to view interactive map)
June 20
A journalist, his wife and son were found murdered in their house in Veracruz, Veracruz state. The journalist, the second murdered in the state this month, wrote about crime and politics for the newspaper Notiver.
Five bodies were found throughout Michoacan state with a narcomanta on each claiming responsibility on behalf of the Knights Templar.
The police chief in Morelia, Michoacan state, was detained for possession of drugs and weapons for military use only.
More than three tons of methamphetamine and precursor chemicals were found in an industrial area of El Marques, Queretaro state.
June 21
A cache of weapons and military tactical gear, including camouflage uniforms, were found in Coneto de Comonfort, Durango state.
The burned bodies of three traffic cops were found on the street in Guadalupe, Chihuahua state.
Eight suspected members of the Knights Templar were detained in Piedras de Lumbre, Michoacan state. Among the detained were the group’s leaders in Tuxpan and Zitacuaro, Michoacan state.
June 22
A man’s body was found in Jesus Maria, Aguascalientes state, with a narcomanta alluding to the detention of Mendez Vargas, the LFM head who was detained by police the previous day.
A group of marines was ambushed by unknown gunmen in Panuco, Zacatecas state, leaving one marine dead.
The police chief in Praxedis G. Guerrero, Chihuahua state, and her family were attacked and held at knifepoint during a robbery in the state of Chihuahua.
The municipal police chief of Ciudad Isla, Veracruz state, Ricardo Reyes Alvarez, was attacked by gunmen. The police chief was killed and three others were injured in the attack.
Three individuals working for the criminal organization led by Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal were detained in Tlaltizapan, Morelos state. The suspects were arrested with two kilograms (more than four pounds) of marijuana, one kilogram of cocaine and firearms.
June 23
A group of suspected extortionists opened fire on an escort vehicle in the convoy of Julian Leyzaola Perez, the municipal security chief in Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Leon state. One attacker was injured in the ensuing firefight.
Seven individuals suspected of belonging to a gang of kidnappers operating in Pachuca and Mineral de la Reforma were detained in Hidalgo state. The individuals are responsible for at least two kidnappings and one murder.
Seventy-eight Central American migrants were detained at a railway station in Irolo, Hidalgo state. Among the migrants were Hondurans, Salvadoreans, and Guatemalans.
June 24
Ninety-one police officers were arrested in Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala state, on charges of robbery and collusion among public officials.
Four Salvadorans were arrested in San Salvador, El Salvador, in connection to the August 2010 massacre in San Fernando, Tamaulipas state, that left 72 immigrants dead. The Salvadorans were responsible for transferring undocumented migrants to Mexico.
Approximately 60 undocumented migrants were kidnapped by armed men in Veracruz. The migrants were on a freight train headed from Oaxaca to Veracruz when the train was stopped by three vehicles parked in its path.
Eleven graves containing human remains were found in Nuevo Leon by the Mexican army.
The Mexican government announced the deployment of around 2,800 Mexican troops to Tamaulipas to take charge of public safety and counter corruption within the police force.
June 25
Mexican Federal Police captured alleged Los Zetas leader Albert Gonzalez Pena, aka “El Tigre,” in Xalapa, Veracruz state. He was responsible for moving drugs farther into northern and central Mexico and was also linked to various other criminal activities in Veracruz state.
Nine women from the Institutional Revolutionary Party were assaulted and received death threats allegedly due to political affiliations in Pachuca, Hidalgo state. The attackers are allegedly working for the campaign of a rival candidate.
Seven bodies were found in the municipalities of Ixtapaluca and Valle de Chalco, Mexico state. A message from LFM was left with them.
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**So how exactly should law enforcement officers determine citizenship status if asking citizenship status isn't allowed because it's raaaaAAAAaaaaacist?
http://news.yahoo.com/texas-executes-mexican-court-stay-rejected-233305430.html
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Mexican national was executed Thursday for the rape-slaying of a teenager after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal to spare him that was supported by Mexico and the White House.
In his last minutes, Humberto Leal repeatedly said he was sorry and accepted responsibility.
"I have hurt a lot of people. ... I take full blame for everything. I am sorry for what I did," he said in the death chamber.
"One more thing," he said as the drugs began taking effect. Then he shouted twice, "Viva Mexico!"
"Ready warden," he said. "Let's get this show on the road."
The 38-year-old mechanic was pronounced dead 10 minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing into his arms.
He was sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, whose brutalized nude body was found hours after he left a San Antonio street party with her. She was bludgeoned with a chunk of asphalt.
Leal was just a toddler when he and his family moved to the U.S. from Monterrey, Mexico, but his citizenship became a key element of his attorneys' efforts to win a stay. They said police never told him following his arrest that he could seek legal assistance from the Mexican government under an international treaty.
Mexico, the Obama administration and others had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay Leal's execution so Congress could consider a law that would require court reviews in cases where condemned foreign nationals did not receive help from their consulates. They said the case could affect not only foreigners in the U.S. but Americans detained in other countries.
The court rejected the request 5-4. Its five more conservative justices doubted that executing Leal would cause grave international consequences, and doubted "that it is ever appropriate to stay a lower court judgment in light of unenacted legislation."
"Our task is to rule on what the law is, not what it might eventually be," the majority said.
The court's four liberal-leaning justices said they would have granted the stay.
Leal's attorney Sandra L. Babcock said that with consular help her client could have shown that he was not guilty. But she added, "This case was not just about one Mexican national on death row in Texas. The execution of Mr. Leal violates the United States' treaty commitments, threatens the nation's foreign policy interests, and undermines the safety of all Americans abroad."
Prosecutors, however, said Congress was unlikely to pass the legislation sought and that Leal's appeals were simply an attempt to evade justice for a gruesome murder.
Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement that the government condemned Leal's execution and sent a note of protest to the U.S. State Department. The ministry also said Mexican ambassador Arturo Sarukhan attempted to contact Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who refused to speak on the phone.
The governor's office declined to comment on the execution Thursday.
Leal's argument that he should have received consular legal aid that could have helped his case was not new. Texas has executed other condemned foreign nationals who raised similar challenges, most recently in 2008.
Leal's appeals, however, focused on legislation introduced last month in the U.S. Senate by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy. Leahy's measure would bring the U.S. into compliance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations provision regarding the arrests of foreign nationals, and ensure court reviews for condemned foreigners to determine if a lack of consular help made a significant difference in the outcome of their cases.
"Americans detained overseas rely on their access to U.S. consulates every day," Leahy said after the Supreme Court decision was announced. "If we expect other countries to abide by the treaties they join, the United States must also honor its obligations."
The Obama administration took the unusual step of intervening in a state murder case last week when Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. joined Leal's appeal, asking the high court to halt the execution and give Congress at least six months to consider Leahy's bill.
The Mexican government and other diplomats also contended that the execution should be delayed so Leal's case could be thoroughly reviewed. Some also warned his execution would violate the treaty provision and could endanger Americans in countries that deny them consular help.
Measures similar to Leahy's have failed at least twice in recent U.S. congressional sessions. The Texas Attorney General's office, opposing the appeals, pointed to those failures in its Supreme Court arguments and said "legislative relief was not likely to be forthcoming."
After his execution, relatives of Leal who had gathered in Guadalupe, Mexico, burned a T-shirt with an image of the American flag in protest. Leal's uncle Alberto Leal criticized the U.S. justice system and the Mexican government and said, "There is a God who makes us all pay."
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Knights Templar-Orchestrated March in Michoacan
In Apatzingan, Michoacan state, a large protest materialized July 13 in which the drug-trafficking organization Los Caballeros Templarios (aka the Knights Templar or KT) figured prominently. Demonstrators carried signs supporting the cartel and protesting the presence of federal security forces in Michoacan. This was not the first time that a cartel has orchestrated a “popular protest” in Mexico. Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Federation and the Juarez cartel are known to have contrived public demonstrations to enhance their public image. What makes the KT-engineered protest in Apatzingan interesting is that the cartel leadership seemed so adamant about the turnout and timing.
In three recorded telephone conversations believed to have been released to the media a day after the march, a mid-level KT leader insisted that all residents and business owners in Apatzingan participate and warned that those who did not would be “fined.” The KT organizers arranged for food and drink to be served to the marchers and ensured that the Mexican press would cover the event. We find the recorded conversations interesting not so much for their content — which was revealing — but because of their sourcing. Who recorded them and put the tapes in the hands of the Mexican media outlet Milenio Television? What was the purpose?
However the recordings were obtained and whatever their intent, they do suggest two possible motives for the KT to organize the July 13 protest. First, there is a good possibility that the prearranged presence of the Mexican press made the march the kick-off event of a propaganda campaign in Michoacan to pressure the federal forces to leave. Another possible motive is misdirection. The federal forces have been targeting the Knights Templar as well as La Familia Michoacana, and the increased federal presence may be hampering KT smuggling activities; the group is reportedly having difficulties receiving shipments of methamphetamine precursors and moving the finished product north to the border to generate revenue.
In one of the recorded discussions, an apparent boss ordered an underling to mobilize all of the people in Apatzingan and march immediately. When the underling said arrangements had already been made for the protest to begin, the boss relented. Timing was obviously an issue, so the question arises: Why stage the protest now? It could be that the KT needed to create a diversion — make a lot of noise, protest the federal presence, require that every resident participate, ensure that the country’s national press would be present with cameras.
We may not end up developing all the facts, but a well-publicized public protest could be an effective way to ensure that the bulk of the federal forces in the state are focused on — or removed from — one particular area of Michoacan.
Prison Break in Nuevo Laredo
On July 15, 59 prisoners believed to be members of Los Zetas escaped from the federal prison in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. Immediately before their escape, a large fight broke out that resulted in the deaths of seven inmates, all believed to be members of the Gulf cartel. Following the escape, it was determined that the prison’s warden was missing.
This was not the first time that a large group of inmates had broken out of the federal prison in Nuevo Laredo; the last major escape occurred in December 2010 and involved 151 escapees, all believed linked to Los Zetas. Nor is this particular prison an anomaly: A year ago in Gomez Palacio, Durango state, Zeta assassins left the prison in street clothes, driving official prison vehicles and armed with prison guards’ weapons. After killing 17 people attending a birthday party, the gunmen returned to the prison, gave the weapons back to the guards and re-entered their cells. It was later determined that they had conducted such operations from the prison on two previous occasions in 2010.
Mexican authorities have tried rotating prison staff and spending more money on training, but so far it has had little long-term effect. Many incarcerated cartel operatives, especially those who have leadership positions, seem to be able to get out of prison almost any time they wish. Until these problems are corrected, the federal effort in the cartel war can only be a qualified success.
Ambush in Sinaloa
On July 16, a convoy carrying members of Grupo Elite, a special operations unit of the Sinaloa state police, was ambushed on a highway near Guasave, Sinaloa state, in an area that has been hotly contested by cartels this year. The personnel were travelling in officially marked but unarmored trucks when they were attacked, and 10 members of the unit as well as one civilian were killed.
According to media reports, the convoy had just finished providing security for the chief of the Ministry of Public Security in Sinaloa state, Francisco Cordova Celaya, at an appearance in Los Mochis. (Cordova Celaya was not with the convoy, having departed Los Mochis by helicopter.) Though there is not yet any evidence to indicate this, the intent of the ambush may have been to kill Cordova Celaya.
Most notable about the ambush are the topographic features of the site. In other cartel ambushes seen over the past two years, geography has offered obvious tactical advantages for the ambush team such as high ground, roadblock-created kill zones, existing fighting positions, protective cover and limited visibility. In this case, the highway is in flat, level terrain, with two lanes in each direction separated by a “k-rail,” a low concrete partition common to many highways around the world. Other than the k-rail, which is high enough to prevent vehicles from crossing it and heading in the opposition direction, photographs and video of the scene show no other cover from which to conduct an effective ambush.
How, then, were cartel gunmen able to surprise a group of highly trained, well-armed law enforcement personnel traveling in multiple trucks and having excellent visibility and fields of fire? If a stationary roadblock were used, the Grupo Elite officers would have seen it well in advance and been able to take adequate measures to avoid or deal with the attackers. Similarly, a rolling roadblock, in which attacking vehicles box in the target vehicle while moving and force it to slow down, stop or crash, would have been easy to detect, and with multiple vehicles in the convoy such a tactic would have been difficult to pull off.
We suspect that a ruse was used to get the convoy to slow or stop voluntarily, such as a staged accident scene. Whatever it was that stopped the police convoy, it appears that security protocols were not followed and situational awareness was minimal at best. Even for well-trained security forces travelling in numbers, complacency can kill.
(click here to view interactive map)
July 11
Thirteen individuals were charged in a July 8 shooting at a bar in Valle de Chalco, Mexico state, that left 11 people dead. The shooting was a result of fighting between the Knights Templar and La Familia Michoacana.
Five members of Los Zetas were arrested in Ixcan, Peten, Guatemala, including a Mexican national. The arrests were the result of an ongoing investigation of a massacre that killed 27 people in Peten.
A lieutenant of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Luis Fernando Bertolucci Castillo, was arrested in the Dominican Republic. During the lieutenant’s interrogation he revealed the Sinaloa Cartel’s attempt to use the Dominican Republic as a base for drug-smuggling operations.
July 12
Two police officers were killed by residents of San Crisobalito in the municipality of San Andres, Chiapas. The police were following a man who was accused of stealing a vehicle. When the police entered San Cristobalito they were detained by residents then thrown into a ravine that was more than 200 meters deep.
A grenade thrown from a moving vehicle exploded at an Institutional Revolutionary Party office in Saltillo, Coahuila.
The public security director in Tuzantla, Michoacan state, was reported missing. His vehicle was found empty in Benito Juarez.
July 13
Five police officers were arrested in Mexico state for the June 26 execution of eight individuals in Valle de Chalco, Mexico state.
Five minors were killed after playing a soccer game in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. The bodies of the youth were found inside a truck.
Javier Beltran Arco, an alleged leader of Knights Templar also known as “El Chivo,” was arrested in Apatzigan, Michoacan.
A protest march organized by the Knight Templar was held in Apatzigan, Michoacan. A man identified as “Pantera” organized the march in response to federal troop deployments in the area.
July 14
Five vehicles that were replicas of typical police vehicles in the area were seized in San Luis Potosí.
Mexican authorities discovered a 300-acre marijuana plantation in Baja California, thought to be the largest cultivated marijuana operation ever found in Mexico.
Roadblocks and firefights involving the Mexican navy were reported in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
July 15
A firefight between armed groups in Torreon, Coahuila, left four people dead and two injured.
Fifty-nine prisoners, many of whom were thought to be Los Zetas, escaped from a federal prison in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. Seven inmates thought to be members of the Gulf cartel were killed before the escape.
A convoy made up of members of the state police unit Grupo Elite was ambushed while traveling along a highway in Guasave, Sinaloa. At least 10 police officers were killed.
July 16
Mexican soldiers discovered 114 kilograms of cocaine in a truck in Sonora.
July 17
A firefight between two groups in south Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, lasted for 45 minutes and included the use of high-powered rifles and grenades.
The Mexican army captured a Los Zetas leader, Cristobal “El Golon” Flores Lopez, in Anahuac, Nuevo Leon. El Golon is thought to have trafficked drugs from northern Mexico into the United States for the last eight years.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: A Diversionary Protest by the Knights Templar? | STRATFOR
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« Back to Article
U.S. federal court employee kidnapped, killed in Mexico
Details murky, but apparent kidnap unrelated to job ended in stabbing.
By Guillermo Contreras
gcontreras@express-news.net
Updated 09:53 p.m., Wednesday, July 20, 2011
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A court interpreter who worked for the San Antonio-based federal district that covers West Texas was found dead across the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, after reportedly being kidnapped for ransom.
Jorge Luis Dieppa, 57, had worked for the Western District of Texas for seven years as a Spanish-English interpreter in El Paso, and was a part-time lecturer at the University of Texas at El Paso and a martial arts instructor.
Dieppa disappeared July 5, apparently kidnapped, and was found dead July 6 after his family was unable to come up with $10,000 ransom, Mexican officials said in new releases that didn't identify Dieppa by name.
The victim was bound and gagged with duct tape and stabbed repeatedly, the releases said.
The officials said three people were arrested, including a stripper claiming to be his lover, and two more suspects are being sought.
Federal sources Wednesday confirmed Dieppa's identity and said the FBI in El Paso had been called in to assist the family since he was a U.S. citizen. The FBI declined to comment, as did Dieppa's family.
“He was a dedicated and loyal court family member,” said Fred Biery of San Antonio, chief judge of the Western District. “He leaves behind a widow and two sons.”
His kidnapping and death are not believed to be related to his status as a federal employee, and court officials had been told he crossed the border to have some work done on his car.
The Mexican news outlet Puente Libre, however, reported on its website that one of the suspects, a stripper named Lizbeth Nayeli Rodríguez Alanis, said Dieppa had been her lover for five years. Rodríguez claimed she and her accomplices decided to kidnap him after learning he taught college courses in El Paso, Puente Libre reported.
Other news organizations reported he was killed because he recognized Rodríguez as one of his captors.
A UTEP spokesman said Dieppa was a part-time lecturer in the school's languages and linguistics department. He also was involved in the El Paso Interpreters & Translators Association and was a sword instructor with the Hsin Lu Tau Academy of Martial Arts in El Paso.
“We are all saddened by the loss to his family and our court family,” Biery said. “People just have to be careful on where they go and with whom they associate.”
Services are pending.
Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/U-S-federal-court-employee-kidnapped-killed-in-1474799.php#ixzz1SiAmqKLK
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/07/los-zetas-may-attempt-to-overthrow.html#more
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From a very reliable source:
Juárez authorities were dealing with a riot at the Cereso prison late Monday night, a police spokesman said. Multiple gunshots heard from inside the prison. Soldiers, state and federal police officers were deployed to the prison. It is unknown if anyone was injured. The Norte newspaper reported on its website that some prisoners may have been disguised as security guards and were heavily armed during a possible escape attempt .At the same time, authorities were also dealing with a burning car on Norzagaray boulevard and a shootout between gunmen and federal police on Eje Vial Juan Gabriel.
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Surprise :-P high up white official knew of the fast and furious operation. Obviously Holder will look the other way. But Congress has the power to appoint a special prosecutor to look for the cover up:
******CBSNews Investigates
(Credit: CBS/AP) At a lengthy hearing on ATF's controversial gunwalking operation today, a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010. The communications were between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, and White House National Security Director for North America Kevin O'Reilly. Newell said the two are longtime friends. The content of what Newell shared with O'Reilly is unclear and wasn't fully explored at the hearing.
It's the first time anyone has publicly stated that a White House official had any familiarity with ATF's operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of weapons to fall into the hands of suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to gain intelligence. It's unknown as to whether O'Reilly shared information with anybody else at the White House.
Congressional investigators obtained an email from Newell to O'Reilly in September of last year in which Newell began with the words: "you didn't get this from me."
"What does that mean," one member of Congress asked Newell, " 'you didn't get this from me?' "
"Obviously he was a friend of mine," Newell replied, "and I shouldn't have been sending that to him."
Newell told Congress that O'Reilly had asked him for information.
"Why do you think he asked for that information," Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked Newell.
"He was asking about the impact of Project Gunrunner to brief people in preparation for a trip to Mexico... what we were doing to combat firearms trafficking and other issues."
Today, a White House spokesman said the email was not about Fast and Furious, but about other gun trafficking efforts. The spokesman also said he didn't know what Newell was referring to when he said he'd spoken to O'Reilly about Fast and Furious.
President Obama has said neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized or knew about the operation. Holder has asked the Inspector General to investigate.******
*****Special prosecutor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A special prosecutor generally is a lawyer from outside the government appointed by an attorney general or, in the United States, by Congress to investigate a government official for misconduct while in office. A reasoning for such an appointment is that the governmental branch or agency may have political connections to those it might be asked to investigate. Inherently, this creates a conflict of interest and a solution is to have someone from outside the department lead the investigation. The term "special prosecutor" may have a variety of meanings from one country to the next, from one government branch to the next within the same country, and within different agencies within each government branch. Critics of the use of special prosecutors argue that these investigators act as a "4th branch" to the government because they are not subject to limitations in spending or have deadlines to meet.*****
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Congress hasn't had the statutory authority to name a special prosecutor since 1999.
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Is the Wikepedia blurb above outdated? It claims Congress can do this.
How could one expect the DOJ to investigate itself or in this case the connected WH?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_the_Independent_Counsel
The politics around the special prosecutor led Congress to refuse to re-up the statute.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/07/ciudad-juarez-police-federal-chief-leyzaola-shooting-prison.html
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_696057.html
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_18563275?source=most_viewed
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_18564733?source=most_viewed
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http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1303-could-mexico-city-become-the-next-cartel-battleground
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http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1359-mexico-upstart-gangs-eat-into-cartel-hegemony
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WASHINGTON — The United States is expanding its role in Mexico’s bloody fight against drug trafficking organizations, sending new C.I.A. operatives and retired military personnel to the country and considering plans to deploy private security contractors in hopes of turning around a multibillion-dollar effort that so far has shown few results.
The United States is assisting Mexican police forces in conducting wiretaps, running informants and interrogating suspects.
In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, where, for the first time, security officials from both countries work side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of American contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counternarcotics police unit.
Officials on both sides of the border say the new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil, and to prevent advanced American surveillance technology from falling under the control of Mexican security agencies with long histories of corruption.
“A sea change has occurred over the past years in how effective Mexico and U.S. intelligence exchanges have become,” said Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. “It is underpinned by the understanding that transnational organized crime can only be successfully confronted by working hand in hand, and that the outcome is as simple as it is compelling: we will together succeed or together fail.”
The latest steps come three years after the United States began increasing its security assistance to Mexico with the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative and tens of millions of dollars from the Defense Department. They also come a year before elections in both countries, when President Obama may confront questions about the threat of violence spilling over the border, and President Felipe Calderón’s political party faces a Mexican electorate that is almost certainly going to ask why it should stick with a fight that has left nearly 45,000 people dead.
“The pressure is going to be especially strong in Mexico, where I expect there will be a lot more raids, a lot more arrests and a lot more parading drug traffickers in front of cameras,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution. “But I would also expect a lot of questioning of Merida, and some people asking about the way the money is spent, or demanding that the government send it back to the gringos.”
Mexico has become ground zero in the American counternarcotics fight since its cartels have cornered the market and are responsible for more than 80 percent of the drugs that enter the United States. American counternarcotics assistance there has grown faster in recent years than to Afghanistan and Colombia. And in the last three years, officials said, exchanges of intelligence between the United States and Mexico have helped security forces there capture or kill some 30 mid- to high-level drug traffickers, compared with just two such arrests in the previous five years.
The United States has trained nearly 4,500 new federal police agents and assisted in conducting wiretaps, running informants and interrogating suspects. The Pentagon has provided sophisticated equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters, and in recent months it has begun flying unarmed surveillance drones over Mexican soil to track drug kingpins.
Still, it is hard to say much real progress has been made in crippling the brutal cartels or stemming the flow of drugs and guns across the border. Mexico’s justice system remains so weakened by corruption that even the most notorious criminals have not been successfully prosecuted.
“The government has argued that the number of deaths in Mexico is proof positive that the strategy is working and that the cartels are being weakened,” said Nik Steinberg, a specialist on Mexico at Human Rights Watch. “But the data is indisputable — the violence is increasing, human rights abuses have skyrocketed and accountability both for officials who commit abuses and alleged criminals is at rock bottom.”
Mexican and American officials involved in the fight against organized crime do not see it that way. They say the efforts begun under President Obama are only a few years old, and that it is too soon for final judgments. Dan Restrepo, Mr. Obama’s senior Latin American adviser, refused to talk about operational changes in the security relationship, but said, “I think we are in a fundamentally different place than we were three years ago.”
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A senior Mexican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed. “This is the game-changer in degrading transnational organized crime,” he said, adding: “It can’t be a two-, three-, four-, five- or six-year policy. For this policy investment to work, it has to be sustained long-term.”
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The New York Times
Several Mexican and American security analysts compared the challenges of helping Mexico rebuild its security forces and civil institutions — crippled by more than seven decades under authoritarian rule — to similar tests in Afghanistan. They see the United States fighting alongside a partner it needs but does not completely trust.
Though the new United States ambassador to Mexico was plucked from an assignment in Kabul, Afghanistan, the Obama administration bristles at such comparisons, saying Mexico’s growing economy and functioning, though fragile, institutions put it far ahead of Afghanistan. Instead, administration officials more frequently compare Mexico’s struggle to the one Colombia began some 15 years ago.
Among the most important lessons they have learned, they say, is that in almost any fight against organized crime, things tend to get worse before they get better.
When violence spiked last year around Mexico’s industrial capital, Monterrey, Mr. Calderón’s government asked the United States for more access to sophisticated surveillance technology and expertise. After months of negotiations, the United States established an intelligence post on a northern Mexican military base, moving Washington beyond its traditional role of sharing information to being more directly involved in gathering it.
American officials declined to provide details about the work being done by the American team of fewer than two dozen Drug Enforcement Administration agents, C.I.A. officials and retired military personnel members from the Pentagon’s Northern Command. For security reasons, they asked The New York Times not to disclose the location of the compound.
But the officials said the compound had been modeled after “fusion intelligence centers” that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups, and that the United States would strictly play a supporting role.
“The Mexicans are in charge," said one American military official. “It’s their show. We’re all about technical support.”
The two countries have worked in lock step on numerous high-profile operations, including the continuing investigation of the February murder of Jaime J. Zapata, an American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
Mexico’s federal police chief, Genaro García Luna, put a helicopter in the air within five minutes after receiving a call for help from Mr. Zapata’s partner, the authorities said. Then he invited American officials to the police intelligence center — an underground location known as “the bunker” — to work directly with Mexican security forces in tracking down the suspects.
Mexican officials hand-carried shell casings recovered from the scene of the shooting to Washington for forensics tests, allowed American officials to conduct their own autopsy of the agent’s body and shipped the agent’s bullet-battered car to the United States for inspection.
In another operation last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration and a Mexican counternarcotics police unit collaborated on an operation that led to the arrest of José Antonio Hernández Acosta, a suspected drug trafficker. The authorities believe he is responsible for hundreds of deaths in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, including the murders of two Americans employed at the United States Consulate there.
While D.E.A. field officers were not on the scene — the Mexicans still draw the line at that — the Americans helped develop tips and were in contact with the Mexican unit almost every minute of the five-hour manhunt, according to a senior American official in Mexico. The unit, of about 50 officers, is the focus of another potentially ground-breaking plan that has not yet won approval. Several former D.E.A. officials said the two countries were considering a proposal to embed a group of private security contractors — including retired D.E.A. agents and former Special Forces officers — inside the unit to conduct an on-the-job training academy that would offer guidance in conducting operations so that suspects can be successfully taken to court. Mexican prosecutors would also work with the unit, the Americans said.
But a former American law enforcement official familiar with the unit described it as one good apple in a barrel of bad ones. He said it was based on a compound with dozens of other nonvetted officers, who provided a window on the challenges that the Mexican police continue to face.
Some of the officers had not been issued weapons, and those who had guns had not been properly trained to use them. They were required to pay for their helmets and bulletproof vests out of their own pockets. And during an intense gun battle against one of Mexico’s most vicious cartels, they had to communicate with one another on their cellphones because they had not been issued police radios. “It’s sort of shocking,” said Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Mexico is just now learning how to fight crime in the midst of a major crime wave. It’s like trying to saddle your horse while running the Kentucky Derby.”
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The Buffer Between Mexican Cartels and the U.S. Government
August 17, 2011
By Scott Stewart
It is summer in Juarez, and again this year we find the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (VCF), also known as the Juarez cartel, under pressure and making threats. At this time in 2010, La Linea, the VCF’s enforcer arm, detonated a small improvised explosive device (IED) inside a car in Juarez and killed two federal agents, one municipal police officer and an emergency medical technician and wounded nine other people. La Linea threatened to employ a far larger IED (100 kilograms) if the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did not investigate the head of Chihuahua State Police intelligence, whom the VCF claimed was working for the Sinaloa Federation.
La Linea did attempt to employ another IED on Sept. 10, 2010, but this device, which failed to detonate, contained only 16 kilograms of explosives, far less than the 100 kilograms that the group had threatened to use.
Fast-forward a year, and we see the VCF still under unrelenting pressure from the Sinaloa Federation and still making threats. On July 15, the U.S. Consulate in Juarez released a message warning that, according to intelligence it had in hand, a cartel may be targeting the consulate or points of entry into the United States. On July 27, “narcomantas” — banners inscribed with messages from drug cartels — appeared in Juarez and Chihuahua signed by La Linea and including explicit threats against the DEA and employees of the U.S. Consulate in Juarez. Two days after the narcomantas appeared, Jose Antonio “El Diego” Acosta Hernandez, a senior La Linea leader whose name was mentioned in the messages, was arrested by Mexican authorities aided by intelligence from the U.S. government. Acosta is also believed to have been responsible for planning La Linea’s past IED attacks.
As we have discussed in our coverage of the drug war in Mexico, Mexican cartels, including the VCF, clearly possess the capability to construct and employ large vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) — truck bombs — and yet they have chosen not to. These groups are not averse to bloodshed, or even outright barbarity, when they believe it is useful. Their decision to abstain from certain activities, such as employing truck bombs or targeting a U.S. Consulate, indicates that there must be compelling strategic reasons for doing so. After all, groups in Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq have demonstrated that truck bombs are a very effective means of killing perceived enemies and of sending strong messages.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for the Mexican cartels to abstain from such activities is that they do not consider them to be in their best interest. One important part of their calculation is that such activities would remove the main buffer that is currently insulating them from the full force of the U.S. government: the Mexican government.
The Buffer
Despite their public manifestations of machismo, the cartel leaders clearly fear and respect the strength of the world’s only superpower. This is evidenced by the distinct change in cartel activities along the U.S.-Mexico border, where a certain operational downshift routinely occurs. In Mexico, the cartels have the freedom to operate far more brazenly than they can in the United States, in terms of both drug trafficking and acts of violence. Shipments of narcotics traveling through Mexico tend to be far larger than shipments moving into and through the United States. When these large shipments reach the border they are taken to stash houses on the Mexican side, where they are typically divided into smaller quantities for transport into and through the United States.
As for violence, while the cartels do kill people on the U.S. side of the border, their use of violence there tends to be far more discreet; it has certainly not yet incorporated the dramatic flair that is frequently seen on the Mexican side, where bodies are often dismembered or hung from pedestrian bridges over major thoroughfares. The cartels are also careful not to assassinate high-profile public figures such as police chiefs, mayors and reporters in the United States, as they frequently do in Mexico.
The border does more than just alter the activities of the cartels, however. It also constrains the activities of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. These agencies cannot pursue cartels on the Mexican side of the border with the same vigor that they exercise on the U.S. side. Occasionally, the U.S. government will succeed in luring a wanted Mexican cartel leader outside of Mexico, as it did in the August 2006 arrest of Javier Arellano Felix, or catch one operating in the United States like Javier’s oldest brother, Francisco Arellano Felix. By and large, however, most wanted cartel figures remain in Mexico, out of the reach of U.S. law.
One facet of this buffer is corruption, which is endemic in Mexico, reaching all the way from the lowest municipal police officer to the presidential palace. Over the years several senior Mexican anti-drug officials, including the nation’s drug czar, have been arrested and charged with corruption.
However, the money generated by the Mexican cartels has far greater effects than just promoting corruption. The billions of dollars that come into the Mexican economy via the drug trade are important to the Mexican banking sector and to the industries in which the funds are laundered, such as construction. Because of this, there are many powerful Mexican businessmen who profit either directly or indirectly from the narcotics trade, and it would not be in their best interest for the billions of drug dollars to stop flowing into Mexico. Such people can place heavy pressure on the political system by either supporting or withholding support from particular candidates or parties.
Because of this, sources in Mexico have been telling STRATFOR that they believe that Mexican politicians like President Filipe Calderon are far more interested in stopping drug violence than they are in stopping the flow of narcotics. This is a pragmatic approach. Clearly, as long as there is demand for drugs in the United States there will be people who will find ways to meet that demand. It is impossible to totally stop the flow of narcotics into the U.S. market.
In addition to corruption and the economic benefits Mexico realizes from the drug trade, there is another important element that causes the Mexican government to act as a buffer between the Mexican cartels and the U.S. government — geopolitics. The Mexico-U.S. relationship is a long one that has involved considerable competition and conflict. The United States has long meddled in the affairs of Mexico and other countries in Latin America. And from the Mexican perspective, American imperialist aggression, via the Texas War of Independence and the Mexican-American War, resulted in Mexico losing nearly half of its territory to its powerful northern neighbor. Less than a century ago, U.S. troops invaded northern Mexico in response to Pancho Villa’s incursions into the United States.
Because of this history, Mexico — as with most of the rest of Latin America — regards the United States as a threat to its sovereignty. The result of this perception is that the Mexican government and the Mexican people in general are very reluctant to allow the United States to become too involved in Mexican affairs. The idea of American troops or law enforcement agents with boots on the ground in Mexico is considered especially threatening from the Mexican perspective.
A Thin Barrier
While Mexican sovereignty and international law combine with corruption and economics to create a barrier to assertive U.S. intervention in Mexico’s drug war, this barrier is not inviolable. There are two distinct ways this type of barrier has been breached in the past: by force and by consent.
An example of the first was seen following the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. DEA special agent Enrique Camarena. The DEA was not able to get what it viewed as satisfactory assistance from the Mexican government in pursuing the case despite the tremendous pressure applied by the U.S. government. This prompted the DEA to unilaterally enter Mexico and snatch two Mexican citizens connected to the case. Because of his involvement in the Camarena case, Honduran drug kingpin Juan Matta-Ballesteros was also rendered from his home in Honduras by U.S. government agents.
As a result of the U.S. reaction to the Camarena murder, the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization at the time, was decapitated, its leaders — Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero — all arrested and convicted for their part in ordering the killing. The tremendous pressure applied to Mexican authorities by the U.S. government to arrest the trio, coupled with the fear that they too might be rendered, ultimately led to their detention, although they did maintain sufficient influence to ensure that they were not extradited to the United States.
The Guadalajara Cartel also lost its primary connection to the Medellin cartel (Matta-Ballesteros) as a result of the Camarena case, and the cartel was eventually fractured into smaller units that would become today’s Sinaloa, Juarez, Gulf and Tijuana cartels. The Camarena case taught the Mexican cartel bosses to be careful not to provoke the Americans to the point where it will bring the full power of the U.S. government to bear upon their organizations (a lesson recently demonstrated by the unilateral U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan).
But in addition to unilateral force, sometimes the U.S. government can be invited into a country despite concerns about sovereignty. This happens when the population has something it fears more than U.S. involvement, and this is what happened in Colombia in the late 1980s. In an effort to influence the Colombian government not to cooperate with the U.S. government and extradite him to the United States, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin Cartel, resorted to terrorism. In 1989 he launched a string of terrorist attacks that included the assassination of one presidential candidate, the bombing a civilian airliner in an attempt to kill a second presidential candidate and several large VBIED attacks, including the detonation of a 1,000-pound truck bomb in December 1989 targeting the Colombian Administrative Department of Security (DAS, Colombia’s primary national intelligence and security service) that caused massive damage in the area around the DAS building in downtown Bogota. These attacks had a powerful impact on the Colombian government and Colombian people and caused them to reach out to the United States for increased assistance despite their concern about U.S. power. The increased U.S. assistance eventually led to the death of Escobar and the systematic dismantling of his organization.
The lesson in the Escobar case was: Do not push your own government or population too far or they will turn on you and invite the Americans in.
Full Circle
So, in looking at the situation in Mexico today, there are indeed cartel organizations that have been hit hard. Over the past few years, we have seen groups such as the Beltran Leyva Organization, the Arellano Felix Organization, the VCF and Los Zetas heavily damaged. Many of these groups, particularly the VCF, the Arellano Felix Organization and Los Zetas, have been forced to resort to other criminal activity such as kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking to fund their operations. However, they have not yet undertaken large-scale terrorist attacks. The VCF tiptoed along that line last year, with La Linea’s small-scale IED attacks, as did the Gulf cartel, but these groups were careful not to use IEDs that were too large, and La Linea never employed the huge IED it threatened to. In fact, the overall use of IEDs is down dramatically in 2011 compared to the same period last year — despite the fact that explosives are readily available in Mexico and the cartels have the demonstrated capability to manufacture and employ them.
It is also important to recognize that in the past couple of years, when the United States has become heavily interested in attacks linked to the Mexican cartels, the cartel figures believed to be responsible for these actions have been arrested or killed. This has happened in cases such as the March 2010 murders of three people with ties to the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, the September 2010 murder of David Hartley on Falcon Lake, the February 2011 murder of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Zapata, and even the previously mentioned July 27 threats against U.S. interests in Juarez. This means that the chances of a cartel such as the VCF getting the United States directly involved without the cartel being directly impacted are probably quite slim. In other words, if the VCF attacks the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, it can expect to be targeted directly by the U.S. and Mexican governments, instead of the governments focusing on other cartel players in the city, such as the VCF’s rival, the Sinaloa Federation.
As noted in our last cartel update, we anticipate that in the coming months the Mexican government campaign against Los Zetas will continue to impact that group, as will the attacks against Los Zetas by the Gulf cartel and its criminal allies. We also anticipate that the aforementioned Sinaloa pressure against the VCF in Juarez will not diminish. Nor will Mexican government pressure: We have seen reports that Luis Antonio Flores (also known as El Comen 2 or El Tarzan), El Diego’s replacement as the leader of La Linea, was arrested Aug. 16. However, we have seen nothing that would indicate that this pressure will cause these groups to lash out in the form of large-scale terrorist attacks like those associated with Pablo Escobar. Even when wounded, these Mexican organizations have shown that they seek to maintain the buffer protecting them from the full power of the U.S. government.
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Gunfight at a Soccer Match in Torreon
A gunfight erupted in Torreon, Coahuila state, at around 8 p.m. on Aug. 20, after a three-vehicle convoy of gunmen reportedly crashed through a security checkpoint outside the Territorio Santos Modelo soccer stadium. No one was killed or seriously injured during the shootout. Security forces closed the doors of the stadium — likely preventing the deaths of fans who might have panicked and run out into the gunfight — and established a security cordon around the facility.
Adelaido Flores Diaz, the director general of public security in Torreon, confirmed that the gunmen were targeting a Public Security Patrol, rather than the stadium or the fans therein. Stray bullets did enter the stadium. The gunmen evaded arrest by using caltrops (small, four-pointed spikes used to deflate vehicle tires) to slow pursuing authorities. Their truck was found abandoned and containing three high-caliber weapons and two grenades.
(click here to enlarge image)
The shootout in Torreon illustrates the role geography plays in Mexico’s drug trafficking operations — a role of which cartel leaders keenly understand the importance. Cartels must not only move contraband into and out of the country, but also across it. Situated in central Mexico at the intersection of a couple of major highways, Torreon is a critical hub for cartels moving product to northern Mexico and, eventually, into the United States. Control of Torreon helps facilitate the movement of product from Mexico’s Pacific coast across the country to smuggling corridors, such as Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez, on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Because cartels understand the importance and vulnerability of their own supply routes, such gateway cities have become hotly disputed territory. Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation have been fighting for control of Torreon for some time, and members of one or both of those groups were very likely among those involved in the shootout. We can expect to see continual violence in the city as the Zetas and Sinaloa continue to vie for unfettered control of transit routes. Unfortunately for Torreon, its geographic location predisposes it to such violence and increases the psychological impact of “terror,” which STRATFOR has previously addressed.
Indeed, aside from the geographic issue, there is also a notable psychological component to the incident in Torreon. Soccer is by far the most popular sport in Mexico, often used as a means to escape the realities of daily life. In a country where the populace does not often have much reason for optimism — corruption is rampant and violence, often grotesque and public, is commonplace — fans can always cheer for their home team and take pride in their city when victorious. While Torreon is unlikely to stop hosting soccer matches altogether, the psychological impact of the Aug. 20 gunfight is an affront to a cherished pastime. It signifies a permeation of violence into every aspect of Mexican life and robs Torreon’s citizens of a respite from news of prolific violence, making a return to normalcy seem all the more remote.
Moreover, the game was a high-profile event, airing not only in Mexico but also the United States, and a number of fans documented the episode on cameras and phones. (None of the fans actually recorded anything but the sounds of the gunfire. During the live telecast, the game’s announcers discussed what was happening, who was responsible and how to escape.) Such publicity serves as a reminder that while Mexico’s war on drugs directly affects comparatively few — those in cities such as Torreon — the violence it causes can be seen by anyone with an Internet connection.
Violence in Acapulco
On Aug. 17, two bus drivers and an assistant driver were killed in separate incidents in Acapulco, Guerrero state. The first incident took place on the Acapulco-Mexico highway at an area known as La Llave de Agua, where a bus driver and his assistant were found dead in their bus, near a number of shell casings. In the second incident, a female driver was found shot and killed in her bus on the Avenida Adolfo Ruiz Cortines.
The violence in Acapulco is a result of its strategic geographic location. The port is a natural coastal harbor and provides excellent shelter. It has become an important port, not only for legitimate economic enterprises, but also for the drug industry. Though far smaller than Lazaro Cardenas, it is still a critical hub for the import of precursor chemicals used in the production of methamphetamine, and of cocaine that arrives at port from Colombia. It also straddles the Pacific coastal highway, which traverses nearly the entire country. Acapulco is currently being fought over by several different criminal groups. One of these is the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA), which consists of a faction of the former Beltran Leyva Organization that was loyal to Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal and that joined with local Acapulco criminals to form CIDA. This group has long been locked in a bloody war with the Sinaloa cartel and the Cartel Pacifico Sur, which is headed by Hector Beltran Leyva.
As cartel infighting continues to escalate, so too does violence against transportation employees. This violence can occur for many reasons. The first is extortion. Like other businesses, many bus companies and taxi companies are forced to pay “taxes” to the criminal organizations that control the city in which they operate. Failure to pay these organizations frequently results in violence. Conversely, in a city where various groups are vying for control, one group can target a business that it believes is providing financial support to a rival organization. This leaves businesses facing a deadly situation: Failure to pay may result in death, while paying one cartel over others invites reprisal from rival cartels.
Finally, some transportation workers serve as “halcones” — a name given to those working to supply street-level information to various cartels. Certainly not all of those working in the transportation industry work for the cartels, but those who do are vital assets of their respective intelligence apparatuses. They have an inherent cover story and the ability to access different areas of a city (bus drivers even have scheduled, predictable routes). Cartels, therefore, have every incentive to target those halcones they believe to be on the take of their rivals.
As violence continues in the struggle to control Acapulco, it will impact bystanders as well as those supporting the various combatants.
(click here to view interactive map)
Aug. 15
A decapitated body was hung off a bridge in Huixquilucan, Mexico state, with a narcomanta from La Mano con Ojos. The message stated that the decapitated individual thought the La Mano con Ojos organization was disjointed and decided to work for himself. The message follows the arrest of Oscar Osvaldo “El Compayito” Garcia Montoya, the former leader of the group.
Police seized 2 tons of marijuana in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, after an armed individual was spotted discarding a package in the presence of police. No arrests were made.
Aug. 16
Federal police arrested the presumed successor to the leader of La Linea, Jose Antonio “El Diego” Acosta Hernandez. He was arrested in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state. “El Coman 2,” who operates under the aliases Luis Antonio Flores Diaz and Jose Antonio Rincon, replaced Acosta after his arrest on July 29.
The Mexican army killed eight gunmen traveling in a three-vehicle convoy in Michoacan state’s Tacambaro region. As the army patrol approached, two of the vehicles sped away while the third engaged in a gunfight with the soldiers.
Gunmen shot and killed Francisco Torres Ibanez, the intermunicipal police commander of Veracruz-Boca Del Rio, while he was on patrol in Veracruz, Veracruz state.
A severed pig head was discovered in a cooler at a university in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state, with a note stating that the pig head was for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The message was signed “El Coman 2.”
Aug. 17
During a reconnaissance operation, Mexican authorities seized a drug lab in Chilchota, Michoacan state, containing approximately 1 ton of chemical precursors.
Federal police seized approximately 116 kilograms (256 pounds) of marijuana from a vehicle in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state.
Five coolers containing severed human remains were found throughout Acapulco, Guerrero state. The identities of the victims and the killers remain unknown.
Aug. 18
Multiple narcomantas were posted throughout Chihuahua, Chihuahua state, criticizing Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Some of the banners were critical of the lack of reporting of clandestine graves in Durango and accused Calderon of a cover-up.
Ten Los Zetas members were killed when the Mexican army approached a safe house in Agualeguas, Nuevo Leon state. At least 20 gunmen escaped during the fight.
Aug. 19
The Mexican army detained 10 members of the group Comando Del Diablo, in Acapulco, Guerrero state. The arrests were a result of an investigation conducted after members of the group left coolers with human remains in Acapulco on Aug. 17.
Aug. 20
The mayor of Zacualpan, Mexico state, was found dead in Teloloapan, Guerrero state. He was kidnapped Aug. 19 after he and his bodyguards were attacked by gunmen.
A gunfight erupted between police and gunmen in Torreon, Coahuila state. The gunfight occurred outside of a soccer stadium where a game was being played.
Nine dead bodies with multiple gunshot wounds were found along a highway near Mora, Nayarit state. The bodies were found with their hands bound.
After stopping traffic and firing gunshots, gunmen hung a narcomanta off a bridge in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, addressed to Calderon and state Gov. Rodrigo Medina. The narcomanta warned of an upcoming prison escape at the Apodaca prison in Nuevo Leon.
Aug. 21
Three human heads were discovered in a plastic bag along a busy street in Acapulco, Guerrero state. The authorities have not dismissed the possibility that the heads belong to headless corpses found in Acapulco on Aug. 19.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Violence Shows Strategic Value of Torreon, Acapulco | STRATFOR
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No citation, but from a reliable source. For those not familiar with Mexico, know that the presence of foreign troops and/or police is an unusually hot button in Mexico, , , and that understates matters. For a writer with the impeccable Mexican credentials of Carlos Fuentes to call for such, is quite remarkable.
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Hours before accepting a literary prize Saturday night in Spain, Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico's most accomplished writers, spoke decisively about the country's crisis of violence and drug trafficking.
"They should decriminalize drugs and get help from the Israeli, French or German police forces who have proven effective in combating crime," he said.
The 82 year old Mexican writer, and social and political activist, acknowledged that he was stunned by the horrific "narco" attack at the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, that killed 53 people.
"Unless steps are taken to legalize drugs in coordination with the United States, which is the biggest drug market, and unless more effective internal police actions are forthcoming, the drug cartels will defeat the Mexican Army and the country's unarmed society," argued Fuentes.
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Crafty, you know far more about Mexico than I do, but no where in your post do I see Carlos Fuentes calling for "foreign troops". He does call for the decriminalization of drugs, a controversial subject, and suggests help from Israeli, French, or German police forces. I take this as a slap against the US since from what I've read, our various "police" forces (DEA, FBI, CIA) have been advising and cooperating with Mexico but to no avail. Perhaps having Israeli, French, or German police assist might be less controversial rather than US advisors since America, as the primary consumer of drugs, is indirectly much of the cause of the violence in Mexico.
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I'll point out that the Israeli, French and German police operate under greater freedoms to use force in doing their jobs. Yeah, this was a slap at the US.
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It was not my intention to say that CF called for foreign troops for he did not. My bad. :oops:
As for the calling for other than US police, I suspect this is due to intense traditional Mexican concerns about being manipulated, controlled, invaded, and such by the US.
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Traditional Mexican anti-americanism.
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Mexico’s economy
Making the desert bloom
The Mexican economy has recovered somewhat from a scorching recession imported from America, but is still hobbled by domestic monopolies and cartels
Aug 27th 2011
HOT and high in the Sierra Madre, the city of Saltillo is a long way from Wall Street. Stuffed goats keep an eye on customers in the high-street vaquera, or cowboy outfitter, where workers from the local car factories blow their pesos on snakeskin boots and $100 Stetsons. Pinstriped suits and silk ties are outnumbered by checked shirts and silver belt-buckles; pickups are prized over Porsches.
The financial crisis of 2008 began on the trading floors of Manhattan, but the biggest tremors were felt in the desert south of the Rio Grande. Mexico suffered the steepest recession of any country in the Americas, bar a couple of Caribbean tiddlers. Its economy shrank by 6.1% in 2009 (see chart 1). Between the third quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, 700,000 jobs were lost, 260,000 of them in manufacturing. The slump was deepest in the prosperous north: worst hit was the border state of Coahuila. Saltillo, its capital, had grown rich exporting to America. The state’s output fell by 12.3% in 2009 as orders dried up.
The recession turned a reasonable decade for Mexico’s economy into a dreary one. In the ten years to 2010, income per person grew by 0.6% a year, one of the lowest rates in the world. In the early 2000s Mexico boasted Latin America’s biggest economy, measured at market exchange rates, but it was soon overtaken by Brazil, whose GDP is now twice as big and still pulling away, boosted by the soaring real. Soon Brazil will take the lead in oil production, which Mexico has allowed to dwindle. As Brazilians construct stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Mexicans, who last year celebrated the bicentenary of their independence from Spain, are building monuments to their past (and finishing them late).
Mexico’s muscles
Yet Mexico’s economy is packed with potential. Thanks to the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a string of bilateral deals, it trades more than Argentina and Brazil combined, and more per person than China. Last year it did $400 billion of business with the United States, more than any country bar Canada and China. The investment rate, at more than a fifth of GDP, is well ahead of Brazil’s. Income per person slipped below Brazil’s in 2009, but only because of the real’s surge and the peso’s weakness. After accounting for purchasing power, Mexicans are still better off than Brazilians.
Though expatriates whinge about bureaucracy, the World Bank ranks Mexico the easiest place in Latin America to do business and the 35th-easiest in the world, ahead of Italy and Spain. In Brazil (placed 127th) companies spend 2,600 hours a year filing taxes, six times more than in Mexico. Registering a business takes nine days in Mexico and 26 in Argentina. The working hours of supposedly siesta-loving Mexicans are among the longest in the world. And although Mexico’s schools are the worst in (mainly rich) OECD countries, they are the least bad in Latin America apart from Chile’s.
These strengths have helped Mexico to rebound smartly from its calamitous slump. Last year the economy grew by 5.4%, recovering much of the ground lost in 2009. Exports to the United States, having fallen by a fifth, have reached a record high. In the desert there are signs of life: Saltillo’s high street, where four out of ten shops closed during the recession, is busy again. CIFUNSA, a foundry that turns out some 400,000 tonnes of cast iron a year for customers such as Ford and Volkswagen, shed 40% of its staff in 2009, but has rehired most of them and is producing more than it did before the slump.
However, the jobs market has yet to return to its pre-recession state. Nationally, the official unemployment rate is 5.4%, having peaked at 6.4% in 2009. Javier Lozano, Mexico’s labour secretary, believes that the pre-recession mark of 4.1% will not be matched within the term of this government or the next (ie, before 2018). What’s more, the new jobs are not as good as those that were lost. Average pay last year was 5% lower than in 2008. Because of this, and rising food prices, more Mexicans have slipped into poverty: last year 46.2% of them were below the official poverty line (earning less than 2,114 pesos, or $167, per month), up from 44.5% in 2008.
Just as recession came from the gringos, recovery depends partly on them. Many analysts who once predicted economic growth of 5% this year cut their forecasts to under 4% after a downward revision of American GDP in July. Exports account for nearly a third of Mexico’s trillion-dollar GDP, and most go to the United States. Remittances provide $190 per person per year (down from $240 in 2007). Now America faces several years of lacklustre growth, which poses a dilemma for Mexico.
Some look at the recent explosive growth of Brazil and wonder if it is time to follow its example and look to new markets. In 2009 only 3% of Mexico’s exports went to Brazil, Russia, India or China, whereas Brazil sent 16% of its exports to its fellow BRICs. Industrialised countries receive less than half of Brazil’s exports but 90% of Mexico’s. The Inter-American Development Bank, the biggest lender in the region, describes a “two speed” Latin America, in which economies, such as Mexico, which do most of their trade with developed countries, lag behind those, such as Brazil, that have forged links with emerging markets.
South or north?
Mexico has already diversified its exports. America’s share of them has fallen from 89% in 2000 to perhaps 78% this year and will fall further, according to Miguel Messmacher, head of economic planning at Mexico’s finance ministry. Sales to Latin America and Asia are growing twice as fast as those to America. The automotive industry, Mexico’s biggest exporter, is ahead of the trend: though exports to America continue to rise, they now make up only 65% of the total. Eduardo Solís, head of the industry’s national association, says he would like to get the figure down to 50% by focusing on Latin America and Europe.
Others say Mexico’s economic future will always be to the north. “We can’t just become a commodity exporter and start sending soy beans to China,” says Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign secretary. History, geography and natural resources have wedded Mexico to its wealthy neighbour: “It’s not something we chose,” he says. If the American economy is growing slowly, Mexico will just have to get a bigger chunk of it.
That task has been made harder by China. Since China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 its share of American imports has grown fast and is now the biggest. The shares of Canada and especially Japan have fallen. Mexico’s share, which almost doubled in the seven years after NAFTA came into effect, slipped after 2001. But it is edging up again (see chart 2).
China’s low wages, which lured factories away from Mexico, are rising rapidly. In 2003 Mexican pay was three times Chinese rates but now it is only 20% higher, Mr Messmacher says. The rising yuan and the cheap peso accentuate this trend.
Proximity to America, Mexico’s trump card, has been made more valuable by the high oil price. The resolution in July of a long dispute has allowed Mexican lorries to make deliveries in America, which the Mexican government reckons will reduce firms’ shipping costs by 15%. The rise of China may also help Mexico too, by forcing American companies to compete more keenly. Detroit carmakers cannot export cars to South Korea, but a Mexican factory using American parts can, notes Luis de la Calle, a former trade minister.
Luring foreign investors has been made trickier by a spike in violence. Since 2007, a crackdown on organised crime has caused Mexico’s drug-trafficking “cartels”, as they are known (though they are in fact rather competitive), to splinter and fight. Last year the murder rate was 17 per 100,000 people, a little lower than Brazil’s, but more than two-thirds up on 2007. Ernesto Cordero, the finance minister, has estimated that the violence knocks about a percentage point off Mexico’s annual growth rate.
The fighting is highly concentrated: last year 70% of mafia-related killings took place in 3% of the country’s municipalities. In Yucatán state, where tourists scramble around Mayan ruins, the murder rate is no higher than in Belgium. Last July was the busiest ever for Mexico’s foreign-tourist trade, but there are signs that the drip of bloody stories is starting to hurt bookings. In the first five months of this year, arrivals were 3.6% lower than last. Acapulco, which caters mainly to domestic tourists, has virtually emptied thanks to frequent shootings in the heart of the hotel zone.
Many of the roughest areas are in the north, where foreign investment is concentrated. In Ciudad Juárez, a centre of maquila factories that assemble products for export, the murder rate has climbed to one of the highest in the world, as the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels battle for control of the border crossing, little restrained (and often aided) by the local police. In Tamaulipas, a border state where violence surged last year, the unemployment rate has risen to 7.5%, the highest in the country. The head of a Mexican multinational with operations there found recently that his local manager had been siphoning company money to the cartels. Many rich businessmen have moved their families to America; the governor of one border state is rumoured to have done the same (his office denies it).
Investors have largely held their nerve. Foreign direct investment, which reached $30 billion in 2007 but fell to half that in 2009, is expected to recover to $20 billion this year. Businessmen play down the violence: Mr Solís admits that some car transporters have been robbed on highways, but says that this year has been better than last. This month Honda became the latest carmaker to announce plans to expand in Mexico, in spite of the insecurity.
Still, insecurity adds costs and delays. The road from Saltillo to Monterrey, the nearest big airport, has become dicey, so more people rely on Saltillo’s own tiny airport, where a single airline offers flights to Mexico City for upwards of $400. Conferences, concerts and sporting fixtures have been cancelled in Monterrey. In Coahuila on August 20th a football match was abandoned after shots were fired outside the stadium. Some foreign companies are even nervous about sending executives to Mexico City, although it has a lower murder rate than many American cities.
From Uncle Sam to Uncle Slim
Despite Mexico’s difficulties, one of its citizens is the richest person in the world. Carlos Slim, the son of a Lebanese immigrant, has made a fortune estimated by Forbes at $74 billion. The magazine reckons that last year his net worth rose by $20.5 billion.
Nearly two-thirds of Mr Slim’s wealth is thought to lie in América Móvil, the biggest or second-biggest mobile-phone operator everywhere in Latin America except Chile (where it is third). In Mexico Mr Slim’s grip is particularly strong, with 70% of the cellular market and 80% of landlines. In half the country’s 400 local areas, only his company has the infrastructure to put through calls to landlines. Not surprisingly, after accounting for purchasing power home landlines in Mexico cost 45% more than the OECD average and business lines 63% more (see chart 3). Mobiles are better value, particularly for those who do not make many calls. But basic broadband access costs nearly ten times more (per megabit per second of advertised speed) than in the rest of the OECD.
Telecoms is not the only monopolised sector. A study by the OECD and Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission (CFC) found that 31% of Mexican household spending went on products supplied in monopolistic or highly oligopolistic markets. The poorest tenth suffered most, 38% of their expenditure going on such things.
The cost of these captive markets is ruinous. Until recently, for example, firms selling generic medicines were required by law to operate a plant in Mexico. This, along with a system that allows doctors to prescribe medicines by brand rather than by generic compound, means that the market is dominated by expensive brands. Generics account for less than 17% of the drugs market, against 66.5% in America. Medicine is a third pricier than in Britain.
Transport is expensive too. The handful of budget airlines that arrived in the past decade have struggled to get take-off and landing slots at Mexico City’s airport, which are dished out by a committee dominated by incumbents. The CFC found that flights to and from Mexico City were between 40% and 80% dearer than those to less strangled airports. Intercity bus routes are dominated by four firms that have divided up the country. Fares are 10% higher than they ought to be, the CFC estimates.
Banking is similarly uncompetitive. Two banks control almost half the market for deposit accounts and two-thirds of the credit- and debit-card markets. The lack of choice means that 95% of account-holders have never switched banks. Top of the list of Saltillo businesses’ complaints is the scarcity and cost of credit.
Some of these pinch points are being addressed. The collapse last year of Mexicana, North America’s oldest airline, has presented an opportunity to auction landing slots to nimbler competitors. Drugs should get cheaper thanks to an auction system devised by the CFC for Mexico’s social-security institute. In April a new competition law introduced penalties of up to ten years in jail for collusion, and empowered the CFC to make surprise inspections. The same month it fined Mr Slim’s mobile-phone operator a record $1 billion for abusing its market dominance.
Banking has been opened to entrants such as Walmart, which has already shaken up Mexican retailing. Commercial credit is expanding: it stands at 19% of GDP, nearly double the ratio in 2003. Lending is still less than half of what it was before the banking crisis of 1994, suggesting plenty of room for growth—certainly more than in Brazil, where credit already equals about half of GDP.
Forcing competition on cosy industries is still not easy. When the government decided in 2009 to shut down Luz y Fuerza, a state-run electricity company that was costing the taxpayer $3 billion a year, it required 1,000 police in riot gear to occupy the firm’s offices. Since Luz y Fuerza shut, the wait for new connections in Mexico City has fallen from ten months to four. But its ex-employees still bring parts of the capital to a halt with protests. Labour-reform efforts, to ease hiring and firing and allow six-month trial contracts, have met opposition in congress. Even with the new competition law, few people fancy the authorities’ chances against Mr Slim’s lawyers.
The answer is to open the economy and let foreign competition force Mexican firms to adapt, believes Mr de la Calle. “If you have free trade, you don’t need structural reforms because the companies have to compete,” he says. He cites the pork industry, which used to be blighted with hog cholera. Farmers resisted pressure to eradicate it, preferring to sell low volumes at high prices. When tariffs were dropped, cheap pork from America forced Mexican farmers to clean up their act. Cholera was eliminated, output rose and prices fell.
Other industries are ripe for similar treatment. Oil is a prime candidate. Pemex, a state monopoly, handles everything from exploration to petrol pumps. Its profits contribute a third of government revenue, allowing Mexico to maintain a generous and feebly enforced tax regime. But decades of underinvestment have hurt production, which fell from 3.4m barrels a day in 2004 to 2.6m. Brazil, which has allowed foreign investment in its oilfields, is producing around 2m barrels a day and expects to be pumping 6m by 2020.
Pemex’s output has stabilised in the past year, and this month it awarded its first performance-based contracts, a precursor to getting oil majors to explore the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But efforts to make the company more efficient have been vetoed by the oil workers’ union. Refineries are poorly run; petrol stations forbid self-service.
The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think-tank, estimates that the GDP growth rate could be raised by 2.5 percentage points if the oil industry were opened up and labour and competition laws reformed. Reeling from an American-made recession, however, Mexico is hardly in the mood for a more open economy. With a presidential election next year, it would be easier to keep puttering along in the shadow of Brazil, an economy which in some ways Mexico outclasses. Mexico’s rebound from slump and its resilience to lawlessness show its underlying strength. If it could only bust the monopolistic dams that have parched its economy, its desert might one day start to bloom.
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Good read CCP.
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Well we have wondered why Mexicans come here for work.
Carlos Slim didn't get to be worth 74 billion being a nice guy:
"Nearly two-thirds of Mr Slim’s wealth is thought to lie in América Móvil, the biggest or second-biggest mobile-phone operator everywhere in Latin America except Chile (where it is third). In Mexico Mr Slim’s grip is particularly strong, with 70% of the cellular market and 80% of landlines. In half the country’s 400 local areas, only his company has the infrastructure to put through calls to landlines. Not surprisingly, after accounting for purchasing power home landlines in Mexico cost 45% more than the OECD average and business lines 63% more (see chart 3). Mobiles are better value, particularly for those who do not make many calls. But basic broadband access costs nearly ten times more (per megabit per second of advertised speed) than in the rest of the OECD."
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Stratfor
Above the Tearline: Reconstructing the Monterrey Arson Attack from Surveillance Footage
August 31, 2011 | 1347 GMT
Click on image below to watch video:
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton demonstrates how video surveillance footage is used to reconstruct the recent arson attack in Monterrey, Mexico.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
In this week’s Above the Tearline, we’re going to show you how agents utilize video surveillance tape to reconstruct the crime using the recent casino fire in Monterrey, Mexico, as an example.
Let’s take a look at the first video, which takes place before the crime occurs. This is surveillance footage at a gas station, and you see the suspects have purchased gas that they have placed in the back of this pickup truck in these white barrels. Note that you could digitally enhance this and get a very good tag number. You also can get a make and model the vehicle, and notice the distinct clothing and attire on this one suspect on the right. And you’re going to have a good date time stamp as when this truck pulls out of the gas station.
This is our second video surveillance tape, and notice the truck that was at the gas station pulling out onto a public highway in Monterrey. So you’re going to be able to sync up the time of the gas purchase when the vehicle pulls out on the highway. I want you to note this vehicle up in the corner. It’s a mini — a white mini with black markings. It rolls in behind the pickup truck along the same route. This vehicle will subsequently show up at the crime scene as well.
Before I roll the tape here, you will see a third vehicle rolling in behind the mini that subsequently shows up at the crime scene as well. So you have the truck leading the convoy; you have the mini; and now you have a third vehicle in the mix right here. You’ll see a fourth vehicle that subsequently shows up at the crime scene as well.
Our next video is taken from a security camera at the casino. Notice you’ll have the first, second and third suspect vehicles already pulled up into the parking lot, and it will be quickly followed by a fourth vehicle — right here — that I’m going to show you. Now you have all four of the vehicles seen on the highway, and you have the truck that had purchased the gasoline earlier in the videotape on the scene. You’ll see the suspects start to deploy out. As we roll the videotape, you’ll see individuals carry the cans of gasoline from the bed of the truck into the actual casino. Notice here also the countersurveillance elements here. You’ll have the security arm of the cartel members — in this case believed to be Zetas — on the scene of the attack site. They’re watching. They’re looking for cops, no doubt. You’ll see the first mini — these guys are getting kind of antsy; they’re wanting to move on. You’ll see the black smoke start to billow, and, pretty soon, the actual video footage is going to be obscured completely by the smoke billowing out.
Let’s take a look at a photograph from the crime scene from a different perspective. The video surveillance camera that we had seen where the video was shot was up in this area shooting downward. You can see the upward turn of the driveway. So the suspects came in from this direction and pulled this way. You’ll see the windows that had been broken, probably by the fire department for ventilation to let the smoke clear.
The Above the Tearline aspect with this video footage is the significant value that security videotape has to help you piece together the elements of the crime. There is also the tactical ramifications. You know they’re going to have additional attacks tomorrow or the next day in Mexico, and the police and the military can study this to learn the Zeta methodology when they go to carry out a similar attack down the road.
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Zetas Communications Network Disrupted in Veracruz
The Mexican navy on Sept. 8 dismantled a communications network used by Los Zetas throughout Veracruz state. Among the equipment seized were mobile radio transmitters, computers, radio scanners, encryption devices, solar power cells and as many as seven trailers that served as base stations, according to media reports. A spokesman for the Mexican navy said some 80 individuals have been arrested over the past month in connection with the operation, itself the result of months of work by naval intelligence officers.
Los Zetas have been known to utilize more sophisticated communications networks than other cartels, due in large part to the organization’s origins in military special operations. The Zetas needed to augment sparse communications in some areas they control, and the Veracruz network likely was for the purpose of “off the grid” communications. Since cellphones are relatively easy for authorities to monitor, Los Zetas have sought to diversify their telecommunications capabilities, a fact of which Mexican authorities are aware.
It is possible that the seizure of this communications equipment means the navy is preparing to launch operations to push the Zetas out of the Veracruz port region. Indeed, a navy spokesman said the immediate result of the operation was the disruption of the Zetas’ “chain of command and tactical coordination.” If the navy is about to engage the Zetas in Veracruz, dismantling the Zetas’ communications network would be one of the first moves it would make.
There is not yet enough evidence to conclude with certainty that an operation is in the works, but STRATFOR will continue to watch for signs of increased military operations against the Zetas in Veracruz.
Hand Grenade Attacks in Rio Bravo
On Sept. 10, armed men in an SUV and an accompanying car reportedly threw five hand grenades at two businesses in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas state, killing two people. Beginning at 2:30 p.m., the assailants lobbed three grenades at a bar on the city’s east side, an unnamed police official said; one of the grenades failed to detonate. A few minutes later, unidentified men threw two grenades at a strip club in downtown Rio Bravo, causing the building to catch fire and injuring three people.
It is unclear who conducted the attacks, but they are believed to be the work of Los Zetas, who are engaged in a turf war with the Gulf cartel in the wider region. At present the Gulf cartel controls the Rio Bravo plaza, but Los Zetas have been known to “heat up” a plaza — increase attacks to soften their target — prior to an offensive, as was the case in Matamoros in mid-June.
The targets are significant in that they are “legitimate” businesses. Businesses can serve as money-laundering hubs for cartels and thus are not immune to attack. Also significant is that the attacks occurred during daylight hours. While violence in Mexico is unpredictable and by no means limited to nighttime hours, there is a general sense that the goings-on of a normal day are spared from targeted violence. Incidents such as the Sept. 10 grenade attacks show that this is not always the case.
If the Zetas did not conduct the attacks, they could be a symptom of infighting within the Gulf cartel. The recent death of Samuel “El Metro 3” Flores Borrego, the Gulf cartel’s Reynosa plaza boss and overall No. 2, suggests rifts are forming within the cartel. Rio Bravo can expect to see reprisal attacks regardless of who is responsible.
U.S. Citizens as Couriers for Money, Guns
Mexican authorities arrested seven individuals Sept. 7 in Piedras Negras, Coahuila state, and confiscated firearms, ammunition, radio communication equipment, two vehicles and the equivalent of $600,000. The Ministry of National Defense has not disclosed the identities or nationalities of those arrested, but local and state media have reported that they are all U.S. citizens.
It is not uncommon for a cartel to use individuals with U.S. citizenship as couriers. These individuals have unfettered access to the United States and, while highly visible due to their frequent border crossings, they may receive less scrutiny from border security. Therefore, U.S. citizens are useful in moving guns and money south into Mexico (but they are less useful coming north, as security checks are more robust when coming from Mexico to the United States). This is particularly true in an area such as Coahuila state, where authorities have recently uncovered several large weapons caches.
The corridor of Piedras Negras and its sister city in the United States, Eagle Pass, thus is valuable not as a route to smuggle drugs north but as a route to move guns and money south. (A lack of drug-smuggling routes makes the area desirable territory, so the Zetas are the only ones operating there.) As recently as Sept. 7, in a separate incident from the seven arrests, Texas law enforcement stopped a van with Texas license plates that was carrying 14 assault rifles, a sniper rifle and more than 500 assault rifle magazines.
But the incident in which seven U.S. citizens were arrested, if true, is interesting because those arrested reportedly only had enough weaponry to protect the money they were transporting. This means they were not moving guns but cash, most likely proceeds from drug sales in the United States, the beneficiaries of which are Los Zetas.
(click here to view interactive graphic)
Sept. 5
The Mexican military dismantled a drug lab in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, containing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of methamphetamines and chemical precursors.
Mexican authorities attempted to stop a stolen vehicle traveling on a road in Cadereyta municipality, Nuevo Leon state. The vehicle, along with two accompanying vehicles, refused to stop, leading authorities on a chase that turned into a gunfight in which four gunmen were killed.
Sept. 6
Gunmen in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, shot and killed two women traveling in a vehicle with Texas license plates. The four-year-old daughter of one of the women survived the attack.
Federal police arrested four members of Los Aztecas in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, including a leader of the group.
A criminal group sent a message to the Department of Education in Acapulco, Guerrero state, demanding a percentage of the salaries of teachers who matched certain criteria. The message also demanded identification information on teachers in the city.
Gunmen attacked a deputy traveling in his vehicle in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco state. During the attack, the deputy left his vehicle and was subsequently hit by a semitrailer.
Mexican authorities arrested a U.S. citizen in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state. The individual was charged with trafficking weapons from the United States for the Sinaloa cartel.
Sept. 7
Three members of Los Zetas were arrested in a neighborhood of Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon state, while attempting to kidnap an individual. One of the members arrested was in charge of the “halcones” (Zetas lookouts) in Nuevo Leon.
The Mexican Attorney General’s Office identified 18 Los Zetas operators who were involved in the attack on the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, that killed 52 people. The Mexican government is offering a reward of 15 million pesos ($1.2 million) for information leading to the arrest of each individual.
Mexican soldiers seized approximately 2.5 tons of marijuana after receiving a tip on the existence of a drug camp in Cerro del Borbollon, Durango state. Soldiers also found a vehicle with Baja California license plates.
Sept. 8
Federal police killed seven gunmen during a firefight in Villanueva, Zacatecas state. A conflict with the gunmen had erupted earlier when two federal police officers were kidnapped in the area.
Authorities announced that an operation conducted throughout Veracruz state resulted in the dismantling of a Los Zetas telecommunications network. More than 80 members of the cartel were arrested, and a variety of communications equipment was seized, including solar power cells, high-powered transmitters, encryption devices and secure radio communication systems.
Sept. 9
A drug courier transporting 1 kilogram of cocaine was arrested at Mexico City International Airport after authorities discovered the drugs. The individual’s itinerary indicated he was flying to Rome via Madrid.
The Knights Templar posted a narcomanta over a bridge in Zamora, Michoacan state, offering a 500,000-peso reward for information leading to the location of the Los Zetas members listed on the banner.
The Mexican military seized approximately 9 tons of marijuana, 51 firearms and 8,000 rounds of ammunition hidden in a cave near Reynosa, Tamaulipas state.
Sept. 10
Unidentified men threw five hand grenades in two separate locations in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas state. The first incident involved gunmen traveling in a vehicle who threw three grenades at bar, and the second attack involved an individual who tossed two grenades at a strip club. The attacks killed two people.
Sept. 11
The Mexican military captured Veronica Mireya “La Vero” Moreno Carreon, Los Zetas’ plaza boss for San Nicolas de los Garza, Nuevo Leon state. Also know as “La Flaca,” she was discovered to be the plaza boss after she was arrested while traveling in a stolen vehicle.
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http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_corruption.html
Judith Miller
The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement
The drug cartels extend their corrupting influence northward.
Customs and Border Protection agents have been bought off by drug dealers.
Leslie Hoffman/AP Photo
Customs and Border Protection agents have been bought off by drug dealers.
Beheadings and amputations. Iraqi-style brutality, bribery, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. More than 7,200 dead—almost double last year’s tally—in shoot-outs between federales and often better-armed drug cartels. This is modern Mexico, whose president, Felipe Calderón, has been struggling since 2006 to wrest his country from the grip of four powerful cartels and their estimated 100,000 foot soldiers.
But chillingly, there are signs that one of the worst features of Mexico’s war on drugs—law enforcement officials on the take from drug lords—is becoming an American problem as well. Most press accounts focus on the drug-related violence that has migrated north into the United States. Far less widely reported is the infiltration and corruption of American law enforcement, according to Robert Killebrew, a retired U.S. Army colonel and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. “This is a national security problem that does not yet have a name,” he wrote last fall in The National Strategy Forum Review. The drug lords, he tells me, are seeking to “hollow out our institutions, just as they have in Mexico.”
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_18924755
Whistle-blowers allege corruption, cartel ties
By Diana Washington Valdez \ El Paso Times
Posted: 09/19/2011 12:00:00 AM MDT
Two former law enforcement officers allege that they cannot get anyone to investigate allegations that the Mexican drug cartels have corrupted U.S. law officers and politicians in the El Paso border region.
Greg Gonzales, a retired Doña Ana County sheriff's deputy, and Wesley Dutton, a rancher and former New Mexico state livestock investigator, said that instead of arrests and prosecutions of suspects, their whistle-blowing activities have resulted only in threats and retaliation against themselves.
"I lost my job for a security company at the federal courthouse in Las Cruces because I would not keep my mouth shut, and someone threatened me by holding a knife to my throat," Gonzales said.
Dutton, a rancher in Southern New Mexico, said an election official stopped by his ranch to ask him what was it going to take for him to retract his allegations concerning the official.
Confidential sources
Both men were confidential sources for the FBI in El Paso and assisted with investigations over an 18-month period.
Gonzales and Dutton allege that the FBI dropped them after "big names" on the U.S. side of the border began to surface in the drug investigations.
FBI Special Agent Michael Martinez said that the FBI cannot comment on its former or current relationships with confidential sources.
Dutton said an FBI official who used to be in El Paso sent a memo to other law enforcement agencies in the area to dissuade them from talking to him and Gonzales or
having anything to do with them.
Gonzales and Dutton said both or either one of them helped with federal investigations that were successful, including the arrest of Special FBI Agent John Shipley. Shipley was convicted of weapons-related charges after a weapon he sold someone turned up in Chihuahua state at a scene where a firefight took place between Mexican soldiers and drug traffickers.
However, they said, they are concerned that other serious allegations have not found their way to court.
Hit on agent
"One of the street gangs that works for the Juárez cartel put a hit out on FBI Special Agent Samantha Mikeska, and I told the FBI as soon as I heard about it," Dutton said. "We also had information on campaign fundraisers and parties in La Union that the cartel held for officials from New Mexico and El Paso. A lot of important people were at those parties, such as bankers, judges, and law enforcement officers."
Mikeska is a high-profile agent whose investigations of the Barrio Azteca gang led to prosecutions of gang leaders. The gang, which has members in West Texas and New Mexico, is linked to the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel.
Gonzales said a U.S. law enforcement officer was suspected of selling to a street gang with Juárez drug cartel ties a list of U.S. Marshals that included their telephone numbers.
"With their number, the gang was able to 'clone' the agents' cell phones and intercept their calls," Gonzales said. "That way, they would know when one of the agents was trying to serve an arrest warrant against one of their members."
Dutton and Gonzales said small aircraft regularly drop drug loads on ranches or other properties along the U.S.-Mexico border, and that some U.S. law officers escort the loads to the next stop.
The two whistle-blowers said that drug cartels have managed to obtain computer access codes to U.S. surveillance systems that let them see where and when Border Patrol agents are monitoring the border.
They also alleged that drug cartels have given big donations to politicians, which are unreported, to influence appointments of key law enforcement officers.
Some of these allegations were contained in a letter that Dutton provided to Gov. Rick Perry, who is seeking the Republican Party's nomination for president in the 2012 election.
"Our office received the letter and referred it to the appropriate agency, which was the Department of Public Safety," Josh Havens, a spokesman for the Texas governor's office, said last Friday.
Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and a former FBI agent from El Paso, said last Friday that he was interested in talking to Dutton. Then, about a half-hour later, McCraw said that Dutton had no credibility.
'Nothing there'
"We looked into it and there was nothing there," McCraw said.
Dutton said in response, "How can they say there was nothing when they didn't even look at what I have?"
Dutton said he has videos, telephone records, and other documents gathered over the 18 months he worked with the FBI.
"The DPS never asked to see any of it," Dutton said.
During his work with the FBI, Dutton said the FBI asked him to accept drug shipments from Mexico through his ranching company.
"The drugs were concealed in horse saddles, and we started getting a lot of them," Dutton said. "But the FBI kept putting me off when I asked for the money to pay the cartels for the drugs. I had to use my own funds. The FBI still owes me thousands of dollars for these out-of-pocket expenses.
"I asked the FBI for help when I started getting threats, but the only thing that happened is that everyone starting running for cover to protect their careers," Dutton said. "One of the FBI agents said politics got in the way, and that they had to close out the investigation and end their relationship with me."
As a state livestock investigator, Dutton made arrests like any other law enforcement officer, collaborated with sheriffs' offices, seized drugs and investigated thefts. He also developed intelligence that drug cartels used cross-border cattle shipments to transport drugs across the border at Santa Teresa.
Zetas cartel
Dutton said other informants told him that the Zetas drug cartel has a high-level member in Las Cruces whose wife holds a non-law enforcement job in the "DA's office," referring to the Doña Ana County District Attorney's Office.
The whistle-blowers also alleged that the corruption they've encountered includes a prominent doctor in El Paso who provides prescriptions for drugs to people who need to pass lie-detector tests.
"The FBI was provided with all this information, and I guess that's why they're now saying that we're crazy," Dutton said.
Dutton and Gonzales said their frustration over the lack of investigations has compelled them to turn to U.S. lawmakers and to Judicial Watch for help.
Judicial Watch is a conservative, nonpartisan educational foundation in Washington, D.C., which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.
The organization publishes a list each year of the "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" of both major political parties.
Chris Farrell, Judicial Watch research director, confirmed that Dutton has been in contact with his office.
"These are very serious allegations that should be investigated by law enforcement," Farrell said. "There are too many details and specifics to just ignore them. The threats against them (Dutton and Gonzales) also should be investigated."
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.
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This is VERY bad stuff! Once a cancer like this takes root, it is terribly hard to undo and terribly destructive of civic culture.
I would point out GM that BBG and I have pointed out numerous times in the War on Drugs thread that one of the costs of the WoD is that the supra-profits it creates will fuel tremendous corruption.
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Decriminalize corruption then? :evil:
Seriously, it's a cultural issue. Those that are incorruptable will remain so no matter what the amount of money is that is offered in bribes. Every black market has profits, thus allowing for the potential for bribes.
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...time to legalize human trafficking. :roll:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/mexican-cartels-move-into-human-trafficking/2011/07/22/gIQArmPVcI_story.html
Mexican cartels move into human trafficking
Anne-Marie OConnor/The Washington Post - Mexican Congresswoman Rosi Orozco, the sponsor of a new Mexican law against human trafficking, with girls rescued from sex traffic.
By Anne-Marie O’Connor,
MEXICO CITY — The Salvadoran single mother was hoping to support her children in the United States. Instead, gunmen from the Zeta drug cartel kidnapped her in Mexico and forced her to cook, clean and endure rapes by multiple men.
Now the survivor of this terrifying three-month ordeal is a witness for a growing group of legislators, political leaders and advocates who are calling for action against the trafficking of women in Mexico for sexual exploitation.
More than a thousand people have been arrested in an operation targeting suspected human traffickers in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. (July 25)
As organized crime and globalization have increased, Mexico has become a major destination for sex traffic, as well as a transit point and supplier of victims to the United States. Drug cartels are moving into the trade, preying on immigrant women, sometimes with the complicity of corrupt regional officials, according to diplomats and activists.
“If narcotics traffickers are caught, they go to high-security prisons, but with the trafficking of women, they have found absolute impunity,” said Rosi Orozco, a congresswoman in Mexico and sponsor of a proposed law against human trafficking.
In Mexico, thousands of women and children are forced into sex traffic every year, Orozco said, most of it involving lucrative prostitution rings.
“It is growing because of poverty, because the cartels have gotten involved and because no one tells them no,” said Teresa Ulloa, the regional director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. “We are fighting so that their lives and their bodies are not merchandise.”
“This is an inferno of sexual exploitation for thousands and thousands of women,” President Felipe Calderon told officials in mid-July after they heard the testimony of a young survivor. “With this new law, we will all be obliged to act, and no authority can say it’s not my responsibility or turn a blind eye to the terrible crime of human trafficking.”
Mexico passed a law against human trafficking in 2007.
Hopes for enforcement have been raised by the appointment of Mexico’s first female attorney general, Marisela Morales, who was praised for her efforts against human trafficking this year when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored her as an International Woman of Courage.
Authorities said federal police mounted a massive raid against human trafficking in bars and hotels in Ciudad Juarez last weekend, arresting hundreds of suspects and recovering a missing 15-year-old girl and four other minors who were being used for sexual exploitation.
But convictions are still rare, making the attention seem like empty political rhetoric or a response to international pressure, said Saul Arellano, an analyst at the CEIDAS think tank. He viewed the proposed law as a much-needed step in the right direction, but he said it would have to be matched by a stronger effort to arrest and convict traffickers.
A ‘godfather’ sentenced
U.S. prosecutors have won stiff sentences for Mexican traffickers in recent years, often in cooperation with Mexican authorities. In Georgia, a Mexican “padrote,” or “godfather,” from a trafficking stronghold in Tlaxcala state, was sentenced to 40 years in March for luring 10 victims, one of them 14, to the Atlanta area and then forcing them into prostitution. If they refused to work, he beat them.
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"Those that are incorruptable will remain so no matter what the amount of money is that is offered in bribes"
Sorry, but that seems simplistic to me. Lots of people, indeed perhaps most people have a price. The cartels were paying $400,000US a month to someone on Calderon's staff at one point. Combine that with "plata o plomo" (silver or lead, i.e. take the money or we will kill you) and most people will break.
Human trafficking is not an example of a "victimless crime" and as such should remain illegal and the resources currently wasted on the WoD could be brought to bear.
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A secure border would make a serious dent into the ability of criminal cartels to smuggle anything into the US, yet a decade after 9/11 it isn't because of various political elements.
A crime is still a crime, no matter if there is a direct victim or not.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/10/17/blaze-exclusive-texas-high-school-students-made-to-recite-mexican-national-anthem-pledge-of-allegiance/
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Cain joked something about setting up an electified fence with a sign saying you will be killed if you touch this.
The response from the left and Scarborough was of course to mock him and use this as fodder to demonstrate that he is not Presidential material.
Yet we have a silent war going on with Mexico drug dealers and Brock is totally ineffective and actually presided over giving the murderers guns. Yet the MSM is silent!
Instead of travelling around playing class warfare and campaigning and supporting the bums marching for more government payouts the real bum in the WH should have his butt on the border addressing this.
I don't expect the left to get it but the "establishment" Republicans? This has all the appearances they are just protecting their power and financial interests.
We keep hearing the "est." right saying the party is not what it used to be. Well thank God. I am getting more frustrated and angrier every day.
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It's our border. I don't know why we just don't mine it and to hell with whoever thinks what about it. The fact that the United States exists, does not give someone the right to trespass here, regardless of whatever the would be trespasser does or does not have going on in their personal situations.
The problem is and always will be that anything done outside of "political correctness" in this country is quickly ostracized and demonized by the Left, including defense of one's own country and self (reference the border patrol agent who was having stones thrown at him and shot his attacker).
In Russia, there isn't this problem to the extent that there is here (Tajakistanis) and the reason why is that Russia doesn't tolerate anyone speaking against her defending herself...humanitarians and apologists be damned.
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The Russian approach has quite a few problems of its own. It is not clear to me that theirs is a road we wish to travel. I think it would more than suffice here were we to simply patrol the border properly, and deport those who don't belong here AND improve the efficiency, rationality, and coherence of legal admission to the country.
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Deportations at an all time high:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/18/us/immigrant-deportations/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
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Deportations at an all time high:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/18/us/immigrant-deportations/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
And with the border still unsecured, they are often back in a week or two.
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Love the Amerikan Criminal Liberties Union take on deportations. As long as it hurts the US, they are for it.
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I have been posting in English on the Spanish language forum thread for Mexico without posting here as well for a while so those interested in this subject may wish to take a look there too, e.g. the report by two US generals.
While the deportations are a good thing (I saw yesterday that ONE THOUSAND of the 400,000 had some sort of homicide conviction?!?) that is not the only metric: As noted there, the narco cartels are establishing quasi-military presence in the counties on the US side of the border so that they have safe havens when pressed by the Mexican military. Corruption is further spreading its tentacles into Border Patrol and local authorities.
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Deportations at an all time high:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/18/us/immigrant-deportations/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Yet another attempt by the Left Wing press to divert attention from the need to patrol and secure the border with Mexico.
To GM's point, they are back as soon as they are released from custody.
Additionally, there are many articles by the Leftist press showing the "plight" of these poor, downtrodden illegals and their "need" to come to the United States by any means necessary. Ironically, Mexico is lacking an ACLU of its own that demonizes Mexico and her citizens.
I have seen first hand, people in Mexico helping illegal immigrants in their country with gifts of food and water, yet it is commonly known that illegal immigrants are not welcome in Mexico and nearly every woman that crosses Mexico illegally is raped before they reach the United States (which is the reason that many Guatemalans and El Salvadorans do not like Mexicans), yet it is odd to me that Mexico, her politicians, or anyone else for that matter, would have anything to say about United States defending her borders by any means that we feel prudent as was witnessed by everyone a few days ago when Mexican politicians spoke out against Cain's joke about making an electric fence on the border with a sign on the other side stating that the fence could kill you.
To GC's point, the United States isn't Russia, nor should it be, but to GM's point, we have groups (the ACLU and every Liberal in the country), that actively speak out against the United States being able to secure her borders. Their allegiance to the principles within the constitution are questionable to say the least. I'm not sure what should be done about that. We have enough enemies from within to deal with, let alone allowing people to come here that have no intention of embracing America's founding ideologies. Patrolling the border with soldiers is the least that we should be doing.
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Love the Amerikan Criminal Liberties Union take on deportations. As long as it hurts the US, they are for it.
Although it is a slippery slope, at what point does freedom of speech become sedition, especially when it attacks the core principles of the very law that protects the individual or groups (ACLU) that are attacking the principles that created freedom of speech?
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"...we have groups (the ACLU and every Liberal in the country), that actively speak out against the United States being able to secure her borders."
The problem with broad, sweeping absolute claims like this one is that it is easy to disprove.
Deportations at an all time high:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/18/us/immigrant-deportations/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Yet another attempt by the Left Wing press to divert attention from the need to patrol and secure the border with Mexico.
To GM's point, they are back as soon as they are released from custody.
Additionally, there are many articles by the Leftist press showing the "plight" of these poor, downtrodden illegals and their "need" to come to the United States by any means necessary. Ironically, Mexico is lacking an ACLU of its own that demonizes Mexico and her citizens.
I have seen first hand, people in Mexico helping illegal immigrants in their country with gifts of food and water, yet it is commonly known that illegal immigrants are not welcome in Mexico and nearly every woman that crosses Mexico illegally is raped before they reach the United States (which is the reason that many Guatemalans and El Salvadorans do not like Mexicans), yet it is odd to me that Mexico, her politicians, or anyone else for that matter, would have anything to say about United States defending her borders by any means that we feel prudent as was witnessed by everyone a few days ago when Mexican politicians spoke out against Cain's joke about making an electric fence on the border with a sign on the other side stating that the fence could kill you.
To GC's point, the United States isn't Russia, nor should it be, but to GM's point, we have groups (the ACLU and every Liberal in the country), that actively speak out against the United States being able to secure her borders. Their allegiance to the principles within the constitution are questionable to say the least. I'm not sure what should be done about that. We have enough enemies from within to deal with, let alone allowing people to come here that have no intention of embracing America's founding ideologies. Patrolling the border with soldiers is the least that we should be doing.
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Woof,
What I've been saying would happen for years now is coming about. The basics of that being, if we don't control our border, someone else will and what ever is taking place on the outside will soon be happening on the inside. :-P
P.C.
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"...we have groups (the ACLU and every Liberal in the country), that actively speak out against the United States being able to secure her borders."
The problem with broad, sweeping absolute claims like this one is that it is easy to disprove.
Disprove what? That Liberals and the ACLU are not opposed to the borders being secured?
There is this, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/?page=all and the illegals' attorneys all from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund who from their own page, http://www.maldef.org/immigration/public_policy/index.html go on to "challenge" our own laws that we as Americans have voted into existence, as though we don't know for ourselves, how we would like our laws to read. The go on to protect and defend those that are here illegally. Are they Liberals? They endorse Obama and Sotomayor here: http://www.maldef.org/news/releases/senate_judiciary_committee_07281009/index.html with the interesting remark that "Any further discussion about Judge Sotomayor as a judicial activist with a liberal agenda must be quelled, for it is neither accurate nor productive.” So apparently we should discuss the agenda of someone that will ultimately be entrusted with the setting of legal precedents in this country?
Here is a bit more from the leader of the Liberals: http://www.speaker.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=75546 wherein Pelosi speaks in direct opposition a fence that would certainly have a major impact on making the border more secure.
If you've any evidence of the ACLU being interested in border security, I'm all ears.
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I highlighted the "every liberal portion" of your assertion. I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance.
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http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=14499
The Open Borders Lobby and the Nation's Security After 9/11
By: William Hawkins and Erin Anderson
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Forward – by David Horowitz
There are few issues so important to the life of a nation as the integrity of its borders and the nature of its citizenship. These are issues that define its identity and shape its future. When a nation is at war, moreover, its ability to regulate and control its borders is a security matter of paramount importance.
The following text by William Hawkins and Erin Anderson describes how America’s borders have been under assault for forty years with consequences that are measurable and disturbing. The assault has been led by an open borders lobby that is sophisticated and powerful. Many of its components, moreover, have a history of antagonism to American purposes and a record of active support for America’s enemies. Its funders are multi-billion dollar entities, who are unaccountable and unscrutinized. They have more discretionary incomes at their disposal to influence these issues than is possessed by either political party, or any business group, or even the federal government itself.
As Hawkins and Anderson show, the open borders campaign was already instrumental in damaging the nation’s ability to defend itself before 9/11. Yet not even this terrible event has caused its activists to have second thoughts, or tempered their reckless attacks. Instead, the open borders lobby has expanded its efforts to eliminate America’s border controls to include the active defense of terrorists and terrorist organizations and a continuing assault on the very policies the federal government has adopted to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks.
A Ford Foundation newsletter the authors cite features an interview with Georgetown law professor David Cole, a leading academic figure in the open borders campaign, who has written a book attacking America’s immigration laws and their protections against terrorist groups. In the interview, Cole denounces, “the criminalization of what the government calls material support for terrorist organizations. This is a practice that was introduced … through the immigration law, … It criminalizes any support of any blacklisted terrorist organization without regard to whether one’s support actually had any connection whatsoever to terrorist activity that the group undertakes.”
The Ford Foundation interview with Cole was published with hindsight in September 2003, ten years after the first World Trade Center bombing and two years after the September 11 attack. As Hawkins and Anderson point out, the anti-terrorist law which Professor Cole is denouncing was introduced as legislation and passed during the Clinton Administration in response to the first World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist plots. It was a bi-partisan effort to put a check on terrorist support groups that were using use the liberties afforded by the American legal system to aid and abet terrorist activities. Shortly after the interview with Cole appeared, it was revealed that the Ford Foundation had granted millions of tax-exempt dollars to terrorist support groups and other radical organizations in the Middle East.[1]
The Ford Foundation’s sponsorship of Professor Cole in underwriting his book and promoting his conclusions is but a reflection of Ford’s larger role as the central funder of the open borders lobby, and the architect of many of its radical agendas. Elsewhere in their text Hawkins and Anderson describe how this $11 billion leviathan took a small civil rights group called the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund which was based in San Antonio Texas, poured more than $30 million into its treasury, revamped its political agendas, moved its offices to Washington and turned it into one of the largest and most powerful proponents of radical immigration change in the nation.
Forty years ago, as Hawkins and Anderson observe, the most prominent Hispanic civil rights organization – the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) – supported English as the common national language and assimilation as a citizenship goal. Membership in LULAC was limited to American citizens and its code stated: “Respect your citizenship; honor your country, maintain its traditions in the minds of your children; incorporate yourself in the culture and civilization.” Today, as a result in part of the huge financial investment Ford has made in the immigration lobby, no major Hispanic civil rights organization subscribes to these views.
Finally, Hawkins and Anderson show how thoroughly the Ford-funded open borders network is integrated with the traditional American left, including its factions from the old Communist movement. Most prominent among these organizations and a strategic player in the open borders network is the National Lawyers Guild, which began as a Soviet front and has continued its “revolutionary” allegiances since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today its most celebrated and admired member – as well as one of its chief causes – is attorney Lynne Stewart, who is under federal indictment for aiding and abetting the terrorist activities of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the leader of group that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
William Hawkins and Erin Anderson have performed an essential public service by tying together the threads of this network and putting its agendas into perspective. The picture they paint is as detailed as it is disturbing and should open a national debate and perhaps congressional hearings on the uses to which taxpayer funds are being directed as the nation faces its post-9/11 threats.
Introduction: Open Borders in a Time of Terror
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which killed 3,000 Americans, have brought the question of border security to the forefront of the nation’s agenda. Even among Hispanics, a U.S. subgroup thought to favor liberal immigration policies, a majority of 56% wanted “tougher immigration [controls] in light of security concerns,” according to a national poll commissioned by a Hispanic business magazine in late 2003.[2]
All the terrorists who flew the hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had come into the United States from the other side of the world with the intent of carrying out their premeditated plot. America’s natural barriers – the great oceans which traditionally have protected America from foreign attacks – failed to provide security in this case because the enemy did use ballistic missiles or a naval armada. The traditional safety afforded to the United States by the vast oceans separating the country from foreign powers and foreign strife was not breached by ballistic missiles or an invading armada. Our enemies used normal commercial methods of transportation and exploited America’s laxity about possible threats from strangers in its midst. The terrorists’ visa applications had been rubber-stamped by U.S. consular officials despite flagrant errors and suspicious answers to security-inspired questions.[3] On arrival, the terrorists simply blended in the general population – which already accommodates more than 8 million illegal immigrants -- and went about their business of planning mass murder. Half of the 19 hijackers made their deadly 9/11 airline reservations on an Internet travel site.
Since the first World Trade Center bombing by Arab-Muslim fanatics in 1993, forty-eight foreign-born Islamic radicals have been charged, convicted, pled guilty or admitted involvement in terrorism within the United States since 1993. According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, 16 of the 48 terrorists were on temporary visas (primarily tourists); 17 were legal permanent residents or naturalized U.S. citizens; 12 were illegal aliens; and 3 had applications for asylum pending (including Ramzi Yousef, the Iraqi mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center Attack).[4] In addition to the dozen who had entered the country illegally, ten of those who had entered by legal means had subsequently violated the terms of their admission by overstaying their visas. All the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. on temporary visas, except Ali Mohammed, a leading member of al Qaeda, who was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The United States has at sea the largest navy in the world and is developing a national missile defense system to frustrate overt military attacks on the country. But the day-to-day security of its borders is a broken system that has been unable to stop small groups of terrorists, let alone a mass migration that outnumbers the largest armies of history. It is estimated that 700,000 illegal immigrants simply walked across the U.S.-Mexican border last year and moved inland without interception by the thinly deployed Border Patrol.[5] The demographic shifts caused by unregulated mass immigration can have adverse impacts on national stability that rival or surpass the effects of war.
Despite these widely known and universally accepted facts, every major reform of the immigration laws over the last forty years has served to systematically undermine existing protections and controls, to open America’s borders wider and to call forth a larger flow of legal and illegal migration.[6]
The most notable changes came in 1965 and 1986. In the first instance, quotas for people from South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia were lifted, radically altering the composition and rate of legal and illegal immigration, the latter in part because of the geographical proximity of South America to the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted a general amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who had entered the United States prior to 1982. Rather than establish controls over immigration – something considered routine by every other nation in the world -- these reforms stimulated a new massive migration and created a vast underground network of illegal aliens and institutional supports for them.
The United States has also experienced explosive growth in the number of foreigners admitted to the country on a “temporarily” basis using “non-immigrant” visas — from seven million admitted in 1980 to nearly 33 million in 2001. There is no set limit to the number of non-immigrant visas that can be issued; it is purely a demand-driven system. Most of these visas go to tourists, visiting relatives or business travelers who do return home. However, many of these temporary immigrants overstay their visas and join the illegal alien population. Like the September 11 terrorists, about 40 percent of the 8-12 million illegal aliens in the United States entered by this initially legal method.
Since the 2001 attacks, there has been a concerted effort to perform better background checks on those applying for visas and to track the movement of foreigners in and out of the country. But as in the case of other reasonable concerns about the porous nature of American borders, there has also been a steady barrage of criticism against reasonable new screening and monitoring programs from well-funded and powerful political interests who promote the idea of “open borders,” and other forms internationalism. These radicals dismiss domestic political or security considerations in favor of an alleged higher “human right” to untrammeled migration and the fulfillment of individual agendas over community concerns.
The concept of “open borders” has long been an agenda of the ideological left. Since the 1960s, a vast network -- including hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of grassroots activists, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from leftwing foundations -- has waged a sustained campaign to open America’s borders to a mass migration from the Third World. Though these groups talk in terms of “human rights,” the rights they demand are not the restrictions on government enshrined in the American Bill of Rights, but the claims on society for “equity” and “welfare” and special treatment for designated groups that are the familiar menu of the left and would, if enacted, amount to a revolution in America’s existing social order. Which is precisely their intent.
The “open borders” movement emerged from the radicalism of the 1960s and matured in the fight over amnesty for illegal aliens in the 1980s. It gained a certain mainstream status in the 1990s as the “globalization” and “multilateralism” fads of the decade encouraged talk of a “world without borders” and the decline (even the demise) of the nation-state. At the center of the movement was the Ford Foundation – the largest tax-exempt foundation in the world, and one increasingly guided by the political left.
Under the leadership of McGeorge Bundy (1966-1979), a dissident liberal who broke with President Lyndon Johnson over the war in Vietnam, the Ford Foundation embraced aspects of the New Left assault on American society, for example on the issue of race, funding a radical secession from the New York City School system. Ford bankrolled the creation of new groups like the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza, expanded the role of established leftwing groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and promoted radical Marxist organizations – overtly hostile to American values and purposes -- like the National Lawyers Guild. It also was the prime funder of “multiculturalism” in college and university programs, whose effect was to undermine the concept of a national identity, as Arthur Schlesinger pointed out in a celebrated essay, The Disuniting of America: Reflections On A Multicultural Society.[7]
In the radical perspective, America is an oppressor nation, which significantly depreciates any value that American citizenship might have and justifies a less than solicitous view towards the preservation of American culture and America’s borders. One of the more prolific academics promoting the radical viewpoint is has been James D. Cockcroft, a New Left radical who has received much of the funding for his work from the Ford Foundation. A characteristic Cockcroft work is Outlaws in the Promised Land: Mexican Immigrant Workers and America's Future.[8] This is a frontal attack on American society, in which Cockcroft argues, “the U.S. working class can realistically strengthen its position only when it adds to its fight‑back strategy a commitment to the defense of the unorganized and the undocumented.”[9] This Ford-sponsored effort also claims that, “since Vietnam, this [U.S.] society has displayed a deepening ‘anti-communist,’ racist, nativist, and class-biased character in its treatment of immigrants and in its immigration policy....it has also experienced a wave of legislative, administrative, and court decisions that may curtail the basic civil rights of not only immigrants but of all U.S. citizens.”[10]
The campaign to radically change American values and culture through mass immigration and the political mobilization of the alienated presents a danger to the American that parallels the anti-American agendas of the Islamic jihad. Moreover, politically engineered demographic shifts and terrorism are not unrelated. The same communities of recently arrived immigrants (whether legal or not) help create networks used by illegal aliens that provide jobs, housing, and routes of entry into America for other illegals, including criminals and terrorists. Immigrants from strife-torn lands often provide funds for movements engaged in conflict in their homelands, while factions competing for power overseas frequently have their struggles mirrored within immigrant communities here.
The concerted leftist attempt to radicalize immigrant communities runs the risk that at the periphery a home-grown terrorist cells will form that will work in conjunction with foreign movements while finding a base of support within the United States. At which time, it will be too late to close the borders. There is already a growing problem with ethnic criminal gangs fighting for turf in major U.S. cities, a form of low-level conflict that could escalate into a form of insurgency as it has in so many other countries.
**Read it all.
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I highlighted the "every liberal portion" of your assertion. I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance.
" I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance."
Fair enough. In regard to those that aren't members of this forum, can you speak to any examples of the ACLU or Senators and Representatives that actively engage in securing the borders without trying to pass inclusive legislation that makes it possible for those that are here illegally, "citizens?"
It's a fair question.
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"I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance."
That may be, but given how hard-core right most of us are that could be a true statement of someone who is center or even right of center. :lol:
As I previously bantered with you in a sidebar, I consider you a Democrat back from when mainstream Democrats were patriotic, reasonable, and rational people i.e. NOT a liberal :evil: :lol:
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The JFK/Scoop Jackson wing of the dems, which is about as extinct as t-rex these days.
Although Buraq the bloodthirsty has had moments that made me quite happy. OBL, Gitmo and drone strikes, oh my!
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Although Buraq the bloodthirsty has had moments that made me quite happy. OBL, Gitmo and drone strikes, oh my!
A ploy to retain his political relevance and future no doubt, and also done with the groundwork that GW Bush initiated.
Bloodthirsty? Mr. "I'm going to have all of the troops withindrawn within a year?" That guy? He says whatever the people he thinks support him want, and as far as results, it was the Pentagon, CIA and SEALs that got Osama (rhymes with Obama). The only thing Obama did was tell them "okay."
Drone Strikes? CIA? The same group that doesn't share info with anyone? I'm not saying that I'm not pleased. I am. I'm just saying that Obummer is just another politician of the Liberal flavour that is doing what all politicians do...play for the crowd in an effort of self preservation of the financial variety. Credit? No. I'll give that where it belongs....the military and intelligence agencies that had the gonads to carry it out.
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The problem is never with the US military or other gov't agencies on the sharp end, it's with those in the leadership positions, most every time.
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The problem is never with the US military or other gov't agencies on the sharp end, it's with those in the leadership positions, most every time.
I completely agree with you.
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And as I've told you, sir, your regard is much appreciated.
"I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance."
That may be, but given how hard-core right most of us are that could be a true statement of someone who is center or even right of center. :lol:
As I previously bantered with you in a sidebar, I consider you a Democrat back from when mainstream Democrats were patriotic, reasonable, and rational people i.e. NOT a liberal :evil: :lol:
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I am not sure that you will accept him as a "liberal" since that may be up to you, and not me to define. Here is a Democrat, who has sponsored bills"reforming procedures for providing court-appointed defense counsel to indigent defendants, and carried DNA legislation that has resulted in freeing many wrongly convicted citizens." Moreover, he was NOW's "Legislator of the Year." In 2005, he "received the John Henry Faulk award from the [A]merican Civil Liberties Union." Damn near a hippy protesting at OWS!!!!!
BUT, he has also "worked with a bipartisan group of legislators to allocate more than $120 million on training and technology for border security."
I give you: http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/members/dist20/dist20.htm, a liberal senator who is also pro-border security.
I highlighted the "every liberal portion" of your assertion. I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance.
" I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance."
Fair enough. In regard to those that aren't members of this forum, can you speak to any examples of the ACLU or Senators and Representatives that actively engage in securing the borders without trying to pass inclusive legislation that makes it possible for those that are here illegally, "citizens?"
It's a fair question.
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I am not sure that you will accept him as a "liberal" since that may be up to you, and not me to define. Here is a Democrat, who has sponsored bills"reforming procedures for providing court-appointed defense counsel to indigent defendants, and carried DNA legislation that has resulted in freeing many wrongly convicted citizens." Moreover, he was NOW's "Legislator of the Year." In 2005, he "received the John Henry Faulk award from the [A]merican Civil Liberties Union." Damn near a hippy protesting at OWS!!!!!
BUT, he has also "worked with a bipartisan group of legislators to allocate more than $120 million on training and technology for border security."
I give you: http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/members/dist20/dist20.htm, a liberal senator who is also pro-border security.
I highlighted the "every liberal portion" of your assertion. I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance.
" I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance."
Fair enough. In regard to those that aren't members of this forum, can you speak to any examples of the ACLU or Senators and Representatives that actively engage in securing the borders without trying to pass inclusive legislation that makes it possible for those that are here illegally, "citizens?"
It's a fair question.
I like the "Innocence Project" and DNA testing that frees wrongly convicted persons. I'd point out that Texas and other southern dems are different, mostly.
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But, he won an award from the ACLU, GM. I was asked about this: "any examples of the ACLU or Senators," and found both.
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But, he won an award from the ACLU, GM. I was asked about this: "any examples of the ACLU or Senators," and found both.
Hitler liked animals and was a vegitarian, doesn't make him not Hitler. If the ACLU is actually ever on the right side of something, it's either an accident or part of their pose to convince the uninformed into thinking that they actually are something else than a Stalinist group designed to damage America from within.
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The ACLU’s untold Stalinist heritage
Published: 2:11 AM 01/04/2011 | Updated: 3:29 AM 01/05/2011
By John Rossomando - The Daily Caller
Noted author Paul Kengor has unearthed declassified letters and other documents in the Soviet Comintern archives linking early leaders of the ACLU with the Communist Party.
Kengor found a May 23, 1931 letter in the archives signed by ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, written on ACLU stationery, to then American Communist Party Chairman William Z. Foster asking him to help ACLU Chairman Harry Ward with his then-upcoming trip to Stalin’s Russia.
The letter suggests Ward intended to visit the Soviet Union to find “evidence from Soviet Russia” that would undermine the capitalist profit motive.
Baldwin wrote the letter at a time when Stalin was deporting 1.8 million Ukrainian peasants to Siberia under his policy of the forced collectivization of agriculture, which resulted in the deaths of up to 10 million Ukrainians in the two years that followed.
The Ukrainian government considers this to have been an act of genocide.
Foster was a key figure in the early years of the American communist movement who belonged to the ACLU’s National Committee in the 1920s, according to FBI documents. He later wrote a book titled “Toward Soviet America” in 1932 and also testified under oath before Congress that he opposed American democracy.
Another letter on ACLU letterhead Kengor found in the Soviet archives dated Sept. 2, 1932 asks the Communist Party of America for a schedule of Foster’s trips around the country and offers to help keep the police at bay. It also asks for the names and addresses of Communist Party representatives in the cities where Foster was speaking.
Kengor also found a flier from 1933 advertising ACLU board member Corliss Lamont as the headline speaker for “Soviet Union Day,” which its organizers hoped would “answer lies and slanders of enemies of the Soviet Union.”
The documents found their way into the Soviet archives because the Communist Party sent all of its correspondences to the Comintern in Moscow for safekeeping, according to Kengor.
Other documents released in the 1990s by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin show the American Communist Party was under the Moscow’s direct control until 1989.
“These guys were advocating a regime that arguably was the biggest mass murderer in all of human history,” Kengor said. “Where is the moral authority in that?”
Kengor told The Daily Caller he found numerous other documents in the Soviet Comintern archives that also show a close relationship between the Communist Party and the ACLU.
These documents corroborate rumors that have circulated about the ACLU’s founders and early leaders dating back to the 1920s.
The ACLU would not comment on Kengor’s research, but the ACLU’s official history describes its founders as a “small group of idealists” who began the organization amid the “Palmer Raids” of late 1919 and early 1920 against “so-called radicals”.
“The problem here is what is being left out of the narrative,” Kengor said. “Palmer, who was attorney general to Woodrow Wilson, the great progressive’s progressive, understood, as did the Wilson administration, that many of these radicals were American communists who were literally devoted to the overthrow of the U.S. government and its replacement with a ‘Soviet-American republic.’
“American communists actually stated such things in their proclamations, documents, and fliers.”
Kengor catalogs many of these in his book “Dupes.”
“If you look at a lot of things about the ACLU’s early history, you will see a lot of things that are pro-communist,” Kengor said. “What I’m trying to say about this group is that from the outset was on the farthest extremes of the left.
“It was atheistic. Certain members were pro-communist, and would argue that the ACLU itself in the 1920s was pro-communist, as defined by the writings and the beliefs of its founders, key officials and board members.”
Kengor, however, does not believe today’s ACLU is communist, but he argues it still pushes its founders’ militant atheism.
Kengor said a conservative group would not receive the same sort of a pass from the press and the left were it to be discovered its founders had Nazi or fascist ties during the same time period.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/04/the-aclu%e2%80%99s-untold-stalinist-heritage/
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We've done this before. I was merely addressing what I was asked.
But, he won an award from the ACLU, GM. I was asked about this: "any examples of the ACLU or Senators," and found both.
Hitler liked animals and was a vegitarian, doesn't make him not Hitler. If the ACLU is actually ever on the right side of something, it's either an accident or part of their pose to convince the uninformed into thinking that they actually are something else than a Stalinist group designed to damage America from within.
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We've done this before. I was merely addressing what I was asked.
But, he won an award from the ACLU, GM. I was asked about this: "any examples of the ACLU or Senators," and found both.
Hitler liked animals and was a vegitarian, doesn't make him not Hitler. If the ACLU is actually ever on the right side of something, it's either an accident or part of their pose to convince the uninformed into thinking that they actually are something else than a Stalinist group designed to damage America from within.
Understood. It's important to point out who the ACLU really is. Much like pointing out CAIR is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The MSM won't do that for the public at large.
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Quite a bit of thread drift here! :lol:
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-veracruz-killings-20111020,0,6947989.story
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Yep, you are right, except they are your criminals not ours. This is the biggest screwed up mess in the history of the United States since the Civil War, and if we don't get it under control soon the body count could rival it as well:
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Felipe Calderon accused the United States on Thursday of dumping criminals at the border because it is cheaper than prosecuting them, and said the practice has fueled violence in Mexico's border areas.
U.S. officials earlier this week reported a record number of deportations in fiscal year 2011, and said the number of deportees with criminal convictions had nearly doubled since 2008.
"There are many factors in the violence that is being experienced in some Mexican border cities, but one of those is that the American authorities have gotten into the habit of simply deporting 60 (thousand) or 70,000 migrants per year to cities like Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana," Calderon told an immigration conference.
Among these deportees "there are many who really are criminals, who have committed some crime and it is simply cheaper to leave them on the Mexican side of the border than to prosecute them, as they should do, to see whether they are guilty or not," Calderon said. "And obviously, they quickly link up with criminal networks on the border."
On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said his agency deported nearly 400,000 individuals during the fiscal year that ended in September, the largest number of removals in the agency's history.
Morton announced the 2011 numbers in Washington, saying about 55 percent of those deported had felony or misdemeanor convictions. Officials said the number of those convicted of crimes was up 89 percent from 2008. The vast majority of migrants, and deportees, are from Mexico.
There are no records to substantiate whether U.S. authorities opt for deporting undocumented Mexican nationals who have committed crimes instead of prosecuting them in the U.S.
The U.S. embassy declined to comment on Calderon's speech.
When Mexicans without documents finish their prison terms in the United States, they're bused to the border and freed. Mexican officials in Tijuana have said some deportees turn to petty crime but couldn't say if they were feeding drug cartels.
The Associated Press in the past year has repeatedly asked the Mexican government to document the impact of leaving deportees with criminal records at the border. The AP filed a freedom of information request asking Mexico's Foreign Ministry how many times the U.S. had notified Mexico it was deporting a convicted criminal and how many people arrested for drug trafficking in Mexico had prior records in the U.S. The foreign ministry said it didn't have such numbers. The office of Calderon's former security spokesman Alejandro Poire did not respond to similar queries.
The United States and Mexico are experimenting with new methods of alerting Mexico about deportations, and U.S. officials say they warn Mexico when former inmates are considered particularly dangerous.
Mexicans with criminal records in the U.S. can't be detained in Mexico if they have not violated the law in their home country, and some Mexican border cities complain they don't have any easy way to run criminal background checks on deported inmates to see if they have pending charges.
One deported criminal, Martin Estrada Luna, is accused of becoming a leader of a cell of the Zetas drug cartel in the border state of Tamaulipas just 18 months after he was deported from the United States. Estrada, who had a long rap sheet of mostly theft and property crimes in Washington state, is now in custody in Mexico City, where he is accused for masterminding the killing of more than 250 people.
Calderon also lashed out at what he called "absurd" and "irrational" immigration laws in the United States.
"To the extent to which they continue to put absurd curbs on migration, to the degree to which they continue to persecute migrants in the United States in an irrational way that sometimes violates their human rights, in that measure American society will continue to lose competitiveness..." he said.
That was an apparent reference to tough immigration laws like the one implemented in Alabama in late September. While courts have blocked some provisions of the law, judges let stand provisions that allow police to check a person's immigration status during a traffic stop.
Under the measure, courts also can't enforce contracts involving illegal immigrants, such as leases, and it is a felony for an illegal immigrant to do business with the state for basic things like getting a driver's license.
Calderon said immigration shouldn't be seen as a threat or invasion; he noted that net migration of Mexicans to the United States is approaching zero, as fewer people leave and more come back.
Rafael Fernandez de Castro, head of the International Relations studies at the Monterrey Technological Institute, told the conference that about 200,000 Mexicans per year are returning to their country, and that Mexican schools are facing a new problem: tens of thousands of Mexican children are coming back each year with little or no Spanish.
"In the last couple of school years in Mexico, literally tens of thousands of children have turned up with last names like Sanchez, Fernandez, or Hinojosa and, it must be said, they don't speak Spanish, they speak English," Fernandez de Castro said. "We have to ask California and Texas how they managed to integrate these Mexican children who went to the United States and didn't speak English."
P.C.
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Among these deportees "there are many who really are criminals, who have committed some crime and it is simply cheaper to leave them on the Mexican side of the border than to prosecute them, as they should do, to see whether they are guilty or not," Calderon said. "And obviously, they quickly link up with criminal networks on the border."
P.C.
Calderon, if they are innocent as you suggest, they won't be linking up with criminals in Mexico, will they?
Calderon also lashed out at what he called "absurd" and "irrational" immigration laws in the United States.
"To the extent to which they continue to put absurd curbs on migration, to the degree to which they continue to persecute migrants in the United States in an irrational way that sometimes violates their human rights, in that measure American society will continue to lose competitiveness..."
edited in quote end.
Calderon, would you care to cite the difference between Mexican law towards those in Mexico illegally and United States law (which is much less stringent than Mexican immigration law is), as well as explain Mexican hostility towards illegal aliens that are within Mexico?
I'll leave the fact that you are not American and have no right to speak whatsoever, in regard to the politics of the United States completely out of this. Please explain those two very simple things.
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Regarding the alleged attempt by Iranian agents to enlist a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, there are two significant parts to the story. But only one of them is getting much attention.
That's the part about how Iranian officials apparently felt little compunction ordering up a terrorist attack on American soil. Some commentators have noted that the plot does little credit to the supposedly expert tradecraft of Iran's terrorist Qods Force, suggesting that unspecified rogue agents may have played a role. Others have argued that Tehran's readiness to conduct the attack suggests how little they think they have to fear from the Obama administration.
The real shocker, however, is how shocked the administration seems to be by the plot. "The idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?" marvelled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Information about the plot was initially met within the government with a level of incredulity more appropriate for an invasion by, say, alien midgets.
Yet policy analysts, military officials and even a few columnists have been warning for years about Iran's infiltration of Latin America. The story begins with the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, an example of the way Tehran uses proxies such as Hezbollah to carry out its aims while giving it plausible deniability. Iran later got a boost when Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela and began seeding the top ranks of his government with Iranian sympathizers. In October 2006, a group called Hezbollah América Latina took responsibility for an attempted bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, Iran has increased the number of its embassies in Latin America to 11 from six.
Enlarge Image
CloseAFP/Getty Images
Buenos Aires in March 1992, shortly after the bombing of the Israeli embassy.
.All this has served a variety of purposes. Powerful evidence suggests that Iran has used Venezuelan banks, airliners and port facilities to circumvent international sanctions. Good relations between Tehran and various Latin American capitals—not just Caracas but also Managua, Quito, La Paz and Brasilia—increase Tehran's diplomatic leverage. Hezbollah's ties to Latin American drug traffickers serve as a major source of funding for its operations world-wide. Hezbollah has sought and found recruits among Latin America's estimated population of five million Muslims, as well as Hispanic converts to Islam.
And then there is the detail that Latin America is the soft underbelly of the United States.
In September 2010, the Tucson, Ariz., police department issued an internal memo noting that "concerns have arisen concerning Hezbollah's presence in Mexico and possible ties to Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO's) operating along the U.S.-Mexico border. The potential partnership bares alarming implications due to Hezbollah's long-established capabilities, specifically their expertise in the making of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED's)." The memo also noted the appearance of Hezbollah insignia as tattoos on U.S. prison inmates.
The concerns that the Tucson police had immediately in mind were twofold. First there was the arrest in New York of Jamal Yousef, a former Syrian military officer caught in a 2009 Drug Enforcement Agency sting trying to sell arms to Colombian terrorists in exchange for a ton of cocaine.
Then there was the July 2010 arrest by Mexican authorities of a Mexican citizen named Jameel Nasr. According to a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasah, Mr. Nasr was attempting to set up "a logistics infrastructure of Mexican citizens of Shiite Lebanese descent that will form a base in South America and the United States to carry out operations against Israeli and Western targets." The paper added that Mr. Nasr "traveled regularly to Lebanon to receive instructions and inform his employers of developments," but that Mexican officials had been tipped off by his "long visit to Venezuela in mid-2008 . . . during which he laid the foundations for building a network for Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard."
Might Mr. Nasr have been connected to the Washington plot? Probably not, since he was arrested before it was hatched, though it's probably worth asking him directly. The larger problem, as Roger Noriega of the American Enterprise Institute points out, is that until now the administration hasn't been especially curious. "They don't want to mud wrestle with Chávez and roil the waters in Latin America," he says. "The policy of reticence and passivity sends the message that we don't know or care what's going on."
It's time to wise up. Until now, the idea of terrorist infiltration along our southern border has been the stuff of Tom Clancy novels. Not anymore. And unless Tehran is made to understand that the consequences for such infiltration will be harder than an Obama wrist slap, we can expect more, and worse, to come.
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WASHINGTON — American law enforcement agencies have significantly built up networks of Mexican informants that have allowed them to secretly infiltrate some of that country’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations, according to security officials on both sides of the border.
As the United States has opened new law enforcement and intelligence outposts across Mexico in recent years, Washington’s networks of informants have grown there as well, current and former officials said. They have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counternarcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.
Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants — including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives — partly because of concerns about corruption among the Mexican police, and partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil.
“The Mexicans sort of roll their eyes and say we know it’s happening, even though it’s not supposed to be happening,” said Eric L. Olson, an expert on Mexican security matters at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
“That’s what makes this so hard,” he said. “The United States is using tools in a country where officials are still uncomfortable with those tools.”
In recent years, Mexican attitudes about American involvement in matters of national security have softened, as waves of drug-related violence have left about 40,000 people dead. And the United States, hoping to shore up Mexico’s stability and prevent its violence from spilling across the border, has expanded its role in ways unthinkable five years ago, including flying drones in Mexican skies.
The efforts have been credited with breaking up several of Mexico’s largest cartels into smaller — and presumably less dangerous — crime groups. But the violence continues, as does the northward flow of illegal drugs.
While using informants remains a largely clandestine affair, several recent cases have shed light on the kinds of investigations they have helped crack, including a plot this month in which the United States accused an Iranian-American car salesman of trying to hire killers from a Mexican drug cartel, known as Los Zetas, to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
American officials said Drug Enforcement Administration informants with links to the cartels helped the authorities to track down several suspects linked to the February murder of a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jaime J. Zapata, who is alleged to have been shot to death by members of Los Zetas in central Mexico.
The D.E.A.’s dealings with informants and drug traffickers — sometimes, officials acknowledged, they are one and the same — are at the center of proceedings in a federal courthouse in Chicago, where one of the highest-ranking leaders of the Sinaloa cartel is scheduled to go on trial next year.
And last month, a federal judge in El Paso sentenced a midlevel leader of the Sinaloa cartel to life in prison after he was found guilty on drug and conspiracy charges. He was accused of working as a kind of double agent, providing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency with information about the movements of a rival cartel in order to divert attention from his own trafficking activities.
As important as informants have been, complicated ethical issues tend to arise when law enforcement officers make deals with criminals. Few informants, law enforcement officials say, decide to start providing information to the government out of altruism; typically, they are caught committing a crime and want to mitigate their legal troubles, or are essentially taking bribes to inform on their colleagues.
Morris Panner, a former assistant United States attorney who is a senior adviser at the Center for International Criminal Justice at Harvard Law School, said some of the recent cases involving informants highlight those issues and demonstrate that the threats posed by Mexican narcotics networks go far beyond the drug trade.
“Mexican organized crime groups have morphed from drug trafficking organizations into something new and far more dangerous,” Mr. Panner said. “The Zetas now are active in extortion, human trafficking, money laundering, and increasingly, anything a violent criminal organization can do to make money, whether in Mexico, Guatemala or, it appears, the U.S.”
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Because of the clandestine nature of their communications with informants, and the potential for diplomatic flare-ups between the United States and Mexico, American officials were reluctant to provide any details about the scope of their confidential sources south of the border.
Over the past two years, officials said, D.E.A. agents in Houston managed to develop “several highly placed confidential sources with direct access” to important leaders of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. This paid informant network is a centerpiece of the Houston office’s efforts to infiltrate the “command and control” ranks of the two groups.
One of those paid informants was the man who authorities say was approached last spring by a man charged in Iran’s alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. Law enforcement documents say the informant told his handlers that an Iranian-American, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, had reached out to him to ask whether Los Zetas would be willing to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States and elsewhere.
Authorities would provide only vague details about the informant and his connections to Los Zetas, saying that he had been charged in the United States with narcotics crimes and that those charges had been dropped because he had “previously provided reliable and independently corroborated information to federal law enforcement agents” that “led to numerous seizures of narcotics.”
The Justice Department has been more forthcoming about the D.E.A.’s work with informants in a case against Jesús Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as Vicentillo. Officials describe Mr. Zambada-Niebla as a logistics coordinator for the Sinaloa cartel, considered one of the world’s most important drug trafficking groups. His lawyers have argued that he was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, which offered him immunity in exchange for his cooperation.
The D.E.A. has denied that allegation, and the Justice Department took the rare step of disclosing the agency’s contacts with him in court documents. The intermediary was Humberto Loya-Castro, who was both a confidant to the cartel’s kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán, known as El Chapo, and an informant to the D.E.A.
The documents do not say when the relationship between the agency and Mr. Loya-Castro began, but they indicate that because of his cooperation, the D.E.A. dismissed a 13-year-old conspiracy charge against him in 2008.
In 2009, the documents said, Mr. Loya-Castro arranged a meeting between two D.E.A. agents and Mr. Zambada-Niebla, who was floating an offer to negotiate some kind of cooperation agreement. But on the day of the meeting, the agents’ supervisors canceled it, expressing “concern about American agents meeting with a high-level cartel member like Zambada-Niebla.”
Mr. Zambada-Niebla and Mr. Loya-Castro showed up at the agents’ hotel anyway. The D.E.A. agents sent Mr. Zambada-Niebla away without making any promises, the documents said. A few hours later, Mr. Zambada-Niebla was captured by the Mexican police, and was extradited to the United States in February 2010.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on organized crime at the Brookings Institution, said that while some had criticized the D.E.A. for entertaining “deals with the devil,” she saw the Zambada case as an important intelligence coup. Even in an age of high-tech surveillance, she said, there is no substitute for human sources’ feeding authorities everything from what targeted traffickers like to eat to where they sleep most nights.
A former senior counter narcotics official echoed that thought.
“A D.E.A. agent’s job, first and foremost, is to get inside the body of those criminal organizations he or she is investigating,” the former official said, asking not to be identified because he occasionally does consulting work in Mexico. “Nothing provides that microscopic view more than a host that opens the door.”
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An IED Attack in Monterrey
On Oct. 20, as a Mexican military patrol chased a vehicle carrying suspected cartel gunmen through the streets of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, an unidentified party remotely detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) placed in a parked car moments before the patrol passed by it. There were no reported deaths or injuries from the blast, but all of the gunmen in the vehicle escaped. Though this is the first IED attack Monterrey has witnessed, there have been other such attacks in Mexico within the past year or so. In July 2010, La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes cartel, set off an IED in a car in Ciudad Juarez, killing four people; between August and December 2010, the Gulf cartel deployed as many as six IEDs throughout Tamaulipas state; and in January 2011, a small IED detonated in Tula, Hidalgo state, injuring four people.
In the aftermath of such attacks, it is tempting for observers and the mainstream media to assume cartel violence in Mexico has reached an unprecedented level of escalation, and that an increased use of IEDs is all but certain. However, the Oct. 20 ambush, sophisticated though it was, actually showed some degree of restraint on the part of the planners, as did the IED attacks of the past year elsewhere in Mexico. Given the psychological impact and tactical effectiveness of IED use in a combat environment — and cartel personnel armed with the knowledge to construct sophisticated explosive devices — perhaps more astonishing than the occurrence of IED attacks is the fact that cartels do not conduct them with more regularity or on a greater magnitude than they have. That the cartels choose not to do so illustrates a calculated strategy aimed at staving off further American involvement and limiting negative domestic public opinion against them.
courtesy of El Universal
A Mexican soldier stands near the site of the Oct. 20 Monterrey blastMilitary grade explosives are very easy to acquire on the black market in Mexico. More readily available and cheaper than guns, they are routinely confiscated by security forces. In fact, the army has made notable seizures as recently as the past week. On Oct. 18, the Mexican army seized around 20 kilograms (about 45 pounds) of C4 in or around Mexico City, capable of producing an explosion 10 times larger than that of the Monterrey blast. Later on Oct. 20, the army seized 45 blocks of C4, detonators, weapons and cell phones in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz state.
The prevalence of individuals practiced at constructing explosive devices adds to the issue. Many cartels employ ex-military personnel as enforcers. Los Zetas, for example, were founded by defectors from the Mexican army’s Special Forces Airmobile Group and originally served as the enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel before embarking on their own narcotics trafficking operations. These individuals learned the intricacies of demolitions as part of their military training, and they are now in a position to deploy — or train others to deploy — IEDs across the country.
However, former members of the military are not the only ones in Mexico who know how to make bombs. The country’s mining sector has given many people an expertise in the use of explosives and has contributed to cartel inventories. Industrial hydrogel explosives have been used in some IEDs, notably in an attempt made in Juarez in August 2010. They also have been seized in cartel munitions caches in large enough quantities to bring down buildings.
Despite the availability of explosives and the prevalence of people who know how to manipulate those explosives, large IEDs have yet to be deployed in Mexico. This dynamic has been very different from what we have seen in places like Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. The reason for this is simple. The leaders of Mexico’s various cartels conduct business based on the principle that if they can stand to benefit from something — an assassination, extortion or even a licit activity — they will do it; if not, it will be avoided. The use of large IEDs would create substantial domestic pressure and compel the Mexican government to come down hard on the cartels — much harder than Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s administration has demonstrated to date.
More important, cartels cannot afford direct and heavy-handed interdiction from the U.S. government aimed at their total dismantlement. The use of large, powerful IEDs would lead the Mexican government to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations. Such a designation would allow U.S. law enforcement easier access to their finances and operation, something the cartels want to avoid at every cost. It could also lead to dramatically increased U.S. involvement in the fight against the Mexican criminal cartels.
Mexico’s drug cartels must weigh the tactical benefits of using IEDs with the strategic need to keep the U.S. government off their backs. Intermittent IED attacks can be expected in the future, but those attacks will continue to utilize small amounts of explosives to mitigate the risk of U.S. involvement — or political crisis in Mexico. This dynamic could possibly change should one of the criminal cartels become desperate and believe they have nothing to lose, but as we saw in the case of La Linea in Juarez, the group did not follow through on their threat to employ a 100-kilogram vehicle-borne IED even when heavily pressed.
(click here to view interactive map)
Oct. 19
The Mexican military seized a drug lab in Zapopan, Jalisco state. Approximately 27 metric tons of chemical precursors were discovered.
Mexican authorities seized a heroin and cocaine processing lab in Xochitepec, Morelos state. Two individuals were detained in the operation.
Oct. 20
An improvised explosive device in a vehicle exploded Oct. 20 as a Mexican military convoy passed by it in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, while pursuing gunmen. All the gunmen escaped.
A police radio operator was killed by gunmen in a security hut in Veracruz city, Veracruz state. The operator was involved in an ongoing operation in Los Volcanes neighborhood. Police pursued the gunmen afterwards, killing one gunman and injuring another.
The Mexican military detained five alleged Los Zetas members in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz state. Among the five was Rodrigo Herrera Valverde, a nephew of the former Veracruz state governor, Fidel Herrera Beltran.
Oct. 21
A confrontation in Tancitaro, Michoacan state, between gunmen and the Mexican military left one soldier and three gunmen dead.
Three individuals were executed in Apatzingan, Michoacan state. Their bodies were left with a narcomanta signed by the Knights Templar stating that the individuals died because of their behavior.
Oct. 22
Police seized 42 kilograms of cocaine from a tractor-trailer near Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state.
Police arrested four suspected La Barredora members in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
Oct. 23
A convoy of gunmen executed three individuals in Villa Ocampo, Durango state. The same convoy was reported driving through Las Nieves, Durango state, prior to the executions.
Soria “El Hongo” Adrian Ramirez, leader of Cartel del Centro, was arrested in Ojo de Agua, Mexico state. Cartel del Centro is reportedly in territory disputes with the Knights Templar, La Familia Michoacan and La Mano Con Ojos.
A confrontation between Mexican authorities and gunmen in Doctor Gonzalez, Nuevo Leon state resulted in the death of a Los Zetas plaza boss and the capture of three Los Zetas members. The plaza boss, Gabriel “El Cochiloco” Hernandez Hernandez, was responsible for the municipalities of La Laja and El Oregan in Nuevo Leon state.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Restrained IED Attacks a Necessary Tactic For Drug Cartels | STRATFOR
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Woof,
Hezbollah are good at training others how to make IED's, but just go back to sleep America, it's all good.
P.C.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/25/border-agent-jaile-arrest-teen-drug-smuggler/
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for improperly lifting the arms of a 15-year-old drug smuggling suspect while handcuffed — in what the Justice Department called a deprivation of the teenager’s constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force.
Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. was named in a November 2009 federal grand jury indictment with deprivation of rights under color of law during an October 2008 arrest near the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, in response to a report that illegal immigrants had crossed the river with bundles of drugs.
In a prosecution sought by the Mexican government and obtained after the suspected smuggler was given immunity to testify against the agent, Diaz was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum in San Antonio. The Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass had filed a formal written complaint just hours after the arrest, alleging that the teenager had been beaten.
Defense attorneys argued that there were no injuries or bruises on the suspected smuggler’s lower arms where the handcuffs had been placed nor any bruising resulting from an alleged knee on his back. Photos showed the only marks on his body came from the straps of the pack he carried containing the suspected drugs, they said.
Border Patrol agents found more than 150 pounds of marijuana at the arrest site.
The defense claimed that the smuggling suspect was handcuffed because he was uncooperative and resisted arrest, and that the agent had lifted his arms to force him to the ground — a near-universal police technique — while the other agents looked for the drugs.
The allegations against Diaz, 31, a seven-year veteran of the Border Patrol, initially were investigated by Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Professional Responsibility, which cleared the agent of any wrongdoing.
But the Internal Affairs Division at U.S. Customs and Border Protection ruled differently nearly a year later and, ultimately, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas brought charges.
The Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council said the government’s case was “based on false testimony that is contradicted by the facts.”
In a statement, the council said that because the arrest took place at about 2 a.m., darkness would have made it impossible for the government’s witnesses to have seen whether any mistreatment took place. It said Marcos Ramos, the Border Patrol agent who stood next to Diaz, testified that he did not see any mistreatment of the smuggling suspect.
The council said other witnesses made contradictory claims and some later admitted to having perjured themselves. Such admissions, the council said, were ignored by the court and the government. It also said that probationary agents who claimed to have witnessed the assault raised no objections during the incident and failed to notify an on-duty supervisor until hours later.
“Instead, they went off-duty to a local ‘Whataburger’ restaurant, got their stories straight and reported it hours later to an off-duty supervisor at his home,” the council said. “Then the ‘witnesses’ went back to the station and reported their allegations.”
The council also noted that the teenager claimed no injuries in court other than sore shoulders, which the council attributed
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Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart discusses the arrest of Rafael Cardenas Vela and what it means for the Gulf Cartel and for security in Mexico’s northeast.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
• Mexican Drug War Update: The Polarization Continues
On Oct. 26, U.S. authorities announced they had arrested Rafael Cardenas Vela in a traffic stop in Port Isabella, Texas on Oct. 20. The arrest of Cardenas, who is also known as “El Junior,” is significant because he was one of the leaders of two factions that are currently fighting for control of the Gulf Cartel. The struggle among these differing Gulf Cartel factions could have a significant impact on the security situation in Mexico’s northeast.
Rafael Cardenas Vela is the nephew of Osiel Cardenas Guillen, former leader of the Gulf Cartel. Osiel Cardenas Guillen was convicted in a U.S. court in 2010 and sentenced to serve 25 years, which he is currently serving in the Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. Following the arrest of Osiel Cardenas Guillen, control of the Gulf Cartel was handed to his brother, Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, also know as “Tony Tormenta,” as well as Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, who is know as “El Coss.”
That arrangement seemed to work fairly well for several years, but it broke apart following the death of Tony Tormenta in November 2010. This led to a rift in the Gulf Cartel between a faction of those members of the cartel who are loyal to the Cardenas family and a section of the cartel that is loyal to El Coss. In recent months, we’ve been watching as that friction and tension have increased and it appears currently that it’s on the verge of breaking into an all-out war.
In early September, we saw one of El Coss’s major lieutenants, Samuel “El Metro 3” Flores Borego, get assassinated in northern Mexico. And this was one of the signs that tensions were increasing between the two factions. We believe that it’s very likely that the arrest of El Junior is connected to this inter-factional fighting between the Gulf Cartel, and it’s quite possible that the information that led to his arrest was leaked to U.S. authorities by El Coss, his primary rival for control of the Gulf Cartel.
The fact that Cardenas was in U.S. custody for several days before his arrest was announced is very interesting. It indicates to us that he was likely cooperating with U.S. authorities. So we’re going to be watching this Gulf Cartel infighting very carefully for signs that it’s going to weaken these various cartel factions enough that other organizations can move into their areas of operation. In this case of the Gulf Cartel, we have both Los Zetas, who used to be the enforcer group of the Gulf Cartel before splitting from them in January 2010 and are now bitter rivals with the Gulf Cartel, and of course their allies, the Sinaloa Cartel.
Over time, the Sinaloa Cartel has shown that it is very aggressive at moving into and taking territory from its former allies like we saw in Tijuana and in Juarez. So it would not be surprising for them to try to make a move in the northeast to take control of Matamoros. And it’s going to be important to watch the area around Matamoros to see if the areas that are controlled currently by the Gulf Cartel fall to one of these other very powerful cartel organizations.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/25/border-agent-jaile-arrest-teen-drug-smuggler/
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for improperly lifting the arms of a 15-year-old drug smuggling suspect while handcuffed — in what the Justice Department called a deprivation of the teenager’s constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force.
Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. was named in a November 2009 federal grand jury indictment with deprivation of rights under color of law during an October 2008 arrest near the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, in response to a report that illegal immigrants had crossed the river with bundles of drugs.
In a prosecution sought by the Mexican government and obtained after the suspected smuggler was given immunity to testify against the agent, Diaz was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum in San Antonio. The Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass had filed a formal written complaint just hours after the arrest, alleging that the teenager had been beaten.
Defense attorneys argued that there were no injuries or bruises on the suspected smuggler’s lower arms where the handcuffs had been placed nor any bruising resulting from an alleged knee on his back. Photos showed the only marks on his body came from the straps of the pack he carried containing the suspected drugs, they said.
Border Patrol agents found more than 150 pounds of marijuana at the arrest site.
The defense claimed that the smuggling suspect was handcuffed because he was uncooperative and resisted arrest, and that the agent had lifted his arms to force him to the ground — a near-universal police technique — while the other agents looked for the drugs.
The allegations against Diaz, 31, a seven-year veteran of the Border Patrol, initially were investigated by Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Professional Responsibility, which cleared the agent of any wrongdoing.
But the Internal Affairs Division at U.S. Customs and Border Protection ruled differently nearly a year later and, ultimately, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas brought charges.
The Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council said the government’s case was “based on false testimony that is contradicted by the facts.”
In a statement, the council said that because the arrest took place at about 2 a.m., darkness would have made it impossible for the government’s witnesses to have seen whether any mistreatment took place. It said Marcos Ramos, the Border Patrol agent who stood next to Diaz, testified that he did not see any mistreatment of the smuggling suspect.
The council said other witnesses made contradictory claims and some later admitted to having perjured themselves. Such admissions, the council said, were ignored by the court and the government. It also said that probationary agents who claimed to have witnessed the assault raised no objections during the incident and failed to notify an on-duty supervisor until hours later.
“Instead, they went off-duty to a local ‘Whataburger’ restaurant, got their stories straight and reported it hours later to an off-duty supervisor at his home,” the council said. “Then the ‘witnesses’ went back to the station and reported their allegations.”
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Summary
The online activist collective Anonymous released a video Oct. 6 in which a masked spokesman denounces Mexico’s criminal cartels, demands that a member of Anonymous kidnapped by Los Zetas be released and threatens to release information about individuals cooperating with Mexico’s cartels. If Anonymous carries out its threat, it will almost certainly lead to the deaths of individuals named as cartel associates, whether or not the information released is accurate. Furthermore, as Mexican cartels have targeted online journalists and bloggers in the past, hackers could well be targeted for reprisal attacks.
Analysis
Anonymous, an online collective of activists including hackers, lashed out at Mexican cartels in a video released online Oct. 6. In the video, a masked individual claiming to speak on behalf of Anonymous denounces Mexico’s cartels and demands that Los Zetas release a member of Anonymous kidnapped during a street-level protest named Operation Paperstorm in Veracruz state. The spokesman also threatens to release revealing information about journalists, police, politicians and taxi drivers colluding with the cartels.
Simply disseminating information on cartel members will not significantly impede overall cartel operations, but if Anonymous carries out its threat, it will affect cartel associates and others the that cartels could target for retaliatory attacks.
Anonymous is not an organized, monolithic group; rather, it is a collection of activists whose organizers work under the name Anonymous. Hackers have conducted several online activities using the name Anonymous, as they have had to develop code for conducting cyberattacks. The collective of hackers takes on several different causes and carries out attacks involving participation by experienced hackers and unskilled members alike. Not everyone involved in Anonymous participates in every action, and some actions are more popular than others.
The Anonymous spokesman in the video does not specify how many individuals support the threat against the cartels or how the group acquired the information it threatens to release. It would not take a group of hackers to obtain the kind of information the spokesman claims Anonymous could release; much of this kind of information could be acquired via rumors circulating through Mexico. In fact, the Anonymous spokesman does not mention anything about using hacking activities to acquire confidential information about the cartels.
However, there are many examples of hackers acting under the name Anonymous acquiring personal and sensitive information about their targets. Recently, hackers shut down child pornography website Lolita City and reportedly posted more than 1,500 usernames and activities of the website’s users. On Oct. 21, Anonymous hackers stole sensitive information — including Social Security numbers — from a series of police-affiliated targets including the International Association of Chiefs of Police website and the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association email portal and revealed more than 1,000 usernames and passwords of Boston police officers. Although cartels’ activities are focused on the streets of the cities they control, even cartels use the Internet for communication and some business transactions. Any cartel activities occurring online could be potential vulnerabilities if individuals involved in the new Anonymous threat can identify them; though the threat from Anonymous does not necessarily mean that hackers are now targeting cartels, given the history of activities carried out in Anonymous’ name, it is certainly possible.
If Anonymous carries out its threat, members would use online media outlets to publish revealing information about the cartels and their associates. Anonymous members frequently focus on these media, which allow them to post revealing information while concealing their own identities. Any information released to the public would not pose a direct threat in itself; it would be up to others to determine the information’s validity and whether to take action. For example, if Anonymous claims that a politician is colluding with criminal cartels, the politician could be threatened by whatever actions the Mexican government decides to take or by members of rival cartels.
Loss of life will be a certain consequence if Anonymous releases the identities of individuals cooperating with cartels. Whether voluntarily or not, cooperating with criminal cartels in Mexico comes with the danger of retribution from rival cartels. Taxi drivers, typically victims of extortion or otherwise forced to act as lookouts or scouts, are particularly vulnerable. In areas such as Acapulco, Guerrero state, reports of murdered taxi drivers occur weekly. The validity of the information Anonymous has threatened to reveal is uncertain, as it might not have been vetted. This could pose an indiscriminate danger to individuals mentioned in whatever Anonymous decides to release.
The online media frequently used to organize Anonymous-labeled activities are far removed from the violent world of Mexican criminal cartels. This distance — along with the likely physical distance of many Anonymous members from Mexico — could limit the activists’ understanding of cartel activities. Anonymous activists may act with confidence stemming from perceived anonymity when sitting in front of a computer, but this could blind them to any possible retribution. Cartels have targeted bloggers and online journalists in previous attacks, and even hackers in Mexico are not beyond the cartels’ reach. Cartels reportedly have turned to the information technology community in the past, coercing computer science majors in Mexico into working for them. Any Anonymous activists inside Mexico who are targeting or perceived as targeting the Mexican cartels will be just as vulnerable as online journalists and bloggers as the cartels seek to make them examples of what happens when someone exposes or publicizes damaging information about cartel activity.
Anonymous activists can threaten to reveal information about cartels or launch cyberattacks. But even if the cartels cannot track down the individuals directing cyberattacks or releasing information, the cartels will continue to commit acts of violence meant to warn the online community about such activities.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/world/americas/hackers-challenge-mexican-crime-syndicate.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hackers%20kidnapping%20mexico&st=cse
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/world/americas/hackers-challenge-mexican-crime-syndicate.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hackers%20kidnapping%20mexico&st=cse
I'm not sure who to root for here. "Anonymous" better hope they live up to that name, or they won't live long.
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I was in Mexico this past weekend. While this piece is sound, Stratfor is not yet up to speed on various variables. No time for a thorough post-- sorry. As a teaser I will add that the post of Secretaria de Gobernacion (roughly Sec'y of Internal Affairs) is THE second most powerful post in a country where the Executive is THE dominant player and that usually the post leads to becoming the next president. In the past 5 years this post has had 4 occupants, two of whom have died in air crashes. Oddly the aircraft that fly officials about have no black boxes and the helo in question had no instruments for zero visibility conditions-- yet the route in question (between Cueravaca and the DF) takes one through the near 10,000 foot mountains FREQUENTLY has fog/low clouds etc. On the flight in question, route was changed precisely in order to go through less of a cloud/fog bank. Also interesting is that the locals at the site of the crash (common people in an area of contested land ownership) did NOT hear the sound of a helicopter-- i.e. was the motor not functioning at the moment of impact?
Question: So why was Blake planning on returning to Baja California as Governor? When he left BC, he was rumored to be involved with the narcos there and oddly enough upon his departure the anticipated turf wars did not develop; instead reasonable understandings were reached.
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Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton uses the recent helicopter crash involving Mexican officials to discuss the best practices that should be used to investigate air disasters.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
• Above the Tearline: Reconstructing Air France Flight 447 Wreckage
In light of the helicopter crash that killed Mexican Interior Minister Mora, we thought it would be a good time to revisit how air crashes should be investigated. Having done quite a few investigations of air disasters, it is important for the lead investigator to focus on four primary areas.
The first is mechanical and electrical. Number two is weather. Three, pilot error. Four, man-made or foul play (for example, sabotage or terrorism).
With the helicopter going down in Mexico carrying the Mexican Interior Minister, it is easy to jump to conclusions and suspect foul play. There have also been two previous ministers’ deaths in aviation disasters, adding to the conspiracy hype. However, the investigator needs to keep an open mind and proceed methodically through the investigation.
Behind the scenes, the team should be looking for a range of different factors to include: 1) evidence of prior threats against any of the passengers; 2) intelligence from sources to indicate foul play; 3) the overall mechanical condition of the aircraft, with an eye towards the engines and the hydraulics; 4) the number of flight hours; 5) geography and route of travel; 6) maintenance records; 7) fuel tests; 8) pilot suitability; 9) security of the aircraft before the crash; 10) radio transmissions between the aircraft and tower; 11) phone or message text records of passengers during the flight; 12) eyewitness accounts; 13) weather conditions such as fog or hail and 14) GPS tracking data.
A critical factor in any air crash is autopsies of the victims, to check for smoke inhalation in the lungs to rule in or out onboard fires or explosions and gunshot wounds to the pilots.
What is Above the Tearline about this video?
It has been my experience that the facts will speak for themselves, if the investigators are allowed access to all of the data and the crime scene. Internal politics may come into play in this case due to the politics of the Mexican military aircraft carrying the Interior Minister, complicated by the fact that due to rampant corruption, trust in the Mexican government by the public is in short supply.
We have seen source reports indicating fuel contamination as a possible cause of the crash. The helo (helicopter) was also allegedly scheduled to transport President Calderon later in the day. If true, these facts could point towards a man-made cause.
However, we have also seen a report that poor maintenance has plagued Mexican aircraft this year by at least one credible law enforcement source.
Regardless, the investigators should be able to get to the bottom of the crash if allowed to do their jobs. It is a positive step that the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has been called upon to assist. They will have more credibility, so their participation will be important.
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Pasting this here from the Gun thread.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/22/armed-illegals-stalked-border-patrol/?page=all#pagebreak
Armed illegals stalked Border Patrol
Mexicans were ‘patrolling’ when agent was slain, indictment says
By Jerry Seper
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The Washington Times
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
SLAIN: Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry called out, “I’m hit,” after a bullet pierced his aorta. He died at the scene. (Associated Press)
Five illegal immigrants armed with at least two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles were hunting for U.S. Border Patrol agents near a desert watering hole known as Mesquite Seep just north of the Arizona-Mexico border when a firefight erupted and one U.S. agent was killed, records show.
A now-sealed federal grand jury indictmentin the death of Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terrysays the Mexican nationals were “patrolling” the rugged desert area of Peck Canyon at about 11:15 p.m. on Dec. 14 with the intent to “intentionally and forcibly assault” Border Patrol agents.
At least two of the Mexicans carried their assault rifles “at the ready position,” one of several details about the attack showing that Mexican smugglers are becoming more aggressive on the U.S. side of the border.
According to the indictment, the Mexicans were “patrolling the area in single-file formation” a dozen miles northwest of the border town of Nogales and — in the darkness of the Arizona night — opened fire on four Border Patrol agents after the agents identified themselves in Spanish as police officers.
Two AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene came from the failed Fast and Furious operation.
Using thermal binoculars, one of the agents determined that at least two of the Mexicans were carrying rifles, but according to an affidavit in the case by FBI agent Scott Hunter, when the Mexicans did not drop their weapons as ordered, two agents used their shotguns to fire “less than lethal” beanbags at them.
At least one of the Mexicans opened fire and, according to the affidavit, Terry, a 40-year-old former U.S. Marine, was shot in the back. A Border Patrol shooting-incident report said that Terry called out, “I’m hit,” and then fell to the ground, a bullet having pierced his aorta. “I can’t feel my legs,” Terry told one of the agents who cradled him. “I think I’m paralyzed.”
Bleeding profusely, he died at the scene.
After the initial shots, two agents returned fire, hitting Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, 33, in the abdomen and leg. The others fled. The FBI affidavit said Osorio-Arellanes admitted during an interview that all five of the Mexicans were armed.
Peck Canyon is a notorious drug-smuggling corridor.
Osorio-Arellanes initially was charged with illegal entry, but that case was dismissed when the indictment was handed up. It named Osorio-Arellanes on a charge of second-degree murder, but did not identify him as the likely shooter, saying only that Osorio-Arellanes and others whose names were blacked out “did unlawfully kill with malice aforethought United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry while Agent Terry was engaged in … his official duties.”
The indictment also noted that Osorio-Arellanes had been convicted in Phoenix in 2006 of felony aggravated assault, had been detained twice in 2010 as an illegal immigrant, and had been returned to Mexico repeatedly.
Bill Brooks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting southwest border field branch chief, referred inquiries to the FBI, which is conducting the investigation. The FBI declined to comment.
The case against Osorio-Arellanes and others involved in the shooting has since been sealed, meaning that neither the public nor the media has access to any evidence, filings, rulings or arguments.
The U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, which is prosecuting the case, would confirm only that it was sealed. Also sealed was the judge’s reason for sealing the case.
The indictment lists the names of other suspects in the shooting, but they are redacted.
In the Terry killing, two Romanian-built AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene were identified as having been purchased in a Glendale, Ariz., gun shop as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) failed Fast and Furious investigation.
A number of rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have questioned why the case has not gone to trial, nearly a year after Terry’s killing. Several also have concerns about the lack of transparency in the investigation, compounded now by the fact that the court case has been sealed.
Shawn P. Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 17,000 nonsupervisory agents, said it is rare for illegal immigrants or drug smugglers to engage agents in the desert, saying they usually “drop their loads and take off south.”
“The Brian Terry murder was a real wake-up call,” Mr. Moran said. “It emphasizes the failed state of security on the U.S. border, which poses more of a threat to us than either Iraq or Afghanistan. We have terrorism going on right on the other side of the fence, and we’re arming the drug cartels.
“My biggest fear is that someday a cartel member is going to go berserk, stick a rifle through the fence and kill as many Border Patrol agents as he can,” he said.
Mr. Moran said he understood the “rationale of working things up the food chain,” as suggested in the Fast and Furious probe, but had no idea how ATF planned to arrest cartel members who ultimately purchased the weapons since the agency lacks jurisdiction south of the border and never advised Mexican authorities about the operation.
“It was a ridiculous idea from the beginning, and it baffles us on how it was ever approved,” he said.
Mr. Moran also challenged the use of less-than-lethal s in the shooting incident, saying field agents have been “strong-armed” by the agency’s leadership to use nonlethal weapons. He said they were not appropriate for the incident in which Terry was killed.
“That was no place for beanbag rounds,” he said, noting that the encounter was at least 12 miles inside the U.S. and was carried out by armed men looking specifically to target Border Patrol agents.
CBP has said Terry and the agents with him carried fully loaded sidearms, along with two additional magazines, and were not under orders to use nonlethal ammunition first.
Mr. Moran, himself a veteran Border Patrol agent, said he also was “surprised” that the suspected Mexican gunmen were carrying their weapons at the ready position, meaning that the butts of the weapons were placed firmly in the pocket of the shoulder with the barrels pointed down at a 45-degree angle. He said this probably meant they had some level of military training.
More than 250 incursions by Mexican military personnel into the United States have been documented over the past several years.
The Border Patrol has warned agents in Arizona that many of the intruders were “trained to escape, evade and counter-ambush” if detected. The agency cautioned agents to keep “a low profile,” to use “cover and concealment” in approaching the Mexican units, to employ “shadows and camouflage” to conceal themselves and to “stay as quiet as possible.”
Several of the incursions occurred in the same area where Terry was killed, including a 2005 incident in which two agents were shot and wounded by assailants dressed in black commando-type clothing in what law-enforcement authorities said was a planned ambush. More than 50 rounds were fired at the agents after they spotted the suspected gunmen.
Many of the Mexican drug cartels use former Mexican soldiers, police and federal agents to protect drug loads headed into the U.S. Many cartel leaders also have targeted U.S. Border Patrol agents and state and local police, sometimes offering bounties of up to $50,000.
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Nightly News on
Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear
Despite government assurances that they're safe, they say the level of violence is rising
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By Mark Potter
Correspondent
NBC News
updated 2 hours 48 minutes ago
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FALFURRIAS, Texas — While walking along a dirt road bordering his property, a South Texas farmer complained about living in fear of Mexican traffickers smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across his land. He would later ask his visitor not to reveal his identity, for his safety and that of his family.
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"I'm a citizen of the United States. This is supposedly sovereign soil, but right now it's anybody's who happens to be crossing here," he said. "I'm a little nervous being here right now. Definitely don’t come down here after dark."
The farmer said a federal law enforcement agent told him to buy a bulletproof vest to use while working in his fields. Whenever he goes out to survey his agricultural operations, he always tells his office where he is headed, and he has purchased a high-powered rifle.
"One of the basic points of the federal government is to protect the people of this nation to secure the border, and they're not doing that," he complained.
Story: Cartels using Ariz. mountaintops to spy on cops
The Obama administration and many local officials have said the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever and that reports of violence on the American side are wildly exaggerated. But the farmer scoffed at that argument. "I walk this soil every day and have since I was old enough to come out on my own," he said. "In this part of Texas, it is worse than it's ever been."
Moving families to safer ground
A report recently released by the Texas commissioner of agriculture said cross-border violence was escalating. "Fear and anxiety levels among Texas farmers and ranchers have grown enormously during the past two years," the report said, adding that some “have even abandoned their livelihoods to move their families to safer ground."
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as the U.S. drug czar during the Clinton administration and as an NBC News military analyst, is a co-author of the report. During a recent interview, McCaffrey said that while major cities along the Texas border are "pretty safe," the rural areas between towns are "largely unprotected, and across those areas the (Mexican) cartels are conducting massive movements of illegal drugs and other criminal activity."
Story: Mexican cartels corrupting more US border officials?
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Law enforcement agents say they are seeing more aggressive efforts by Mexican traffickers operating in the Rio Grande Valley. In South Texas alone, the traffickers smuggle hundreds of tons of drugs a year into the United States by floating them on rafts across the Rio Grande, then transporting them by car, truck or on foot — often across private land — into the United States.
Video: 'Like living in a war zone' (on this page)
The smuggling “clearly has intimidated U.S. citizen who don't believe they're safe on their own land in their own country," McCaffrey said.
Several Texas congressmen and sheriffs have condemned the report, saying its conclusions are overstated and politically driven. But McCaffrey claims the officials not facing facts.
"I think there is an element of denial," McCaffrey said. "Inside the beltway the senior law enforcement, I think, have fallen in line and said, no, that's right, the U.S. border is the safest place in America, which is errant nonsense."
Mark Potter / NBC News
Mike Vickers, a veterinarian and rancher, leads a group of Texas landowners concerned about Mexican drug and immigrant smugglers crossing their private property.
Ranchers protecting themselves
Veterinarian and rancher Mike Vickers heads the Texas Border Volunteers, a group of about 300 landowners and supporters who work closely with law enforcement officials to track drug and immigrant smugglers entering the U.S. from Mexico and crossing private land. His primary concern, he said, is the safety of farmers and ranchers who have been confronted by armed traffickers.
"A lot of them have been threatened not to call the Border Patrol or law enforcement if they see smuggling going on their property, otherwise they'll be killed or their family members may be killed," he said.
Video: 'It's compromised our lives' (on this page)
During a tour of his land and that of a neighbor, Vickers pointed out numerous hiking trails worn by smugglers and illegal immigrants from around the world. He also showed where many parts of the wire fence had been cut and pulled back. "This is not done by wildlife," he said. "This is done by smugglers and more than likely drug smugglers that have heavy backpacks full of drugs so they can drag the backpack underneath and not have to throw it over the fence."
In order to prove their claims that thousands of smugglers and illegal immigrants are crossing private American land, the Texas Border Volunteers have erected hidden cameras and share the images with state and federal agents. Describing one of the pictures, Vickers said, "This individual's got at least 80, maybe 100 pounds on his back. This is probably marijuana with a canvas covering." Another black and white photograph showed a man hoisting a smaller load. "You know he's carrying at least 40 pounds of drugs in that backpack. We suspect cocaine."
Video: Drug flow from Mexico on the rise
Vickers said that since 2004, about 500 people, mostly illegal immigrants, have perished while on smuggling trips through private property in Brooks County, Texas, alone, where his ranch is located.
A war zone?
Todd Staples, the Texas agriculture commissioner and a candidate for lieutenant governor, argued that many leaders in Washington, D.C., continue to ignore the violence along the border. In a recent article he wrote, "A Webb County rancher checking his cattle is shot at and barely escapes with his life; the suspects are linked to drug cartels. Workers in a Hidalgo County sugarcane field are told by cartel members to stop harvesting the crop 'or else," because the sugarcane provides coverage for cartel coyotes smuggling drugs."
Mark Potter / NBC News
This fence on private land apparently was trampled by smugglers trying to get around a Border Patrol checkpoint in South Texas.
Vickers said he knows ranchers who have moved their families into nearby cities for their protection and have taken other safety measures. "Everyone is packing a weapon and carrying a cell phone with them. and they're crazy if they don't," he said. "This is happening on American soil; this is a war zone here, there's no question about it."
The use of the phrase "war zone" to describe the U.S. side of the border is controversial. The report to the agriculture commissioner states, "Living and conducting business in a Texas border county is tantamount to living in a war zone in which civil authorities, law enforcement agencies as well as citizens are under attack around the clock."
Video: Drug violence comes to Mexican resort (on this page)
Democratic congressmen and some local officials say that conclusion is unfair. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino was recently quoted by the Houston Chronicle as saying, "The border is not in chaos.” And the newspaper quoted Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat representing El Paso, as calling the claims "political rhetoric" meant to embarrass the Obama administration.
Among ranchers, farmers and law enforcement agents working at the ground level, however, there is considerable agreement that large-scale drug smuggling from Mexico into the United States has been increasing in recent years and that the traffickers are becoming more aggressive. For the farmer too afraid to be identified publicly, it creates a painful dilemma.
"I can't pick up and move this farm; we're tied to the land," he said. "This is the front door to our country. Help us stop it here."
P.C.
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I took PC's post and cleaned it up for readability; I didn't want it to go unread or porrly understood.
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Nightly News on
Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear
Despite government assurances that they're safe, they say the level of violence is rising
Below:
By Mark Potter
Correspondent
NBC News
FALFURRIAS, Texas — While walking along a dirt road bordering his property, a South Texas farmer complained about living in fear of Mexican traffickers smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across his land. He would later ask his visitor not to reveal his identity, for his safety and that of his family.
"I'm a citizen of the United States. This is supposedly sovereign soil, but right now it's anybody's who happens to be crossing here," he said. "I'm a little nervous being here right now. Definitely don’t come down here after dark."
The farmer said a federal law enforcement agent told him to buy a bulletproof vest to use while working in his fields. Whenever he goes out to survey his agricultural operations, he always tells his office where he is headed, and he has purchased a high-powered rifle.
"One of the basic points of the federal government is to protect the people of this nation to secure the border, and they're not doing that," he complained.
Story: Cartels using Ariz. mountaintops to spy on cops
The Obama administration and many local officials have said the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever and that reports of violence on the American side are wildly exaggerated. But the farmer scoffed at that argument. "I walk this soil every day and have since I was old enough to come out on my own," he said. "In this part of Texas, it is worse than it's ever been."
Moving families to safer ground
A report recently released by the Texas commissioner of agriculture said cross-border violence was escalating. "Fear and anxiety levels among Texas farmers and ranchers have grown enormously during the past two years," the report said, adding that some “have even abandoned their livelihoods to move their families to safer ground."
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as the U.S. drug czar during the Clinton administration and as an NBC News military analyst, is a co-author of the report. During a recent interview, McCaffrey said that while major cities along the Texas border are "pretty safe," the rural areas between towns are "largely unprotected, and across those areas the (Mexican) cartels are conducting massive movements of illegal drugs and other criminal activity."
Story: Mexican cartels corrupting more US border officials?
Law enforcement agents say they are seeing more aggressive efforts by Mexican traffickers operating in the Rio Grande Valley. In South Texas alone, the traffickers smuggle hundreds of tons of drugs a year into the United States by floating them on rafts across the Rio Grande, then transporting them by car, truck or on foot — often across private land — into the United States.
Video: 'Like living in a war zone' (on this page)
The smuggling “clearly has intimidated U.S. citizen who don't believe they're safe on their own land in their own country," McCaffrey said.
Several Texas congressmen and sheriffs have condemned the report, saying its conclusions are overstated and politically driven. But McCaffrey claims the officials not facing facts. "I think there is an element of denial," McCaffrey said. "Inside the beltway the senior law enforcement, I think, have fallen in line and said, no, that's right, the U.S. border is the safest place in America, which is errant nonsense."
(Mike Vickers, a veterinarian and rancher, leads a group of Texas landowners concerned about Mexican drug and immigrant smugglers crossing their private property.)
Ranchers protecting themselves
Veterinarian and rancher Mike Vickers heads the Texas Border Volunteers, a group of about 300 landowners and supporters who work closely with law enforcement officials to track drug and immigrant smugglers entering the U.S. from Mexico and crossing private land. His primary concern, he said, is the safety of farmers and ranchers who have been confronted by armed traffickers.
"A lot of them have been threatened not to call the Border Patrol or law enforcement if they see smuggling going on their property, otherwise they'll be killed or their family members may be killed," he said.
Video: 'It's compromised our lives' (on this page)
During a tour of his land and that of a neighbor, Vickers pointed out numerous hiking trails worn by smugglers and illegal immigrants from around the world. He also showed where many parts of the wire fence had been cut and pulled back. "This is not done by wildlife," he said. "This is done by smugglers and more than likely drug smugglers that have heavy backpacks full of drugs so they can drag the backpack underneath and not have to throw it over the fence."
In order to prove their claims that thousands of smugglers and illegal immigrants are crossing private American land, the Texas Border Volunteers have erected hidden cameras and share the images with state and federal agents. Describing one of the pictures, Vickers said, "This individual's got at least 80, maybe 100 pounds on his back. This is probably marijuana with a canvas covering." Another black and white photograph showed a man hoisting a smaller load. "You know he's carrying at least 40 pounds of drugs in that backpack. We suspect cocaine."
Vickers said that since 2004, about 500 people, mostly illegal immigrants, have perished while on smuggling trips through private property in Brooks County, Texas, alone, where his ranch is located.
A war zone?
Todd Staples, the Texas agriculture commissioner and a candidate for lieutenant governor, argued that many leaders in Washington, D.C., continue to ignore the violence along the border. In a recent article he wrote, "A Webb County rancher checking his cattle is shot at and barely escapes with his life; the suspects are linked to drug cartels. Workers in a Hidalgo County sugarcane field are told by cartel members to stop harvesting the crop 'or else," because the sugarcane provides coverage for cartel coyotes smuggling drugs."
This fence on private land apparently was trampled by smugglers trying to get around a Border Patrol checkpoint in South Texas.
Vickers said he knows ranchers who have moved their families into nearby cities for their protection and have taken other safety measures. "Everyone is packing a weapon and carrying a cell phone with them. and they're crazy if they don't," he said. "This is happening on American soil; this is a war zone here, there's no question about it."
The use of the phrase "war zone" to describe the U.S. side of the border is controversial. The report to the agriculture commissioner states, "Living and conducting business in a Texas border county is tantamount to living in a war zone in which civil authorities, law enforcement agencies as well as citizens are under attack around the clock."
Video: Drug violence comes to Mexican resort (on this page)
Democratic congressmen and some local officials say that conclusion is unfair. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino was recently quoted by the Houston Chronicle as saying, "The border is not in chaos.” And the newspaper quoted Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat representing El Paso, as calling the claims "political rhetoric" meant to embarrass the Obama administration.
Among ranchers, farmers and law enforcement agents working at the ground level, however, there is considerable agreement that large-scale drug smuggling from Mexico into the United States has been increasing in recent years and that the traffickers are becoming more aggressive. For the farmer too afraid to be identified publicly, it creates a painful dilemma.
"I can't pick up and move this farm; we're tied to the land," he said. "This is the front door to our country. Help us stop it here."
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I know we have a drug demand problem in the U.S. drug laws that force up prices and profits making trafficking worse but from my view from seeing only small parts of our 5500 mile border with Canada, I offer this intended as constructive, not disparaging: The main problem with the US southern border is inside Mexico and whatever freedom, opportunity and prosperity that is not happening there.
With free trade, NAFTA, short flights and easy trucking lanes right into the world's most prosperous economy next door, why aren't they the fastest growing productive economy and opportunity society on the planet? Does anyone here have insights on that or another theory?
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http://www.economist.com/node/21526899
Mexico’s economy
Making the desert bloom
The Mexican economy has recovered somewhat from a scorching recession imported from America, but is still hobbled by domestic monopolies and cartels
Aug 27th 2011 | SALTILLO | The Economist - from the print edition
HOT and high in the Sierra Madre, the city of Saltillo is a long way from Wall Street. Stuffed goats keep an eye on customers in the high-street vaquera, or cowboy outfitter, where workers from the local car factories blow their pesos on snakeskin boots and $100 Stetsons. Pinstriped suits and silk ties are outnumbered by checked shirts and silver belt-buckles; pickups are prized over Porsches.
The financial crisis of 2008 began on the trading floors of Manhattan, but the biggest tremors were felt in the desert south of the Rio Grande. Mexico suffered the steepest recession of any country in the Americas, bar a couple of Caribbean tiddlers. Its economy shrank by 6.1% in 2009 (see chart 1). Between the third quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, 700,000 jobs were lost, 260,000 of them in manufacturing. The slump was deepest in the prosperous north: worst hit was the border state of Coahuila. Saltillo, its capital, had grown rich exporting to America. The state’s output fell by 12.3% in 2009 as orders dried up.
The recession turned a reasonable decade for Mexico’s economy into a dreary one. In the ten years to 2010, income per person grew by 0.6% a year, one of the lowest rates in the world. In the early 2000s Mexico boasted Latin America’s biggest economy, measured at market exchange rates, but it was soon overtaken by Brazil, whose GDP is now twice as big and still pulling away, boosted by the soaring real. Soon Brazil will take the lead in oil production, which Mexico has allowed to dwindle. As Brazilians construct stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Mexicans, who last year celebrated the bicentenary of their independence from Spain, are building monuments to their past (and finishing them late).
Mexico’s muscles
Yet Mexico’s economy is packed with potential. Thanks to the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a string of bilateral deals, it trades more than Argentina and Brazil combined, and more per person than China. Last year it did $400 billion of business with the United States, more than any country bar Canada and China. The investment rate, at more than a fifth of GDP, is well ahead of Brazil’s. Income per person slipped below Brazil’s in 2009, but only because of the real’s surge and the peso’s weakness. After accounting for purchasing power, Mexicans are still better off than Brazilians.
Though expatriates whinge about bureaucracy, the World Bank ranks Mexico the easiest place in Latin America to do business and the 35th-easiest in the world, ahead of Italy and Spain. In Brazil (placed 127th) companies spend 2,600 hours a year filing taxes, six times more than in Mexico. Registering a business takes nine days in Mexico and 26 in Argentina. The working hours of supposedly siesta-loving Mexicans are among the longest in the world. And although Mexico’s schools are the worst in (mainly rich) OECD countries, they are the least bad in Latin America apart from Chile’s.
These strengths have helped Mexico to rebound smartly from its calamitous slump. Last year the economy grew by 5.4%, recovering much of the ground lost in 2009. Exports to the United States, having fallen by a fifth, have reached a record high. In the desert there are signs of life: Saltillo’s high street, where four out of ten shops closed during the recession, is busy again. CIFUNSA, a foundry that turns out some 400,000 tonnes of cast iron a year for customers such as Ford and Volkswagen, shed 40% of its staff in 2009, but has rehired most of them and is producing more than it did before the slump.
However, the jobs market has yet to return to its pre-recession state. Nationally, the official unemployment rate is 5.4%, having peaked at 6.4% in 2009. Javier Lozano, Mexico’s labour secretary, believes that the pre-recession mark of 4.1% will not be matched within the term of this government or the next (ie, before 2018). What’s more, the new jobs are not as good as those that were lost. Average pay last year was 5% lower than in 2008. Because of this, and rising food prices, more Mexicans have slipped into poverty: last year 46.2% of them were below the official poverty line (earning less than 2,114 pesos, or $167, per month), up from 44.5% in 2008.
Just as recession came from the gringos, recovery depends partly on them. Many analysts who once predicted economic growth of 5% this year cut their forecasts to under 4% after a downward revision of American GDP in July. Exports account for nearly a third of Mexico’s trillion-dollar GDP, and most go to the United States. Remittances provide $190 per person per year (down from $240 in 2007). Now America faces several years of lacklustre growth, which poses a dilemma for Mexico.
Some look at the recent explosive growth of Brazil and wonder if it is time to follow its example and look to new markets. In 2009 only 3% of Mexico’s exports went to Brazil, Russia, India or China, whereas Brazil sent 16% of its exports to its fellow BRICs. Industrialised countries receive less than half of Brazil’s exports but 90% of Mexico’s. The Inter-American Development Bank, the biggest lender in the region, describes a “two speed” Latin America, in which economies, such as Mexico, which do most of their trade with developed countries, lag behind those, such as Brazil, that have forged links with emerging markets.
South or north?
Mexico has already diversified its exports. America’s share of them has fallen from 89% in 2000 to perhaps 78% this year and will fall further, according to Miguel Messmacher, head of economic planning at Mexico’s finance ministry. Sales to Latin America and Asia are growing twice as fast as those to America. The automotive industry, Mexico’s biggest exporter, is ahead of the trend: though exports to America continue to rise, they now make up only 65% of the total. Eduardo Solís, head of the industry’s national association, says he would like to get the figure down to 50% by focusing on Latin America and Europe.
Others say Mexico’s economic future will always be to the north. “We can’t just become a commodity exporter and start sending soy beans to China,” says Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign secretary. History, geography and natural resources have wedded Mexico to its wealthy neighbour: “It’s not something we chose,” he says. If the American economy is growing slowly, Mexico will just have to get a bigger chunk of it.
That task has been made harder by China. Since China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 its share of American imports has grown fast and is now the biggest. The shares of Canada and especially Japan have fallen. Mexico’s share, which almost doubled in the seven years after NAFTA came into effect, slipped after 2001. But it is edging up again (see chart 2).
China’s low wages, which lured factories away from Mexico, are rising rapidly. In 2003 Mexican pay was three times Chinese rates but now it is only 20% higher, Mr Messmacher says. The rising yuan and the cheap peso accentuate this trend.
Proximity to America, Mexico’s trump card, has been made more valuable by the high oil price. The resolution in July of a long dispute has allowed Mexican lorries to make deliveries in America, which the Mexican government reckons will reduce firms’ shipping costs by 15%. The rise of China may also help Mexico too, by forcing American companies to compete more keenly. Detroit carmakers cannot export cars to South Korea, but a Mexican factory using American parts can, notes Luis de la Calle, a former trade minister.
Luring foreign investors has been made trickier by a spike in violence. Since 2007, a crackdown on organised crime has caused Mexico’s drug-trafficking “cartels”, as they are known (though they are in fact rather competitive), to splinter and fight. Last year the murder rate was 17 per 100,000 people, a little lower than Brazil’s, but more than two-thirds up on 2007. Ernesto Cordero, the finance minister, has estimated that the violence knocks about a percentage point off Mexico’s annual growth rate.
The fighting is highly concentrated: last year 70% of mafia-related killings took place in 3% of the country’s municipalities. In Yucatán state, where tourists scramble around Mayan ruins, the murder rate is no higher than in Belgium. Last July was the busiest ever for Mexico’s foreign-tourist trade, but there are signs that the drip of bloody stories is starting to hurt bookings. In the first five months of this year, arrivals were 3.6% lower than last. Acapulco, which caters mainly to domestic tourists, has virtually emptied thanks to frequent shootings in the heart of the hotel zone.
Many of the roughest areas are in the north, where foreign investment is concentrated. In Ciudad Juárez, a centre of maquila factories that assemble products for export, the murder rate has climbed to one of the highest in the world, as the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels battle for control of the border crossing, little restrained (and often aided) by the local police. In Tamaulipas, a border state where violence surged last year, the unemployment rate has risen to 7.5%, the highest in the country. The head of a Mexican multinational with operations there found recently that his local manager had been siphoning company money to the cartels. Many rich businessmen have moved their families to America; the governor of one border state is rumoured to have done the same (his office denies it).
Investors have largely held their nerve. Foreign direct investment, which reached $30 billion in 2007 but fell to half that in 2009, is expected to recover to $20 billion this year. Businessmen play down the violence: Mr Solís admits that some car transporters have been robbed on highways, but says that this year has been better than last. This month Honda became the latest carmaker to announce plans to expand in Mexico, in spite of the insecurity.
Still, insecurity adds costs and delays. The road from Saltillo to Monterrey, the nearest big airport, has become dicey, so more people rely on Saltillo’s own tiny airport, where a single airline offers flights to Mexico City for upwards of $400. Conferences, concerts and sporting fixtures have been cancelled in Monterrey. In Coahuila on August 20th a football match was abandoned after shots were fired outside the stadium. Some foreign companies are even nervous about sending executives to Mexico City, although it has a lower murder rate than many American cities.
From Uncle Sam to Uncle Slim
Despite Mexico’s difficulties, one of its citizens is the richest person in the world. Carlos Slim, the son of a Lebanese immigrant, has made a fortune estimated by Forbes at $74 billion. The magazine reckons that last year his net worth rose by $20.5 billion.
Nearly two-thirds of Mr Slim’s wealth is thought to lie in América Móvil, the biggest or second-biggest mobile-phone operator everywhere in Latin America except Chile (where it is third). In Mexico Mr Slim’s grip is particularly strong, with 70% of the cellular market and 80% of landlines. In half the country’s 400 local areas, only his company has the infrastructure to put through calls to landlines. Not surprisingly, after accounting for purchasing power home landlines in Mexico cost 45% more than the OECD average and business lines 63% more (see chart 3). Mobiles are better value, particularly for those who do not make many calls. But basic broadband access costs nearly ten times more (per megabit per second of advertised speed) than in the rest of the OECD.
Telecoms is not the only monopolised sector. A study by the OECD and Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission (CFC) found that 31% of Mexican household spending went on products supplied in monopolistic or highly oligopolistic markets. The poorest tenth suffered most, 38% of their expenditure going on such things.
The cost of these captive markets is ruinous. Until recently, for example, firms selling generic medicines were required by law to operate a plant in Mexico. This, along with a system that allows doctors to prescribe medicines by brand rather than by generic compound, means that the market is dominated by expensive brands. Generics account for less than 17% of the drugs market, against 66.5% in America. Medicine is a third pricier than in Britain.
Time for some self-service
The labyrinth of torpitude
Transport is expensive too. The handful of budget airlines that arrived in the past decade have struggled to get take-off and landing slots at Mexico City’s airport, which are dished out by a committee dominated by incumbents. The CFC found that flights to and from Mexico City were between 40% and 80% dearer than those to less strangled airports. Intercity bus routes are dominated by four firms that have divided up the country. Fares are 10% higher than they ought to be, the CFC estimates.
Banking is similarly uncompetitive. Two banks control almost half the market for deposit accounts and two-thirds of the credit- and debit-card markets. The lack of choice means that 95% of account-holders have never switched banks. Top of the list of Saltillo businesses’ complaints is the scarcity and cost of credit.
Some of these pinch points are being addressed. The collapse last year of Mexicana, North America’s oldest airline, has presented an opportunity to auction landing slots to nimbler competitors. Drugs should get cheaper thanks to an auction system devised by the CFC for Mexico’s social-security institute. In April a new competition law introduced penalties of up to ten years in jail for collusion, and empowered the CFC to make surprise inspections. The same month it fined Mr Slim’s mobile-phone operator a record $1 billion for abusing its market dominance.
Banking has been opened to entrants such as Walmart, which has already shaken up Mexican retailing. Commercial credit is expanding: it stands at 19% of GDP, nearly double the ratio in 2003. Lending is still less than half of what it was before the banking crisis of 1994, suggesting plenty of room for growth—certainly more than in Brazil, where credit already equals about half of GDP.
Forcing competition on cosy industries is still not easy. When the government decided in 2009 to shut down Luz y Fuerza, a state-run electricity company that was costing the taxpayer $3 billion a year, it required 1,000 police in riot gear to occupy the firm’s offices. Since Luz y Fuerza shut, the wait for new connections in Mexico City has fallen from ten months to four. But its ex-employees still bring parts of the capital to a halt with protests. Labour-reform efforts, to ease hiring and firing and allow six-month trial contracts, have met opposition in congress. Even with the new competition law, few people fancy the authorities’ chances against Mr Slim’s lawyers.
The answer is to open the economy and let foreign competition force Mexican firms to adapt, believes Mr de la Calle. “If you have free trade, you don’t need structural reforms because the companies have to compete,” he says. He cites the pork industry, which used to be blighted with hog cholera. Farmers resisted pressure to eradicate it, preferring to sell low volumes at high prices. When tariffs were dropped, cheap pork from America forced Mexican farmers to clean up their act. Cholera was eliminated, output rose and prices fell.
Other industries are ripe for similar treatment. Oil is a prime candidate. Pemex, a state monopoly, handles everything from exploration to petrol pumps. Its profits contribute a third of government revenue, allowing Mexico to maintain a generous and feebly enforced tax regime. But decades of underinvestment have hurt production, which fell from 3.4m barrels a day in 2004 to 2.6m. Brazil, which has allowed foreign investment in its oilfields, is producing around 2m barrels a day and expects to be pumping 6m by 2020.
Pemex’s output has stabilised in the past year, and this month it awarded its first performance-based contracts, a precursor to getting oil majors to explore the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But efforts to make the company more efficient have been vetoed by the oil workers’ union. Refineries are poorly run; petrol stations forbid self-service.
The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think-tank, estimates that the GDP growth rate could be raised by 2.5 percentage points if the oil industry were opened up and labour and competition laws reformed. Reeling from an American-made recession, however, Mexico is hardly in the mood for a more open economy. With a presidential election next year, it would be easier to keep puttering along in the shadow of Brazil, an economy which in some ways Mexico outclasses. Mexico’s rebound from slump and its resilience to lawlessness show its underlying strength. If it could only bust the monopolistic dams that have parched its economy, its desert might one day start to bloom.
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This was a vey good piece; The Economist at its best.
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STRATFOR
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November 30, 2011
VIDEO: ABOVE THE TEARLINE: MEXICAN CARTEL VIOLENCE IN TEXAS
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton examines the recent murder allegedly
committed by Mexican cartel members and the complexity faced by law enforcement
agencies when cross-border violence occurs.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology.
Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
In this week's Above the Tearline, we are going to look at an incident that appears
to be a Mexican cartel-related murder in Texas.
Last Monday, in the Houston area, several undercover officers from a High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Areas Task Force (known as a HIDTA) were following a
tractor-trailer from south Texas transporting drugs in an undercover operation. Four
suspects ambushed the truck, firing shoulder weapons, shooting and wounding a task
force police officer and killing the driver, who media have identified as an
undercover government informant.
The true motive for the attack is unclear. There has been speculation in the media
that the suspects attacked the truck to steal the marijuana, with others speculating
the real target was the undercover informant. It is unknown if the shooters were
aware that undercover police officers were surveilling the drug load. We have heard
through our law enforcement contacts the suspects may be linked to the violent Zeta
cartel organization. The brazen nature of the ambush certainly fits their m.o., but
killing government informants in the U.S. is something the cartels have typically
tried to avoid. The pressure the feds can place on the cartels disrupts their supply
chain and causes the cartels to lose money.
The DEA has taken the lead investigative role, which is a positive step, assisted by
the Houston Police Department Homicide Division and the local sheriff's department.
However, behind the scenes, other state and federal agencies are also assisting the
DEA, to include the Texas DPS, ATF and the FBI. Three of the four suspects are
allegedly Mexican nationals, so the State Department and ICE will interface with our
Mexican counterparts, and an investigation will be conducted in Mexico to determine
if the suspects are connected to a drug trafficking organization. At the national
level, traces will also be conducted on the suspects through the entire U.S.
intelligence community. As you can see, a lot is taking place behind the scenes.
What is the Above the Tearline aspect of this video? The DEA needs to determine
whether or not a cartel source sold out the details of the undercover operation to
the bad guys. If so, the internal leak needs to be found before other drug
operations are jeopardized.
More Videos - http://www.stratfor.com/theme/video_dispatch
Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.
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http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/14/world/la-fg-mexico-michoacan-elections-20111114
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Issa Launches Probe of Alleged DEA Laundering Operation in Mexico
Was F&F a successful model that is was used for other operations?
Rep. Darrell Issa is launching a congressional investigation into the Drug Enforcement Administration following claims that the agency helped drug cartels launder money -- an operation the lawmaker said bears striking resemblance to the failed "Fast and Furious" anti-gunrunning probe.
Both operations were run by agencies within the Justice Department. Fast and Furious, which Issa and other lawmakers have been investigating all year, was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The alleged money-laundering operation was run by the DEA.
While Fast and Furious was designed to allow federal agents to trace the flow of illegal weapons to the Mexican cartels, the DEA operation reportedly was designed to allow agents to trace the flow of money.
"It looks like it's the same sort of a program," Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox News on Tuesday.
Issa wrote Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday urging him to quickly brief his staff on the DEA program, in advance of a hearing Thursday where Holder is set to testify.
"It is imperative that Congress be apprised of the true dimensions of these alleged operations immediately," Issa wrote. In a separate statement, Issa's office described the new congressional probe as an offshoot of the Fast and Furious investigation.
"We're following the evidence where it goes," Issa told Fox News.
But he posed sharp questions about the wisdom of the DEA program.
"Money is the lifeblood of the drug trade. With money they can corrupt the system in Mexico," he said, questioning whether Mexican authorities were fully aware of the DEA operation.
The DEA operation was detailed in a New York Times story published Sunday.
Anonymous officials described an effort by U.S. agents to launder or smuggle "millions of dollars" in drug money in order to monitor the flow of cash to and from the cartels in Mexico. One official told the Times there was "close supervision." Another official said the Americans worked with Mexican agents on the investigation. Officials told the newspaper that the DEA tried to seize as much as they laundered, in part through arrests at pickup locations.
The article also described how officials had to obtain Justice Department clearance to launder more than $10 million at a time, something that was approved many times.
The DEA issued a statement Tuesday defending its operations.
"The DEA has well-established mechanisms for coordinating and approving activities associated with the fight against money laundering," the DEA said. "As a result of this cooperation, DEA has seized illicit transnational criminal organization money all around the world through our partnership with law enforcement."
The DEA said it had been working "collaboratively" with Mexico to fight money laundering "for years."
"As part of that collaboration, DEA works with Mexican authorities to gather and use information about these criminal organizations to counter the threats they pose to both of our countries," the DEA said, adding that the joint investigations "have led to important advances and detentions in each country. The cooperation between the United States and Mexico is based on principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect for the jurisdiction of each country."
A Justice official said Tuesday that the department is "reviewing the letter" from Issa, and noted that the program in question has been in existence "for quite some time."
The Times said the DEA was running similar operations in other countries but only started to expand it into Mexico "in the past few years."
Issa indicated he's skeptical, particularly after the Justice Department on Friday gave Congress hundreds of pages of documents showing how Justice officials initially provided inaccurate information about Fast and Furious.
"The first answer you get from this Justice Department doesn't have a high credibility," Issa said Tuesday, adding that Thursday's hearing will mark "the first time we're expecting to see the real truth" regarding Fast and Furious.
Issa, in his letter to Holder, said the DEA allegations, "if true, raise further unsettling questions" about the risks taken on by the Justice Department.
"The existence of such a program again calls your leadership into question. The managerial structure you have implemented lacks appropriate operational safeguards to prevent the implementation of such dangerous schemes," Issa wrote.
Holder has testified that he only learned of Fast and Furious earlier this year.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...est=latestnews
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The media in Cd Juarez is reporting that authorities have confirmed alleged copkiller Gilberto Manuel Estupiñán Aguirre (left), age 20, is an active duty soldier in the U.S. Army .
The media In Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua are reporting that one of three "sicarios" arrested Wednesday after the armed robbery of a gasoline station in this border city is an active duty U.S. Army soldier.
According to authorities after their arrest the three men confessed to taking part in the murders of four Juarez police officers this year.
The men have been identified as Jesús Rubio González, age 24; Gilberto Manuel Estupiñán Aguirre, age 20; and César Benito Betancourt Griego, age 26.
Authorities claim that Gilberto Manuel Estupiñán identified himself as a soldier in the U.S. Army during his arrest and that his status was confirmed by police personnel.
The three men were in a blue Honda Accord at the time of their arrest and were in possession of a 9mm handgun and ammunition and a spare magazine for an AK-47 assault type weapon, in addition to a small amount of drugs and a bottle of Buchanon's whiskey.
The three men are alleged to have taken part in the murder of Juarez municipal police officers Joaquín Avendaño Pineda, Vidal Zatarain Valdez and Gabriel Avitia on the afternoon of September 7, 2011. The officers were intercepted by gunmen in two pickups while returning home at the end of their shift.
The three men are also alleged to have murdered municipal police officer Cordero Mireles, who was attacked and killed a day later on September 8, 2011.
At the time authorities had reported that evidence indicated the same group of gunmen were involved in both attacks.
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The media in Cd Juarez is reporting that authorities have confirmed alleged copkiller Gilberto Manuel Estupiñán Aguirre (left), age 20, is an active duty soldier in the U.S. Army .
Nosotros los haremos Army Strong.
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Recommended External Links
Image and translation of Zetas narcomanta
STRATFOR is not responsible for the content of other websites.
Zetas Narcomanta Challenges the Government
Mexican media began reporting Dec. 2 of a narcomanta attributed to Miguel “Z-40” Trevino Morales, the overall No. 2 leader of Los Zetas, that appeared in an as yet undisclosed city in Mexico. In a clear threat to Mexican authorities, the banner read, “The special forces of Los Zetas challenge the government of Mexico.” The banner went on to say that “Mexico lives and will continue under the regime of Los Zetas. Let it be clear that we are in control here and although the federal government controls other cartels, they cannot take our plazas … Look at what happened in Sinaloa and Guadalajara.” The last sentence is a reference to the mass killings and body dumps attributed to the Zetas in Culiacan and Guadalajara discovered Nov. 23.
The language used in the banner is intriguing; never before has a cartel referred to itself as a “regime,” and such brazen, adversarial terminology directed against the Mexican government is uncommon. It is difficult to imagine a drug cartel with a pedigree as violent as the Zetas wanting to assume governmental duties. Historically, while cartels have exerted influence over portions of Mexico, they have not sought to actually govern. Instead they use corruption or fear to ensure an unrestricted ability to conduct their criminal operations.
Though it specifically references the incidents in Culiacan and Guadalajara, there is no way to verify that Trevino actually commissioned the banner. Trevino has commissioned banners in the past, and, given his predilection for violence, his underlings would be unlikely to author something on his behalf without his approval. The fact that the message in this banner is so out of character suggests the possibility that it is a disinformation campaign directed against Los Zetas. If this is indeed a disinformation effort, the Sinaloa Federation, which, as the other pre-eminent cartel in Mexico, has the most to gain from increased government action against the Zetas, cannot be ruled out.
What is more interesting than the content of the banner is how little is known about its origins. No media agency has definitely stated where the banner was found — or if there were others like it. Narcomantas are prevalent in Mexico, and details of their appearances are not hard to come by in the media. Also, major messages are frequently left with the bodies of mutilated enemies to prove bona fides. But for whatever reason, no agency has been able to ascertain the location of this banner (a rumor surfaced that it appeared in Ciudad Victoria in Zetas territory, but that rumor remains unconfirmed). That six days have passed without any indication of the location suggests the Mexican government, which is constantly attempting to maintain an image of control in the war on drugs, is taking the threat seriously and is disallowing the details of the banner’s location to come out.
More Victims in Veracruz
Seven bodies were found Dec. 4 in the Adolfo Lopez Mateo neighborhood of Veracruz, Veracruz state. All of the bodies were bound and gagged, and some of them bore signs of torture. The cause of death is unconfirmed, but from photographs of the scene it appears that many were shot. As many as five of the seven bodies had their faces completely covered by their shirts, which had been pulled over their heads and fastened to their necks with duct tape. Uncorroborated witness statements said members of the state police had executed the victims.
On the surface, the location in which the bodies were dumped seems notable. The Adolfo Lopez Mateo neighborhood lies just 2 miles from Boca del Rio, where the bodies of around 35 alleged Zetas members were dumped in September. (Less than a week later, another 32 bodies were found in stash houses in the same neighborhood.) At that time, STRATFOR predicted that the Zetas would carry out reprisals in Veracruz; the forecast was accurate, but the location was not. On Nov. 23, the Zetas dumped 24 bodies in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, and 26 bodies in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, the following day. Based on the messages left at the scenes, these two events — not the Dec. 4 incident — were revenge killings for the Boca del Rio incident in September.
Notably, the Dec. 4 victims were killed in a different manner than the September victims (who were suffocated), and there were no messages left at the scene to suggest the killings were in fact reprisals. This, coupled with the unconfirmed statements suggesting state police involvement in the killings, presents a few possible explanations.
Given the long-term control the Zetas have maintained in Veracruz and the possibility that that control included coercion of or collaboration with the state police, the victims may have been connected to the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) and/or the Matazetas, who are believed to have been responsible for the September killings. With such control, it is possible that the state police acted on orders of the Zetas to kill the seven victims discovered Dec. 4.
Alternatively, Los Zetas may have killed the seven victims directly. If this were the case, they likely would have left a message with the bodies claiming retribution or providing some kind of explanation or threat. In either case, the time elapsed between the September killing of Zetas members and this possible retribution is not unreasonable; the Zetas would need time to investigate and track down the perpetrators.
There is the potential that the seven dead were members of Los Zetas and that this was a continuation of the September killings. But because the modus operandi was so different — specifically, there was no writing on the bodies or other written messages to indicate an affiliation of the victims with any group — it is unclear which cartel is responsible. What is clear is that the two mass-killing events in Boca del Rio in September were not isolated events. Rather, STRATFOR sees this series of events as an escalation of the cycle of retributive violence in Veracruz — in scale if not in frequency.
Whichever explanation is correct, it is clear that the struggle between Los Zetas and the CJNG in Veracruz is continuing, and more violence can be expected in the important port city.
(click here to view interactive map)
Nov. 29
Mexican authorities discovered the remains of three dismembered bodies in Xochitepec, Morelos state, after receiving an anonymous tip.
Mexican marines arrested Ezequiel Cardenas Rivera, the son of former Gulf cartel leader Antonio Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas Guillen, at a residence in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state.
The prison director and twenty other officials at the San Pedro Cholulu prison in Puebla state were arrested in connection with the Nov. 27 prison escape of Los Zetas cartel members.
Four banners appeared in various areas of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, addressing Mexican President Felipe Calderon and linking the president to supporting Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. The banners were signed, “The United Citizens of Juarez and Mexico.”
Nov. 30
Mexican authorities seized more than 3.9 metric tons of marijuana from a drug tunnel in Tijuana, Baja California state, running under the U.S.-Mexico border.
A narcomanta left with the body of an elderly man in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, mentioned the theft of $5 million and the name “Tono” Pena.
Dec. 1
Mexican authorities seized a synthetic drug lab in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, that housed various precursor chemicals for methamphetamine. No arrests were made.
Mexican authorities seized more than 550 kilograms (about 1,213 pounds) of methamphetamine in a drug lab in Zapotlanejo, Jalisco state.
Dec. 2
A narcomanta signed by the Knights Templar was posted on a bridge in Morelia, Michoacan state. The banner stated that the Knights Templar is not a criminal group and encouraged citizens to enjoy the “December holiday.”
After a two-month operation, the Mexican military dismantled Los Zetas communications networks in the states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi, and Tamaulipas.
A radio host was murdered at a nightclub in Chihuahua, Chihuahua State. Witness reports claim the murderer was wearing military-style clothing.
Dec. 3
Mexican authorities arrested 22 police officers throughout Tabasco state for connections to Los Zetas.
Dec. 4
The bodies of five executed individuals were discovered in Sinaloa Municipality, Sinaloa state.
Gunmen fired at the house of the mayor of Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon state.
Dec. 5
Federal Police arrested six members of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco in Acapulco, Guerrero.
Gunmen shot and killed the police chief of Saltillo, Coahuila state, and his 11-year-old son.
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http://www.policeone.com/gangs/articles/4808296-Are-Zetas-operating-as-police-impersonators-in-the-United-States/
Are Zetas operating as police impersonators in the United States?
Whether or not Zetas are conducting paramilitary, police-impersonation operations here in the US, the incident in Houston is a watershed event indeed
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Good thing in American we don't have lots of no-knock warrants being served by policeman dressed up in military robo-cop attire.
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Yes, if they were only wearing old school police uniforms, the Zetas would never be able to copy that.
Obviously US police should never serve search warrants.....
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Portfolio: Mexico to Lower Tariffs on Chinese Goods
December 8, 2011 | 1347 GMT
Click on image below to watch video:
Analyst Karen Hooper examines Mexico’s intent to drop tariffs on hundreds of Chinese goods Dec. 11 under the auspices of the World Trade Organization — a move that will likely lead to job loss and international friction.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Mexico will lower tariffs on over 200 Chinese goods Dec. 11 on the 10th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is a move that may exacerbate underemployment in Mexico, encourage the entry of cheap goods into Mexico’s domestic market and almost certainly create tension between Mexico and China within the framework of the WTO.
When China joined the WTO in 2001, it signed a bilateral deal with Mexico delaying lowering tariff barriers to trade between the two countries. Current tariffs on Chinese goods range between 50 percent and 250 percent, but will be lowered to between 20 percent and 35 percent tariff when the transitional measures expire. Though there have been ten years to prepare for this moment, Mexican businessmen have been quite vocal in recent months about their objections to the change. Textiles, shoes and toys comprise four-fifths of the products that will be affected by falling tariffs. Understandably, companies that produce these goods are concerned about the impact of an influx of cheap Chinese products that could potentially displace Mexican-made products on the Mexican domestic market.
Mexico’s textile industry has grown the fastest over the past decade, reaching nearly 8 percent in 2010. While nearly 70 percent of those textiles are exported to external markets — and in particular the United States — there is a significant market at home in Mexico’s trillion dollar economy. Mexican textile producers are concerned that the industry is vulnerable to Chinese products, which are essentially subsidized by China’s financial structure. In the shoe manufacturing industry, which employs nearly half a million people, the industry expects Chinese competition to trigger the loss of around 35,000 jobs. As this is a trend that we expect to be felt across all affected industries, job losses could be significant in the aggregate.
With presidential elections approaching in July, economic challenges will come in a close second to security concerns in Mexico. The global economic downturn of 2009 significantly destabilized labor markets in both the United States and in Mexico. Official unemployment rates in Mexico have risen from under 4 percent to around 5 percent in the past two years. However, these rates do not fully capture Mexico’s underemployed labor pool. Underemployment in the United States has risen, as well, and there has been a sharp decline over the past several years in illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico. This has been highlighted by the fact that arrests at the border in Mexico are at their lowest in about 40 years. Likely this means that many Mexicans who would otherwise have gone to the United States for work are staying in Mexico.
Mexico’s relationship with China has become increasingly important over the past decade. Imports from China have spiked from about two to 15 percent of the total Mexican imports from the world, and Mexico is not alone in Latin America. In fact, Mexico is joining a small club of Latin American states with significant manufacturing sectors under threat from Chinese competition. Both Brazil and Argentina have, in the past several years, voiced serious concerns about Chinese competition and the possible hollowing out of their own manufacturing sectors. Brazil, in particular has emphasized its concerns about China’s decision to keep the value of the yuan tied to the U.S. dollar, and in November the WTO agreed to arbitrate on the case.
As Mexican tariffs drop, we can expect to see similar tension between Mexico and China. Mutual interest in protecting domestic manufacturing will likely create a common ground for Mexico and Brazil, in particular, to cooperate together to pressure China in what has become a global dispute over the Chinese yuan and Chinese products.
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mentioned in the Gun Rights thread under the post "Grenade Walker"? Well, here are six of them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhNGWDimSUc&feature=share
The impunity of it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhMobuDCzPQ&feature=share
Btw, the 23,000 number mentioned is about 20-25,000 too low.
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By MIRIAM JORDAN
Arrests of people trying to sneak into the U.S. from Mexico have plunged to the lowest level in four decades, the latest sign that illegal immigration is on the retreat even as legislatures, Congress and presidential candidates hotly debate the issue.
Arrests of migrants sneaking into the U.S plunge to lowest level in decades, indicating illegal immigration is on the retreat even as states, Congress and GOP presidential candidates hotly debate the issue. Miriam Jordan explains on The News Hub.
.Behind the historic drop is a steep decline in the birthrate in Mexico and greater opportunities there relative to the weak U.S. economy. Stepped-up U.S. patrols along the border make it both riskier and more expensive for Mexicans to attempt to enter the country.
Government crackdowns on U.S. employers who hire illegal workers also have discouraged immigrants. The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether an Arizona statute targeting illegal immigrants interferes with U.S. law.
The decline in Mexican immigrants is being felt as far away as farms in Washington and Michigan, which weathered labor shortages during the recent apple harvest.
The U.S. arrested 340,252 migrants along the Mexico-U.S. border in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30—down 24% from the year before and the lowest level in 39 years, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security.
In the previous fiscal year, agents apprehended 447,731 illegal crossers in the Southwest, compared with 1.6 million in 2000, the peak year. The last time the border was this quiet was 1972, when agents caught 321,326 people.
"We have reached the end of an era," said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "Even if immigration increases some after this recession, it won't rebound back to levels we saw in the early 2000s."
Rafael Garcia, a 40-year-old undocumented immigrant in Washington State, said he would discourage Mexican friends from attempting to enter the U.S. illegally, even though he has worked in vineyards, apple orchards and dairy farms in the country for two decades.
"You have to be really desperate to come here now," said Mr. Garcia, who is married with three U.S.-born daughters. "It's so hard to get across, and then you have all these states passing laws to get rid of you."
The dramatic decrease in border arrests—which the U.S. considers a key gauge of how many people try to enter illegally—is supported by figures that show a shrinking number of illegal immigrants already in the country.
Journal Community
..In 2010, that undocumented population was estimated at 11 million by the independent Pew Hispanic Center, down 8% from its peak of 12 million in 2007.
Mexicans constitute about 60% of undocumented U.S. immigrants. "Current flows are as low as we have ever seen them," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior researcher at the Pew center. "More unauthorized Mexicans have been leaving than coming."
At 150,000 last year, Mexican immigration to the U.S. was one-fifth of what it was in 2000, when 750,000 Mexicans flocked to the U.S., the majority of them illegally. All told, net immigration from Mexico is "essentially zero," said Mr. Passel.
Nearly 21,500 agents, about twice as many as in 2004, guard the Southwestern border. They are backed by hundreds of miles of fencing and high-tech surveillance, including thermal imaging and unmanned aerial systems.
Mexican drug cartels also may play a role in discouraging people. (Ya think?!?) The cartels often ply the same routes to the U.S. that undocumented immigrants use, making those paths violent and dangerous. Some crossers have been forced to serve as drug carriers for cartels.
Some demographers say more undocumented Mexicans may be leaving the U.S. than arriving as a downturn in construction, hospitality and other industries makes low-skill jobs scarce. Thousands of illegal immigrants have lost their jobs after the U.S. has audited company payrolls to find undocumented workers.
"No one knows better than the migrants themselves about the state of the U.S. economy. They hear that their cousin, uncle and friends are without work," said Primitivo Rodriguez, a Mexican migration expert who formerly worked for the Mexican Human Rights Commission.
Back in Mexico, families have shrunk, providing less incentive for young people to leave. In 1970, each Mexican woman bore an average of 6.8 children. By 1990, that number was 3.4. Today, the birthrate is at replacement level, about 2.1.
That "enormous demographic shift," coupled with a better economic climate in Mexico, is helping curb emigration, said Gordon Hanson, an international economist at the University of California, San Diego.
To be sure, annual immigration to the U.S. from its neighbor has climbed and receded before. It dropped by one-third after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The annual influx of Mexicans averaged 550,000 between 2003 and 2006, according to Pew. It has since tumbled.
Still, illegal immigration remains a contentious political issue. More than one million people have been deported since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. Deportations hit a record 397,000 in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. The president favors putting undocumented workers on the path to legalization. But as the 2012 election approaches, no immigration bill is expected to come before the House and Senate.
The impasse has propelled several states, such as Arizona, Alabama and Georgia, to pass laws to curb illegal immigration. Supporters say undocumented workers are taking jobs from Americans at a time of high unemployment and burdening cash-strapped public governments.
Except for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said those in the U.S. more than 20 years should be able to earn legal status, top Republican presidential candidates oppose letting illegal immigrants remain in the U.S.
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Mexico Security Memo: The Disinformation Continues in Tamaulipas
Response to a Narcomanta
Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, the No. 2 leader of Los Zetas, may have responded Dec. 12 to the narcomanta found Dec. 6 in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state. Attributed to Trevino, the Dec. 6 banner referred to Los Zetas as a "regime" and directly challenged the Mexican government for control of plazas in Zetas territory.
Ten narcomantas reportedly signed by Trevino were placed throughout Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. The banners deny commissioning the threat to the government, saying the Zetas have no interest in challenging or governing Mexico. According to the response, Trevino said he is "aware that you cannot and should not fight against any government" and that he has "no motive to put such stupidness [sic] on a message." In the response, Trevino implied that whoever wrote the original message was trying to set him up by provoking a violent response from the Mexican government.
Trevino has never been one to shy away from violence, so it seems unlikely that he would issue such a bold challenge in the first message, then turn around and refute it days later. If his response is sincere, then the Dec. 6 narcomantas were part of a disinformation campaign against the Zetas (though the possibility that his response is also part of the disinformation campaign against him cannot be ruled out). The Sinaloa Federation, which is battling the Zetas for primacy in Mexico, would be the likely culprit behind the false narcomanta because it would have much to gain from military clashes with the Zetas. The Gulf cartel -- which has been in a continuous battle with the Zetas, its former enforcement arm, since the two split violently in February 2010 -- could also have been responsible for the Dec. 6 banner. Given its internal turmoil, the Gulf cartel would benefit the most, especially in the near term, if the government would turn its attention away from that cartel and toward the Zetas.
The Methodology of Identifying Cartels
On Dec. 6, a statement from the Jalisco state Public Security Secretariat indicated the presence of a group not previously seen in Guadalajara. According to the statement, La Barredora, a Sinaloa Federation affiliate from Acapulco, Guerrero state, left messages with three bodies found Dec. 5. Some Mexican news outlets published portions of the statement, which characterize La Barredora as a new organized crime organization operating in the city. The Sinaloa-affiliated Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Los Zetas-affiliated La Resistencia already operate in and vie for control of Guadalajara, and the presence of La Barredora in the Jalisco capital could complicate the situation.
Indeed, Guadalajara exemplifies just how difficult it can be to determine which cartel is active in a given location -- and which cartel is responsible for a given event, such as an assassination or a clash with the military. Indeed, the Mexican cartel landscape is constantly evolving, giving rise to new groups while leading to the demise of others. Given the complexity and fluidity of this landscape, STRATFOR has decided to share the methodology of how we identify where the cartels operate and how we come to the conclusions we do.
We should begin this discussion by saying virtually every report and communique -- from the Mexican government and cartels alike -- is met with scrutiny. Deception, propaganda and disinformation are simply additional theaters in Mexico's war on drugs, and we are careful to factor these into our assessments. However, there are situations in which we can determine who the victims or aggressors were based on what we see in photographs and government-released video statements or read in government reports.
For example, messages at a body dump do not necessarily take the form of narcomantas but, rather, can be displayed as words or symbols written on the bodies themselves. In photographs of the 35 bodies dumped Sept. 20 in the Boca del Rio neighborhood of Veracruz, we can see that "Por Z" was written in black on the torso of each victim. This indicated the likelihood that the victims were killed because they were members or associates of Los Zetas. Two days later, another 14 victims were found in the same location with "Por Z" written on the torsos, suggesting the same group was responsible for both incidents. (That all but one of the 49 victims were strangled to death also suggests a strong connection.)
The "Por Z" signature contrasts with the signature left on the victims of Los Zetas. In such cases, we have often seen a "Z" sliced into the victims' torsos with a knife, often across the width of the torso.
When we examine photographs of ambush or gunbattle scenes, we look at what the bodies (or captured operators) are wearing. The type of clothing, type or style of any tactical gear, consistencies in those elements among all of the bodies present and whether the tactical gear has been personalized by the individuals to fit their needs and fighting styles, such as a tactical pouch on a belt, are all indicators that can help determine to which cartel the operators belong.
We also examine pictures of the weapons involved, particularly the types and conditions of those weapons, to help identify the cartel that used them. Consistency among the weapons for functionality or professional tactical use can reveal much about their operators. For example, if all of the weapons at a crime scene are AR-15 assault rifles and in well-maintained condition, the force that used them likely was professionally trained and experienced military personnel. But if the weapons found at a scene are an assortment of hunting rifles, AK-47s and miscellaneous handguns -- past evidence suggests such assorted caches are typically in poor condition -- the group likely had little or no formalized training. In these cases, we can likely rule out cartels or enforcer arm groups that comprise military personnel.
Such details do not necessarily identify which group was involved, but they help eliminate many possible suspects. When looking at the photos, we are constantly comparing what is seen in the images to what is known of particular groups in the given region, and when anomalies appear, we widen the search to include groups traditionally outside the area that fit those anomalies.
In interview or interrogation videos, we correlate what is said by the suspect with where the individual was captured and his known affiliations and areas of operation. We also investigate the individual's history, and then we examine the video for other indicators, such as body language, expressions, mannerisms and even blinking, which may lend to or undermine credibility.
As the organized crime landscape grows more complex in Mexico, and as the battle for territory grows more intense, it is very important to methodically determine which groups are operating where. These indicators all contribute to tracking the movement and activity of the cartels in Mexico.
(click here to view interactive map)
Dec. 6
• Two gunmen died when the Mexican military repelled an attack by gunmen in Ojuelos, Jalisco state.
• A peace activist representing the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity was kidnapped while traveling in Aquila, Michoacan state.
• Mexican authorities reported the discovery of a clandestine grave in Ahuacuotzingo, Guerrero state. One body has been recovered, but authorities believe up to 20 bodies still remain in the grave.
• Gunmen attacked Mexican soldiers in Acapulco, Guerrero state, while the soldiers were on patrol. All gunmen managed to escape after soldiers repelled the attack.
• Gunmen killed the aunt and cousin of former Gulf cartel leader Ulises "El Mojo" Martinez Gonzalez in Cuernavaca, Morelos state. El Mojo was killed in a confrontation with federal police in June 2011.
• Mexican authorities presented the arrest of six members of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, including Gilberto "El Comandante Gil" Castrejon Morales, a senior member of the group.
Dec. 7
• Mexican authorities arrested three alleged members of the Zetas-aligned Milenio cartel for their involvement in the deaths of 26 individuals in Guadalajara, Jalisco state.
Dec. 8
• In Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state, Mexican authorities seized 205 metric tons of chemical precursors from a vessel originating from China. According to the Mexican government, the shipment was destined for Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala.
• Mexican authorities arrested 20 Los Zetas operators, including two plaza bosses, in a sports bar in Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon state.
Dec. 9
• Mexican authorities dismantled an explosive device at the Ramon de la Fuente Psychiatric Hospital in Mexico City. The device was discovered during a routine patrol.
Dec. 10
• Eleven gunmen were killed and two were arrested during a confrontation between gunmen and Mexican soldiers in Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas state.
Dec. 11
• A group of gunmen attacked an ambulance transporting patients in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. Two patients and the ambulance driver were killed in the attack.
Dec. 12
• In a graffiti message on a wall addressed to the governor of Chihuahua City, Chihuahua state, a group known as Gente Nueva said it was in the city for a "house cleaning."
• An explosive detonated at a secret cockfighting event, killing one individual and injuring nine in Cerro Gordo, Veracruz state. Mexican authorities discovered another explosive device that failed to detonate in the same area.
• At least 10 narcomantas were found Dec. 12 signed by Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales alleging that banners found the previous week challenging Mexican and U.S. authorities and purporting to be signed by Trevino were false.
• Mexican authorities arrested senior Zetas member Raul Lucio "El Lucky" Hernandez Lechuga at a ranch in Cordoba, Veracruz state.
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Mexico says captured cartel leader had arsenal
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO | AP – Tue, Dec 13, 2011Email
…
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities said Tuesday that an alleged founder of the Zetas drug cartel had an arsenal of 169 weapons when he was captured Monday, and may have been linked to the abduction of nine Mexican marines.
Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said suspect Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga oversaw Zetas operations around the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, where nine marines disappeared earlier this year.
Vergara said a suspect was killed and a marine wounded in a firefight that erupted during Hernandez Lechuga's capture Monday in the Veracruz state city of Cordoba. The bust was the result of a yearlong intelligence operation, Vergara said.
Marines found 133 rifles, five grenade launchers, 29 grenades and 36 pistols at the scene of the raid near a highway. Marines also found bulletproof vests with the letter "Z'', the zetas symbol, on the front.
Vergara said Hernandez Lechuga was one of Mexico's 37 most wanted drug traffickers, and that with his arrest, 22 of those 37 have either been killed or detained.
The Zetas have been linked to some of the apparent abductions of Mexican marines, but Vergara didn't say what specific evidence authorities had of Hernandez Lechuga's involvement in the cases.
The apparent abductions of Mexican navy personnel have been shrouded in mystery, with the navy previously acknowledging that three marines and a navy cadet were abducted by suspected drug cartel gunmen in August in Veracruz, the state's largest city.
Later that month, the navy said it had found four bodies in a pit on the outskirts of Veracruz city, and that the remains might be those of the missing marines, but it never publicly confirmed that was the case.
At a Tuesday news conference where Hernandez Lechuga and four alleged associates were paraded before the media, Vergara said a total of nine marines had disappeared, but didn't say whether any of them had been found.
Mexican drug cartels have kidnapped and killed military personnel before, but such incidents remain relatively rare.
Hernandez Lechuga was the leader of the Zetas in about 10 states, including Veracruz. The federal government had offered a reward of 15 million pesos, or about $1.2 million, for information leading to his arrest. Vergara said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was also offering a $1 million reward for Hernandez Lechuga, known by the nickname "Lucky."
The Zetas organization was formed by a small group of elite soldiers based in Tamaulipas state, across the border from Texas, who deserted to work for the Gulf drug cartel in the 1990s.
The Zetas split from their former allies in the Gulf cartel last year, setting off bloody fights throughout Mexico as they sought to expand south.
In Veracruz, the Zetas are believed to be locked in a bloody turf battle with groups allied with the Sinaloa cartel.
Also Tuesday, gunmen killed a town's deputy mayor and her bodyguard and wounded the town's police chief and his family while they were in the northern city of Chihuahua, authorities said.
Attackers opened fire on the two cars being used by the officials from the town of Gran Morelos, said the Chihuahua state prosecutors' spokesman, Carlos Gonzalez.
He said deputy mayor Idalia Ayala and her bodyguard died in one car. Police chief Miguel Gomez was in the second with his wife and two children, and all were wounded and taken to a hospital, Gonzalez said.
Gomez was named police chief after last month's arrest of Gran Morelos' top cop. Authorities said soldiers caught the police chief while he and police officers from the nearby town of Belisario Dominguez met with a boss for La Linea, a gang of hit men for the Juarez Cartel.
In neighboring Coahuila state, gunmen killed the director of the prison in the capital city of Saltillo, authorities said.
Serafin Pena Santos was ambushed Tuesday afternoon as he drove through a residential area of the northern city, state prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors didn't give a motive in the killing, but said the assailants used automatic rifles, weapons commonly used by Mexico's drug traffickers.
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Associated Press writers Ricardo Chavez in Ciudad Juarez and Oscar Villalba in Piedras Negras contributed to this report.
P.C.
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Summary
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) announced Enrique Pena Nieto as its presidential nominee, positioning him to run against Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and a yet-to-be-named candidate from the ruling National Action Party (PAN) in the July 2012 election. Mexican voters are ready for a shift away from the PAN after years of drug cartel-related violence. Pena and the PRI currently lead in polls, but Lopez Obrador’s resurgence under a united PRD could lead to a close vote.
Analysis
Mexico’s centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on Dec. 17 announced that former Mexico state Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto would be its official nominee for the July 1, 2012, presidential election. Pena Nieto’s opponent from the leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) is former Federal District Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The ruling National Action Party (PAN) has yet to name its candidate, but it is likely to choose Josefina Vazquez Mota.
November polling from Consulta Mitofsky showed the PRI leading with 40 percent, followed by the PAN with 21 percent, the PRD with 17 percent and 22 percent undecided. Polling for individual candidates showed Pena Nieto with a 43 percent approval rating and Lopez Obrador (before he became the PRD’s official candidate) around 20 percent. Vazquez held a 52 percent approval rating in the PAN, ahead of intra-party rivals Ernesto Cordero and Santiago Creel.
In an environment characterized by skyrocketing violence, the ruling PAN is at an extreme disadvantage in this election cycle. The PRI is currently leading in the polls, but a united effort from the left could make the PRD competitive in the election.
The National Action Party
The PAN has lost much credibility as a result of the conservatively estimated 50,000 violent deaths attributed to the ongoing fight against the cartels, and Mexicans have been signaling that they want to see a new party in control of the government. President Felipe Calderon had been hoping to name Cordero as his successor in the tradition of past Mexican presidents, but the popularity of longtime PAN politician Vazquez among both the public and the party’s political elite pushed Calderon to shift his support to her.
No matter who the PAN chooses as its candidate, their campaign will suffer from the legacy of 12 years of PAN rule characterized by an uncertain national economic environment and escalating violence. Furthermore, the PAN can no longer claim to be the party coming in from the outside — a position from which the PAN successfully unseated the PRI after 70 years of rule in 2000.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party
Pena Nieto is kicking off the presidential race at a considerable advantage. He has projected a carefully cultivated charismatic persona, has excellent relationships with Mexico’s major businessmen, media moguls and the core voters of the PRI and is generally well respected as a strong decision maker. Although the official campaign season will begin in late March, it has long been clear that Pena Nieto would be the PRI candidate.
Pena Nieto is currently maintaining his popularity — but not without difficulty. His opponents likely will point to gaffes such as a recent interview in which he was unable to recall his favorite books, as well as darker scandals from his past.
The Revolutionary Democratic Party
Though currently behind in the polls, the PRD cannot yet be discounted, and Lopez Obrador, as the representative of Mexico’s left, likely will pose the strongest challenge to Pena Nieto. A strong proponent of leftist reform in Mexico, Lopez Obrador has a long history in Mexican politics. After his loss in the 2006 elections to Calderon, Lopez Obrador denounced the results, declared himself the legitimate president of Mexico, and embarked on a yearslong tour of the country with his declared government. In the process, Lopez Obrador radicalized his position, moving to the far left of the political spectrum and creating a rift within the PRD.
This rift seriously weakened the party over the past five years, leaving it with control over only a few governorships, which are a key aspect of gaining power in Mexico. Some 20 Mexican states have PRI governors that can wield their funding and political influence to the benefit of their candidate. Similarly, the PAN’s control over federal institutions and their budgets will make it possible for them to influence social expenditures to the benefit of their candidate. With only three states — Chiapas, Guerrero and likely Oaxaca (with a PRD/PAN alliance government) — and the Federal District headed by friendly PRD operatives, Lopez Obrador will be at a disadvantage.
However, in spite of this setback and the political splits caused by his reaction to the 2006 loss, Lopez Obrador was an effective and highly popular mayor of Mexico City from 2000-2005 and retains significant support and credibility as a voice for Mexico’s political left. A crucial event for the left occurred when current Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard decided in mid-November not to enter the presidential race as a PRD candidate. Had Ebrard — whose well-respected record as mayor would have made him a popular presidential candidate — entered the race, the competition between the two would have further divided the PRD and likely knocked the left out of serious competition in the presidential election and reduced the party’s chances of gaining seats in the legislature.
With the PRD appearing to be united behind Lopez Obrador, who has also reduced his inflammatory rhetoric and taken a more conciliatory approach to Mexico’s varied power centers, the left has a credible chance of appealing to Mexico’s approximately 50 million people living in poverty by promising greater attention to social welfare. While the PRI remains firmly in the lead, a united left under Lopez Obrador will prove to be a powerful force in this election.
Read more: Mexico's Political Parties Look Ahead to 2012 Presidential Election | STRATFOR
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US mom, 2 daughters killed in Mexico attacks
Buses were targeted in apparent violent robbery spree, officials say
A group of five gunmen attacked three buses in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Thursday, killing a total of seven passengers in what authorities said appeared to be a violent robbery spree.
The Americans killed were a mother and her two daughters who were returning to visit relatives in the region, known as the Huasteca, said an official in the neighboring state of Hidalgo, where the mother was born.
Hidalgo state regional assistant secretary Jorge Rocha identified the dead U.S. mother as Maria Sanchez Hernandez, 39, of Fort Worth, Texas, and the daughters as Karla, 19, and Cristina, 13. Rocha said all three held dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship. A 14-year-old Mexican nephew traveling with the three was also killed.
A U.S. Embassy official confirmed the women's nationalities, but could offer no information on their ages or hometowns. The official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said consular authorities were offering assistance to the victims' relatives.
Story: Mexico disbands entire police force in top port of Veracruz
While funeral plans were unclear, Rocha said Sanchez Hernandez's mother wants her daughter to be buried in Mexico.
Three other Mexican citizens were killed in the Thursday attacks on the three buses.
The five gunmen who allegedly carried out the attacks were later killed by soldiers.
Earlier in their spree, the gunmen shot to death three people and killed a fourth with grenade in the nearby town of El Higo, Veracruz.
'Exercise caution'
On Thursday, the U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, a Mexican border city north of where the attacks occurred, said in a statement that "several vehicles," including the buses, were attacked, but did not specify what the other vehicles were.
The consulate urged Americans to "exercise caution" when traveling in Veracruz, and "avoid intercity road travel at night."
While the specific area where the Thursday attacks occurred is not frequented by foreign travelers, other parts of the Huasteca — a hilly, verdant area on the Gulf coast — are popular among Mexican tourists and some foreigners.
Story: Mexico makes huge meth precursor chemicals seizure
The attack occurred near the border with the state of Tamaulipas, an area that has been the scene of bloody battles between the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels.
Meanwhile, the tortured bodies of 10 people were found in northern Veracruz, local media reported Friday, as attacks in the region intensify between the rival cartels.
In September, 35 bodies were dumped along a downtown highway in the Veracruz city of Boca del Rio.
More than 45,000 people have been killed in cartel-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.
P.C.
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PC, besides "tighten our border" (I agree, although it's a lot less porous than it was), and maybe not vacation in Mexico, what are we suppose to do? Get involved somehow? I mean, it's interesting and sad to read posts about Mexicans dying in Mexico, killed by Mexicans, especially since America is the primary cause being the number one market for their drugs, but what is America suppose to do about it?
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http://www.michaelyon-online.com/mexico-a-very-interesting-talk-by-general-ret.-barry-mccaffrey.htm
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Associated Press
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico—A vicious fight among inmates armed with makeshift knives, clubs and even stones left 31 people dead in a prison in a drug cartel-plagued state in northern Mexico, authorities said.
Another 13 prisoners were wounded in the brawl in the penitentiary in the Gulf Coast city of Altamira, Tamaulipas state's Public Safety Department said in a statement.
The fight started when a group of inmates burst into a section of the prison they were banned from and attacked the prisoners housed there, the department said.
Local media said the fight was between members of the rival Gulf and Zetas drug cartels but authorities wouldn't confirm the reports. Tamaulipas state has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the two former allies.
Tamaulipas state officials said many of the dead were killed with makeshift knives. A state official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said several of the inmates were beaten to death with clubs or stones.
Soldiers and marines managed to regain control of the prison, the official said.
The safety department said 22 of the inmates killed were serving sentences for state crimes and nine for federal offenses. It gave no other details.
The port of Altamira in southern Tamaulipas, near the border with the state of Veracruz, is in a region that has seen a spike in drug-violence in the last two months. Authorities say the port is used to bring in cocaine and precursor chemicals used to make methamphetamine into Mexico.
In 2010, four inmates at the Altamira prison were killed when an armed gang stormed the penitentiary as 11 inmates were being transferred. Authorities did not confirm reports that the raid was an attempt to free prisoners. Gang raids on prisons are common in Tamaulipas.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/01/06/f-mexico-q-a-walter-mckay.html
BTW, see the entry on the Rest in Peace thread yesterday for an example of deaths in a tourist area being underreported by authorities.
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WSJ:
By JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA
MEXICO CITY—When a top Mexican or Colombian drug lord is captured, events normally go something like this: He gets extradited to the U.S. and makes a closed-door deal with prosecutors to give information on the drugs trade while getting a reduced sentence in return. The public finds out little to nothing of the details.
But the upcoming Chicago trial of the son of one of Mexico's top drug lords has broken all the rules. This time, Jesús Zambada Niebla is going mano a mano with U.S. prosecutors, with both sides trading allegations that have raised eyebrows across the U.S.-Mexico border.
In pre-trial motions, Mr. Zambada alleges the U.S. government lets the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful criminal organization, to import tons of illegal drugs into the U.S. in exchange for information on other cartels.
Mr. Zambada, 36 years old, is no ordinary accuser: He is the son of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, the co-head of the Sinaloa cartel alongside Mexico's most famous trafficker, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán.
The U.S. government has flatly denied the claims. But it has acknowledged in court filings that it received information for years from a close associate of the two Sinaloa cartel chiefs.
The pretrial wrangling provides a rare glimpse of both the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel and the complex and ambiguous relationships that drug traffickers and law-enforcement agents have with the informants who act as the couriers between the two camps.
Mr. Zambada's allegations come at a time when doubts are growing about the U.S.'s role in Mexico's drug war as well as Mexican President Felipe Calderón strategy in the conflict which has claimed more than 46,000 lives in the last five years.
Jesús Zambada was arrested in Mexico in early 2009, after a controversial meeting with U.S. law enforcement agents at a Sheraton Hotel next to the U.S. embassy in downtown Mexico City. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2010. Mr. Zambada's federal trial in Chicago is set to begin sometime this year. Mr. Zambada's claims were made as part of his legal defense in pretrial legal filings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Enlarge Image
Close.Mr. Zambada doesn't deny drug trafficking. Rather, he says he did so with the permission of U.S. drug-enforcement agents and was promised immunity as part of an agreement with the U.S. government.
Both Mr. Zambada's defense lawyers and U.S. prosecutors declined to comment. Mr. Guzmán and Ismael Zambada are fugitives.
So far, the Chicago court filings have provided startling revelations. U.S. officials as well as Mr. Zambada, for instance, say that one of the Sinaloa cartel's top officials has been a U.S. informant for years.
The alleged informant, Humberto Loya, a Mexican lawyer, has long been a top confidant of Mr. Guzmán and Ismael Zambada, the Sinaloa cartel chiefs, according to sworn affidavits. Mr. Loya's location is unknown. A U.S. federal indictment of Mr. Loya and other top Sinaloa cartel capos in 1995 described Mr. Loya's alleged role in paying off Mexican government officials and altering judicial documents to protect the cartel.
Once, according to the indictment, Mr. Loya allegedly paid a Mexican police official $1 million to free Mr. Guzmán's brother from custody.
In 2000, Mr. Loya agreed to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement officials by providing information on drug trafficking operations of rival cartels, according to a pretrial court filings submitted by prosecutors.
A different Drug Enforcement Administration agent said that Mr. Loya gave the tip that led to Mexico's largest cocaine bust—the 2007 seizure of 23 tons of cocaine belonging to the rival Juarez cartel, according to an affidavit submitted by Patrick Hearn, a Washington-based U.S. prosecutor.
In 2008, the DEA's Mexico City chief David Gaddis recommended that the U.S. drop Mr. Loya's 1995 indictment. Prosecutors followed his recommendation.
"It was the only time I had ever been involved in asking for a dismissal of an indictment against a cooperating defendant," wrote DEA agent, Manuel Castañón, in an affidavit.
Mr. Loya's alleged role is central to Jesús Zambada's defense. Mr. Zambada's lawyers argue that the U.S. provided their client and top Sinaloa cartel figures with immunity in exchange for information through Mr. Loya from "at least" 2004.
"Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of [Mr. Zambada's] father, Ismael Zambada and "Chapo" Guzmán were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs ... into ... the United States and were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels," Mr. Zambada's lawyers wrote. "Indeed the Unites States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel."
U.S. prosecutors reject the claims as "simply untrue."
They also noted that Mr. Guzmán and Ismael Zambada have been indicted in absentia several times, and both have been placed on high priority "kingpin" lists by the U.S. government. Jesús Zambada himself was also indicted in 2003.
Over the years, many top drug traffickers, especially from Colombia, have worked out agreements with U.S. prosecutors to turn themselves in and provide information in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Such deals, however, are complicated. In most successful cases, the trafficker chooses a U.S. lawyer, often a former prosecutor who is trusted by current prosecutors. After numerous meetings, often in third countries, both sides reach a deal. It is rare for there to be a trial.
In an affidavit, Mr. Castañón, the DEA agent, wrote that Mr. Guzmán, the drug lord, asked Mr. Loya in 2009 to set up the meeting in Mexico City between Mr. Zambada and the DEA at the behest of Mr. Zambada's father, Ismael Zambada. The elder Zambada wanted his son out of the business, Mr. Hearn, the prosecutor, wrote. In exchange, he said, Jesús Zambada would cooperate with the U.S. government.
In Chicago, where in 2009 he was again indicted for drug trafficking after his extradition to the U.S., Mr. Zambada is also accused of trying to obtain rocket-propelled grenade launchers and bazookas, which U.S. officials allege were to be used on attacks on U.S. and Mexican government installations. "I want to blow things up," Mr. Zambada said, according to testimony in a court filling from another confidential informant.
The Department of Justice approved an initial meeting between the DEA and Mr. Zambada which was supposed to take place on March 17, 2009, the U.S. government says. Mr. Zambada drove to Mexico City to meet with DEA agents who flew in from out of town.
What happened at the meeting is in dispute. But the court filings reflect that both sides agree things went awry and the DEA station chief canceled the meeting at the last minute.
Mr. Castañón, the DEA agent, wrote in his affidavit that the agents met with Mr. Loya at the Sheraton Hotel next door to the U.S. embassy to tell him the meeting was off. But Mr. Loya, who was "visibly nervous," returned to the hotel shortly after with Jesus Zambada, surprising the agents.
Mr. Castañón wrote in his affidavit that he told Mr. Zambada he couldn't make any promises, but discussed future cooperation. Mr. Zambada's defense attorneys assert that the agents told him they would quash the Washington indictment in exchange for more information against rival cartels.
The next morning, Jesús Zambada and five bodyguards were arrested by Mexican army troops, who, an army spokesman said, responded to anonymous complaints from neighbors in one of Mexico City's toniest neighborhoods about the presence of armed men in vehicles.
Mr. Zambada is now being held in solitary confinement in a four-foot-by-six foot cell in a maximum security prison near Detroit, his lawyers said in a court filing.
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AP Exclusive: Border Patrol to toughen policy
A Border Patrol agent works in front of a color-coded chart at a detention center Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, in Imperial Beach, Calif. The Border Patrol is moving to end its revolving-door policy of turning migrants around to Mexico without any punishment in what amounted to an invitation to immediately try their luck again. (AP Photo - Gregory Bull)
ELLIOT SPAGAT
From Associated Press
January 17, 2012 6:53 AM EST
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The U.S. Border Patrol is moving to halt a revolving-door policy of sending migrants back to Mexico without any punishment.
The agency this month is overhauling its approach on migrants caught illegally crossing the 1,954-mile border that the United States shares with Mexico. Years of enormous growth at the federal agency in terms of staff and technology have helped drive down apprehensions of migrants to 40-year lows.
The number of agents since 2004 has more than doubled to 21,000. The Border Patrol has blanketed one-third of the border with fences and other physical barriers, and spent heavily on cameras, sensors and other gizmos. Major advances in fingerprinting technology have vastly improved intelligence on border-crossers. In the 2011 fiscal year, border agents made 327,577 apprehensions on the Mexican border, down 80 percent from more than 1.6 million in 2000. It was the Border Patrol's slowest year since 1971.
It's a far cry from just a few years ago. Older agents remember being so overmatched that they powerlessly watched migrants cross illegally, minutes after catching them and dropping them off at the nearest border crossing. Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher, who joined the Border Patrol in 1987, recalls apprehending the same migrant 10 times in his eight-hour shift as a young agent.
The Border Patrol now feels it has enough of a handle to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches, from areas including Texas' Rio Grande Valley to San Diego. The "Consequence Delivery System" — a key part of the Border Patrol's new national strategy to be announced within weeks — relies largely on tools that have been rolled out over the last decade on parts of the border and expanded. It divides border crossers into seven categories, ranging from first-time offenders to people with criminal records.
Punishments vary by region but there is a common thread: Simply turning people around after taking their fingerprints is the choice of last resort. Some, including children and the medically ill, will still get a free pass by being turned around at the nearest border crossing, but they will be few and far between.
"What we want to be able to do is make that the exception and not necessarily the norm," Fisher told The Associated Press.
Consequences can be severe for detained migrants and expensive to American taxpayers, including felony prosecution or being taken to an unfamiliar border city hundreds of miles away to be sent back to Mexico. One tool used during summers in Arizona involves flying migrants to Mexico City, where they get one-way bus tickets to their hometowns. Another releases them to Mexican authorities for prosecution south of the border. One puts them on buses to return to Mexico in another border city that may be hundreds of miles away.
In the past, migrants caught in Douglas, Ariz., were given a bologna sandwich and orange juice before being taken back to Mexico at the same location on the same afternoon, Fisher said. Now, they may spend the night at an immigration detention facility near Phoenix and eventually return to Mexico through Del Rio, Texas, more than 800 miles away.
Those migrants are effectively cut off from the smugglers who helped them cross the border, whose typical fees have skyrocketed to between $3,200 and $3,500 and are increasingly demanding payment upfront instead of after crossing, Fisher said. At minimum, they will have to wait longer to try again as they raise money to pay another smuggler.
"What used to be hours and days is now being translated into days and weeks," said Fisher.
The new strategy was first introduced a year ago in the office at Tucson, Ariz., the patrol's busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Field supervisors ranked consequences on a scale from 1 to 5 using 15 different yardsticks, including the length of time since the person was last caught and per-hour cost for processing.
The longstanding practice of turning migrants straight around without any punishment, known as "voluntary returns," ranked least expensive — and least effective.
Agents got color-coded, wallet-sized cards — also made into posters at Border Patrol stations — that tells them what to do with each category of offender. For first-time violators, prosecution is a good choice, with one-way flights to Mexico City also scoring high. For known smugglers, prosecution in Mexico is the top pick.
The Border Patrol has introduced many new tools in recent years without much consideration to whether a first-time violator merited different treatment than a repeat crosser.
"There really wasn't much thought other than, 'Hey, the bus is outside, let's put the people we just finished processing on the bus and therefore wherever that bus is going, that's where they go,'" Fisher said.
Now, a first-time offender faces different treatment than one caught two or three times. A fourth-time violator faces other consequences.
The number of those who have been apprehended in the Tucson sector has plunged 80 percent since 2000, allowing the Border Patrol to spend more time and money on each of the roughly 260 migrants caught daily. George Allen, an assistant sector chief, said there are 188 seats on four daily buses to border cities in California and Texas. During summers, a daily flight to Mexico City has 146 seats.
Only about 10 percent of those apprehended now get "voluntary returns" in the Tucson sector, down from about 85 percent three years ago, said Rick Barlow, the sector chief. Most of those who are simply turned around are children, justified by the Border Patrol on humanitarian grounds.
Fisher acknowledged that the new strategy depends heavily on other agencies. Federal prosecutors must agree to take his cases. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must have enough beds in its detention facilities.
In Southern California, the U.S. attorney's office doesn't participate in a widely used Border Patrol program that prosecutes even first-time offenders with misdemeanors punishable by up to six months in custody, opting instead to pursue only felonies for the most egregious cases, including serial border-crossers and criminals.
Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, said limited resources, including lack of jail space, force her to make choices.
"It has not been the practice (in California) to target and prosecute economic migrants who have no criminal histories, who are coming in to the United States to work or to be with their families," Duffy said. "We do target the individuals who are smuggling those individuals."
Fisher would like to refer more cases for prosecution south of the border, but the Mexican government can only prosecute smugglers: smuggling migrants is a crime in Mexico but there is nothing wrong about crossing illegally to the United States. It also said its resources were stretched on some parts of the border.
Criticism of the Border Patrol's new tactics is guaranteed to persist as the new strategy goes into effect at other locations. Some say immigration cases are overwhelming federal courts on the border at the expense of investigations into white-collar crime, public corruption and other serious threats. Others consider prison time for first-time offenders to be excessively harsh.
The Border Patrol also may be challenged when the U.S. economy recovers, creating jobs that may encourage more illegal crossings. Still, many believe heightened U.S. enforcement and an aging population in Mexico that is benefiting from a relatively stable economy will keep migrants away.
"We'll never see the numbers that we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s," said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Doris Meissner, who oversaw the Border Patrol as head of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s, said the new approach makes sense "on the face of it" but that it will be expensive. She also said it is unclear so far if it will be more effective at discouraging migrants from trying again.
"I do think the Border Patrol is finally at a point where it has sufficient resources that it can actually try some of these things," said Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
Tucson, the only sector to have tried the new approach for a full year, has already tweaked its color-coded chart of punishments two or three times. Fisher said initial signs are promising, with the number of repeat crossers falling at a faster rate than before and faster than on other parts of the border.
"I'm not going to claim it was a direct effect, but it was enough to say it has merit," he said.
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Networked Intelligence | 17 January 2012
MEXICO: Defense Secretariat recommends policy review
On 9 January 2012, the Mexican army’s institutional magazine La Gran Fuerza de
México said that Mexico faces a looming energy crisis due to oil shortages, a food
crisis fueled by climate change and overpopulation, and vulnerability to cyber
attacks. The Defense Secretaiat (Sedena) recommended that Mexico renew its defense
policy to seek alternative energy sources and to formulate new production and
nutrition policies to stave off famine.
MEXICO: Informal sector drove employment growth under PAN administrations
On 9 January 2012, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) reported that the
informal sector became the main generator of employment over the last 11 years. The
number of employed individuals increased by 10.8 million, 23.7 percent of which were
employed in the formal sector, while the remaining 76.3 percent fell within the
informal sector. The unemployment rate increased by 202 percent, with a total of
2,781,703 unemployed persons. However, the report shows a 14 percent growth of the
number of jobs under the present administration.
MEXICO: Local chief of La Familia arrested
On 11 January 2012, members of the Federal police arrested Emmanuel Díaz Ríos, alias
El Profe, area chief for “La Familia” cartel in the municipalities of Chicoloapán,
Chimalhuacán, Nezahualcóyotl, Los Reyes and Texcoco in the state of Mexico. While
arresting him, Iztapalapa police also seized a nine-millimeter firearm with 10
cartridges, 40 cartridges of different calibers, one chip, seven cell phones, a
package containing one kilo of white powder suspected to be cocaine, documents and a
gray van with license plates from the state of Mexico.
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Editor's Note: In this annual report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess the most
significant developments of 2011 and provide updated profiles of the country's
powerful criminal cartels as well as a forecast for 2012. The report is a product of
the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and
other analyses we produce throughout the year.
As we noted in last year's annual cartel report, Mexico in 2010 bore witness to some
15,273 deaths in connection with the drug trade. The death toll for 2010 surpassed
that of any previous year, and in doing so became the deadliest year ever in the
country's fight against the cartels. But in the bloody chronology that is Mexico's
cartel war, 2010's time at the top may have been short-lived. Despite the Mexican
government's efforts to curb cartel-related violence, the death toll for 2011 may
have exceeded what had been an unprecedented number.
According to the Mexican government, cartel-related homicides claimed around 12,900
lives from January to September -- about 1,400 deaths per month. While this figure
is lower than that of 2010, it does not account for the final quarter of 2011. The
Mexican government has not yet released official statistics for the entire year, but
if the monthly average held until year's end, the overall death toll for 2011 would
reach 17,000. Though most estimates put the total below that, the actual number of
homicides in Mexico is likely higher than what is officially reported. At the very
least, although we do not have a final, official number -- and despite media reports
to the contrary -- we can conclude that violence in Mexico did not decline
substantially in 2011.
Indeed, rather than receding to levels acceptable to the Mexican government,
violence in Mexico has persisted, though it seems to have shifted geographically,
abating in some cities and worsening in others. For example, while Ciudad Juarez,
Chihuahua state, was once again Mexico's deadliest city in terms of gross numbers,
the city's annual death toll reportedly dropped substantially from 3,111 in 2010 to
1,955 in 2011. However, such reductions appear to have been offset by increases
elsewhere, including Veracruz, Veracruz state; Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state;
Matamoros, Tamaulipas state; and Durango, Durango state.
Over the past year it has also become evident that a polarization is under way among
the country's cartels. Most smaller groups (or remnants of groups) have been
subsumed by the Sinaloa Federation, which controls much of western Mexico, and Los
Zetas, who control much of eastern Mexico. While a great deal has been said about
the fluidity of the Mexican cartel landscape, these two groups have solidified
themselves as the country's predominant forces. Of course, the battle lines in
Mexico have not been drawn absolutely, and not every entity calling itself a cartel
swears allegiance to one side or the other, but a polarization clearly is occurring.
Geography does not encapsulate this polarization. It reflects two very different
modes of operation practiced by the two cartel hegemons, delineated by a common
expression in Mexican vernacular: "Plata o plomo." The expression, which translates
to "silver or lead" in English, means that a cartel will force one's cooperation
with either a bribe or a bullet. The Sinaloa Federation leadership more often
employs the former, preferring to buy off and corrupt to achieve its objectives. It
also frequently provides intelligence to authorities, and in doing so uses the
authorities as a weapon against rival cartels. Sinaloa certainly can and does resort
to ruthless violence, but the violence it employs is merely one of many tools at its
disposal, not its preferred tactic.
On the other hand, Los Zetas prefer brutality. They can and do resort to bribery,
but they lean toward intimidation and violence. Their mode of operation tends to be
far less subtle than that of their Sinaloa counterparts, and with a leadership
composed of former special operations soldiers, they are quite effective in
employing force and fear to achieve their objectives. Because ex-military personnel
formed Los Zetas, members tend to move up in the group's hierarchy through merit
rather than through familial connections. This contrasts starkly with the culture of
other cartels, including Sinaloa.
Status of Mexico's Major Cartels
Sinaloa Federation
The Sinaloa Federation lost at least 10 major plaza bosses or top lieutenants in
2011, including its security chief and its alleged main weapons supplier. It is
unclear how much those losses have affected the group's operations overall.
One Sinaloa operation that appears to have been affected is the group's
methamphetamine production. After the disintegration of La Familia Michoacana (LFM)
in early 2011, the Sinaloa Federation clearly emerged as the country's foremost
producer of methamphetamine. Most of the tons of precursor chemicals seized by
Mexican authorities in Manzanillo, Colima state; Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco state;
Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state; and Los Mochis and Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, likely
belonged to the Sinaloa Federation. Because of these government operations -- and
other operations to disassemble methamphetamine labs -- the group apparently began
to divert at least some of its methamphetamine production to Guatemala in late 2011.
In addition to maintaining its anti-Zetas alliance with the Gulf cartel, Sinaloa in
2011 affiliated itself with the Knights Templar (KT) in Michoacan, and to counter
Los Zetas in Jalisco state, Sinaloa affiliated itself with the Cartel de Jalisco
Nueva Generacion (CJNG). Sinaloa also has tightened its encirclement of the Vicente
Carrillo Fuentes (VCF) organization in the latter's long-held plaza of Ciudad
Juarez. There are even signs that it continues to expand its control over parts of
Juarez itself.
Los Zetas
By the end of 2011, Los Zetas eclipsed the Sinaloa Federation as the largest cartel
operating in Mexico in terms of geographic presence. According to a report from the
Assistant Attorney General's Office of Special Investigations into Organized Crime,
Los Zetas now operate in 17 states. (The same report said the Sinaloa Federation
operates in 16 states, down from 23 in 2005.) While Los Zetas continue to fight off
a CJNG incursion into Veracruz state, they did not sustain any significant
territorial losses in 2011.
Los Zetas moved into Zacatecas and Durango states, achieving a degree of control of
the former and challenging the Sinaloa Federation in the latter. Both states are
mountainous and conducive to the harvesting of poppy and marijuana. They also
contain major north-south transportation corridors. By mid-November, reports
indicated that Los Zetas had begun to assert control over Colima state and its
crucial port of Manzanillo. In some cases, Los Zetas are sharing territories with
cartels they reportedly have relationships with, including the Cartel Pacifico Sur
(CPS), La Resistencia and the remnants of LFM. But Los Zetas have a long history of
working as hired enforcers for other organizations throughout the country.
Therefore, having an alliance or business relationship with Los Zetas is not
necessarily the equivalent of being a Sinaloa vassal. A relationship with Los Zetas
may be perceived as more fleeting than Sinaloa subjugation.
On the whole, Los Zetas remained strong in 2011 despite losing 17 cell leaders and
plaza bosses to death and arrest. Los Zetas also remain the dominant force in the
Yucatan Peninsula. However, the CJNG's mass killings of alleged Zetas members or
supporters in Veracruz have called into question the group's unchallenged control of
that state.
In response to the mass killings in Veracruz, Los Zetas killed dozens of CJNG and
Sinaloa members in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, and Culiacan, Sinaloa state. Aided by
La Resistencia, these operations were well-executed, and the groups clearly invested
a great deal of time and effort into surveillance and planning.
The Gulf Cartel
The Gulf cartel (CDG) was strong at the beginning of 2011, holding off several Zetas
incursions into its territory. However, as the year progressed, internal divisions
led to intra-cartel battles in Matamoros and Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. The
infighting resulted in several deaths and arrests in Mexico and in the United
States. The CDG has since broken apart, and it appears that one faction, known as
Los Metros, has overpowered its rival Los Rojos faction and is now asserting its
control over CDG operations. The infighting has weakened the CDG, but the group
seems to have maintained control of its primary plazas, or smuggling corridors, into
the United States. (CDG infighting is detailed further in another section of this
report.)
La Familia Michoacana
LFM disintegrated at the beginning of 2011, giving rise to and becoming eclipsed by
one of its factions, the Knights Templar (KT). Indeed, by July it was clear the KT
had become more powerful than LFM in Mexico. The media and the police continue to
report that LFM maintains extensive networks in the United States, but it is unclear
how many of the U.S.-based networks are actually working with LFM rather than the
KT, which is far more capable of trafficking narcotics. It appears that many reports
regarding LFM in the United States do not reflect the changes that have occurred in
Mexico over the past year; many former LFM leaders are now members of the KT. Adding
to the confusion was the alleged late-summer alliance between LFM and Los Zetas.
Such an alliance would have been a final attempt by the remaining LFM leadership to
keep the group from being utterly destroyed by the KT. LFM is still active, but it
is very weak.
The Knights Templar
In January 2011, a month after the death of charismatic LFM leader Nazario "El Mas
Loco" Moreno, two former LFM lieutenants, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez and Enrique
Plancarte, formed the Knights Templar due to differences with Jose de Jesus "El
Chango" Mendez, who had assumed leadership of LFM. In March they announced the
formation of their new organization via narcomantas in Morelia, Zitacuaro and
Apatzingan, Michoacan state.
After the emergence of the KT, sizable battles flared up during the spring and
summer months between the KT and LFM. The organization has grown from a splinter
group to a dominant force over LFM, and it appears to be taking over the bulk of the
original LFM's operations in Mexico. At present, the Knights Templar appear to have
aligned with the Sinaloa Federation in an effort to root out the remnants of LFM and
to prevent Los Zetas from gaining a more substantial foothold in the region through
their alliance with LFM.
Independent Cartel of Acapulco
The Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA) has not been eliminated entirely, but it
appears to have been severely damaged. Since the capture of CIDA leader Gilberto
Castrejon Morales in early December, the group has faded from the public view.
CIDA's weakness appears to have allowed its in-town rival, Sinaloa-affiliated La
Barredora, to move some of its enforcers to Guadalajara to fend off the Zetas
offensive there. The decreased levels of violence and public displays of dead bodies
in Acapulco of late can be attributed to the group's weakening, and we are unsure if
CIDA will be able to regroup and attempt to reclaim Acapulco.
Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion
After the death of Ignacio "El Nacho" Coronel in July 2010, his followers suspected
the Sinaloa cartel had betrayed him and broke away to form the CJNG. In spring 2011,
the CJNG declared war on all other Mexican cartels and stated its intention to take
control of Guadalajara. However, by midsummer, the group appeared to have been
reunited with its former partners in the Sinaloa Federation. We are unsure what
precipitated the reconciliation, but it seems that the CJNG was somehow convinced
that Sinaloa did not betray Coronel after all. It is also possible CJNG was
convinced that Coronel needed to go. In any case, CJNG "sicarios," or assassins, in
September traveled to the important Los Zetas stronghold of Veracruz, labeled
themselves the "Matazetas," or Zeta killers, and began to murder alleged Zetas
members and their supporters. By mid-December, the CJNG was still in Veracruz
fighting Los Zetas while also helping to protect Guadalajara and other areas on
Mexico's west coast from
Zetas aggression.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization/Juarez Cartel
The VCF, aka the Juarez cartel, continues to weaken. A Sinaloa operative killed one
of its top lieutenants, Francisco Vicente Castillo Carrillo -- a Carrillo family
member -- in September 2011. The VCF reportedly still controls the three main points
of entry into El Paso, Texas, but the organization appears unable to expand its
operations or move narcotics en masse through its plazas because it is hemmed in by
the Sinaloa Federation, which appears to have chipped away at the VCF's monopoly of
the Juarez plaza. The VCF is only a shadow of the organization it was a decade ago,
and its weakness and inability to effectively fight against Sinaloa's advances in
Juarez contributed to the lower death toll in Juarez in 2011.
Cartel Pacifico Sur
The CPS, headed by Hector Beltran Leyva, saw a reduction in violence in the latter
part of 2011 after having been very active in the first third of the year. We are
unsure why the group quieted down. The CPS may be concentrating on smuggling for
revenue generation to support itself and assist its Los Zetas allies, who provide
military muscle for the CPS and work in their areas of operation. Because of their
reputation, Los Zetas receive a great deal of media attention, so it is also
possible that the media attributed violent incidents involving CPS gunmen to Los
Zetas.
Arellano Felix Organization
The November arrest of Juan Francisco Sillas Rocha, the AFO's chief enforcer, was
yet another sign of the organization's continued weakness. It remains an impotent
and reluctant subsidiary of the Sinaloa Federation, unable to reclaim the Tijuana
plaza for its own.
2011 Forecast in Review
In our forecast for 2011, we believed that the unprecedented levels of violence from
2010 would continue as long as the cartel balance of power remained in a state of
flux. Indeed, cartel-related deaths appear to have at least continued apace.
Much of the cartel conflict in 2011 followed patterns set in 2010. Los Zetas
continued to fight the CDG in northeast Mexico while maintaining their control of
Veracruz state and the Yucatan Peninsula. The Sinaloa Federation continued to fight
the VCF in Ciudad Juarez while maintaining control of much of Sonora state and Baja
California state.
We forecast that government operations and cartel infighting and rivalry would
expose fissures in and among the cartels. This prediction held true. The Beltran
Leyva Organization no longer exists in its original form, its members dispersed
among the Sinaloa Federation, the CPS, CIDA and other smaller groups. As noted
above, fissures within LFM led to the creation of two groups, LFM and the KT. The
CDG also now consists of two factions competing for control of the organization's
operations.
We also forecast that the degree of violence in the country was politically
unacceptable for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his ruling National Action
Party. Calderon knew he would have to reduce the violence to acceptable levels if
his party was going to have a chance to continue to hold power after he left office
in 2012 (Mexican presidents serve only one six-year term). As the 2012 presidential
election approaches, Calderon is continuing his strategy of deploying the armed
forces against the cartels. He has also reached out to the United States for
assistance. The two countries shared signals intelligence throughout the year and
continued to cooperate through joint intelligence centers like the one in Mexico
City. The U.S. military also continues to train Mexican military and law enforcement
personnel, and the United States has deployed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in
Mexican airspace at Mexico's behest. The Mexican military was in operational command
of the UAV
missions.
As we have noted the past few years, we also believed that Calderon's continued use
of the military would perpetuate what is referred to as the three-front war in
Mexico. The fronts consist of cartels against rival cartels, the military against
cartels, and cartels against civilians. Indeed, in 2011 the cartels continued to vie
for control of ports, plazas and markets, while deployments of military forces
increased to counter Los Zetas in the states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and
Veracruz; to combat several groups waging a bloody turf war in Acapulco, Guerrero
state; and to respond to conflicts arising between the Sinaloa Federation and Los
Zetas and their affiliate groups in Nayarit and Michoacan states.
While Los Zetas were hit hard in 2011, the Mexican government's offensive against
the group was unable to damage it to the extent we believed it would. Despite losing
several key leaders and plaza bosses, as noted previously, the group maintains its
pre-eminence in the east. This is largely due to the ease with which such groups can
replenish their ranks.
Resupplying Leadership
One of the ways in which Mexico's cartels, including Los Zetas, replenish their
ranks is with defected military personnel. Around 27,000 men and women desert the
Mexican military every year, and about 50 percent of the military's recruiting class
will have left before the end of their first tour. In March 2011, the Mexican army
admitted that it had "lost track of" 1,680 special forces personnel over the past
decade (Los Zetas were formed by more than 30 former members of Mexico's Special
Forces Airmobile Group). Some cartels even reportedly task some of their own foot
soldiers to enlist in the military to gain knowledge and experience in military
tactics. In any case, retention is clearly a serious problem for the Mexican armed
forces, and deserting soldiers take their skills (and oftentimes their weapons) to
the cartels.
In addition, the drug trade attracts ex-military personnel who did not desert but
left in good standing after serving their duty. There are fewer opportunities for
veterans in Mexico than in many countries, and understandably many are drawn to a
lucrative practice that places value on their skill sets. But deserters or former
soldiers are not the only source of recruits for the cartels. They also replenish
their ranks with current and former police officers, gang members and others (to
include Central American immigrants and even U.S. citizens).
2012 Forecasts by Region
Northeast Mexico
Northeast Mexico saw some of the most noteworthy cartel violence in 2011. The
primary conflict in the region involved the continuing fight between CDG and Los
Zetas, who were CDG enforcers before breaking away from the CDG in early 2010. Los
Zetas have since eclipsed the CDG in terms of size, reach and influence. In 2011,
divisions within the CDG over leadership succession came to the fore, leading to
further violence in the region, and we believe these divisions will sow the group's
undoing in 2012.
The CDG began to suffer another internal fracture in late 2010 when the Mexican army
killed Antonio "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen, who co-lead the CDG with Eduardo
"El Coss" Costilla Sanchez, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state. After Cardenas Guillen's
death in November 2010, Costilla Sanchez assumed full control of the organization,
passing over Rafael "El Junior" Cardenas Vela, the Cardenas family's heir apparent,
in the process. This bisected the CDG, creating two competing factions: Los Rojos,
loyal to the Cardenas family, and Los Metros, loyal to Costilla Sanchez.
In late 2011, several events exacerbated tensions between the factions. On Sept. 3,
authorities found the body of Samuel "El Metro 3" Flores Borrego, Costilla Sanchez's
second-in-command, in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. Then on Sept. 27, gunmen in an SUV
shot and killed a man driving a vehicle on U.S. Route 83, east of McAllen, Texas.
The driver, Jorge Zavala of Mission, Texas, was connected to Los Metros.
The Mexican navy reported the following month that Cesar "El Gama" Davila Garcia,
the CDG's head finance officer, was found dead in Reynosa. Davila previously had
served as Cardenas Guillen's accountant. Then on Oct. 20, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents arrested Cardenas Vela after a traffic stop near Port
Isabel, Texas. We believe Los Metros tipped off U.S. authorities about Cardenas
Vela's location. (Los Metros have every reason to kill Los Rojos leaders, including
Cardenas Vela, but cartels rarely conduct assassinations on U.S. soil for fear of
U.S. retribution.)
On Oct. 28, Jose Luis "Comandante Wicho" Zuniga Hernandez, believed to be Cardenas
Vela's deputy and operational leader in Matamoros, reportedly turned himself in to
U.S. authorities without a fight near Santa Maria, Texas. Finally, Mexican federal
authorities arrested Ezequiel "El Junior" Cardenas Rivera, Cardenas Guillen's son,
in Matamoros on Nov. 25.
By December, media agencies reported that Cardenas Guillen's brother, Mario Cardenas
Guillen, was the overall leader of the CDG. But Mario was never known to be very
active in the family business, and his reluctance to involve himself in cartel
operations appears to have continued after his brother's death. In addition,
Costilla Sanchez is reclusive, choosing to run his organization from several
secluded ranches. That he is not mentioned in media reports does not mean he has
been removed from his position. Given his reclusiveness and Mario Cardenas Guillen's
longstanding reticence to involve himself in cartel activity, it seems unlikely that
Costilla Sanchez would be replaced. Because Los Metros seemingly have gained the
upper hand over Los Rojos, we anticipate that they will further expand their
dominance in early 2012.
However, while Los Metros may have defeated their rival for control of the CDG, the
organizational infighting has left the CDG vulnerable to outside attack. Of course,
any group divided is vulnerable to attack, but the CDG's ongoing feud with Los Zetas
compounds its problem. Fully aware of the CDG's weakness, we believe Los Zetas will
step up their attempts to assume control of CDG territory.
If Los Zetas are able to defeat the Los Metros faction -- or they engage in a truce
with the faction -- they may be able to redeploy fighters to other regions or
cities, particularly Veracruz and Guadalajara. Reinforcements in Veracruz would help
counter the CJNG presence in the port city, and reinforcements in Guadalajara would
shore up Los Zetas' operations and presence in Jalisco state. Likewise, a reduction
in cartel-on-cartel fighting in the region would free up troops the Mexican army has
stationed in Tamaulipas state -- an estimated force of 13,000 soldiers -- for
deployment elsewhere.
Southeast Mexico
Some notable events took place in southeast Mexico in 2011. On Dec. 4 the Mexican
army dismantled a Zetas communications network that encompassed multiple cities in
Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi and Coahuila states.
In addition, Veracruz state Gov. Javier Duarte on Dec. 21 fired the city's municipal
police, including officers and administrative employees, and gave the Mexican navy
law enforcement responsibilities. By Dec. 22, Mexican marines began patrols and law
enforcement activities, effectively replacing the police much like the army replaced
the police in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 and in various cities in Tamaulipas state in
August 2011. We anticipate that fighting between the CJNG and Los Zetas will
continue in Veracruz for at least the first quarter of 2012.
We expect security conditions on the Yucatan Peninsula to remain relatively stable
in 2012 because there are no other major players in the region contesting Los Zetas'
control.
Southwest Mexico
In the southern Pacific coastal states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, we expect violence to
be as infrequent in 2012 as it was in 2011. Chiapas and Oaxaca have been
transshipment zones for Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation for several years; as
such, clashes and cargo hijackings occasionally take place. However, direct and
sustained combat does not occur regularly because the two groups tend to use
different routes to transport their shipments. The Sinaloa Federation prefers to
move its product north on roads and highways along the Pacific coast, whereas Los
Zetas' transportation lines cross Mexico's interior before moving north along the
Gulf coast.
Pacific Coast and Central Mexico
As many as a dozen organizations, ranging from the KT to local criminal
organizations to newer groups like La Barredora and La Resistencia, continue to
fight for control of the plazas in Guerrero, Michoacan and Jalisco states. Acapulco
was particularly violent in 2011, and we believe it will continue to be violent
through 2012 unless La Barredora is able to exert firm control over the city.
Acapulco has been a traditional Beltran Leyva stronghold, and the CPS may attempt to
reassert itself there. If that happens, violence will once again increase.
Security conditions worsened in Jalisco state at the end of 2011, and Stratfor
anticipates violence there will continue to increase in 2012, especially in
Guadalajara, a valued transportation hub. In November, Los Zetas struck the CJNG in
Guadalajara in response to the mass killings of Los Zetas members in Veracruz state.
The attacks are significant because they demonstrated an ability to conduct
protracted cross-country operations. Should Los Zetas establish firm control over
Guadalajara, the Sinaloa Federation's smuggling activities could be adversely
affected, something Sinaloa obviously cannot permit. Given an increased Zetas
presence in Zacatecas, Durango and Jalisco states, and Sinaloa's operational need to
counter that presence, we expect to see violence increase in the region in 2012.
Unless a significant military force is somehow brought to bear, we do not expect to
see any substantive improvement in the security conditions in Guerrero or Michoacan
states.
Northwest Mexico
The cross-country operations performed by Los Zetas indicate that the group's growth
and expansion has been more profound than we expected in the face of the
government's major operations specifically targeting the organization. Such
expansion will pose a direct threat not only to the Sinaloa Federation's supply
lines but to its home turf, which stretches from Guadalajara to southern Sonora
state.
In northwest Mexico, specifically Baja California, Baja California Sur and Chihuahua
states (and most of Sonora state), the Sinaloa Federation either directly controls
or regularly uses the smuggling corridors and points of entry into the United
States. Security conditions in the plazas under firm Sinaloa control have been
relatively stable. Indeed, as Sinaloa tightened its control over Tijuana, violence
there dropped, and we expect to see the same dynamic play out in Juarez as Sinaloa
consolidates its control of that city. Stability could be threatened, however, if
Los Zetas attempt to push into Sinaloa-held cities.
Outside of Mexico
As we noted in the past three annual cartel reports, Mexico's cartels have been
expanding their control of the cocaine supply chain all the way into South America.
This eliminates middlemen and brings in more profit. They are also using their
presence in South America to obtain chemical precursors and weapons.
Increased violence in northern Mexico and ramped-up law enforcement along the U.S.
border has made narcotics smuggling into the United States more difficult than it
has been in the past. The cartels have adapted to these challenges by becoming more
involved in the trafficking of cocaine to alternative markets in Europe and
Australia. The arrests of Mexican cartel members in such places as the Dominican
Republic also seem to indicate that the Mexicans are becoming more involved in the
Caribbean smuggling routes into the United States. In the past, Colombian smuggling
groups and their Caribbean partners in places like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Dominican Republic used these routes. We anticipate seeing more signs of Mexican
cartel involvement in the Caribbean, Europe and Australia in 2012.
Government Strategy in 2012
There is no indication of a major shift in the Mexican government's overarching
security strategy for 2012; Calderon will continue to use the military against the
cartels throughout the year (a new president will be elected in July, but Calderon's
term does not conclude until the end of 2012). This strategy of taking out cartel
leaders has resulted in the disruption of the cartel balance of power in the past,
which tends to lead to more violence as groups scramble to fill the resultant power
vacuum. Mexican operations may further disrupt that balance in 2012, but while
government operations have broken apart some cartel organizations, the combination
of military and law enforcement resources has been unable to dislodge cartel
influence from the areas it targets. They can break specific criminal organizations,
but the lucrative smuggling corridors into the United States will continue to exist,
even after the organizations controlling them are taken down. And as long as the
smuggling
corridors exist, and provide access to so much money, other organizations will
inevitably fight to assume control over them.
Some 45,000 Mexican troops are actively involved in domestic counter-cartel
operations. These troops work alongside state and federal law enforcement officers
and in some cases have replaced fired municipal police officers. They are spread
across a large country with high levels of violence in most major cities, and their
presence in these cities is essential for maintaining what security has been
achieved.
While this number of troops represents only about a quarter of the overall Mexican
army's manpower -- troops are often supplemented by deployments of Mexican marines
-- it also represents the bulk of applicable Mexican military ground combat
strength. Meager and poorly maintained reserve forces do not appear to be a
meaningful supplemental resource.
In short, if the current conditions persist, it does not appear that the Mexican
government can redeploy troops to conduct meaningful offensive operations in new
areas of Mexico in 2012 without jeopardizing the gains it has already made. The
government cannot eliminate the cartels any more than it can end the drug trade. The
only way the Mexican government can bring the violence down to what would be
considered an acceptable level is for it to allow one cartel group to become
dominant throughout the country -- something that does not appear to be plausible in
the near term -- or for some sort of truce to be reached between the country's two
cartel hegemons, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation.
Such scenarios are not unprecedented. At one time the Guadalajara cartel controlled
virtually all of Mexico's drug trade, and it was only the dissolution of that
organization that led to its regional branches subsequently becoming what we now
know as the Sinaloa Federation, AFO, VCF and CDG. There have also been periods of
cartel truces in the past between the various regional cartel groups, although they
tend to be short-lived.
With the current levels of violence, a government-brokered truce between Los Zetas
and Sinaloa will be no easy task, given the level of animosity and mistrust that
exists between the two organizations. This means that it is unlikely that such a
truce will be brokered in 2012, but we expect to see more rhetoric in support of a
truce as a way to reduce violence.
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If this is accurate, Mexico is worse than I imagined.
http://www.amazon.com/Murder-City-Ciudad-Economys-Killing/dp/B004NSVFMW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327801264&sr=8-1
Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields
Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. Last year 1,607 people were killed—a number that is on pace to increase in 2009.
In Murder City, Charles Bowden—one of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Juárez—has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants—a raped beauty queen, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life—with a broader meditation on the town’s descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juárez’s culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north.
Heartbreaking, disturbing, and unforgettable, Murder City establishes Bowden as one of our leading writers working at the height of his powers.
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Mexico is a wonderful place. GM, you should come down for dinner, I'll buy. 8-)
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http://www.policeone.com/gangs/articles/4808296-Are-Zetas-operating-as-police-impersonators-in-the-United-States/
Are Zetas operating as police impersonators in the United States?
Whether or not Zetas are conducting paramilitary, police-impersonation operations here in the US, the incident in Houston is a watershed event indeed
There are no secure borders....
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"The hybrid threat of crime, terrorism and insurgency is presently understudied as a matter of policy, strategy, and doctrine. As a small step towards remedying this conceptual deficit, and exploring those ideas in the particular context of Mexico, the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) together with the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership co-convened a symposium in Washington D.C. on October 20, 2011. What follows is a compilation of those proceedings. The forum began with keynote remarks offered by General Barry R. McCaffrey, former Commander of the United States Southern Command, and former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Following the transcript of General McCaffrey's presentation, we have inserted a policy paper designed to introduce the issues that resonated throughout the course of the forum. The remainder of the monograph gives full voice to those issues by way of transcripts of the event's two panel discussions. The first panel addressed strategy and doctrine, existing and yet required, that will be necessary to tackle our 'hybrid threat.' The second panel focuses on Mexico as a case study for those requirements."
https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=698178
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/insurgency-in-america-former-border-agent-details-national-security-threats-spilling-into-the-u-s/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/insurgency-in-america-former-border-agent-details-national-security-threats-spilling-into-the-u-s/
"Undocumented Americans" Sen. Harry "Cleanface" Reid-D NV.
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Meth in Mexico: A Turning Point in the Drug War?
By Ben West | February 16, 2012
Mexican authorities announced Feb. 8 the largest seizure of methamphetamine in Mexican history -- and possibly the largest ever anywhere -- on a ranch outside of Guadalajara. The total haul was 15 tons of pure methamphetamine along with a laboratory capable of producing all the methamphetamine seized. While authorities are not linking the methamphetamine to any specific criminal group, Guadalajara is a known stronghold of the Sinaloa Federation, and previous seizures there have been connected to the group.
Methamphetamine, a synthetic drug manufactured in personal labs for decades, is nothing new in Mexico or the United States. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has led numerous crusades against the drug, increasing regulations on its ingredients to try to keep it from gaining a foothold in the United States. While the DEA's efforts have succeeded in limiting production of the drug in the United States, consumption has risen steadily over the past two decades. The increasing DEA pressure on U.S. suppliers and the growing demand for methamphetamine have driven large-scale production of the drug outside the borders of the United States. Given Mexico's proximity and the pervasiveness of organized criminal elements seeking new markets, it makes sense that methamphetamine would be produced on an industrial scale there. Indeed, Mexico has provided an environment for a scale of production far greater than anything ever seen in the United States.
But last week's methamphetamine seizure sheds light on a deeper shift in organized criminal activity in Mexico -- one that could mark a breakthrough in the violent stalemate that has existed between the Sinaloa Federation, Los Zetas and the government for the past five years and has led to an estimated 50,000 deaths. It also reveals a pattern in North American organized crime activity that can be seen throughout the 20th century as well as a business opportunity that could transform criminal groups in Mexico from the drug trafficking intermediaries they are today to controllers of an independent and profitable illicit market.
While the trafficking groups in Mexico are commonly called "cartels" (even Stratfor uses the term), they are not really cartels. A cartel is a combination of groups cooperating to control the supply of a commodity. The primary purpose of a cartel is to set the price of a commodity so that buyers cannot negotiate lower prices. The current conflict in Mexico over cocaine and marijuana smuggling routes shows that there are deep rifts between rival groups like the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas. There is no sign that they are cooperating with each other to set the price of cocaine or marijuana. Also, since most of the Mexican criminal groups are involved in a diverse array of criminal activities, their interests go beyond drug trafficking. They are perhaps most accurately described as "transnational criminal organizations" (TCOs), the label currently favored by the DEA.
Examples from the Past
While the level of violence in Mexico right now is unprecedented, it is important to remember that the Mexican TCOs are businesses. They do use violence in conducting business, but their top priority is to make profits, not kill people. The history of organized crime shows many examples of groups engaging in violence to control an illegal product. During the early 20th century in North America, to take advantage of Prohibition in the United States, organized criminal empires were built around the bootlegging industry. After the repeal of Prohibition, gambling and casinos became the hot market. Control over Las Vegas and other major gambling hubs was a business both dangerous and profitable. Control over the U.S. heroin market was consolidated and then dismantled during the 1960s and 1970s. Then came cocaine and the rise in power, wealth and violence of Colombian groups like the Medellin and Cali cartels.
But as U.S. and Colombian law enforcement cracked down on the Colombian cartels -- interdicting them in Colombia and closing down their Caribbean smuggling corridors -- Colombian producers had to turn to the Mexicans to traffic cocaine through Mexico to the United States. To this day, however, Colombian criminal groups descended from the Medellin and Cali cartels control the cultivation and production of cocaine in South America, while Mexican groups increasingly oversee the trafficking of the drug to the United States, Europe and Africa.
The Mexican Weakness
While violence has been used in the past to eliminate or coerce competitors and physically take control of an illegal market, it has not proved to be a solution in recent years for Mexican TCOs. The Medellin cartel became infamous for attacking Colombian state officials and competitors who tried to weaken its grasp over the cocaine market. Going back further, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel is thought to have been murdered over disagreements about his handling of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Before that, Prohibition saw numerous murders over control of liquor shipments and territory. In Mexico, we are seeing an escalating level of such violence, but few of the business resolutions that would be expected to come about as a result.
Geography helps explain this. In Mexico, the Sierra Madre mountain range splits the east coast and the west from the center. The Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean coastal plains tend to develop their own power bases separate from each other.
Mexican drug traffickers are also split by market forces. With Colombian criminal groups still largely controlling the production of cocaine in jungle laboratories, Mexican traffickers are essentially middlemen. They must run the gauntlet of U.S.-led international interdiction efforts by using a combination of Central American traffickers, corruption and street-gang enforcers. They also have to move the cocaine across the U.S. border, where it gets distributed by hundreds of street gangs.
Profit is the primary motivation at every step, and each hurdle the Mexican traffickers have to clear cuts into their profit margins. The cocaine producers in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia can play the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas (as well as others) off of each other to strengthen their own bargaining position. And even though keeping the traffickers split appears to create massive amounts of violence in Mexico, it benefits the politicians and officials there, who can leverage at least the presence of a competitor for better bribes and payoffs.
For Mexican drug traffickers, competition is bad for the bottom line, since it allows other actors to exploit each side to get a larger share of the market. Essentially, everyone else in the cocaine market benefits by keeping the traffickers split. The more actors involved in cocaine trafficking, the harder it is to control it.
The Solution
Historically, organized criminal groups have relied on control of a market for their source of wealth and power. But the current situation in Mexico, and the cocaine trade in general, prevents the Mexican groups (or anyone) from controlling the market outright. As long as geography and market forces keep the traffickers split, all sides in Mexico will try to use violence to get more control over territory and market access. We assume that Mexico's geography will not change dramatically any time soon, but market forces are much more temporal.
Mexican criminal organizations can overcome their weakness in the cocaine market by investing the money they have earned (billions of dollars, according to the most conservative estimates) into the control of other markets. Ultimately, cocaine is impossible for the Mexicans to control because the coca plant can only grow in sufficient quantity in the foothills of the Andes. It would be prohibitively expensive for the Mexicans to take over control of coca cultivation and cocaine production there. Mexican criminal organizations are increasing their presence in the heroin market, but while they can grow poppies in Mexico and produce black-tar heroin, Afghanistan still controls a dominant share of the white heroin market -- around 90 percent.
What Mexicans can control is the methamphetamine market. What we are seeing in Mexico right now -- unprecedented amounts of the seized drug -- is reminiscent of what we saw over the past century in the infancy of the illegal liquor, gambling, heroin and cocaine markets: an organized criminal group industrializing production in or control of a loosely organized industry and using that control to set prices and increase its power. Again, while illegal methamphetamine has been produced in the United States for decades, regulatory pressure and law enforcement efforts have kept it at a small scale; seizures are typically measured in pounds or kilograms and producers are on the run.
Mexican producers have also been in the market for a long time, but over the past year we have seen seizures go from being measured in kilograms to being measured in metric tons. In other words, we are seeing evidence that methamphetamine production has increased several orders of magnitude and is fast becoming an industrialized process.
In addition to the 15 tons seized last week, we saw a record seizure of 675 tons of methylamine, a key ingredient of methamphetamine, in Mexico in December. From 2010 to 2011, seizures of precursor chemicals like methylamine in Mexico increased 400 percent, from 400 tons to 1,600 tons. These most recent reports are similar to reports in the 1920s of U.S. liquor seizures going from barrels to shiploads, which indicated bootlegging was being conducted on an industrial scale. They are also eerily similar to the record cocaine seizure in 1984 in Tranquilandia, Colombia, when Colombian National Police uncovered a network of jungle cocaine labs along with 13.8 metric tons of cocaine. It was the watershed moment, when authorities moved from measuring cocaine busts in kilograms to measuring them in tons, and it marked the Medellin cartel's rise to power over the cocaine market.
A True Mexican Criminal Industry?
Anyone can make methamphetamine, but it is a huge organizational, financial and legal challenge to make it on the industrial level that appears to be happening in Mexico. The main difference between the U.S. labs and the Mexican labs is the kind of input chemicals they use. The U.S. labs use pseudoephedrine, a pharmaceutical product heavily regulated by the DEA, as a starting material, while Mexican labs use methylamine, a chemical with many industrial applications that is more difficult to regulate. And while pseudoephedrine comes in small individual packages of cold pills, methylamine is bought in 208-liter (55-gallon) barrels. The Mexican process requires experienced chemists who have mastered synthesizing methamphetamine on a large scale, which gives them an advantage over the small-time amateurs working in U.S. methamphetamine labs.
Thus, while methamphetamine consumption has been steadily growing in the United States for the past two decades -- and at roughly $100 per gram, unpure methamphetamine is just as profitable on the street as cocaine -- it is even more profitable for Mexican traffickers. Methamphetamine does not come with the overhead costs of purchasing cocaine from Colombians and trafficking valuable merchandise through some of the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere. Precursor materials such as methylamine used in methamphetamine production are cheap, and East Asian producers appear to be perfectly willing to sell the chemicals to Mexico. And because methamphetamine is a synthetic drug, its production does not depend on agriculture like cocaine and marijuana production does. There is no need to control large swaths of cropland and there is less risk of losing product to adverse weather or eradication efforts.
For the Mexican TCOs, industrializing and controlling the methamphetamine market offers a level of real control over a market that is not possible with cocaine. We expect fighting over the methamphetamine market to maintain violence at its current levels, but once a group comes out on top it will have far more resources to expel or absorb rival TCOs. This process may not sound ideal, but methamphetamine could pick the winner in the Mexican drug war.
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Spring Break in Mexico: Travel and Security Risks
March 5, 2012
Every year between January and March, U.S. college administrations remind their students to exercise caution while on spring break. These well-meaning guidelines often go unread by their intended recipients, as do travel warnings issued to citizens by the U.S. State Department. Many regular visitors to Mexican resort areas believe they are safe from transnational criminal organizations (TCO), more commonly called cartels. These travelers tend to think cartels want to avoid interfering with the profitable tourism industry, or that they only target Mexican citizens; this is not an accurate assessment.
Nothing in the behavior of Mexican cartels indicates that they would consciously keep tourists out of the line of fire or away from gruesome displays of their murder victims. Violence related to the cartels is spreading, and while tourists may not be directly targeted, they can be caught in the crossfire or otherwise find themselves in situations where their security is compromised. TCOs, it should be remembered, are more than just drug traffickers -- they participate in extortion, robbery, rape and carjackings. And where cartels are fighting each other violently, local gangs are able to take advantage of law enforcement's resulting distraction to commit crimes of their own.
Mexico's Drug War
Violence between competing criminal organizations in Mexico has continued for more than two decades. In the last decade, this violence has escalated nearly every year: In 2006 there were 2,119 murders related to organized crime. There were 2,275 in 2007, 5,207 in 2008, 6,598 in 2009 and 15,273 in 2010. While official figures are not yet available for 2011, figures reported by media agencies demonstrate that violence did not drop substantially from 2010.
The core of the conflict revolves around the most valuable routes for trafficking drugs through Mexico. Several groups are waging a violent campaign for control of these corridors and the Mexican government is using the military to combat drug traffickers, adding an additional actor in the conflict. However, no part of the country has been immune to the effects of organized crime.
While cartels typically direct their violence toward rival groups, outside parties are often caught up in the violence. For example, Los Zetas tried to burn down the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, on Aug. 25, 2011, allegedly to send a message to the casino's owner. The attackers were not stopped by the presence of innocent bystanders, and more than 50 individuals were killed in the blaze. In August 2011, a grenade targeting the Mexican military landed near a crowd of tourists near an aquarium in Veracruz state, killing at least one individual. U.S. citizens have been among those caught up in the violence of the drug wars, with the U.S. State Department reporting 120 U.S. citizens killed in 2011. While that number is small in relation to the estimated 4.7 million Americans who visited Mexico between January and October 2011 -- and the more than 150,000 U.S. citizens who travel across the border each day -- it marks a substantial increase from the 35 deaths reported in 2007.
There is no sign that cartel-related violence in Mexico will ease in 2012. While a polarization of organized criminal groups has set in -- with Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation on opposing ends -- 2011 witnessed a continued splintering of many organized criminal groups. Divisions between entities such as the Gulf Cartel, La Familia Michoacana and Knights Templar have exacerbated the violence in many regions of Mexico, and the efforts of federal forces have failed to effectively cap the violence.
Cartel operations within Mexico have affected many aspects of the country's security infrastructure -- some of which tourists may rely on. Corruption is rampant within Mexico's governing bodies and law enforcement is a routine victim of cartel infiltration and violence. With federal, state and municipal forces focused on combating criminal organizations, resources are drawn away from combating unrelated crimes. This has led to an increase in serious crimes such as murder and kidnapping and to an uptick in general crime to which tourists are more likely to fall victim.
Threats from Cartels and Local Gangs
Cartels usually focus on the business of trafficking drugs through Mexico into the United States. However, they do resort to other methods of financial gain, which could affect visitors to Mexico. Groups such as the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas are known to involve themselves in kidnappings, carjackings and extortion. Cartel gunmen also operate with a sense of impunity in many parts of the country and will rob or rape targets of opportunity as they see fit. It is impossible to gauge the willingness of individual cartel members to victimize unwary tourists, but innocent bystanders can be caught in the crossfire as confrontations between groups escalate.
The presence of cartels, especially in areas where multiple cartels exist in competition, causes a deterioration of security conditions that also invites the formation of local gangs. These local gangs may not be affiliated with the cartels but still present many of the same security concerns. They may be involved in murder, extortion, carjacking, sexual assaults, kidnappings and collateral damage caused during open confrontations with rivals.
As law enforcement increases its focus on combating drug traffickers, resources are diverted away from providing the kind of security many visitors to Mexico are accustomed to local police providing. Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation also succeed in corrupting law enforcement agencies in Mexico, which in turn degrades the security infrastructure, providing a suitable environment for local gangs to thrive. Corrupt police officers themselves also frequently prey on other targets.
In 2011, 1,322 kidnappings were reported throughout Mexico. This number represents the kidnappings reported by victims and family who are willing to speak up -- the actual number is believed to be much higher. As the security infrastructure in Mexico has deteriorated, many citizens have lost trust in Mexico's law enforcement and feel it would be safer not to report a kidnapping.
While there are examples of groups such as the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas participating in kidnappings throughout the country, localized kidnapping rings have sprouted due to the lack of security in Mexican cities. The gangs' victims range from wealthy businessmen to lower- and middle-class individuals, so assumptions should not be made regarding their typical target. There are also different types of kidnappings, ranging from classic high-value target abductions to express kidnappings (in which the victim can spend a week in the trunk of a vehicle as the kidnappers go from one ATM to the next withdrawing all the money in the victim's account) and even virtual kidnappings, a method in which someone falsifies a kidnapping to extort a ransom. There is little uniformity with kidnapping rings in Mexico in terms of resources, targets and tactics. The vast majority of kidnapping victims are Mexican nationals, but the risk to tourists remains, especially if they are perceived to be wealthy.
Law Enforcement
Visitors to Mexico should not expect law enforcement officers to behave as their counterparts do in the United States. As previously stated, law enforcement in many areas of Mexico is focused on drug trafficking. In some regions, elements of law enforcement are on the payroll of cartels, and in some locations the police have been fired for corruption and law enforcement functions have been assumed by the Mexican military. In October 2011, authorities in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, announced that seven police officers were allowing Los Zetas to maintain safe-houses where cartel members watched over kidnapping victims. While obviously not every element of law enforcement in Mexico engages in these activities, visitors to the country should expect to assume sole responsibility for their personal security.
Locations
As Stratfor has previously stated, many of the popular spring break locations that are perceived to have "acceptable" levels of crime have experienced the violence related to the drug wars raging in Mexico. Firefights between Federal Police or soldiers and gunmen armed with assault rifles have erupted without warning throughout Mexico, affecting small mountain villages, large cities like Monterrey and resort towns like Acapulco and Cancun. While the cartels have not often intentionally targeted tourists, their violence increasingly has been on public display in popular tourist districts. In February this year, Acapulco saw multiple incidents of dismembered bodies being discovered in the trunks of abandoned vehicles -- on Feb. 13, authorities discovered the decapitated body of a taxi driver in the trunk of a taxi. Highlighting these threats, the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning to Mexico in February 2012 and recommended against non-essential travel to resort areas such as Acapulco, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta.
It also is important to understand the risks associated with traveling to a country that is engaged in ongoing counternarcotics operations involving thousands of military and federal law enforcement personnel. Some parts of Mexico can credibly be described as a war zone. While there are important differences among the security environments in Mexico's various resort areas and between the resort towns and other parts of Mexico, the country's overall reputation for crime and kidnapping is deserved. Locals and foreigners alike often become victims of assault, express kidnappings, high-value target kidnappings, sexual assaults, carjackings and other crimes.
As stated, the country's security services sometimes pose security risks themselves. When driving, it is important to pay attention to the highway roadblocks manned by military personnel and to checkpoints established to screen vehicles for drugs and cartel operatives. Police officers and soldiers have opened fire on vehicles driven by innocent people who failed to follow instructions at the checkpoints, which are often poorly marked.
It is also important to note the well-documented episodes of cartel gunmen operating mobile or stationary roadblocks while disguised as government troops. We have not confirmed whether these have been encountered in popular resort areas, but if not, there is the strong possibility they will be eventually, given the increase in violence in port cities. And as violence escalates near Mexico's resort towns, Stratfor anticipates that the cartels will not hesitate to use all the tools at their disposal to defeat their opponents, regardless of where these happen to be. An encounter with a checkpoint or roadblock operated by gunmen disguised as Federal Police or military personnel can be deadly. Driving around city streets in resort towns or roads in the surrounding countryside is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Many Mexican coastal resort towns better known for their beautiful beaches also depend on their port facilities, and these have come to play a strategic role in the country's drug trade. Drug trafficking organizations use legitimate commercial ships as well as fishing boats and other small surface vessels to carry shipments of cocaine from South America to Mexico, and many cartels often rely on hotels and resorts to launder drug proceeds. Because of the importance of these facilities, the assumption has been that drug trafficking organizations seek to limit violence in such areas, not only to protect existing infrastructure but also to avoid the attention that violence affecting wealthy foreign tourists would draw.
This is no longer a safe assumption. The profound escalation of cartel-related conflict in Mexico has created an environment in which deadly violence can occur anywhere, with complete disregard for bystanders, whatever their nationality or status. Moreover, the threat to vacationing foreigners is not just the potential of being caught in the crossfire but also of inadvertently drawing the attention and anger of cartel gunmen.
Acapulco
Acapulco, which remains one of the most violent of Mexico's popular resort towns, saw 1,199 murders in 2011 according to Mexican government figures. The criminal landscape in Acapulco is fluid and has seen many changes since 2011. Most violence related to organized crime in the city resulted from the collapse of the Beltran Leyva Organization, which spawned a set of competing organizations. While the reported activity of groups such as the Independent Cartel of Acapulco and Cartel Pacifico Sur has dropped, a more recent group also formed from the remnants of Beltran Leyva Organization, La Barredora, has established dominance over the city.
Organized crime-related violence in Acapulco is not limited to regional outfits. For example, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which is based out of Jalisco state and known for public displays of violence, recently announced its presence in Acapulco.
Cancun and Cozumel
Cancun's port remains an important point of entry for South American drugs transiting Mexico on their way to the United States. Los Zetas remain highly active in the area, with a steady flow of drugs and foreign nationals entering the smuggling pipeline from Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and other points of origin in the greater Caribbean Basin. Benito Juarez, the municipality in which Cancun is located, saw 423 homicides during 2011. Cozumel, Isla Mujeres and associated tourist zones have seen little violence related to organized crime -- nine murders were reported for 2011.
Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta's location on the Pacific coast makes it strategically important to trafficking groups that send and receive maritime shipments of South American drugs and Chinese chemical precursors used in the production of methamphetamine, much of which is produced in the areas surrounding the nearby city of Guadalajara. Several of Mexico's largest and most powerful cartels maintain a trafficking presence in Puerto Vallarta and the nearby municipality of Jarretaderas. Incidents of cartel-related deaths in Puerto Vallarta are relatively low compared to places like Acapulco, but Puerto Vallarta still saw 64 murders and one reported kidnapping in 2011. Threats from kidnapping gangs or other criminal groups also are said to be lower in this resort city than in the rest of the country. Still, a February 2012 incident illustrated why caution and situational awareness should always be exercised: a group of 22 tourists ventured off their cruise ship to tour El Nogalito, an area near Puerto Vallarta, and were held at gunpoint and robbed of their personal belongings.
Cabo San Lucas
Located on the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula, Cabo San Lucas and the greater Los Cabos region have been relatively insulated from the country's drug-related violence and can be considered one of the safer places in Mexico for foreign tourists. Although historically it has been a stop on the cocaine trafficking routes, Cabo San Lucas' strategic importance decreased dramatically after the peak of cartel activities there in the late 1990s when the Tijuana cartel lost its contacts with Colombian cocaine suppliers (the result of joint U.S.-Colombian counternarcotics activities). Over the last five years, drug trafficking in the area has been limited. Still, Cabo San Lucas' ongoing problems with crime include incidences of kidnapping, theft and assault, as well as some drug trafficking. In October 2011, after being pursued by municipal police, gunmen took refuge in a grocery store in Cabo San Lucas -- some reports stated the civilians inside were taken hostage. Despite the relative lack of cartel violence in the area, official 2011 statistics for the greater Los Cabos region show seven murders and one kidnapping.
Mazatlan
Mazatlan, located only about 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Puerto Vallarta, has been perhaps the most consistently violent of Mexico's resort cities during the past year. It is located in Sinaloa state, home of the country's largest cartel, the Sinaloa Federation, and bodies of victims of drug cartels and kidnapping gangs appear on Mazatlan's streets on a weekly basis. The sheer level of violence means that the potential for collateral damage is high. There were 382 murders and 12 reported kidnappings in Mazatlan and the rest of Sinaloa state in 2011.
Matamoros
Though Matamoros itself is not one of the more commonly visited spring break locations, we are including it in this discussion because of its proximity to South Padre Island, Texas. It has long been the practice of adventurous vacationers on the south end of South Padre Island to take advantage of the inexpensive alcohol and lower drinking age south of the border, mainly in Matamoros and the surrounding towns clustered along the Rio Grande. But it is important to note that drug- and human-smuggling activities in that region of Mexico are constant, vital to Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, and ruthlessly conducted. Since the Zetas offensive against the Gulf Cartel of Matamoros in 2011, Matamoros has seen a significant amount of violence between competing organizations as well as confrontations with the military. Visitors should not venture south into Mexico from South Padre Island.
General Safety Tips
If travel to Mexico is planned or necessary, visitors should keep in mind the following:
• Do not drive at night.
• Use only pre-arranged transportation between the airport and the resort or hotel.
• If at a resort, plan on staying there; refrain from going into town, particularly at night.
• If you do go into town (or anywhere off the resort property), do not accept a ride from unknown persons, do not go into suspicious-looking or run-down bars, do not wander away from brightly lit public places and do not wander on the beach at night.
• Stop at all roadblocks.
• Do not bring anything with you that you are not willing to have taken from you.
• If confronted by an armed individual who demands the possessions on your person, give them up.
• Do not bring ATM cards linked to your bank account. (Among other things, an ATM card can facilitate an express kidnapping.)
• Do not get irresponsibly intoxicated.
• Do not accept a drink from a stranger, regardless of whether you are male or female.
• Do not make yourself a tempting target by wearing expensive clothing or jewelry.
• Do not venture out alone. Additionally, being part of a group does not guarantee safety.
Editor's Note: In July 2011, Stratfor published a series on travel security, available at the end of this piece on our website.
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Let's make this simple. If you are stupid enough to go to Mexico for spring break, you deserve whatever happens to you.
Iraq and A-stan are safer. This is what we call a clue.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/world/americas/in-mexico-a-kidnapping-ignored-as-gang-crimes-go-unpunished.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120318
MATAMOROS, Mexico — They have spotted their stolen vehicles at stoplights, driven by the same gunmen who used them to take their entire family captive last July. They have reported the brazen abduction to every branch of Mexican law enforcement, only to be ignored, or directed someplace else.
Zynthia Cazares showing photographs of, from left, her brother, husband and father, all still missing after they were kidnapped.
For the women of the Cazares family who were kidnapped with their families for ransom — and who are still searching for five missing relatives — the official response to their horrific ordeal has been even more excruciating than the crime itself. Even now, they say, after months of trying to goad the Mexican authorities into action, they still see criminals they recognize living large here in this border city, as untouchable as kings.
“We’re completely impotent,” said Zynthia Cazares, 30, an American citizen who was among those abducted and whose husband, brother and father are still missing. “No one will help us.”
Six years into a mostly military assault on drug cartels, impunity across much of Mexico has worsened, and justice is harder to find. Criminals in Mexico are less likely to be punished now than even just a few years ago, say current and former government officials and experts who have studied Mexico’s ailing judiciary, because the authorities have been overwhelmed by increases in violent crime while corruption, fear and incompetence have continued to keep the justice system weak.
Many areas now veer toward lawlessness: in 14 of Mexico’s 31 states, the chance of a crime’s leading to trial and sentencing was less than 1 percent in 2010, according to government figures analyzed by a Mexican research institute known as Cidac. And since then, experts say, attempts at reform have stalled as crime and impunity have become cozy partners.
CONT.
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Good thing we secured that border!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/world/americas/in-mexico-a-kidnapping-ignored-as-gang-crimes-go-unpunished.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120318
MATAMOROS, Mexico — They have spotted their stolen vehicles at stoplights, driven by the same gunmen who used them to take their entire family captive last July. They have reported the brazen abduction to every branch of Mexican law enforcement, only to be ignored, or directed someplace else.
Zynthia Cazares showing photographs of, from left, her brother, husband and father, all still missing after they were kidnapped.
For the women of the Cazares family who were kidnapped with their families for ransom — and who are still searching for five missing relatives — the official response to their horrific ordeal has been even more excruciating than the crime itself. Even now, they say, after months of trying to goad the Mexican authorities into action, they still see criminals they recognize living large here in this border city, as untouchable as kings.
“We’re completely impotent,” said Zynthia Cazares, 30, an American citizen who was among those abducted and whose husband, brother and father are still missing. “No one will help us.”
Six years into a mostly military assault on drug cartels, impunity across much of Mexico has worsened, and justice is harder to find. Criminals in Mexico are less likely to be punished now than even just a few years ago, say current and former government officials and experts who have studied Mexico’s ailing judiciary, because the authorities have been overwhelmed by increases in violent crime while corruption, fear and incompetence have continued to keep the justice system weak.
Many areas now veer toward lawlessness: in 14 of Mexico’s 31 states, the chance of a crime’s leading to trial and sentencing was less than 1 percent in 2010, according to government figures analyzed by a Mexican research institute known as Cidac. And since then, experts say, attempts at reform have stalled as crime and impunity have become cozy partners.
CONT.
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I've stopped to eat in this town a few times in the 1970s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/americas/investigating-beheadings-12-officers-slain-in-mexico.html?src=recg
ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Gunmen ambushed and killed 12 police officers who had been sent to investigate the beheadings of 10 people in the southern state of Guerrero, Mexican authorities said Monday.
Six state and six local officers were killed and 11 officers were wounded Sunday night on a road leading out of the town of Teloloapan, between Acapulco and Mexico City, said Arturo Martínez, a Guerrero State police spokesman.
The officers were traveling in six patrol pickups and searching for the bodies of seven men and three women whose heads had been dumped outside the town’s slaughterhouse earlier Sunday, Mr. Martínez said.
The heads were left with a message threatening the drug cartel La Familia, whose home base is in neighboring Michoacan State.
Teloloapan is near an area shared by Guerrero and Michoacan that is known as Tierra Caliente for its steamy weather. Drug traffickers have used the violent, mountainous zone for years to grow marijuana and opium poppies.
The region has been plagued by drug violence in recent years as drug gangs have fought to control it. The authorities say the fighting has severely battered La Familia.
Soldiers have been sent to the area, but that has not stopped gunmen from killing priests, politicians, police chiefs or anyone else who gets in the way.
In September 2010, nine police officers were kidnapped in Teloloapan as they were investigating the death of a man in the village of El Revelado. The bodies of eight of the officers were found days later. Six had been dismembered. One officer was found alive.
More than 47,000 people have died in drug violence nationwide since President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on drug cartels in December 2006.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fMOg_f71-Dc
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fMOg_f71-Dc
Perhaps Malia is down in Mexico as part of the dem "get out the vote" operation?
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304177104577313952179611064.html?mod=world_newsreel
By DAVID LUHNOW
MEXICO CITY—Mexico's presidential campaign began Friday with three main candidates vying for the prize in the July vote: a young ex-governor with movie-star looks, the country's first major female candidate and a messianic former mayor who once preached revolution and now talks about love.
Polls show a big early lead for telegenic Enrique Peña Nieto, a telegenic former governor with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seven consecutive decades until it lost the presidency in 2000.
An average of six polls published this week, calculated by pollster Mitosfky, showed Mr. Peña leading with 47.6% of the vote compared with 30.2% for Josefina Vázquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party (PAN) and 21.3% for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who narrowly lost the vote six years ago.
The winner and successor to President Felipe Calderón, constitutionally barred from re-election, will take over a country with a raging drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives in the past five years, a slow-growing economy that has been left in the dust by fast-growing emerging markets like Brazil and India, and a political landscape that has been stuck in gridlock for 15 years."The challenge here is how to govern a country where the three major parties split up the vote, and can't agree on what to do," said Luis Rubio, head of the Cidac think tank in Mexico City.
.The two front-runners kicked off their campaigns right after midnight on Friday, the first day of the campaign season under the country's election laws. Mr. Peña told a crowd of flag-waving supporters in Mexico's second city of Guadalajara that it was time for change after 12 years of the conservative PAN.
"Mexicans can and deserve to do better," said Mr. Peña, who has promised to carry out economic reforms that include opening Mexico's closed energy sector to private companies.
Ms. Vázquez, for her part, said she would recruit a "coalition government" that represented the best talent in Mexico—an effort to try to build bridges beyond her party and get legislation passed. Her campaign hasn't yet outlined major policy proposals.
Mexico's drug war looms heavily over the vote, which will include local, state and federal elections. Alleged drug gangs have already threatened at least 13 candidates for various posts among the coalition of leftist parties that support Mr. López Obrador, telling them to step down or be killed, the party said this week.
One mayoral candidate's brother was kidnapped for six hours by a presumed drug gang with a message to tell the candidate not to run, the party said.
But the drug war isn't a divisive issue, because voters generally back Mr. Calderón's offensive against drug gangs, and all three major candidates have vowed to broadly continue the fight, albeit with different tactics.
Enlarge Image
CloseReuters
Josefina Vázquez arrives at a Mexico City school Friday.
.Some analysts say the race may get much closer than current polls suggest. One reason is that about 25% of voters are still undecided, and in past elections they have tended to break against the PRI, which is still viewed negatively by many Mexicans for its history of corruption and cronyism in power.
In the past two elections, the PRI candidate lost ground between March and Election Day, while the PAN candidate ended up gaining ground.
Mr. Peña has also been slowly declining in polls over the past year, losing about 10 percentage points to his current level. Late last year, he blundered when he couldn't name three books he had read raising questions about his intellect. Ms. Vázquez, meanwhile, has gained about 10 percentage points, partly as the result of securing her party's primary and becoming better known.
"To make this interesting, the PAN needs to convince the undecided voters to come out and vote for them," said Luis de la Calle, a former deputy trade minister and political consultant. "But the party needs to give them a reason to turn out."
A big factor in Mr. Peña's favor are new campaign rules that limit the campaign season to three months, outlaw attack ads, and set limits on television spending that will let the PRI run 40% of all TV spots versus just 28% for the PAN.
"It's possible that Ms. Vásquez Mota and Mr. López Obrador can catch Mr. Peña, but the rules of the game make it unlikely," Luis Carlos Ugalde, the former head of Mexico's electoral agency, wrote on the political website El Palenque this week.
A victory by the PRI would cap a remarkable comeback for a party that ran Mexico for 71 years until it lost in 2000 to Vicente Fox. The centrist party very nearly fell apart due to infighting and came in a distant third place in the last presidential election in 2006.
But it has been helped by its rivals. The PAN has proved ineffectual in power, unable to control a civil war among Mexico's drug cartels or tackle the country's biggest problems, from a dysfunctional judicial system to corrupt labor unions to monopolies that dominate the economy and suffocate competition.
While economic stability under the PAN has paid off in the form of a growing middle class, Mexico's average annual economic growth during the past decade has been an anemic 2.5%.
The Democratic Revolution Party, meanwhile, has suffered from Mr. López Obrador's reaction to his narrow loss six years ago, when he refused to recognize Mr. Calderón's win, led months of street protests that railed against the country's "oligarchy," and claimed himself to be the "legitimate" president—scaring off many voters along the way. To woo back the middle class, he has now recast himself as a candidate of "love" without class rancor.
For many voters, the election is shaping up as a choice between the lesser of three evils. Do they want to keep the ineffectual PAN or go back to the PRI, seen as capable but corrupt? Or do they want to roll the dice with Mr. López Obrador?
"I don't really like any of them," said Héctor Ortega, 42, who runs an outdoor stand that sells sweets on a street corner in Mexico City.
So far, the most far-reaching proposals during the precampaign months have come from the PRI, including a plan to change Mexico's constitution and allow state oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos to partner with foreign oil companies.
That kind of talk has spurred hope that Mexico may finally break out of its gridlock. But given that the PRI itself helped block many reforms in the past decade, some investors still need convincing.
CONT.
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com
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second post of day
Ideal Circumstances
Mexican authorities found at least seven dismembered bodies on display March 26 in the Los Zetas stronghold of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. The displays were accompanied by three narcomantas, ostensibly signed by Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, claiming the Nuevo Laredo plaza as his own. The messages openly challenged Los Zetas' two senior leaders, Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales and Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano, and intimated that further assaults can be expected against Los Zetas in the northeast Mexican city.
If they were authentic, the narcomantas would suggest that Sinaloa has resumed operations against Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo, one of the most valuable border towns for illicit drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. While the messages alone do not indicate the extent to which Sinaloa will encroach upon Los Zetas' northeastern stronghold, Sinaloa certainly has the resources to undertake the challenge. Were Sinaloa to try to reclaim the Nuevo Laredo plaza, Los Zetas would defend their territory with all available resources, and violence in the city would likely intensify.
There are several factors that make this an ideal time for Guzman's criminal organization to strike its eastern rival in Nuevo Laredo, not the least of which is that the Mexican military has recently stepped up operations against Los Zetas in the plaza. On March 1, Los Zetas plaza boss Gerardo "El Guerra" Guerra Valdez was killed in a firefight with the army. Then on March 13, authorities captured Guerra's alleged replacement, Carlos Alejandro "El Fabiruchis" Gutierrez Escobedo. Perceived weakness in Zetas leadership may have motivated Sinaloa to undertake operations before Los Zetas can recuperate.
New alliances among Los Zetas' rivals also make current conditions ripe for incursion. Following the 2003 arrest of Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen, Sinaloa moved a large group of enforcers into Nuevo Laredo and began a violent turf war with the Gulf cartel. After five years of intense fighting, Los Zetas, enforcers for the Gulf cartel at the time, pushed Sinaloa out of Nuevo Laredo. But Los Zetas quickly assumed control of the plaza after splitting with the Gulf cartel in 2010, and residual Gulf elements have fought intermittently with Los Zetas ever since.
In 2011, two rival factions within the Gulf cartel -- Los Metros and Los Rojos -- began fighting for absolute control of the cartel. Though weakened, these factions retained control of various areas of Tamaulipas state, such as Reynosa, Matamoros and Miguel Aleman, posing a significant threat to Los Zetas. Los Metros, led by Jorge Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez, appeared to have consolidated control over the Gulf cartel by the end of 2011. But according to a Stratfor source and other unconfirmed reports, Costilla has since been forced out of the cartel by Mario "X-20" Ramirez-Trevino, who has assumed control of the Reynosa plaza. The source said Costilla has now been fully brought into the Sinaloa Federation's fold. If the report were true, Costilla would appear to be facilitating Sinaloa's incursion into Nuevo Laredo.
Another factor may also be creating ideal circumstances for Sinaloa's moves: control over transport routes. In September 2011, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) commenced operations against Los Zetas in the important port city of Veracruz, Veracruz state. Allegedly conducted at the behest of Sinaloa, these assaults helped CJNG establish a presence in previously uncontested Zetas territory. Then in January 2012, reports surfaced that Los Zetas had begun operations against an alleged Sinaloa-Gulf cartel alliance in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, a valuable transport hub linking Veracruz to Nuevo Laredo. Meanwhile, renewed violence between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas erupted in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state, located between Veracruz and Nuevo Laredo. Taken together, these events suggest Los Zetas are being confronted along a crucial supply line to Nuevo Laredo.
It is unclear if or to what degree Sinaloa will escalate its assaults on Nuevo Laredo, but given the plaza's importance, Los Zetas would respond with all available resources to defend it. This may require diverting manpower and resources from areas in which Los Zetas are encroaching on Sinaloa, such as Jalisco, Durango or Zacatecas states. Los Zetas would also have to defend against strikes on transport routes leading to Nuevo Laredo. In any case, security in Nuevo Laredo can be expected to degrade rapidly if Sinaloa and Los Zetas engage in all-out turf war.
March 20
■Authorities discovered the body of an executed man in Cancun, Quintana Roo state.
March 21
■Masked individuals identifying themselves as Los Guerreros de Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion ("The Warriors of CJNG") sent a video to a Mexican media agency. The individuals said CJNG would clean Guerrero and Michoacan states of all ills, threatened the Knights Templar and said former La Familia Michoacana leader Nazario "El Mas Loco" Moreno Gonzalez was alive and acting as a Knights Templar leader.
■Six members of the Mexican military were injured in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state, when a grenade thrown from a nearby bus station exploded, flipping their vehicle.
■Authorities discovered the bodies of three executed men next to a narcomanta addressed to a gang in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon state.
March 22
■Gunmen executed seven people, including three taxi drivers, in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
■State police detained eight Gulf cartel members and three Los Zetas members in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
■Gunmen executed a municipal police chief outside a bar in Chihuahua, Chihuahua state.
■Gunmen left a narcomanta accusing the police chief of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, of supporting the Sinaloa Federation.
March 23
■Gunmen shot and killed seven people at a fuel vendor's stand in Angostura, Sinaloa state.
■Authorities found four severed heads in a truck in Acapulco, Guerrero state.
■The Mexican military seized 9.5 metric tons of marijuana from a warehouse in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, while responding to reports of an explosion. The warehouse was being used to install secret compartments for illicit drug transportation.
March 24
■Gunmen shot and killed a man in Acapulco, Guerrero state. The gunmen left a narcomanta with the body, but the message's contents have not been released.
March 25
■An explosive device was detonated near a TV studio in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state. No injuries were reported.
March 26
■Two grenade attacks injured one person in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state. Authorities attribute the city's recent rise in grenade attacks to fighting between rival gangs.
■A firefight with state police left 10 gunmen dead in Temosachi, Chihuahua state.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: In Nuevo Laredo, Killings May Herald a Sinaloa Incursion | Stratfor
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third post of the morning:
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With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, by Robert D. Kaplan
March 28, 2012 | 1237 GMT
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By Robert D. Kaplan
While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria -- half a world away from the United States -- more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States' southern border, Mexico will affect America's destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East. Indeed, Mexico may constitute the world's seventh-largest economy in the near future.
Certainly, while the Mexican violence is largely criminal, Syria is a more clear-cut moral issue, enhanced by its own strategic consequences. A calcified authoritarian regime in Damascus is stamping out dissent with guns and artillery barrages. Moreover, regime change in Syria, which the rebels demand, could deliver a pivotal blow to Iranian influence in the Middle East, an event that would be the best news to U.S. interests in the region in years or even decades.
Nevertheless, the Syrian rebels are divided and hold no territory, and the toppling of pro-Iranian dictator Bashar al Assad might conceivably bring to power an austere Sunni regime equally averse to U.S. interests -- if not lead to sectarian chaos. In other words, all military intervention scenarios in Syria are fraught with extreme risk. Precisely for that reason, that the U.S. foreign policy elite has continued for months to feverishly debate Syria, and in many cases advocate armed intervention, while utterly ignoring the vaster panorama of violence next door in Mexico, speaks volumes about Washington's own obsessions and interests, which are not always aligned with the country's geopolitical interests.
Syria matters and matters momentously to U.S. interests, but Mexico ultimately matters more, so one would think that there would be at least some degree of parity in the amount written on these subjects. I am not demanding a switch in news coverage from one country to the other, just a bit more balance. Of course, it is easy for pundits to have a fervently interventionist view on Syria precisely because it is so far away, whereas miscalculation in Mexico on America's part would carry far greater consequences. For example, what if the Mexican drug cartels took revenge on San Diego? Thus, one might even argue that the very noise in the media about Syria, coupled with the relative silence about Mexico, is proof that it is the latter issue that actually is too sensitive for loose talk.
It may also be that cartel-wracked Mexico -- at some rude subconscious level -- connotes for East Coast elites a south of the border, 7-Eleven store culture, reminiscent of the crime movie "Traffic," that holds no allure to people focused on ancient civilizations across the ocean. The concerns of Europe and the Middle East certainly seem closer to New York and Washington than does the southwestern United States. Indeed, Latin American bureaus and studies departments simply lack the cachet of Middle East and Asian ones in government and universities. Yet, the fate of Mexico is the hinge on which the United States' cultural and demographic future rests.
U.S. foreign policy emanates from the domestic condition of its society, and nothing will affect its society more than the dramatic movement of Latin history northward. By 2050, as much as a third of the American population could be Hispanic. Mexico and Central America constitute a growing demographic and economic powerhouse with which the United States has an inextricable relationship. In recent years Mexico's economic growth has outpaced that of its northern neighbor. Mexico's population of 111 million plus Central America's of more than 40 million equates to half the population of the United States.
Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States, even as half of Central America's trade is with the United States. While the median age of Americans is nearly 37, demonstrating the aging tendency of the U.S. population, the median age in Mexico is 25, and in Central America it is much lower (20 in Guatemala and Honduras, for example). In part because of young workers moving northward, the destiny of the United States could be north-south, rather than the east-west, sea-to-shining-sea of continental and patriotic myth. (This will be amplified by the scheduled 2014 widening of the Panama Canal, which will open the Greater Caribbean Basin to megaships from East Asia, leading to the further development of Gulf of Mexico port cities in the United States, from Texas to Florida.)
Since 1940, Mexico's population has increased more than five-fold. Between 1970 and 1995 it nearly doubled. Between 1985 and 2000 it rose by more than a third. Mexico's population is now more than a third that of the United States and growing at a faster rate. And it is northern Mexico that is crucial. That most of the drug-related homicides in this current wave of violence that so much dwarfs Syria's have occurred in only six of Mexico's 32 states, mostly in the north, is a key indicator of how northern Mexico is being distinguished from the rest of the country (though the violence in the city of Veracruz and the regions of Michoacan and Guerrero is also notable). If the military-led offensive to crush the drug cartels launched by conservative President Felipe Calderon falters, as it seems to be doing, and Mexico City goes back to cutting deals with the cartels, then the capital may in a functional sense lose even further control of the north, with concrete implications for the southwestern United States.
One might argue that with massive border controls, a functional and vibrantly nationalist United States can coexist with a dysfunctional and somewhat chaotic northern Mexico. But that is mainly true in the short run. Looking deeper into the 21st century, as Arnold Toynbee notes in A Study of History (1946), a border between a highly developed society and a less highly developed one will not attain an equilibrium but will advance in the more backward society's favor. Thus, helping to stabilize Mexico -- as limited as the United States' options may be, given the complexity and sensitivity of the relationship -- is a more urgent national interest than stabilizing societies in the Greater Middle East. If Mexico ever does reach coherent First World status, then it will become less of a threat, and the healthy melding of the two societies will quicken to the benefit of both.
Today, helping to thwart drug cartels in rugged and remote terrain in the vicinity of the Mexican frontier and reaching southward from Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso, Texas) means a limited role for the U.S. military and other agencies -- working, of course, in full cooperation with the Mexican authorities. (Predator and Global Hawk drones fly deep over Mexico searching for drug production facilities.) But the legal framework for cooperation with Mexico remains problematic in some cases because of strict interpretation of 19th century posse comitatus laws on the U.S. side. While the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to affect historical outcomes in Eurasia, its leaders and foreign policy mandarins are somewhat passive about what is happening to a country with which the United States shares a long land border, that verges on partial chaos in some of its northern sections, and whose population is close to double that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Mexico, in addition to the obvious challenge of China as a rising great power, will help write the American story in the 21st century. Mexico will partly determine what kind of society America will become, and what exactly will be its demographic and geographic character, especially in the Southwest. The U.S. relationship with China will matter more than any other individual bilateral relationship in terms of determining the United States' place in the world, especially in the economically crucial Pacific. If policymakers in Washington calculate U.S. interests properly regarding those two critical countries, then the United States will have power to spare so that its elites can continue to focus on serious moral questions in places that matter less.
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Read more: With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, by Robert D. Kaplan | Stratfor
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Government border town crackdowns on the rise
In this March 22, 2012 photo, Luis Valverde, right, talks with Nicho Vacca, middle, and Anthony Delgado, all long time residents of Sunland Park, as they gather in front of a senior center in Sunland Park, N.M. Scandal in this small border town is nothing new. But what is new is the harsh response: State and federal authorities are focusing on border town corruption as part of the larger effort to battle the influence of Mexican drug cartels. (AP Photo - Ross D. Franklin)JERI CLAUSING
From Associated Press
April 26, 2012 12:05 PM EDT
SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — While much of New Mexico is west of the Rio Grande, this dusty enclave of 14,000 residents is the only U.S. city located on the Mexico side of the river, on the same side as — and just across the border fence from — Juarez.
But it's more than the anomalous location that lends to the town's persistent reputation as a self-contained banana republic.
When state police descended on the dysfunctional community before the March elections, the reaction wasn't so much surprise as "what now?"
And that would be the latest allegations of extortion and financial kickbacks among municipal officials, and, more colorfully, that a mayoral candidate tried to force his opponent out of the race with a secretly recorded video of the other man getting a topless lap dance.
But what is relatively new in Sunland Park and in other troubled border cities and towns is the harsh response to such shenanigans. State and federal agencies are cracking down on border town corruption as part of the larger effort to battle Mexican drug cartels.
"Everyone turned their heads for so long," said Richard Schwein, a former FBI agent in nearby El Paso, Texas, where at least 28 people have either been convicted or indicted recently for voting scandals or awarding fraudulent contracts. Then, when the Department of Justice and the FBI made it a priority, "Bingo!"
Another example can be found 70 miles west of El Paso, in tiny Columbus, N.M., where authorities a year ago arrested the mayor, police chief, a town trustee and 11 other people who have since pleaded guilty to charges they helped run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels.
That corruption that seems endemic to the border towns can be blamed on a mix of small-town politics, an influx of corrupt government practices from across the border, and, of course, the rise of the cartels and their endless supply of cash.
"If you're (a small town police officer) making $35,000 a year, and someone offers you $5,000 cash ... and next month there's another $5,000 in it for you, you've just (substantially increased) your income by not being on patrol on a given road," said James Phelps, an assistant professor with the Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.
The U.S. attorney for New Mexico, Kenneth Gonzalez, says more local officials have gotten caught up in scandals as federal authorities put a more intense and sophisticated focus on border towns as part of their attempts to thwart the cartels.
"A result of that intense scrutiny is that we more than likely are going to ensnare someone abusing their position," Gonzalez said.
In Sunland Park, an inquiry into local elections turned into a major probe by multiple agencies.
State auditor Hector Balderas said that broad cooperation among agencies shows that law enforcement is starting to realize that "many crimes are interrelated."
"I think law enforcement agencies and other agencies are now learning that these fiscal problems are symptoms of potentially greater corruption," Balderas said. "And a village or municipality can be infiltrated by criminal elements very easily."
Dona Ana District Attorney Amy Orlando stated in court that Sunland Park's former mayor pro tem and then mayor-elect, Daniel Salinas, 28, had boasted to his codefendants in the cases there that he had ties to the cartels and could call on them to have people who testify against him killed.
Salinas' attorney vehemently denied those allegations.
The two dozen felonies filed against Salinas to date focus on corruption of the financial and voting processes. Although he won the mayor's chair, he was barred from taking office by the terms of his bail.
So allies on the City Council recently named a political newcomer to the job. The new mayor, 24-year-old Javier Perea, most recently worked as a jewelry store employee at an El Paso mall. He replaces former Mayor Martin Resendiz, who dropped a bid for Congress after admitting in a deposition that he signed nine contracts while drunk.
Said Orlando, "Unfortunately I think what is happening down in Sunland Park is that it was being run by a small group of people that were using funds and using the resources there for their own gain, operating it really as just their own little town — not following rules, not following regulations."
Incorporated in 1983, Sunland Park could geographically be considered a suburb of El Paso or Las Cruces, N.M., or even an upscale neighborhood in north Juarez. The town has a modern racetrack, replete with casino gambling, on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. There are a few store fronts, churches and even horse stables lining its main road.
The residents are friendly, but weary of the attention that they fear has made the town a laughingstock.
Salinas has declined to talk about the case, citing advice from his lawyer. But during an encounter outside his house after the second of his three arrests, he seemed at ease for a man facing multiple felony charges and continued investigation.
"I could write a book," he said with a wry smile.
And the native of the town still has many supporters.
"He is a good man, you can see it in his eyes," a man at the senior center said, before rushing off when asked for his name.
Besides Salinas, several city workers, including the city manager, the city's public information officer, the public works director and former city councilors and the former police chief, have also been indicted in the three separate criminal cases.
In one, Salinas and others are accused of trying to force his mayoral opponent, Gerardo Hernandez, out of the race with the lap dance video. Hernandez, who finished second, told investigators that an unidentified man threatened to blackmail him by producing a still image from the video. Hernandez said he was set up.
In another case, Salinas is accused of giving the former acting police chief the job of chief for convincing his sister not to run against a Salinas ally for city council. And in the third, Salinas and others are accused of billing hookers, drinks and campaign videos to a $12 million fund set up for the city by the owner of Sunland Park casino and racetrack to aid the town's ongoing efforts to get a border crossing built there.
State auditor Balderas said he's been monitoring the town since 2009. A previous auditor recommended the state take over the town in 2004 after finding scores of violations of state and local laws.
"Sunland Park has had a culture that has lacked accountability for many years," Balderas said. "They probably should have been taken over many years ago. They got more brazen when they didn't."
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updated 5/13/2012 8:22:55 PM ET 2012-05-14T00:22:55
Print Font: +-CADEREYTA JIMENEZ, Mexico — Suspected drug gang killers dumped 49 headless bodies on a highway near Mexico's northern city of Monterrey in one of the country's worst atrocities in recent years.
The mutilated corpses of 43 men and 6 women, whose hands and feet had also been cut off, were found in a pile on a highway in the municipality of Cadereyta Jimenez in the early hours of Sunday, officials from the state of Nuevo Leon said.
"What's complicating the identification of all the people was that they were all headless," said Jorge Domene, the Nuevo Leon government's spokesman for public security, who said the other body parts were missing.
Domene said the brutal Zetas drug gang claimed responsibility for the murders in a message found at the scene.
The massacre was the latest in a string of mass slayings that have convulsed Mexico in recent months, many of them in the north of the country, where the Zetas have waged a war against rival groups for control of smuggling routes.
Video: Video of kid criminals stirs controversy in Mexico (on this page)
The Zetas gang was founded by deserters from the Mexican army who became enforcers for the Gulf cartel, which once dominated the drug trade in northeastern Mexico. Leaders of the Zetas later split from their employers and the two gangs have since fought for control of trafficking routes.
The Zetas have also been at war with the powerful Sinaloa cartel on the other side of the country.
President Felipe Calderon has staked his reputation on bringing Mexico's drug gangs to heel, sending in the army to fight them shortly after taking office in December 2006.
But the violence has spiraled since, and more than 50,000 people have fallen victim to the conflict, eroding support for Calderon's conservative National Action Party (PAN), which looks likely to lose power in presidential elections on July 1.
A poll published on Sunday showed PAN presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota trailing front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) by 19 points with just seven weeks to go.
The commercial hub of Monterrey was long a bastion of the PAN, and the local business community has been "livid" about the violence engulfing the city, said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
"This puts the final nail in the coffin of the PAN in the presidential contest," he said after the latest atrocity.
Surveys show voters think that the PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000, is more likely to quell the violence. Its long rule was tainted by corruption and critics have accused the PRI of making deals with cartels to maintain order.
Tattooed victims
The headless victims have not been identified.
The bodies showed signs of decay, indicating they may have been dead for days, Nuevo Leon Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said. He noted there had been no mass disappearances reported in the state, so the victims could have died elsewhere.
De la Garza said many of the bodies were tattooed, which could offer a clue to their identities. The dead may have been migrants passing through Mexico to the United States, he added. Migrants have been targeted by criminal gangs in the past.
Violent street gangs in Central America such as the Maras have distinctive tattoos, though security spokesman Domene said the victims did not show these markings.
Domene said some had tattoos of Santa Muerte, or "Holy Death" a female skeletal grim reaper venerated by both gangs and some broader, non-criminal sections of Mexican society. The corpses were taken to Monterrey and authorities said they would perform DNA tests. Thousands of Mexico's drug war victims have never been identified.
Spiral of violence
The bloody killings in Nuevo Leon were the worst there since 52 people died in an arson attack on a casino in Monterrey in August. That attack was also blamed on the Zetas.
Monterrey is Mexico's most affluent city and was long seen as a model of economic development in Latin America. But it has been ravaged by the drug war over the last three years.
The horrifying conflict has been marked by an escalation of mass slaughter in recent weeks.
Last Wednesday, 18 people were found decapitated and dismembered near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara.
A week earlier, the bodies of nine people were found hanging from a bridge and 14 others found dismembered in the city of Nuevo Laredo, just across the U.S. border from Laredo in Texas.
Security analyst Alberto Islas said much of the recent spike in violence was the result of fighting over cocaine supplies from South America between the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.
Increased pressure on Guzman's operations in Colombia this year had prompted the Sinaloa cartel to buy up a bigger share of cocaine from Peru and Ecuador, squeezing the Zetas' supply and sparking tit-for-tat attacks among the gangs, Islas added.
The fact that state and federal authorities had time and again failed to capture and prosecute those responsible for the brutality meant the attacks were only getting worse, he said.
"They're fighting across the whole country with complete impunity," he said. "The government has to send out a very clear signal they will stop the violence and find those responsible."
Late last year, several mass killings took place in the eastern state of Veracruz, which has been ravaged by the Zetas.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/world/americas/mexicans-unflinching-in-face-of-drug-wars-carnage.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120516
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second post of morning
Mexico Security Memo: Zetas-Sinaloa Conflict Intensifies
May 16, 2012 | 1255 GMT
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Criminals have assembled dramatic displays of corpses throughout Mexico since May 4, when 23 victims were arranged in two separate displays in Nuevo Laredo. Narcomantas accompanied both, the first signed "El Chapo" and the other unsigned but denouncing Gulf cartel leaders and a former sicario, or hit man, for the Sinaloa Federation. On May 9, Mexican authorities discovered 18 bodies near Guadalajara, Jalisco state. According to state authorities, Los Zetas and the Zetas-affiliated Milenio cartel were responsible. And in the highest-profile incident, 49 dismembered bodies were dumped along a highway near Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon state, along with a narcomanta in which Los Zetas claimed responsibility.
These public displays of violence all relate to the ongoing conflict between the Sinaloa Federation and its allies and Los Zetas and their allies in northeastern Mexico, in particular over Nuevo Laredo, a critical plaza for Los Zetas. This conflict has security implications throughout Mexico.
Since September 2011, the Sinaloa Federation and its allies, the Gulf cartel and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), have challenged Los Zetas in cities along routes leading to Nuevo Laredo, such as Veracruz, Monterrey and Ciudad Victoria. Sinaloa announced its recent challenge to Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo in a March 27 narcomanta. Los Zetas responded in kind along the route from Veracruz city to Nuevo Laredo and in traditional strongholds of Sinaloa and its allies, including Culiacan, Sinaloa and Guadalajara, Jalisco state, areas as critical to Sinaloa as Nuevo Laredo is to Los Zetas.
Continuing pressure from Sinaloa in Nuevo Laredo may force Los Zetas to divert resources from their other plazas to defend Nuevo Laredo. This limits Los Zetas' ability to defend plazas from additional incursions or to counter existing incursions like one in Cancun, where CJNG is competing for control of the plaza.
.The Mexican military also is mounting strong efforts against Los Zetas in states such as Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The arrests or deaths of Los Zetas members like the March loss of two Nuevo Laredo plaza bosses in military operations open up even more opportunities for the Sinaloa Federation and its allies. This could well translate into additional turf wars in Zetas-controlled territory -- and in the turf of the Sinaloa Federation and its allies when Los Zetas strike back. While Nuevo Laredo is critical for Los Zetas, it is only one battlefield in the war.
May 7
■Authorities seized 32 metric tons of monomethylamine, a chemical precursor used for the production of methamphetamine, from a ship in Veracruz city, Veracruz state. The shipment, which originated in China, was labeled falsely as containing aluminum sulfate.
May 8
■Authorities rescued 12 kidnapping victims from a house in Tala, Jalisco state. Authorities were alerted to the house after one of the victims escaped.
■Gunmen killed a Centro de Readaptacion Social prison guard director in Torreon, Coahuila state, in his vehicle at an intersection.
■Authorities detained six members of La Oficina in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes state. At the time of their arrest, the six were planning to kidnap a person who did not pay an extortion fee.
■Gunmen established several roadblocks in central Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, by forcing motorists from their vehicles and then setting the vehicles ablaze.
■Gunmen ambushed a group of police officers along a road near Xalostoc, Guerrero state, killing two officers.
May 9
■Authorities discovered 18 headless bodies along a road in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillo, Jalisco state, accompanied by a narcomanta signed "Milenio-Zetas alliance."
■Authorities seized 766.35 kilograms (1,689 pounds) of marijuana from a vehicle in Tijuana, Baja California state.
■Authorities seized approximately 14,700 liters (3,880 gallons) of chemical precursors used in the production of illicit drugs in Frontera Hidalgo, Chiapas state.
May 10
■Gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in Torreon, Coahuila state. Casualty information was not available.
■Authorities detained four people in possession of illegal drugs, a sidearm, seven cellphones, a radio and 135 voter ID cards in San Nicolas de los Garza, Nuevo Leon state.
■A firefight between gunmen and the military in Salvador Alvarado, Sinaloa state, killed five gunmen after gunfire ignited their vehicle. Elements of the 9th Military Zone initiated the exchange after encountering a checkpoint set up by the gunmen on Highway 15.
May 11
■Gunmen fired on newspaper El Manana's office in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, for several minutes and spray-painted an undisclosed message on the building. No injuries were reported.
May 12
■Authorities arrested four people in Tala, Jalisco state, in connection with decapitated bodies found May 9 in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, Jalisco state.
May 13
■Forty-nine dismembered bodies in black bags were dumped near Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon state, along a highway leading to Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. "Z-100%" was spray painted on a nearby wall, suggesting Los Zetas carried out the attack.
■Authorities found the body of Orta Salgado, a police reporter with 20 years of experience, handcuffed and bearing signs of torture in the trunk of a vehicle in Cuernavaca, Morelos state.
■Authorities discovered a dismembered body in Ixlan, Michoacan state, along a highway. A narcomanta signed CJNG and threatening the Knights Templar accompanied the body.
May 14
■Authorities in Luvianos, Mexico state, arrested suspected La Familia Michoacana (LFM) operator Juan Castelan Martinez "El Virulo" on the Tejupilco-Luvianos road. He is believed to have reported to "El Pony" and "La Marrana," the two principal LFM operators in Mexico state.
■Soldiers in the municipality of Chapala, Jalisco state, discovered five bodies in an industrial freezer on a farm. The bodies matched severed body parts found May 9 in Jalisco state.
■Seven men are being held in Chiapas state for allegedly trying to smuggle 6.4 kilograms of methamphetamine through a roadblock in Margaritas, Chiapas state. The drug shipment allegedly originated in Comitlan de Dominguez, Chiapas state, and was bound for Mexico state.
■Authorities seized 136 metric tons of chemical precursors aboard a ship in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state. The shipment originated in China and had Honduras listed as its final destination.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Zetas-Sinaloa Conflict Intensifies | Stratfor
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second post:
I haven't had a chance to look closely at this but it seems likely to be lively
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/we-never-occupied-mexico-beck-schools-eva-longoria-on-her-mexican-history/
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MEXICO - Economy grows 4.1 percent in first quarter
On 14 May 2012, financial groups reported an estimated 4.1 percent growth in the first quarter, mainly due to strong performance in the country’s manufacturing sector. Both increased external demand and the depreciation of the country’s currency from August 2011 to March 2012, which lowered export prices, were key factors in the growth.
MEXICO - Generals held for possible links to Beltrán Leyva Organization
On 17 May 2012, a federal judge ordered former deputy defense minister Tomás Ángeles Dauahare and Brigadier General Roberto Dawe González to be held for 40 days while they are investigated for alleged ties to the Beltrán Leyva Organization. The two were arrested on 16 May 2012 as part of an investigation against organized crime; Ángeles Dauhare was second-in-command of the military before his 2008 retirement.
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Tuesday, June 12, 2012 -- 12:26 PM EDT
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Mexican Cartel Hides Millions in Horse Races, U.S. Alleges
A top drug ring enforcer’s brother, taken into custody Tuesday, was behind a horse breeding organization in the United States that officials say laundered millions of dollars.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/drug-money-from-mexico-makes-its-way-to-the-racetrack.html?emc=na
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The Past Has a Presence Here
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: June 15, 2012
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Adam Wiseman for The New York Times
Organ pipe cactuses at the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca.
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Adam Wiseman for The New York Times
Spiced grasshoppers at a market.
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Adam Wiseman for The New York Times
The archaeological site Monte Albán, about seven miles outside of Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico. Evidence points to the area as home to perhaps the earliest state in the Americas.
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Adam Wiseman for The New York Times
Textiles dyed by using the cochineal, in Oaxaca.
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Adam Wiseman for The New York Times
Cochineals on a nopal cactus. These insects are crushed to make the prized red pigment.
OAXACA, Mexico — The past casts a sharp shadow here, wherever you look. You see it on mountaintop plateaus, where the ruins of ancient pyramidal staircases and capital-I-shaped ball fields hint at mysterious rituals that disappeared over a millennium ago.
You see it during market days in nearby towns, whose traditions may be even older than those Zapotec ruins. Stalls with cheap contemporary kitsch — SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts and bootleg Snow White baskets — are juxtaposed with culinary offerings from other centuries: crunchy grasshoppers laced with chili peppers, and mounds of black mole paste used for making spiced sauces.
You see it too in this town’s astonishing botanical garden of native plants, whose exotic cactuses and succulents are bounded by the walls of a 1500s Dominican monastery, the Spanish colonial structure shaping plangent counterpoint with indigenous flora.
For a visitor from the United States used to different kinds of exhibitions, it is startling how different the effect of the displays is here, how crisp certain contrasts seem and how brightly illuminated some familiar controversies become. It has something to do with the indigenous past, which has a different weight here, a different character.
In Oaxaca, which lies on the southern end of the Mexican landmass as it curves eastward to the isthmus, the first impression may be that of a quaint Spanish colonial town set in a protected valley. There are more museums here than can readily be explained: museums devoted to stamps, to pre-Columbian statuary, to the region’s cultural histories, to contemporary artists, to archaeological sites.
But for all that immersion in heritage (Oaxaca has even received the Unesco seal of approval as a World Heritage Site), there seems to be no temptation to glaze over the past’s harshness and imagine a pastoral harmony disrupted by colonization and only now struggling back. Leave that well-worn narrative for back home, where it has, unfortunately, become one of the embarrassments of the museum world.
In the United States, in institutions ranging from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington to regional natural history museums, the real arbiters of indigenous history these days are representatives of contemporary tribes. They oversee the display of a museum’s tribal artifacts and reshape accounts of the past, in many cases relying mainly on frayed strands of traumatically disrupted oral traditions. And everything is meant to increase self-esteem with promotional banality.
But here, something else happens. When you stand on a flattened hilltop above the village of Atzompa, some seven miles outside of Oaxaca, and look over at a nearby peak, you can glimpse the immense ruins of Monte Albán, a pre-Columbian plaza of breathtaking expanse used for ceremonies and games. Below those ruins, where perhaps 25,000 people lived in the early part of the first millennium, you can make out faint remnants of terraced farming on the hillside. The past is visible in the landscape.
On Atzompa’s adjacent plateau, similar ruins have been discovered. An impoverished village once reliant on its lead-based glazed pottery (now shunned), Atzompa will soon reap the benefits of recent discoveries when the government opens this site during the next year, showing off these fields and structures to visiting tourists.
We are not dealing here with imagined reconstructions, but with the past’s palpable presence. And most of these ancient cities and monuments were abandoned some six centuries before the Spaniards plundered the region. After 80 years of archaeological research, their meanings are still unclear, though much has been written about Zapotec social hierarchies, gladiatorial-style games and stone carvings.
What is more clear is that remnants of those worlds also exist in the valley, where the slow-changing cultures of this buffeted but protected region still reflect Zapotec and Mixtec heritages. So here everything is plentiful that in the United States is rare: indigenous ruins, ancient languages, signs of direct lineage. And there is an edge to it all. Centers like Monte Albán are monuments to power and accumulated material wealth; they are also clearly evidence of a large-scale political organization, relics of perhaps the earliest state in the Americas.
There have still been attempts to romanticize this past: Some of the carvings in the museum at Monte Albán were once thought to show dancers in acrobatic motion; now they are more convincingly interpreted as images of brutally castrated prisoners of war.
But how different all of this is from images of the indigenous past north of the border! There are few areas where evidence of ancient state-size power exists (mainly in the 2,000-year-old relics of societies that once thrived along the Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers). There are few places where cultural continuity is even remotely clear, and where ancient languages are still widely spoken. Even before colonization, cultures disappeared, leaving behind neither oral traditions nor written records. And forced migrations and centuries of warfare so disrupted native traditions that the past now seems little more than an identity-affirming fantasy.
There are Oaxacan counterparts, but they have a different character. Nelly Robles García, the head of Mexico’s national archaeological administration, explained in her dissertation that it was not easy to balance the needs of archaeologists with a sensitivity toward the local community, which also has its set of demands. “An experienced archaeologist,” she writes, “on hearing ‘the community will decide,’ immediately abandons hope of success.”
But generally there seems to be so much less gauze layered over what is being seen, because there is so much left to be seen.
Much of this becomes evident at the remarkable Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca, in the former monastery of Santo Domingo. The anthropologist Alejandro de Ávila Blomberg selected the plants and gave the garden its conceptual structure. In a manuscript about the garden, he cites Pablo Neruda’s description of Mexico, “with its cactus and its serpent,” as being a land both “flower-bedecked and thorny, dry and hurricane-drenched, violent of sketch and color, violent of eruption and creation.” That is the mixture evoked in this ensemble of native plants.
This is not a garden in the European sense, presenting an idealized landscape. At first, it can even seem untamed. The Oaxaca region, Mr. de Ávila Blomberg explains as he guides visitors, has been home to more ethnic groups, more indigenous languages and more species of plants than any other region in Mexico, and indeed, more than most regions of the world.
While sections of the garden, with its five acres of planting, are organized by climatic zones, it is also organized to shape a kind of history, beginning with plants grown from “the oldest cultivated seeds known”: 10,000-year-old squash seeds found in a cave about 25 miles from the city.
Most dramatically, extending down the garden’s center are columns of organ pipe cactuses, planted as if to guard the prickly pear cactus gathered nearby. The prickly pear, or nopal, cactus turned out to form a crucial axis on which Spanish colonization turned. A white parasitic insect, the cochineal, can be seen on its broad leaves. Squeeze them, and a bright red stain is left behind, the source of a cherished crimson dye once coveted for oil paints and cardinal robes. The cochineal, Mr. de Ávila Blomberg explains, made “the splendor of Santo Domingo” possible. It is also used in the garden, he explains, to color the water that pours through a sculpture by the Oaxacan artist Francisco Toledo, called “La Sangre de Mitla” — the blood of Mitla — invoking one of the great local Zapotec ruins.
There is a polemical point to this bloodletting, of course, because this is a nationalist garden. And only partly in jest, Mr. de Ávila Blomberg makes sure that visitors notice that the garden’s design places a cactus along the path leading to the monastery’s arched window, as if “giving the finger” to its alien colonists.
But such polemical displays do not undermine the garden’s ultimate embrace of even that past as one more strand in a complex cultural fabric. And such tensions, along with so many others here, make the American identity museum, with its romantic imaginings, seem like bland fare in comparison.
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second post of morning
More 'Cloned' Vehicles Used to Transport Mexican Cartel-linked Drugs, Aliens
By: Anthony Kimery
05/29/2012 (10:06am)
On May 18, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents arrested a 21-year-old male attempting to smuggle illegal aliens using a cloned United Parcel Service (UPS) van in CBP’s El Centro Sector of southern California. Less than a week later, in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, (which has become a hot spot for cross-border transnational criminal activity), Hildago County sheriff’s deputies pulled over a suspicious FedEx truck near La Joya. It didn’t take long to discover that the truck also was a cloned commercial vehicle – it bore a fake magnetic license plate with the number of a lawfully registered FedEx delivery van.
In the May 18 cloned vehicle incident, diligent CBP agents busted the driver of the bogus UPS truck at approximately 11:30 a.m. after Border Patrol agents observed the fake UPS van attempting to circumvent the Highway 111 checkpoint. Agents performed a vehicle stop and discovered 13 passengers hiding inside the back of the fake delivery van. Upon further investigation, agents determined that the van was not a legitimate UPS vehicle.
The driver was identified as a United States citizen and the 13 passengers were identified as Mexican citizens without legal immigration documents. The driver and illegal aliens were arrested and the cloned UPS van was seized.
In the La Joya, Texas, case, Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies pulled over a suspicious FedEx truck that led to the discovery of “bundles of cash,” weapons (including an inert grenade) and drugs. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino told reporters that the truck was large enough to hold more than a ton of drugs. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is now assisting in the case. Three people, including the driver, have been arrested in connection to the cloned truck and contraband, authorities said.
In January off Highway 490, west of the Hidalgo County community of McCook, a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) state trooper
stopped what appeared to be an AT&T truck for speeding. At least 2,100 pounds of marijuana was discovered in the truck, which was found to also be a cloned work truck.
DPS troopers also stopped a second car driven by Wilfredo Garza-Salgado for failing to stop at a nearby stop sign.
According to court records, Garza-Salgado was acting as an escort for the cloned AT&T truck.
Southwest border counter-cartel intelligence officials told Homeland Security Today on condition of anonymity that there’s “been an uptick” in the use of cloned vehicles to move both illegal aliens and drugs across the border or within the US side of the border region.
Homeland Security Today first reported that on March 12, 2011, within days of more than a dozen illegal aliens having been arrested near San Diego, Calif., wearing US Marine uniforms in an allegedly stolen van with allegedly stolen and altered Department of Homeland Security (DHS) license plates, a “cloned US Border Patrol service truck” also bearing apparent DHS license plates driven by a man in a Border Patrol uniform was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Del Rio, Texas, and found packed with nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana.
The ICE agents became suspicious of the truck “while conducting surveillance at the Del Rio, Texas, Port of Entry,” according to the criminal complaint in the case.
In the earlier incident in southern California, the 13 undocumented aliens who’d managed to enter the US from Mexico caught in the bogus DHS truck all were wearing US Marine Corps Marine Pattern desert digital Battle Dress Uniforms when they were stopped by alert Border Patrol agents near Campo, Calif. The aliens and the three US citizens (who also were wearing Marine woodland digital uniforms) traveling with them were driving an allegedly stolen vehicle with altered US Government license plates.
In the April 2008 report, Beware the Clones, Homeland Security Today provided the first in-depth report on the employment of cloned vehicles to transport drugs, illegal aliens and other illicit materials.
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I've lived and worked in Mexico for a while now and spent a good amount of time in most of the country.
Although there is violence in Zacatecas due to its proximity to Durango, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, etc., and also due to the logistical support the main corridor provides when transporting arms and narcotics, beheadings in Zacatecas are unusual: http://zacatecasonline.com.mx/noticias/policia/23109-cabezas-humanas-mercado.html
It is also unusual that the cartel (presumably Zetas), shot down a helicopter close to Jerez not long ago. They say that it was a mechanical failure, but there are rumors that the bird was shot down. Either way, more activity than usual going on: http://www.freefirezone.org/cgi-bin/archivedstory.pl?whichstory=2319
They seem to be ramping up activity within the region. I expect much to be changing in Mexico this year. The Zetas and Mara Salva Trucha which had been at war with each other for years have had training relations together near the suothern border close to Guatemala. Change is in the wind.
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This comes to me from "Outland Securities". I have yet to inform an opinion as to their reliability.
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Drug trafficking enforcement action in Mexico city's international airport leaves three dead
Monday, June 25, 2012
The shootout that took place in Terminal 2 of the Mexico City international airport (AICM) was triggered when Federal Police agents tried to detain suspected drug traffickers, according to the an official report on the incident issued by the Federal Department of Public Safety (SSP).
In the report, they indicated that Federal agents were performing investigative duties and "proceeded to take into custody suspects linked with drug trafficking."
The suspects (number unknown) were in Terminal 2 of the Mexico City International Airport and, "when the saw themselves surrounded by Federal Police, began shooting their firearms at the federal agents."
Authorities within the agency indicated to El Universal that apparently the suspects were also Federal Police officers, which is why they were carrying weapons inside the terminal area, and they managed to fire their weapons to prevent being apprehended, although the investigation will continue to try to determine the aggressors' identities.
The SSP confirmed that two Federal Police officers lost their lives in the incident and another was transferred to a hospital, where he later died.
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Forty-five-year-old Enrique Peña Nieto, a former governor of the central state of Mexico, took Sunday's presidential elections as predicted by every poll for the last three months. The bigger story is how it happened.
President Felipe Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) candidate lost, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) challenger won, and the transfer of power came through the ballot box. That's not something to take for granted in this or any young democracy just now.
Do not forget that Mexico was a one-party state under PRI rule from 1929-2000. That's seven decades of political repression shaping the way citizens thought about their rights and the way civil institutions operate. When in the 1990s the PRI's lock on power began to unravel, violence erupted. Back then it was not so obvious that Mexico's transition to a stable democracy was inevitable.
Yet in just 12 years, since PRI President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) led a political reform, Mexico has adopted true universal suffrage and real political competition has emerged. This allowed the PAN to win two back-to-back presidential elections—first Vicente Fox and then Mr. Calderón—but also forced the party in power to be accountable.
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Mexico's President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto
.On Sunday the electorate opted to try something else. Mr. Peña Nieto came away with some 38% of the vote against his closest rival, the hard-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who won just under 32%. PAN candidate Josefina Vásquez Mota took 25.5%. Mr. López Obrador, true to threats made during the campaign, said Monday evening he'd contest the results, alleging misconduct. But word is that significant leadership in his own party may not be inclined to back him.
Some in Mexico are worried about the PRI's return to the presidential residence of Los Pinos because of its authoritarian past. But Mexico's political and civic environment has changed, and so has the PRI, which has reformers who want to deepen economic liberalization, but also "dinosaurs" who yearn for the past. Mr. Peña Nieto has his work cut out for him. Even if the PRI won an outright majority in the lower house on Sunday—those tallies are not in yet—negotiation will be crucial for him to govern, and he may have to reach across the aisle. If he doesn't deliver, Mexicans will let his party know at the next election.
More than 143,000 polling stations around the country were manned by ordinary citizens who went through training with the federal electoral institute, got up early on election day and stayed late ensure a free and fair election. The big winner Sunday was Mexican civil society.
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Michael Barone also reports on the positive news of a successful national election held Sunday in Mexico.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/07/05/what_if_they_held_an_election_and_nobody_came_114694.html
"...Pena will not bring back the old PRI system. He won based on his record as governor of the state of Mexico and his fame as the husband of a telenovela actress.
He has promised to get rid of the law prohibiting Pemex from making contracts with private oil service firms, one of the hallmarks of the old PRI system.
It's not clear whether he'll keep that promise, or whether he'll continue Calderon's aggressive fight against drug traffickers. As for immigration, it appears that the flow of Mexicans to the U.S. has been reversed since 2007.
What is clear is that Mexico has become a neighbor much easier to live with.
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Also Brett Stephens/WSJ: Miracle in Mexico http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304708604577503213024949028.html
..."From the year Nafta came into force till the present, Mexico's GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity) more than doubled, to $15,000 from $7,000." ...
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A friend in Mexico City is bitching that AMLO got cheated, but I suspect that's just sour grapes. Witness how AMLO comported himself the last time around! Too bad PAN put forth such a weak candidate.
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Pasting BD's post here as well
http://www.lawfareblog.com/
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Pasting BD's post here as well
http://www.lawfareblog.com/
To insure that the story stays, here is the proper link: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2012/07/us-mexican-intelligence-cooperation-against-cartels-an-interesting-section-in-the-draft-intel-authorization-act/
The lawfareblog site is an interesting discussion of the role of law (and lawyers) in warfare. I posted it originally in the legal issues and islamic war thread because that was the basis of the creation of the blog. The material posted on the site, as the story above illustrates, often goes beyond the exact subject.
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A friend in Mexico City is bitching that AMLO got cheated, but I suspect that's just sour grapes. Witness how AMLO comported himself the last time around! Too bad PAN put forth such a weak candidate.
There is evidence that substantiates that PRI bought the vote... $500 to 1000 (peso) giftcards at Soriana (think Target) in the event that PRI won. Before the elections, PRI had distributed the giftcards to people only when the person had presented the IFE (Mexican Identification, also necessary to cast a vote), and had promised to vote for PRI. When the votes were tallied, if PRI won, the cards at that point, would be validated, and the voters could then cash in on the amounts.
It is necessary to say, that like all multi party systems (and the inherent problems with them, such as in Europe), PRI still enjoys a substantial amount of support from hardline supporters, but also from disenchanted members of PAN, the hardline conservatives (the weakest party of the three). PRD members would never vote for PRI, and there is no doubt that the offer of monies to the general public put the PRI out in front.
I myself support PRI, my fiance (a liberal), doesn´t support them at all. The facts are what they are.
A link to a letter that Soriana has released in regard to the cards. The mere fact that the cards exist speaks volumes. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150912401037513&set=o.231776320252115&type=1&theater
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That's what the PRI does.
I've heard a number of people say that PAN bit off more than it could chew with the narcos, or that it stirred up a hornet's nest without expecting that the hornets would come out really PO'd and that maybe things weren't so bad under the PRI after all.
The PRD is a breakaway from the PRI started by ex-Presidente Echeverria ('70-76) and his running dog Munoz Ledo. AMLO has plenty of people who support him, especially in the DF going back to when he was mayor and had the heavy patronage to dish out. My read on him is that, apart from the fact that he is hard core left, he is an egomaniac who confuses his own political fortunes with those of the nation and therefore is perfectly willing to hurt the nation so as to further his own cause. Mexico is very, very, young in its true democracy and to have a contested by force situation (as last time almost was) could be ruinous to the political culture of the nation.
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Violence in Torreon
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed three police officers traveling in a car July 12 in Torreon, Coahuila state. A fourth officer was injured in the attack. The incident is the latest in a trend of increasing violence in Coahuila state, particularly in Torreon.
Mexican law enforcement officials attribute the recent wave of violence in Torreon to the capture of a Los Zetas plaza boss, Alberto Jose "El Paisa" Gonzalez Xalate, who was detained April 29. In addition, homicide numbers released by the Executive Secretariat of the National System of Public Security reflect an uptick in murders in Coahuila state since the arrest. Homicides increased from 82 in April to 121 in May, the highest number of homicides in state history, according to previous figures from the same source. Media reports indicate Torreon specifically has seen a sharp increase, with 112 reported homicides in June, the highest count reported in 2012. Regardless of whether Gonzalez's arrest triggered the increased violence in Torreon, it is certain the struggle between organized criminal groups in southern Coahuila state has intensified since the end of April.
.Given the notable increase in violence since the time of Gonzalez's arrest, his fall likely contributed to the increase in organized criminal violence in the area. The death or capture of a plaza boss can create violence for a number of reasons, such as retribution against law enforcement, internal power struggles or rival cartels attempting to exploit the lack of leadership to gain new territory or further disrupt opponents' networks. Unidentified rivals of Los Zetas' top two leaders, Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano and Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, have used Gonzalez's arrest as an opportunity to subvert the Zetas leaders by posting narcomantas labeling Lazcano and Trevino as traitors in various areas of Nuevo Leon, Zacatecas and Tamaulipas states. The narcomantas mention Gonzalez's arrest as an example of an alleged betrayal by Lazcano or Trevino and imply that there is an internal struggle within Los Zetas by possibly hinting that a Zetas leader could have something to do with the arrest of one of their own. However, there are no external indications that such a struggle exists, and the narcomantas could be misdirection from a rival cartel.
CJNG in Colima
Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion recently lost two leaders in Colima state. Unidentified gunmen killed four individuals and wounded six others July 14 when the assailants opened fire on patrons at a restaurant in Cerro de Ortega, Colima state. Among the dead was Leopoldo "Polo" Gonzalez Aviles, the alleged CJNG plaza boss of Cerro de Ortega. The next day in Colima state's port city of Manzanillo, authorities arrested Jaime Ignacio "El Pelotas" Ramirez Jauregui, the reported CJNG plaza boss of Manzanillo, along with a colleague. The presence of CJNG leaders in Colima state shows their activity in a region where the criminal organization has only recently expanded operations.
CJNG, which originated from Ignacio "El Nacho" Coronel Villarreal's group within the Sinaloa Federation, rapidly expanded its operations geographically during 2011 from its home state of Jalisco to several states, including neighboring Colima state. Manzanillo has long been used by Mexico's drug trafficking organizations to acquire chemical precursors for the production of methamphetamine, an illicit product Coronel's group specialized in producing. While the loss of the two leaders could affect CJNG's ability to operate in the near term, the arrests will not likely have a significant impact on long-term operations because leadership can easily be replaced in order to hold the strategic location.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Record-High Violence in Torreon | Stratfor
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http://www.businessinsider.com/this-graphic-shows-what-mexican-cartels-and-drugs-come-to-your-town-2012-7
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Editor's Note: In this interim report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess important developments in the drug war during the second quarter of 2012 and explain what they could mean for the rest of the year.
Many of the trends discussed in the first quarter cartel update continued in the second quarter. Most significantly, smaller gangs aligned themselves with either Los Zetas or the Sinaloa Federation as the two sides continued their countrywide conflict. In the first quarter of 2012, Los Zetas came under increased attack from the Gulf cartel in the northeastern states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. Most violence in Tamaulipas during the second quarter involved those two groups, though the Sinaloa Federation appears to be supporting Gulf cartel activities.
.Los Zetas also continued their struggles against another Sinaloa Federation ally, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, in Veracruz state. The Sinaloa Federation in turn faced attacks from Zetas allies in Sinaloa's strongholds of Jalisco and Sinaloa states. As during the first quarter, the Sinaloa Federation and its ally the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion continued their conflict in Guadalajara against Los Zetas and the Zetas-allied Milenio cartel. In Sinaloa state, the Sinaloa Federation has faced a resurgence of assaults from remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization, primarily Los Mazatlecos, to whom Los Zetas have provided gunmen. With the exception of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion's arrival in Cancun, no territorial shifts in Mexico's criminal landscape have occurred.
Information Operations
Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation, as well as Sinaloa's ally the Gulf cartel, emphasized information operations campaigns beginning in the first quarter and continuing into the second quarter, particularly in northeastern Mexico. These campaigns have seen the display of dismembered bodies in public, a tactic that offers little operationally beyond broadcasting messages on behalf of the cartel involved. Through these operations, the cartels are striving to control the flow of information in a bid to subvert their rivals' support base.
As the focus on information operations increases, civilians have been increasingly affected. Links between victims in body dumps and organized crime have rarely been confirmed. Mexican authorities, for example, say many of the victims in the May 9 body dump in Guadalajara were simply bystanders. To maintain the shock value of body dumps, criminal groups must continue increasing their scale. This means there will likely be more body dumps like those in Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Mante, Culiacan and Guadalajara during the second quarter.
Los Zetas
Los Zetas do not appear to have suffered significant operational losses in areas where they are engaged in turf wars with the Gulf cartel. As noted in the last quarterly, Los Zetas will defend Nuevo Laredo at any cost, since it is perhaps their most valuable plaza. The lack of activity in Nuevo Laredo may indicate that Los Zetas do not yet perceive any significant threat there.
Law enforcement operations across Los Zetas' turf in the second quarter resulted in notable arrests. Guatemalan authorities arrested Horst Walther Overdick-Mejia, a Guatemalan drug distributor working with Los Zetas, in Guatemala on April 3. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities arrested Jose Trevino, the brother of Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, on June 11 in Oklahoma on charges of using a horse breeding company to launder money for Miguel Trevino. And Mexican authorities arrested Francisco Trevino Chavez, a Nuevo Laredo plaza boss and cousin of Miguel Trevino, on June 12. The arrests are not likely to impact overall Zetas operations significantly, since the group is apparently adept at finding replacement leaders.
Los Zetas carried out notable violent acts within Sinaloa Federation's stronghold in the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco during the second quarter with the help of local organized criminal groups such as the Milenio cartel in Jalisco and Los Mazatlecos and other remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization in Sinaloa. So far, this Zetas activity has not caused any significant operational setback for the Sinaloa Federation.
Sinaloa Federation
The second quarter saw a focus on increasing anti-Zetas assaults in areas where Sinaloa operations expanded in the first quarter. The Gulf cartel is leading the assault against Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo and the rest of Tamaulipas state, while the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion continues its assault in Veracruz state and the Knights Templar continues to confront the weakened Zetas ally La Familia Michoacana in the central region of the country.
The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Knights Templar significantly increased their violent acts against one another in the central states of Guanajuato, Guerrero and Michoacan in the form of firefights and executions. Should the violence hinder the Sinaloa Federation's trafficking operations, the group might attempt to broker peace or pick a side to support. Currently, nothing suggests this conflict will end during the next quarter.
With the exception of the Baja California Peninsula, which is fully under Sinaloa Federation control, the Sinaloa Federation and its allies continue to deal with rivals in all of the states in which they operate. Just as Los Zetas are being confronted but not damaged in their stronghold, Sinaloa's rivals do not appear to be able to damage Sinaloa's operations in its strongholds.
Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion
The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion continued to expand its operations by confronting Los Zetas in Cancun, Quintana Roo state. Executions involving members of Los Zetas known as Los Pelones, a local gang involved in local criminal enterprises such as drug sales and extortion, and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion began in March in Cancun. Though still less violent than other popular tourist destinations in Mexico, drug-related deaths in Cancun more than doubled during the first half of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011.
The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion appears to be continuing its turf war against Los Zetas in Veracruz city, where executions attributed to the cartel continue. But the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion appears more focused on its turf war with the Knights Templar in Guerrero and Michoacan states.
Knights Templar
Since its split from La Familia Michoacana in January 2011, the Knights Templar has asserted control over La Familia Michoacana's former territories, a trend that continued in the second quarter. La Familia Michoacana has become a shadow of its former self; the Knights Templar appears more active in Guanajuato, Guerrero, Mexico, Michoacan and Morelos states.
The Knights Templar's main focus shifted during the second quarter toward its interstate turf war with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion as it defends against the latter's expansion into Knights Templar territory. This turf war accounted for the most intense intercartel violence in Guerrero and Michoacan states.
Beltran Leyva Organization
A resurgence in activity has been reported from remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization, primarily in Sinaloa state. Some remnants of the former Beltran Leyva Organization, in particular Cartel Pacifico Sur and Los Mazatlecos, appeared to maintain a working relationship. The second quarter of 2012 saw a resurgence of reported activity by Los Mazatlecos in Sinaloa state.
Firefights between gunmen affiliated with organized crime and the Mexican military occurred April 28 in the northern Sinaloa municipality of Choix. Some of the gunmen likely belonged to Los Mazatlecos, allied with the Cartel Pacifico Sur, and others may have belonged to another ally of Los Zetas. After the fighting subsided, military patrols discovered dead bodies from an unrelated conflict, revealing an ongoing intercartel battle in the vicinity. Media reports indicate that the same organized criminal groups engaged in conflicts in Choix are operating in rural towns in southwestern Chihuahua state. If true, this would indicate that remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization under the organization of Los Mazatlecos are fighting for control of a lucrative region in several states where marijuana and opium poppies are grown.
Gulf Cartel
The Gulf cartel saw a continued resurgence through the second quarter of 2012. According to several reports, Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez, a Gulf cartel leader, led the group's violent acts against Los Zetas in Tamaulipas with the apparent backing of Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera.
The most public of the Gulf cartel's recent activity occurred March 26 in Nuevo Laredo, when authorities discovered 14 dismembered bodies along with a narcomanta ostensibly signed by El Chapo. While the message implied that the Sinaloa Federation was responsible, corroborated reporting shows that Gulf cartel members at least assisted. Whether the Gulf cartel has taken over any smuggling routes or undermined Los Zetas' support structure remains unclear. However, Gulf cartel activity is not likely to subside during the next quarter, with narcomantas and body dumps likely to continue in its conflict with Los Zetas. A few Gulf cartel members have been arrested recently, which could undermine its renewed assault against Los Zetas.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization
Little suggests that the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization will regain its former position as one of the dominant cartels in Mexico. The organization has splintered into various criminal groups such as the New Juarez Cartel. The New Juarez Cartel has shown less tactical sophistication compared to other offshoots of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization, such as La Linea. Reports of activity attributed to the New Juarez Cartel have dropped significantly. Indeed, it seems intercartel violence has decreased altogether in Ciudad Juarez. The drop can be attributed to the Sinaloa Federation gaining further control over Juarez.
La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization, has continued to show little activity in the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization's former territory since it suffered significant losses in leadership in 2011. Authorities captured a top leader and his replacement during the second quarter.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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Read more: Mexican Drug War Update: Third Quarter | Stratfor
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Mexico Security Memo: Rumors of a Split Within Los Zetas
August 1, 2012 | 1000 GMT
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Several media outlets recently have reported an organizational split between Los Zetas' two top leaders, Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano and Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales. These reports cite a series of narcomantas posted June 1 in several states in Mexico alleging that Lazcano and Trevino betrayed several Zetas leaders close to them. Reports also cite social media messages that portrayed the two leaders as traitors.
Given the frequent fracturing of Mexico's organized criminal groups since the breakup of Miguel Angel "El Padrino" Felix Gallardo's Guadalajara cartel in the 1980s, a rift within Los Zetas would not come as a surprise and likely would lead to increased violence while factions fight for territorial control. However, currently there are no explicit indications of fracturing within Los Zetas. The group continues to defend its areas of operations from the Sinaloa Federation and its allies and to make incursions into rivals' strongholds.
.Organizational splits within major criminal groups in Mexico typically have led to increased violence in regions where the criminal group operated. Felix Gallardo's decision to split the Guadalajara cartel into regional plazas eventually led to violent inter-cartel rivalries, such as the Sinaloa Federation's conflict with the Tijuana, Juarez and Gulf cartels. In northeastern Mexico, primarily in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon states, Los Zetas continue to engage in turf wars with the Gulf cartel, their former parent organization.
Los Zetas have also received the most attention from government counternarcotics operations targeting the organization's high-ranking criminal leaders. In 2011, Los Zetas lost more cell leaders and plaza bosses than any other Mexican organized crime group as a result of the operations, and the group continues to suffer losses in local and regional leadership -- most recently on July 27, when soldiers in Huejotzingo, Puebla state, arrested Mauricio Izar Cardenas, the regional plaza boss allegedly responsible for Los Zetas' operations in southeastern Mexico. Despite these losses, Los Zetas have expanded into at least 17 states, giving the group among the widest geographic reach of all Mexico's cartels.
Since Los Zetas operate in more than half of Mexico's states, a conflict between the group's top leaders likely would trigger additional violence in multiple regions of the country. However, a rift between the top leaders is not the only scenario that could lead to internal conflicts. Los Zetas operate using compartmentalized cells and local leaders throughout Mexico and other countries, such as Guatemala. These cells typically follow the instructions of higher-level regional leaders and pay monetary dues but also may act independently from the larger organization. The June 1 narcomantas brought attention to these cells by implying that the arrest or death of several regional Los Zetas leaders resulted from betrayals by either Lazcano or Trevino.
Indications of an internal conflict will largely depend on where the rift within the organization forms, whether between Lazcano and Trevino or a breakaway Los Zetas cell. Currently, no such indications have manifested. Should Los Zetas suffer a significant internal conflict, their principal rivals, the Sinaloa Federation and its allies the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Gulf cartel, would take advantage of the rift by redoubling their efforts to take control of Los Zetas' plazas. This in turn would result in increased violence, as recently seen in Coahuila state. Los Zetas' rivals may also attempt to bring any potential splinter groups into their own fold, much like the split between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas that led to the alignment of the Gulf cartel with the Sinaloa Federation.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Rumors of a Split Within Los Zetas | Stratfor
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Not that I agree with everything in this , , ,
George Friedman | Wednesday, 22 August 2012
tags : Mexico, Stratfor
Mexico’s growing pains
"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!" said one of its presidents one hundred years ago. Not much has changed.
A few years ago, I wrote about Mexico possibly becoming a failed state because of the effect of the cartels on the country. Mexico may have come close to that, but it stabilized itself and took a different course instead -- one of impressive economic growth in the face of instability.
Mexican Economics
Discussion of national strategy normally begins with the question of national security. But a discussion of Mexico's strategy must begin with economics. This is because Mexico's neighbor is the United States, whose military power in North America denies Mexico military options that other nations might have. But proximity to the United States does not deny Mexico economic options. Indeed, while the United States overwhelms Mexico from a national security standpoint, it offers possibilities for economic growth.
Mexico is now the world's 14th-largest economy, just above South Korea and just below Australia. Its gross domestic product was $1.16 trillion in 2011. It grew by 3.8 percent in 2011 and 5.5 percent in 2010. Before a major contraction of 6.9 percent in 2009 following the 2008 crisis, Mexico's GDP grew by an average of 3.3 percent in the five years between 2004 and 2008. When looked at in terms of purchasing power parity, a measure of GDP in terms of actual purchasing power, Mexico is the 11th-largest economy in the world, just behind France and Italy. It is also forecast to grow at just below 4 percent again this year, despite slowing global economic trends, thanks in part to rising U.S. consumption.
Total economic size and growth is extremely important to total national power. But Mexico has a single profound economic problem: According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Mexico has the second-highest level of inequality among member nations. More than 50 percent of Mexico's population lives in poverty, and some 14.9 percent of its people live in intense poverty, meaning they have difficulty securing the necessities of life. At the same time, Mexico is home to the richest man in the world, telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim.
Mexico ranked only 62nd in per capita GDP in 2011; China, on the other hand, ranked 91st. No one would dispute that China is a significant national power. Few would dispute that China suffers from social instability. This means that in terms of evaluating Mexico's role in the international system, we must look at the aggregate numbers. Given those numbers, Mexico has entered the ranks of the leading economic powers and is growing more quickly than nations ahead of it. When we look at the distribution of wealth, the internal reality is that, like China, Mexico has deep weaknesses.
The primary strategic problem for Mexico is the potential for internal instability driven by inequality. Northern and central Mexico have the highest human development index, nearly on the European level, while the mountainous, southernmost states are well below that level. Mexican inequality is geographically defined, though even the wealthiest regions have significant pockets of inequality. We must remember that this is not Western-style gradient inequality, but cliff inequality where the poor live utterly different lives from even the middle class.
Mexico is using classic tools for managing this problem. Since poverty imposes limits to domestic consumption, Mexico is an exporter. It exported $349.6 billion in 2011, which means it derives just under 30 percent of its GDP from exports. This is just above the Chinese level and creates a serious vulnerability in Mexico's economy, since it becomes dependent on other countries' appetite for Mexican goods.
This is compounded by the fact that 78.5 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States. That means that 23.8 percent of Mexico's GDP depends on the appetite of the American markets. On the flip side, 48.8 percent of its imports come from the United States, making it an asymmetric relationship. Although both sides need the exports, Mexico must have them. The United States benefits from them but not on the same order.
Relations With the United States
This leads to Mexico's second strategic problem: its relationship with the United States. When we look back to the early 19th century, it was not clear that the United States would be the dominant power in North America. The United States was a small, poorly integrated country hugging the East Coast. Mexico was much more developed, with a more substantial military and economy. At first glance, Mexico ought to have been the dominant power in North America.
But Mexico had two problems. The first was internal instability caused by the social factors that remain in place, namely Mexico's massive, regionally focused inequality. The second was that the lands north of the Rio Grande line (referred to as Rio Bravo del Norte by the Mexicans) were sparsely settled and difficult to defend. The terrain between the Mexican heartland and the northern territories from Texas to California were difficult to reach from the south. The cost of maintaining a military force able to protect this area was prohibitive.
From the American point of view, Mexico -- and particularly the Mexican presence in Texas -- represented a strategic threat to American interests. The development of the Louisiana Purchase into the breadbasket of the United States depended on the Ohio-Mississippi-Missouri river system, which was navigable and the primary mode of export. Mexico, with its border on the Sabine River separating it from Louisiana, was positioned to cut the Mississippi. The strategic need to secure sea approaches through the Caribbean to the vulnerable Mexican east coast put Mexico in direct conflict with U.S. interests.
The decision by U.S. President Andrew Jackson to send Sam Houston on a covert mission into Texas to foment a rising of American settlers there was based in part on his obsession with New Orleans and the Mississippi River, which Jackson had fought for in 1815. The Texas rising was countered by a Mexican army moving north into Texas. Its problem was that the Mexican army, drawn to a great extent from the poorest elements of Mexican society in that country's south, had to pass through the desert and mountains of the region and suffered from extremely cold and snowy weather. The Mexican soldiers arrived at San Antonio exhausted, and while they defeated the garrison there, they were not able to defeat the force at San Jacinto (near present-day Houston) and were themselves defeated.
The region that separated the heart of Texas from the heart of Mexico was a barrier for military movement that undermined Mexico's ability to hold its northern territory. The geographic weakness of Mexico -- this hostile region coupled with long and difficult-to-defend coastlines and no navy -- extended west to the Pacific. It created a borderland that had two characteristics. It was of little economic value, and it was inherently difficult to police due to the terrain. It separated the two countries, but it became a low-level friction point throughout history, with smuggling and banditry on both sides at various times. It was a perfect border in the sense that it created a buffer, but it was an ongoing problem because it could not be easily controlled.
The defeat in Texas and during the Mexican-American War cost Mexico its northern territories. It created a permanent political issue between the two countries, one that Mexico could not effectively remedy. The defeat in the wars continued to destabilize Mexico. Although the northern territories were not central to Mexico's national interest, their loss created a crisis of confidence in successive regimes that further irritated the core social problem of massive inequality. For the past century and a half, Mexico has lived with an ongoing inferiority complex toward and resentment of the United States.
The war created another reality between the two countries: a borderland that was a unique entity, part of both countries and part of neither country. The borderland's geography had defeated the Mexican army. It now became a frontier that neither side could control. During the ongoing unrest surrounding the Mexican Revolution, it became a refuge for figures such as Pancho Villa, pursued by U.S. Gen. John J. Pershing after Villa raided American towns. It would not be fair to call it a no-man's-land. It was an every-man's-land, with its own rules, frequently violent, never suppressed.
The drug trade has replaced the cattle rustling of the 19th century, but the essential principle remains the same. Cocaine, marijuana and a number of other drugs are being shipped to the United States. All are imported or produced in Mexico at a low cost and then re-exported or exported into the United States. The price in the United States, where the products are illegal and in great demand, is substantially higher than in Mexico. That means that the price differential between drugs in Mexico and drugs in the United States creates an attractive market. This typically happens when one country prohibits a widely desired product readily available in a neighboring country.
This creates a substantial inflow of wealth into Mexico, though the precise size of this inflow is difficult to gauge. The precise amount of cross-border trade is uncertain, but one number frequently used is $40 billion a year. This would mean narcotic sales represent an 11.4 percent addition to total exports. But this underestimates the importance of narcotics, because profit margins would tend to be much higher on drugs than on industrial products. Assuming that the profit margin on legal exports is 10 percent (a very high estimate), legal exports would generate about $35 billion a year in profits. Assuming the margin on drugs is 80 percent, then the profit on them is $32 billion a year, almost matching profits on legal exports.
These numbers are all guesses, of course. The amount of money returned to Mexico as opposed to kept in U.S. or other banks is unknown. The precise amount of the trade is uncertain and profit margins are difficult to calculate. What can be known is that the trade is likely an off-the-books stimulant to the Mexican economy, generated by the price differential created by drug prohibition.
The advantage to Mexico also creates a strategic problem for Mexico. Given the money at stake and that the legal system is unable to suppress or regulate the trade, the borderland has again become -- perhaps now more than ever -- a region of ongoing warfare between groups competing to control the movement of narcotics into the United States. To a great extent, the Mexicans have lost control of this borderland.
From the Mexican point of view, this is a manageable situation. The borderland is distinct from the Mexican heartland. So long as the violence does not overwhelm the heartland, it is tolerable. The inflow of money does not offend the Mexican government. More precisely, the Mexican government has limited resources to suppress the trade and violence, and there are financial benefits to its existence. The Mexican strategy is to try to block the spread of lawlessness into Mexico proper but to accept the lawlessness in a region that historically has been lawless.
The American position is to demand that the Mexicans deploy forces to suppress the trade. But neither side has sufficient force to control the border, and the demand is more one of gestures than significant actions or threats. The Mexicans have already weakened their military by trying to come to grips with the problem, but they are not going to break their military by trying to control a region that broke them in the past. The United States is not going to provide a force sufficient to control the border, since the cost would be staggering. Each will thus live with the violence. The Mexicans argue the problem is that the United States can't suppress demand and is unwilling to destroy incentives by lowering prices through legalization. The Americans say the Mexicans must root out the corruption among Mexican officials and law enforcement. Both have interesting arguments, but neither argument has anything to do with reality. Controlling that terrain is impossible with reasonable effort, and no one is prepared to make an unreasonable effort.
Another aspect is the movement of migrants. For Mexicans, the movement of migrants has been part of their social policy: It shifts the poor out of Mexico and generates remittances. For the United States, this has provided a consistent source of low-cost labor. The borderland has been the uncontrollable venue through which the migrants pass. The Mexicans don't want to stop it, and neither, in the end, do the Americans.
Dueling rhetoric between the United States and Mexico hides the underlying facts. Mexico is now one of the largest economies in the world and a major economic partner with the United States. The inequality in the relationship comes from military inequality. The U.S. military dominates North America, and the Mexicans are in no position to challenge this. The borderland poses problems and some benefits for each, but neither is in a position to control the region regardless of rhetoric.
Mexico still has to deal with its core issue, which is maintaining its internal social stability. It is, however, beginning to develop foreign policy issues beyond the United States. In particular, it is developing an interest in managing Central America, possibly in collaboration with Colombia. Its purpose, ironically, is the control of illegal immigrants and drug smuggling. These are not trivial moves. Were it not for the United States, Mexico would be a great regional power. Given the United States, it must manage that relationship before any other.
Given Mexico's dramatic economic growth and given time, this equation will change. Over time, we expect there will be two significant powers in North America. But in the short run, the traditional strategic problems of Mexico remain: how to deal with the United States, how to contain the northern borderland and how to maintain national unity in the face of potential social unrest.
George Friedman is chief executive officer of Stratfor, the world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. Mexico's Strategy is republished with permission of Stratfor.
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Arrest's Impact Likely Limited
The Mexican navy arrested Mario "El Gordo" Cardenas Guillen, a presumed senior member of the Gulf cartel, on Sept. 3 in Altamira, Tamaulipas state. Mario Cardenas Guillen, the brother of former Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen, became the latest of a series of prominent Gulf cartel operatives to be arrested or killed in recent years. However, while U.S. and Mexican media outlets have described Mario as the overall leader of the Gulf cartel, he actually serves a lesser role within the fractured organization. His arrest will likely affect a specific faction of the Gulf cartel, Los Rojos, more than the cartel as a whole.
A series of Gulf cartel leadership changes began after Osiel Cardenas Guillen was extradited to the United States in 2010. Since then, Mario Cardenas Guillen has demonstrated neither the desire nor the ability to lead Gulf cartel operations. As a result, several cartel members who do not belong to the Cardenas family, most notably Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez, have surpassed Mario Cardenas Guillen in the organization's hierarchy.
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Even within the Los Rojos faction, which is instead led by Juan "R-1" Mejia Gonzalez, it is unclear whether Mario had much influence over day-to-day operations prior to his arrest. Moreover, the Gulf cartel's ongoing fight against Los Zetas in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon states has been commanded primarily by the rival Los Metros faction, so the cartel's ability to confront Los Zetas will likely endure. Thus, Mario's arrest is unlikely to significantly undermine the Gulf cartel's operational capabilities. At most, the arrest could deliver another blow, even if only a limited one, to the already weakened Los Rojos faction and further solidify Los Metros' control.
Los Zetas' Internal Power Struggle Continues
Gunmen opened fire on a group of young men Sept. 8 at a football field in Soledad de Graciano Sanchez, San Luis Potosi state, killing seven people. The assailants left a note pinned to the back of one victim with a screwdriver, warning that a similar fate would befall those who follow "50." The note, signed simply "Los Zetas," was likely referring to Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero, also known as "Z-50," the former Zetas plaza boss of San Luis Potosi state.
The killings took place in a week marked by multiple acts of violence related to the erupting turf war between Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales and Velazquez. Violence in states affected by the rivalry, including Zacatecas, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi and possibly Nuevo Leon is unlikely to subside significantly until one of the two leaders gains control. Still, unless Velazquez attracts outside support from other criminal leaders such as Los Zetas plaza bosses or those from organizations such as the Gulf cartel or the Sinaloa Federation, violence associated with the turf war is unlikely to spread to additional states.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Senior Gulf Cartel Member Arrested | Stratfor
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U.S. Shifts Mexico Drug Fight
Military Aid Plummets as Washington Turns Focus to Bolstering Legal System.
By NICHOLAS CASEY
MEXICO CITY—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets her Mexican counterparts at a security summit in Washington Tuesday to discuss the next phase in the drug war: how to train the judges and prosecutors that will be trying suspected drug lords.
The Merida Initiative, the U.S.'s $1.9 billion assistance program to Mexico, began mostly as a means to buy military hardware like Black Hawk helicopters for Mexico. But over the past two years, it has entered a new phase, in which purchases for the Mexican military are taking a back seat to measures to mend the branches of Mexico's civilian government.
The former director of Colorado's penitentiary system has trained more than 5,000 Mexican prison officials in recent years. Mexican jurists are running mock trials with visiting American judges to prepare for a transition to oral hearings that will replace Mexico's enigmatic closed-door meetings where sentences are handed down.
"Different things have come to the fore at different times, but strengthening the rule of law in Mexico is the area that's crucial right now," says Roberta Jacobson, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Officials in both countries increasingly believe the root of Mexico's problem lies in creating an honest police force, professional judges and a prison system comparable with that in the U.S.
The challenges are harder to measure but will take center stage at the so-called High-Level Consultative Group on Tuesday, where Mrs. Clinton will be joined by Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Attorney General Eric Holder and top officials from Mexican President Felipe Calderón's cabinet. The two sides will also discuss topics ranging from border security to seizing assets of drug cartel members in the U.S.
"Our efforts to confront transnational crime on both sides of the border benefited from a clear understanding that we had to multitask," says Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Arturo Sarukhán.
While Mexico has had success at catching criminals, it's had less luck in putting them behind bars—the country has a meager 2% conviction rate for most crimes. A new test came just last week with the capture of Jorge "El Coss" Costilla, the alleged boss of Mexico's powerful Gulf Cartel. He is the 23rd in Mexico's "37 Most Wanted" list to have either been killed or captured under Mr. Calderón; after six years of fighting, the original heads of Mexico's drug gangs are mostly gone.
That reality is being reflected in how U.S. aid is being spent in Mexico. Assistance to the Mexican military has nearly collapsed, with counternarcotics and security aid falling from a height of around $529 million in 2010 to $67.5 million planned for next year.
Meanwhile money meant for strengthening institutions from law schools to prisons doubled in the last year, to $201.8 this year from $105 million in 2011.
Training Mexico to handle its own struggle could be more cost-effective for the U.S.—total aid this year to Mexico is at $330 million, less than half its number 2010—in large part because training police and prosecutors is less expensive than financing a military with big purchases like helicopters.
One example both sides are touting has to do with Mexico's courts, which are undergoing a radical overhaul. Unlike the U.S., most trials in Mexico take place in closed proceedings where judges aren't present nor even meet the defendant. Attorneys and witnesses gather in a cubicle where a clerk takes notes and prepares a file, later sent to the judge for a decision. There are no juries.
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In 2008, Mexico's congress approved a change to have trials be conducted orally—with attorneys arguing in an open courtroom before a judge—with a complete rollout by 2016. The overhaul is hoped to boost conviction rates and guarantee fair trials.
Since the new system will be similar to the way trials are conducted in the U.S., the government has sent legal experts to train their Mexican counterparts in everything from witness protection to plea bargaining. So far more than 7,500 Mexican judicial personnel have received U.S. training at the federal level, and more than 19,000 at the state level.
A delegation from the U.S. Supreme Court met with Mexican judges in taking oral testimony, a first in Mexico. Members of the U.S. Bar Association are training lawyers.
"There was a skepticism that Mexican judges had coming into this, for this new role, but now they have enthusiasm," says John Feeley, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. "Judges are going to be the linchpin in this."
Another key area is the Mexican police. Experts believe most drug-related crime in Mexico is never reported because the populace mistrusts the police. Such problems were on full view last month when members of the Federal Police wounded two U.S. government employees after opening fire on their car in the hills outside of Mexico City. The police say they mistook the car for that of fugitive kidnappers they were looking for.
The U.S. is trying to avoid incidents like that in the future by taking a hand in training the police themselves.
A Mexican police academy in the central state of San Luis Potosí is now partially staffed by American law enforcement agents who have trained more than 4,500 federal police. Mr. Feeley says the program is being expanded to develop similar academies that will work with state and local police in other Mexican states. Spanish-speaking U.S. agents from border states now work with the Mexicans and the U.S. even hired the former director of Colorado's state penitentiary system to give classes to Mexican corrections officers.
Still, both the U.S. and Mexico agree that no amount of training will solve crime problems if corruption remains in institutions such as the police and judiciary.
Despite the collaboration, one reality can't be avoided when the leaders meet Tuesday: Mexico still has a long way to go in this second phase of the drug war.
Eric L. Olson, a Mexico expert at Washington think-tank the Wilson Center went to an oral trial in Morelos, one of the first adopters of the new system, and says the hearings reached an awkward moment where a judge was scolding the attorneys for wanting to read from sheets rather than argue properly.
Mr. Olson says the proceedings were a step in the right direction, even if there are missteps. Still, he says: "Both sides have always had difficulty defining what the criteria for success are," he says. "That has not happened yet."
Write to Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com
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second post
http://www.officer.com/news/10781032/over-130-inmates-escape-from-mexican-border-prison?utm_source=Officer.com+Newsday+E-Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS120912005
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Perhaps motivated by the votes, money, and influence of Florida tomato industry, Baraq apparently is risking kicking off a trade war:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/business/global/tomatoes-are-ammunition-for-a-trade-war-between-us-and-mexico.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120928
(Question: When I post just a link like this, can people here see the content?)
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MEXICO - Ombudsman warns of prison self-government
On 24 September 2012, Raúl Plasencia Villanueva, national ombudsman and President of the National Commission on Human Rights, announced that 60 percent of imprisoned criminals in Mexico are self-governed, as organized crime groups have taken control of municipal and state prisons. The 2012 National Survey of Penitentiary Supervision revealed that corruption has led to the sale of drugs and alcohol within the prisons, and that the recent jail break at Piedras Negras is representative of the troubling nature of prison self-government, in which the incarcerated may end up with keys to various areas of the penitentiary system.
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http://www.officer.com/news/10797747/us-embassy-car-was-targeted-in-mexico-ambush?utm_source=Officer.com+Newsday+E-Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS120927004
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A senior U.S. official says there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mexican federal police who fired on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers, were working for organized crime in a targeted assassination attempt. Meanwhile, a Mexican official with knowledge of the case confirmed on Tuesday that prosecutors are investigating whether the Beltran Leyva Cartel was behind the Aug. 24 ambush.
The Mexican official said that is among several lines of investigation into the shooting of an armored SUV that was clearly marked with diplomatic license plates on a rural road near Cuernavaca south of Mexico City. Federal police, at times battered by allegations of infiltration and corruption by drug cartels, have said the shooting was a case of mistaken identity as officers were looking into the kidnapping of a government employee in that area.
"That's not a 'We're trying to shake down a couple people for a traffic violation sort of operation. That's a 'We are specifically trying to kill the people in this vehicle'," a U.S. official familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press. "This is not a 'Whoops, we got the wrong people.' "
Photos of the gray Toyota SUV, a model known to be used by Drug Enforcement Administration agents and other U.S. Embassy employees working in Mexico, showed it riddled with heavy gunfire. The U.S. Embassy called the attack an "ambush." When asked by the AP if the Mexican federal police officers involved in the shooting were tied to organized crime, the U.S. official said, "The circumstantial evidence is pretty damn strong."
Both the U.S. and Mexican officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic issue.
A federal police on Tuesday maintained the position that their agents fired on the vehicle by mistake, thinking it belonged to a band of kidnappers they were pursuing, according to a spokesman who was not authorized to speak on the record. The U.S. State Department declined to discuss details.
"We will not comment on an ongoing investigation," said William Ostick, a spokesman. "This is a matter of great significance to both our countries and we will continue to cooperate with Mexican authorities in their investigation."
The Mexican official said one line of investigation is that members of the Beltran Leyva Cartel were interested in attacking the people in the car because some of their lookouts had seen them passing through the area and presumed they were investigating the cartel. It's possible they didn't know they were Americans.
The rural road near Cuernavaca where the attack took place is known territory of the remnants of the Beltran Leyvas, a once-powerful cartel now run by Hector Beltran Leyva since the Navy killed his brother, drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, in Cuernavaca in late 2009. Beltran Leyva was once aligned with Mexico's powerful cartel, Sinaloa, headed by fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. But the groups split in 2008 and continued government hits on Beltran Leyva leadership since then have splintered that cartel into small gangs warring for the area.
The CIA officers were heading down a dirt road to the military installation with a Mexican navy captain in the vehicle when a carload of gunmen opened fire and gave chase. The embassy SUV tried to escape, but three other cars joined the original vehicle in pursuing it down the road, according to the original navy statement. Occupants of all four vehicles fired.
"This is somebody with a powerful automatic weapon just unloading an entire clip, reloading, and continuing to fire at that same impact point, clearly with the intention of penetrating the armor and presumably killing those who are inside," the U.S. official told the AP.
Surveillance cameras in the area recorded two civilian vehicles chasing the U.S. Embassy SUV, the Mexican official said. So far Mexican officials have said only federal police fired on the SUV.
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The two CIA officers received non-life-threatening wounds and have returned to the United States. The navy captain was uninjured and radioed the navy for help.
Twelve officers have been detained in the case and are being held under a form of house arrest pending possible charges, and 51 officers have testified in the case. The FBI, which is leading the investigation for the U.S., has been in on interviews of the detainees. At FBI headquarters in Washington, spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment.
A Mexican federal police spokesman said last month that the officers may not have noticed the diplomatic plates. The official said police focused on the unusual sight of a bulletproof SUV traveling at high speed on a rural road, not on the car's distinctive diplomatic plates.
But Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said Mexican military sources have told him that "the attack was not an error," and "the objective was to annihilate the three passengers in the car."
"The same car with the same people had been going up and back (to the marine training camp) for a week, so perhaps some lookout who worked for drug traffickers informed the police, or the Beltrans" about the vehicle, Benitez said.
He said the federal police must have known that they were attacking a diplomatic vehicle.
"I don't think we're yet in a position to say definitively who did it, who paid them and why they did it," the U.S. official said. "We have been assured repeatedly in private and in public that the government of Mexico will investigate this to the end and provide a final answer as to what occurred, and I think our posture at this stage is we take them at their word."
Mexico's federal police agency, which President Felipe Calderon calls the most professional and highly trained of the country's law enforcement, has been hit with allegations of wrongdoing in recent months. In August, all 348 officers assigned to security details at the Mexico City International Airport were replaced in the wake of a June shooting of three federal policemen, who were killed by a fellow officer believed to be involved in trafficking drugs through the terminal.
Ten federal police officers were arrested in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in 2011, accused of running an extortion ring.
Attacks on diplomatic personnel in Mexico were once considered rare, but the CIA attack was the third shooting incident in two years. In 2011, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed and another wounded in a drug gang shooting in northern Mexico. A drug-gang shooting in 2010 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez killed a U.S. consulate employee, her husband and another man.
That could be the result of the break-up of larger cartels, said Andrew Selee of the Washington-based Mexico Institute, noting that historically drug traffickers didn't want the attention that a hit on U.S. personnel normally brings.
"The lower level leaders in the cartels are making decisions the more seasoned leaders wouldn't," he said. "It's the lower level leaders who feel empowered to order hits."
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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
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Mexico's Election Spurs Policy Shifts
October 12, 2012 | 1000 GMT
Summary
Through fierce intraparty fighting over the details of major reforms affecting labor, energy and politics will continue, the potential is emerging for negotiated agreements among Mexico's three major parties. Mexico's legislature has seen a flurry of activity on questions affecting the Mexican economy since the Institutional Revolutionary Party's candidate, former Mexico State Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto, won Mexico's July presidential election. The Chamber of Deputies has since passed major labor reforms -- reforms the Senate is likely to approve by Nov. 1. This represents a level of cooperation on policy issues absent for several years as Mexican politicians remained deadlocked over policy changes to deprive rival parties of any political advantage ahead of the 2012 elections. The new dynamic should continue for several years into Pena Nieto's administration, during which time the government will tackle major questions that will shape Mexico's economic and political future.
Analysis
The Mexican Senate is currently debating a bill already approved by the Chamber of Deputies that would make important changes to Mexico's labor laws. The changes would update labor regulations for the first time since the 1970s, introducing more modern protections for workers while easing the burden that outdated labor laws place on employers in Mexico. The legislation stops short of changing Mexico's complex constitutional labor strictures, instead focusing on changing laws, which can be altered more easily. The difficulty of changing the constitution means major union reforms have been postponed.
Although there are disagreements on the details of how reform should be implemented, a consensus has emerged that a host of major reforms are needed. Although Mexico is already in an advantageous position given its proximity to the U.S. consumer market, labor reforms should make it even easier for Mexico to attract foreign investment. With wages rising in China's coastal manufacturing zones, low-to-medium end manufacturing firms are looking for more cost-effective locations. Some of this investment is moving into the Chinese interior, but much is moving into emerging economies all over the world, including Mexico. The Mexican government has made strong efforts to attract such investment, efforts that the new administration will redouble -- making this a moment of strategic significance for Mexico.
Among other reforms, some of which are highly controversial, the changes would allow companies to hire and fire employees more easily. Regulations on severance pay would be loosened, with employers no longer required to guarantee payouts to employees fired for violating workplace standards. On the flipside, the law will also increase penalties on companies that violate labor regulations and will establish protection from sexual harassment for workers. Another important reform would allow companies to offer performance-based promotions instead of purely seniority-based promotions and to grant performance-based bonuses.
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One important area still under heated negotiation relates to regulations that would alter the way unions elect their leadership. In initial discussions, the National Action Party of outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon had proposed that unions be required to elect their leadership via free, direct and secret ballot processes. The laws currently under discussion, however, would permit unions to set their own leadership election processes. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which historically has had close ties to Mexico's unions, backed the withdrawal of union transparency regulations.
As the party that ruled Mexico for 70 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party was instrumental in shaping Mexico's political landscape. With little in the way of competition among political parties, it operated as the political power broker, building corporatist structures over time that bound Mexico's many social and economic sectors together. This policy of inclusive politics played an important role in keeping Mexico relatively stable for decades. The rise of secondary parties and political competition, including the National Action Party on the right and the Revolutionary Democratic Party on the left, during the 1990s led to National Action Party candidate Vicente Fox's 2000 presidential win. This altered the political landscape in Mexico, introducing greater political competition and in many cases, political deadlock, as the parties competed for influence across Mexican society.
Though Mexican politics is more pluralistic than before the National Action Party first won the presidency, key aspects of Institutional Revolutionary Party influence remain, such as its links to the country's powerful unions. These include the Mexican National Education Workers' Union, whose leader, Elba Esther, backed Pena Nieto ahead of the July election. They also include the powerful Petroleos Mexicanos oil workers' union, whose leader was recently elected to the Mexican Senate as a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Energy and Democratic Reforms
Beyond labor, the increase in dynamism in Mexican politics means that Mexican parties may be able to make significant changes on other major issues. Energy reform is the most important issue the country faces. Petroleum output, which funds between 30 percent and 40 percent of Mexico's federal budget and accounts for 16 percent of Mexico's export revenue, has been steadily declining. Oil production slipped from 3.8 million barrels per day in 2004 to 3 million barrels per day in 2011. Although exploration has increased, Petroleos Mexicanos will need significant foreign expertise and capital to find and develop fields, which most likely will be concentrated offshore. This could take years to yield results, leaving Mexico's government facing an uncertain fiscal future.
The main steps needed to reform Mexico's energy sector would entail revising the constitution, for which the Institutional Revolutionary Party would need to garner support from at least two-thirds of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies plus the approval of a majority of Mexico's state legislatures. But the Institutional Revolutionary Party did not win even a simple majority of federal legislature seats in the July elections. If it can obtain votes from the National Action Party along with those of two smaller parties (Mexico's Green Party and the New Alliance Party), constitutional approval at the federal level still could be possible. With 19 out of 31 governorships, the Institutional Revolutionary Party might also be able to push through the constitutional revision at the state level. Accomplishing both of these steps will not be easy, meaning the party probably will focus most of its efforts on non-constitutional legal reforms that require only a simple majority at the federal level.
Other more obscure, but equally important, reforms could be on the table, including measures loosening term limits. This would represent a major change to Mexico's political structure. By giving them a chance to win re-election, Mexican legislators might become more accountable to voters. It also would introduce more continuity to the political system, facilitating Mexico's transition to a democratic system for decades to come.
Whether any of these changes comes to pass depends on negotiations among a group of notoriously fractious parties. Still, with the electoral calendar cleared for the next three years and the Institutional Revolutionary Party holding the presidency, the next several years should see important shifts in how Mexico operates.
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Read more: Mexico's Election Spurs Policy Shifts | Stratfor
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second post of day:
Mexico Security Memo: The Death of Los Zetas' Top Leader
October 10, 2012 | 1015 GMT
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On Oct. 8, the Mexican navy reported that Los Zetas leader Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano was one of two men killed in a shootout Oct. 7 in Progreso, Coahuila state. After Progreso residents warned of organized crime activity, navy elements began patrolling the area and were attacked by armed men.
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Less than 24 hours later, during the early morning hours of Oct. 8, the presumed body of Lazcano was stolen from a funeral home in Sabinas, Coahuila state. Local authorities reportedly had conducted preliminary forensics, including taking photographs and fingerprints. The fact that the navy allowed local authorities to conduct verification and did not protect the body is certainly anomalous. Also, Lazcano's biometrics according to the U.S. Department of Justice do not match those of the dead body. The Department of Justice reports that Lazcano is 5 feet 8 inches tall, but the Mexican navy said the body was 5 feet 2 inches tall. With discrepancies in reporting and the disappearance of the body, speculation over whether Lazcano is truly dead will likely ensue. However, given Los Zetas' resiliency after past leadership losses and the transition in top leadership from Lazcano to Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, there will not likely be any significant setbacks in Los Zetas' operations, regardless of whether Lazcano was killed.
Because ex-military personnel formed Los Zetas, members tend to move up in the group's hierarchy through merit rather than through familial connections, and members are groomed to step into leadership when the need arises. This contrasts starkly with the culture of other cartels, including the Sinaloa Federation. Because of its relative meritocracy, Los Zetas are somewhat more prepared for loss of significant leaders. The transition in leadership from Lazcano to Trevino demonstrates the group's efficiency in replacing top leadership. While it is still not certain whether Lazcano resisted Trevino's ascending to the top role within the organization, the transition did not hinder the organization significantly.
Whether Lazcano died during the shootout with the Mexican military, Los Zetas operations will continue as observed in recent months. The flow of illicit drugs into the United States from Mexico's northeastern region will continue, particularly in Los Zetas' most valued plaza of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. Los Zetas are still engaged in violent turf wars with the Gulf cartel and remnants of Velazquez's network in the northeast and with the Sinaloa Federation, the Knights Templar and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in the central states, most notably in Guadalajara, Jalisco state. Lazcano's death could escalate violence in Zetas-controlled territories, such as Coahuila state, should they retaliate for the loss of such an influential figure or perceive a betrayal from within the organization.
If the Mexican navy's claims are accurate, the death of Lazcano would solidify Trevino's top leadership role within Los Zetas. However, Lazcano's death will likely increase law enforcement and military pressure on Trevino. Having removed Lazcano, both Mexican and U.S. authorities will have the opportunity to increase focus on Los Zetas' top leaders, and Trevino is now the highest-profile target within the organization.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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Editor's Note: In this interim report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess important developments in the drug war during the third quarter of 2012 and explain what they could mean for the rest of the year.
Many of the broader trends discussed in our annual and quarterly cartel updates continued through the third quarter. In particular, the polarized nationwide conflict between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation apparently went on. This conflict could be complicated if the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, once under the control of the Sinaloa Federation, was to act independently. Los Zetas, now led by Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, continued to fight against other criminal organizations aligned with the Sinaloa Federation, namely the Knights Templar, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Gulf cartel. The Sinaloa Federation continued to defend its strongholds, including northern Sinaloa state and Jalisco state, from Los Zetas and Zetas allies. The third quarter saw no new turf wars, but incursions that began in previous quarters continued, and indicators of a potential challenge to the Sinaloa Federation in northern Sonora state emerged from an unidentified organization.
Northeastern Mexico saw significant upheaval during the past quarter due to several key events within Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel. These events included some of the most notable operations by Mexico's law enforcement and military since the December 2009 killing of top Beltran Leyva Organization leader Arturo Beltran Leyva. With just one quarter of 2012 remaining, overall levels of violence in Mexico look set to be lower than in 2011. January through August 2012 saw 14,070 homicides compared to 15,331 homicides during the same period in 2011, though 2010 saw just 11,942 reported homicides during the same period. Recent shifts involving Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar, however, could cause the rate of violence to increase during the fourth quarter.
The quarter will also see the inauguration of Mexico's next president, Enrique Pena Nieto, on Dec. 1. Pena Nieto has discussed plans to reduce overall violence by 50 percent in the first year of his presidency by creating a national gendarmerie, transferring military troops to the federal police and honing the military's focus on violent crimes. Whether those plans will be pursued remains to be seen, and any significant shifts in military and law enforcement policies probably will not occur until 2013.
The Rise of Trevino and Demise of Lazcano
During the third quarter, the ascendancy of Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, formerly the second in command of Los Zetas, to the top spot over Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano became public. Trevino likely assumed control over the course of the first half of 2012. In the first quarter of 2012, Trevino became the focus of anti-Zetas messages posted by rival cartels, particularly in Nuevo Laredo in March. Mexican media outlets -- some citing unnamed government sources -- began referring to Trevino as the new leader of Los Zetas during August. As Stratfor sources confirmed during the third quarter, Trevino had surpassed Lazcano to attain control of one of Mexico's pre-eminent cartels.
Government officials and media outlets began reporting on a rivalry between the two top leaders in July, a rift that inevitably would have significant repercussions for the security situation throughout Mexico. The third quarter did not see the kind of violence one would expect when two top cartel leaders were engaged in open warfare, causing Stratfor to discount claims of their rivalry.
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Adding to our doubts about the reports, narcomantas were posted in Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas states during June and July, after former Zetas plaza boss Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero split from Los Zetas to ally with Los Zetas' principle enemy in the northeast, the Gulf cartel. These banners called Lazcano and Trevino traitors to Zetas plaza bosses. This suggested that rivals, possibly including Velazquez, saw Trevino and Lazcano as enemies, contradicting media reports that the organization was split into just two factions.
Whether a split between Lazcano and Trevino existed, the death of Lazcano on Oct. 7 in Progreso, Coahuila state, solidified Trevino's position within Los Zetas. His killing marks the most notable demise of a criminal leader in Mexico in almost three years, and perhaps the most notable during the entire Calderon presidency.
For the remaining quarter of 2012, the flow of illicit drugs into the United States from Los Zetas' stronghold in northeastern Mexico will continue. The fourth quarter could also see increased violence. Lazcano's closest supporters will seek revenge for their leader's killing, whether against the navy elements who took part in his death or against any perceived as traitors who led Mexican forces to Lazcano.
Rival groups could attempt to capitalize on Lazcano's death through an information operations campaign designed to subvert Los Zetas' organizational structure by portraying the group as weakened or by sowing distrust by emphasizing claims that Lazcano was betrayed. Either way, Los Zetas remain engaged in violent turf wars with the Gulf cartel and remnants of Velazquez's network in the northeast as well as with the Sinaloa Federation, the Knights Templar and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in the central states, most notably in Guadalajara, Jalisco state.
Other Developments Regarding Los Zetas
Los Zetas experienced the most tumultuous quarter of all of Mexico's cartels. Former Zetas plaza boss Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero declared war against Trevino and Los Zetas and announced his alliance with the Knights Templar and the Gulf cartel. The resulting split drastically increased violence in Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi states. Although the Mexican navy arrested Velazquez on Sept. 26 in San Luis Potosi state, we expect the violence in the states affected by his split to continue while Los Zetas battle remnants of Velazquez's network.
Though other notable arrests occurred during the quarter, such as that of Salvador Alfonso "El Ardilla" Martinez Escobedo on Oct. 6 in Nuevo Laredo, none will significantly impact the organization. Authorities attribute a series of high-profile crimes to Martinez, including the August 2010 killing of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas state, the September 2010 killing of U.S. citizen David Hartley on Falcon Lake in Texas and the September 2012 prison escape in Piedras Negras, Coahuila state.
Countering these setbacks, military operations and other criminal groups' actions against Los Zetas' rivals have provided significant advantages to Los Zetas. The series of military arrests of mid- to high-level Gulf cartel leaders and the arrest of senior Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion leaders in Guadalajara stand out in this regard.
Gulf Cartel
During 2011, the Gulf cartel suffered from an internal rivalry between two factions known as Los Rojos and Los Metros, which suggested the group would decline in influence in 2012. Instead, a resurgence in activity directed against Los Zetas in the northeast during the second and third quarter suggested a revival in the group's fortunes. This rally led to significantly increased violence in the northeast, particularly in Tamaulipas state and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state.
But during September, a series of significant Gulf cartel arrests apparently stymied the group's recovery. Mexican authorities detained the Gulf cartel plaza boss for Monterrey. Federal police arrested Juan Gabriel "El Sierra" Montes Sermeno, a plaza boss overseeing Gulf cartel operations in southern Tamaulipas state. In addition, the Mexican navy detained Mario Cardenas Guillen, brother of former top Gulf leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen, and Jorge Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez, leader of the Gulf cartel in Tampico, Tamaulipas state. Until the death of Lazcano, this was the most significant military success for 2012.
Whether the cartel will continue to operate as a cohesive organization following these rapid losses is uncertain. The arrests will likely prompt further violence in the fourth quarter, since Los Zetas may capitalize on the Gulf cartel's perceived weakness and refocus their efforts on contested turf like Monterrey, Ciudad Victoria and Matamoros. The arrests also may spark additional internal rivalries for control of the organization.
Sinaloa Federation
The Sinaloa Federation saw perhaps the least change among Mexico's cartels during the third quarter. Sinaloa continues to use other criminal organizations like the Gulf cartel in Nuevo Laredo and the Knights Templar and perhaps the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in the central states to assault and defend against their principle rival, Los Zetas. The series of Gulf cartel arrests during the third quarter will likely benefit Los Zetas at the Sinaloa Federation's expense in the northeast.
The Sinaloa Federation continues largely to control the lucrative drug corridor in Chihuahua state. It gained the dominant position there after a violent conflict that began in 2008 with the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization, also known as the Juarez cartel, for control over the plaza in Ciudad Juarez. Violence in Ciudad Juarez and the city of Chihuahua continues to decline as Sinaloa consolidates its control of the plaza. According to the Executive Secretariat of the National System of Public Security, Chihuahua state saw just 1,538 reported homicides from January to August 2012 versus 2,169 in the same period of 2011.
Even as the Sinaloa Federation largely appears to have gained control over Chihuahua state, it is still defending other important territories against Zetas incursions, namely Guadalajara. Sinaloa also faces an emerging challenge in northern Sonora state -- where much of the organizations' marijuana and other illicit drugs flow into the United States.
The Sinaloa Federation largely has controlled the northern half of Sonora state since seizing it from the splintering Beltran Leyva Organization in 2010. The first indications that the Sinaloa Federation faced a challenge in Sonora appeared in the northern half of the state in July, when the brother of Raul "El Negro" Sabori Cisneros, a former Sinaloa Federation lieutenant, was killed in a shootout between two rival groups of gunmen in Puerto Penasco. Indications of violence and tension associated with organized crime have since continued to emerge.
It still is not certain what has caused the recent violence in northern Sonora state. It could be the result of activity by local gangs or by Sinaloa Federation rivals like Los Zetas or splinter groups from the former Beltran Leyva Organization, which operate in adjacent territories such as southern Sonora and western Chihuahua states. Should a rival challenge the Sinaloa Federation for control of the trafficking corridor in Sonora state, the violence will likely continue.
Either way, it does not appear the Sinaloa Federation is at risk of losing any control at present. Northern Sonora state has a relatively sparse population, making widespread violence less opportune than in more densely populated regions. Because those communities are small, the violence would be more visible and more likely to impact the overall security environment of those areas.
The Sinaloa Federation did suffer some notable losses due to military and law enforcement operations in the third quarter. An Oct. 11 shootout between gunmen and the Mexican army in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, resulted in the death of Manuel "M-1" Torres Felix, a high-level hit man for both Sinaloa Federation leaders Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Guzman. While the impact of Torres' death remains uncertain, he likely would have been responsible for defending against challenges to the Sinaloa Federation in northern Sinaloa state from rival groups. We therefore will be looking for indicators of increasing violence and weakness on the part of the Sinaloa cartel.
Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion
The rapid territorial expansion of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion seen during the first half of 2012 appeared to stall during the third quarter. Although the group continued its ongoing turf wars with Los Zetas and the Knights Templar during the third quarter, no indications it enjoyed significant successes emerged. As noted during the second quarterly update, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion may be ending its alignment with the Sinaloa Federation. Additional indications of this shift appeared during the third quarter.
With Mexico's drug war defined at a national level by the Los Zetas-Sinaloa Federation conflict, many smaller criminal organizations in Mexico sought a working relationship with either Los Zetas or the Sinaloa Federation.
Of these smaller groups, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has rapidly grown into a major criminal organization since 2011. It now operates along both the western and eastern coasts of Mexico in crucial locations for the transport of illicit drugs and shipments of precursor chemicals. Given its extensive territory, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion could carve out a niche as a separate major cartel on turf it originally secured with Sinaloa backing to aid Sinaloa operations.
The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion experienced increased law enforcement pressure in Jalisco state during the third quarter. Its response to the government's targeting organized criminals in Guadalajara and Ciudad Guzman demonstrated the organization's capability to mount coordinated violence over a wide geographic area. On Aug. 25-26, gunmen established at least 26 roadblocks by setting hijacked vehicles on fire in roadways throughout Jalisco state, including in Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta and Ciudad Guzman, as well as locations in Colima state.
Jalisco state authorities said Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera Cervantes, a top leader of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, managed to evade arrest due to the roadblock campaign. Even so, authorities attained some successes during their operations, including the arrest of four Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion members operating under Jose Javier Ramirez Chavez, a high-level leader in Ciudad Guzman. A week later, authorities in Ciudad Guzman detained Ramirez. The most notable arrests by Mexican authorities occurred Sept. 6 in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, when Ramon "El R-1" and Rafael "El R-2" Alvarez Ayala, two Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion leaders working directly with top leader Oseguera Cervantes, were detained.
Knights Templar
The Knights Templar continued their turf war with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in addition to their conflict with La Familia Michoacana and Los Zetas. These conflicts in Mexico's central states have led to increased violence, particularly in Guanajuato state.
The Knights Templar have become increasingly public about their conflict with Los Zetas, particularly in relation to Trevino. For example, a video message released on the Internet in August from top Knights Templar leader Servando "La Tuta" Gomez Martinez discussed the organization's ongoing feud with Los Zetas.
While there have been no explicit indications of expanding violence between the two organizations, it is certainly possible that the Knights Templar will begin assaulting Los Zetas in the latter's strongholds during the fourth quarter. Authorities discovered several narcomantas Oct. 1 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, ostensibly signed by the Knights Templar. If they are in fact planning an assault on Los Zetas in Monterrey, this would obviously affect the security situation there during the fourth quarter.
Authorities have targeted lower-level Knights Templar members in response to brazen acts of coordinated violence by the group. These include the arson attacks on installations and delivery trucks of Sabritas, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, during May in various parts of Michoacan and Guanajuato and the coordinated attacks against fuel stations Aug. 10 in Guanajuato state. In response, authorities detained at least 20 Knights Templar members Sept. 13 in San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato state, in connection to both series of attacks. Such arrests, however, will likely have a minimal impact on the group due to the low-level status of those arrested.
Other Groups
Many other lesser criminal groups have remained unchanged in their operational status, such as La Familia Michoacana, the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, La Barredora and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization. While still operational in Mexico, these groups have a minimal impact on security compared to Mexico's main cartels.
La Familia Michoacana continued its turf war with the Knights Templar. Despite its efforts, La Familia Michoacana has never regained the status it lost when the Knights Templar split from them in January 2011.
Though the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization has mostly lost control of Ciudad Juarez and the city of Chihuahua to the Sinaloa Federation, the group remains operational outside both cities. In addition to facing new violence in northern Sinaloa and western Chihuahua along with its current allies, Los Zetas, the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization continues to suffer at the hands of law enforcement and military operations. Most recently, on Oct. 4 federal police captured La Linea leader Juan Carlos "El Sabritas" Sandoval Seanez and six other members of La Linea -- an enforcer group for the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization.
Outside of arrests, little activity was reported during the third quarter regarding La Barredora and the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, splinter groups from the old Beltran Leyva Organization. Their operations appear to remain focused around Acapulco. On Oct. 1, authorities discovered dismembered human remains in Acapulco along with a narcomanta directed against the Independent Cartel of Acapulco's presumed leader, Victor Aguirre, ostensibly signed by the Gulf cartel. The incident might indicate a new conflict between the Gulf cartel and the Independent Cartel of Acapulco to watch for during the fourth quarter.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
Read more: Mexican Drug War Update: Fourth Quarter | Stratfor
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-zetas-control-20121104,0,4077102,full.story
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Hat tip to GM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238577/Maria-Santos-Gorrostieta-executed-surviving-assassination-attempts.html?ICO=most_read_module
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Violence Continues in Coahuila and Zacatecas States
Violence between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas continues in Zacatecas and Coahuila states. On Dec. 2, seven dismembered male bodies packed in six plastic bags were found on an abandoned property in the Obispado neighborhood of Torreon, Coahuila state, and another male body was found on Revolucion Boulevard. Additionally, attacks in Torreon against law enforcement have been increasing since October. The most recent incident occurred Nov. 30, when armed men killed two municipal police officers in Jardin neighborhood.
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On Dec. 1 in Zacatecas, Zacatecas state, authorities discovered five male bodies in two separate locations along with messages at each location allegedly authored by the Gulf cartel, claiming responsibility for the homicides and threatening members of Los Zetas. While the Gulf cartel has suffered significant losses in 2012 through military operations and Los Zetas assaults in states such as Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, the Gulf cartel has had a resurgence farther west in Coahuila and Zacatecas states. This resurgence was due in part to its alliance with former Los Zetas' regional plaza boss of Zacatecas, Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero, and also likely the support of the Sinaloa Federation.
It is not likely either state will see a reduction in the current level of violence in the short term, since rival groups maintain their numbers of gunmen capable of carrying out violent acts. At the moment, it is not certain if either group has achieved the upper hand. Neither Coahuila nor Zacatecas state has been entirely controlled by one criminal organization before, so recent violence does not reflect an incursion by a criminal organization as much as an increased focus for control by one side.
New Police for Monterrey
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, a city valued by drug traffickers as a transportation hub and source of local revenue, experienced a sharp increase in violence when Los Zetas split from the Gulf cartel in 2010. As the two organizations became rivals, Monterrey became a frequent battleground resulting in inter-cartel violence and increasing pressure on law enforcement. In addition to this pressure, like many cities in Mexico, law enforcement is also subject to corruption efforts by the two competing cartels.
On Nov. 29, Monterrey Mayor Margarita Arellanes announced the "new" municipal police in Monterrey, with freshly acquired recruits beginning operations. the existing municipal police force is simply undergoing new recruitment and competency exams and changing its name from "Police Regia" to "Police Municipal de Monterrey." Mexico's navy trained approximately 500 recent police recruits, none of whom were from Monterrey, for introduction into Monterrey's law enforcement.
Reforming Monterrey's police body will likely have some drawbacks for security in the city. Since the incoming recruits are intended to replace existing police in the city, many current police officers will become unemployed, presenting opportunities for both the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas to recruit new gunmen as part of their ongoing turf war. Additionally, the same environment, which can corrupt active duty police, will exist for any incoming recruits. Given the organization's jurisdiction, any benefits of the reformation would affect only the Monterrey municipality and not the remaining municipalities of the greater metropolitan area.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region and designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Coahuila and Zacatecas States See Sustained Violence | Stratfor
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Territorial Exchanges in Chihuahua State
On Dec. 7, a group of gunmen entered Guadalupe y Calvo, a small town in southwest Chihuahua state, and began a spree of violence that lasted through the weekend. Residents said the assailants, who reportedly killed at least 11 people, took control of the town by blocking its main roads and searched for people to execute inside homes. The gunmen reportedly belonged to a group that had broken away from the Sinaloa Federation. While the involvement of such a splinter group is uncertain, Stratfor believes the attacks were likely linked to an ongoing fight for control over Mexico's "Golden Triangle" -- a region of the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains responsible for high levels of drug production, particularly marijuana and opium -- in which Sinaloa has played a central role.
The incident in Guadalupe y Calvo reflected a dynamic that has become common in the Golden Triangle, where rival organizations have been struggling for control over towns and where several similar episodes of violence have occurred in recent months. On Aug. 16, for example, gunmen shot and killed the police chief of Guadalupe y Calvo. Two days later, the town's entire police force fled the area in response to additional threats by the gunmen, forcing the Mexican military and state law enforcement to intervene.
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Much of the violence can be linked to the Sinaloa Federation's struggle for control in the Golden Triangle, in part because the organization is fighting several smaller groups in the region, most notably La Linea and Los Mazatlecos -- two groups allied with Los Zetas. While the culprits of the Dec. 7 attacks in Guadalupe y Calvo have not been identified, Stratfor believes that responsibility lies with one of these groups -- if not the Sinaloa splinter group.
For the Sinaloa Federation, the struggle highlights the difficulty the organization has had in maintaining control over regional transportation routes and drug production. And the prolonged nature of the regional conflicts indicates that Sinaloa's ongoing effort to uproot its rivals has been unsuccessful. Sinaloa's struggles could be perceived as insubstantial to the organization, since the organization still has one of the largest shares of the Mexican drug trade and has limited itself in the region to fighting Los Mazatlecos and La Linea. But given their relatively small size, the Sinaloa rivals rely heavily on revenues from drug production, and neither group can likely afford to stand down. Unless the Sinaloa Federation either escalates its efforts to remove its rivals or negotiates agreements with them, back-and-forth episodes of large-scale violence in southwest Chihuahua state will likely continue.
Murder of a Coahuila Mining Executive
On Dec. 7 in Sabinas, Coahuila state, authorities discovered the body of a mining business owner named Basilio Nino Ramos with a gunshot wound in his neck, signs of torture and his dismembered finger placed in his mouth -- a symbol used by cartels on victims believed to be informants, suggesting links to organized crime. Authorities have not named any possible culprits or motives for the killing, although the manners in which the victim was maimed and then left in a public area are common among killings by organized criminal groups.
While no evidence has been released clearly implicating Los Zetas in the murder, the cartel has allegedly been involved in Coahuila state's mining industry. Nino Ramos owned Minera La Mision, a coalmine operator in Muzquiz, Coahuila state, that has reportedly been one of several mining businesses under investigation by the Mexican attorney general's office on allegations of laundering money for the cartels. If the accusations are true, then Nino Ramos was probably in frequent contact with organized criminal groups to coordinate the illicit financial transactions and a plausible target for cartel-related violence.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region and designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: A Fight for the Sierra Madre Occidental | Stratfor
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Stratfor
On Dec. 17, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and members of his Cabinet presented the new administration's plan for reducing nationwide violence and crime caused by Mexico's drug wars. Pena Nieto outlined six points, and within those points, he mentioned the creation of a national gendarmerie and the consolidation of state police forces under the federal command, neither of which was a surprising move.
By bringing the federal police under the control of the Interior Ministry, acquiring oversight of state police and substantially bolstering the ranks of federal law enforcement, Pena Nieto is addressing the challenges that arise for municipal and state law enforcement as they try to combat national level criminal groups without closer federal coordination. Increasing the number of federal police or establishing an additional law enforcement body also allows law enforcement in Mexico to better confront violent groups that act in several geographic areas. This could lead to greater intelligence sharing, funding and coordinated actions, though the outline lacked details, such as timelines and precise courses of action.
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In 2010, there were approximately 32,000 federal police, 186,000 state police and 159,000 municipal police -- and correspondingly little federal coordination, creating significant challenges in law enforcement operations against nationally operating criminal organizations. Each state and municipal law enforcement body can confront nationally operating crime groups only within their respective geographic boundaries.
Increasing the federal government's coordination of law enforcement responsibilities at a state level will likely benefit the government's ability to deal with violence attributed to nationally operating organized criminal groups. But many of the problems afflicting Mexico's law enforcement remain -- primarily corruption and the lack of adequate funding or training.
Furthering the ability to coordinate law enforcement operations in Mexico would help the government confront violent groups on an inter-regional scale, but it would not solve these other outstanding issues. Additionally, the national gendarmerie or unified command has yet to be established and would probably not be operational in the next year. It is unlikely any tangible restructuring will take place in the short term since the process for establishing a command over state police has yet to be expressed in detail. Therefore, while plans to expand federal law enforcement oversight in Mexico could stem the violent actions of the cartels, the plans likely will not have an impact on security until after 2013.
Editor's Note: As an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, we now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, which provides more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. If you are interested in learning about this new fee-based custom service, please contact aboutmsm@stratfor.com.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Plans to Strengthen Law Enforcement Coordination | Stratfor
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http://vimeo.com/57022172
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8813601/stop-the-drugs-war/
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"...there aren’t really many other alternatives. Why not legalise drugs? It wouldn’t be giving up, it would be winning without fighting — the best, cleverest way. The cartels would be forced above ground; the big money would be in legitimate business. "
Yes, we would have legal cartels of big hemp with lawyers and lobbyists in Washington and state capitals instead of the gun war. Truckloads of drugs would be coming in on a trade scale the size of oil. We will see shortly what the effects of legalization in certain states. Probably no big change since it was essentially legal there before.
On a scale smaller than international trade, couldn't we legalize the right to grow your own and the right to transport or sell one ounce or one pound and knock down the price that way, and squeeze out the profits?
My conservative and libertarian sides are conflicted, but the war in Mexico is unacceptable for both countries.
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"couldn't we legalize the right to grow your own and the right to transport or sell one ounce or one pound and knock down the price that way, and squeeze out the profits?"
Makes sense to me , , ,
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"Yes, we would have legal cartels of big hemp with lawyers and lobbyists in Washington and state capitals instead of the gun war. Truckloads of drugs would be coming in on a trade scale the size of oil. We will see shortly what the effects of legalization in certain states. Probably no big change since it was essentially legal there before."
Colorado is becoming the new ground zero for cartel operations in the US. An unsecured border coupled with very little in the way of law enforcement resources outside of the Denver metro area/front range and the new legalization combined with Colorado's geographic location....libertarian paradise, right?
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Ah, knocking down those straw men as usual GM :roll: :-)
As you well know, EVERYONE here is in favor of defending our border vigorously!
As you well know, federal drug law remains in place.
Anyway, how is the current approach working for us?
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Ah, knocking down those straw men as usual GM :roll: :-)
As you well know, EVERYONE here is in favor of defending our border vigorously!
As you well know, federal drug law remains in place.
Anyway, how is the current approach working for us?
I see no moves to secure the border, nor do I see the feds surging into Colorado to deal with what is coming.
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No one here is suggesting that there are sufficient moves to defend the border. The question presented is whether what your side on this has been trying is working or not.
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No one here is suggesting that there are sufficient moves to defend the border. The question presented is whether what your side on this has been trying is working or not.
I don't recall seeing organized crime entities pushing into Colorado en mass before. Do you think this is a promising development
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Of course not. Duh. The whole trajectory of the War on Drugs is not "promising".
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Of course not. Duh. The whole trajectory of the War on Drugs is not "promising".
So surrender to the cartels ? Maybe they'll show mercy?
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No, as you well know, the idea would be to remove/dramatically diminish the profitability of it all. The diminished evil behaviors remaining could and should be then attended to forcefully.
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No, as you well know, the idea would be to remove/dramatically diminish the profitability of it all. The diminished evil behaviors remaining could and should be then attended to forcefully.
It may reduce the profitability of Mexican produced weed, but create a new production center for high grade weed and without the cost and risk of crossing an international border.
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Well, if weed is let out of the legal shadows, then Americans can grow it here in a free market with free market instead of black market profits.
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Well, if weed is let out of the legal shadows, then Americans can grow it here in a free market with free market instead of black market profits.
It's not legal under federal law, or the vast majority of States. What legalization has done is create a forward operating base and profit center for the cartels in the American heartland.
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Ummm , , , hot news flash: The cartels have been establishing themselves more and more for many years now, beginning preceding the quasi-legalizations of a handful of states.
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Yes, but now they've been handed a gift on a silver platter. Colorado law enforcement will learn what "Plata o plomo" means.
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So, let me see if I understand your analysis correctly:
Despite the clustermess that the War on Drugs has been in both the US and Mexico, somehow it is going to make a noticeable difference that the authorities of the State of Colorado are no longer busting people for weed?
Is this about right?
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It was cost effective for the cartels to send illegals to grow in forestland, under the scrutiny of local level law enforcement, now they have a free hand to grow and then ship to other states from a centrally located state, amassing huge profits which will be used in part to corrupt and undermine the rule of law.
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Mexico's Masked Vigilantes Defy Drug Gangs—And the Law .
By NICHOLAS CASEY
For years, villages in rural Mexico have been terrorized by drug gangs and organized crime groups. Now, armed militias are taking control--running patrols, raiding the homes of suspected mafia and detaining prisoners. WSJ's Nick Casey reports.
AYUTLA, Mexico—Masked men, rifles slung over their shoulders, stand guard on a lonely rural road, checking IDs and questioning travelers. They wear no uniforms, flash no badges, but they are the law here now.
A dozen villages in the area have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers that have terrorized the region and a government that residents say is incapable of protecting them from organized crime.
Ranchers in Tecoanapa, near Ayutla, voted Sunday in favor of having local militiamen provide security.
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The villages in the hilly southern Mexican state of Guerrero now forbid the Mexican army and state and federal police from entering. Ragtag militias carrying a motley arsenal of machetes, old hunting rifles and the occasional AR-15 semiautomatic rifle control the towns. Strangers aren't allowed entry. There is a 10 p.m. curfew. More than 50 prisoners, accused of being in drug gangs, sit in makeshift jails. Their fates hinge on public trials that began Thursday when the accused were arraigned before villagers, who will act as judge and jury.
Crime is way down—for the moment, at least. Residents say kidnapping ceased when the militias took charge, as did the extortions that had become the scourge of businessmen and farmers alike. The leader of one militia group, who uses the code name G-1 but was identified by his compatriots as Gonzalo Torres, puts it this way: "We brought order back to a place where there had been chaos. We were able to do in 15 days what the government was not able to do in years."
Yet a few shaken townspeople in Ayutla, the area's primary town, have stories of being arrested and held for more than a week before being deemed innocent and released. And one man was shot dead trying to escape the masked men at a checkpoint.
Village justice has long been part of life in rural Mexico. Now it's playing a growing role in the country's drug war. Across Mexico, from towns outside the capital to along the troubled border with the U.S., mobs have lynched suspected drug traffickers and shot those accused of aiding them. Last year a logging town in a neighboring state took up arms when traffickers of La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel, attempted to lay claim to their forests.
The uprising around Ayutla, a two-hour drive from the resort city of Acapulco, differs from the others because it has started to spread locally. In the two weeks, bands in six other towns in Guerrero state have declared vigilante rule, including in Iguala, a city of 140,000. In the nearby Jalisco state, groups say they are considering similar action.
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Some government officials are even siding with the militias, for now. Guerrero Governor Ángel Aguirre has met with the vigilantes and says state law gives villagers the right to self-rule. Ayutla's mayor, Severo Castro, says he welcomes the new groups. On a recent evening, he pointed toward a checkpoint blocks away and said the town is nearly crime-free for the first time in years.
"There are two police departments now," he said. "The ones in uniform and another masked one, which is much more brave."
That sentiment seems to be shared even among local police, who are still technically on duty but who now seem limited to the role of directing traffic around the central square, leaving the rest of the patrolling and police work to the militias.
Police Commander Juan Venancio, a broad-faced middle-aged man with a mustache, said local police are too afraid of organized crime to make arrests.
"We could arrest a gangster for extortion, but if we couldn't prove it, we'd have to let him go," he said. "But then what about our families? Do you think we're not scared they will take revenge on us if they are out? Of course we are scared."
In some ways, life is getting back to normal here after years of insecurity. Village rodeos attract young cowboys and girls in traditional dresses, and weddings stretch late into the evening. The same townspeople who were once extorted by drug gangs now bring melons and tamales to the militiamen standing guard at checkpoints.
Suspicion of the government and outsiders runs high here. During a visit by The Wall Street Journal last week to the nearby hamlet of Azozuca, rumor spread that the reporter's car was bringing state human-rights officials. An angry, stick-wielding mob of about 150 blocked the only road into town and didn't allow the reporter to enter.
"Get out of here! Don't take another step!" yelled a woman waving a wooden bat.
Remote villages in Guerrero, one of Mexico's most independent regions, had long complained that too few police looked after their towns. In 1995, the state passed a law allowing towns to form "community police" groups that worked much like neighborhood-watch organizations, permitting the groups to detain suspects and hand them over to authorities. But the laws didn't allow the groups to pass judgment on those accused.
By 2006, Mexico's drug war had begun to weaken its already-troubled institutions. Areas like Mexico City remained under tight control, but the power of the state in rural areas diminished. Some 65,000 Mexicans have been killed since 2006, but only a fraction of the killings have been solved—or even investigated, according to the government and legal experts.
"Mexico has a 2% conviction rate, and Mexicans have taken note of that," says Sergio Pastrana, a sociology professor at the College of Guerrero who has studied rural regions. "It's caused unrest and a determination among some to take the reins themselves."
Villagers in Ayutla say the town was never crime-free—bandits sometimes robbed horsemen riding the road, for example—but the specter of organized crime was something new.
Several years ago, a group known by villagers as Los Pelones—literally, the Bald Ones—entered Ayutla and began a racket which included both drugs and other crime, people here say.
Mr. Castro, the mayor, says his 19-year-old daughter was kidnapped two years ago and he paid a "large sum" for her release. Last July, the body of the town's police chief Óscar Suástegui was found in a garbage dump outside town. He had been shot 13 times. Authorities said it looked like the work of a criminal group. No arrests were made in either case.
Townspeople say Los Pelones moved into extortions last year, demanding protection money from those who ran stalls in the market adjoining Ayutla's central plaza. The payments were usually 500 pesos, or $40, a month per stall, according to several vendors, a large sum in the impoverished town.
As harvest season approached last fall, the group fanned out into the countryside, demanding monthly payments of 200 pesos, about $16, for each animal that farmers owned. Several farmers say the gang made a list of those who had agreed to pay and those who had not.
In November, a spate of kidnappings began. Gunmen in the village of Plan de Gatica captured the village commissioner, a kind of locally elected mayor, along with a priest in a nearby village who had refused to pay extortion fees for his church. A second commissioner was kidnapped in the village of Ahuacachahue in December. The three men eventually were released after ransoms were paid, villagers say.
When a village commissioner named Eusebio García was captured on Jan. 5, several dozen villagers from Rancho Nuevo grabbed weapons and formed a search party. The next morning, they found Mr. García in a nearby house with his kidnappers, who were arrested and jailed, say the militiamen.
"This was the turning point, the moment everything exploded here," says Bruno Placido, one of the leaders of the armed groups. "We had shown the power armed people have over organized-crime groups."
As word spread of Mr. García's release, farmers in villages around Ayutla also took up arms. Their plan: to descend into Ayutla, where they believed the rest of the Los Pelones gang was based. That night they raided numerous homes throughout Ayutla, arresting people they believed to be lookouts, drug dealers, kidnappers and hit men, and brought them to makeshift jails. Other villagers set up checkpoints across the town.
The vigilantes were now in charge. They instituted the curfew and declared that state and federal authorities would be turned away at checkpoints. Villagers were allowed to make accusations against others, anonymously, at the homes of militiamen.
The group ordered most schools shut down, saying Los Pelones might try to take children hostage in exchange for prisoners detained by the vigilantes.
"I hadn't seen anything quite like this before," says state Education Secretary Silvia Romero, who traveled to Ayutla after the initial uprising to negotiate for classes to resume. Some teachers agreed that suspending school was necessary until all top gang leaders were under lock and key. "The students were an easy target for the criminals," says teacher Ignacio Vargas.
Many schools have since reopened. The army, after negotiations, set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the region. Beyond that, the militiamen remain in control and no state or federal officials are permitted to enter the villages around Ayutla.
Townspeople interviewed recently said the masked men are ordinary farmers and businessmen, not rival criminals looking to oust Los Pelones. The mayor agrees. Still, Mr. Torres, the lead militiaman in Ayutla, acknowledged the risk of "spies from organized crime coming into our ranks." He said he encourages his men to turn in anyone seeking to join the vigilantes who might be linked to crime groups.
The militias are moving beyond the drug gangs to other alleged crimes and, in the process, are revealing some of the pitfalls of village justice.
On a recent day, two pickup trucks filled with masked men pulled up carrying bar owner Juan de Dios Acevedo. They alleged that Mr. Acevedo, 42, had been involved in the rape of a local woman. One of them pulled a shirt over his head while another bound his hands with rope. His mother and sister comforted him and cried.
As he was being bundled into one pickup, his mother fetched signed papers from the local prosecutor's office that said he had already been arrested for the same crime, and cleared by prosecutors. "This is a false accusation, and now I've been arrested for the second time," Mr. Acevedo protested.
The vigilantes were unmoved and took him away for questioning. Later that day, he was released unharmed.
A makeshift detention center run by villagers in El Mezón is home to two dozen men and women accused of being with Los Pelones. There is no budget to run the prison, villagers say. The prisoners eat donated tortillas and rice and sleep on cardboard on the floor. On a recent afternoon, seven men were clustered behind bars in a tiny, dark room that smelled of urine. It was hot and dirty. There were no visible signs of physical abuse.
The masked commander of the facility, who wouldn't give his name and declined to allow interviews with the prisoners, said the men are being treated well and will be given a chance to defend themselves in a public trial in the village. They won't be allowed lawyers, he said, and villagers will decide their sentences by a consensus vote.
Possible punishments include hard labor constructing roads and bridges in chain gangs, he said, although it will be up to the villagers, not the militia, to decide. He added that executions, which are not permitted under Mexican law even in murder cases, were not on the table.
"The village will be their judge," he said. "If the village saves you, you will be free. If not, then you are condemned."
Nightly raids of suspected drug traffickers have provided the militiamen with a clutch of high-powered weapons, including AR-15 rifles. It isn't clear how the men will be trained to use the weapons.
On Jan. 6, the night the checkpoints were erected, a man named Cutberto Luna was shot dead by the vigilantes, state authorities say. Mr. Torres, the Ayutla militia commander, says the man refused to stop at the checkpoint and opened fire on the men standing guard, who responded by firing back. He also alleges Mr. Luna was a "known leader of organized crime."
Members of Mr. Luna's family couldn't be located for comment. The state prosecutor's file on the case says Mr. Luna was a local taxi driver. The file makes no mention of organized-crime ties. No arrests have been made in the killing.
On a recent day, a group of militiamen in the village of Potreros discussed what lay ahead. A rancher in a nearby town was thought to have collected extortion money on behalf of the criminal gangs. Several militia members wanted to organize a raid to take back the money, then use it to buy ammunition. The men also discussed the merits of shooting on the spot criminals they believed to be guilty rather than taking them to village courts.
A vendor in the Ayutla town plaza is glad to have faced neither fate. He spent 14 days in the El Mezón jail but was released on Jan. 21, he said. The vendor said he was accused of helping an organized-crime member. In fact, he said, he was simply paying his 500 peso weekly extortion fee. He wasn't harmed in detention, he said, but got sick after he was given dirty water from a nearby pond to drink.
"Clearly I wasn't on the side of the bad guys," he said. "Still, I went to jail. The kind of psychological damage this does is great. Now I'm afraid they'll come back for me and cut off my finger or gouge out my eye."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/world/americas/us-stepped-in-to-halt-mexican-generals-rise.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130205&_r=0
As Mexico’s military staged its annual Independence Day parade in September, spectators filled the main square of Mexico City to cheer on the armed forces. Nearly 2,000 miles away in Washington, American officials were also paying attention.
But it was not the helicopters hovering overhead or the antiaircraft weapons or the soldiers in camouflage that caught their attention. It was the man chosen to march at the head of the parade, Gen. Moisés García Ochoa, who by tradition typically becomes the country’s next minister of defense.
The Obama administration had many concerns about the general, including the Drug Enforcement Administration’s suspicion that he had links to drug traffickers and the Pentagon’s anxiety that he had misused military supplies and skimmed money from multimillion-dollar defense contracts.
In the days leading up to Mexico’s presidential inauguration on Dec. 1, the United States ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, met with senior aides to President Enrique Peña Nieto to express alarm at the general’s possible promotion.
That back-channel communication provides a rare glimpse into the United States government’s deep involvement in Mexican security affairs — especially as Washington sizes up Mr. Peña Nieto, who is just two months into a six-year term. The American role in a Mexican cabinet pick also highlights the tensions and mistrust between the governments despite proclamations of cooperation and friendship.
“When it comes to Mexico, you have to accept that you’re going to dance with the devil,” said a former senior D.E.A. official, who requested anonymity because he works in the private sector in Mexico. “You can’t just fold your cards and go home because you can’t find people you completely trust. You play with the cards you’re dealt.”
A former senior Mexican intelligence official expressed similar misgivings about American officials. “The running complaint on the Mexican side is that the relationship with the United States is unequal and unbalanced,” said the former official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke anonymously to discuss diplomatic and security exchanges. “Mexico is open with its secrets. The United States is not. So there’s a lot of resentment. And there’s always an incentive to try to stick it to the Americans.”
Wave of Violence
Washington’s concerns about General García Ochoa — which several officials cautioned were not confirmed — come as both governments grasp for new ways to stem the illegal flows of drugs, guns and money across their borders.
Under Mr. Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón, cooperation between the two governments had expanded in ways once considered unthinkable, with American and Mexican agents conducting coordinated operations that resulted in the capture or killing of several dozen important cartel leaders. But while Washington highlighted the record numbers of arrests, the stepped-up campaign created a wave of violence in Mexico that left some 60,000 people dead.
The devastating death toll has Mr. Peña Nieto, 46, a former governor, promising to move his country’s fight against organized crime in a different direction, focusing more on reducing violence than on detaining drug kingpins. But he has so far offered only vague details of his security plans, focusing instead on social and economic programs.
While Mr. Peña Nieto portrays himself as the leader of a new generation of reformers, he is also a scion of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for more than 70 years through a combination of corruption and coercion until it lost power in 2000. During its time in power, the party was known more for keeping the United States at arm’s length while attempting to strike deals with drug traffickers, rather than combating them head on.
Mr. Peña Nieto’s election has brought the PRI back to power, and since so many of those serving in his cabinet have one foot in the past, foreign policy experts who specialize in Mexico say it is not clear where the new government is headed.
“It could go either way,” said Eric L. Olson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, speaking of future cooperation between Mexico and the United States. “Part of me says, ‘Let’s not assume it’s all going to go south.’ And there are things that are happening that give me hope. But the longer it goes without some clarity, the more doubts creep in.”
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Those doubts have also crept to Capitol Hill. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he was withholding nearly $230 million in security assistance to Mexico through the so-called Merida Initiative amid concerns about whether the fight against organized crime is doing more harm than good.
“Congress has been asked for a significant new investment, but it’s not clear what the Mexican government’s plans are,” Mr. Leahy said. “It’s premature to sign off on more of the same.”
General García Ochoa, 61, whose background is at once exemplary and enigmatic, personifies that quandary. On paper, he is a model officer. He earned two advanced degrees from Mexico’s most prestigious military academies, and founded the elite National Center for Counter-Narcotics Intelligence. He has been a student and an instructor in American military training programs. He has written three books, including one on the military’s role in the drug fight.
People who know the general said they were struck by his candid assessments of the fight against organized crime. He spoke openly about governmental corruption, a topic that has been considered taboo. And on at least two occasions over the past year and a half, the general’s friends said, he traveled secretly to San Antonio to meet with American intelligence officials — he didn’t feel safe meeting with agents in Mexico, they said — and gave names of military and civilian officials he suspected of providing protection to drug traffickers.
“He was genuinely worried that corruption was giving the military a bad name, and that if nothing was done about it, it could hurt relations with the United States,” said a person knowledgeable about the meetings. “The way he saw it, this next government has the chance to really change the way Mexico works with the United States. He didn’t want that chance to be missed.”
By then, General García Ochoa was already on the short list to become defense minister. And people who know him said he hoped American support would give him an advantage over other candidates.
What he did not know was that the United States was quietly advocating against him. Current and former American officials said they had put together a troubling portfolio of allegations against the general. In his role as director of military administration and acquisitions, he had been accused of skimming money and supplies from large defense contracts.
Reports in the Mexican news media last summer accused the general of approving payments totaling more than $355 million for sophisticated surveillance equipment, without reporting those payments to civilian authorities or providing an explanation of how that equipment would be used.
‘Mr. Ten Percent’
Behind the scenes, American officials had nicknamed the general “Mr. Ten Percent,” shorthand for their suspicions about the way he handled contracts. And two American officials recalled the general making a formal request for American assistance for the military’s helicopter unit, and then backing out of the arrangement when the United States asked to look at the books — including the unit’s financial, flight and fuel records.
“The United States is sending a lot of money down there,” said one senior American official, describing the concerns about the general. “We need to be sure that money is being used in the right way or we could lose a huge opportunity.”
The D.E.A. suspected the general had long ties to drug traffickers. Agents declined to discuss the specific nature of those links. Nor would they say whether their investigation against the general was continuing. General García Ochoa declined requests to be interviewed.
“There was a lot of information on him, and it was coming from multiple sources,” said a recently retired senior federal law-enforcement officer, referring to what he called the “serious concerns” about the general. “We never found any smoking guns, not enough to make a case.”
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The New York Times obtained classified D.E.A. intelligence reports from the early years of the general’s career, when he founded the counternarcotics intelligence center. The reports, dated Dec. 15, 1997, allege that then-Colonel García Ochoa was one of several senior Mexican military officials involved with attempts to negotiate a deal with the country’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations.
“It is highly likely,” said one report, “that military officials wanted to continue to profit from an ongoing relationship with the drug traffickers.”
The reports also allege that the colonel led a raid against the Juárez Cartel in which he deliberately allowed the kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes to escape, saying that the colonel “did not give orders to launch the operation until the car in which ACF was reportedly traveling had departed the area.”
Mexican officials declined requests to be interviewed for this article. American officials declined to comment publicly on their suspicions about the general. But they emphasized that whatever concerns they might have had about an individual general were hardly representative of the larger relationship between the two governments.
There have been significant strides in cooperation in recent years, including the first drones flying over Mexican airspace, the creation of the first joint intelligence center on a Mexican military base, operations staged by Mexican counternarcotics officers on the United States side of the border, and operations conducted by American federal law enforcement agents against money laundering in Mexico.
The United States has successfully shared delicate intelligence with the Mexican Navy, which led to the arrests of significant cartel leaders. And the number of exchanges between the Pentagon and the Mexican military has increased drastically, from 3 events in 2009 to nearly 100 last year, according to a report in Small Wars Journal, an independent online military publication.
“One of the most important bilateral relationships the United States has is with Mexico, and neither side is going to abandon it,” said another former senior D.E.A. official. “Yes, there are significant concerns, but when they come up you try to isolate them, limit their impact and move on.”
The American effort to prevent General García Ochoa’s promotion was just such an exercise in containment, with the Americans quietly moving to weed out Mexican officials suspected of corruption because they feared Mexican institutions would not be willing or able to do so on their own.
Misgivings Aired
After September’s Independence Day parade, senior American officials gathered in Mexico City for two days of meetings to assess their suspicions about the general, and to discuss whether or not to share those misgivings with their Mexican counterparts.
According to a Mexican official, the Americans eventually did share their concerns about the general, less than a week before Mr. Peña Nieto announced his cabinet appointments. The official said the American ambassador met in Mexico City with two senior aides to the incoming leader, including Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, who later became interior minister, and Jorge Ramírez Marin, a former national security adviser.
The official said Mr. Wayne, the ambassador, had discussed Washington’s concerns about the general, emphasizing that the allegations had not been corroborated.
“The timing was important,” the Mexican official said, “because Mexican presidents almost never replace the person they appoint as defense minister, so whoever was chosen would be involved with setting the terms of cooperation for the next six years.”
In the end, General García Ochoa did not get the job. Instead, it went to Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who Mexican officials said had become close with Mr. Peña Nieto when he served as governor of the state of Mexico and General Cienfuegos commanded the area’s military base.
As for General García Ochoa, he was dispatched to a military base in the northern border state of Coahuila, a hotbed of cartel-related prison breaks, police corruption and political assassinations.
Whether Washington played a central role in how things turned out for the general remains unclear. Meanwhile, a column in the Mexican newspaper El Universal debated whether his dangerous new assignment was a demonstration of the government’s confidence in him, or a demotion aimed at forcing him to consider an early retirement.
Whichever the case, the general made a hasty departure from the military’s headquarters in Mexico City. One person who knows him said he had emptied his office with the help of a handful of aides and dispensed with the usual farewell festivities.
On a day in December when defense ministers from across the hemisphere gathered for a summit meeting in Mexico City, the general was seen wearing civilian clothes, climbing into his personal car and driving away.
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Mexico Security Memo: A New Conflict in Jalisco State
February 6, 2013 | 1100 GMT
Stratfor
In the newest battlefront in violent Jalisco state, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has begun fighting its former ally Los Coroneles, an ally of the Sinaloa Federation, along with Sinaloa's allies the Knights Templar and the Gulf cartel. The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has become one of the larger organized crime networks in Mexico, with its operations spreading into several Mexican states. During the latter half of 2011 and through 2012, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion dominated criminal enterprises in Jalisco, defending Sinaloa Federation interests against incursions by rivals. The split is a significant blow to the Sinaloa Federation.
Like Los Coroneles, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion emerged from a Sinaloa faction led by Ignacio "El Nacho" Coronel Villarreal. The conflict between the two successor organizations strongly suggests the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion is a fully independent criminal organization. The new fighting has affected multiple regions of Jalisco state, including the eastern portion around Lake Chapala, the western half including Guadalajara and along the state's border with -- and into -- Michoacan state. Further complicating Jalisco state's cartel landscape, Gulf cartel gunmen have become active there, probably upon request of their ally the Knights Templar. The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion also has been engaged in multiple turf wars with the Knights Templar since at least February 2012.
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Jalisco state, specifically the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, has long been a strategic base of operations for Mexican organized crime, serving as a transportation hub for drug traffickers. Mexican cartels also use the mountainous and rural areas of the state for the production of illegal drugs. Guadalajara remains critical to Sinaloa Federation operations, meaning Sinaloa's new conflict with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion will likely continue either directly or through Sinaloa proxies.
The new conflict between Los Coroneles and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion raises the question of what role Los Zetas -- who inevitably will be drawn in -- will play. Jalisco state began experiencing escalated levels of violence as early as 2011, when Los Zetas began making inroads at the expense of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion at the latter's inception. Activity attributed to Los Zetas in Jalisco has been limited during the first month of 2013. What strategy the organization will take in light of the influx of rivals thus remains unclear.
Los Zetas could align with Los Coroneles, the Knights Templar and the Gulf cartel, although so far Los Zetas have remained aligned to a lesser criminal organization known as La Resistencia, which derived from the former Milenio cartel. More beneficial for Los Zetas would be aligning with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in efforts to keep out the numerous other cartels seeking a foothold in Jalisco. An alignment with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in Jalisco state would be a substantial blow to the Sinaloa Federation, Gulf cartel and Knights Templar, the principal rivals to Los Zetas in their strongholds in northeastern Mexico. Nothing, however, suggests an alignment between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Los Zetas is imminent, though it is a possibility.
Whether Los Zetas continue to assault other criminal organizations in Jalisco state independently or whether they align with one of the other groups in the state, violence will likely continue in Jalisco and in neighboring Michoacan. Although an alignment would eliminate a separate conflict from the region, it would probably not reduce violence in Jalisco state since conflict between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar, Gulf cartel, Los Coroneles and Sinaloa Federation would likely replace it. Should Los Zetas remain separate and resume fighting in Jalisco, violence will likely escalate.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: A New Conflict in Jalisco State | Stratfor
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In Mexico, Rumors Surround the Pemex Explosion
February 3, 2013 | 1729 GMT
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Summary
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images
The Pemex building in Mexico City on Feb. 1
Rumors indicate that an explosive device may have triggered the Jan. 31 explosion in the basement of the headquarters of Petroleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex, in Mexico City. According to other unconfirmed reports, two other explosive devices were in the building that did not detonate. If these claims are true, they would finally offer clarity on the blast, which left at least 32 people dead and more than 100 injured. The official position of the Mexican government, as stated by Pemex Director General Emilio Lozoya, remains that the explosion appears to have been an accident but that the government is pursuing all lines of investigation.
Though the exact cause of the explosion is unknown at this point, the event could indicate a range of possible political challenges for the new administration, including criminal intimidation and political infighting. The reform of state-owned Pemex has formed the cornerstone of the administration of newly inaugurated President Enrique Pena Nieto. Mexico's declining oil production and exports have a direct impact on the national budget, which in any given year derives 30 to 40 percent of its revenue from Pemex. Reforms will aim to increase crude oil and natural gas production for both domestic consumption and export. As a result, for anyone looking to send a clear message to the new administration, Pemex is a natural target.
Analysis
Although Mexico's drug cartels are the most obviously powerful set of violent actors in Mexico, to date they have refrained from using terrorist-type tactics against the government. Their operations have remained largely within the bounds of criminal violence designed to facilitate the business of illicit drugs. Unlike the decision of Colombia's Medellin cartel to engage in politicized violence during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Mexican drug gangs have largely kept their operations from directly challenging Mexico City. Should the cartels escalate their actions to political violence, it could push the Mexican government to invite U.S. forces into the country to combat the threat, something these criminal organizations wish to avoid. It is possible that the Pena Nieto administration is engaging in back-channel negotiations with one or another of Mexico's criminal groups in an effort to stem the violence, an action that could shift the calculus of cartels. There is no evidence to suggest that such a change has occurred, but if further evidence comes to light suggesting the cartels were involved in the Jan. 31 explosion, it would indicate a significant change in Mexico's political and security situation.
If the explosion was indeed an attack, the more likely explanation may be political infighting. The changes that the Pena Nieto administration wishes to implement will make Pemex more transparent and efficient and will most likely undermine entrenched interests in the company. Notoriously corrupt, Pemex has long been accused of gross inefficiencies and its employees of pervasive graft. As a result, any efficiency reforms to Pemex will likely cause many to lose their privileged access to Pemex funds. This is not to say that the organization is unaware that changes must be made. In fact, the company has attempted in recent years to make a number of changes to increase output. But recent discussions that the new Pemex leadership, appointed by the Pena Nieto administration, will lay off thousands of employees have put new strain on the company and on the leading Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has a close relationship with Pemex union leaders.
Nevertheless, the explosion was very large for a political message stemming from an internal power struggle, and it is possible that it was a complete accident; a natural gas leak or a blown transformer could have caused an explosion of this size. Indeed, many media reports have pointed to Pemex's poor maintenance record as a possible explanation. If that is the case, then the incident may have no significant political implications. However, as the rumors suggest, an attack would indicate a significant setback in the first months of the Pena Nieto administration.
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Read more: In Mexico, Rumors Surround the Pemex Explosion | Stratfor
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Mexico Security Memo: Guatemalan Gunmen Join Mexican Turf War
February 13, 2013 | 1100 GMT
Stratfor
On Feb. 5, federal police detained at least five Guatemalans at a hotel in the Lomas del Lago neighborhood of Zacatecas, Zacatecas state. According to the Zacatecas state attorney general, the Guatemalans had recently arrived to the state in order to reinforce Los Zetas, one of the two principal cartels fighting for control over the state. Along with the arrests, authorities seized an unspecified number of assault rifles and grenades, indicating the Guatemalans intended to engage in violent acts on behalf of Los Zetas. On Feb. 4, authorities discovered the bodies of two Guatemalans accompanied by rifles in Monteczuma in neighboring San Luis Potosi state after responding to reports of a shootout. And on Jan. 20 in Valparaiso, Zacatecas state, authorities detained four Guatemalans and seized assault rifles after a confrontation between gunmen and federal police.
Mexican organized crime has long worked with Guatemalan organized crime, and Los Zetas have had links to Guatemala since operating as an enforcer arm for the Gulf cartel. These ties remained after Los Zetas separated from the Gulf cartel and pushed to expand operations further down the supply chain of illicit drugs.
Recent reporting suggests Los Zetas are partly relying on Guatemalans in their attempts to regain control over states where a Zetas faction led by Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero broke away to align with Los Zetas' principal rival in the region, the Gulf cartel. Velazquez's dissidence led to rising levels of violence in several Mexican states, most notably in San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas. Using Guatemalans to augment Los Zetas' forces is understandable since the organization suffered a substantial loss in operational capacity due to the breakaway faction.
As Los Zetas' need for gunmen increased, opportunities to recruit diminished because the organization likely had lost territory when Velazquez's faction splintered and probably did not trust the local population after such a betrayal. By recruiting Guatemalans, Los Zetas can bring in gunmen less likely to be compromised by rival cartels.
As long as Los Zetas retain operational ties in Guatemala, they will likely continue to use Guatemalans to make up for declining domestic recruitment. Guatemala has a large pool of unemployed military-age men to recruit from, and if Los Zetas face additional pressures, such as new incursions by rival cartels or another internal split, their recruitment of Guatemalans could increase. However, Guatemalans likely stand out from the local populations in which they operate in Mexico, which could lead to increased targeting by rival criminal groups and Mexican authorities.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/world/americas/border-security-hard-to-achieve-and-harder-to-measure.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=fb-nytimes
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Mexico Security Memo: Taxis Targeted in Cancun
March 20, 2013 | 1000 GMT
stratfor
Fight for the Taxi Industry in Cancun
A group of gunmen killed seven people and wounded five others in a bar in Cancun on the evening of March 14. The incident began when gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles arrived at La Sirenita bar, located on 20 de Noviembre Avenue in Region 233 in the northern half of the city, and opened fire on a group of patrons. Three of the dead were leaders in a Quintana Roo state taxi union. On March 16, authorities detained two suspects involved in the March 14 shooting from a nightclub in the hotel zone of Cancun. According to one of the detained men, Hector "El Diablo" Cacique Fernandez, the suspects belong to Los Zetas and are responsible for collecting extortion fees in the city's hotel zone. The attack demonstrates that Mexican cartels have been using the city's taxi industry as a revenue source. Moreover, the current turf wars involving rival Mexican organized crime groups in Cancun -- including Los Pelones, Los Zetas, the Gulf cartel and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion -- may lead to additional violence on taxi drivers as well as their union leaders.
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According to Mexican media reports citing unnamed police officials, Los Zetas in Cancun are internally divided, and some members of the group are now working for the Gulf cartel. These alleged desertions reportedly revolve around both factions' attempting to control revenue earned by extorting taxi drivers working in the tourist destination. One source reported that although the detained suspects confessed to working for a Los Zetas plaza boss, they were in fact among the Zetas who had begun working for the Gulf cartel. However, no desertion by Los Zetas members in Cancun has been confirmed.
It would make sense for violence between the rival criminal groups to focus on taxi operators in the city, since Cancun's value for Mexican cartels comes from the city's popularity as a tourist destination and the income cartels can make from the tourists. Taxi drivers in Cancun have fallen victim to organized crime on several occasions, such as April 13, 2012, when gunmen in two trucks opened fire on a taxi in the Region 92 area of Cancun, killing two people in the cab and injuring a third. Two of the individuals inside the taxi were later identified as Los Zetas members. The April 13 attacked marked the beginning of a Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion incursion into the city.
If some members of Los Zetas operating in Cancun have split from the organization, and particularly if they joined sides with one of Los Zetas' primary rivals in the area, more attacks targeting taxi drivers involved in organized crime or simply paying extortion fees could follow. Desertion by Los Zetas members would likely weaken the group's hold in Cancun. Still, even if Los Zetas are not fracturing, their rivals could still attempt to take control of Los Zetas' operations, which could lead to increased overall violence in Cancun.
Gulf Cartel Infighting Hurting Operations
Tamaulipas state authorities announced March 17 that three gunmen were killed in clashes between cartel elements and security forces -- one in the Jacinto Lopez neighborhood of Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, and two along the highway between Reynosa and San Fernando, Tamaulipas state. These events follow a series of cartel-related violent incidents in the Reynosa area over the past week.
Recent violence in Reynosa is likely the result of warring factions within the Gulf cartel. It is not clear if this weekend's events were the result of an offensive by the Mexican military to engage and counter elements of the Gulf cartel or if military patrols happened to come across the cartel gunmen who then engaged in a shootout. Regardless, infighting within the Gulf cartel has escalated and may be affecting the group's trafficking operations in the city, as evidenced by several substantial drug seizures that have coincided with the escalating conflict.
On March 15, federal police discovered two underground warehouses in Reynosa, collectively containing more than five tons of marijuana and 167 kilograms (368 pounds) of methamphetamines. This seizure followed the March 13 discovery of four tons of marijuana, also in a warehouse in Reynosa. While such seizures are not uncommon in northern Tamaulipas, the frequency is atypical. However, such frequent seizures could be expected in a city where traffickers who were at one point working within the same network are now rivals. A prolonged conflict between Gulf cartel leaders in Reynosa could lead to traffickers alerting authorities to their rivals' operations -- in addition to increasing military operations as violence rises.
Should cartel-related violence, particularly violence attributed to internal Gulf cartel disputes, continue at the current heightened levels, Gulf operations in Reynosa may be further hindered by both their rival Gulf cartel operators as well as the military.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region and designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Taxis Targeted in Cancun | Stratfor
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Summary
Demian CHAVEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Part of an aircraft assembled at the Bombardier plant in Queretaro, Mexico, in October 2010
Mexico's manufacturing sector has grown more sophisticated under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Manufacturers now produce higher value-added products, such as automotive, aeronautical and electronic products, and they are doing so in factories outside their traditional production region: the U.S.-Mexico border. As the country's economy has grown, a secondary manufacturing core has emerged in the central lowlands, also known as the Bajio. Located near the bulk of Mexico's educated workforce, the Bajio is safer than many border towns and is now connected more efficiently to suppliers in the United States and Asia and consumers in the United States and Canada. The manufacturing sector in this region will grow in importance in the years to come, though it will not replace the border region entirely.
Analysis
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mexico underwent a profound economic and political reorganization. The economy liberalized, culminating in NAFTA, and major state-owned companies privatized, transforming Mexico from a closed economic and political system into an export-oriented industrial economy.
As a result, trade increased between Mexico and the United States and a manufacturing belt sprung up at the countries' shared border. From 1990 to 2000, Mexican trade became even more closely tied to the United States. In 1990, the United States accounted for 69 percent of all Mexican trade; by 2000, it accounted for nearly 80 percent. Low-end factories, known as maquilas, sprang up in the border states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. These provided manufacturers with an abundant supply of low-wage labor, most of which came from elsewhere in Mexico.
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But at the turn of the century, China's special economic zones became cost-competitive alternatives to Mexican factories. Mexico responded by making more valuable products. So even though clothing exports dropped 43 percent (from $7.6 billion to $4.3 billion) between 2002 and 2012, automotive exports increased by 152 percent ($27.9 billion to $70.3 billion) and electronic exports increased by 73 percent ($43.3 billion to $74.9 billion) over the same period. Asian alternatives notwithstanding, these Mexican products remained cost-competitive because of NAFTA.
A Systemic Shift
Mexico's central lowlands, which include Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Queretaro and San Luis Potosi states, provide relative isolation from the endemic violence of the border, a large pool of qualified workers and incentives schemes to lure foreign direct investment.
To attract foreign investment, Bajio state governments in 2006 began building infrastructure and training facilities, selling real estate and providing a wide range of other benefits. Foreign multinational companies responded enthusiastically. Nissan has invested roughly $2 billion to build a new automotive plant in Aguascalientes state. Volkswagen, GM, Honda and Mazda have invested $550 million, $200 million, $800 million and $500 million, respectively, in their plants in Guanajuato state. Bombardier has invested $500 million and Eurocopter has pledged $550 million in operations in Queretaro state.
These numbers represent a systemic shift. In Baja California, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states, there were 4 percent fewer factories in 2011 than there were in 2007. Farther south, in Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi and Jalisco states, there were roughly 12 percent more factories.
Investment has followed a similar trend. Total foreign direct investment in the Bajio increased from $7.2 billion in 1993-2002 to $16.3 billion in 2003-2012. By comparison, foreign direct investment in the border states over the same period increased from $32.9 billion to $55.2 billion. That is not to say factories are relocating from the border to the Bajio -- it is not a zero-sum game. Rather, new firms looking to enter the North American market, especially European and Asian automakers, increasingly are setting up in the Bajio.
Notably, the overall amount of manufactured exports from the Bajio is far lower than that of the border. However, the number of manufacturing firms and the amount of foreign direct investment are increasing at a faster rate in the Bajio than in the border states.
Developing the Bajio
The Bajio only became attractive to manufacturers after Mexico overhauled its transportation infrastructure. More and more raw materials are coming from Asia, and the majority of automobile exports are moved by rail. Thus, Mexico had to expand its Pacific ports and connect them by rail to the industrial base and to consumer markets.
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The Pacific ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas are booming accordingly. Lazaro Cardenas, the only port in Mexico that can accommodate post-Panamax ships, is the fastest growing port in North America.
In addition, the railways connecting these ports to the United States have become much more efficient since being privatized in 1995. The entire length of the country's railway network has remained at approximately 26,700 kilometers (16,600 miles), but the amount of freight transported has doubled from 52.5 million tons to 108.8 million tons per year. Moreover, companies have moved more freight with far fewer employees.
Unlike the border states, the central lowland region is a part of Mexico's economic and political heartland. It hosts a large, educated population and its climate is the most temperate in the country. It is centrally located, with relatively easy access to ports on both coasts, the United States to the north and Mexico City in the south.
Geography has benefited the Bajio, as have improved transportation infrastructure, comparatively better security and efforts to attract investment. More manufacturing investment and output will bring Mexico's industrial core closer to Mexico City and populations in need of jobs. Bajio manufacturing will not replace manufacturing activity along the border, but it gives Mexico an opportunity to develop more evenly and sustainably.
Read more: In Mexico, a New Manufacturing Heartland? | Stratfor
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second post
Mexico: The 'New Narco-Reality' Is Already Here
March 27, 2013 | 1620 GMT
By Scott Stewart, Vice President of Analysis, and Tristan Reed
Last week we read an article discussing the idea that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was somehow going to be able to create a "new narco-reality" in Mexico. The article theorized that if the Mexican government were to soften its investigation of drug crimes, the administration could defuse the situation and thus violence would decrease. The author of the article is not alone in exploring this line of reasoning. In fact, the article expresses a theoretical shift in approach we have often heard while discussing the problem of violence in Mexico with both Mexicans and interested foreigners.
Unfortunately, reducing the levels of violence is not quite that simple. The nature and origins of violence in Mexico severely constrain the Mexican government. Because of these constraints, merely lessening the government's prosecution of drug crimes will have little impact on the level of violence. Therefore, the theoretical argument will remain just that.
Nature and History
When analyzing the violence in Mexico it is helpful to put the violent incidents into one of three distinct categories: incidents that result from government action against the criminals, incidents that result from one criminal group attacking another and incidents that are the result of criminals attacking innocent citizens.
By reducing the tempo at which it prosecutes the drug war, the Mexican government could influence the number of incidents in the first category -- government action against cartel figures. Clearly these incidents can and do provoke a considerable amount of violence.
Tristan recently visited the street corner in Matamoros where Antonio Cardenas Guillen, also known as "Tony Tormenta," was killed by government troops in November 2010. Even though the incident occurred more than two years ago, the neighborhood still shows significant damage from the ferocious firefight that erupted between the military and Cardenas Guillen's bodyguards. The scene was reminiscent of the damage Tristan saw while in Iraq and Afghanistan and not something normally associated with a law enforcement operation, especially one within small arms range of the United States (the firefight forced an evacuation of the University of Texas at Brownsville campus).
But, while quite dramatic, such operations are relatively rare. The government simply does not initiate the majority of violent incidents in Mexico and is not even involved in most of the violence. Many of the deadliest incidents in Mexico have no government involvement at all, such as the May 2011 ambush in Nayarit state in which 29 cartel gunmen were killed; the July 2010 ambush in Saric, Sonora, in which more than 20 cartel gunmen were killed; the August 2011 casino arson in Monterrey in which 52 people were killed; the killing of 72 migrants on a bus in Tamaulipas state in August 2010; and the hundreds of victims displayed in the dueling body dumps by Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel in each other's territory in 2011 and 2012. Even in the prolonged firefights in Reynosa in March 2013, there are reports that the government allowed the two warring criminal groups to fight for hours before getting involved in the fray.
Indeed, while the popular narrative is to ascribe the beginning of Mexico's cartel war to a campaign launched by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, this is simply not the case. The escalation began well before Calderon was elected, and it was not government actions but a change in narcotics smuggling routes to the United States and competition over those routes between Mexican criminal groups that really sparked the escalation of violence.
This dynamic first became visible in the early 1990s when Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera and his Sinaloa Federation partners sent forces from Sinaloa state into Tijuana, Baja California state -- controlled at the time by the Arellano Felix brothers -- to buy stash houses and construct tunnels for moving drugs across the border. In response, the brothers tortured and killed Sinaloa operatives in Tijuana and even tried to assassinate El Chapo. The war between Sinaloa and the Arellano Felix brothers sparked a prolonged season of violence in Tijuana that eventually led Mexico's president at the time, Ernesto Zedillo, to dispatch Mexican soldiers to the city in 2000 in an attempt to quell the violence.
A similar escalation occurred in Tamaulipas state in 2003, following the arrest of Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen, when El Chapo and Sinaloa made an attempt to seize control of the lucrative Nuevo Laredo plaza. This incursion caused a powerful counterattack by Los Zetas, and a bloody, protracted struggle erupted in the city. By mid-2005 law and order had completely broken down in Nuevo Laredo, and then-President Vicente Fox deployed the army to the city to reassert government control.
Currently in Tamaulipas, the federal police and the military control security, and the local police have been disarmed in some cities, such as Reynosa. In such an environment it will be impossible for the federal government to disengage without first rebuilding local and state police forces to provide security.
The bottom line is that since the federal government has not initiated most of the violence in Mexico, a decision by the government not to pursue drug investigations would do little to quell the violence.
Fracturing
Beyond this general history of cartel-initiated and cartel-driven violence, there is the changing nature of the Mexican cartels themselves. Perhaps the most significant of these changes has been the fragmentation that has occurred among the cartels. After many years of relative stasis, where there were a handful of large cartel organizations that controlled relatively large areas, the cartel groups and the territory they control have entered a dynamic period. In 2006 and 2007 it was possible for us to do an annual report that explained the main dynamics of the Mexican cartels, but due to the rapid changes in 2010 we felt compelled to do a mid-year update in May. By 2011, the quickly changing cartel landscape demanded that we provide quarterly updates as older organizations splintered and newer organizations rose from them. This process has shown no sign of stopping.
The trend toward fragmentation is partly a result of the Mexican and U.S. governments' policy of seeking to decapitate the cartel groups, but it is too simplistic to suggest that Mexican policy is the sole cause of this fragmentation. In many cases, the reasons are much more complicated. For example, the largest of these new fragment groups, Los Zetas, split from the Gulf cartel nearly seven years after the capture of Gulf cartel leader Cardenas and almost a year before the death of his replacement -- and brother -- Antonio Cardenas Guillen.
Los Zetas split from the Gulf cartel after they staged what was essentially a failed hostile takeover of the organization and the other leaders resisted their attempt -- and resented their greed and arrogance. This resulted in friction between the traditional leadership of the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas that then led to all-out war between the two organizations when a Gulf cartel gunmen killed a Zetas member.
It is true that the killing of Antonio Cardenas Guillen led to additional splintering of the Gulf cartel and to a bitter struggle for control of the organization in 2011 and 2012, but the organization was arguably weakened far more by Los Zetas' insurrection than it was by his death. Currently, the Gulf cartel is very weak and appears to be not a unified organization but a scattered collection of smaller groups fighting to retain control of Matamoros and Reynosa.
The proliferation of these smaller organized crime groups has also resulted in increased friction, and the increase in violence we have seen in places like Acapulco and Guadalajara in recent years is a direct consequence of this. The violence is not just occurring in one or two border towns; it is stretching over a large portion of the country and encompasses several states.
There are also some who cling to the idea that Pena Nieto can forge some sort of agreement with the cartels and return to the way that his predecessors in the Institutional Revolutionary Party used to deal with and accommodate the cartels in the past. However, given the current cartel dynamics, the situation in Mexico is very different than it was under former presidents, such as Zedillo and Carlos Salinas de Gortari. There simply are too many moving parts and too many cartel groups with which to deal.
Beyond Trafficking
Another constraint that prevents the Mexican government from taking a hands-off approach to the criminal cartels is that they are no longer simply drug trafficking organizations. They have evolved into something else.
In the 1990s the cartels were mostly focused on trafficking Colombian cocaine to the United States and producing their own marijuana, black tar heroin and synthetic drugs that they then transported to the United States. However, over the past decade the costs of the protracted wars among the cartels and the impact that these wars have had on some groups' ability to produce or traffic drugs have led many groups to branch out into other crimes.
These other criminal endeavors include kidnapping, extortion, human smuggling and cargo theft. Los Zetas also make a considerable amount of money stealing oil from Mexico's state-run oil company and pirating CDs and DVDs. This other criminal behavior is what sparks many territorial fights in areas that are outside the traditional drug production areas and border crossings.
It is not necessary to entirely control a highway or transportation hub to push drugs through -- both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement struggle to even slightly interdict the overall drug flow, and a Mexican gang will not be any more successful. But when two opposing groups are using the same turf, and are selling drugs on the streets, extorting businesses or running kidnapping rings, then it's crucial that they keep competitors away so they do not harm profits. This increasing focus on local drug sales also means that drugs are becoming more of an acute Mexican problem rather than just a problem for the Americans.
This drift toward localized crime and drug distribution is one of the major causes of the current violence in states such as Morelos, Mexico, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Quintana Roo. This change has been reflected in law enforcement acronyms. The Mexican cartels are no longer referred to as DTOs, or drug trafficking organizations, but rather TCOs, or transnational criminal organizations, in recognition of the other crimes they are involved in.
A "new narco-reality" has already dawned in Mexico. The environment is vastly different from what it was in the 1990s, and there is no going back. The changes that have occurred to and among the Mexican cartels, and the amount of violence the organizations precipitate without government involvement, mean that it will be extremely difficult for the Pena Nieto administration to ignore the cartels' activities and adopt this theoretical hands-off approach.
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Read more: Mexico: The 'New Narco-Reality' Is Already Here | Stratfor
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Yes, but now they've been handed a gift on a silver platter. Colorado law enforcement will learn what "Plata o plomo" means.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/04/01/mexican-cartels-getting-strong-foothold-in-the-united-states-n1554480
Assassinating Public Officials: Mexican Cartels Getting Strong and Violent Foothold in the United States
Katie Pavlich
News Editor, Townhall
Apr 01, 2013 10:26 AM EST
The Associated Press is out with an extensive piece today showing just how far Mexican drug cartels have infiltrated American society. The cartel problem is no longer a border problem, it's a problem for the entire country. Violent cartel members are carrying out crimes in our backyards with the potential to develop into something much worse.
Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world's most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.
If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels' move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.
But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.
"It's probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime," said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office.
The fact is, Phoenix is now the number two city in the world behind Mexico City for kidnapping and sex trafficking from Mexico is already a common occurance.
An aspect of the cartel business that is often overlooked is sexual exploitation. Sexual exploitation of both women and children is occurring at an alarming level.
Thomas said sexual predators in the U.S. will order children from Mexico through cartels; cartels then send those children along with a drug run through the desert after payment and deliver that child to their new owner for sexual use.
In addition, Breitbart News is reporting a possible connection between the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Cartels working together to kill public officials in the United States. They report on the link between Mexican cartels and the murders of Texas Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia over the weekend. McLelland's murder came after the targeting killing of two other prosecutors in Texas and Colorado.
A national security expert who has spent several years in intelligence gathering operations around the Mexican drug cartels' criminal insurgency into the continental United States told Breitbart News, "This assassination of DA McClellend and his wife is meant to send a message: no one is safe, no one is beyond our reach. We will kill you and your loved ones. We are in control here."
"This is a significant point of escalation in the crisis," he continued. "This type of high-profile targeting of public officials is a classic insurgent tactic. Its escalating use inside the US shows a complete lack of fear of consequences and demonstrates the fundamental shift in the strategic landscape that has already occurred.
"The criminal insurgencies and their gang foot soldiers have exported the type of warfare that brought Mexico to its knees deep into our sovereign territory. They are waging a war: targeting, assassinating, using terror tactics—and our law enforcement is outgunned and overwhelmed.”
Breitbart News interviewed McLelland several weeks ago as part of an investigation into Mexican drug cartel criminal insurgency operations in the United States, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and the city of Chicago. Breitbart News's Brandon Darby conducted the interview with D.A. McLelland in his office in Kaufman, TX.
McLelland spoke about the recent assassination of his Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, who was himself gunned down in broad daylight on the Kaufman County Courthouse steps by a masked gunman who has yet to be apprehended.
Also, on March 19, Colorado’s prisons director, Tom Clements, was shot and killed while answering his front doorbell at his home outside Colorado Springs. The suspect in that case was Evan Spencer Ebel, a member of a white supremacist prison gang, later shot while trying to escape authorities on March 21st.
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Mexico Security Memo: Implications of a Gulf Cartel Consolidation
April 3, 2013 | 1030 GMT
Stratfor
The Ramirez Trevino Faction's Reputed Reynosa Victory
Protracted fighting among Gulf cartel factions for control of Reynosa may finally have concluded in a victory for faction leader Mario "El Pelon" Ramirez Trevino. Social media outlets corroborated by a Stratfor source maintain that Ramirez Trevino's faction has killed its principal rivals in Reynosa, Miguel "El Gringo" Villarreal and his associates.
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According to Mexican media reports at the end of March, gunmen belonging to Ramirez Trevino's faction executed up to 60 of Villarreal's and his allies' relatives in the Tamaulipas cities of Miguel Aleman and Camargo. While we cannot verify these reports, such actions would be unsurprising given the intensity of fighting between Gulf cartel factions over the last month.
Rival Gulf leaders have fought for control of the overall group's lucrative criminal enterprises -- not surprisingly, to the detriment of its operations -- since at least 2010. A decisive victory by Ramirez Trevino in Reynosa would consolidate his control over Villarreal's former turf, allow him to remove any potential rivals within Villarreal's network and expand his overall control of Gulf cartel operations in northeastern Tamaulipas state -- possibly even reunifying the Gulf cartel under a single uncontested leader.
What sparked the escalated fighting in March remains unclear. Some accounts say that Villarreal was perceived as betraying other Gulf cartel leaders by maintaining a relationship with the now-deceased top leader of Los Zetas, Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano. Other accounts, such as an anonymous message circulating on social media outlets at the end of March, maintain Villarreal and his associates were working closely with the Sinaloa Federation -- prompting the Sinaloa Federation to sever ties with the Gulf cartel now that Ramirez Trevino has won out. Such rumors frequently are encountered when following Mexican organized crime, and the validity and the source of the information are rarely established. Nevertheless, the reports pinpoint a critical element in the future security climate of Tamaulipas state -- namely, the responding actions of cartels that have frequently interacted with Gulf cartel factions (whether as rivals or allies) in the wake of Ramirez Trevino's victory. Such groups could seek to subvert the newly formulated Gulf cartel, renew attacks in light of a further weakened state (from continued infighting) or even collaborate with any potential new factions within the Gulf cartel.
The Gulf cartel factions have become increasingly reliant on support in defending their territories in Tamaulipas -- to include Matamoros and Reynosa -- from Los Zetas incursions. Thus far, this support primarily has come from the Sinaloa Federation and the Knights Templar. Given the rifts within the Gulf cartel, such alliances might have been with specific Gulf factions.
Although Ramirez Trevino apparently has secured control over Reynosa, this is likely to be temporary. Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Federation and the Knights Templar all have an interest in trafficking drugs into the United States through the Gulf-controlled cities of Reynosa and Matamoros. And any of these organizations could challenge the Gulf cartel for control. Moreover, it is unclear whether Ramirez Trevino's faction is able to smuggle significant quantities of illegal drugs independent of a larger Mexican criminal organization such as the Sinaloa Federation or Knights Templar.
Should Ramirez Trevino indeed have expelled his rivals from Reynosa, violence will likely decrease from the heightened level seen in March. However, isolated individuals loyal to the defeated faction could remain, given the defeated faction's deep cultural and familial ties in Reynosa. Such a reduction in violence would probably be temporary, because Los Zetas will continue to vie for control of the city. Likewise, should Ramirez Trevino's recent actions in Reynosa anger the Sinaloa Federation or Knights Templar, either cartel might seek to oust him by sending its own forces or supporting a rival Gulf cartel faction. While Ramirez Trevino may have made progress in becoming overall Gulf cartel leader, perhaps even eliminating the infighting, the Gulf cartel is far weaker than before. As such, it will continue to be influenced by other Mexican cartels as they struggle for control of the lucrative plazas in northern Tamaulipas state.
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Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Implications of a Gulf Cartel Consolidation | Stratfor
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El Chapo's Name in Nuevo Laredo Again
Authorities discovered two narcomantas hanging from a pedestrian bridge early April 4 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, ostensibly signed by Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, Los Zetas' principal rival. The message threatened Los Zetas leader Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales and promised to expel Los Zetas from Nuevo Laredo, the latter's most significant stronghold. The message also said "El H" supports Trevino, likely in reference to Hector "El H" Beltran Leyva. He leads a nationwide criminal network that splintered from the old Beltran Leyva Organization after the death of Arturo Beltran Leyva in December 2009.
Placing such threatening narcomantas in Los Zetas' stronghold may signal increased violence ahead in Nuevo Laredo and other cities in Tamaulipas state. More significant, the message probably reflects shifts in the state's criminal landscape following the end of Gulf cartel infighting. This shift is affecting other criminal groups vying for control of Gulf cartel territories, including Reynosa, Tamaulipas state.
Competition over the Reynosa plaza among Gulf cartel factions in March culminated in a victory for the faction led by Mario "El Pelon" Ramirez Trevino, which has consolidated control over the city. Unidentified Gulf factions are reportedly aligned with the Sinaloa Federation and its ally the Knights Templar. Due to this alignment, the two larger cartels will likely adjust their strategy in fighting Los Zetas depending on whether Ramirez Trevino's faction allied with the Sinaloa Federation and the extent to which his faction is able to fight Los Zetas. The April 4 narcomantas said Guzman offers his full support for the Gulf cartel. If the message is authenticated, it implies the Sinaloa Federation did in fact align with Ramirez Trevino.
If Ramirez Trevino has lost some capabilities by fighting Los Zetas in Tamaulipas state or if he has challenged a faction loyal to either the Sinaloa Federation or the Knights Templar, the Sinaloa Federation would likely have to use its own gunmen for incursions into Nuevo Laredo. The April 4 messages could reflect the Sinaloa efforts to take control of Nuevo Laredo using its own resources rather than those of the Gulf cartel.
Previous narcomantas in Nuevo Laredo signed "El Chapo" appeared March 26, 2012. At least seven dismembered bodies accompanied three narcomantas claiming the Nuevo Laredo plaza. Since Mexican cartels frequently use narcomantas to spread disinformation as part of information operations campaigns, a Los Zetas rival other than the Sinaloa Federation might have actually been behind those three narcomantas.
Regardless of who authored the April 4 narcomantas or whether the content was authentic, a response from Los Zetas -- including bodies accompanying narcomantas -- is likely. This could mean high causalities in Nuevo Laredo or any area where the Sinaloa Federation or the Gulf cartel operates, including Sinaloa state and the Gulf-controlled cities of Reynosa and Matamoros. Should the April 4 messages indeed mark a new Sinaloa campaign to take control of Nuevo Laredo, violence will likely escalate substantially as Los Zetas use all available resources to defend their stronghold.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region, designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: More Signs of the Sinaloa Federation in Tamaulipas | Stratfor
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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Worry grows over Mexico vigilante movement
Armed citizen patrols fighting drug cartel violence join forces with a radical teachers union in Guerrero state opposed to an education reform law.
Citizen vigilantes stand at the entrance to Tierra Colorada, in Guerrero state on Mexico's Pacific Coast. A federal official called the decision by the anti-drug-cartel vigilantes to join in political protests a “Molotov cocktail.” (Bernardino Hernandez / Associated Press / March 27, 2013)
By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez, Los Angeles Times
April 11, 2013, 4:08 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — Debate is intensifying over armed vigilante patrols that have sprung up in crime-plagued sections of rural Mexico, particularly in the state of Guerrero, where some patrols joined forces this week with a radical teachers union that has been wreaking havoc with massive protests, vandalism and violent confrontations with police.
The two groups, on the surface, would appear to have little in common. The vigilante patrols, typically made up of masked campesinos, are among dozens that have emerged in the countryside in recent months, purporting to protect their communities from the depredations of the drug cartels. The state-level teachers union, meanwhile, has taken to the streets to protest a sweeping education reform law backed by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Their alliance was announced in a joint meeting Sunday. A leader of the vigilantes said they were joining with the teachers because it was the vigilantes' "watchword to fight against injustice."
The groups took part in their first joint demonstration this week in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state, which is home to the well-known resort city of Acapulco. The vigilantes apparently chose to march unarmed, and there were no reports of serious trouble.
But there is concern that an already-volatile series of political protests may take on a violent edge.
Before the alliance was announced, stick- and pipe-wielding members of the union, known as the State Coordinating Committee of Guerrero Education Workers, three times had blocked the key freeway connecting Mexico City and Acapulco, disrupting commerce during Acapulco's crucial spring break season.
Last week, some of the union protesters attacked federal police with homemade weapons as officers removed them from the road, according to police reports carried by Notimex, the state news agency. According to police, 15 officers were injured.
The vigilantes' decision to participate in political protests is an "unpleasant Molotov cocktail," Francisco Arroyo, president of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, told reporters Tuesday. "A state that permits its citizens to arm themselves in order to achieve justice by their own hand is a failed state."
In general, the idea of aggrieved campesinos taking up arms and demanding justice resonates deeply in the national mythos, and the vigilantes have been embraced in some quarters. In January, Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre proposed giving salaries and uniforms to a group that patrols the city of Ayutla.
There have been problems, however. In February, a group in the Guerrero community of Las Mesas shot and injured two tourists headed to the beach who failed to stop at a vigilante roadblock. In March, federal authorities announced the arrest of 34 members of a self-defense group in the neighboring state of Michoacan, alleging they were connected to the drug cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
The newspaper Reforma counted vigilante groups in 27 of Guerrero's 81 municipalities. The Peña Nieto government, which took power in December, has downplayed their presence as the administration tries to move the focus in Mexico away from the country's persistent violence and toward a package of reforms — including the controversial education reform law — that it hopes will spur a golden age of economic growth.
Peña Nieto was visiting Japan this week, hoping to drum up investment. At a news conference Tuesday, he was asked about the developments in Guerrero. He said the vigilantes' effort to take justice into their own hands was "beyond legality" and one "that my government will have to fight."
On Wednesday, protest leaders said their new group, which includes students and union members, would be called the Guerreran Popular Movement. On Thursday, hundreds of protesters again blocked the freeway to Acapulco.
Aguirre, the governor, told a reporter that he refused to be intimidated.
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Sanchez is a news assistant in The Times' Mexico City bureau.
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MEXICO - Violence recedes under Peña Nieto administration
On 10 April 2013, Governance Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong presented the results of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s first security evaluation, confirming a reduction in violence. According to Osorio Chong, between the periods of August to November 2012 and December 2012 to March 2013, homicides decreased 17 percent and kidnapping dropped by 25 percent.
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The Gulf Cartel Enters a Tourist Hub
A series of drug-related killings in Cancun over the past week is the latest sign of an escalating turf war as the Gulf cartel tries to expand its presence in the popular tourist destination. Authorities on April 14 discovered the bodies of seven people, all apparently strangled, in the backyard of a residence in the 102 region of the city. The residence was reportedly used for retail drug sales. The high number of victims, once atypical for Cancun, comes a month after a March 14 attack on a bar in Cancun where seven people were killed.
While there are no indications that the current turf war in Cancun will directly affect bystanders or tourists not participating in criminal activities, the killings will likely place additional pressure on security forces in Cancun, possibly distracting law enforcement from preventing the kind of petty crimes more likely to affect tourists.
One possible explanation for the uptick in Gulf cartel activity is that a faction of Los Zetas in Cancun recently broke away from the parent organization and declared itself to be part of the Gulf cartel. Because the Gulf cartel is a far less cohesive and hierarchical organization than other cartels such as the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf cartel operating in Cancun may or may not be coordinating with the factions in northeastern Mexico.
Regardless of how the Gulf cartel's presence grew to the point of driving the inter-cartel conflict in Cancun, any resulting violence will force municipal, state and federal authorities to redirect their focus. As part of the effort to reinforce security in Cancun, the Quintana Roo state government announced April 15 the deployment of 150 additional state police officers. Still, should violence continue to rise and put additional pressure on security forces, petty crimes more likely to affect bystanders or visitors such as theft or extortion may increase, which in turn could damage Cancun's main industry if enough tourists are deterred.
Threats Against Foreign Companies in Michoacan
On April 15, unidentified individuals distributed pamphlets, ostensibly signed "Knights Templar," in various areas of Apatzingan, Michoacan state. The message on the pamphlets warned commercial vendors as well as specific companies to stop delivering goods to Buenavista Tomatlan and Tepalcatepec, two municipalities west of Apatzingan near the Jalisco state border. Among the companies mentioned is PepsiCo subsidiary Sabritas, which was the target of coordinated attacks by the Knights Templar in May 2012.
The next day, narcomantas appeared in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state, as well as Apatzingan warning that the community police operating in Michoacan -- particularly Buenavista Tomatlan -- belong to the Knights Templar's principal rival in the region, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
It is still not clear whether the Knights Templar are the actual authors of the April 15 and April 16 messages, but, as noted above, the criminal organization has targeted companies such as Sabritas in the past. In addition to questions about the authorship of the narcomantas, it is unclear whether the message they contained about Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion infiltrating the community police in Buenavista Tomatlan is true. Even if those rumors are unfounded, the Knights Templar may believe them to be true, which could lead to continued attacks against individuals residing in the stated municipalities as well as businesses operating in the region. Therefore, the threats against vendors and multinational corporations such as Sabritas likely signal an intent to target businesses in the area and should not be disregarded.
Editor's Note: We now offer the daily Mexico Security Monitor, an additional custom intelligence service geared toward organizations with operations or interests in the region and designed to provide more detailed and in-depth coverage of the situation. To learn more about this new fee-based custom service, visit www.stratfor.com/msm.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Rising Violence in Cancun | Stratfor
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Second post of the morning
Mexico's Drug War: Balkanization Leads to Regional Challenges
April 18, 2013 | 0911 GMT
Stratfor
Editor's Note: This Security Weekly assesses the most significant cartel-related developments of the first quarter of 2013 and provides updated profiles of Mexico's powerful criminal cartels, as well as a forecast for the rest of this year. It's the executive summary of a more detailed report available to clients of our Mexico Security Monitor service.
Balkanization of Cartels
Since the late 1980s demise of the Guadalajara cartel, which controlled drug trade routes into the United States through most of Mexico, Mexican cartels have followed a trend of fracturing into more geographically compact, regional crime networks. This trend, which we are referring to as "Balkanization," has continued for more than two decades and has impacted all of the major cartel groups in Mexico. Indeed the Sinaloa Federation lost significant assets when the organizations run by Beltran Leyva and Ignacio Coronel split away from it. Los Zetas, currently the other most powerful cartel in Mexico, was formed when it split off from the Gulf cartel in 2010. Still these two organizations have fought hard to resist the trend of fracturing and have been able to grow despite being affected by it. This led to the polarized dynamic observed in 2011 when these two dominant Mexican cartels effectively split Mexican organized crime in two, with one group composed of Los Zetas and its allies and the other composed of the Sinaloa Federation and its allies.
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This trend toward polarization has since been reversed, however, as Balkanization has led to rising regional challenges to both organizations since 2012. Most notable among these is the split between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa Federation. The Sinaloa Federation continues to struggle with regional crime groups for control in western Chihuahua state, northern Sinaloa state, Jalisco state and northern Sonora state. Similarly, Los Zetas saw several regional challengers in 2012. Two regional groups saw sharp increases in their operational capabilities during 2012 and through the first quarter of 2013. These were the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar.
The Beltran Leyva Organization provides another example of the regionalization of Mexican organized crime. It has become an umbrella of autonomous, and in some cases conflicting, groups. Many of the groups that emerged from it control specific geographic areas and fight among each other largely in isolation from the conflict between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation. Many of these successor crime groups, such as the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos are currently fighting for their own geographic niches. As its name implies, the Independent Cartel of Acapulco mostly acts in Acapulco, while Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos mostly act in Morelos state.
The ongoing fragmentation of Mexican cartels is not likely to reverse, at least not in the next few years. Despite this, while Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation continue to face new rivals and suffer from internal splintering, their resources are not necessarily declining. Neither criminal organization faces implosion or a substantial decline as a transnational criminal organization as a result of rising regional challengers. Both Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation continue to extend their drug trafficking operations on a transnational level, increasing both their influence and profits. Still, they will continue to face the new reality, in which they are forced to work with -- or fight -- regional groups.
Los Zetas
In Hidalgo state, a former Zetas stronghold, the Knights Templar have made significant inroads, although violence has not risen to the level of that in the previously mentioned states. Also, the turf war within Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas that began when Los Zetas split from the Gulf cartel in 2010 continues.
In light of Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero's dissent from Los Zetas and the death of former leader Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano, Zetas leader Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales could face organizational integrity issues during 2013. Signs of such issues appeared in Cancun during the first quarter when some members of Los Zetas reportedly broke from the group and adopted the Gulf cartel name. Besides possible minor dissent, a seemingly new rival has emerged in Tabasco state to counter Los Zetas. A group called Pueblo Unido Contra la Delincuencia, Spanish for "People United Against Crime," carried out a series of executions in Tabasco state throughout the first quarter, but the group's origins and significance remain unclear. No indicators of substantial splintering among Los Zetas have emerged since the Velazquez split.
Sinaloa Federation
Regional organizations continued to challenge the Sinaloa Federation on its turf in western Chihuahua state, northern Sinaloa state and Jalisco state through the first quarter. Intercartel violence in mountainous western Chihuahua continues as the Sinaloa Federation fights La Linea for control of the region's smuggling routes and drug cultivation areas. Los Mazatlecos so far has maintained its control over northern Sinaloa cities, such as Los Mochis and Guasave. It also has continued violent incursions into southern areas of Sinaloa state, such as Mazatlan, Concordia and El Rosario with its ally Los Zetas.
Gulf Cartel
At the beginning of 2012, Gulf cartel territory appeared likely to be absorbed by larger cartels -- essentially signaling the end of the Gulf cartel. Support from the Sinaloa Federation and the Knights Templar combined with fractures within Los Zetas allowed a Gulf cartel resurgence, leading to a renewed Gulf assault on Los Zetas in the northeastern states of Mexico. The resurgence ended with a series of notable arrests during the last quarter of 2012, such as that of former top leader Jorge Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez. The arrests triggered additional Gulf cartel infighting, which peaked in March 2013.
The escalated infighting in the Gulf cartel, particularly in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, highlighted the new state of the Gulf cartel: Instead of operating as a cohesive criminal network, the Gulf cartel now consists of factions linked by history and the Gulf label. The infighting began in 2010 after the death of former top Gulf cartel leader Antonio Ezequiel "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen. The death of Cardenas Guillen split the Gulf cartel into two main factions, Los Rojos and Los Metros. By the first quarter of 2013, infighting had broken out between Los Metros leaders, such as Mario "Pelon" Ramirez Trevino, David "Metro 4" Salgado and Miguel "El Gringo" Villarreal. This suggests the Gulf cartel is further fractured and no longer consists of just two opposing sides. The Gulf cartel may begin acting as a cohesive network during the second quarter after the escalated infighting in March, though this cannot be definitely predicted.
From March 10 to March 19, Reynosa became the focal point for Gulf cartel infighting as Ramirez Trevino escalated his conflict against Villarreal. Ramirez Trevino reportedly expelled Villarreal's faction and its allies from the Reynosa plaza and killed Salgado. This could mean Ramirez Trevino has consolidated control over other Gulf cartel factions. If true, this would represent a substantial shift in organized criminal operations in northeastern Tamaulipas state, where the Sinaloa Federation and the Knights Templar smuggle drugs, people and other illicit commodities through the border towns of Reynosa and Matamoros while Los Zetas maintain a constant interest in fighting for control of the stated cities.
As mentioned during the last annual update, Gulf cartel factions are increasingly reliant on Sinaloa Federation and Knights Templar support to defend the remaining Gulf cartel territory in Tamaulipas state from Los Zetas. This certainly remains true after the first quarter, although the recent shift from Gulf cartel infighting may signal a shift in intercartel dynamics. Since the Gulf cartel in reality consists of separate factions, there is likely a separate relationship between each Gulf cartel faction and the larger criminal organizations reportedly in alignment with them. With Ramirez Trevino now in charge of Reynosa, a city valued by both the Sinaloa Federation and the Knights Templar, his existing relationship with the two organizations will likely influence their strategies for maintaining their interests in Gulf cartel-controlled areas. Additionally, it is not yet clear whether Ramirez Trevino suffered any substantial losses during the March fighting in Reynosa. If he did lose some capabilities fighting Los Zetas in Tamaulipas state, or if he has challenged a faction loyal to either the Sinaloa Federation or the Knights Templar, either organization would likely have to use its own gunmen for defending Gulf cartel-controlled areas or mounting their own incursions into Zetas territory, particularly Nuevo Laredo.
Intercartel violence in the Gulf cartel-controlled city of Reynosa will likely diminish compared to the first quarter of 2013 if Ramirez Trevino has indeed won. This reduction in violence will continue only as long as Ramirez Trevino is able to hold his control over Reynosa. Influence from external organizations, such as Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Federation and the Knights Templar, could once again spark violence if Ramirez Trevino's efforts have harmed their trafficking operations through Reynosa or presented a new opportunity to seize control. What, if any, Gulf cartel infighting is ongoing is difficult to gauge.
Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion
The severing of the relationship between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa Federation came to the forefront of conflicts in the Pacific states of Michoacan and Jalisco during the first quarter of 2013. The Sinaloa Federation relied on its alliance with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in defending the critical location of Guadalajara from Los Zetas and used the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion as an assault force into Los Zetas strongholds, such as Veracruz state.
Although evidence of the rift between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa Federation began to appear in open-source reporting during the last half of 2012, the conflict between the two organizations only became clear when the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion went on the offensive in Jalisco state by attacking Sinaloa Federation allies Los Coroneles, the Knights Templar and the Gulf cartel.
With a now-fully independent Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the polarization of warring cartels in Mexico has effectively ended. In addition to the existing conflicts between the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Federation must now focus on reclaiming an operational hold over Jalisco state from the now-rival Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. The second quarter will continue to see a conflict between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Sinaloa Federation-aligned groups in Jalisco state as well as neighboring states like Michoacan.
Knights Templar
The Knights Templar experienced intensified conflict during the first quarter from their principal rival, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. In an effort to combat the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the Knights Templar have allied with other Sinaloa Federation-aligned groups, the Gulf cartel and Los Coroneles, referring to themselves as "Los Aliados" to fight the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion within Jalisco. Violence as a result of this alliance against the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has been most notable in the Guadalajara metropolitan area as well as towns lying on highways 15 and 90, which connect to Guadalajara.
In addition to the Knights Templar offensive into Jalisco state, the group is currently defending its stronghold of Michoacan state. The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion also has conducted violent assaults against the Knights Templar in Michoacan, particularly on routes leading from Jalisco state toward Apatzingan, Michoacan state. This assault has increased intercartel violence along the border of the two states as part of a tit-for-tat dynamic.
Citizens of Buenavista Tomatlan, Michoacan state, a municipality lying amid territory contested by the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar, have recently set up a community police force to counter Knights Templar operations in the municipality. As in some other areas of Mexico, this community police force is a volunteer force that assumed law enforcement responsibilities independent of the Mexican government. The community police, while established to thwart the Knights Templar, have created tension between the communities of Buenavista Tomatlan and the government. On March 8, the Mexican military detained approximately 34 members of the community police force that had been created in February in Buenavista Tomatlan.
The Buenavista Tomatlan arrests occurred after the community police took over the municipal police station March 4 and detained the municipal police chief, who the Mexican military later freed. Notably, the Mexican government claimed at least 30 of the detained community police belonged to the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. If true, this suggests it has made territorial gains to the point of infiltrating the community police. However, there has been no confirmation on whether the accusations are true. Regardless, the community police force of Buenavista Tomatlan has placed its focus on stopping Knights Templar operations in the area, a focus that could only benefit the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion's war with its rivals.
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Read more: Mexico's Drug War: Balkanization Leads to Regional Challenges | Stratfor
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Arrest of a Torreon Criminal Leader
Federal police have detained Daniel "El Danny" Garcia Avila, leader of the criminal organization Los Dannys, also known as Cartel del Poniente, in Zacatecas state, Mexican officials announced April 19. Los Dannys are a regional crime group operating in the Comarca Lagunera metropolitan area, which encompasses the cities of Torreon, Coahuila state; Gomez Palacio, Durango state; Lerdo, Durango state; and Matamoros, Coahuila state. While Garcia Avila's arrest could hurt Los Dannys, violence in the area is unlikely to abate.
Though much of the violence in Coahuila is related to a turf war between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation, increasing regional challenges from independent criminal groups like Los Dannys have made a substantial contribution. This regionalization of organized crime has increased the number of actors capable of contesting areas such as Torreon.
According to local authorities, Los Dannys have been responsible for a series of attacks against law enforcement officials in the area, in addition to other high-profile attacks. Whether the arrest of Daniel Garcia Avila will see Los Dannys' ability to operate diminish or whether another capable leader will step in remains unclear. Violence is likely to continue either way, since both Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation remain locked in combat for control of the region.
Violence in Tijuana
Authorities discovered the body of Edwin Jael Valencia Godinez, a leader within a Tijuana-based organized crime group under Jose Luis "El Guero Chompas" Mendoza Uriarte, on April 21 in Tijuana, Baja California state. His death follows the April 17 killing of Victor "El Sargento" Manuel Garcia, a leader of the local crime group Los Talibanes. The executions are part of a sharp increase in organized crime-related violence in Baja California state.
Violence in Tijuana and the rest of Baja California sharply declined after 2008 when the Sinaloa Federation largely bested the Arellano Felix Organization. Since then, the Arellano Felix Organization has maintained control of Tijuana, but in a subordinate role to the Sinaloa Federation. This relationship is by no means permanent. A new challenge to the Sinaloa Federation in Tijuana would not be surprising -- and would reflect another step in the Balkanization of Mexican organized crime.
Violence in Baja California state resulting from warring local criminal cells would harm Sinaloa Federation interests by drawing additional law enforcement attention to the lucrative border city of Tijuana. Indeed, unconfirmed Mexican media reports stated that Sinaloa Federation leader Ismael "Mayo" Zambada Garcia has ordered his lieutenants operating in Tijuana to halt the increase in violence. If correct, this shows a lack of control by Sinaloa Federation, since violence has not subsided. However, should the violence prove to be direct challenges to the Sinaloa Federation, then violence could intensify even more. Tijuana provides a critical port of entry into the United States, meaning the Sinaloa Federation would do everything it could to defend its operations in the area.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Torreon Leader Arrested, Violence in Tijuana | Stratfor
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MEXICO CITY — Andrea Benítez simply did what many rich, connected Mexicans have always done: she used her influence to step on the lower born. Witnesses said that when she was not given the table she wanted on Friday at Maximo Bistrot, a popular Mexico City restaurant, she called in inspectors who worked for her father at the country’s main consumer protection agency to shut it down.
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“Dreadful service,” she wrote on Twitter, before announcing she had arrived at the agency to complain. “They have no manners.”
What followed, however, caught much of Mexico by surprise. Instead of enjoying the perks of privilege, Ms. Benítez and her father have become the targets of a broad and swift social media campaign — with tens of thousands of Tweets condemning them — that led the president’s office on Monday to announce a formal investigation into allegations of abuse of power.
This kind of response, it must be said, is exceedingly rare in Mexico. Murders are routinely ignored by the authorities here, and increasingly by senior officials who would prefer to discuss other topics. But the food at Maximo Bistrot apparently has the capacity to ignite public rage and government action like little else.
To many of its fans, the restaurant is the Chez Panisse of Mexico City, a gastro-paradise of fresh ingredients delivered with innovation for (relatively) affordable prices, in a simple dining room often populated by stars, from Mexican actors to visiting luminaries like Patti Smith. It is one of many new restaurants here that have sought to reinvent Mexican cuisine, taking advantage of both a booming economy and the fact that food is an economic exception — one of the only industries where Mexico’s monopolistic tendencies do not hold sway.
Many of the restaurant’s regular patrons said the young Ms. Benítez clearly miscalculated by assuming that all the smartphone owners at dinner would let her get away with such behavior.
“It’s such blatant corruption that’s right in our faces,” said Max St. Romain, 42, a filmmaker who saw the inspectors slap an enormous “suspension of activities” sticker on Maximo Bistrot on Friday night. “It’s a connection to the corruption that ruled Mexico for decades — the fact that a child of someone in power can use it just on a whim, on a tantrum.”
Twitter users immediately gave Ms. Benítez a hashtag: #LadyProfeco. Profeco is the abbreviated version of the office that her father directs, and “Lady” referred back to another recent incident labeled #LadiesDePolanco — when some drunken young women in the posh neighborhood of Polanco were caught on video berating police officers for being “salary men.”
As of Sunday evening, Twitter had logged around 42,000 messages referring to #LadyProfeco in every manner of vulgar insult.
Ms. Benítez’s father, Humberto Benítez Treviño, eventually apologized, releasing a statement declaring that his daughter had exaggerated, prompting inspectors to overreact.
The Net vigilantism, nonetheless, has not let up. Few of the Benítezes’ critics seem to expect a real investigation, so they are again turning to digital outrage and humor. One artist even turned Lady Profeco into a satirical comic book heroine.
“Is there a business that’s given you bad service?” she is depicted as saying on the cover. “Talk to me and I’ll tell my daddy to shut it down.”
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https://plus.google.com/+nytimes/posts/NuEFJecvX8V#+nytimes/posts/NuEFJecvX8V
Description:
The movie "Traffic" tells the story of a Mexican informant who helps the U.S. fight drug trafficking from Mexico. But there are many details in the film that aren't at all like the reality of the life of Luis Octavio López Vega, an informant abandoned by the Americans and sought by Mexican authorities who accuse him of colluding in narcotics trafficking. Watch this video about the differences between Hollywood and real life in the Drug War.
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Mexico Security Memo: Challenges to the Knights Templar in Michoacan
Stratfor
The conflict between the Knights Templar and the self-defense groups, also commonly referred to as community police, continues to escalate with violent acts and Knights Templar propaganda in Michoacan state near the border with Jalisco state. The Buenavista Tomatlan and Tepalcatepec municipalities have experienced the quickest increases in violence, extortion and embargos on local industries due to the ongoing conflict between Knights Templar and the self-defense groups.
On May 5, authorities discovered several narcomantas in Apatzingan, which is connected to both aforementioned municipalities by Highway 120 to the east. The messages denounced the self-defense groups, claiming they are associated with Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the now-principal rival of the Knights Templar in states such as Jalisco, Michoacan, Guanajuato and Guerrero. Regardless of any validity behind the messages, the focus on connecting the self-defense groups to the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion shows an increasing urgency for the Knights Templar to defend their stronghold state from Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the expanding self-defense groups in Mexican communities.
The self-defense groups emerged in Buenavista Tomatlan in February as a response to escalating conflict between the Knights Templar and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. Since then, Knights Templar propaganda has shifted its focus from targeting Los Zetas to targeting the self-defense groups. During 2012, Los Zetas were the primary rival for the Knights Templar because they continually threatened Knights Templar routes to the United States through northeastern Mexico. But the conflict with Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion is a more immediate threat to the Knights Templar because of the former's proximity to the Knight's Templar stronghold in Michoacan. Moreover, the appearance of the self-defense groups brought additional challenges for the group.
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In addition to propaganda and violent assaults, the Knights Templar have attempted to impose embargos on the municipalities that host self-defense groups in Michoacan. On April 15, unidentified individuals distributed pamphlets, ostensibly signed by the Knights Templar, in various areas of Apatzingan, Michoacan state. The message on the pamphlets warned vendors in general and some companies in particular to stop delivering goods to Buenavista Tomatlan and Tepalcatepec.
Regardless of the validity of the claims that self-defense groups are colluding with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the groups augment the threat that the neighboring cartel poses to the Knights Templar. Additionally, the self-defense groups' ability to police their respective communities competes with the publicly stated intent of the Knights Templar to provide public services in the communities in which they operate. Should more self-defense groups also countering Knights Templar interests emerge in Michoacan, the cartel could expect to lose some freedom to maneuver in its local criminal enterprises within its stronghold.
It does not appear that the Knights Templar are in immediate danger of losing significant territory. However, it is likely the operations of self-defense groups in Michoacan state have favored the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in their current conflict with Knights Templar. Because of this, violence in Michoacan state, particularly west of Apatzingan, will likely continue at current levels and could further escalate if more self-defense groups emerge or if existing ones improve in their tactical capabilities.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: Challenges to the Knights Templar in Michoacan | Stratfor
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A remarkable clip about Mormon colonies in Chihuahau fighting the narcos and their connections to Mitt Romney.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIyaIHsJbc
http://youtu.be/8XiSnCt9fDc
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Mexico, Where Teachers Take Hostages
President Enrique Peña Nieto needs to show the country that he will defend the rule of law.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Mexican students studying to be teachers released a hostage on Wednesday—in the municipality of Nahuatzen—due to concerns about his health. But they continue to hold five others. The students are supported by the Michoacán State Teachers Organization, which warned that the remaining captives, who are state policemen, would be freed only when a demand for 1,200 new teaching jobs is met.
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WSJ's "Americas" columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady talks with James Freeman about the tension between teachers unions in Mexico and newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto. Photo: Associated Press.
The Mexican standoff, now a week old, is only the latest example of a teacher-union rebellion against recent amendments to the Mexican constitution aimed at improving public education.
Institutional Revolutionary Party President Enrique Peña Nieto has made it a priority to fix the broken public-education system. But eager reformers are often tested by politically powerful interests in their first year in office. The teachers believe they can make him back down.
Over the 71 consecutive years that the PRI ruled Mexico until 2000, it earned a reputation for heavy-handedness bordering on repression. Now that it is finally back in power, there is pressure on Mr. Peña Nieto to show that his party is kinder and gentler. This may tempt him to tolerate union violence. But the recent constitutional amendments increase transparency and accountability and depoliticize education. This is the change the PRI needs to show the public it supports.
It's easy to see why teachers are up in arms over the amendments. For the first time ever they will be vetted in a comprehensive process that includes proficiency exams. Lifetime tenure will no longer be guaranteed from the day a teacher graduates from a teaching college. Teachers will not be allowed to pass their tenured posts to relatives, the prevalent practice of selling a teaching post will be outlawed, and promotions will require evaluation. In short, teaching is to be like a real job, where performance matters.
Accountability is a foreign concept for many who go into teaching, which explains why teaching students are part of the rebellion. In April, violence broke out in Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero, when the state legislature refused a request by activists to reject the new evaluation process. Union thugs vandalized property. They also blocked the highway that runs from Mexico City, through Chilpancingo, to Acapulco, with serious economic consequences. Most teachers unions at least pretend to care about their students. Many striking teachers in Mexico just walked off the job, leaving children and parents in the lurch.
Mr. Peña Nieto is leading a nation that long ago outgrew the labor laws that govern teaching. When the North American Free Trade Agreement was born in 1994, many expected Mexico to use it to become a magnet for low-skill, low-tech industries. But openness raises living standards, and destinations outside of Nafta soon became more attractive for investors seeking low-wage labor.
Mexico naturally moved up the food chain. Today it increasingly hosts middle- and high-tech industries, including aerospace. According to the ministry of the economy, "There are over 190 companies within the aerospace industry operating in Mexico, employing nearly 30,000 workers" and the aerospace market is undergoing "rapid growth."
Will Mexico have the human capital needed for that growth and the other economic changes that will accompany it? The education ministry claims that every year 90,000 Mexicans complete graduate programs in engineering and technology. But the public-education system could hold the country back.
In very poor countries, access to education is the first hurdle to clear. But step two, which Mexico now faces, is the quality challenge. Claudio X. González, president of Mexicanos Primero (Mexicans First), a nongovernmental organization, is working to build public support for reform. He says "only one quarter of each generation finishes high school," and only "10% finish their college degree." What is more, "up to 80% of each generation fails or barely passes international tests in reading comprehension, math and science."
Mexico ranks 34th out of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in basic education achievement. Mexicanos Primero reports that Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoácan, where much of the union violence has taken place, have the nation's worst secondary-education outcomes.
Notes Mr. González: "No country in the OECD spends as much on education, as a percentage of GDP, as Mexico. Still, we have no reliable registry of teachers and close to 160,000 people [are paid] a salary as teachers but never step into a classroom."
Mexico's elected representatives have voted to reform a corporatist education model built in the 1930s. Now the state is charged with enforcing the change. It should also prosecute vandals and kidnappers. If it does, it won't only defend the interest of millions of children but it will also be a step closer to implementing the rule of law in a country where it is sorely lacking.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
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Mexico Security Memo: A New Conflict in Northern Sinaloa
Analysis
May 15, 2013 | 0730 Print - Text Size +
Stratfor
Analysis
Recent body dumps and targeted attacks in northern parts of Sinaloa state reveal an unfolding conflict among regional organized criminal groups with backing from some of Mexico's major cartels. Since April, media outlets have attributed at least two body dumps in Los Mochis, Ahome municipality's largest city, to a group calling itself La Mochomera. The group's origins and allegiances remain unclear, but the escalating violence in the state suggests that a new challenge to Los Mazatlecos -- the current dominant organization in Ahome -- is underway.
According to social media reports, La Mochomera is a remnant of the former Beltran Leyva Organization, a Sinaloa-based cartel that split in 2009. The group has reportedly been fighting Los Mazatlecos, another Beltran Leyva Organization remnant that wrested control of parts of northern Sinaloa state over the past year. In 2012, Los Mazatlecos emerged as a regional challenger to Sinaloa Federation in Sinaloa state, and the group operates in some of the few areas in the state outside of Sinaloa's control.
The ability of Los Mazatlecos to counter the far stronger the Sinaloa Federation has been partly a result of its cooperation with La Linea and Los Zetas, two of the Sinaloa Federation's principal rivals. Before the breakup of the Beltran Leyva Organization, Los Zetas allied with some of the cartel's leaders, including Alfredo Beltran Leyva. Since the split, Los Zetas have maintained a working relationship with many of the remnant groups, most notably Los Mazatlecos, whose operations in Sinaloa state have allowed Los Zetas to make occasional incursions into territories controlled by the Sinaloa Federation and afforded access to the Sierra Madre Occidental, a lucrative region for illicit drug production.
But the recent violence in Ahome indicates that La Mochomera is distinct from Los Mazatlecos. On April 20, authorities discovered six bodies inside an abandoned vehicle in Los Mochis, along with a narcomanta signed ostensibly by "El Dos Letras," presumably the nickname of the leader of La Mochomera. The message contained a threat to Ahome police chief Jesus Carrasco Ruiz and accused him of colluding with organized criminals. Then on May 4, authorities discovered another six bodies near Los Mochis and another narcomanta apparently signed by El Dos Letras. On May 9, a group of gunmen in Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, a community in Guasave municipality, ambushed a convoy ferrying the police chief to the city of Culiacan along Highway 15.
In light of the recent threats against Carrasco Ruiz and the Ahome police, the May 9 attack can likely be linked to the body dumps on April 20 and May 4. The ability to ambush an armored police convoy with a high number of gunmen suggests the involvement of a more substantial regional criminal group, rather than a local gang. Thus, La Mochomera could be receiving support from an outside organization looking to counter Los Mazatlecos. It is also possible that the new group splintered from Los Mazatlecos or perhaps is a Los Mazatlecos faction still working to defend the group's territory.
Stratfor has been unable to confirm whether the escalating conflict in northern Sinaloa state is indeed between La Mochomera and Los Mazatlecos as reported. If La Mochomera is aligned with or a part of Los Mazatlecos, then the recent violence could be the result of defensive operations against a rival, likely the Sinaloa Federation. If La Mochomera is challenging Los Mazatlecos, Los Zetas will likely respond to ensure its capabilities to conduct operations in the state and the Sierra Madre Occidental and to counter the Sinaloa Federation in the rival cartels' nationwide conflict. This would prolong high levels of violence for the foreseeable future.
Editor's note: As part of a refocusing of our Mexico coverage to include more analysis of the geopolitical, economic and energy-related issues affecting the country, Stratfor is discontinuing publication of our weekly Mexico Security Memo. We will continue to publish analyses pertaining to the security situation in Mexico, but we will do so when events warrant the coverage rather than simply once a week.
If you need access to more detailed intelligence and analysis on the security situation in Mexico, we will continue to offer a number of products and services specifically on that topic, including our Mexico Security Monitor, which you can subscribe to here. As always, we want your feedback. Please let us know what you think of our expanded coverage by sending an email to responses@stratfor.com.
Read more: Mexico Security Memo: A New Conflict in Northern Sinaloa | Stratfor
Understanding Pena Nieto's Approach to the Cartels
Security Weekly
Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 04:00 Print - Text Size +
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's approach to combating Mexican drug cartels has been a much-discussed topic since well before he was elected. Indeed, in June 2011 -- more than a year before the July 2012 Mexican presidential election -- I wrote an analysis discussing rumors that, if elected, Pena Nieto was going to attempt to reach some sort of accommodation with Mexico's drug cartels in order to bring down the level of violence.
Such rumors were certainly understandable, given the arrangement that had existed for many years between some senior members of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party and some powerful cartel figures during the Institutional Revolutionary Party's long reign in Mexico prior to the election of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party in 2000. However, as we argued in 2011 and repeated in March 2013, much has changed in Mexico since 2000, and the new reality in Mexico means that it would be impossible for the Pena Nieto administration to reach any sort of deal with the cartels even if it made an attempt.
But the rumors of the Pena Nieto government reaching an accommodation with some cartel figures such as Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera have persisted, even as the Mexican government arrests key operatives in Guzman's network, such as Ines Coronel Barreras, Guzman's father-in-law, who was arrested May 1 in Agua Prieta, Mexico. Indeed, on April 27, Washington Post reporter Dana Priest published a detailed article outlining how U.S. authorities were fearful that the Mexican government was restructuring its security relationship with the U.S. government so that it could more easily reach an unofficial truce with cartel leaders. Yet four days later, Coronel -- a significant cartel figure -- was arrested in a joint operation between the Mexicans and Americans.
Clearly, there is some confusion on the U.S. side about the approach the Pena Nieto government is taking, but conversations with both U.S. and Mexican officials reveal that these changes in Mexico's approach do not appear to be as drastic as some have feared. There will need to be adjustments on both sides of the border while organizational changes are underway in Mexico, but this does not mean that bilateral U.S.-Mexico cooperation will decline in the long term.
Opportunities and Challenges
Despite the violence that has wracked Mexico over the past decade, the Mexican economy is booming. Arguably, the economy would be doing even better if potential investors were not concerned about cartel violence and street crime -- and if such criminal activity did not have such a significant impact on businesses operating in Mexico.
Because of this, the Pena Nieto administration believes that it is critical to reduce the overall level of violence in the country. Essentially it wants to transform the cartel issue into a law enforcement problem, something handled by the Interior Ministry and the national police, rather than a national security problem handled by the Mexican military and the Center for Research and National Security (Mexico's national-level intelligence agency). In many ways the Pena Nieto administration wants to follow the model of the government of Colombia, which has never been able to stop trafficking in its territory but was able to defeat the powerful Medellin and Cali cartels and relegate their successor organizations to a law enforcement problem.
The Mexicans also believe that if they can attenuate cartel violence, they will be able to free up law enforcement forces to tackle common crime instead of focusing nearly all their resources on containing the cartel wars.
Although the cartels have not yet been taken down to the point of being a law enforcement problem, the Pena Nieto administration wants to continue to signal this shift in approach by moving the focus of its efforts against the cartels to the Interior Ministry. Unlike former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who was seen leading the charge against the cartels during his administration, Pena Nieto wants to maintain some distance from the struggle against the cartels (at least publicly). Pena Nieto seeks to portray the cartels as a secondary issue that does not demand his personal leadership and attention. He can then publicly focus his efforts on issues he deems critically important to Mexico's future, like education reform, banking reform, energy reform and fostering the Mexican economy. This is the most significant difference between the Calderon and Pena Nieto administrations.
Of course it is one thing to say that the cartels have become a secondary issue, and it is quite another to make it happen. The Mexican government still faces some real challenges in reducing the threat posed by the cartels. However, it is becoming clear that the Pena Nieto administration seeks to implement a holistic approach in an attempt to address the problems at the root of the violence that in some ways is quite reminiscent of counterinsurgency policy. The Mexicans view these underlying economic, cultural and sociological problems as issues that cannot be solved with force alone.
Mexican officials in the current government say that the approach the Calderon administration took to fighting the cartels was wrong in that it sought to solve the problem of cartel violence by simply killing or arresting cartel figures. They claim that Calderon's approach did nothing to treat the underlying causes of the violence and that the cartels were able to recruit gunmen faster than the government could kill or capture them. (In some ways this is parallel to the U.S. government's approach in Yemen, where increases in missile strikes from unmanned aerial vehicles have increased, rather than reduced, the number of jihadists there.) In Mexico, when the cartels experienced trouble in recruiting enough gunmen, they were able to readily import them from Central America.
However -- and this is very significant -- this holistic approach does not mean that the Pena Nieto administration wants to totally abandon kinetic operations against the cartels. An important pillar of any counterinsurgency campaign is providing security for the population. But rather than provoke random firefights with cartel gunmen by sending military patrols into cartel hot spots, the Pena Nieto team wants to be more targeted and intentional in its application of force. It seeks to take out the networks that hire and supply the gunmen, not just the gunmen themselves, and this will require all the tools in its counternarcotics portfolio -- not only force, but also things like intelligence, financial action (to target cartel finances), public health, institution building and anti-corruption efforts.
The theory is that by providing security, stability and economic opportunity the government can undercut the cartels' ability to recruit youth who currently see little other options in life but to join the cartels.
To truly succeed, especially in the most lawless areas, the Mexican government is going to have to begin to build institutions -- and public trust in those institutions -- from the ground up. The officials we have talked to hold Juarez up as an example they hope to follow in other locations, though they say they learned a lot of lessons in Juarez that will allow them to streamline their efforts elsewhere. Obviously, before they can begin building, they recognize that they will have to seize, consolidate and hold territory, and this is the role they envision for the newly created gendarmerie, or paramilitary police.
The gendarmerie is important to this rebuilding effort because the military is incapable of serving in an investigative law enforcement role. They are deployed to pursue active shooters and target members of the cartels, but much of the crime affecting Mexico's citizens and companies falls outside the military's purview. The military also has a tendency to be heavy-handed, and reports of human rights abuses are quite common. Transforming from a national security to a law enforcement approach requires the formation of an effective police force that is able to conduct community policing while pursuing car thieves, extortionists, kidnappers and street gangs in addition to cartel gunmen.
Certainly the U.S. government was very involved in the Calderon administration's kinetic approach to the cartel problem, as shown by the very heavy collaboration between the two governments. The collaboration was so heavy, in fact, that some incoming Pena Nieto administration figures were shocked by how integrated the Americans had become. The U.S. officials who told Dana Priest they were uncomfortable with the new Mexican government's approach to cartel violence were undoubtedly among those deeply involved in this process -- perhaps so deeply involved that they could not recognize that in the big picture, their approach was failing to reduce the violence in Mexico. Indeed, from the Mexican perspective, the U.S. efforts have been focused on reducing the flow of narcotics into the United States regardless of the impact of those efforts on Mexico's security environment.
However, as seen by the May 1 arrest of Coronel, which a Mexican official described as a classic joint operation involving the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican Federal Police, the Mexican authorities do intend to continue to work very closely with their American counterparts. But that cooperation must occur within the new framework established for the anti-cartel efforts. That means that plans for cooperation must be presented through the Mexican Interior Ministry so that the efforts can be centrally coordinated. Much of the current peer-to-peer cooperation can continue, but within that structure.
Consolidation and Coordination
As in the United States, the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Mexico have terrible problems with coordination and information sharing. The current administration is attempting to correct this by centralizing the anti-cartel efforts at the federal level and by creating coordination centers to oversee operations in the various regions. These regional centers will collect information at the state and regional level and send it up to the national center. However, one huge factor inhibiting information sharing in Mexico -- and between the Americans and Mexicans -- is the longstanding problem of corruption in the Mexican government. In the past, drug czars, senior police officials and very senior politicians have been accused of being on cartel payrolls. This makes trust critical, and lack of trust has caused some Mexican and most American agencies to restrict the sharing of intelligence to only select, trusted contacts. Centralizing coordination will interfere with this selective information flow in the short term, and it is going to take time for this new coordination effort to earn the trust of both Mexican and American agencies. There remains fear that consolidation will also centralize corruption and make it easier for the cartels to gather intelligence.
Another attempt at command control and coordination is in the Pena Nieto administration's current efforts to implement police consolidation at the state level. While corruption has reached into all levels of the Mexican government, it is unquestionably the most pervasive at the municipal level, and in past government operations entire municipal police departments have been fired for corruption. The idea is that if all police were brought under a unified state command, called "Mando Unico" in Spanish, the police would be better screened, trained and paid and therefore the force would be more professional.
This concept of police consolidation at the state level is not a new idea; indeed, Calderon sought to do so under his administration, but it appears that Pena Nieto might have the political capital to make this happen, along with some other changes that Calderon wanted to implement but could not quite pull off. To date, Pena Nieto has had a great deal of success in garnering political support for his proposals, but the establishment of Mando Unico in each of Mexico's 31 states may perhaps be the toughest political struggle he has faced yet. If realized, Mando Unico will be an important step -- but only one step -- in the long process of institution building for the police at the state level.
Aside from the political struggles, the Mexican government still faces very real challenges on the streets as it attempts to quell violence, reassert control over lawless areas and gain the trust of the public. The holistic plan laid out by the Pena Nieto administration sounds good on paper, but it will still require a great deal of leadership by Pena Nieto and his team to bring Mexico through the challenges it faces. They will obviously need to cooperate with the United States to succeed, but it has become clear that this cooperation will need to be on Mexico's terms and in accordance with the administration's new, holistic approach.
Read more: Understanding Pena Nieto's Approach to the Cartels | Stratfor
U.S., Mexico: The Decline of the Colorado River
Analysis
May 13, 2013 | 0703 Print - Text Size +
A ring of bleached sandstone caused by low water levels during a six-year drought surrounds Lake Powell, a Colorado River reservoir near Page, Arizona David McNew/Getty Images
Summary
An amendment to a standing water treaty between the United States and Mexico has received publicity over the past six months as an example of progress in water sharing agreements. But the amendment, called Minute 319, is simply a glimpse into ongoing mismanagement of the Colorado River on the U.S. side of the border. Over-allocation of the river's waters 90 years ago combined with increasing populations and economic growth in the river basin have created circumstances in which conservation efforts -- no matter how organized -- could be too little to overcome the projected water deficit that the Colorado River Basin will face in the next 20 years.
Analysis
In 1922, the seven U.S. states in the Colorado River Basin established a compact to distribute the resources of the river. A border between the Upper and Lower basins was defined at Lees Ferry, Ariz. The Upper Basin (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico) was allocated 9.25 billion cubic meters a year, and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California and Nevada) was allotted 10.45 billion cubic meters. Mexico was allowed an unspecified amount, which in 1944 was defined as 1.85 billion cubic meters a year. The Upper and Lower basins -- managed as separate organizations under the supervision of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation -- divided their allocated water among the states in their jurisdictions. Numerous disputes arose, especially in the Lower Basin, regarding proper division of the water resources. But the use of (and disputes over) the Colorado River began long before these treaties.
As the United States' territory expanded to the west, the Colorado River briefly was considered a portal to the isolated frontier of the southwestern United States, since it was often cheaper to take a longer path via water to transport goods and people in the early 19th century. There was a short-lived effort to develop the Colorado River as the "Mississippi of the West." While places like Yuma, Ariz., became military and trading outposts, the geography and erratic flow of the Colorado made the river ultimately unsuitable for mass transportation. Navigating the river often required maneuvering around exposed sand banks and through shallow waters. The advent of the railroad ended the need for river transport in the region. Shortly thereafter, large and ambitious management projects, including the Hoover Dam, became the river's main purpose.
Irrigation along the river started expanding in the second half of the 19th century, and agriculture still consumes more water from the Colorado than any other sector. Large-scale manipulation of the river began in the early 20th century, and now there are more than 20 major dams along the Colorado River, along with reservoirs such as Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and large canals that bring water to areas of the Imperial and Coachella valleys in southern California for irrigation and municipal supplies. User priority on the Colorado River is determined by the first "useful purposing" of the water. For example, the irrigated agriculture in California has priority over some municipal water supplies for Phoenix, Ariz.
Inadequate Supply and Increasing Demand
When the original total allocation of the river was set in the 1920s, it was far above regional consumption. But it was also more than the river could supply in the long term. The river was divided based on an estimated annual flow of roughly 21 billion cubic meters per year. More recent studies have indicated that the 20th century, and especially the 1920s, was a time of above-normal flows. These studies indicate that the long-term average of flow is closer to 18 billion cubic meters, with yearly flows ranging anywhere from roughly 6 billion cubic meters to nearly 25 billion cubic meters. As utilization has increased, the deficit between flow and allocation has become more apparent.
Total allocations of river resources for the Upper and Lower basins and Mexico plus water lost to evaporation adds up to more than 21 billion cubic meters per year. Currently, the Upper Basin does not use the full portion of its allocation, and large reservoirs along the river can help meet the demand of the Lower Basin. Populations in the region are expected to increase; in some states, the population could double by 2030. A study released at the end of 2012 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation predicted a possible shortage of 3 billion cubic meters by 2035.
The Colorado River provides water for irrigation of roughly 15 percent of the crops in the United States, including vegetables, fruits, cotton, alfalfa and hay. It also provides municipal water supplies for large cities, such as Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas, accounting for more than half of the water supply in many of these areas. Minute 319, signed in November 2012, gives Mexico a small amount of additional water in an attempt to restore the delta region. However, the macroeconomic impact on Mexico is minimal, since agriculture accounts for the majority of the river's use in Mexico but only about 3 percent of the gross domestic product of the Baja Norte province.
There is an imbalance of power along the international border. The United States controls the headwaters of the Colorado River and also has a greater macroeconomic interest in maintaining the supply of water from the river. This can make individual amendments of the 1944 Treaty somewhat misleading. Because of the erratic nature of the river, the treaty effectively promises more water than the river can provide each year. Cooperation in conservation efforts and in finding alternative water sources on the U.S. side of the border, not treaty amendments, will become increasingly important as regional water use increases over the coming decades.
Conservation Efforts Along the Colorado
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation oversees the whole river, but the management of each basin is separate. Additionally, within each basin, there are separate state management agencies and, within each state, separate regional management agencies. Given the number of participants, reaching agreements on the best method of conservation or the best alternative source of water is difficult. There are ongoing efforts at conservation, including lining canals to reduce seepage and programs to limit municipal water use. However, there is no basin-wide coordination. In a 2012 report, the Bureau of Reclamation compiled a list of suggested projects but stopped short of recommending a course of action.
A similar report released in 2008 listed 12 general options including desalinization, vegetation management (elimination of water-intensive or invasive plants), water reuse, reduced use by power plants and joint management through water banking (water is stored either in reservoirs or in underground aquifers to use when needed). Various sources of water imports from other river basins or even icebergs are proposed as options, as is weather modification by seeding clouds in the Upper Basin. Implementation of all these options would result in an extra 5 billion cubic meters of water a year at most, which could erase the predicted deficit. However, this amount is unlikely, as it assumes maximum output from each technique and also assumes the implementation of all proposed methods, many of which are controversial either politically or environmentally and some of which are economically unviable. Additionally, many of the methods would take years to fully implement and produce their maximum capacity. Even then, a more reasonable estimate of conservation capacity would likely be closer to 1 billion-2 billion cubic meters, which would fall short of the projected deficit in 2035.
The Potential for New Disputes
Conflict over water can arise when there are competing interests for limited resources. This is seen throughout the world with rivers that traverse borders in places like Central Asia and North Africa. For the Colorado River, the U.S.-Mexico border is likely less relevant to the competition for the river's resources than the artificial border drawn at Lees Ferry.
Aside from growing populations, increased energy production from unconventional hydrocarbon sources in the Upper Basin has the potential to increase consumption. While this amount will likely be small compared to overall allocations, it emphasizes the value of water to the Upper Basin. Real or perceived threats to the Upper Basin's surplus of water could be seen as threats to economic growth in the region. At the same time, further water shortages could limit the potential for economic growth in the Lower Basin -- a situation that would only be exacerbated by growing populations.
While necessary, conservation efforts and the search for alternative sources likely will not be able to make up for the predicted shortage. Amendments to the original treaty typically have been issued to address symptomatic problems. However, the core problem remains: More water is promised to river users than is available on average. While this problem has not come to a head yet, there may come a time when regional growth overtakes conservation efforts. It is then that renegotiation of the treaty with a more realistic view of the river's volume will become necessary. Any renegotiation will be filled with conflict, but most of that likely will be contained in the United States.
Read more: U.S., Mexico: The Decline of the Colorado River | Stratfor
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http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20130530/c0de0f64-0de0-411d-9dbf-8159ec18493e
http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17231535/mexico-violence-claims-hundreds-of-us-lives/
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Good description of many dangerous scams against tourists going on
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20130531/95eb81ae-058b-4d8e-84ba-9217046046df
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Good description of many dangerous scams against tourists going on
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20130531/95eb81ae-058b-4d8e-84ba-9217046046df
Crossing the border, especially to play tourista is a very bad idea.
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Good description of many dangerous scams against tourists going on
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20130531/95eb81ae-058b-4d8e-84ba-9217046046df
Crossing the border, especially to play tourista is a very bad idea.
Tourists and outsiders aren't necessarily welcome here. This place has already been Americanized enough. Go enjoy China or some other laid back place.
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Umm , , , no one here is suggesting visiting the border region-- quite the contrary-- though I suspect quite a few people and businesses would be quite glad for the narco wars to settle down and for American tourists to come back.
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It is true the the tourism economy is desperately needed. In some states here, they wouldn't survive without it. I couldn't agree more.
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Summary
In August or September 2013, Mexico will unveil the most ambitious of its legislative packages to date -- comprehensive reform of its energy sector. The reform is expected to include incremental improvements, such as tax, pension and subsidy reforms, and will focus on more long-term structural issues, such as changing the constitution to allow for improved partnership models that will increase foreign investment. For a number of economic and political reasons, this attempt at energy reform will be Mexico's best chance in decades to solve some of the sector's most pressing challenges.
Analysis
By most metrics, Mexico's energy sector is performing poorly. Between 2004 and 2012, crude oil output fell by 25 percent, from 3.4 million barrels per day to 2.5 million barrels per day. Crude oil exports by volume declined 32 percent, from 1.9 million barrels per day to 1.3 million barrels per day over the same period. Natural gas output has been steadily declining since 2009, causing imports to spike. Over the past decade, proven reserves of crude oil have fallen 37 percent. Roughly a decade after nitrogen injection temporarily boosted production, output at Mexico's two most important fields, Cantarell and Ku-Maloob-Zaap, is either already declining or is expected to peak soon as the fields enter their natural decline phase.
Mexico's Main Oil and Natural Gas Regions
As the output of cheaply produced crude oil from the Bay of Campeche drops, state-owned energy company Petroleos Mexicanos' profitability will also decline. To maintain production levels, Petroleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex, needs to look beyond the shallow offshore areas, either into the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico or into unconventional exploration and production. This would require a massive upfront investment of money that Pemex simply does not have due to its unprofitable downstream sector and high tax burden. To solve this problem, Pemex must improve its tax, pension and subsidy liabilities and gain access to increased levels of capital, either from private domestic sources or foreign investors.
When low-cost oil and natural gas was readily available, Mexico did not need to confront the nationalist regulatory structure put in place in the first half of the 20th century that limited foreign ownership and investment. However, since the low-cost options (namely, oil produced at below $10 per barrel) are now in decline, decision-makers in Mexico are compelled to substantially rethink the regulatory framework.
Nationalization and Reform
The current regulatory framework was formulated at three historical moments. In the immediate aftermath of the Mexican Revolution in 1917, Mexican leaders drafted a new constitution in which Article 27 declared subsurface mineral rights to be the inalienable property of the Mexican nation. Then in 1938, then-President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the energy sector, expropriating foreign interests and creating Pemex, which would monopolize the entire Mexican oil industry. Most recently, the Petroleum Law of 1958 eliminated private oil mineral interests and extended Pemex's monopoly downstream to include all activities along the production chain.
Since 1999, successive administrations have attempted to reform the energy sector. In 1999, 2002 and 2008, former Presidents Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon each scored some minor victories -- including adding a degree of transparency and flexibility to Pemex and improving the company's ability to contract foreign firms -- but the issue of private investment was never definitively resolved.
In each of these three attempts, the timing was only partially conducive to success. Zedillo attempted to pass a reform bill near the end of his term when he was already a lame-duck president; Fox attempted just before midterm elections, while the energy sector and Pemex were still relatively healthy; and Calderon tried to reform the sector just after winning a close and contested election. Additionally, the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 12 years out of power from 2000 to 2012 after dominating Mexican politics for decades was characterized by political ill will and non-cooperation. By contrast, the situation facing current President Enrique Pena Nieto is categorically different and much more conducive to success. The Mexican economy is growing, it is still early in Pena Nieto's term and there is broad political consensus for the need for serious reform.
Reform Options
Because the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party does not control enough seats in either house of Mexico's Congress to pass an energy reform package on its own, let alone one that requires a constitutional amendment, any legislation will require the support of at least one of Mexico's two other major political parties. The National Action Party is the most likely partner, since it has been in favor of energy reform for the previous two administrations when it held the presidency and it sided with the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the recently passed Pact for Mexico reforms.
There are three major problems in the energy sector that can be fixed without amending the constitution. First, Mexico subsidizes the gasoline, diesel and liquid petroleum gas used in most Mexican homes, which has placed considerable stress on Pemex. In 2011, Pemex -- and by extension the Mexican government -- spent 1 percent of gross domestic product (or $12.5 billion) subsidizing fuel. Cutting these subsidies would be highly unpopular but would improve the bottom line of Pemex's downstream activities. To reduce these outlays without sparking social unrest, Mexico has already been gradually increasing the price of fuel over the past decade.
Second, the Mexican government relies on Pemex for 30 to 40 percent of its total fiscal revenues. Because it is a national oil company, Pemex has a tax regime and pension liabilities that are much greater than those of private firms. The Institutional Revolutionary Party needs to find a way to maintain public spending while reducing Pemex's tax burden. It is for this reason that the Pena Nieto administration may try to tackle energy and tax reform in tandem. It also explains why the government is trying to increase royalties on other sectors such as mining. However, diversifying streams of fiscal revenue is difficult, and potential alternatives, such as a value-added tax on things like food and medicine, are already prompting considerable social opposition.
Third, Pemex's pension fund is in need of reform. Under the current system, Pemex employees can retire at 55 with a pension worth their full salary. Currently, Pemex employs some 150,000 workers and pays full benefits to another 70,000 retirees. Knowing that pension reform is absolutely imperative, Pemex and the powerful oil workers' union are currently in negotiations with the government. While the details of the negotiation are unclear, there are two possible options: raising the retirement age to 65 or changing to a defined contribution model.
These reforms would certainly modernize Pemex and improve its efficiency but would not address Pemex and Mexico's main strategic imperative -- to pursue deep-water and unconventional exploration and production. With an estimated 30 billion to 50 billion barrels of oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and with an estimated 15.4 trillion cubic meters of shale gas and 13 billion barrels of shale oil resources, if Mexico is serious about expanding energy production, it must change the regulatory framework to allow for deeper partnerships with foreign companies. Exploiting these reserves is extremely capital intensive, and while Pemex could theoretically do it alone, it would be difficult to exploit the offshore and unconventional plays in a timely manner without outside support.
It has become increasingly clear over the past decade that in order to breathe life into the energy sector, international oil companies must be incentivized to invest money and technology into Mexico. However, because the 1958 Petroleum Law prohibited private ownership of mineral rights, the only types of partnerships that Pemex is allowed to enter into are service and leasing agreements. This model has failed to attract sufficient investor interest because no percentage of production, sales or profits can be used as a basis for compensation. Unable to book even a small percentage of reserves, these energy companies are unwilling to make expensive and risky investments. The most recent attempt, in 2008, to stimulate investment without touching the regulatory framework resulted in the Pemex Exploration and Production-model contract, which is a fee-based system with a potential for a bonus payment if production exceeds expectations. Nevertheless, because firms cannot book reserves under the existing model, few companies have responded enthusiastically.
Some new information about the secretly negotiated reform effort has recently been released. According to several high-level Mexican officials speaking with The Wall Street Journal, the new energy reform is expected to grant 25-year contracts in specific deep-water areas, develop a mechanism to allow foreign firms to book reserves and create a national petroleum agency that will administer the new partnership model. Pena Nieto has said that the reform will be made public in the next three months and will include "the constitutional changes needed to give private investors certainty." As a means to placate nationalistic sentiment, the government may try to devise a way to retain ownership over the oil reserves and pay oil firms in cash. This will certainly deter some investors, but the Mexican government is anticipating that the new terms will be attractive enough to sufficiently stimulate upstream investment. While the "Petrobras model" has been referred to as a point of reference, Mexico's energy reform will most likely be a case-specific solution that addresses Mexico's own unique priorities and constraints.
Finding Common Ground
The main issues holding Mexico's energy sector back have been known and acknowledged for years, but this does not mean that the major players will agree upon a solution. Unlike the National Action Party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party is first and foremost a corporatist political entity. Its longevity in government is due to its ability to get a wide array of actors with seemingly divergent interests to agree to a common political program. Hence, the Institutional Revolutionary Party first needed to get its own house in order. Creating a reform bill that satisfies both the interests of the oil workers' union and those of the company's management is just one issue that the government has had to manage.
Once Pena Nieto gets the Institutional Revolutionary Party on board, he must strike an agreement with one of its rival political parties. The National Action Party is in many respects the most logical partner, since it has been trying to pass comprehensive energy reform for the past 12 years and would welcome the opportunity to pass it now, even if it cannot take sole credit for its passage. That said, the National Action Party knows it is indispensible to the reform's success, so it will try to exact as many concessions as possible. The leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party will flirt with the idea of energy reform but is unlikely to support a reform effort that would increase foreign or private participation in the energy sector. It may even use the energy issue to try to foment social unrest.
Mexico now has a better opportunity to enact comprehensive energy reform than at any point in recent decades. Ultimately, the success of that effort will depend on how successful the Institutional Revolutionary Party is at bringing in a rival political party without disturbing the careful balance of interests within its own ranks.
Read more: Mexico Readies for Energy Sector Reform | Stratfor
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By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: June 22, 2013 1 Comment
MONTERREY, Mexico — Rosa González cannot shake the memory of the state investigator who was too afraid of reprisals to take a full report, the police officer who shrugged when the ransom demand came, the months of agonizing doubt and, most of all, the final words from her daughter before she disappeared.
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“I am giving you a hug because I love you so much,” her mentally disabled daughter, Brizeida, 23, told Rosa hours before she was abducted with her 21-year-old cousin after a party more than two years ago.
In thousands upon thousands of cases, the story may well have ended there, adding to the vast number of Mexicans who have disappeared. Unlike those in other Latin American countries who were victims of repressive governments, many of Mexico’s disappeared are casualties of the organized-crime and drug violence that has convulsed this nation for years.
But here in Nuevo León State, prosecutors, detectives, human rights workers and families are poring over cases together and in several instances cracking them, overcoming the thick walls of mistrust between civilians and the authorities to do the basic police work that is so often missing in this country, leaving countless crimes unsolved and unpunished.
About 26,000 missing-person reports sit in the federal government’s database, everything from drug-related abductions to runaways, and the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in December, has promised to do more to find out what happened.
Often, that would require the authorities to investigate themselves. This month, the national human rights commission said it was looking into 2,443 cases in which the police or military, corrupted by criminal gangs, appeared to be the abductors.
But public pressure from victims’ families and international groups has been mounting, repeatedly condemning the widespread failure to investigate the scourge of disappearances. After a series of protests by mothers of victims at the federal attorney general’s office in Mexico City, it announced two weeks ago that a unit was being assembled to delve into the cases.
“We are not doing magic,” the attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, told reporters at the announcement. “We are going to get as far as you can. We are going to exhaust all the options and speak with absolute truth about the possibility of results.”
Advocates for the victims remain skeptical, saying the real work needs to be done at the state and local level, where the cases are first reported and most investigators and leads reside.
Here in Nuevo León, one of the states hardest hit by violence, they have praised the prosecutor’s office for working with a local human rights group and family members to review several dozen cases, sometimes performing investigations that were never done in the first place.
Another look at Ms. González’s case last year helped lead the police to a gang leader who was arrested in January. He confessed to abducting and killing the women, and directed the authorities to the remains of the cousin; further testing of bones at the site is under way to determine if any belong to Ms. González’s daughter. “Whatever God may want,” Ms. González said through tears, “whether my daughter is alive or dead, I am resigned to whatever may come.”
Since agreeing in June 2011 to reopen dozens of cases, out of thousands here in the past several years, the authorities and their civilian counterparts have met monthly to go over leads and any progress made on them. Fifty-two cases have been resolved, with some people found dead and others alive, including 12 this year who were discovered to be in the custody of the authorities, unknown to their families. About 40 people have been arrested on abduction or homicide charges, 16 of them police officers.
“Nuevo León is one of the only states where you see prosecutors actually doing the due diligence of conducting investigations, meeting with families, going to the crime scene, taking common-sense steps to advance the investigation,” said Nik Steinberg, an investigator with Human Rights Watch, which in February published a damning report on the disappeared. “To search for the missing and find the people responsible for taking them, in Mexico where normally investigators don’t do any of that, that is progress.”
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Mexico has only a rough sense of how many people have disappeared amid a surge of violence over the past several years that has left tens of thousands dead in battles between drug gangs, organized-crime groups, the police and the military.
Sometimes people vanish en masse; a dozen young people, two of them sons of convicted drug dealers, were kidnapped from a Mexico City bar last month and have not been found.
The federal government’s huge database of missing-person reports was compiled by the previous government, and last month the new interior secretary said the list was being combed through, expressing confidence that many cases were not abductions or the result of foul play, but rather more mundane instances of people leaving home and moving to new places, including the United States.
Still, many others are cold cases, with little forensic evidence to go on, witnesses who refuse to testify and concerted efforts by criminal gangs to do away with the bodies.
Maximina Hernández has been looking for six years for her son, José Lara Hernández, a police officer from a Monterrey suburb who apparently was intercepted on his way home from work and abducted by men in a sport utility vehicle. A witness saw the whole episode but refuses to give details to investigators, out of fear or possible involvement in the crime, she said.
“I don’t want to go against anybody,” she said. “I just want to know where my son is.”
Eduardo Ayala, who helps coordinate the investigations at the Nuevo León prosecutor’s office, acknowledged the challenge of the cases but said the authorities were making headway, in part because the state had fired about two-thirds of its police forces in a mass cleanup of corruption begun in 2011. “There is much left to do, but we are moving ahead,” he said. “The police now go to every corner of the state to investigate where they did not before.”
He said the state, working with the United Nations and experts from other countries, is writing a protocol to standardize how such cases should be handled.
Much of the impetus has come from Consuelo Morales, a Catholic nun who directs a local human rights organization known as Cadhac.
“We have a checklist,” she said. “Did they take a DNA sample, did they get cellphone records, if there was a license plate number of the car that took the victim did they check that?” Ms. Morales said that in many cases, initially, the answers were often no.
Ms. González, after chasing rumors that her daughter had been spotted in several other cities, took her case to Ms. Morales last November, two years after the abduction. They met with prosecutors and tracked down the case file, filling in details left out before and cross-matching it with current investigations.
The police were building a separate case against Jaime Cabello Figueroa, 40, an organized-crime boss who operated in the town where the women were seized. When he was detained in January, the police said he confessed to or was implicated in several killings and disappearances, including the case of Ms. González’s daughter and the cousin.
Ms. González now wants to speak directly to him, so he can see her pain and offer more information on her daughter. She said she had paid a ransom, but then contact with the captors ceased. The police never followed up, making her wonder if some were involved.
“They told me if I walk into that jail and talk to him, the bad guys will have eyes on me and have me followed outside,” she said. “But if they are going to kill me, they are going to kill me. I am fighting for my daughter to be found, wherever she is.”
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Money Laundering in Mexico: The Struggle to Track Illicit Gains
Analysis
July 5, 2013 | 0521 Print Text Size
Money Laundering in Mexico: The Struggle to Track Illicit Gains
Authorities seized more than $1 million and more than 41 million pesos on June 15, 2012. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/GettyImages)
Summary
In its fight against organized crime, the Mexican government is going after what is perhaps most valuable to criminal enterprises: their money and their bank accounts. On June 17, the government confirmed a new money laundering law that will help prevent cartels from washing their proceeds so easily. The law will take effect sometime around March 2014.
The new law will not bring an end to all money laundering operations in Mexico. Money launderers no doubt will adapt to and circumvent the new regulations. They may be able to use existing tactics less affected by the legislation, or they may exploit money laundering avenues outside those of their most reliable associates in the United States. However, improving the economy is a priority for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and if he can at least make such operations more difficult for criminal organizations and the corrupt businesses with which they transact, he may be able to improve the image of his country's regulatory environment enough to attract more foreign investment to Mexico.
Analysis
Mexico's political and economic environment has long been conducive to money laundering. Rampant corruption and inefficient regulation and enforcement have prevented previous administrations from effectively redressing the issue. But the blame also lies partly in the sophistication of Mexico's money launderers, who employ a multitude of methods to make their earnings appear legitimate.
Methodology
Money laundering is broadly defined as the process by which illegally obtained earnings are made to appear legitimate. The oldest and simplest form of money laundering -- in Mexico as elsewhere -- is bulk cash smuggling. In Mexico this is done primarily in U.S. dollars. The advantages of smuggling are that it does not involve a third party or create a paper trail. Using this method, drug dealers sell their product in the United States and deposit the proceeds into U.S. banks. Otherwise, they smuggle the cash across the border and deposit it into Mexican banks.
They also use what is known as trade-based money laundering, which U.S. and Mexican intelligence agencies believe accounts for the highest percentage of laundered money in the world. In trade-based money laundering, criminals disguise money through seemingly legitimate commercial transactions. Transactions could take any number of forms: multiple shipments, phantom shipments or underreporting or overreporting shipments or payments. Frequently this technique involves the collusion of manufacturers and export/import firms, and typically it involves high-value goods that are subject to higher taxes and are in higher demand, such as electronics, luxury cars, textiles, precious metals and counterfeit goods.
Money Laundering in Mexico: The Struggle to Track Illicit Gains Read more: Money Laundering in Mexico: The Struggle to Track Illicit Gains
For example, a criminal with $1 million to wash will use a front or shell company to purchase $10,000 worth of, say, computers from an oversees computer company. The computer company, which is privy to the arrangement, will falsify an invoice to show $1 million worth of computers sold, after which it will ship the computers, take a commission and wire the remainder of the money -- in this case, $990,000 less the commission and merchandise -- to the original front company. The launderer can then sell the computers on the open or black market. Unlike conventional laundering practices, in which criminals sacrifice a portion of their earnings, trade-based money laundering enables criminals to recoup all their expenses by selling the merchandise. In some cases, they even turn a profit.
Trade-based money laundering has grown as global trade, including online commerce, has increased. It provides criminal organizations a relatively low-risk way to wash their funds. Countering this kind of activity requires a lot of coordination, funding and attention from authorities, who simply are unable to interdict in every instance of money laundering. Such challenges ensure that international trade-based money laundering will continue to grow.
Money Laundering in Mexico: The Struggle to Track Illicit Gains
Another preferred method of money laundering is the black market peso exchange. Mexican and Colombian criminal groups have long used this method because it is very difficult to detect and prosecute.
In these exchanges, Mexican criminals will smuggle drugs or other goods into the United States and sell them on the street for U.S. dollars. They then sell those dollars to a peso broker, who has connections in Colombia. The peso broker deposits the cash into the U.S. banking system in the form of structured deposits, making sure that these deposits do not exceed $10,000 -- the amount at which banks are required to file suspicious transaction reports to the U.S. government.
To avoid detection, the peso broker finds a Colombian importer that needs U.S. dollars and can purchase goods from U.S. exporters. The peso broker then uses funds from his U.S. bank account to pay the U.S. exporter on behalf of the Colombian importer. The U.S. exporter ships the goods to Colombia, where the Colombian importer sells the goods for pesos. These pesos are used to repay the peso broker. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, black market peso exchange moves an estimated $5 billion in drug proceeds from the United States to Colombia every year.
Allaying Investor Concerns
Mexico's new money laundering law is designed to counteract these and other methods. First introduced in 2010 by then-President Felipe Calderon, the law is meant to fight organized crime and corrupt business practices in part by limiting large cash transactions for expensive commodities, such as luxury cars, airplanes and real estate.
But because of the amount of money at stake and the corruption inside the Mexican government, pushback was inevitable. And given that so many small businesses in Mexico transact solely in cash, many Mexicans believed the law would hamper economic growth. Lawmakers debated and revised the law before it eventually went to Calderon for approval in October 2012.
Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 on a platform of solving Mexico's labor, education and banking problems. He hoped to divert attention from his country's troubled security situation by showcasing its economic potential. His administration has emphasized the country's economic vitality and has sought to safeguard existing and potential investors from corruption and organized crime. If administered properly, the new law may allay investors' concerns about conducting business in Mexico.
Specifically, the law is designed to reorganize public institutions within the Ministry of Finance, which ultimately will enforce the law, and develop an intelligence system to better identify and track potential and existing money launderers. It will also establish a Special Unit for Financial Analysis attached to the Attorney General's Office.
In addition to restricting the use of cash for high-end purchases, the law also will make it more difficult for criminals to transfer large amounts of cash. It will require Mexican businesses such as banks, money-remittance services, construction companies, lottery distributors, real estate firms and automobile manufacturers and dealers to better monitor suspicious transactions, often referred to as vulnerable activities.
All these organizations will be required to submit monthly reports of suspicious transactions to the Finance Ministry, but what qualifies as "suspicious" varies from business to business. For real estate transactions, the threshold is 8,025 times the minimum wage in Mexico City (roughly $40,000). For car, boat or airplane transactions, the threshold is 3,210 times the minimum wage in Mexico City (roughly $16,000). Credit issuers, financial institutions and individuals and businesses processing credit card transactions will be required to submit a report when a credit card user has spent equal to or more than 1,285 times the minimum wage in Mexico City (roughly $6,400).
According to a provision of the law, these reports must include the contact information of the individuals involved, an explanation of their business relationships, the goods or services provided in the transaction and the origin of the funds. Commonly known as the "know your customer" process, this provision refers to the due diligence that financial institutions and other regulated companies typically conduct to prevent identity theft, financial fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing. If nothing derails the law before 2014, most Mexican businesses will be required to participate in this process.
At the heart of the new law lies the need to stem the flow of laundered U.S. dollars into the Mexican economy. According to the U.S. State Department's 2012 Money Laundering Report, Mexican criminal organizations send between $19 billion and $39 billion to Mexico annually from the United States. These remittances are driven in large part by the proximity of the United States and its relatively robust economy.
The new law may indeed disrupt illegal financial operations in Mexico. But ultimately, its effectiveness will depend partly on the vigilance of Mexican businesses and financial firms, and criminals certainly will try to exploit those that do not enforce the rules strictly. In the meantime, Mexican criminal groups will continue to use reliable money laundering techniques as they search for new methods and new countries with which to partner. The U.S.-Mexican conduit will remain intact for the foreseeable future, but Mexican money launderers have already established ties with criminal enterprises in other countries -- notably in Europe and Central and South America. After March 2014, those connections could become even stronger.
Read more: Money Laundering in Mexico: The Struggle to Track Illicit Gains | Stratfor
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Ruthless Mexican drug cartel recruiting in the U.S.; Los Zetas looks to prisons, street gangs
By Jerry Seper
The Washington Times
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Los Zetas appears to have left a message for rival gang Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar, in the form of vandalism of a temple in Michoacan state, Mexico. (Associated Press)
A Mexican drug cartel known for kidnapping random civilians and beheading its rivals has expanded its operations into the U.S. The gang known as Los Zetas is recruiting U.S. prison and street gangs, and non-Mexicans, for its drug trafficking and support operations in Mexico and the U.S. An FBI intelligence bulletin notes that “multiple sources” reported the shift in Los Zetas recruiting. The cartel sought to maintain a highly disciplined and structured hierarchy by recruiting members with specialized training, such as former military and law enforcement officers.
“The FBI judges with high confidence that Los Zetas will continue to increase its recruitment efforts and establish pacts with non-military trained, nontraditional associates to maintain their drug-trafficking and support operations, which may increase violence along the Southwest border posing a threat to U.S. national security,” the bulletin says.
The expansion of Los Zetas operations across the southwestern border has long been a concern of U.S. authorities. Trained as an elite band of Mexican anti-drug commandos, Los Zetas evolved into mercenaries for the infamous Gulf Cartel, unleashing a wave of brutality in Mexico’s drug wars.
Bolstered by an influx of assassins, bandits, thieves and thugs, as well as corrupt federal, state and local police officers, the gang has evolved into a well-financed and heavily armed drug-smuggling force of its own.
Known for mounting the severed heads of its rivals on poles or hanging their dismembered bodies from bridges in cities throughout Mexico, Los Zetas easily has become the most feared criminal gang in Mexico.
“The Zetas are determined to gain the reputation of being the most sadistic, cruel and beastly organization that ever existed,” said George W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary and a specialist on Mexican drug gangs. “Many of Mexico’s existing drug cartels will kill their enemies, but not go out of their way to do it. The Zetas look forward to inflicting fear on their targets. They won’t just cut off your ear; they’ll cut off your head and think nothing of it.”
Weapons, cars, horses
The FBI intelligence bulletin quotes what it describes as “corroborated collaborative” sources “with excellent access” to show that Los Zetas has increased its effort to recruit and contract with U.S. gangs for daily drug trafficking activities in the United States.
The bulletin says the FBI had “moderate confidence” that Los Zetas likely will pose a higher national security threat to the U.S., based on “demonstrated capabilities for violence, their recent killings of U.S. citizens, increased kidnappings of U.S. citizens on both sides of the border, and their continued participation in the U.S. drug trade.”
According to the FBI, Los Zetas:
• Made contact with the Texas Mexican Mafia prison gang and tasked its members to collect debts, carry out hits and traffic drugs into and through Laredo, Texas.
• Tried to recruit U.S. gang members in Houston to join Los Zetas’ war against the Gulf Cartel on both sides of the border.
• Was buying AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles from the Tango Blast, a Houston-based street gang.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/7/ruthless-mexican-drug-cartel-recruiting-in-the-us/#ixzz2YSpx0O4P
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Mexico's Drug War: Los Zetas Lose Their Leader and Community Police Proliferate
Security Weekly
Thursday, July 18, 2013 - 04:24 Print Text Size
Stratfor
Editor's Note: This Security Weekly assesses the most significant cartel-related developments of the second quarter of 2013 and provides updated profiles of Mexico's powerful criminal cartels, as well as a forecast for the rest of this year. It's the executive summary of a more detailed report available to clients of our Mexico Security Monitor service.
By Tristan Reed
Mexico Security Analyst
Mexican authorities arrested Los Zetas' top leader, Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, roughly 27 kilometers (17 miles) southwest of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, on July 15. Trevino's is the most significant capture in Mexico's drug war in recent years. The fate of Los Zetas and the response of Los Zetas' rivals has accordingly become uncertain moving into the third quarter. Indicators will emerge during the third quarter providing clarity on what to expect for security and cartel operations throughout Mexico.
Beyond the Trevino arrest, the second quarter also saw continued expansion of community-organized militias, commonly referred to as self-defense groups or community police, a trend we identified in the 2013 first quarter update. In Michoacan state, militia activity was so pronounced that Mexico City deployed the military and federal police to reassert government authority. The proliferation of these groups increasingly affects not just the Mexican government's strategy for combatting crime and violence, but also the strategies of Mexico's transnational criminal organizations.
Los Zetas
It is too early to gauge the extent to which Trevino's arrest will impact Los Zetas' operations. Whether a Los Zetas member is capable of filling the leadership vacuum will determine the impact. In the meantime, each of Los Zetas' rivals will likely revise their current strategies in fighting Los Zetas depending on their respective geographic reach and perceptions of Los Zetas' moment of weakness in the wake of the loss of their leader.
One reason behind Los Zetas' success has been the group's ability to replace its leadership, even its most senior leaders, relatively easily. Trevino himself succeeded former leader Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano sometime during 2012 -- albeit prior to Lazcano's death during a military operation in October 2012 -- without any noticeable internal strife, a rare occurrence among Mexican criminal groups.
This ability stems from founders' military pedigree. Because ex-military personnel formed Los Zetas, members tend to move up in the group's hierarchy based on merit rather than familial connections. Unlike his predecessor, Trevino did not have a military background, so it is possible that the group's culture has changed somewhat, dulling its facility for smooth leadership transitions.
It is unclear who will try to keep the group together. Trevino's brother, Omar "Z-42" Trevino, will likely continue to maintain his role in criminal operations. His position was significantly boosted by his brother's ascent to the top spot, but it remains to be seen whether he has the capability or respect within the organization to replace his brother.
Violence will likely follow Trevino's capture in some parts of Mexico. The location and the scale of that violence depends on how resilient Los Zetas and its component cells are as rivals move to capitalize on what they see as a moment weakness.
Another potential impact of the arrest of Trevino will fall on Los Zetas' national strategy. The group has boasted cohesive network spanning more than half of Mexico, from which it has planned assaults on the territories of rivals such as the Sinaloa Federation. This was on display in Sinaloa state via a strategy that depended on coordination with the remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization, which maintain a substantial presence in Sinaloa, and on Los Zetas' ability to stage gunmen and operations outside Sinaloa state. If Los Zetas cannot maintain the same level of cohesion as a whole, such strategies may dissolve.
In the third quarter, several indicators will reveal the impact Trevino's has on Mexican security and on Los Zetas' continued viability. These include shifts in violence within Zetas territories such as Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, Coahuila, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Tabasco states. Another indicator likely to emerge during the third quarter will be information operations campaigns by Los Zetas' rivals. While cartel propaganda, most commonly seen in narcomantas, is often disinformation, the messages' topics often demonstrate the priorities of the cartel behind the narcomanta.
'Community Police'
Vigilantism and non-government militias have long been seen throughout Mexico. The phenomenon of community police goes back at least to 1995, by which time an institutionalized collective of militias, the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities, had a well established presence in parts of Guerrero state. Self-defense groups began to expand into communities throughout Guerrero and Michoacan states in early 2013, a year that has seen the role of community police in Mexico's domestic security issues expand rapidly.
In Michoacan, the militias appear to form within the confines of distinct communities. The groups remain largely disconnected, though they share the goal of confronting organized crime organizations and, at times, of countering government interests. In Guerrero, the presence of self-defense groups is much greater given their longer history there and given that state laws grant special recognition to them, particularly to those in indigenous communities.
Two separate and sometimes conflicting bodies coordinate self-defense group operations in Guerrero state: the Union of People and Organizations of Guerrero state and the Regional Coordinator of Community Authority. These groups, which call themselves community police, follow their own procedures for administering justice in their areas of operations and engage in talks with the state government. Regardless of the institutional system, both groups have been actively expanding their reach in Guerrero state through promoting the establishment of community police in new locales. This expansion has brought intermittent moments of tension with the state and federal governments due to the demonstrations and roadblocks that have accompanied it, as well as because of the increasing interactions between community police and organized crime during the second quarter of 2013.
As the Regional Coordinator of Community Authority and the Union of People and Organizations of Guerrero state community police have historically operated with limited funding, their members have largely served as volunteers armed primarily with hunting rifles and shotguns.
By contrast, the recently formed self-defense groups in Michoacan reportedly are equipped with assault rifles, tactical gear and sport utility vehicles. Self-defense groups in Michoacan also have targeted organized criminal groups -- specifically the Knights Templar, which apparently has inflicted the most harm on the people of Michoacan -- much more actively. Groups in the Buenavista Tomatlan, Tepalcatepec and Coalcoman municipalities of Michoacan state were founded during the first and second quarters of 2013 to confront the Knights Templar, which have dominated regional criminal activity since its split from La Familia Michoacana in 2010. In response, the Knights Templar disseminated propaganda denouncing Michoacan's self-defense groups and has violently attacked them. This forced the Mexican government to deploy federal security forces, including Federal Police and the military, in May to quell the rising violence and reassert government authority in the affected communities. The troops are currently maintaining an increased operational tempo in Michoacan state and likely will continue to do so through the next quarter.
Community police groups reflect the social consequences of prolonged violence and Mexico City's inability to enforce the rule of law in rural regions that historically are difficult to govern. In most cases, residents in communities with active self-defense groups rely primarily on those groups to maintain public order, undermining Mexican government authority. This has lead to tensions between the communities and government authorities. Sometimes, these tensions spark demonstrations and even low-level violence, occasionally blocking important transportation routes along southwest coastal highways and interior roads throughout Michoacan and Guerrero states. Such blockades can last several days, with the self-defense groups ultimately winding up in negotiations with federal troops and multiple levels of government.
The expansion of self-defense groups also has led to increased conflict between them and Mexican cartels, particularly the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar. Michoacan's self-defense groups emerged amid a turf war between these two cartels. Notably, the self-defense groups have formed along roads connecting Jalisco and Michoacan. These are the same roads through which the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Knights Templar stage incursions into one another's territories. Thus the self-defense groups have not only directly impacted Knights Templar's operations but also inadvertently aided the efforts of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in its incursions into Michoacan state.
Self-defense groups would not be in a position to confront organized criminal groups without some level of financial and other material support. While self-defense groups in Guerrero have in the past operated on a modest budget with the help of the community and occasional support from the government, the possibility remains that they have new benefactors -- perhaps including organized criminal groups. In June, business leaders in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state, met with Union of People and Organizations of Guerrero state representatives in an attempt to strike a deal to jointly combat extortion, an increasing problem as violence worsens. Such agreements do not yet appear to include financial support, something that could elevate the tactical capabilities -- and further the geographic expansion -- of the Union of People and Organizations of Guerrero.
Despite a stated intent to combat organized crime, self-defense groups could collude with organized criminal groups. Mexican military officers have made multiple accusations that self-defense groups in Michoacan state and self-defense groups emerging in July in the Costa Grande region of Guerrero state (unaffiliated with either the Regional Coordinator of Community Authority or the Union of People and Organizations of Guerrero state) are linked to organized crime. Likewise, the Knights Templar has actively spread propaganda through narcomantas and online media alleging that their principal rival, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, is behind the expansion of self-defense groups. There have been no further reports of links between self-defense groups and organized crime, and Mexican authorities apparently have not followed up on such accusations.
As exemplified by the May deployment of federal troops to Michoacan, self-defense groups have added additional complexity to Mexico's security environment, forcing the federal government to adjust its strategy. The Mexican government wishes to contain the expansion of self-defense groups, since they pose a threat to governmental authority. Thus far, the current government strategy has been to substantially increase military and law enforcement presence in exchange for self-defense groups' limiting their activity. This strategy will only yield temporary results, however, until the violence carried out by organized crime groups can be stamped out.
Specifically in Michoacan and Guerrero states, self-defense groups will likely continue to expand into some rural communities during the third quarter. As a result of continued expansion, confrontations between self-defense groups and organized crime could increase. Should violence with organized crime continue to escalate or tension between self-defense groups and the Mexican government rise as result of the groups' continued expansion, additional federal troop deployments to either Michoacan or Guerrero states could occur during the third quarter.
In addition to consequences resulting from their expansion, self-defense groups will continue to impact the conflict between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar in Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero states. Since the fourth quarter of 2012, this conflict has become more active, with the groups mounting continued incursions into their rivals' strongholds in Jalisco and Michoacan states and violence occurring in Guerrero state. To more effectively combat the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the Knights Templar aligned with a Gulf Cartel faction and Los Coroneles (a organized crime group derived from now-deceased Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villareal's network) to form Los Aliados. Thus far, Los Aliados have had little impact on the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion's hold over Jalisco. Due in part to the contest between self-defense groups and the Knights Templar in Michoacan state, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has made inroads into Michoacan state, particularly in towns along highways linking Michoacan and Jalisco. The conflict between the two criminal organizations has increased violence, particularly in Jalisco and Michoacan states but also in Guerrero state.
Read more: Mexico's Drug War: Los Zetas Lose Their Leader and Community Police Proliferate | Stratfor
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Mexican Tied to Killing of D.E.A. Agent Is Freed
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and KARLA ZABLUDOVSKY
Published: August 9, 2013
MEXICO CITY — A drug kingpin convicted of masterminding the murder of an American drug agent in 1985 — a killing that helped accelerate the modern drug war and that remains an emotional touchstone for law enforcement agents — was unexpectedly released from prison on Friday after his conviction was overturned.
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Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Rafael Caro Quintero, shown in 2005, had served 28 years in prison.
The decision caught the American authorities by surprise. A Mexican federal judge freed the drug lord, Rafael Caro Quintero, after ruling that he had been improperly tried in federal court rather than state court for the murder of Enrique Camarena, known as Kiki, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was abducted, tortured and killed.
Mr. Caro Quintero, a pioneer in mass producing and distributing marijuana and transporting South American cocaine, had 12 years left on his 40-year sentence. He was notified of his release at 2 a.m. Friday and promptly disappeared sometime after.
It was among the head-scratching developments in a case that could inject new tension between American and Mexican authorities, who are still working out how to cooperate under a new Mexican president wary of deep American involvement in Mexican drug cases.
The Drug Enforcement Administration “is deeply troubled” and “will vigorously continue its efforts to ensure Caro-Quintero faces charges in the United States for the crimes he committed,” the agency said in a statement, though it was unclear if an extradition request was pending.
The Justice Department filed conspiracy and racketeering charges against Mr. Caro Quintero in May 1987 related to the killing, and “in the years since, the Department of Justice has continued to make clear to Mexican authorities the continued interest of the United States in securing Caro Quintero’s extradition so that he might face justice in the United States,” it said in a statement.
Current and former drug agents recall the death of Mr. Camarena, which galvanized antidrug campaigns, as if it had occurred yesterday. The D.E.A. office in San Diego is named after Mr. Camarena, as is a school there and a conference room in the American Embassy in Mexico City. The story was the subject of a popular 1990 television mini-series, “Drug Wars: The Camarena Story,” starring Benicio Del Toro. Red Ribbon Week, a popular drug prevention campaign, originated as a commemoration of him.
“At no time should Rafael Caro Quintero see the light of day as a free man,” said Joel Gutensohn, a former D.E.A. agent and president of the Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents. “We find it astounding that after 28 years his guilt should still be at issue. The release of this violent butcher is but another example of how good-faith efforts by the U.S. to work with the Mexican government can be frustrated by those powerful dark forces that work in the shadows of the Mexican ‘justice’ system.”
Although Mr. Caro Quintero had other charges pending, the judge ruled that his 28 years in prison would count toward any sentence for those charges.
The release followed a series of other such cases, as Mexican courts strive to enforce due process more strictly in a country where forced confessions, torture and prolonged detention on trumped-up charges are common.
But Mr. Camarena’s case has long stood out on both sides of the border as a rare, deliberate murder of an American drug agent on foreign soil that shifted the ground in the drug war and for a time plunged United States-Mexico relations to a low. In the aftermath, Mexico and the United States agreed to work more closely on drug enforcement, ultimately increasing cooperation to unprecedented levels under the previous Mexican president.
After the murder, the United States was determined to find the killers, accusing Mexican officials of botching the case and going as far as to pay bounty hunters in Mexico to abduct a doctor believed to have been involved in Mr. Camarena’s torture. He was later absolved of the crime and returned to Mexico, though several others associated with the case were convicted in the United States on drug and other charges.
Mr. Caro Quintero, head of a drug-trafficking empire based in Jalisco State, where Mr. Camarena worked and had uncovered a large marijuana plantation, was believed to have ordered the killing. He fled to Costa Rica but was detained there, returned to Mexico in 1985, and convicted and sentenced in 1989.
The governor of Jalisco State, Aristóteles Sandoval, said Friday that Mr. Caro Quintero had the right to resume his life there, like any citizen.
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Summary
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is expected to submit his party's landmark proposal for energy reform to Mexico's Congress in the coming week, culminating nearly a year of speculation and intrigue. Despite the controversy over the reforms, which proved troublesome for many previous administrations, Pena Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party will enact measures capable of revolutionizing Mexico's energy sector. Unlike previous attempts, this energy reform package has the support of Mexico's largest opposition group, the National Action Party. The second-largest opposition group, the Democratic Revolutionary Party, is too weak to seriously hinder the bill's passage. While lawmakers will debate the finer points of the reforms, as well as any subsequent pieces of legislation, Mexico will soon see the most transformative adjustment to its energy sector in more than half a century -- even as it sees some public unrest in response to the bill.
Analysis
In December 2012, Mexico's three major parties agreed in the Pact for Mexico to reform the energy sector. But the promise was intentionally vague, leaving ample space for tri-partisan cooperation. Now, eight months later, Mexico's ruling party is poised to announce its proposal for reforming the country's struggling energy sector.
On one end of the spectrum, the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party supports the most limited energy reform, focusing solely on improving Petroleos Mexicanos, commonly known as Pemex, from within. It does not advocate changing the constitution's Article 27, which prohibits concessions in the energy sector. This kind of reform would make the company more profitable but would not address the country's most pressing issue: the need to expand hydrocarbon exploration and production from the comparatively easy and inexpensive Bay of Campeche into the more difficult, more capital-intensive deep-water plays in the Gulf of Mexico and in the shale deposits in the northeastern basins.
Mexico's Main Oil and Natural Gas Regions
On the other end of the spectrum, the right-of-center National Action Party previously has supported more comprehensive proposals, including the idea of partially privatizing Pemex. Given the nationalist fervor surrounding Mexico's oil -- a fervor whose roots can be found in the post-Mexican Revolution period -- this proposal is highly controversial and stands little chance of acceptance. While there is a broad consensus on the need to allow more private partnerships and promote competition, a consensus has yet to be reached on privatizing Pemex or on allowing private firms to own the oil itself.
In the middle of these two extremes lies the proposal the ruling party is likely to put forth. The Institutional Revolutionary Party has suggested numerous times that it is interested in a transformative, structural reform, but one that stops short of privatizing Pemex. This is widely understood to mean improving Pemex operationally, introducing more attractive contracting models and perhaps even breaking Pemex's and the Federal Electricity Commission's monopolies. How the ruling party will go about doing this is still unknown. In theory it could implement tax reform, pension reform or subsidy reform. Otherwise it could require Pemex to have a certain stake in any offshore project, or it could give Pemex certain lucrative areas for exploration. But essentially, this middle-ground proposal allows the country to address declining hydrocarbon production without ceding control over its most lucrative natural resource and associated state-owned enterprise.
Obstacles to Reform
Pushing through the desired reforms likely will require a constitutional amendment -- many reforms passed under the current administration have. But to amend the constitution, the Institutional Revolutionary Party would have to partner with another party to secure the two-thirds majority in the federal legislature and a simple majority of all state legislatures. The National Action Party is the most logical choice because it has been trying for 12 years to reform the energy sector. Its proposal is transformative, while the Democratic Revolutionary Party's ideas are essentially more of the same.
In late July, the National Action Party proposed a reform that would change articles 25, 27 and 28 of the constitution. In Article 25, the party introduces environmentally friendly qualifiers, likely to curry favor with Mexico's Green Party and satisfy the Pact for Mexico promise to make Pemex a central force in the fight against climate change. In Article 27, it proposes scrapping the prohibition of concessions, thereby creating the opportunity for increased foreign investment. In Article 28, it proposes breaking the monopolies in the energy and electricity sectors, thus allowing private firms to compete all along the production chain: exploration and production, distribution, refining and retail. This would relieve some of the burden on Pemex to operate certain sections of the supply chain at a loss and enable the firm to focus on its more profitable activities in the upstream sections.
The proposal also calls for the creation of a Mexican Petroleum Fund to manage petroleum proceeds. Moreover, it would allow the National Hydrocarbon Commission and the Energy Regulatory Commission to grant concessions to the private sector in the upstream and the downstream/electricity sectors, respectively. The National Action Party also proposes keeping Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission as state-owned companies but removing them from the federal budget and granting them operational autonomy, as well as a 10-year plan to reduce the federal government's dependence on Pemex for tax revenues. This ensures a soft landing and gives the government time to develop other sources of fiscal revenue.
None of this directly contradicts the broad outline of what the ruling party is expected to propose. It addresses the need to make Pemex more efficient, and it grants the government the ability to form new contracting models -- effectively breaking Pemex's and the Federal Electricity Commission's monopolies. There is no privatization of Pemex, and there is nothing to suggest that the oil will cease being the property of the Mexican nation. Details are still scarce, but recent reports suggest that the government will find a way to give foreign firms the juridical certainty and the profit margins needed to incentivize risky, capital-intensive endeavors without transferring ownership of the resource itself. So while the Institutional Revolutionary Party's proposal will differ from the National Action Party's, those differences likely will be surmountable.
Growing Support for Pena Nieto's Plan
Pena Nieto has used the past eight months to consolidate support for the reform from within his party. In the last week of July, the Mexican government came to a wage increase agreement with the powerful oil workers union and had talks with some 18 Institutional Revolutionary Party governors whose support will be critical for passage of the constitutional reform. Unlike the National Action Party before it, the Institutional Revolutionary Party has been bringing all of the major interest groups on board before releasing the proposal, suggesting that once it is released it will be debated and approved relatively quickly, possibly by year's end. Recent delays in releasing the proposal suggest the government is addressing disagreements pre-emptively rather than waiting until later on to address internal concerns.
With few major disagreements between the National Action Party and the ruling party on the proposal, and with the major pillars of the ruling party apparently in favor of the reforms, Pena Nieto's efforts now are more of a public relations campaign than anything else. The opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party is trying to characterize the reform as a brazen and undemocratic privatization. By contrast, the Institutional Revolutionary Party has vociferously denied that the reforms will privatize Pemex and change the ownership status of the country's oil reserves.
Privatization is a highly ambiguous term in the context of Mexico's energy sector reforms. The Democratic Revolutionary Party equates privatization to allowing foreign and private firms to gain concessions, and the other two major parties equate privatization to allowing private investment in Pemex. Ultimately, the task for the Mexican government is to forge a proposal that significantly addresses problems facing the energy sector while convincingly arguing that the reform is not tantamount to privatization.
The Democratic Revolutionary Party has announced that it will hold a non-binding national referendum in half of Mexico's states on Aug. 25 and in the other half on Sept. 1. (The referendum coincides with the start of Congress's regular session.) The party also has planned a national demonstration on Sept. 8. These measures portend a fractious September, though the Democratic Revolutionary Party's ability to impede the passage of the bill is doubtful. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former presidential candidate for the party, managed to bring some 30,000 people out to protest an energy reform in 2008, but the Democratic Revolutionary Party's popularity has since waned, as has the popularity of Lopez Obrador, who has left his former party.
The Democratic Revolutionary Party can protest the bill but only at the risk of appearing obstructionist. In the meantime, the Institutional Revolutionary Party and National Action Party will go on to pass one of Mexico's most transformative reforms in decades.
Read more: Mexico: On the Brink of Major Energy Reform | Stratfor
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By
JUAN MONTES
MEXICO CITY—At a time when politicians in Washington struggle to agree on anything, their Mexican counterparts—who spent the past dozen years locked in bruising battles—sit down almost daily to talk about thorny issues.
Sometimes they tip a glass. Sometimes they share a pizza. And, increasingly, they reach agreements.
In the past eight months, Mexico's Congress has passed a constitutional change to curb the powerful public teachers union; a legal reform to strip public officials of immunity from criminal prosecution; and a telecommunications bill that sharply limits the quasi-monopolistic powers of the country's biggest telephone company, controlled by billionaire Carlos Slim.
In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, top officials from Mexico’s three major political parties discussed the impact of a wide-reaching agreement that has paved the way for key reforms.
This week, President Enrique Peña Nieto delivered a proposal to crack open Mexico's historically closed state-owned energy market to private companies. All three parties also began discussing the creation of a national election agency that oversees all federal, state and local elections—a key demand of the opposition.
The steady stream of deal-making, after years of partisan gridlock, is causing ordinary Mexicans to take notice and reviving international confidence in the country's economy even as interest in other big emerging markets flags. During the past 12 months, Mexico's stock index rose 5% and the peso strengthened 3.5% against the dollar, even while Brazil's leading stock market index fell 13% and its currency sank 14%.
Political leaders met last November to negotiate a pact to pave the way for major reforms. Attendees included representatives of Enrique Peña Nieto and top officials from the PAN and PRD parties.
In the coming months, Mr. Peña Nieto and the three parties plan to tackle a tax reform to boost revenues and reduce heavy reliance on income from oil exports, and end the constitution's ban on lawmakers serving consecutive terms. "I spend around 60% of my time with members of the opposition, discussing bills," says Aurelio Nuño, chief of staff to Mr. Peña Nieto. "We've all gotten to know each other very well. You come to see each other as people, not just politicians."
As he talks, the phone rings. It is the president, asking how the day's meetings with the opposition went. "He calls after every meeting," Mr. Nuño says.
Behind the change is a wide-ranging political agreement called the Pacto por México, or Pact for Mexico. Unveiled with little fanfare the day after Mr. Peña Nieto took office in December, the deal was signed by the all three major political parties, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the conservative National Action Party (PAN).
The pact outlines 95 goals ranging from the tax overhaul to barring junk food in schools. The hope is to get all done before the politics of midterm elections in 2015 make deal-making more difficult.
"What we're seeing so far is a kind of legislative coalition, something remarkable in Mexico," said political analyst José Antonio Crespo at Mexico City's CIDE graduate school and research institute.
Many investors view the future of Mexico's economy as linked to the success of the pact. "Investors care a lot about the pact. You can't imagine how many questions I get about it," said Gray Newman, chief economist for Latin America at Morgan Stanley.
Obstructionist politics were the norm here over a bitter 15-year stretch beginning in 1997, when the country became a full democracy and the PRI, which had governed since 1929, lost control of Congress for the first time. Few major initiatives passed both houses, which were divided between the three big political parties, none holding a majority.
The bickering got so bad that the losing candidate in the 2006 presidential election, nationalist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, refused to acknowledge then President Felipe Calderón as president. Mr. López Obrador led months of street protests and declared himself the "legitimate president."
Bickering is bound to resurface. The pact's most crucial test comes as the parties sit down to discuss opening the oil industry, whose protected status has long been a point of national pride.
The chances of getting the initiative approved appear high. The opposition PAN party says it will back the proposal, giving the ruling PRI the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.
The wild card is the leftist PRD. The party will almost certainly vote against the reform—even possibly take to the streets to protest it, party leaders say. But they say they won't blow up the pact if they don't get their way on a single issue.
"We're not going to abandon the negotiating table," said Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a high-ranking PRD official who helps represent the party in pact negotiations. "We can protest in the streets against the energy reform, and at the same time talk with the government over tax reform."
While the political stalemate in Washington has become most pronounced in recent years, Mexico's politics were stuck long enough for the country to drift dangerously. Indeed, a big reason why the pact happened is that all three parties grew alarmed about how weak the Mexican state had grown.
For centuries, this land was ruled with an iron fist—from Aztec emperors to Spanish colonial viceroys to a succession of powerful presidents. That ended with the rise of democracy in the 1990s. The president was forced to cede power to institutions like Congress and the courts that had atrophied under centralized rule.
The result: a power vacuum filled by other forces, including drug gangs that killed an estimated 70,000 people in the past seven years and seized control of parts of the country. Some state governors, left unchecked, ruled their states like feudal lords, building up vast fortunes. Union leaders became enormously powerful.
Big business operated unfettered. Government attempts to regulate the country's monopolies and introduce competition in sectors from telecommunications to beer went nowhere.
"While politicians quarreled during these last 15 years, the space that the state's democratic authority left empty was occupied by private interest groups, be they monopolist firms, drug traffickers or the unions," said Jesús Zambrano, the president of the PRD.
While the parties have very different ideologies, they found common ground. All three parties, for instance, found that they shared a frustration that Mr. Slim's telephone companies charged ordinary Mexicans far higher rates than in comparable countries, and got around regulation by tying up rulings in the country's Byzantine courts. So the political parties agreed to create a new telecom regulator with powers to break up monopolies and whose decisions cannot be suspended in court until the appeals process ends.
Another factor behind the deal-making was the departure from the PRD of Mr. López Obrador, who left to form his own party last September. That gave the party a unique chance to rebrand itself as a moderate, open-minded left-wing group.
PRD moderates broached the idea for the pact, inspired by a landmark deal in Spain in 1977 that helped transform the country after the decadeslong Franco dictatorship.
It all began a year ago, around a month after the July presidential election, when PRD president Mr. Zambrano and his right-hand man, Jesús Ortega, held a secret meeting at the Mexico City house of José Murat, a senior PRI politician with friends across party lines. At the meeting was Mr. Peña Nieto's top adviser, Luis Videgaray, the current finance minister. He took the idea of a broad-ranging pact to the president-elect.
"Why not? What do we lose?" Mr. Peña Nieto responded, according to two people who talked to him on those days. For the president, the pact could broaden his popularity beyond his 38% vote share and get Mexico's economy moving again.
At the same time, the president-elect's team began holding private meetings with leaders of the PAN, which governed Mexico from 2000 to 2012.
"We didn't want revenge," said Gustavo Madero, the president of the PAN. When in power, the PAN felt constantly thwarted by the PRI.
By mid-September, a group of nine people from all three parties secretly started working on a draft at the house of Mr. Murat, the PRI politician.
The group laid some early ground rules. "First, we agreed negotiations must always remain private. Second, nothing is agreed until all is agreed. And third, negotiations shouldn't be affected by current events," said Santiago Creel, a former PAN interior minister who participated in the talks.
The group of nine politicians would agree on broad principles, and then a group of only three members—one from each side—would break off to hammer out the specific language of the pact.
An atmosphere of mistrust at the outset gave way to familiarity and even friendship. Some nights ended with leaders sharing improvised dinners of tacos or pizza.
"The key was to give the benefit of doubt to the adversary," said Mr. Ortega. "Not to be dogmatic and avoid as much as possible an ideological approach."
By late November, a 34-page draft was nearly ready. On a feverish last night of negotiations following the president's inauguration on Dec. 1, parties finally agreed on the wording of the proposed energy reform. At 2 a.m., Mr. Murat broke open a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and poured everyone a glass. They raised their glasses and offered each other a toast: "To Mexico."
Write to Juan Montes at juan.montes@dowjones.com
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Re: Evil in Connecticut and elsewhere
« Reply #89 on: September 26, 2013, 08:15:06 PM »
Quote from: G M on February 11, 2013, 02:41:20 PM
In Mexico, Dorner would be a typical officer, yes?
Despite millions in U.S. aid, police corruption plagues Mexico
Mexico’s plague of police corruption
Despite millions in U.S. aid, forces continue to be outgunned, overwhelmed — and often purchased outright — by gangsters
DUDLEY ALTHAUS
, HOUSTON CHRONICLE | October 18, 2010
Federal police officers stand in formation in June while drug-dealing suspects are presented to the media in Mexico City. The officers' faces are covered to protect their identities. Photo: Eduardo Verdugo, Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — City cops killing their own mayors; state jailers helping inmates escape; federal agents mutinying against corrupt commanders; outgunned officers cut down in ambushes or assassinated because they work for gangster rivals.
Always precariously frayed, Mexico's thin blue line seems ready to snap.
Six prison guards were killed Wednesday as they left their night shift in Chihuahua City, 200 miles south of El Paso. On Tuesday, the head of a police commander supposedly investigating the death of an American on the Texas border was packed into a suitcase and sent to a local army base.
Mexicans justifiably have long considered their police suspect. But today many of those wearing the badge are even more brazenly bad: either unwilling or unable to squelch the lawless terror that's claimed nearly 30,000 lives in less than four years.
State and local forces, which employ 90 percent of Mexico's 430,000 officers, find themselves outgunned, overwhelmed and often purchased outright by gangsters.
Despite some dramatic improvements — aided by U.S. dollars and training under the $1.6 billion Merida Initiative — Mexico's 32,000 federal police remain spread thin and hobbled by graft. And many in Mexico consider the American investment little help so far against the bloody tide wrought by drug gangs.
Grasping for a cure, President Felipe Calderon and other officials are pushing to unify Mexico's nearly 2,000 municipal police under 32 state agencies that they insist can better withstand the criminals' volleys of bullets and cash.
"The tentacles of organized crime have touched everyone," said Ignacio Manjarrez, who oversees public security issues for a powerful business association in Chihuahua, the state bordering West Texas that has become Mexico's most violent. "There are some who are loyal to their uniform and others who will take money from anyone and everyone.
"We let it into our society. Now we are paying the consequences."
Many actions, few results
Across Mexico, local, state and federal police forces have been purged, then purged again. Veteran officers and recruits alike undergo polygraphs, drug tests and background checks. A national database has been set up to ensure that those flushed from one force don't resurface in another.
Still the plague persists.
One of the surest signals that rivals are going to war over a community or smuggling routes are the dumped corpses of cops who start turning up dead. Many, if not most, of the officers are targeted because they work for one gang or the other.
Scores of federal officers rebelled this summer, accusing their commanders of extortion in Ciudad Juarez, the murderous border city that Calderon pledged to pacify. As a result, Mexican officials fired a tenth of the federal police force.
The warden and some guards at a Durango state prison were arrested in July after a policeman confessed in a taped gangland interrogation that they aided an imprisoned crime boss's nightly release so he could kill his enemies.
Another prison warden and scores of guards were detained in August following the breakout of 85 gangsters in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande near McAllen.
On Friday, the governor of Tamaulipas state, which borders South Texas, ordered the purging of the police force in the important port city of Tampico. Gov. Eugenio Hernandez said he took the action following officers' apparent participation in this week's brief abduction of five university students in the city.
$100 million a month
Mexico's top federal policeman, Genaro Garcia Luna, has estimated gangsters pass out some $100 million each month to local and state cops on the take.
"There really is no internal capacity or appetite to try to get their arms around corruption," said a former U.S. official with intimate knowledge of Mexico's security forces. "Anyone who sticks their head up, wanting to make a change, is eliminated."
Edelmiro Cavazos, mayor of Santiago, a picturesque Monterrey suburb, had vowed after taking office to clean up its police force, which many believe is controlled by the gangster band known as the Zetas.
He barely got the chance to try.
Killers came for him in August, arriving at his home on five trucks, a surveillance tape showing their headlights slicing the night like knives as his own police bodyguard waved them in.
A workman found Cavazos' blindfolded and bound body a few days later, tortured, shot three times and dumped like rubbish along a highway outside Santiago.
The bodyguard and six other officers from Santiago's police force are among those accused in the killing.
"They considered him an obstacle," the Nuevo Leon state attorney general said.
Following Cavazos' slaying and that of 600 others in the Monterrey area this year, Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina proposed bringing municipal police forces under unified state command.
"We have to act as a common front," Medina told reporters. "If we are divided in isolated forces and we have a united organized crime against us and society, we aren't going to be able to articulate the forceful response we need."
New command structure
The tiny western state of Aguascalientes created a unified police command this week. And Calderon won support for the plan Tuesday from 10 newly elected governors.
"Having institutions that enjoy the full confidence of the public can't be put off," Calderon told the new governors. "The single police command is a crucial element in achieving the peace and tranquility that Mexicans deserve."
Although small training programs for state and local forces exist, American dollars by way of the $1.6 billion Merida Initiative until now have been aimed mostly at Mexico's federal police.
Intelligence gathering and sharing has been enhanced and computer systems upgraded. U.S. and other foreign experts have given extensive training to a third of the federal force, officials say, with another 10,000 Mexican officers attending workshops.
"Beyond the money, the Merida plan put information and technology at the disposal of the Mexican government," said Manlio Fabio Beltrones, president of Mexico's senate, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party is widely favored to reclaim the presidency in 2012.
Its critics argue that the U.S. aid has failed to curtail the violence, leaving communities and local police forces at the mercy of gangsters.
Javier Aguayo y Camargo, a retired army general who was replaced as Chihuahua City's police chief this month, said no one has "figured out how to make the reforms work."
"The resources of Merida remain at the federal level," Aguayo y Carmargo said. "We haven't felt any of it. They need to support the states and municipalities."
Gangs reverse gains
Chihuahua City, capital of the state bordering West Texas, underscores just how quickly the drug wars have overpowered even the best attempts to strengthen local police.
Under a succession of mayors since the late 1990s, the city's police steadily improved. Hiring standards were raised, record keeping improved, arrest and booking processes overhauled. A citizen's oversight committee was set up with significant influence within the department.
Three years ago, the 1,100-officer force became the first in Mexico to be accredited by CALEA, a U.S.-based law enforcement association that rigorously evaluates police administrative standards. Only a handful of other Mexican cities have since won accreditation.
Then Mexico's gangland wars arrived in 2008.
The city of 800,000 has been racked this year by an average of four killings daily, according to a recent study by El Heraldo, the leading local newspaper, about 30 times more than a few years ago. It now ranks as Mexico's third most murderous city, behind Ciudad Juarez and Culiacan, capital of the gangster-infested state of Sinaloa, federal officials say.
Scores of city police officers have been fired for suspected corruption. More than two dozen others have been killed, either gunned down in street battles or assassinated by gangsters.
"If with all this equipment and training they are overwhelmed by the criminals, what happens in other places?" said Manjarrez, the businessman who monitors public security matters in Chihuahua. "As prepared as we were, we never saw this tsunami coming."
dudley.althaus@chron.com
Dude... It would be wonderful if just once, someone that has actually worked here, for the Mexican government, wrote one of these things. Is there corruption? In a word, yes, but then how many go to work, doing the right thing, knowing that their own partners may kidnap, torture, and kill them and their families. Want to talk about Dorner, you go right ahead, but keep it in your country because the last I checked, none of the law enforcement up there has to go to work daily with what I just listed above. We have the best and worst of both. Try a little respect.
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By Tristan Reed
Mexico Security Analyst
Editor's Note: This Security Weekly assesses the most significant cartel-related developments of the third quarter of 2013 and provides updated profiles of Mexico's powerful criminal cartels, as well as a forecast for the rest of this year. It is the executive summary of a more detailed report available to clients of our Mexico Security Monitor service.
Despite the high-profile arrests of Los Zetas' top leader, Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, on July 15 and Gulf cartel leader Mario "El Pelon" Ramirez Trevino on Aug. 17, the third quarter much like the second quarter experienced a continuation of existing trends in organized crime. Tit-for-tat cartel conflicts continued, but Mexico's various organized criminal groups largely controlled the same territory they did at the beginning of the quarter. The third quarter did see intermittent periods of escalated violence by rival groups seeking territory. These included the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion's conflict with the Knights Templar in Michoacan, Guerrero, Guanajuato and Jalisco states and the Velazquez faction of the Gulf cartel's conflict with Los Zetas in northern and central Mexico.
While no criminal organization in Mexico suffered any substantial losses in capabilities or territory in the third quarter, the fourth quarter will likely see variations in this trend, particularly as cartels adjust to the arrest of Mario Ramirez Trevino. The Velazquez faction will become the widest-operating branch of the Gulf cartel and the most active challenger to Los Zetas for control of the northeast. As Stratfor noted during our first quarterly update, the Velazquez faction was formerly led by the now-captured Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero, a former regional boss for Los Zetas, which split from Los Zetas around March 2012 and later returned to operating under the Gulf cartel name. The Velazquez faction continues to operate unhindered by the arrest of Ivan Velazquez on Sept. 26, 2012.
There are a variety of reasons for the relatively stable cartel dynamics in Mexico during the third quarter. For one, it has been less than three months since Miguel Trevino was detained by the Mexican navy and less than two since Mario Ramirez's detention. Miguel Trevino's brother, Omar Trevino, appears to have assumed leadership over Los Zetas, and -- notably -- there has been no significant challenge to his new role. Mario Ramirez's arrest will certainly alter the dynamic within the umbrella of the Gulf cartel, particularly as it relates to Gulf allies such as the Knights Templar and the Sinaloa Federation, and Gulf rivals, such as Los Zetas. Any changes related to dynamics within the Gulf cartel have yet to be reflected in open source reporting.
Also, the balkanization of Mexican organized crime has shifted the focus of all criminal organizations from planning new incursions to addressing existing challenges within their territory. The Sinaloa Federation continues to combat regional rivals in northwestern Mexico, including northern Sinaloa, southwestern Chihuahua, and northern Sonora state. Los Zetas continue their fight to regain complete control over much of Zacatecas state after Velazquez Caballero's split in 2012. Los Zetas also continued to engage in violent attacks against the Gulf cartel in the rest of northeastern Mexico and against the Knights Templar (and possibly Gulf cartel) in Tabasco state, although these offensives have not accomplished any real gains. The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar continued to focus on their traditional strongholds in southwestern Mexico, trading tit-for-tat incursions into one another's territories.
Moreover, many of the changes in cartel dynamics reported in the third quarter actually occurred during the first quarter. For example, Stratfor first identified the arrival of a new challenger to Los Zetas into Tabasco state operating under the name People United Against Crime (commonly referred to by its Spanish acronym, PUCD), but during the second and particularly third quarter it became apparent that People United Against Crime are really just pre-existing Zetas rivals operating under a new label (most likely the Knights Templar or its allies, the Velazquez faction of the Gulf cartel). And it came to light in the third quarter that Los Zetas have entered the Ciudad Juarez area in northern Chihuahua, though they actually began building their presence at least as far back as the first quarter.
Areas of Cartel Influence in Mexico, Fourth Quarter 2013
In contrast to the minimal disruptions in the overall cartel landscape in Mexico in the past two quarters, the fourth quarter will likely see substantial changes. The Gulf cartel will likely feel the effects of Mario Ramirez's capture, which will shift the balance of power in Tamaulipas state and thus invite another offensive by Los Zetas or further control by Gulf allies, particularly the Knights Templar. Meanwhile, should Omar Trevino be capable of retaining the organization's ability to stage significant incursions into Sinaloa Federation territory, Los Zetas efforts in Ciudad Juarez could spark a new turf war in Chihuahua state.
Overall Violence
Los Zetas
After the July 15 capture by the Mexican navy of top Zeta leader Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, his brother Omar "Z-42" Trevino ascended to the top position within the criminal organization. Thus far, it does not appear that anyone within Los Zetas has publicly challenged Omar Trevino.
Many of the challenges to Los Zetas by rivals during the second quarter continued into the third quarter. While efforts by the Velazquez faction of the Gulf cartel to seize Zetas territory were renewed in part because of Miguel Trevino's capture, primarily affecting Zacatecas state and southern Tamaulipas state, the renewed fighting is only a continuation of the dispute that began after the former leader of the Velazquez faction, Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero, split from Los Zetas around March 2012. Elsewhere, Los Zetas have been unable to mitigate challenges for territorial control in some regions, a trend that emerged before Miguel Trevino's arrest.
Tamaulipas and Zacatecas states remain the most critical areas to follow in assessing the integrity and capability of Los Zetas, particularly Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. This is due to the value of Nuevo Laredo to Los Zetas' operational capabilities and to the Velazquez faction of the Gulf cartel being the most active and closest rival of Los Zetas in geographic proximity to Nuevo Laredo. While the Velazquez network operates along the entire eastern coast of Mexico, its center of operations remains in northern and central Mexico, including Zacatecas, Coahuila and San Luis Potosi states; its reach extends into southern Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon states (specifically Monterrey) thanks to its ties to other Gulf cartel factions.
With the exception of Zacatecas during September, however, there have been no indications that such violence has yet posed a substantial threat to Los Zetas operations in the aforementioned states. The lack of change in criminal activities in Nuevo Laredo, including inter-cartel violence, has been most notable in the Los Zetas-Gulf cartel competition. This suggests Los Zetas' rivals have yet to find the opportunity to mount another incursion against them.
Los Zetas have thus far maintained their capabilities in terms of drug smuggling and other criminal activity plus the ability to defend against their rivals despite the loss of their top leader, and the organization continues to operate deep into rival territory. During the third quarter of 2013, it became apparent that Los Zetas have been operating in the Sinaloa Federation-controlled territory of northern Chihuahua state, most notably in Ciudad Juarez, via its allies La Linea and Los Aztecas (both former enforcer groups of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization, better known as the Juarez cartel). Los Zetas are funding and training both groups, but they have yet to operate in an offensive manner in Ciudad Juarez at present.
However, Los Zetas have been using the area for their trafficking operations into the United States, particularly southeastern Ciudad Juarez. In exchange for support, Los Zetas can operate in areas still controlled by La Linea around Ciudad Juarez, helping to avoid an overt conflict with the Sinaloa Federation. Stratfor has received reports that Los Zetas have attempted to avoid drawing attention to their presence by eschewing violent acts. Although Los Zetas' presence in the area only became apparent in the third quarter, it had begun prior to the arrest of Miguel Trevino.
Although Los Zetas do not overtly appear to have suffered any substantial losses in operational capabilities since Miguel Trevino's arrest, uncertainties persist about whether his brother, Omar Trevino, can successfully manage one of the two largest criminal organizations in Mexico. These uncertainties make it difficult to forecast Los Zetas' strategy and the potential challenges that could lead to a degraded security climate in its own and rival territories. Should the Gulf cartel in Zacatecas state make progress in its territorial dispute with Los Zetas, rivals to Los Zetas would likely vie for territory closer to Nuevo Laredo, probably leading to an increase in violence. Additionally, should Los Zetas try to use their established presence in Ciudad Juarez to attempt a takeover from the Sinaloa Federation, violence in Chihuahua would likely increase drastically.
Gulf Cartel
The Gulf cartel suffered yet another substantial blow to its leadership during the third quarter with the capture of its most powerful leader, Mario "El Pelon" Ramirez Trevino, on Aug. 17. This arrest will likely lead to further tumult within the Gulf cartel, which had already devolved from a cohesive criminal organization into an umbrella group with factions loyal to individual leaders but operating on a transnational level.
The fall of Ramirez will likely propel the Velazquez faction of the Gulf cartel to become one of the most powerful Gulf cartel factions in the northeast during the fourth quarter, barring any unforeseen captures or deaths at the hands of Mexican authorities. This is because the Velazquez faction maintains the widest geographic reach in Mexico under a cohesive network. The leadership of the Velazquez faction since the arrest of Ivan Velazquez in September 2012 remains something of a mystery, though likely successors include two of his brothers, Daniel "El Talibancillo" Velazquez Caballero and Rolando "El Rolys" Velazquez Caballero.
The most significant change resulting from Ramirez's capture during the fourth quarter will likely be yet another reshuffle of allegiances and roles among Gulf cartel factions in addition to Ramirez's replacement. This will include another split within the Gulf cartel umbrella, assimilation at some level of Gulf cartel cells into existing factions or an external organization such as the Knights Templar and even Los Zetas, and an increased presence of the Knights Templar or the Sinaloa Federation in Tamaulipas state, both of which have thus far propped up the Gulf cartel in its conflict with Los Zetas. Of the current Gulf cartel factions, the Velazquez faction will become the most formidable rival of Los Zetas in the northeast.
Knights Templar and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion
While the northeastern states of Mexico are typically the most fluid in terms of cartel dynamics and security due to the Zetas-Gulf cartel conflict, violence as a result of the ongoing dispute between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar turned southwestern Mexico, particularly Guerrero, Michoacan and Jalisco states, into the most active in terms of inter-cartel violence.
As stated during our first quarterly update of 2013, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has made a substantial bid to wrest control of the Knights Templar stronghold of Michoacan state. With community police in southwestern and northern Michoacan state a contributing factor, inter-cartel violence escalated dramatically during the third quarter and will likely continue at present levels or even escalate further during the fourth quarter.
This has placed the Knights Templar on the defensive, something made apparent by their escalated aggression against authorities during the third quarter and the shifting of the focus of their propaganda from Los Zetas to both the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the community police. Despite this, the Knights Templar probably will not lose substantial territory in Michoacan state nor lose their ability to resist the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion incursion during the fourth quarter. The Knights Templar are simply firmly planted in Michoacan. The conflict will continue to pose a substantial security threat throughout the state.
Sinaloa Federation
With the exception of Los Zetas in Ciudad Juarez, little has changed during the third quarter regarding the Sinaloa Federation. As Stratfor has noted, the Sinaloa Federation has been dealing with regional conflicts within its territory in the northwest. This includes the golden triangle region (encompassing northern Sinaloa, northwestern Durango and southwestern Chihuahua), northern Sonora state and southern Chihuahua state. These conflicts continued over the third quarter and will likely remain on course throughout the fourth quarter. None of the existing conflicts will present any serious challenge to the Sinaloa Federation's territorial control or criminal operations during the fourth quarter.
As mentioned above, Los Zetas have built up a presence around Ciudad Juarez during 2013, potentially marking a new criminal aggressor in Ciudad Juarez. The city already has seen a turf war between the Sinaloa Federation and the Juarez cartel and its allies, La Linea and Los Aztecas, since 2008. Thus far, Los Zetas' presence in Ciudad Juarez has largely been nonaggressive, and they have apparently limited their operations to trafficking drugs into far western Texas.
The Sinaloa Federation lost a prominent lieutenant overseeing the region, Gabino "El Ingeniero" Salas Valenciano, on Aug. 8 when Salas died in a firefight with the Mexican army. While no public reports suggest that Los Zetas are attempting to take advantage of his death by striking against Sinaloa interests, it is clear that Salas' death has triggered some conflict between La Linea and the Sinaloa Federation. On Sept. 22, gunmen opened fire on a family celebrating a local baseball game in Loma Blanca, a community located in southeastern Ciudad Juarez. Ten people died in the attack. While the identity and motive of the shooters remain unknown, some Mexican news agencies have attributed the killing to La Linea. Soon after the shooting, authorities discovered messages in at least eight locations in Ciudad Juarez attributing the shooting to La Linea. Notably, the messages were signed "the people of Gavino (sic) Salas."
While such messages cannot alone confirm the identity of the attackers or suggest a motivation, they do suggest at least a momentary escalation of violence between the Sinaloa Federation and La Linea. Such a renewed violent campaign could present a moment of opportunity to persuade their allies to attempt to wrest Ciudad Juarez from the Sinaloa Federation -- a scenario that would certainly lead to a sharp uptick in violence through Ciudad Juarez and possibly much of northern Chihuahua.
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http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/hezbollah-tattoos-increasing-found-us-prison-inmates
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/01/16/mexican-vigilantes-against-drug-cartels-reject-disarming-in-standoff-with/?intcmp=latestnews
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Vigilantes line up during a program to register their weapons and create a rural police in Paracuaro in Michoacan state, Mexico, last Monday. The government has proposed incorporating some vigilantes into a rural police force and giving them formal training. Reuters
MEXICO CITY—Hundreds of vigilantes in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacán, escorted by the military and federal police, on Saturday moved into the city of Apatzingán, the main bastion of the Knights Templar criminal organization.
The vigilantes, working alongside federal forces, set up checkpoints on roads in and out of Apatzingán in search of members of the Knights Templar.
Francisco Castellanos, a local journalist in Apatzingán, said that as of midafternoon Saturday, the operations had been carried out without reports of clashes or shots being fired.
The heavily armed vigilantes, known locally as self-defense groups, had been expanding and taking control of a number of towns and municipalities in largely rural areas of Michoacán state to kick out the Knights Templar. Named after a medieval order of warrior monks, the Templars evolved from trafficking in marijuana and methamphetamines to extortion, kidnapping and murder.
The Templars' abuses and the government's inability to stop their reign of terror sparked a reaction, mostly by lime and avocado growers, cattlemen and shopkeepers, many of them former U.S. migrants (!!!) who organized vigilante organizations to take back control of the towns from the organized crime group.
A year ago, the vigilantes ran the Templars out of two towns in the Tierra Caliente, a swath of rich agricultural land, gathering strength from their victories. The movement continued to spread. The growing danger of open armed conflict between the two organizations led the Mexican government to step up the presence of troops and federal police in the state. In January, federal forces took control of Apatzingán as the vigilante groups were planning to move in.
A government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the federal government didn't see Saturday's moves as an "advance" of the self-defense groups or an "occupation" of Apatzingán. He said the cooperation between federal forces and the local communities, including self-defense members, is essential for the government to recover lost trust in the state.
The international focus on the proliferation of self-defense groups and growing violence in Michoacan has embarrassed the Mexican government, which has emphasized its efforts to reform the country's economy, including opening up Mexico's energy industry to private investment.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto last month appointed as special envoy a close political ally, Alfredo Castillo, who became Michoacan's de facto acting governor with special powers to implement economic and security measures. Mr. Castillo was ordered to dismantle the Templar organization and disarm the self-defense groups.
Last week, the government announced an ambitious plan to spend $3.4 billion to boost the Michoacán economy, and improve the state's social services. The vigilante groups had said disarming would leave their communities open to revenge attacks by the Templars. But late last month, they reached agreement to form into rural and town police forces. Alejandro Hope, a security expert with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank, questioned the wisdom of allowing the vigilantes to enter Apatzingán after the government had sought to contain their advance.
"If the federal forces were already there, why did they [the vigilantes] have to go in?" he said.
Write to Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/11/cartel-hitman-testifies-to-800-murders-daily-quotas-at-kingpin-trial/
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Guzman's beauty queen wife went to LA to give birth to twins. So now his kids are automatic US citizens. This is just crazy. Folks, the joke is on every law abiding American. Why do we have to be so stupid?:
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-guzman-arrest-20140222,0,4274864.story#axzz2u6oqrlKK
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http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/americas/198985-mccaul-extradite-el-chapo
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/world/americas/suspected-of-shielding-mexican-drug-profits-but-hiding-in-plain-sight.html?nlid=49641193&src=recpb&_r=0
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Editor's Note: This week's Security Weekly summarizes our quarterly Mexico drug cartel report, in which we assess the most significant developments of the first quarter of 2014 and provide a forecast for the second quarter of the year. The report is a product of the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and other analyses that we produce throughout the year as part of the Mexico Security Monitor service.
By Tristan Reed
Mexico Security Analyst
During the first quarter of 2014, Mexican authorities managed to kill or capture a substantial number of high-level leaders of Mexican organized criminal groups, including top Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera on Feb. 22 at a hotel in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state. In an unusually high tempo of operations, the Mexican military managed to capture several other Sinaloa leaders who operated under Guzman or Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, another top-tier Sinaloa Federation leader. By the beginning of 2014, the Sinaloa Federation was already struggling to adapt to a series of significant leadership losses during the last quarter of 2013. Its losses during the first quarter of 2014 thus compound its pre-existing problems.
Meanwhile, the efforts of federal troops and the self-defense militias in Michoacan resulted in the death or capture of the bulk of the Knights Templar's top-tier leaders. Since the second half of January 2014, three out of four of the most prominent Knights Templar leaders have been eliminated, as have many of their lieutenants.
The arrest of Guzman is not likely to alter any of the trends during the second quarter addressed in our 2014 annual cartel report. By contrast, the massive losses for the Knights Templar in such a short period will likely trigger substantial shifts in organized crime dynamics in Michoacan, including the expansion of old or the creation of new, smaller criminal groups into the void left by the Knights Templar. Given that the Knights Templar were expanding domestically and internationally up to the end of 2013, the impact of successful federal operations against the group could be felt beyond southwestern Mexico. This is particularly likely in northeastern Mexico, where the Knights Templar helped the Gulf cartel defend its territory from Los Zetas. If this evolution does not occur during the second quarter, it probably will later in 2014.
Michoacan
Federal authorities could not have racked up such rapid successes against Knights Templar leaders during the first quarter were it not for the presence of self-defense militias in Michoacan state. The self-defense militias first emerged in February 2013 and have since expanded their operations to more than 26 of Michoacan's 113 municipalities (and over half the state's geographic area). Even so, Mexico City has decided it cannot tolerate the existence of well-armed and widely operating militias willing to supplant government authority.
At the end of 2013, self-defense militias in Michoacan had already expanded into nearly a dozen municipalities as part of a strategy of ejecting the Knights Templar from specific areas and then holding onto the newly won territory. With the expansion, the militias challenged government authority in many towns by taking charge of public safety, often detaining local law enforcement authorities whom the militias viewed as having links to the Knights Templar. The growing presence of the militias presented yet another substantial security challenge for Mexico City in the state, particularly as the militias expanded around the transportation routes surrounding the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. Rising levels of organized crime-related violence, the continued expansion of well-armed militias into much of the state and disruptive violence such as the Oct. 27 attacks on Federal Electricity Commission installations in Michoacan prompted several deployments of federal police and the Mexican military to Michoacan throughout 2013 (in addition to drawing international media coverage of Michoacan's security woes).
Cities With Self-Defense Groups
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In January 2014, Mexico City created the Commission for Security and Integral Development in Michoacan, led by Alfredo Castillo, to oversee its security strategy in Michoacan, coordinate federal and state security forces and purportedly address political, social and economic issues in the state. One of the commission's first actions was to bring the various militias, operating in a coordinated manner, into an agreement with the federal and state government Jan. 27. Among other things, the self-defense groups agreed to integrate with federal troops by joining the Rural Defense Corps, a longtime auxiliary force of the Mexican army. In addition, the agreement provided Mexico City with greater oversight over the inner workings of the militias and their leadership. However, no substantial integration of militia members into the Rural Defense Corps had occurred by the end of the first quarter.
By contrast, the agreement did succeed in fostering a great deal of cooperation between the militias and federal troops with regard to targeting the Knights Templar. The combined efforts of the self-defense militias and federal troops against the Knights Templar yielded substantial gains. The day of the agreement, federal troops captured Dionisio "El Tio" Loya Plancarte, the first of the top Knights Templar leaders to fall in the first quarter. On March 9, the Mexican military killed Nazario "El Chayo" Moreno Gonzalez, the founder of the Knights Templar, in Tumbiscatio, Michoacan state. Moreno's death occurred as a result of substantial militia operations in the city just days before. On March 31, top leader Enrique "El Kike" Plancarte Solis was killed during a military operation in Colon, Queretaro state. Of the Knights Templar's best-known leaders, only Servando "La Tuta" Gomez Martinez remains at large.
Municipalities With Self Defense Groups
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Significantly, the spread of the militias in Michoacan has greatly hindered the group's mobility in the state. This greatly diminished the operational capabilities of the Knights Templar during the first quarter, lessening its hold over profitable criminal activities in the state. And this in turn has created a power vacuum, allowing smaller independent crime groups, including the remnants of the Knights Templar, to emerge. (The second quarter will likely see these lower-tier groups continue to emerge.)
In the weeks following the March 31 death of Plancarte, the federal commission overseeing Michoacan's security developments called for the disarmament of the militias because, the commission said, the Knights Templar had largely been defeated. Self-defense militia movement spokesman Jose Mireles rejected calls to disarm, citing the persistence of the Knights Templar under Gomez and other lower-level bosses.
The federal government then set a deadline of May 10 for the militias to voluntarily disarm or face forced disarmament. In response, the militia movement threatened blockades. Various militias could erect these, presumably on major roads in Michoacan, should the federal government not satisfy militia demands. These include the release of 100 incarcerated militia members, the killing or capture of remaining Knights Templar members in the state, the restoration of the rule of law in Michoacan and the recognition of the self-defense militias' right to exist.
The commission and militia leaders from 20 municipalities struck a new deal April 14. Though the agreement followed a recent ultimatum by the federal government that the militias voluntarily disarm by May 10 or have federal troops forcibly disarm them, the new deal's 11 points do not call for a total disarmament. Instead, the militias accepted an offer to be incorporated into a Rural State Police body beginning May 11. Under the terms of the deal, self-defense militias will turn in "high-caliber" weapons. The deal calls for all remaining militia arms to be registered with the federal government. The April 14 agreement also allows militia members to join the Rural Defense Corps, just as the agreement signed Jan. 27 did.
According to Security and Integral Development Commissioner Alfredo Castillo, the agreement means that self-defense militias in Michoacan will disappear by May 11. Whether the agreement will actually produce that outcome remains unclear, given that it allows the self-defense militia members to continue to bear arms and does not specify just how the militias will be formally integrated into government-controlled security forces. Moreover, divisions within the militia movement could threaten the viability of the April 14 agreement.
The April 14 agreement highlights the federal government's intent to halt the expansion of vigilante groups in Mexico. The challenge to governmental authority apparently has been deemed greater than the benefits the militias bring of reducing the need for military involvement in the fight against drug-trafficking organizations.
To this end, Mexico City has sought to bring the militias to the bargaining table. But implementing any deal will face a challenge from increased divisions among the militias. Although at present the militias mostly act in concert, the movement comprises various militias operating in towns among dozens of municipalities.
Internal discord has already emerged, albeit currently isolated to a few personalities within the militias. Since the beginning of 2014, various self-defense militia leaders have accused one another of belonging to organized crime and have said that organized crime is infiltrating their groups. Though such claims are impossible to verify, their existence underscores concerns among self-defense militias that their members may be interested in taking over criminal enterprises left by the power vacuum that emerged from the Knights Templar's decline. If these concerns become reality, the government will face an even more fractured militia landscape during negotiations for their incorporation into federal forces.
If the broader movement fractures during the second quarter, the likelihood of any negotiated settlement between the militias and the government greatly diminishes, given the lack of any coordinated leadership. However, divisions within the militia movement would pose a diminished threat to Mexico City. If the movement remains largely intact yet fails to honor the April 14 agreement, it is possible that Mexico City would still delay any efforts to disarm the militias during the second quarter. This would provide more time for the militias to fragment, thus reducing their collective ability to challenge state authority while obviating the need for any military confrontation. However, such a decision would risk further proliferation of the militias, bringing in more weaponry and bolstering their ranks. The longer Mexico City allows the militias to expand without any permanent resolution that brings the militias fully into the fold or disarms them, the greater the threat militias will pose to government authority.
In the second quarter, the fracturing of organized crime in Michoacan will likely lead to more organized crime-related violence as these smaller groups move, hampering federal and state government bids to improve security in the state. And although Knights Templar operational capabilities in Michoacan have declined, the group will still retain a substantial presence in the state during the second quarter. Violence between rival criminal organizations and between criminal organizations and the self-defense militias will combine with the continued presence of the Knights Templar to keep the state unstable.
Editor's Note: The full version of our quarterly cartel update is available to clients of our Mexico Security Monitor service.
Read more: Mexico's Drug War: Substantial Changes Seen in Michoacan | Stratfor
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elf-Defense Groups in Mexico's Michoacan State
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April 17, 2014 | 1057 Print Text Size
Self-Defense Groups in Mexico's Michoacan State
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Since the second half of January 2014, three out of four of the most prominent Knights Templar leaders have been eliminated, as have many of their lieutenants. Federal authorities could not have racked up such rapid successes against Knights Templar leaders during the first quarter were it not for the presence of self-defense militias in Michoacan state. The self-defense militias first emerged in February 2013 and have since expanded their operations to more than 26 of Michoacan's 113 municipalities (and over half the state's geographic area). With the expansion, the militias challenged government authority in many towns by taking charge of public safety, often detaining local law enforcement authorities whom the militias viewed as having links to the Knights Templar.
Mexico City has decided it cannot tolerate the existence of well-armed and widely operating militias willing to supplant government authority, which led to the government and militia leaders from 20 municipalities striking a new deal April 14 to resolve their status. Though the agreement followed a recent ultimatum by the federal government that the militias voluntarily disarm by May 10 or have federal troops forcibly disarm them, the new deal's 11 points do not call for a total disarmament. Instead, the militias accepted an offer to be incorporated into a Rural State Police body beginning May 11. Under the terms of the deal, self-defense militias will turn in "high-caliber" weapons. The deal calls for all remaining militia arms to be registered with the federal government. The April 14 agreement also allows militia members to join the Rural Defense Corps, just as a previous agreement reached Jan. 27 did.
According to Security and Integral Development Commissioner Alfredo Castillo, the agreement means that self-defense militias in Michoacan will disappear by May 11. Whether the agreement will actually produce that outcome remains unclear, given that it allows the self-defense militia members to continue to bear arms and does not specify just how the militias will be formally integrated into government-controlled security forces. Moreover, divisions within the militia movement could threaten the viability of the April 14 agreement.
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Following up yesterday's post with one from back in February:
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Understanding the Risks of Travel To Mexico
Security Weekly
Thursday, February 27, 2014 - 04:00 Print Text Size
Editor's Note: This Security Weekly is a condensed version of a report on travel security in Mexico. The full version is available to subscribers to our Mexico Security Monitor service, which also includes our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly cartel updates and other analyses throughout the year.
By Tristan Reed
Many people who visit Mexican resort areas during North America's spring break season ignore travel warnings, meaning they may not be aware of the threat posed by transnational criminal organizations, more commonly known as cartels. Since 2012, cartel violence has spread from the northern border regions of Mexico south into Mexican states hosting popular destinations for spring break travelers. Nothing in the behavior of Mexican cartels indicates that they would consciously keep tourists out of the line of fire.
Learn more about travel security in our seven-part series.
While most of the approximately 150,000 U.S. citizens who travel to Mexico each day do so without incident, tourists are by no means immune to cartel violence or even common crime. Mexico's criminal cartels are more than just drug traffickers -- they participate in extortion, robbery, kidnapping and carjacking. And where cartels are fighting each other violently, local gangs are able to take advantage of law enforcement's resulting distraction to commit crimes of their own. We will explore the nature of the risk from cartel and ordinary violence before giving an in-depth review of select major tourist destinations.
Cartel Crime
For more than two decades, Mexico's criminal cartels have fought each another for control of drug trafficking operations in various parts of Mexico. Cartel turf wars typically focus on specific drug trafficking routes, ports of entries into the United States along Mexico's northern border towns and areas where illicit drug production and cultivation are concentrated. Mexico's cartels increasingly have turned to other criminal activities to fund the defense of their territories from potential rivals. Such operations include human smuggling, kidnapping, extortion, counterfeiting goods and hydrocarbon theft. This diversification has seen turf wars break out in resorts.
While cartels typically direct their violence toward rival groups, outside parties often wind up in the crossfire. In one instance, gunmen belonging to a faction of the Gulf cartel opened fire on a bar in Cancun, Quintana Roo state, on March 14, 2013, killing seven people and wounding five others. Though the gunmen were targeting three leaders of a taxi union in Cancun, they were clearly unconcerned by the presence of bystanders. Similarly, five students in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state, were killed Dec. 19, 2013, after a vehicle carrying cartel gunmen fleeing the Mexican army struck the group. And in probably the most extreme example, Los Zetas set fire to the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, on Aug. 25, 2011, allegedly in an effort to send a message to the casino's owner. More than 50 patrons and staff died in the blaze.
In the past decade, violence in Mexico escalated nearly every year, from 25,133 overall homicides in 2007 to 38,052 in 2012, according to the National System of Public Safety, though 2013 saw a drop to 34,648. Years of law enforcement and military efforts to contain cartel violence have allowed already-high levels of other crimes, many of which could affect tourists, to persist or even rise. For example, 1,407 kidnappings were reported in 2012 versus 1,702 in 2013, the highest level since at least 1997, according to the National System of Public Safety. Since most kidnappings in Mexico go unreported, the true number is likely much higher.
Much of the reduction in homicides in 2013 can be attributed to the continued decline of turf wars in what were once among Mexico's most violent states -- places such as Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. At the same time, however, cartel turf wars intensified in states farther south, including Guanajuato, Michoacan and Jalisco. These southern states contain several towns and areas popular with tourists. These conflicts are likely to continue in 2014, and they could even spread due to increased challenges to the Sinaloa Federation, whose top leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera was arrested Feb. 22.
Ongoing conflicts between Mexico's most powerful crime bosses and their diversifying criminal activities have resulted in growing ties between previously unaffiliated street gangs and the cartels. Cartels often hire street gangs as foot soldiers, something seen with Los Aztecas, Los Mexicles and the Artistas Asesinos in Ciudad Juarez. Los Aztecas, a Juarez cartel ally, fought against Los Mexicles and the Artistas Asesinos, which in turn were helping the Sinaloa Federation take over the Juarez plaza. As cartels continue to expand into other criminal activities, their contact with local street gangs already engaged in such crimes expands, creating alliances and, at times, new turf wars. An example of the latter is Los Pelones' turf war with Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel in Cancun. While cartels may not specifically target foreigners, more localized criminal actors often see tourists as potential targets. In any case, the dividing lines between cartel and local gang activity have become increasingly blurred.
Local Crime
Common criminals belonging to a local gang or acting alone are more likely than cartel enforcers to target foreigners in Mexico. But the presence of cartels, especially in areas where multiple cartels are engaged in competition, causes a deterioration of security conditions that lends itself to the formation of local gangs. These local gangs may not be affiliated with the cartels, but still present many of the same security concerns: Like the cartels, they may be involved in killings, extortion, carjacking, sexual assaults and kidnappings, and they may cause collateral damage.
According to a Jan. 9, 2014, travel warning update by the U.S. Department of State, Tamaulipas state witnessed a 75 percent increase in kidnappings of U.S. citizens in 2013. (The actual number of incidents was not reported). The same travel warning stated that the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City received reports of 90 U.S. citizens kidnapped throughout Mexico between April and November 2013.
Citizens of many countries have fallen victim to such crime. For example, a gang targeted Spanish tourists in a bungalow on Feb. 4, 2013, in Acapulco, Guerrero state, binding and robbing the males before sexually assaulting the females. In the same part of Acapulco, a gunman shot and killed a Belgian national in a parking lot in the Diamante tourist zone on Feb. 23, 2013. Authorities discovered the victim's body next to his vehicle with a gunshot wound to the chest and a spent .45-caliber casing nearby. And sometime after Jan. 25, 2014, a U.S. citizen who had been traveling through the southwestern states of Michoacan and Guerrero was reported missing. The missing person had been headed to Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, a popular spot with foreign travelers for fishing and surfing close to some of the most violent, and underreported, criminal turf wars in Mexico.
Kidnappings do not always follow the same pattern. They could involve anything from classic high-value target abductions to express kidnappings in which the victim can spend a week in the trunk of a vehicle as the kidnappers go from one ATM to the next withdrawing all the money in the victim's account. They even include so-called virtual kidnappings, a technique by which perpetrators falsely claim to have kidnapped someone to extract a ransom from a friend or relative of the victim. Reports of virtual kidnappings in Mexico have become more frequent, even in popular resort destinations such as Cancun.
While there are examples of groups such as the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas participating in kidnappings throughout the country, localized kidnapping rings that operate independently from the drug trade have flourished due to the lack of security in Mexican cities. There is little uniformity with kidnapping rings in terms of resources, targets and tactics. Though the vast majority of reported kidnapping victims have been Mexican nationals, the risk to tourists remains, especially for tourists perceived as being wealthy. The gangs' victims range from wealthy businessmen to poor farmers, so assumptions should not be made regarding their typical target set.
Law Enforcement
Visitors to Mexico should not expect law enforcement officers to behave in the same way as their North American counterparts. As mentioned, law enforcement efforts in many areas of Mexico primarily are aimed at combating drug trafficking. In some cases, law enforcement officers have been found to be on the cartel payroll, forcing the Mexican military to assume law enforcement responsibilities in some areas. For example, Tamaulipas state's municipal and state police were effectively disarmed over corruption concerns, which required the military to assume the role of the state police.
As previously mentioned, the country's security services sometimes pose security risks, too. When driving, it is important to pay attention to highway roadblocks manned by military personnel and to checkpoints established to screen vehicles for drugs and cartel operatives. Police officers and soldiers have opened fire on vehicles driven by innocent people who failed to obey instructions at such checkpoints, which often are poorly marked.
Mexico
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Resorts
Many popular spring break locations foreigners perceive as having "acceptable" levels of crime have experienced violence related to the drug wars raging in Mexico. Firefights between federal police or soldiers and gunmen armed with assault rifles have erupted without warning throughout Mexico, affecting mountain villages, large cities like Monterrey, and resort towns like Acapulco and Cancun. While the cartels have not often intentionally targeted tourists, their violence increasingly has been on public display in popular tourist districts.
While there are important differences among the security environments in Mexico's various resort areas and other parts of Mexico, the country's overall reputation for crime and kidnapping is deserved. Locals and foreigners alike often become victims of assault, express kidnappings, high-value target kidnappings, sexual assaults, carjackings and other crimes.
Far more dangerous to tourists and others than government roadblocks are instances of cartel gunmen operating mobile or stationary roadblocks disguised as government troops, a well-documented phenomenon. We have not confirmed whether these have been encountered in popular resort areas, but there is the strong possibility they will be eventually, given the increased violence in major port cities. An encounter with a checkpoint or roadblock operated by gunmen disguised as federal police or military personnel can be deadly. Driving city streets in resort towns or roads in the surrounding countryside is also becoming increasingly dangerous because of such roadblocks.
Many Mexican coastal resort areas better known for their beautiful beaches also depend on their port facilities, and these have come to play a strategic role in the country's drug trade. Drug trafficking organizations use legitimate commercial ships as well as fishing boats and other small surface vessels to carry cocaine from South America to Mexico, and many cartels often rely on hotels and resorts to launder drug proceeds. Because of the importance of these facilities, the assumption has been that drug trafficking organizations seek to limit violence in such areas not only to protect existing infrastructure but also to avoid the attention that violence affecting wealthy foreign tourists would draw.
This is no longer a safe assumption. The profound escalation of cartel-related conflict in Mexico has created an environment in which deadly violence can occur anywhere, with cartels displaying complete disregard for bystanders whatever their nationality or status. As violence escalates near Mexico's resort towns, Stratfor anticipates that the cartels will not hesitate to use all tools at their disposal to defeat their opponents. Moreover, the threat to vacationing foreigners is not just the potential of being caught in the crossfire but also of inadvertently drawing the attention and anger of cartel gunmen.
Acapulco
Acapulco has become one of the most violent cities in Mexico, with 143 murders per 100,000 residents during 2012. Homicides per capita dropped in 2013, but nonetheless remain high. According to Mexican nongovernmental organization the Citizen Council for Public Safety, Acapulco ranked third in the world for homicides per capita in 2013, with 113 per 100,000. Most violence related to organized crime in the city resulted from the collapse of the Beltran Leyva Organization in 2010, which spawned a set of competing organizations. In addition to conflicts between the Beltran Leyva Organization's remnant groups, such as the Independent Cartel of Acapulco and Cartel Pacifico Sur, other rival organizations such as the Sinaloa Federation, Gulf cartel and Los Zetas have competed for control of the city.
The frequent conflicts among Mexican cartels, including conflicts with authorities, have taxed authorities' ability to protect against more localized crime. Additionally, criminal actors actively seek to recruit or collude with law enforcement members. During October 2013, authorities arrested 13 federal police officers in Acapulco for working with a kidnapping gang.
Cabo San Lucas
Located on the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula, Cabo San Lucas and the Greater Los Cabos region have remained relatively insulated from the country's drug-related violence, and so are considered among the safer places in Mexico for foreign tourists. Although historically a stop on drug trafficking routes, Cabo San Lucas' strategic importance has not spawned violent competition among drug traffickers. Over the past five years, organized crime-related violence in the area has accordingly been limited.
Cancun
Cancun's port remains an important transshipment point for maritime drug trafficking routes from the Caribbean basin. The high volume of tourism in Cancun makes the area a lucrative draw for localized crime such as drug dealing and theft. Until 2013, Los Zetas maintained the greatest presence in the area, occasionally fighting a local street gang, Los Pelones, for control of retail drug sales throughout Cancun, including popular resorts.
When Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero, who oversaw Los Zetas operations in Cancun among other areas, split with Los Zetas and then rebranded his own criminal network as a faction of the Gulf cartel, he triggered more frequent organized crime-related violence in the city. This included executions, dismemberments and the targeting of law enforcement officers. After a number of arrests of the Velazquez faction of the Gulf cartel in Quintana Roo, Los Pelones in 2014 have thus far managed to take control over retail drug sales in Cancun, including the resort areas along Kukulcan Boulevard. The Gulf cartel, or even Los Zetas, could once again vie for control, which would further elevate the levels of violence in Cancun.
Recent examples of violence in the city include the killing of Gumersindo Martinez Gomez, the night operations coordinator for the Cancun police, by two gunmen early Aug. 14, 2013, outside his home on the western edge of the city. And on April 12, 2013, authorities discovered a dismembered body in three black plastic bags in the Cancun suburb of Puerto Juarez, Quintana Roo. Such incidents emphasize that cartel-related violence is not absent just because a town draws substantial tourism.
Matamoros
Though Matamoros is no longer a common spring break destination, we address it because of its proximity to South Padre Island, Texas. Adventurous vacationers to South Padre Island often cross the nearby border, mainly to Matamoros and the surrounding towns clustered along the south side of the Rio Grande.
The area sees constant drug- and human-smuggling activities vital to Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel, which are ruthlessly carried out. Since the Zetas' offensive against the Gulf cartel of Matamoros in 2011, Matamoros has experienced significant violence among competing organizations and between such organizations and the military. In addition to cartel-related violence, Matamoros has experienced a surge in local crimes such as robberies and kidnappings. The U.S. Consulate in Matamoros posted a travel advisory regarding escalated kidnapping threats on Dec. 14, 2012, and on Feb. 21, 2013. For these reasons, visitors are strongly advised not to venture south into Mexico from South Padre Island.
Mazatlan
Mazatlan, located about 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Puerto Vallarta, had been perhaps the most consistently violent of Mexico's resort cities during the past year, although 2012 and 2013 saw a substantial drop in violence. It is located in Sinaloa state, home of the country's largest cartel, the Sinaloa Federation, as well as of the rival crime group Los Mazatlecos.
Even with decreasing violence in Mazatlan, the surrounding areas have experienced notable levels of violence as a result of incursions by Los Zetas and Los Mazatlecos into southern Sinaloa state. Such violence may increase in frequency as rivals of the Sinaloa Federation attempt to capitalize on perceived Sinaloa weaknesses after the Feb. 22 arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera in a condominium in Mazatlan.
Puerto Vallarta
Several of Mexico's largest and most powerful cartels maintain a trafficking presence in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco state. Though violence related to organized crime is much less frequent than in other areas beset by criminal turf wars, it is still present in Puerto Vallarta and thus presents risks to bystanders.
Gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying three passengers, killing two and critically wounding the third, early Oct. 17, 2013, in the Romantic Zone in Puerto Vallarta. Gunmen in two trucks cut off the victims' vehicle at the intersection of Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza streets before opening fire. At least 35 rounds struck the victims' vehicle, killing two occupants, who were brothers. The tactics and the number of rounds fired suggest the killing was a targeted hit by an unidentified organized criminal group.
As stated, unrelated crime tends to appear wherever criminal organizations compete for turf, and Puerto Vallarta is no exception. Thus, in August 2013 burglars killed a U.S. citizen living in Puerto Vallarta. His body was discovered after his maid, who was tied up during the robbery, managed to escape and alert authorities.
Threats from kidnapping gangs or other criminal groups also are said to be lower in this resort city than in the rest of the country. Still, a February 2012 incident illustrated why caution and situational awareness should always be exercised: A group of 22 tourists ventured off their cruise ship to tour El Nogalito, an area near Puerto Vallarta, where they were held at gunpoint and robbed.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this report misstated the number of U.S. visitors to Mexico.
Read more: Understanding the Risks of Travel To Mexico | Stratfor
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2637789/Threatening-cartel-billboards-warning-police-choose-silver-lead-come-complete-hanging-mannequins-appearing-Texas.html
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/05/20/Former-Border-Patrol-Union-Only-Cartels-Benefit-From-Border-Monument
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2637789/Threatening-cartel-billboards-warning-police-choose-silver-lead-come-complete-hanging-mannequins-appearing-Texas.html
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/05/20/Former-Border-Patrol-Union-Only-Cartels-Benefit-From-Border-Monument
Just plucky hardworking people doing the work Americans won't do who dearly love this country.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/12/21/ex-marine-freed-from-mexico-prison-at-last-back-in-u-s-with-his-family/
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/17/feds-armed-mexican-troops-police-jump-border/
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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mexico-invades-texas-33-soldiers-cross-border-humvees/story?id=14173304
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http://toprightnews.com/?p=4090
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15 July 2014
MEXICO – Audit puts PAN party’s status at risk
National Electoral Institute (INE) data released on 11 July 2014 from June shows that the National Action Party (PAN) has just 222,928 members, after discovering that 48,704 registrations were duplicates. This puts PAN at risk of losing its status as a national political party, as electoral law dictates that a recognized national political party have a minimum number of members equivalent to 0.26 percent of the population, or approximately 219,608 citizens. The INE will now crosscheck the registrations of the other political parties and, if necessary, request that citizens express their final preference.
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(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/2012-06-20-chronicle.jpg)
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As is usually the case with this source, some of the expression is a bit over the top, but the essence of the point is there:
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/mexican-president-claims-to-be-co-governor-of-california/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/08/29/more-than-134000-petition-obama-admin-to-demand-release-of-sgt-tahmooressi-heres-the-response-they-recieved-instead/
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Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's state of the union address Tuesday offered key insights into Mexico's direction over the next few years. Among the high points of the speech were reforms in the Mexican energy sector that ended the state's monopoly on hydrocarbons production. Pena Nieto's speech also touted reductions in the nation's homicide rate over the past year.
With the legislative hurdles cleared, Mexico will use the next few years to implement reforms achieved in 2013 and 2014. The energy reform in particular portends an increase in Mexican oil output and government revenue over the next decade. Mexico will also continue using federal authorities, including the newly formed gendarmerie, to counter the violence generated by organized crime. However, these are short-term political moves in Mexico's larger geopolitical narrative, in which Mexico's economic future will remain inextricably connected to the United States, and Mexico City will continue searching for ways to mitigate ongoing competition between drug trafficking organizations.
To a large degree, Pena Nieto will focus his presidency on maintaining the steady economic growth of the past 20 years. Since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Mexico's real gross domestic product climbed by about $383 billion to more than $1 trillion. This growth, which placed Mexico second in Latin America in terms of GDP and 15th in the world, primarily rose due to the advantages gained by Mexico's proximity to the United States. Mexico has defined its economic strategy around these advantages, which include short transport distances to the world's largest consumer market and Mexico's relatively low wages compared with the United States -- low wages that have spurred investment into manufacturing (with the United States being a leading investor) for decades. NAFTA accelerated this trend, and nearly 80 percent of Mexican exports worth some $300 billion went directly to the United States in 2013. Although Mexico is attempting to eliminate tariff barriers with like-minded trading partners in the burgeoning Pacific Alliance, its trade flows will remain overwhelmingly focused on its neighbor to the north.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
This long-term economic focus northward will define Mexico's immediate economic moves. Over the next several years, Mexico will continue building out its natural gas pipeline network to take advantage of the U.S. role as a major natural gas producer and supply Mexico's growing industrial base and electricity generation. Because the pipelines that import U.S. natural gas into Mexico are operating near full capacity, Mexico will add three additional pipelines to its grid over the next two years. Mexican state-owned energy firm Petroleos Mexicanos is planning five additional pipelines in upcoming years. Together, these lines will add nearly 55.9 billion cubic meters per year to Mexico's existing pipeline import capacity.
Mexico will also focus heavily on implementing the centerpiece of its reform drive, namely, energy reform. Much of Pena Nieto's political legacy rests on successfully securing meaningful foreign investment into Mexico's oil sector. To this end, the government will auction 169 oil blocks in May 2015. There are growing indications that Pemex is willing to make the necessary moves to restructure the firm to become more competitive. A successful auction is unlikely to bear fruit until several years down the road, but it would set Mexico's deteriorated oil sector on the path toward recovery.
Pena Nieto will also continue dealing with the ongoing violence from Mexico's drug war, an unwelcome inheritance from his predecessor, Felipe Calderon. Mexico remains one of the last destinations in the cocaine supply chain to the lucrative U.S. market, and this role will not change soon. Despite rising cocaine traffic through the Caribbean, the vast majority of cocaine shipments from South America still pass through Mexico -- and thus into the hands of the numerous drug trafficking organizations competing there for dominance over supply routes northward. This violence, which spiked sharply in the years after Calderon sent federal forces directly after drug trafficking organizations in 2006, has remained a challenge for the Mexican government. The government will continue to try to contain the violence associated with criminal competition, and the U.S. interest in stemming the flow of drugs through the U.S. border is unlikely to wane in the coming years.
Despite a major U.S. interest in countering drug flows north, Mexico will likely enjoy significantly less success on the security front. There are simply too many people within criminal organizations and institutions benefiting from the drug trade for its effects to be reduced through law enforcement pressure alone. Although several major drug traffickers were captured during Pena Nieto's term, including Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera and Los Zetas leader Miguel "Z-40" Trevino Morales, the elements remain in place for continued cartel wars across Mexico. The lucrative profit margins available to Mexican drug traffickers will keep spurring competition over supply routes and gateways into the United States. Though the names of individuals and organizations involved in the trade over the next several years will change, the overall dynamic of drug trafficking organizations exporting cocaine, heroin and marijuana into the United States will not. With local police forces highly penetrated by narcotics traffickers, Pena Nieto will continue to rely on the military and other federal security bodies to stem ongoing violence, but setting up lasting law enforcement institutions will prove elusive.
Despite its lasting role in the drug trade, Mexico's future for the remainder of Pena Nieto's tenure looks bright. Reductions in U.S. consumer demand notwithstanding, the country is well-positioned to continue to benefit from high levels of foreign direct investment and trade with the United States. If successful, the energy reform will provide significant revenue flows for both the central government and private firms by the decade's end. Overall, Mexico is set to continue its trajectory toward securing its position as a Latin American economic power.
Read more: The Mexican President's State of the Union Suggests a Bright Future | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
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New Candidate Jolts Mexican Politics
A maverick former mayor is mounting a competitive bid as Mexico’s first independent gubernatorial candidate
Dudley Althaus
Updated May 22, 2015 10:03 a.m. ET
MONTERREY, Mexico—A maverick former mayor known as El Bronco is mounting a serious bid to become Mexico’s first independent candidate to win a governorship, buoyed by voter mistrust of the country’s traditional political parties.
Waging a social media campaign on a shoestring—paid for largely with the crumpled bills supporters press into his hands on the stump— Jaime Rodríguez is shaking up politics in Nuevo León, the conservative northern border state that includes the industrial powerhouse of Monterrey, and jolting politicians nationwide.
An opinion poll published Friday in El Norte, Monterrey’s leading newspaper, puts Mr. Rodríguez ahead of his rival from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the June 7 vote. The PRI has ruled Nuevo León for 80 of the past 86 years.
Mr. Rodríguez’s unlikely bid has emerged as one of the most watched in a midterm election for all 500 seats in Mexico’s lower house of Congress, nine governors and hundreds of state legislators, mayors and city councils.
Polls suggest that the PRI and its allies are likely to retain a slight majority in Congress. But that doesn’t mean all is well for Mexico’s ruling party.
Mr. Rodríguez, a rancher, businessman and thrice-married father of six, represents a new page in Mexican politics: the rise of independent candidates running against the traditional parties, something that was illegal until a 2014 political overhaul passed by Congress.
“This is making the political parties tremble because a candidate without a party, a structure or resources is giving them a fight,” Mr. Rodríguez, 58, said in an interview.
June’s vote takes place amid mounting voter frustration with underworld violence, a lackluster economy and corruption scandals that have hit all three major parties, especially the PRI.
President Enrique Peña Nieto and his finance minister have come under the scrutiny of Mexican and international media for property deals they made with government contractors. They both deny any wrongdoing. Civic groups have accused family members of Nuevo León’s current PRI governor, Rodrigo Medina, of illicit enrichment through dirty land deals. They deny wrongdoing.
“We have a cancer which has to be eradicated and that’s corruption,” Mr. Rodríguez said to whoops and applause at a recent stop in Monterrey’s wealthiest suburb. “I don’t want to be just one more governor, I want to change the system.”
Only 9% of Mexicans say they trust their political parties, according to a recent survey by Mexico City-based pollster GEA ISA. Only one in five is satisfied with the country’s democracy, the lowest rate anywhere in Latin America except Honduras, according to a 2013 survey of attitudes in the region by the respected Latinobarómetro firm.
Luis Carlos Ugalde, the former head of the national election agency, said he expected an independent to mount a presidential bid in 2018 national elections.
“It’s a classic kind of anti-party and antiestablishment moment,” political analyst Federico Estévez said. “The public’s mood is against the powers that be.”
Mr. Rodríguez, whose nickname El Bronco reflects his untamed style and rural roots, peppers conversations and speeches with salty language more commonly heard in fields and on factories floors than the campaign trail. While emphasizing a pro-business bent, he says he intends to improve conditions for the working poor. He elicits his biggest cheers, however, when he talks about attacking graft and corruption.
“Sooner or later you get tired of all the lies,” said Guadalupe García, a 52-year old saleswoman who was passing out literature for Mr. Rodríguez at a mountainside rally recently. “I was always with the PRI, but all the things they promise in campaigns never are fulfilled. We need something different.”
The El Norte poll published Friday gives Mr. Rodríguez 31% support versus 26% for PRI rival Ivonne Álvarez, with the conservative National Action Party’s candidate, Felipe de Jesus Cantú, at 20%.
Mr. Rodríguez got a boost Thursday when another independent candidate, Fernando Elizondo, dropped out and endorsed Mr. Rodríguez. Mr. Elizondo, who was interim state governor in 2003, was polling about 4%.
Despite his narrow lead in most polls, Mr. Rodríguez still faces a difficult fight. Political power in Nuevo León recently has been shared only between the PRI and National Action. Both parties have strong political machines and loyalists whose votes prove particular crucial in elections with low turnouts.
The established parties are also heavily favored by rules that regulate independent bids at both the federal and state levels. Nuevo León’s election commission said it gave Mr. Rodríguez’s campaign only about $25,000 in public campaign funding compared with some $2 million each for his two rivals. His campaign has been apportioned 16 free television spots compared with hundreds allotted to his two rivals under federal election laws.
Consequently, Mr. Rodríguez has campaigned largely via social media, particularly on Facebook, where has more than 440,000 followers. He polls particularly well among younger and more affluent voters.
“People are disillusioned with politicians, all of them. People are very tired of the corruption,” said Eduardo Elizondo, Mr. Elizondo’s brother and son of a former Nuevo León governor.
This disillusionment has rattled some of the political elite in Monterrey and beyond.
Underscoring the importance the PRI accords the Nuevo León race, the party has dispatched some of its top political operatives to advise Ms. Álvarez’s campaign and will culminate its nationwide campaign effort at a rally in Monterrey.
PRI national leader César Camacho has accused Mr. Rodríguez of incompetence and has joined other critics in saying he is surpassing legal campaign spending limits. “We want legality and fairness to continue being the constant in the Nuevo León election,” Mr. Camacho said in a recent news conference.
Mr. Rodríguez has rejected such accusations from PRI officials and others as desperate attempts to hobble his rise in the polls.
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, a lifelong National Action member, likened Mr. Rodríguez to Venezuela’s late populist Hugo Chávez, whose 1998 presidential election destroyed traditional politics in that country and launched a socialist revolution that continues to roil it.
“Chávez also was very charismatic, very untamed and quite a bully,” Mr. Calderón said in a recent visit to Monterrey in support of his party’s gubernatorial hopeful.
Mr. Rodríguez quipped in response that Mr. Calderón must have been “drunk” or “hung-over” when he made the comparison. Mr. Calderón retorted via Twitter that the comment proved his point about Mr. Rodríguez’s intolerance.
Mr. Rodríguez seems an unlikely revolutionary. He spent more than three decades in the PRI, serving as a party boss, state bureaucrat and federal congressman before making his name as the crime-fighting mayor of Villa de García, a violent Monterrey suburb. He bolted the party in September, saying he was fed up with party politics.
Much of Mr. Rodríguez’s attraction to voters rests on his tough-on-crime reputation.
Mr. Rodríguez has said that one of his sons, who was killed in a road accident six years ago, crashed while fleeing gangsters, and that his young daughter had to be rescued from a kidnapping. Gunmen killed his newly appointed police chief soon after Mr. Rodríguez took office as mayor in 2009, after which he survived two assassination attempts himself.
Mr. Rodríguez took on organized crime with a network of citizen informants who reported gangland activity via tweets, texts and Facebook posts. He purged his police force of officers believed to have criminal ties. He said as governor he would employ the same tactics, some of which have since been adopted by state agencies and civic groups.
“I am not Superman,” Mr. Rodríguez said at a small rally last week in a working-class Monterrey suburb. “But I can be the Lone Ranger.”
Write to Dudley Althaus at Dudley.Althaus@wsj.com
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Noteworthy:
Ricardo Monreal won in the Capitol - from the Worker's Party (Partido de Trabajo). He is credited with the entrance of the Zetas in Fresnillo, Zacatecas and has far too much personal info on them and their operations, even from a politician (referencing his book - Esquradas de Muerte 'Death Squads', about the police military and cartels here)
His brothers David and Saul have accumulated much money, and one of them almost won. It is stated that their money comes directly from the cartels.
Candidates killed this election - 21.
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:-o
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In-depth look at a rising cartel and the dynamics impacting the region:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/operation-jalisco-the-rise-of-the-jalisco-new-generation-cartel-and-peña-nieto’s-militarise
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http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2009/01/13/mexicos-glass-house-2/
J. Michael Waller
Mexico’s Glass House
mexico_southern_border
Articles | January 13, 2009 | Borders
EmailPrint
Every country has the right to restrict the quality and quantity of foreign immigrants entering or living within its borders. If American policymakers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution.
Adopted in 1917, the constitution of the United Mexican States borrows heavily from American constitutional and legal principles. It combines those principles with a strong sense nationalism, cultural self-identity, paternalism, and state power. Mexico’s constitution contains many provisions to protect the country from foreigners, including foreigners legally resident in the country and even foreign-born people who have become naturalized Mexican citizens. The Mexican constitution segregates immigrants and naturalized citizens from native-born citizens by denying immigrants basic human rights that Mexican immigrants enjoy in the United States.
By making increasing demands that the U.S. not enforce its immigration laws and, indeed, that it liberalize them, Mexico is throwing stones within its own glass house. This paper, the first of a short series on Mexican immigration double standards, examines the Mexican constitution’s protections against immigrants, and concludes with some questions about U.S. policy.
Summary
In brief, the Mexican Constitution states that:
Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.
The Mexican constitution: Unfriendly to immigrants
The Mexican constitution expressly forbids non-citizens to participate in the country’s political life. Non-citizens are forbidden to participate in demonstrations or express opinions in public about domestic politics. Article 9 states, "only citizens of the Republic may do so to take part in the political affairs of the country." Article 33 is unambiguous: "Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country."
The Mexican constitution denies fundamental property rights to foreigners. If foreigners wish to have certain property rights, they must renounce the protection of their own governments or risk confiscation. Foreigners are forbidden to own land in Mexico within 100 kilometers of land borders or within 50 kilometers of the coast. Article 27 states,
"Only Mexicans by birth or naturalization and Mexican companies have the right to acquire ownership of lands, waters, and their appurtenances, or to obtain concessions for the exploitation of mines or of waters. The State may grant the same right to foreigners, provided they agree before the Ministry of Foreign Relations to consider themselves as nationals in respect to such property, and bind themselves not to invoke the protection of their governments in matters relating thereunto; under penalty, in case of noncompliance with this agreement, of forfeiture of the property acquired to the Nation. Under no circumstances may foreigners acquire direct ownership of lands or waters within a zone of one hundred kilometers along the frontiers and of fifty kilometers along the shores of the country." (Emphasis added)
The Mexican constitution denies equal employment rights to immigrants, even legal ones, in the public sector. Article 32: "Mexicans shall have priority over foreigners under equality of circumstances for all classes of concessions and for all employment, positions, or commissions of the Government in which the status of citizenship is not indispensable. In time of peace no foreigner can serve in the Army nor in the police or public security forces."
The Mexican constitution guarantees that immigrants will never be treated as real Mexican citizens, even if they are legally naturalized. Article 32 bans foreigners, immigrants, and even naturalized citizens of Mexico from serving as military officers, Mexican-flagged ship and airline crew, and chiefs of seaports and airports:
"In order to belong to the National Navy or the Air Force, and to discharge any office or commission, it is required to be a Mexican by birth. This same status is indispensable for captains, pilots, masters, engineers, mechanics, and in general, for all personnel of the crew of any vessel or airship protected by the Mexican merchant flag or insignia. It is also necessary to be Mexican by birth to discharge the position of captain of the port and all services of practique and airport commandant, as well as all functions of customs agent in the Republic."
An immigrant who becomes a naturalized Mexican citizen can be stripped of his Mexican citizenship if he lives again in the country of his origin for more than five years, under Article 37. Mexican-born citizens risk no such loss.
Foreign-born, naturalized Mexican citizens may not become federal lawmakers (Article 55), cabinet secretaries (Article 91) or supreme court justices (Article 95).
The president of Mexico, like the president of the United States, constitutionally must be a citizen by birth, but Article 82 of the Mexican constitution mandates that the president’s parents also be
Mexican-born citizens, thus according secondary status to Mexican-born citizens born of immigrants.
The Mexican constitution forbids immigrants and naturalized citizens to become members of the clergy. Article 130 says, "To practice the ministry of any denomination in the United Mexican States it is necessary to be a Mexican by birth."
The Mexican constitution singles out "undesirable aliens." Article 11 guarantees federal protection against "undesirable aliens resident in the country."
The Mexican constitution provides the right of private individuals to make citizen’s arrests. flagrante delicto, any person may arrest the offender and his accomplices, turning them over without delay to the nearest authorities." Therefore, the Mexican constitution appears to grant Mexican citizens the right to arrest illegal aliens and hand them over to police for prosecution.
The Mexican constitution states that foreigners may be expelled for any reason and without due process. According to Article 33, "the Federal Executive shall have the exclusive power to compel any foreigner whose remaining he may deem inexpedient to abandon the national territory immediately and without the necessity of previous legal action."
Notional policy options
Mexico and the United States have much to learn from one another’s laws and practices on immigration and naturalization. A study of the immigration and citizenship portions of the Mexican constitution leads to a search for new policy options to find a fair and equitable solution to the immigration problem in the United States.
Two contrary options would require reciprocity, while doing the utmost to harmonize U.S.-Mexican relations:
1. Mexico should amend its constitution to guarantee immigrants to Mexico the same rights it demands the United States give to immigrants from Mexico; or
2. The United States should impose the same restrictions on Mexican immigrants that Mexico imposes on American immigrants.
These options are only notional, of course. They are intended only to help push the immigration debate in a more sensible direction. They simply illustrate the hypocrisy of the Mexican government’s current immigration demands on the United States – as well as the emptiness of most Democrat and Republican proposals for immigration reform.
Mexico certainly has every right to control who enters its borders, and to expel foreigners who break its laws. The Mexican constitution is designed to give the strongest protections possible to the country’s national security. Mexico’s internal immigration policy is Mexico’s business.
However, since Mexican political leaders from the ruling party and the opposition have been demanding that the United States ignore, alter or abolish its own immigration laws, they have opened their own internal affairs to American scrutiny. The time has come to examine Mexico’s own glass house.
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J. Michael Waller, Ph.D., is the Center for Security Policy’s Vice President for Information Operations.
[1] The official text of the Constitution of Mexico appears on the Website of the Chamber of Deputies, or lower house of Congress, of the United Mexican States: http://www.cddhcu.gob.mx/leyinfo/txt/1.txt. An authoritative English translation of the Constitution of Mexico, published by the Organization of American States, appears on the Website of Illinois State University: http://www.ilstu.edu/class/hist263/docs/1917const.html. Quotations in this document are from the OAS translation.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-america-first-neo-isolationism-113331890.html
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This is very interesting. along with an article that stated an ambassador from Mexico is going to work on Mexico's image in the US. If we let other countries walk all over us they will. If we stick up for ourselves for a change their attitude of treating us like push overs may change. Could be all talk we will see:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/04/president-fox-apologizes-invites-trump-mexico/
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This is very interesting. along with an article that stated an ambassador from Mexico is going to work on Mexico's image in the US. If we let other countries walk all over us they will. If we stick up for ourselves for a change their attitude of treating us like push overs may change. Could be all talk we will see:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/04/president-fox-apologizes-invites-trump-mexico/
Funny how so many will treat you the way they really feel, until they find out you really do have what it takes to just crush them.... then it-s all backpeddling.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LMUZ8PZ9s
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Analysis
Editor's Note: This is the 15th installment of an occasional series on water scarcity issues around the world.
When determining borders, a river is often the clearest delineation between sovereign nations. But that clarity abruptly ends when countries must decide how to use the water that the river provides. Even managing rivers that do not determine borders, but rather travel through multiple countries, is precarious at best. The Rio Grande, which partly establishes the U.S.-Mexico border, is no exception. It has been and will continue to be vital to economic growth in the region, especially in Mexico, where the river and its tributaries are crucial to supporting new opportunities for manufacturing and energy.
But growing demands and environmental pressures will increase tension over water resources in the coming decades. Unlike the waters of the Colorado River, which originate entirely in the United States, the watershed of the Rio Grande is more evenly split between the United States and Mexico. Although Mexico depends on the water resources far more than the United States does, both nations are vulnerable to increasing water stress, making it difficult for them to meet anticipated water treaty obligations.
Exceptional Management
The Rio Grande is more than just the main river that runs along the Mexican border of Texas, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Its upper reaches stretch as far north as Colorado, though the majority of the basin area in the United States lies in New Mexico. Because of a combination of factors — such as high evaporation rates in the arid region, diversions for agricultural production in New Mexico and invasive plant species — a portion of the Rio Grande effectively dries up before being replenished at its confluence with the Rio Conchos. The Rio Conchos runs entirely through Mexico's territory, beginning in the mountains of Chihuahua and Durango and moving through the Chihuahuan Desert, and it accounts for roughly 14 percent of the Rio Grande's total watershed. On the U.S. side, one of the Rio Grande's primary tributaries, the Pecos River, runs through New Mexico before joining up again with the larger river farther south.
Yet the cooperation between the United States and Mexico over the river systems of the Colorado and the Rio Grande (or Rio Bravo, as it is known in Mexico) is in some ways exceptional by international standards. Treaties signed in the first half of the 20th century clearly dictate the volumes of flow guaranteed to each country, and those agreements have successfully forestalled many past disputes. Specifically, the river's use is governed in two separate sections, with Fort Quitman, Texas, acting as the dividing point for legislation and management.
It was not until the late 19th century that legal disputes over the use of the Rio Grande began. At the time, U.S. courts determined that the country had no legal obligation to deliver any water downstream. A 1906 case, however, determined that roughly 74 million cubic meters per year would be delivered to Mexico from the northwestern parts of the river but stipulated that the amount could be reduced in drought years. There were reductions in roughly a third of the years between 1939 and 2015. In fact, Mexico has not received the full allotment since 2012, and as little as 6 percent of the full amount was delivered in 2013.
Along the southeastern portion of the Rio Grande, downriver from Fort Quitman, the allotments are governed by the 1944 water treaty, which requires Mexico to receive two-thirds of the water from its tributaries and to deliver the remaining third to the United States. These deliveries are somewhat flexible because the amount (just over 430 million cubic meters per year) is tracked in five-year blocks, and one year's deficit can be accounted for in the next year if necessary. Even if a deficit spans the entire five-year block, as was the case for much of the 1990s as well as from 2010 to 2015, it can still be compensated for in the following five-year span. Mexico even made up its accumulated deficit of 325 million cubic meters within the first few months of 2016. Still, the uncertainty over consistent volumes of delivery sometimes leads to calls for political action, especially for consumers in Texas.
In addition to the two countries' shared surface water, Mexico and the United States share about 20 underground aquifers. Though these resources support the populations and economies of the border region, unlike surface water, no international treaty governs their use. Much like surface water, however, there is significant overexploitation and a decline in water quality. Consistent overuse ultimately threatens the viability of the aquifer systems.
Demand Factors
When these agreements were signed in the early 20th century, less was known about the hydrology of the region, and the Rio Grande's limited water resources were likely over-allocated based on above-average yearly flows. Furthermore, demand is growing, not shrinking. Agriculture is the primary consumer of the basin's water, but expanding populations that could reach nearly 20 million people by 2020, the rapid rise of manufacturing capacities in Mexico (following North American Free Trade Agreement) and energy production on both sides all play a role in increasing water stress in the region.
Mexican manufacturing capacity, especially in the automotive sector, may be slowing after having swelled between 2008 and 2014. But buoyed by the increasing number of nearby U.S. consumers, high-end manufacturing will soon determine Mexican economic growth, and water consumption by the sector will only rise.
Manufacturing growth has also propelled the rapid expansion of Mexico's electrical grid and, in turn, the demand for energy: Mexico continues to rehabilitate its energy sector to revive production levels. And while the full benefits of Mexico City's recent energy reforms have yet to be seen, the energy sector will likely increase its water consumption (including for hydraulic fracturing) at sites located in the Rio Grande Basin. Moreover, Mexico will not be the only country drawing from the Rio Grande or aquifers to support energy production. Agriculture is the primary consumer of water in Texas, but the Eagle Ford shale formation crosses the Mexican border, and production on the U.S. side has already increased water use in several river basins over the past decade, a pattern that will likely continue.
All of these factors contribute to current estimates that upper portions of the river will decrease by as much as a third by the end of this century, and lower portions will accumulate a deficit of more than 830 million cubic meters per year. The gap between supply and demand will grow, as will tension along the border. The treaties, signed decades ago, have been sufficient and their terms largely met until now. But overuse of water resources and environmental stress continue to rise, and basin conditions are poised to prevent amiable management of the water system in the long term. Efforts from both the private sector and governments will instead likely focus on implementing technological adaptations, including waterless hydraulic fracturing and water recycling, to mitigate water stress. Nevertheless, dwindling water supplies could hamper manufacturing growth and energy production in the basin, especially for Mexico. Moreover, Mexico's likely failure to meet delivery quotas will only ramp up tensions with the United States in the coming decades.
Part 1: Yemen's Looming Water Crisis
Part 2: U.S. Agriculture Wilts During California Drought
Part 3: South Africa's Water Needs Will Be Costly
Part 4: Indonesia's Disjointed Islands Make Water Scarcity a Problem
Part 5: Mesopotamian Vitality Falls to Turkey
Part 6: Water Use Reform Will Be Difficult for Fractured India
Part 7: Sao Paulo Drought Could Benefit Brazil
Part 8: Industrial Expansion Will Strain Mexico's Water Resources
Part 9: China's Appetite Will Strain Australia's Water
Part 10: Why Canada Cannot Export Its Water
Part 11: The Sea Is a Relief for Spain's Water Problems
Part 12: Central America: How a Drought Affects Migration
Part 13: Algeria: A Desert Nation Fighting to Maintain Water Supplies
Part 14: Southern Africa's Options Are Drying Up
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Lets see how the LEFT will go after the President of Mexico. Money will pour in to anyone who runs against him in next election:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/31/trumpmexicoarizonaimmigration/
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Now we see how the LEFT will go out to undermine Trump.
During the news conference the mex prez said nothing about the wall.
Later he tweets otherwise.
And of course the Huff post declares Trump a liar.
The LEFt must be out in full fury over this.
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Mexico’s Options in a Trump Trade War
The country could impose retaliatory duties and look for new trade partners.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Nov. 20, 2016 5:22 p.m. ET
If the sharp selloff of the Mexican peso after the Nov. 8 election of Donald Trump were set to music it might sound like a funeral dirge, the dearly departed being the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). The peso has fallen to an all-time low of more than 20 to the dollar, and on Thursday the Bank of Mexico raised its benchmark interest rate to stem the bleeding.
Mexico investors are worried that Mr. Trump might actually believe—as he argued in his campaign—that U.S. productivity growth and job creation depend on renegotiating Nafta to discourage U.S. investments south of the border. But Mexico won’t easily yield to a new deal that limits its access to U.S. markets in order to make it less attractive as a destination for capital.
If Mr. Trump counters with tariff hikes in violation of Nafta, Mexico is likely to respond with its own duty increases. It did this with $2.4 billion in retaliatory tariffs on important U.S. export products in 2009 when the U.S. failed to live up to its Nafta obligation in trucking. There is even the possibility that Mr. Trump will carry out his threat to tear up the agreement. There are no winners in any of these narratives.
In the 23 years since Nafta was launched, Mexico has cultivated a middle-class, a more-vibrant democracy and a diversified economy far less dependent than it once was on oil. The country now sends 80% of its exports to the U.S. A trade war would be an economic disaster and open the door to political instability.
Thus it won’t be so easy for Mr. Trump to bully the neighbors. National pride will play a role in stiffening the Mexican spine, and President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government is signaling that it intends to face any crisis by deepening structural reforms, getting its fiscal house in order and looking more aggressively for new trading partners. The unspoken message to Mr. Trump is that if he plays the protectionist game, Mexico is ready to raise the stakes.
Nafta’s demise would be bad for the U.S. too, although the U.S. stock market rally suggests that the fear of a trade war is overblown. Protectionist steel and textile tycoon Wilbur Ross is rumored to be in line for a job in the new administration. But Vice President-elect Mike Pence is a free trader from Indiana, which in 2015 exported $4.8 billion in goods to Mexico, its second-largest export market.
From time to time Mr. Trump has had flashes of sanity on trade. In a joint press conference with Mr. Peña Nieto in Mexico in August, then-candidate Trump spoke of the need to “keep manufacturing wealth in our hemisphere.”
Some expect the Trump administration to find a way to largely leave Nafta alone while it works on legitimate trade issues like China’s practice of intellectual-property theft. Mexico seems to want to help in this face-saving endeavor and has wisely decided not to escalate the rhetoric. It doesn’t need to: Americans have plenty to lose if Nafta is destroyed.
Many U.S. corporations are now heavily invested in supply chains that crisscross the continent to create globally competitive products. These support millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Saying goodbye to duty-free access to Mexico under Nafta also would hit U.S. agricultural exports hard.
Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Reuters on Nov. 10 that his government is “ready to talk so we can explain the strategic importance of Nafta for the region. Here we’re not talking about . . . renegotiating it, we’re simply talking about dialogue.”
He also said Mexico will look for new markets, adding to more than 40 existing free-trade agreements. It had hoped for expanded opportunities via the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation accord that includes the U.S. and much of Asia. But President Obama wasn’t able to get TPP through Congress and Mr. Trump has promised to kill it. Mr. Guajardo said that Mexico will pursue the possibility of completing a smaller TPP with the countries that are expected to have ratified it by the end of 2016. He named Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Australia would probably be eager to replace the U.S. as Mexico’s chief food supplier.
None of this would make up for the loss of U.S. market access under Nafta, which means that increasing Mexican competitiveness is urgent. Mr. Peña Nieto got historic constitutional reforms in energy and telecommunications through his Congress in 2013. Opening these markets to competition will attract capital and improve the infrastructure for producers but implementation takes time.
Unfortunately the government’s debt burden has increased sharply in recent years and taxes have gone up, adding to disappointing economic performance. These are mistakes that Mexican policy makers cannot afford if Mr. Trump plays chicken with Nafta.
Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.
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Mexico's Options in a Trump Trade War
The country could impose retaliatory duties and look for new trade partners.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Nov. 20, 2016 5:22 p.m. ET
If the sharp selloff of the Mexican peso after the Nov. 8 election of Donald Trump were set to music it might sound like a funeral dirge, the dearly departed being the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The peso has fallen to an all-time low of more than 20 to the dollar, and on Thursday the Bank of Mexico raised its benchmark interest rate to stem the bleeding.
I arrived in Mexico, January 11th of 2011, in the heart of the country. There is about a 2 peso difference in value between internal Mexico and the border concerning the ability of the peso to purchase US dollars. Here, in central Mexico, in January of 2011, the peso was trading at 12.42 pesos per dollar. Even before Trump was elected, and it was (wrongly) assumed that Clinton would win (by many), the peso was still trading at 18.36 pesos per dollar internally. At the border, it was already at 20 pesos per dollar. After Trumps election, it dropped to 21 pesos internally (3 pesos).
Mexico investors are worried that Mr. Trump might actually believe—as he argued in his campaign—that U.S. productivity growth and job creation depend on renegotiating NAFTA to discourage U.S. investments south of the border. But Mexico won't easily yield to a new deal that limits its access to U.S. markets in order to make it less attractive as a destination for capital.
Mexico has several investors; Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the US, are just some examples. In short, Mexico doesn't depend on NAFTA.
If Mr. Trump counters with tariff hikes in violation of NAFTA, Mexico is likely to respond with its own duty increases. It did this with $2.4 billion in retaliatory tariffs on important U.S. export products in 2009 when the U.S. failed to live up to its NAFTA obligation in trucking. There is even the possibility that Mr. Trump will carry out his threat to tear up the agreement. There are no winners in any of these narratives.
Mexico wouldn't necessarily lose if NAFTA was torn up. In many cases, US companies are paid millions of dollars per company (annually, during the start up years), just for bringing their existing manufacturing here. I have seen it myself. I have also seen the US companies fail to live up to governmental obligation in providing a certain amount of jobs, even though the company received the money promised by the Mexican government.
In the 23 years since NAFTA was launched, Mexico has cultivated a middle-class, a more-vibrant democracy and a diversified economy far less dependent than it once was on oil. The country now sends 80% of its exports to the U.S. A trade war would be an economic disaster and open the door to political instability.
Many of these "exports" originate from the States themselves, and take a $60,000 USD job, and pay someone that was previously farming chilis here in Mexico and pay them 4000 pesos a month to do it. Even myself. who was paid $43,000 pesos a month to manage machining and engineering operations, pails in comparison to the 8000 dollars a month I was making before I moved to Mexico, fulltime. If there are winners, the winners aren't the American nor Mexican people, but the business owners and investors. The losers are the people in both countries, who either lose jobs in the States, or pay huge amounts of taxes in Mexico, for underpaid, promised jobs, with high turnover rates to keep wages low, and the companies receiving millions of USD, per business, in Mexican tax dollars.
Thus it won't be so easy for Mr. Trump to bully the neighbors. National pride will play a role in stiffening the Mexican spine, and President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government is signaling that it intends to face any crisis by deepening structural reforms, getting its fiscal house in order and looking more aggressively for new trading partners. The unspoken message to Mr. Trump is that if he plays the protectionist game, Mexico is ready to raise the stakes.
Mexico is raising the stakes solely by just recently, creating a commission to create jobs and industry, to prepare for millions of deported Mexicans coming from the States in order to avert a crisis. It's about time.
Nafta’s demise would be bad for the U.S. too, although the U.S. stock market rally suggests that the fear of a trade war is overblown. Protectionist steel and textile tycoon Wilbur Ross is rumored to be in line for a job in the new administration. But Vice President-elect Mike Pence is a free trader from Indiana, which in 2015 exported $4.8 billion in goods to Mexico, its second-largest export market.
Again, the winners are only the business owners and investors. Company after company has left the US, leaving millions of Amercans jobless. Also, in Mexico, every time a new general manager is hired, all of the previous management staff, is run off, in order to give jobs to friends of the new manager, and the production staff also has the same issue. Many people are fired before they can achieve seniority, to avoid paying them more, and even if they weren't a well paid machinist here in Mexico makes about 9000 pesos a month. I have seen people leave their jobs to move across the country for a 10 peso a day raise, only to come back, asking for their old job back.Also, Mexican labor law provides for the workers to have unions, which heavily prevents efficiency and production, and the US workers still can't compete.
From time to time Mr. Trump has had flashes of sanity on trade. In a joint press conference with Mr. Peña Nieto in Mexico in August, then-candidate Trump spoke of the need to “keep manufacturing wealth in our hemisphere.”
Keep manufacturing wealth in the pockets of Canadian owners of Mexican mines, US owners of US factories operated in Mexico, and the American and Mexican people can either lose their jobs or be paid 1/5 of what an American worker would make.
Some expect the Trump administration to find a way to largely leave NAFTA alone while it works on legitimate trade issues like China's practice of intellectual-property theft. Mexico seems to want to help in this face-saving endeavor and has wisely decided not to escalate the rhetoric. It doesn't need to: Americans have plenty to lose if NAFTA is destroyed.
The author this story has plenty to lose as well if TPP (next level NAFTA) is implemented, because the new person writing the story will come from India, work in a US office, on a guaranteed visa, and the house the author bought, will be foreclosed on, because there won't be enough workers around, to make a salary that will pay for the advertising revenue, or printed price of anything this author is conveying.
Many U.S. corporations are now heavily invested in supply chains that crisscross the continent to create globally competitive products. These support millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Saying goodbye to duty-free access to Mexico under NAFTA also would hit U.S. agricultural exports hard.
We came here and created an aerospace industry where one did not exist previously. We also decreased production run times here in Mexico, by up to 600% in some cases, primarily on large hydraulic actuators, for different models of Boeing aircraft, and not one cent made it to our pockets. It took American jobs though. You can bet on that. Also, the steel, is purchased from all over the world, including Gloria Steel Company in China, titanium from Russia and steel forgings from Austria. The US has already been sold out. I have to add, my engineers and I created a aftermarket machine interface, to allow for Marposs and Renishaw in machine measuring, with the help of an engineer from Mori-Seiki, in order to achieve in machine measurement and adjustment of work shift offsets. We were successful. I had also wanted to implement robotics, due to the unions here, even going as far as to quote 2000 series robots from Fanuc, but I finally chose not to, because if I did, there wouldn't be a workforce to generate wages to support a local economy. I learned my lesson after transferring the factory from the US to Mexico. In many things, we were successful. AS a whole, it failed American and Mexican peoples.
Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Reuters on Nov. 10 that his government is “ready to talk so we can explain the strategic importance of NAFTA for the region. Here we're not talking about . . . renegotiating it, we're simply talking about dialogue.”
He also said Mexico will look for new markets, adding to more than 40 existing free-trade agreements. It had hoped for expanded opportunities via the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation accord that includes the U.S. and much of Asia. But President Obama wasn't able to get TPP through Congress and Mr. Trump has promised to kill it. Mr. Guajardo said that Mexico will pursue the possibility of completing a smaller TPP with the countries that are expected to have ratified it by the end of 2016. He named Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Australia would probably be eager to replace the U.S. as Mexico's chief food supplier.
Says the guy that lets Canada suck every cent of wealth out of the country's natural resources, shipping them abroad. Also, Mexico is second only to Vietnam in terms of minimum wages paid. It's like being second place in a race to "zero."
None of this would make up for the loss of U.S. market access under NAFTA, which means that increasing Mexican competitiveness is urgent. Mr. Peña Nieto got historic constitutional reforms in energy and telecommunications through his Congress in 2013. Opening these markets to competition will attract capital and improve the infrastructure for producers but implementation takes time.
I can't argue with this portion. Mexican production workers are severely inexperienced and undertrained. The management staff and engineers; however, are top notch, needing only experience, which they have been getting since the inception of NAFTA. Notably, there is only one that manufactures drones, in Jalisco. This will change soon, because people are becoming more experienced in top level manufacturing, and more importantly, design.
Unfortunately the government's debt burden has increased sharply in recent years and taxes have gone up, adding to disappointing economic performance. These are mistakes that Mexican policy makers cannot afford if Mr. Trump plays chicken with NAFTA.
That happens in what is essentially a socialist government. Also, NAFTA has had almost no effect on Mexican politics. They fought before NAFTA. They will fight after NAFTA.
Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.
[/quote]
EDIT: Every item stated here, is something that I have years of personal experience with, and also either oversaw directly or experienced myself. I didn't have to interview anyone as the author had to. NAFTA, and even worse, the TPP (which I read in its entirety), are bad for everyone with the exception of politicians and investors. Other than that, the people are the ones that lose, and the people implementing these policies, don't care, because they are insured their investment and tax dollars, until the people run out of money to pay them, which... in the end, they will, because the well will dry up. They're too short-sighted to see that, and if they're not, they think the impact will happen too late to affect them directly, having shielded themselves from it. I can't count how many investigations there have been, on both sides of the border, of politicians and investors, both, having been investigated for corruption or insider trading. That's a fact. NAFTA and TPP only serve the wealthy and powerful.
One last note, my engineers (each of whom has a degree - Calculus, the whole deal....not some chickensh.t liberal arts degree), make between 12,000 and 16,000 pesos a month, working for a world leader in Aerospace, and is a third tier supplier to Boeing themselves. It is important to add that, because many people in the States, think that having a degree will save their jobs.... it won't.
On a personal note, I am currently studying law and doing an internship for a lawyer, because that's where the only money for people that aren't rich, will be made. I could have said doctors, but even they have been sold out by everything the LEFT has to offer. I look at the world we live in, shake my head, and wonder what happened to it, and then I think of the laziness that most humans that have never done hard, manual work, are capable of and what their expectations are when thrust into comparison (I grew up working a corn and pig farm), and I have to look no further. Liberal Arts degree holders (or anyone for that matter), that have never done hard, physical labor.... they are fully the culprits of all of this. Even then though, there are ranch students ("San Marqueños" here and others, to be specific, that get subpar grades in school, protest, and think they're entitled to the world). Greed. I'm so grateful that I have to heat mine and Cynthia's bathwater by hand. It keeps things in perspective.
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Wave of violence in Mexican state of Guerrero
Mexico - Security - 22 November 2016
Vanguardia reported on 21 November 2016 the Mexican state of Guerrero experienced over 25 violent deaths in the in a short period between 19 and 20 November 2016. Police recovered the dismembered bodies of at least eight men in the municipality of Tixtla with the tortured remains being discovered in black bags scattered near the edge of a bridge (La Opinion). The finding came after authorities in Acapulco reported nine deaths, including two off duty Navy personnel, presumably related to organized crime. Authorities also reported five further homicides in three separate incidents in Acapulco and an additional five were found executed (Vanguardia). Authorities have indicated a spike in violence and cartel disputes over territory may stem the 18 November capture of Benito Escalante alias El Benny, alleged top hitman of the Los Beltrán Leyva cartel (El Universal and La Opinion). Due to the sudden increase in violence, Guerrero Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores announced security would be reinforced in high criminal activity zones (Noticias Acapulco).
Bank of Mexico warns about possible restrictions on remittances from the U.S.
Mexico - Business - 22 November 2016
Bank of Mexico (Banxico) President Agustín Carstens warned on 22 November 2016 of the possibility the U.S. would exercise greater controls on remittance flows (Informador and El Universal). Carstens commented it would be both illegal and unlikely that the U.S. confiscate remittances sent by Mexicans from the U.S., but it would be entirely possible to place restrictions on those, for example, who could not demonstrate the resources were obtained legally. Carstens warned these were the types of scenarios Mexico needed to predict and prepare for in case it were to face them during the Donald Trump administration (El Universal).
Mexican senate transfers greater port authority to secretariat of the Navy
Mexico - Security - 22 November 2016
Mexican Senate committees approved new law stemming from presidential proposal on 22 November 2016 to reform Mexican port authority by transferring a number of security responsibilities from the Communication and Transport Secretariat (SCT) to the Secretariat of the Navy (Excelsior). Senator Miguel Barbosa Huerta (PRD) outlined the details of the Navy's permanent duties, including responsibility for authorizing the arrival and departures of vessels, granting permits for maritime passenger transport, as well as regulating and monitoring waterways, among others (Quadratin). The SCT will remain responsible for overseeing the administration, development, and commercial aspects of the port, but security duties will lie exclusively with the Navy (Excelsior and Fuero).
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The news this morning stated that 21,000 illegals are going to the States per month, with it expected to spike at 30,000 in December and January.
Those are just the ones that register with the support groups for migrants. It doesn't count the others that go with no support.
Today... I had several court sessions, and even the magistrate here, expressed an interest in at least getting a visa for the States before "Hump," assumes power.
To be fair, a Mexican diputado "politician" that lived her entire life in the States, before coming back to Mexico, stated publicly, that the States do indeed have the right to enforce their laws, and she went as far as to call illegals "nacos," or crude, low class people. She is taking flack for it.
Mexicans do not like Trump at all, but even some are starting to admit the hypocrisy of law enforcement between countries. It still doesn't mean illegal immigration is slowing down as the Left and many Mexicans would have someone believe.
Even Colombians and Central Americans have an opinion on it, saying that now they will have to seek an illegal life in Mexico, instead of the States, which struck me as odd regarding two things:
1.) Why not force your own country to get better instead of leaving it and depending on people you don't even like?
2.) Mexico has averted any real illegal immigration problems by allowing free passage to anyone attempting to go to the States, and in fact, profits from it heavily, so much so that one of the national economic advisers was on the news, talking about the importance of remittances from the US in regard to the Mexican economy.
Today at court, we were working out several land disputes (135 of them actually). Many of the owners didn't even show up, because they were in the States. Others had sent power of attorney from the States, to assert their land claims here. Literally every family here has someone in the States, it is that prevalent.
Just to get a sense of scale and attitude.
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The next time we see Vincent Fox lambasting Trump someone should ask him , "exactly what is wrong with Mexico that its people have the need to flee north for jobs. Instead of bothering us why don't you Vincent, fix what is wrong with your country?"
It is a huge country with lots of resources . What is wrong with them. Why are so many Indian Mexicans so poor? Why are those in power predominantly white descendetns of Spaniards?
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Analysis
By Reggie Thompson
Today marks the 10th anniversary of Operation Michoacan, and to many, the start of Mexico's deadly war on drugs. But a decade later, the country's prospects for security and peace don't seem much better than they did when the massive crackdown on Mexican cartels began in 2006.
Most people point to Felipe Calderon's presidency as the moment when things began to go wrong for Mexico. In the face of rising crime, and under mounting pressure from the United States to stem the flow of drugs across its southern border, Calderon sent 5,000 soldiers and federal police officers into the streets of Michoacan state, firing the first shots of what would become a long and bloody struggle. But it is neither fair nor accurate to pin the blame for the conflict that ensued on a single decision. Crime-related violence plagued Mexico long before Calderon took office, albeit at a lower level than in the years that followed his declaration of war on the country's cartels. Moreover, Calderon was not the first president to deploy Mexico's armed forces against drug lords and their assets; he was just the first to do so on such a tremendous scale.
Cartels in the Crosshairs
Operation Michoacan signaled the beginnings of a concerted effort by Mexico City to tackle organized crime. Though day-to-day security tasks normally fell to local police agencies, corruption had become so pervasive at the lower levels of Mexican law enforcement that their federal counterparts — the army, marines and federal police — had to step in to maintain law and order in some areas. Under Calderon's orders, some 45,000 troops were deployed throughout Mexico each year to combat crime, more than twice the average manpower that Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, had dedicated to the same cause. Upticks in arrests and killings of cartel members began to noticeably disrupt trafficking activities as crime groups' capabilities steadily eroded.
But the military's success came at a price. As Mexican crime groups came under greater pressure from law enforcement, they began to fight back against the government and among themselves, vying for the trafficking routes, recruits and resources that were left. Violence skyrocketed in several of the cities and regions that were vital to the drug trade and other illegal activities.
Treating the Symptoms
Ten years on, the future of Mexico's security environment looks no more promising than it did at the start of Calderon's campaign. Still, the intervening decade has brought some positive changes. From a tactical perspective, public safety has visibly improved in the areas that the government targeted because of their rampant violence, such as Ciudad Juarez and parts of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. Meanwhile, most of the large cartels that once controlled swaths of Mexican territory have splintered as military operations have left them leaderless and riven by infighting.
What has not changed is Mexico's proximity to the massive market for drugs that lies just north of its border. Despite the heavy blows Mexican officials have dealt to major drug trafficking organizations, the smaller fragments left in their wake have picked up where their predecessors left off. Driven by persistently high demand for the drugs they have to offer, Mexican traffickers have kept supply chains to the United States and beyond running, even as state security forces try to shut them down. Though the power of individual crime groups has faded in the face of continued law enforcement efforts, the scope, location and intensity of violence has ebbed and flowed over the years, rather than declining permanently.
This reality is unlikely to change so long as there are profits to be made. Since the United States and its foreign partners began cracking down on cocaine smuggling routes through the Caribbean in the 1980s, Mexico — situated between Central America and the United States and blessed with well-developed transportation infrastructure — has proved ideally suited to serve as a land bridge for northbound drugs. Though the use of cocaine has sharply declined since the mid-2000s, heroin and methamphetamine have taken over bigger and bigger shares of the U.S. drug market, and both are increasingly produced and transported by Mexican cartels. The emerging preference for heroin and methamphetamine has even hiked up profit margins, since the cartels do not have to buy these drugs from South American producers.
A War With No End in Sight
With foreign demand propping up Mexican crime, it is unlikely that Mexico City will retreat from its drug war anytime soon. The country's cartels pose a threat to national security that is far too great for the government to address on its own. Consequently, Mexico City will continue to rely on Washington's help, in the form of security training and intelligence sharing, to target cartel members and criminal networks. Perhaps even more important, Mexico's enduring effort to quash drug trafficking across its borders is a fundamental part of its relationship with the United States. Any attempt to scale down its operations against cartels would immediately meet with pushback from Washington.
Lacking other means of going after the country's criminal groups, Mexico's government will keep tasking federal forces with protecting the Mexican public. Over the past three years, Mexico City has tried to create new law enforcement bodies to bridge the gap between the military and local police, since soldiers do not have the writ or capacity to conduct criminal investigations and combat low-level crime. But forming and implementing these organizations will take years, leaving Mexico City with little choice in the meantime but to count on the military to protect its citizens from the criminals in their midst.
In all likelihood, Mexico's decadelong drug war will continue for decades to come. Fueled by geography and the economics of the illegal drug trade, trafficking and violence will remain a thorn in Mexico's side and a blemish on U.S.-Mexico relations. Though crime may not linger at the heights the country has seen over the past 10 years, Mexican cartels are central to the global drug market, and for now they have made it clear that they are here to stay.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-dines-with-carlos-slim-as-relations-warm-with-mexican-leaders/2016/12/19/652ccf7c-c60f-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.7c07624af833&wpisrc=nl_p1most-partner-1&wpmm=1
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAr_xIttcho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7BBF-_uCnQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO4Af8SIKBo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvGzvP75_f8
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Mexican authorities confirmed Jan. 5 that nationwide protests against the government's recent gasoline and diesel price hikes have resulted in four deaths and more than 700 arrests. Officials also said that around 1,700 businesses have been looted over the past two days. In Veracruz, two people were found dead amid the looting and a third was killed by a driver fleeing police. A police officer was also killed in Mexico City while defending a gas station.
The protests began Jan. 1 in Mexico City following the implementation of a 20 percent increase in gasoline prices and a 16.5 percent increase in diesel prices. According to Treasury Secretary Jose Antonio Meade, the government will not be providing subsidies or fiscal incentives to the sectors of the economy most affected by the hikes. Over the past few days, the initially small demonstrations have spread to some 20 states. Despite the participation of left-wing organizations such as the National Coordinator of Education Workers, a dissident faction within Mexico's National Education Workers' Union, many of the rallies appear to have been motivated by citizens' anger at the price increases. The protests have largely remained regional and have not yet coalesced into a coordinated national movement. Powerful trucking and transportation unions, however, have staged strikes in several states, lending weight to the demonstrations. Nevertheless, the transportation disruption is not yet severe enough to sway the government.
The protests have coincided with heightened pressure on the government from lawmakers, governors, mayors and the Roman Catholic Church to evaluate measures to reduce the harmful effects of the price hikes. But President Enrique Pena Nieto has rebuffed their criticism, insisting that alternatives to price increases would entail either tax increases or more budget cuts. The president argues that because there have already been deep spending cuts, any further belt-tightening would require the suspension of social programs. He has also pointed out that raising taxes would make Mexico less attractive to foreign investors. The price reform is part of a larger reform package — including energy, education, labor and fiscal reforms — that forms the cornerstone of Pena Nieto's agenda, and he appeared on television late Jan. 5 to announce that his government has no plans to reverse its decision. The president added that because the cost of oil in Mexico has risen by 60 percent in the past year alone, failing to increase the price of gasoline accordingly would cost the government around $10 billion.
At the moment, the Mexican government appears determined to ride out the unrest as it did in the 2013-14 protests over education reform. And given the sporadic, localized nature of the demonstrations, the government's approach might work. Even so, there is a risk of violent demonstrations spiraling out of control and sparking further protests. Supply chain disruptions could also occur as looters attempt to hijack gasoline trucks. The president's liberalization measures are still likely to remain the law of the land in Mexico, no matter who wins the country's 2018 presidential election, but they could face setbacks if leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wins the upcoming vote.
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ummary
Mexico has marked the start of 2017 with a wave of protests over a proposed increase in fuel prices. The protests involve a wide range of political groups: Social movements such as teachers' unions have joined in the country's southwest, truckers' unions have blocked roads, and regular citizens have come out into the streets. Looting also began on Jan. 1, damaging hundreds of stores across the country, with most of the ransacking occurring in urban areas such as Mexico City, Veracruz and parts of Mexico state.
Though media attention has focused on the fact that some protests are violent, the violence is not the full story. What's more interesting is that the protests are not part of a centrally organized movement. Instead, their strength depends on regional movements, such as transport unions, and on how many demonstrators they draw out through efforts like online calls to protest. To truly understand their importance, one must analyze the underlying causes of the protests and how they will affect the country's politics if they grow.
Analysis
The rise in fuel prices that ignited the protests is a part of the energy reform that Mexico began in 2013. The upstream portion of the reform, which removed the 75-year monopoly the Mexican state held on oil production, was removed by congressional vote. Bidding rounds were held starting in 2015, and there are now private companies investing in oil exploration and production in Mexico's territory.
But the fuel price increase is part of the downstream reforms, specifically those concerning the domestic fuel market. As part of overall energy reform, Mexico opened all parts of hydrocarbons production, refinement, transportation and sale to private investment. That also meant making Mexico's subsidized retail fuel market attractive to foreign investors part of the plan. When it was crafting the reform, the Mexican government intended for fuel prices to be liberalized and brought in line with market prices beginning in 2018. Before that, the government set prices that were lower than the cost of producing and transporting gasoline and diesel in the country. The government in 2016 decided to begin that process a year sooner, crafting a transitional pricing scheme derived from the U.S. Gulf Coast prices and creating two additional taxes on fuel sales that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2017. The scheme will precede the full 2018 liberalization of fuel prices. By then, the government expects prices to fluctuate in accordance with a pricing scheme reflecting the global price of crude oil.
Consequently, any plan to expose Mexican consumers to fuel prices that could fluctuate depending on market conditions would be fraught with risk. Mexico's revenue shortfall when oil prices collapsed in 2014 compounded those risks. The sudden price decline and Mexico's hedging of oil revenue (which locked prices for Mexican crude oil exports in at a set yearly level) cost the country. In 2012, the federal government received 852 billion pesos (roughly $40 billion) from oil revenue, and by 2015, this figure had dropped to only 408 billion pesos. The magnitude of Mexico's fuel price hike is the direct result of this revenue shortfall. The new pricing scheme and new taxes drove fuel prices up between 14 and 20 percent from their previous levels.
Unpredictable Risks
Despite the current debacle in Mexico, even greater risks could lie ahead. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has publicly stated he does not intend to renege on his decision to raise fuel prices. It is a logical choice: A sudden policy shift would introduce too much uncertainty over Mexico's future regulatory decisions for the domestic fuel market. Potential investments in fuel storage, transport and retail infrastructure could even be reduced if the government suddenly changed course as a result of public pressure. Moreover, because the Mexican Constitution bars Pena Nieto from running for another term, he has little to lose politically, and thus little incentive to back down.
The risk comes from the unknown aspects of the protests, particularly if they grow. If a security forces crackdown at a demonstration takes lives or inflicts mass injuries, it could trigger even more unrest. There is also the issue of other political parties, such as the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), jumping on the bandwagon. The party has announced protests for next week in Mexico City. This move to oppose Pena Nieto's unpopular policy makes sense with a presidential election set for next year. But the PRD joining the protests confers some legitimacy on the demonstrations as well, making it possible for them to swell.
It is unclear how long the protests will last or how violent they will become. At the moment, it is a mass display of unconnected protests rather than a coordinated effort at undermining the energy reform. Because there are multiple interests and organizations from various regions involved, they will not find common ground easily (apart from general opposition to higher fuel prices) or be able to quickly create the connections necessary to form a unified front against the government. Even with the logistical support of parts of the PRD, labor unions and a widespread online campaign, if the protest movement does not soon succeed on some level (by bringing the government to the negotiating table on the reforms, for example), it may fizzle out.
Any Reversal of Reform
So Pena Nieto is in a difficult spot. On the one hand, reneging on a part of Mexico's energy reform would tell investors that pro-business reforms in Mexico bow to extreme pressure from street action. On the other hand, pushing forward with the price hikes is going to inflame protests in the short run and potentially hurt the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the 2018 vote, which promises to be rather competitive. The protests will not easily roll back energy reforms — those were etched into the country's constitution years ago. Still, any reversal of Pena Nieto's reform drive would erode investor confidence in Mexico, complicate the country's fiscal picture and likely hand the PRI a notable political defeat.
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Too bad they don't get this upset about mass graves or systemic corruption.
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This is weird. Paying with drug money?
And why is this drug lord still so rich to begin with?
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mexican-drug-lord-pay-families-victims-including-murdered-us-agent-1m-1601096?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous&yptr=yahoo
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-border-wall-announcement-builds-more-resentment-in-mexico-1485364860
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-border-wall-announcement-builds-more-resentment-in-mexico-1485364860
Mexico can suck it.
Resentfully.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-border-wall-announcement-builds-more-resentment-in-mexico-1485364860
Mexico can suck it.
Resentfully.
Kind of feeling the same way. On the subject:
I support Trump, 100%, because he's right. Having said that, there are people here in Mexico, that want people like me expelled from the country, even though Mexico's own immigration laws and practice of enforcing them are much more severe than the United States, which.... is Mexico's right. What I take issue with, is why they get upset when someone else enforces their own laws in lieu of giving away the country.
Shot at, living with the fear of being tortured or my family being tortured, creating an aerospace industry where one didn't exist, training the people to work in it, increasing their production abilities by hundreds of percentage points depending on what the product line was, so they can remain competitive given the logistical costs in doing business with other countries (sometimes 800% faster than in the States), almost have completed my degree in law and helping people with that... given money to every single homeless person I have seen every time I have money... and the bottom line, is that many people here are racist as shit... same as anywhere else, and I can't even tell them they're wrong to be... it is absolutely their right.
Trust in God. I've invested seven years here, and so much more. Just about to finish school, and this shit. Whatever... it'll be alright either way. If only my own country would have given me the same second chance I have received here.
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DDF:
IN Mexican law isn't an accused person considered guilty to proven innocent?
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DDF:
IN Mexican law isn't an accused person considered guilty to proven innocent?
In fact, until recently, they were. That has changed, but there is too much here to list, as to what can go wrong with anyone's case. Also, the absence of a jury is another major difference. Anyone can understand the implications of that.
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Also, if I remember correctly, judges, even justices of the Supreme Court (I had dinner with one, Carlos del Rio, in 1978) have a fixed term (6 years?) and as such must go back to their political patron for their next job at the end of the term.
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Also, if I remember correctly, judges, even justices of the Supreme Court (I had dinner with one, Carlos del Rio, in 1978) have a fixed term (6 years?) and as such must go back to their political patron for their next job at the end of the term.
Also, correct. It can actually be between 3 and nine years, but they are temporary and the point as to pleasing their new boss is absolutely correct.
In fact, the very reason I took up law, is because every time a change in administration comes around, you're out if the new guy already has his team ready or doesn't like you....period.
Almost everything here moves in terms of six year periods, with this year being an odd exception that it will only be five years for the governor, due to the government wanting to hold all elections simultaneously, with the federal elections, or at least here in Zacatecas. I'd have to verify that with the other states, but the judges are usually six year periods.
http://www.animalpolitico.com/2016/10/los-magistrados-del-tribunal-electoral-validaran-la-eleccion-presidencial-2018/
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Thank you. (PS: Supreme Court justice with whom I had dinner -- his nephew was a friend of mine-- was a complete lush)
Karl Rove, no friend of Trump, noted today that Pena Nieto won with only 38% and that the next election is in 2018 with hard lefty of PRD Lopez Obrador looking very strong and that if LO wins this could present serious issues for the US (e.g. becoming of use to China, Russia, Iran, etc).
Your thoughts?
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Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444318/donald-trump-border-wall-shouldnt-cost-mexico-money-honor
In that Trump's honor is in play as well, this does look problematic.
Also worth noting is that the remittances of Mexicans in the US to back home are a major (one of the top 3 IIRC) source of hard currency for Mexico.
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Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444318/donald-trump-border-wall-shouldnt-cost-mexico-money-honor
In that Trump's honor is in play as well, this does look problematic.
Also worth noting is that the remittances of Mexicans in the US to back home are a major (one of the top 3 IIRC) source of hard currency for Mexico.
Time to levy a 50% tax on remittances.
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I don't know . I have nothing against Mexico or Mexicans . People from all over the world have taken advantage of our decades of not enforcing immigration laws.
They just happen to be right along side our border. Americans were sold out from both the business forces on the Right and the polical creeps on the LEFT.
We should enforce the immigration laws with an iron fist and apply it to everyone no matter where they come from.
I am not comfortable with what seems like picking on Mexico.
Just my thoughts
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Driving the next election into the hands of Lopez Obrador is a very high cost well worth considering as part of our calculus.
Looks like negotiations have begun:
http://thehill.com/latino/316528-trump-holds-hour-long-call-with-mexican-president
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I can tell you from firsthand experience, illegal aliens I dealt with while working in law enforcement were almost always demonstrating a very arrogant demeanor and sense of entitlement to be here. Fcuk Mexico.
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Lefty icon Cesar Chavez strongly opposed illegal aliens, or, as he called them, "wetbacks":
https://spectator.org/59956_cesar-chavez-anti-immigration-his-union-core/
https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/189746
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Thank you. (PS: Supreme Court justice with whom I had dinner -- his nephew was a friend of mine-- was a complete lush)
Karl Rove, no friend of Trump, noted today that Pena Nieto won with only 38% and that the next election is in 2018 with hard lefty of PRD Lopez Obrador looking very strong and that if LO wins this could present serious issues for the US (e.g. becoming of use to China, Russia, Iran, etc).
Your thoughts?
Again....completely correct. People here HATE Nieto with a passion. Unfortunately for the Left (PRD, Moreno, Movemiento Ciudano, and Partido de Trabajo), they can't get it together enough to fight the PRI, that isn't fragmented. The heads from the leftist organizations, would rather be the lion of their particular little ship, than the tail of a merged organization, so they never unite. They have tried a PRD/PAN (Far Left/Far Right alliance), to yank power from the PRI, but they fail in that too. The PRI has run the country I should think, more than 80% of the time since 1917.
China's presence here is growing daily. In fact, the country is banking on China (and to a lesser extent Japan), in case the US trade market falls through.
Things are really a flipping mess here. I've said it before, and I'll say it here publicly now, Mexico has been set up for a military takeover, even ED thinks that US citizens will start being targeted soon from CNG, and I agree with him... and things are going to go downhill fast. I may be overstating the urgency of that, but it is definitely heading that direction.
Even with the deficiencies of the Left, Mexico is still a very socialist country (as you well know), and even though they can't yank the presidency, they have plenty of senators and diputados (representatives), to help the Left pass whatever they want to, and also signifying major support of the left from the people in the states and municipios (townships).
I've basically decided to finish my degree, and Cynthia and I will almost certainly be joining you all shortly. You all know me.... know what I do... and I've been hewre roughly 7 years now and wasn't planning on leaving. Now... I'm not so sure, and it isn't because I'm easily rattled.
Mexicans (in Mexico) LOATHE Trump... I have NO doubt, they'd burn him at a stake if they could. Last night on TV, it came right out of the newscaster's mouth - "La RATA que es Trump...." and you could almost hear the spittle flying out of the guys mouth when he said it.
That's what's up.
EDIT: PGC.... I just looked it up... since 1928 (the birth of the PRI party), there have been 17 presidents. 15 of them belonging to PRI, the other two PAN.... (and even the two presidents preceding the birth of the PRI, also were of the same ideology), but if you look at the current senators and diputados, it's completely different.
Senators -
PRI: 55 bancas
PAN: 38 bancas - Christian Right (allies with the leftists PRD to fight PRI)
PRD: 20 bancas - Far Left
PVEM: 7 bancas - Green Party - Center Right - works with PRI a lot.
PT: 6 bancas - Hard Left (hardcore socialism)
SG: 2 bancas - Independents
Resumen - 61 PRI + Green
- 64 Alliance between PRD, PT, and PAN
- 2 Independents
Representatives are about the same - 500 total
PRI - 208
PAN - 109
PRD - 60
GREEN - 42
Movimiento Ciudano (left) - 24
Nueva Alianza (PRD+PAN) - 11
Morena (Left) - 36
Encuentra Social (Center right ) - 9
Independent - 1
Resumen:
PRI, GREEN, EC - 259
Left, and Right against the PRI - 240
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I can tell you from firsthand experience, illegal aliens I dealt with while working in law enforcement were almost always demonstrating a very arrogant demeanor and sense of entitlement to be here. Fcuk Mexico.
Don't even get me started on that one.... The hypocrisy is f king sickening.
Just got into a huge argument with my wife about it last night.
Oh... and PGC... Iran and Russia here? IDK about that, but China? Definitely.... they're all over.
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A spark, or the absence of some very large security guys, could have set this thing off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r0_-AXDW3g
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A spark, or the absence of some very large security guys, could have set this thing off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r0_-AXDW3g
Wow! After being here, learning the law, earning the culture of Mexico (not of those in the States specifically, but that of deep Mexico), the attitudes of Mexicans in general, the hypocrisy, I refer back to GM's comment.
If anything, it has made me less cultured... not more.
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By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Jan. 29, 2017 6:43 p.m. ET
159 COMMENTS
The author of “The Art of the Deal” has badly botched his first big one on the world stage, and not because he failed to stake out a tough position. In his effort to extract concessions from Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Trump has failed to understand his opponent.
It isn’t quite right to say that negotiations were scheduled to begin this week, with Mr. Trump hosting Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto in Washington. Mr. Trump has been negotiating since last year’s campaign. His strategy has been to soften up the opponent with verbal abuse and extreme threats, including the possibility of tearing up Nafta altogether.
“The president-elect has done a wonderful job of preconditioning other countries [with] whom we will be negotiating that change is coming,” Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross gloated during his Senate confirmation hearing. “The peso didn’t go down 35% by accident. Even the Canadian dollar has gotten somewhat weaker—also not an accident. He has done some of the work that we need to do in order to get better trade deals.”
Having witnessed his nation and its currency pummeled in the public square, the Mexican president was supposed to crawl to Washington and agree to whatever terms his U.S. counterpart put on the table. Maybe Mr. Trump should have Googled the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexicans are still smarting over that one.
After Mr. Trump told Mexico that a promise to pay for a border wall was a prerequisite for the scheduled meeting, Mr. Peña Nieto canceled. The White House responded by saying it would extract the money for the wall with a 20% tariff on Mexican exports to the U.S. Of course American consumers would be the ones paying. But in any case it would be the end of Nafta.
Americans have to hope their new president is not that reckless. Even the Soviets recognized that mutually assured destruction was a bad idea. A phone call between the two heads of state on Friday ended with both sides agreeing to future discussions.
North American free trade cannot be dissolved without inflicting great harm on the country that Mr. Trump has sworn to protect. Mexico is the U.S.’s third-largest trading partner, and some six million American jobs rely on trade with the southern neighbor. According to the Agriculture Department, “sales of food and farm products to Mexico totaled a record $19.5 billion in fiscal year 2014.” That was 13% of U.S. agricultural exports.
Mr. Trump says that the U.S. has been outfoxed in manufacturing because American companies now make things in Mexico. But imports from Mexico contain significant American content, and production-sharing across the continent has given U.S. companies an edge in the global market. New tariffs on Mexican imports would damage that competitiveness and may result in retaliatory Mexican tariffs on U.S. exports.
Legal experts say it isn’t clear how much unilateral power Mr. Trump has to maneuver. Article 2205 of Nafta allows the president to withdraw from the agreement. But it is being debated whether that would repeal the congressional legislation that put it into effect. If so, tariffs would revert to pre-Nafta levels, which implies using the World Trade Organization tariff schedule. American exporters to Mexico would face greater tariff hikes than Mexican exporters to the U.S., because Mexico accepted much greater tariff reductions under Nafta than the U.S. did.
A Jan. 10 paper from the international law firm White & Case says that its reading of the agreement and U.S. law “implies that substantive modifications of the Nafta outside of tariffs and rules of origin would require congressional authorization.” The rules of origin—the share of a product that must be Nafta-sourced—have changed several times already, and Mexico might agree to alter them again. But it has said that it won’t budge on tariffs.
Mr. Trump might try to invoke the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 to slap his oft-promised punitive tariff on Mexican imports. But it is hard to argue that national security is being threatened.
The 45th president has said he wants to craft new bilateral trade agreements. Mexico says it is not interested. It has learned a hard lesson about relying on an unreliable partner, and its aim now is to diversify its trade portfolio. Policy makers are said to be exploring new agreements in the region with countries eager to replace U.S. agricultural suppliers.
Mr. Trump’s demagoguery has offended Mexican pride. But it has also destabilized an economy that was already buffeted by low oil prices. As the rector of ITAM, one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America, said earlier this month, “It would be, perhaps, preferable to leave Nafta aside rather than a long process of negotiation and tension.” Mexicans can bargain too.
Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.
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She is an editor for the WSJ. I do not trust the WSJ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_O'Grady
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This is from-- no surprise!-- the WSJ:
By Ruchir Sharma
Jan. 31, 2017 7:28 p.m. ET
208 COMMENTS
Mexico is the unlucky country. Time and again its economy has been poised to take off, only to stumble into crisis, sometimes of its own making but often a result of the forces unleashed by its gradual opening to the U.S. The latest shock arrived with Donald Trump and peaked last week when a spat over who will pay for “the wall” compelled Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to cancel his first meeting with the new White House. Economists are already rushing to downgrade Mexico’s growth prospects for 2017.
Mr. Trump’s worldview is built on a gut feeling that bad trade deals allow Mexico to profit at America’s expense. Atop his agenda is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 deal that turned the continent into a free-trade zone. But it is difficult to argue that Nafta unfairly enriched Mexico.
The big mystery, actually, is why Mexico has not done better since Nafta launched. Opening to the U.S. did help to modernize the country, putting it on track to emerge as the most important manufacturing power in Latin America. But it hardly made Mexico rich.
Since 1994, Mexico’s economy has grown at an annual rate of about 2.5%—half the average for emerging countries over the same period. The average Mexican’s income is only a quarter the average American’s, no higher in relative terms than 20 or even 100 years ago.
Mexico’s string of unlucky stumbles dates to at least 1994. As Nafta went into effect, a sharp rise in U.S. interest rates prompted investors to pull money out of Mexico, leading to the peso crash that December. Because Mexico’s government had begun issuing bonds that it promised to pay in dollars, it needed a bailout when the peso collapsed. Bankruptcies spread, and the economy fell into a massive recession.
As often happens after a crisis, Mexico recovered sharply, and in the late 1990s its economy grew in close sync with America’s. But right as its luck started to turn, the next shocks hit. In 2001 the U.S. fell into recession, dragging Mexico along, and China entered the World Trade Organization. Manufacturers began moving to China at an accelerating pace to take advantage of wages that were a fraction of Mexico’s.
Over the next decade, many emerging economies were lifted by surging prices for oil and other commodities, as well as a tide of easy credit from Western banks. Mexico was not among the lucky, its growth stymied by the declining production of its state oil company, Pemex, and by a cultural fear of debt contracted during the peso crisis. While other emerging economies grew rapidly by exporting to booming China, Mexico grew moderately by exporting to the U.S. When the 2008 financial crisis began in America, Mexico became one of the first casualties in the emerging world.
Still, Mexico had not given up on closer ties to the U.S. Its elites remained believers in the Washington consensus of open borders, free markets and budget discipline. In 2012 Mexicans elected Mr. Peña Nieto, a growth-oriented reformer who promised to reduce the influence of monopolists, including Pemex.
By 2014 these reforms looked ready to generate the long-sought boom. The government expected huge revenues from an auction of oil drilling rights, including to big American firms. But later that year oil prices collapsed and dragged the growth rate down to 2%.
Mr. Peña Nieto persisted, and by the middle of last year, the oil shock had faded. Mexico was growing at a healthy 3%, and unemployment was falling sharply. Then came President Trump. Now businesses are putting investment on hold until they see what the White House will do. But shoving Mexico too hard on trade could backfire.
Economists already expect Mexico’s growth this year to dip below 2%, and unemployment could start rising again. This would send more Mexicans northward. The flow of immigrants had slowed significantly in recent years as job opportunities and wages rose in Mexico. More than the wall, the best way to keep immigrants from crossing the border is to give them reasons to stay home.
North American supply chains are so tightly interwoven that 80% of Mexican exports go to the U.S.—and 40% of the parts those exports contain are made in the U.S. Fourteen states now count Mexico as their main trading partner, including anchors of the angry middle class like Michigan, which catapulted Mr. Trump to victory.
Mexicans also have an intense streak of anti-gringo patriotism. This had waned in recent years as the two countries’ economies became intertwined. The feeling I got during a recent visit is that many Mexicans felt they had been moving toward becoming the honorary 51st state before Mr. Trump barged in vowing to expel them.
Delivering on Mr. Trump’s threats could revive latent Mexican nationalism and play into the hands of a populist politician like Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a firebrand who is gaining momentum as Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections approach. Mr. Peña Nieto’s approval rating has fallen to 12%, partly because many Mexicans fault him for failing to stand up to Mr. Trump. Still, nationalism can’t fill an empty stomach. If Washington pushes Mexico into a deeper slump, no wall could be high enough to prevent Mexican immigrants from trying to escape their unlucky land.
Mr. Sharma, the chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is the author of “The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World” (Norton, 2016).
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I remember once about 30 yrs ago standing on the side of a cruise ship with a cabin mate I met on the cruise.
He was from Arizona and of Mexican heritage. Nice guy. Owned a night club somewhere in Arizona
while standing at the rail side of the docked cruise ship in a Mexican city port of call we saw 3 Mexicans trying to get from one side of a chain linked fence to the other side just below and in front of us. They walked up to the fence and lifted up the bottom of it and then one by one they scooted under it brushing along the pavement to get to other side.
What was very odd about the whole thing was was that there was a open walk way just about 10 feet away. All they had to do was step a few feet over and walk through to the other side.
We were kind of standing there watching this and scratching our heads when my friend said ,
"typical stupid Mexicans"
I was surprised he said that being he was from Mexico himself and never forgot it .
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By Felicia Schwartz
Updated Feb. 8, 2017 11:52 p.m. ET
14 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to visit Mexico, the State Department said, with the top U.S. diplomat agreeing to the trip during a meeting Wednesday with Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray.
Mr. Videgaray said Mr. Tillerson’s visit would take place in the coming weeks.
Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the two had a “constructive conversation” that covered U.S.-Mexico collaboration on law enforcement, migration and security.
Mr. Videgaray spoke to reporters after huddling with Mr. Tillerson at the State Department. Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto scrapped a visit to the U.S. last month after President Donald Trump increased pressure on Mexico to pay for the wall he wants built on the southern border.
The back-and-forth between the allies about the wall as well as about Mr. Trump’s calls to alter trade ties have shaken up longstanding commercial and diplomatic relations.
Mr. Videgaray told reporters that Mr. Peña Nieto wasn’t looking to reschedule his visit to the U.S.
Mexico’s government said earlier Wednesday in a statement that Mr. Videgaray would meet with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and he would discuss migration and border security with both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Tillerson.
Mr. Videgaray was named foreign minister in January. As finance minister, he helped bring Mr. Trump to Mexico in August to meet with Mr. Peña Nieto. The visit was seen in Mexico as a humiliation, and Mr. Videgaray resigned from the finance post.
Mr. Tillerson also met with Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, on Wednesday.
Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com
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https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/the-border-wall-making-mexican-drug-cartels-great-again/
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https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/the-border-wall-making-mexican-drug-cartels-great-again/
Not if we seek them out and kill them, like we should.
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https://www.facebook.com/nayaritenlinea.mx/videos/10154208666502256/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38986804
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38986804
Nothing new there. It's been done before.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38986804
Nothing new there. It's been done before.
"No arrests made" means several things here.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38986804
Nothing new there. It's been done before.
"No arrests made" means several things here.
La mordida?
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or , , , desaparecido , , ,
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Both. It's Mexico and there is a full on drug war here. Everything goes.
Edit: There are several public cases of both. No rumors.... mass graves.... all kinds of things.
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And two dead Secretarias de Gobernacion (the #2 post in the country, and quite commonly the next president) from odd plane/helicopter crashes during the previous administration , , ,
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And two dead Secretarias de Gobernacion (the #2 post in the country, and quite commonly the next president) from odd plane/helicopter crashes during the previous administration , , ,
Indeed.
It's Mexico.
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I might add that the third one passed on trying for the presidency and went back to being governor of BCN or BCS where he was reputed to have gotten quite wealthy while governor there previously-- presumably working in concert with local cartel(s). (Working from memory here based on an article I read in Proceso the last time I was in Mexico.
Do I have this right DDF?
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I might add that the third one passed on trying for the presidency and went back to being governor of BCN or BCS where he was reputed to have gotten quite wealthy while governor there previously-- presumably working in concert with local cartel(s). (Working from memory here based on an article I read in Proceso the last time I was in Mexico.
Do I have this right DDF?
You do.
With the last administration here, they approved a federal loan of billions and billions of pesos. In order to pass the measure, there are many that say the votes to pass the measure, were purchased. The population was clearly against it. They have now issued a criminal case against him - http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2016/12/21/1135536
Now... with the new administration, things like seat belt tickets are appearing....a new state tax levied at the Canadian mine owners... that the Federal government just shot down... and the outgoing governor now in hot water for mismanagement of funds (he was #3 favored to be future president).... due to my status here...I cannot speak to politics without being in danger of being expelled from the country.... but I can say, there are lots and lots of stories covered publicly in the media, with proof of corruption, and all other manners of misbehavior or worse.
One of the worst case scenarios, is the case of the Monreal Family.... almost all of whom, work in the government industry, come from farms.... and have grown so rich, that one of them (David Monreal IIRC), now has mansions in Malibu and other places in the US. His relative Ricardo is now a senator here...and had written a book (Escuadras de la Muerte) . . . http://imagendelgolfo.mx/resumen.php?id=395521 .... where he describes even the age and gender on average... of sicarios.... even info that we don't have... and is said to run with the Zeta cartel, as well as is blamed for their presence here where I am at.
In my personal experience, I can say that there are almost certainly agreements between the cartels and high level politicians, because when there are not (and there have been times when this is readily apparent - administration changes, etc...)... the body counts, public executions, narcomantras and firefights spike notably.
I'm almost done with my degree in law here... and have gotten to a point, where I tire of the whole deal.... and am just looking to bring my wife back and see what we will do from there. I have possibilities in the works... haven't really heard anything from any of them.. but that's where I'm at with all of it... Had I been born Mexican, I may feel differently, but I wasn't... and that is made clear here to me daily...
Be fighting you all again in gatherings shortly I imagine. My wife sends her regards.
Edited to include the source on the charges against Miguel Alonso Reyes.
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An unusually well informed Mexican friend responds to this thread:
Well I could only read trough some of it.
There are a few points I don't agree with. Specifically:
Governor Osunas cartel ties. He was the governor I work with directly... He is as clean as they come. He has the distinction of being the only governor in the history of Baja to pick military forces as bodyguards instead of police for his final 4 years of being in office.
This is very telling.
He lives in the same house he did before he started and if you are ever so inclined I can make the introductions and you can meet him yourself. He manages his small businesses in Baja directly. You can find him at his office most days.
Proceso is a leftist publication... And has a slant towards the PRI at times.
I take most of the stuff I read in it with a bit of scepticism.
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I'm an unusually well informed, Mexican friend too.
Osuna has his detractors in the news, but then again, so does everyone. I don't know the guy personally. He left office here in 2013.... I had only started in 2012.
The governor here on the other hand.... I have more than a few photos with and know him well. Monreal... does have knowledge that he probably shouldn't have.
If you want me to admit whether there are clean politicians or not, who's to say? There are plenty of stories concerning almost every one of them floating around in the news... even Peña Nieto goes from being corrupt to being "the best president in the world" (they literally said that), in the course of a week.
The police here, with anything above municipal and penitentiary police, are almost all former military and especially escoltas.
Not sure what the point is. I know what I've seen being here, working here and living here, for years.
Then again... soon to be none of my business.
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Regarding Osuna....
"En el que capturaron a unos de los lugartenientes del \”Teo\” mas mencionados, el “Kaibil”, junto con otros de sus colaboradores, además también se capturaron a unos escoltas o ex-escoltas del gobernador Osuna Milán, a ministeriales, policías estatales y policías municipales de Rosarito."
http://mexablog.com/2009/03/12/la-misma-corrupcion-en-todo-mexico/
Not getting into a tit for tat deal with anyone else you know Guru.... I have nothing but respect for you and anyone else you know.
My point is merely... the news and other sources do in fact say "things."
Then again... I have always stated.... "what happens in Vegas... stays in Vegas. What happens in Mexico... never even happened."There is a lot of truth in that.
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Mexico's central bank will offer up to $20 billion in currency hedges to calm the peso's volatile exchange rate relative to the dollar. The money would come from Mexico's considerable foreign currency reserves, which stand at around $179 billion. By injecting foreign currency from its reserves into circulation, Mexico City hopes to prevent the peso's value from dropping further. The decision is a clear and significant reaction to the pressures of U.S. economic and social policies.
A stronger dollar and the possibility of interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve have for several years been driving down the value of the peso relative to the dollar, which is in turn driving up inflation. Between February 2014 and February 2017, the peso lost around 35 percent of its value, alarming the Mexican government, which is now attempting to limit fluctuations in the value of the peso to ensure social stability. If the peso depreciates more, it would push up food prices — including staples such as corn — hurting Mexico's poorer citizens and increasing the probability of protest. Opposition parties would capitalize on any such discontent to challenge the ruling party for presidential, legislative and gubernatorial positions.
Mexico is severely constrained when it comes to managing its domestic economy. Though it is hedging the value of the peso, it cannot prop it up forever. Moreover, Mexico has been hiking interest rates (currently at around 6.25 percent) to limit inflation but any further hikes will curb lending and further slow the economy. Regardless, Mexico will continue trying to limit inflation and promote growth. Whether it is successful, however, depends a great deal on outside factors, such as U.S. decisions on interest rates and renegotiating the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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http://www.thediplomad.com/2017/02/the-new-mexican-war.html
Saturday, February 11, 2017
The New Mexican War
Much has been written, including in this blog, of the threat to America posed by radical Islamic terrorism. Not so much has been written about another threat, perhaps an even greater one. I refer to the threat posed by Mexico to the United States; it is multi-faceted and persistent, and forms a long established core component of Mexico's foreign policy.
Before I get into the subject let me engage in the usual disclaimer required in our snowflake culture. I have been in Mexico many times both on vacation and for work as a US diplomat. I know Mexico well, am fascinated by its history, and consider Mexico City one of the great cities in the world. If you want outstanding restaurants and, above all, world class museums and other cultural institutions, go to Mexico City.
That said, I also have long considered Mexico a major threat to America. I have dealt with Mexican diplomats at the UN, the OAS, and in Central and South America. They are first rate. They are patriotic, well-trained, dedicated, and hard working. They, almost to a man and a woman, are also possessed with a deep, deep animus towards the United States. At the UN and the OAS, for example, Mexico, in my experience, played the role of opponent to whatever we sought to do. They not only consistently voted against us, they collaborated with our opponents on resolutions and projects antithetical to our interests, and, for example, refused to oppose Cuban and Venezuelan human rights violations. They rarely passed on an opportunity to stick it in our eye.
Mexico had a major role in fostering guerrilla groups in Central America during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, backing off only when it became a hindrance to the NAFTA deal with the United States, and when some of the groups began operating in Mexico. Mexico is feared and resented throughout Central America as a bully and for its mistreatment of Central American migrants. The horror stories these migrants tell of their passage through Mexico are hair-raising and heartbreaking.
I wrote during the recent hysteria over Russian hacking and interference in our 2016 elections that,
Is there foreign interference in our elections? You bet.
The biggest offender? Not Russia, but Mexico. Mexican officials publicly called on Mexicans in the US to oppose Trump; Mexico's over fifty--yes, fifty--consulates in the US (here) are hot beds of political activity and activism. Millions of illegal and legal aliens largely from Mexico and Central America vote, yes vote. We need to have an in-depth investigation into Mexico's interference in our elections, an interference that goes well beyond revealing embarrassing DNC texts.
There. That's an investigation the GOP should endorse, and the new SecState should take up the issue of Mexican interference in our elections.
That interference in our politics has not ceased since the elections. It, in fact, has increased. Some years ago, I mentioned to a senior colleague in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at State, my concern over the openly political activity engaged in by Mexico's consulates and diplomatic personnel in the U.S. She acknowledged it was a problem but not one anybody wanted to take up. Well, it is now at a stage when it must be taken up. If the Trump administration is serious about protecting our borders and sovereignty the time has come for tough action on Mexico.
We see this story in the Wall Street Journal (and here) in which Mexican officials, including their diplomats in the US, are seeking to "jam" US courts with contested deportations. The Mexican government has set aside millions of dollars to help illegal Mexican migrants in the US fight efforts to deport them. In addition, Mexico, apparently, is contemplating the grotesque tactic of demanding that we PROVE that deportees are Mexican citizens before Mexico will accept them. In other words, we have to provide the documentation that Mexico failed to provide its own citizens. Mexican officials are holding meetings in Arizona with US politicians warning them about the harm to US-Mexico relations if illegal aliens are deported or prevented from coming to the US. Mexican officials are openly encouraging activists to block deportations. I find this nothing short of outrageous, but, nevertheless, a clear manifestation of the hostility that has long existed in Mexican officialdom for the USA.
We must not only defend our border but, in my view, it is well past the time for the US to begin shutting down most of these Mexican consulates. There is no justification for Mexico to have over fifty consulates in the US. Had I the power, we would give Mexico one week to close 25-30 consulates. In addition, we would work out a plan to close additional consulates depending on how Mexico behaves. If Mexico, in fact, refuses to take back deportees, then we would need to take additional actions such as shutting down our visa issuance in Mexico, kicking out their ambassador from Washington, closing down the border crossing for periods of time, and even halting remittances to Mexico--just to let Mexico feel the pain. As part, of course, of any comprehensive reform of our immigration laws, no federal money should go to supporting illegal aliens in the US.
The Southwest USA does not "belong" to Mexico. Mexico, please note, held California for about 25 years; they had Texas for even less time. Spain held the area for a couple hundred years, and we've had it for some 170 years. So enough with that argument. It is tiresome.
The USA has the right to defend its sovereignty and borders. Mexicans have no right of access to the US any more than anybody else does.
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If people in the States for the most part, knew what is published in the news here, and said in the streets, whilst having a firm grasp on what Mexican law states about foreigners speaking their political opinions...
Trump, and the people that support him aren't just hated.... they are LOATHED, which is odd coming from a country and people that will boot any foreigner from the country for saying anything about politics.... almost ten years here... and number of American flags I've seen being waved here? Not even one.
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Strong article there GM.
Note the temporary visas granted Haitians so they can get to US border mentioned in this article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/23/mexico-chides-us-on-trump-immigration-policies-adm/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURFd1pUZzJZekl3T1RZeiIsInQiOiJwXC8rZ2FCd2s5R1lxbFBqVzAycnY3NGJjWGY1VW5sREVocCtDbGdvcjFKR2JrNnlaVzNMZUxxeHhkeDZZMERTTnF2dktzM243bDlsaFRMNHRCVFJrcGl6WG1mekVxOEFUR3NmUThzbzZ2QlZFVHh5MWRyc1VsU3dRVFRcL2dcL3hsQiJ9
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Strong article there GM.
Note the temporary visas granted Haitians so they can get to US border mentioned in this article:
It's important to note... the Mexican Constitution specifcally allows for anyone having the right to pass through the national territory. Article 11:
"Article 11. Everyone has the right to enter and leave the Republic, to travel through its
territory and to change his residence without necessity of a letter of security, passport,
safe-conduct or any other similar requirement. The exercise of this right shall be
subordinated to the powers of the judiciary, in cases of civil or criminal liability, and to
those of the administrative authorities insofar as concerns the limitations imposed by the
laws regarding emigration, immigration and public health of the country, or in regard to
undesirable aliens resident in the country."
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I did not know that. Point taken.
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The acrid political atmosphere between the United States and Mexico created by the issue of immigrant deportation dominated the visit to Mexico City by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and John Kelly, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The shifting U.S. stance toward immigration enforcement will play a significant part in shaping Mexico's domestic political landscape and will affect future relations between the two countries.
The most recent dispute between Mexico City and Washington revolves around memos written by Kelly to his department and made public Monday concerning how to implement executive orders issued by President Donald Trump that give authorities greater latitude to deport foreigners who break U.S. immigration law. Under Kelly's instructions, the United States could send those people to the contiguous country nearest to their point of detention — meaning Mexico in tens of thousands of cases — until their immigration hearings were resolved, although he said people whose cases were decided would be transported directly back to their home countries.
What is a Geopolitical Diary?
The policy outlined by Kelly, who at a press conference Thursday promised to prioritize the deportation of criminals and take a cooperative approach with Mexico in the matter, opens the door to increased deportation of Mexican-born migrants. This will create a number of headaches for authorities in Mexico City. Adding thousands of deportees to the ranks of the unemployed is certainly an unappealing prospect for Mexican officials, who are already dealing with federal budget cutbacks spurred by slumping oil prices. But increased deportations of Mexican citizens also could damage the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ahead of the 2018 presidential race by creating the impression among voters that the PRI's leaders are weak in the face of unfavorable U.S. policy. This could drive up support for opposition parties such as the PRI's traditional foe, the National Action Party (PAN), or the upstart National Regeneration Movement (Morena), founded by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The prospect of voters flocking to Morena is a major concern for Mexico's business and political elite. The private sector knows what to expect from PRI or PAN, but Morena has never held power. Lopez Obrador is not exactly a political outsider: He was previously mayor of Mexico City under the Party of the Democratic Revolution and twice ran unsuccessfully for president. But 2018 could produce a different result for him; polls indicate that he has the support of around a third of the electorate, and the current tussle with the United States could add to his popularity. But even as Lopez Obrador has publicly signaled a shift to the center by meeting with business leaders, economic and regulatory risks abound concerning his election. For example, he has repeatedly vowed to slow the pace of the country's 2013 energy reforms, which opened exploration and production in Mexico's oil and natural gas sectors to private foreign investment. Most recently, a Lopez Obrador spokesman said that if elected, the Moreno leader would halt Mexico City's oil and gas licensing rounds and review existing agreements. Lopez Obrador most likely made the promise in the hopes of bolstering support in areas hit hard by the downsizing of state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos and then riding a wave of nationalism to the presidency.
While his shot at the energy reforms may merely represent populist rhetoric intended to appeal to voters already angry with the government, it suggests that if Lopez Obrador assumes office, he would use his presidential powers to slow the pace of private capital entering Mexico's energy sector. This in turn raises the specter of political gridlock and infighting at a time when Mexico can ill afford it. With the United States pushing the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), such a divisive energy issue could be in front of Mexico's congress at the same time it might need to address changes in the trade status with the United States, a priority that congressional infighting could delay.
But aside from the political difficulties that changes in U.S. immigration policy could create, another angle of the issue has raised concerns in Mexico City. Accepting deported migrants from other countries (mostly those from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) without any promise of assistance from the United States would put Mexico in a difficult position. Though Mexico would accept its own citizens, the establishment of communities of largely jobless, sometimes criminal migrants from other nations (many of whom would never leave Mexico) would create long-term difficulties for the country. The number of Central Americans attempting to enter the United States illegally has surged, and the economic pressures that influence them to cross Mexico's southern border are not diminishing. That, combined with the Mexican administration's fears of a voter backlash if it acquiesces to the DHS directive, makes it no surprise that Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Mexico would not entertain cooperating on that portion of the new orders, although Mexico could face U.S. pressure to give in.
Discussions on security issues, particularly on ways to counter illegal migration and organized crime, will continue parallel to the NAFTA discussions, slated to begin in June. Before then, one of the main tools Mexico will use to shape negotiations on security and economic matters will be the threat of refusing to help the United States rein in illegal migration. Mexico has already suggested that it would reduce security cooperation if the United States pushes for changes to NAFTA that are unfavorable to Mexico. But putting that threat into practice will be a risky proposition for Mexico. The Trump administration can retaliate by cutting off most U.S. government assistance, a threat set up by the language of the DHS memos instructing agencies to identify any sources of aid to Mexico.
The ultimate intent of such a policy seems to be to pressure Mexico to accept U.S. demands, whether to agree to the suggestion that Mexico fund a border wall between the countries or to concede points in NAFTA negotiations. A reduction in Mexico's security cooperation with the United States, whether on intelligence gathering or migrant interdiction, could lead to retaliation from Washington, which could replace NAFTA with a bilateral trade agreement. The demise of NAFTA would result in more uncertainty for Mexico, which would find itself in the difficult position of negotiating a bilateral trade deal at a time when political relations with the United States are at an ebb.
Mexico's government would probably want to divorce security cooperation from the economic talks, but doing so may no longer be possible. As the negotiations go on, long-standing security issues such as migration and drug trafficking (and Mexican cooperation on those issues) will intersect with the purely economic aspects of Mexico's relationship with the United States. Mexico would clearly be at a disadvantage in NAFTA negotiations, but for now, Mexico City will wait to see what constraints limiting the White House's ability to act on NAFTA present themselves. The future of NAFTA is uncertain, even among Washington policymakers, and Mexican leaders likely hope that uncertainty will give way to a renegotiation of the pact, rather than to a rapid deterioration in economic and political ties.
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Morena is growing in power daily here.
Mexico is already a socialist country... Morena will make it more so.
I'm wondering how long Mexico will keep its public support of migrants migrating north? Amerins by and large don't know it, but Mexico actually has public departments that promote (even illegal) immigration to the States, because of the amount of cash sent back to Mexico.
http://guerrero.gob.mx/?cat=792&s=+&post_type=directorio
http://codigo.michoacan.gob.mx/directorios/directorio_oficinas_general_cat.php?showdep=42
There are Ministries dedicated to this in every single state in Mexico.
Also noteworthy, are the huge clubs of Mexicans in the United States (primarily in Los Angeles and Chicago - being the largest amongst them), where i have personally guarded the governor here whilst meeting with them when they have returned to Mexico...to sponsor what they call a 3 for 1 program, wherein, the government here invests 3 pesos for every peso the clubs send back to Mexico....
http://www.3x1.sedesol.gob.mx/conoce.php?secc=0
You will notice that every link I attached has the ".gob" suffix, which is the Mexican equivalent of .gov, designating a government website.
The only reason Americans on't know the extent of this charade, is because they don't speak Spanish, and generally, anyone speaking Spanish in the States, supports the effort.
It's a scam of epic proportions... driven by dire need and corruption here. Americans get screwed in the process, as do Mexicans... because it allows the government here, to keep Mexicans dependant upon the US economy instead of fixing the economy here.
To date, there have only been something like 6 Mexican aircraft manufacturers, with only ONE currently producing driones... there has never been a Mexican helicopter.... there are zero Mexican car manufacturers, but they'll bu Nissan Tsurus by the ton (every taxi in the country is one almost).... and it isn't because Mexico lacks engineers that are capable of this.... it's because of a few things... government wanting to keep people dependent upon the government and ripping off the US economy being chief amongst them...
Even the drug war here could be combatted by developing the economy.... but they don't.
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/26/tancredo-mexico-feels-no-shame-exporting-people-fruits-corrupt-socialist-economy-full-display/
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I know this is in Spanish (enough people will understand it to get the just of it), but this just happened.
He was a presidential candidate here. It won't happen, but it speaks to the common atitude of Mexicans concerning relations between both contries.
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/politica/2017/03/10/promueve-cardenas-demanda-para-anular-cesion-de-territorio-eu
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Map of how that might look here:
https://www.google.com/amp/io9.gizmodo.com/a-map-of-the-u-s-if-there-had-never-been-a-mexican-am-1613264384/amp
I wonder if they would like to restart the war or have the affected territories take a new voice of self-determination?
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Map of how that might look here:
https://www.google.com/amp/io9.gizmodo.com/a-map-of-the-u-s-if-there-had-never-been-a-mexican-am-1613264384/amp
I wonder if they would like to restart the war or have the affected territories take a new voice of self-determination?
I want to laugh... then I think of how proud Mexicans are, "cut off one's nose to spite one's face," and I realize that I wouldn't put it past them. And the map you posted it exactly what they want.
I personally like the idea of self determination...especially with California's attitude lately, and the collossal stupidty of Pelosi.
This in particular:
(https://lunaolvera1996.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/20131015-145610.jpg)
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DDF:
Isn't Cardenas the son/grandson of the President from 1934-40?
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DDF:
Isn't Cardenas the son/grandson of the President from 1934-40?
He's the son of him (General/Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río). That is correct.
He also started the PRD party which is as Left as one can get here.
Mexico does have it written into its Constitution that anyone can only serve as president once (including those that serve in a temporary capacity); still, people stay in power in certain families for centuries, going all the way back to the Spanish Crown.
A great example of that, is the Monreal dynasty. They currently have 20+ politicians in their family. The Barrios family as well. There are several here.
In Los Angeles, they refer to Beverly Hills as "old money," and Encino being "newer money." Here in Mexico, most money comes from the beginning barring a couple of entrepreneurs and cartels... the rest of it goes all the way back to Spain.
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"He also started the PRD party which is as Left as one can get here."
I had forgotten that.
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"He also started the PRD party which is as Left as one can get here."
I had forgotten that.
The governor that just left, before the governor that I worked for Miguel Alonzo Reyes, Amalia Garcia, started it with him.
Anyways... not USA related, but concerning big names in Mexican politics... (and they really only go back a century in their story - the money and power have existed since Spain)... it's good to have on record in English... just for reference:
88 clans control Mexicos Congress
posted May 6, 2015, 7:16 PM by Hernan Cortes
Nepotism in Mexican congress. Are you surprised? 88 families have held control over 455 federal legislative positions during the last 81 years, a period in which when reelection to the legislature has been prohibited, according to an investigation by El Universal news outlet. Of these dynasties, 53 have been present for between nine and 18 years; and 35 between 21 and 57 years, according to an research by El Universal.
A group of 230 legislators that belong to the "castes" that have controlled Mexico's Congress since 1934 have survived to reforms and switched parties to remain in power. Many parliamentarians are candidates in the current electoral process, while others have their clan's seat secured through proportional representation.
Their political heritage lies in their lineage and surname, that open the doors of Congress and political power in general: Rojo-Lugo, Batres, Vicencio, Sansores, Monreal, Alcaine, Manatou, Martínez, Ortega, Padierna.
The biggest "brand" is the Vicencio family, from Xonacatlán de Vicencio, State of Mexico, a town that owes its establishment to Celso Vicencio, local congressman in 1870, the first legislator of the family.
It would be very interesting to do such an research in Baja Sur state government and the municipio of La Paz and Cabo San Lucas...... Somehow I got the feeling that the results will be very similar. The power is within a few names/clans, excessive nepotism and enrichment by connection at the cost of the general population. What else is new....
Find the original report at El Universal Newspaper
http://www.la-paz-bcs.com/la-paz-news/88-clans-control-mexicos-congress (english)
http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion-mexico/2015/88-34clanes-34-familiares-dominan-congreso-1097457.html (spanish)
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Valuable post there DDF!
Following up on the formation of the PRD-- I thought Munoz Ledo (from Team Louis Echeverria Alvarez) was the one behind that?
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I hope Chelsea Clinton comes out against nepotism in politics.
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I hope Chelsea Clinton comes out against nepotism in politics.
I won't hold my breath. I'd trust almost every forum member here (aside from myself) to execute the function of governance better than anyone sitting.
Valuable post there DDF!
Following up on the formation of the PRD-- I thought Munoz Ledo (from Team Louis Echeverria Alvarez) was the one behind that?
Tailwags Tujon GC.
I'm not certain, but I'll look it up and come back and edit the post. I'm about to leave the house for a few. I'll look it up within the next hour. Nepotism as GM rightly alludes to, seems to be a recurring theme in several countries.
Edit: "In 1986, three PRI members – Rodolfo González Guevara, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas – formed the Democratic Current, a political faction within the PRI." "The PRD was formed after the 1988 electoral fraud which sparked a movement away from the authoritarian rule of the PRI.[15] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_the_Democratic_Revolution
Actually.... we were just going over this in school yesterday.... Evidently, the PRI (until just before 1986, was an extremely leftist party... (the professor - a former senator here - and from the Left)... stated that the PRI switched over to the Right for $$$.
Amalia Garcia "After briefly being a member of the Socialist Mexican Party, she became a founding member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) when it was created in 1989." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalia_Garc%C3%ADa
Mexico, being as socialist as it is (and it is VERY much so, especially from an American perspective - example... everyone of our electricity bills from the Federal Electrical Commission, are heavily subsidized by the federal government, where they pay for a healthy portion of it... and several other examples... EXCEPT in medical care.... that's horrible for those that don't have insurance from work... go figure," has several powerful politicians, many of them from the Left....and linked with each other in one way or another...going back years.
Sorry to use wikipedia to cite stuff... but it was quick and relatively accurate.
Ps... the PRI and PRD both still currently belong to a worldwide Socialist movement.
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Thank you.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/world/americas/mexico-trump-pena-nieto-wall-drug-war.html?emc=edit_th_20170317&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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https://www.facebook.com/259874557445743/photos/a.259878640778668.42544.259874557445743/992517717514753/?type=3&theater
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https://www.facebook.com/News8/videos/10154715186917552/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
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second post
https://bluelivesmatter.blue/mexican-attorney-general-edgar-veytia/
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https://www.facebook.com/News8/videos/10154715186917552/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
I hope the people that buy there have the money for an executive protection detail.
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https://www.facebook.com/News8/videos/10154715186917552/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
I hope the people that buy there have the money for an executive protection detail.
No joke. Kidnappings have spiked lately too... in a major way.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/world/americas/mexico-corn-nafta-trade.html?emc=edit_th_20170403&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/world/americas/mexico-corn-nafta-trade.html?emc=edit_th_20170403&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
That is some of the worst economic reporting I have ever seen. Probably no ag or trade economists on staff at NYT. Were the Mexicans buying US corn as some kind of a favor to US farmers? Or was it because they were getting the best product for the best price from the closest, most reliable suppliers?
If they could grow all their corn better and cheaper at home, wouldn't they already be doing that? Don't we also buy a lot of Mexican agricultural products? https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/agricultural-trade/ What market of similar size, prosperity and proximity will they sell their products to when they cut off US trade? How popular will Mexican leaders be when they force up food prices. Is Argentina more efficient than the US? Maybe a hundred years ago. Maybe they can cut a supplier contract with Venezuela to buy their excess food. Or substitute soy tortillas for corn. Who will notice?
Good grief.
NYT is a little late to the story, CNN had it 2 months ago:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/13/news/economy/mexico-trump-us-corn/
What happens if this fictitious event actually happens?
"The global market effect would kick in, if Mexico stopped U.S. corn imports. Any demand that would shift from the U.S. to South America would cause other world buyers to shift purchases from South America to the U.S.” http://www.agriculture.com/news/business/no-mas-to-us-corn-imports-mexico-senator-says
Who knew?
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:lol: :lol: :lol:
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/world/americas/mexico-corn-nafta-trade.html?emc=edit_th_20170403&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
The entire country hates Trump, they hate the idea of a wall.... but the thing that REALLY irked them... was when a truckload of avocados was turned back at the border, that was to be sold in the US.
I'm not making it up. They are very upset about that.
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So this just happened 15 minutes ago.
Someone has ripped of material that could be used for a dirty bomb.
http://www.tribunanoticias.mx/nueve-estados-en-alerta-por-robo-de-fuente-radiactiva/
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Clashes with Mexican security forces leave two cartel leaders dead
2017-04-23 | Mexico | Security — Mexican authorities confirmed the deaths of two cartel leaders in separate operations in Tamaulipas on 22 April 2017 (El Universal). In Reynosa, Cartel del Golfo head Juan Manuel Loisa Salinas, alias El Comandante Toro, was killed during clashes with state and federal security forces (El Universal). Following the confrontation, suspected Cartel del Golfo members caused chaos in Reynosa. The cartel members set up at least 32 roadblocks around the city including the use of burning vehicles as blockades set fire to a number of buildings and businesses. In Ciudad Victoria, personnel from the Mexican Navy came under attack and killed Los Zetas member Francisco Carreón Olvera, alias Pancho Carreón, during the gun battle (El Debate). Authorities in Tamaulipas noted the pair were principle actors responsible for violence in the region (El Universal).
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http://agenciacatolicamx.blogspot.mx/2017/05/un-musulman-frances-apunala-un.html
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http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/us-world/border-mexico/article/Judge-presiding-over-El-Chapo-s-case-shot-in-9980271.php
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Articles
Regions & Countries
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A serious challenge from populist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador awaits Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in next year's presidential election. That's what polling data and the close results of the June 4 gubernatorial election in Mexico state suggest as Lopez Obrador looks ahead to a third presidential run in July 2018 after second-place finishes as the candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution in 2006 and 2012. Now leading his own party, the National Regeneration Movement, Lopez Obrador is in a statistical tie in recent polls with the PRI and National Action Party candidates.
While a Lopez Obrador victory would be historic, his ability to make sweeping changes in keeping with his populist rhetoric will be greatly constrained. Even if Lopez Obrador wins the presidency, Mexico's political and economic path will remain relatively stable.
As we've discussed the possibility of a Lopez Obrador victory with our contacts in Mexico, we've noticed that many of them believe he would seek to undertake a dramatic change in the way the government deals with Mexico's powerful criminal drug cartels. The idea is that as president, Lopez Obrador would seek to address Mexico's violence problem by cutting a deal with cartel leaders, and on the campaign trail, he has promised to end the deployment of military forces in the country. Such a deal would allow traffickers to operate in the country as long as they did so without violence. While the concept may sound possible in theory, there are simply too many obstacles to permit such a dramatic shift in policy.
A Look at History
The idea that a Mexican presidential candidate would place more emphasis on stopping violence in Mexico than on stopping the flow of narcotics to the United States is not new. Indeed, we heard similar talk during the 2006 and 2012 elections. Here is a quote from a Stratfor analysis I wrote in June 2011:
One of the trial balloons that the opposition parties, especially the PRI, seem to be floating at present is the idea that if they are elected they will reverse [President Felipe] Calderon's policy of going after the cartels with a heavy hand and will instead try to reach some sort of accommodation with them. This policy would involve lifting government pressure against the cartels and thereby (ostensibly) reducing the level of violence that is wracking the country.
The people who believe such a shift is possible base their belief on a mistaken historical narrative. This holds that Mexican organized crime groups were controlled by the ruling PRI and were largely nonviolent until President Ernesto Zedillo, who was elected in 1994, abandoned the party's deal with the cartels after a corruption scandal enveloped his predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. When Zedillo unleashed the military on the cartels, this myth goes, violence spiked.
This rendition of events is deeply flawed. There were indeed close ties between the cartels and PRI figures at all levels of the Mexican government as well as between the cartels and powerful figures in other political parties. The cartels also fostered deep corruption into every level of law enforcement in Mexico. However, quite simply, the PRI did not control the cartels. Rather, the inverse was true. The cartels had a significant amount of control over some politicians and portions of the government.
The cartels were too rich and powerful to be corralled in this manner. In the 1980s, interdiction efforts forced an increasing amount of cocaine trafficking away from Caribbean routes and through Mexico. The vast wealth connected to the cocaine trade made the Mexican cartels far more powerful than they had ever been. It also caused them to become more protective of the source of their wealth. One of the first widely publicized manifestations of this protectionist streak was seen in the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Enrique Camarena. While his death caused the United States to focus heavily on Mexico's powerful Guadalajara cartel and pressure the Mexican and regional governments to follow suit, cartel violence was not a new manifestation: The cartels assassinated rivals and journalists well before 1985.
After Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and other leaders of the Guadalajara cartel were arrested in the wake of Camarena's murder, Gallardo's primary lieutenants assumed responsibility for the various areas where they operated. This resulted in the creation of the Tijuana cartel (Arellano Felix organization), the Juarez cartel (Carrillo Fuentes organization) and a group of cartels led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, Ismael Zambada and others, known as the Sinaloa Federation. Tensions quickly flared between Guzman and the Arellano Felix brothers over control of smuggling routes — and profits — resulting in a bloody turf war that began in 1989 and wracked northwestern Mexico in the early 1990s. One of the high-profile side effects of their battles was the May 1993 murder of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and six other people at the Guadalajara airport. It is believed that a Tijuana cartel hit team sent to assassinate Guzman accidentally killed the Catholic Church leader. After Posadas' murder, Mexican law enforcement began to dramatically step up operations against both the Tijuana cartel and the Sinaloa Federation. This heat caused Guzman to flee to Guatemala, where he was arrested in June 1993.
In the early 1980s, many cartel figures served as their own enforcers, but as tensions escalated among competing gangs over control of the cocaine trade, violence escalated as the Tijuana cartel and others began to employ teams of police officers and street gang members to serve as enforcer units. Competing gangs formed similar enforcer groups. Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, the leader of the Gulf cartel, upped the ante by hiring a unit of special forces soldiers, and Los Zetas were formed. Again, rival cartels followed suit and hired their own groups of soldiers to counter the power of Los Zetas, leading to the militarization of cartel enforcer groups. The introduction of paramilitary forces brought along with it military weapons, and cartel enforcers graduated from using pistols, shotguns and submachine guns to regularly employing fully automatic assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades.
A careful review of cartel history makes it clear that cartel violence in Mexico was a significant security problem well before Zedillo came into office in 1994. In fact, Salinas in his inaugural address in December 1989 noted that "narcotics trafficking has become a grave risk to the security of the nation." It was cartel violence, and corruption within law enforcement agencies, that led Zedillo to put the military into the fight against the cartels. They were not the cause of the violence, and taking the military off the streets will not end the violence that is plaguing Mexico — especially when there is no other force to replace them.
Besides, like the violence between the Tijuana cartel and Sinaloa Federation that led to the Posadas assassination, a substantial percentage of the violence in Mexico is spawned by cartel-on-cartel attacks and is not initiated by the government.
The Impact of Balkanization
Another severe constraint on the Mexican government's ability to reach some sort of arrangement with the cartels is that the cartel landscape has changed dramatically. Two main groups — the Guadalajara and Gulf cartels — controlled most drug trafficking in Mexico in the 1980s. Even a decade ago, there were only a handful of groups controlling most of the activity. But today, infighting caused by greed and suspicion, as well as decapitation caused by the arrest or killing of cartel leaders, has led to the Balkanization of Mexico's cartels. This fracturing has caused us to change the way we think about and analyze these groups. Instead of a monolithic Sinaloa Federation, dozens of organized crime groups have splintered from it. Likewise, what was the Gulf cartel is now a constellation of geographic gangs that are often at odds — and at war — with one another. Even if the Mexican government wanted to pursue deals to end the violence, and even if each group in this array of criminal gangs was willing to entertain such an offer, it would be impossible to reach any sort of comprehensive peace agreement with this many parties.
The 2011 analysis quoted above referred to campaign rhetoric from PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto. However, after he won election in 2012, Pena Nieto has not been able to dramatically reverse course as he proposed on the campaign trail. In fact, he has struggled to enact many of the more gradual changes he proposed, such as "mando unico," or unified state command over police forces and the creation of a gendarmerie, or paramilitary police force, to replace the military force deployed against the cartels. Without a replacement, it is impossible to pull the military out of the fight because to do so would create a security vacuum in the areas where the military is deployed. This would be socially and politically unacceptable.
Speaking of politics, the Mexican Congress also serves as a severe constraint on the power of the president to enact reforms. Without congressional support, the president could make only limited changes, and lawmakers would resist making any radical shifts in cartel policy.
This means that, much like immediate predecessors Pena Nieto, Calderon and Vicente Fox, Mexico's next president will not have much freedom to change the country's cartel policy.
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Drug Cartels Fuming at New U.S. Policy Screening 100% of Mexican Cargo Trucks
AUGUST 01, 2017
In a major shift from lax Obama-era regulations, the Trump administration is finally allowing customs officers to screen all cargo trucks entering the U.S. from Mexico and sources on both sides of the border tell Judicial Watch Mexican drug cartels are fuming. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is using X-ray technology and other non-intrusive tools to screen 100% of cargo trucks crossing the southern border after eight years of sporadic or random screening permitted under the Obama administration.
“We felt like we were the welcoming committee and not like we were guarding our borders,” said veteran U.S. Customs agent Patricia Cramer, who also serves as president of the Arizona chapter of the agency’s employee union. “The order was to facilitate traffic, not to stop any illegal drugs from entering the country,” Cramer added. “We want to enforce the law. That’s what we signed up for.” Cramer, a canine handler stationed at the Nogales port of entry in Arizona, said illicit drugs are pouring in through the southern border, especially massive quantities of fentanyl, an opioid painkiller that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says is more potent than morphine.
Approximately 471,000 trucks pass through the U.S-Mexico border monthly, according to figures published by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The busiest port of entry is in Laredo, Texas where 167,553 trucks enter the U.S. from Mexico monthly, followed by Otay Mesa in California (76,953), El Paso, Texas (58,913), Hidalgo, Texas (45,355) and Nogales with 29,439. Other busy ports include East Calexico, California (29,173), Brownsville, Texas (16,140) and Eagle Pass, Texas (12,952). Trucks bring in everything from auto parts to appliances, produce and livestock. In fact, a veteran Homeland Security official told Judicial Watch that cattle trucks passed without inspection during the Obama administration because Mexican farmers complained that the security screenings frightened their cows. “Our guys were livid that we were not allowed to check cattle,” the federal official said.
Frontline customs agents stationed along the southern border confirm that trucks containing “legitimate” goods are often used by sophisticated drug cartels to move cargo north. This is hardly surprising since most illegal drugs in the United States come from Mexico, according to the DEA, and Mexican traffickers remain the greatest threat to the United States. They’re classified as Transitional Criminal Organizations (TCOs) by the government and for years they’ve smuggled in enormous quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana. Last year the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the nonpartisan agency that provides Congress with policy and legal analysis, published a disturbing report outlining how Mexican cartels move record quantities of drugs into the U.S. Because cartels move the drugs through the Southwest border, western states have become part of what’s known as the “heroin transit zone,” according to the CRS.
Federal law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch Mexican cartels operate like efficient businesses that resort to “other more treacherous routes” when necessary, but driving through a port of entry in a cargo truck is a preferred method of moving drugs. Cartels station shifts of spotters with binoculars in Mexican hills near border checkpoints to determine the level of security screenings. “They know if we’re on the job, the level of screening that we’re conducting,” Cramer said. “The cartels watch us all the time.” Nogales is a favorite for cartel spotters because the U.S. checkpoint sits in a valley surrounded by hills on the Mexican side, where unobstructed views facilitate surveillance. “They see everything,” Cramer said. For years the cartel spotters saw that much of the cargo passing through the checkpoint was waved through, according to agents contacted by Judicial Watch.
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Aug 3, 2017 | 08:00 GMT
Mexico's Cartels Find Another Game Changer in Fentanyl
By Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
Bags of heroin, some laced with fentanyl, are shown at a press conference at the office of the New York Attorney General.
(DREW ANGERER/Getty Images)
In my July 13 On Security column about the Mexican government's anti-cartel policy, I discussed how the dynamics of the cocaine trade affected the historical trajectory of Mexican organized crime. In short, cocaine provided cartels with unprecedented quantities of cash that they then parlayed into power. Starting in the 1980s, Mexican criminal organizations began fighting over the immense profit pool produced by the lucrative trade in powder, and this infighting has continued in one form or another to this day.
But cocaine was merely the first of several drugs that were game changers for Mexican organized crime groups. The latest of them, fentanyl (and related synthetic opioids), is the most profitable yet, and is rapidly becoming the deadliest drug for users north of the border.
Disruptive Drugs
Mexican criminals have been incredibly flexible and adaptive in terms of the drugs they supply to the massive illegal narcotics market in the United States. Much of this flexibility naturally comes in response to consumer demand for certain types of drugs. But enforcement and interdiction also heavily influence the activities of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Increased disruption of Caribbean cocaine-trafficking routes, for example, led Colombian cartels to rely more heavily on Mexican groups to move their product over land into the United States. This change transformed the Mexicans into a critical link in the cocaine supply chain and allowed figures such as Gulf cartel leader Juan Garcia Abrego to demand larger profit cuts.
Methamphetamine is another good example of Mexican cartels recognizing and seizing business opportunities created by market forces and enforcement activity. U.S. law enforcement action targeting industrial-scale methamphetamine labs in California's Central Valley, and state and federal legislation such as the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005, made it increasingly difficult to manufacture methamphetamine in the United States. Mexican criminal organizations, especially several Sinaloa cartel affiliates, recognized the opportunity presented by these developments and dramatically expanded their methamphetamine production in response. They also improved the quality and purity of the drug, compared to the product made by smaller operations in the United States. As a result, methamphetamine for sale on American streets became better, cheaper and more widely available.
Sinaloa cartel lieutenant Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel even became known as the "king of crystal" due to the large quantities of methamphetamine his organization produced. Unlike cocaine, which they had to purchase from Colombian producers or, more expensively, Central American middlemen, Mexican cartels could produce methamphetamine from relatively inexpensive dual-use precursor chemicals. So, though the cartels had been making good money in the cocaine trade, methamphetamine was even more profitable, since the cartels could control the lion's share of the profit pool. And groups that had strong connections to Chinese chemical providers and could oversee the flow of chemicals through Mexico's ports had a competitive advantage. Indeed, the rise of Tierra Caliente organized crime groups such as La Familia Michoacana, the Knights Templar and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion occurred largely because they controlled Mexico's ports and the methamphetamine trade.
Areas of cartel influence in Mexico.
Fentanyl: Low Costs, Big Profits
Lately, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has cracked down on pill mills prescribing opiates in the United States. As a result, people addicted to opiates have turned to alternatives such as Mexican black tar heroin. Mexican growers have planted record amounts of opium poppies in recent years, and the large influx of Mexican heroin to the United States has filled the coffers of growers and traffickers. Mexican heroin was strong, plentiful and inexpensive. And Mexican organizations also pioneered new distribution methods, even delivering heroin to the homes of users. One no longer had to travel into inner cities to obtain the drug, and heroin use expanded in all strata of society.
However, poppy cultivation is limited by geography. In Mexico, poppies grow best along the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain chain, on ridges above the 1,000-meter mark (3,280 feet) where the air is dry. So, there is a finite amount of space where opium poppies can be planted, and these locations are not difficult for the Mexican government to find and eradicate. Mexico has a relatively gentle climate and poppy growers ordinarily can manage two harvests of opium gum a year, but heroin production is nevertheless limited. It takes about three months for an opium poppy to mature and produce opium gum.
Fentanyl and other synthetic opiates, on the other hand, are not bound by geography or growing cycles. Fentanyl can be produced anywhere a laboratory can be set up, such as a warehouse in an industrial park, a home in a residential area or a clandestine lab in the mountains. It can be synthesized as long as there is access to the required precursor chemicals, which are almost exclusively imported from China. Fentanyl is also relatively inexpensive to produce — the DEA estimates it costs about $3,300 to produce 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds). It is also very potent, so a little goes a long way. According to the DEA, fentanyl is some 50 times more potent than heroin — and carfentanil is 100 times stronger than fentanyl. This makes the drug a smuggler's dream due to its compact nature. Smuggling 1 kilogram of fentanyl into the United States is, from a dosage standpoint, essentially the same as smuggling in 50 kilograms of heroin, and 1 kilogram of carfentanil is roughly the equivalent of 5,000 kilograms of heroin.
Due to fentanyl's strength, 1 kilogram can fetch more than $1 million on the retail drug market, making fentanyl the most profitable drug the Mexican cartels are trafficking. Fentanyl's inexpensive nature is why drug dealers have attempted to pass it off as various more expensive narcotics, such as "China White" heroin for example, or pressed it into pills to mimic pharmaceutical opiates such as oxycodone or hydrocodone. The potency of fentanyl, carfentanil and other derivatives also seriously increases the risk overdose. Dealers processing the drugs for sale on the street often struggle to accurately dispense the very small doses required — and small mistakes in dosage can be deadly. In fentanyl, a deadly dose is measured in milligrams — one thousandth of a gram. In carfentanil, a deadly dose is in micrograms — one millionth of a gram. When dealing with such microscopic amounts placed into a medium purporting to be heroin or a pharmaceutical pill, it isn't hard to see why miscalculations are made and why so many users are overdosing.
Lucrative Ports
Fentanyl is also relatively easy to synthesize; the chemists who work in Mexico's more complex methamphetamine labs have little problem manufacturing it. And given America's appetite for opioids, fentanyl is poised to become the latest in a line of drugs offering a competitive advantage to the organizations that produce them. As in the methamphetamine trade, those that control Mexico's ports are in the best position to benefit from the fentanyl trade: The same networks that produce and smuggle methamphetamine precursors can be used to bring fentanyl precursors into the country.
All Mexican cartels are able to smuggle some finished fentanyl from China and some quantity of the drug's precursors, but as fentanyl's popularity grows, the organizations that control the ports and have close ties to Chinese chemical providers will be able to produce the largest quantities with the most consistency. In terms of the current cartel landscape, this means that Tierra Caliente-based organized crime groups are the largest beneficiaries of the fentanyl trade — much as they have benefited the most from the methamphetamine trade. Indeed, synthetic drugs have largely fueled the rapid growth of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
The Mexican navy assumed security responsibility for Mexico's ports in June, but the ports are rife with corruption and it is going to be a tall task for the navy to put a substantial dent in the flow of precursor chemicals and other contraband. Thus the ports will continue to be valuable possessions.
As with the fighting we have seen over lucrative smuggling corridors on the border, it is likely that other organizations will attempt to challenge the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion's control of Pacific coast ports such as Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, as well as Veracruz on the Gulf Coast. With the amount of money at stake, any challenge is likely to be met with force and could result in significant intercartel violence. And of course, such potential for violence is of major concern to the many legitimate businesses that use Mexican ports for shipping.
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https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4188347/los-cabos-mexican-beach-gunmen-kill-three-men/
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• Mexico: Mexican government sources told Reuters that their government is studying the possibility of stepping in to replace Venezuelan oil program Petrocaribe if the government of President Nicolas Maduro were to fall. Petrocaribe is a trade initiative that provides subsidized oil to friendly countries. Cuba, a beneficiary of the initiative whose shipments have declined, has already had to limit retail fuel sales and request help from Russia. Mexico’s foreign minister was in Havana last week and reportedly tried to persuade Cuba to help fix Venezuela while reassuring Havana that Mexico will support it if Maduro falls. We need a better understanding of Mexico’s role in this situation. Is this the first sign of a more assertive Mexico?
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https://www.texasobserver.org/los-zetas-inc-author-mexicos-drug-war-isnt-drugs/
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Forecast Update
Stratfor previously forecast that, even if populist Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wins the presidency in 2018, the nation's military-centered public security policies will not change significantly. The release of a document outlining Lopez Obrador's tentative policy positions confirm this overall assessment, although there is room for him to selectively withdraw the armed forces from public security duties.
According to a new policy paper, Mexico's populist presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will deliver few surprises on public security when he officially reveals his platform. On Oct. 3, Mexican news outlet La Politica Online obtained a document outlining domestic and foreign policy priorities for a potential Lopez Obrador administration. The document suggests a Lopez Obrador administration would take a similar approach to public security and fighting cartels as his predecessor, current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
The Pena Nieto administration — much like the potential Lopez Obrador administration — has taken note of the military's shortcomings as police officers. The longer they remain deployed to stem the violence from cartels, the more vulnerable they become to corruption. Further complicating matters is the fact that military forces don't operate within a clear legal framework, although military authorities supported legislation to correct this earlier in the year.
Although the policy paper criticizes prior administrations for overreliance on the armed forces to pursue and arrest drug traffickers, it doesn't suggest completely withdrawing troops from their now-permanent deployments. Instead, the paper calls for studies on a possible new force, the National Guard, to replace the military in its domestic security role. In this sense, Lopez Obrador's approach to public security is the same one Pena Nieto took when he entered office in 2013. Nieto attempted to create an auxiliary paramilitary force, called the gendarmerie, to gradually supplant the military. But the force was plagued by the same corruption issues faced by Mexican law enforcement at virtually all levels of government. The gendarmerie was expensive, and it was virtually impossible for the force to supplant the military during Pena Nieto's tenure. In 2015, when Mexico implemented budget cuts, the gendarmerie's lost 25 percent of its funding.
Previous Stratfor analysis said it was unlikely that a Lopez Obrador administration would move away from Mexico's current approach to government security. This development confirms that analysis, but it's important to remember that Lopez Obrador's proposals are not policy yet. If he comes to power, he could still attempt a gradual military withdrawal even without replacing the troops with an alternative force. However, because such movements would worry Washington, it's highly unlikely that Lopez Obrador would tear down the status quo with quick action. The White House has made it clear that border security is a major priority, and Mexico is not about to risk ruining relations with its largest trading partner.
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http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-mexico-housing/#nws=mcnewsletter
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http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-mexico-housing/#nws=mcnewsletter
Another great lesson never learned.
Mexico promised affordable housing for all. Instead it created many rapidly decaying slums
I can't remember, did President John F Kennedy tell the Economics Club that a great big government cronying up with the most powerful corporate interests will lift all boats?
I can tell you from the inside that the housing business is a people business. People respond to incentives and a sense of ownership, not entitlement. You can give people free houses and free housing all day long but they will treat as their own if it is earned.
Liberals always want more government housing money and projects, without questioning the results. Why don't we look at areas where housing and communities succeed and copy those strategies instead?
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Forecast Update
In Stratfor's 2017 Third-Quarter Forecast, we wrote that U.S. pressure to restructure the North American Free Trade Agreement could push Mexican voters toward populist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Recently, Lopez Obrador suggested he would consider providing amnesty to cartel leaders to stem violence in the country. But considering how vital Mexico's cooperation is to the United States' international counternarcotics strategy, the move wouldn't be accepted lightly by Mexico's northern neighbor.
See 2017 Third-Quarter Forecast
Mexico's presidential frontrunner has proposed providing amnesty to cartel leaders to reduce violence, but the proposal would be virtually impossible to implement. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador made the proposal — which would be a significant departure from previous administrations' approaches to security — during a campaign rally Dec. 2 in Quechultenango, Guerrero state. But it is important to note that the suggestion is just that, a suggestion, and may not translate into actual policy should Lopez Obrador be elected. But even if the candidate does attempt to grant cartel bosses amnesty, a mountain of institutional and logistical obstacles will likely block his efforts.
By claiming that his administration will approach public security differently, Lopez Obrador may be trying to appeal to the rural populations hit hardest by violence in recent years. But just how differently the candidate can actually approach security is an altogether different question. Lopez Obrador has said in the past he would move away from a military-centric security approach but has walked back from that statement in recent months, likely realizing the impracticality of the proposal. Similarly, even if Lopez Obrador believes that amnesty would be an effective option against crime, he will soon be faced with the impracticality of it as well.
Granting amnesty to cartel leaders would encounter stiff resistance — both in Mexico and in the United States. Mexico's cooperation against organized crime is a key part of the United States' international counternarcotics strategy and domestic security policies —particularly under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. As president, Lopez Obrador and his administration would have to carefully weigh the benefits of negotiating to demobilize criminal groups against the risk of antagonizing a security-minded U.S. presidential administration. In addition, amnesty proposals would lead to major domestic political resistance. And if the Mexican Congress determined that an amnesty law were necessary to demobilize criminal groups, passing such legislation would be all but impossible.
Even if it were legally possible to grant criminal groups amnesty in Mexico, choosing which criminals to give amnesty to would risk opening a Pandora's box full of unending requests and pressure from various criminal organizations. Mexico's criminal landscape has fragmented over the past decade, as several large cartels have broken apart under law enforcement pressure and years of turf battles. Granting any particular group amnesty in Mexico would not guarantee any immediate public security benefits.
A comparison could be drawn to the Colombian government's peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In Colombia, the FARC's internal unity and hierarchical structure helped reduce militant attacks virtually overnight after the group enforced a unilateral ceasefire in July 2015. In Mexico, criminal gangs are highly decentralized and are driven by profit rather than ideology, which could hinder any government-sponsored negotiation to significantly curb violence at a national level. Still, Lopez Obrador's amnesty proposal cannot be dismissed. After all, it is a policy option proposed by Mexico's presidential frontrunner. There are enough obstacles to the successful implementation of any amnesty deal, however, that the attempts would likely fail.
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Highlights
Long-term political and economic factors in Mexico have created fertile ground for a populist presidential candidate such as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Lopez Obrador's rise as a leading candidate in 2018 has been spurred by the decadeslong diversification of Mexico's political system, deep-seated economic grievances and more recent events in U.S.-Mexican relations.
Even if Lopez Obrador loses next year's election, Mexico's political system is becoming more competitive and the results of future elections will be more uncertain.
Mexico's gradual move toward populism has made headlines for more than a year. The foreign press in particular has reported extensively on the popularity of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, creating a narrative of a recent, inexorable leftward shift among Mexican voters. The underlying reality is far more complicated. Lopez Obrador's popular approval is the product of Mexico's enduring, widespread poverty and steadily diversifying political landscape, among other broader, longer-term trends. It's also the result of prevailing, discrete events, such as the Mexican government's perceived complacency when faced with U.S. threats during talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. These dynamics will likely create a competitive presidential election in 2018, in which Lopez Obrador or a challenger from a traditional party such as the National Action Party (PAN) or the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) could narrowly clinch power. In keeping with recent history, however, whoever wins next year's election will enter office relatively weak and will struggle to implement populist policies, especially if Congress and the country's economic elites disagree with them.
A Slow Change Coming
Lopez Obrador's populist message clearly resonates with a political minority in Mexico. According to recent polls, nearly a third of Mexican voters would be willing to vote for him in July 2018. This receptiveness to populism is not a recent trend, however; it even predates Lopez Obrador's previous presidential runs in 2006 and 2012. The PRI, for example, was far more populist when it emerged in the 1920s after the Mexican revolution than it is now under President Enrique Pena Nieto. Historically, poverty and corruption have created fertile ground for populist political messages, but in recent decades, as Mexico became more economically intertwined with the United States, political leaders' enthusiasm for populism waned and the country's political parties began to favor business-friendly technocrats for president. For two decades, presidential leadership in Mexico has been primarily about keeping the status quo in domestic politics and foreign affairs, particularly in international trade.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/world/americas/mexico-corruption-pri.html?emc=edit_na_20171220&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/world/americas/mexico-corruption-pri.html?emc=edit_na_20171220&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0
Wait, corruption in Mexico? NFW!
:-o
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How Violence in Mexico Shapes Relations With the US
Jan 25, 2018
Summary
Violence in Mexico is on the rise, multiple reports show, stoking alarm both inside and outside the country. Though violence doesn’t have inherent geopolitical significance, it becomes significant when it has the potential to fundamentally alter a country’s economic trajectory, political system and international relations. In the case of Mexico, reports of increasing violence, particularly organized crime-related violence, merit a closer look because Mexico is an emerging market and harbors ambitions to get out from under the thumb of the United States.
The violence in Mexico also raises the issue of the potential for spillover into the U.S., since this would likely lead to a redefinition of the bilateral relationship. Other places in the world have higher rates of violence than Mexico, but greater scrutiny is placed on Mexico because of its proximity to the U.S. and the impact violence may have on Mexico’s emergence as an economic power.
Rising Violence and Drug Trafficking
To understand the potential impact, we must first understand the types of violence in Mexico. Media reports focus on intentional homicides as well as kidnappings, extortion and armed robberies. In tracking homicides, Mexico distinguishes between homicides in which the perpetrator intentionally seeks the death of the victim and homicides that result from reckless or negligent behavior without the intention of causing death.
Intentional homicides set a new record last year. The previous record of 22,409 was set in 2011. The number of intentional homicides had declined each year since then, but the trend reversed in 2015. In 2017, there were 25,339 intentional homicides, a 23 percent increase from the previous year and 13 percent higher than the old record.
Drug trafficking organizations are often blamed for the rise in violence in Mexico. The official statistics do not differentiate between drug- or organized crime-related killings and other homicides, but some types of homicides are characteristic of the criminal and drug trafficking organizations, or DTOs, in Mexico. Homicides involving guns – which was about two-thirds of the homicides in 2017 – have a high probability of being related to organized crime or drug traffickers. Extortion and kidnapping, along with human trafficking and sales of stolen cars, are also associated with DTOs. It is not a coincidence that the states with the most homicides and kidnappings per month and the greatest increases in homicides per month are those with a strong presence of drug trafficking activity. The high-profile victims are typically journalists and politicians, who are attractive targets for organized crime groups. Further, anecdotal evidence of mass graves, dismembered bodies, decapitations and bodies found with narco messaging all point to the work of DTOs.
Homicides in Mexico do not occur uniformly across the large territory. Baja California, Guerrero, Mexico state, Veracruz and Chihuahua rank as the most violent states with the highest incidents of intentional homicide. Other states with high homicide totals are Sinaloa, Michoacan and Jalisco. In other states, such as Colima, the number of registered homicides are low, but they have a dramatic effect due to the small population. Colima registered 93.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017. Baja California Sur ranks second with 69.1 deaths per 100,000 people. For perspective, the national homicide rate in Mexico is about 20.8 per 100,000 people. Other states that have lower homicide rates have noted a faster increase in those rates. Last year, intentional homicide cases rose 550 percent in Nayarit, 116 percent in Aguascalientes and 118 percent in Quintana Roo. Overall, 26 of Mexico’s 32 states recorded an increase in homicide rates in 2017.
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As for kidnappings and extortion, the number of reported incidents has increased in the past two years, but not as quickly as homicides. Both peaked in 2013, with 1,688 kidnappings and 8,213 extortion cases, and then dropped significantly over the next two years. However, since 2015, the number of reported incidents has slowly increased. In 2017 there were 1,484 reported kidnappings and 5,649 extortion cases, both surpassing 2016 totals. Meanwhile, local human rights organizations and other observers say there is reason to believe these incidents are under-reported. Given the nature of extortion and due to anomalies observed in the data from Mexico state, those organizations may be correct.
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Drug Trafficking Organizations and Organized Crime
The main reasons for the spike in violence are the splintering, restructuring and growing competition among the DTOs and other organized crime groups in Mexico. This fragmentation had its roots in the presidency of Felipe Calderon (2006-12), who from day one adopted an aggressive stance on drug cartels. His “kingpin strategy” focused on killing or imprisoning the heads of major cartels, which followed a hierarchical model with strong familial and neighborhood ties.
Calderon’s approach led to a surge in homicide rates from 2006 to 2011 because it created power vacuums within groups and provoked turf wars and cycles of revenge killings. In addition, security operations began targeting these illegal groups. Over the past 11 years, Mexico’s military, which has more training and better equipment than local police, has become more involved in fighting organized crime.
The current criminal organization landscape is exceptionally fluid. Many groups operate more on a local cell-based level, and their association with other groups may shift with business interests. Many of these groups not only are involved in drug trafficking but also engage in other profitable crimes, including kidnapping, assassination, auto theft, prostitution, extortion, money laundering, software piracy, resource theft and human trafficking. Some criminal organizations have incorporated areas of specialization. For instance, some DTOs on the U.S. border have assumed the role of toll collectors, exacting payment from other traffickers, while other organizations specialize in sourcing cocaine from South America. Still others focus on transit routes within Mexico and other ways to either facilitate the drug trade or augment their profits through lower-risk activities.
The number of large DTOs jumped from four in 2006 to nine in 2017, and another 45 smaller organized crime groups have been identified. Their structure is more like a consortium, where groups are different sizes and specialize in various business activities. For example, La Linea and Los Aztecas are two distinct local criminal groups that fall under the umbrella of the Juarez cartel.
Though the Sinaloa cartel is the largest and most powerful DTO in Mexico, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which broke off from the Sinaloa cartel in 2010, has become formidable over the past two years. In a short time it has grown and strengthened enough to compete for space, resources and markets. Given the increasing overlap of territories and resources, clashes with other DTOs become more frequent and intense. This is also the case for smaller groups that may act independently or fall under larger DTOs. Some of these groups stay in the drug business, while smaller, local criminal groups remain engaged in other criminal activity such as the illicit gasoline trade. When Mexico’s current president, Enrique Pena Nieto, assumed office in December 2012, security officials estimated there were 80 to 90 smaller criminal groups in operation. The latest estimates put the number at 45, which means there still are many players competing for business in the black market.
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Economic Impact
Mexico needs to address the violence of DTOs for domestic economic reasons and to maintain its relationship with the United States. Violence and crime cost Mexico approximately 18 percent of its gross domestic product, according to a 2017 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The figure factors in a wide range of related costs, including spending on security by the government and businesses and lost income due to a homicide in the family. In terms of government spending, the institute estimates that Mexico spends 6.8 percent of its GDP to help contain violence nationwide.
Growing violence may also discourage investment, according to the Bank of Mexico. The bank recently ranked Mexico’s security as 5.5 on a scale of 1-7, with 7 representing the greatest risk to investment. Private sector estimates indicate that investments may fall by up to 5 percent because of violence, with impacts already being noted anecdotally.
Despite those warnings, a large-scale exodus of companies from Mexico in response to violence has not occurred. Many businesses there understand the security risks and factor in those costs. The point at which violence becomes intolerable will largely depend on the companies’ ability to operate profitably over the long term. Any prolonged decline in revenue or absence of investment would, of course, hurt the economy.
Relations With the U.S.
In terms of foreign policy, the violence in Mexico will primarily affect its relationship with the United States. Besides their shared border, the U.S. is the main destination for Mexican-produced opium and for cocaine transited through Mexico, and is the source of illegal weapons for Mexico’s DTOs. Drug trafficking between the two countries dates back to the early 20th century when the first opium shipments from Sinaloa made their way into the United States. Shortly thereafter, alcohol flowed to the U.S. in the wake of the Prohibition Act of 1919. The products and tactics for doing business may have changed, but not the business of smuggling.
The Mexican DTOs are the major wholesalers of illegal drugs in the United States and are increasingly gaining control of U.S. retail-level distribution through alliances with U.S. gangs. Street gangs continue to work with Mexican DTOs in Mexico, along the southwest border, and throughout the United States. These relationships are based more on location and personal and business ties than on strict affiliations with a given gang.
Mexican DTOs conduct business with a much lower profile in the U.S. than they do in Mexico to avoid engaging with security officials. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2017 National Drug Assessment notes the absence of significant spillover violence in the United States. Violence that does occur is infrequent, localized on the southwest border and mostly among traffickers. Mexican DTO activity in the United States is mainly overseen by Mexican nationals or U.S. citizens of Mexican origin. Those operating in the United States often share familial ties with, or can be traced back to, the natal region of leading cartel figures in Mexico.
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The U.S. and Mexico have worked closely together on border security, particularly since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But current tensions surrounding trade and immigration policies between the two countries make border security cooperation less straightforward, and the ability to strengthen such cooperation is no longer a singular issue. There is minimal spillover violence right now, but any change that causes spillover violence to rise would have massive political and geopolitical effects. The U.S. government is already studying measures for increased border controls and justifying them by vilifying Mexico. An actual spillover of violence would empower those in the United States advocating tighter border security. Right now, the U.S.-Mexico border allows for the relatively easy, free flow of trade and persons. A strong, controlled border would redefine the basic structure of this bilateral relationship.
The U.S., for its part, can try to pressure Mexico to take stronger action or pursue particular security measures. The point of leverage for this would not be a wall, as President Donald Trump has urged, since that would not be effective or practical. President Richard Nixon effectively shut down the U.S. border for several weeks in September 1969 in an attempt to stem the flow of drugs. The closed border killed local business but did little to impact the drug flow.
Perhaps more effective for the U.S. would be to limit or hinder remittances. Remittances to Mexico from people in the U.S. help to sustain or augment household income nationwide. The most recent figures from the Bank of Mexico show that from January to November 2017, remittances totaled $26.1 billion, and the year is poised to see a record high. But the move could backfire. Remittances play an even more important role in households of poorer states – Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca, for example – so cutting off remittances runs the risk of driving more desperate people to join criminal groups and creating controversy within the United States. Still, remittances are a powerful card to play and may be used as a tactic with other bilateral issues, such as NAFTA, that have a greater overall impact on the U.S.
Security Options
Though it is in Mexico’s interest, particularly its economic interest, to stop drug-related violence, the key question becomes: What can the Mexican government do? The short answer is: not much. There are several strategies the Mexican government could pursue, but it faces severe constraints that will limit the effectiveness of any approach.
One obvious strategy is putting an end to criminal groups’ illicit financial activities, primarily drug trafficking and other black market activities, including fuel sales and human trafficking. The problem is that these groups have many alternative routes and means of conducting their business. Shutting down one route, point of entry or source of materials is merely a logistical problem for a criminal group. Criminal organizations have many financial resources as well as experience in logistical planning. To be effective, the government would need to conduct multiple large-scale shutdown operations simultaneously. This would be an extremely costly and difficult endeavor. The government and security forces simply don’t have the manpower and resources to conduct a sustained and effective operation of this magnitude.
Extra resources would have to come from outside the country, and the country best positioned in terms of funding, skills and expertise is the United States. But Mexico cannot accept large-scale U.S. support – especially in manpower – on its own soil. History has proved to Mexico that it must be wary of any foreign presence, that of the U.S. above all others. The government cannot risk the country’s sovereignty or increased dependence on the U.S. Therefore, from Mexico’s position, cooperation with the U.S. is best limited to primarily border cooperation, along with selective training, weapons supplies and funding.
Similarly, the idea of tackling violence by eliminating corruption is a purely theoretical option since it is no secret that, generally speaking, local police and government officials are also corrupt. Prosecution is not guaranteed and is often lax when pursued. Attempts to remove corrupt members of local police departments nationwide have failed, which in part explains why the military has assumed domestic security responsibilities. Though the targeted elimination of high-profile corruption is possible, completely cleaning the system of it is impossible without totally dismantling everything and rebuilding from the ground up.
The Mexican government faces fewer constraints in crafting regulatory frameworks for tacking criminal groups. The main obstacles the government faces here are political in nature. The current government did pursue judiciary reforms and domestic security legislation to better combat criminal groups. Both measures have been severely criticized by various political and special interest groups, citing confusion in the judiciary reforms and vagaries and loopholes for abuse of power in the domestic security legislation. Though regulatory changes fall squarely within the power of the government, the public reaction and associated political costs prevent drastic changes and full enforcement.
A final possible strategy would be to focus more on quelling violence rather than eliminating or reducing criminal activity in the country. The violence Mexico currently experiences is a symptom of the competition between criminal groups. In theory, removing this competition – in a sense creating a monopoly – would eliminate the violence that competition produces. This would involve the government aligning or tacitly supporting a dominant drug trafficking group or cluster of groups, ultimately diminishing competition. This is not a novel strategy but it certainly is a highly controversial one. It compromises the government’s power over criminal groups, and there are no guarantees that the monopoly would hold. Not to mention it’s morally questionable and wouldn’t be feasible until at least 2019. Mexico holds presidential elections on July 1, and the sitting president cannot run for re-election. A new government will be inaugurated on Dec. 1. Criminal groups will have no incentive to negotiate with the outgoing government.
Conclusion
The rise in violence in Mexico is geopolitically significant because of its potential to affect the trajectory of Mexico’s economic development and basic framework of its relationship with the United States. Given the political and resource constraints facing the Mexican government, this level of violence will likely continue to rise in 2018. During this time, anecdotal evidence will provide a strong measure of the economic impact – as will statistics, though they inherently capture the past over the present. The United States will be closely watching for any increase in spillover violence. Though the current levels do not threaten the U.S.-Mexico relationship, a sharp rise – combined with the political climate in the U.S. and tense relations over NAFTA negotiations – would help set the stage for a strong U.S. reaction that would redefine the relationship.
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I've made a few posts (in English) on the Mexico thread in the Spanish language forum without posting here. Anyway, here is this:
Mexico: Etellekt, a risk analysis consulting firm in Mexico, released its first report on political violence in the country. The data is from the past six months and identifies 83 violent acts against politicians in 25 states. Of those, a shocking 54 were assassinations of political candidates for office. We know violence in Mexico has been bad, but if nine candidates are being assassinated every month, this is even worse than we thought. Let’s evaluate the credibility of the firm and its report and find out who was assassinated
• Finding: Etellekt specializes in political risk mitigation and campaigning. Its clients are primarily government entities at all levels and strategic business industries. It isn’t a particularly transparent organization – it does not list its physical address or its employees on its website, making it difficult to judge its credibility. Press references to the consulting firm come from a small group of regular reporters. Only the head of the company, Ruben Salazar Vazquez, is publicly recognized. The lack of transparency could be explained by the sensitivity of the company’s work. The report should be considered reliable in that other news articles throughout the year report incidents of political violence that support the final numbers in this report. Of the 54 political victims listed in the report, seven were sitting mayors, nine were former mayors, one was an elected municipal president, 15 were pre-candidates, 12 were aldermen, eight were political party and militant leaders, one was a local deputy, and one was political adviser.
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http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2018/04/05/mexican-senate-threatens-stop-helping-u-s-drug-cartels-trump-deploys-troops-border/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180405
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https://www.worldcrunch.com/opinion-analysis/far-left-frontrunner-for-mexican-presidency-may-get-help-from-moscow-1
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https://www.worldcrunch.com/opinion-analysis/far-left-frontrunner-for-mexican-presidency-may-get-help-from-moscow-1
We will need an update on this from our correspondent on the scene, DDF. )
I see Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) labeled a populist (like Trump?), and a Marxist far Left socialist who speaks in vague terms to hide his true intent (like Obama only further to the Left?).
Mexico Populist Lopez Obrador Sprints Out to Record 22-Point Lead in Reforma Poll
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-mexican-election/
They are all Leftists to me, I wonder what the potential change of government would mean? A Chavez-like economic disaster in the making? 4 times bigger in population and far closer! Mexican refugees already which direction to head.
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DDF is no longer with us.
AMLO is a hard lefty in my opinion.
Also worth noting is that in one of his previous runs, he organized protests to challenge his loss for quite a period of time , , ,
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The Barriers to Development in Mexico’s Guerrero State
Apr 26, 2018
Summary
Geography can be a barrier to development in any country. Some have managed to overcome their hurdles through technology and sheer political will. Others, like Mexico, have found it more difficult.
Even during colonial rule, the Spanish viceroys struggled to control parts of the vast country. Anywhere outside of the central plateau, which includes Mexico City, can be hard to govern. Today, violence and drug trafficking are on the rise, partly due to the disconnectedness and lack of government authority in certain areas. In the first quarter of 2018, Mexico registered 7,667 intentional homicides. At this rate, total homicides will exceed 30,000 by the end of the year – well above the total for 2017, which was already a record year at 25,339 homicides.
The problem has been more pronounced in some places, most notably Guerrero state. Located on the Pacific coast and 120 miles (200 kilometers) southwest of Mexico City, it had the most homicides of any state in Mexico last year. Though this can partly be attributed to geography – the state is mountainous and therefore hard to secure from the outside – it’s also due to the fact that the state was not seen as a priority during various points in Mexico’s history. This Deep Dive will focus on why Guerrero has become a hub of violence and illicit activity and some of the challenges the government still faces in controlling it.
An Attractive Target for Cartels
On the whole, Mexico is a fairly prosperous country. It ranks 15th in the world in terms of gross domestic product and is classified as an upper middle-income country by the World Bank. But its wealth is not distributed evenly, and Guerrero state is a perfect example of the poverty and underdevelopment that exists in many parts of the country. Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography compared the level of development in all 32 Mexican states, looking at factors such as housing, infrastructure, basic furnishings, quality of life, health, education and employment levels. It found that Guerrero was among the three least-advantaged states in the country. In fact, all three least-advantaged states are located in the south and along the Pacific coast.
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Guerrero has become a prime target for drug cultivation and trafficking, a fact that’s reflected in its high murder rate. Last year, Guerrero registered a homicide rate of about 70 per 100,000 people. There are at least six major drug trafficking organizations – Jalisco New Generation Cartel, La Familia Michoacana, Guardia Guerrerense, Sangre Nueva Guerrerense, Los Viagras, and Los Cornudos – operating in the state and competing for territory. Other groups active in the state include Los Ardillos and Los Rojos. Some areas of Guerrero, most notably the Chilpancingo-Chilapa corridor, have almost no government presence and are controlled mainly by drug cartels that offer to “protect” local residents in exchange for their labor in poppy fields. The cartels’ willingness to intimidate and even attack local officials prompted the government, military and federal police this month to extend special protection to political candidates ahead of federal elections scheduled for July.
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The state’s demographics and terrain make it ripe for exploitation by drug trafficking organizations. Guerrero is the second-largest poppy producing state in Mexico after Sinaloa, thanks in large part to its climate and soil. In addition, the state’s population is very young, with an average age of 23, making it an attractive target for drug cartels that need people to join their ranks, work their land and traffic their goods. Some 98 percent of Guerrero’s economically active population is employed, but 79 percent of its workforce is employed in the informal sector, meaning those workers do not have access to health care and retirement plans and are generally paid much lower wages. Nearly 20 percent of the working population is underemployed or underpaid, and according to Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, nearly a quarter of the population lives in extreme poverty. The average person living in Guerrero has just eight years of education. Only about half of workers have some primary-level education, and only a quarter completed high school. Among a population that is undereducated and underemployed, cartels have had little trouble finding recruits for the lucrative drug trade.
History of Rebellion
Why have these conditions developed in Guerrero, while other parts of the country have prospered? There is no single, easy answer, but Mexico’s colonial past is a good place to start. Though named after Vicente Guerrero, a celebrated general from Mexico’s War of Independence, the state has a rich history of rebellion against authority. Guerrero, which translates as “warrior,” had unique beginnings: For years, local residents pressured the national government to establish a separate entity for Guerrero, which was previously divided among three states – Mexico, Michoacan and Puebla. Its population was among the first to rise up in several conflicts: the War of Independence, in support of constitutional reform, against French intervention, against the Porfirio Diaz government and against the government in Mexico’s Dirty War.
Colonial rule established a strong social hierarchy and concentrated land ownership in the hands of elites. Though existing population centers were allowed to survive, the Spanish distributed land, economic opportunities and investment according to the crown’s needs rather than those of the local population. Resentment against colonial rule existed throughout Mexico – the country did, after all, fight a war for independence – but the population in Guerrero was more isolated than most, with a weaker presence of the colonial government, which had limited resources with which to control a vast area. Guerrero, then, was often the starting point for social unrest that led to different rebellions. The state continued its rebellious streak even after colonialism ended. Nineteenth-century President Porfirio Diaz ruled with an iron fist, re-enforcing the public’s distrust of centralized authority. Diaz was especially tough on Guerrero, fearing it could inspire a rebellion against his government, and kept it a weak state.
Guerrero’s history of dissent is now reflected in the formation of self-defense groups – vigilante forces that have sprung up because of the growing insecurity in the state and the government’s inability to address it. The government’s response to the violence can be described as containment. Eight military bases encircle Guerrero along a federal highway that follows the state’s borders. This strategy may help limit the spread of the violence to other states, but it leaves the center unprotected and mostly lawless. At the municipal level, local police forces are ill-equipped to control the vast land for which they are responsible. Only four of the state’s municipalities have 10 or more agents from the Ministry of Public Security assigned to them, and over a dozen have fewer than four. Federal-level public security agents are practically non-existent outside of the resort town of Acapulco and the state capital of Chilpancingo.
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Poor Infrastructure
Another reason for the disorder in Guerrero is the lack of infrastructure. Mexico experienced a wave of infrastructure development after the second French intervention in the 1870s and during the early years of the Diaz government in the 1880s. In 1860, Mexico had but 150 miles of disjointed railway. Just 24 years later, this grew to 7,500 miles. Initially, officials wanted to construct a rail line linking Veracruz on the east coast with Acapulco, a port city in Guerrero, via Mexico City. But ultimately, they did not follow through, and Guerrero was largely left out of the infrastructure boom, a fact that has limited the state’s development ever since.
The state was left out because its mountainous terrain makes infrastructure development costly. Heavy rain during summer months also makes construction harder and increases the cost of maintenance for existing tracks. At the start of the railway boom, private companies and investors from the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere funded infrastructure projects and choose which projects to invest in based on their own business interests. In Guerrero, business interests mainly related to mining. The northern part of the state is rich in minerals and metal deposits. There was thus enough financial incentive to construct a railway from Mexico City to Iguala, located in the mining region and relatively close to Mexico’s capital.
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But when metal prices fell at the end of the 19th century, investor interest in the state waned. It was around this time, in 1898, that the federal government stepped in to regulate railway construction and, in so doing, put the final nail in the coffin for Guerrero’s development. The federal government intervened for two reasons. First, it needed to fill the gap left by the private sector. The fall in metal prices hit Guerrero particularly hard, but it affected the mining industry, and therefore infrastructure development, across the country. This would have almost immediate impacts on local populations and economies that the Diaz government had been so dedicated to supporting in the previous decade. Second, the government wanted a national approach to infrastructure development to ensure that the decisions being made on which projects to support and which areas received the most investment were in the best interests of the country. This resulted in legislation that limited foreign participation in infrastructure, gave the government more control and introduced a period in which projects needed government subsidies before they could move forward. But the central government did not consider Guerrero a priority for rail construction, and therefore the extension of the railway to Acapulco was abandoned.
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Guerrero is also poorly connected by roads. The first and only major highway in Guerrero connects Acapulco to Mexico City. It was built in 1927 and followed the original dirt road that connected the cities. The construction of the highway significantly affected the state’s development, as economic activity and population centers grew in areas with access to it. These areas included Acapulco, Chilpancingo and Iguala, as well as somewhat smaller centers just off the highway like Taxco and Chilapa. A third of the state’s population lives in the first three municipalities, and when the other three are added, it’s nearly half the population. Even today, the areas of Guerrero that are not along the main highway are underdeveloped, desolate and disconnected from economic activity in the rest of the country. Securing these areas would require heavy investment, both in terms of finances and personnel. This in part helps explain why federal security forces have adopted a containment approach there. It is costly for the government to cover this barren area, and therefore easy for others to take over.
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Limited Coastal Development
One key advantage Guerrero does have is its access to the Pacific Ocean. Ports usually serve as engines for economic growth and development because they help facilitate trade. Port cities offer benefits for businesses in terms of logistics and often develop into economic hubs themselves. But this hasn’t been the case in Guerrero’s main port, Acapulco.
Discovered by Spanish conquistadors in 1532, Acapulco was among the earliest ports established by Spain. But multiple factors have prevented Acapulco from developing into a major Mexican port. From 1565 to 1814, Acapulco was one of the primary ports used by New Spain and then Mexico for trade with China and other Asian countries, although trade with these countries was secondary to trade with Europe, which meant that ports on Mexico’s Atlantic coast took priority.
It was difficult for Acapulco and the surrounding area to fully capitalize on trade with Asia. The port received large shipments from Asia only twice a year. Crossing the Pacific Ocean took an incredibly long time given the distance between Mexico and China and the limits of maritime navigation and technology at the time. A trip that now takes two to three weeks took several months back then. Goods were unloaded at the port and a local fair was set up to sell them. After four to six weeks, the fairs would close and the goods would be sent to Mexico City, where they would be consumed or delivered to other parts of the viceroyalty. Thus, Acapulco was mainly used as a transit point for commerce and goods on their way to the capital and didn’t develop into a major commercial hub itself. Acapulco port did conduct trade with other viceroyalty cities along the Pacific coast – like Guayaquil (in present-day Ecuador) and Lima (in present-day Peru) – but the volume and value of such trade didn’t match that of, for example, Veracruz, Mexico’s main port on the east coast. The extreme seasonality of trade and the port’s limited development into a business center meant that it couldn’t support major development and growth in the rest of the state.
Once Acapulco lost its position as a major Pacific shipping port for New Spain, it never claimed it back. Mexico’s fight for independence severely disrupted Spanish control over trade and territory, including in Acapulco. Mexican Gen. Jose Maria Morelos took the city of Acapulco in 1814, at which point Spain redirected trade to other ports. In the years that followed, Mexico’s central government focused on securing territory from incursion by the U.S., France and even residents of Guerrero, which was not yet a state of its own. In the early 20th century, construction of the Panama Canal was in full swing, further stagnating development in Acapulco because goods could be shipped to Mexico’s east coast faster and more inexpensively through the canal. Within Mexico, Manzanillo Port, also on the Pacific coast, quickly started surpassing Acapulco in terms of infrastructure development, and in 1908, Porfirio Diaz designated Manzanillo as an official port of entry.
Today, the ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas dominate Mexico’s Pacific maritime trade. Despite increasing trade between Mexico and Asian markets and the fact that, globally, Pacific trade is starting to overtake Atlantic trade, Acapulco cannot take advantage. The private sector continues to shy away from investing there, partly because of the security concerns in Guerrero and partly because of competition from more developed and reliable ports in other areas of Mexico. This leaves the government as the primary source of funding for major infrastructure projects, but even the government is reluctant to sink money into this part of the country.
Playing Catch-Up
Over time, Guerrero became isolated from the rest of Mexico, limiting the central government’s ability to govern the state and rein in violence there. Geography initially served as the underlying cause of Guerrero’s lack of connectivity. Its isolation from other major population centers bred a strong sense of regional identity and made it difficult to integrate the state with the rest of the country. Its only major center of commerce, Acapulco, was far from the country’s main trade routes and markets, thus making it more a transitory stop than an economic center. Guerrero’s natural resources were taken out of the region, particularly under colonial rule, and little was reinvested into the state. In the early days of major infrastructure development, Guerrero drew the short end of the stick, as other states presented more attractive business prospects.
The lack of connectivity resulted in the state’s developing an economy based on subsistence farming, tourism and basic manufacturing – all low-value economic activities. The lack of economic opportunities, a large, young labor force, and a climate prime for poppy cultivation have made Guerrero an attractive location for drug trafficking organizations, which have easily filled the power vacuum left by the central government.
Technology has come a long way, and much of the state’s geographic barriers could be overcome. But other states have gotten a head start, and Guerrero is still stuck playing catch-up. Major investments are needed to bring Guerrero on par with other Mexican states, but the security environment will make that difficult. Guerrero needs more economic and infrastructure development if it wants to really tackle the violence and drug problem. But it has a long way to go.
The post The Barriers to Development in Mexico’s Guerrero State appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
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O'Grady is dead on here-- AMLO is a hard lefty who, IMHO, is capable of ending Mexican democracy.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
June 3, 2018 3:30 p.m. ET
8 COMMENTS
Donald Trump has cultivated a contentious relationship with the government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. But if left-wing Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador wins the July 1 election, it may not be long before Mr. Trump regrets many lost opportunities to advance U.S. interests by working with Mr. Peña Nieto to deepen institutional reforms.
The troubles that an AMLO presidency could bring to the U.S. go way beyond the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. AMLO says he is an antiestablishment moderate out to unseat a corrupt political class. Others say he is an old-fashioned Mexican corporatist. But he can’t get to the presidential palace without Mexico’s hard left. If he makes it, he will be under pressure to repay the more extreme elements of his campaign.
The market will impose some economic discipline on him. But there will be no cost to opening the doors of his government’s Foreign Ministry to every useful idiot, true believer in utopia, and power-hungry climber in the country.
Once in, they will bring their friends from places like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Iran to “educate” and provide “health care” in the barrios and pueblitos—and to share military advice.
The AMLO team understands the risks of a peso collapse sparked by an investor stampede for the exits if he is declared winner on July 2. This is why he makes a point of calmly promising “respect” and “friendship” with the U.S. and no big reversals of the market economy.
Between the election and the Dec. 1 inauguration, expect even more reassurances of continuity. Anything less could finish his presidency before it starts. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had to do much the same when he first won election in 2002.
Yet there are gaping inconsistencies between AMLO’s worldview and his insistence that he is a centrist. He cannot, for example, promise fiscal restraint while pouring government resources into agriculture with the goal of reviving agrarian life circa 1960.
Nor has he reconciled his long history of opposing private investment in oil and gas with his vague and shifting suggestions that he will not disrupt the opening of the energy industry. In February AMLO adviser Alfonso Romo said that the campaign had reviewed most existing contracts and found them acceptable, as if he and the new president will be the final arbiters of fairness. Mr. Romo’s history of dubious financial dealings, which I wrote about in a February column, “How to Get Rich Quick in Mexico,” do not inspire confidence.
Yet this potential for economic instability pales in comparison with the dangers presented by the close relations between Mr. López Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement—Morena—and several military dictatorships. These are not casual bonds; they are statements of ideological solidarity, and they are perilous.
AMLO says he does not know Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. But as Mexican writer Fernando García Ramírez observed in a Jan. 15 column in the daily El Financiero, that “is true in personal terms but false with respect to his party and his movement.” Key players in Morena, Mr. García Ramírez pointed out, “sustain an intense relationship with chavismo in general and the party of Maduro”—the United Socialist Party of Venezuela—“in particular.”
Exhibit A is Morena’s president, Yeidckol Polevnksy, who speaks frankly about her admiration for Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution and of her desire to import Bolivarian ideas to Mexico. “She travels constantly to Venezuela” Mr. Garcia Ramirez wrote, “participates in chavista activities, has continuous contact with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.” Another high-ranking Morena official who is enamored with Venezuela is Héctor Díaz-Polanco. He has said that Morena coming to power will allow Mexico to integrate into the Bolivarian revolution. Mr. Garcia Ramirez’s full column, “To Deceive with the Truth,” is worth reading.
Mr. López Obrador will also attract opportunists who see him as a way to get ahead. Mr. Romo is one such figure. Another is Sen. Gabriela Cuevas, who once belonged to the center-right National Action Party but jumped to Morena in January to advance her political career. When I met her in Mexico last year she had just returned from a recreational break in Cuba where, she told me, she goes because she has “friends” in the dictatorship. She is also a fan of Iran, as she explained in a November speech in Mexico City: “Today Iran is one of the most important fighters against extremism, violence and terrorism. In this sense, both Iran and Mexico have been loyal to the constructive dialogue.”
Bring this stuff up and AMLO shouts “dirty war.” Many Mexicans fear his vengeance if he wins and thus shrink from the debate. But no one will be able to say, after the fact, that the proclivities were not there. That includes Mr. Trump.
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Perfect reason to use the US Military to totally lock down the border.
O'Grady is dead on here-- AMLO is a hard lefty who, IMHO, is capable of ending Mexican democracy.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
June 3, 2018 3:30 p.m. ET
8 COMMENTS
Donald Trump has cultivated a contentious relationship with the government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. But if left-wing Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador wins the July 1 election, it may not be long before Mr. Trump regrets many lost opportunities to advance U.S. interests by working with Mr. Peña Nieto to deepen institutional reforms.
The troubles that an AMLO presidency could bring to the U.S. go way beyond the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. AMLO says he is an antiestablishment moderate out to unseat a corrupt political class. Others say he is an old-fashioned Mexican corporatist. But he can’t get to the presidential palace without Mexico’s hard left. If he makes it, he will be under pressure to repay the more extreme elements of his campaign.
The market will impose some economic discipline on him. But there will be no cost to opening the doors of his government’s Foreign Ministry to every useful idiot, true believer in utopia, and power-hungry climber in the country.
Once in, they will bring their friends from places like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Iran to “educate” and provide “health care” in the barrios and pueblitos—and to share military advice.
The AMLO team understands the risks of a peso collapse sparked by an investor stampede for the exits if he is declared winner on July 2. This is why he makes a point of calmly promising “respect” and “friendship” with the U.S. and no big reversals of the market economy.
Between the election and the Dec. 1 inauguration, expect even more reassurances of continuity. Anything less could finish his presidency before it starts. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had to do much the same when he first won election in 2002.
Yet there are gaping inconsistencies between AMLO’s worldview and his insistence that he is a centrist. He cannot, for example, promise fiscal restraint while pouring government resources into agriculture with the goal of reviving agrarian life circa 1960.
Nor has he reconciled his long history of opposing private investment in oil and gas with his vague and shifting suggestions that he will not disrupt the opening of the energy industry. In February AMLO adviser Alfonso Romo said that the campaign had reviewed most existing contracts and found them acceptable, as if he and the new president will be the final arbiters of fairness. Mr. Romo’s history of dubious financial dealings, which I wrote about in a February column, “How to Get Rich Quick in Mexico,” do not inspire confidence.
Yet this potential for economic instability pales in comparison with the dangers presented by the close relations between Mr. López Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement—Morena—and several military dictatorships. These are not casual bonds; they are statements of ideological solidarity, and they are perilous.
AMLO says he does not know Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. But as Mexican writer Fernando García Ramírez observed in a Jan. 15 column in the daily El Financiero, that “is true in personal terms but false with respect to his party and his movement.” Key players in Morena, Mr. García Ramírez pointed out, “sustain an intense relationship with chavismo in general and the party of Maduro”—the United Socialist Party of Venezuela—“in particular.”
Exhibit A is Morena’s president, Yeidckol Polevnksy, who speaks frankly about her admiration for Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution and of her desire to import Bolivarian ideas to Mexico. “She travels constantly to Venezuela” Mr. Garcia Ramirez wrote, “participates in chavista activities, has continuous contact with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.” Another high-ranking Morena official who is enamored with Venezuela is Héctor Díaz-Polanco. He has said that Morena coming to power will allow Mexico to integrate into the Bolivarian revolution. Mr. Garcia Ramirez’s full column, “To Deceive with the Truth,” is worth reading.
Mr. López Obrador will also attract opportunists who see him as a way to get ahead. Mr. Romo is one such figure. Another is Sen. Gabriela Cuevas, who once belonged to the center-right National Action Party but jumped to Morena in January to advance her political career. When I met her in Mexico last year she had just returned from a recreational break in Cuba where, she told me, she goes because she has “friends” in the dictatorship. She is also a fan of Iran, as she explained in a November speech in Mexico City: “Today Iran is one of the most important fighters against extremism, violence and terrorism. In this sense, both Iran and Mexico have been loyal to the constructive dialogue.”
Bring this stuff up and AMLO shouts “dirty war.” Many Mexicans fear his vengeance if he wins and thus shrink from the debate. But no one will be able to say, after the fact, that the proclivities were not there. That includes Mr. Trump.
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By Juan Montes
June 4, 2018 5:30 a.m. ET
0 COMMENTS
MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s leading presidential candidate has a daunting challenge that keeps his would-be finance minister awake at night: find some $20 billion every year to step up social spending and public investment without raising taxes or debt.
Leftist nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said he would call on Carlos Urzúa to take on the herculean task if he wins the July election, as all published polls indicate he will.
“My focus will be to find the money we need,” said Mr. Urzúa, an affable 62-year-old economics professor with a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Concerns about fiscal restraint have investors wary of a victory for Mr. López Obrador, who has a lead of about 18 points over his closest rival with four weeks to go before the election. Mexico’s benchmark stock index has dropped nearly 9% this year through Friday as Mr. López Obrador has risen in the polls and talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement have hit investor sentiment.
The candidate’s ambitious plan to fund social programs and infrastructure projects by cutting other government spending isn’t realistic, according to many economists, raising fears that campaign vows of fiscal discipline will be relaxed if Mr. López Obrador becomes president.
‘My focus will be to find the money we need,’ said Carlos Urzúa, shown in April, who Mr. López Obrador has said he would pick as finance minister.
‘My focus will be to find the money we need,’ said Carlos Urzúa, shown in April, who Mr. López Obrador has said he would pick as finance minister. Photo: ginnette riquelme/Reuters
“To achieve those savings would be a positive surprise,” said Alonso Cervera, chief economist for Latin America at Credit Suisse. “If they don’t, I think they will likely widen the budget deficit rather than break campaign promises.”
Mexico’s main business groups also have voiced concerns about a return to old policies. Uncontrolled government spending under populist leaders led Mexico to major economic upheavals and peso devaluations in 1976 and 1982. After the country’s last homegrown financial crisis in 1994, Mexico secured investment-grade ratings which it kept even through the global crisis of 2008.
Since polls show that Mr. López Obrador’s Morena party and his allies could also secure an outright majority in the lower house of Congress, his administration is also likely to have enough room to pass spending plans without support from the opposition.
“The temptation of indebting the country is going to be there,” said Héctor Villarreal, head of the Center of Economic and Budget Research, a Mexico City think tank.
Mr. Urzúa, who described himself as a moderate social democrat, said a López Obrador administration would never put the country’s financial stability at risk. “What we can’t finance [through savings], won’t be done,” he said.
Success or failure of a López Obrador administration may rest on Mr. Urzúa’s ability to come up with the savings needed to fund projects such as a $5.1 billion-a-year program to put unemployed young people to work, doubling pensions for the elderly, and building two oil refineries.
“Urzúa will be the economizer-in-chief. That’s why López Obrador wants him,” said Gerardo Esquivel, an economic adviser to the candidate.
Mr. Urzúa says he is confident that by trimming down bureaucracy, making government more efficient and fighting corruption, enough funds can be freed up. The target is to make annual savings of around 2% of Mexico’s gross domestic product, or $20 billion.
Purchases by all government ministries, of items from toilet paper to computers, will be centralized and monitored at the finance ministry, Mr. Urzúa said. Part of the money for discretionary spending that is transferred to Mexican state governments, and which last year included $10 billion more than expected, would instead be funneled to public works, he said.
Mexico has seen major economic upheavals in prior decades. Above, unemployed workers in Mexico City in 1982.
Mexico has seen major economic upheavals in prior decades. Above, unemployed workers in Mexico City in 1982. Photo: Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images
Mr. López Obrador’s plan also includes slashing by half the salaries of high-ranking officials who earn more than $50,000 a year and reducing by 70% the number of management positions. He also says he would save money by fighting corruption in public bidding processes, although details remain vague.
Former government officials view the planned cuts in bureaucracy with skepticism. “You won’t attract talent, and incentives for corruption will increase, not decrease,” one former top finance ministry official said.
Reassigning funds that currently go to state governments could also face strong political resistance from affected sectors and special interest groups, complicating the plan.
And analysts see little room to make the needed savings, as more than 80% of Mexico’s roughly $270 billion budget goes to pay wages and pensions and to service debt. Mr. López Obrador’s promises to lower consumer taxes along the northern border and freeze gasoline prices could make it even more difficult to balance the books.
“The most likely outcome is that they will achieve just a fraction of the planned savings,” Mr. Villarreal said.
A López Obrador government would aim for a primary budget surplus—excluding debt payments—in 2019 and progressively reduce Mexico’s public debt, Mr. Urzúa said. “López Obrador is a fiscal conservative.”
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Mexico’s public debt rose steadily under current President Enrique Peña Nieto, reaching 49% of GDP in 2016 but is now on a downward path. A primary budget surplus equal to 0.8% of GDP is already projected for this year.
Mr. López Obrador has promised to respect the Bank of Mexico’s autonomy and the free float of the peso.
Mr. Urzúa was Mexico City’s finance chief from 2000 to 2003, his only government experience so far, when Mr. López Obrador was mayor. Some investors and analysts doubt he is cut out for a job as Mexico’s finance minister that typically requires international contacts and political skills.
“If Urzúa is the best López Obrador has around him, he is in trouble,” said one U.S. investor who recently met with him.
Mr. Urzúa says he is prepared for the job, having managed a budget in Mexico City that is larger than those of some countries in Latin America, and added that he has experience in difficult political talks, such as when he negotiated the city budget with an opposition-controlled local assembly.
Instead of attending international meetings and events, he said he plans to focus on re-engineering Mexico’s budget. “I won’t be a suit-and-tie minister, but a hands-on minister.”
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The Presidential election is Sunday July 1. The presumed winner is "Leftist nationalist" Lopez Obrador (AMLO). Make Mexico Great (Again?) - or something. From his point of view, 'make me supreme leader for life'?
Crafty: "O'Grady is dead on here-- AMLO is a hard lefty who, IMHO, is capable of ending Mexican democracy."
In the mold of Chavez, and maybe Erdogan...
G M: "Perfect reason to use the US Military to totally lock down the border."
Maybe that is the good news coming out of an increased threat from Mexico, secure the damn border.
From our perspective, he is sort of a blend of Obama and Trump qualities. Like Obama with the Leftism and blank canvas where you paint your own picture of how beautifully he will govern and like Trump with the nationalism. All who win are seen as populists, representing the interests of ordinary people. Obama turned to Leftism, elitism, internationalism where Trump doubled down on nationalism. Obama is having his legacy erased while the book is still out on Trump.
The article emphasizes the debt he will owe the Mexican Left, but Power and Presidency (they say) changes a person. Winning candidates say what they need to say to get elected, then are judged on results more so than their shifts. If he is a true Mexican nationalist and if he is smart, wise and a student of all that is happening around him, then there is also upside risk too, that he will turn Mexico in a positive direction.
Who in Spanish-speaking south of North America can't see what no one denies in Venezuela, the spanish speaking north of South America? Who could envy Chavez' national demise or Maduro's downward spiraling disaster?
Mexican may hate Trump but they (unknowingly) envy him when they see the strong dollar, the job gains, GDP growth, reignited spirit.
If you want to be powerful head of a powerful government, why not copy China over Cuba, or Singapore over Zimbabwe?
Mexico is important to the US in a number of interrelated ways. The better Mexico does, the better it is for us. The more they look out for their own interests (nationalism), the more it helps us. The more they head down the proven failure Leftist dustbin graveyard of history, the worse it is for us. They are our neighbor and relative, not our competitor and hopefully not our enemy.
I have no idea how smart AMLO is, but the more wise, learned and clever he is, the more he will turn to policies that work and that is all we can hope for. If successful and he has makes a strong, positive, measurable turn for his country of great potential, he will have no need to dismantle the democratic process.
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I remember how he acted when he lost the previous presidential election. Look it up-- might even be in this thread or the one on the Spanish language forum.
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I remember how he acted when he lost the previous presidential election. Look it up-- might even be in this thread or the one on the Spanish language forum.
"... Lopez Obrador has a long history in Mexican politics. After his loss in the 2006 elections to Calderon, Lopez Obrador denounced the results, declared himself the legitimate president of Mexico, and embarked on a yearslong tour of the country with his declared government. In the process, Lopez Obrador radicalized his position, moving to the far left of the political spectrum and creating a rift within the PRD."
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=604.300
He is radical far-Left. Before that he was a popular (Leftist) mayor of Mexico City, runner-up for "world Mayor": http://www.worldmayor.com/worldmayor_2004/obrador_second04.html
His main thrust is anti-corruption. He won't be a popular leader of Mexico very long if he leads them down into Venezuela-style failure and there isn't another outcome for far-Leftist policies. As a Leftist, his words in this campaign, I assume, are just words. He will have tough choices to make if/when elected. Currently he has a 26 point lead.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election/mexican-leftist-widens-double-digit-lead-for-presidency-poll-idUSKCN1J01AS
Yes this looks like a Chavez repeat on our border but now we know and he should know more ugly chapters in the Chavez / Maduro story. It is Leftist but not nationalist, populist or anti-corruption to follow them.
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"... Lopez Obrador has a long history in Mexican politics. After his loss in the 2006 elections to Calderon, Lopez Obrador denounced the results, declared himself the legitimate president of Mexico, and embarked on a yearslong tour of the country with his declared government. In the process, Lopez Obrador radicalized his position, moving to the far left of the political spectrum and creating a rift within the PRD."
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=604.300
Yup.
Working from memory, it began with very large protests in Mexico City, the nation's capitol, and of which he was mayor-- conditions apt to trigger ambitious thoughts of crossing the Mexican Rubicon were in the air.
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/25/a-new-revolution-in-mexico?mbid=nl_Magazine%20Daily%20List%20061818&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13714195&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1421650958&spReportId=MTQyMTY1MDk1OAS2
I've used up my free viewings-- would someone please paste the article here?
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A New Revolution in Mexico
Sick of corruption and of Trump, voters embrace the maverick leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
By Jon Lee Anderson
Proclaiming a “people’s struggle” against the country’s “power mafia,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador is regularly mobbed on the Presidential campaign trail.Photograph by Meghan Dhaliwal for The New Yorker
The first time that Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran for President of Mexico, in 2006, he inspired such devotion among his partisans that they sometimes stuck notes in his pockets, inscribed with their hopes for their families. In an age defined by globalism, he was an advocate of the working class—and also a critic of the pri, the party that has ruthlessly dominated national politics for much of the past century. In the election, his voters’ fervor was evidently not enough; he lost, by a tiny margin. The second time he ran, in 2012, the enthusiasm was the same, and so was the outcome. Now, though, Mexico is in crisis—beset from inside by corruption and drug violence, and from outside by the antagonism of the Trump Administration. There are new Presidential elections on July 1st, and López Obrador is running on a promise to remake Mexico in the spirit of its founding revolutionaries. If the polls can be believed, he is almost certain to win.
In March, he held a meeting with hundreds of loyalists, at a conference hall in Culiacán. López Obrador, known across Mexico as amlo, is a rangy man of sixty-four, with a youthful, clean-shaven face, a mop of silver hair, and an easy gait. When he entered, his supporters got to their feet and chanted, “It’s an honor to vote for López Obrador!” Many of them were farmworkers, wearing straw hats and scuffed boots. He urged them to install Party observers at polling stations to prevent fraud, but cautioned against buying votes, a long-established habit of the pri. “That’s what we’re getting rid of,” he said. He promised a “sober, austere government—a government without privilege.” López Obrador frequently uses “privilege” as a term of disparagement, along with “élite,” and, especially, “power mafia,” as he describes his enemies in the political and business communities. “We are going to lower the salaries of those who are on top to increase the salaries of those on the bottom,” he said, and added a Biblical assurance: “Everything I am saying will be done.” López Obrador spoke in a warm voice, leaving long pauses and using simple phrases that ordinary people would understand. He has a penchant for rhymes and repeated slogans, and at times the crowd joined in, like fans at a pop concert. When he said, “We don’t want to help the power mafia to . . . ,” a man in the audience finished his sentence: “keep stealing.” Working together, López Obrador said, “we are going to make history.”
The current Mexican government is led by the center-right President Enrique Peña Nieto. His party, the pri, has depicted López Obrador as a radical populist, in the tradition of Hugo Chávez, and warned that he intends to turn Mexico into another Venezuela. The Trump Administration has been similarly concerned. Roberta Jacobson, who until last month was the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, told me that senior American officials often expressed worry: “They catastrophized about amlo, saying things like ‘If he wins, the worst will happen.’ ”
Ironically, his surging popularity can be attributed partly to Donald Trump. Within days of Trump’s election, Mexican political analysts were predicting that his open belligerence toward Mexico would encourage political resistance. Mentor Tijerina, a prominent pollster in Monterrey, told me at the time, “Trump’s arrival signifies a crisis for Mexico, and this will help amlo.” Not long after the Inauguration, López Obrador published a best-selling book called “Oye, Trump” (“Listen Up, Trump”), which contained tough-talking snippets from his speeches. In one, he declared, “Trump and his advisers speak of the Mexicans the way Hitler and the Nazis referred to the Jews, just before undertaking the infamous persecution and the abominable extermination.”
Officials in the Peña Nieto government warned their counterparts in the White House that Trump’s offensive behavior heightened the prospect of a hostile new government—a national-security threat just across the border. If Trump didn’t modulate his behavior, the election would be a referendum on which candidate was the most anti-American. In the U.S., the warnings worked. During a Senate hearing in April, 2017, John McCain said, “If the election were tomorrow in Mexico, you would probably get a left-wing, anti-American President.” John Kelly, who was then the Homeland Security chief, agreed. “It would not be good for America—or for Mexico,” he said.
In Mexico, remarks like Kelly’s seemed only to improve López Obrador’s standing. “Every time an American politician opens their mouth to express a negative view about a Mexican candidate, it helps him,” Jacobson said. But she has never been sure that Trump has the same “apocalyptic” view of amlo. “There are certain traits they share,” she noted. “The populism, for starters.” During the campaign, López Obrador has decried Mexico’s “pharaonic government” and promised that, if he is elected, he will decline to live in Los Pinos, the Presidential residence. Instead, he will open it to the public, as a place for ordinary families to go and enjoy themselves.
After Jacobson arrived in Mexico, in 2016, she arranged meetings with local political leaders. López Obrador kept her waiting for months. Finally, he invited her to his home, in a distant, unfashionable corner of Mexico City. “I had the impression he did that because he didn’t think I would come,” she said. “But I told him, ‘No problem, my security guys can make that work.’ ” Jacobson’s team followed his directions to an unremarkable two-story town house in Tlalpan, a middle-class district. “If part of the point was to show me how modestly he lived, he succeeded,” she said.
López Obrador was “friendly and confident,” she said, but he deflected many of her questions and spoke vaguely about policy. The conversation did little to settle the issue of whether he was an opportunistic radical or a principled reformer. “What should we expect from him as President?” she said. “Honestly, my strongest feeling about him is that we don’t know what to expect.”
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
Lies and Truth in the Era of Trump
This spring, as López Obrador and his advisers travelled the country, I joined them on several trips. On the road, his style is strikingly different from that of most national politicians, who often arrive at campaign stops in helicopters and move through the streets surrounded by security details. López Obrador flies coach, and travels from town to town in a two-car caravan, with drivers who double as unarmed bodyguards; he has no other security measures in place, except for inconsistent efforts to obscure which hotel he is staying in. On the street, people approach him constantly to ask for selfies, and he greets them all with equanimity, presenting a warm, slightly inscrutable façade. “amlo is like an abstract painting—you see what you want to see in him,” Luis Miguel González, the editorial director of the newspaper El Economista, told me. One of his characteristic gestures during speeches is to demonstrate affection by hugging himself and leaning toward the crowd.
Jacobson recalled that, after Trump was elected, López Obrador lamented, “Mexicans will never elect someone who is not a politician.” This was telling, she thought. “He is clearly a politician,” she said. “But, like Trump, he has always presented himself as an outsider.” He was born in 1953, to a family of shopkeepers in Tabasco state, in a village called Tepetitán. Tabasco, on the Gulf of Mexico, is bisected by rivers that regularly flood its towns; in both its climate and the feistiness of its local politics, it can resemble Louisiana. One observer recalled that López Obrador joked, “Politics is a perfect blend of passion and reason. But I’m tabasqueño, a hundred per cent passion!” His nickname, El Peje, is derived from pejelagarto—Tabasco’s freshwater gar, an ancient, primitive fish with a face like an alligator’s.
When López Obrador was a boy, his family moved to the state capital, Villahermosa. Later, in Mexico City, he studied political science and public policy at unam, the country’s premier state-funded university, writing his thesis about the political formation of the Mexican state, in the nineteenth century. He married Rocío Beltrán Medina, a sociology student from Tabasco, and they had three sons. Elena Poniatowska, the doyenne of Mexican journalism, recalls meeting him when he was a young man. “He has always been very determined to get to the Presidency,” she said. “Like an arrow, straight and unswerving.”
“Chicken on a bed of spinach and onions?”
For a person with political aspirations, the pri was then the only serious option. It had been founded in 1929, to restore the country after the revolution. In the thirties, President Lázaro Cárdenas solidified it as an inclusive party of socialist change; he nationalized the oil industry and provided millions of acres of farmland to the poor and the dispossessed. Over the decades, the Party’s ideology fluctuated, but its hold on power steadily grew. Presidents chose their successors, in a ritual called the dedazo, and the Party made sure that they were elected.
López Obrador joined the pri after college, and, in 1976, he helped direct a successful Senate campaign for Carlos Pellicer, a poet who was friends with Pablo Neruda and Frida Kahlo. López Obrador rose quickly; he spent five years running the Tabasco office of the National Indigenous Institute, and then leading a department of the National Consumer Institute, in Mexico City. But he felt increasingly that the Party had strayed from its roots. In 1988, he joined a left-wing breakaway group, led by Lázaro Cárdenas’s son, that grew into the Partido Revolucionario Democrático. López Obrador became the Party chief in Tabasco.
In 1994, he made his first attempt at electoral office, running for governor of the state. He lost to the pri’s candidate, whom he accused of having won through fraud. Although a court inquiry did not lead to a verdict, many Mexicans believed him; the pri has a long record of rigging elections. Soon after the election, a supporter handed López Obrador a box of receipts, showing that the pri had spent ninety-five million dollars on an election in which half a million people voted.
In 2000, he was elected mayor of Mexico City, a post that gave him considerable power, as well as national visibility. In office, he built a reputation as a rumpled everyman; he drove an old Nissan to work, arriving before sunrise, and he reduced his own salary. (When his wife died, of lupus, in 2003, there was an outpouring of sympathy.) He was not averse to political combat. After one of his officials was caught on tape seeming to accept a bribe, he argued that it was a sting, and distributed comic books that depicted himself fighting against “dark forces.” (The official was later cleared.) At times, López Obrador ignored his assembly and governed by edict. But he also proved able to compromise. He succeeded in creating a pension fund for elderly residents, expanding highways to ease congestion, and devising a public-private scheme, with the telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, to restore the historic downtown.
When he left office to prepare for the 2006 Presidential elections, he had high approval ratings and a reputation for getting things done. (He also had a new wife, a historian named Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller; they now have an eleven-year-old son.) López Obrador saw an opportunity. In the last election, the pri had lost its long hold on power, as the Partido de Acción Nacional won the Presidency. The pan, a traditionalist conservative party, had support from the business community, but its candidate, Felipe Calderón, was an uncharismatic figure.
The campaign was hard fought. López Obrador’s opponents ran television ads that presented him as a deceitful populist who posed “a danger for Mexico” and showed images of human misery alongside portraits of Chávez, Fidel Castro, and Evo Morales. In the end, López Obrador lost by half of one per cent of the vote—a margin slim enough to raise widespread suspicions of fraud. Refusing to recognize Calderón’s win, he led a protest in the capital, where his followers stopped traffic, erected tented encampments, and held rallies in the historic Zócalo and along Reforma Avenue. One resident recalled his giving speeches in “language that was reminiscent of the French Revolution.” At one point, he conducted a parallel inauguration ceremony in which his supporters swore him in as President. The protests lasted months, and the residents of Mexico City grew impatient; eventually, López Obrador packed up and went home.
In the 2012 election, he won a third of the vote—not enough to defeat Peña Nieto, who returned the pri to power. But Peña Nieto’s government has been tarnished by corruption and human-rights scandals. Ever since Trump announced his candidacy with a burst of anti-Mexican rhetoric, Peña Nieto has tried to placate him, with embarrassing results. He invited Trump to Mexico during his campaign and treated him as if he were already a head of state, only to have him return to the U.S. and tell a crowd of supporters that Mexico would “pay for the wall.” After Trump was elected, Peña Nieto assigned his foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, who is a friend of Jared Kushner’s, to make managing the White House relationship his highest priority. “Peña Nieto has been extremely accommodating,” Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican Ambassador to China, told me. “There’s nothing Trump has even hinted at that he won’t immediately comply with.”
In early March, before López Obrador’s campaign had officially begun, we travelled through northern Mexico, where resistance to him is concentrated. His base of support is in the poorer, more agrarian south, with its majority indigenous population. The north, near the border with Texas, is more conservative, tied both economically and culturally to the southern United States; his task there was not so different from presenting himself to the Houston Chamber of Commerce.
In speeches, he tried to make light of his opponents’ accusations, cracking jokes about receiving “gold from Russia in a submarine” and calling himself “Andrés Manuelovich.” In Delicias, an agricultural hub in Chihuahua, he swore not to overextend his term in office. “I’m going to work sixteen hours a day instead of eight, so I will do twelve years’ work in six years,” he said. This rhetoric was backed by more pragmatic measures. As he travelled through the north, he was accompanied by Alfonso (Poncho) Romo, a wealthy businessman from the industrial boomtown of Monterrey, whom López Obrador had selected as his future chief of staff. A close adviser told me, “Poncho is key to the campaign in the north. Poncho is the bridge.” In Guadalajara, López Obrador told the audience, “Poncho is with me to help convince the businessmen who have been told we’re like Venezuela, or with the Russians, that we want to expropriate property, and that we’re populist. But none of that is true—this is a government made in Mexico.”
At a lunch with businessmen in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state, López Obrador tested some ideas. “What we want to do is to carry out the transformation that this country needs,” he began. “Things can’t go on as they are.” He spoke in a conversational tone, and the crowd gradually seemed to grow more sympathetic. “We’re going to end the corruption, the impunity, and the privileges enjoyed by a small élite,” he said. “Once we do, the leaders of this country can recover their moral and political authority. And we’ll also clean up the image of Mexico in the rest of the world, because right now all that Mexico is known for is violence and corruption.”
López Obrador spoke about helping the poor, but when he talked about corruption he focussed on the political class. “Five million pesos a month in pension for ex-Presidents!” he said, and grimaced. “All of that has to end.” He noted that there were hundreds of Presidential jets and helicopters, and said, “We’re going to sell them to Trump.” The audience laughed, and he added, “We’ll use the money from the sale for public investment, and thus foment private investment to generate employment.”
During these early events, López Obrador was adjusting his message as he went along. His campaign strategy seemed simple: make lots of promises and broker whatever alliances were necessary to get elected. Just as he promised his Party faithful to raise workers’ salaries at the expense of senior bureaucrats, he promised the businessmen not to increase taxes on fuel, medicine, or electricity, and vowed that he would never confiscate property. “We will do nothing that goes against freedoms,” he declared. He proposed establishing a thirty-kilometre duty-free zone along the entire northern border, and lowering taxes for companies, both Mexican and American, that set up factories there. He also offered government patronage, vowing to complete an unfinished dam project in Sinaloa and to provide agricultural subsidies. “The term ‘subsidy’ has been satanized,” he said. “But it is necessary. In the United States they do it—up to a hundred per cent of the cost of production.”
Culiacán is a former stronghold of the brutal Sinaloa cartel, which has been instrumental in the flood of drug-related violence and corruption that has subsumed the Mexican state. Since 2006, the country has pursued a “war on drugs” that has cost at least a hundred thousand lives, seemingly to little good effect. López Obrador, like his opponents, has struggled to articulate a viable security strategy.
After the lunch in Culiacán, he took questions, and a woman stood to ask what he intended to do about narcotrafficking. Would he consider the legalization of drugs as a solution? A few months earlier, he had said, seemingly without much deliberation, that he might offer an “amnesty” to bring low-level dealers and producers into legal employment. When critics leaped on his remark, his aides tried to deflect criticism by arguing that, because none of the current administration’s policies had worked, anything was worth trying. To the woman in Culiacán, he said, “We’re going to tackle the causes with youth programs, new employment opportunities, education, and by tending to the abandoned countryside. We’re not only going to use force. We’ll analyze everything and explore all the avenues that will let us achieve peace. I don’t rule out anything, not even legalization—nothing.” The crowd applauded, and amlo looked relieved.
For López Obrador’s opponents, his ability to inspire hope is worrisome. Enrique Krauze, a historian and commentator who has often criticized the left, told me, “He reaches directly into the religious sensibilities of the people. They are seeing him as a man who will save Mexico from all of its evils. Even more important, he believes it, too.”
Krauze has been concerned about López Obrador ever since 2006. Before the Presidential elections that year, he published an essay titled “The Tropical Messiah,” in which he wrote that amlo had a religious zeal that was “puritanical, dogmatic, authoritarian, inclined toward hatred, and above all, redemptory.” Krauze’s latest book—“El Pueblo Soy Yo,” or “I Am the People”—is about the dangers of populism. He examines the political cultures in modern Venezuela and Cuba, and also includes a scathing assessment of Donald Trump, whom he refers to as “Caligula on Twitter.” In the preface, he writes about López Obrador in a tone of oracular dismay. “I believe that, if he wins, he will use his charisma to promise a return to an Arcadian order,” he says. “And with that accumulated power, arrived at thanks to democracy, he will corrode democracy from within.”
What worried Krauze, he explained, was that if López Obrador’s party won big—not just the Presidency but also a majority in Congress, which the polls suggest is likely—he might move to change the composition of the Supreme Court and dominate other institutions. He could also exercise tighter control over the media, much of which is supported by state-sponsored advertising. “Will he ruin Mexico?” Krauze asked. “No, but he could obstruct Mexico’s democracy by removing its counterweights. We’ve had a democratic experiment for the past eighteen years, ever since the pri first lost power, in 2000. It is imperfect, there is much to criticize, but there have also been positive changes. I’m worried that with amlo this experiment might end.”
Over dinner in Culiacán one night, López Obrador picked at a steak taco and talked about his antagonists on the right, alternating between amusement and concern. A few days earlier, Roberta Jacobson had announced that she was stepping down as Ambassador, and the Mexican government had immediately endorsed a prospective replacement: Edward Whitacre, a former C.E.O. of General Motors who happened to be a friend of the tycoon Carlos Slim. This was a nettlesome point for López Obrador. He had recently argued with Slim over a multibillion-dollar plan for a new Mexico City airport, which Slim was involved in. The scheme was a public-private venture with Peña Nieto’s government, and López Obrador, alleging corruption, had promised to stop it. (The government denies any malfeasance.) “We are hoping it doesn’t mean they are planning to interfere against me,” López Obrador said, of Whitacre and Slim. “Millions of Mexicans would take offense at that.”
Recently, the Peruvian novelist and politician Mario Vargas Llosa—who serves as an oracle for the Latin American right—had said publicly that if amlo won office it would be “a tremendous setback for democracy in Mexico.” He added that he hoped the country would not commit “suicide” on Election Day. When I mentioned the remarks, López Obrador grinned and said that Vargas Llosa was in the news mostly for his marriage to “a woman who always married up, and was always in Hola! magazine.” He was referring to the socialite Isabel Preysler, a former wife of the singer Julio Iglesias, for whom Vargas Llosa had abandoned his marriage of fifty years. López Obrador asked if I’d seen his response, in which he’d called Vargas Llosa a good writer and a bad politician. “You notice,” he said wickedly, “I didn’t call him a great writer.”
On April 1st, López Obrador officially launched his campaign, before a crowd of several thousand people in Ciudad Juárez. On a stage set up in a plaza, he stood with his wife, Beatríz, and several of his cabinet picks. “We have come here to initiate our campaign, in the place where our fatherland begins,” he said. The stage stood under a grand statue of Mexico’s revered nineteenth-century leader Benito Juárez, an avowed hero of López Obrador’s. Juárez, a man of humble Zapotec origins who championed the cause of the disenfranchised, is a kind of Abraham Lincoln figure in Mexico—an emblem of unbending honor and persistence. Looking at the statue, López Obrador said that Juárez was “the best President Mexico ever had.”
In López Obrador’s speech, he likened the current administration to the despots and colonists who had controlled the country before the revolution. He attacked the “colossal dishonesty” that he said had characterized the “neoliberal” policies of Mexico’s last few governments. “The country’s leaders have devoted themselves . . . to concessioning off the national territory,” he said. With his Presidency, the government would “cease to be a factory that produces Mexico’s nouveaux riches.”
López Obrador often speaks of admiring leaders from the nineteen-thirties—including F.D.R. and the pri head Lázaro Cárdenas—and much of his social program recalls the initiatives of those years. In his launch speech, he said that he intended to develop the south of the country, where the agricultural economy has been devastated by inexpensive U.S. food imports. To do this, he proposed to plant millions of trees for fruit and timber, and to build a high-speed tourist train that would connect the beaches of the Yucatán Peninsula with Mayan ruins inland. The tree-planting project alone would create four hundred thousand jobs, he predicted. With these initiatives, he said, people in the south would be able to stay in their villages and not have to travel north for work.
Across the country, he would encourage construction projects that used hand tools rather than modern machinery, in order to boost the economy in rural communities. Pensions for the elderly would double. There would be free Internet in Mexico’s schools, and in its public spaces. Young people would be guaranteed scholarships, and then jobs after graduation. He wanted “becarios sí, sicarios no”—scholarship students, not contract killers.
For many audiences, especially in the south, these proposals are appealingly simple. When López Obrador is asked how he will pay for them, he tends to offer a similarly seductive answer. “It’s not a problem!” he said, in one speech. “There is money. What there is is corruption, and we’re going to stop it.” By getting rid of official corruption, he has calculated, Mexico could save ten per cent of its national budget. Corruption is a major issue for López Obrador. Marcelo Ebrard, his chief political aide, says that his ethics are informed by a “Calvinist streak,” and even some skeptics have been persuaded of his sincerity. Cassio Luiselli, a longtime Mexican diplomat, told me, “I don’t like his authoritarian streak and confrontational style.” But, he added, “he seems to me to be an honest man, which is a lot to say in these parts.”
López Obrador has vowed that his first bill to Congress would amend an article in the constitution that prevents sitting Mexican Presidents from being tried for corruption. This would be a symbolic deterrent, but an insufficient one; in order to root out corruption, he’d have to purge huge swaths of the government. Last year, the former governor of Chihuahua, charged with embezzlement, fled to the U.S., where he is evading efforts at extradition. More than a dozen other current and former state governors have faced criminal investigations. The attorney general who led some of those inquiries was himself reported to have a Ferrari registered in his name at an unoccupied house in a different state, and, though his lawyer argued that it was an administrative error, he resigned not long afterward. The former head of the national oil company has been accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes. (He denies this.) Peña Nieto, who ran as a reformer, was involved in a scandal in which his wife obtained a luxurious house from a developer with connections to the government; later, his administration was accused of using spyware to eavesdrop on opponents. According to reporting in the Times, state prosecutors have declined to pursue damning evidence against pri officials, to avoid harming the Party’s electoral chances.
With every major party implicated in corruption, López Obrador’s supporters seem to care less about the practicality of his ideas than about his promises to fix a broken government. Emiliano Monge, a prominent novelist and essayist, said, “This election really began to cease being political a few months ago and became emotional. It is more than anything a referendum against corruption, in which, as much by right as by cleverness, amlo has presented himself as the only alternative. And in reality he is.”
For months, López Obrador’s team crisscrossed the country. Arriving in a tiny cow town called Guadalupe Victoria, he told me that he had been there twenty times. After a long day of speeches and meetings in Sinaloa, we had dinner as he prepared to travel to Tijuana, where he had a similar agenda the next day. He looked a little weary, and I asked if he was planning a break. He nodded, and told me that, during Easter, he’d go to Palenque, in the southern state of Chiapas, where he had a ranchito in the jungle. “I go there and don’t come out again for three or four days,” he said. “I just look at the trees.”
For the most part, though, communing with the crowds seemed to energize him. In Delicias, it took him twenty minutes to walk a single block, as supporters pressed in for selfies and kisses and held up banners that read “amlove”—one of his campaign slogans. Appearances with his opponents and encounters with the media suit him less. At times, he has responded to forceful questions from reporters with a wave of his pinkie—in Mexico, a peremptory no. In 2006, he declined to attend the first Presidential debate; his opponents left an empty chair for him onstage.
There were three debates scheduled for this campaign season, and they were amlo’s to lose. By May 20th, when the second one was held, in Tijuana, polls said that he had an estimated forty-nine per cent of the vote. His nearest rival—Ricardo Anaya, a thirty-nine-year-old lawyer who is the pan candidate—had twenty-eight per cent. José Antonio Meade, who had served Peña Nieto as finance secretary and foreign secretary, trailed with twenty-one. In last place, with two per cent, was Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, the governor of the state of Nuevo León. An intemperate tough guy known as El Bronco, he has made his mark on the campaign by suggesting that corrupt officials should have their hands chopped off.
With López Obrador in the lead, his opponents’ debate strategy was to make him look defensive, and at times it worked. At one point, Anaya, a small man with the buzz-cut hair and frameless glasses of a tech entrepreneur, walked across the stage to confront López Obrador. At first, amlo reacted mildly. He reached for his pocket and exclaimed, “I’m going to protect my wallet.” The mood lightened. But when Anaya challenged him on one favorite initiative, a train line connecting the Caribbean and the Pacific, he was so affronted that he called Anaya a canalla, a scoundrel. He went on, using the diminutive form of Anaya’s first name to create a rhyming ditty that poked fun at his stature: “Ricky, riquín, canallín.”
When Meade, the pri candidate, criticized López Obrador’s party for voting against a trade agreement, amlo replied that the debate was merely an excuse to attack him. “It’s obvious, and, I would say, understandable,” he said. “We are leading by twenty-five points in the polls.” Otherwise, he hardly bothered to look Meade’s way, except to wave dismissively at him and Anaya and call them representatives of “the power mafia.”
Nevertheless, his lead in polls only grew. Two days later, in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta, thousands of fans surrounded his white S.U.V., holding it in place until police opened a pathway. On social media, video clips circulated of well-wishers bending down to kiss his car.
Ever since he lost the election of 2006, López Obrador has presented himself as an avatar of change. He founded a new party, the National Regeneration Movement, or morena, which Duncan Wood, the director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, described as evocative of the early pri—an effort to sweep up everyone who felt that Mexico had gone astray. “He went around the country signing agreements with people,” Wood said. “ ‘Do you want to be part of a change? Yes? Then sign here.’ ” morena has an increasing number of sympathizers but relatively few official members; last year, it had three hundred and twenty thousand, making it the country’s fourth-largest party. As López Obrador’s campaign has gathered strength, he has welcomed partners that seem profoundly incompatible. In December, morena forged a coalition with the P.T., a party with Maoist origins; it also joined with the pes, an evangelical Christian party that opposes same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. Some of his aides intimate that López Obrador could sever these ties after he wins, but not everyone is convinced. “What terrifies me most are his political alliances,” Luis Miguel González, of El Economista, told me.
At a rally in the town of Gómez Palacio, some of these alliances collided messily. In an open-air market on the edge of town, P.T. partisans occupied a large area near the stage—an organized bloc of young men wearing red T-shirts and waving flags with yellow stars. Onstage with López Obrador was the Party’s chief, Beto Anaya. One of López Obrador’s aides winced visibly and grumbled, “That guy has quite a few corruption scandals.” (Anaya denies accusations against him.) As local leaders gathered, a young woman walked to the microphone, and boos erupted from the crowd. The aide explained that the woman was Alma Marina Vitela, a morena candidate who had formerly been with the pri. The booing gathered strength, and Vitela stood frozen, looking at the crowd, seemingly unable to speak. López Obrador strode over, put his arm around her, and took the microphone. “We need to leave our differences and conflicts behind,” he said. The booing quickly stopped. “The fatherland is first!” he shouted, and cheers broke out.
With the P.T. partisans in the audience, López Obrador’s speech took on a distinctly more radical edge. “This party is an instrument for the people’s struggle,” he said, and added, “In union there is strength.” He went on, “Mexico will produce everything it consumes. We will stop buying from abroad.” After each of his points, the P.T. militants cheered in unison, and someone banged a drum.
Over dinner that night, we spoke about morena’s prospects. López Obrador boasted that, although the party remains considerably smaller than its rivals, it was able to reliably mobilize partisans. “There are few movements on the left in Latin America with the power to put people on the street anymore,” he said.
Not long before, a prominent Communist leader in the region had told me that the Latin American left was largely dead, because there were almost no unions anymore. Unions were once a powerhouse of regional politics, supplying credibility and votes; in recent decades, many have succumbed to corruption or internal divisions, or have been co-opted by business owners. López Obrador smiled when I mentioned it. The largest Mexican miners’ union had recently offered to support his campaign. In 2006, the head of the union, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, was charged with trying to embezzle a workers’ trust fund of fifty-five million dollars; he fled to Canada, where he obtained citizenship and wrote a best-selling book about his travails. In López Obrador’s telling, he had been punished for taking on mine owners. “They own everything, and they call the shots,” he said.
Urrutia was exonerated in 2014, but he still felt that he was vulnerable to new charges if he returned. López Obrador took up his cause, offering him a seat in the Senate, which would provide him immunity from prosecution. López Obrador’s critics were enraged. “You should have seen the outcry!” he said. “They really attacked me. But it’s dying down again now.” With a mocking look, he said, “I told them that, if the Canadians thought he was fine, then maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.” Rolling his eyes, he said, “You know, here they think the Canadians are all things good.”
López Obrador told me that he also had the backing of the teachers’ union, then hastened to clarify: “The unofficial one—not the corrupted official one.” Peña Nieto’s government had passed educational reforms, and the measures had been unpopular with teachers. “They are now with us,” he said, then added, “The official—compromised, corrupted—teachers’ union has also given me its support.” He grimaced. “This is the kind of support one doesn’t really need, but in a campaign you need support, so we will go forward, and hope to find ways to clean them up.”
A few weeks later, I rejoined López Obrador on the road in Chihuahua, Mexico’s biggest state. South of Ciudad Juárez and its dusty belt of low-wage factories, Chihuahua is cowboy country—a wide-open place of vast prairies and forested mountains. For several days, we drove hundreds of miles back and forth through the rangelands.
This territory had once been a base for Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army in its fight against the dictator Porfirio Díaz; the landscape was dotted with the sites of battles and mass executions. One day, outside a men’s bathroom at a rest stop, López Obrador looked out at the plain, waved his arms, and said, “Villa and his men marched all through these parts for years. But just imagine the difference: he and his men covered most of these miles by horse, while we’re in cars.”
López Obrador has written half a dozen books on Mexico’s political history. Even more than most Mexicans, he is aware of the country’s history of subjugation and sensitive to its echoes in the rhetoric of the Trump Administration. When we stopped for lunch at a modest restaurant off the highway, he spoke of the invasion of 1846, known in the U.S. as the Mexican-American War and in Mexico as the United States’ Intervention in Mexico. That conflict ended with the humiliating cession of more than half the nation’s territory to the United States, but López Obrador saw in it at least a few examples of valor. At one point during the war, he said, Commodore Matthew Perry arrayed a huge U.S. fleet off the coast of Veracruz. “He had overwhelming superiority, and sent word to the commander of the town to surrender so as to save the city and its people,” he said. “And you know what the commander told Perry? ‘My balls are too big to fit into your Capitol building. Get it on.’ And so Perry opened fire, and devastated Veracruz.” López Obrador laughed. “But pride was saved.” For a moment, he mused about whether victory was more important than a grand gesture that could mean defeat. Finally, he said he believed that the grand gesture was important—“for history’s sake, if for nothing else.”
We were interrupted by members of the family that ran the restaurant, politely asking for a selfie. As López Obrador got up to oblige them, he said, “This country has its personalities—but Donald Trump!” He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, and, with a laugh, hit the table with both hands.
Early in Trump’s term, López Obrador presented himself as an antagonist; along with his condemnatory speeches, he filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in Washington, D.C., protesting the Administration’s border wall and its immigration policy. When I mentioned the wall to him, he smiled scornfully and said, “If he goes ahead with it, we will go to the U.N. to denounce it as a human-rights violation.” But he added that he had come to understand, from watching Trump, that it was “not prudent to take him on directly.”
On the campaign trail, he has generally resisted grand gestures. Not long before the speech in Gómez Palacio, Trump sent National Guard troops to the Mexican border. López Obrador suggested an almost pacifist response: “We’ll organize a demonstration along the entire length of the border—a political protest, all dressed in white!”
Mostly, López Obrador has offered calls for mutual respect. “We will not rule out the possibility of convincing Donald Trump just how wrong his foreign policy, and particularly his contemptuous attitude toward Mexico, have been,” he said in Ciudad Juárez. “Neither Mexico nor its people will be a piñata for any foreign power.” Offstage, he suggested that it was morally necessary to restrain Trump’s isolationist tendencies. “The United States can’t become a ghetto,” he said. “It would be a monumental absurdity.” He said that he hoped to be able to negotiate a new rapport with Trump. When I expressed skepticism, he pointed to Trump’s fluctuating comments about the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un: “It shows that his positions aren’t irreducible ones, but made for appearances’ sake.” Behind the scenes, López Obrador’s aides have reached out to counterparts in the Trump Administration, trying to establish working relationships.
A more aggressive position would give López Obrador little advantage over his opponents in the campaign. When I asked Jorge Guajardo, the former Ambassador, what role Trump had at this point in the election, he said, “Zero. And for a very simple reason—everyone in Mexico opposes him equally.” In office, though, he could find that it is in his interest to present more forceful resistance. “Look at what happened to those leaders who right away tried to make nice with Trump,” Guajardo said. “Macron, Merkel, Peña Nieto, and Abe—they’ve all lost out. But look at Kim Jong Un! Trump seems to like those who reject him. And I think the same scenario will apply to Andrés Manuel.”
In campaign events, López Obrador speaks often of mexicanismo—a way of saying “Mexico first.” Observers of the region say that, when the two countries’ interests compete, he is likely to look inward. Mexico’s armed forces and law enforcement have often had to be persuaded to coöperate with the United States, and he will probably be less willing to pressure them. The U.S. lobbied Peña Nieto, successfully, to harden Mexico’s southern border against the flow of Central American migrants. López Obrador has announced that he will instead move immigration headquarters to Tijuana, in the north. “The Americans want us to put it on the southern border with Guatemala, so that we will do their dirty work for them,” he said. “No, we’ll put it here, so we can look after our immigrants.” Regional officials fear that Trump is preparing to pull out of nafta. López Obrador, who has often called for greater self-sufficiency, might be happy to let it go. In the speech that launched his campaign, he said that he hoped to develop the country’s potential so that “no threat, no wall, no bullying attitude from any foreign government, will ever stop us from being happy in our own fatherland.”
Even if López Obrador is inclined to build a closer relationship, the pressures from both inside and outside the country may prevent it. “You can’t be the President of Mexico and have a pragmatic relationship with Trump—it’s a contradiction in terms,” González said. “Until now, Mexico has been predictable, and Trump has been the one providing the surprises. I think it’s now going to be amlo who provides the surprise factor.”
One morning in Parral, the city where Pancho Villa died, López Obrador and I had breakfast as he prepared for a speech in the plaza. He acknowledged that the transformation Villa helped bring about had been bloody, but he was confident that the transformation he himself was proposing would be peaceful. “I am sending messages of tranquillity, and I am going to continue to do so,” he said. “And, quite apart from my differences with Trump, I have treated him with respect.”
I told him that many Mexicans wondered whether he had moderated his early radical beliefs. “No,” he said. “I’ve always thought the same way. But I act according to the circumstances. We have proposed an orderly change, and our strategy seems to have worked. There is less fear now. More middle-class people have come on board, not only the poor, and there are businesspeople, too.”
There are limits to López Obrador’s inclusiveness. Many young metropolitan Mexicans are wary of what they see as his lack of enthusiasm for contemporary identity politics. I asked if he been able to change their minds. “Not much,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Look, in this world there are those who give more importance to politics of the moment—identity, gender, ecology, animals. And there’s another camp, which is not the majority, but which is more important, which is the struggle for equal rights, and that’s the camp I subscribe to. In the other camp, you can spend your life criticizing, questioning, and administering the tragedy without ever proposing the transformation of the regime.”
López Obrador sometimes says that he wants to be regarded as a leader of the stature of Benito Juárez. I asked if he really believed that he could remake the country in such a historic way. “Yes,” he replied. He looked at me directly. “Yes, yes. We are going to make history, I am clear about that. I know that when one is a candidate one sometimes says things and makes promises that can’t be fulfilled—not because one doesn’t want to but because of the circumstances. But I think I can confront the circumstances and fulfill those promises.”
This is the message that excites his supporters and worries his opponents: a promise to transform the country without disrupting it. I thought about a speech he gave one night in Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, a neglected-looking mining town surrounded by mountains. Ciudad Cuauhtémoc was remote from most of Mexico’s citizens, but people there felt the same frustrations with corruption and economic predation. The area was dominated by drug cartels, according to López Obrador’s aides, and the economy was troubled. A local morena leader spoke with frustration about “foreign mining companies exploiting the treasures under our soil.”
The audience was full of cowboys wearing hats and boots; a group of indigenous Tarahumara women stood to one side, wearing traditional embroidered dresses. López Obrador seemed at home there, and his speech was angrier and less guarded than usual. He promised his listeners a “radical revolution,” one that would give them the country they wanted. “ ‘Radical’ comes from the word ‘roots,’ ” he said. “And we’re going to pull this corrupt regime out by its roots.” ♦
This article appears in the print edition of the June 25, 2018, issue, with the headline “Mexico First.”
Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to the magazine in 1998. He is the author of several books, including “The Fall of Baghdad.”Read more »
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All Mexicans offended by Trump should immediately return to Mexico in protest!
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Thank you very much CCP!!!
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From the article: "my strongest feeling about him is that we don’t know what to expect.”"
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In addition to his behavior in the aftermath of his presidential loss, there is the very fact that he heads the pretty hard left PRD, which was formed as a breakaway from the PRI by Munoz Ledo, right hand man to President and general scum bag Luis Echevarria (1970-76) who as the #2 man under the prior president shot down hundreds in 1968.
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Crafty:
"In addition to his behavior in the aftermath of his presidential loss, there is the very fact that he heads the pretty hard left PRD, which was formed as a breakaway from the PRI by Munoz Ledo, right hand man to President and general scum bag Luis Echevarria (1970-76) who as the #2 man under the prior president shot down hundreds in 1968."
I take it you see a Chavez-like disaster coming to Mexico?
What should we do?
Secure our country. Build the wall.
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AMLO was reasonably competent as mayor of Mexico City -- which has something like 14 million people-- running it is not an easy gig!
In fairness, this would not be the first time that a Mexican politician has run on radical language and then not fully followed through.
OTOH, for virtually everyone in Mexico, Trump is a true boogie man and opposing him will be EXTREMELY popular and it will be easy and tempting to blame him for whatever woes befall Mexico due to AMLOs policies. As a man of the PRD, the woes he triggers may well be many.
Buckle up!
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/32202/mexican-prez-candidate-calls-mass-exodus-us-paul-bois?utm_medium=email&utm_content=062318-news&utm_campaign=position1
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/32202/mexican-prez-candidate-calls-mass-exodus-us-paul-bois?utm_medium=email&utm_content=062318-news&utm_campaign=position1
An act of war. That would call for a military response.
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A hostile act certainly, but specifically what response should be taken?
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A hostile act certainly, but specifically what response should be taken?
Seize a defensible chunk of land and create a military zone of control. All detainees can be housed there until they are adjudicated. All the Mexican national swept up in the CONUS can also be moved there until their appeals are exhausted. Minefields are quick and easy until the wall can be completed.
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Two reports have concluded that Mexico’s police are corrupt and unable to maintain the rule of law. As Mexico heads into elections on July 1, more than 100 politicians have been assassinated. The most recent is a mayoral candidate in the small city of Ocampo. In response, Mexican federal authorities detained the town’s entire 27-person police force, as well as the local public security secretary. These kinds of stories are unfortunately becoming commonplace, but even more disturbing is a report by the Executive Secretary of the National Public Security System, which estimated that there was a police shortfall of 95,900 officers (a shortfall owed in part to officers’ unreliability) and that it would take at least three and a half years to fill the gaps. From both a short- and long-term perspective, this does not bode well for political stability in Mexico.
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I've reached my freebie limit with the New Yorker. Could someone get this please?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-the-humanitarian-crisis-on-the-mexico-border-could-worse?mbid=nl_Daily%20062418&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13750639&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1422200749&spReportId=MTQyMjIwMDc0OQS2
This one too please:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-opponents-arent-arguing-for-open-bordersbut-maybe-they-should?mbid=nl_Daily%20062318&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13744569&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1422054528&spReportId=MTQyMjA1NDUyOAS2
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to implement these solutions. Once he is gone we're done:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/mexico-what-went-wrong-economy-based-on-exporting-poor-people/
Doesn't reading this make you want to run Ryan out of DC as fast as possible ?
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to implement these solutions. Once he is gone we're done:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/mexico-what-went-wrong-economy-based-on-exporting-poor-people/
...
VDH is right on the money all the way through as usual. All of these facts and all of these recent news stories lead to the same logical conclusion, build the wall, and pass and enforce the accompanying laws that protect our sovereignty and stop the invasion.
Families separated as they enter illegally? Build the wall. To address the danger of a new, anti-American government south of the border, build the wall. Gangs controlling entry, raping and profiteering off the illegals? Build the wall. Arms, drugs, terrorists coming in? Build the wall.
The liberal position of no borders or enforcement is naively supported by about 20% of the country but happens to include, it seems, nearly all Democrats in power. Hypocrisy and Leftism are synonymous but it is simple math and social science that you cannot have both open borders and a generous welfare system. Choose one, or neither.
ccp is right, this needs to be fixed now, under Trump. Is he waiting for the mid-terms? Will things be better after the mid-terms? Is he keeping it on the table as a political issue, like Democrats do? Waiting is a dangerous policy. We needed this in 1987. We needed this in 2005. We need it far more now.
Is this Ryan's fault. If so, is it easier under Pelosi? Is it not done because 49 Dem Senators will never support it? Republicans might gain 1, 2 or 3 Senate seats, but will never have 60.
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I drove with a group into British Columbia Canada and back earlier this year. All vehicles stop and get questioned in both directions. The checkpoints are a big deal. ID is required. Law abiding citizens don't risk entering illegally - even though it's just Canada. Why would we assume you have respect for the laws of the country you are entering if you're first act is to break the law?
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“We have to build a wall because Democrats wouldn’t let us have a border.” -Bill Whittle
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https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/more-than-100-politicians-murdered-in-mexico-ahead-of-election.html
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No mention of his assertion that Mexicans have a right to live in the US, no discussion of the Narco Wars, passage of Central Americans to the US, etc , , ,
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Mexico’s Presidential Watershed
The country may elect a left-wing populist who says he’s changed. Has he?
By The Editorial Board
June 28, 2018 6:37 p.m. ET
155 COMMENTS
Mexicans head to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president, and the biggest question is whether a country that has made great political and economic strides is about to slide backward.
The question takes the form of leftwing Morena party candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is the heavy favorite to win after two previous losses. The 64-year-old AMLO, as he is known, claims to have moderated his views but retains his zeal for the corporatist Mexico of the 1970s. With a six-year term he could reverse the progress this nation of 130 million has made to becoming a modern, advanced democracy.
It’s worth recalling how recent and substantial that progress is. For decades through the early 1980s, Mexico was a one-party, inward-looking state run by the PRI.
President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988) recognized the need for change and started the reform era by joining the global trade regime in 1986. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) privatized most state enterprises and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Ernesto Zedillo was also a modernizer, laying the groundwork for the first truly transparent competitive election in 2000.
Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) and PAN successor Felipe Calderón continued this market opening. The PRI came back in 2012 with the election of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has pushed formerly unthinkable reforms to open Mexico’s energy and telecom markets and demand accountability for teachers.
The changes have lifted Mexico from an economy dependent on oil exports to a manufacturing powerhouse with a rising middle class. From shoes and cell phones to dining out and better education at all levels, Mexicans are more prosperous than ever.
Yet as young, U.S.-educated technocrats moved into government, the old guard at the PRI, including Mr. López Obrador, broke away. AMLO lost presidential bids in 2006 and 2012 and has moderated his views in his third try. He has dropped his opposition to Nafta and talks about the need to continue Mexico’s economic progress. The effort has calmed some fears—not least about politicizing the central bank.
Yet AMLO remains a man of the left whose instincts are for state economic control. For decades he described Mexican oil reserves as the property of “the people,” meaning the government. He now says he’ll respect private contracts as long as he deems them fair, which implies political leverage over investment. And he says Mexico should aspire to be self-sufficient in agriculture and gasoline.
AMLO is running against corruption, but he hasn’t practiced transparency. As mayor of Mexico City he opposed a “freedom of information” law and used no-bid contracts. He had financial records for the city’s multimillion-dollar elevated highway classified.
Optimists say he is following the playbook of Brazil’s Lula da Silva, another leftist whose close links to Fidel Castro spooked investors when he was elected president in 2002. Lula calmed markets with the right talk and presided over a short-lived, commodity-led boom. But he gradually undermined central bank independence, openness to foreign investors and fiscal discipline. By the time his Workers’ Party left after 13 years, corruption was rife and Brazil endured a near three-year recession.
A victorious AMLO would command significant power even if his Morena party doesn’t win a majority in Congress. He’d be able to name at least three members to the 11-member Supreme Court, four vice governors of the central bank and a new central bank governor in 2021. That would leave financial markets and trade agreements as the main checks on his power.
AMLO can win with a plurality of the vote against his two main competitors, but it’s possible that middle-class Mexicans will have final-week doubts and turn him away one more time. If he does win, he will pose a test for President Trump, as he is likely to seek alliances with the region’s left-wing governments.
Mexicans are responsible for their own political choices, but Mr. Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric has encouraged the response of AMLO’s left-wing nationalism. Americans have underestimated the importance of having a reform-minded, prospering democracy on its southern border. They may have to deal with a different reality for the next six years.
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Since when have we had a reform minded prospering democracy on our southern border? Last I checked, we have a failing narco state that as national policy, does it’s best to export its poverty problems to us.
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The populist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appears likely to win Mexico's presidential election on July 1, and his coalition will likely emerge from the congressional balloting in a much stronger position.
Lopez Obrador's agenda will depend on his control of Congress. Without at least a lower house majority, he will find it virtually impossible to make good on many campaign promises.
Whoever wins the presidency in the July 1 election can be expected to take the same general approach as the previous government to negotiating NAFTA with Canada and the United States.
Historic elections that could change the political face of the country are fast approaching for Mexico. On July 1 — for the first time since the founding of the modern Mexican state — voters could elect a president outside of the two political parties that have held the post for more than 70 years. That candidate is the populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is running as the head of a coalition led by his National Regeneration Movement (Morena). For more than a year, Lopez Obrador has led in the polls, widening his lead as he gained popularity among undecided voters and supporters of the other major parties. Now, he seems poised to win the election with a third to half of the vote, and according to some polls, he could also gain a majority in both houses of Congress, where all 628 seats are up for election. Those majorities would mean that, upon taking office in December, Lopez Obrador would not need the votes of any opposition political party to pursue his agenda. But regardless of who wins, the most pressing foreign policy topic will be the United States and NAFTA.
The Big Picture
Populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appears poised to win the presidency in Mexico, and his coalition is expected make gains in both houses of Congress. His policies remain unclear, but there are clear signs that Lopez Obrador intends to review oil and gas contracts awarded since 2015. Any other aggressive legislative action will depend on whether his coalition seizes congressional majorities.
See The Importance of Mexico
AMLO: Promises and Reality
Lopez Obrador, who often goes by the initials AMLO, has frequently criticized the private sector in Mexico, as well as the political elites for their supposed acquiescence to corruption. The three-time presidential candidate has turned widespread dissatisfaction with government fraud into political gains over the past two years. But turning his broad campaign promises into action will likely meet with uneven results. Some pledges, such as higher public spending, can be enacted with legislative majorities; others, such as an attack on deep-rooted corruption, could meet more resistance from political opponents. Still, other promises, such as an oil export ban to benefit domestic consumers, will be economically counterproductive and will meet with resistance from technocrats at government ministries.
In the case of corruption, Lopez Obrador has several options for taking a more aggressive approach. The easiest path would involve purging government ministries of employees suspected of irregularities. A more difficult route would be the establishment of a stronger nationwide anti-corruption agency or process capable of investigating and referring cases for prosecution. Even without clear majorities in either house after July 1, his administration could still bring the proposal for such an agency to the floor of Congress for a vote. Because of widespread public resentment against official corruption, it would be politically difficult for the two other major parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), to oppose such a move even if their own elites could eventually be threatened by it.
A chart shows the changes in party composition of Mexico's lower house of Congress over time.
Another big campaign issue for Lopez Obrador is social spending. Though his policies remain unclear, his rhetoric suggests he will try to adjust government budgets to redirect funds to welfare programs. Even without a clear Senate majority, his government could still use a lower house majority to get the Senate to approve his spending priorities. But Carlos Manuel Urzua Macias, who may be his pick for finance minister, appears to support more pragmatic economic and fiscal policies, such as pushing for a quicker resolution to NAFTA talks, delaying a freeze on fuel prices and reining in government spending.
On the business front, a Lopez Obrador presidency could have a big impact on the Mexican private sector and foreign investors. He will almost certainly move to review oil and gas exploration and production contracts awarded since 2015. A longtime critic of the 2013 energy reform, Lopez Obrador will not be able to reverse the constitutional reform that opened the energy sector to private capital. And even with a two-house majority, he may not be able to significantly amend the reform's secondary legislation, because of the subsequent fiscal and economic benefits of rising oil and gas production. But a contract review could allow him to slow or temporarily suspend future bidding rounds, particularly if evidence of corruption is uncovered. Despite this risk, foreign investors appear to have bet on Mexico in the long term by snapping up exploration and production areas in 2017 and 2018.
A chart shows the changes in party composition in Mexico's Senate over time.
NAFTA and the U.S. Elephant in the Room
On the foreign policy front, Mexico's biggest challenge under a new president will likely be the successful completion of negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. Concerns about other aspects of Lopez Obrador's foreign policy — suggestions that he would antagonize Washington by negotiating with criminal groups or would alter the country's military-dominated domestic security policy — are likely unfounded. But whoever wins the presidency will have to face the NAFTA negotiations in some form or another. The discussions could even be headed toward completion before a new president takes office — assuming that Mexico and Canada agree to U.S. demands, such as more stringent rules of origin for the automotive sector or a sunset clause for the agreement.
Or the trade negotiations could head down a rockier path. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump could stick to its hard-line demands and threaten to withdraw from the agreement. In that case, Mexico City and Ottawa would probably wait and hope that the U.S. Congress would restrain the White House's power to undo the agreement. If Congress steps in, a withdrawal may be beyond the administration's power, and the White House may decide that it is not in its political interests to fight for it ahead of 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential vote.
A bar chart shows the U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico over time.
Despite whoever is elected president, Mexico is still likely to take the same broad approach toward NAFTA negotiations, assuming they are still going on in December. In Mexico, the deal is widely regarded by the country's elites as being economically beneficial, so even a Lopez Obrador administration would try to preserve the trilateral deal. However, enough uncertainty remains in the talks that a satisfactory conclusion for Mexico is still in doubt. With negotiations effectively stalled, Mexico is looking, at best, at a prolonged limbo, which draws out the uncertainty for foreign investors and Mexico's private sector. At worst, Mexico's economy could suffer if the Trump administration moves ahead with Section 232 tariffs on automobile imports or moves to end U.S. membership in NAFTA.
If Lopez Obrador wins on July 1, his initial impact on Mexico's political scene will depend on his margin of victory and on whether he controls any houses of Congress. Any major gains by the Morena coalition in the Senate and lower house would likely drive the PAN and PRI into a rapid alliance to fend off Lopez Obrador's legislative advances. If his coalition takes majorities, the opposition's options will be much more limited. It will have to rely on the federal court system to slow any legislation it deems controversial, including attempts to amend the 2013 education reform, to enact laws to implement a cease-fire with criminal groups or to rewrite parts of the 2014 secondary laws for the energy reform. Nevertheless, the future for Mexico starts at the polls.
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Pretty good article.
http://www.aei.org/publication/frustrated-mexicans-are-set-to-elect-their-own-populist-strongman/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWWpreU5HUmtOV0k1TURWayIsInQiOiI5TUlGZWFmQU5wOHRCVXRvY1lPbkRrRW1kaWtnSWhYYXRnZ2oxOG1JU3dyNHdzaFNnZVdMUlZFQ2VRNzJySmlnMnVHMUJNUHp6VzhOeGEzZGczMUpteG5JRHAycDFMcE5jZmZkUmlYa2hMK2gzelIyK2J0Zk9RQ1JINzkrQitpRiJ9
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44677829
I like his commitment to fight narco crime and corruption
He is saying he is not planning to Nationalize anything.
Conciliatory with Trump.
We will see.
No mention about emigration though.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44677829
I like his commitment to fight narco crime and corruption
He is saying he is not planning to Nationalize anything.
Conciliatory with Trump.
We will see.
No mention about emigration though.
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2018/07/chavismo-on-your-doorstep.html
Act accordingly.
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Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been declared the winner of Mexico's July 1 presidential election, and now that nearly all the votes from the federal elections of the same day have been counted, the country's populist president-elect and his National Regeneration Movement (Morena) have emerged as big winners in Congress as well. Preliminary information from the National Electoral Council, reported July 3, indicate that Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration coalition will pick up about 69 seats in the Senate and about 309 in the lower house. These figures will give Morena uncontested majorities in both houses of Congress.
These majorities are crucial because they will allow Lopez Obrador's party to legislate without the input of political opponents such as the center-right National Action Party (PAN) or the centrist Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), which has been Mexico's ruling party for several years — until these most recent elections.
Morena's control of the legislature means the PRI and PAN will have to resort to Mexico's federal court system to slow any legislative changes they deem controversial. These issues may include attempts by Morena to amend parts of the previous administration's showcase energy and education reforms.
Indeed, having won the majority in Congress, Lopez Obrador's coalition can now begin seriously considering a far more ambitious legislative agenda than that of his predecessors in the PRI. Initiatives such as significantly increasing social spending are well within his political faction's grasp, and so are changes to secondary legislation underpinning energy reform.
Though the extent of his political power is now fully visible, Lopez Obrador's complete political agenda is not. Now that the July 1 elections have limited the power of Mexico's political minorities and private sector, they will likely begin building connections to Lopez Obrador's coalition in the hopes of shaping the president-elect's agenda. However, without significant congressional leverage to engage in political bartering, PRI and PAN will find themselves increasingly at the mercy of Morena and its allies.
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I was also reading something on this from the NYT. In their mind, they are hopeful because he is a Leftist.
Amlo is a Leftist and a "pragmatist" from the sounds of all the analysts. My take is that there is a 50% chance this ends in tragedy and a 50% chance this ends in disaster. I don't want to say that nothing good will come out of this, perhaps because of this we will reach consensus in the US to secure our border and sovereignize our country.
Crazy idea: If I were the newly elected leader of a developing(?) country, a populist and a pragmatist, and wanted to make Mexico great (again?), I would read the Heritage Freedom Index list of countries and emulate the policies of the most successful ones, enact the building blocks of prosperity and see if it works.
When you are in a free trade agreement with the US and Canada and competing with the rest of the world, you really need to make all your policies for production competitive.
Unfortunately, that is exactly the opposite of Leftism, see Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea. Something has to give, the Leftism or the positive results. He can't and won't have both.
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I was also reading something on this from the NYT. In their mind, they are hopeful because he is a Leftist.
Amlo is a Leftist and a "pragmatist" from the sounds of all the analysts. My take is that there is a 50% chance this ends in tragedy and a 50% chance this ends in disaster. I don't want to say that nothing good will come out of this, perhaps because of this we will reach consensus in the US to secure our border and sovereignize our country.
Crazy idea: If I were the newly elected leader of a developing(?) country, a populist and a pragmatist, and wanted to make Mexico great (again?), I would read the Heritage Freedom Index list of countries and emulate the policies of the most successful ones, enact the building blocks of prosperity and see if it works.
When you are in a free trade agreement with the US and Canada and competing with the rest of the world, you really need to make all your policies for production competitive.
Unfortunately, that is exactly the opposite of Leftism, see Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea. Something has to give, the Leftism or the positive results. He can't and won't have both.
The left and Mexicans will of course blame the US and Trump for the upcoming tragedy/disaster.
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Well, looks like AMLO may not be around for long, or he really means it when he says he won't be enforcing the drug laws , , ,
https://www.dailywire.com/news/32648/mexicos-new-president-announces-absolutely-insane-ryan-saavedra?utm_medium=email&utm_content=070518-news&utm_campaign=position1
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Well, looks like AMLO may not be around for long, or he really means it when he says he won't be enforcing the drug laws , , ,
https://www.dailywire.com/news/32648/mexicos-new-president-announces-absolutely-insane-ryan-saavedra?utm_medium=email&utm_content=070518-news&utm_campaign=position1
Reality isn’t his thing.
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He'll be a god (seriously!) , , , until he is not.
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He'll be a god (seriously!) , , , until he is not.
The thin veneer of Catholicism never made Mexico's love of human sacrifice go away.
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Thanks to a congressional majority, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will become the strongest Mexican president in decades, but questions remain about how he will wield that power.
Lopez Obrador's big win, as well as the success of his party in Congress, gives him a mandate to tackle corruption, but he will find it easier to stamp out graft at the federal level than among lower-level officials.
As a politician who has acted pragmatically in the past, Lopez Obrador could abandon a far-reaching campaign against corruption in favor of a targeted anti-graft drive.
Some political regimes bend for decades until they break. After years of pressure building on Mexico's political establishment, an overwhelming presidential and legislative victory by populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Voters propelled Lopez Obrador — who was third-time lucky after two unsuccessful attempts to capture the presidency — into the country's highest office with more than half of the national vote and the highest tally for any presidential candidate since 1994. Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration Movement (Morena) also captured a majority in the Senate and lower house, marking the first time any candidate has won both chambers since 1997.
Often referred to simply as "AMLO," the new president clearly enjoys a strong political mandate and extensive powers to pursue an agenda that includes hiking public spending, raising wages and possibly rolling back parts of energy and education reforms. But perhaps the plan that will have the most profound ramifications is his popular — and politically loaded — vow to stamp out corruption in Mexico. Fueled by the fraying of the country's political establishment and intensifying public intolerance toward crime and graft, Lopez Obrador has a strong platform to target well-entrenched political adversaries under a broad, anti-corruption umbrella. The new president, however, could trigger a major upheaval as he strives to tackle misconduct that has infested the public and private sectors. The question now is whether he will turn to political pragmatism once in power — becoming a product of the system he was elected to dismantle — or will use the powerful tools at his disposal to try and upend the country's political order.
The Big Picture
In its Third-Quarter Forecast for 2018, Stratfor noted that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stood a good chance of winning Mexico's presidential elections but that his political influence would depend on whether he secures a congressional majority. Not only did Lopez Obrador win the elections on July 1, but his Morena party also secured majorities in both chambers of Mexico's Congress of the Union. The double victory gives him the power to implement much of his agenda, including an anti-corruption drive.
Realities, however, could reduce the scope of that campaign.
The Roots of Political Change
A win by an insurgent politician like Lopez Obrador was nearly three decades in the making. Since the early 1990s, Mexico's once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has steadily ceded ground to political opponents such as the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Voters soured on PRI as it presided over corruption scandals and an economic crisis in 1994. Other parties gained power at its expense, but by the 2012 election cycle, no single party could secure a congressional majority. Without this fragmentation, it would have been impossible for a single politician heading a brand-new party (as with Lopez Obrador) to stand a realistic chance of attaining power. After suffering consecutive defeats in the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, Lopez Obrador made a strategic move to break with the PRD and rebrand himself under the newly formed Morena.
A bar chart shows the percentage of votes for Mexican president won by each party as well as the party makeup of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
Broad trends clearly enabled the rise of Lopez Obrador, but short-term political trends and events also nudged voters toward his fledgling party. In December 2017, Stratfor wrote, “If Lopez Obrador becomes president in 2018, it will be because he was in the right place at the right time.” During outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto's six-year term, three major trends served to hamper PRI's and PAN's political fortunes. Criminal activity worsened significantly in parts of the country, including the state of Baja California Sur, which had previously experienced less of the extreme violence of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Even as the government broke the Sinaloa Federation by arresting its leader, the rapidly expanding Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion grew across the country, resulting in new, bloody turf wars.
Political events to the north also turned Mexicans against their political establishment. By early 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump's moves to alter key trade relationships, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, were in full swing. Voters in Mexico interpreted the Pena Nieto administration's cautious moves in response to Trump's foreign policies as indecision at best and cowardice at worst.
But it was Lopez Obrador's persistent attacks on the excesses of corrupt politicians under Pena Nieto and prior administrations that seemed to resonate the most with the public. Given that nationwide corruption scandals have wracked the country for decades, it is no surprise that the Pena Nieto administration also became embroiled in graft. Allegations of extensive graft, such as when contractors reportedly overcharged the federal government by $2.5 billion during the construction of Mexico City's new airport, provided fodder for Lopez Obrador on the campaign trail and helped turn public opinion against PRI and PAN. Pervasive violent crime, corruption and Pena Nieto's perceived weakness before Washington all contributed to the political establishment's defeat and the election of a politician who billed himself as a political outsider.
Lopez Obrador's persistent attacks on the excesses of corrupt politicians seemed to resonate the most with the public ahead of the elections.
Institutionalizing Corruption in Mexico
There is a reason why a serious anti-corruption movement has never taken root in Mexico's political system before. Since modern Mexico emerged in the wake of the 1910-20 revolution, the country's governments have put a priority on political stability, meaning that addressing political corruption simply paled in importance to victory in elections and the maintenance of stability. After 1920, a series of governments corralled the country's divided politicians into a working coalition of political factions. In so doing, the new governments primarily sought to keep the peace among Mexico's powerful elites and put the nation back on the path toward economic development and internal stability. To achieve this, successive administrations in the 1930s and 1940s incorporated as many potentially destabilizing factions as possible into the ruling party's orbit, resulting in the federal government doling out federal money and benefits to the military, state governors and labor unions, all in the interest of inculcating loyalty to the PRI. Under the strong patronage networks that emerged, politicians and party allies had little incentive to transgress the boundaries of the PRI.
The patronage system held together for nearly five decades, as PRI inevitably emerged victorious in every election. Thanks to the party's strong political networks that were undergirded by state power, a sprinkling of intimidation, and strict control over the federal government's purse strings, the party faced virtually no serious political opposition for much of the 20th century. During the period of unassailable PRI control over Mexican politics, the party never emphasized the fight against corruption. After all, its goal for decades was to create a political machine capable of delivering big wins, not one concerned with the illicit activities happening under its watch.
AMLO Takes on the Establishment
Much of the unease of elites with Lopez Obrador stems from his anti-corruption pledge. Not only does his anti-graft mandate carry broad appeal with the public, but it could also serve as a potent tool to further weaken his opponents in the political establishment. And since a U.S.-backed anti-corruption body in next-door Guatemala has already taken down a president — and with the prospect that such agencies could spread across Central America — the incoming Mexican president has an interest in seizing the initiative to battle corruption at home rather than face the risk that outside forces would team up with civil society groups to galvanize public dissent over graft. The details on how Lopez Obrador will translate a popular campaign promise into policy remain sketchy, but he now has the legislative numbers to create anti-corruption bodies without interference from other parties in Congress. The independence of any such bodies, their enforcement powers and their potential insulation from politics or politicization by the president remain open questions. The prospect of an anti-graft body with teeth is nonetheless a direct threat to the country's political establishment. The PRI and PAN are already in a weak position, and the publicization of more corruption scandals involving them will only harm their standing among potential voters.
In broad terms, there are two paths open to Lopez Obrador. First, he could take a more ideological approach in cutting the political establishment down to size. Such action would please many of his constituents, but endowing an anti-corruption body with broad investigative and enforcement powers to systematically take down political opponents could prove disruptive to Mexico's stability. On the other hand, Lopez Obrador could pursue a more practical approach that could still score the president political points with his base. Such an approach would target corrupt officials primarily at the federal level in Congress and ministries through audits and investigations. Such probes would constitute showy moves that could greatly unnerve investors, but Lopez Obrador would still be operating within the constraints of the system that enabled his rise. For all his anti-establishment rhetoric, Lopez Obrador began his career as a member of PRI and made a name for himself as a PRD official and a mayor of Mexico City before becoming a presidential candidate. Ultimately, Lopez Obrador knows the good, the bad and the ugly intricacies of the system and where he is likely to encounter the heaviest resistance.
AMLO knows the good, the bad and the ugly intricacies of the system and where he is likely to encounter the heaviest resistance in his anti-corruption drive.
The Path Forward
Lopez Obrador will be greatly restricted in attempting to extend the writ of an anti-corruption body down to the local level. Because municipal officials are nestled beneath state officials in the federal system created by PRI, there are multiple avenues for corrupt behavior, some of which the central government in Mexico City cannot detect or easily eliminate. During PRI rule, the president could remove governors more easily or lean on party bosses to influence the behavior of even lower-level officials. But now that governorships across the country are in the hands of different major parties and (largely unreported) corruption has become deeply embedded in thousands of municipalities, combating lower-level graft and theft will pose a great challenge for the federal government. Morena's legislative majorities will allow Lopez Obrador to enact tougher anti-corruption mechanisms to ensnare the egregiously corrupt in Congress and federal ministries, but extending the writ to the states, municipalities and the private sector — all authorities with whom many Mexicans interact on a daily basis — will be far more complicated.
So where will Lopez Obrador go from here? Tackling endemic corruption at a federal level is not only simpler than taking down local officials, but it also offers greater political benefits since it's more visible to the public. Accordingly, Lopez Obrador is likely to allocate investigative resources to such a fight. But as Brazil has learned, measures to combat deeply entrenched corruption can have unexpected consequences, after an investigation into a massive graft network at state-owned energy firm Petroleo Brasileiro worsened the country's economic downturn in 2014 and 2015. In Mexico, an indiscriminate pursuit of corruption would likely have immediate side effects, particularly if such an initiative occurs in tandem with other measures, such as tax hikes or reviews of oil and gas contracts, that will frighten investors. Broader investigations and stricter enforcement mechanisms would also disturb opposition parties, which will harbor worries that the probes will target their members. Investors and the private sector may also interpret heavy anti-corruption efforts as a move to consolidate political power, which risks fomenting economic disruption in the form of capital flight and delayed investments.
Some budgetary and security issues will also influence Lopez Obrador's plans to reduce corruption. Any new mechanism that is actually capable of investigating and punishing illicit enrichment will compete with other funding priorities in the national budget, such as social, infrastructure and security spending. Striving to create a commission with a sizable body of investigators doesn't necessarily have the same near-term political payoff as the funding of new bridges, schools or roads. Other concerns, such as the backlash from drug traffickers whose political allies may find themselves caught up in corruption investigations, or protests and public opinion campaigns driven by officials resisting the probes, could also discourage the creation of new, more powerful anti-corruption institutions.
Though Lopez Obrador swept into office on the back of promises to stamp out corruption in the government, the hard realities of governance may ultimately whittle down his ambitions to a series of targeted investigations through existing institutions. Overall, this approach would be far less disruptive than wide-ranging investigations, while also avoiding the political hullabaloo that would surround Congress' establishment of far stronger investigative bodies. But even if the new president has little choice but to tone down his anti-graft campaign, he will be the strongest Mexican leader in decades. Lopez Obrador boasts the political incentive and wields the tools to ramp up corruption investigations — the only question is whether he ultimately decides that the rewards of taking a dramatically stronger stance against Mexico's endemic corruption is worth the risk.
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Last year, Mexico recorded its highest homicide rate ever, so its next president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will try a new strategy against the cartels. Dubbed “transitional justice,” the strategy will feature amnesty, leniency and decriminalization, at least according to the incoming interior minister. AMLO, as the president-elect is colloquially known, doesn’t take office until Dec. 1, and he must approve the strategy before submitting it to the public for a referendum. It’s clear that the incoming government will need to make some kind of change, but AMLO will soon discover that Mexico’s problems are not the reflection of bad policy but of much deeper societal issues. How he handles the cartels may become another obstacle to improved U.S.-Mexico relations
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/30/mexico-had-more-homicides-in-2017-than-previously-thought.html
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Aug. 6, 2018
By Allison Fedirka
Truth and Reconciliation and Violence in Mexico
The president-elect has a controversial plan to eliminate organized crime. Will it work?
For many Mexicans, insecurity is commonplace. They look at the news and see stories of new vigilante groups, or they learn about the piles of bodies that were the most recent victims of organized crime, or they hear anecdotes of how business was obstructed or suspended because of some unnamed security concern. Now, the media coverage they watch tends to overemphasize these kinds of acts of violence while de-emphasizing the fact that Mexico has a mostly functional government and thriving economy. Still, violent crime, especially associated with the country’s drug cartels, is a serious issue in Mexico. So serious, in fact, that President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s radical proposal to resolve it – which features amnesty and reconciliation rather than confrontation – helped win him the presidency. He will soon begin to execute the plan, but as he does, he needs to bear in mind that virtually every previous plan to eliminate the cartels in the past few decades has failed.
A Spectacular Failure
This stands in stark contrast to the success of the cartels themselves. Their run began in the 1980s, when they went into business with Colombia’s cocaine producers looking for alternate transportation routes to their biggest market, the United States. At the time, Mexican drug trafficking was essentially a monopoly. But things changed in the 1990s. The business was divvied up partly by function and partly by region to inoculate itself from counternarcotics operations. Where some saw safety in numbers, others saw competition, which inevitably and violently ensued. The government, meanwhile, tried to curb cultivation but did not conduct large-scale operations against drug traffickers.
Enter Felipe Calderon, the president from 2006 to 2012, who all but declared war on the cartels. On his first day in office, he enlisted the military to help manage public security, employing a decapitation strategy on the leadership of the biggest groups. Calderon’s successor, Enrique Pena Nieto, mostly pursued the same strategy.
The strategy failed. In fact, it succeeded only in balkanizing and militarizing the larger cartels. The number of large drug trafficking organizations – that is, ones capable of controlling large swaths of territory – jumped from four in 2006 to nine in 2017. (This figure excludes the 45 or so smaller organizations that operate on a local level and whose associations with larger groups may change, depending on their business interests.) The cartels continued to produce, move and profit from their trade. Poppy cultivation, for example, increased 38 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, yielding an additional 111 metric tons. Higher numbers of cocaine-related overdoses and increased levels of coca production in Colombia suggest cocaine use is on the rise in the United States, a market in which Mexican cartels control supply.
(click to enlarge)
Homicides, meanwhile, shot up dramatically under Calderon. They dipped slightly from 2011 to 2014 before increasing again. In 2017, Mexico registered 25 homicides per 100,000 people. More alarming than the sheer number is the speed at which the number is increasing. 2017 set a record for registered intentional homicides, and 2018 is on track to be the bloodiest year ever, with a reported 15,973 intentional homicides in the first half of the year alone, according to the National System of Public Security. 2018 has also been notable for its uptick in political assassinations. In the nine months leading up to recent elections, 132 politicians and candidates were killed, according to risk analysis firm Etellekt. (The previous record, set in 2010, was 20.)
Clemency Is Controversial
AMLO, as the president-elect is often called, promised to solve these problems knowing full well the failures of his forebears. And he did so by taking a new approach, articulated in his 10-point Pacification and National Reconciliation Plan for Mexico. Though short on detail, the plan calls for opening public debate on contentious issues and a re-examination of how the law is enforced. Controversially, it proposes amnesty for some offenders, the formation of truth commissions, the use of pardons and penalty reductions, the professionalization and purging of law enforcement entities, the gradual demilitarization of public security, and the possible legalization of drugs beyond medicinal marijuana.
Some of these, especially those that redress problems among law enforcement personnel, are direct responses to public demand. Mexico does not have enough police officers to keep the peace, and the ones it does have are often underqualified. At the beginning of the year, the country had a total of nearly 120,000 officers or 0.8 officers per 1,000 residents, short of the minimum standard of 1.8 officers per 1,000 residents. In some places, there is no functional police force at all. In the places where the police do exist, many officers were not current with their performance evaluations; 66,000 had no evaluation at all. Roughly 24,000 have no initial training. Nearly 80,000 uniformed officers failed to meet the evaluation of basic skills. And this is to say nothing of rampant allegations of criminal collusion and corruption.
Other proposals are not so popular. Take the proposed amnesty law, which will apply only to young people co-opted by organized crime, women forced to mule drugs, and farmers forced to produce drugs. It is not meant to forgive crimes against humanity, torture and forced disappearances. Still, clemency is controversial – just ask anyone in Colombia, whose citizens remain deeply divided over the deal to bring members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia into the political fold – and the government has not yet decided how it will prosecute full-fledged organized crime members.
The legalization of drugs is also contentious. It’s unclear which drugs AMLO’s plan would apply to, and it’s unknown whether the law would focus on consumption, production, sale or any other segment of the business cycle. Drugs are, moreover, just one component of an organization’s portfolio. Legalizing drugs in Mexico may do little to prevent a criminal enterprise from continuing to profit in foreign markets, nor will it prohibit the countless other illicit activities in which it engages. Hence why AMLO means to target their finances. But if he does that, the groups won’t have much of an incentive to participate in his peace plan.
The Greater Good
At this point, AMLO’s primary objective is to open the debate on alternative ways to solve Mexico’s security problems, a goal that invariably touches on sensitive topics. And so, from Aug. 7 to Oct. 24, he will hold public discussions throughout Mexico to identify public needs and hear ideas of how to address them. Participants will include farmers, indigenous groups, academics, business members, religious communities, local authorities, politicians and the military.
(click to enlarge)
It will be interesting to see what details, if any, come from the discovery phase of his plan. Many of Mexico’s security problems are structural and so are difficult to solve. Revamping municipal police and gradual demilitarization alone will take at least three and a half years to execute (according to the National System of Public Security) even if everything goes exactly according to plan (which it rarely does). The U.S. has already criticized the plan to legalize drugs, and it could discourage AMLO from making good on the proposal by linking the issue to other issues. And in any case, there is always a chance that the public consultations will backfire.
AMLO may listen to all sides, but ultimately he will be forced to ignore some suggestions – and the groups that made them – for the greater good. And in doing so he will create enemies. With all these potential roadblocks, it’s no wonder a poll by the National Survey of Urban Public Security showed that 35 percent of the population thinks security will be equally bad in the next year while another 33 percent thinks it will get worse. AMLO’s predecessors came to office with grand plans too. His strategy is different, but unless he can secure buy-in from both cartels and civil society, the outcome will be the same.
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Mexico and the U.S. are talking rules of origin in NAFTA. Canada is sitting on the sidelines. The U.S. continues to play hardball, having reportedly refused to budge on its calls for 75 percent local content as a baseline, with 40-45 percent of regional content coming from high-wage zones (the U.S. and Canada). Washington is, moreover, now overtly linking the talks with potential tariffs on automobiles and auto parts. The U.S. proposal now includes a measure to exempt existing Mexican auto plants from the tariffs, which would still apply to any new Mexican auto plants. Mexican media indicate that Mexico is willing to be more flexible on rules of origin for automobiles with the U.S. in exchange for leeway in other areas – eliminating the sunset clause and keeping the dispute resolution mechanism, for example. Still, the current proposal is too steep even for Mexico, so bilateral talks on the issue will continue into next week. Meanwhile, Canada remains in direct contact with its counterparts but is staying out of it until its southern neighbors resolve the questions on automobiles. This doesn’t mean Washington has forgotten about Canada – President Donald Trump recently threatened Ottawa over its high tariffs and trade barriers. The current goal is for an agreement in principle by the end of the month. Meeting that goal will require some major concessions over the next couple of weeks.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fhAcIpGPlU
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Highlights
An attack carried out by La Union Tepito against a splinter group illustrates the continuing danger posed by the balkanization of cartel groups in Mexico.
That the attack occurred in a tourist zone shows how cartel figures can drag violence into any part of Mexico.
The attack was well-orchestrated, which likely reflects the powerful CJNG's support for La Union Tepito.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets, and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
The party atmosphere surrounding Mexico's Independence Day celebrations in Mexico City's Garibaldi Plaza was shattered Sept. 14 when a group of three gunmen dressed as mariachis opened fire on a group seated at a restaurant. The hail of pistol and rifle fire killed five people and injured another eight. The apparent target of the attack was Jorge Flores Concha "El Tortas," the leader of a criminal organization known as "La U," or "La Fuerza Antiunion," a group that split from the powerful Union Tepito crime network.
A Map of Mexico City's Major Narcomenudistas
Union Tepito assassinated El Tortas' predecessor, Omar Sanchez Oropeza, aka "El Oropeza" or "El Gaznate," on May 5 in a parking garage in the Tlaxpana colony of the Miguel Hidalgo delegation of Mexico City. Union Tepito sometimes uses the name New Generation Cartel of Tepito, illustrating its close connection to the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG). The CJNG is the most aggressively expanding cartel in Mexico and is behind much of the violence that has wracked Mexico in 2018.
A Professional Attack
The attack was well-planned and well-executed, which may be a result of the support Union Tepito has received from the CJNG and its experienced enforcer groups. While it is unclear if El Tortas was at the restaurant at the time of the attack, most of the dead and wounded were associated with him, according to Mexican newspaper El Milenio. This suggests Union Tepito had intelligence on his plans in advance and was able to prepare for the attack.
Using gunmen dressed as mariachis provided good cover for status, allowing the attack team to move into the area with rifles hidden in their instrument cases. After the attack, the shooters escaped on the back of motorcycles operated by drivers staged and waiting for them. The motorcycles likely took the shooters to safety in the maze of nearby Tepito, the group's stronghold. Their hasty exit suggests the attackers feared the Garibaldi Plaza area's heavy police presence, which is not a concern in many parts of Mexico.
An Ongoing Cartel Threat
The conflict between Union Tepito and La U has resulted in a significant increase in homicides in Tepito and adjacent areas of Mexico City so far in 2018. Union Tepito efforts to eradicate La U will continue, and La U can be expected to retaliate against Union Tepito for the attack.
The increased violence has prompted local business and political leaders to request that the Mexican military deploy forces to improve security in parts of the capital. Such a brazen attack will likely result in similar calls, which will make it very difficult for Mexico's incoming administration to fulfill its campaign promise of removing the military from the struggle against Mexico's criminal cartels.
Reports indicate that one of the eight wounded victims was a foreign tourist. This highlights the persistent danger of being in the wrong place at the wrong time in Mexico. It also once again illustrates how cartel leaders can drag violence into any part of Mexico.
In light of these risks, travelers and expatriates in Mexico should practice good situational awareness and pay specific attention to people who might belong to cartels. If a group of such people enters a restaurant or other establishment, it would be prudent to be prepared to respond to a possible incident, and even to leave the location to avoid potential violence.
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Mexico: President-Elect Plows Ahead With Plans for an Airport Vote
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The Big Picture
Mexican voters elected Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as president based on his promises to combat government and private sector corruption. True to his word, Lopez Obrador has signaled his intention to take the construction of Mexico City's new airport — a project plagued by corruption allegations — to a public vote. Enforcing the results of a nonbinding referendum, however, would put Lopez Obrador in dubious legal territory and hurt investor confidence in Mexico.
See 2018 Fourth-Quarter Forecast
See The Importance of Mexico
What Happened
On Oct. 16, the legislative heads of Mexico's ruling party, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), said their party would not financially support a referendum on whether to continue construction of the new Mexico City international airport. The president of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, a Morena ally, said the referendum lacked legal validity and that he would ask the Supreme Court to invalidate it if President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attempts to enforce its results. The referendum, which Lopez Obrador has set for Oct. 25-28, would give voters the options of continuing the project — which has been plagued by allegations of $40 million in corruption-related cost overruns — canceling its construction in favor of expanding the existing Mexico City and Toluca airports or building new runways at the Santa Lucia military airbase. The government may also try to reduce costs for some parts of the airport project even if voters choose to continue with its construction.
Why It Matters
The referendum provides a test as to how far Lopez Obrador wishes to stray from normal institutional channels to enforce his populist campaign promises. After all, Lopez Obrador made decisive action against corruption and increased popular participation in referendums — including a vote on the controversial airport — a key part of his political platform on the campaign trail. According to Mexican law, however, Lopez Obrador cannot hold a binding vote on the facility's continued construction as no legal basis exists for such votes on public works projects like airports or for such referendums outside of an election.
The referendum, however, is significant because Lopez Obrador could try to turn a nonbinding, haphazard vote into policy. No federal electoral authority will count the votes, while it's unclear what private or nongovernmental entity will actually conduct the referendum. A vote against the airport's continued construction could paint Lopez Obrador into a corner, as he would either try to turn it into policy and alienate allies by entering legally dangerous territory or ignore the result and suffer political backlash from followers who expected him to follow through on a major campaign promise. If Lopez Obrador were to opt for the former, investors could become wary of providing funds for projects that could attract scrutiny from the government, whether because of corruption or local resistance.
But there is another layer of importance to the referendum. Lopez Obrador is progressing down a politically disruptive path by trying to hold a potentially controversial vote haphazardly — seeking a congressional vote to change the constitution to permit such a referendum would have created less instability. In theory, Lopez Obrador has the two-thirds majority in each house of Congress and a majority of the state legislatures needed to alter the Mexican Constitution to eventually allow such referendums to legally proceed. His haste to put the airport issue to a public vote on an unrealistic timeline and without funding support, however, is exposing his lack of votes in Congress for constitutional reform — even from his own allies — meaning Mexico's new president is opting for a course of action that will inject a sizable amount of uncertainty into the country's politics.
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For those who read Spanish
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=604.500
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Backed Up and Shaken Down at the Border
U.S. law says immigrants can present themselves to request asylum at border crossings or inside the country after entering illegally. The reality on the ground has become much more complicated, and not just because of the Trump administration’s court battle seeking to deny asylum to those entering illegally. At border crossings in Texas, migrants are being blocked from approaching the U.S. side, forced onto waiting lists overseen by Mexican officials. Many asylum seekers say those Mexican officials have demanded money to let them pass. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is said to be preparing another new policy called “Remain in Mexico,” which would force asylum seekers to stay there unless they can establish a “reasonable fear” of persecution in Mexico.
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Asylum seekers blocked at Texas border bridges say Mexican officials are demanding money to let them pass
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Nov 22, 2018 | 3:00 AM
| Matamoros, Mexico
Asylum seekers blocked at Texas border bridges say Mexican officials are demanding money to let them pass
Asylum seekers Elvis Gonzalez Rodriguez, 23, left, of Havana and Robert Richard Braganca of Rio de Janeiro, with his toddler son, Mario, wait on the Matamoros and Brownsville International Bridge in Matamoros, Mexico. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Asylum seekers funneled to bridge crossings at the Texas border are being blocked from approaching the U.S. side, forced onto waiting lists overseen by Mexican officials.
The asylum seekers and immigrant-rights advocates say that has put them at risk of extortion, discrimination and deportation, with many telling of Mexican officials demanding money to let them pass and of watching others, further down the list, cross ahead of them.
In Matamoros, a city across from Brownsville, Texas, the list is kept on a clipboard in an opaque blue plastic case on the newer of two border bridges. Though Mexican officials maintain the list, U.S. officers decide how many asylum seekers cross. An individual familiar with the Mexican immigration system who asked not to be identified for safety reasons said U.S. officials choose who crosses based on nationality and other characteristics.
Last week, Mexican immigration officials notified four asylum seekers camped at the foot of the bridge for more than a month that it was their turn to cross. They had been near the top of the waiting list for days but had watched others jump ahead of them. Now they said teary goodbyes to about 20 migrants they had been staying with on cots under tarps.
Mexican officials escorted the four — a pregnant woman, her boyfriend, a mother and her 16-year-old son — to a U.S. customs officers’ station at the center of the covered bridge.
“How many are you, and from what countries?” one of the U.S. officials asked in Spanish.
The migrants identified themselves, and the U.S. officials counted aloud: two Cubans, two Guatemalans. Mexican officials nodded. Then they allowed the four to enter the U.S.
U.S. law says immigrants can present themselves to request asylum at border crossings or inside the country after entering illegally. But as thousands of Central Americans approached the border this month, President Trump announced that those crossing illegally would be denied asylum. This week, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked that asylum ban.
But the judge’s ruling didn’t address the administration’s efforts to stop asylum seekers at southern border bridges. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they have run out of space to process them at border holding areas, most of which they said house fewer than a hundred people.
The agency has stationed officers at bridge midpoints to prevent asylum seekers from entering the U.S. The migrants must add their names to waiting lists in Mexico, a process U.S. officials call “queue management.”
A list was first used two years ago in Tijuana, prompting immigrant advocates to sue in California federal court, arguing the process illegally blocked asylum seekers. With the lawsuit pending, U.S. immigration officials expanded the system to busy crossings in Arizona and Texas.
As of last week, waiting lists were being used at all major crossings in Texas, said Rick Pauza, a Laredo, Texas-based spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Across the border from El Paso, Mexican officials in Ciudad Juarez cleared 300 migrants from border bridges last week, sent them to shelters and created a waiting list, said Shaw Drake, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. Asylum seekers’ numbers on the list were written in marker on their arms.
“They’re creating the circumstances under which that’s necessary,” said Drake, adding that about 20 of the asylum seekers were being admitted to the U.S. daily from Juarez. “It’s illegal to be turning these people away and making them wait.”
To the east, where Texas’ Rio Grande Valley borders the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, U.S. and Mexican immigration officials launched a joint campaign in September against cartel violence and corruption. But U.S. authorities delegated management of asylum seeker waiting lists to Mexican counterparts. The lists are not made public, and they are not monitored by U.S. officials, Customs and Border Protection said.
In Matamoros last week, officials from Grupos Beta, the humanitarian arm of Mexican immigration services, could be seen using the list to record the names of 80 asylum seekers. Two weeks before, the list contained 165 names, said migrants who saw it. It was unclear how many of those removed from the list had been allowed to cross. Mexican officials refused requests to review it.
Officials at Mexico’s National Institute of Migration office at the city’s new bridge declined to comment, as did the institute’s Grupos Beta Matamoros. Institute officials in Mexico City did not respond to requests for comment, including about extortion allegations.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it “processes undocumented persons as expeditiously as possible,” and denied it was involved in selecting who enters from the lists.
“Nationality has absolutely no bearing on the processing” of asylum seekers, and those on the lists are “processed on a first-come, first-serve basis,” the agency said.
The agency said it “does take into consideration persons with medical emergencies, unaccompanied alien children, the disabled, and gives priority as we can, bearing in mind the day-to-day availability of resources, case complexity, holding space, port volume and enforcement actions.”
Jessica Zamora, an 18-year-old Cuban who is seven months pregnant, was still waiting at the foot of the Matamoros bridge last week, more than 25 days after U.S. officials allowed her mother and 13-year-old brother across. The officials didn’t consider her part of the same family, Zamora said. Two other pregnant women were also waiting to cross.
“We wait here while others pass because we don’t have money,” Zamora said.
Mexican immigration officials in Matamoros said they try to limit the number of asylum seekers waiting at the new bridge to 10, ferrying the rest to a shelter across town, but the number swelled recently as migrants refused to leave, afraid of missing a chance to cross.
An additional 39 asylum seekers waited at the shelter, including some families stuck there for more than a month. Their temporary Mexican visas had expired, and they worried they could be deported.
“There are weeks they don’t call anyone” to cross, said asylum seeker Yoveni Torres, 37. His family left Nicaragua after being persecuted for joining the Catholic resistance to the country’s authoritarian government, he said. He was still waiting this week after a month at the shelter with his wife and three children.
Two dozen migrants from Central America, Cuba, Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Russia and Venezuela camped at the foot of the bridge last week without food, water or medical care beyond occasional visits by the Mexican Red Cross, even as temperatures dipped to freezing.
They said immigration officials had failed to secure the bridges, leaving them vulnerable to extortion. When they complained, Mexican immigration officials threatened to force them to leave, including when they were being interviewed by The Times.
“See how they talk to us? ‘Go’ like dogs,” said Yaneisi Jinarte, a teacher from Cuba.
Jinarte said she complained to U.S. immigration officials. Others said they had tried, but Mexican officials barred them from reaching the bridge’s midpoint.
Two other Cuban asylum seekers said Mexican immigration officials demanded they pay to cross the city’s older bridge this fall. They refused and were still waiting to cross last week.
Their claims were being investigated, according to the Mexican individual who requested anonymity. He said that immigrants are not supposed to cross on the older bridge, where their names are not added to the list, and that U.S. officials should stop allowing them to sneak onto the bridge and cross. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was up to Mexican officials to manage the flow of asylum seekers at the bridges.
Cuban asylum seeker Elvis Gonzalez Rodriguez said that when he arrived at the old bridge last week, a uniformed Mexican immigration official demanded he pay $1,000 to cross. Gonzalez, 23, refused, and the official made him leave. At the newer bridge, a backpack containing his passport and cash was stolen, he said. He returned to the old bridge and was forced off by Mexican immigration officials three more times.
“There’s a lot of corruption here. It’s the responsibility of Mexican officials to protect immigrants. I want to come the correct, legal way,” the electrician from Havana said as he sat on the old bridge again on Nov. 14, a few feet from two U.S. customs officers.
They need to help us. They need to know about the corruption, how it’s a business to pass here.
Cuban asylum seeker Elvis Gonzalez Rodriguez
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He said the U.S. officials should help asylum seekers and investigate what’s happening a few feet south of them on the bridge.
“They need to help us. They need to know about the corruption, how it’s a business to pass here.”
Another Cuban asylum seeker said a uniformed Mexican immigration official demanded $500 to get her across the old bridge after she arrived at Matamoros airport in mid-October. She said she gave the official her passport and $300 at the airport, then got nervous.
“He didn’t seem trustworthy, so I left,” said Rosa Maria, 50, who asked to be identified by first name because she feared for her safety.
She said Cuban asylum seekers have called her cellphone after crossing the old bridge to say they paid Mexican officials $100 to $300 each to bypass the list.
U.S. volunteers and immigrant advocacy groups alerted Mexican authorities that asylum seekers have been forced to pay to cross the bridge since June.
“They are. I know that’s a fact,” said Michael Seifert, an ACLU border advocacy strategist in Brownsville. “It’s only gotten worse. It’s gotten more expensive. The Cubans are targeted because they have money.”
He said African immigrants are forced to wait weeks because “they don’t speak enough Spanish to understand the bribe.”
For many waiting in Tijuana, a mysterious notebook is the key to seeking asylum
Jul 05, 2018 | 4:10 AM
Asylum seekers from Cameroon said Mexican officials in Matamoros turned them away this month and told them the U.S. was not accepting more Africans. Michael Randy said he asked U.S. customs officers at the bridge, who rejected the claim and assured him African asylum seekers were still being accepted. Mexican officials are investigating, according to the individual who requested anonymity.
Randy, 30, said he fled Cameroon after police fatally shot his younger brother, raped his wife in front of him and then burned the home they shared with their 2- and 3-year-old daughters. He hasn’t heard from his family since. Randy said he was imprisoned and tortured for 77 days, then fled the country.
In Matamoros, he said Mexican officials forced him off the old bridge, but not Cuban asylum seekers who were behind him on the list at the new bridge but managed to cross the old bridge before him. “That shows there is something wrong,” he said.
Another Cameroon migrant suffered a tropical disease that can cause blindness but had to wait a month before U.S. volunteers interceded last week; he was then allowed to cross and receive treatment at a hospital.
“It’s not fair,” Randy said Nov. 12 as he stood at the new bridge eating a donated chicken dinner, wondering when he would cross. “I could stay for a month — there’s no certain time.”
Cuban asylum seeker Leonardo Mederos, 30, said he paid a smuggler $4,000 to get him to a border bridge to the west in Reynosa, a Gulf cartel stronghold, where the smuggler assured him he would be able to cross and join relatives in Miami.
“He told me if I paid, nothing would happen,” Mederos said at the Brownsville bus station last week. Mederos crossed Sept. 28 and was released from immigration detention this week with a notice to appear in immigration court.
Christina Patiño Houle of the nonprofit Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network said Mexican officials at times close the bridges with gates, shutting migrants out.
“These are incredibly dangerous areas where these individuals are waiting for days and weeks to enter the bridge. We sometimes have pregnant women, women with toddlers, who are sent back into territories that are managed openly by cartels,” she said. “It just does not reflect a genuine effort to allow people to come to the United States and seek asylum.”
In response to questions about whether Mexican officials were charging asylum seekers to cross bridges and turning African asylum seekers away, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said: “Mexico is a sovereign nation, and our authorities do not cross international boundaries. Actions of Mexican officials, or people in Mexico, should be addressed to the government of Mexico including any actions taken on the Mexican side of bridges and in the border cities of Mexico.”
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Trump plan would force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as cases are processed, a major break with current policy
By Nick Miroff , Joshua Partlow and Josh Dawsey
| Washington Post |
Nov 22, 2018 | 10:25 AM
| Washington
Trump plan would force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as cases are processed, a major break with current policy
A Honduran mother stands with her sons at a temporary shelter for members of the migrant caravan Nov. 21 in Tijuana. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)
Central Americans who arrive at U.S. border crossings seeking asylum in the United States will have to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under sweeping new measures the Trump administration is preparing to implement, according to internal planning documents and three Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the initiative.
According to Homeland Security memos obtained Wednesday by the Washington Post, Central American asylum seekers who cannot establish a "reasonable fear" of persecution in Mexico will not be allowed to enter the United States and would be turned around at the border.
The plan, called "Remain in Mexico," amounts to a major break with current screening procedures, which generally allow those who establish a fear of return to their home countries to avoid immediate deportation and remain in the United States until they can get a hearing with an immigration judge. Trump despises this system, which he calls "catch and release," and has vowed to end it.
Among the thousands of Central American migrants traveling by caravan across Mexico, many hope to apply for asylum due to threats of gang violence or other persecution in their home countries. They had expected to be able to stay in the United States while their claims move through immigration court. The new rules would disrupt those plans, and the hopes of other Central Americans who seek asylum in the United States each year.
Trump remains furious about the caravan and the legal setbacks his administration has suffered in federal court, demanding hard-line policy ideas from aides. Senior advisor Stephen Miller has pushed to implement the Remain in Mexico plan immediately, though other senior officials have expressed concern about implementing amid sensitive negotiations with the Mexican government, according to two Homeland Security officials and a White House advisor with knowledge of the plan, which was discussed at the White House on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the administration's new plan, if a migrant does not specifically fear persecution in Mexico, that's where they will stay. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is sending teams of asylum officers from field offices in San Francisco, Washington, and Los Angeles to the ports of entry in the San Diego area to implement the new screening procedures, according to an agency official.
To cross into the United States, asylum seekers would have to meet a relatively higher bar in the screening procedure to establish that their fears of being in Mexico are enough to require immediate admission, the documents say.
"If you are determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will be permitted to remain in the United States while you await your hearing before an immigration judge," the asylum officers will now tell those who arrive seeking humanitarian refuge, according to the Homeland Security memos. "If you are not determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will remain in Mexico."
Mexican border cities are among the most violent in the country, as drug cartels battle over access to smuggling routes into the United States. In the state of Baja California, which includes Tijuana, the State Department warns that "criminal activity and violence, including homicide, remain a primary concern throughout the state."
The new rules will take effect as soon as Friday, according to two Homeland Security officials familiar with the plans.
Katie Waldman, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, issued a statement late Wednesday saying there were no immediate plans to implement these new measures.
"The president has made clear — every single legal option is on the table to secure our nation and to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants at our borders," the statement says. "DHS is not implementing such a new enforcement program this week. Reporting on policies that do not exist create uncertainty and confusion along our borders and has a negative real world impact. We will ensure — as always — that any new program or policy will comply with humanitarian obligations, uphold our national security and sovereignty, and is implemented with notice to the public and well coordinated with partners."
A Mexican official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that current Mexican immigration law does not allow those seeking asylum in another country to stay in Mexico.
On Dec. 1, a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will be sworn in, and it's also unclear whether his transition team was consulted on the new asylum screening procedures.
The possibility that thousands of U.S.-bound asylum seekers would have to wait in Mexico for months, even years, could produce a significant financial burden for the government there, especially if the migrants remain in camps and shelters on a long-term basis.
There are currently 6,000 migrants in the Tijuana area, many of them camped at a baseball field along the border, seeking to enter the United States. Several thousand more are en route to the city as part of caravan groups, according to Homeland Security estimates.
U.S. border officials have allowed about 60 to 100 asylum seekers to approach the San Ysidro port of entry each day for processing.
Last week BuzzFeed reported that U.S. and Mexican officials were discussing such a plan.
Mexico also appears to be taking a less permissive attitude toward the new migrant caravans now entering the country.
Authorities detained more than 200 people, or nearly all of the latest caravan, who recently crossed Mexico's southern border on their way to the United States. This is at least the fourth large group of migrants to cross into Mexico and attempt to walk to the U.S. border. They were picked up not long after crossing. The vast majority of the migrants were from El Salvador, according to Mexico's National Immigration Institute.
After the first caravan this fall entered Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration offered migrants the chance to live and work in Mexico as long as they stayed in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. Most chose not to accept this deal as they wanted to travel to the United States.
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The Cultural Stew of Rodeo in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
By Thomas M. Hunt
For centuries, migration across the U.S-Mexican border has been a normal part of life in rural far West Texas.
The rodeo culture in the region reflects that reality, featuring traditions from both north and south of the Rio Grande.
The popularity of the sport in both Mexico and Texas makes it an interesting prism through which to view the current issues surrounding the border and immigration.
My family owns a ranchito in the beautiful Davis Mountains of far West Texas. It is my favorite spot on earth. A recent episode of Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" series on CNN featured Texas' Big Bend region where the Davis Mountains are located. The residents he interviewed, much like myself, cherish both the rugged beauty of the land as well as its rich mixture of Anglo and Mexican cultural traditions. And they universally opposed the push to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border through the sparsely populated region.
In one interview, an eye-patch-wearing cowboy/saloon owner named Ty delivered an astonishing moment of eloquence on this point. "We can't survive without the river," he said, referring to the Rio Grande forming the border. "And we can't survive without the people on that side of the river. And they can't survive without us. And they're our friends, for God's sake. Loyalty is a big thing in Texas, and you ain't gonna build a fence between me and my loyal friends."
President Donald Trump, who has long touted a wall stretching the entire length of the border as a solution to illegal immigration, recently ordered about 5,200 active-duty troops to the border in response to reports that a large caravan of migrants was moving north from Central America. The deployment took place amid the implementation of a larger set of policy proposals centered on immigration. These include a "zero tolerance" policy by law enforcement toward undocumented immigrants and a decision to allow the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy to expire.
Those issues and the wall proposal have put the region at the front of my mind lately. I've been thinking about my annual trips there in August, when I take a few friends out to the ranchito so we can watch the Big Bend Ranch Rodeo held in nearby Alpine. In the amateur competitions at the event, working cowboys representing their home ranches perform tasks designed to replicate the reality of their chosen profession: calf branding, team penning, cattle doctoring, wild-cow milking and ranch bronc riding. The display of everyday skills showcases the athleticism of the wranglers. The ranch hands are very much the real deal — and their abilities are amazing. I competed in a few local youth rodeo events as a child, and I maintain that roping a calf from horseback is perhaps the single most difficult feat in all the world of sports. But my group of friends also goes as scholars interested in larger issues.
Rodeo seems to offer an interesting prism through which to view the types of border questions that Bourdain's episode raised. It serves simultaneously as the official state sport of Texas and as (in a stylized form called charreria) the national sport of Mexico. Rodeo events, moreover, range from the small and the local to commercialized versions that are truly gigantic.
Among the most successful of the latter are the 300 or so competitions put on every year by the Professional Bull Riders (PBR). Although the organization includes competitors from all over the world, its brand identity is very much centered in the United States. "At its core," its website says, "PBR has always been about bringing people together to participate in and enjoy a sport built upon traditional American values. Reflecting on these bedrock principles, PBR looks for ways to promote these values, celebrate real heroes, unite our nation, and inspire the next generation."
In 2008, the organization entered into a partnership with the U.S. Border Patrol, whose agents became "the official federal law enforcement officers of the Professional Bull Riders." Recruiting booths for the agency are now prominently found at PBR events. That tone seems markedly different from the ranch rodeo of which my friends and I are so fond.
The cowboys and vaqueros of the borderlands have a long and deep relationship, after all. My guess is that at least a few of the ranches that send competitors to the Big Bend event employ a hand or two from Mexico. It is also worth pondering as well that charreria are becoming mainstays in a number of rural communities in Texas. This is perhaps emblematic of the demographic transition into a state whose largest population group is projected to soon be Hispanic.
All three flavors of rodeo — the amateur competitions between rural ranch hands, the gatherings of vaqueros practicing the traditions of Mexico and the professionals who perform their sport in concrete arenas before thousands of spectators — reflect the perspectives that can be found in the mixed heritage of the borderlands.
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Is there something I am missing here?
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/27/report-mexico-to-award-jared-kushner-with-highest-honor/
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Maybe they're doing business together after AMLO takes office?
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- Very personal message. My wife and kid are now stuck on the border because of this madness. It's very personal now. Get the message out. This is not a peaceful group, they use woman and children as shields, they are pieces of human garbage and deserve nothing. This isn't a sympathy post. This is a warning to anyone that cares to listen.
Anyone painting these people as anything other than a hostile force demanding things that they don't deserve and have broken most laws by getting up here are fools and need to come down to Tijuana and not just interview the hand full of women in the group. Fake fucking news... -
Ed
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second post
Possibly rumint, but worth noting
https://www.speroforum.com/a/YVOQLYYSQG58/84351-Mexican-selfdefense-group-to-hunt-down-migrant-caravan?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=RKQZOZIYWV3&utm_content=YVOQLYYSQG58&utm_source=news&utm_term=Mexican+selfdefense+group+to+hunt+down+migrant+caravan#.W_4Fv-JRfcs
Calls for the narcos to take action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=vQDtjrn0v50
Locals are pissed off
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=deBYhPbZinY
also see
https://www.speroforum.com/a/KQOHJHIITD34/84373-Confirmed-migrants-use-children-as-human-shields?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=RKQZOZIYWV3&utm_content=KQOHJHIITD34&utm_source=news&utm_term=Confirmed+migrants+use+children+as+human+shields#.W_4FXuJRfcs
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https://www.facebook.com/NTDTelevision/videos/vb.179417642100354/371705456900858/?type=2&theater
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By Allison Fedirka
Mexico’s New President Can’t Avoid Old Problems
Regardless of his objectives, Lopez Obrador will find that he has to govern within certain parameters.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who campaigned as an anti-establishment candidate who would prioritize nationalist concerns above all else, will become the president of Mexico on Saturday. His party, which was founded only in 2014, is the first non-mainstream party to win an election since 1934, when the modern political system was established. And it did so by a considerable margin. Lopez Obrador won 30.1 million votes (53 percent) in July’s election, more than double the number of votes received by the second-place candidate. By August, he had a 64.6 percent approval rating, according to an El Universal survey, though it has slipped since then to 55.6 percent. In line with his populist message, Lopez Obrador has relied heavily on public consent to validate his platform and policies. Last weekend, for example, the incoming government held a referendum on the top ten projects it will focus on – which include everything from infrastructure to pensions and employment. At least 89 percent of voters cast a ballot in favor of each of the projects, though turnout was very low, with less than 1 million people participating in the referendum.
But regardless of what Lopez Obrador hopes to achieve while in office, he will face certain unavoidable constraints once he’s inaugurated – as all political leaders do. Domestically, he will need to satisfy his base, at least to some degree, while balancing the views and wishes of other segments of the population. His most challenging constraints, however, will be in dealing with the United States. The asymmetrical relationship between the two countries will limit Mexico’s ability to ignore Washington’s wishes and chart its own path. This will be most apparent in two issues: trade and immigration. Both are pivotal to Mexico’s national interests and go beyond party politics – which explains why Lopez Obrador has been closely collaborating with the current administration in both areas since July. They’re also inextricably intertwined with Lopez Obrador’s campaign promise to stimulate the country’s economy.
On trade, Lopez Obrador will have a lot of work to do during his first year in office to ensure that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is ratified and implemented in such a way that meets Mexico’s interests. The final draft of the deal was agreed to on Sept. 30, but the U.S., Mexico and Canada are supposed to officially sign the agreement on Nov. 30. (The legislatures of all three countries will then need to ratify it, which could take several months or longer.) The two-month delay was supposed to give each country time to meet certain preconditions – which are not stated in the agreement itself – before all three would officially agree to the treaty. But in some cases, that hasn’t happened. Mexico and Canada said they wanted exemptions from U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs before signing the deal. They didn’t get them, but U.S. companies with operations in Canada and Mexico are still lobbying for the wavers. Another precondition – this one demanded by Democrats in the U.S. Congress – was that Mexico pass a series of labor reforms, which it has so far failed to do. (It has said it will approve these reforms by Jan. 1.)
(click to enlarge)
Once all three countries pass the agreement, implementation will be the next hurdle. One of the biggest constraints on the member governments will be Chapter 32, which restricts their ability to enter into free trade agreements with non-market economies. Members must notify the other signatories before entering trade talks with non-market economies, and a copy of any deal must be provided to them before being signed. The members then have the option to scrap the USMCA and replace it with a bilateral agreement. The target of this provision is clearly China, though both Canada and Mexico claim it doesn’t rule out any future trade agreements with Beijing. The U.S., meanwhile, is locked in a trade war with China for now and is therefore unlikely to sign any new deals with the Chinese anyway. The agreement thus gives all future Mexican leaders, including Lopez Obrador, less room to maneuver. Despite any plans to distance Mexico from the U.S. economically, they can’t risk doing anything that could sever trade ties with the U.S. and put the Mexican economy in danger.
Immigration will be another major concern for Lopez Obrador, who faces different pressures on the issue at home and abroad. The U.S. president has threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border if Mexico doesn’t deport Central American migrants making their way to the United States. A border closure could have devastating impacts on the Mexican economy. The government has thus tried to stop migrants from trying to enter the U.S. illegally by either deporting them or persuading them to stay in Mexico instead. The U.S. has also proposed a “safe third country agreement” with Mexico, which would require asylum seekers to apply for refugee status in the first country of arrival. This would effectively mean that Central American migrants traveling through Mexico could not claim refugee status in the U.S. But the current Mexican government has refused to agree to such a deal and the incoming government has said it doesn’t plan to agree to it either. It would essentially make Mexico’s immigration policy subordinate to the United States and make the Mexican government responsible for the Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S. border. The new government, however, has proposed creating a mini-Marshall Plan along with the U.S. and Canada to help develop Central American economies.
Domestically, the inflow of Central American migrants presents challenges to Lopez Obrador’s promise to improve the standard of living for Mexicans while also bringing down government spending. Public backlash is already building as more and more local and federal resources are allocated to accommodating the migrants instead of providing services for the local population. According to a recent El Universal survey, roughly 70 percent of Mexicans have a negative view of the migrant caravans, with 46 percent believing the migrants could increase crime rates and 27 percent believing they could take jobs away from Mexicans. Mexico’s Labor and Social Welfare Ministry announced that over 200 companies with facilities in Tijuana are offering at least 3,500 jobs to migrants. Mexico’s National Jobs Service portal will also post 45,000 jobs for migrants in the northern border states and 160,000 jobs nationwide. So while Lopez Obrador wants to show that he’s putting Mexico first, his government will still need to devote time and money to dealing with the migrant influx and encouraging economic development in Central America to stem the flow of migrants in the first place.
(click to enlarge)
Even beyond trade and immigration, Lopez Obrador will find that he has to govern within certain parameters. The extent to which he can pave a new path for Mexico is limited by his need to satisfy his base, maintain a healthy economy and balance protection of Mexico’s long-term interests against U.S. demands. All these challenges predate Lopez Obrador’s election, so while he may want more freedom of action, his hands will be tied by the same factors that limited flexibility for presidents before him.
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Pravda on the Beach:
https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-caravan-leaders-20181206-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter
====================
https://www.speroforum.com/a/DQCJCHSVDE7/84436-Lady-Frijoles-ungrateful-Honduran-migrant-who-refused-free-food-is-now-in-Texas?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GCHAPKUNHA0&utm_content=DQCJCHSVDE7&utm_source=news&utm_term=Lady+Frijoles+ungrateful+Honduran+migrant+who+refused+free+food+is+now+in+Texas#.XAmm4-JRfcs
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Even though it is Breitbart as best as I can tell this gets it right:
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/01/28/exclusive-terrorist-who-targeted-americans-takes-over-mexican-cartel-on-texas-border/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=
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What Happened: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is planning to hold a referendum on Feb. 23-24 on the construction of a $628 million power plant in Morelos state, Natural Gas Intel reported Feb. 8. Although construction on the plant is complete, it has not yet started operations. The referendum will only include residents of 32 towns along a 171-kilometer (106-mile) pipeline supplying the plant.
Why It Matters: Holding the referendum would significantly erode investor confidence in Mexico as the plant has already attracted considerable funding and halting the project would be a sign of increasing regulatory risk despite previous assurances.
Background: Lopez Obrador's government has already held informal referendums, including a vote on the construction of a new airport in Mexico City in 2018.
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What Happened: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is planning to hold a referendum on Feb. 23-24 on the construction of a $628 million power plant in Morelos state, Natural Gas Intel reported Feb. 8. Although construction on the plant is complete, it has not yet started operations. The referendum will only include residents of 32 towns along a 171-kilometer (106-mile) pipeline supplying the plant.
Why It Matters: Holding the referendum would significantly erode investor confidence in Mexico as the plant has already attracted considerable funding and halting the project would be a sign of increasing regulatory risk despite previous assurances.
Background: Lopez Obrador's government has already held informal referendums, including a vote on the construction of a new airport in Mexico City in 2018.
I would guess they are using some variation of the Delphi method to make the referendum go the way they want.
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This is not unknown in Mexico haha Witness the 70+ years of the PRI winning starting in 1926.
But also witness that starting in 1976 they enacted serious structural changes to enable the development of true competing parties. (the PAN, and later the PRD) with the PAN taking the presidency two times. Then the PRI again, and now some other party (AMLO, who came out of the PRD).
Though on the surface it is modeled on ours, it is something quite different in many ways. How to govern a country like Mexico? It is not an easy thing!!!
This is a deep, subtle system in many ways.
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Murder in Mexico: What's the Danger to an American Tourist?
Mexican marines patrol the beach of Playacar, near the seaside tourist resort of Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo State, on Feb. 14, 2019.
(DANIEL SLIM/AFP/Getty Images)
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Highlights
Mexico broke its record for homicides last year, and the dynamics that are driving that violence are unlikely to abate in the near future.
At the same time, record numbers of U.S. citizens are either visiting Mexico as tourists or residing in the country, yet the number of Americans murdered in Mexico remains remarkably low.
Still, violent crime remains a problem in Mexico, and visitors and residents should take measures to mitigate the risk.
With spring break right around the corner, our Threat Lens team is once again in demand, as clients — along with a wide array of friends and family — are all wondering about the safety of a Mexican getaway for some spring sun. Of course, the concern is understandable. As our 2019 Mexico cartel forecast reported, murders in the country hit their highest rate ever last year and, worryingly, there's nothing to suggest that this year will be any different.
The Big Picture
Geography, economics and history have resulted in the United States and Mexico becoming tightly intertwined, with Mexico's manufactured goods benefiting the U.S. market and U.S. tourists helping Mexico's economy. Mexico's proximity to the United States, however, has also spawned powerful and deadly crime south of the Rio Grande — some of which can ensnare Americans.
See The Importance of Mexico
Mexico's climbing murder rate has yet to deter American tourists from visiting their southern neighbor. Last year's U.S. tourist figures are not yet available, but it's safe to assume that the tally will come in higher than the 35 million that visited the country in 2017. The U.S. Department of State has issued warnings advising against travel to five Mexican states: Colima, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Guerrero — the last of which is home to the resort city of Acapulco. Despite this, the resorts of Cancun, Cozumel and Cabo San Lucas are already full of American tourists in 2019, and I expect they will be near capacity over spring break.
Someone recently reached out to me on Twitter, saying they had stopped visiting Mexico after becoming a Stratfor subscriber. Now, that's certainly not our intent in writing on this topic; after all, we prefer to take a "go, but" approach to travel security rather than definitely tell anyone not to go. It's the same story for Mexico, which is a great country to visit with incredible things to see and do. But, like anywhere else, there are risks, many of which can be avoided or mitigated. For the moment, though, let's take a closer look at the confluence of Mexico's growing murder rate and the rising number of American tourists choosing to visit the country. Because, ultimately, the threat may not be as great as feared.
American Deaths in Mexico
Between June 2017 and June 2018, 238 Americans died in Mexico, amounting to 29 percent of all U.S. citizens who perished overseas during the period, according to the U.S. Department of State. But in terms of homicide, Mexico looms much larger in the figures: Of the 152 who were murdered overseas during the 12 months in question, exactly half died in Mexico. Naturally, however, the question of scale is paramount in interpreting the figures. The 35 million U.S. tourists who visit Mexico dwarf the number of their compatriots (1.5 million) who go to nearby destinations such as Jamaica. And while just six Americans fell victim to homicide in the latter, the murder rate for U.S. citizens is, per capita, higher on the Caribbean island than it is in Mexico.
To put things further into perspective, Chicago has a population of 2.7 million — about the same as the number of Americans that live in Mexico (to say nothing of the 35 million that visited last year). Last year, however, 561 people died in homicides in the Windy City, more than seven times the number of Americans who were murdered in Mexico.
A graph showing the cause of deaths for Americans in Mexico from June 2017 to June 2018.
In the end, the 76 American homicide victims are a drop in the bucket in terms of Mexico's overall total: 33,341. Moreover, a good portion of those murders occurred in border cities in which there are active cartel wars, such as Tijuana, Juarez and Reynosa. In contrast, just four occurred in tourist hotspots like Cancun, La Paz in Baja California Sur and Puerto Penasco in Sonora. Furthermore, many of the Americans murdered in places like Tijuana and Juarez were dual citizens or residents of Mexico who were involved in criminal activity — that isn't intended to minimize their deaths, but merely indicates that such murders have almost no bearing on the American tourists who visit Mexican resorts. And even in states with significant resorts in which the murder rate has increased, such as Quintana Roo (which is home to Cancun), the number of American tourists killed there remains quite small. Violence in Cancun, for example, is quite common — an attack on a bar there on Feb. 16 killed five people — but most of the violence occurs far from the tourist zones along the beach. Ultimately, Mexico's murder rate may have risen to about 27 per 100,000, but its homicide rate is still only about half that of Honduras or El Salvador.
Avoiding the Danger
That notwithstanding, Mexico patently does have a serious problem with violent crime, as evidenced by the many cartels that are fighting each other for control of the country's lucrative drug production areas, trafficking corridors and domestic narcotics sales. And then there are ancillary, violent criminal activities, such as fuel theft, cargo theft, kidnapping and human trafficking. Cartel members also tend to wield military-grade weapons, which they do not hesitate to use on rival gangs or security forces, often resulting in collateral damage.
Violence in Cancun is quite common — an attack on a bar there on Feb. 16 killed five people — but most of the violence occurs far from the tourist zones along the beach.
Because of this, the best way to avoid falling prey to criminal violence is to avoid places in which it is most likely to occur, such as strip bars and seedy clubs in which drug-selling occurs. Moreover, many foreign victims of crime in Mexico were drinking to excess, using drugs or staying out late at night. We recommend that tourists visiting Mexico stay at their hotel or resort grounds after dark and avoid drinking to excess or using drugs. In some of the drinking-related incidents, assailants spiked beverages with incapacitants such as GHB, Rohypnol or fentanyl, so we recommend you not accept drinks from unknown people or leave your drink unattended. What's more, it's a good idea to avoid going onto the beach after dark.
And speaking of the dark, avoid driving at night, even on the highways. That means that if you're flying into Mexico, schedule your flights to arrive during the day and use pre-arranged transportation to get to your hotel or resort, as Mexican taxis, particularly the illegal ones, can sometimes be used for express kidnappings and sexual assaults.
Before you go, minimize what you take with you on your trip, so that you can reduce your losses if you are robbed and lessen your temptation to resist an armed criminal. And if, despite all your precautions, armed robbers do confront you, do as they say, for they will not hesitate to use gratuitous violence if you fail to comply. In the end, your watch or your wallet is simply not worth your life.
As the old adage goes, you're more likely to die or suffer injury in a traffic accident (or fire or other accident) than you are to suffer harm at the hands of a criminal. That's why it's critical to pack a stop-the-bleed kit and other first aid equipment, a good-quality flashlight and smoke hoods, as these items can literally be lifesavers. For the rest of the time, exercise proper situational awareness and common-sense security and you're unlikely to encounter many problems on your trip south.
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https://usmca.com/?fbclid=IwAR01DI_57pJUKB3xArevGGN2FPgTRZT47vSSxC2o7eF07E6c2lBMNdc4b6A
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PEMEX is probably one of the most horribly run organizations on the planet. Here's the basic deal. The lighter and sweeter the crude the less equipment you need to refine it. The heavier it is it gets exponentially harder and more complex.
Mexico's entire refinery structure was built around light crude with I think one exception. They have since basically tapped out the easy to get to light crude so most of their refineries are either completely shut down and the ones that are still up and running not one is running over 30% capacity.
That said, almost NO exploration has happened and production of oil has fallen off big time along side a bunch of moth balled refineries. At the same time Mexico has a lot of proven reserves of heavy offshore crude, and if they bring in new technology for the directional drilling they can revamp their oil production to some degree.
The president of Mexico says 'this is like having an orange grove and selling the oranges cheap but then turning around and buying orange juice at an expensive mark up'... All of that disrepair and lack of investment all falls under the PEMEX name.
Now just Texas alone is producing substantial amounts of light crude (the kind Mexico's refineries need to run) while at the same time our refineries (especially along the US Gulf coast) are all built to handle heavy crude.
So basically with a few pipelines or not even that---just some relatively minor tweaks and investment Mexico can produce offshore heavy crudes (with US companies like Exxon) and export that primarily to the US (thus offsetting more and more imports from the Middle East). Texas can then also export the crap out of light crude and help bring those refineries they have back online and running where they should be. As a reference US refineries run on average above 90%. I saw one estimate recently that said in 2019 they will run at 96% capacity.
All of this stuff is very very low hanging fruit and it's beneficial to everyone (almost). About the only ones that won't like it are the people who are (currently) exporting finished products (IE diesel or gasoline) to Mexico.
In the grand scheme of things though bringing our lighter crudes to market even more (there will be a giant wave 2nd half of 2019 and a bigger one in 2020), and bringing Mexico's refining capacity back up to speed and incorporating them into a near seamless industry with the neighbors (IE Texas) will be far more beneficial.
Just that one industry alone is already making people salivate.
One other thing the new President of Mexico wants to do is build a new refinery along the Gulf Coast to supplement their refining capabilities.
Those are the basic plans that the new guy and Trump both want and the energy industry has a real stiffy over it too. We are talking a whole lot of money to be made where it's not 'us vs them'.
Another one of his key things he wants to do is create a massive free trade area for like 40 or 50 miles south of the Rio Grande and have that be incorporated into the US economy as well. It will be sort of like an economic transitional zone from the US to the heartland of Mexico.
No one is objecting and no one is complaining about any of this, except maybe Al Gore or AOC because 'it's oil' and 'greenhouse gas' and 'global warming' or whatever... aside from that he's for sure hell bent on a modernization of PEMEX and the whole oil industry in Mexico for that matter.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHTLE6vlgNE&feature=player_embedded
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=edZR_nPp1l8
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I'm listening to the interview. Long, serious, and seriously dark.
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I'm listening to the interview. Long, serious, and seriously dark.
Lots of industrial grade stupid on the topic of guns. Lots of empty-headed platitudes on the cultures of criminality.
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I'm only 47 minutes of the over 2 hours into it so far , , , What I've heard so far portrays well the depth of the depravity, the violence, and the utter corruption of the political system , , ,
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http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/JWWhitePaperCartelFTOdesigationMarch2019-003.pdf?V=1&utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=corruption+chronicles&utm_term=members&utm_content=20190314042916
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second post
https://www.timelines.ws/countries/MEXICO_D.HTML?fbclid=IwAR0URKrWgZza5aFVftMTroPAz9moDEMLsGf8L013o169O-yOKkb2pQxwRLk
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https://www.utep.edu/liberalarts/nssi/_Files/docs/Capstone%20projects1/Valencia_Evolving-Dynamics-of-Terrorism.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1snBcM8t9ODBSAjCCDkelJ52EggrlSK84_a8DycLnOEaiBr7GedVRdlXA
https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2017/282846.htm?fbclid=IwAR3PtbR8ZglrSgDw_0GFcqULgaF6Ai7BK9s1dBWMYaWIa8mes8MB_XYRvUQ
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/10/mexico-drug-cartels-grip-on-politicians-and-police-revealed-in-texas-court-files?fbclid=IwAR183RJZRrj1UeVuzR5uRB83MIa14BlrQluMWqxGpeyq_DSvGfWS0BJcCAI
https://abc7chicago.com/mexico-cartels-now-fuel-deadly-chicago-opioid-epidemic/4605627/?fbclid=IwAR0t9uyE7t622Ddw__TzAaUnnsdelSVZa-LEVJhjYaor9AefA9QmHf3ymvc
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https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-tijuana-violence-20190314-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1hhFv_Dt0MQE-OJteeSOiW6K4Upah4qBJzzqpDeh2e9g3y6Eu9lCWMLR8
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/jalisco-new-generation-cartel-goes-on-the-offensive/?fbclid=IwAR1YP24FT5qfqyKwDvwnp_902eLWDCNK7TwshHqPAOZ4A-daUj4NHZfWyxk
They even attack the police station , , ,
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The Cartel del Noreste appears poised to launch a push to seize control of Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest metropolitan area and a major regional business hub.
This could lead to a significant escalation of violence in areas where many companies and organizations have interests, and where many of their employees live.
Competing extortion demands would also present businesses in the region with a dangerous conundrum.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets, and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
The Cartel del Noreste (CDN), the remnant of the Los Zetas cartel that controls the lucrative Nuevo Laredo smuggling plaza, has taken actions over the past week suggesting it is preparing a push to seize control of Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest metropolitan area and a major regional business hub. Such an offensive would likely meet resistance from the groups currently in the area and so would involve significant violence — something businesses with interests in the area should prepare for.
The Big Picture
By 2013, the long process of balkanization — or splintering — of Mexico's cartels made analyzing them much more difficult. Indeed, many of the ones we had been tracking, such as the Gulf cartel, had imploded and fragmented into several smaller, often competing factions. From the Gulf cartel emerged the notorious Los Zetas, which also subsequently split into several smaller remnants including the Cartel del Noreste (CDN). That splinter group now appears poised to make a play for control of the major Mexican business center of Monterrey. Were the CDN to proceed, foreign businesses there would feel the heat.
See Security Challenges in Latin America
Over the weekend of March 16-17, a narcomanta — or banner with a message from a drug cartel — was hung in the city of San Pedro Garza Garcia, part of the Monterrey metropolitan area. The banner threatened to kill members of the Gulf cartel and "the people of El Gato" who do not leave the city. El Gato refers to Jose Rodolfo Villarreal Hernandez, a leader of a remnant of the Beltran Leyva Cartel who has established a strong presence in San Pedro Garza Garcia. The banner also threatened "people who pay a fee to El Gato" — meaning that businesses pay him extortion fees, and said that they would use murder to target businesses that do not instead pay extortion fees to the CDN. The banner also claimed that the mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia, Miguel Bernardo Trevino de Hoyos, was working with the CDN — something the group probably would not broadcast were it true.
In response, a narcomanta attributed to "El Felino," presumably a reference to El Gato, was hung threatening the people allegedly bringing deadly violence to the area. It also said his organization was well-established in the area, and was prepared to take on the intruders.
Competing extortion demands would also present businesses in the region with a dangerous conundrum.
The CDN has also reportedly been busily threatening journalists. The publication Proceso reported March 13 that CDN has threatened at least a dozen journalists in the Monterrey metropolitan area via calls to their personal cellphones. The callers revealed knowledge of personal information about the call recipients, such as where the journalists lived and their families' activities. The threatening callers also reportedly demanded payments to allow the journalists to continue to work. Threatening journalists is not a new activity for the CDN: In December 2018 it threatened the Expreso newspaper in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas state, by leaving a message in front of the paper accompanied by a human head in a cooler.
As we noted in our 2019 annual cartel forecast, the CDN has been locked in a protracted battle for control of Ciudad Victoria with the Zetas Vieja Escuela (Spanish for the "Old School Zetas"). This battle apparently has not drained the CDN's resources such that its leadership thinks it lacks the resources to mount an offensive for control of other areas.
It is quite possible that this apparent CDN activity could be a hoax or just empty bluster. But if the CDN's threats are sincere and it actually attempts to seize control of the wealthy enclave of San Pedro Garza Garcia and the rest of the Monterrey metropolitan area, it could produce a significant escalation of violence in areas where many companies and organizations have interests — and where many of their employees live. Competing extortion demands would also present businesses in the region with a dangerous conundrum.
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https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/sd-me-concertina-wire-tj-20190318-story.html
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/armed-civilians-kidnap-detain-11-puebla-cops/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/corruption-was-protected-supported-at-highest-levels/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-accused-of-being-submissive-timid/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/fishermens-leader-repression-and-persecution-continue/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/58-say-stop-the-migrants/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=8faa106a24-MNT+apr05-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-8faa106a24-349632321
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Most of the $33 Billion in Remittances to Mexico Flow Via U.S. Govt. Banking Program
Though President Trump said he would block money transfers to Mexico to fund a much-needed border wall, Mexicans in the U.S. sent a record $33.48 billion in remittances last year and a big chunk of it flowed through a government program operated by the Federal Reserve.
This means that, amid an onslaught of illegal immigration, the U.S. government is largely responsible for the billions in remittances flowing south of the border from illegal aliens. Figures released by Mexico’s central bank show that 104 million transactions were executed in 2018, nearly six million more than the previous year.
Uncle Sam facilitates the process with a program called “Directo a Mexico” (Direct to Mexico), launched by the Federal Reserve, the government agency that serves as the nation’s central bank, more than a decade ago. President George W. Bush came up with the idea following the 2001 U.S.-Mexico Partnership for Prosperity to provide low-cost banking services to illegal immigrants and facilitate the procedure for those sending money home.
In its first year, 2005, remittances to Mexico topped $20 billion and the Federal Reserve reports “double-digit percentage growth for the past several years.” Remittances are transferred through the Federal Reserve’s own automated clearinghouse linked directly to Mexico’s central bank (Banco de Mexico). The Trump administration should eliminate it because it undermines our nation’s immigration laws and is a potential national security nightmare.
Back in 2006 Judicial Watch investigated the outrageous taxpayer-subsidized initiative and obtained government records that shed light on how it functions. Marketing materials target immigrant workers in the U.S.—regardless of their legal status—as well as banks, credit unions and other financial institutions.
The program is promoted as “the best way to send money home,” offering “more pesos for every dollar.” American financial institutions are charged $0.67 per item to transfer money from the United States to Mexican banks, ensuring a “highly competitive rate.” The Federal Reserve also provides participating U.S. financial institutions with Spanish language promotional materials to “help get your message out.” The marketing materials also include the number of Mexican migrants in the U.S. with no distinction between those here illegally or not. A separate list identifies thousands of Mexican banks receiving “Directo a México” transfers.
When the program was created Federal Reserve officials acknowledged that most of the Mexican nationals who send money back home are illegal immigrants so a Mexican-issued identification is the only requirement to use the government banking service. A colorful brochure promoting “Directo a Mexico” offered to help immigrants who don’t have bank accounts and assured the best foreign exchange rate and low transfer fees.
A frequently asked question section posed this: “If I return to Mexico or am deported, will I lose the money in my bank account?” The answer: “No. The money still belongs to you and can easily be accessed at an ATM in Mexico using your debit card.” In short, the U.S. created this special banking system specifically for illegal aliens and tens of billions of dollars have streamed through it.
As a presidential candidate Trump proposed a plan to get Mexico to fund a border wall by cutting off remittance payments from Mexican migrants in the U.S. In a memo to a mainstream newspaper Trump wrote that Mexican migrants send $24 billion in remittances annually and the estimated cost of a border wall would be between $5 billion and $10 billion.
According to his plan, the U.S. Patriot Act would be amended to block wire transfers from Mexican nationals using companies such as Western Union. Nowhere in the document is the Federal Reserve’s special program, which clearly caters to illegal immigrants. The president is well aware that the overwhelming majority of remittances to Mexico are sent by those living in the U.S. illegally.
In fact, his proposal was to create a rule that “no alien may wire money outside of the United States unless the alien first provides a document establishing his lawful presence in the United States.” The Federal Reserve’s “Directo a Mexico” has no such requirement as the commander-in-chief completes his first term.
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This is fcuking unbelievable! :x
Most of the $33 Billion in Remittances to Mexico Flow Via U.S. Govt. Banking Program
Though President Trump said he would block money transfers to Mexico to fund a much-needed border wall, Mexicans in the U.S. sent a record $33.48 billion in remittances last year and a big chunk of it flowed through a government program operated by the Federal Reserve.
This means that, amid an onslaught of illegal immigration, the U.S. government is largely responsible for the billions in remittances flowing south of the border from illegal aliens. Figures released by Mexico’s central bank show that 104 million transactions were executed in 2018, nearly six million more than the previous year.
Uncle Sam facilitates the process with a program called “Directo a Mexico” (Direct to Mexico), launched by the Federal Reserve, the government agency that serves as the nation’s central bank, more than a decade ago. President George W. Bush came up with the idea following the 2001 U.S.-Mexico Partnership for Prosperity to provide low-cost banking services to illegal immigrants and facilitate the procedure for those sending money home.
In its first year, 2005, remittances to Mexico topped $20 billion and the Federal Reserve reports “double-digit percentage growth for the past several years.” Remittances are transferred through the Federal Reserve’s own automated clearinghouse linked directly to Mexico’s central bank (Banco de Mexico). The Trump administration should eliminate it because it undermines our nation’s immigration laws and is a potential national security nightmare.
Back in 2006 Judicial Watch investigated the outrageous taxpayer-subsidized initiative and obtained government records that shed light on how it functions. Marketing materials target immigrant workers in the U.S.—regardless of their legal status—as well as banks, credit unions and other financial institutions.
The program is promoted as “the best way to send money home,” offering “more pesos for every dollar.” American financial institutions are charged $0.67 per item to transfer money from the United States to Mexican banks, ensuring a “highly competitive rate.” The Federal Reserve also provides participating U.S. financial institutions with Spanish language promotional materials to “help get your message out.” The marketing materials also include the number of Mexican migrants in the U.S. with no distinction between those here illegally or not. A separate list identifies thousands of Mexican banks receiving “Directo a México” transfers.
When the program was created Federal Reserve officials acknowledged that most of the Mexican nationals who send money back home are illegal immigrants so a Mexican-issued identification is the only requirement to use the government banking service. A colorful brochure promoting “Directo a Mexico” offered to help immigrants who don’t have bank accounts and assured the best foreign exchange rate and low transfer fees.
A frequently asked question section posed this: “If I return to Mexico or am deported, will I lose the money in my bank account?” The answer: “No. The money still belongs to you and can easily be accessed at an ATM in Mexico using your debit card.” In short, the U.S. created this special banking system specifically for illegal aliens and tens of billions of dollars have streamed through it.
As a presidential candidate Trump proposed a plan to get Mexico to fund a border wall by cutting off remittance payments from Mexican migrants in the U.S. In a memo to a mainstream newspaper Trump wrote that Mexican migrants send $24 billion in remittances annually and the estimated cost of a border wall would be between $5 billion and $10 billion.
According to his plan, the U.S. Patriot Act would be amended to block wire transfers from Mexican nationals using companies such as Western Union. Nowhere in the document is the Federal Reserve’s special program, which clearly caters to illegal immigrants. The president is well aware that the overwhelming majority of remittances to Mexico are sent by those living in the U.S. illegally.
In fact, his proposal was to create a rule that “no alien may wire money outside of the United States unless the alien first provides a document establishing his lawful presence in the United States.” The Federal Reserve’s “Directo a Mexico” has no such requirement as the commander-in-chief completes his first term.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/guerrero-farmers-detain-soldiers/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=3eb46ec59a-MNT+apr12-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-3eb46ec59a-349632321
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Next caravan under way in Chiapas , , ,
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/ca...il&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-9ee523849d-349632321
Irregular Cubans
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/im...il&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-9ee523849d-349632321
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Looks like President Trump's pressure on Mexico is having some effect
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-getting-tougher-on-migrants/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=3860e416b7-MNT+apr19-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-3860e416b7-349632321
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/juarez-swamped-with-migrants/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/15000-trucks-stranded-in-juarez/
Meanwhile , , ,
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/4-dead-after-gang-attacks-celaya-police-station/
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Why Migrant Caravans Are not Behind the Recent U.S.-Mexico Border Crossing Slowdowns
A Central American migrant caravan on Nov. 11, 2018, passes through the Mexican state of Guanajuato on its way to the United States.
Highlights
Much has been made of so-called migrant caravans heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border, but they are a relatively small part of a broader problem increasing processing times for legal land border crossings into the United States.
These slowdowns affect the operations of businesses reliant on cross-border trade.
While current record levels of immigration will eventually drop off, seemingly intractable staffing challenges at U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the national political fight over the border will continue.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
About 3,000 migrants from Central America crossed into Mexico from Guatemala via the Rodolfo Robles International Bridge on April 12, joining about 4,000 others already in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas hoping to make it to the United States. Based on the patterns of previous caravans from Central America, the migrants will take an additional three to four weeks to make their way north to the U.S. border, arriving sometime in early May. This timeline could be delayed, however, by an apparent crackdown by the Mexican government: Reuters reported on April 17 that Mexico City has sought to slow the caravans by closing visa offices in southern Mexico and stopping the processing of visas, stranding migrants in camps.
The Big Picture
Staffing shortages, a highly charged atmosphere over immigration and border security, and record-high numbers of would-be illegal border crossers — many of whom are children — have overwhelmed U.S. officials, with so-called migrant caravans a relatively small contributor to the slowdown in border crossings. Consequent delays at official crossing points where U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents process thousands of commercial and personal vehicles every day have caused major problems for legitimate businesses. While current record levels of immigration will eventually drop off, the perennial challenge of securing the border and the national political fight over the issue will persist.
See Crossing Borders
But while some migrants will turn back and some will seek shelter in Mexico, the majority will eventually push on to the U.S. border and will even be joined by others — swelling the size of the caravan. Nongovernmental organizations will help by arranging bus rides, providing meals and leading the group on foot at times. As the caravan moves north, it is likely to break up as groups head toward major crossing points into the United States at Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Piedras Negras.
The caravans are contributing to a surge in illegal border crossings into the United States, which has experienced more illegal crossings from Mexico than it has in 12 years. To boost patrols in overwhelmed sectors, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reassigned hundreds of agents from high-traffic ports of entry, such as San Diego, and Laredo and El Paso in Texas. This in turn has slowed down the processing of legitimate border traffic.
The recent slowdown in processing times threatens the operations of businesses reliant on trade with Mexico. In El Paso, for example, wait times increased to two to three hours in early April 2019 compared with an average of about one hour in April 2015. At Otay Mesa, California, crossing was taking close to 4.5 hours in early April versus minimal wait times in November 2018. And California's San Ysidro crossing, just a few miles west of Otay Mesa, was shut down by protests and immigrants trying to force their way across. Laredo is also experiencing unusually high wait times of about four hours. No caravans, however, will arrive at the border in April. Moreover, the last time a caravan arrived on the border — when about 1,800 Central Americans reached Piedras Negras in early February — its arrival didn't cause a significant jump in legal border crossing times.
Migrant Caravans, a Small Part of the Overall Problem
While caravans have been drawing a great deal of attention in the national debate over immigration and border security, they are just one of a number of factors that have contributed to the crisis unfolding along the border with Mexico. Immigrants attempting to reach the United States by caravan make up a small percentage of total immigration from Mexico and Central America. The February Piedras Negras caravan, for example, accounted for little more than 2 percent of the 76,535 individuals that CBP agents apprehended that month trying to cross into the United States.
March 2019 in turn saw the highest levels of monthly reported apprehensions (103,492) at the border since April 2007, a 105 percent increase over March 2018. In March 2019, apprehensions were up 516 percent from March 2017, when migration along the border with Mexico was at record lows. From January to March 2019, CBP apprehended more Honduran and Guatemalan family units than in all of 2018 combined. So it is actually the overall increase in illegal immigration that is overwhelming the border, not the caravans themselves.
Seasonal Surges and CBP Staffing Woes
Immigration to the United States from Latin America is currently in the middle of its annual increase as seasonal workers attempt to make their way in. In a historical trend, border apprehensions — an indicator of overall illegal immigration patterns — tend to increase from February through May before dropping in June and July. So with or without caravans, the seasonal pressure on immigration authorities along the border should continue for the next one to two months.
Making it harder for the government to cope with the surge, and thus increasing legal crossing wait times, CBP has simultaneously been struggling with staffing shortages. In late March, CBP ordered the redeployment of 750 agents from El Paso and Laredo; Tucson, Arizona; and San Diego to address the surge along less-patrolled sections of the border. That number could go up to 2,000 agents during April, and CBP could request even more if it deems it necessary — further straining resources at busy ports of entry.
Less personnel means fewer open lanes, delays in processing vehicles and backlogs that compound the wait time — ultimately raising shipping costs for companies and individuals that rely on products from Mexico.
During 2018, similar but smaller redeployments saw shorter delays. CBP moved 100 agents from El Paso to the Arizona and California sectors in November, causing wait times to double to about an hour in El Paso. This reallocation of resources has closely corresponded to the increase in wait times during early April. The agents' absence is forcing ports of entry to limit their operations. For example, Laredo was operating only 10 of 12 commercial lanes on April 12, while Otay Mesa was using only eight of 10. Less personnel means fewer open lanes, delays in processing vehicles and backlogs that increase wait times — ultimately raising shipping costs for companies and individuals that rely on products from Mexico.
The apparent shortage of CBP agents is nothing new. According to a 2017 report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, CBP hasn't hit its hiring goals since 2014. It is also trying to fill 7,000 to 8,000 positions for new agents and officers to secure the border and ensure commerce continues without unreasonable delays. But nothing so far indicates the CBP will overcome its personnel shortages any time soon.
Faced with an influx of immigrants and a shortage of personnel to deal with them, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has chosen border security over the swift processing of commercial and private traffic from Mexico. While the president didn't go so far as to shut down the border as he threatened in early April, the redeploying of limited human resources away from entry points has still hampered trade.
The importance of border security to Trump, as evidenced by his insistence on a border wall, means the subject will remain a politically intractable issue. And while current record levels of immigration will eventually drop off, relieving some pressure on border security forces, the perennial challenges of an understaffed CBP and the national political fight over the border will continue at least through the next round of U.S. elections in 2020.
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Nothing to see here, keep moving , , ,
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/fuel-theft-cartel-issues-second-threat/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/first-quarter-sets-new-homicide-record/
Maybe the President's pressure on AMLO is having some effect:
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/temporary-migrant-employment-program/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=6f27aadc0f-MNT+apr22-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-6f27aadc0f-349632321
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/300000-migrants-have-entered-mexico/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=b96b04214b-MNT+apr24-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-b96b04214b-349632321
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/veracruz-mayor-gunned-down-and-killed/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=3131ff67b1-MNT+apr26-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-3131ff67b1-349632321
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/migrants-make-a-getaway-from-chiapas-shelter/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/pirates-attack-gulf-of-mexico-oil-rig/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/new-security-force-operational-today/
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https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/04/28/cartel-gunmen-use-armored-suv-in-clash-with-mexican-military-near-texas-border/amp/?fbclid=IwAR1P2GxW9M73S3Z0GoONQouiGDbVu8lYI7xp8h8MAO-l6Tn3ehZ0-Rojw20
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/lopez-obrador-threatens-to-identify-judges/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=fd1a01f4dd-MNT+may03-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-fd1a01f4dd-349632321
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"https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/lopez-obrador-threatens-to-identify-judges/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=fd1a01f4dd-MNT+may03-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-fd1a01f4dd-349632321"
without logging in
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Jalisco Governor Alfaro will head up judicial corruption fight.
López Obrador threatens to identify judges who free crime suspects
President backs governors' initiative to go on the offensive against corruption in the judicial branch
Friday, May 3, 2019
158shares
President López Obrador has threatened to go after judges who regularly free suspected criminals who go on to commit new crimes.
It would be a strategy similar to the one the president has adopted with respect to gas stations — identifying at his Monday press conference those that sell the most expensive fuel.
“We’re going to be respectful of the judicial branch, but we will also be vigilant; if there are judges that are arbitrarily freeing crime suspects . . . that’s over now. There will now be a who’s who of the justice system.”
Reminding his audience that one of the central aims of his administration is to stifle corruption, he said judges will now have to act within the bounds of the law.
As an example of what can go wrong, the president recounted the case of a suspected criminal who was freed and then proceeded to murder the police officer who had arrested him.
“. . . The executive branch must intervene. This cannot be allowed to keep happening.”
On Tuesday, the president and the National Conference of Governors agreed to conduct an offensive against corruption in the judicial branch.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro will head up an initiative to develop a methodology to review cases of judicial corruption that can then be applied in every state.
He said his state is emblematic of the problem, claiming that for years the judicial branch has been hijacked by branches of government and individuals.
The judicial branch has been controlled, it has had its masters and there has been ongoing manipulation of decisions, Alfaro said, “and that history has come to an end.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with the newspaper Milenio, constitutional lawyer Alberto Woolrich suggested that the president’s threat to identify suspect judges should not be seen as a threat against the judicial branch, but as a response to the public’s demand to purge institutions of corruption.
“People are fed up with so much corruption. I don’t see this as a threat. Instead, it’s a measure to curb corruption among judges.”
The lawyer highlighted the case of Raúl Salinas de Gortari, brother of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was arrested for money laundering but later freed by the Supreme Court.
“How can you put faith in the Supreme Court, in these robed lawyers that supposedly respect the constitution . . .”
The lawyer added that corrupt judges directly undermine Mexico’s sovereignty, saying that though he did not fully agree agree with the president’s ideals, the situation requires immediate action. People throughout the country are fed up with situation, he said.
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/05/bodyguard-for-journalist-hector-de.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR0tYd4B8AhgjpFFPXN8oIO1-i_wFENrEZnBzL0jgczHH9aT4-SynJuVzoM
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/interpol-red-notice-issued-for-ex-puebla-governor/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=a9c8bf3390-MNT+may08-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-a9c8bf3390-349632321
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/criminal-complaint-against-its-attorney-general/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=a9c8bf3390-MNT+may08-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-a9c8bf3390-349632321
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"López Obrador threatens to identify judges who free crime suspects"
Good to see President AMLO is serious about fighting corruption, the only good part of his agenda.
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Seriously tough to be both honest and alive in a world of "Plata o plomo" (Silver or lead).
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/05/sinaloa-farmer-runs-over-and-kills-his.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR3IkPMDBC3V79__SMP2d6iLJnIw3KDbgREbpy0Jp3Xqjb5CVT8KR4BnCOc
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second of the day
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/05/sinaloa-farmer-runs-over-and-kills-his.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR3IkPMDBC3V79__SMP2d6iLJnIw3KDbgREbpy0Jp3Xqjb5CVT8KR4BnCOc
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/prisons-on-alert-after-five-guards-killed/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=fdd9a1733c-MNT+may13-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-fdd9a1733c-349632321
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https://mailchi.mp/mexiconewsdaily.com/may-17-2019?e=add05987d5
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second post
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/can-trump-use-insurrection-act-stop-immigration/589690/?fbclid=IwAR0iYaxHkh1NBn8FLWDF3yhzeeiLiVRJrAqGgJ_Il6DaoxuD8eNGd4xDgSA
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/crime-gangs-watched-over-reynosa/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=dc54df3a0b-MNT+may20-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-dc54df3a0b-349632321
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS8kLsFys9c&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1Wh3YU006YxWBvX8LiZa2toxBS8Sj-GyIkA7H9D_Ht0lY5TiTHYEyNj2s
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https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/crime/2018/07/16/juarez-police-officer-arturo-lozano-mendez-charged-elpaso-sinaloa-cartel-federal-charges-drugs/789417002/?fbclid=IwAR3R_RFOp20MgGgazDLZOq4yySaGvUT-9amVHaZ1X44jKhlSRHGZ-naGbo0
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/world/juarez/2015/05/15/former-juarez-police-chief-julia-leyzaola-says-shooting/31255129/?fbclid=IwAR2PGBmL4UMiRanvxneVsgJeiuXIDEv9l1xeo34csJGa9POv9hXDhxllgYA
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/jalisco-cartel-attacks-police-in-michoacan/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=4641e9dbf0-MNT+may27-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-4641e9dbf0-349632321
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/five-federal-investigators-detained/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=4641e9dbf0-MNT+may27-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-4641e9dbf0-349632321
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/05/cjng-multiple-attacks-on-zamora.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR1wUPnWSOC_m9mrMlhFHOMkALzQ_JRlwaAhdV7WtJrqz1PRdqZCgd-88HM
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/so...il&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-43e9971dcc-349632321
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/women-children-arm-themselves-against-the-narcos/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=43e9971dcc-MNT+may29-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-43e9971dcc-349632321
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/trump-vows-rapid-high-tariffs-on-mexico-unless-illegal-immigration-ends-idUSKCN1T01GJ
------------------
But, but, but, as Larry Elder might say mocking liberals, I though Trump was going to have Mexico pay for the wall.
Check.
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all we would have to do is enforce immigration law
close some loopholes and this whole problem would go away
but no, we have stinking self serving shitheads for politicians
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A Tariff Threat Against Mexico Could Be Trump's Riskiest Yet
On May 30, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 5 percent tariff on all goods from Mexico starting June 10 unless the country takes "substantial" steps to stem the flow of migrants crossing the U.S. border. According to Trump's statement, that tariff would continue to rise by 5 percentage points on the first day of each following month until eventually capping off at 25 percent in October, where it would remain until Washington deems enough has been done to counter northbound migration flows from Central America.
The Big Picture
________________________________________
U.S. President Donald Trump has made immigration a clear priority as he gears up for his re-election in 2020. After shutting down the government in December in a bid to fund his U.S.-Mexico border wall, Trump is now threatening an unprecedented tariff hike on Mexican imports in the hopes of getting Mexico City to stem the increasing number of Central American migrants showing up at Washington's southern doorstep. However, combined with the president's ongoing disputes with other key U.S. trade partners, a full-blown trade war with Mexico could be the final straw that pushes the United States into a recession.
________________________________________
The U.S. and the Balance of PowerThe Importance of MexicoNorth America Unrivaled
What's the likelihood Trump will follow through?
Other than fewer migrants flowing through, it remains unclear what other criteria the United States would be use to judge Mexico. Following Trump's announcement, a White House official only noted that the criteria would be "ad hoc." Given this ambiguity, it's possible that Trump could back down from the full threat — using it instead as leverage to reach a modest agreement with Mexico that he could then declare as a victory. On the other hand, the president has also shown that he is willing to tolerate significant collateral damage in order to implement his immigration policy, as evidenced by the 35-day government shutdown earlier this year. Trump made a similar threat in April, in which he gave Mexico one year to halt migration flows before imposing tariffs on its exports.
But now, he's significantly turned up the heat with a new June 10 deadline — a nearly impossible timeline for Mexico to fully implement any kind of plan. There are rumors Trump made the threat in haste after hearing a report about an increase in migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Thus, it is possible that Trump is willing to make a quick withdrawal from the threat if Mexico can make modest concessions.
What's behind Trump's threat?
Securing the U.S.-Mexico border was a key pillar of Trump's 2016 campaign platform that ultimately ushered him to victory. But over the past two years, migrant crossings into the United States — largely from Central America — have risen to decade-high levels. In April alone, Customs and Border Protection officers arrested nearly 100,000 migrants crossing illegally, most of whom had families requesting asylum.
In addition to threatening Trump's campaign promise of a security crackdown on the southern border, this sudden influx of migrants has also strained the U.S. border security forces' ability to process and hold people awaiting removal or a hearing on asylum. And while the Mexican army and police forces are involved in operations to detain or deter migrant flows, the number of crossing points and corrupt security officers have hindered Mexico's ability to meaningfully stem the movement of people.
Does Trump have the power to impose such tariffs?
The short answer is possibly, though it'd be an unprecedented move and could be challenged by the courts. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) gives the U.S. President significant power to regulate aspects of global commerce in the event of a national emergency that is either wholly or partially international. And the White House has already declared a national emergency on its border with Mexico in an effort to redistribute the $6.7 billion in government funds towards Trump's wall and border security.
However, the IEEPA does not explicitly authorize the president to implement tariffs as a way to deal with a national emergency. Instead, it affords the power to "regulate" certain commercial activities with the country in question through foreign exchange transactions or the transfer of payments between banking institutions. The IEEPA has also never been used to implement tariffs against another country. In fact, the law was initially passed in 1977 as a way to limit some of the powers Congress previously delegated to the president in times of emergency.
Combined with Trump's ongoing disputes with other key U.S. trade partners, a full-blown trade war with Mexico could be the final straw that pushes the United States into a recession.
It can certainly be argued that using the IEEPA to implement tariffs is an expansive interpretation of the law. However, the U.S. judicial system does tend to defer to the president on issues of national security. Congress also still has the power to reverse national emergencies and block tariffs, though doing so would require a joint resolution signed into law, something that would demand significant bipartisan backing. And despite Trump's previous trade wars irking many members of his party, Republicans have yet to overturn a single tariff Trump has implemented. The extent to which the federal law can be used to implement tariffs has not been determined by U.S. federal courts, and would thus set an important precedent for U.S. foreign policy.
How will this affect USMCA approval?
Trump's tariff threats certainly risk sticking a pin in the process to approve the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on both sides. Mexico had submitted the agreement to its legislature for ratification on May 30. But Trump's threat — announced just hours later — now risks making the USMCA a sideshow. Even if President Trump fully removed the North American Free Trade Agreement to allow Mexico and the United States to instead deal on World Trade Organization terms, the average tariff that Mexican exporters would face would be less than five percent — which is where Trump's threatened move starts. And the full 25 percent tariff would be more than seven times higher.
Such a sizable tax hike would likely force Mexico City to consider delaying a full passing of USMCA until after this particular issue is resolved, just as it did earlier this year when it stalled the process until the United States removed steel and aluminum tariffs on Mexican products. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate had been blocking the agreement over the steel and aluminum tariffs as well, and will likely try to do the same should Trump follow through on imposing these new tariffs. That said, it's also possible Trump could use the threat of a trade war with Mexico as leverage against Congress to get USMCA approved.
How might Mexico respond to the threat?
Countries typically retaliate when a trade partner tacks on higher tariffs, hence the name "trade war." But for Mexico, a full retaliation will be difficult due to its sputtering economy, which has not seen positive Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for three of the last four quarters. Trump's announcement, unsurprisingly, has already jarred global markets, with the Mexican peso falling 3 percent. The tariffs risk pushing Mexico into an even deeper recession. And if Mexico responds by upping its own tariffs on U.S. goods, that would only make matters worse — limiting the extent to which Mexico is willing (or able) to match the United States tit-for-tat in a potential trade war.
Instead, Mexico could try a more targeted approach to minimize the blowback on its economy, such as imposing taxes on only agricultural goods. Still, the safest option may indeed be to appease Trump in some capacity and allow him to declare a victory of some sort in exchange for no tariffs at all. And indeed, Mexico appears to already be taking such a route, with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sending an emergency delegation to Washington on May 31.
What would be the economic toll for both countries?
The extent to which President Trump's threats hit the U.S. economy would depend on the level of Mexican retaliation, and whether or not the tariffs end up reaching the 25 percent cap in October. Compared with the other global tariff disputes Trump has waged so far, a trade war between the United States and Mexico would undoubtedly be the most damaging one yet. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. imports from Mexico are through intracompany trade, meaning goods can cross the border several times before becoming a finished product. This highlights the high degree of economic interconnectivity between the two countries.
In the worst-case scenario, both Mexico and the United States could both slap each other with 25 percent tariffs. Should such tariffs last for months, U.S. economic growth in the short-term could be hit by more than 1 percent of GDP and Mexico's could go well beyond 10 percent. But this extreme case is highly unlikely because it would almost certainly be met with backlash in Washington. Even a modest scenario of just 5 percent tariffs with comparable retaliation from Mexico could result in a roughly .25 percent drop in U.S. GDP, and an up to 5 percent drop in Mexico's GDP.
What are the implications for Trump's other trade wars?
Trump is threatening to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on a total of roughly $1 trillion in U.S. imports from Mexico. When adding up the potential impacts of Trump's threatened tariffs on almost all imports from Mexico and China as well as Japanese and European cars, he risks sending the United States into a recession — thus damaging his re-election hopes in 2020.
Waging a trade war against Mexico could serve as a lesson to China, Europe and Japan that even a quick deal capitulating to some of Trump's demands does not necessarily neutralize the threat of tariffs from the United States. It could very well prompt Beijing, for example, to harden its position amid its own trade negotiations with Washington — no longer able to trust Trump's promises that tariffs would be reduced long-term should China meet Washington demands.
What's the main takeaway?
While there's a chance Trump could actually implement the tariffs in full as a punishment for Mexico's failure to stem the northward flow of migrants, he may also be keeping them in reserve to spur the Mexican government to devote more forces to resolve the problem at hand.
A lot still depends on if — and to what extent — the president follows through on his threat. Trump's tariffs not only risk freezing the USMCA approval process, but plunging the United States and Mexico into recession. Though, in sending the Mexican economy into an even deeper tailspin, Trump risks making matters even worse on the U.S.-Mexico border by prompting even more desperate Mexican citizens to head north in search of work.
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Fcuk Mexico. We need to use every pressure point to make them comply.
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Agreed 100%.
I posted the Strat piece not because I agree but because it contains relevant info.
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Agreed 100%.
I posted the Strat piece not because I agree but because it contains relevant info.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/05/bienvenido-reality-cabron.html
THIS.
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Heh heh.
==========================
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/dhs-deploying-agents-to-guatemala
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https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2019/06/mexicos-president-meets-reality-and.html
Mexico's president meets reality, and doesn't like it
Mexican President Lopez Obrador is apparently peeved with US President Trump over the latter's economic retaliation against Mexico for not stemming the tide of illegal alien border-jumpers.
In a pointed letter released Thursday, López Obrador lashed out at Trump for what he described as the U.S. president's "turning the United States, overnight, from a country of brotherly love for immigrants from around the world, to a bolted space, where there's stigmatizing, mistreatment, abuse, persecution, and a denial of the right to justice to those who seek -- with sacrifice and hard work -- to live free from misery."
López Obrador said that “social problems are not solved with duties or coercive measures,” and alluded to the United States’ history as a nation of immigrants: “The Statue of Liberty is not an empty symbol.”
He added in the letter, which he provided a link to on his Twitter account, that in contrast to Trump's approach, Mexico is doing its part to avoid migration through its territory as much as possible, without violating human rights.
“People don’t leave their homelands for pleasure but out of necessity," the Mexican leader said.
There's more at the link.
That's a fine note of righteous indignation, to be sure. Unfortunately, it doesn't square with Lopez Obrador's far-left-wing credentials and previous pronouncements. For example:
“Soon, very soon, after the victory of our movement, we will defend migrants all over the American continent and the migrants of the world who, by necessity, must abandon their towns to find life in the United States,” Lopez Obrador said during a rally in the Mexican city of Culiacán ... “It’s a human right we will defend,” he added.
Lopez Obrador said on Thursday tackling illegal immigration is an issue chiefly for the United States and Central America to address ... Mexico would help to check the flow of migrants heading north, but that his country was no longer the main driver of the phenomenon ... "That is, this is a problem of the United States, or it's a problem of the Central American countries. It's not up to us Mexicans, no ... I just emphasize that migration flows of Mexicans to the United States are very low, a lot lower," he said. "The Mexican is no longer seeking work in the United States. The majority are inhabitants of our fellow Central American countries."
That doesn't sound like a man seriously trying to address the issue, does it?
American Thinker pointed out last year:
To be sure, AMLO is only saying out loud what every other Mexican president believed in his heart: that America is Mexico's "social safety net" and that it's up to the U.S. taxpayer to take care of Mexico's unemployable, destitute millions.
Unsaid by AMLO is the implication of a mass migration of Mexicans to the U.S. The not so secret dream of every Mexican government is that illegals flooding into America will eventually allow for a "return" of California and much of the American southwest to Mexico.
What makes this socialist different, however, is his novel argument that entering the U.S. illegally is actually a "human right." That's an opinion we could have a lot of fun with. One would assume that if it were a "human right" to illegally enter the U.S., it would then be a human right to enter Mexico – or any other country, for that matter.
Again, more at the link.
If the United States allowed unfettered, unrestricted access to aliens intent on crossing Canada's southern border, Canada would rightly protest as strongly as possible, and probably take the US to international courts, the United Nations, and any other avenue of action it could think of, to stem the tide. If the US were to do the same to Mexico (assuming sufficient numbers of the insane could be found that are willing to enter that criminal-violence-plagued nation), Mexico would protest equally strongly. Why, then is Lopez Obrador surprised to find a similar reaction from the US?
The stability of Mexico is dependent on one single thing: its access to the US market. That includes both production in Mexico that's exported north, and money sent home by its citizens in America (most of them here illegally), which amounts to a staggering $25-billion-plus (yes, that's "Billion" with a "B") every year. Without that access and that cash flow, the Mexican economy would collapse. That's the plain and simple truth - and that's what President Trump is now using as leverage.
If tariffs on Mexican imports don't work, President Trump can turn to the remittances sent to that country by people in the USA. That would hurt even more than tariffs. He can't tax them without a new law passed by Congress, which isn't going to happen while Democrats control the House. However, he can stop the flow altogether on national security grounds (for which, I submit, a mass invasion by illegal aliens, such as is now going on, could be more than sufficient grounds). That would mess up Mexico's economy almost overnight.
I hope, for the sake of his country, that Lopez Obrador gets the picture, straightens up and flies right. If he doesn't, Mexico is about to get squeezed . . . and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. If our positions were reversed, I'm sure it would try to do the same thing.
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/05/a-book-bomb-explodes-in-hands-of-morena.html?fbclid=IwAR3dInYKLILxhCG79Rx_PecWsT7uSwiGOQJx-HVZdr_B9p2Vzfwze-Dcm1c
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/05/leader-of-hacker-cartel-was-earning.html?fbclid=IwAR11um9Je7pYyCi1J_4iBxSO8SPbgzohcMsG3HlmFwev-OJBBHC_6pnq9vg#more
https://www.blog-del-narco.com.mx/2019/05/video-ejecutan-y-exhiben-hijo-de.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR2IbOrs5BlEejzJ5J-34OWFdgcdp1IoxIi5j8BnBDkSsaJhEkr2c4W6UvM
https://www.blog-del-narco.com.mx/2019/05/video-del-convoy-del-cjng-antes-de.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR17S6dS-z7jc2Xn6STAcxE2ozgKAyTYzJmBzZBy8Se6HfJN7PRFW63Yx3U
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https://tubitv.com/movies/357459/mexicos_bravest_man
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second post
https://www.propublica.org/article/allende-zetas-cartel-massacre-and-the-us-dea
https://www.propublica.org/article/dea-operation-played-hidden-role-in-the-disappearance-of-five-innocent-mexicans?fbclid=IwAR3M-bZOcEv0DUvVJtD-XkFaA6URVV4zBhDTRqtMBN5xtI_LY-P99rmiR3I
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On AMLO:
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/amlo-is-leading-country-to-disaster/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=7c8dd87113-MNT+june03-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-7c8dd87113-349632321
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/incompetent-bureaucrats-and-doomed-policies/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=7c8dd87113-MNT+june03-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-7c8dd87113-349632321
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https://www.conservativereview.com/news/mexican-government-admits-80-populated-territory-run-cartels-including-key-border-areas/?fbclid=IwAR3tD2kqyh3FQx0n4p9TWu9zK_nB0Ay1y8qP-2mnwGLdadUN1xjJotswQlQ
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https://www.conservativereview.com/news/mexican-government-admits-80-populated-territory-run-cartels-including-key-border-areas/?fbclid=IwAR3tD2kqyh3FQx0n4p9TWu9zK_nB0Ay1y8qP-2mnwGLdadUN1xjJotswQlQ
Too bad walls are immoral. You know, except for the gated communities wealthy and powerful leftists live in.
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In concert with above post pointing out 80% of narco mafia Mexico country , 80% of which under criminal control
Dan Horowitz suggests the Trump Mexico tariff if mis guided
partly because Mexico could not even if it really tried to, control the illegal influx
Dan clearly does not have the gift of gab (unlike Mark Levin) and he is too slow and prods along for too long but he does make good points. I only could take the time to listen to half this piece but in the first 5 to 10 minutes one can get the bottom line of his rationale and he makes good points:
https://omny.fm/shows/the-conservative-conscience-with-daniel-horowitz-1/why-ask-mexico-to-do-the-job-the-american-governme
I don't know if the tariff is helpful or not. Sadly even with Trump or worse, (because of him?) the illegal immigration situation is more out of control than ever.
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Mexico IS capable of stopping the flood of Central Americans and those of other countries among them at its southern border. Mexico IS capable of not giving bus rides to them.
The fundamental problem here is that the Dems in Congress block the necessary changes to our law.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/police-get-34-years-for-shooting-of-cia-agents/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=1f6de16da9-MNT+june19-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-1f6de16da9-349632321
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ISIS Jihadi on entering America through border:
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2019/06/isis-fighter-affirms-what-jw-exposed-years-ago-terrorists-enter-u-s-via-mexico/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=corruption_chronicles&fbclid=IwAR35MW3XfJr12rqLQu1Uig1qPa5wKrXcYOmCv9ZvPGihuiCEjQGgIpD3Qu0
ISIS Fighter Affirms What JW Exposed Years Ago—Terrorists Enter U.S. Via Mexico - Judicial Watch
Five years after a Judicial Watch investigation uncovered evidence of Islamic terrorists infiltrating the United States through Mexico, a captured ISIS fighter is providing details of a plot in which jihadists enter the country through the southern border to carry out an attack. The terrorists...
Looking to fundamentally transform America with undocumented voters:
Pelosi On Immigrants: ‘Violation Of Status Is Not A Reason For Deportation’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that a violation of immigration status should not be a reason to deport someone illegally living in the U.S.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/24/nancy-pelosi-violation-status-not-reason-deportation-illegal-immigrants/?utm_medium=email
Thank you President Trump:
Report: Trump’s Asylum Program With Mexico Is Adding Two Additional Cities
The Remain in Mexico program will add two Mexican border towns, the latest sign that Mexico is doing more to mitigate illegal immigration into the U.S.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/24/two-cities-added-remain-in-mexico/?utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR2D4zMIAbzbrxNKNijuB3V4ncjOcPOzWwLlmPpe0iMegn0rW48-4yXUSrE
Mexican law enforcement reality:
mexiconewsdaily.com
Four coordinated attacks against Jalisco police leave five dead
Five people were killed on Friday in four coordinated attacks against Jalisco state police in Tlajomulco and Zapopan. Two of the dead were police officers.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/attacks-against-jalisco-police-leave-five-dead/?fbclid=IwAR0NTGblbaKMohFje8mIBMKbtnIN5EZYwIfS1-MxlVZLX1GAdw0LgIdekI4
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/forces-have-no-orders-to-detain-migrants/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=78a9577c13-MNT+june26-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-78a9577c13-349632321
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/immigration-restructures-after-dismissing-500-agents/
https://www.theepochtimes.com/at-busy-southern-mexico-border-no-troops-to-be-found_2979272.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=7e19560317-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_27_03_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-7e19560317-239065853
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/06/us-mexico-border-deaths-lower-under-trump-than-obama-data-shows/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/tabasco-crime-warning-to-national-guard/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=5907a1598a-MNT+july-01-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-5907a1598a-349632321
https://cis.org/Arthur/Cartel-Members-Claim-Asylum-After-Fleeing-Gun-Battle?fbclid=IwAR3RVpvpUCLMqTGSYyy2AQaS7INofoTpu6npcCvlaiijtF6a0kBYGzpjLDg
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mayor-advises-citizens-to-avoid-public-spaces/
I've driven through this reservation. A very lonely place; some serious huevos on this sheriff and his men.
https://nypost.com/2019/06/29/meet-the-real-life-action-hero-taking-on-a-mexican-drug-cartel/?fbclid=IwAR3Bb1z3mxhLaU0bBtTzv0TVXYhE9iM4HQbqFGvFQKzTio_8UqN56cNI_sY
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Highlights
Mexican news outlet Milenio counted 2,249 murders nationwide in June, the highest monthly total since it began keeping its own tally in 2007 and the first time its numbers have ever surpassed 2,000 for a given month.
According to Milenio, the four Mexican states with the highest murder counts in the month were Jalisco with 206, Mexico with 202, Baja California with 181 and Guanajuato with 176, an unsurprising development for those who have been tracking the country's cartel dynamic.
The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion is playing either a direct or indirect role in nearly every part of the country experiencing elevated violence.
Editor's Note: The full version of this security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets, and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
To those who closely follow violence in Mexico, the reports can sometimes seem overwhelming: Two shot dead in Cancun; 15 murdered in the last 24 hours in Tijuana; 12 dismembered bodies found in trash bags in Jalisco, etc. The headlines come in day after day in a steady rhythm of violence, and the photos are worse than the headlines. Images of dismembered bodies or of "narcomantas," messages from cartels on banners, left next to severed human heads appear at least weekly.
Mexican news outlet Milenio on July 1 published its unofficial count of murders in Mexico for the first half of 2019. Milenio counted 2,249 murders in June alone, the highest monthly number the news outlet has recorded since it began keeping its own tally in 2007. In fact, this is the first time that Milenio's numbers have ever surpassed 2,000 for any given month.
According to Milenio, the four states with the highest murder counts in June were Jalisco with 206, Mexico with 202, Baja California with 181 and Guanajuato with 176. While these numbers are not official, they still serve as a good barometer by which to measure the state of the country's violence. As expected, the country appears well on its way to another record-setting year for murders.
The Big Picture
Viewed individually, daily acts of violence in Mexico can appear senseless — but the violence is not senseless when seen through the lens of the overarching dynamics driving it. While some violence in Mexico results from personal disputes or local grievances, the majority results either from competition between cartels or among a cartel's members. Since 2006, Stratfor has worked to analyze, understand and chronicle the cartel dynamics that have driven the preponderance of the violence in Mexico. We present our findings in our annual cartel report, which helps clients understand what is driving the violence in Mexico.
Based on the trends we outlined in our 2019 annual cartel forecast, the high levels of violence in Jalisco, Mexico State, Baja California and Guanajuato state come as no surprise.
One commonality we are observing across Mexico is that the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) is playing a role in nearly every part of the country experiencing elevated violence, either directly or indirectly.
Jalisco
While the CJNG is busy expanding into other parts of the country, it is also embroiled in a bloody battle in its home turf of Guadalajara. The CJNG is facing a challenge from a splinter of the cartel that calls itself "Nueva Plaza" composed mostly of former CJNG members and led by Carlos "El Cholo" Enrique Sanchez Martinez and Erick Valencia Salazar, aka "El 85."
Sanchez Martinez is a former high-ranking member of the CJNG who reportedly broke with the group after the CJNG's leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (aka "El Mencho"), ordered the execution of a Colombian financial operator. Valencia Salazar, one of the founders of the CJNG, believes Oseguera Cervantes informed on him to the police in 2012 so that he would be arrested and Oseguera Cervantes could assume sole control of the organization. Following his release from prison in December 2017, Valencia Salazar has sought revenge on Oseguera Cervantes. Though he is a cousin of Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, the wife of Oseguera Cervantes, in this case, his grudge is stronger than his familial loyalties.
While interpersonal conflicts may have sparked the CJNG-Nueva Plaza conflict, it appears the Sinaloa cartel's Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada has fueled the fighting by helping fund Nueva Plaza in an effort to weaken his CJNG rivals.
Mexico State
Most of the violence in Mexico state is as a result of a turf war between smaller-scale groups competing for control of retail drug sales in Mexico City, and of other criminal activity such as prostitution and extortion. Several such "narcomenudistas" are active in Mexico City, but the most powerful are the Union Tepito; the Cartel de Tlahuac; and the Anti-Union Tepito, or La U, a Union Tepito splinter. At the end of May, the leaders of both the Union Tepito and La U were arrested in police operations.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced June 27 that he will deploy national guard forces to Mexico City to help stem the growing crime problem there.
In recent weeks, Mexican authorities have claimed to have arrested several CJNG members in Mexico City and said they believe the organization is attempting to expand its presence in the region. The CJNG had been supporting Union Tepito but may now be attempting to assert itself directly in the Mexico City area in the wake of the leadership losses by Union Tepito and La U. This increase in direct CJNG activity is likely to result in more violence. On June 27, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that he will deploy national guard forces to Mexico City to help stem the growing crime problem.
Baja California
The vast majority of the violence in Baja California state is a result of the continuing struggle for control of the Tijuana smuggling plaza. The dominant cartel group in Tijuana is the Sinaloa cartel branch run by the Arzate Garcia brothers, Rene (aka "La Rana") and Alfonso (aka "El Aquiles"). The brothers are Tijuana traffickers who helped Sinaloa wrest control of the city from the Arellano Felix organization (aka the Tijuana cartel), and they are now fighting to retain their position, which includes control over street-level retail drug sales as well as cross-border smuggling routes.
Their main opposition is a remnant of the Tijuana cartel that sometimes refers to itself as the Cartel de Tijuana Nueva Generacion, an acknowledgment of its affiliation with the CJNG. The CJNG is involved in this dispute because it does not have a border crossing of its own, and so has to pay a "piso," or tribute, for contraband it smuggles through border crossings controlled by other groups. Such payments can reach tens of millions of dollars a year for a large drug trafficking organization, thus providing the group a large financial incentive to attempt to control drug-smuggling routes known as plazas — even if this means protracted fighting. Coincidentally, this is the same reason that the Sinaloa cartel began its efforts to wrest control of border plazas controlled by other groups in 2003 such as Nuevo Laredo, where it failed, and then later Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, where it succeeded.
With both of the local factions in Tijuana backed by powerful outside cartels with massive resources, the battle for control of the city may grind on until some unforeseen development impacts the dynamic.
Guanajuato
The Mexican government has launched an aggressive nationwide operation to stem fuel theft in the country, an operation that began with the deployment of federal security forces to the Salamanca refinery in Guanajuato. While these efforts have reduced the problem, they have done little to quell the violence in Guanajuato state.
Several cartels are active in Guanajuato, including remnants of Los Zetas, but the main catalyst of the violence there is the struggle between the CJNG and a regional organized crime group known as the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel led by Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz (aka "El Marro".) Yepez Ortiz and his organization are fighting hard to keep the CJNG at bay, but the CJNG keeps sending forces into the state. The result has been sustained bloodshed.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/lopez-obradors-presidency-could-be-a-game-changer/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=de28add3d9-MNT+july-24-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-de28add3d9-349632321
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second post
Mexico’s New National Guard: What It Is, and What It Isn’t
Will the agency make any difference in crime rates?
By
Allison Fedirka -
July 23, 2019
Every Mexican president over the past 20 years has tried to tackle the escalating violence and insecurity in the country. Some made more progress than others, but the problem has persisted. Now, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has developed his own strategy, at the heart of which is the new National Guard. It has been met with mixed reactions. Some have embraced the idea, while others believe it’s more of the same, offering little hope to substantially improve the security situation in the country.
What is certain, however, is that the Mexican government needs to do something to address the rising violence. 2018 set a new record high for homicide rates, and 2019 is already on track to break that record, with 14,600 homicides registered in the first half of this year alone, according to the National System of Public Security. Multiple polls reveal the level of fear that many Mexicans feel at the deteriorating conditions. A survey conducted by the Center for Social Studies and Public Opinion last October found that 62.9 percent of people felt unsafe where they lived. Similarly, a poll taken this month by the National Survey of Urban Public Security found that 73.9 percent of respondents felt unsafe. The violence has had an impact on businesses too, as companies are forced to boost security, relocate their facilities or shut down factories altogether because of the worsening security in the country. There’s also evidence that drug sales, extortion, kidnapping and violence are rising in parts of Mexico City that were previously considered safe.
Perceptions of Insecurity in Mexico
(click to enlarge)
But previous governments’ attempts to reduce the level of violence – through, for example, targeting cartel leaders and relying on the military – haven’t produced the desired results. So it’s understandable that the current administration has decided to take a different approach, starting with the creation of the National Guard, a security force Mexican authorities say will be a civilian agency. Prior to the guard’s inauguration on June 30, Mexico relied heavily on federal police, the army and navy to combat organized crime, primarily because local police were overwhelmed and have proved unreliable in dealing with organized crime. It was an ineffective system given that the army and navy are not structured or trained to handle domestic security problems. There were also concerns about excessive use of force, abuse of power and other human rights violations allegedly committed by the military during security operations. The Mexican public has, as a result, supported the creation of a civilian force that’s supposed to help lower crime rates. According to a poll conducted by research firm Parametria shortly after Lopez Obrador announced the project, 87 percent of Mexicans said they backed the National Guard.
The new security body is tasked with 20 functions, chief among them crime prevention and investigation. Surveillance, verification and inspection activities are also top priorities. Other functions include cybersecurity, intelligence and information gathering. The remaining functions cover organizational support and administrative roles. Salaries for National Guard members will be competitive (19,000 pesos, or $1,000 per month, according to Lopez Obrador) to discourage bribes and corruption. The National Guard will be composed of some 82,000 members (some of whom have already been deployed) covering 150 locations that have been identified as high risk. By 2021, it will grow to 111,000 members covering 266 locations nationwide.
Murders and National Guard Deployments by State
(click to enlarge)
There are questions, however, about its structure and independence as a civilian institution. The guard falls under the authority of the Secretariat of Civilian Security and Protection. But the second-level chain of command will also include army and navy personnel and defense ministry officials. Furthermore, 62 percent of the officers currently serving in the guard come from the army, 16 percent from the navy and only 22 percent from the federal police. The federal police will be eliminated within the next 18 months as it’s absorbed into the guard, while the army will continue to be one of the main sources of recruitment through 2021. Efforts to recruit civilians have produced poor results thus far. It seems the introduction of the National Guard may not be such a radical change after all.
The agency has thus faced public backlash. Many human rights groups and other community organizations see the changes it has ushered in as more cosmetic than structural. They contend that, because the military will play an important role in the guard, problems with abuse of power and excessive use of force will continue. The federal police have also voiced their concerns over having their own members recruited into the agency – thousands of officers even went on strike over the issue. The police are also worried about the lack of transparency over pay, uncertainty about seniority recognition and the treatment they received from military leadership. So far, the government has managed to alleviate some of the federal police’s concerns, but civilian groups insist more changes are needed.
However, the National Guard was structured this way for a reason. While efforts have been made to train more local police forces, they will not be ready for at least another three years, assuming everything goes according to plan. By recruiting from the military and federal police, the National Guard was able to launch earlier than it likely could have had it relied solely on civilian or local police forces. And despite the concerns of some civil society organizations, the army and navy are consistently ranked among the most-trusted institutions in Mexico. Recruiting from the military, therefore, could help increase the guard’s credibility among the public. In addition, the National Guard has received widespread political support. To create the agency, the government needed to pass certain constitutional changes, which required majority support in both houses of Congress and in at least 17 of 32 state legislatures. That the government was able to garner support from all 32 legislatures shows that a wide range of regions and politicians in Mexico back the National Guard.
(click to enlarge)
Public trust in and political backing for the National Guard, however, do not automatically mean the new organization will succeed. In the long term, drawing forces from the military isn’t sustainable, and the guard will have to start recruiting from the civilian population, especially if it is to win over the public’s confidence and prove its own utility. More important, the guard needs to produce results in terms of fighting crime and reducing violence (particularly with regard to the homicide rate). In a poll conducted this month, some 60.3 percent of Mexicans said they think the security situation is the same or worse than it was 12 months ago. And given that many of the people who are now part of the National Guard were also part of the federal police or military just a year ago, it’s questionable whether there will be any improvements in crime rates.
The National Guard will play a key role in efforts to improve security in Mexico, but it can’t be expected to single-handedly end violence in the country. It’s just one component of a much broader criminal justice system – one that many still see as extremely corrupt and unreliable. Meanwhile, the root causes of crime in Mexico, including socio-economic factors like unemployment and a lack of education, still need to be addressed. Lopez Obrador’s national security strategy deals with many of these issues, but it is in the early stages of development. The National Guard is just one piece of the puzzle, and the final judgement on whether or not it’s a success will have to wait until the other pieces are put into place.
Allison Fedirka is a senior analyst for Geopolitical Futures. In addition to writing analyses, she helps train new analysts, oversees the intellectual quality of analyst work and helps guide the forecasting process. Prior to joining Geopolitical Futures, Ms. Fedirka worked for Stratfor as a Latin America specialist and subsequently as the Latin America regional director. She lived in South America – primarily Argentina and Brazil – for more than seven years and, in addition to English, fluently speaks Spanish and Portuguese. Ms. Fedirka has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and international studies from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in international relations and affairs from the University of Belgrano, Argentina. Her thesis was on Brazil and Angola and south-south cooperation.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/asian-migrants-pay-smugglers-up-to-us-40000/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=eb737ac4d7-MNT+july-26-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-eb737ac4d7-349632321
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Is that cheaper than simply coming in through NYC and overstaying visas or as tourists who don't go home,
or paying for having children in our hospitals and finding way to get the whole family here?
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https://tohff.com/2019/07/28/bodyguards-in-mexico/?fbclid=IwAR2ddl3PKg2I0kyMew2cmYpVGu_vT8U97OPF4_W9KJIHZWEp5OZ_CKxJubE
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/garystoller/2018/02/21/mexico-where-more-americans-are-murdered-than-in-all-other-countries-combined/?fbclid=IwAR0yjGDFD3EhqINOdMgqAy_E1dQjnNsywC3A5IDYDJQqAVvdjBOX4qRzotk#23c9997cde37
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/community-police-involved-in-taking-down-gang-leader/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=a8da9b698a-MNT+aug-05-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-a8da9b698a-349632321
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https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/why-are-more-mexicans-being-killed-2019/?fbclid=IwAR0QpOkRg7eXlMutd3xHnTweWxrAA1Dj_gmoo98nEAqX2hQERlxFkczacgU
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/08/killing-of-20-avocado-bar-restaurant.html?spref=tw&m=1&fbclid=IwAR2b0nj6hJEFM3ET4mKWWmDSUaB35_ZMzL7mtLBTyb-B_udtI7vHrAQEjvI
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/police-find-guerrero-gang-leaders-war-tank/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=2151e775be-MNT+aug-07-2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-2151e775be-349632321
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https://globalecco.org/to-pay-or-not-to-pay-criminal-extortion-from-a-game-theory-perspective?fbclid=IwAR1_GRqsq2bG9PVJBpyNlaw6EHVdlBmyNeeoWjAfTmP4fbzKOeJfvA8DMJw
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Competing for control in Mexico. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a Mexican militia that controls large swaths of territory in Chiapas state, claimed that it extended its authority to 11 more zones in Chiapas, giving it a total of 43 areas of control. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador responded cautiously, saying the expansion was welcome so long as it was not violent. Domestic security is still a challenge for Mexico, as self-defense groups like the Zapatistas have created obstacles to restoring order in certain parts of the country. Chiapas is also a key part of the route for migrants heading north from Guatemala, and maintaining control of the area is critical to controlling the flow of migrants.
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https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/entire-police-forces-continue-arrested-mexico/?fbclid=IwAR1F1SelQPjGUDq_lZC870QiuFFB5t2qqP22pfP1p5wEe2ygxcvhvhsCkRk
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cJR9copFw
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/states-warn-feds-theyre-negotiating-with-criminal-gangs/
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https://www.apnews.com/9231894fd9bf451e92a6ba64e3c68dc2?fbclid=IwAR1CuzWgpK8yvuvibjwWLsQ3xSruVP7pIs_rfzjeJ9rR9ERZyfHO04csfQQ
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https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/entire-police-forces-continue-arrested-mexico/?fbclid=IwAR37BhCZtvMeUwEOoHmsDM5Irhs90u8WHc7b3zUqvVVNKfV9zSItb-nB-zs
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Violence between the Cartel del Noreste and state police has been surging in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas state over the past two weeks.
In response to these losses, CDN has threatened those that do business with security forces, prompting many gasoline stations to refuse to sell fuel to the authorities.
Given running gunbattles involving automatic weapons and grenades, attacks on security forces and threats against businesses, those with interests in Nuevo Laredo should be on heightened alert until the wave of brutality subsides.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
Violence between the Cartel del Noreste (CDN) and state police has been surging in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas state over the past two weeks. The incidents began Aug. 22, when officers with the Center for Analysis, Information and Studies of Tamaulipas (CAIET) erected a pop-up checkpoint just outside Nuevo Laredo on Federal Highway 2, which leads to Piedras Negras up the Rio Grande in Coahuila state. A convoy of heavily armed CDN gunmen with the cartel's "Tropa del Infierno" (Spanish for "Soldiers of Hell") enforcer unit attacked the checkpoint and wounded two police officers. They attacked the officers again as they took their wounded to the hospital, injuring a third officer.
The Big Picture
Since 2013, Mexico's cartels began a long process of balkanization, or splintering. Many organizations, such as the Gulf cartel, imploded and fragmented into several smaller, often competing factions. One of the three main clusters of smaller groups we track by geography centers on Tamaulipas state.
See Security Challenges in Latin America
On Aug. 23, Tropa del Infierno gunmen attacked the Santa Teresa Hotel in Nuevo Laredo, where CAIET officers were staying, killing one officer and wounding two others. On Aug. 27, 11 members of the enforcer unit were killed — four in an attack on a police station and seven in an attempted ambush on a CAIET patrol. On Aug. 28, family members of the CDN gunmen protested outside the Santa Teresa Hotel and threatened to burn vehicles in the parking lot. This incident shows the CDN's deep roots in the Nuevo Laredo community.
On Aug. 31, CAIET arrested four members of the CDN Tropa 202 enforcer unit in Ciudad Mier after a running gunbattle. Several others escaped into the countryside. On Sept. 2, four CDN gunmen were detained at a roadblock on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, and on Sept. 5, eight members of the Tropa del Infierno were killed in a firefight with CAIET officers; the dead included three female gunmen.
With the running gunbattles, those with interests in Nuevo Laredo should be on heightened alert until this wave of brutality subsides.
In response to these losses, CDN has openly threatened businesses that support the CAIET and the military in Nuevo Laredo. It specifically warned gasoline stations that sell fuel to security forces. According to media company Televisa, stations have refused to sell fuel to the authorities since Sept. 2. Televisa broadcast a conversation between a Tamaulipas state official and a gas station owner in which the owner refused to sell fuel even if additional security was provided for his station. This has forced the authorities to ship in fuel.
The CDN is a remnant of the Los Zetas cartel that is led by Juan Gerardo Trevino Chavez, also known as El Huevo; he is a member of the Trevino smuggling clan, which has a long history in Nuevo Laredo — and in the Los Zetas cartel. His uncles, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, aka Z-40, and Omar Trevino Morales, aka Z-42, were both former leaders of Los Zetas. The Trevinos are old-school Nuevo Laredo smugglers and criminals with deep ties to the community.
Conflict between the CDN and government forces isn't a new phenomenon. In the summer of 2018, violence between the two sides also surged after the ambush and assassination of the director of a prison in Nuevo Laredo. With the running gunbattles involving automatic weapons and grenades, attacks on security forces and threats against businesses, those with interests in Nuevo Laredo should be on heightened alert until this wave of brutality subsides.
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Not quite sure how the corpse had an erection , , ,
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9954708/el-chapo-kim-k-female-assassins-mexico-drugs/
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Not quite sure how the corpse had an erection , , ,
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9954708/el-chapo-kim-k-female-assassins-mexico-drugs/
I am not aware of rigor mortis working that way. Only "La China" appears to have some degree of weapons training, based on the photos in the article.
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Obviously a sensationalistic article, but hard to imagine that such women are not part of the mix.
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Obviously a sensationalistic article, but hard to imagine that such women are not part of the mix.
No doubt.
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on security
The Case for a Counterinsurgency Approach to Mexico's Cartel Wars
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
9 MINS READOct 1, 2019 | 10:00 GMT
Favio Gomez, brother of Servando Gomez, also known as
(MANUEL VELASQUEZ/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Favio Gomez, brother of Servando Gomez, also known as "La Tuta," is transported in Mexico City on Feb. 27, 2015, after his capture. Counterinsurgency tactics, rather than counterterrorism measures, might bring Mexico more success in battling its cartels.
Highlights
Mexico has not designated its cartels as terrorist organizations, but it uses many counterterrorism tools and tactics to fight them.
Such an approach has weakened many cartels, causing several to implode, but it has done little to enhance the government's legitimacy or address the issues that foster the rise of such groups.
Because cartels have grown strong due to corruption, incompetent governance, economic malaise, impunity and the absence of the rule of law, Mexico might require a holistic counterinsurgency approach that goes beyond military means to remedy the underlying issues that facilitate such criminality.
Just last week, I was chatting with someone on Twitter who stated his belief that Mexican drug cartels should be classified as "terrorists" because of their actions. It's an idea, however, that I have long opposed: Cartels' gratuitous violence notwithstanding, their actions do not really fit the definition of terrorism, which many broadly define as political violence directed toward civilians. To my mind, Mexican cartels have simply not yet emulated Colombia's Pablo Escobar and his Medellin Cartel sicarios and engaged in political violence.
The Big Picture
Geographic proximity to the United States has been both a blessing and a curse for Mexico. Easy access to the giant U.S. market and free trade agreements have fostered more manufacturing activity, jobs and foreign investment in the country. At the same time, Mexico's proximity to illicit U.S. markets has resulted in the rapid growth of extremely violent criminal enterprises. Crime and violence are taking a huge toll on citizens and placing heavy fetters on the Mexican economy. There are many profound factors underlying the rise of the powerful organized crime groups, which are responsible for the majority of Mexico's violence. But until Mexico can address these issues, its government will be unable to kill its way out of this situation, causing the people and the economy to suffer.
See The Importance of Mexico
Still, it dawned on me that — definitions aside — the Mexican government and its U.S. ally have pursued the "war" on cartels using many of the same tools that we normally associate with the "global war on terror." Mexican special operations forces routinely raid hideouts to capture or kill cartel leaders, as well as employ sophisticated intelligence tools to track or hack cartel communications devices and networks. In one February 2017 incident, Mexican marines poured fire from a helicopter armed with a minigun into a house in Tepic, Nayarit, killing a Beltran Leyva Organization leader and 11 of his henchmen. Widely circulated videos of the incident resembled something one would expect to see in an operation targeting the Islamic State rather than an anti-crime operation in the capital of a Mexican state.
I certainly don't fault the Mexican military for using military force against the cartels. Since the 1990s, the cartels have employed former soldiers armed with military-grade weapons in their enforcer units. But as we've seen in recent years, the military-based counterterrorism approach to combatting the cartels is not working. The government has captured or killed a long list of cartel leaders but failed to curb cartel violence. Indeed, 2019 is on track to be the most violent year ever in Mexico. Clearly, the Mexican government can't capture or kill its way out of its cartel problem. Instead, the road to solving the country's profound problems might lie along a different, more holistic, tack: a counterinsurgency model. Thinking of the cartels as criminal insurgents provides a valid blueprint for understanding the problem — as well as a road map for addressing it.
Mexico's Cartels Stage an Insurgency
The idea that Mexican cartels are criminal insurgents is not a revelation. In fact, Stratfor contributor John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker published an anthology in 2012 on the topic of Mexico's criminal insurgency for Small Wars Journal. As it is, the U.S. military defines insurgency as "the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region," in its counterinsurgency doctrinal document, Joint Publication 3-24. And while Mexican cartels may not be seeking to establish an alternative government like a typical political insurgency, they are seeking to nullify or challenge the political control of territory to further their criminal operations.
Insurgents thrive in insecure areas that lack capable, credible governance. There are historical, geographic and political factors that have challenged Mexico City's ability to govern and control parts of the country. Indeed, banditry, smuggling and other criminal activity have historically plagued ungoverned places such as the sparsely populated deserts and mountains of the country's north.
In some ways, it is only when it comes to end goals that the Islamic State and Mexican cartels differ: Whereas the jihadist group wants to control territory for political power, cartels wish to do so for profit.
Geography and terrain are important factors that enable an insurgency, and it is no coincidence that most successful insurgencies take advantage of rough terrain, such as mountains and deserts, to wage their operations. But even more important than the physical terrain is the human terrain, as insurgents who enjoy the support of the population tend to thrive, relying on locals for shelter, material support, recruits and even intelligence. Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong noted that favorable human terrain allows a guerrilla fighter "to move among the people as a fish moves in the sea," and leftist and jihadist theorists alike have stressed the need to obtain local backing in their insurgencies. The cartels use a complicated combination of largesse and fear to ensure the population stays on their side. Indeed, Mexico's Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera did not become a revered and respected cultural icon by mistake, but rather as the result of a carefully cultivated campaign. In the end, mere popular support couldn't protect Guzman from the massive international effort to capture him, but it certainly complicated authorities' efforts to locate him, allowing the cartel boss to remain freer for much longer than he would have otherwise.
In places like Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has conducted operations to destabilize areas in which it wants to operate by conducting targeted assassinations and engaging in efforts to influence or sway local leaders to its side. By offering "plata o plomo" (silver or lead), Mexican cartels operate in much the same way, seeking to tip the local population to their side, maintain their favorable standing or, at the very least, obtain locals' fearful acquiescence by demonstrating the government's powerlessness. In some ways, it is only when it comes to end goals that the Islamic State and Mexican cartels differ: Whereas the jihadist group wants to control territory for political power, cartels wish to do so for profit.
Taking a Holistic Approach
As history has repeatedly demonstrated — including recent history in the war against jihadism — counterinsurgency is difficult. This is especially so when locals view the forces conducting the counterinsurgency as outsiders. For insular communities in the Mexican mountains, federal troops are nearly as foreign as U.S. troops in Afghanistan. At its heart, counterinsurgency is really more an art than a science, meaning it requires a great deal of foresight, patience and cultural understanding. Unlike the current counterterrorism approach, a counterinsurgency approach would go beyond mere military force to utilize all the tools of the national, state and local governments, including their political, economic, educational, health, legal and developmental resources. Getting all of Mexico's conflicting political parties and state and local governments on board would present a challenge, but perhaps only measures that erode cartels' support base will cut such enterprises down to size.
As I have noted in the past, there is little difference in the geographic factors that influence the north and south banks of the Rio Grande. The vast majority of the drugs that flow north out of Tamaulipas pass through the Texas Rio Grande Valley, while most of the money that flows south ends up back in Tamaulipas. Indeed, the same criminal cartels that operate in Tamaulipas also operate in Texas, but there are worlds of difference in terms of how these groups operate depending on whether they're on the U.S. or Mexican side of the line. As has become abundantly clear, they are far more aggressive and violent in Mexico than they are in the United States. It all goes to show that corruption, incompetent governance, economic malaise, impunity and the absence of the rule of law have allowed cartels to thrive and engage in wanton violence in Mexico. In essence, these are the same factors that have permitted groups such as the Islamic State West African Province to spread in Nigeria, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin in northern Mali and other insurgent groups elsewhere.
This graph shows murder rates by year in Mexico.
Mexican governments have repeatedly tried to address the cartel problem through an institutional approach, focusing merely on reforming corrupt police agencies. The government of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is taking a similar path, creating a new Mexican National Guard and reviving the Secretariat of Public Security that his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, abolished. These new institutions, however, have done little to reduce the violence wracking Mexico because they are not holistic and cannot address the underlying issues facilitating the criminal insurgencies. Lopez Obrador the candidate noted that corruption was the No. 1 problem facing Mexico, but Lopez Obrador the president has succeeded in doing very little about the issue.
To be successful, a counterinsurgency campaign must weaken the insurgent forces while building the government's legitimacy. Mexico's counterterrorism approach against the cartels has weakened many of the groups, causing several to implode, but it has done little to stem corruption or enhance the government's legitimacy. This, in turn, has allowed criminals to take advantage of the vacuum of authority and governance.
Joint Publication 3-24 notes that "the [host nation] government generally needs some level of legitimacy among the population to retain the confidence of the populace and an acknowledgment of governing power." The Mexican government has not been able to build legitimacy in the eyes of the population, which has very little confidence in central authorities' ability to govern. Until Mexico City can begin to make progress on the ground in governing, battling corruption, ending impunity and winning the trust and confidence of the local population, cartels will continue to thrive — no matter how many criminal leaders the military kills or how many new security institutions the state drafts into the fight.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/supreme-court-justice-issues-surprise-resignation/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/is-the-military-tiring-of-turning-the-other-cheek/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/guerrero-town-imposes-curfew-in-preparation-for-a-new-cartel-invasion/
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence-sinaloa/mexican-security-forces-free-el-chapos-son-to-protect-lives-minister-idUSKBN1WX0BE?utm_source=GPF+-+Paid+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5fa69f7891-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_18_04_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_72b76c0285-5fa69f7891-247660329
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second post
An Eruption of Violence Forces Mexican Security Forces to Release El Chapo's Son
3 MINS READOct 18, 2019 | 15:08 GMT
Bullet-ridden and wrecked vehicles in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan, Mexico, on Oct. 17, 2019.
(RASHIDE FRIAS/AFP via Getty Images)
Bullet-ridden and wrecked vehicles in the Sinaloa-state capital of Culiacan, Mexico, on Oct. 17, 2019.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
Mexican forces captured Ovidio Guzman Lopez, a son of Sinaloa cartel founder Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan on Oct. 17. After the arrest, cartel gunmen went on the offensive throughout the city, blocking roads with burning trucks and attacking security forces with heavy weapons, including M2 machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Large portions of the city were engulfed in the violence. The gunmen also stormed a military housing complex and kidnapped a number of soldiers as well as a group of wives and children of soldiers. This forced the government to conduct a prisoner swap, and they released Guzman Lopez in exchange for the soldiers and their families.
This incident demonstrated the military might of the Sinaloa cartel in its core area of operations. It was able to rapidly mobilize hundreds of heavily armed gunmen, who poured into Culiacan from the surrounding hills in a wide variety of vehicles. Among them were large farm trucks with heavy machine guns mounted in their beds and clones of military and Telmex company trucks. These cloned vehicles may provide some clues on one way the cartel moves drugs, personnel and weapons around Sinaloa.
The government reported that Guzman Lopez was captured by accident.
The government reported that Guzman Lopez was captured by accident. It said a National Guard patrol was fired at from a house in Culiacan's Three Rivers section, and when the soldiers stormed the house, they captured four people, including Guzman Lopez. This account rings true because of the unpreparedness of the authorities for the blowback from the operation. Also, in past cases in which high-value cartel leaders were captured, they were quickly whisked out of the area, rather than detained for hours near the place of capture where there would be the threat of a rescue operation.
This case also illustrates how the government's approach to battling the cartels hasn't changed, despite the campaign promises of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Mexican cartels are more than just street gangs; they are well organized and heavily armed. And, as seen in this incident, they can challenge the government's ability to govern. They are a criminal insurgency, and if the government wants to truly mitigate the threat they pose, it needs to adopt a more holistic counterinsurgency approach rather than rely solely on military force.
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third post
The Case for a Counterinsurgency Approach to Mexico's Cartel Wars
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
9 MINS READOct 1, 2019 | 10:00 GMT
Favio Gomez, brother of Servando Gomez, also known as
(MANUEL VELASQUEZ/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Favio Gomez, brother of Servando Gomez, also known as "La Tuta," is transported in Mexico City on Feb. 27, 2015, after his capture. Counterinsurgency tactics, rather than counterterrorism measures, might bring Mexico more success in battling its cartels.
Highlights
Mexico has not designated its cartels as terrorist organizations, but it uses many counterterrorism tools and tactics to fight them.
Such an approach has weakened many cartels, causing several to implode, but it has done little to enhance the government's legitimacy or address the issues that foster the rise of such groups.
Because cartels have grown strong due to corruption, incompetent governance, economic malaise, impunity and the absence of the rule of law, Mexico might require a holistic counterinsurgency approach that goes beyond military means to remedy the underlying issues that facilitate such criminality.
Just last week, I was chatting with someone on Twitter who stated his belief that Mexican drug cartels should be classified as "terrorists" because of their actions. It's an idea, however, that I have long opposed: Cartels' gratuitous violence notwithstanding, their actions do not really fit the definition of terrorism, which many broadly define as political violence directed toward civilians. To my mind, Mexican cartels have simply not yet emulated Colombia's Pablo Escobar and his Medellin Cartel sicarios and engaged in political violence.
The Big Picture
Geographic proximity to the United States has been both a blessing and a curse for Mexico. Easy access to the giant U.S. market and free trade agreements have fostered more manufacturing activity, jobs and foreign investment in the country. At the same time, Mexico's proximity to illicit U.S. markets has resulted in the rapid growth of extremely violent criminal enterprises. Crime and violence are taking a huge toll on citizens and placing heavy fetters on the Mexican economy. There are many profound factors underlying the rise of the powerful organized crime groups, which are responsible for the majority of Mexico's violence. But until Mexico can address these issues, its government will be unable to kill its way out of this situation, causing the people and the economy to suffer.
Still, it dawned on me that — definitions aside — the Mexican government and its U.S. ally have pursued the "war" on cartels using many of the same tools that we normally associate with the "global war on terror." Mexican special operations forces routinely raid hideouts to capture or kill cartel leaders, as well as employ sophisticated intelligence tools to track or hack cartel communications devices and networks. In one February 2017 incident, Mexican marines poured fire from a helicopter armed with a minigun into a house in Tepic, Nayarit, killing a Beltran Leyva Organization leader and 11 of his henchmen. Widely circulated videos of the incident resembled something one would expect to see in an operation targeting the Islamic State rather than an anti-crime operation in the capital of a Mexican state.
I certainly don't fault the Mexican military for using military force against the cartels. Since the 1990s, the cartels have employed former soldiers armed with military-grade weapons in their enforcer units. But as we've seen in recent years, the military-based counterterrorism approach to combatting the cartels is not working. The government has captured or killed a long list of cartel leaders but failed to curb cartel violence. Indeed, 2019 is on track to be the most violent year ever in Mexico. Clearly, the Mexican government can't capture or kill its way out of its cartel problem. Instead, the road to solving the country's profound problems might lie along a different, more holistic, tack: a counterinsurgency model. Thinking of the cartels as criminal insurgents provides a valid blueprint for understanding the problem — as well as a road map for addressing it.
Mexico's Cartels Stage an Insurgency
The idea that Mexican cartels are criminal insurgents is not a revelation. In fact, Stratfor contributor John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker published an anthology in 2012 on the topic of Mexico's criminal insurgency for Small Wars Journal. As it is, the U.S. military defines insurgency as "the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region," in its counterinsurgency doctrinal document, Joint Publication 3-24. And while Mexican cartels may not be seeking to establish an alternative government like a typical political insurgency, they are seeking to nullify or challenge the political control of territory to further their criminal operations.
Insurgents thrive in insecure areas that lack capable, credible governance. There are historical, geographic and political factors that have challenged Mexico City's ability to govern and control parts of the country. Indeed, banditry, smuggling and other criminal activity have historically plagued ungoverned places such as the sparsely populated deserts and mountains of the country's north.
In some ways, it is only when it comes to end goals that the Islamic State and Mexican cartels differ: Whereas the jihadist group wants to control territory for political power, cartels wish to do so for profit.
Geography and terrain are important factors that enable an insurgency, and it is no coincidence that most successful insurgencies take advantage of rough terrain, such as mountains and deserts, to wage their operations. But even more important than the physical terrain is the human terrain, as insurgents who enjoy the support of the population tend to thrive, relying on locals for shelter, material support, recruits and even intelligence. Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong noted that favorable human terrain allows a guerrilla fighter "to move among the people as a fish moves in the sea," and leftist and jihadist theorists alike have stressed the need to obtain local backing in their insurgencies. The cartels use a complicated combination of largesse and fear to ensure the population stays on their side. Indeed, Mexico's Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera did not become a revered and respected cultural icon by mistake, but rather as the result of a carefully cultivated campaign. In the end, mere popular support couldn't protect Guzman from the massive international effort to capture him, but it certainly complicated authorities' efforts to locate him, allowing the cartel boss to remain freer for much longer than he would have otherwise.
In places like Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has conducted operations to destabilize areas in which it wants to operate by conducting targeted assassinations and engaging in efforts to influence or sway local leaders to its side. By offering "plata o plomo" (silver or lead), Mexican cartels operate in much the same way, seeking to tip the local population to their side, maintain their favorable standing or, at the very least, obtain locals' fearful acquiescence by demonstrating the government's powerlessness. In some ways, it is only when it comes to end goals that the Islamic State and Mexican cartels differ: Whereas the jihadist group wants to control territory for political power, cartels wish to do so for profit.
Taking a Holistic Approach
As history has repeatedly demonstrated — including recent history in the war against jihadism — counterinsurgency is difficult. This is especially so when locals view the forces conducting the counterinsurgency as outsiders. For insular communities in the Mexican mountains, federal troops are nearly as foreign as U.S. troops in Afghanistan. At its heart, counterinsurgency is really more an art than a science, meaning it requires a great deal of foresight, patience and cultural understanding. Unlike the current counterterrorism approach, a counterinsurgency approach would go beyond mere military force to utilize all the tools of the national, state and local governments, including their political, economic, educational, health, legal and developmental resources. Getting all of Mexico's conflicting political parties and state and local governments on board would present a challenge, but perhaps only measures that erode cartels' support base will cut such enterprises down to size.
As I have noted in the past, there is little difference in the geographic factors that influence the north and south banks of the Rio Grande. The vast majority of the drugs that flow north out of Tamaulipas pass through the Texas Rio Grande Valley, while most of the money that flows south ends up back in Tamaulipas. Indeed, the same criminal cartels that operate in Tamaulipas also operate in Texas, but there are worlds of difference in terms of how these groups operate depending on whether they're on the U.S. or Mexican side of the line. As has become abundantly clear, they are far more aggressive and violent in Mexico than they are in the United States. It all goes to show that corruption, incompetent governance, economic malaise, impunity and the absence of the rule of law have allowed cartels to thrive and engage in wanton violence in Mexico. In essence, these are the same factors that have permitted groups such as the Islamic State West African Province to spread in Nigeria, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin in northern Mali and other insurgent groups elsewhere.
This graph shows murder rates by year in Mexico.
Mexican governments have repeatedly tried to address the cartel problem through an institutional approach, focusing merely on reforming corrupt police agencies. The government of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is taking a similar path, creating a new Mexican National Guard and reviving the Secretariat of Public Security that his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, abolished. These new institutions, however, have done little to reduce the violence wracking Mexico because they are not holistic and cannot address the underlying issues facilitating the criminal insurgencies. Lopez Obrador the candidate noted that corruption was the No. 1 problem facing Mexico, but Lopez Obrador the president has succeeded in doing very little about the issue.
To be successful, a counterinsurgency campaign must weaken the insurgent forces while building the government's legitimacy. Mexico's counterterrorism approach against the cartels has weakened many of the groups, causing several to implode, but it has done little to stem corruption or enhance the government's legitimacy. This, in turn, has allowed criminals to take advantage of the vacuum of authority and governance.
Joint Publication 3-24 notes that "the [host nation] government generally needs some level of legitimacy among the population to retain the confidence of the populace and an acknowledgment of governing power." The Mexican government has not been able to build legitimacy in the eyes of the population, which has very little confidence in central authorities' ability to govern. Until Mexico City can begin to make progress on the ground in governing, battling corruption, ending impunity and winning the trust and confidence of the local population, cartels will continue to thrive — no matter how many criminal leaders the military kills or how many new security institutions the state drafts into the fight.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/sinaloa-cartel-sows-terror-in-culiacan/
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second post
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/cartel-threatened-michoacan-police/
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Mexican Cartel Rules City After Gunbattle
Operation to free Ovidio Guzmán was unprecedented in scope and sophistication
By David Luhnow,
José de Cordoba and
Santiago Pérez
Updated Oct. 18, 2019 7:04 pm ET
MEXICO CITY—A son of the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is captured. Cartel gunmen respond with a vicious attack on soldiers and civilians across a major Mexican city, leaving at least eight people dead and 16 wounded. The government gives in and releases the son, a top figure in the cartel.
One of the most violent and harrowing days in Mexico’s long fight against drug cartels unfolded late Thursday as members of the Sinaloa cartel wreaked havoc across Culiacán, a modern, middle-class city of around 800,000 residents, in response to what appeared to be a botched attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzmán.
Heavily-armed gunmen riding in convoys engaged in more than 70 separate firefights with Mexican security forces, set fires to vehicles, shot at government offices and engineered a jailbreak that freed 55 prisoners, with six recaptured, officials said. By nightfall, it was clear that the cartel was in charge of the city.
Mexican cartels have a history of blocking streets with burned-out cars to protect their bosses and of going on rampages when their leaders are captured by authorities. But Thursday’s events were unprecedented in their scope and sophistication, showing that the Sinaloa cartel is alive and well despite the absence of its legendary leader, who is now serving a life prison sentence.
The incident stunned many in Mexico and raised pressure on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to make headway against the country’s relentless cartel-fueled violence. On Friday, he defended the decision to release the younger Mr. Guzmán.
“The situation became very difficult. Many citizens were at risk,” the president said at his daily news conference. “I agreed with that.”
Cartel gunmen had also kidnapped eight army soldiers and an officer, said Mexico’s Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval. They were released after the drug lord was freed.
Schools remained closed in Culiacán on Friday, as did many businesses.
Mr. Guzmán, who is only in his late 20s, has emerged as a top figure in the cartel along with his brothers Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo following the arrest and extradition of their father in 2017.
The incident was the third major gun battle of the week. On Monday, at least 13 state police in Michoacán state were massacred by suspected gunmen from the country’s powerful Jalisco cartel. A day later, one soldier and 14 alleged cartel gunmen died in a shootout in southern Guerrero state.
The violence, along with widespread extortion of businesses by organized crime, is one factor in Mexico’s economic stagnation. The economy has failed to grow so far this year. A survey by Mexico’s central bank found that violence and political uncertainty are the top two obstacles to economic growth cited by economists.
The administration’s backing down to the cartel’s offensive was sharply criticized by many ordinary Mexicans and security analysts, who challenged Mr. López Obrador’s policy of using force only as a last resort in an attempt to pacify one of the world’s most violent nations. He has called the policy “hugs, not bullets,” promising to focus on attacking poverty rather than cartels.
Murders in Mexico are on pace for a record-high 37,000 this year, according to the country’s national statistics agency. The U.S., which has nearly three times Mexico’s population, has about 15,000 murders a year, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Security analysts said the Culiacán incident was a public-relations disaster for the government, which looked weak in the face of cartel firepower.
“Lopez Obrador was confident his call for peace and love—and not going after narcos—would lower violence,” said Raúl Benitez, an analyst at the Autonomous University of Mexico. Instead, he said the president has given free rein to gangs. “It shows the peace-and-love strategy is not working.”
Adding to the sense of impunity, a lawyer representing the Guzmán family held a press conference in Mexico City on Friday to thank Mr. López Obrador for freeing Mr. Guzmán.
“The calculus the president made was that a single Mexican life is worth more than all the violence that was, as they say in music, reaching a crescendo,” attorney Juan Pablo Badillo said, adding that “we have no idea what would have happened” if the drug lord hadn’t been released.
Mr. Sandoval said Friday that a unit of Mexico’s National Guard had located Ovidio Guzmán, but acted hastily and arrived at a safe house without a warrant. While they were waiting for it, cartel gunmen allegedly opened fire. Security forces captured Mr. Guzmán, officials said, but then found themselves surrounded by cartel gunmen who arrived as backup.
Within minutes of Mr. Guzmán’s capture, hundreds of cartel gunmen sprang into action. Convoys of SUVs and pickups filled the city streets. Gunmen wore bulletproof vests and toted assault rifles, and at least two had machine guns, including an intimidating Browning M2 set up on the back of a light truck, according to security experts who analyzed video footage of the events.
Gunmen also began firing on army barracks where the family members of soldiers lived, Mr. Sandoval said. One unconfirmed report said gang members had hijacked loaded fuel trucks and parked them near the barracks, threatening to blow them up.
“The criminal organization’s ability to call on its members and power of response was underestimated,” said Mr. Sandoval.
Mexican soldiers patrol near the government palace in Culiacán on Friday. Photo: alfredo estrella/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mobsters sprayed bullets in front of key government buildings and gas stations, torching cars and sending plumes of smoke over the Culiacán skyline. It gave the impression of a civil war, sparking panic among the population, said Eduardo Guerrero, a former top Mexican security official.
Between 100 and 150 gunmen surrounded the area near the house where Mr. Guzmán was hiding out, outnumbering some 70 to 80 troops. Another 150 or 200 cartel members were deployed in various parts of the city to create havoc, Mr. Guerrero estimates.
Another armed commando staged a parallel raid, taking advantage of the chaos spreading across Culiacán to free more than 50 cartel members from a nearby prison. Security guards offered no resistance.
“They were more powerful and showed tactical supremacy. The government didn’t expect a reaction in such scale,” said Guillermo Valdés, Mexico’s former intelligence chief. “As soon as some 300 hit men came out, there was no capacity to counter them.”
Mexico’s powerful drug cartels are likely to take note of the Sinaloa cartel’s use of military power and tactics in freeing Mr. Guzmán, and emulate it, said Mike Vigil, a former head of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who has also served in Mexico.
“Releasing Ovidio sends a vivid message to criminal cartels that if a group’s leader is captured, all you have to do is go into a town, commit wholesale violence, and the government will release him,” he said.
Mr. López Obrador campaigned on ending Mexico’s drug war. Since 2006, as cartels gained increasing power, successive presidents have used the armed forces to kill or capture cartel leaders and break up powerful gangs.
The strategy reduced the clout of the largest cartels, but it also led to growing criminal violence as cartels splintered into rival gangs and fought each other for control of drug-trafficking routes and territory. Hundreds of thousands have died in the carnage.
Mr. López Obrador said his government would no longer focus on capturing cartel leaders but work on alleviating poverty. “What happened yesterday was lamentable, but in no way does it mean our strategy has failed,” he told reporters during his morning news conference.
The president is also relying on the force of his personality to tamp down crime, calling on gang members to think of their mothers.
“We’re calling on criminals to tone it down, that we all start to behave better. To hell with criminals. Fuchi, guacala,” he said, using colloquial terms that mean “gross, yuck.”
Thursday, as word of the battles in Culiacán spread on social media, the phrase #Fuchi/guacala was trending on Twitter.
—Anthony Harrup and Robbie Whelan contributed to this article.
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com, José de Cordoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com and Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com
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second post
https://time.com/5705358/sinaloa-cartel-mexico-culiacan/?fbclid=IwAR2EltepvGFg-DkLuZP6olJemaM8J-AAVDR8HaOMwaZpT-9bjzhZbZnikkU
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coastal-tourist-destinations-among-most-violent-locations/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/critical-speech-reveals-growing-rift-between-amlo-military/
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/05/mexico-declines-president-trumps-offer-for-war-against-cartels/
"During his conference, Lopez Obrador said there would be no impunity, but war was not the answer. Lopez Obrador claimed in the past that his government will not fight drug cartels with violence, but through economic opportunities and social programs."
Didn't we bring down Pablo Escobar by offering all his soldiers jobs ?
:roll:
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I've no idea as to the validity of the following. I do know that the Mormons in Mexico hold to hard line beliefs no longer held by the American Mormons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIyaIHsJbc&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR01a2drfy_-8H5rB1vCxejXAxkudSKjbO70Ef8d9dLMQxYBsf5NZnJwTFg
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https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/06/its-time-for-the-united-states-to-wage-war-on-mexican-drug-cartels/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members&utm_content=20191106213905
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BojXVi3el-g&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1NgSQDtVvVGqVU2I2FNIiu479XqIoq4XHHgBIsHC5KQINvCFB3zPwIXyE
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/videos/mexican-drug-cartels-how-far-is-their-reach-chris-farrell/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7662587/Mexican-police-officer-arrested-El-Chapos-son-assassinated-hail-bullets.html
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For better privacy:
https://www.judicialwatch.org/videos/mexican-drug-cartels-how-far-is-their-reach-chris-farrell/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7662587/Mexican-police-officer-arrested-El-Chapos-son-assassinated-hail-bullets.html
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Thank you!
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Thank you!
You are welcome. When you just cut and paste from emailed articles, you link everyone that clicks on the link to your email and associated information.
https://whatismyipaddress.com/
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Will see if I can learn to apply this :-D
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Another one on this:
https://dailycaller.com/2019/11/08/cop-arrested-el-chapo-son-shot/?fbclid=IwAR3N-rjiBrdpS-blHfnoKDB2MtCxIuw8NKFIns1eo3sPrBGPsL0WcIGWZ-4
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looking for jobs:
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/el-chapos-cartel-puts-show-20860240
This will not happen in the US
(at least till Dems get control of everything and send armored vehicles to kill off the magas.....)
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49984987?ns_source=facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_campaign=bbcnews&fbclid=IwAR1_sQh6ylQxMF3c3eCtafQUJ2Bq6Qurkzkhvwbc5ZyVeGIwEJyVJZtUH6w
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HIGHLIGHTS
The long and complex relationship between the United States and Mexico has left the Mexicans far more sensitive to what they perceive as U.S. infringement on their sovereignty.
Many Mexicans view U.S. President Donald Trump's actions as offensive, patronizing and motivated by his 2020 election ambitions.
Merely labeling a few of the larger groups such as the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa cartel as terrorist organizations will not be helpful in meaningfully countering all the smaller groups.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
In a radio interview that aired on Nov. 26, U.S. President Donald Trump told former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that he intends to designate Mexican cartels as international terrorist entities because of their role in human and drug trafficking. The statement was met with widespread condemnation in Mexico, where both the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the public are seriously opposed to the move. Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said in a Nov. 25 interview on the proposal that he didn't expect the United States to follow through on the idea.
The situation in Mexico is quite different from that in Colombia during the early 1990s when Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel were designated as narcoterrorists. Both the Colombian government and population supported the designation and the U.S. assistance. However, the long and complex relationship between the United States and Mexico has left the Mexicans far more sensitive to what they perceive as U.S. infringement on their sovereignty. Many Mexicans viewed Trump's threat to send U.S. troops to Mexico in the wake of the Nov. 4 LeBaron slayings as offensive, patronizing and motivated by his 2020 election ambitions. Any decision to designate the Mexican cartels as international terrorist organizations is seen in much the same light.
The harsh reality is that economics dictate that the flow of contraband across the U.S.-Mexico border — drugs going north and cash and guns flowing south — will never end as long as there is a huge market in the United States for illegal drugs.
From a practical perspective, the U.S. government has long been involved in supporting Mexico's military efforts against the cartels, and it has provided training, equipment, assistance and intelligence. The relationship is particularly close with the Mexican marines, who are involved in most operations targeting high-value cartel figures. The Mexicans have been able to either capture or kill a long list of major cartel figures. Such operations do weaken and fragment the cartels, but they do very little to address the underlying problems — corruption, impunity and a vacuum of authority — that allow them to operate the way they do in Mexico.
The harsh reality is that economics dictate that the flow of contraband across the U.S.-Mexico border — drugs going north and cash and guns flowing south — will never end as long as there is a huge market in the United States for illegal drugs. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the same cartels operate on both sides of the border, but they are far more restrained in the United States. Therefore, if Mexico can make progress in addressing corruption and related problems, it can regain the trust of the public and take steps to constrain the cartels so they behave as they do in the United States. Obviously, given the violent behavior of the cartels, the government of Mexico must continue to use military force against them so it will be able to address these underlying weaknesses. However, force alone will not be able to combat those problems.
Finally, there is a real practical difficulty in designating Mexican cartels as international terrorist organizations. The cartel landscape is far different from what it was 20 years ago, and there are an array of distinct and independent groups. For example, the Gulf cartel has completely imploded and turned into a host of smaller local criminal groups, including Los Zetas, which has splintered into at least a half-dozen competing factions. Merely labeling a few of the larger groups such as the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa cartel as terrorist organizations will not be helpful in meaningfully countering all the smaller groups.
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FCUK Mexico's hurt feelings.
HIGHLIGHTS
The long and complex relationship between the United States and Mexico has left the Mexicans far more sensitive to what they perceive as U.S. infringement on their sovereignty.
Many Mexicans view U.S. President Donald Trump's actions as offensive, patronizing and motivated by his 2020 election ambitions.
Merely labeling a few of the larger groups such as the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa cartel as terrorist organizations will not be helpful in meaningfully countering all the smaller groups.
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
In a radio interview that aired on Nov. 26, U.S. President Donald Trump told former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that he intends to designate Mexican cartels as international terrorist entities because of their role in human and drug trafficking. The statement was met with widespread condemnation in Mexico, where both the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the public are seriously opposed to the move. Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said in a Nov. 25 interview on the proposal that he didn't expect the United States to follow through on the idea.
The situation in Mexico is quite different from that in Colombia during the early 1990s when Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel were designated as narcoterrorists. Both the Colombian government and population supported the designation and the U.S. assistance. However, the long and complex relationship between the United States and Mexico has left the Mexicans far more sensitive to what they perceive as U.S. infringement on their sovereignty. Many Mexicans viewed Trump's threat to send U.S. troops to Mexico in the wake of the Nov. 4 LeBaron slayings as offensive, patronizing and motivated by his 2020 election ambitions. Any decision to designate the Mexican cartels as international terrorist organizations is seen in much the same light.
The harsh reality is that economics dictate that the flow of contraband across the U.S.-Mexico border — drugs going north and cash and guns flowing south — will never end as long as there is a huge market in the United States for illegal drugs.
From a practical perspective, the U.S. government has long been involved in supporting Mexico's military efforts against the cartels, and it has provided training, equipment, assistance and intelligence. The relationship is particularly close with the Mexican marines, who are involved in most operations targeting high-value cartel figures. The Mexicans have been able to either capture or kill a long list of major cartel figures. Such operations do weaken and fragment the cartels, but they do very little to address the underlying problems — corruption, impunity and a vacuum of authority — that allow them to operate the way they do in Mexico.
The harsh reality is that economics dictate that the flow of contraband across the U.S.-Mexico border — drugs going north and cash and guns flowing south — will never end as long as there is a huge market in the United States for illegal drugs. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the same cartels operate on both sides of the border, but they are far more restrained in the United States. Therefore, if Mexico can make progress in addressing corruption and related problems, it can regain the trust of the public and take steps to constrain the cartels so they behave as they do in the United States. Obviously, given the violent behavior of the cartels, the government of Mexico must continue to use military force against them so it will be able to address these underlying weaknesses. However, force alone will not be able to combat those problems.
Finally, there is a real practical difficulty in designating Mexican cartels as international terrorist organizations. The cartel landscape is far different from what it was 20 years ago, and there are an array of distinct and independent groups. For example, the Gulf cartel has completely imploded and turned into a host of smaller local criminal groups, including Los Zetas, which has splintered into at least a half-dozen competing factions. Merely labeling a few of the larger groups such as the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa cartel as terrorist organizations will not be helpful in meaningfully countering all the smaller groups.
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/12/declaring-mexican-drug-cartels-terrorists-bad-old-idea/161596/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
https://havokjournal.com/nation/whats-happening-right-now-at-the-u-s-mexico-border/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/cartel-attacked-coahuila-town-in-bid-to-secure-drug-route-to-us/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/army-reveals-how-crooks-get-guns-across-the-border/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/army-reveals-how-crooks-get-guns-across-the-border/
"All told, the military has destroyed almost 20,000 weapons that were seized in 26 states across the country this year, Cresencio said."
By "destroyed", he meant they sold the weapons on the black market and pocketed the money.
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Mexico’s Polarizing President Presides Over Rising Violence, Flailing Economy
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador remains popular despite cartel crime and weak growth
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador greets supporters in the southern state of Oaxaca. PRESS OFFICE ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR/REUTERS
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By David Luhnow and José de Córdoba
Dec. 7, 2019 12:15 am ET
MEXICO CITY—On Dec. 1, tens of thousands of people gathered in Mexico City’s gritty central square to celebrate Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s first year in office. His supporters chanted “It’s an honor to support Obrador.”
A few blocks away, thousands of protesters marched along the city’s elegant Reforma boulevard to rail against the president. Their chant was different: “It’s a horror to support Obrador.”
Since taking power, the silver-haired populist has polarized Mexico more than any president in recent memory. A majority see him as their first honest leader in decades, a man of the people and champion of the forgotten poor. For a growing minority, the president is a dangerous authoritarian who is consolidating power and failing to address the country’s basic problems like out-of-control crime and weak economic growth.
Stalling Out
Annual change in GDP
Source: International Monetary Fund
Note: 2019 data are estimates.
%
Mexico
U.S.
2009
’10
’11
’12
’13
’14
’15
’16
’17
’18
’19
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
His first year wasn’t an optimistic harbinger of his remaining five years in power. Mexico’s economy hasn’t grown at all this year, its worst performance in a decade. Even as the U.S. economy chugs along, Mexican businesses have slowed investment, spooked by the president’s governing style and economic decisions like suspending the country’s historic opening to private investment in the energy industry. At the same time, the window may be closing for ratification of a renegotiated free-trade pact among Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.
Crime has hit record highs, with murders climbing another 2.2% during the first 10 months of the year compared with last year’s record tally of 36,685 slayings. More than ever, parts of Mexico appear ungovernable as powerful crime syndicates take on the government. In October, the Sinaloa cartel overran the northern city of Culiacán in a successful attempt to force the army to liberate a captured drug lord.
President Trump had been expected to designate Mexico’s drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, putting them on a par with groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda. On Friday night, he said he would “temporarily hold off” on that move at the request of Mr. López Obrador.
Mr. Trump, in tweets, said the two nations would “step up our joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and ever-growing organizations!” He said “all necessary work” had been completed to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations.
A series of recent clashes between cartel gunmen and security forces as well as massacres of civilians in Mexico has captured global attention. Last month, presumed gunmen from a cartel killed three mothers and six of their children, all U.S. citizens living in a fundamentalist Mormon community in the northern state of Chihuahua.
Men carry the remains of Dawna Ray Langford and her sons Trevor and Rogan, who were killed by unknown assailants in November. PHOTO: CARLOS JASSO/REUTERS
Rafael Chávez, a burly construction worker who runs a business remodeling homes, voted for Mr. López Obrador last year on the politician’s promises he would “transform” the country. But a sharp slowdown in construction has forced Mr. Chávez to cut the size of his crews to 12 from an average of 30.
“I had the hope he was going to be able to conjure a change,” says Mr. Chávez. But with crime growing and a weak economy, he says, it seems “everything is falling apart.”
Since taking power, the man who once said “to hell with your institutions” has become the most powerful president in decades, with a big majority in both chambers of congress. He has attacked many of the country’s fragile institutions like courts, the central bank, and regulators as part of a “mafia of power” against him. And his party is now trying to oust the non-partisan head of the agency that oversees elections in time for the 2022 midterms.
“It’s not yellow flashing lights—they are glowing red,” says Enrique Krauze, one of the country’s leading historians. Mr. López Obrador’s government appears to be “on the road to becoming a populist dictatorship.”
Despite the shaky first year, the veteran politician and baseball fan remains Mexico’s most popular leader in decades, with different recent polls showing an approval rating between 60% and 70%. Those are enviable numbers at a time when some leaders in Latin America have approval ratings in the single digits and others face violent street protests.
“It’s a paradox,” says Héctor Aguilar Camín, a leading Mexican writer. “It’s a president who has high credibility and very poor results.”
The answer may lie in Mr. López Obrador’s masterful use of political symbols. He slashed his own salary and that of top bureaucrats, arguing that Mexico can’t have a rich government and poor citizens. The savings have gone partly to fund an expansion in cash transfer programs for the elderly, middle-school students and others.
The austerity is a welcome change in a country where many former presidents retired as multimillionaires. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mr. López Obrador’s predecessor, left office hounded by scandal and a record low 16% approval. The former president appears regularly in the pages of Mexico’s top society magazines, jet-setting on holidays around Europe with his new 31-year-old girlfriend, a model. Mr. Peña Nieto has long denied wrongdoing.
President López Obrador talks to a fellow passenger during a commercial flight in in Mexico in February. PHOTO: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Mr. López Obrador is the symbolic opposite. He put the country’s version of Air Force One, a Boeing 787, on the auction block and flies economy class, delighting fellow travelers. He disbanded the 8,000-strong elite presidential guard, saying the people would protect him. And he turned the sprawling and secretive presidential compound into a tourist attraction visited by millions. Rather than rest and play golf on the weekends, he visits the country’s poorest corners.
“This is one of the best things that has happened in all of my life,” said Omar Escovedo, 59, a retired state worker, during a recent visit by the president to the mostly indigenous hamlet of Amanalco near the capital. Over the past decade, the politician visited every county in Mexico—all 2,457.
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Do you think a populist leader can bring peace and prosperity to Mexico? Join the conversation below.
He has also proved adept at communication. In a country where presidents hardly ever held news conferences, he holds one nearly every morning that is carried live on radio, television and the internet to millions of his supporters.
There, Mr. López Obrador hammers home his vision of a country cleaved in two. His opponents are traitorous “conservatives”—a term from Mexico’s 19th century civil wars—and modern-day “neoliberals.” To him, these Mexicans are corrupt, beholden to foreign interests, and wealthy. Mr. López Obrador has even resurrected a 19th century word, “fifí,” meaning Frenchified and effete, to describe them.
On the other side are Mr. López Obrador and his supporters. These are the inheritors of Mexico’s 19th-century patriots and revolutionaries who seek to extinguish corruption and, through the hand of the state, produce well-being for all, especially the poor and the nation’s indigenous people.
“If you oppose López Obrador, then you are a traitor, corrupt, a coup monger,” says José Crespo, a political analyst at Mexico City’s CIDE university. “It’s a Manichaean use of history where on one side are the good Mexicans and on the other the very bad Mexicans.”
Crime is perhaps the president’s biggest vulnerability. A majority of Mexicans give him negative marks on crime, which they say is the country’s most pressing problem. A December poll by newspaper Reforma found 65% of Mexicans believe organized crime is stronger than the Mexican government. Just 29% said the government is stronger.
Soldiers stand guard in Villa Unión, a Mexican town near the border with the U.S., after a shootout with suspected cartel gunmen earlier this month. PHOTO: JULIO CESAR AGUILAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The crime wave has also hit Mexico City, which until recently had been relatively shielded from the carnage in the countryside. More than eight in 10 city residents say crime is their biggest problem, polls show. Just south of Mexico City, Catholic churches in parts of Morelos state have suspended Mass during evenings because parishioners are too frightened to attend, according to Ramón Castro, the bishop of Cuernavaca.
From the day he took power, the president declared an end to the country’s war on drugs, saying “you can’t fight fire with fire.” Mexico’s U.S.-trained Naval Marines, the force that killed or captured most top cartel leaders in the past decade, including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been sidelined, say Naval officers. No major cartel figure has been arrested or killed this year.
The president disbanded the 40,000 strong Federal Police, built up under the previous two administrations in a bid to create a capable police force to pursue organized crime. In its place is a new National Guard, drawn mostly from the ranks of army and naval police. The Guard has 70,000 members and will grow to 140,000, the government says.
Critics say the Guard is a work in progress with no clear mission. So far, it has been deployed to stop Central American migrants from reaching the U.S., patrol Mexico City’s subway system, fight gasoline theft and deal with high-profile incidents such as massacres by organized crime. “It’s been a very reactive force, scattered, without a clear vision,” says Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexico City-based security analyst.
Deadly Trend
Homicides in Mexico
Source: Mexico's National Statistics Institute
2010
’12
’14
’16
’18
0
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
Analysts say that while Mexico has mostly relied on the armed forces to control organized crime, it has for years neglected a long-term fix: building professional police forces, especially at state and local levels, that can actually solve crimes like murder. Less than 13% of violent crimes end up with a suspect appearing before a judge, compared with 80% in the U.S., according to Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former member of Mexico’s intelligence agency.
By dismantling the Federal Police, the president went back to square one in creating a trained federal force. His government has also cut federal funding to train state and local police forces, according to government budget data.
Aside from the National Guard, the president is betting that reducing poverty will reduce crime. Some 800,000 youth have signed up to an apprentice program called “Youth Building a Future” that gives them a monthly stipend in exchange for learning a trade, a process that Mr. López Obrador hopes will keep them from becoming cannon fodder for gangs.
The president is also relying on the force of his personality to tamp down crime, calling on gang members to think of their mothers. “We’re calling on criminals to tone it down, that we all start to behave better. To hell with criminals. Fuchi, guácala,” he said, using colloquial terms that mean “gross, yuck.”
Last week, a small army of gunmen in a convoy of about 50 armored trucks, some mounted with .50 caliber rifles, attacked a small town in Coahuila, less than 40 miles from the Texas border, shooting up the town hall. At least 23 people, 17 of them presumed cartel members, were killed in a two-day running battle between security forces and gunmen, who wore helmets and military fatigues, and drove trucks emblazoned with the insignia of their self-styled “Northeast Cartel.”
On the economy, the outlook appears grim. Economists forecast just 1.2% growth next year—well below the president’s promises of 4% average annual growth and 6% growth by the end of his term.
Lack of Confidence
Mexico's gross fixed investment index
Source: Mexico's National Statistics Institute
Total
Construction
2016
’17
’18
’19
85
90
95
100
105
110
115
120
ConstructionxSept. 2019x93.4
Investment in machinery, equipment and construction fell 6.8% in September compared with a year ago, and is down 4.8% in the first nine months of this year, Mexico’s statistics agency said Friday.
Many blame the stagnation on the president’s decisions like canceling Mexico City’s partially built new airport, the country’s largest public-works project. Mr. López Obrador spiked the project after some $5 billion had already been spent, saying it was too extravagant. His finance minister later quit, saying economic decisions were being made on the basis of ideology.
The nationalist also reversed or suspended the economic overhauls—from ensuring public school teachers are tested for competence to opening the energy sector to private investment—carried out by Mr. Peña Nieto. Even auctions to attract private investment in renewable energies like wind farms have been scrapped.
Mexico’s stagnation marks the first time in two decades that Mexico’s economic cycle has diverged from the U.S., its northern neighbor and destination for 85% of its manufactured exports.
To spark economic growth, the president is betting on the resurrection of debt-ridden state oil firm Pemex, injecting it with new money and forcing it to build an $8 billion new refinery in his home state of Tabasco. But the oil industry accounts for under 4% of Mexico’s economic output.
His government closed down ProMexico, the country’s overseas investment offices. While he is supportive of the renegotiated free-trade deal with the U.S., he has yet to visit a single modern factory.
A refinery belonging to Pemex, the Mexican state oil firm. PHOTO: DANIEL BECERRIL/REUTERS
In July, on a visit to the countryside, he extolled the virtues of a primitive sugar-cane grinder powered by one mangy horse in a video he posted on his Twitter account which went viral. “This is an authentic people’s economy,” he said as the horse went around in a circle, grinding out the cane juice. “This is the economy we are promoting,” he said.
His austerity drive, while good for public finances, has forced thousands of top technocrats out of institutions like the central bank and finance ministry by slashing wages and cutting benefits like private health insurance.
“I’ve seen a year of destruction of institutions, of projects, of talents, of human capital,” says Valeria Moy, the director of “How are we doing, Mexico?” a Mexico City-based think tank. “This year, nothing has been built, and much has been destroyed.”
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com and José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/painting-of-nude-revolutionary-zapata-on-an-aroused-horse/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/calderons-security-chief-arrested/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/residents-arm-themselves-in-southern-veracruz/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/chihuahua-police-chief-arrested-in-connection-with-lebaron-massacre/
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https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/how-sinaloa-drug-cartel-clobbered-mexican-army
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The Business Impact of Corruption and Impunity in Mexico
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
7 MINS READ
Dec 24, 2019 | 10:00 GMT
HIGHLIGHTS
Falling victim to crime can make business operations unprofitable, but cooperating with criminals can prove even more costly....
The detention in the United States of Mexico's former secretary of public security highlights how corruption reaches to the highest levels of Mexico's government. Former Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested Dec. 10 in Grapevine, Texas. He has been charged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York with three counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and one count of making false statements related to bribes he allegedly received from the Sinaloa cartel to help facilitate its smuggling operations. Garcia Luna held the national security post in Mexico during the administration of former President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012. Before then, he headed Mexico's Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) from 2001 to 2006.
Testimony from the Sinaloa cartel's former chief accountant during the trial of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera incriminated Garcia Luna. Jesus Zambada, the brother of Guzman Loera's business partner Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, testified that on two occasions he delivered briefcases containing $3 million to Garcia Luna. According to Jesus Zambada, the first delivery occurred in 2005 while Garcia Luna was leading the AFI and the second transaction occurred while Garcia Luna was secretary of public security.
The Big Picture
There is no disputing that Mexico's proximity to illicit U.S. markets has resulted in the rapid growth of extremely violent criminal enterprises. Crime and violence take a huge toll on Mexico's citizens and economy. But geography alone is not responsible for the majority of Mexico's violence. Other factors, such as corruption and impunity, have permitted the cartels to become powerful and to operate brazenly. Until Mexico can address these issues, its government will be unable to kill its way out of the situation.
See Security Challenges in Latin America
For those who watch Mexico, the arrest of Garcia Luna — who has been dogged by accusations of corruption — comes as no surprise. Former high-ranking member of the Beltran Leyva organization Edgar Valdez Villarreal, aka La Barbie, wrote a letter in 2012 published in the Mexican newspaper Reforma claiming he had paid protection money to Garcia Luna beginning in 2002. Garcia Luna and the Calderon administration denied the accusation, claiming Valdez was lashing out at those who had arrested him. But rumors of Garcia Luna's corruption persisted, regularly appearing in major Mexican news outlets such as Proceso. In fact, the rumors were so widespread that Forbes magazine named Garcia Luna to its list of the 10 most corrupt Mexicans for 2013. When Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was elected in 2012, he subsequently abolished the Secretariat of Public Security that Garcia Luna had led; rumors of Garcia Luna's corruption likely played a role in Pena Nieto's decision.
Recent Mexican history is replete with law enforcement organizations being disbanded for corruption, and not just municipal police departments. For example, the administration of former Mexican President Vicente Fox created the AFI in 2001 to replace the Federal Judicial Police, an agency disbanded because of rampant corruption. Patterned after the FBI, the AFI was structured to block corruption spilling over into it from other agencies. Despite those safeguards, by late 2005 the Mexican Attorney General's Office reported that almost 1,500 of the AFI's 7,000 agents were under investigation for suspected criminal activity and 457 agents faced criminal charges. Because of this corruption, Calderon's 2008 police reforms disbanded the AFI and assigned its mission to the Federal Police in early 2009. Garcia Luna, however, managed to dodge a Mexican criminal probe into the AFI's corruption problem, and for that matter, any legal consequences in Mexico from the various allegations against him. This highlights another long-standing problem that has plagued Mexico: impunity.
While news reports following Garcia Luna's arrest have suggested the Mexican Attorney General's Office is planning to request his extradition from the United States for trial in Mexico, it is highly unlikely the U.S. government would comply. The history of prison escapes involving high-profile figures such as Joaquin Guzman Loera and of judicial malfeasance resulting in the release of prisoners such as Rafael Caro Quintero has made the United States wary of such requests.
In October, I wrote a column discussing how corruption and impunity were enabling Mexican cartel groups to behave far more brazenly and brutally on the south side of the U.S.-Mexico border than they do north of it. This case illustrates how corruption and impunity reach even the highest levels of the Mexican government. Corruption is even more pervasive at the state level and endemic at the municipal level. And Mexico is certainly not the only country in the region impacted by corruption and impunity: Neighboring Guatemala and Honduras suffer even more severely from these maladies — and even the United States is by no means immune to them. Among the dangers of corruption and impunity is the way they enable criminal enterprises.
Enabling Criminals
Corruption helps smugglers by allowing contraband (or people) to pass through ports, checkpoints or over borders when authorities accept payment to turn a blind eye. In several recent court cases, testimony emerged that high-ranking Honduran politicians and police officials took this a step further and accompanied high-value loads of cocaine to ensure the loads did not encounter any problems while passing through Honduras.
Corruption also helps criminals use the proceeds of their illegal activities, such as when officials allow bulk cash shipments to pass through checkpoints and when corrupt bank officials or businessmen permit money laundering through their organizations. The lure of huge amounts of criminal cash continues to be difficult for banks and businesses to resist despite the potential consequences, such as the $1.9 billion dollar fine HSBC paid in 2012 to avoid prosecution for laundering funds for Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers.
The freedom of operation that corruption and impunity allow criminal organizations to pursue lets them extort businesses, kidnap executives, steal cargo or hydrocarbons, or hide contraband within a company's products or shipments with little fear of legal repercussions.
Corruption also greatly facilitates criminal organizations' ability to acquire weapons, such as when corrupt officials look the other way when illegal shipments of guns and ammunition pass over borders. Many documented cases also exist of military or police officials selling guns to criminal groups, and in fact, the vast majority of the medium and heavy machine guns, hand grenades, 40 mm grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and other military ordnance Mexican cartels use is purchased from military sources in the region.
There have also been many well-documented cases in which police and military personnel have served as muscle for various criminal groups, in which police dispatchers have conducted records checks for criminals, and in which police command center personnel have even used government CCTV systems to serve as "halcones" (lookouts) for criminals.
Impunity follows corruption when law enforcement officials or judicial authorities are bribed or threatened into allowing criminals to avoid arrest, to be released without charges or to otherwise escape prosecution. Even when criminals are prosecuted, corruption often allows them to live like kings in their prison cells and to continue to operate their criminal enterprises from behind bars — or, as mentioned, to get out of prison through jailbreaks or legal shenanigans.
The Business Impact
All this corruption negatively impacts businesses by allowing criminals to operate brazenly and with impunity. The freedom of operation allows criminal organizations to extort businesses, kidnap executives, steal cargo or hydrocarbons, or hide contraband within a company's products or shipments with little fear of legal repercussions. We have seen companies shutter or suspend operations in parts of Mexico most affected by crime flowing from corruption and impunity, such as Guerrero and Guanajuato states.
Clearly, criminality can make business operations unprofitable. But cooperating with criminals as with money laundering can prove even more costly, as HSBC found. Paying bribes to corrupt officials can also create crushing liabilities: Companies have been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for violating the American Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or the U.K. Bribery Act. Until Mexico is able to come to grips with the situation, businesses will continue to suffer.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/hundreds-us-bound-migrants-storm-border-rush-mexico/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=AE&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=2020-01-21
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Thank you President Trump!
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/government-rounding-up-migrants-to-protect-them/
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Thank you President Trump!
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/government-rounding-up-migrants-to-protect-them/
If Hillary were president, they would already be registered to vote.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/guerrero-kids-learn-to-defend-themselves-against-crime/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/ngo-sees-potential-for-cartel-insurgency/
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second post
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/narcos-secret-weapon-is-whatsapp/
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third post
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/migrant-smuggling-networks-believed-widespread/
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second post
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/narcos-secret-weapon-is-whatsapp/
Bullshiite.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/tech/whatsapp-attack/index.html
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Tracking Mexico's Cartels in 2020
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
14 MINS READ
Feb 4, 2020 | 10:00 GMT
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is an excerpt from one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
Since 2006, Stratfor has produced an annual cartel report that chronicles the dynamics shaping the complex mosaic of organized crime in Mexico and that forecasts where those forces are headed in the coming year. When we began producing these forecasts, the landscape was much simpler, with only a handful of major cartel groups. As we noted in 2013, the long process of Balkanization — or splintering — of the groups made it difficult to analyze them the way we used to. Indeed, many of the cartels we had been tracking, such as the Gulf cartel, had imploded and fragmented into several smaller, often competing factions.
Because of this, we began to look at the cartels by focusing on the clusters of smaller groups that emanate from three distinct geographic areas: Tamaulipas state, Sinaloa state and the Tierra Caliente region (Guerrero and Michoacan). When viewed individually, the daily flow of reports of cartel-related murders and firefights can be overwhelming and often appears senseless. But the violence is not senseless when viewed through the lens of the dynamics driving it. Our intent here is to provide the framework for understanding those forces.
This year's report will begin with a general overview of the past year and then examine and provide an update and a forecast for each of those three areas of organized crime. For a detailed historical account of the dynamics that brought the major cartel groupings to where they are today, please read our 2017 report.
A map showing areas of cartel influence in Mexico
2019 in Review — Mired in Bloody Conflict
The forces that shaped the violence in 2019 were much the same as those in 2018, and as 2020 dawns, the regions are mired in bloody cartel conflicts that show no sign of resolution. Part of the reason is the involvement of powerful external organizations that can supply the money, guns and men to sustain weaker local groups and prevent them from being defeated. This dynamic has been at work for several years in Tijuana and Juarez, where local proxies supported by the Sinaloa cartel and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) are locked in bitter battles for control. In Reynosa, the CJNG has thrown its support behind a faction of Los Metros, preventing it from being defeated by the more powerful Gulf cartel faction from Matamoros, attacking from the east, or the Cartel del Noreste (CDN), attacking from the west. But the CJNG is also being vexed by this same phenomenon. The Sinaloa cartel is funding a breakaway CJNG faction in Guadalajara, creating problems for the CJNG in its core area. The Sinaloa cartel is also reportedly backing anti-CJNG forces in Guerrero and Michoacan states.
As a result of these brutal conflicts, murders in Mexico set another record in 2019, hitting 34,582 — and surpassing the record 33,341 of 2018. The rate of increase, however, has slowed from the steep jumps seen during 2015-18. It is important to note that these numbers don't account for the many abducted and slain people whose bodies are buried in clandestine graves, burned or dissolved in acid.
Violence has been persistent in border plaza towns such as Tijuana, Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa. It has been nearly constant along the interior routes where drugs and precursor chemicals are smuggled, as well as in places where opium poppies and marijuana are grown. Despite this, the cartel groups continue to produce and traffic large quantities of drugs, including South American cocaine and Mexican heroin. But the cartels realize their biggest profit margins in synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Last year also saw an increase in the amount of cannabis oil that the cartels are producing and smuggling (often in 5-gallon buckets) into the United States. The oil is a concentrated form of cannabis, making it easier to smuggle than large bales of marijuana. And vaping has opened a market for marijuana cartridges, which can be manufactured using the oil.
Tierra Caliente-Based Cartel Groups
A map showing areas of Tierra Caliente cartel influence in Mexico
Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG)
The CJNG is by far the most powerful of the Tierra Caliente-based groups, and it is involved in nearly every part of the country that is currently experiencing elevated violence. In Jalisco, Guerrero, Veracruz and Guanajuato, it is acting directly. In Tijuana, Mexico City, Reynosa and Juarez, it is working with local partners or proxies. The CJNG has aggressively sought control of ports, border plazas and areas where drugs are grown and where fuel is stolen. The government has reported that the CJNG has become the most powerful cartel group in Mexico and that it has a presence in more places than the Sinaloa cartel.
In looking from west to east, we see that the CJNG is working with remnants of the Arellano Felix organization (Tijuana cartel) for control of the Tijuana smuggling plaza; is supporting the Chapo Isidro group for control of the smuggling plazas in Sonora state against Sinaloa cartel ally Los Salazar; is supporting La Linea in its efforts to push Sinaloa out of Juarez and the drug-growing areas of Chihuahua state; and is backing a faction of Los Metros as it attempts to maintain control of the Reynosa plaza. Farther south, the CJNG is continuing its bloody campaign in Guanajuato state, where it is fighting the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, led by Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz, alias El Marro. The CJNG is also fighting for control of Michoacan and Guerrero states against an array of smaller cartels. In addition, it has pushed into Quintana Roo state, home to the resort cities of Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel.
This avarice has led to the group's leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka El Mencho, being declared public enemy No. 1. The Mexican and U.S. governments have worked with other governments to track down and arrest members of his wife's family, the powerful Valencia smuggling clan, which facilitates money laundering for the group.
Other Tierra Caliente-Based Groups
Tierra Caliente is the most heavily fragmented region in Mexico, with dozens of distinct and often competing organized crime cartels in the states of Michoacan and Guerrero. The implosions of the Beltran Leyva organization, the Knights Templar and La Familia Michoacana resulted in the creation of a number of these groups.
In Michoacan, the remnants of the Knights Templar, including Los Viagras, and of La Familia Michoacana, such as La Nueva Familia Michoacana, fight for control of the state with the CJNG. One interesting development this past year was the creation of the Carteles Unidos (United Cartels), a group that combined Los Viagras and a number of smaller Michoacan cartel groups. The Sinaloa cartel may be supporting Carteles Unidos as a way to foil the aspirations of the CJNG in the state.
The militant landscape is further complicated by the large number of autodefensas, or self-defense, groups in Michoacan and Guerrero. These heavily armed militias often set up roadblocks and charge tolls. In July, two American citizens were shot dead and their 12-year-old son was wounded when they attempted to run a roadblock in Guerrero state.
Forecast
The CJNG will remain the largest and most aggressive cartel group this year. It will continue to profit handsomely from cocaine and synthetic drugs, and those profits will pay for its far-flung military operations and support for proxy groups. The CJNG can be expected to expand its operations to San Luis Potosi, Torreon, Monterrey and perhaps even Nuevo Laredo.
Efforts to roll up its leadership and its financial operations are unlikely to have a major impact on the group. We do expect to see more fractures of the CJNG in 2020, and if Oseguera Cervantes is finally captured or killed, his removal would increase the infighting and splintering. Guerrero and Michoacan will continue to be excessively violent in 2020.
Sinaloa-Based Cartel Groups
a map showing areas of Sinaloa Cartel influence in Mexico
Sinaloa cartel
While a great deal of attention has been paid to the July conviction of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera and his life sentence, he isn't the only Sinaloa cartel figure who faced legal problems over the past year. In December, Ismael Zambada Imperial, the son of Guzman Loera's partner and current Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, was extradited to the United States to stand trial on drug charges. Zambada Imperial was arrested in Mexico in 2014 and convicted on drug and weapons charges. The United States requested his extradition in 2015.
Two of his half-brothers have already been convicted in the United States. Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla was arrested in Mexico in 2009 and extradited in 2010. He was sentenced to 15 years in May 2019 after testifying in the trial of Guzman Loera. With credit for time served, he could be released as early as 2023. Half-brother Serafin Zambada Ortiz was arrested in 2013 as he attempted to cross the U.S. border in Arizona. He was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison and released in September 2018.
The only son of Zambada Garcia who remains free is Ismael Zambada Sicairos, who is also believed to be involved in the narcotics trade. The U.S. indictment of Zambada Imperial lists his half-brother Ismael Zambada Sicairos; their father; and Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, the son of Guzman Loera, as co-conspirators.
Guzman Salazar along with his half-brother Ovidio Guzman Lopez are known as Los Chapitos (The Little Chapos). They made international headlines in October, when Guzman Lopez was arrested in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa. Guzman Salazar mobilized his group's gunmen and laid siege to the city with the support of the forces of Zambada Garcia. These gunmen entered a military housing area and captured some military personnel and their families. They used them as hostages, forcing the government to release Guzman Lopez.
Tijuana Cartel Remnants
The remnants of the Arellano Felix organization (Tijuana cartel) remain divided into two camps. The stronger faction is affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel and is run by the Arzate Garcia brothers, Rene, aka La Rana, and Alfonso, aka El Aquiles. The brothers helped Sinaloa wrest control of Tijuana from the Arellano Felix organization.
Their main opposition sometimes refers to itself as the Cartel de Tijuana Nueva Generacion, an acknowledgment of its affiliation with the CJNG. This conflict has been extremely bloody, and the state of Baja California has the second-highest murder rate for Mexican states (76.7 per 100,000).
Juarez Cartel Remnants
The situation in Juarez is quite similar to that in Tijuana. The Sinaloa cartel worked with a splinter group of the Carrillo Fuentes organization (Juarez cartel) to establish a firm foothold in the Juarez plaza. The CJNG is supporting other remnants of the cartel — Nuevo Cartel de Juarez and La Linea — to strike back against Sinaloa and its allies. This struggle also involves the battle for the city of Chihuahua and the drug-growing areas in the mountains of Chihuahua state.
Last year it appeared that Sinaloa forces Gente Nueva with support from the Los Salazar organization in Sonora were gaining the upper hand in the mountains of Chihuahua, but the dynamics changed and La Linea began to win back territory. Perhaps one of the highest-profile events tied to this fight was the Nov. 4 ambush of a family in northern Sonora near the Chihuahua border, which resulted in nine dead women and children. Most of those killed were dual U.S. and Mexican citizens.
Remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization
Fausto "El Chapo" Isidro Meza Flores continues to fight with the Sinaloa cartel. Though his organization hasn't made much headway in gaining control over a larger portion of the drug-growing areas in Sinaloa, it appears to have had more success in taking control of smuggling plazas and fuel theft rackets in Sonora. It is fighting Los Salazar, the Sinaloa faction that has long held power in Sonora.
Forecast
Despite the many challenges the Sinaloa cartel has faced in the courts and on the battlefield in recent years, the organization will remain strong in 2020. El Mayo Zambada Garcia appears to have slowed the fragmentation that has taken a heavy toll on the group since the Beltran Leyva organization split from it in 2008.
The CJNG has been working hard with the help of its local allies to undermine the Sinaloa cartel's control of the smuggling plazas stretching from Tijuana to Juarez. The Sinaloa cartel has lost some ground, but it hasn't been decisively defeated in any conflict zone. This is why the battleground cities have remained largely in stasis during 2019, and we don't anticipate a major shift in 2020.
Tamaulipas-Based Cartel Groups
A map showing areas of Tamaulipas cartel influence in Mexico
Gulf Cartel Fragments
Many people, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, continue to refer to the Gulf cartel as a unified entity, but it is nothing of the sort. It has disintegrated into an array of smaller, competing groups that control smaller pieces of territory, such as Matamoros or a part of Reynosa.
The border city of Reynosa remains a hot spot as several cartel groups vie for control of it. The two main local competitors are splinter groups of Los Metros, formerly a Reynosa-based enforcer group of the Gulf cartel. After the two factions exhausted themselves in years of battle, they reached out to more powerful outsiders for help. One group aligned with the Gulf cartel faction from Matamoros, which is aligned with the powerful Cardenas smuggling clan — the family of former Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen.
Los Zetas Splinters
Many people continue to refer to Los Zetas as a cohesive entity, but like the Gulf cartel it split from, it is heavily fractured. The Cartel del Noreste (CDN), based in Nuevo Laredo, has also attempted to capitalize on the Los Metros infighting and a push toward Reynosa from the west, but it hasn't been able to make much headway. It has a strong hold on Nuevo Laredo, and the territory it controls stretches into Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. CDN remains at war with another Los Zetas remnant, the Zetas Vieja Escuela (ZVE), or the Old School Zetas, for Ciudad Victoria.
The CDN has aggressively gone after government forces in recent months, specifically the special forces of the state police agency known as the Center for Analysis, Information and Studies of Tamaulipas (CAIET). The CDN has attacked hotels where CAIET forces have stayed in Nuevo Laredo and have ambushed many of their patrols. The CDN and their Tropa del Infierno (Troops From Hell) have suffered serious losses in these confrontations, and their threats are alienating the local population.
Forecast
The battle for Reynosa will continue to rage because of the support from powerful outside actors who have the resources to keep the money, men and guns flowing. In the Monterrey area, violence will increase in 2020 if the CJNG makes a concerted effort to establish its presence in the important logistical hub.
The CDN alienation of the local population will likely result in an intelligence windfall. However, we are skeptical that government forces will have the foresight to take advantage of the opportunity. But the weakness of the CDN will be noted by others, and it is quite possible that CJNG, ZVE or some other group will make a move on Nuevo Laredo in 2020.
Implications for Businesses and Organizations
Violence has affected almost every part of Mexico, including areas that are considered generally safer than others, such as upscale neighborhoods and tourist resorts and attractions. Most of the violence has been cartel on cartel or government on cartel, but with the organized crime groups using military-grade equipment, the risk of injury or death for bystanders is considerable.
Moreover, these persistent conflicts rapidly burn through men, weapons and vehicles, forcing the groups to look beyond drug smuggling to augment their incomes. Many have resorted to other criminal rackets, including extortion, human smuggling, kidnapping, cargo theft and hydrocarbon theft. This is taking a heavy toll on businesses operating in conflict areas, forcing some to suspend operations in the states of Guerrero and Guanajuato.
We remain concerned that a significant breakdown or implosion of the CJNG could lead to a scramble for control of its territories, including the important commercial center of Guadalajara and the ports of Manzanillo, Lazaro Cardenas and Veracruz. Such a struggle could result in a significant increase in violence in those areas, or a drop in some cities as men and resources are pulled back to fight for control of these core areas.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/3-associates-of-el-chapo-escape-prison/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/3-associates-of-el-chapo-escape-prison/
Does this really count as an escape when you are escorted to your ride like a celebrity leaving the Four Seasons?
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Does this really count as an escape when you are escorted to your ride like a celebrity leaving the Four Seasons?
[/quote]
They went through 5 sets of doors??!! Typically these door in maximum security don't have door handles; they are operated one set at a time by guards behind secured glass.
I don't know Mexican law but seems to me if you are a prison guard and help an inmate escape, you should serve his or her sentence until they are recaptured.
I suppose these gangs threaten to kill the families of the guards if they don't assist.
Like G M says, if you are free to go anytime you want in a limousine waiting in front, it would probably be cheaper to hold them in a Four Seasons hotel than in a prison.
Someday we will have a first-world country south of our border?
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"I suppose these gangs threaten to kill the families of the guards if they don't assist."
remember this :
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/12/20999191/trump-mexican-drug-cartels-terrorist-organizations-mexico-sinaloa-transnational-criminal-trafficking
since this is shot down by Mexico and the leftist media
the terror continues...... unbated really
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Mexico Slides Toward One-Man Rule
The president uses his authority to muscle business and suppress dissent.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Feb. 23, 2020 1:55 pm ET
A recent “invitation” to business leaders from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to attend a fundraiser at the National Palace was an offer many couldn’t refuse. Some 70 of the Mexican “suits” who showed up reportedly pledged to spend 1.5 billion pesos ($88 million) on government lottery tickets.
About half the tickets in the pot—another 1.5 billion pesos’ worth—remained unsold at the end of the evening. The drawing is scheduled for September, when up to 100 winners will take home 20 million pesos each. The proceeds, if any, will be earmarked for public assistance, which the president says he will allocate to the nation’s ailing hospitals.
It’s unclear whether the scheme can succeed, but the larger problem is that it looks like pay-to-play. Presidential fundraising for pet projects has the whiff of illegality because the state dishes out valuable concessions and no-bid contracts and can let unpaid tax bills slide. Yet when AMLO—the president is known by his initials—does it, no one dares stop him.
The Mexican economy did not grow in 2019 and the standstill is expected to continue this year because business and government investment has collapsed. To understand why, look no further than Mr. López Obrador’s use of executive power to try to make himself the savior of the nation.
AMLO has a utopian vision for Mexico in which he gets to decide what economic fairness looks like and how rich is too rich. Think Bernie Sanders en español. Not all wealthy people are brought low—only the ones who get in the way.
AMLO’s decisions to scrap the construction of a new airport in Mexico City and to force the renegotiation of natural-gas pipeline contracts have received a lot of international attention. His effort to cap salaries at the central bank may violate the Mexican Constitution and is seen as a ploy to chase out qualified technocrats so he can replace them with political loyalists.
This smells bad. Behind the scenes it’s even worse, as “the law” is used to spread terror among opponents. A key tool is the Financial Intelligence Unit, which derives its power from international commitments to combat money laundering. The unit, which is inside the Treasury, is supposed to investigate suspicious financial activity and pass the information to the attorney general. In practice, critics say, it is being used to gain control of institutions that ought to be independent.
Mr. López Obrador remains popular because Mexicans still see in him a guy who is willing to stand up to corruption and crony capitalism. Hot money chasing high interest rates in Mexico has held up the peso, and U.S. ratification of a new North American free-trade agreement has removed a source of market uncertainty.
Yet 15 months into AMLO’s presidency, the weak economy, rampant violence and a breakdown of the public-health system have diminished his popularity. All eyes are now on the midterm elections of July 2021. If his Morena Party and its allies win two-thirds of Congress’s lower house and strong support among the nation’s 32 governors, he will have smooth sailing in the second half of his six-year term. If the opposition surges, he may become a lame duck.
Meantime, he is working to consolidate as much power as possible. The lottery spectacle at the National Palace showcased his muscle. He lavished praise on the tycoons, congratulating them for meeting their moral obligation to contribute to his causes.
Privately many Mexicans snickered about what was seen as a blatant act of extortion. The misuse of the Financial Intelligence Unit at the Treasury is also worrying. It has been employing its power selectively to pressure the president’s adversaries.
According to Article 115 of the banking and credit law and Article 41 of the anti-money-laundering act, officials at the Treasury must safeguard the confidentiality of ongoing investigations. Further, under Mexican law all suspects are entitled to the presumption of innocence. Yet the unit has a record of violating both norms, making public statements of condemnation and freezing the financial assets of the accused and their extended families even before charges are filed and without a judge’s ruling.
The chief of the unit, Santiago Nieto, told me Saturday that the prohibition on speaking about investigations applies only to the attorney general’s office and that he uses his freedom of speech to expose findings. He said freezing assets is an administrative tool to block the moving of money.
But Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled that freezing assets without a court order is unconstitutional, and the attorney general has complained about the lack of due process. Nevertheless, the weaponization of the unit continues, probably because it gets results.
The head of the regulatory commission on energy and a Supreme Court justice were both named as suspects—along with family members—in possible financial crimes. Both maintained their innocence. But the freezing of assets meant possible financial ruin even if there was eventual exoneration. Neither was ever charged but both resigned. AMLO replaced them with his own handpicked appointees. Tick-tock, Mexico.
Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/business-group-likes-senates-marijuana-bill/
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8110163/Mexico-wants-close-border-Americans-stop-spread-coronavirus.html?ito=facebook_share_article-top
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/project-python-mexican-drug-cartel-us-arrest-a9398116.html?amp
https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2020/03/11/dea-led-operation-nets-more-600-arrests-targeting-cartel-jalisco-nueva-4
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/covid-19-5-dead-405-confirmed-cases/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/sonorans-demand-tighter-border-controls/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/sonorans-demand-tighter-border-controls/
Are they going to build a wall and pay for it?
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They don't need to build a wall. How many Americans are going to swim the Rio Grande to get into Mexico? haha
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-ignores-crime-victims/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-ignores-crime-victims/
Shocking!
:roll:
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https://mailchi.mp/mexiconewsdaily/apr-10-2020-mnt?e=add05987d5
A lot of colorful stories
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https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/04/pentagon-urges-mexico-reopen-covid-closed-factories-supply-us-weapon-makers/164756/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
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April 22, 2020 View On Website
Open as PDF
Mexico’s Three Economic Fronts Face a Recession
By: Allison Fedirka
Mexico is bracing for a serious economic recession this year, much like the rest of the world. But unlike many other countries, the Mexican government is not meeting the event with an abundance of bailouts, tax breaks or other fiscal measures. Instead, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (popularly known as AMLO) has opted to stay the course with his plans of austerity and social development funding, much to the chagrin of big business. He has made it clear that his goal for combating the recession is to avoid sovereign debt and mitigate the impact felt by the country’s poor. Lopez Obrador is facing three fronts in his battle against a recession in Mexico: the country’s formal, informal and black market economies. And his decision to focus on propping up and reining in the informal economy through continued social development funding is more than just a continuation of adherence to political policy. It also reflects that the government is unable to effectively address the other two economies on its own.
The Three Economic Fronts
Lopez Obrador’s strategy to confront the economic recession preserves his big-picture plan to “transform” the Mexican economy and wrestles with the fact that the Mexican economy can be clearly divided into three distinct sub-economies, each playing by its own set of rules. The formal economy is characterized by services, finance and high-end manufacturing with intricate supply chains. It generates 77.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and is concentrated in the central and northern parts of the country. The informal economy — a “gray zone” not taxed or regulated by the government but still legal — generates 22.5 percent of the country’s GDP and is characterized by precarious employment, basic manufacturing and low wages. It exists in much higher concentrations in the country’s south. The black market economy, run by organized crime, is prevalent throughout the entire country. Its economic contribution is not clearly known given the illicit nature of its activities, but recent estimates put Mexican drug sales to the United States at $19 billion to $29 billion annually. Despite its illegality, the black market injects a massive amount of capital into the economy, which generally speaking is a good thing. On the other hand, it also deters investment and infrastructure development and breeds extortion, corruption and violence. The result is a mixed bag of economic effects that is not easy to define or calculate.
(click to enlarge)
AMLO’s proposed solution for dealing with the segmented nature of Mexico’s economy involves diminishing the economic and development disparities across the country through youth education and job training programs, labor-intensive infrastructure projects, support for small businesses, anti-corruption measures and government austerity. In other words, he is attempting to reduce the informal economy and merge it with the formal economy. His approach has been controversial and viewed by the opposition as contrary to the ultimate objectives of developing and growing Mexico’s economy. Indeed, the segmented nature of the country’s economy makes it extremely difficult to pursue a policy that helps one segment without hurting the other two. But in the face of the recession, the government has opted to direct the few funds it has toward the informal sector, an approach that aligns with long-term goals and exists as the most viable short-term solution available.
The Formal Economy: Severe Limits
Mexico’s formal economy has a high degree of exposure to external forces and is therefore largely out of the government’s control. For starters, the Mexican economy is largely dependent on the health of the U.S. economy. Mexican exports to the United States are equivalent to about 31 percent of the country’s GDP, and the United States is the leading supplier of foreign direct investment to Mexico. Remittances, which totaled $36.05 billion last year, are Mexico’s largest source of U.S. dollars, and 95 percent come from senders in the United States.
When the U.S. economy performs poorly (or restricts border crossings), the effects are often amplified in the Mexican economy. The International Monetary Fund expects the U.S. economy to contract 5.6 percent this year, and new unemployment claims in the country at the time of publication stand at 22 million. For Mexico, this means that there are far fewer buyers of Mexican goods and that the country can’t trade its way out of the crisis, even considering the strong decline in the peso’s value relative to the dollar so far this year.
To escape its mild 2019 recession, Mexico had planned to turn to foreign direct investment in 2020. And even before a global recession became imminent, the government was struggling to attract foreign investment over concerns of regulations, crime and general doubts over management. Now, the United Nations estimates that foreign investment will drop by 30-40 percent globally this year. For Mexico, this means investment will be difficult to come by and require fierce competition with others.
Foreign investment is no longer a viable option to stimulate the economy. Lastly, other major financial sources, such as oil and tourism, not only remain out of Mexico’s control but have poor prospects this year. Admittedly, state-owned oil company Pemex has been struggling for years, but even in the company’s best-case scenario, it can do little to address low oil prices, let alone change them. As for tourism, travel restrictions and personal fears mean the cancellation of many summer trips.
(click to enlarge)
The Mexican government has offered little to mitigate the recession’s impact on the formal economy because the influence of external factors will outweigh much of what it can offer. The government says it only has about $10 billion available from various rainy day funds. This means the bailouts, tax breaks and fiscal stimulus called for by businesses in the formal sector cannot be executed on a scale that would have an impact on a $1.3 trillion economy. Effectively stimulating an economy takes massive amounts of money, which often means taking on debt — and the concern over government debt in Mexico predates AMLO. The government currently does not have enough reserves to cover its debt in the event of an emergency, and incurring new debt would make matters only worse. Additionally, spending money on the formal economy would largely put the two other major segments of the economy on the sidelines. The government’s financial authorities did loosen liquidity rules on banks, which they assert are well equipped to handle the pending economic crisis, but aside from that, it has taken a largely hands-off approach.
The Informal Economy: Opportunity for Impact
The Mexican government has directed its efforts toward the informal economy because its potential for impact is higher and the informal economy plays a critical role in the workforce. Mexico defines the informal economy as one that includes any economic activity that is legally produced and marketed but the production or distribution units are not formally registered. It also includes all economic activities that operate from family resources, such as micro- and small businesses that are not constituted as companies. Because informal workers tend to have lower-quality jobs, lower wages and no insurance compared to those with formal-sector jobs, they are more vulnerable to recession. And since the latest official figures from the end of 2019 show that Mexico’s informal sector employs 56.2 percent of all workers, a sizable portion of the country’s working population is highly vulnerable to recession.
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The actions the Mexican government has taken to mitigate the impact of a recession on the country’s economy have focused on supporting the continued employment of informal workers. Earlier this month, the government said it would provide a 25,000-peso ($1,000) credit for small and micro-companies that have retained employees and not reduced wages, offering low interest rates that increase slightly by company size. The plan allows for a million total recipients, though an estimated 5 million will request access, and money will arrive in May and June. This low-interest-rate credit will need to be paid back in three years, with payments starting after the fourth month. Lopez Obrador also announced additional credit for the creation of 2 million more formal jobs this year, but such a project was already in the works prior to the global recession.
One wild card that could impede the government’s task of easing the recession’s impact is remittances, which play a key role in many household incomes, particularly in poor segments of the economy. BBVA estimates that, this year, remittances will decline by 17 percent to $29.9 billion due to the recession and mass unemployment in the United States. Nevertheless, from the government’s perspective, it’s still more cost-effective to support working programs now than deal with millions of people eventually out of work amid economic collapse.
The Black Market Economy: A Very Large Shadow
Though Mexico’s organized crime groups are not often considered in terms of their contribution to economic activity, they must also be factored in to efforts to combat the recession. For better or worse, the large scale and high value of their operations do create jobs and support economic activity at local levels. The pervasive nature of organized crime means it touches the pocketbooks of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. And these groups are not immune to the recession, though they are positioned better than most to confront it. Like many multinational companies, organized crime groups in Mexico experienced supply chain disruptions with the slowing global economy, particularly with respect to the chemical precursors from China used to make fentanyl. The disruptions hurt major fentanyl suppliers, such as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.
Meanwhile, alternative revenue flows, including human trafficking, fuel robbing and extortion, are not currently available due to increased border restrictions, low oil prices and businesses going on hold for quarantine. Of course, the addictive nature of drugs means that demand in that area remains. And that, in turn, has meant an increase in price due to supply chain shortages and stricter border measures.
AMLO’s government will have to face the threat of increased social and political encroachment by organized crime. The recession and health crisis have already presented organized crime groups with opportunities to intensify their presence in socioeconomic gaps in place of the government. Big-name cartels like Golf, Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa have also started community outreach and charity programs to provide locals with goods at a time when supplies and funds are scarce. In this area, AMLO finds himself extremely limited in terms of what he can do to combat organized crime, particularly on the economic end; freezing assets will not reach a sum high enough to stop operations anytime soon. This is one major reason that AMLO reiterated his plans to continue social development funding and welfare programs, which are intended (at least on paper, over time) to undermine the hold that organized crime has on local communities. That said, the president knows this remains a weak point for the government because it cannot throw money around as easily as the cartels.
The Only Real Option
Lopez Obrador was forced to choose sides in preparation for mitigating the impact of Mexico’s deeper recession, and his outlier approach of rejecting stimulus measures reflects the reality of three very distinct economic segments, none of which overwhelmingly dominates the others. He does not have the funds or enough control over the formal economy to risk stimulus; he does not have the reach or security ability to take on organized crime. What remains is the country’s informal sector, where the bang for the buck (or punch for the peso) is larger, and where efforts generally align with longer-term goals of integrating the informal economy into the formal one, thereby improving economic standards for Mexico’s lower socioeconomic classes. This may not be considered the ideal move by many, but it’s AMLO’s only decent option.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/cartel-puts-on-a-show-of-force-with-25-vehicle-convoy/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/authorities-investigate-meeting-between-national-guard-suspected-criminals/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/cartels-believed-hurting-due-to-partial-border-closure/
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"Cartels believed hurting due to partial border closure"
Well they can always have their illegal employees in the US apply for a bail out........
Newsom Como and DeBlasio AOC and the gang
already probably have helped
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Mexico falls 4% on peace index due to surge in organized crime
Baja California least peaceful state last year, Yucatán the most peaceful
Published on Wednesday, May 6, 2020
9
SHARES
Peacefulness in Mexico deteriorated 4.3% in 2019, largely due to a 24.3% increase in the rate of organized crime, according to a global think tank.
The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) said in its report Mexico Peace Index 2020 that peacefulness has declined 27.2% over the past five years. Published on Tuesday, the report highlighted that the homicide rate in Mexico last year was 28 per 100,000 residents, seven times higher than the global average.
The IEP noted that the rate increase of 1.4% in 2019 represented “a much slower rise than the previous year’s increase of 15.7%” but highlighted that the national violent crime rate increased by 4.7%. The latter increase was mainly driven by an 18.7% rise in the sexual assault rate, the think tank said.
It said that Baja California was the least peaceful state in Mexico last year for a second consecutive year followed by Colima, Quintana Roo, Chihuahua and Guanajuato. Yucatán remains the most peaceful state, followed by Tlaxcala, Chiapas, Campeche and Nayarit.
The IEP said that only seven states have recorded improvements in homicide rates since 2015. “Baja California Sur has achieved the largest improvement, reducing its homicide rate by more than half to stand at 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people,” the report said.
The think tank said that statistical analysis shows that there are four distinct types of violence in Mexico: political, opportunistic, interpersonal and cartel conflict.
The overall economic impact of violence in Mexico last year – the first full year of the new federal government – was 4.57 trillion pesos (US $238) billion, the IEP said, noting that the figure is equivalent to 21.3% of national GDP. Homicides caused just under half of the economic damage.
“The economic impact of violence was nearly eight times higher than public investments made in health care and more than six times higher than those made in education in 2019,” the report said.
“The economic impact of violence was 36,129 pesos per person, approximately five times the average monthly salary of a Mexican worker. The per capita economic impact varies significantly from state to state, ranging from 11,714 pesos in Yucatán to 83,926 pesos in Colima.”
Despite the high cost of rampant violence, the federal government spent just 0.7% of GDP on domestic security and the justice system last year, the IEP said, highlighting that the percentage was the lowest among the 37 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Source: Reforma (sp), El Economista (sp)
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:roll:
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/crime-rate-down-32-in-guerrero-a-major-drop-in-the-last-3-years/
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Pemex’s Losses Deepen Mexico’s Financial Woes
3 MINS READ
Aug 31, 2020 | 19:41 GMT
HIGHLIGHTS
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's failure to strengthen Pemex's finances and shore up domestic oil production will exacerbate Mexico's public finance woes from COVID-19. On Aug. 24, Mexico's state-owned energy giant Pemex reported its lowest level of monthly crude oil production since 1979, with the company's July output totaling only 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) -- marking a 0.6 percent decline from June and a 4.5 percent decline from July 2019. Pemex was already struggling before the current COVID-19 crisis, seeing record losses during 2019 and the first half of 2020. Lopez Obrador's attempts to strengthen Pemex's bottom line and increase domestic oil production, however, will continue to fail without new private investment to help increase long-term production, as well as a business plan that forces Pemex to focus on the most profitable areas....
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's failure to strengthen Pemex's finances and shore up domestic oil production will exacerbate Mexico's public finance woes from COVID-19. On Aug. 24, Mexico's state-owned energy giant Pemex reported its lowest level of monthly crude oil production since 1979, with the company's July output totaling only 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) — marking a 0.6 percent decline from June and a 4.5 percent decline from July 2019. Pemex was already struggling before the current COVID-19 crisis, seeing record losses during 2019 and the first half of 2020.
Lopez Obrador's attempts to strengthen Pemex's bottom line and increase domestic oil production will continue to fail without new private investment to help increase long-term production, as well as a business plan that forces Pemex to focus on the most profitable areas.
Mexico's current oil fields in the Gulf, such as Cantarell and Ku-Maloob-Zaap, are nearing the end of their productive life. Any substantive increase in production thus needs to come from new developments in either deep-water fields or the unconventional fields in northeastern Mexico, which Pemex does not have the resources or expertise to develop alone.
Other national oil companies, such as Brazil's Petrobras or Colombia's Ecopetrol, have engaged in strategies to get rid of unproductive assets and focus on their resources on most productive areas. These strategies have helped prevent both Petrobras and Ecopetrol's credit rating from being downgraded in recent years. Pemex's debt, meanwhile, was downgraded this year and last.
Lopez Obrador has relied on Pemex's revenue and resources to boost government spending, which has spread the company's already scarce resources thin by forcing its involvement in unprofitable activities. This has included placing Pemex in charge of building a new refinery in southeast Mexico and modernizing various other refineries.
Lopez Obrador's administration has also barred Pemex from partnering with private firms on long-term exploration projects, further accelerating the deterioration of the company's finances and profitability prospects.
Pemex will increasingly become a drag on Mexico's already stressed public finances, which will impede Lopez Obrador's ability to mitigate the fallout from COVID-19 ahead of 2021 midterm elections by robbing his government of a key revenue source.
Amid the fallout from the pandemic, Lopez Obrador is facing mounting pressure to revive the Mexican economy, which was in a recession even before the onset of the global health crisis. But this time, he Mexican government won't be able to rely on Pemex to shore up spending, especially in the absence of any tax reform that would enable the company to diversify revenues, and may be forced to redirect its scarce resources to keep Pemex afloat.
Pemex has long been a key financing source for the Mexican government, which is one of the main causes of the company's chronic underinvestment. Pemex's revenues currently make up around 10 percent of the federal government's total revenues.
The Lopez Obrador administration has provided Pemex with debt relief and even some subsidies in the hopes of giving the oil company some room to make more productive investments. But given the magnitude of Pemex's cashflow erosion, that money has instead been used to cover the company's current expenditures.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Lopez Obrador's administration has also not passed any meaningful fiscal stimulus packages, and has instead continued to fund its pet infrastructure projects that are already underway, including the $8 billion Dos Bocas refinery.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/national-guard-seizes-michoacan-gangs-homemade-tank/
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-embassy-issues-advisories-against-visiting-mexico-over-virus_3491081.html?ref=brief_BreakingNews&utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-vows-to-quit-if-100000-protest/
Separately
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/residents-fined-for-filling-oaxaca-city-potholes/
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Brief: Blackouts Highlight Mexico's Energy Dilemma
Weekly reviews of what's on our bookshelves.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: The Mexican economy’s high dependency on the U.S. economy is a double-edged sword. On one hand, having close ties to the biggest economy in the world – made all the more accessible because of their proximity and trade agreements – is an advantage for many industries. On the other hand, Mexico's reliance on an external market means that many of the factors that determine the health of its economy are out of Mexico’s control. It thus has a strategic interest in reducing this dependency but faces a multitude of factors that limit its ability to do so.
What Happened: Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission said Monday that a winter storm in Texas reduced natural gas exports from the U.S. by around 25 percent, causing blackouts in parts of northern Mexico. The shortage affected Sinaloa, Sonora, Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon states and disrupted production at electricity generation stations. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador used the occasion to point out Mexico’s high dependence on the U.S. for natural gas. Mexico’s energy secretary estimated last month that 70 percent of the country’s gas supplies came from the U.S., while the remaining 30 percent was produced domestically.
The blackouts come amid the government’s recent efforts to reform Mexico’s electricity industry by increasing the role of the government-owned utility in the domestic market. The Federal Economic Competition Commission warned on Monday that the proposed changes could damage competition and hurt investor confidence. Mexican, U.S. and Canadian businesses have all expressed concerns over the proposed reforms.
Bottom Line: Solving the problems in Mexico’s electricity industry cannot be done without evaluating its supplies – namely, those coming from its northern neighbor. In the short term, Mexico can do little outside of negotiate with Washington as the weaker party. As mentioned in our forecast, energy is one front where we expect U.S.-Mexican relations to sour this year.
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Mexico’s Energy Conundrum
Winter storms were just the beginning.
By: Allison Fedirka
Last week, ice storms disrupted natural gas supplies to Mexico and so revived an existential question over how energy independent the country can and should be. But because Mexico’s independence is so often defined by its relationship to the United States, what started as an errant power outage quickly became a larger debate over the future of Mexico’s energy sector, infrastructure development and domestic politics as officials clamored for more energy self-sufficiency.
Their calls are hardly misplaced. State-run energy company Pemex has long focused primarily on oil, leaving the natural gas sector in a state of arrested development. What natural gas Mexico does produce is in decline. Modest deregulation has allowed for private investment and infrastructural improvement, but for now the country relies heavily on the U.S. to meet its natural gas needs. In fact, its northern neighbor accounts for about 70 percent of the natural gas consumed in Mexico, and 60 percent of the energy consumed by vital manufacturing hubs in the north is natural gas. Similarly, the U.S. meets nearly 75 percent of Mexico’s gasoline needs. (Though Mexico is an oil-producing country, it does not have the refining efficiency, ability or storage capacity to meet domestic demand with its own crude oil production.) In 2019, Pemex alone spent $14.75 billion on fuel imports; the country total is even higher once private importers have been factored in.
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Energy is a historically sensitive issue in Mexico. U.S. and British oil companies dominated the country’s oil industry during its infancy, and were put in check only in 1917, when Mexico’s new constitution stipulated that the national government had ownership over all subsoil – that is, resources. A series of taxes and other regulatory measures favoring Mexico ensued, until finally in 1938 President Lazaro Cardenas simply expropriated the assets of nearly all the foreign oil companies operating in Mexico. The move reflected years of festering discontent among Mexicans with how the oil industry operated in their country – how profits were being sent overseas, how investment was lacking, how production was low, and how poor Mexican industry workers were. Shortly thereafter, the government formed Pemex and has played an influential role in its operations ever since.
With a past like this, it’s easy to see why energy independence means more than just a best-practice of diversification. There’s an inherent wariness between the U.S. and Mexico, which lost a lot of its territory to the U.S. in 1848 and which fell victim to intermittent invasions and occupations by U.S. forces up until the start of World War I. Past energy disputes make Mexico even more uneasy. After the 1938 expropriations, the U.S. threatened to stop buying Mexican silver and its oil companies embargoed Mexican oil. Exports fell to half their volume in a handful of years. The issue was not resolved until Mexico agreed to pay $29 million in compensation to U.S. companies in 1942. Now as then, Mexico’s dependence gives the U.S. a ton of leverage. Current disagreements between the countries are plenty manageable, but this kind of leverage means Mexico has a hard time acting from a position of strength if an unmanageable conflict erupts. Energy security is thus highly politicized.
Value of Mexican Oil Exports by Destination
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It’s one thing to want independence, of course, and quite another to have it. Importing energy from other suppliers is simply not a viable option. Its proximity to the U.S. and its existing infrastructure make transport cheaper than from any other supplier. Higher prices on energy imports would drive up Mexico’s own production costs, making domestic markets more expensive and exports potentially less competitive.
In addition, the country’s state-owned oil company is in dire straits. Once the pride and joy of the country’s economy, Pemex is now a drain for the government. Crude oil production has been in decline since peaking in 2003, and the lackluster price of oil globally makes recovery difficult. Tax demands, mismanagement, barriers to reinvestment, pension plans and fuel theft have made Pemex operations inefficient and have left the company in debt to the tune of approximately $110 billion. The Mexican government has been pumping money in to keep the company afloat – and plans to provide another $3.5 billion this year – but has been unable to reverse its course.
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The administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is betting heavily on improving Mexico’s refining capacity. Its refineries are currently operating at 36.4 percent capacity, according to the energy office. (Lopez Obrador says Pemex refineries operate closer to 50 percent capacity.) Issues are due partly to supply and partly to the lack of upgrades. The Dos Bocas refinery project, for example, lies at the core of the government’s plans to solve the country’s refining shortcomings. Pemex owns the project, which will cost $31.3 billion over 20 years. The project’s potential value and return remain contested by members of the business community; those opposed believe the benefits are unrealistic. There is also concern over the lack of storage capacity for refined fuels.
Mexico City has meanwhile made modest policy attempts to improve its energy issues.
For example, it attempted to curb fuel imports by introducing a bill last December that significantly reduced the timeframe for related contracts. These measures were challenged in court, though, and their application was temporarily suspended under court orders.
The government also proposed major natural gas infrastructure projects. In the last quarter of 2020, it announced an infrastructure investment package worth $14 billion. Among the proposals is the Salina Cruz liquefaction project, which includes the expansion of pipeline networks and will account for $1.2 billion of the earmarked investment. While the Salina Cruz project has the domestic market in mind, two other liquified natural gas projects in the package mean to re-export LNG to Asia. These kinds of projects are designed to both stimulate economic recovery and signal to private investors that their money will be used wisely.
Mexico's Natural Gas
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The government can’t go it alone, so foreign direct investment will play a key role in helping Mexico build out its energy infrastructure. The problem confronting the government is that its hands-on approach to restructuring and revitalizing the domestic energy industry is off-putting to the very investors Mexico needs to attract. When he came to office, Lopez Obrador made several moves that discouraged investor confidence such as rewriting gas contracts, canceling electricity projects and taking steps toward ending subcontracts in the labor force. Other efforts, such as saving Pemex, have been viewed as superficial, moves that treat the symptom and not the disease. The chambers of commerce from Canada and the U.S. have both expressed concern over the growing role of the state in economic projects and warned that this could affect investment behavior going forward.
Mexico has a national imperative to break free of its energy dependence on the United States, in spite of the many obstacles that stand in its way. Even under the best of circumstances, they will be difficult to surmount any time soon.
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Migration surge. The Mexican government is planning to send security reinforcements to the Guatemalan border to block migrants headed for the U.S. border, according to a Reuters report that cited four anonymous sources. The reinforcements, which will most likely come from the National Guard, will be deployed as soon as next week. The report comes one day after Washington announced that the U.S. was on pace to see the most migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years.
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Stratfor
Mexico: National Guard Prepares to Monitor Country's Southern Border
2 MIN READMar 18, 2021 | 21:05 GMT
What Happened: Mexico is preparing to use its militarized police force, the National Guard, to conduct more frequent operations at Mexico’s southern border, Reuters reported March 17, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the matter. The purported aim of the deployment is to decrease the flow of migrants to Mexico’s border with the United States.
Why It Matters: Both U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stand to benefit from this operation. If Lopez Obrador can stop the flow of migrants to the U.S. southern border by cracking down on migration, the Biden administration will likely continue extending a hand to Mexico, as was seen when Washington announced on March 18 it would share 4 million surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses with Canada and Mexico.. Meanwhile, the Biden administration will enjoy less political and national security pressure on the U.S.-Mexico border if the volume of migrants is reduced.
Background: Mexico’s move comes days after the U.S. border patrol reported that it expects to receive more migrants in 2021 than it has in 20 years, primarily coming from Guatemala and Honduras.
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Topic # 1: Carteles Unidos “El Fruto” Arrested in Guatemala on US Extradition Request
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/carteles-unidos-leader-el-fruto.html
Photo # 1 & 2: El Fruto was arrested in Zona 10, an affluent suburb of Guatemala City
Photo # 3 & 4: At the same time that the arrests were being carried out in Guatemala, in Miami, Florida, four members gang members linked to El Fruto were arrested at a drug lab.
The Story:
On Tuesday afternoon, authorities in Guatemala arrested Mexican national Adalberto Fructuoso Comparan Rodríguez (alias 'El Fruto'), former mayor of Aguililla, Michoacan, and suspected leader of Cárteles Unidos ('United Cartels'). The arrest was made on a formal US extradition request for his alleged involvement in international drug trafficking. The Guatemalan Public Ministry (MP) detailed in a press release that El Fruto was arrested in a residential area of Guatemala City along with Alfonso Rustrián, another Mexican national wanted in the US for drug charges. According to US authorities, the two Mexicans are accused of drug trafficking, specifically conspiracy to smuggle and with intent to distribute 500 grams of methamphetamine into the US. They are wanted by the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Both of them were detected in Guatemala by US officials following an investigation that showed that El Fruto held several meetings in Colombia with other high-ranking cartel members. The two Mexicans will appear in the following hours before a Guatemalan judge who will decide in a matter of days or weeks if their extradition to Florida becomes effective. During the first three months of 2020, 16 people with an extradition order from the US government have been arrested in Guatemala. Most of them are wanted for drug trafficking.
Background
El Fruto, 57, was mayor of Aguililla, Michoacan, from 2008 to 2010, under the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He is currently the suspected leader of Carteles Unidos, a criminal group made up of different cartels under a loose alliance. They are rival to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Prior to El Fruto's involvement with Carteles Unidos, he was a high-ranking member of the Knights Templar Cartel. One of the cited sources say he was a close associate of Servando Gomez Martinez (alias 'La Tuta'), former Knights Templar Cartel boss. He is suspected of coordinating methamphetamine and heroin shipments from Michoacan, Mexico, to the US cities like Houston, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia. In 2015, he survived an assassination attempt in Mexico, but one his bodyguard Jose Luis Garcia Mendoza was killed. Two years prior, he had served as police officer in the Fuerza Rural (Rural Force) unit in Aguililla. This rural police force was a state-sanctioned unit that was born from the autodefensa (self-defense) groups that were active in Michoacan.
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Topic # 2: Veracruz: Victim’s Remains Delivered to Families in Plastic Gabage Bags
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/veracruz-victims-remains-delivered-to.html
The victim's mother at a prosecutor's office in Veracruz with the bags containing the remains of her son
The Story:
Eladio's family searched and found his remains on their own. Natalia Aguirre would like to take him to a cemetery and begin her grief, but the bureaucratic procedures denied her that opportunity. Meanwhile, the recalcitrant heat and a nauseating smell emanating from the black bags permeates the woman's face mask and the walls of the Las Choapas law enforcement sub-unit . An official in Veracruz has been fired over the incident: A senior law enforcement official in Veracruz has been fired after the recently-located remains of a 30-year-old man were delivered to his family in black plastic bags on Saturday. The Veracruz Attorney General’s Office (FGE) announced Monday that Alberto Torres Rivera, head of its sub-unit in the municipality of Las Choapas, had been dismissed for delivering the remains of Eladio Aguirre Chable, who disappeared in April 2020, to his family in the bags, which weren’t even sealed. His dismissal came after members of a Coatzacoalcos-based collective made of up mothers of missing persons denounced the way in which the man’s remains were handed over to his family. The Colectivo Madres en Búsqueda Coatzacoalcos called for criminal sanctions to be imposed and for Torres and Las Choapas prosecutor Lenin Juárez to be sacked. The Las Choapas sub-unit of the FGE delivered the body in “deplorable” conditions without complying with its obligations in accordance with the legal framework that applies to missing persons and without abiding by “necessary forensic standards,” it said. Eladio's body was located in recent days thanks to the work of the collective Mothers in Search Coatzacoalcos that, according to an anonymous report, inspected a vacant lot in the municipality of Agua Dulce.
The collective organization said the insensitive way in which the man’s body was delivered to his family was "with great indignation and pain the cruel, degrading, inhuman and revictimizing treatment that the Aguirre Chablé family has suffered." After the discovery, the FGE came to begin the removal of the remains. And without further ado, he handed them over to the family in plastic bags, violating all the protocols stipulated in the Law for the Protection of Victims of Crime. Candelaria and her daughter Natalia spent all of March 26 completing forms until the prosecutor Lenin Juárez agreed to sign the delivery of the skeleton. However, he would have told them that it was too late, to go the next day to the Las Choapas Forensic Medical Service. The women, outraged, were crushed. The mother asked to look at the corpse in the Semefo pantheon to be convinced that it was Eladio. There were no doubts. The jaw and three overlapping teeth convinced her. Prosecutor Alberto Torres Rivera told Natalia Aguirre to notify her funeral home to pass the remains to the Las Choapas prosecution unit. The sister went to that place where there were more forms to sign. Eladio Aguirre Chable (30 years old) made a living in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo. There he worked as a taxi driver where he transported tourists. On April 21, 2020, he paid a visit to Las Choapas to visit with his mother, Candelaria, and his children.
That trip was quick, because one of his children was sick. As soon as it improved, he planned to return to Quintana Roo to continue to make a living with tips in dollars. But his plans were not fulfilled: he was deprived of his liberty on a Monday and his whereabouts were not heard from again. “We demand the immediate dismissal of prosecutor Lenin Juárez and Alberto Torres; the rights of victims must be guaranteed,” they said. In addition to announcing Torres’ dismissal, Veracruz Attorney General Verónica Hernández Giadáns said Monday that an investigation had been opened to identify all of the public servants responsible for violating the General Victims Law as well as state and federal protocols that apply to the treatment of bodies of missing persons. She issued an apology to Aguirre’s family and said she was committed to eradicating practices that violate victims’ rights. The attorney general added that “exemplary punishments” will be imposed on those found to be responsible for the delivery of the man’s body to avoid any repeat of “such regrettable actions.” She didn’t say whether Juárez, the Las Choapas prosecutor, would remain in his job but issued a stern demand to all FGE employees. “The necessary investigations are carried out to impose exemplary sanctions in order to avoid the repetition of such regrettable events. I reiterate my demand to the public servants of this institution to adhere strictly to the law and to apply it with sensitivity and respect to human rights. I will not tolerate a single act that is removed from the principles that govern the institution that I represent,” Hernández said.
The State Human Rights Commission (CEDH) initiated two complaint procedures, one against the State Attorney General's Office (FGE) for delivering in the municipality of Las Choapas the remains of a person reported as missing inside bags of garbage. The second was against the municipal public security directorate of Atzacán - a district located in the central mountainous area of Veracruz - for the murder of a man with intellectual disabilities at the hands of a municipal policeman. In the case of Las Choapas, the ECHR initiated the ex officio complaint DAV / 0093/2021 after learning that the body of Eladio Aguirre Chablé, who disappeared in May 2020, was delivered to his family in two black plastic bags. After the discovery, the FGE came to begin the removal of the remains. And without further ado, he handed them over to the family in plastic bags, violating all the protocols stipulated in the Law for the Protection of Victims of Crime. The ECHR is already providing accompaniment to the victims and is investigating the responsibilities of the FGE regional officials in Las Choapas. In her social networks, the head of the FGE, Verónica Hernández Giadáns, reported this Monday that she started the folder FGE / FIN / 16/2021 to establish criminal responsibilities against Las Choapas officials, accused of transgressing the aforementioned law, as well as than search and investigation protocols. Hernández reported that Jessica Lizbeth Orozco Prescenda will be the new prosecutor in charge of the Comprehensive Subunit of Procurement of Justice in Las Choapas, while the previous person in charge, Alberto Torres Rivera, and the prosecutor Lenin Juárez Jiménez, who delivered the body, are investigated. Candelaria expected to receive the remains found of her brother, however, the authorities gave it to her in garbage bags. The Eladio family reported his disappearance and his file began to be disseminated by the State Search Commission.
The months passed without news, until Candelaria Chable received an anonymous sketch that said: Look in this place for your son , there they went to throw him away. "Ignore that , they want to make you look like a fool": Candelaria received the sketch on March 25, when members of the group to which she belongs searched for bodies on properties in the Los Tuxtlas region. She gave notice to the Prosecutor of Veracruz , but the response was blunt: "Ignore it, maybe want to extort you "; the prosecutor retorted Lenin Juarez Jimenez. The mother saved her courage and ignored those words. Sola went to a place marked on the map, near the Tonalá River, in the municipality of Agua Dulce. Candelaria rented a boat and found a skeleton that still had clothing attached to it that Eladio was wearing on the day of his disappearance . In the water floated a polo shirt , blue jeans, black tennis shoes and a cap. "It's him," Candelaria said and sent a photograph to the FGE's expert services personnel. The authorities there were surprised but sent a vehicle to collect the skeleton. There are more than 70,000 missing persons in Mexico, including a large number of people who disappeared in recent years in Veracruz, where many hidden graves have been discovered.
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Topic # 3: German Weapons in Mexico: German Weapons Export Cntrols Declared in Bank
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/german-weapons-in-mexico-german-weapon.html
The Story:
Federal High Court Rules on Illegal Arms Exports from Heckler and Koch to Mexico: In the process for illegal arms exports from Heckler and Koch (H&K) to Mexico, the Federal High Court of Germany (BGH), in Karlsruhe, today rejected the review of the judgment issued by the previous court, requested by the prosecution and the defendants. Heckler and Koch will have to pay more than three million euros for their illegal businesses in Mexico. In application of the law for the control of weapons of war, end-user declarations are not part of arms export licenses. The wide scope of this judgment has explosive potential for the entire German arms industry. "Today's ruling puts an end to the German arms export control system that has been applied," comments on the decision of the court Jürgen Grässlin, spokesperson for "Aktion Aufschrei – Stoppt den Waffenhandel!, (Cry to action - stop the arms trade!) and president of the RüstungsInformationsBüro (RIB e.V.), (Office of Information on Weapons). Jurgen Grässlin demands that this process have consequences, "to continue as before with arms export controls is unsustainable. Legislators must draft without delay a law that regulates arms exports, prohibits current export practices and, finally, takes into account the interests of firearms victims." The judgment shows support for this thesis: "According to Presiding Judge Dr. Schäfer, the current legal framework should be changed if necessary, this would be the task of the legislators.
In response to a 2010 lawsuit by Jürgen Grässlin and Tubingia lawyer Holger Rothbauer, the Stuttgart High Regional Court examined between 2018 and 2019 a case for illegal exports of H&K weapons. The court considered it proven that the authorizations for the exports of more than 4,200 assault rifles to Mexico were obtained intransparently and knowing that the end-user declarations were falsified, (EVE for its acronym in German). These declarations are a central instrument for the control of arms exports from Germany and Europe and document them to the German authorities that authorize them, where the weapons will be used. In the case of illegal exports of G36 assault rifles from Heckler and Koch, several Mexican federal states had been declared by the German federal government as unauthorized destinations for EVE declarations, given the critical situation in which they were. However, there came the rifles. The Stuttgart District Court, unlike the usual jurisprudence to date, did not consider end-user declarations an integral part of the export authorization. It was based on the Foreign Trade Law that the defendants could be convicted of manipulating the export authorization, since Mexico was cited as the destination of the weapons.
"This sentence is a political earthquake. Until now, the government has been arguing that end-user declarations are part of export authorizations and guarantee that weapons exported from Germany do not reach unwanted recipients," says lawyer Holger Rothbauer, who adds: "Today's resolution confirms the Stuttgart Court's interpretation that end-user declarations are not an integral part of export authorizations. Thus, a central element of the German arms export control system has been reduced to absurdity. In this way, what we knew for years is ratified, that end-user declarations have no more value than the paper on which they are printed and that they are used as vine leaves to hide dark businesses." "The sentence shows an open gap in the legislation on arms exports," adds Stephan Möhrle of RüstungsInformationsBüro: "both the Federal High Court (BGH) and the High Regional Court in Stuttgart argued that the legislator, in the Law for the Control of Firearms, has not considered the manipulation of authorizations a crime, contrary to what is provided for in the Foreign Trade Law. A manipulated authorization is still valid. This irregularity must be resolved as soon as possible by legislators and to achieve this it is necessary to draft a law on firearms exports." The victims of German arms export practices are the people affected by them, in the countries receiving exports. "The export bans of assault rifles for some particularly conflictive Mexican states were unsustainable from the beginning, if a human rights perspective is applied. Rather, it seems that a commitment was reached to make these exports possible. In that year Mexico was already marked by violence, human rights violations, corruption and impunity. It is shameful that the victims of these irresponsible export practices have not been taken into account at any time during the process," criticizes Carola Hausotter of the German Coordination for Human Rights in Mexico: "Lawmakers must establish that arms export controls also protect victims of violence by these weapons in export-receiving countries. These people have the right to be a party to this type of process," adds Christian Schliemann of the human rights organization ECCHR.
Contact details:
German Coordination for Human Rights in Mexico – Tobias Lambert, +49-157-71730893,presse@mexiko- koordination.de
ECCHR – Maria Bause, presse@ecchr.eu, +49-30 69819797
Aktion Aufschrei – Stoppt den Waffenhandel!, RIB e.V. – Jürgen Grässlin, +49-170-6113759, jg@rib- ev.de
Aktion Aufschrei – Stoppt den Waffenhandel und Ohne Rüstung Leben – Charlotte Kehne, +49-711- 62039372, orl-kehne@gaia.de
Attorney Holger Rothbauer, DEHR-Rechtsanwälte, +49-7071-1504949 / +49-173-6577693,anwalt@dehr.eu
RüstungsInformationsBüro e.V. – Stephan Möhrle, LL.M. moehrle@rib-ev.de
The German Coordination for Human Rights in Mexico is a network composed of:
Pastoral work for Latin America Adveniat, Amnesty International Germany, A.C., Carea A.C., Franciscan Center for Development and Mission, Companer@s of Southern Mexico A.C., Initiative for Mexico of Cologne and Bonn, Initiative Mexiko (INI-MEX), Mexico via Berlin A.C., Episcopal Work MISEREOR, Ecumenical Office for Peace and Justice A.C., Pacta Servanda A.C., Bread for the World, pax christi / One World Solidarity Commission, Missionary Procurate of the German Jesuits, Promovio and Zapapres A.C.
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Topic # 4: Magdalena de Kino, Sonora: 3 Sicarios Killed by Security Forces in Cartel Checkpoint
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/magdalena-de-kino-sonora-3-sicarios.html
The Story:
The cartel war in the municipality of Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, turned deadlier over the weekend after several shootouts and arsons were reported. There have been shootouts occurring frequently in this area since 2 March 2021. In one incident this weekend, cartel members and security forces clashed in Ejido La Cebolla. The shootout started after military personnel discovered a cartel checkpoint. The checkpoint was being used to inspect civilians coming in and out of Magdalena de Kino. Upon noticing the presence of the officers, the cartel gunmen opened fire, but the military soldiers responded and killed three assailants. Five soldiers were wounded but were reported in stable condition. Users on social media reported that cartel members burned several houses and ranches in the area.
Turf war
The wave of narco-terror in this part of Sonora began on March 2, in the Imuris and Magdalena highway, where an armed confrontation between cartel figures and the armed forces was reported. The clash caused the closure of the federal highway. Through social media, Magdalena residents reported that they were "locked up" because the entrance and exit roads to this municipality were blocked during the shootouts. Mexican federal investigators indicate that the Sinaloa Cartel is the main criminal group in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, plaza. This turf is a strategic location for drug trafficking given its proximity to the US state of Arizona. As reported by Borderland Beat, much of the violence in Sonora is driven by conflicts between several factions of the Sinaloa Cartel and local drug groups. Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel operates there with the support of Los Salazar faction. They are said to be competing with La Plaza and/or the Caborca Cartel, reportedly headed by Rafael Caro Quintero. Local reports have mentioned that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) may be working with Caro Quintero to fight the Sinaloa Cartel. Other groups have been reported in the area, including a gang known as Los Jabalies and/or Los Jabalis, formed by the Villagrana family, and Los Memos, headed by Adelmo Niebla González and/or Guillermo Nieblas Nava ('El G3').
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Topic # 5: Catholic Priest was Tortured and Killed in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/catholic-priest-was-tortured-and-killed.html
The Story:
Catholic priest Gumersindo Cortes Gonzalez, who served for the Diocesis of Celaya, was killed by unknown assailants over the weekend. His body was found in Cerrito de Guadalupe, a rural community in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. Investigators say Cortes was brutally tortured by his captors and killed with a firearm to the head and thorax. His vehicle was found close to where his corpse was abandoned. Cortes, 64, was a Catholic priest since 9 March 1983. He served for many years in the multiple Catholic communities in Celaya and San Miguel de Allende. Local media reports say that this incident is the first one of its kind in the Diocesis of Celaya. They did confirm that some of their priests have reported being extorted by drug cartels, but this was the first registered murder. Cortes was the second Catholic priest murdered in Mexico since Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) took office. In August 2019, priest Jose Martin Guzman Vega was stabbed to death outside a church in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. A week before his death, Guzman Vega had criticized Tamaulipas governor Francisco Javier Cabeza de Vaca for the growing insecurity in his community.
Why are priests attacked?
Clergymen in Mexico are not immune to the drug violence nor to attacks from drug cartels. Priests have been victims of extortion from organized crime groups. If a priest refuses to pay the demanding cartel, the threats can become severe and include burning of church precints, kidnappings, and even murder. Priests' outspokenness against organized crime activity can also incur reprisals, especially in areas where these crimes are high. Others have received death threats and attacks because they have protected migrants (common preys of organized crime) from abuse. As reported by Borderland Beat, priests are sometimes viewed as "social stabilizers" in communities. This is can be used against them by organize crime groups, who understand that killing a priest can cause social destabilization, thus sowing fear to be able to act at will.
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Topic # 6: Migrant Drownings Spike in Mexican Border State near West Texas
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/31/migrant-drownings-spike-in-mexican-border-state-near-west-texas/
Synopsis:
Authorities in Mexico and the U.S. are documenting a spike in drownings as a growing number of Central American migrants try to cross the Rio Grande. In the border state of Coahuila, authorities documented a total of 44 drownings since the start of 2021. According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by state officials, the drownings have taken place in Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuna. In Piedras Negras, authorities documented 24 drownings in three months, while in 2020, they documented 28 for the entire year. The most recent drowning took place on Tuesday afternoon when a 25-year-old Salvadoran migrant jumped into the river to escape Mexican police officers. Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuna about the Texas border cities of Eagle Pass and Del Rio. The border river is minimally fenced in these areas, leaving the Rio Grande as the only obstacle for drug traffickers and human smugglers who are profiting from the recent spike. The rapid increase in drownings comes as authorities see greater numbers of migrants crossing the river to Texas. The Del Rio Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, which encompasses both cities, documented a 300 percent spike in apprehensions in comparison to 2020.
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Topic # 7: Infant Tossed into Rio Grande by Human Smugglers Rescued by Texas Rangers
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/31/infant-tossed-into-rio-grande-by-human-smugglers-rescued-by-texas-rangers/
Synopsis:
A Texas Ranger worked with U.S. Border Patrol agents to rescue a six-month-old migrant girl after human smugglers threw her into the Rio Grande near Roma, Texas. The infant’s mother had reportedly been assaulted by the smugglers in Mexico and sustained a broken leg. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials posted a photo on Facebook showing a Texas Ranger holding an infant girl after she was rescued from the river that separates the U.S. and Mexico. Officials say human smugglers threw the six-month-old girl out of a raft and into the Rio Grande on March 16. The DPS South Texas Special Operations Group, Texas Rangers Division, assisted U.S. Border Patrol agents in the rescue effort. The report indicates the mother of the child sustained a broken leg after being assaulted by human smugglers in Mexico. It is not clear why the smugglers threw the child into the river. Breitbart Texas reached out to Border Patrol officials for additional information on the rescue. An immediate response was not available. On Tuesday, Breitbart Texas published a leaked video detailing the dramatic rescue attempt of a nine-year-old migrant child who drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, on March 20. Despite the heroic efforts to resuscitate the child, doctors later pronounced her to be deceased at a hospital. Del Rio Sector Marine Unit agents came upon a small island in the middle of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, on March 20. The agents found three people unconscious on the island where they became stranded while attempting to cross from Mexico into Texas, according to information provided by Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials.
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Topic # 8: THEY GO FOR 'EL REY SAPO' WHO KEEPS THE SECRETS OF MENCHO AND IS FROM HIS CLOSE CIRCLE
Source: https://elblogdelnarco.com/2021/03/30/van-por-el-rey-sapo-quien-guarda-los-secretos-del-mencho-y-es-de-su-circulo-cercano/
The Story:
A powerful but low-key capo is the government's new concern. He is the right hand of Mencho, founder of the CJNG. And it is the criminal mind behind important cartel operations. The Mexican government wants to catch him before he grows any more, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, is no longer the man most wanted by the Federal Government. His place has been taken by a boss who few know his name, alias and history. The team of Rosa Icela Rodríguez, head of the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, has changed the peephole and now has it on a Michoacan who is considered the right hand of Mencho, for whom the United States government offers 10 million dollars reward. His nickname is King Sapo, or simply El Sapo, Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytán, a violent operator of the most powerful cartel in the country whose stronghold is in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco. The security cabinet attributes to this man dozens of kidnappings and murders, as well as the collection of extortion fees from businesses and hotels in that tourist destination, whose objective would be to finance the containment barrier for his boss. El Sapo had gone almost unnoticed in the media until December 18, 2020, when the former governor of Jalisco, Aristóteles Sandoval, was assassinated in a complex ambush set up by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel in Puerto Vallarta. Since then, federal investigations have intensified and pointed out that this man with a robust complexion and 174 centimeters tall would have orchestrated the attack against the PRI politician who ruled Jalisco between 2013 and 2018.
Keep the secrets of Mencho
He is only 34 years old - his file locates October 2, 1988 as his date of birth - and he has high responsibilities within the cartel: he is in charge of conquering cities for his boss and he is also the recruiter of the bosses of hitmen. As the person in charge of the cartel's expansion plans, El Sapo designed the offensive in Guanajuato to seize the huachicoleo business and extortion from the rival to the death of his boss, José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, el Marro, founder of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. And it is also the maximum operator of the alliance between the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and La Antiunión of Mexico City, whose objective is to displace La Unión Tepito and stay with the criminal businesses of the country's capital. By paying attention to El Sapo, the security cabinet realized that he was the key man to stop the violence generated by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, since he is the boss who keeps the most important secrets of Mencho. According to an analysis made by the National Intelligence Center, Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytán is - in addition to all the previous responsibilities - in charge of the cartel's political relations and the payment of bribes to the local authorities that protect them. Government investigators believe that he administers the cartel's payroll - which ranges from plaza bosses and mayors who take care of them to hawks and hitmen - as well as Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes' most prized assets, including ranches, houses and even luxury vehicles, such as sports and armored cars. “El Sapo is a priority because, if we catch him, we will have all the necessary information to attack the CJNG in the weakest points and we will know where we can do the most damage. It's like opening a safe with secrets. And in this type of operation, information is the best tool. If we want to limit the power of the Jalisco Cartel, it must be done with data, with intelligence, not with bullets, ”an official who is on the hunt for the kingpin assured EMEEQUIS.
Your close circle
In the government they already have a thick folder with data on this elusive criminal: they know his areas of influence, his weapons and who is part of his close circle. In the government they already have a thick folder with data on this elusive criminal: they know his areas of influence, his weapons and who is part of his close circle. Investigators know, for example, that he is married to Liliana Rosas Camba, a 27-year-old woman, who is the leader of several money laundering schemes to launder the profits obtained by her husband and El Mencho. And that among its most prominent partners is a Colombian, located as "C", who is the cartel's link with South America and who trains the hit men who are part of the bodyguard squad of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes. His importance in the criminal organization has grown steadily since the son of his boss, Rubén Oseguera González, el Menchito, was arrested in 2015 and later extradited to the United States. Later, he jumped to the top of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel when Menchito's sister, Jessica Johanna Oseguera González, was also arrested in February 2020 and is currently imprisoned in the United States. With his sons incarcerated, El Mencho had to find someone to name as his heir and, they believe in the federal government, chose El Sapo as the next in line of succession. “It's not a minor thing, huh? There are very strong rumors that Mencho has been ill for a long time. A kidney problem, apparently. And he has been in serious condition, so much so that he had to have a hospital built for him just because he required surgical interventions. “If El Mencho dies, is killed or is imprisoned, the king of the entire Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel will be El Sapo. And I say king because that is how they also nickname him King Toad, because he handles himself as if he were royalty. He could be the next big headache of this government or the one that follows ”, said the source consulted. That is why, he says, is that the federal government has changed the peephole: they are not going against the sick king who has been giving up power, but against the violent, healthy and strong prince who is going for the crown of the most powerful cartel in the country.
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Possible Sinaloa Cartel Feud Leaves 4 Mexicans Dead in Guatemala
San Luis Potosi, SLP: CJNG Video Message against CDG and The Ministerial Policemen Cartel (Video in Link)
Construction Workers Under the Yoke of Organized Crime
EXCLUSIVE: Photos Show Migrant Camp in Mexico near Texas Border
370 Pounds of Meth Seized in Tractor-Trailer at Texas Border Crossing
Border State Cops in Mexico Rescue Migrants Kidnapped by Gulf Cartel
Exclusive Video: Endless Waves of Migrants Fleeing Poverty Overwhelm Border Patrol
REYNOSA TRAIAN ON THE NAIL JUST OVER 1 MILLION DOLLARS (Translated Spanish to English)
Topic # 1: Possible Sinaloa Cartel Feud Leaves 4 Mexicans Dead in Guatemala
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/possible-sinaloa-cartel-feud-leaves-4.html
Photo # 1: The victims, presumably Sinaloa Cartel drug traffickers, could have been killed after Mexican authorities seized 3 tons of cocaine in Chiapas earlier this month
Photo # 2: At least two of the victims have ties with Puebla Public Security chief Raciel Lopez Salazar
Photo # 3: The two vehicles had license plates from Queretaro and Mexico City. They were found abandoned in Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas
Topic # 4: Gilberto Rivera Amarillas was arrested in Mexicali in 1999, but he was quickly released due to lack of evidence. In 2004, two of his teenage children were killed in an attempt on his life
The Story:
A possible drug cartel feud in Guatemala left 4 Mexican citizens dead. The killing occurred in Nica, Malacatan, a rural community in San Marcos Department. After residents reported a shooting, the National Civil Police of Guatemala mobilized and reached Nica, where they found the bodies of four people scattered on a property. All of them victims were executed with a coup de grace blow to the head. The National Institute of Forensic Sciences (INACIF) in San Marcos has only identified three of the victims: Guillermo de Jesús Tovar Gómez (aged 28), José Luis García Gutiérrez (aged 42), and Eduardo Galaor Torres Vera (aged 43). The first two are from Comitan and the last one is from Tonala, two municipalities in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Torres Vera was the brother of former Institutional Revoluationary Party (PRI) deputy Judith Torres Vera. She is currently a Public Security Department head in Puebla under Racial Lopez Salazar. Investigators say that the four victims crossed the Mexican border into Guatemala last Wednesday via Suchiate River and left their two vehicles on the Mexican side. The route they took to get there is known as La Pedrona and is notorious for human smuggling. At some point, the four victims were intercepted by an armed group and killed. In one of the vehicles, investigators found an ID card from Juan Carlos Gomez Roman, a resident of Comitan who works in the Ministry of Health in Chiapas. Authorities are unsure if this man was with the four victims, if he managed to escape, or if he was taken by the assassins. Guatemalan authorities say that the local cartel in Malacatan is known as Los Melendez Merida, which has presence in parts of Central America and southern Mexico.
Possible drug feud
Guatemalan officials believe that the mass murder may be drug-related and linked to a large cocaine seizure carried out by Mexican authorities two weeks prior. On 10 May 2021, the Chiapas Attorney General's Office seized close to 3 tons of cocaine in Puerto Arista in the municipality of Tonala, Chiapas. Seven people were arrested: Pedro U., Leobardo R., Manuel I., José Natividad G., Oscar C., Daniel T., and Carlos C. Investigators say the drugs were owned by the Sinaloa Cartel. Intelligence sources from Mexico's Attorney General's Office (FGE) say that they were investigating two of the victims, Torres Vera and Garcia Gutierrez, for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking in Chiapas. They are believed to have been part of a criminal group once headed by Gilberto Rivera Amarillas AKA El Tio and/or El Señor de la Frontera Sur. Rivera Amarillas was born in Culiacan, Sinaloa, and controlled much of the drug trafficking operations for the Sinaloa Cartel in southern Mexico. Authorities say he was one of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's leading operators in the area. Rivera Amarillas frequently moved between southern Mexico and Guatemala. In June 2016, he was arrested at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala and extradited to the US in February 2017. He died from a terminal illness five months later.
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Topic # 2: San Luis Potosi, SLP: CJNG Video Message against CDG and The Ministerial Policemen Cartel
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/san-luis-potosi-slp-cjng-video-message.html
Video translation is as follows:
Good morning citizens of the entire state of San Luis Potosí. We are the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación of Mr. Mencho. And through this statement we want to inform you of the reality of the violent events that have occurred with businessmen and politicians this March in the Potosina capitol. We completely distance ourselves from the murder of the president of Coparmex, Julio César Galindo Pérez, the politician Rodrigo Sánchez Flores AKA El Ferrari, and his wife, Miriam Luna Contreras. We all know those who ordered the attacks were Evaristo Sánchez Cruz AKA El Vaquero, leader of the Gulf Cartel. And Alfredo Aleman Narváez AKA Comandante Aleman, leader of Los Alemanes Cartel. The are the ones who sent José Pedro Bárcenas Martínez AKA Peter Carreteras, intellectual author of the two events who was fighting the plaza of the Piedad prison for the sale of drugs with El Ferrari. Since he was an inmate in the prison. Peter Carreteras ordered him to kill the guard Jorge Luis Arteano, who smuggled the drugs, the wine, and the beer in for El Ferrari. And also to benefit politics and his friend José Ricardo Gallardo Cardona AKA El Pollo Gallardo, candidate of the Green Party for the governorship of the State. Why is he being financially supported by these aforementioned kidnappers and murderers of innocent civilians?
They work hand in hand. To commit crimes against the citizens who hinder them in their illicit businesses and money laundering. Another person that we leave on the list for you of those linked to these events, they know very well who the guilty are and refuse to detain them. They’re good at playing dumb asses. As is the case of the sons of bitches who executed Rosalinda, a municipal police officer, in the most cowardly way. This was a crime that was organized and ordered by her own ministerial colleagues. Quico, Mike, Fuerte, and his superior Daniel Chávez are also involved. So is Jose Guadalupe Celestino, leader of the Ministerial Policemen Cartel. This is a cartel that here recently was exhibited nationwide on television by journalist Denise Maerker from Noticieros Televisa. For engaging in illegal activities such as theft of vehicles and businesses, drug trafficking after seizures, and charging civilians for not executing their arrest warrants. Something that everyone in San Luis Potosí already knew for several years. As we have told you in previous communications. We came to stay. And little by little we will accommodate the state so that citizens can live in peace. Free from kidnapping, extortion, and fee collection.
So it’s best you strengthen yourselves Golfos, Alemanes, and Ministerial Policemen. Because we’re coming after all the Golfos, commanders, and the criminal cells that we have identified as being directly responsible for the intentional homicides in the state. Comandante San Fe, Tigre, Londo, Guasel, Polaris, in charge of Matehuala. And Carlos López, in charge of San Vicente. And as for the children of Aleman, who seem to think that they’re still living in the past. When their father was the leader of Los Zetas and could kill and do whatever they wanted. Luis aka El Mongol, Checo Aleman, and Adrián Aleman. The comandantes of the Peter Carreteras cells: Lalo Salazar, Michis, Guacho, Fresa, Jimmy, and that fucking faggot Daniel Chavez, compadre Alemán, as well as your filthy cell of narco Ministerial Policemen. Thieves, collector of fees, extortionists and drug dealers. Made up of your black lover El Quico, Nicky, Fuerte, Ahueca, Pato, Marcelo, and Caballero. With an advance warning there is no betrayal assholes. Sincerely, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación. San Luis Potosí Branch Office.
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Topic # 3: Construction Workers Under the Yoke of Organized Crime
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/construction-workers-under-yoke-of.html
The Story:
Workers who lay the foundations of the hotel infrastructure of Isla Blanca, an extension of Cancun, live stories of terror, as organized crime pressures to recruit them and, if they refuse its demands, they are victims of extortion, disappearance or homicide. Every day some 35,000 construction workers build the foundations of the hotel infrastructure of Isla Blanca, an extension of Cancun, at an annual growth rate of more than 7,000 rooms. But apart from this successful industry, these workers live stories of terror as organized crime pressures to recruit them and, if they refuse its demands, they are victims of extortion, disappearance or murder. Isla Blanca, Quintana Roo: The Planet Hollywood Cancun hotel offers its guests the possibility of vacationing like a movie star in Isla Blanca, as it is inspired by the glamor of the seventh art. It is the first lodging in Mexico operated under the brand owned by Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In contrast to the dream environments that invite you to live a fantasy experience, this property has been the scene of terror for workers who have been tortured, disappeared or killed during the construction stage. The inauguration of this 898-room hotel complex, whose investment reached 200 million dollars, was scheduled for December 15, 2020. However, it was postponed a few weeks due to the discovery of the bones of four people in an adjoining lot, in November 2020.
The identities of the victims have not been officially released. It is not an isolated case. Organized crime has infiltrated to the ground in the Mexican Caribbean tourism industry, considered the main economic engine of the region, admit authorities, businessmen and workers. Catalonia, Atelier, Excellence, Majestic, Palladium, RIU Dunamar and RIU Beach Palace are accommodations whose construction works were also co-opted by extortionists and drug sellers, the testimonies of ex-workers and a member of the State Ministerial Investigation Police coincide with diligences in the area, who for security reasons asked not to reveal his identity. During a meeting with deputies of the Justice Commission, on December 18, 2020, the head of the General Attorney of the State of Quintana Roo (FGE), Óscar Montes de Oca Rosales, assured that the escalation of violence in the entity is directly linked to migrants employed in the construction sector. “Of the homicides (in Quintana Roo) –both perpetrators and victims–, 80% are not from here; They all come from neighboring states and have to do with construction. There they are taken and taken, first, to help in the sale of drugs and, later, they are turned into hitmen, ”said Montes de Oca.
A photograph of violent crimes:
On June 18, 2020, seven months before the official opening of Planet Hollywood Cancun, Ángel de la Cruz, a worker from Tabasco, was taken to a basement inside the resort by a criminal group infiltrated in the work day. What is known is that he was beaten and tortured for 12 hours, his weekly payment and his cell phone were stolen. Then they released him. It was a warning for Manolo, his employer, to pay the forced fees that he owed to the criminal group that had taken over the work, according to what Ángel himself was able to narrate by phone to his family in Tabasco, thanks to a cell phone they lent him. The threat materialized on July 21 and Ángel disappeared: two hooded men kidnapped him from his workplace, in full view of his colleagues. Since then, his family has been desperately searching for him, and it is personal. At Planet Hollywood, William Ariel Llanes, Carlos de la Cruz, Juan Pablo Pech and Carlos Ramón López were also disappeared between 2019 and 2020, while Jesús Moisés Gómez and Laureano Méndez were disappeared from the Catalonia hotel works. So far the investigations have not yielded clues as to his whereabouts or those responsible for his disappearance. Extortion at construction sites, the recruitment of workers, their torture, disappearance and homicide are part of an organized crime operation scheme that began to be identified two or three years ago in Isla Blanca, spread to Cancun and currently it covers the north coast of the state, confirms James Tobin Cunningham, a member of the National Security Council. Isla Blanca is the epicenter of the problem. Called to be "the new hotel zone of Cancun", here the construction of 29,400 hotel rooms is projected, according to the Partial Urban Development Plan. However, there, in addition to the disappearances of construction workers, there are reports of violent executions to the detriment of this sector. At least three alleged workers were found dead outside the RIU, Planet Hollywood and Catalonia hotels in 2020. One more appeared with signs of torture last January. Who could be behind this scene of violence? A diagnosis on security matters prepared by Lantia Consultores in 2016 located the operation of two large organized crime groups in the state: the Pacific Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, ie CJNG, with a presence in Cancun and Chetumal, dedicated to drug trafficking , people, goods, extortion and kidnapping.
"Modus operandi":
The pattern of extortion is similar in all works where the presence of people linked to criminal groups is reported: working has a cost or there is "tablazo", a method of torture in which pieces of wood are used to beat the victim. All workers have to pay floor fees (piso) : engineers, architects, construction managers, bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, helpers and even street vendors and public transport workers. The charge varies, depending on the position and the work in which it works. It is mandatory and can be in two ways: a weekly fee of approximately 500 pesos or a dose of marijuana that the employee has to pay for forcibly. René paid the drug trafficker about 1,500 pesos a week, a third of his income, for 10 bags of marijuana that they forced him to buy. He is a worker who worked at the Catalonia, Majestic and Planet Hollywood hotels. His name, and that of all the employees interviewed for this report, have been changed so as not to jeopardize their integrity."The Engineer", as his direct employer is called, has to give an additional fee to that paid by each worker. If you do not give that payment, the first warning is to hit one or more of your workers, as happened with Ángel de la Cruz. Each construction site in large resorts, with surfaces of up to 40 hectares, houses an average of 800 workers. Mixed with this army of workers are the thugs. Criminals keep track of attendance and how much each worker earns per week. The vendor offers them drugs all day. The situation worsens if, in addition to the weekly quota, workers go into debt to be able to consume, describes Jacinto. Tobin argues that criminals identify constructions when they are just starting, they look for those responsible for the works and also for contractors; they research your personal data and then address it. On March 15, 2021, the FGE reported in a statement about the arrest of three individuals identified as Marcos, Martín and Carlos, related to crimes of extortion, as well as possession, trafficking and sale of drugs in hotel buildings, coinciding with the modus previously described operandi.
Calvary of the invisible victims:
Driven by the promise of higher wages and better living conditions for themselves and their families, men and, to a lesser extent, women, migrate from marginalized populations in southeastern Mexico to Quintana Roo, in order to be employed in the manufacturing industry construction. Of the 74, 764 people that this sector employs, 51, 351 are registered with the IMSS; that is, 23, 413 are in an informal scheme, without labor benefits, social security or an employer responsibility contract. Even so, Catalina Portillo Navarro, head of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare of Quintana Roo, affirms that working conditions in the state are much higher than those of workers in their states of origin. However, the contribution of construction employees to an economy that extends year after year is not proportional to working conditions, historically marked by exploitation, informality and security risks, laments Juan José Chilón, former leader of the Union of Construction Workers, Laborers and Employees (Sitec). The economic deprivation and almost zero social mobility currently place them in the crosshairs of organized crime. For the criminologist and security specialist Mónica Franco, these young people, living in poverty, alone and far from their families, do not have support networks, which increases their vulnerability.
These conditions, the expert adds, have made it practically impossible for workers to have the opportunity to report extortion and acts of torture. The FGE recognizes that there are 18 investigation folders for disappearances related to workers in the construction industry, according to an official response. However, the prosecution does not have data on the operations carried out in the construction works and declared that there is no record of clandestine graves between January 1, 2015 and November 31, 2020, which leaves out the findings near the Planet Hollywood. For the families, the search has become an odyssey, due to their financial shortcomings, lack of legal knowledge, apathy from the FGE and poor support. They have also stated that neither the hotels nor the construction companies for which they worked have agreed to assist with the investigation. Although the Planet Hollywood and Catalonia hotels are subject to reports of disappearance of workers within their facilities, these tourist complexes operate normally. In a destination like Cancun, whose economy depends on the more than 23 million visitors that arrive annually, it is a priority to take care of the image of the tourist centers.
The prosecutor Montes de Oca put it in those terms during the December meeting with legislators: “All the events (homicides) are regrettable, but for a state that lives off tourism, we have to take care of our raw material, which is precisely tourism. so that it does not happen that they decide not to come ”. For her part, the head of the Quintana Roo Tourism Secretariat, Marisol Vanegas Pérez, ruled out that it was a serious situation. He dismisses that it inhibits the arrival of tourists to the state and adds that so far no investment has been stopped for security reasons. Vanegas acknowledges that drug trafficking groups have "sneaked" into the hotels under development, but states that this is resolved in a "simple" way: by certifying the supplier companies "before the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry." This position is shared by Ramón Roselló, manager of InverHotel, a company that groups 16 hotel chains that add up to 50,000 of the 114,000 rooms that operate in the Mexican Caribbean. Although Roselló acknowledges that there is a problem of insecurity in buildings, he believes that it is not "so serious" and qualifies as "exceptional" the work of the authorities. He says that if the news about violence in construction is repeated a lot, that could have a negative impact on the image of Cancun as a destination. For his part, Tobin mentions that there are already investors who have stopped projects due to insecurity in the works. While tourism in the area shows signs of progress, the Stations of the Cross does not end for the victims and their families. For Chilón, the Tourist Brand has weighed more than the workers' own lives, and concludes: "It is very regrettable that information is hidden in order to preserve the image of the city and prevent tourists from not coming."
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Topic # 4: EXCLUSIVE: Photos Show Migrant Camp in Mexico near Texas Border
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/29/exclusive-photos-show-massive-migrant-camp-in-mexico-near-texas-border/
Synopsis:
mber of Central American migrants are camping outside of one of the international ports of entry in Reynosa. The growing group has been ignored by the Mexican federal government, presenting concerns for local and state officials. Breitbart Texas visited one of the makeshift camps in the main plaza near the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge area. The group is made up largely of migrants who were recently deported from the U.S. and have nowhere to go. Others are hoping to cross the bridge and request asylum. Breitbart Texas journalists only saw state police officers in the plaza. No officials from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) nor the National System for Integral Family Development (DIF) were visibly present. “It hurts to see how they treat us like if we aren’t humans,” Maria Perez from Guatemala said about being ignored by Mexican federal officials. “Look at the children, how they are being forced to lay on the floor.” According to Brenda Ordonez, a deported migrant from Honduras who has been in Reynosa for five days, she and others are waiting for INM and the UN Migrant Agency (ACNUR) to help them get home. “I don’t, not anymore,” Ordonez said in tears about trying to cross the border. “I would like for governments to look at us, that we traveled to other countries to look for a better life. We want jobs, we want something for our family, it is impossible to live in Honduras.”
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Topic # 5: 370 Pounds of Meth Seized in Tractor-Trailer at Texas Border Crossing
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/29/370-pounds-of-meth-seized-in-tractor-trailer-at-texas-border-crossing/
Synopsis:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 370 pounds of methamphetamine at a Texas border crossing commercial lane. The officers found the $7.3 million in drugs in a tractor-trailer attempting to enter from Mexico. CBP officers assigned to the Laredo Port of Entry on March 25 observed a tractor-trailer approaching from Mexico to enter the United States via a World Trade Bridge commercial border crossing, according to information received from Laredo, Texas, CBP officials. The driver presented a manifest listing the cargo as industrial magnets. Officers referred the driver to a secondary inspection station where they conducted a K-9 search and a non-intrusive imaging system inspection, officials stated. During the inspection, the officers observed anomalies in the cargo. This led the agents to conduct a physical search of the load. During the secondary inspection and search, the officers found 104 packages allegedly filled with methamphetamine. Officials said the drug load weighed 367.24 pounds. They estimated the value of the shipment to be $7,344,845. “The level of methamphetamine abuse in the U.S. continues to rise,” Acting Port Director Eugene Crawford, Laredo Port of Entry, said in a written statement. “Seizures like this one underscore the vital role that CBP officers play in advancing our overall national border security mission and protecting the public from illegal narcotics.” The officers seized the drug shipment and turned the case over to ICE Homeland Security Investigations for preparation of charges.
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Topic # 6: Border State Cops in Mexico Rescue Migrants Kidnapped by Gulf Cartel
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/28/border-state-cops-in-mexico-rescue-migrants-kidnapped-by-gulf-cartel/
Synopsis:
Authorities in the Mexican border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, rescued a group of migrants who were kidnapped by the Gulf Cartel. The cartel members held the migrants against their will while they extorted ransoms from their loved ones. The incident took place last week when Tamaulipas state authorities responded to a call to their 911 system about a group of migrants that were being held against their will. The kidnappers held the migrants in the rural community of Buena Vista, located on the outskirts of Matamoros. Police officers responded to the scene and found 37 Central American migrants including 7 described as minors. The migrants claimed they were trying to reach the U.S. border the cartel members took them hostage. The migrants claimed that they had been held against their will for approximately 15 days. Authorities did not find any human smugglers or cartel members at the house. Authorities did not disclose the nationalities of the migrants. Officials turned the case over to Mexico’s National Migration Institute to process their deportation or, in the case of unaccompanied minors, to turn them over to another government entity. The kidnapping comes at a time when Mexico’s Gulf Cartel dramatically ramped up their human smuggling operations in the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa. The cartel seeks to cash in on the perception held by migrants that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is welcoming them unlike his predecessor Donald J. Trump.
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Topic # 7: Exclusive Video: Endless Waves of Migrants Fleeing Poverty Overwhelm Border Patrol
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/28/exclusive-video-endless-waves-of-migrants-fleeing-poverty-overwhelms-border-patrol/
Synopsis:
Video shot this week in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas shows firsthand, the never-ending stream of migrants illegally entering the United States. Many of the migrants shared their stories as they made their way to a receiving area set up by the Border Patrol. The migrants, depending on where they illegally enter, walk up to several miles to reach the area where they will surrender. In a few short hours, near Mission, Tx, Breitbart Texas observed more than 250 migrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico. The endless groups of migrants consisted mostly of whole families and unaccompanied children. Some unaccompanied children, as young as 9 years old, walked through the brush and farm fields in search of Border Patrol agents. The migrants guided themselves by following makeshift signs on sheets of plywood placed strategically to keep them from getting lost. All of the migrants Breitbart Texas spoke to were from Central America. Some claimed to be fleeing poverty in their home country while others hinted at persecution. Very few Border Patrol Agents could be found in the area as many are removed from front-line patrols due to the humanitarian needs of caring for the surge in unaccompanied children.
Border Patrol facilities are reported to be overcrowded due to the sheer volume of apprehensions made during the last two months. A never-ending stream of Border Patrol buses arrived at a temporary processing center near the Rio Grande to transport migrants to other facilities for later release. Earlier this week, the Border Patrol implemented a plan to release migrants into the United States with minimal processing of their asylum claims. Their cases are not being reported to immigration courts, saving Border Patrol Agents processing time in order to accommodate the increased migrant flow in the area. The increased migrant traffic is still troubling to Border Patrol agents in the field. Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera, in his role as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, finds the situation concerning. “This is more than a crisis; we need more boots on the ground in this area,” Cabrera told Breitbart. “We still have aliens running from us and not enough agents to chase them.” “We don’t know who those people are and what threat they may pose unless we can apprehend them,” the veteran border agent explained. “That’s getting harder every day”. Although some migrants are returned swiftly due to the CDC’s Title 42 COVID-19 protection protocol, those with small children are exempted and released into the United States. There simply are not enough Border Patrol agents to respond to the surge of crossings, process, and provide care for those currently in custody.
The Border Patrol is struggling to even provide transportation from the river to processing centers as the numbers continue to grow. Border Patrol Agent Cabrera is concerned that the situation could prove deadly as the summer months approach. “The dangers out here are deceiving,” he said. “A person can become dehydrated in this heat in a very short amount of time.” “The river poses an equally dangerous hazard,” Cabrera continued. “We’ve seen enough drownings out here as well”. As darkness fell, the groups continued to cross the Rio Grande searching for the Border Patrol. Many carried small children on their shoulders on the long walk through the brush country. Many appeared worried and exhausted. Helicopters flew overhead at times, attempting to assist the few Border Patrol agents in the area to round up those migrants attempting to escape apprehension. The migrants who flee are usually those who do not qualify for release. The number of those who escape apprehension by the Border Patrol increases daily. As for the Border Patrol agent’s morale, Agent Cabrera says, “The job has never been easy, we still have to come to work and give it our all. That’s what we always do”.
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Topic # 8: REYNOSA TRAIAN ON THE NAIL JUST OVER 1 MILLION DOLLARS
Source: https://www.valorportamaulipas.info/2021/03/reynosa-traian-en-el-clavo-poco-mas-de.html
Synopsis:
Tamaulipas.- Police from the Special Operations Group, secured $ 1,115,000 in cash in bills of various denominations that were transported in a trailer. The seized money was hidden between the pallets of a load of plastic waste. The vehicle was stopped on the Reynosa - San Fernando highway on its way to Villahermosa, Tabasco. Two people were traveling in the cargo transport unit, a man and a woman who were detained.
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Topic # 1: Sonora, Mexico: Mexican Leaders Say Human Trafficking Driving Disappearances of Women and Girls
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/sonora-mexico-mexican-leaders-say-human.html
Marchers hold a banner that says "We're the voice of the ones who are no longer here"
Synopsis:
Mexican officials say they believe human trafficking is driving high numbers of disappearances of women and girls in neighboring Sonora and across the country. Calling the numbers of missing women and girls worrisome, officials with the Mexico's human rights and searching commissions said Thursday that women represent 25% of disappearances in the country. Of those nearly 60% are girls under 18. "Sonora is one of the states with the highest number of missing women, most of whom are adolescents or young adults," said Karla Quintana, head of the National Searching Commission. "The working hypothesis for searches is human trafficking." Most women who go missing in Sonora are young, and many share similar physical traits. But while the cases are being investigated as human trafficking, she said, the commission is still working to better understand the context. Across Mexico, more than 85,000 people have gone missing and never been found since 2006. Sonora is among the 10 states with the highest number of disappearances, and in the top five with the most clandestine graves.
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Topic # 2: Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas: The Cartel del Noreste Threatens Transportation Drivers
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/nuevo-laredo-tamaulipas-cartel-del.html
Synopsis:
The Cartel del Noreste (CDN), headed by Juan Gerardo Trevino Chávez AKA El Huevo, has just released a statement online warning all shipment drivers not to drive into Nuevo Laredo outside of regular business hours. This narco message started circulating on social media over the weekend. This warning goes out to all transportation drivers. Avoid for yourselves the penalty of us having to physically hurt you by not working outside of normal work hours. If you enter Nuevo Laredo it should be between 5 in the morning to 12 at night. Beware of consequences after hours for you and your company. This is you final warning. Sincerely, The Northeast Cartel.
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Topic # 3: San Fernando, Tamaulipas: Secretary of the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office Killed
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/san-fernando-tamaulipas-secretary-of.html
Synopsis:
A secretary belonging to the Attorney General's Office of Tamaulipas was murdered in San Fernando and his body was found inside his home located in the north of the municipality. Information provided by the Police Station confirmed that the deceased male responded to the name of Juan Gerardo "T" and worked within the Attached Agency of the Public Investigative Ministry. The public servant had three stabs in the chest and others in his arms. A cousin identified as Carlos "N" made the discovery of the body at 5:20 p.m. respectively. The relative explained that from early on they were fixing the house and that for a few moments he left him alone. Upon returning he found him lying on the floor deceased. For its part, the Police Station reported that so far no suspect has been arrested.
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Topic # 4: Queretaro, Mexico: A component for Making a Dirty Bomb Has Been Stolen
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/queretaro-mexico-component-for-making.html
Synopsis:
The federal agency reported that if the radioactive source is removed from its container, handled or there is direct contact with it for a few minutes or hours, it can cause permanent injuries. An industrial radiography equipment, which contains a radioactive source, was stolen this Sunday morning on the road to the municipality of Teoloyucan, State of Mexico, reported the National Coordination of Civil Protection of the Government of Mexico (CNPC). For the theft of the radioactive source, Federal Civil Protection alerted the population of the following states to, in case of finding the equipment, not open it and notify the local authority in Querétaro, State of Mexico, Mexico City, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Guerrero, Morelos, Tlaxcala and Puebla. In a statement, the agency detailed that the aforementioned container houses inside a radioactive source of Iridium-192 with serial number TT3303, with an activity of 68.89 Curíes, which was violently stolen along with a 2016 Toyota Hilux with license plates NRU3128. The federal agency reported that if the radioactive source is removed from its container, handled or there is direct contact with it for a few minutes or hours, it can cause permanent injuries. If you stay in direct contact with the source for hours or days, its effects can be fatal. If the source is located, it is recommended to contact the number 911 or 800 111 3168. Do not handle the equipment, establish a security perimeter and guard with a minimum radius of 30 meters and notify the competent authorities.
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Topic # 5: Mayor’s Brother Killed Outside a Grocery Store in Chiapas
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/mayors-brother-killed-outside-grocery.html
The Story:
Lucio Flores Gómez, brother of the mayor of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán, Chiapas, José Luis Flores Gómez, was shot to death on Thursday. The events occurred on the afternoon of April 8, when the brother of the mayor of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party was killed by armed individuals in the vicinity of a grocery store located in the central part of the city. According to witnesses, the subjects fired at Lucio Flores, 50, several times. He was accompanied by several people who were also attacked. The victims were taken to the Pueblo Nuevo Community Hospital, where several hours later the death of the mayor's brother was confirmed. Policemen and prosecutors from the Public Ministry Department arrived at the scene to initiate an investigation. Subsequently, elements of the National Guard, as well as units of the State Preventive and Municipal Police, implemented an operation to search for those responsible. So far there is no report of people detained for these events. It should be noted that according to residents, the attack is related to the dispute between leaders of political parties in the town.
Background
On January 21 in the same municipality, two paramilitary groups, "Los Diablos" and "Los Marianos", fought each other for a gold statuette in the shape of a donkey, a symbol for luck for some members of that indigenous community. The shooting left four people dead and five injured in the state of Chiapas. The events were reported at Aurora Ermita, a rural community in Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacan, Chiapas. This community is predominantly Tzotzil, an indigenous Maya people of the central Chiapas highlands in southern Mexico. According to the Prosecutor's Office, the shooting began when members of “Los Diablos” tried to snatch the golden donkey figure from the hands of one of the leaders of “Los Marianos”. Local media reports indicate that the confronted groups were led by Enoc Díaz, leader of the Revolutionary Movement Number Seven, and José Luis Flores Gomez, the mayor of the town. According to local residents, since 2015 armed groups have installed checkpoints throughout the region. They reportedly extort people and terrorize them during electoral season.
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Topic # 6: Shooting in the Mexican Border Area Kills a Hitman and Wounds 2 Military
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/04/12/balacera-en-zona-fronteriza-mexicana-mata-un-sicario-y-hiere-2-militares/
Synopsis:
A series of ambushes against Mexican soldiers killed a hitman and wounded two Mexican soldiers in a rural area near the Texas border. The confrontation took place over the weekend near the city of Guerrero, east of the Mexican border city of Piedras Negras. According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Coahuila state officials, a group of gunmen shot a squad of soldiers patrolling the highway between Piedras Negras and Nuevo Laredo. Later, the hitmen fled, unleashing a high-speed chase, however, the hitmen were apparently heading to a point where another group of hitmen was preparing an ambush. The hitmen fired at the soldiers, prompting a short but intense shootout in which one hitman was killed, while two soldiers sustained gunshot wounds. The scene of the shooting is just 20 miles north of Villa Unión, a small rural community that in late 2019 was the scene of a large-scale incursion that left 23 people dead, by the Cartel del Noreste faction of Los Zetas. As Breitbart Texas reported, the governor of Coahuila revealed that at least 150 hitmen had carried out the attack as a way to terrorize locals. The scene where the most recent shooting occurred has become one of the main smuggling corridors used by members of the Los Zetas Northeast Cartel faction to move drugs and certain migrants across the Rio Grande. Most of the Texas border with Coahuila has a minimal number of fences or walls, making the shallow waters of the Rio Grande the only barrier to human and drug traffickers.
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Topic # 7: Criminal Groups Zero in on Mexico Resort Construction
Source: https://insightcrime.org/news/criminal-groups-hotel-industry-riviera-maya-mexico/
The Story:
Criminal groups in one of Mexico’s most popular tourist regions have found yet another sector to extort and terrorize: hotel builders. Everyone — from engineers, to plumbers and painters — is systematically extorted during the construction of Cancun’s hotels, according to an investigation by Aristegui Noticias in alliance with Connectas. When workers or their employers don’t pay, they have been tortured, disappeared, and even killed, according to accounts from victims and their families. A map in the report highlights several hotels built along the Caribbean coast of the state of Quintana Roo — home to the popular beach destinations of Cancún and Riviera Maya — that have been the targets of crime groups. The modus operandi is always the same. When the construction of a hotel begins, crime groups demand what has been dubbed “floor rights,” weekly fees from construction workers or their bosses. For low-level employees, many from other Mexican states — the quota can represent a third of their earnings, according to the investigation. Construction workers have also been press-ganged into working for the criminal groups themselves. They “are captured and taken, first to assist with drug sales, and later they are converted into hitmen,” Quintana Roo Attorney General Óscar Montes de Oca told Aristegui Noticias. According to James Tobin Cunningham, a member of Mexico’s National Security Council who is cited in the report, between 30,000 and 40,000 construction workers may be victims of this type of scheme. However, few complaints to authorities are ever logged, out of fear.
ANALYSIS BY INSIGHT CRIME:
The tourist corridor of Riviera Maya, visited by more than one million people a year, has attracted criminal groups involved in a range of illicit activities, including extortion of restaurants and bars, street-level drug sales and human trafficking. It was was only natural that they would begin to target the hotel construction sector, which has seen major growth in recent years. Several criminal groups have a presence in the Riviera Maya, including Mexico’s two most powerful cartels, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación — CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel. Remnants of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas are also present, while foreign groups like the Romanian mafia have found a foothold there as well. Due to its perch on the Caribbean sea, the region also serves as a gateway for cocaine arriving in Mexico via the Atlantic routes from South America. In September 2020, for example, almost three tons of the drug were seized in the port municipality of Mahahual. Criminal groups now regularly battle over control of territory and illicit activities. In 2020, Quintana Roo state registered 581 homicides. In December of this year, more than 160 disappearances were reported. At least three local politicians were also shot dead, reportedly after receiving threats from crime groups. Though important efforts have been made by authorities in Quintana Roo to combat organized crime, officials often downplay violence aimed at people who are not tourists to maintain an image of safety. For example, in January, the Planet Hollywood hotel in Cancun opened to much fanfare. Two months before, however, authorities had found the remains of four missing workers on land adjacent the hotel. Family members claimed that this might be a clandestine grave, where other remains could also be found, but they have not seen any subsequent investigation taking place. “All [the homicides] are deplorable, but as a state that lives off tourism, we have to take care of our raw material, which is tourism, so that [tourists] do not decide not to come,” said Prosecutor Montes de Oca, according to the report by Aristegui Noticias.
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and the DNC Harris and Pelosi
and the entire Dem party
for their votes
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CNnbdZWBwpz/?igshid=w7nzzbvqk3vz&fbclid=IwAR3RZAhkHqHFPwsV7c6yivCZUenUyS5JrYwA0XeO7uYTLVihQiczKBzS_0Y
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CNnbdZWBwpz/?igshid=w7nzzbvqk3vz&fbclid=IwAR3RZAhkHqHFPwsV7c6yivCZUenUyS5JrYwA0XeO7uYTLVihQiczKBzS_0Y
I can't view Instagram.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CNnbdZWBwpz/?igshid=w7nzzbvqk3vz&fbclid=IwAR3RZAhkHqHFPwsV7c6yivCZUenUyS5JrYwA0XeO7uYTLVihQiczKBzS_0Y
I can't view Instagram.
Looks like 20 humans packed like sardines hidden under floor boards being smuggled and trafficked as prisoners. The American dream in the Biden Harris era.
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Enroute to NY State for the 15K handout?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/ny-to-give-illegal-immigrants-covid-checks-of-up-to-15600-republicans-hit-back-in-new-york-it-pays-to-break-the-law
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNnbdZWBwpz/?igshid=w7nzzbvqk3vz&fbclid=IwAR3RZAhkHqHFPwsV7c6yivCZUenUyS5JrYwA0XeO7uYTLVihQiczKBzS_0Y
I can't view Instagram.
Looks like 20 humans packed like sardines hidden under floor boards being smuggled and trafficked as prisoners. The American dream in the Biden Harris era.
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Topic # 1: Cartel Operatives Criticize DEA Map of Cartel Influence in the US: “It’s Bull ---,” They Said
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/cartel-operatives-criticize-dea-map-of.html
Photo # 1: Mexican soldiers stand guard next to packages of marijuana at a military base in Tijuana
Chart # 1: Major Mexican organized-crime groups' areas of influence in the US, according to the DEA's 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment. (2020 National Drug Threat Assessment)
Photo # 2: Pedro Flores, left, and his twin brother, Margarito Flores, in undated photos from a wanted poster released by the US Marshals Service
Photo # 3: A fraction of the cocaine seized from a ship at a Philadelphia port on display at the US Custom House in Philadelphia
Chart # 2: The cartel areas of influence map from the 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment. (DEA NDTA 2016)
The Story:
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently released its annual National Drug Threat Assessment, in which it maps out the states where Mexican drug cartels have gained "influence." Asked about that depiction of cartel presence in the US, security experts and cartel sources told Insider "it's bulls---." The DEA's report says Mexican transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, "maintain great influence" in most US states, with the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion showing the "biggest signs of expansion." A map included in the report shows the Sinaloa Cartel, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Cartel del Golfo, Organización de Beltran-Leyva, and Los Rojos as the most "influential" drug organizations with presence in Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Chicago, New York, Florida, Kansas, Colorado, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, among other states. "Mexican TCOs continue to control lucrative smuggling corridors, primarily across the SWB [Southwest Border], and maintain the greatest drug trafficking influence in the United States," the report says. But operatives for the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion interviewed by Insider said their criminal organizations maintain "only clients or helpers" across the border and "not members of our organization."
"You would never see anyone in the US saying they are part of the organization [Sinaloa Cartel], because that is bulls---. The members and leaders of the organization are in Mexico, not in the US. What we have there are clients or associates, people helping transport, or gang members working with us," a Sinaloa Cartel operative told Insider. The operative explained that most of the gangs or "associates" in the US work as independents. "We wholesale to them and what they do to that merchandise is their problem. We don't give a f---. They can loose it, sell it, snort it, whatever, as long as they pay up," he said. One of the most prominent cases used to prove Mexican cartels' presence in the US was that of Pedro and Margarito Flores, two brothers from Chicago accused of importing cocaine for the Sinaloa Cartel. The Flores brothers admitted to smuggling at least 1,500 kgs of cocaine for the Sinaloa cartel into the US every month between 2005 and 2008. According to their guilty pleas, they also sent more than $930 million in "bulk cash" back to the cartel in Mexico.
US authorities allege the brothers were part of the Sinaloa Cartel, but a phone call of a negotiation with then-Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman that was made public during Guzman's trial in 2018 revealed Flores brothers bargaining over the price of a 20 kg shipment of heroin. "Do you think we can work something out where you can deduct five pesos from those for me?" said a man identified as Pedro Flores. "How much are you going to pay for it?" said the other man on the call, allegedly Guzman. 'It just doesn't make sense.' Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico and former official with CISEN, Mexico's top security intelligence organization, said the DEA warns of Mexican drug cartels being active in the US in order "to keep asking for money." "It's DEA's bulls---. They have been doing this for years, and it just doesn't make sense. Cartels today are not structured [like] a hierarchy organization, but more like a decentralized network," Hope told Insider.
"The logic behind the DEA [report] is to argue there is an invasion of external forces so they can justify more budget and support from the US," he said. Neither DEA headquarters nor its offices in Texas and Arizona responded to requests for comment on the map. The report describes the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion as "one of the fastest growing cartels" and says the organization "smuggles illicit drugs into the United States by accessing various trafficking corridors in northern Mexico along the SWB including Tijuana, Juarez and Nuevo Laredo." "The cartels dominate the drug trade influencing the United States market, with most cartels having a poly drug market approach that allows for maximum flexibility and resiliency of their operations," the report states. The report doesn't describe how these organizations maintain their presence in the US. "The DEA has a problem with semantics. What does influence actually mean? What does presence even mean? An associate is no other thing but a client," Hope said. An operative for Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion said the organization maintained a large group of members in Mexico who are "mostly on the armed side of the operations," while most contacts in the US were clients.
"Most of what we can call members of the Jalisco organization are on the arms [side], like sicarios, and some producers that are on a payroll, but everyone else is either a client we are selling to or an association to have access to certain route" for distribution in the US, he said. Some intelligence officials believe Mexican cartels do have a real presence on US soil but function differently there. "The substantial difference is that drug criminal enterprises are not displaying force at the border with the US because it is not needed. We should take into account that keeping a low profile is good for their activities and business, just as any other corporation," said a high-level foreign intelligence official in Mexico who asked for anonymity. The official said cartel associates in the US have something like membership, even if they aren't part of the cartel structure, and "are using the brand" to prove their drugs' quality. "We need to consider that they act just as another transnational company, with their level of organization, distribution, reach, and territory control. They do have a presence in the US in how their drug has a brand backing up certain quality," the official said.
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Topic # 2: San Luis Potosi: Cartel del Noreste Suspected in Police Execution
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/san-luis-potosi-slp-cartel-del-noreste.html
Synopsis:
A Capital policeman by the name of Jose de Jesus Tapia was murdered by a group of armed men as he was walking past them. The officer was a Municipal Policeman in the capital of San Luis Potosí (SLP). His execution took place in the Nuevo Progreso neighborhood. On the road that leads to Guanajuato known as Camino Viejo to Guanajuato. The community of Nuevo Progreso lies just south east of the city’s center. A cardboard narco message was found at the crime scene. The message has yet to be released to the public at this time. Sources are claiming that the Cartel del Noreste (CDN) was behind his murder.
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Topic # 3: FBI Searching For Arkansas Man Who May Be a Victim of Kidnapping in Mexico
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/fbi-searching-for-arkansas-man-who-may.html
Synopsis:
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that a man from Bentonville, Arkansas, is missing in Mexico and may have been kidnapped. Luis Davila, 31, went to Mexico to visit his girlfriend near Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, according to a news release sent by the FBI's Little Rock Field Office. Davila was last seen on March 29, 2021, near Monterrey. He was driving a silver 2016 Nissan Maxima with the Arkansas license plate 936 VET. He was wearing a white shirt and jeans at the time. Davila is about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs about 190 pounds and has brown eyes and black hair. The FBI believes Davila may still be in Mexico, possibly near Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. This case comes weeks after three women from Laredo, Texas, went missing in Nuevo Laredo. Their whereabouts are unknown and FBI investigators say that there is no indication the women did not plan to return to Texas. As reported by Borderland Beat, Nuevo Laredo is under the control of the Northeast Cartel (Cartel del Noreste, CDN), a splintered group of the old Zetas cartel. It is rival to the Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo, CDG), based east of Nuevo Laredo all the way to Matamoros. In the past, the CDN has targeted American drivers in Nuevo Laredo by forcing them to pay money or "cartel tax" (cuota). Most of these incident happened near Luis Donaldo Colosio Avenue, which connects Nuevo Laredo with the federal highway leading to Monterrey. A source consulted by Borderland Beat confirmed that the cartel has several outlooks posted across the highway that notify other cartel members of potential targets driving through. Borderland Beat published a story with videos showing how the CDN sets up blockades to extort drivers.
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Topic # 4: Ex-Governor of Tamaulipas To Pay US$9.5 Million as Part of His Plea Agreement
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/ex-governor-of-tamaulipas-to-pay-up-to.html
Tomas Yarrington, former Mayor of Matamoros and Governor of Tamaulipas
Synopsis:
The US government released the final seizure order for the former Governor of Tamaulipas, Tomás Yarrington. He will have to forfeiture between US$3.5 and up to $9.5 million, a figure investigators determined he made for 15 years while laundering money for the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, and the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO). They say that Yarrington bought multiple properties in the US with these drug proceeds. Among them included properties in San Antonio, Laredo, and Port Isabel, Texas. Yarrington faces up to 20 years in prison for his money laundering charges. Yarrington pleaded guilty last month and will receive a soother sentence. During his plea deal, Yarrington also detailed how he accepted bribes from individuals and private companies in Mexico to do business with the state of Tamaulipas while he served as governor. Originally, Yarrington faced up to life in prison if he had been convicted of the racketeering or drug trafficking conspiracy charges the U.S. government leveled against him eight years ago. On more than 15,000 digital documents consisting of 100,000 pages, US investigators detailed how Yarrington took bribes from the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, and the BLO, and actively participated in drug trafficking operations. Authorities from multiple law enforcement agencies had pictures, information about warrants, seizures, and protected witness testimonies framing him as a top cartel figure. Borderland Beat records show that Yarrington was a key figure in the Gulf Cartel's ascension as one of Mexico's leading criminal groups in the late 1990s and early 2000s. During that era, the cartel was headed by legendary kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen. US prosecutors walked away from the allegations and dismissed these serious charges after Yarrington pleaded guilty.
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Topic # 5: Children in Guerrero Arm Themselves Against Cartels
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/children-in-guerrero-arm-themselves.html
Photo # 1: This Saturday, April 10, minors between the ages of six and fifteen led a column of armed self-defense groups in the mountainous region of the state of Guerrero. They are defending themselves from the criminal group Los Ardillos
Photo # 2: It is not the first time that the community guards have armed and paraded the children of the community, but this protest has been the largest so far
Photo # 3: Some children fire rounds into the air after leaving their wooden rifles
Photo # 4: In the town's main square of the community of Ayahualtempa, members of the community police ask the federal government to help them against drug traffickers
The Story:
Under a zenith sun, armed children parade one after another throwing cheers at orphans, widows, indigenous peoples, and General Zapata. “Live! live! live!”. For the third consecutive year, the infants have joined the adults of the community police in a kind of military parade that is a call for help to the Government of Mexico and also a show of force before the organized crime groups that besiege them in the Low Mountain of the State of Guerrero. They are now just an irreducible village of 600 inhabitants in an area where poppy cultivation has been gaining ground by gunfire. Los Ardillos want the land and semi-slave labor for the opium gum. Whoever does not fold pays it dearly. And in the municipality of José Joaquín de Herrera they do not want to fold. Last year, the strategy of arming children, even with toy shotguns for the seven to 12-year-olds, paid off. The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was forced to react to the international outrage. Armed children in Mexico. This year, the community police have forced the pulse a little more: the kids have fired into the air in an open field after launching slogans and demanding that the Government “support the widows, orphans and displaced people. Enough of crime and discrimination against the indigenous peoples of Mexico”. The shots also looked like toys, but they weren’t.
The so-called self-defense groups have a long tradition in Guerrero and have spread throughout the country. Ordinary people arm themselves to protect themselves from the dangers that threaten them. After all, the Constitution establishes autonomy for indigenous peoples in matters of justice and police, among others. And they exercise it, not always very wisely. The siege of organized crime has turned these local patrols into defense forces that every year lose lives in their shootings with drug cartels. On both sides, people lose lives. In 2020 there were six attacks, according to the accounts of Bernardino Sánchez Luna, 48, a veteran guerrilla member who organizes these militias in the area. The armed defense of these communities was born with a community security objective, but, at the same time, it became a quasi-military group to which they now add children to train them. Why involve children? Why raise them with a shotgun in their hands? “The Government has not complied with us. We asked him for help against the groups and he has not given it. We ask him for secondary school teachers, because we cannot leave the town, and they have not arrived. Our task is to cultivate the fields, if he does not want us to arm ourselves, then he must give us security”, says Bernardino, as they all call him. “The Government has not complied with us.” There is the pulse. The rest is bravado so Los Ardillos know who they are playing it with.
The line of black-haired and dark-skinned soldiers parade through town. They wear a peaked cap and stiff leather huaraches. With a bandana tied to the neck they cover their nose and mouth, as if they were guerrillas. Little flesh and blood figures who smile with all their teeth at the package of cookies. The dust of the dirt streets covers everything and the sun does not give its arm to twist. They carry wooden weapons, toy guns; the smallest holds sticks. And they throw cheers with a megaphone while on the truck of a vehicle. It almost seems like a holiday. The procession has been led by women, who have little voice in these towns. Then come the kids, then the adults. Their shotguns also reveal years of struggle: the worn handles, the dull barrel, homemade straps. More than a show of force, it looks like an army returning home after years of battle. Defeated. The journalists have arrived in a car caravan. By driving together they protect themselves from dangerous roads with checkpoints of all kinds of uniformed men. They are welcomed to a place where nobody enters, because the hosts want to send a message “to the world”. “We are not criminals,” the children tell the Government at the microphone in a sports hall. In many parts of the Mexico, citizens now wear self-defense shirts without it being fully known who they are or what they stand for. In this municipality there is only one certainty: they are poor and they don’t want violence, but generation after generation they go through arms. Sitting at the edge of the court, three women seem oblivious to the matter.
The oldest speaks Nahuatl, like everyone else, and pretends not to understand. The youngest, 27, does not want her children to carry rifles. “It will be what God wants. I would not like my children … but if the people chose that way, then no way”. Her name is Claudia Bolaños and she has a 5-year-old boy and a baby who sleeps in her arms. Men choose. Among them they vote for the Communal Council that governs in assembly. They will decide whether set up the polls on June 6, when Mexico will vote for 20,000 public offices and 15 governorships, among them that of Guerrero. Half the country has raised its hands to its head because the candidate to govern this land by the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party, the same as President López Obrador, is accused of rape and his candidacy has been annulled due to fiscal inconsistencies. What do they know on the mountain of Félix Salgado Macedonio? Bernardino says little or nothing. There is no television here. Nothing to add about a case that has been on national headlines for weeks. No candidate, also according to the guerrilla, has appeared in this community yet. The assembly will vote if they consent to a vote on the 6th. The absence of the State in this area is obvious. Are they in abandonment? “One could say, Yes. Faced with a simplified discourse that attributes everything to drug trafficking, the authorities end up looking the other way, there is nothing to do, they seem to say,” said Franco-Argentine anthropologist Romain Le Cour. She has been in Mexico for 12 years and works for the international NGO Noria, specialized in violence around the world.
Le Cour knows a lot about the Mexican people. “What happens here is much more complex. It is a social problem, of poverty and neglect. It is not enough to blame the violence on the drug traffickers and let the indigenous communities govern themselves without help,” she explains. Simple messages end in simple solutions. And the lack of peace that exists in this mountain requires something more. There is a blurry relationship between local leaders (caciques), narcos, and politicians in this area. Interests more crossed than the bullets themselves. In José Joaquín de Herrera Municipality there are nine widows, 14 orphans and 34 displaced people from nearby besieged communities. And they are isolated. The doctor approaches when there is an emergency. Nobody stops him on the road, because he also heals the afflicted in other towns. Some merchants arrive to supply the basics, after paying the one who charges. And, of course, the Cola-Cola truck. “And the one with the Pepsi,” laughs Bernardino. When they finish primary school, the students do not continue studying because they would have to travel a few kilometers further, where the danger lies: bullets or kidnappings, they say. Nor do they come to see the relatives who live in the entrance of the region. In this town, when they point to the mountain, they see shotgun barrels instead of thinking of corn, beans, or squash. On one side some goats browse, two black-and-white pigs are tied by a rope, a donkey brays beyond. The sweaty troops enter the field. “Community children, firm now! Embracing weapons, now! If there is no one to defend us, then we are going to respond with fire to the hit men, sons of the bitch!”. A dozen shots leave puffs of smoke in the air. And the mountain echoes them. Firm now! Embrace weapons, now! If there is no law defending orphaned children in Mexico, nor government that protects us, then we are going to respond with fire to all sicarios, sons of the bitch!
Bernando Sanchez - Founder of the Community Police: We have 30 comrades who have died against cartels. Every time one dies or is kidnapped, we go to the military to ask for help. But they tell us they do not have orders to leave their barracks. We were forced to bring kids into our ranks. Since kids go out on patrols, we want them to be armed to be able to defend themselves. Like we like to say around here: 'It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' We have 14 orphans. Right now we have no support from the government. Los Ardillos criminal group is trying to dominate our communities and live us in misery by taking our natural resources. I ask the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who says he sides with the people, who says he will help the indigenous people. I tell him that here we are and have not received help from the federal government. We have widows, orphans, and displaced, and not even this makes the government want to help us. I ask him to not only make promises. Political campaigns are underway and this will be the time where people will be tricked with fake promises. Lots of promises will be made but nothing will be done.
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Topic # 6: Bar Attack Leaves 5 Dead in the Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Area
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/bar-attack-leaves-5-dead-in-monterrey.html
Photo # 1: The bar, 'La Zertuche Clamateria', is now permanently closed in this location. Two other branches remain open
Photo # 2: Two of the five victims that were killed
Photo # 3: Example of the vandalism done in San Pedro Garza Garcia
The Story:
Five men killed and four seriously wounded was the ending balance left this weekend during an armed attack at a bar in Guadalupe, a municipality of the Monterrey metropolitan area in Nuevo Leon. This is the first massacre reported in this municipality in 2021. According to witnesses, the attackers arrived at the bar in two vehicles and began shooting at the victims. They then fled to the Miguel de la Madrid Boulevard, where authorities located a gray car that was likely used as the getaway vehicle. The bodies were found between the entrance and behind the bar. The bar was celebrating its first year of opening and there were many people in attendance. "I was drinking at the bar when I heard loud gunfire. I ran to hide and avoid getting shot," a witness said. After witnesses called the emergency line, municipal police officers and paramedics from the Green Cross of Guadalupe and the Red Cross arrived at the scene. Paramedics confirmed that eight people were shot and that five of them were killed. Their names were not released to the public by press time.
Brazen attacks at business establishments are an usual occurrence in Nuevo Leon, and particularly in the Monterrey metropolitean area. Attacks at bars were more common in the early 2010s, when the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas were competing for control of this urban area. Investigators say that the attack in Guadalupe was drug-related; the bar was reportedly had a punto (drug sale spot) of a local gang. Most of the murders committed in the Monterrey metropolitan area are driven by gangs competing over street corners and businesses to sell heroin, cocaine, and meth. Several drug cartels have been reported in the area, including various Gulf Cartel (CDG) factions, the Northeast Cartel (CDN), the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), and even remnants of the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO). Unofficial reports say that this bar attack was between the CJNG and the CDN.
More incidents in the region
In the municipality of San Pedro Garza García, considered the richest city in Mexico, several residences and cars were vandalized and had the acronyms of "CDN" painted on them. The paints were made with red aerosol and were marked in at least five residences and three cars in the Villas de Santa Engracia neighborhood. According to intelligence and police sources, the BLO has had a strong presence in the municipality of San Pedro Garza Garcia for several years and has not allowed other organized crime groups to settle. The head of the cartel in this plaza is José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández ('El Gato').
More Information
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/04/12/exclusive-mexican-border-state-shooting-leaves-five-dead-amid-turf-war/
“El Rodo”
A weekend cartel attack that killed five men and left three more injured in the Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon is linked to a turf war over street-level drug sales. One of the main figures in that war operates from inside a state prison. The attack took place over the weekend in the suburb of Guadalupe in the Monterrey metropolitan area. Gunmen used a small sedan to pull up to a business in the San Rafael neighborhood with 9mm and .40cal handguns, shooting a total of eight men. Five of them died at the scene. The gunmen fired 43 rounds into the building, injuring and killing anyone inside. Authorities found the vehicle used by the gunmen a few blocks from the initial scene. The case is currently listed as the most violent shooting in Nuevo Leon in 2021. Breitbart Texas consulted with U.S. law enforcement sources who operate in Mexico about the motives behind the shooting. Current information points to a turf war between independent drug dealers, where a cell of hitmen under orders from Joel Rodolfo “El Rodo” Ramones Barba attacked a distribution spot run by another independent dealer known only as “El Kamala.” Breitbart Texas previously exposed El Rodo, who has been operating from inside the Apodaca state prison in Nuevo Leon. With the help of corrupt state police officers, El Rodo has been able to control parts of the prison and give orders to gunmen on the outside as he seeks to control the suburbs of Guadalupe and Juarez. The Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas previously targeted El Rodo.
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Topic # 7: Badiraguato, Sinaloa: The Mexican Navy Combs Through Rafael Caro Quintero Birthplace
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/badiraguato-sinaloa-mexican-navy-combs.html
Synopsis:
A contingent of members of the Mexican Navy this morning began an operation in the mountainous area of Badiraguato, Sinaloa. Witnesses and residents told Riódoce that since Sunday morning, sailors in helicopters arrived in the communities of Guanajuato, Babunica and Bamopa, near La Noria, where Rafael Caro Quintero was born. The town of Guanajuato is located 5 minutes from Santiago de los Caballeros, while the other two towns are passing La Noria. Residents of Babunica and Santiago de los Caballeros confirmed the mobilization of the Armed Navy with the support of helicopters from the Air Force that were in the military base of the latter community. Other residents point out that the operation on the ground and in the air is supported by unmanned ships. Since the release of Caro Quintero, accused of participating in the murder of the DEA agent, Enrique Camarena, in the Sierra de Sinaloa, specifically in the towns around La Noria, Navy operations have been carried out trying to locate Rafael Caro. The capo was released in August 2013 by a federal judge, but still claimed by the US authorities and by whom they offer a reward for his capture. Known as the Narco de Narcos, Caro Quintero founded, together with the drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the extinct Guadalajara cartel in the 1980s. Caro Quintero was imprisoned for 28 years accused of the murder of the DEA agent, Enrique Kiki Camarena, registered on March 5, 1985, and in 2013 he was released after obtaining protection from federal justice in the absence of a formal sentence.
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Topic # 8: Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala deploy troops to lower migration
Source: https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/immigration/central-american-nations-deploy-troops-to-reduce-migration/
Young unaccompanied migrants wait for their turn at the secondary processing station inside the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley, in Donna, Texas
The Story:
The Biden administration has struck an agreement with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to temporarily surge security forces to their borders in an effort to reduce the tide of migration to the U.S. border. The agreement comes as the U.S. saw a record number of unaccompanied children attempting to cross the border in March, and the largest number of Border Patrol encounters overall with migrants on the southern border — just under 170,000 — since March 2001. According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Mexico will maintain a deployment of about 10,000 troops, while Guatemala has surged 1,500 police and military personnel to its southern border and Honduras deployed 7,000 police and military to its border “to disperse a large contingent of migrants” there. Guatemala will also set up 12 checkpoints along the migratory route through the country. A White House official said Guatemala and Honduras were deploying troops temporarily in response to a large caravan of migrants that was being organized at the end of March. Psaki said “the objective is to make it more difficult to make the journey, and make crossing the borders more difficult.”
She added that the agreement was the product of “a series of bilateral discussions” between U.S. officials and the governments of the Central American nations. While Vice President Kamala Harris has been tasked with leading diplomatic efforts to tamp down on the increase in migration at the U.S. border, Psaki declined to share details on her involvement with the discussions and said only that the discussions happened at “several levels.” She noted that Roberta Jacobson, who will depart her role as the administration’s southwest border coordinator at the end of the month, was involved in talks. Mexico announced in March that it was deploying National Guard members and immigration agents to its southern border, and it has maintained more personnel at its southern border since Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican imports in 2019. On Monday, Mexico’s Foreign Affairs ministry said, “Mexico will maintain the existing deployment of federal forces in the its border area, with the objective of enforcing its own immigration legislation, to attend to migrants, mainly unaccompanied minors, and to combat the trafficking of people.”
Honduras Foreign Affairs Minister Lisandro Rosales said Monday that Honduras maintains a multinational force at its border with Guatemala that works closely with that government on not only immigration, but also organized crime and other illegal activity. But “there was no commitment on the part of the Honduran delegation to put soldiers on the border, even though there is a clear commitment by the Honduran government to avoid this kind of migration that generates death and mourning for Honduran families,” Rosales said. But Honduras Defense Secretary Fredy Santiago Díaz Zelaya, who was part of a Honduran delegation that met with U.S. officials in Washington last week, said later that the military was studying the possibility of sending more troops to the border to assist in migration control. He said the military always works under a plan and that planning would determine how many troops would assist national police and immigration authorities at the border. “We need to do a correct analysis of the situation, increase troops if it’s necessary,” Díaz Zelaya told local press. He said Honduras would do so “in response to this request that comes from the great nation to the north (the United States) to be able to help on the issue of immigration.”
The Guatemalan government denied there was any signed agreement with the United States to place troops at the border to stop migrants. “The Guatemalan government has undertaken protection and security actions at the border since last year, on its own initiative, it is a constitutional mandate,” said presidential spokeswoman Patricia Letona. “In the context of the pandemic, the protection of the borders has become a fundamental aim for the containment of the virus.” Guatemalan troops have been responsible for breaking up the last several attempted migrant caravans. The increase in migrants at the border is becoming one of the major challenges confronting Biden in the early months of his first term. Numbers grew sharply during Trump’s final year in office but further accelerated under Biden, who quickly ended many of his predecessor’s policies, including one that made asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for court hearings in the U.S. Mexicans represented the largest proportion of people encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol, and nearly all were single adults. Arrivals of people from Honduras and Guatemala were second and third, respectively, and more than half of the people from those countries were families or children traveling alone.
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Four Policemen from Morelos Wanted For Kidnapping Two Businessmen
Leaks From the National Guard Database Expose Gulf Cartel Kingpins
Links Between Sinaloans and Mafia Group ‘Ndrangheta Are Uncovered In Italian Investigation Involving Two Detainees
Municipal Police Officer Arrested Was the Leader of La Empresa in Chihuahua City
The Mexican Women Who Kicked out the Cartels
The Private Empire of Tamaulipas Governor Garcia Cabeza de Vaca
Body count from drug cartel wars earns Mexican cities label of ‘most violent in the world’
Closing Prisons Only Postpones Real Issues in Mexico
Topic # 1: Four Policemen from Morelos Wanted For Kidnapping Two Businessmen
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/four-policemen-from-morelos-wanted-for.html
Synopsis:
The Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office in Morelos disclosed the faces of four ex-police officers and offered a reward of almost MXN$25,000 to anyone that provides information that leads to their arrest. These police officers are wanted for kidnapping two businessmen in eastern Morelos. The former police officers have been considered fugitives since last January after one of their colleagues was arrested for the same crime and confessed their participation in the kidnapping. Their full names are José Mario Gómez Guillén, Gabriel Iván Fuentes Galicia, Carlos Ricardo Cabello Hernández, and Isaías Pérez Martínez. The victims are Román Martínez García (aged 39) and his stepson Luis Fernando Ogazón Ariza (aged 23), who were reported as missing since last January 16, after they were detained by the officers in Yautepec municipality. These two people were owners of a gas station. His family and friends reported their kidnapping to the police. After failing to get a response, they organized their own search and protests to bring attention to the case. The investigations revealed that two of the four police fugitives are members of the state police assigned to the municipality of Yautepec; all four abandoned their weapons and cargo vehicles to flee without a trace. Based on these investigations, elements of the Criminal Investigation Agency detained Jesús Fernando Soriano Ramírez a Yautepec police force, for his alleged participation in the kidnapping. He has been collaborating with investigators to find the other four officers involved.
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Topic # 2: Leaks From the National Guard Database Expose Gulf Cartel Kingpins
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/leaks-from-national-guard-database.html
Map of the state of Tamaulipas above; Four drug kingpins from the Gulf Cartel were exposed over the Internet earlier this week when someone within the National Guard leaked their information. Below is the breakdown of each of these figures
The Story:
Citizen journalists in Tamaulipas published several leaks from a National Guard (GN) database that include sensitive information about multiple fugitive Gulf Cartel kingpins. The information released includes pictures, full names, addresses, family trees, DOBs and POBs, work and/or criminal history, and other general information about them. Some of these criminals are only wanted by federal authorities while others are fugitives at both state and federal level. To comply with our privacy guidelines, Borderland Beat omitted the exact addresses of these suspected drug kingpins. We removed the streets and house numbers but kept the city and state. We have also removed the names of the suspects' children as many of them are minors.
Cesar Morfin Morfin, alias "El Primito"
This first display shows the information about El Primito, the Gulf Cartel plaza boss in La Frontera Chica (also known as La Ribereña), a border region along Tamaulipas. The municipalities of Guerrero, Mier, Miguel Aleman, Camargo and Diaz Ordaz make up La Frontera Chica. According to the data presented, El Primito was born in 1987 in Colima, Colima, Mexico, and does not have previous criminal history. The GN confirms that El Primito has up to 10 known addresses under his name.
Location of properties
Reynosa, Tamaulipas
Colima, Colima
Villa de Alvarez, Colima
El Palomar, Jalisco
Mexico City
Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco
Pihuamo, Jalisco
Pihuamo, Jalisco (different address)
Pihuamo, Jalisco (different address)
Pihuamo, Jalisco (different address)
Family members
Father - Remigio Morfin Moreno
Mother - Maria De Jesus Morfin Galvan
Wife - Alma Rosa Magaña De La Mora
Brother - Alvaro Noe Morfin Morfin (1978)
Brother - Alejandro Morfin Morfin (1981)
Sister - Blanca Trinidad Morfin Morfin (1984)
Brother - Remigio Morfin Morfin (1991)
Carlos Humerto Acuña de los Santos, alias "Comandante Mono", "M-36", and "Metro 36"
This second display shows the information of El Mono, the Gulf Cartel plaza boss in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, the bastion of Los Metros faction. He is the successor of both Juan Manuel Loza Salinas ("El Toro") and Petronilo Moreno Flores ("Panilo"), who were killed and arrested in 2017 and 2018, respectively. GN information shows that El Mono is close to El Primito. According to the data presented, El Mono was born in 1989 in Llera, Tamaulipas, and does not have previous criminal history. One of the observation notes in the display says that El Mono was in the Mexican Army from 1 August 2007 to 19 May 2014. He was stationed in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital of Tamaulipas, as an infantry soldier.
Location of properties
Llera, Tamaulipas
Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas
Family members
Fathers - Humberto Heisy Acuña Cantu
Mother - Maria Epifanias de los Santos
Spouse - Ana Keren Vargas Sanchez
Former Partner - Cindy Natali Cedillo Sanchez
Hector de Leon Fonseca, alias "Mario Gonzalez Martinez", "R3", "Teto", and/or "Chenco"
This third display shows the information of R-3, the Gulf Cartel plaza boss in the Tampico metropolitan area. This conurbation includes the municipalities of Tampico, Altamira, Ciudad Madero, Pueblo Viejo, and Pánuco. As reported by Borderland Beat, R-3 worked closely with Silvestre Haro Rodríguez, alias "R-1" and/or "El Chive", and his brother Marco Antonio Haro Rodriguez, alias "R-2" and/or "Toñin". The Tampico faction reportedly has an alliance with the one in Matamoros. The information revealed shows that R-3 was born in 1977 in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.
Location of properties
Reynosa, Tamaulipas
Family members
Father - Jose Humberto de Leon Hernandez
Mother - Guadalupe Fonseca
Brother - Jesus de Leon Fonseca
Sister - Gabriela Nohemi de Leon Fonseca
Spouse - Erika Daniela Murillo Dominguez
R-3's directs and plaza structure
Odilon Hernandez Valdivia, alias "Tango Uno" and/or "Tango
This fourth display shows Tango Uno, the Gulf Cartel plaza boss in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital of Tamaulipas. The leaked information reveals that Tango Uno was a Supervisor in the Reynosa Transit Police from 2005 to 2007, when Governor of Tamaulipas Francisco Javier Cabeza de Vaca was mayor. Data shows that Tango Uno was born in 1979 in Tamaulipas (the exact municipality was not provided).
Location of properties
Matamoros Tamaulipas
Family members
N/A - None listed
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Topic # 3: Links Between Sinaloans and Mafia Group ‘Ndrangheta Are Uncovered In Italian Investigation Involving Two Detainees
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/links-between-sinaloans-and-mafia-group.html
Photo # 1: The two Guatelamans in Italian custody worked for fugitive Sinaloa Cartel trafficker Jose Angel Rivera Zazueta, alias El Flaco. He is one of the Sinaloa Cartel's main operators in Europe
Photo # 2: El Flaco arrived in Italy in 2019. Reports say he lives in Asia and may be related to one of the nephews of legendary drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes
Photo # 3: Daniel “Tito” Esteban Ortega Ubeda and Felix Ruben Villagran Lopez in Verona, where they traveled from southern Italy for a cocaine deal.
Synopsis:
Two Guatemalans imprisoned in Italy for smuggling drugs for the Sinaloa Cartel are scheduled for trial on May 18, 2021. They are accused of trafficking 385 kg (848 lbs) of cocaine into Italy. The two defendants are Daniel Esteban Ortega Úbeda, alias Tito, and Félix Rubén Villagrán López. They will face trial for drug trafficking at a tribunal court in Catania. Italian prosecutors were initially looking to have both of them sentenced to 21 years, but since both defendents agreed to a summary judgement (i.e. partial trial), the sentence recommendation was reduced to 14 years: eight for organized crime involvement and six for drug trafficking. Defense attorney Ofelia Liñán Aguilera, flanked by her Italian colleague Luigi Tozzi, has asked for the acquittal for her clients, believing that during the investigation that led to their arest, police officers 'induced' the commission of the crime.
They stressed that at some point during the investigation, the defendants thought of backing down from the drug deal the police were setting up to catch them. They said that the undercover agents encouraged them to do a crime and that this diminishes their culpability. "The agents were fully involved in this drug deal that they are partially responsible for it as well," the lawyer explained by phone. Liñan-Aguilera, who is based in Sevilla, Spain, but was hired by the defendants for this case, said that she is optimistic about the court's resolution. The court will have to determine in the next few days if the two defendants are allowed to be moved to house arrest. A third defendant, currently on the run, is Mexican national José Ángel Rivera Zazueta, alias El Flaco, a close operator of Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael 'El Mayo Zambada. Liñan-Aguilera said that she will push for a summary judgement trial for him as well should he be arrested.
Investigation
The trial is part of an investigation that tried to uncover an initiative of the Sinaloa Cartel to introduce drugs into Europe through new routes such as the Catania Fontanarossa Airport. Investigators say that the Sinaloa Cartel is working with the Calabrian mafia group 'Ndrangheta. El Flaco is believed to be in charge of directing the Catania cell of the Sinaloa Cartel and of receiving cocaine from countries such as Colombia. The Guatemalans Ortega and Villagrán were arrested in Verona in January 2020, where they flew from Cartagena, Colombia, to close a drug deal. Behind the facade of a soap import and export business, El Flaco controlled fentanyl production laboratories in China, Vietnam and Taiwan, which have been on the radar of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for four years. A native of Sinaloa state, El Flaco relied on four trusted men: Salvador Ascencio Chávez —of Mexican origin, convicted on two occasions for trafficking hundreds of kilos of cocaine to Canada— and three Guatemalan citizens settled in Europe: Luis Fernando Morales Hernández, alias 'El Suegro', and the two Guatemalans in question. Once in European territory, the drugs are handed over to the ‘Ndrangheta, an Italian mafia group that dominates the cocaine trade in Europe. This group is based Calabria, one of the poorest regions of Italy. The OCCRP revealed details of the intentions of the Sinaloa Cartel to establish itself in the European market. They said that the 385 kilograms were a test that would be followed by more tons. According to court documents, the investigation is code-named Operation Halcon. It was established with the help of an informant, who was involved in the shipment of the cargo. This subject alerted the authorities and provided access to meetings with El Flaco.
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Topic # 4: Municipal Police Officer Arrested Was the Leader of La Empresa in Chihuahua City
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/municipal-police-officer-arrested-was.html
Photo # 1: Mauro Mendoza Bailón ("El Mendoza") is currently facing trial for murder
Photo # 2: René Gerardo Garza Santana ("El 300") is the founder of La Empresa, one of the deadliest gangs in Chihuahua. His trial for a triple murder is currently underway
The Story:
Mauro Mendoza Bailon ("El Mendoza"), a municipal police officer in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, was the local leader of a criminal group known as La Empresa. One of his main duties as gang leader was to maintain control of the crystal meth distribution and sales in Chihuahua. Most of the drug sale spots were located in the southern part of the city. El Mendoza ordered his triggermen to kill rivals who tried to sell drugs in his turf. According to evidence presented by the State Prosecuto's Office (FGE), El Mendoza is believed to be behind the kidnapping and murder of Luis Carlos Arroyo Lerma (“El Golo”), an Uber driver who also distributed drugs without his approval. El Golo was kidnapped on 20 July 2020 and found dead hours later. El Mendoza had several drug dealers and triggermen on his watch. His closest associates were a lady simply known as Blanca O. and a man known as Jorge Alberto M. H. ("El Cabe"). They were responsible for selling methamphetamine in Cerro de la Cruz neighborhood in southern Chihuahua city. The FGE confirmed that El Mendoza was arrested on 15 April 2021 following an extensive investigation involving a network of corrupt police officers. The investigation shows that more than a dozen officers from different police corporations in Chihuahua city work for La Empresa or other rival gangs, to whom they provide protection, sell drugs for, capture or kill opponents, and collect drug proceeds.
ANALYSIS BY BORDERLAND BEAT:
La Empresa emerged in June 2018 after gang member Rene Gerardo Garza Santana ("El 300") had a disconnect with several leaders of La Linea and Los Aztecas, two groups once allied to the old Juarez Cartel. Cartel bosses Eduardo Ravelo ("El Tablas") and Juan Arturo Padilla Juarez ("El Genio") considered that El 300 was getting out of line and trying to take over more street drug spots in Ciudad Juarez. When confronted, El 300 and his close associate Luis Gerardo Mendez Estevane ("El Tio") deserted and formed La Empresa. As violence rose in Ciudad Juarez, law enforcement efforts against La Empresa, La Linea, and Los Aztecas increased. Ravelo was arrested in June, and El Genio was killed two months later. El 300 was arrested in November 2018, but he continued running La Empresa while imprisoned at the Ciudad Juarez federal penitentiary. He then formed an alliance with Los Mexicles, once allied to the Sinaloa Cartel, and gained support of their leaders Jesús Eduardo Soto Rodríguez ("El Lalo") and Luis Elías Cardoza Santiago.
In Chihuahua city, the cartel dynamics have a slightly different twist. In early 2021, a Ciudad Juarez newspaper reported that much of the violence in this city was driven by a gangland dispute between Gente Nueva on one front and La Empresa and Los Aztecas on the other. Gente Nueva gets support and reinforcements from Parral, a municipality close to the border with the state of Durango. There is also information that Gente Nueva works with a faction known as Los Salguieros. La Empresa is currently headed by Omar Alejandro Garza Santana or Omar Alejandro Chávez Santana ('El Nomo', The Gnome), and two individuals simply known by their aliases 'El Saavedra'/'El Menos' and 'La Guera'.
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Topic # 5: The Mexican Women Who Kicked out the Cartels
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/the-mexican-women-who-kicked-out-cartels.html
Synopsis:
Adelaida Sánchez is a member of the community police force in Cherán, a Purépecha indigenous town in Michoacán, Mexico, which declared itself autonomous in 2011. When the town was under siege from illegal logging, cartel criminals, and corrupt authorities and the men of the town stood by and did nothing, it was left to women to lead the fightback. On the tenth anniversary of the uprising, Adelaida patrols the town and its forests, providing an oasis amidst the murder, kidnap and extortion across the state.
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Topic # 6: The Private Empire of Tamaulipas Governor Garcia Cabeza de Vaca
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/04/part-i-private-empire-of-tamaulipas.html
Photo # 1: Francisco Javier Cabeza de Vaca, current Governor of Tamaulipas
Photo # 2: Simplified overview of the Cabeza de Vaca clan
Photo # 3: Cabeza de Vaca's mugshot following his arrest in McAllen, Texas
Photo # 4: Simplified overview of the Gomez Reséndez clan
Photo # 5: Manuel Gómez García, cousin of Francisco Javier´s wife Mariana when he was president of the CANACAR
Photo # 6: Gustavo Cárdenas Gutiérrez, political godfather of Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca
Photo # 7: Overview of the Gomez Resendez / Cabeza de Vaca initial political contacts
The Story:
During the last months we have been witnessing the development of an interesting story: current Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca is facing multiple criminal charges. Following years of news, rumors, and accusations against Cabeza de Vaca himself and most of his family members, during the first months of 2021 the official debate and public opinion finally placed the Governor in the middle of the bullseye. The old rumors evolved into formal and public denouncements that have revealed what was always known: Tamaulipas, as many other Mexican States, has been the private fiefdom of a predatory elite composed by corrupted politicians and public officials that have abused public and private resources allocation for their own profit, earning hundreds of millions of dollars while their State fell into violent anarchy and widespread corruption.
Although Cabeza de Vaca has not been declared guilty yet, we can infer that he will face the same ending as other former politicians such as Tomás Yarrington, Eugenio Hernández Flores, Humberto Moreira, César Duarte, Roberto Sandoval, or Javier Duarte. Today, Cabeza de Vaca is still in power and can use his political position as a cover. He has allies, from his own party and in certain layers of society, have defended his honorability because he still controls the allocation of public contracts, certain areas of the criminal panorama, and the granting of job positions. Nevertheless, it is a matter of time before he falls. It will likely be before or after he ends his mandate in 2022. At that moment Cabeza de Vaca will be left alone by his current friends and allies. He will likely go into hiding and probably will try to leave Mexico like former Tamaulipas governor Yarrington or Coahuila governor Moreira did. We have witnessed the same stories enough times to understand that this is another card in the wide and wicked deck of Mexico's criminal governors.
In order to offer a better hindsight into the facts and circumstances that surround Cabeza de Vaca's case, Borderland Beat presents a series of investigative reports that will dig into the Governor's past and present times. We will study how he got into the higher layers of Mexico's first alternative to the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN). Borderland Beat will also analyze how he got into the city hall of Reynosa, how he was able to develop strong ties with both former Mexican presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, and how he created a vast network of associates, strawmen, and accomplices with whom he sacked the State of Tamaulipas since at least 2005. For doing this series, Borderland Beat spent hours of investigative reporting and invested a considerable amount of resources to gather its findings. We sincerely hope to match up to the challenge. We owe it, not just to our readers, but also to the beleaguered, mistreated and incredible Mexican people.
THE McALLEN INCIDENT:
Son of the marriage between María Lourdes Cabeza de Vaca Wattenberger and Manuel García Uresti, Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca was born on September 17, 1967. He has two brothers: José Manuel and Ismael. His family was traditionally based in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and from this border city the clan has managed the strings of municipal and regional politics at least since 2005. The first relevant event in the life of Cabeza de Vaca as a youngster is possibly one of the darkest. Not because of its relevance but because it evidences the nature of the individual. Although it is true that one cannot be judged by a single action, the circumstances, accomplices, the fate of such accomplices, and the future of Cabeza de Vaca after this specific incident offers a great glipmse through which his life and personality can be interpreted. On February 9 1986, Cabeza de Vaca and three other individuals where detained by a police officer in McAllen, Texas. That night the four youngsters (all of them minors except Cabeza de Vaca) stopped their car next to a pickup parked at the Cinema Gemelos Plitt. One of them came out from the car, entered into the pickup and stole everything he found inside. The police officer saw it and stopped the car later, which was being driven by 16-year old Alfredo Cerda Ramos AKA El Paya. Next to the driver was Cabeza de Vaca. Behind them there were 17-year old Antonio Barba Villanueva AKA El Toño Barba and 16-year old Alberto Gómez AKA La Chona.
They were hiding a cardboard box, a rifle, and a shotgun they had stolen from the pickup. Among the items found by the agents inside the car were two screwdrivers, a package of batteries, a pair of gloves, a knife in a black case, a pair of spurs with the initials E.R. and a cardboard box containing a telephone with an automatic answering machine. This machine was propriety of Emilio Rodríguez, the owner of the pickup that Cabeza de Vaca and his pals robbed. Since his friends were all minors their cases did not go through the criminal procedure. But Cabeza de Vaca was 18 years old and had the capacity to answer for his crime. How did he get away from the subsequent criminal procedure? In later interviews he said that he was inside the car, but defended himself by saying that he did not steal anything. "The incident occurred as we were coming out from a cinema," he said in an interview with Radio Fórmula decades later. "The police came and a boy tried to open a car, they captured everyone, it was a mischief." Mischief or not, they stole two weapons, not vegetables. Although it is true that the Hidalgo County Criminal District Attorney René Guerra (the one who handled the case) recognized these allegations in a TV interview in the 2000s, the defense and praise he gave to Cabeza de Vaca, who was just one of the hundreds of cases Guerra managed from 1984 and 2014 was a District Attorney, should be considered at least suspicious.
Officially, the case was dismissed because the one stealing the pickup was a minor and it was not possible to link any of the other youngsters, including Cabeza de Vaca, to the crime. We will probably never know what happened between the Cabeza de Vaca family and Texan authorities, but the truth is that all four of them left McAllen as free men after paying a $5,000 fine and negotiating with the victim, who granted their pardon. The only trace that the murky event ever left is the police mugshot of a young Cabeza de Vaca holding a plaque with the number of his criminal case: 33696 0209. What we do know about is the end of his three friends. All of them were murdered in a time span of less than 3 years. On October 9, 1998, Alfredo Cerda Ramos AKA El Paya (the driver of the car) was murdered. Son of the high-ranking PEMEX labor union boss Alfredo Cerda Hernández, El Paya appeared executed with a bullet to the head with two other individuals from Reynosa in the Cuautitlán Izcalli delegation of Mexico City. Antonio Barba Villanueva AKA El Toño Barba was murdered on August 20, 1999. The last of the McAllen quartet was Alberto Gómez AKA La Chona, who had evolved quite a lot since he was captured with Cabeza de Vaca. According to available press archives, he became a lawyer and started working from Monterrey in cases linked only to drug issues.
According to El Norte newspaper, he became a lawyer for the Juárez Cartel and was particularly close to Amado's brother Vicente Carrillo Fuentes AKA El Viceroy. La Chona was kidnapped on the first days of November 2000. According to Mexican reporter Jesús Blancornelas, he was abducted and killed by people linked to Arturo Guzmán Decena AKA Z-1, founder member of Los Zetas. Z-1 was the head of Osiel Cárdenas Guillen's security circle and commanded offensives against members of Sinaloa Cartel in northeastern Mexico. Z-1 was killed in November 2002 in Matamoros. It is difficult to determine the circumstances of Cabeza de Vaca's life during the aftermath of the McAllen incident. If we have to believe his own version, he already was a popular football player and a clever student in the area of McAllen, so he continued with his bright career. He got two degrees from the Houston Baptist University, one in Business Administration and the other one in Marketing. He also met his wife Mariana Gómez Leal in a ball in 1990 in Reynosa, right after he had arrived from playing a football match in McAllen. This event would mark Cabeza de Vaca's future and career since Mariana was member of one of the multiple family clans or dinasties that have ruled Tamaulipas through local fiefdoms since before the revolutionary period.
Mariana was the daughter of Graciela Leal de Gómez and José Ramón Gómez Reséndez. José Ramón was probably one of Reynosa's most powerful businessmen. An engineer, he studied at the Tecnológico de Monterry, where he met and befriended a young Economics student called Manuel Cavazos Lerma, who between 1993 and 1999 would be the PRI Governor of Tamaulipas. José Ramón was also the founder of Transportes Gor, a transport company founded in Reynosa in 1981 that would become a transport emporium absorbing several smaller companies and eventually becoming Autofletes Gómez Leal SA de CV, which still bears the brand name "Grupo Gor" in memory of the initial company. During the early 2000s, Transportes Gor was in the middle of a scandal that erupted when several trucks of the company were caught redhanded transporting illicit fuel that had been brought illegally into the country. Among other episodes, we can cite the one happening on July 22, 2002, when three tanker trucks belonging to Transportes Gor were seized containing illegal kerosen imported from the US.
The relationship between Cabeza de Vaca's political family and organized crime have always been a dark shadow orbiting around him. In 2009, his brother-in-law José Ramón Gómez Leal (one of Transportes Gor's shareholders) launched his campaign as a PAN candidate for a seat in the State Congress. As journalist Ana Lilia Pérez points out, in the middle of the campaign, several photos appeared in the internet showing José Ramón hugging and partying with Armando Montes de León, a former policeman who at the time was working as enforcer for Jaime González Durán AKA El Hummer, one of the original Los Zetas founders and a heavy hitter in the city of Reynosa at the time. Borderland Beat was not able to find these pictures, but did confirm that such photographs were in circulation when reports from that time were consulted. During those years, Transportes Gor was owned by Cabeza de Vaca's father in law, José Ramón Gómez Reséndez, and his two brothers in law, José Ramón and Manuel Gómez Leal. The manager of the company was Manuel Gómez García, who was also Gómez Reséndez´s nephew. Manuel Gómez García left Transportes Gor at the end of 2002 to create his own transport company, Intertransports Inc. SA de CV, which immediately managed to obtain public contracts from PEMEX in order to transport oil and gas and that would also be pointed as a company engaged in oil theft and kerosen smuggling.
In 2001, Manuel Gómez García would be nominated as the head of Mexico´s National Chamber of Cargo Trucking (CANACAR), the national union of the haulier elite. From there, and until the end of his mandate in 2003, he would continuously praise and develope strong ties with Vicente Fox Quesada, who at the time was Presidente of Mexico. The President himself would attend meetings of the CANACAR organized by the union´s leader. Manuel Gómez Garcia's blazing career would have an abrupt end on February 3, 2008, when his corpse was found with several gunshots in a wasteland near Reynosa. But by then Fox was a friendly retired old man enjoying the fruits of his career in his ranch in Guanajuato and Cabeza de Vaca was a local deputy for the Tamaulipas State Congress. It was just another cadaver rounding on the orbit of the future Governor of Tamaulipas.
THE NOT SO HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF A BUREAUCRAT:
The origins of Cabeza de Vaca's involvement in politics are clouded by the distance of time and the unbearable number of campaigns, elections, marches, speeches, and promises of dozens of candidates appearing in Tamaulipas during the last 22 years. What we know is that during most of the 1990s, he devoted himself to the management of his family's businesses. The first contact with real life political implications happened in 1998 when he became a precandidate on the elections for Reynosa's townhall. He did not go too far in an atmosphere where the only possibilities of success were linked to the factic powers represented by the PAN and the PRI, which still controlled Mexico's political destiny. The future Governor immediately saw the possibilites of joining one of Mexico´s political forces, and that same year Cabeza de Vaca jumped into the ranks of the PAN. Today most people might not remember how Mexico was back in the 1990s. A rare exception among the long and terrible list of Latin American dictatorships of the XXth century, Mexico managed to remain relatively stable and politically peaceful. The price for such a stability was the creation of a "civilian dictatorship" that would rule Mexico's social, political, and economic spheres for nearly 60 years through an almost unique party, the PRI.
Once labeled by prominent writer Mario Vargas Llosa as "the perfect dictatorship", the PRI managed to maintain Mexico within a certain level of order combining an old-fashioned and artificial revolutionary rhetoric, the mismanagement of the public resources coming from the exploitation of gas and oil through PEMEX, a widespread regime of corruption and clandestine, accurate and fierce repression against potential threats that included forced dissapearances of revolutionary students and intellectuals, a generalized practice of police torture, and a sporadic displays of violence (such as the Tlatelolco massacre or the scorched earth campaign against the armed movements in Guerrero and Michoacán). Nevertheless, during these years of obscurity, the PRI was not the only political party acting inside Mexico. As a method for legitimizing its own system, the PRI allowed certain political organizations to organize themselves as some sort of "opposition" as long as their reivindications did not go too far. Thus, in 1939, a group of conservative and religious businessmen founded the PAN. The PAN originally represented the ideas and aspirations of a certain (and minority) group of citizens opposed to the policies and political projects of President Lázaro Cárdenas, who always charaterized himself as a nationalist, with a clear idea about the progressivism, laicism and patriotism that should guide Mexico's founding principles.
With the years, as the PRI's hegemony turned into a wicked regime of nepotism and corruption, the PAN did not stay silent. Things began changing in the 1980s when it was clear that the revolutionary movements of Central America would not achieve any significant victories and the US started loosening the ties that linked what they saw as America's security to the stability of Mexico's political system. Thus, in 1989, the "panista" politician Ernesto Ruffo Appel managed to become the first opposition candidate winning a Governorship (the one of Baja California). During the 1990s, Mexicans suddenly realized that the PRI´s regime would not last forever. Suddenly, new PAN candidates started being elected as mayors and Governors, and the press could publish articles critizising the hegemonic party. It was also possible (to some extent) to organize a political meeting without fearing the appearance of "porros" or secret policemen who would start a quarrel. Certain surreal events such as the murders of the PRI's presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and General Secretary José Francisco Ruíz Massieu, both linked to the obscure spheres of influence orbitating around the Salinas de Gortari political clan, contributed to the destruction of the remaining party's influence and credibility. By the last years of the 20th century it was clear that the PRI would loose the Federal elections and that the monopoly over the industry created around the public contracts through which the PRI's last administrations had started privatizing Mexico's economy would change hands.
This was a turning point in the history of Mexico that few have studied with rigor. A system created for achieving political stability had shaped a country, defining its economy, molding its institutions, stating a way of doing business ... This system was crushed in 2000 when Vicente Fox Quesada, the PAN opposition candidate, was elected as President of Mexico. And with the new President came a new system that was different from the preceding one in the colors of the party flag, because the objective remained the same: sacking Mexico.The PRI bureaucrats were followed by a cohort of PAN politicians that without any political experience would cope with the facilities and temptations of absolute power very soon. By the end of the 1990s, Cabeza de Vaca was one among the thousands of young individuals that saw in the PAN not the possibility of a democratic future and an end to the PRI´s reign of corruption, but the possibility of acquiring power and money. And, obsiouly, he joined the party. As any other "young turk", Cabeza de Vaca entered into the PAN ranks with the aid and support of a godfather: Gustavo Cárdenas Gutiérrez. Son of three-time mayor of Matamoros Jorge Cárdenas González and nephew of former Tamaulipas Governor Enrique Cárdenas González (1975-1981),
Gustavo Cárdenas was initially a member of the PRI. In 1993, when the party refused to present him as candidate for the mayorship of Ciudad Victoria, Gustavo changed colours and joined the already successful PAN, winning the position and becoming the mayor of Ciudad Victoria. In 1995 he managed to become a local Deputy at the Tamaulipas State Congress. By this time Gustavo had managed to become the PAN's heavyhitter in Tamaulipas, controlling the party at the State level (he would be the PAN's delegate for the whole State between 1999 and 2000). Due to his large political influence, he tried to run for Tamaulipas' first opposition Governor. He lost in 1998 against the PRI's golden candidate: Tomás Yarrington Ruvalcaba, who would make an art of corruption and collusion with organized crime, as Borderland Beat has reported in detail. Gustavo would try again in 2012, but this time it was Yarrington's puppet, Eugenio Hernández Flores, who beat him for the Governorship role. After two failed attempts, Gustavo's political image was totally burnt and after four years in the Federal Senate (2000-2004), he finally left the PAN in 2013 amid allegations of corruption and despotism. He immediately chose a new political party, Movimiento Ciudadano, which he would use to run again for the Mayorship of Ciudad Victoria (he failed once again) and to become a Federal Congressman between 2015 and 2018.
Although today there is a bitter rivalry between both men, it was Gustavo Cárdenas Gutiérrez the one who initially sponsored Cabeza de Vaca inside the PAN. Cabeza de Vaca's first task for his political godfather was to organize Gustavo's electoral campaign for the Governorship in 1998 as Coordinator for the PAN's pre-candidacy. He also directed Gustavo's formal candicacy in the northern area of Tamaulipas. From these new positions, a young and relatively inexperienced Cabeza de Vaca, had to sell the image of his boss and mentor to the people of Tamaulipas. Given the PRI's de facto control over Tamaulipas, it is worth noting that Gustavo managed to obtain a meager 26.02% of the votes against Yarrington's undisputed victory with 53.66% of the vote. By the end of 1999, Cabeza de Vaca had become someone important inside the PAN's state ranks. Using his influence, contacts, and unquestionable social skills, he managed to climb positions inside a party which was clearly defined as Mexico's next ruling party. Cabeza de Vaca knew this, and once his first obstacle (the obtention of contacts and reputation inside the State PAN elite) had been achieved, he immediately turned towards the second goal: reaching the Federal level. Hence, Cabeza de Vaca targeted a new political patron: PAN's presidential candidate Vicente Fox Quesada.
TARGETING MEXICO'S OWNERS: CABEZA DE VACA AND THE FOX-SAHAGÚN CLAN
The relationship between the current Governor of Tamaulipas and the Fox family started in the late 1990s and probably was the consequence of indirect contacts. In other words, Cabeza de Vaca was introduced to the Fox family through someone who knew both families. In this case the relationship was established not with Vicente Fox, the presidential candidate, but with his spouse Marta Sahagún, and especially with the three sons of the would-be first lady: Manuel, Fernando and Jorge Alberto Bribiesca. Where did this relationship come from? The most probable answer is a man called Sergio Amaury Flores Pérez. Originally from Reynosa, Amaury studied in Celaya, Guanajato, where he met and befriended Marta Sahagún's son Manuel Bribiesca. As Cabeza de Vaca recognized, he also knew Sergio Amaury very well, "even before Manuel Bribiesca". Eventually, Sergio Amaury would join the Customs division of the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), Mexico's equivalent of the US's Internal Revenue Service (IRS), where we worked as sub-administrator in the customs of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and as Chief of Customs Operations in the border crossings of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo during the 1990s.
While stationed in these two border cities, he introduced his friend Manuel Bribiesca to several transport elites. It is worth noting that a Federal Investigative Commision revealed that Sergio Amaury participated in the diversion of seized smuggled items for private profit. What happened that linked Sergio Amaury, Cabeza de Vaca, and Manuel Bribiesca? We may never know, but we can suppose that the link between Amaury and Reynosa's customs and transport elites may have facilitated contacts between Cabeza de Vaca and Manuel Bribiesca. In any case, Amaury's services were rewarded when Cabeza de Vaca became mayor of Reynosa in 2005. He appointed Amaury as Director of Transit and Land Transport. In 2006 it was revealed that Amaury and Cabeza de Vaca's brother, Ismael had created two companies, Compañía Difusora de Radio del Norte SA de CV and Corporativo de Radio Norte SA de CV. These two companies tried to obtain hundreds of TV and radio licenses issued by the local Government. We will return to this issue in the next episode of this series. The fact is that it is almost unquestionable that it was through Sergio Amaury that Cabeza de Vaca contacted Manuel Bribiesca. Manuel Bribiesca, in turn, introduced the would-be Governor to his mother, Marta Sahagún, through whom he got access to his ultimate objective: Vicente Fox Quesada.
Nevertheless, the initial relationship between the Fox-Sahagún clan and Cabeza de Vaca would be bolstered by the articulation of a support platform and civil organization for the presidential candidate: "Amigos de Fox" (Friends of Fox). Born in the State of Guanajuato, Vicente Fox Quesada was the son of an American citizen and a Vasque immigrant. Bred inside considerable levels of economic and social well-being, Vicente Fox joined Coca-Cola Mexico in 1964 as a mid-level manager. In the late 1970s, he left the company after serving as President and Chief Officer and managed his family´s businesses and ranches in Guanajato. By 1987, he entered in the PAN's ranks and founded an internal political trend known as "neopanismo". This faction was headed by young businessmen that managed to win their first victory in 1989 when Ernesto Ruffo Appel won the Governorship of Baja California. In the early 1990s, several of Fox's friends conceived the project of presenting him as candidate for the Governorship of Guanajuato, which he won in 1995. Two years later, these same friends and businessmen started developing a plan to help prepare Fox for the 2000 presidential elections, but for such a campaign they needed a formidable public relations campaign.
On February 1998, this clique founded Amigos de Fox. This organization constitutued itself as a civil association whose purpose was to act as a powerful multimedia platform that would sell the image of the ideal alternative to the PRI. Amigos de Fox soon became the key to future success for multiple insightful individuals that immediately understood that if they provided Fox with support and favours, they would be rewarded once the PAN had conquered Los Pinos, Mexico's former presidential office. Hundreds of people, most of whom intially were rich businessmen from Jalisco, the State of Mexico and Guanajuato, started joining the group. They provided money to print T-shirts, polos, caps, flags, key rings, and banners with the face of Fox and his electoral slogan: "Sacar al PRI de Los Pinos" (Take the PRI out from Los Pinos). Amid this wave of sudden Fox supporters was a young Cabeza de Vaca. He already knew the son of Fox's fiancé, Marta Sahagún (at the time, Fox was preparing the divorce from his first wife). Cabeza de Vaca was also one of the closest advisors to Tamaulipas PAN delegate Gustavo Cárdenas Gutiérrez. With such contacts it was no surprise that Cabeza de Vaca was able to be nominated as Coordinator of Amigos de Fox for the Northern Zone of Tamaulipas at the beginning of 2000. That same year, he joined the State Committee of Amigos de Fox, where he coordinated the campaign of the future president, who was elected as President of Mexico with 42.52% of the votes. A new century had started for Mexico. A century that would bring a new wave of public contracts awarded by the PAN's leadership, the sharpening of the climate of violence caused by organized criminal groups, and the strengthening of the Cabeza de Vaca clan, which from its native Reynosa would raise him to the mayorship. From there, the future of the clan was going to speed up towards massive corruption, nepotism, and a tacit alliance with organized crime.
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Topic # 7: Body count from drug cartel wars earns Mexican cities label of ‘most violent in the world’
Source: https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/border-crime/body-count-from-drug-cartel-wars-earns-mexican-cities-label-of-most-violent-in-the-world/
Study: Celaya, Tijuana and Juarez have highest homicide rates as AMLO sticks to hands-off policy against cartels; Central American cities no longer as deadly
Photo # 1: Members of the National Guard walk near the crime scene where 24 people were killed at rehab center in Irapuato, Guanajuato state, Mexico
Photo # 2: Jorge Nava
The Story:
Seven Mexican cities, including the border towns of Tijuana and Juarez, are among the world’s most violent, says a group that tracks homicide rates worldwide. This has to do with Mexico being the home of several warring drug cartels that try to kill each other off in a country where the government has taken a “hands off” approach toward organized crime and impunity is high, according to the group. “Mexico for the past two years has been the world’s epicenter for homicidal violence. This is no fluke. In 2019 and 2020, the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has applied the worst crime-control policy,” the Mexico City-based Citizens Council for Public Safety and Judicial Justice said. The group says Lopez Obrador hasn’t moved against organized criminal groups, which it says are responsible for much of the violence, under the assumption the criminals “will behave well” if police leave them alone. The government also is pursuing a policy of social spending hoping people will say no when gangs try to recruit them. The council calls both strategies “questionable.” The council every year publishes a list of the most violent cities in the world based on murder rates. Tijuana was number one in the 2019, study, followed by Juarez. Celaya, a city in Guanajuato, Mexico where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) made it a point to wipe out a local gang named Santa Rosa de Lima in an effort control drug trafficking and large-scale gasoline theft had the highest homicide rate in the world in 2020, according to the group.
Celaya’s 109 murders per 100,000 inhabitants were greater than Tijuana’s 105. The group ranks Juarez as the third-deadliest city in the world with 103 murders per 100,000 population. Mid-sized Mexican cities in Sonora, Guanajuato and Baja California followed, with St. Louis, Mo., coming in seventh with 87.83 murders per 100,000 people. Baltimore is 16th on the list. And even as citizens of Central American countries stream to the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum because of violent crime, the council said fewer homicides were reported in major cities in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in 2020 than in prior years. The council says Guatemala City and San Salvador are no longer among the world’s 50 most violent cities and San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the world’s homicide capital from 2011-2014, now ranks 34th, with 41.19 murders per 100,000 population. Chihuahua City, where the old Juarez cartel now known as La Linea is trying to expel Sinaloa cartel proxy Gente Nueva, had a higher murder rate with 42.87. In Juarez, a Honduran migrant named Victor as well as Chihuahua Deputy Attorney General Jorge Nava questioned the survey’s conclusions.
Victor got shot in the foot while fleeing a criminal who tried to rob him on a pay day in Olancho, southeast of San Pedro Sula. “Crime is bad all over Honduras. Maybe they don’t kill you, but not because they don’t try,” he said. Nava doesn’t dispute the numbers but says to refer to cities as “most violent” based solely on homicides is misleading. “What makes a city less safe? Kidnappings, robberies and carjackings directly impact people’s safety and threaten business stability,” the deputy attorney general said. “We don’t deny Juarez has a high number of homicides […] but most of the homicides have to do with drug-trafficking, drug sales, violence from one gang to another. What makes citizens less safe? Violence among people aware something could happen to them because of the activities they are engaged in, or random crime against citizens at large?” He said few non-drug related murders, kidnappings, extortion and robberies happen in Juarez.
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Topic # 8: Closing Prisons Only Postpones Real Issues in Mexico
Source: https://insightcrime.org/news/closing-prisons-delays-problem-mexico/
The Story:
The shuttering of a state prison in Mexico is an unconventional response by officials trying to combat poor living conditions for inmates but this will do little to address fundamental problems in the country’s penitentiaries. The facility in Temascaltepec, State of Mexico, was permanently closed this week due to security failures and a lack of basic resources, according to a statement from the state’s security secretary. The prison reportedly did not have adequate health and education services or sufficient recreational areas for inmates. Without these services, the state government considered that prisoners did not enjoy adequate living conditions but also lacked access to the services needed to help them transition back into society. Officials also said they were unable to provide adequate security to maintain order within the prison. While it is unclear how violent it became inside, a good indicator might be that the prison lacked “disciplinary areas” where inmates were supposed to be held after breaking the rules, according to a 2019 report from the Mexico State Commission on Human Rights. The report also included the prison on its list of state facilities suffering from overpopulation. The 164 inmates are being transferred to other facilities in the state of Mexico, including in Valle de Bravo and Almoloya de Juárez. The recently opened Tenancingo del Sur prison, which was reportedly constructed with an emphasis on social programs in line with United Nations prisons standards, will also be taking some of the inmates.
ANALYSIS BY INSIGHT CRIME:
While acknowledging that the Temascaltepec prison did not offer the right conditions is a positive step, closing it permanently may be counterintuitive to long-term progress. Instead, it worsens the burden on other prisons and does little to address nationwide structural flaws. The Mexican prison system has been characterized as understaffed, with poor sanitary conditions and a lack of “opportunities for inmates to develop the skills necessary for social reintegration,” according to the 2020 United States Country Report on Human Rights. Nearly half of all prisons in Mexico suffer from overcrowding – sharing a cell with five or more people – and thirteen percent share a cell with more than fifteen, according to the report. The State of Mexico is no exception. Temascaltepec prison was one of a number of facilities identified by Mexico’s Commission on Human Rights as having issues with overcrowding, security and basic resources. This was despite the fact that many of the prisons listed were temporarily closed for reforms in the early 2010s. “There is no use in having fewer prisons but the same or greater population of people deprived of their freedom. This situation only allows for more human rights violations,” ASILEGAL, a prisoners advocacy group in Mexico, wrote in an October 2020 statement. Finally, an investigation by Milenio last year found that the government had invested over $2 million over 14 years into the infrastructure and security of six prisons around the country, only for them to close anyway, or become inactive.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-patrol-abandoned-bag-guns-texas?fbclid=IwAR3o8GOgJABMdhJy0Hjct4EVHQnnDcWInDNmGAyRHfJgaNlp-9fjaxAVEQw
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/happy-mothers-day-from-the-jalisco-new-generation-cartel/?fbclid=IwAR3Q4_jhZr9xkiSM_ddZmskCM6EysSxIcBq64ZqGk2b6nlqF910XV48oalA
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Wow! San Cristobal de las Casas sure has changed since I was thrown in the state prison there for three days in 1978!!!
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/mexicolife/san-cris-coffee-chocolate-haven/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=243a0871cd-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-243a0871cd-350211146
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May 18, 2021
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Brief: Why Mexico's President Is Apologizing to China
It has a lot to do with trade talks with the United States.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: When it comes to U.S.-Mexican relations, the U.S. has the advantage in almost every way that matters. Mexico City has few options but to try to leverage trade, its proximity to the U.S., the significant Mexican diaspora in the U.S. and its relationship with Canada. As U.S. anxieties about China grow, however, ties with the Chinese could become a bargaining chip for the Mexican government.
What Happened: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador apologized on Monday for the 1911 racially motivated killing of hundreds of Chinese people in Torreon, Coahuila. He hosted a ceremony alongside the Chinese ambassador to Mexico, and specifically thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese scientists, diplomats and companies for their assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lopez Obrador’s comments coincided with the start of a two-day meeting among the U.S., Mexico and Canada on the disputes related to their trilateral trade agreement.
Bottom Line: It’s no coincidence that Lopez Obrador’s apology – and especially his expression of gratitude toward Chinese businesses – occurred at the same time as trade talks with Mexico’s northern neighbors. For its part, China welcomes the opportunity to grow its presence in the Western Hemisphere. How far Mexico is willing to go remains to be seen, and there’s a fine line between creating leverage with the U.S. and provoking an American backlash.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/angry-crowd-threatens-to-hang-candidate/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/sarah-devries/narcos-choose-politicians/
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Topic # 2: Roberto Sandoval, Former Governor of Nayarit is Arrested in Nuevo Leon
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/roberto-sandoval-former-governor-of.html
Photo # 1: Roberto Sandoval Castañeda's taste for Pura Raza Española (PURE) horses led him to ally himself with drug cartels
Photo # 2: Roberto Sandoval Castañeda was governor of Nayarit from 2011 to 2017
The Story:
This Sunday, in the midst of the largest elections in the history of Mexico, the arrest of the former governor of the state of Nayarit, Roberto Sandoval, was reported in Linares, Nuevo León, who is accused of operations with resources of illicit origin. Sandoval was arrested with his daughter, Lidy Alejandra, who was also charged with the same crime. The operation to arrest the former governor and his daughter was led by agents of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR), Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), Secretariat of the Navy (Navy), National Guard (GN), and the National Center Intelligence (CNI). According to information from journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva, Sandoval and Lidy, his daughter, were arrested at 5 in the morning this Saturday. When issuing the arrest warrant against Roberto Sandoval and Lidy, a federal judge considered that there is evidence, both in the common and federal courts, of the alleged connection of the former governor with people who have been detained abroad for crimes related to organized crime. Sandoval and his children, as well as his wife, have several arrest warrants against them, the last complaint against the family was made by the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) last March, since it established through different federal agencies of that state and its relatives a network of diversion of public resources and money laundering, during the years of his government (2011-2017).
During his administration, violence and insecurity linked to organized crime escalated dramatically so that at the end of his term there was talk that he had ties to drug trafficking. He was wanted in 194 countries after Friday, November 13, a Nayarit control judge accused him of the crimes of illicit enrichment, embezzlement and improper exercise of functions. But it is not the first time that accusations have been made against the former governor. Since May 17, 2019, the United States accused him of ties to drug trafficking in Mexico, having received bribes from the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), and froze accounts that the former state governor had in the US. That is why on February 28, the Secretary of State of the American Union, Mike Pompeo, reported that the Treasury Department included the former governor of Nayarit, in the list of people who committed acts of corruption, which in his case It was because of the links with criminal drug trafficking groups. In addition, he pointed out that neither Sandoval Castañeda nor his family can enter that country. Days later, Roberto Sandoval gave an interview to Radio Fórmula.
He said he was surprised by the determination of the neighboring country and clarified that for two years he has been in contact with the authorities of that country. In addition, he said that in 2016 he received a letter informing him about the suspension of his US visa until his situation was clarified, so he had already had time without visiting the neighboring country. He insisted that he was innocent of the accusations. In addition to diverting millions of pesos of public resources, the American Union pointed out that the former governor accepted bribes from the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, its financial arm "Los Cuinis" and the Los Beltrán Leyva Cartel. In the plot with drug trafficking and abuse of power, the Nayarit prosecutor, Édgar Veytia Cambero, alias “El Diablo” and personal friend of Sandoval Castañeda, was also involved. "El Diablo" was not only involved with organized crime, but also carried out land grabbing, threats, extortion, torture, femicide, kidnapping and forced disappearances in the state.
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Topic # 3: “Tony Duarte” Lawyer Linked to Late Governor Aristoteles Sandoval & Defended Sinaloa Cartel Members Killed in Guadalajara
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/tony-duarte-lawyer-linked-to-late.html
José Luis Duarte Reyes, a lawyer and businessman linked to former governor Aristóteles Sandoval, was executed in a parking lot in Guadalajara, Jalisco
Synopsis:
José Luis Duarte Reyes, a lawyer and businessman linked to former governor Aristóteles Sandoval, was executed in a parking lot in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Although the state government assured that this election day has not had major incidents, Duarte Reyes was executed along with another man, while two more people were injured. resumably, the lawyer known as "Tony Duarte" was singled out for being a defender of members of the Sinaloa Cartel. According to the first reports, the businessman was attacked when he was in the vicinity of a parking lot of his property, located on Herrera and Cairo and Mayor streets of the Jalisco capital. Subjects aboard two vans fired up to 50 rounds around 9:30 am on June 5, according to police reports. The same state prosecutor, Gerardo Octavio Solís Gómez, went to the site. When Aristóteles Sandoval served as mayor of Guadalajara (2009-2012), Tony Duarte's daughter, Rocío del Carmen, worked as the Director of Parking. It should be noted that in September 2011, José Luis Duarte Contreras, Tony Duarte's son, was assassinated. The crime occurred in Puerto Vallarta. Other reports indicate that the lawyer had a criminal record for his probable responsibility in crimes of misrepresentation and fraud in the 1990s. The former Governor of Jalisco; Aristóteles Sandoval, close to Tony Duarte, was killed in a Puerto Vallarta bar in the early hours of December 18, 2020.
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Topic # 4: Fresnillo, Zecatecas: Armed Confrontation Between Civilians and Police
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/fresnillo-zacatecas-armed-confrontation.html
Synopsis:
This Friday afternoon elements of the Investigative Police clashed with armed civilians in the Buenavista community of Trujillo. In the confrontation two alleged criminals died and an officer was badly injured. According to the security authorities, there was also one civilian arrested and another managed to evade the officers. The events were recorded on the way to the Leobardo Reynoso community, where the agents of the state prosecutor's office were shot at by armed people. Elements of the National Guard (GN) State Preventive Police (PEP) and from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) arrived in support. While the shooting broke out, the inhabitants ran to their homes to get to safety. A helicopter from the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) also participated in the operation. Through breaches and dirt roads, an intense operation was deployed. Local residents reported that it is very recurrent in the area to see vehicles of armed civilians without any authority detaining them. In the end the forensics of the General Directorate of Expert Services took charge of what happened.
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Topic # 5: Sanalona, Sinaloa: The Holy Death Highway for Fervent Worshipers
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/sanalona-sinaloa-holy-death-highway-for.html
The Story:
Every day it is populated with chapels and cenotaphs that are well visited. Tell me she doesn’t look tough as fuck...! boasts a young man dressed in black who sanctifies himself again and again before the Holy Death and offers her "I will idolize you all of my life by putting your image as many times as necessary for this place, because you have helped me and my friends." He assures that in addition to the six chapels that exist in less than 14 kilometers he will install more "every time my girl supports us, we reward her. We want people not to be ashamed and follow Holy Death, so we have to place her image everywhere." The street is gradually populated by chapels that together with the dozens of cenotaphs are part of the road landscape before the fervor that is increasing, by the road that leads to Tamazula, Durango and that is part of the Golden Triangle, the chapels are becoming an obligatory place to stop, some do it out of curiosity, others out of devotion. The cenotaphs and the Holy Death compete in the exaltations that are lived daily in those places, it’s a practice of challenge, there death is combined that is the physical representation of the transition that occurs when leaving life and the cenotaph where they are finally part of the world of the dead.
WITH STYLE
Chapels and cenotaphs compete in their structure, for example there is a cenotaph that emulates the Parthenon, an icon of ancient Greece. The replica of the crown jewel of Greek architecture is lost on the wild road, a few meters from the dam. Believers indicate that they have a perception of death as inevitable, so they do not consider it incorrect to establish conversations or practices in honor of the deity who is in charge of it. "I come to ask you to move away from all those negative vibrations that try to harm my destiny and my life ... just like that," details a fervent admirer of Holy Death. Police authorities and the Catholic Church itself assure that the followers of the Holy Death are people who live outside the law, but that to date in Sinaloa there are no statistics on how many criminals venerate the Holy Death. According to police authorities, they say that when they have searched the homes and vehicles of some criminals, statues, altars and other objects have been found that pay tribute to the Holy Death.
Holy Death is represented as a skeleton dressed in a dark robe that covers it from head to toe and that also has other elements. One of the chapels of the Holy Death that is at the road junction Sanalona-El Coyonqui, at that moment is being renovated, now, the seven different colors are being painted in reference to all kinds of requests. The painter says that he takes care of the place at the request of its owner "I come from a rehabilitation center, the boss supplies us with the paint and we are gladly painting, we do it little by little because there are many people who come." The colors are white to achieve peace, harmony and success. Red means love. Blue is to achieve success. Yellow means the solution to problems for all those who do not find the way out of what afflicts them. The golden color, allows economic tranquility. The "guardian" of Holy Death, at this moment, assures that lately the statues are being stolen. "People are stealing from the Niña, here they recently took the scythe of one of the images we have..." he details. He assures that lately people are going more to these places "we have to remove twice a day the candles, the flowers because the truth is they don’t fit, the truth is it’s unusual how men arrive, older males, everything, they come here."
HOMICIDE
In another of the chapels, precisely where about a month ago a man was murdered, the traces of the event are still present, blood sprinkled on the feet of the Holy Death, just like in the photograph of an individual who is on one side, give an account of what happened there. "We come to leave flowers in memory of the friend who killed him here, not even Holy Death saved him, the good thing is that it was at her feet," says an 18-year-old boy who has a huge tattoo on his left arm "The girl close to my heart." He points out that "Mahami N" was a friend of his brother and that obviously he knew him very well. While snooping inside the place, he takes out beer cans, even assures that they left a joint to the Holy Death. There are also bouquets of dried flowers, it seems that from that moment, this chapel is no longer as visited as the rest of them. "Since she doesn't smoke... I take the joint," she jokes. Another visitor says that he is Catholic, that he believes in the Virgin of Guadalupe and assures that she has done miracles for him, but that the Holy Death, fulfills another type of help. "I dare not ask the little Virgen of Guadalupe to help me in my "business", I always traverse in the jaws of danger ... afterwards I come to visit her, she’s fucking cool.
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Topic # 6: Gulf Cartel Boss Behind Mass Graves Sent to Prison in Mexico
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/06/06/gulf-cartel-boss-behind-mass-graves-sent-to-prison-in-mexico/
Synopsis:
A former top-ranking leader with the Gulf Cartel responsible for a series of mass murders, clandestine gravesites, incinerations sites, and other gory methods of disposing of humans has been sentenced to more than 11 years in a Mexican prison. The cartel boss spent time in a U.S. prison in his early years and is known for an incident where he began crying in front of a judge. Known in the criminal underworld as El Pelochas, or Metro 28, Luis Alberto Blanco Flores climbed the ranks of the Gulf Cartel while surviving and taking part in a series of shifting alliances and betrayals. Those actions eventually led to him becoming a top regional boss before his latest arrest. This week, a sentencing tribunal handed down a term of 11 years and six months in prison following his conviction for aggravated extortion and engaging in organized criminal activity, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office revealed. According to authorities the crimes that led to Pelochas’ sentence took place during the summer of 2017. Breitbart Texas reported extensively on the criminal career of El Pelochas who became one of the leading Gulf Cartel figures between 2016 and 2018. During that period, he made a push to take control of the Reynosa faction and clashed with another top commander.
Breitbart Texas kept a record of the murders directly attributed to that power struggle with more than 500 murders taking place during that time. The murders included executions, assassinations, kidnapping victims, and casualties of the large-scale shootouts. One gruesome trend that grew during that time was the use of clandestine crematoriums and mass graves where Gulf Cartel members worked to dispose of the bodies of their victims and rivals. During the start of his criminal career, El Pelochas spent time in a U.S. prison. In August 2010, federal agents arrested him in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, and only charged him with one count of illegal re-entry. At the time of his initial hearing, the fearsome cartel leader began to sob as he was escorted into the Brownsville federal court and he saw his mother in the audience. El Pelochas was one of three cartel commanders who fled to Brownsville to hide from rivals who had been hunting them.
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Topic # 7: GRAPHIC: Gulf Cartel Dumps Ice Chests with Body Parts in Border City in Mexico
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/06/06/graphic-gulf-cartel-leaves-ice-chests-with-body-parts-in-mexican-border-city/
Synopsis:
A group of gunmen believed to be with one faction of the Gulf Cartel left at least two ice chests filled with dismembered human body parts in the Mexican border city of Reynosa. Authorities recovered one of the ice-chests, while unknown gunmen absconded with the other one. The incident took place on Saturday afternoon when residents spotted two ice chests along the Monterrey-Matamoros highway near the Jarachina Norte neighborhood. The ice chests had been tied closed with a piece of rope. However, by the time authorities responded to the scene, the ice chests were gone. Authorities believe that a group of gunmen picked up the two ice chests before they arrived. Soon after, authorities responded to another location also along the same highway about a body left next to an ice chest. Authorities arrived to find a dismembered torso next to one ice chest that looked similar to one of the two that had been reported earlier in the day. While the male victim has not been identified, the current theory points to one of two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel leaving the gory crime scene as a message to their rivals. As Breitbart Texas has reported, two factions of the Gulf Cartel have been actively fighting for years over control of lucrative border areas in and around Reynosa.
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Topic # 8: "FOR EACH ONE OF US WE WILL KILL 2" FOR THIS REASON THE CJNG DECIDED TO HUNT DOWN THE POLICE
Source: https://elblogdelnarco.com/2021/06/06/por-cada-uno-de-nosotros-les-mataremos-a-2-por-esta-razon-el-cjng-decidio-cazar-a-policia/
Synopsis:
It's a type of direct attack on officers rarely seen outside of the most gang-ridden nations in Central America and it represents the most direct challenge yet to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's policy of avoiding violence and rejecting any war against the cartels. The drug trafficking group has declared war on the government with the aim of eradicating the Tactical Group, because according to the criminal group, it unfairly treats its members. “They want war, they are going to have war and we have already shown them that we already have them located. We're going for all of you, ”says a professionally printed banner signed by the Jalisco cartel that appeared hanging in a building in Guanajuato in May. "For each member of our company (CJNG) that you send, two of your tacticians will be killed, wherever you are, at home, on patrols or fixed services," says the banner, referring to the cartel by its initials. Officials in Guanajuato, Mexico's most violent state, where the CJNG fights local gangs backed by the Sinaloa cartel, declined to comment on how many members of the elite group have been killed so far.
In the most recent case, state police publicly acknowledged that an officer was abducted from his home Thursday, killed, and his body dumped on a highway. Security analyst David Saucedo says there have been many cases. “Many other (officers) decided to defect. They took their families, abandoned their homes and are in hiding and on the run." He added that the "CJNG is hunting down the elite policemen of Guanajuato." It's hard to find the number of victims, but Poplab, a news cooperative in Guanajuato, said at least seven police officers have been killed on their days off so far this year. In January, armed men went to the home of a policewoman, killed her husband, dragged her away, tortured her and dumped her bullet-riddled body. Guanajuato has had the highest number of murdered police officers of any Mexican state since at least 2018, according to Poplab. Between 2018 and May 12, a total of 262 police officers have been killed, about 75 officers each year, more than are killed by gunfire or other assaults on average each year across the United States. The problem in Guanajuato has gotten so bad that the state government published a special decree on May 17 to provide an unspecified amount of funding for protection mechanisms for police and prison officials. "This is an open war against the security forces of the state government," Saucedo said.
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Tamuin, SLP: Cartel Jalisco Threatens the GULF Cartel
Chihuahua: Javier Corral, The Father of All The Losers
Zacatecas, ZAC: National Guardsmen Seize Weapons and Ammunition
Tijuana: Human Heads Thrown into Voting Locations, Ballot Boxes Burned on Election Day
Homicides from May Highest in 9 Months; Violence Steadily Rising
EXCLUSIVE: Bloody Ice Chests Found at Mexican Border State Election Polling Places
NARCO SEEKS TO RENEW PACTS WITH GOVERNMENTS THROUGH 2021 ELECTIONS (Translated Spanish to English)
Topic # 1: Tamuin, SLP: Cartel Jalisco Threatens the GULF Cartel
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/tamuin-slp-cartel-jalisco-threatens.html
Synopsis:
This morning narco messages were left hanging in public: one at the entrance to the municipality. And another one in front of the municipal market. The CJNG takes responsibility for this act and launched a threat against the Gulf Cartel (CDG), a criminal group that controls this area.
Narco message reads as follows:
Attention to the entire town of Tamuín: Cartel Jalisco New Generation Operation Huasteca:
We want to inform you by these means that in the next few days we will be purging the town of all the thieves, extortionists, fee collectors, kidnappers, rapists, and everyone who is caught supporting the Gulf Cartel (CDG). Grupo Espartano we are coming after you. *Roberto Montoya aka “Tito” or “El Wauchito”, Alejandro Morales Morado aka “La Chona”, Carlos Antonio Alonso aka “El Gallero”, Alexis Díaz Montoya aka “La Niña”, and Isidro Gámez aka “El Lolo”. We’re giving you 24 hours to leave this town. Otherwise, you will all be killed off. We don’t want dirty fools here. And for all the authorities: This war isn’t against you. This town already has its owner. Furthermore. he who warns ahead of time isn’t a traitor.
Sincerely, CJNG Operation Huasteca
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Topic # 2: Chihuahua: Javier Corral, The Father of All The Losers
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/chihuahua-javier-corral-father-of-all.html
Synopsis:
He loses the elections by a landslide and exchanges his arrogant accusations against Maru with fearful comments of humility and modesty because he fears being imprisoned. Javier Corral left this Sunday, June 6 as a Traitor to Chihuahua and Father of All Losers. Not only did he lose the elections, but he leaves the State bankrupt. He must now submit to Maru Campos in the face of danger of being sent to jail for corruption. Corral lost the State by betraying the PAN political party and buying the Citizen Movement caucus to be a federal deputy in collusion with the Morena party. He lost everything, State Congress, deputies, municipalities and will face a corruption investigation by the new Governor Maru Campos, whom Corral tried to prevent her arrival in the state government by all means of the State. With his tail between his legs, Corral gave a press conference this Monday to align himself with Maru and announced with a fearful spirit that this same Tuesday he begins the process of transition of the government without any problem. Gone are his arrogant accusations against Maru. And a surge of honeyed comments of collaboration with the new government emerged. The defeat of Morena's candidate Juan Carlos Loera, with whom he made an alliance in open betrayal of the PAN political party, is attributed to his bad reputation.
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Topic # 3: Zacatecas, ZAC: National Guardsmen Seize Weapons and Ammunition
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/zacatecas-zacatecas-national-guardsmen.html
Synopsis:
The operations have been carried out on roads in the state of Zacatecas. In two different actions in the municipalities of Tabasco and Fresnillo, elements of the National Guard seized 20 long weapons, three handguns, five magazines and 50 bullets. The first fact was recorded near kilometer 183 + 200 of the Guadalajara Zacatecas highway, municipality of Tabasco. Where federal troops had contact with a car that suddenly turned in the opposite direction when approaching the vehicle control point; they reached them a kilometer later, however the subjects got off the unit and abandoned it. When inspecting the vehicle, the national guardsmen located 13 long weapons and three handguns wrapped in clear plastic, they were secured and placed at the disposal of the Attorney General's Office (FGR) based in Zacatecas. The second action was recorded at kilometer 018+000 of the La Chicharrona Cuencamé highway, municipality of Fresnillo, where national guardsmen had contact with a vehicle driven by a woman, who was accompanied by a minor. When carrying out a preventive inspection, with the support of a K-9 unit, they located inside the vehicle, seven long weapons, five polymer magazines and 50 bullets, in addition to several pieces for the assembly of the firearms. Faced with the possible commission of a crime, the driver was read the Booklet of Rights Assisting Persons in Detention and the National Registry of Detentions was filled with her data and together with the unit and the secured weapons was made available to the FGR. Meanwhile, the minor was presented to the corresponding authority, which will protect him in accordance with the applicable legal provisions.
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Topic # 4: Tijuana: Human Heads Thrown into Voting Locations, Ballot Boxes Burned on Election Day
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/tijuana-human-heads-thrown-into-voting.html
Left: A Villa Fontana voting location burns. Right: Human remains are left at a Terrazas de Valle voting location
The Story:
June 6, 2021 was considered to be the largest midterm election in Mexico’s history. Such an unprecedented election brought out truly unprecedented acts of voter suppression. This came in the form of unapologetic displays of intimidation, destruction and gore by criminal elements at polling locations for the sole purpose of preventing citizens from voting. At least 88 politicians have been killed in Mexico since last September and dozens of hopeful candidates have been the victims of violence during this campaign season. And election day was not the end to the violence, as voters now became the victims of gruesome acts. In particular, the city of Tijuana, in Baja California was witness to some of the most horrific attacks on voting locations. What follows occurred entirely in the city of Tijuana.
9:00 AM
Neighborhood: Terrazas de Valle. Street: Hacienda Las Palmeras, near Hacienda Santa Monica Street
A man entered the voting location and approached the table where the ballot boxes were sitting. The man was described as wearing a white and green plaid shirt. The man placed a white cardboard box with green and blue stripes on the table while saying “They send them to you,” to the polling officials nearby, then he quickly ran away from the location. The box he had left was originally for plastic syringes, although it seemed to have been repurpose for other means. When officials opened the box, they discovered that inside the box was a human head. Officials alerted law enforcement who cordoned off the area with crime scene tape. The voting at this location had to be immediately suspended.
9:40 AM
Neighborhood: Terrazas de Valle, Street: Paseo de Las Águilas Sur 25, near Hacienda Santa Monica Street
Two suspicious black garbage bags were discovered by neighbors who reported them to police. The municipal police officers arrived on scene and found that inside the bags were human remains. These remains were placed less than 100 meters away from the ballot boxes of voting location 1431. This voting location was right in front of a secondary school called the Misioneros de Baja California. Unlike at the previous voting location, the remains at 1431 were able to be cordoned off for the forensic team without requiring the voting to be suspended due to their distance from the ballot boxes.
10:00 AM
Neighborhood: Terrazas de Valle, Street: Paseo de la Lomas Ave, near Paseo de La Torres
Multiple subjects arrived at voting location 1432 in a white compact vehicle. One of the individuals entered the polling tent carrying a wooden box while shouting out threats. He then placed the box on the table right next to the gubernatorial ballot box. He rejoined the other subjects who all quickly re-entered their vehicle and drove away. Inside the wooden box was reportedly a human head, two hands and two feet. According to El Sol de Tijuana, when a poll worker first approached the box and peered inside they were so shocked by the contents that they fainted. The poll worker received medical attention from Red Cross paramedics and they are reported to be in stable condition. This polling location had to suspend all voting in order to let the forensic team collect and process evidence.
12:00 PM
Neighborhood: Mariano Matamoros, Street: Montealban Street, near Las Torres Ave A
Tijuana Municipal Police received a report that the body was found on the corner of Las Torres Avenue and Montealban Street in the Mariano Matamoros neighborhood of Tijuana. When they arrived at the location, which is behind a shopping center, they sighted a white foam cooler placed on the sidewalk near the busy street. A human head was found inside. Personnel from the State Attorney General's Office went to the scene to begin the investigation. There were no voting locations within the immediate area.
12:40 PM
Neighborhood: El Dorado Residencial, Street: Campeche Street, near Domingo Ariata street
Only fifteen meters away from the tent of voting location 1384, a suspicious black suitcase was discovered. Once police were alerted to the suitcase by an observant civilian, they opened it to discover another human head. It is not reported when or how the suitcase arrived in the polling area. No further details on this discovery.
4:45 PM
Neighborhood: Urbi Villas del Prado, Street: Privada Roca Street, near Carita de Dios migrant shelter
According to witnesses who were present at voting location 1903, several men who were dressed in black, wearing hoods and armed with firearms arrived at the tent and burned the ballot boxes on the tables.
5:40 PM
Neighborhood: Mariano Matamoros, Street: Boulevard Manuel Jesús Clouthier, near Josefa Ortiz Street
Unknown persons arrived at the voting booth number 1154 and set fire to the location. Social media users who witnessed the event report that molotov cocktails were used by the aggressors in order to start the fire. A civilian bystander was injured by the flames and had to receive medical attention. No further details.
6:00 PM
Neighborhood: Villa Fontana, Street: Boulevard Cucapah, near Paseo Villa Fontana Street
A blue Ford Explorer SUV arrived near voting boxes number 1560 which was located in the parking lot of a Calimax, which is a local grocery store chain. Men dressed in black, wearing hoods piled out of the SUV and approached the tent, throwing incendiary bottles of gasoline. The people inside the polling tent ran in different directions, fleeing the area for safety's sake. At first, the men appeared to target the ballot boxes specifically. Once the boxes were burned, they indiscriminately threw the bottles at the tables and chairs under the tent. The whole voting setup went up in flames. The aggressors escaped the area afterwards however two suspects were later found in the Villa Fontana park and arrested in connection to this crime.
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Topic # 5: Homicides from May Highest in 9 Months; Violence Steadily Rising
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/homicides-from-may-highest-in-9-months.html
The Story:
May was the worst month for homicides since August 2020, according to daily figures published by the federal government that also show that murders have increased every month so far this year. There were 2,462 victims of homicide and femicide last month for a daily average of 79.4 murders. The preliminary figures typically undercount murders by 15% to 20%, meaning that final data, to be published June 20, will likely show there were close to 3,000 homicides and femicides in May. The last time Mexico recorded a higher daily number of murders than in May was last August when the figure was 81.4. Last month was the most violent May since President López Obrador took office in late 2018. The preliminary total of murders was 1.6% higher than May 2020 and 3.3% higher than May 2019. The preliminary data also shows that average daily homicides and femicides have increased every month since December. There was an average of 70.8 murders per day last December, 76.7 in January, 78.7 in February, 78.8 in March, 79 in April and 79.4 in May. The average in May was 12.1% higher than the average in December. The month-over-month increase in murders coincided with both the loosening of coronavirus restrictions as the intensity of Mexico’s pandemic declined and with the campaign period leading up to municipal, state and federal elections this Sunday.
Scores of politicians and candidates are among the thousands of people who have been murdered in 2021. Thirty months after López Obrador was sworn in as president and set about implementing a “hugs, not bullets” security policy that favors addressing the root causes of violence with social programs rather than combating it with force, homicide numbers remain alarmingly high. The deployment of more than 100,000 troops of a new security force, the National Guard, and the ongoing use of the armed forces to carry out public security tasks have been unable to stem the bloodshed, with a new record for homicides set in 2019 before only a minimal reduction was achieved in 2020 even as authorities encouraged people to stay at home as much as possible to combat the spread of the coronavirus. In May, Guanajuato retained its unenviable title of Mexico’s most violent state with 271 murders, according to the preliminary data. México state ranked second with 226 homicides and femicides followed by Michoacán, Jalisco and Chihuahua, with 222, 206 and 156, respectively. Murders in those five states accounted for 44% of the total reported by the Public Security Ministry last month. Guanajuato, where numerous criminal groups including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel are fighting each other for control, has been Mexico’s most violent state since 2019.
Celaya, a midsized city about 100 kilometers southeast of the state capital, was the most violent city in the world in 2020, according to a study by a Mexican nongovernmental organization. Irapuato, a city known as Mexico’s strawberry capital, ranked as the fifth most violent. Authorities hoped that the arrest of Santa Rosa de Lima kingpin José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez Ortiz last August would help achieve a sustained reduction in violence in Guanajuato but after a brief decline in homicides rampant bloodshed returned. Another state of concern is Zacatecas, which ranked as the sixth most violent state last month in terms of sheer homicide numbers. The northern state, whose location between Pacific coast ports and Mexico’s northeastern border with the United States makes it a drug trafficking nexus, recorded 130 murders last month, seven more than Baja California and 25 more than Mexico City, both of which have much higher populations. A recent survey by Mexico’s statistics agency Inegi revealed that the crime-ridden city of Fresnillo, located 60 kilometers north of Zacatecas city, has the distinction of being the Mexican city where the highest percentage of residents say they feel unsafe. Among the almost 2,500 murders reported in May were several that made headlines.
Three siblings – two brothers and their sister – were kidnapped and killed in Jalisco early last month, a crime that triggered a large protest in Guadalajara against violence and insecurity. The assassination of Abel Murrieta, a former attorney general of Sonora who was running for mayor in Cajeme (Ciudad Obregón), on May 13 was another high-profile case as was the murder of Alma Barragán, a candidate for mayor in Moroleón, Guanajuato, who was shot dead on May 25. All told, 13 candidates and politicians were murdered in May, according to Etellekt, a risk analysis firm. As is the norm in Mexico, the majority of the perpetrators of the crimes were not taken into custody. One exception was a man identified only as Andrés N., a suspected serial killer of women who was arrested in México state on May 18 and admitted to killing and eating numerous women over a period of 20 years. But the 72-year-old would likely still be at large had his final victim not been the wife of a police commander, who took it upon himself to investigate the disappearance of his spouse.
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Topic # 6: EXCLUSIVE: Bloody Ice Chests Found at Mexican Border State Election Polling Places
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/06/08/exclusive-bloody-ice-chests-found-at-mexican-border-state-election-polling-places/
Synopsis:
At two other locations, authorities found a severed pig head and other bloody pieces of meat inside a chest. Authorities in Nuevo Leon also confirmed to Breitbart Texas a report of six gunmen vandalizing a polling location in the Pedregal de La Silla neighborhood. The gunmen also threatened voters. It is unclear if they physically tampered with any ballot materials. Samuel Garcia, the candidate from Movimiento Ciudadano, claimed victory with unofficial results giving him a 10 percent advantage over other candidates. One of the surprises of the election was the poor performance of Clara Luz Flores, from the MORENA party, who was at one point expected to win but ended in fourth place. MORENA is the ruling party in Mexico founded by current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
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Topic # 7: NARCO SEEKS TO RENEW PACTS WITH GOVERNMENTS THROUGH 2021 ELECTIONS
Source: https://elblogdelnarco.com/2021/06/07/el-narco-busca-renovar-pactos-con-gobiernos-a-traves-de-elecciones-2021/
The Story:
A report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) gives an account of narcopolitical operations in Mexico where criminal groups can bet on candidacies to be benefited, the elections of next June 6 can be seen as a "great democratic party" by the electoral authorities, but they also mean access to power for cartels that invested in a mayor's office, the weakest link in government orders and easily captured. “The Mexican elections are more than a competition between candidates for popular support. They are also a forum for criminal groups to obtain, prolong and consolidate their access to state power, ”says the ICG in its report on Latin America No. 89, published on June 2. Through the analysis of the Tierra Caliente region in Michoacán, this report describes how criminals, politicians and security forces operate during the electoral process. Although President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has reiterated that there are no pacts in his administration, the report states that these agreements continue, but entail degrees of complexity in areas such as Michoacán, where extended domains of a hegemonic association are not updated. "The criminal factions dispute fragments of the Mexican state, so those involved have been involved in a network of relationships in which violent ruptures are frequent," the report warns. And it is that in the Michoacan entity there are permanent conflicts, because local cells resist losing their power, which has taken root over the years due to the same complicities that they forged.
On the other hand, in this quest to lead rivals, they attack security forces that they identify with their enemies, since they consider that their rivals and the fraction of authority have agreements to affect them. "It's the same blowjob as before, but more stupid, more disorganized," an intermediary who reached agreements with the National Guard in favor of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel told the ICG. Supposedly, the theft of hydrocarbons negotiated in central and northern Mexico is protected by these agreements at the federal level. In addition, regional military leaders continue to operate with high levels of autonomy, hence their scope for establishing connections with criminals. The organization criticizes that the security policies of the López Obrador government are apparently passive, while there is a lack of interest in cutting ties between crime and officials. Regarding the understanding in Tierra Caliente, another operator of groups that dispute the territory indicated that he has a good relationship with the local commander of the National Guard, and despite receiving support, he added that his rivals had reached the same pact with senior agents and high-level officials in other regions. Having the backing of the government, indicates the ICG, gives a guideline to "grow", sabotage the agreements of their enemies and guarantees of impunity. As well as having police service, accessing intelligence information, or obtaining part of the budget in the form of salaries, but without working.
This is what can be negotiated at each stage of the elections. "Criminal groups in Tierra Caliente are so influential that candidates frequently approach them for support," reports the ICG. According to data cited by the organization, the authorized campaign spending cap is around 333 thousand pesos to run for a mayor's office in Michoacán. But those who want to buy votes or give food pantries invest between 10, 15 and even 20 million pesos. Hence, illicit financing is a window of opportunity. Furthermore, criminal groups can turn to their operators to channel a certain number of voters, sometimes at the cost of threats. In addition to this, applicants may have previous ties to criminal factions, which facilitates operations to continue dominance in a region. Either by direct or indirect ties, through those who make up your team. However, agreements with applicants are not always respected. A military source assured Crisis Group that there may be "paradise municipalities" where there is no violence because that has been agreed. But at the government level, they can sell territory to competing factions.
Although sometimes only half of what is promised is obtained, noted a criminal operator, it is better than making enemies of officials. But others can unleash waves of violence out of anger at not seeing their investments recovered, for example with police killings. Next Sunday the largest elections in the history of the country will be held in more than 162 thousand polling stations, which will be able to attend more than 90 million citizens. 20,417 positions will be elected throughout Mexico, including 15 governorships. The federal government ensures that there are conditions for voting in order and tranquility. Although there are red spots, generalized instability is ruled out. The National Guard will monitor the development of the elections.
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June 23, 2021
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US-Mexico Border Security: A Modern Version of an Old Problem
It’s a geopolitical problem that often gets painted in political colors.
By: Allison Fedirka
U.S.-Mexico defense and security cooperation is a geopolitical conundrum. Geography dictates that the two countries must work together to address security concerns across their extensive shared border, among other issues. However, a host of constraints – many of which are permanent or endemic – surround this relationship. Such constraints limit the space in which cooperation can take place and the possibility for mutually acceptable solutions.
The United States and Mexico share one of the longest continuous and dynamic land borders in the world. There are 50 official crossings along the 1,900 miles of border between them. Before the pandemic, approximately $1 billion worth of trade crossed the border every day, with advanced manufactured goods often crossing back and forth multiple times. This movement of goods is vital for both countries’ economies. Mexican exports to the U.S. represent approximately 31 percent of its gross domestic product, and the four U.S. states that border Mexico (and rely heavily on migrant labor) account for 25 percent of U.S. GDP.
Commerce at the border is possible so long as the border is secure and stable. But more than that, a tranquil border – something that has generally existed since the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 – was a geopolitical prerequisite for Washington to project power abroad. In other words, the absence of a major threat from the south freed up policymakers to allocate resources toward supporting and executing their foreign policy ambitions. (So important is border security that in World War I, Germany tried but failed to sow conflict between the U.S. and Mexico in hopes of bogging down the U.S. Army in North America.)
Rightly or wrongly, U.S.-Mexico border security tends to get lumped in with domestic politics – such that it obscures the real reasons border tensions are so difficult to resolve. The issue du jour, of course, is immigration, specifically Central American immigration via Mexico. (This issue predates the pandemic, but the associated economic and social deterioration of COVID-19 made it worse.) There is a consensus among the U.S., Mexico and Central American countries that the migration flows should be addressed, as should the underlying causes of migration. There is no consensus on how to do it. No country wants to assume the bulk of the responsibility for a solution where others have a say. The solution each country brings to the negotiating table often reflects the political necessities of the moment, painting a fundamentally geopolitical problem in political colors.
The underlying constraints that limit the intensity and the potential of U.S. and Mexican cooperation are a byproduct of a historical rivalry. The United States didn’t always dominate North America; it had to compete with Mexico for territory and foreign allies, especially in both of their early years.
They even fought a war with each other, after which Mexico lost large swaths of territory to the U.S. Equally scarring but often forgotten up north are the memories formed by a U.S. military invasion that ventured not only into the borderlands but into what is present-day Mexico City.
Subsequent U.S. interventions and invasions of Mexican territory reinforced Mexico’s sensitivity to and distrust of U.S. security forces. During the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Mexico was so unstable that the U.S., compelled as it was to stem any spillover into its territory, sought to block incoming weapons to Mexico that could add to the violence, including by occupying the port of Veracruz.
Then there was U.S. involvement in the Punitive Expedition of 1916-17. One of the leading figures vying for political power during the revolution was Pancho Villa, who actively tried to draw the U.S. into the conflict as a way to undermine Mexican state forces. After he attacked U.S. citizens and raided border towns, the U.S. Army sent as many as 12,000 soldiers into Mexico to search for Villa. And though the U.S. would withdraw them as WWI commanded more and more attention, the seeds of distrust in Mexico had been planted.
However unlikely an invasion from the north may be, the fear of subjugation is a defining feature of Mexico City’s border security strategy. Mexico is obviously not strong enough to unilaterally take on the U.S. alone, so its current strategy revolves around keeping U.S. security forces at as much distance as possible. But since security cooperation is in both of their interests, they have had to engage in a variety of ways to keep the border safe. Perhaps the most notable of which was the 2008 Merida Initiative, which established a cooperation framework between the U.S. and Mexico for combating transnational crime, drug trafficking and money laundering primarily through U.S. support to the judiciary. But even then, there are parameters in place to limit the physical presence of U.S. security officials in Mexico and to regulate how shared information is exercised and used. More recently, the Mexican government went further and passed legislation that restricts the operational tasks U.S. security and intelligence agents can engage in.
Geography also makes it difficult for Mexican security forces to cooperate with outside countries. Mountainous and desert terrain split Mexico into states that, during colonial times and early independence, were extremely isolated from the central government and needed to rely on their own resources and systems for governance and security. Over time, this contributed to power vacuums that have often been filled by criminal groups. Crises such as pandemics make it all the more difficult for the central government to reassert control.
The U.S. understands all these limitations, which is why the immigration issue remains so intractable. It’s also why the U.S. has begun to reengage with Central American countries more directly. Mexico will always be part of the equation, but there is only so much it can do given its financial constraints and its general (and understandable) aversion to U.S. security presence. It’s a contemporary version of a historical problem, one that calls into the question the very concept of national sovereignty.
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CU’s El Betin Gunned Down in Street by Sicarios in Morelia, Michoacan
Monte Escobedo, Zacatecas: Cartel del Golfo Burns Captured Combatants
Reynosa, Tamaulipas: The Hunting of Innocent Civilians
Knights Templar Cartel joins CJNG to Form Michoacan New Mob Cartel
La Costa, Michoacan: CJNG Leaves Decapitated Heads and Message for El Abuelo (Graphic image Attached)
Chihuahua: Business Robbery, Crime With the Most Increase in Corral Administration
EXCLUSIVE: Los Zetas Cartel Builds Big Data Surveillance System on Mexican Border City
Mexican president vows to investigate deadly border shootings of innocent bystanders
Topic # 1: CU’s El Betin Gunned Down in Street by Sicarios in Morelia, Michoacan
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/cus-el-betin-gunned-down-in-street-by.html
The Story:
El Betín was gunned down inside his car in the middle of the street on Sunday. El Betín is the brother of a Carteles Unidos plaza boss named El Seco in Apatzingán. El Betín also allegedly had financial ties to powerful Carteles Unidos leader Alberto Espinoza Barrón, "La Fresa" an infamous, high ranking former leader of La Familia Michoacana.
The Shooting
On the afternoon of Sunday, June 20 2021, a man known by the alias “El Betín” or “El Cocón” was driving in his purple Chevrolet Camaro on Periférico Paseo de la República street, in an area south of the city of Morelia, Michoacán. When El Betín reached the section of the street near the subdivision “Morelia 450” unknown assailants opened fire on him. No details are given about the appearance of the attackers nor if they were inside a vehicle at the time of the shooting. The vehicle and El Betín himself were riddled with bullets in the attack. The assailants then fled in an unknown direction. El Betín received serious gunshot injuries from the shooting. Witnesses to the attack called the emergency services line to report the incident. Paramedics were dispatched to the scene. El Betín was given basic first aid on site and rushed in an ambulance to a hospital however Betín succumbed to his injuries and died while he was being treated by doctors at the hospital.
Who is El Betín? How does he relate to Carteles Unidos?
Contra Muro reports that El Betín is the brother of Juan Manuel Montero Nambo, alias “El Seco”, who is alleged to be the Carteles Unidos plaza boss in charge of the town of Santiago de Acahuato, in Apatzingán municipality. El Betín has also allegedly been financially linked to Alberto Espinoza Barrón, alias “La Fresa” or 'The Strawberry'. La Fresa is a former lieutenant of the La Familia Michoacana. He is currently believed to be a major leadership figure within Carteles Unidos. Back in the 2000s-2010s, La Fresa is believed to have taken over the Morelia plaza after the death of “El Güero”. La Fresa was believed to be a financial advisor and right arm of Dionisio Loya Plancarte, alias "El Tío" and Nazario Moreno González alias "El Chayo", the leaders of La Familia Michoacana at the time.
La Fresa was arrested in December 2008 and was believed to be succeeded by Rafael Cedeño Hernández alias “El Cede” after Fresa’s arrest. El Cede was later famously arrested in 2009 while attending a baptism party for a baby born to a cartel member. With La Fresa having all these historic ties to the criminal underworld of Michoacán, Fresa is a very interesting character for El Betín to allegedly have direct financial ties to.
Who is his brother, El Seco?
Juan Manuel Montero Nambo, alias “El Seco” a native of the town of Acahuato, municipality of Apatzingán, Michoacán. He first came to the attention of the public in 2014 when an avocado farmer from Tancítaro came forward to authorities and revealed that two years prior, in November 2012, El Seco had kidnapped him and held him for ransom. The avocado farmer was only released by El Seco and his men because the farmer had promised he would sell some property he owned in order to afford the large ransom they were demanding. After his captors released him, the farmer made good on his promise, sold the property and delivered the money to appease El Seco. The farmer did not report the incident to police at the time because he was afraid of reprisals against his family.
Juan Manuel Montero Nambo, alias “El Seco”
The farmer had chosen to come forward in 2014 because El Seco was believed to have fled the state and believed to be in hiding so he was unable to hurt the farmer’s family in retribution. When the Michoacán State Attorney General’s Office received this report from the avocado farmer, they began investigating the current whereabouts of El Seco. They were able to locate him in the town of San Pedro Tlaquepaque, in the state of Jalisco. According to Vallarta Uno, El Seco had been hiding out in Jalisco for the last 8 months because “he was hiding from another subject with whom he had problems in his state [Michoacán]”. El Seco was arrested by authorities and presented before a judge on charges related to the homicide of six people and the kidnapping of seven others. In addition to the November 2012 avocado farmer kidnapping, El Seco is believed to be involved in the kidnapping and ransom of two women in Tancítaro, also in November 2012. One of the kidnapped women was released, presumably after payment was received while the other woman was later found dead.
El Seco after being apprehended by the PGR in 2014
El Seco is believed to be involved in the August 2013 kidnapping and subsequent murder of five people in Tancítaro. Only 3 remains of the five kidnapped were ever recovered. Those three remains were located in September, a month after they were kidnapped, in the Tepalcatepec river. El Seco is also suspected in the November 2014 kidnapping of 4 farmers in the city of Apatzingán. Those four farmers are still missing to this day, their whereabouts unknown.
El Seco after being apprehended by the PGR in 2014
Who was behind the hit on El Betín?
The cartel affiliation of the assailants who killed El Betín is currently unknown. There are no confirmed reports on who was behind the attack. It should be noted that Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) has previously threatened El Betín’s brother El Seco on social media. The CJNG is widely considered to be Carteles Unidos’s primary rival in the state of Michoacán. According to Letra Roja, in May 2021 the CJNG publicly named and threatened members of the Michoacán Police who they allege are working for El Seco and fellow Carteles Unidos member, El Tukan.
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Topic # 2: Monte Escobedo, Zacatecas: Cartel del Golfo Burns Captured Combatants
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/monte-escobedo-zacatecas-cartel-del.html
A new video from the Mexican underworld has just surfaced online. For this broadcast hitmen from the Gulf Cartel (CDG), in alliance with the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) are disposing of their adversaries with fire in an open field. An ominous message for the enemy is being spoken. While an enforcer is pouring a flammable liquid from a one gallon container onto a tight firewood stack. Beneath the mound of wood lies an injured Grupo Flechas combatant. Before their communique concludes the horrific screams of the immolated individual can be heard in the background.
Video translation is as follows:
Sicario #1: This will be the fate of everyone who wants to help out the Sinaloa enforcers. For those of you wanting to do a favor for the Sinaloa Cartel. As it is you owe us for that loss we took in Tepetongo. Little by little we are going to turn things around in our favor. I’m telling you this ahead of time so that you don’t find yourselves in disbelief afterwards. So you all know how Commander Fantasma takes care of things.
Sicario #2: Pay attention gentlemen. This is how the Sinaloa gunmen are being burned away. Because you guys are assholes and pieces of shit. You still owe us for that loss we had in Tepetongo. We are the absolute mob of Mr. Fantasma. This is an operation for Mr. Fantasma you fucks. The fucking towns of Monte Escobedo and Tepetongo belong to us.
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Topic # 3: Reynosa, Tamaulipas: The Hunting of Innocent Civilians
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/reynosa-tamaulipas-hunting-of-innocent.html
The Story:
Last Saturday, the city of Reynosa was again a ghost town of desolate avenues and closed shops. Messages circulating on WhatsApp asking people not to leave their homes and alert their families that the nightmare had begun again. That day a caravan formed by trucks and sedan cars arrived in Reynosa from Río Bravo. Those who were part of the convoy toured four colonies in the east - Almaguer, Lampacitos, Unidad Obrera and Bienestar - shooting at the people they were encountering in their path. Construction workers, workers repairing the sewer, a young newly graduated nurse, an elderly person who walked under the burning sun (and who was shot in the throat), the owner of a grocery store and a customer who was shopping at the time he passed the hitmen's armed criminal cell. In total, 14 people whose lives were cut up on the chopping block at the whim of the murderers. The citizens of Reynosa have learned to live between shootings that are recorded almost every day, at any time. It is common for citizens to check their social networks before leaving home or work, in order to avoid war zones: roads in which persecutions are recorded, or vehicles are burned.
It’s not strange that civilians lose their lives by being caught in the crossfire of the groups that dispute control of that border city. But nothing like this had ever happened. The hunt for innocent people, without a criminal record or any relationship with organized crime. "Unpublished, unprecedented," said Attorney Irving Barrios. In April 2017, a former bodyguard who had become leader of the Gulf Cartel, Julián Manuel Loisa Salinas, El Comandante Toro, was killed by the Navy. Loisa was fleeing for the sixth time from an operation designed to stop him. On that occasion he couldn't escape. The truck in which he was fleeing crashed into a tree: he descended opening fire on the sailors. He was riddled on the spot. His death unleashed two days of chaos and extreme violence in Reynosa. His men burned shops, cars, buses, cargo trucks. There were 32 blockades in the city. The Gulf Cartel itself circulated audios ordering people not to leave their homes. There were versions that a group of Cyclones - one of the factions of the cartel - had been sent from Matamoros to take over the city, one of the main drug and migrant crossings: a kidnapping gold mine, "protection fee", hydrocarbon theft and extortion.
The command was assumed by Jesús García, El Güero Jessi. But other cartel leaders opposed: Alberto Salinas, El Betillo; Petronilo Flores, aka El Metro 100 or El Comandante Panilo; Lui Alberto Blanco, El Pelochas, as well as Juan Miguel Lizardi, nicknamed Miguelito 56. Between April and July of that year, 90 executions were recorded in Reynosa. There was talk of a hundred disappearances. Clashes between Los Metros (fraction of the CDG whose stronghold is Reynosa), Los Ciclones (armed wing created by Alfredo Cárdenas Martínez, El Contador) and Los Escorpiones (fraction created by Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, aka Tony Tormenta, and composed of ex-police officers) intensified. The internal struggle ended in a bloodbath that plunged Reynosa into darkness. El Betillo and El Güero Jessi were killed. El Pelochas and El Metro 100, arrested. His successors continued to be engaged in a struggle that has made Reynosa one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico - and with the greatest perception of insecurity.
In 2019, 140 inhabitants of Charco Escondido, just 20 kilometers from Reynosa, left their homes: the hitmen had entered the community to burn several homes: seven people from the same family were killed days later. In the middle of all that fire, the Northeast Cartel was also introduced into the area, commanded by a nephew of the bloodthirsty Z-40, former leader of the Zetas: Juan Gerardo Treviño, known as El Huevo. For years, the bodies of executed people have appeared on rural roads, as happened in May 2021 when six men in tactical vests were found with gunshots in the head, or as happened in August last year, when the heads of three "bodyguards" of Commander Maestrín (a lieutenant of Miguelito 56) appeared.
For years, blockades have been a daily thing, as happened last March, when Mayor Maki Ortiz could not reach the celebration for the 272 years of the foundation of the city because criminals had crossed vehicles and placed caltrops on various avenues. For years, in one of the main manufacturing and cross-border trade centers, classes have been suspended, shops close, people have equipped themselves in their homes: the streets become a cemetery. And yet, nothing similar to what happened this Saturday had never happened: hitmen hunting people in the streets: murderers who go through four colonies killing at random, without anything happening: without being persecuted, arrested, judged. The massacres are repeated. Violence in Mexico is out of control and the State is increasingly incapable of guaranteeing the security of citizens.
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Topic # 4: Knights Templar Cartel joins CJNG to Form Michoacan New Mob Cartel
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/knights-templar-cartel-joins-cjng-to.html
Synopsis:
The Knights Templar Cartel has separated from the United Cartels (CU) and joined forces with the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) and now call themselves the Cártel Gente Nueva de Michoacán (Michoacán New Mob Cartel). The possible rupture between the Knights Templar and United Cartels came after the murder of a well-known owner of a steakhouse in the town of Coalcoman, who had alleged links with the criminal organization. It is believed that the hitmen behind the attack were from Cárteles Unidos, who in addition to murdering the owner Margarito Gálvez, also set fire to the restaurant with the victim inside. A crime that caused indignation because residents claimed that the man was honest and had no criminal activity, a fact that contrasts with the version of the reason for the rupture between the Michoacán cartels. The owner of the restaurant gained notoriety in 2019, when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) ate at the restaurant during a visit to the state of Michoacán along with two other members of his cabinet.
The Knights Templar Cartel
The Knights Templar Cartel emerged in the state of Michoacán as an ally of the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS). And publicly announced its appearance in March 2011, originally it would replace the La Familia Michoacana (LFM) but over the years both groups followed each other in their own way. The original leaders of the Knights Templar were Enrique Plancarte aka El Kike Plancarte, Servando Gómez Martínez, aka La Tuta and José Antonio González aka El Pepe, who after the alleged death of the leader of the Michoacana Family, Nazario Moreno González aka El Chayo, the Madest Male and the Craziest One, in December 2010. Following after the break with Jesús Méndez Vargas, tried to take over the social base that The Michoacana Family captured in its beginnings. But most of its founders have been killed or arrested, which turned The Knights Templar into a very small cartel with a discreet presence which led it to be part of United Cartels to confront the CJNG. Unidos is an alliance of several small criminal groups such as Los Viagras and La Familia Michoacana, as well as some self-defense groups that have allegedly received support from the Sinaloa Cartel to combat the CJNG's attempts to take control of key coastal areas used to bring drugs to Mexico, as well as production territories in the mountains.
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Topic # 5: La Costa, Michoacan: CJNG Leaves Decapitated Heads and Message for El Abuelo
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/la-costa-michoacan-cjng-leave.html
Synopsis:
The Cartel Jalisco New Generation released online a narco message directed at Juan Jose Farías Álvarez aka El Abuelo Farías. Their notice also included the heads of two decapitated males in a styrofoam cooler. The ascending CJNG is looking to assassinate him. El Abuelo is a controversial figure in Mexico. He’s been linked to the self-defense groups and the world of drug trafficking. In the city of Tepalcatepec he is received with praise and cheers by the townspeople. El Abuelo is a celebrity for some but for the Michoacán government El Abuelo is a criminal. Currently he’s the leader of the Tepalcatepec Cartel.
Narco message reads as follows:
This will be the fate of everyone who supports El Abuelo, El Torró, El Teto. Along with you Chopo Panzón, you’re next bitch. Jackass, jackass, jackass. Sincerely, CJNG
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Topic # 6: Chihuahua: Business Robbery, Crime With the Most Increase in Corral Administration
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/06/chihuahua-business-robbery-crime-with.html
The Story:
According to data from the Trust for Competitiveness and Citizen Security (Ficosec), during the administration of Governor Javier Corral Jurado the crime that increased the most was that of robbery without violence, while in the rest of crimes the variation is not very significant. “The truth is that the statistical behavior comparing the last three state administrations is very similar; There is not much to analyze, because it varies in some crimes, well, there are some that have gone down in this administration, but there are others that have gone up ”, explained Arturo Luján Olivas, director of the Ficosec Foundation. Regarding the investigation folders for business robbery without violence, the director of the association points out that in the administration from 2010 to 2016, a total of 7,805 folders were found, while the current administration, which ends in September, has registered 9,046, which corresponds to an increase of 27.6%. This is by comparing the first 55 months of each administration, to make a fair comparison, since it should be remembered that this last period of government has been shorter than the previous ones.
Regarding intentional homicide, it only increased 1% compared to the previous administration, since from 8,894 folders during the period of César Duarte, the figure increased to 8,990 in the Corral government. “Those 100 folders are a very small variation; but in what corresponds to victims there is a significant decrease, since in the previous administration there were 11,291 victims, while this administration has registered 10,198 deaths ”. The highest peak in this crime was registered in August 2020, with 247 folders, which compared to the most complicated month of the previous administration, which was January 2011, with 311 folders, shows a decrease of 20.5%. "Yes there is an important change, but we must also take into account that the figures are sometimes highlighted in folders and sometimes the victims must be highlighted, as a folder can have more than one victim." However, historically the month of January 2011 is not the highest, since in the Reyes Baeza administration, which was from 2004 to 2010, August 2010 had a total of 406 research folders; 39.1% more than the most violent month of the last administration.
“The rest of the crimes that we monitor, which is the robbery of a house with and without violence; business robbery with violence, vehicle robbery in its two forms, kidnapping and extortion, the numbers decreased; that means we can talk about an improvement.” As for the crime that decreased the most in the last 55 weeks, it is theft of a vehicle with violence, it has a decrease, in the comparison of administrations, of more than 82% in the investigation folders, while theft without violence also decreased up to 60% statewide. “Of course the decline is a good thing, although we will never be satisfied with the numbers around public safety; it would be wrong for us to affirm satisfaction with the numbers, but we are able to recognize that in hard data there is improvement in some crimes ”. Therefore, the head of the Ficosec Foundation points out that the crime trend has been downward, despite the fact that there are erratic months in terms of crime, however crime levels are still above the national average.
“In the last 12 months, which correspond from June 2020 to May 2021, the mobile homicide rate is 6.6 victims per 100,000 inhabitants; while the municipalities of Chihuahua bring a rate of 44 victims and Ciudad Juárez of 102 per 100 thousand inhabitants ”. Likewise, he pointed out that 45 of the 67 municipalities in the state are above the national average in terms of homicides; taking into account that there are municipalities where the rate must be for every 10,000 inhabitants, because the population is smaller. "It is not the same to speak of 20 homicides in Ciudad Juárez, to speak of 20 homicides in Cuauhtémoc, in Uruachi or any of the towns that are located in the mountainous area, which do not even reach 100,000 inhabitants."
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Topic # 7: EXCLUSIVE: Los Zetas Cartel Builds Big Data Surveillance System on Mexican Border City
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/06/22/exclusive-los-zetas-cartel-builds-big-data-surveillance-system-on-mexican-border-city/
Synopsis:
Los Zetas Cartel checkpoints in the border city of Nuevo Laredo are linked to more than 100 forced disappearances–including the recent kidnapping of three U.S. citizens. The checkpoints exist with complete impunity and are part of a complex strategy to give the criminal organization more control by harvesting the data of those stopped at the roadblocks. Breitbart Texas consulted with U.S. law enforcement agents in Mexico who are working the case of a missing Texas family from earlier this month as they were traveling from a town in Nuevo Leon to the border city of Nuevo Laredo. 39-year-old Gladys Cristina Perez Sanchez traveled with her 16-year-old son, Juan Carlos Gonzales, and her 9-year-old daughter, Cristina Duran, when they went missing. The current theory is the family encountered a cartel checkpoint. In 2021, authorities have documented close to 100 similar cases in and around Nuevo Laredo–prime Los Zetas turf.
Authorities from both sides of the border shared with Breitbart Texas exclusive information about a complex intelligence apparatus used by the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas to exert complete control of their territories. The region is under the cartel command of Juan Gerardo “El Huevo” Trevino Chavez. The cartel operation uses lookouts and informants placed in strategic turf locations. Those individuals call in suspicious vehicles or persons who then intercepted. The gunmen interrogate the disappeared about their identities, where they are traveling, and why. The gunmen also order motorists to unlock their cell phones and check their social media. The cartel operators reportedly can quickly clone a phone they deem suspicious for deeper data mining. The information is relayed to a central network of radio, phone, and database operators, similar to a 911 call center. Authorities share grave concern about how CDN-Los Zetas has created a database which mimics government ones loaded with property records, license information, and other contents.
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Topic # 8: Mexican president vows to investigate deadly border shootings of innocent bystanders
Source: https://www.borderreport.com/regions/mexico/mexican-president-vows-to-investigate-deadly-border-shootings-of-innocent-bystanders/
The Story:
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s president vowed to investigate the border shootings that left 19 people dead over the weekend, even as the latest homicide figures showed a rebound in killings nationwide. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said evidence indicated that 15 of the victims were innocent bystanders. The other four dead were suspected gunmen from a group that drove into the northern border city of Reynosa and opened fire indiscriminately. “Everything indicates that it was not a confrontation, but rather a commando that shot people who were not involved in any conflict,” López Obrador said. The government of Tamaulipas state, where Reynosa is located, said in a statement there was evidence the killings involved “organized crime,” which in Mexico is generally used to refer to drug cartels. Cartels in the Reynosa area have become increasingly involved in migrant trafficking or charging protection fees to migrant traffickers. Raymundo Ramos, who leads one of the state’s most active human rights groups, said he believed the killings were related to the June 6 elections that chose new mayors for Reynosa and most other Mexican cities and towns.
“This is clearly an act of post-electoral terror directed at the people of Reynosa, and probably a warning for the rest of the townships in Tamaulipas,” wrote Ramos. Drug gangs in Mexico rely heavily on intimidating or coopting local governments to extort money or gain protection from municipal police. Reynosa is located across the border from McAllen, Texas, and has been the scene of fighting between factions of the Gulf cartel. But those disputes usually target rival gunmen or security forces. The dead in the Saturday attack included taxi drivers, workers and a nursing student. On Monday, federal prosecutors said they were taking over the case, in which one suspect has been arrested. The Attorney General’s Office said the attack was “the result of territorial disputes between gangs from Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas and the cartels that operate in Reynosa.” Rio Bravo is located just to the east of Reynosa. Authorities are still investigating the motive, though in the past, drug cartels have sometimes used random killings of civilians to turn up the heat on rival gangs, or intimidate local authorities.
López Obrador pledged “a thorough investigation.” María Elena Morera, director of the civic anti-crime group Common Cause, said many people have become inured to such violence. “Mexicans have become accustomed to all these atrocities, without there being any real reaction,” Morera said. “In the face of so much violence, people prefer not to let the pain in, and turn away.” The killings Saturday in Reynosa, and the latest nationwide homicide figures, suggest that López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” crime strategy is doing little to decrease killings. There were 2,963 homicides in May, the latest month for which figures are available, higher than May 2020 and well above the numbers that prevailed when López Obrador took office in December 2018. The government says homicides declined 2.9% in the first five months of 2021 compared to 2020, but that may be because January and February of this year were marked by Mexico’s worst coronavirus wave, when public activities were curtailed. “This is nothing,” Morera said of the drop. “It is as if you keep a patient in a coma and then say he’s doing very well.”
Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca called the Reynosa victims “innocent citizens,” and said “Criminal organizations must receive a clear, explicit and forceful signal from the Federal Government that there will be no room for impunity, nor tolerance for their reprehensible criminal behavior.” García Cabeza de Vaca belongs to the rival National Action Party and is himself being investigated by the federal prosecutor’s office for organized crime and money laundering – accusations he says are part of plan by López Obrador’s government to attack him for being an opponent. Local businessman Misael Chavarria Garza said many businesses closed early Saturday after the attacks and people were very scared as helicopters flew overhead. On Sunday, he said “the people were quiet as if nothing had happened, but with a feeling of anger because now crime has happened to innocent people.” The attacks sparked a deployment of the military, National Guard and state police across the city.
The area’s criminal activity has long been dominated by the Gulf cartel and there have been fractures within that group. Experts say there has been an internal struggle within the group since 2017 to control key territories for drug and human trafficking. Apparently, one cell from a nearby town may have entered Reynosa to carry out the attacks. López Obrador has sought to avoid confrontations with drug cartels, at one point releasing a top trafficker to avoid bloodshed. He prefers to focus on addressing underlying social problems like youth unemployment. Earlier this month, López Obrador praised the drug cartels for not disrupting the June 6 mid-term voting, even though three dozen candidates were killed during the campaigns. “People who belong to organized crime behaved very well, in general, there were few acts of violence by these groups,” the president said. “I think the white-collar criminals acted worse.”
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/may-remittances-jump-31-over-last-year-to-us-4-5-billion/
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/may-remittances-jump-31-over-last-year-to-us-4-5-billion/
I'm so glad we shower so much money on such great and loyal friends!
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Mexico is our number one or two trading partner, yes?
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Mexico is our number one or two trading partner, yes?
Does trade equal friendship?
How many Americans are murdered by illegals from Mexico every year?
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Non sequitur to the question presented concerning the economic effects of the remittances. Other things being equal, and sometimes (China) they are not, trade is of mutual benefit. They spend the money in part buying things from us.
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Non sequitur to the question presented concerning the economic effects of the remittances. Other things being equal, and sometimes (China) they are not, trade is of mutual benefit. They spend the money in part buying things from us.
Americans buy lots of Superlab Meth and Fentanyl from our Mexican friends!
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And to what extent are we responsible for that?
Anyway, that's not really the point. The point is that a s a general rule trade is a good thing.
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And to what extent are we responsible for that?
Anyway, that's not really the point. The point is that a s a general rule trade is a good thing.
In general, yes. When you have a country that dumps it's poverty problem on us and deliberately acts as a financial parasite, it's not.
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The remittances are the point in question here.
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The remittances are the point in question here.
https://www.kulr8.com/news/national/report-more-than-4-billion-to-go-to-illegal-immigrants-through-biden-stimulus-checks/article_8e889bd6-3d14-5483-9204-7eaa58bdba0a.html
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The remittances are the point in question here.
https://www.kulr8.com/news/national/report-more-than-4-billion-to-go-to-illegal-immigrants-through-biden-stimulus-checks/article_8e889bd6-3d14-5483-9204-7eaa58bdba0a.html
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/078/259/240/original/3e051120879e59b3.jpg)
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Yet another distinct point-- albeit a very interesting one. OF COURSE we agree 100% on the cognitive dissonance of being able to find illegals to give them taxpayer money, but remittances are a separate issue.
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Yet another distinct point-- albeit a very interesting one. OF COURSE we agree 100% on the cognitive dissonance of being able to find illegals to give them taxpayer money, but remittances are a separate issue.
Don't you find the scamulus checks amount and the money sent to Mexico interesting?
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An obvious point , , , one that I confess eluded me until just now. :oops: I was simply thinking of remittances as have been done for many years now out of the earnings of the illegals here, , ,
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An obvious point , , , one that I confess eluded me until just now. :oops: I was simply think of remittances as have been done for many years now out of the earnings of the illegals here, , ,
And we subsidize it all. Because of the "off the grid" as far as reported income combined with no questions asked access to social programs, they have a high standard of living than many Americans.
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Contrast the headline and these two sets of facts from within the article:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/.../ice-appeals-to-public...
1) “In this area, just recently, we had a seizure of nine handguns, one hand gun barrel, 242 rounds of ammunition, 11 magazines, and almost $100,000,” he said. A U.S. citizen was arrested.
“We had a seizure of 31 firearms, 6,500 rounds of ammunition, and arrested a Mexican national who’s being prosecuted for smuggling.”
COMPARE WITH
2) Meanwhile, cartels are stocking up on firepower. Cartel purchases of military-grade weapons from Central and South American countries, especially Guatemala, are most concerning, Jones said.
Which one sounds more serious/dangerous to you?
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1. Ixmilauilpan, Hidalgo: Familia Michoacana Send Out Message For Local Criminal Cells
2. Guadalajara: Narcos Use Social Networks to Deceive and Recruit Hitmen
3. Sinaloa Cartel Mastermind Behind Murder of Politician Arrested in Quintana Roo
4. Zacatecas: 9 Males Killed, 3 are Crucified
5. Grupo Sombra Leaves Human Body in Chalma, Veracruz Along With Narcobanner (Graphic image Attached)
6. Tamaulipas: Alleged Enforcer For The Northeast Cartel Promotes His Enterprise
7. Rival Mexican Cartel Gunmen Freely Clash near Border Despite Army Post Two Miles Away
Topic # 1: Ixmilauilpan, Hidalgo: Familia Michoacana Send Out Message For Local Criminal Cells
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/07/ixmilauilpan-hidalgo-familia-michoacana.html
Synopsis:
A new video from the Mexican underworld has just surfaced online. For this broadcast La Familia Michoacána warns local fuel thieves about their illicit affairs. The communique just as well goes out to all the locals who deal in narcotics. Names of specific operatives in the area are mentioned. Their directive calls for a unity among their criminal counterparts. All who refuse are being warned of their inevitable demise.
Video translation is as follows:
Sicario #1: This video message goes out to the Los Ardilla gang. Especially for Jacinto, Chinto, Israel, and Hugo. As well as everyone else who is supporting the fuel thieves. Along with every shooter who belongs to the Los Charres gang. Including the crystal meth pushers. This here is an open invitation for everyone to align themselves with us. You’re being asked on good terms. We’re currently in Ixmilauilpan. Are you going to join our forces, yes or yes?
Sicario #2: We are the absolute Familia Michoacána you sons of bitches.
Sicarios scream: We are the absolute Familia Michoacána you sons of bitches.
Sicario #2: These faggots are nothing more than crystal meth addicts. There both going to fucking die. These sons of bitches are going to be killed for being nothing more than crystal meth addicts. Just as well we’re also coming after all the local fuel thieves in the area.
Sicario #1: We don’t want any fuel thieves within Ixmilauilpan. All of the fuel thieves here have to align themselves with us. All of the pushers of narcotics who are involved in organized crime, those who are involved in the so called game have to align themselves with us. It’s either yes or yes with us.
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Topic # 2: Guadalajara: Narcos Use Social Networks to Deceive and Recruit Hitmen
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/07/guadalajara-narcos-uses-social-networks.html
The Story:
Criminal groups such as the CJNG publish job or travel offers with which they deceive young people and take them under threat to be hitmen. Antonio, 17 years old, disappeared in Guadalajara on October 2, 2017, and a week later he was rescued from a farm in Puerto Vallarta, where he was held against his will along with five other people who were waiting to be transferred to a place "on the hill," where they would be trained to become hitmen of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). For years, the Jalisco prosecutor's office has detected that this cartel uses Facebook and Twitter to deceive young people through false job offers and then force them to join the criminal group; although the state agency warns about this type of announcement through posts on those social networks, there is no investigation folder open. In addition, the prosecutor's office only warns of advertisements that offer places such as security guards or escorts; however, it leaves aside those in which the supposed job offers are for assistants, loaders, waiters, drivers, day laborers, or even, just to go to have fun for a few days at some tourist destination. After Antonio's rescue, the prosecution arrested 19 subjects, of whom 14 were sentenced to four years in prison for disappearance committed by private individuals; the following account is reconstructed from the files of those sentences.
The case of Antonio
On the afternoon of September 29, 2017, Antonio (fake name for security reasons) found a job offer on Facebook, and although the phone number was from Veracruz, he called to see what it was; the man who answered asked him where he lived, and upon learning that he was in Guadalajara, he told him that the company had people in that city and someone would call him. Minutes later his phone rang, it was a Guadalajara number. The man who spoke asked him if he wanted to work; "yes," Antonio replied and his interlocutor told him that someone else would call to tell him what he had to do. The next call made him doubt and scared him: "What’s up, motherfucker, get your things ready I'm going coming through for you," said one guy; "wait, first tell me what the work is about and we'll see," Antonio replied; "I'm coming for you, you said you wanted the job," the man insisted and hung up. Three hours later they called him again: "I'm already outside your house, gather your belongings, we are in a Ford Figo car on the corner of your house, in front of the inn"; Antonio had not given them his address and although he was afraid he decided to go out to see if it was true: he put on some headphones and walked around the block to try to go unnoticed, he saw the car and two subjects inside, he wanted to pass by, but one of them shouted at him by name, he was paralyzed, the subject ordered him to approach, introduced himself and told him that the company was in Puerto Vallarta, they would take him there and pay him 4,000 pesos per week.
Antonio tried to buy time, he agreed to go, but argued that the weekend was his grandfather's birthday and he wanted to spend it with him, that they return on Monday, and the subjects agreed; although he was scared, he didn’t mention anything to his family and on October 2 came the call that ordered him to leave the house and get in the car. He sought to get done with the matter. He tried to get out: " Buddy, I'm already looking at a job that pays better, I’d rather leave you guys in peace," but the answer he received forced him to get in the car without saying anything to anyone: "Look, here bastard, we’re from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and we’re not fucking around , you’re going to a hitmen' school, so get on, if not, I'm going to go back and I'm going to take you by force and I'm going to kill your whole family." They took him along with another young man to the bus station, bought them tickets to Puerto Vallarta, told them they were being watched, were advised to announce once they arrived to tell them what to do next, and that’s exactly what happened. At night, in Puerto Vallarta, they were ordered to communicate with another number and the person who answered told them that he was already waiting for them, to go out into the street and get on the Jeep that was outside. They were transferred to a farm in the Lisbon neighborhood, where there are few houses around, there they were received by a man who took their phones and told them the rules: "Do not steal, do not fight, do not get high and do not enter the closed rooms, for their safety they could leave the house"; they gave them dinner and ordered them to sleep on the floor.
According to Antonio, the next day another 17 people arrived, including ex-policemen, addicts and thieves; that same day, in Guadalajara, his mother reported his disappearance. "As soon as they gathered 30 individuals together they were sent to the hills." Hugo, Hernán and Héctor are originally from Manzanillo, Colima, and on Facebook they saw an ad with an offer for loaders in Puerto Vallarta. They called and a man offered them 4,000 pesos a week, lodging and food included, they had to get to Puerto Vallarta on their own. They arrived in the early morning of October 7 and were taken to the estate of the Lisbon neighborhood. Hector asked the manager of the house about the work: "He told us that we were going to be there until 30 people were gathered to receive militarized training in self-defense and use of weapons to work as gunmen for a cartel, he told us not to ask questions ... that the only way out was with our feet upward, dead." He said that since then, the three spent hours thinking about how to escape.
The rescue
Before Antonio's disappearance, an informant from the Jalisco prosecutor's office had provided data on how the CJNG was recruiting people to train them and gave three possible locations in Puerto Vallarta; it had been just a few months since the operations with which the state prosecutor's office dismantled several training camps in the mountainous area of the municipality of Tala, where they also rescued people recruited by force. At 2:15 p.m. on October 10, agents from the prosecution’s office arrived at the estate of the Lisbon gated community. They knocked on the door and one of the housekeepers opened, asked for Antonio, said they had information that he could be there; one of the agents noticed that there were several men inside and asked what was happening and the subject at the door said that everyone had met on Facebook and had agreed to rent the house and spend a few days on the beach. When Hugo, Hernán and Héctor saw the police, they made the decision to escape, approached the door and ran out to ask for help; the officers intervened and arrested 19 people and released the three, Antonio and two other young men who said they were there by force. Of the 19 detainees, 14 were subjected to an abbreviated trial and were sentenced to four years in prison that will be served this coming October. There is no information regarding the rest of the victims.
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Topic # 3: Sinaloa Cartel Mastermind Behind Murder of Politician Arrested in Quintana Roo
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/07/sinaloa-cartel-mastermind-behind-murder.html
Photo # 4: Cartel member Jairo, from El 18's group, who was about to receive leg surgery
Photo # 5: Photo of Óscar Melchor 'DC' alias “El 18” taken at some point after his arrest
Photo # 7: The detainee's car which was seized in the clinic's parking lot
Photo # 8: Ignacio Sánchez Cordero
Photo # 9 & 10: Left, crime scene of Nacho's assassination, right, attendees at Nacho's funeral
Photo # 11: Nominee Blanca Tziu Muñoz
Photo # 12: The abandoned vehicle and weapons found related to the attack on Blanca
Photo # 13: Photo of Karla Vivas Medina taken after her arrest
Photo # 14: Members of the Investigative Police near the house of candidate Blanca Tziu Muñoz following the attack
Photo # 15: Photo taken of Ignacio Sánchez Cordero and Blanca together in better times
The Story:
The leader of a Quintana Roo cell of the Sinaloa Cartel was arrested along with four other cartel members. El 18, the leader, is alleged by the Attorney General's Office to be the mastermind who planned out the assassination of a mayoral candidate in February 2021. Some allege that the sister of a rival mayoral candidate commissioned El 18 to carry out the killing on her behalf.
Arrest of Sinaloa Cartel's El 18
Five alleged members of a Sinaloa cartel cell were arrested on June 29 2021 in a suburb of Cancún, Quintana Roo. The five members were waiting inside the clinic "Unidad Medica Familiar" in the Bonfil area, as one of them required surgery on their leg due to a gunshot injury. Before the procedure began, agents of the Ministerial Police and Quintana Roo Police entered the hospital and proceeded to arrest them. The agencies had previously put the Sinaloa Cartel cell under surveillance and through intelligence work they were able to anticipate the group's arrival at the hospital. The four men and one woman were then arrested. The primary target of this police operation was presumably Óscar Melchor “DC” alias “El 18”, who is believed to be the leader of the Sinaloa group operating in Cancún, as the state had three arrest warrants against El 18 in particular.
The three arrest warrants were in relation to:
Homicide - February 24 2021 - Puerto Morelos: The murder of Ignacio Sánchez Cordero, the secretary of Social Development of Puerto Morelos and candidate for municipal president. Covered in detail in Background below.
Attempted Homicide - March 10 2021- Benito Juárez: The shooting of a woman and her son, who was under the age of five, who were in a car wash in Region 95 of Benito Juárez. Both survived the attack after being hospitalized and receiving medical treatment.
Homicide - April 20 2021 - Benito Juárez: The murder of an alleged Sinaloa Cartel financial operator in the Bonfil neighborhood of Benito Juárez, allegedly due to an internal dispute.
"The now detained is one of the leaders of a criminal organization that has operated for years in the State of Quintana Roo and that has been one of the main generators of violence due to the control of drug sales in the entity," said the ministerial police agency in a statement. Arrested alongside El 18 was Jairo ‘B’, Néstor ‘A’, Denis ‘B’ and Román ‘O’. All four are being investigated in relation to the murder of taxi drivers in the northern Quintana Roo area. One of the detainees named Jairo ‘B’ alias “El Tripa”, is alleged to be a sicario in charge of planning and carrying out the homicides of various taxi drivers in the area, related to an extortion racket. Meanwhile another of the detainees, Néstor ‘A’ is alleged to have been a sicario directly involved in the killing of candidate Ignacio Sánchez Cordero. Whereas the Quintana Roo Attorney General's Office said of El 18, Óscar Melchor that his role in the assassination of Ignacio was in more of a mastermind/planning role.
"The events for which this person is being investigated, in his capacity as intellectual and material author, took place on February 24 of this year, in the municipality of Puerto Morelos, in which the victim was a candidate for the candidacy for the municipal presidency of that town." In the parking lot of the clinic the car the detainees arrived in, a Ford Fusion, was seized by law enforcement and military authorities. All of the detainees were transferred to the Special Prosecutor's Office for Narcomenudeo, in Superblock 89. During their transfer to Superblock 89, El 89 tried to escape by jumping out from a moving police patrol car, but he was immediately recaptured by authorities. The area of the Superblock 89 was surrounded by more than 80 members of the police from three different agencies as they anticipated possible rescue attempts could be made by fellow Sinaloa Cartel members in order to free El 18.
Background
February 24 2021
CDS Assassination of Candidate Ignacio Sánchez Cordero
As previously covered on Borderland Beat, Ignacio Sánchez Cordero was the secretary of Social Development for the town of Puerto Morelos in Quintana Roo. Ignacio Sánchez Cordero, better known as “Nacho” had been selected as the mayoral nominee by a political coalition of the PVEM, Morena, and PT parties. On February 24, Nacho was in a café that he frequented in the Pescadores neighborhood, in the company of three other people, when a gunman entered and shot him six times in the back. The gunman then fled the scene. Nacho was taken to the hospital however he died of his injuries shortly after being admitted.
March 5 2021
Ignacio Sánchez Cordero’s widow Blanca Tziu Muñoz Nominated. Although Ignacio Sánchez Cordero’s wife Blanca Tziu Muñoz had never participated in politics before, she agreed to become the new nominee on behalf of the coalition that supported her husband and ran in his stead. Blanca had always preferred to stay on the sidelines and was busy raising their two daughters, however the murder of her husband spurred her take action and she campaigned in his honor, calling herself "Nacho's widow."
May 4 2021
Attack on Blanca Tziu Muñoz: Blanca’s security team was attacked by three armed hitmen when touring Puerto Morelos as part of a campaign event. After the attack, which was successfully repelled by a convoy of the Quintana Roo Police, the authorities chased after the gunmen but the aggressors managed to flee. The gunmen later abandoned a vehicle that they were driving along with the weapons they were carrying and fled towards the nearby mountains.
May 28 2021
Arrest of Karla and Second Attack on Blanca Tziu Muñoz: Police arrest Karla Odethe Vivas Medina, the sister of Yazmín Vivas, who was a rival candidate for the Puerto Morelos mayoral position. Karla was arrested on charges related to the possession of a firearm but the Attorney General stated she was being investigated for her connection to the attacks on Nacho and Blanca Muñoz. According to the Attorney General's Office, Karla wanted to eliminate the political opponents of her sister Yazmín Vivas. Yazmín Vivas had reportedly failed to obtain the nomination from the PVEM, PT and Morena coalition, so she ran for the Solidarity Encounter Party (PES). This alleged connection may allude to the commissioning of the aforementioned El 18 and the Sinaloa cartel sicarios who work under him. Reforma newspaper released audio clips in which a woman, allegedly Karla Vivas Medina, can be heard planning with someone else the murder of Blanca Tziu Muñoz with the intention of masking the attack to look like a suicide.
On the same night as Karla’s arrest, there was another attack on Blanca Tziu Muñoz, this time gunmen shot up her home. The candidate was inside her home at the time with her two daughters and other family members. Karla's security detail fired back at the gunmen and eventually forced the gunmen to retreat, however two members of her security detail were seriously injured. The two bodyguards – one a member of the National Guard, the other an agent of the Quintana Roo State Attorney General’s Office – were listed in grave condition at Cancun General Hospital. “My family and I are fine, upset by the situation, but unhurt and united. We all extend solidarity and unite in prayer for the two people who were wounded, who were just fulfilling the order to provide us with protection,” Tziu Muñoz said via social media.
June 6 2021
Blanca Tziu Muñoz wins the election: Blanca Tziu Muñoz had to stop hosting rallies and even had to leave the state temporarily due to safety concerns over the course of her campaign. And yet, after the June 6 2021 election, she won the mayoral seat and now leads the municipality of Puerto Morelos in Quintana Roo.
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Topic # 4: Zacatecas: 9 Males Killed, 3 are Crucified
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/07/zacatecas-zac-9-males-killed-3-are.html
Video translation is as follows:
Omar Hernandez: 9 people have been killed this Wednesday, confirmed the Secretary of Public Security of the State. The events were recorded at 3 different times and locations. The state capital is the scene with a greater number of victims. Rocío Aguilar Borjón: I can confirm that unfortunately today in various events that have already been confirmed by the Attorney General's Office of the State, the bodies of 9 people have been located. The report we have is that in the municipality of Zacatecas, in the state capital, the bodies of 4 people were found. In the municipality of Fresnillo, 2 more bodies were found. And later in the municipality of Morelos, 3 people were also found dead.
Omar Hermandez: In Morelos, authorities located the scene of the greatest violence. 2 men were crucified prior to their murder. Witness testimony of inhabitants near the area of execution pointed out that in this area at least 5 other people have been killed in similar circumstances. Rocío Aguilar Borjón: In this particular case the deceased were found in an estate. Wherein a small cement structure is located. That in turn supports a small cross where the bodies of 2 people were lying. For this case we have the confirmation of 3 males who as of yet have not been identified.
Omar Hernandez: The central area of the state is also experiencing a death struggle by at least 5 criminal groups. With a national presence, those who fight for control of the roads and sale of narcotics. I am Omar Hernandez for news channel B-15.
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Topic # 5: Grupo Sombra Leaves Human Body in Chalma, Veracruz Along With Narcobanner
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/07/grupo-sombra-leaves-human-body-parts-in.html
Chalma is a village in the northern part of the state of Veracruz. It is located in the state's Huasteca Alta region
Synopsis:
Almost at the end of the day on June 28, 2021, dismembered human remains were located in the municipality of Chalma, Veracruz. Along with the bodies was a narcobanner signed by the gang Grupo Sombra (Shadow Group). According to local media reports, the discovery occurred at around 11:00 p.m., when residents notified security forces that suspected cartel members had dumped human body parts in public. A leg and a feet were left in front of the Chalma municipal sign. In another location, the head and arm of an unidentified man were also scattered. Members of the Mexican Army, National Guard, and the Veracruz State Police arrived at the scene to investigate. No one has been arrested for this gruesome discovery thus far.
The banner left at the scene read:
"This is a statement for the entire population ... This town has an owner and it is Grupo Sombra. To those commanders who continue to extort and threatened our people, this is how they ended up. Villages of Chalma, Chiconamel and Platon have owners. ATTE: FEGS".
"FEGS" is short for Grupo Sombra Special Forces. Grupo Sombra's earliest mentions date back to 2017. Sources say that it started out as an armed of the Gulf Cartel in Veracruz, and later broke away into an independent group. The Ministry of Public Security of Veracruz confirmed that Grupo Sombra is responsible for cargo transport theft, kidnappings, extortions, racketeering, and homicides in northern Veracruz.
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Topic # 6: Tamaulipas: Alleged Enforcer For The Northeast Cartel Promotes His Enterprise
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/07/tamaulipas-alleged-enforcer-for.html
Synopsis:
A new video from the Mexican underworld has just surfaced online. For this broadcast an alleged hitman for the Northeast Cartel feeling brave enough has allowed himself to be recorded on film promoting his cartel. His message for the masses is one of defiance and rebellion in the face of law and order. Just as well he’s showing off to the world the trophy vehicle he moves around in.
Video translation is as follows:
Cameraman: Ok, go ahead I’m recording.
Sicario: Bitch take a look at this here. We are the absolute CDN (Cartel del Noreste). Look, look at this. This is what I’m riding around in. You all can go suck a dick somewhere. All the haters can suck my dick, all the haters can suck my dick.
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Topic # 7: Rival Mexican Cartel Gunmen Freely Clash near Border Despite Army Post Two Miles Away
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/20...near-border-despite-army-post-two-miles-away/
Synopsis:
Mexican authorities are bracing for more border violence in the coming days as rival cartels fight for lucrative smuggling routes. In recent weeks, cartel gunmen killed more than 15 innocent victims and a dozen rivals. The most violent shootout took place Tuesday morning when gunmen from the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas rolled into Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, and clashed with members of the Gulf Cartel. While the shootout took place under cover of darkness, by daylight residents reported the discovery of nine bodies strewn along a highway leading into the city. According to local residents, the shooting went on for more than an hour without any interference despite a Mexican Army building less than two miles away from the scene. The lack of military involvement comes as residents and state officials claim Mexican federal authorities are not clashing with gunmen. Miguel Aleman is controlled by the Metros faction of the Gulf Cartel. Their territories expand east to the border city of Reynosa. The Metros are currently fighting on two fronts with the CDN-Los Zetas pushing from the west, while another faction of the Gulf Cartel from Matamoros is encroaching from the east. On June 19, Gulf Cartel gunmen from the Matamoros faction rolled into Reynosa and killed 15 innocent victims. Military forces and federal authorities did not respond until after the shooting. State police officers to intervene with force.
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SSESSMENTS
Tracking Mexico's Cartels in 2021
9 MIN READAug 6, 2021 | 09:00 GMT
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/tracking-mexicos-cartels-2021?fbclid=IwAR3sX1LMZa7AXM1H0TPcDVOyDo61fcZ0IGfVRe-gOWhfeaM7X9qZ19C0Zgg
The scene of cartel killings on Jan. 11, 2019, in Bavispe, Sonora.
The scene of a cartel killing on Jan. 11, 2019, in Bavispe, Sonora.
(Luis Gutierrez/Getty Images)
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets, and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
Since 2006, Stratfor has produced a cartel report that examines the forces driving the complicated cartel landscape in Mexico. Beginning with the fragmentation of powerful, time-tested cartels, this task has become increasingly intricate as the number of violent groups in the country continues to rise. The list of all drug trafficking organizations in Mexico is long, so we will highlight the most important groups and evaluate the ways in which they will impact Mexico over the next 18 months in our 2021 annual cartel report, which will be broken up into two parts this year; Threat Lens clients will have access to part two.
Largely Static Cartel Drivers, From 2020 to 2021 and Beyond
Despite pandemic-related changes in the last 18 months — which include U.S. border closures, travel restrictions, lockdowns and curfews — the strategic forces behind cartel violence in Mexico have changed very little since 2020: larger groups continued to fuel local conflicts by controlling trafficking routes and territory through cooperation with local gangs, and in many cases using COVID-19 lockdowns to assert territorial control. Important drivers of violence and insecurity in Mexico in the next 18 months will be cartel revenue streams, political relationships, the U.S.-Mexico security relationship, cartel technological and military capabilities, and cartel rivalries. Criminal groups also will continue to experience fragmentation and infighting that leads to sporadic upticks in violence, such as the events in Reynosa on June 19, when civilians were killed as a result of Gulf Cartel infighting. Other notable cartel-driven risks for the coming 18 months include:
Volatility along the U.S.-Mexico border — vital turf for cartel activities including drug- and migrant-smuggling — which could lead to sporadic shutdowns and delays at ports of entry and border crossings.
An increased threat of indiscriminate violence in important areas where cartels are vying for control, such as the states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, Queretaro and Zacatecas.
Ongoing extortion and theft threat to businesses that focus on natural resource extraction — such as oil, mining and timber — given the lucrative nature of these businesses.
For all the pandemic-related restrictions on movement, cartel-related violence remained very high by historic measures, with the number of homicides declining only 0.4% from 2019's record high of 34,648 homicides.
Despite significant investments in various security measures, since 2018 Mexico's homicides effectively plateaued at their highest level, further underscoring the cartels' sustained influence nationwide. The two largest cartels remain Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel.
A Map Showing Cartels in Mexico
Confrontations between them — and between them and a variety of local militias, smaller cartels and Mexico's security forces — drive ongoing violence and broader insecurity. While the CJNG and Sinaloa attract the most attention, smaller groups play important roles in localized conflicts, such as how Sinaloa-aligned Carteles Unidos combats CJNG advances in the state of Michoacan. While smaller groups like Knights Templar, La Familia Michoacana, Los Viagras, Los Rojos and the Juarez Cartel do not have the kind of national presence of some of their rivals, they serve as important proxies for larger, national-level criminal organizations and perennial sources of local violence and insecurity in their areas of operation.
Demand for Drugs and Cartel Revenue Streams
As we have highlighted since the 2018 report, fentanyl continues to play a large role in drug trafficking, something evident in the 70% increase in border seizures of synthetic stimulants from October 2019 to September 2020. This is despite consumer lifestyle changes brought on by the pandemic that saw a slight turn away from stimulants, and toward drugs like marijuana and fentanyl due to nightlife closures. It is expected that as restrictions on bars and clubs are lifted and inoculation rates go up, so will demand for stimulants like cocaine and meth. In 2020, drug overdose deaths in the United States hit a record high, up 29% from the previous year. Of these overdose deaths, 60% were due to synthetic opioids, specifically fentanyl, suggesting that cartels are continuing to expand their synthetic opioid lab operations in Mexico. The rise in fentanyl's popularity can be attributed to its potency for consumers and profitability for cartels. Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin, meaning that the user's high is much more intense. We estimate that cartels made approximately $14 billion on fentanyl sales in 2019. Based on profitability alone, the move toward fentanyl makes sense. Cartels find the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl, easier compared to much bulkier, lower value cannabis.
While drug trafficking continues to be the main source of revenue for — and conflict among — Mexican cartels, other revenue streams also offer lucrative profits and can often lead to violent disputes. As illegal migration increases from Mexico and Central America to the United States, human smuggling, which depending on the country of origin can cost anywhere from $1,300 to $10,000 per person, has become an increasingly important cartel activity. Cartels have exploited this practice to supplement revenue from drug trafficking and assert dominance along the U.S.-Mexico border. Other criminal economies frequently exploited by Mexico's cartels include illegal mining — which is estimated to consume 10% of the country's total mining activities — and oil theft, which is estimated to have hit a total of $3 billion in losses for Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned petroleum company. While drug trafficking remains important in rural areas, these particular criminal activities often increase violence, especially in smaller towns where the local economy is limited to natural resource extraction. The central Guanajuato town of Celaya had the highest per capita homicide rate in the country in 2020: 109 per 100,000 inhabitants (compared to a national rate of 13 per 100,000) due to fighting between the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the CJNG over fuel theft and the control of the sale of methamphetamines.
Politics
Cartels have long exploited the Mexican political system to gain access to protection from elected officials, increase their staying power and derive a host of other benefits that come from political connections and leverage. The Sinaloa Cartel, in particular, has historically proved adept at maintaining strategic relationships with government officials, allowing the cartel's members to avoid clashes with security forces and generally forestall serious government scrutiny. Reflecting the importance cartels attach to political influence and driven by legislative elections in June for the lower house of the Mexican Congress, cartel violence against political candidates in 2021 increased to its second-highest point since the 2000 elections. Given the importance of establishing subnational control of a given state — such as Guerrero, where political violence has especially spiked — cartels are likely to target traditionally less politically prominent municipalities where they can operate more freely without a significant state security presence. Increased violence targeting politicians in order to install cartel-backed candidates will improve criminal groups' abilities to operate behind the scenes and manipulate political forces to sustain their criminal activity. Following the recent electoral success of cartel-backed candidates in states such as Guerrero, it is likely that increased violence in and around elections will be regularized moving forward, particularly if it is shown to bring tangible benefits.
While cartels benefit from political relationships, they still face routine pressure from Mexican security forces at all levels of government. In the past, this pressure has been bolstered by a strong working relationship between Mexican security forces and U.S. authorities sharing intelligence useful for targeting cartels.
Following the U.S. arrest of two high-level Mexican officials in 2020 on allegations of assisting cartels, however, the relationship between Mexican security forces and U.S. counterparts has suffered. The decrease in bilateral engagement in the last year has created an intelligence gap within Mexico's security services that could usher in increased cartel activity throughout the country.
Technological and Military Capabilities
While cartel technology has not changed significantly in the last 18 months, the increasingly militaristic capabilities of Mexico's cartels are of particular importance in analyzing and helping to explain growing violence. Los Zetas was the first criminal group in Mexico to have direct links to past U.S. military training, as members of the group were former members of Mexico's security apparatus. Since then, this trend has continued to spread throughout Mexico's cartels and has helped to catalyze the paramilitary nature of groups like the CJNG. Aside from providing obvious boosts to cartels' violent capabilities, such militarism can provide propaganda to intimidate rivals, security forces and local citizens. For instance, in a propaganda video released by CJNG in July 2020, group members dressed in tactical uniforms with flak jackets labeled "CJNG," holding automatic rifles and driving armored trucks with mounted weapons that have come to be known as "monsters."
As they have expanded their paramilitary capabilities, cartels have continued to make advances in their use of weaponized drones to target enemies, as seen in an April 2021 incident in the Michoacan town of El Aguaje, where CJNG targeted state police with drone-dropped bombs. While such weapons have not yet shown themselves to be especially lethal, they add yet another threat vector for already out-gunned law enforcement officers when responding to cartel-related activity. Even if not tactical game-changers, cartels' further use of drones could be psychologically effective and deter future law enforcement responses in ways that amplify cartels' sense of impunity. As perceptions that being armed like rogue militaries brings comparative benefits, it is likely that a growing array of violent groups beyond the largest cartels will begin to mimic such trends, which will increase the likelihood and lethality of violence amid a potential arms race among violent groups.
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Topic # 1: Elota, Sinaloa: Armed Civilians Shoot at Municipal Police Officers
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/elota-sinaloa-armed-civilians-shoot-at.html
Synopsis:
In the attack, one civilian was killed, one more was arrested and one more was injured; so far the three remain unidentifiedArmed civilians attacked a group of municipal agents from Elota last Monday at noon in the town of La Cruz. According to the report, the agents were able to repel the aggression and during the change of fire a civilian was killed by the uniformed men, while one more was injured and a third was arrested in the attack. Elements of the State Preventive Police and the armed forces were also transferred to the site to protect the area. The attack took place in front of a gas station. According to some witnesses, the suspects were traveling aboard a gray Volkswagen vehicle, which was left at the site. Cristóbal Castañeda Camarillo, head of the Ministry of Public Security, reported through his Twitter account about what happened. “In preliminary information, there is one detained person, one injured and one more who lost his life. A long weapon and a short weapon were secured at the site, ”the official reported. Some witnesses captured the moment of the attack on video, which began to circulate on social networks.
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Topic # 2: Decapitated Head of Cartel Boss El 14 Round, Third Cartel Boss Killed in 1 Month in Quintana Roo
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/decapitated-head-of-cartel-boss-el-14.html
The Story:
On July 29, 2021, the decapitated head of cartel boss "El 14" was found inside the refrigerator of a house under construction in Alfredo V. Bonfil neighborhood of Cancun, Quintana Roo. El 14 is the third cartel boss killed in Quintana Roo in the month of July, as "Don King" was found executed July 7 and "El Chore" was found executed on July 22.
Execution of El 14
On July 28, 2021, it was reported to law enforcement authorities through a call to 911 that in front of the ejidal house (community house) there were human remains found inside black bags and at least one decapitated human head. They reported that alongside the remains a narcomanta (narco message sign) was placed as well. Police traveled to the reported location which was almost in the middle of the main square of the Alfredo V. Bonfil neighborhood. However upon their arrival, no human remains were located.
Allegedly the photo circulated on social media which showed the remains in the main square
This call however appears to have not been a false report as later online, as photos of the bodies and heads were shared on social media. This may imply that the bodies were removed and relocated after they were reported to police but before the police's arrival on scene. The motives behind the potential relocation of human remains is unclear. At around 4:15 p.m. on the following day, July 29, 2021, the emergency services number received a report that in a two-story house located at the end of Vicente Guerrero street, two human heads had been found.
Photo of unfinished home where remains were located
Police were dispatched to check on the reported location which was a house under construction in an unpopulated area of the Alfredo V. Bonfil neighborhood of Cancun in Quintana Roo. The Municipal Police officers searched the unfinished home and they located two heads inside a refrigerator on the first floor. The police cordoned off the area and requested the presence of experts from the State Attorney General's Office (FGE) of Quintana Roo. Later, one of the heads was identified as belonging to a cartel boss who went by the alias “El 14”.
El 14 is the third Quintana Roo cartel boss who has been assassinated during the month of July. The first boss was Don King, then later “El 12” was executed. The identities of all three have been unreleased by the State Attorney General's Office, which is currently led by Oscar Montes de Oca Rosales.
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Topic # 3: Irapuato, Guanajuato: Corpses From Inside Vehicle’s Trunk Believed to be From Neighboring Penjamo
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/irapuato-guanajuato-corpses-found.html
The FGE has not yet disclosed the identity of these people
Synopsis:
On Monday night on social networks in this town, there has been a strong rumor that the bodies of the two men are from Pénjamo. Although authorities of the Attorney General's Office have not yet confirmed it, 24 hours after the dead bodies of two men and a woman were found inside a trunk of an abandoned car in Irapuato, on Monday night on social networks in this town, there has been a strong rumor that at least the bodies of the two men are from Pénjamo. According to the report released to the FGE by the National Guard on Monday, who made the finding, was that in the release of federal data, approximately two kilometers from the community of San Cristóbal, in the direction of the Irapuato-Abasolo highway, in the trunk of a white Volkswagen Bora vehicle, in a deserted area, were the bodies of two men and a woman. At the time of the discovery, it was said that the dead bodies of the three people who are unidentified, showed signs of violence and injuries consistent with gunfire, and that in the vehicle small arms shells were found. Which suggests that they were killed inside the trunk of an abandoned car in the area where it was located. In the report, it was reported that the discovery of the dead bodies was recorded around 3:00 a.m. on Monday, as people circulating in the area, who gave notice to the authorities about the finding. It is expected that this Tuesday The authorities of the Attorney General's Office, who will make known the identity of at least the two men found dead. It’s been assured that these deceased individuals are natives of Pénjamo.
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Topic # 4: La Bartolina Matamoros, Tamaulipas: Delia Quiroa Pleads with The Gulf Cartel
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/la-bartolina-matamoros-tamaulipas-delia.html
Synopsis:
The Collective Union of Mother’s Seeking Missing Loved Ones of Tamaulipas asked this Friday for "a truce of peace" from the leader of "Los Ciclones", one of the armed wings of the Gulf Cartel. Activist Delia Quiroa said that the letter, on behalf of the 200 families of disappeared citizens in the state, sent a letter to the leader of the Gulf Cartel due to the lack of results from the authorities who have not delivered the bodies of their relatives. The Collective Union of Mother’s Seeking Missing Loved Ones added that the objective of reaching a truce with "Los Ciclones" is so that they can access the La Bartolina property, located in Matamoros. The searchers, she added, want the authorities to exhume and identify thousands of human remains in that area in the hope that they will find their loved ones.
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Topic # 5: Tamaulipas: “If You Don’t Send That Money Your Son Will Fucking Die!”
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/tamaulipas-if-you-dont-send-that-money.html
Synopsis:
A new video from the Mexican underworld has just surfaced online. For this broadcast an unknown crime mob has released a film of several young kidnapped migrants. Under physical assault they’re being used as pawns against their family members in the hopes of extorting them of money. Threats of their impending demise are being spoken should they fail to comply. The fate of these victims of extortion is currently unknown at this time.
Video translation is as follows:
Captive#1: Please help us because we’ve been kidnapped. Please, please help me.
Sicario: Here’s the the deal young woman. If you want to see your brother alive again…
Captive #1: Lily please help us.
Sicario: You have to pay the fee. I’m leaving that fee at $7000 for his release. Don’t be a dumb ass. With time you’ll recuperate your money. But dead family members won’t ever come back to you.
Captive #2: Mommy, I’ve been kidnapped. Please help me for my release. The money…please help me to get released…I’ve been kidnapped. They have us all kidnapped. Mommy, help me. Please send all the money that they’re asking for.
Sicario: You hear that you fucking dumb ass? If you don’t send that money your son will fucking die!
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Topic # 6: Northern Mexican Drought Could Benefit Sinaloa Cartel’s Smuggling Operations into Arizona
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/08/02/northern-mexican-drought-could-benefit-sinaloa-cartels-smuggling-operations-into-arizona/
Synopsis:
The drought in northern Mexico is killing off thousands of cattle from starvation and is forcing ranchers to sell herds early. If the trend continues, property owners could turn to the Sinaloa Cartel to augment their finances. In the border state of Sonora, two years of harsh drought have decreased cattle counts from 1.1 million to 635,000, a new report by the LA Times revealed. While the region received some rain in recent weeks, it is not enough to counter the lasting impacts to grazing areas. Local scientists predict that in the coming years, the drought in Sonora will worsen, placing the cattle industry at particular risk, the report claimed. Sonora, just south of Arizona, is one of the main drug trafficking areas used by the Sinaloa Cartel. Some of the ranches mentioned in the report are near the city of Cajeme, an area that has seen a spike in cartel violence in recent months. The drought struggles among ranchers can push more individuals to the Sinaloa Cartel as an economic alternative. In recent years, rival criminal organizations waged fierce turf wars in the region for routes into Arizona. According to information from Mexico’s federal government, Sonora has seen a 38 percent spike in murders this year, with the figure expected to climb further into 2021. According to El Sol de Hermosillo, one of the state’s main cities, Ciudad Obregon, is listed as one of the top 10 most dangerous in the world.
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Topic # 7: REYNOSA RESCUED A BODY FROM THE ANZALDUAS CHANNEL
Source: https://www.valorportamaulipas.info/2021/08/reynosa-rescataron-un-cuerpo-del-canal.html
Synopsis:
Reynosa, Tamps.- The body of a male was found floating in the Anzaldúas channel, by residents of the Las Nopaleras neighborhood, who alerted the authorities through the emergency numbers. The discovery was recorded at 12:30 pm yesterday on Emiliano Zapata street, about 300 meters from the Luis Donaldo Colosio bypass. At the scene, the body of a 30 to 35-year-old man with a thin complexion, light brown complexion, who wore khaki pants and a gray shirt was found. Up to the place, elements of the State Police, the National Guard and the Investigative Police, as well as agents of the Civil Protection and Firefighters corps to take knowledge and requested the intervention of experts from the Expert Services Unit of the General Prosecutor's Office Tamaulipas Justice (FGJT). The criminal experts examined the man's body superficially and transferred him to the morgue where they will continue with various forensic studies, including the legal autopsy. The ministerial authorities reported that they were going to examine the body of the victim in the amphitheater to determine the true cause of death and that he was with unidentified at that time. The General Investigations Unit in turn took cognizance of the case and integrated an investigation folder for the crime of homicide.
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Valparaiso, Zacatecas: Cartels Confront Each Other IN Armed Attacked
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua: Crazed Dementia Within The Municipal Police Department
Fresnillo, Zatatecas: “We’re Living in Hell”: Inside Mexico’s Most Terrified City
El Bandam, Guerreros Unidos Leader Linked to Missing 43 In Ayotzinaps Is Executed in Parking Lot
Mexican president to visit Chihuahua as National Guard expands presence on border
Mexico sues U.S. gun manufacturers over arms trafficking toll
Topic # 1: Valparaiso, Zacatecas: Cartels Confront Each Other IN Armed Attacked
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/valparaiso-zacatecas-cartels-confront.html
Synopsis:
On Monday afternoon there was a strong confrontation between antagonistic criminal groups between the communities of Lobatos and Boquilla de Abajo. This was announced by inhabitants of the Valley on social networks. However, it was until tonight that the Security Spokesperson confirmed this confrontation. In which no deceased or injured people were located. After reports to the 911 Emergency System, it was elements of SEDENA, National Guard and the State Police mobilized to the municipality where they located three vehicles, one of them burned, as well as secured firearms and shells.
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Topic # 2: Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua: Crazed Dementia Within The Municipal Police Department
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/ciudad-juarez-chihuahua-dementia-within.html
Synopsis:
Photos and details emerge about the disastrous tragedy of 2 jealous agents that adds the death of an innocent 11-year-old shot to death in a crazy marital fight. A deranged pandemic of madness permeates the ranks of Public Security, of which the always sordid Municipal Police of Ciudad Juarez is a part of. In recent weeks there are almost half a dozen cases in which uniformed personnel are involved in bloody fights, armed shooting attacks, suicides and beastly murders. The brutal work environment and the pressures to which they are subjected to between thugs and police chiefs, has them on the verge of bursting at any time. And they are supposed to be the most capable of defending citizens and ensuring the security of the city. The most frightening case is that of the two active agents that occurred this morning at the couple's house. More details and the names of the protagonists are now known. Nubia Perez, 27, killed her wife Juana Rivera, 27, and her innocent 11 year old son. Both were active officers and lived in a lesbian marriage with Juana's child. The deadly argument was generated by Nubia’s jealousy who decided to end the romance tragically. Without warning she took out her gun and unloaded it against her wife, who died riddled from gunfire at the scene. The distressed child tried to defend his mom but was also shot to death by Nubia's deadly bullets. The tragedy worsened this afternoon with the death of little Jesus in the hospital.
He had been shot with several high-caliber bullets. After the double homicide, Nubia wanted to die. She shot herself in the head. She is currently convalescing in critical health inside a sanatorium. Nubia was an intelligence agent of the police department. Her mission was to operate as a civilian and graphically document riots and street protests. Those who knew her say that she was beautiful and of spectacular physique. But now, doctors have diagnosed here life expectancy to be in grave danger because of the bullet lodged in her head. Concerning the case, the Municipal Police has denied information to the press. Initially they tried to make the case look like an ordinary execution of an internal nature, omitting that both were officers of the police department. With the evidence at hand, they had to acknowledge part of the story by partially accepting that only one of them was a policewoman. They deliberately omitted part of the story. Following the failed official secrecy, factual information jumped to alternative sources that knew in detail about the bowels of corruption. This is when illegitimate revelations can hit strategic heads. Something that no public official in his right state of mind wants to experience, a few days after the change of municipal administration.
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Topic # 3: Fresnillo, Zatatecas: “We’re Living in Hell”: Inside Mexico’s Most Terrified City
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/fresnillo-zacatecas-were-living-in-hell.html
Photo # 1: In Fresnillo, 96 percent of residents say they feel unsafe — the highest percentage of any city in Mexico
Photo # 2: We’re losing the ability to be shocked,” said Javier Torres Rodríguez, whose brother was killed in 2018
The Story:
The violence was already terrifying, she said, when grenades exploded outside her church in broad daylight some five years ago. Then children in town were kidnapped, disappearing without a trace. Then the bodies of the executed were dumped in city streets. And then came the day last month when armed men burst into her home, dragged her 15-year-old son and two of his friends outside and shot them to death, leaving Guadalupe — who didn’t want her full name published out of fear of the men — too terrified to leave the house. “I do not want the night to come,” she said, through tears. “Living with fear is no life at all.” For most of the population of Fresnillo, a mining city in central Mexico, a fearful existence is the only one they know; 96 percent of residents say they feel unsafe, the highest percentage of any city in Mexico, according to a recent survey from Mexico’s national statistics agency. The economy can boom and bust, presidents and parties and their promises can come and go, but for the city’s 140,000 people, as for many in Mexico, there is a growing sense that no matter what changes, the violence endures. Ever since Mexico’s government began its war on the drug cartels nearly 15 years ago, murder statistics have climbed inexorably. In 2018, during his run for president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered a grand vision to remake Mexico — and a radically new way of tackling the violence.
He would break with the failed tactics of his predecessors, he said. Instead of arresting and killing traffickers as previous leaders had done, he would focus on the causes of violence: “hugs not bullets,” he called it. He was swept to victory. But three years after his landslide win, and with his Morena party in control of Congress, the drumbeat of death continues, suggesting that Mr. López Obrador’s approach has failed, fueling in many a paralyzing helplessness. “We’re living in hell,” said Victor Piña, who ran for mayor of Fresnillo in the June elections and watched an aide gunned down beside him during a pre-campaign event. Zacatecas, the state Fresnillo is in, has the country’s highest murder rate, with 122 deaths in June, according to the Mexican government. Lately, it has become a national horror show, with cadavers found dangling from bridges, stuffed into plastic bags or even tied to a cross. Across Mexico, murders have dropped less than 1 percent since Mr. López Obrador took office, according to the country’s statistics agency. That was enough for the president to claim, in a speech last month, that there had been an improvement on a problem his administration inherited. “There is peace and calm,” he said in June.
Many in Fresnillo disagree
“‘Hugs not bullets’ doesn’t work,” said Javier Torres Rodríguez, whose brother was shot and killed in 2018. “We’re losing the ability to be shocked.” Among other strategies, Mr. López Obrador has focused on tackling what he sees as the root causes of violence, funding social programs to improve education and employment for young people. His government has also gone after the financing behind organized crime. In October, the authorities said they had frozen 1,352 bank accounts linked to 14 criminal groups, including powerful drug cartels. But the collection of programs and law-enforcement actions never coalesced into a clear public policy, critics said. There is “an unstoppable situation of violence and a tragic deterioration of public security in Mexico,” said Angelica Duran-Martinez, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “There’s not a clear security policy.” Mr. López Obrador has also doubled down on his support for the armed forces, embracing the militarization that also marked previous administrations. One central pillar of his approach to fighting crime has been the creation of the National Guard, a 100,000-strong federal security force deployed across some 180 regional barracks nationwide. Last week Mr. López Obrador announced that the guard would receive an additional $2.5 billion in funding.
A street mural shows a young man killed in the Olivares neighborhood of Fresnillo
But security experts say the guard, which the president plans to incorporate into the armed forces, has proved ineffective. Without a clear mandate, it has focused more on tackling low-level crime than cartel violence. And as a security force made up of members of the federal police, the military and other security professionals, it has not found cohesion. “It’s a force that comes out of trying to mix oil and water,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexico City security analyst. “There are a lot of internal struggles, and that has detracted from the performance of the Guard.” In Fresnillo, the National Guard hasn’t done enough, according to the city’s mayor, Saúl Monreal, a member of the president’s Morena party.
“They’re here, they’re present, they do patrols, but what we really need right now is to be fighting organized crime,” Mr. Monreal said. Mr. Monreal was re-elected during national midterms in June. This was one of Mexico’s most violent elections on record, with at least 102 people killed during the campaign, yet another sign of the country’s unraveling security. His family is politically powerful. His brother, David, is governor-elect of Zacatecas. Another brother, Ricardo, leads the Morena party in the Senate and has said he intends to run for president in 2024. But not even the family’s political prominence has managed to rescue the city or the state. Fresnillo’s mayor, Saúl Monreal, said the National Guard hasn’t done enough.
Bordering eight other states, Zacatecas has long been central to the drug trade, a crossroads between the Pacific, where narcotics and drugmaking products are shipped in, and northern states along the United States border. Fresnillo, which sits in the center of important roads and highways, is strategically vital. But for much of its recent history, residents say they were largely left alone. That began changing around 2007 and 2008 as the government’s assault on the cartels led them to splinter, evolve and spread. In the last few years, the region has become embroiled in a battle between two of the country’s most powerful organized crime groups: the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Caught in the middle of the fighting are residents like Guadalupe. She can remember sitting on the stoop with neighbors until midnight as a young girl. Now, the city lies desolate after dark.
Guadalupe does not let her children play outside unsupervised, but even that couldn’t stop the violence from tearing her family apart. On the night her son was killed, in mid-July, four armed men stormed into her home, dragging out her son, Henry, and two friends who were sleeping over. There was a burst of gunfire, and then the assailants were gone. It was Guadalupe who found the teenagers’ bodies. Now she and her family live in terror. Too scared to stay in the same house, they moved in with Guadalupe’s parents in a different part of town. But the fear remained. Her 10-year-old daughter can barely sleep, she said, and Guadalupe keeps dreaming of her son’s killing. The motive, and the identity of the killers, remain unknown. Guadalupe has thought about leaving town or even taking her own life. But for now, she sits in her parents’ small, cinder-block house, the curtains drawn, the shadows broken by the candles of a little altar to Henry and his fallen friends. “There’s nothing here,” she said. “The fear has overwhelmed us.”
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Topic # 4: El Bandam, Guerreros Unidos Leader Linked to Missing 43 In Ayotzinaps Is Executed in Parking Lot
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/el-bandam-guerreros-unidos-leader.html
The Story:
Moisés Brito Bautista, alias “El Bandam”, a leadership figure in the cartel group Guerreros Unidos, who has personally been linked to the disappearance of the 43 normalista students from Ayotzinapa, was murdered on Monday night in Cuernavaca, Morelos.
The Shooting
On August 2 2021, according to witnesses, El Bandam and his significant other went to a parking lot of a convenience store in a black Mercedes Benz SUV. There they made contact with three unknown individuals. They were seen conversing with the three individuals, but only a few minutes into talking, “one of them took out a firearm that was then fired several times towards the victims,” said the Attorney General of Morelos, Uriel Carmona. The sound of the gunfire in the well-known and busy shopping plaza “generated a lot of panic in people who were close“, according to Carmona. The three attackers then fled the scene aboard a car. The State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) stated that at approximately 10:00 PM, law enforcement received a report of gunshots having been fired and that two people were injured in the parking lot of a convenience store located on Diana Avenue in Cuernavaca. Agents of the State Public Safety Commission (CES) were dispatched to the reported location where they found the man’s lifeless body lying on the asphalt of the parking lot. They also found a woman who was still alive but suffering from multiple serious gunshot injuries. She was placed into an ambulance and was taken in critical condition to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.
At first, police only confirmed to the press that unknown assailants shot at a couple in the Delicias neighborhood and that in the attack the man died and the woman was wounded. Later that night State Attorney General Uriel Carmona arrived on scene to personally view the body of the man, and based on the facial similarities, Carmona preliminarily identified the deceased as El Bandam, although further testing will be used to verify this identification. Carmona detailed to the press that "Elements of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) and the Coordination of Forensic Services went to the place where they performed the legal removal of the dead body of the person identified as Moises ‘N’, 33 years old, from the state of Guerrero, and ballistic evidence of 9mm caliber was secured in the place." “The information we have so far, to corroborate legally, is that it was a direct attack with a 9 mm pistol. We do not know yet if it is an assault or an execution. This second hypothesis is the one we will follow and, well, the security video footage will help corroborate the facts," said Uriel Carmona.
Who was El Bandam?
Moisés Brito Bautista, alias “El Bandam”, was 33 years old at the time of his death. He began his career by joining the Army where he served in the 27th Infantry Battalion. In 2012, Bandam deserted his Army post in favor of a life of crime, joining a cartel group. In the state of Guerrero he had an arrest warrant in force for the crime of aggravated homicide.
According to the police files, at the time of his death Bandam was serving as a lieutenant of Juan Carlos Flores Ascencio, alias “La Beba”, leader of the Guerreros Unidos cartel until Beba died in January 2021. Guerrero authorities locate Brito Bautista as the head of Guerreros Unidos hitmen and also as the person responsible for organizing kidnappings. By the time of his death, Bandam was a regional leader of Guerreros Unidos. The region he controlled on their behalf was located in Guerrero. He owned and lived in a home in the city of Iguala, Guerrero. The Guerreros Unidos safehouses he was responsible for were also located in the city of Iguala. El Bandam, is one of the few active members who directly reported to Juan Carlos Flores Ascencio, alias "La Beba". La Beba is one of the only Guerreros Unidos leaders from around the time of the 43 student teachers Ayotzinapa case that authorities have not arrested.
Who is La Beba? Where is he now?
One of the key players in the case of the disappearance of the 43 normalistas from Ayotzinapa was Juan Carlos Flores Ascencio, “La Beba” , an alleged leader of Guerreros Unidos in the municipality of Teloloapan. In September 2020, tarps printed with text appeared in the municipalities of Chilpancingo, Zumpango and Cocula, in Guerrero state. They asked Governor Hector Astudillo Flores and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to arrest "La Beba”, among other, for the 43 Ayotzinapa case. The tarps were signed by "Ayotzinapa Gro."
La Beba was thought to have maintained control of the Capela mine during the time of the case. Capela Mine is operated by the Peñoles group in the town of Tehuixtla. Río Doce newspaper reports that Capela mine has also been linked to mayors and politicians from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) ever since Ángel Aguirre Rivero’s term. La Beba was found executed on January 17, 2021 in the municipality of Teloloapan, in Guerrero state. His remains were found wrapped in sheets, living inside a living room during a search by State Police. His body had multiple bullet wounds to the head. His brother was located on the property and arrested. Reports differ on whether the State Police killed La Beba during their search of the property where he was found and then his death was covered up. Other reports claim that the leaders of Guerreros Unidos (GU) had splintered in Teloloapan. One group stayed loyal to La Beba, while the armed wing that had previously served his GU cell called the “La Tecampanera Community Police” broke ties and waged war against Beba. La Tecampanera Community Police is believed to be led by Luis Alberto Ramos Pioquinto and Juan Carlos Ramos Pioquinto, who are brothers and they are supposedly the ones who organized the execution of Beba, with the State Police merely discovering the body after.
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Topic # 5: Mexican president to visit Chihuahua as National Guard expands presence on border
Source: https://www.borderreport.com/regions/mexico/mexican-president-to-visit-chihuahua-as-national-guard-expands-presence-on-border/
Synopsis:
The president of Mexico will be in Chihuahua on Saturday and Sunday to inaugurate two new National Guard buildings, Mexican media report. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador begins a three-day tour of northern states on Friday with a morning news conference in Cabo. News reports say he will outline progress on his social welfare programs in Baja California Sur. He is scheduled to do likewise in the state of Colima on Saturday morning, before traveling to Chihuahua in the afternoon. Lopez Obrador will visit the site of the new National Guard headquarters in Villa Ahumada, a farming community where drug activity has escalated in the past two decades. The event is scheduled for 6 p.m. The president will be in Juarez on Sunday to tour the new National Guard building in the southern part of the city. That takes place at 10:30 a.m. Juarez is in the process of erecting three buildings to house Mexican National Guard troops, which the Lopez Obrador administration primarily has used for migrant and drug smuggling interdiction. An estimated 400 National Guard troops are already in Juarez, with more on the way.
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Topic # 6: Mexico sues U.S. gun manufacturers over arms trafficking toll
Source: https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/border-crime/mexico-sues-u-s-gun-manufacturers-over-arms-trafficking-toll/
Synopsis:
The Mexican government sued United States gun manufacturers and distributors Wednesday in U.S. federal court, arguing that their negligent and illegal commercial practices have unleashed tremendous bloodshed in Mexico. The unusual lawsuit was filed in U.S. federal court in Boston. Among those being sued are some of the biggest names in guns, including Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc.; Barret Firearms Manufacturing, Inc.; Beretta U.S.A. Corp.; Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC, and Glock Inc. Another defendant is Interstate Arms, a Boston-area wholesaler that sells guns from all but one of the named manufacturers to dealers around the U.S. The Mexican government argues that the companies know that their practices contribute to the trafficking of guns to Mexico and facilitate it. Mexico wants compensation for the havoc the guns have wrought in its country. The Mexican government “brings this action to put an end to the massive damage that the Defendants cause by actively facilitating the unlawful trafficking of their guns to drug cartels and other criminals in Mexico,” the lawsuit said. It noted that the vast majority of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico were trafficked from the U.S.
The sale of firearms is severely restricted in Mexico and controlled by the Defense Department. But thousands of guns are smuggled into Mexico by the country’s powerful drug cartels. In August 2019, a gunmen killed 23 people in a Walmart, including some Mexican citizens. At that time, Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the government would explore its legal options. The government said Wednesday that recent rulings in U.S. courts contributed to its decision to file the lawsuit. It cited a decision in California allowing a lawsuit against Smith & Wesson to move forward, a lawsuit filed last week against Century Arms related to a 2019 shooting in Gilroy, California, and the $33 million settlement reached by Remington with some of the families whose children were killed in the Newtown, Connecticut, mass school shooting.
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Mexico City: Illegal Pot Increasingly Entering Mexico
Eight Found Dead in One House, All Shot in Head, Irapuato, Guanajuato
Irapuato, Guanajuato: We Will Find Those Responsible For The Massacre: Libya Denise (Connected to Topic # 2)
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua: Dealers Bribe Police Commissioner And Record Negotiations By Phone
Tijuana, Baja California: Dismembered Male Found With Narco Message (Graphic image Attached)
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Unaccompanied Migrant Teen Claims Gang Violence Forced Him to U.S.
EXCLUSIVE: Mexican Politician Allegedly Behind Sinaloa Cartel’s Appearance in Border State Unmasked
183-Foot Drug Smuggling Tunnel Found Under California-Mexico Border
Topic # 1: Mexico City: Illegal Pot Increasingly Entering Mexico
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/mexico-city-illegal-pot-increasingly.html
The Story:
Demand has grown with the legalization of marijuana in California, other states. The most sought-after marijuana being trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border is now the weed entering Mexico, not the weed leaving it. Cannabis sold legally in California is heading south illegally, dominating a booming boutique market across Mexico, where buying and selling the drug is still outlawed. Mexican dealers flaunt their U.S. products, noting them in bold lettering on menus sent to select clients: "IMPORTADO." Traffickers from California load their suitcases with U.S.-grown marijuana before hopping on planes to Mexico, or walking across the pedestrian border crossing into Tijuana. One car was recently stopped entering Tijuana with 5,600 jars of gummies infused with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But relatively few of the southbound traffickers are caught -- even as their contraband doubles or triples in value as soon as it enters Mexico. "The demand here for American weed has exploded," said one dealer in Mexico City, who estimated that 60% of the marijuana he sells now comes from California. The dealer spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of arrest. "It's aspirational for many of my clients.
They want to be seen smoking the best stuff, the stuff rappers brag about smoking." Over nearly a century, the U.S. spent billions of dollars combating drug trafficking from Mexico -- and for many years marijuana was at the center of that effort. The strains smoked by American actors and rock stars pointed to Mexico's geography: Acapulco Gold, Michoacan Cream, Jarilla Sinaloa. The weed in those days arrived on speedboats, through tunnels and even by slingshot. Sometimes the marijuana drug "mules" that crossed the Rio Grande were actually horses. But as some states, including California, legalized cannabis and professionalized its production, the world's most famous cannabis strains -- with a new string of American names like Girl Scout Cookies and Bubba Kush -- could suddenly be purchased just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, including at outlet malls walking distance from Mexican territory. At Urbn Leaf, a marijuana dispensary in San Ysidro, Calif., a few hundred yards from the border into Mexico at Tijuana, owner Josh Bubeck estimates that 55% of his customers are Mexican nationals. His employees warn them that bringing marijuana back to Mexico is a violation of Mexican law, but to work at Urbn Leaf is to understand the draw. "Nobody is going to grow cannabis better than California probably ever," Bubeck said.
Back in Mexico, he said, especially for younger smokers, the appeal is clear: "You're showing 'This is what I'm about. I'm a bad ass. I got this from America.'" For years, advocates of legalizing marijuana in Mexico have argued that the country could establish an enormously profitable industry, given its years of producing the drug illicitly. The Sinaloa Cartel has reportedly been looking into establishing its own legal cannabis subsidiary in Mexico. But legalization has moved much faster in parts of the U.S. than in Mexico, giving places like California a huge advantage. Some California weed farms have even hired Mexican migrant workers to tend their fields. The state's cannabis industry produced $4.4 billion in sales in 2020. This July, Mexico's supreme court struck down laws which criminalized the cultivation of cannabis for personal use. But lawmakers have not yet passed legislation that would allow for a commercial marijuana market. It is still technically illegal to buy or sell marijuana, and it is nearly impossible to regulate the quality of Mexican cannabis products available on the illegal market. "Mexicans want to try what they see in music video, in movies, in media, and that's usually American," said another dealer in Mexico City, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of arrest. "We still have this idea that the best products come from the U.S."
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Topic # 2: Eight Found Dead in One House, All Shot in Head, Irapuato, Guanajuato
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/eight-found-dead-in-one-house-all-shot.html
The red truck allegedly used by the perpetrators and later found by police
The Story:
Seven men and one woman were executed by hitmen at a home on Saturday night in Irapuato, Guanajuato.
The Shooting
Witnesses reported that an unknown group of armed men arrived outside a home in the Santa Maria neighborhood of Irapuato. They describe the vehicle as a Nissan Estaquita truck and it was carrying at least six armed men. A few minutes after 10:00 pm on the night of August 7, 2021, the emergency line received a report that several gunshots had been heard on Santa Carolina street in the aforementioned neighborhood. However the several shots did not stop and in fact continued for several minutes straight, concerning the neighbors even further. La Silla Rota reports the shots were so frequent that three different calls were received by the emergency line. Following the gunshots that came from killing the eight victims, Proceso reports that the gunmen stood outside the home for several minutes and fired several shots into the air. The armed men then appeared to leave the area however according to El Universal, even after leaving the property, the assailants continued firing shots into the air with assault rifles while being driven away.
Police arrived on scene and they found eight seemingly lifeless bodies, located in different areas, all within one house. This prompted the police to request the presence of paramedics to aid in checking all the vitals of the bodies. Proceso writes that the paramedics tried to get to the scene but because of unclarified risks in the area, possibly continued gunshots, the paramedics were sent away from the house for a few minutes for the sake of security. Revista Punto de Vista alleges the armed men drove by the house again in a vehicle and from the vehicle they shot at the people outside the house. The area of the house was then put under heavy guard and the paramedics were able to return to the house. The paramedics were able to verify, after a few minutes, none of the victims showed vital signs anymore. All the victims, seven men and one woman, were shot in the head. The house was reportedly still under construction and the bodies of the victims were found inside a garage between unpainted walls. It is unclear how many were found in that location, as reports differ.
The Aftermath
Dozens of neighbors came out of their houses after they heard about the massacre. Relatives of the victims in the house, who had previously arrived on the street, were outraged at the late appearance of the security forces at the crime scene. La Silla Rota describes that a mother whose son was just murdered inside the house could be heard screaming and sobbing, “Oh no please, my child!” while kneeling on the sidewalk. Other women then reached out to embrace and comfort her. Later, the Secretary of Public Security of Irapuato reported police had seized a red Nissan truck which the killers allegedly used to get to the house on Saturday night. The Secretary of Government of Guanajuato, Libia Dennise García Muñoz Ledo condemned the massacre of eight people in Irapuato and assured that will find those responsible. Muñoz Ledo said she had personally contacted the municipal president of Irapuato, Ricardo Ortiz Gutiérrez, to learn more about the situation and they continue coordinating with each other in order to to find those responsible for this event. Two cartels known to have a presence in Irapuato, Guanajuato are the Cartel de Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL) and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generation (CJNG). Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) safe houses were found in Irapuato a few months ago, as previously reported on Borderland Beat. The cartel responsible for this massacre is still unknown at this time.
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Topic # 3: Irapuato, Guanajuato: We Will Find Those Responsible For The Massacre: Libya Dennise
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/irapuato-guanajuato-we-will-find-those.html
Synopsis:
The Secretary of Government of Guanajuato, Libya Dennise García Muñoz Ledo, condemned the massacre of eight people that occurred in Irapuato and assured that a coordination will be established to find those responsible for this violent event that occurred in the Santa María neighborhood. Through her Twitter account, Libia Dennise García said that once the events occurred, she contacted the municipal president of Irapuato, Ricardo Ortiz Gutiérrez, to learn more about the situation and maintain coordination in which the Secretary of Public Security of the State and the Attorney General's Office will also participate, to be able to find those responsible for this event that claimed the lives of seven men and a woman who were gathered at a party in a home in the Santa María neighborhood, on Saturday night. "From Gobierno Guanajuato we condemn the unfortunate event that occurred tonight in the municipality of Irapuato, we have established communication with the Municipal President Ortiz_Irapuato and we work in coordination with @SeguridadGto and @FGEGUANAJUATO to find those responsible" (sic), the Secretary of Government wrote on her Twitter account.
The one in Irapuato was the second massacre that took place in Guanajuato on Saturday. The Santa María neighborhood is located in the north of the municipality. So far this year it has become the scene of 13 murders, all of them perpetrated with gunfire and where the main motive for the previous attacks was due to a situation related to the sale of drugs, although the motive that led to the commission of this multihomicide is being investigated from this recent case. There have been more than 60 massacres in Guanajuato. The one in Irapuato was the second massacre that took place in Guanajuato in less than 24 hours, because on Friday night there was an attack on a business selling alcoholic beverages in the municipality of Moroleón, where four men were killed, as well as three more injured; three women were also taken to a hospital, all of them had gunshot wounds.
However, according to the civil organization Causa en Común, in Guanajuato from January to June 48 massacres were perpetrated in the state, understood as the murder of three or more people in the same violent act. In addition, during July Organización Editorial Mexicana documented 11 more massacres, bringing the number of 60 to occur from January to August of this year. The Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System announced that from January to July 2,106 people have been killed, against the 2,695 that existed in the same period, which according to the governor of Guanajuato, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, means that the coordination work between the three levels of government is yielding positive results. Although it recognized that they are still insufficient to achieve pacifying the state, one of the main tasks of the State Government.
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Topic # 4: Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua: Dealers Bribe Police Commissioner And Record Negotiations By Phone
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/ciudad-juarez-chihuahua-dealers-bribe.html
Synopsis:
A video shows how the municipal police are easily bought by crime for the sale of drugs. According to a post that was deleted from Facebook, Commander Caballero who is in charge of units 106 and 138 of Distrito Centro agreed with dealers in the Centro Zone. The criminal who talks to Commander Caballero offers him 10,000 pesos to allow them to work. “Yes. You’ll get 10 thousand pesos a week. But you’ll allow me to work in my area of operations so that I can make my money. And be able to pay you your money as well. Because that’s quite a bit of money that has to be paid to you” is heard in the recording broadcast on Facebook.
Video translation is as follows:
Dealer: Go ahead and keep 17 thousand pesos, go ahead and keep 17 thousand pesos. And I’ll sort everything out with you week to week.
Commander Caballero: How much of it will be for me?
Dealer: You’ll get 10 thousand a week.
Commander Caballero: I’ll get 10 thouand a week?
Dealer: Yes. You’ll get 10 thousand pesos a week. But you’ll allow me to work in my area of operations so that I can make my money. And be able to pay you your money as well. Because that’s quite a bit of money that has to be paid to you.
Commander Caballero: Well, how many drug points do you have or what?
Dealer: That’s why I was telling you let me work and once you come through there I’ll ask that you give me a break.
Commander Caballero: Well…
Dealer: That’s why I was…well, 10 thousand pesos a week is quite a bit of money bro. This amount isn’t just anything. And I struggle…we struggle to sell everything off.
Commander Caballero: I’ll have to call you back.
Dealer: Ok then.
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Topic # 5: Tijuana, Baja California: Dismembered Male Found With Narco Message
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/tijuana-baja-california-dismembered.html
The Story:
According to police reports, around 03:21 this Saturday, August 7, a double homicide was documented on Antonio López Santana and López Portillo Street in the Infonavit Presidentes neighborhood. The victims were semi-covered inside a black Nissan XTerra vehicle with Baja California license plates.
On the windshield of the unit, the alleged hitmen left a cardboard with a narco-message that read: “You were left without stores in your area of operations for being a cheap fuck. You were actually doing well. But you thought you were slick by killing off operatives from The Company. Juan Enrique Rochin Cervantes aka “El Peter Pan” you’re going to need more personnel to fuck over The Company. Sincerely, CDA
Also this morning in a gray Volkswagen Golf with Baja California license plates. A man was found dead. He had various bullet wounds to his body. The unit was impacted on a fence near Corsica and Andalusian streets in the Villa Fontana neighborhood. It should be noted that inside the unit ballistic evidence was found. Then around 7 in the morning, the emergency center was informed that on a wooden base the dismembered body of a man was hung accompanied by a narco-message. The macabre discovery was made in Pericué Street in the El Guaycura neighborhood, in the Jardines del Guaycura section, in front of the park on the main avenue. The events caused great concern among the residents. Information released indicates that the message was addressed to a subject nicknamed "Peter Pan," allegedly a member of the Sinaloa Cartel. This was the intel that the Territorial Coordination Table for the Construction of Peace and Security currently had. The Fact:
Ten people were killed, one of them dismembered, and three found with a narcomessage was the result of a violent day recorded during the last hours in Tijuana. With these facts, this adds up to 35 homicides in August and 1,247 so far in 2021. On this occasion, a creepy find was recorded around 6:40 a.m., on Pericue Avenue and Paseo del Guaycua, in the neighborhood of the same name. At this address on the public thoroughfare, next to the park, on a small bed, the dismembered body of a man whose feet, hands and head were tied with wire to this wooden base was located. The torso was on the asphalt, next to a blue canvas, accompanied by a message containing the following legend:
“This will continue to happen to those who carry on with that cheap fuck Juan "Enrique Rochin Cervantes" alias "Peter Pan". If before you didn’t have much, now you have nothing. You’re in deep shit you dumb ass. Sincerely, Cartel de Sinaloa
Residents of the area called the police to report on this finding. The Municipal Elements arrived and confirmed this fact, reporting to the Attorney General's Office as well as Expert Services to stay in charge of the corresponding Procedures. The deceased was wearing a blue shirt and black pants.
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Topic # 6: EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Unaccompanied Migrant Teen Claims Gang Violence Forced Him to U.S.
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/08/09/exclusive-video-unaccompanied-migrant-teen-claims-gang-violence-forced-him-to-u-s/
Synopsis:
On Friday, hundreds of migrants surrendered to waiting Border Patrol agents in Roma, Texas. Within the groups were dozens of unaccompanied migrant children and most appeared to be teenagers. One young man says gangs in Guatemala are the reason he is coming to the United States. The two young men in the video seemed excited to be in the United States and spoke freely about where they were ultimately headed. The boys claimed they removed their bracelets provided to migrants by cartels in Mexico as proof of payment. Like most migrants, out of fear, they claimed to not have paid anything to the smugglers. Both will be processed by the Border Patrol and held in custody until they can be transferred over to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) emergency intake site. Once there, HHS volunteers will work to release them to sponsors. The flow of unaccompanied migrant children across the southwest border is at an all-time high in 2021. According to the HHS, there were more than 17,000 migrant children in federal custody as of Friday. These two minors were among 1,341 apprehended by Border Patrol on Thursday and Friday.
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Topic # 7: EXCLUSIVE: Mexican Politician Allegedly Behind Sinaloa Cartel’s Appearance in Border State Unmasked
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/08/07/exclusive-mexican-politician-behind-appearance-of-sinaloa-cartel-in-border-state-unmasked/
Antonio Lucas Martínez and Luis Fernando “El Dragón” Garza Guerrero
The Story:
The mayor of a rural city in the Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon is the alleged key political figure behind the arrival of Sinaloa Cartel enforcers. The cartel members arrived in the region recently in an apparent attempt to take control of drug trafficking routes and regional distribution. In June, a cell of gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS) surfaced in the rural city of Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon. Those gunmen clashed with authorities and strung banners announcing their arrival, Breitbart Texas reported exclusively. The rural city of Montemorelos is located just south of the Monterrey Metropolitan area. According to the cartel banner and to information shared with Breitbart Texas by U.S. law enforcement sources operating in Mexico, the CDS cell is led by an unidentified commander known by the nicknames El Gato or Felino. Authorities in Mexico also seized weapons and tactical gear with patches and hats with Sinaloa Cartel insignias and logos. The U.S. law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that Montemorelos police officers and politicians drew their attention in late February after state authorities arrested three local cops in connection with charges related to extortions, drug distribution, and assault — including the use of a paddle to torture their victims.
One of the victims who was tortured was a political rival of Mayor Luis Fernando “El Dragón” Garza Guerrero. Intelligence information shared with Breitbart Texas by the U.S. law enforcement sources revealed that the politician who is known as El Dragón is connected to the Sinaloa Cartel through a local drug trafficker known as The Stripper. The nickname is not tied to any criminal activity but it is a catchy slogan that the politician has used throughout his career. The politician also had links with the late Dannes Elizondo, a convicted drug trafficker who lived in McAllen, Texas. Elizondo, a U.S. citizen, used to run large cocaine shipments from Nuevo Leon to Houston for various criminal organizations. He also reportedly had links with the Beltran Leyva Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. A group of unknown gunmen killed Elizondo in 2018 in the ritzy suburb of San Pedro, Nuevo Leon.
The politician known as El Dragón hails from the MORENA Party and came into office in 2018. He quickly became the topic of much local controversy after being linked to numerous acts of local corruption and hiring organized crime figures into his inner circle. He is a known political ally of Mauricio Fernández Garza, the former mayor of San Pedro, who hails from the National Action Party (PAN) — the wealthiest suburb in the Monterrey metropolitan area. Even though they were from rival parties, the political allies exchanged political favors and support. One of those favors was the hiring of Antonio Lucas Martínez, as the public security secretary of Montemorelos. Lucas Martinez had the same position in San Pedro but had to resign after he was linked to organized crime, including the forced disappearance of a teenager by his then police officers. The forced disappearance and the alleged collection of bribes by Lucas Martinez have since been covered up by state authorities.
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Topic # 8: 183-Foot Drug Smuggling Tunnel Found Under California-Mexico Border
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/08/07/183-foot-drug-smuggling-tunnel-found-under-california-mexico-border/
Synopsis:
An international law enforcement effort led to the discovery and shutdown of a 183-foot tunnel being built to smuggle drugs, weapons, and people under the border into California. The sophisticated tunnel utilized electricity, a ventilation system, a rail system, and an electric hoist to move their illicit cargo from Mexico to the U.S. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations special agents teamed up with Mexican law enforcement officials in Mexicali, Baja California, to locate and seize a sophisticated smuggling tunnel on August 2, according to information obtained from ICE officials. The team discovered a tunnel inside a home in Mexicali located along the border with California, officials stated. The tunnel ran approximately 183 feet at about 22 feet below the surface to a location approximately three feet north of the border wall in Calexico, California, officials reported. While the tunnel did not yet have an exit in California, the entrance to the three-foot by four-foot tunnel measured approximately 12 feet by ten feet and utilized an electric hoist to lower the people or drugs underground. The drug traffickers installed an electrical system, ventilation, and a rail cart system to move their cargo through the tunnel. “These types of tunnels enable drug traffickers to conduct illicit activities virtually undetected across the U.S.–Mexico border,” Cardell T. Morant, special agent in charge of HSI San Diego said in a written statement. “Discovering and shutting down these tunnels deals a major blow to drug trafficking organizations because it denies them the ability to smuggle drugs, weapons, and people across the border.” “This is an ongoing HSI-led investigation with assistance from the El Centro Sector Border Patrol and the government of Mexico, HSI officials noted. “The HSI San Diego Tunnel Task Force thanks the government of Mexico for its cooperation in this investigation.”
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ASSESSMENTS
Three Years in, Lopez Obrador's Cartel Strategy Has Not Succeeded in Mexico
7 MIN READSep 13, 2021 | 10:00 GMT
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on July 1, 2021, at the National Palace in Mexico City during a commemoration of the third year of his victory in Mexico's 2018 presidential election.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on July 1, 2021, at the National Palace in Mexico City during a commemoration of the third year of his victory in Mexico's 2018 presidential election.
(Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.
After nearly three years in office, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's strategy for combatting violence has not succeeded and his unwillingness to adjust course will ensure that insecurity remains pervasive. This will keep physical security and business continuity risks high for organizations operating in Mexico and along the border, and contribute to further social unrest. Lopez Obrador said upon taking office that reducing violence stood among his top priorities, something he pledged to do through a strategy he called "hugs not bullets" that intended to fight cartels by addressing the underlying issues driving criminal groups, such as extreme poverty. This strategy also included initiatives like marijuana legalization and sentencing reform. In combination with more security-focused approaches, he hoped this would prove more successful than prior administrations' reliance on force alone to combat cartels. Even so, Lopez Obrador's strategy quickly morphed to include the militarized, take-out-the-kingpin strategies of his predecessors, and insecurity, poverty and corruption remain pervasive despite the combination of hard and soft power solutions in his initial plan.
Lopez Obrador established a National Guard in June 2019 intended as a short-term solution to violence while his long-term initiatives took hold, but has turned into a more permanent fixture of Mexico's security apparatus.
He also resumed the previously unsuccessful high-value targeting policy of his predecessors, which has contributed to the further fragmentation of Mexico's cartels and to additional violence as factions fight to replace leadership.
Despite the president's emphasis on addressing the socioeconomic issues that contribute to violence and crime, such as extreme poverty and unemployment, rates of both had marginally grown even before the onset of the pandemic in 2020, and has worsened since then.
According to Transparency International, since Lopez Obrador took office, Mexicans' perceptions of public corruption have grown, and the country's overall ranking on the group's corruption list has worsened.
Despite significant investments in various security measures, since 2018 Mexico's homicides effectively plateaued at their highest level. Even with pandemic-related restrictions on movement, Mexico still reported only a minuscule reduction in the number of homicides in 2020, underscoring the cartels' sustained influence nationwide.
In the three years since Lopez Obrador took office, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) and other smaller groups have grown in prominence and cartels have advanced their technological and tactical capabilities, making it harder to combat violence. Cartels have become increasingly militaristic in nature with the use of drones and improvised armored fighting vehicles, contributing to the rising violence in Mexico.
These and other tactical advances, as well as the continued fragmentation of Mexico's cartels, have not only enabled existing cartels to flourish, but also helped new cartels form and rise to prominence.
Reflecting a tactic that appears set to grow, on April 20, 2021, the CJNG dropped a gunpowder bomb from a drone, wounding police in the Michoacan state town of El Aguaje. Aside from using drones to target their enemies, cartels have grown to use them for surveilling the border and trafficking small amounts of illicit drugs, such as fentanyl.
The rise of smaller groups such as Los Viagras, the Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generacion, Los Rojos and La Linea has made the security environment more unstable, as new actors create more fluidity in traditional alliance and rivalry structures that leads to greater violence.
Although the president's efforts have largely failed to counter violence, it is unlikely that Lopez Obrador will reduce his reliance on the National Guard, which has become a crucial, increasingly politicized, part of his strategy. The president has a direct line of control over the group that he created, despite evidence that the militarized police force is undertrained and ineffective. Further entrenching its institutional position, he has expanded the role of the 100,000-person force to take charge of a number of security issues beyond responding to discrete episodes of violence, including civilian policing, seaport and customs inspections, and preventing the flow of migrants from the Mexico-Guatemala border. This widening remit has left the group stretched thin and in conflict with local communities.
In June 2021, Lopez Obrador announced he planned to propose a constitutional amendment to make the National Guard part of the defense department in order to ensure its budget would not be cut by subsequent administrations, but so far he lacks the votes to pass reforms absent support from other political parties.
Also in June 2021, the National Guard failed to certify more than 90% of its force as fit for duty, reflecting significant readiness challenges that undermine its ability meaningfully to combat the cartels.
Reflecting tensions between the National Guard and local communities, on March 29, 2021, angry villagers detained 15 soldiers after one opened fire on a car of migrants, killing a man. Many local communities, especially those bordering Central America, are skeptical of the central government, and so more likely to resist National Guard activities.
Despite his promises, Lopez Obrador's failure to significantly tackle cartel-driven violence will sustain risks to physical security and business continuity for organizations operating in the country, including locations popular with business travelers and tourists, and spur further social unrest. While cartels continue to operate in Mexico without serious repercussions, all industries — but particularly small and midsize businesses in the natural resource and agriculture sectors, which are easy targets given their lucrative nature, have fewer capabilities to resist and play an outsize role in the economy in which they account for nearly 50% of the workforce — are at risk of theft, blackmail, extortion and at times targeted violence. Persistent insecurity will also continue to undermine social cohesion and increase unrest. This is particularly true for Indigenous and feminist groups, which have suffered disproportionately from violence and hold frequent anti-government protests that have led to violent clashes with police.
The Tierra Caliente region of southern Mexico — where cartels fight for control over a variety of revenue streams ranging from synthetic drugs to avocados — and the northern border states of Tamaulipas and Baja California — where cartels fight for control of access to U.S. trafficking routes — are likely to remain particular hotspots for violence. Popular tourist destinations such as Los Cabos and Acapulco are also likely to remain areas with high levels of violence due to the value of the tourism industry in the area.
Cartels' increasing use of roadblocks to enforce territorial dominance can disrupt supply chains and lead to violence if disputes emerge during these encounters. Cartels can also use roadblocks to stop traffic in order to steal legitimate business vehicles that they then use to hide smuggling operations, posing growing risks to business continuity and safety.
Reflecting persistent insecurity and the fact that they are frequently targeted by cartels because of their second-class societal status, Indigenous self-defense groups have begun to form in the absence of state control. Similar armed civilian groups composed of non-Indigenous individuals are also on the rise.
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".Three Years in, Lopez Obrador's Cartel Strategy Has Not Succeeded in Mexico "
well does Stratford have a better idea
on how to combat narco terrorism
we can't even control the inflow of drugs here in the US
we are the dopes using and paying for the shit coming in .
I don't see our strategies of love and peace
and forgive and forget here is not working is it?
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Zapatistas warn that Chiapas is on verge of civil war, accuse state of kidnapping
The Army of National Liberation claims state is responsible for a long list of abuses
Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2021
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) – an organization best known for staging an armed uprising in southern Mexico in January 1994 – has released a statement warning that Chiapas is on the verge of civil war.
Endorsed by Zapatistas’ leader Subcomandante Galeano, the communique denounced the abduction of two EZLN members by a paramilitary organization at the service of the Chiapas government led by Morena party Governor Rutilio Escandón.
“On September 11, 2021, in the early morning, while the Zapatista air delegation was in Mexico City, members of ORCAO [the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers] – a paramilitary organization serving the Chiapas state government – kidnapped the compañeros Sebastián Nuñez Pérez and José Antonio Sánchez Juárez … from the Good Government Council of Patria Nueva [New Homeland], Chiapas,” the statement said.
The Zapatistas, who control a significant amount of territory in the state, asserted that ORCAO is “a political-military organization with paramilitary characteristics: they have uniforms, equipment, weapons, and ammunition purchased with money they receive from [government-sponsored] ‘social programs.’”
“… They fire on the Zapatista community of Moisés y Gandhi every night with these weapons,” the communique said.
The kidnapping victims were released on Sunday eight days after they were abducted “thanks to the parish priests of San Cristóbal de las Casas and Oxchuc, of the San Cristóbal diocese,” the EZLN said after claiming that the Chiapas government had attempted to sabotage their rescue.
“The compañeros were robbed of a walkie-talkie and 6,000 pesos in cash belonging to the Good Government Council,” the statement said.
“… The only reason the conflict did not escalate into a tragedy was due to the intervention of the parishes mentioned above, human rights organizations, and the mobilizations and denunciations carried out in Mexico and, above all, Europe. The misgovernment of Rutilio Escandón is doing everything possible to destabilize … Chiapas.”
The EZLN accused the state of a laundry list of abuses, asserting that it violently represses student teachers, sabotages agreements between teachers and the federal government, protects drug gangs and finances paramilitary groups.
“Its vaccination campaign is purposefully slow and disorganized, creating unrest in rural communities that it will no doubt exploit. Meanwhile, the rising COVID deaths in these communities are ignored,” it added.
“Its officials are stealing everything they can from the state treasury, perhaps preparing for a federal government collapse or betting on a new party coming into power. And now they want to sabotage the departure of the Zapatista delegation participating in the European chapter of the Journey for Life,” the statement said, referring to a group of Zapatistas – the so-called “air delegation” that departed for Europe by plane on September 13.
“They ordered their ORCAO paramilitaries to kidnap our compañeros, leaving the crime unpunished, and trying to provoke a reaction from the EZLN, all in a state where governability hangs by a thread.”
The Zapatistas also claimed that the Ecological Green Party is really in power in Chiapas but currently “badly disguised” as Morena, the party founded by President López Obrador.
In addition to accusing Escandón of abuses, the EZLN took aim at state government secretary Victoria Cecilia Flores Pérez.
“If what they [Escandón and Flores] want is to topple the federal government, or to cause problems in retaliation for the current federal criminal investigations against them, or to support one of the factions competing for power in 2024, then they should use the available legal channels and stop playing with the life, liberty, and property of the people of Chiapas. They should call for a vote to revoke the presidential mandate and stop playing with fire because they’re going to get burned,” said the rambling and somewhat deranged communique entitled Chiapas on the Verge of Civil War.
The EZLN called for foreigners and Mexicans to protest on Friday in front of Mexican embassies and consulates and at the government offices of the state of Chiapas to demand “an end to their provocations and renunciation of their death cult.”
“Given the actions and omissions of the state and federal governments regarding these crimes and previous ones, we will take the necessary measures to bring justice to the criminals in the ORCAO and the government officials who sponsor them. That is all. Next time there won’t be a communique. That is, there won’t be words, only actions,” concluded the statement issued from the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
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Cuernavaca, Morelos: Journalist Manuel Gonzalez Reyes Executed: 47 Reporters Have Been Killed In AMLO’s Government
United Cartels Narco-Summit Held, Supposedly Under Protection of the National Guard
Sinaloa Cartel Gente Nueva del Tigre Second-in-Command Arrested in Chihuahua
GRAPHIC: Cartel Turf War Reignites in Central Part of Mexican Border State (Graphic image Attached)
Migrants returned to Mexico describe horror of kidnappings, torture, rape
BELONGINGS FOUND IN A #CDN CREMATORIUM IN #NVO LAREDO (Translated Spanish to English)
Topic # 1: Cuernavaca, Morelos: Journalist Manuel Gonzalez Reyes Executed: 47 Reporters Have Been Killed In AMLO’s Government
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/09/cuernavaca-morelos-journalist-manuel.html
The Story:
Manuel González Reyes, owner and reporter of the PM Morelos news agency, was shot dead, around 4:37 p.m. on Tuesday, September 28, while he had finished eating at a post installed in front of a minibus terminal, in the Miraval neighborhood, next to the Pullman de Morelos bus line, in the municipality of Cuernavaca. Witnesses to the crime, quoted by local media, indicated that the reporter had just eaten when he got up from his seat to allegedly answer a phone call, and at that moment a motorcycle arrived at the scene with two subjects on board, dressed in black, who shot him in the face, with 9 mm caliber weapons. González Reyes, 55 years old, lay next to a Volkswagen car, black, on De la Estación street that connects Plan de Ayala Avenue, one of the busiest in the capital of Morelen, with Leandro Valle Street, in the Miraval neighborhood. Elements of the State Public Security Commission (CES) and the Red Cross attended the place, who confirmed that there was a lifeless subject. Meanwhile, elements of the Coordinated Command made tours of the area. At the scene, at least two nine-millimeter caliber shells were found, which were collected as evidence of the crime by experts from the Attorney General's Office (FGE), who took charge of the case. "He had injuries caused by a firearm near the cephalic limb.
At the moment there is no information that refers to the number of people involved in the aggression, and at least one person would have used a firearm at a short distance against him to immediately flee apparently to Colonia Patios de la Estación," the FGE detailed. The last broadcast that González Reyes made live was this same, prior to his murder, from the Vista Hermosa neighborhood of Jiutepec, to denounce the absence of authorities in support of the families that were affected by the tearing down of a hill. "The support of deputies, local, federal, senators and the Governor and other municipal presidents who also live on our taxes is nowhere to be seen here," González Reyes concluded his connection via Facebook Live, on the PM Noticias page. This agency was created by González Reyes in January 2017. Before that, the reporter covered press conferences, demonstrations and citizen protests independently. Also, during the last electoral process, he participated as a candidate of the recently created Citizen Welfare Party (BC), for the Municipal Presidency of Emiliano Zapata, where the journalist lived.
OTHER CRIMES OF JOURNALISTS IN MORELOS
In July 2019, the lifeless body of journalist Rogelio Barragán Pérez, director of the Guerrero “Al Instante” news portal, was located in the municipality of Zacatepec, with traces of handcuffed torture and gunshot wounds. The reporter's body was inside his Volkswagen Jetta, with Guerrero state license plates. Two years earlier, in April 2017, journalist Filiberto Álvarez Landeros was shot dead in the municipality of Tlaquiltenango, south of the same entity. Research indicated that the communicator was walking to his private home, after concluding his radio program, where he read poems. In May 2012, veteran journalist René Orta Salgado, a red note reporter in Sol de Cuernavaca, of the Mexican Editorial Organization (OEM), was found dead inside his vehicle. His relatives had reported him missing four days earlier, after holding a meeting with several men in a bar in the Morelos capital.
"NO JOURNALIST IS PERSECUTED OR CENSORED": AMLO ON SPOT FOR 3RD REPORT; 47 ARE KILLED IN HIS GOVERNMENT
On August 31, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a spot published on his Twitter account, that so far in his government no journalist has been persecuted or censored. However, so far in the Administration headed by the Tabasco politician, since December 2018 to date, a total of 46 communicators have been killed. The Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB) released, on July 13, data from the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which counted the homicides of 43 communicators. But to these are added four more after that date. Likewise, Article 19, a non-governmental organization that defends freedom of expression and the right to information, denounced that during the first half of this year, 362 attacks occurred against journalists and the media, with which 1,663 attacks have been registered so far in the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (609 in the first year and 692 in the second), which indicates that "violence against the press still shows no sign of reversing itself. According to the report 'First semester of 2021: violence against the press prevails, as does the inaction of the State', released on August 24, the NGO highlighted that "every 12 hours a person or a half is attacked in Mexico," and that the 362 attacks recorded reveal "a sustained growth in levels of violence." However, in a video released prior to his Third Government Report, the national president indicated that even now "the president is even insulted but there is no repression" against the press. "There are no more moches because now the budget is going to the people but there are freedoms. The right to disagree, deeds, not words is guaranteed," he said in the spot.
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Topic # 2: United Cartels Narco-Summit Held, Supposedly Under Protection of the National Guard
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/09/united-cartels-narco-summit-held.html
At the meeting held last Sunday, September 12, it was concluded that the United Cartels already had all the necessary resources, both financial and human, to confront the organization of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho. To fund this, cooperation quota taxes were raised on local residents
The Story:
The leaders of some of the main organizations that make up the Cárteles Unidos council in Michoacán recently held a narco-summit to reconfigure the war strategy against the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG). According to journalist Óscar Balderas, who reported on the meeting for the MVS Noticias program with Luis Cárdenas, the meeting held last Sunday, September 12, it was concluded that the United Cartels already had all the necessary resources, both financial and human, to face the organization of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho. The meeting, planned two months in advance, had mainly 4 guests: Juan José Álvarez Farías "El Abuelo", leader of the Tepalcatepec Cartel; Alejandro Sepúlveda Álvarez, alias El Jando or la Fresa , leader of the Trojan Whites/Blancos de Troya; César Sepúlveda Arellano, "El Boto" leader of Los Viagras; and one of the Sierra Santa Ana brothers. That day they got together for breakfast at 11:00 a.m. at a ranch located on Luis Orozco Street, 20 minutes from the Cenobio Moreno market, in Apatzingán, strategically located on a rural road to flee with a 10-minute advantage in case of emergency. The capos arrived unarmed, but with escorts.
The pact resulted in two main agreements: the first was that they were going to raise the cooperation quota for the people of the towns of Apatzingán, Tepalcatepec, and Buenavista so that they would finance the war against the Jalisco. Presumably, the people of Tierra Caliente began to be charged from that day up to 3,000 pesos per house a fortnight to finance the war. In case they are unable or unwilling to pay, the United Cartels would persecute them as if they were allies of the CJNG: they beat them, kidnapped them, tortured them, and disappeared them. The second agreement consisted of a kind of single formation to attack together, in a decisive manner, with common weapons and common human resources, the hosts of Oseguera Cervantes. This second agreement already had its first reaction as reported by Borderland Beat; from Tuesday to Thursday of last week, 48 hours of shootings were recorded. Sources consulted by the journalist warned that the CJNG responded to the summit of its enemies by getting into various communities on the border between Jalisco and Michoacán. Officially it was reported that there were five deaths, although unofficially there was talk of a higher number.
According to Balderas, a version confirmed that the National Guard (GN) had knowledge of this summit, which was not only held with their permission but also under their protection. Supposedly, there were even GN trucks that were parked on the roads near the Cenobio Moreno market to allow the four Michoacan capos to enter. The official version of the GN assured that they found out about the summit within 24 hours, mainly due to the complaints of the residents about the increase in rates. The Tepalcatepec Cartel, which is presented to the media as a group of self-defense groups, forms the council of the United Cartels together with Los Viagras, Trojan Whites, remnants of the Knights Templar, as well as other cells that operate in the so-called Tierra Caliente region of Michoacan. Those local factions have prevailed for decades in the state, migrating from one criminal group to another and fragmenting into regional associations as their leaders were captured or killed. Some groups, such as those led by Abuelo Farías, collaborated with the CJNG in the past, but breakdowns and alleged internal betrayals unleashed a wave of violence in municipalities such as Aguililla, Coalcomán, Buenavista, and the current siege in Tepalcatepec.
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Topic # 3: Sinaloa Cartel Gente Nueva del Tigre Second-in-Command Arrested in Chihuahua
Source: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/09/sinaloa-cartel-gente-nueva-del-tigre.html
The Story:
The second in command of the Sinaloa Cartel group known as Gente Nueva del Tigre, Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias "La Changa", was arrested after a violent shootout in Chihuahua with the State Investigations Agency (AEI) members, which left one of the AEI so badly injured that he was airlifted out for medical treatment. Now a judge has approved that La Changa will be held in jail until his trial, a positive step in the journey towards convicting and sending La Changa to prison. Back in May 14, 2021, the District Attorney for the Zona Occidente (western zone of the state) Jesús Manuel Carrasco Chacón named three key figures from the Sinaloa Cartel subgroup Gente Nueva del Tigre who they say were major priority criminal targets. The three named were Edgar Gamboa Sosa, alias “El 11”, “El Tigre Blanco”, or “El Virolo”, who is the overall leader of the del Tigre group. They also listed two of El 11’s top lieutenants: Víctor Hugo Vázquez, alias “El Chilango”, and Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias “La Changa”. La Changa was described as the right hand man of El 11 and he is considered to be the second in command of the del Tigre group.
He sometimes goes by the aliases "El Comandante" and "El Z-84". He is reportedly 31 years old. Diario de Juárez reports that after the death of “El 100”, La Changa was given control of the plaza in Cuauhtémoc and has been in control of the city ever since, reporting as a direct subordinate to El 11. He has two warrants out for his arrest for the crimes of kidnapping and forced disappearance of individuals in events that occurred between 2019 and 2020. The Attorney General's Office reports that La Changa has multiple other open investigation files for various crimes, mainly homicides and robberies with violence committed in the city of Cuauhtémoc. One of these open investigations relates to the September 7, 2021 massacre of 9 men who were in a house in the Periodista neighborhood of Cuauhtémoc. For more details on that event, please see this story.
Then, on August 27, 2021, an intense shooting took place in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua. Initial reports said that armed men from Gente Nueva del Tigre who were traveling in four or five vehicles attacked the District Attorney Jesús Manuel Carrasco Chacón, the same man who named the three leaders publicly as criminal targets. Chacón’s bodyguard reportedly repelled the attack of the cartel hitmen which occured on a stretch of the Gómez Morín freeway. Later, Attorney Carrasco Chacón stated that the shooting was not a direct attack against him, but rather as a response to an operation which almost captured a top Gente Nueva leader. He clarified that the shooting occured because he was personally leading the actions of an operation which sought to detain a criminal target in the Western zone. He stated that no officers were injured in the shootout with Gente Nueva, that the official government vehicles involved, including the armored car he was in, were damaged by the impacts, but no injuries were reported. The regional prosecutor stated that the operation he was personally overseeing at the time of the attack was a follow-up on a lead that developed from an investigation that had been going on for several days which aimed to locate and arrest specifically Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias “La Changa”.
Carrasco said that the target was finally located inside a vehicle on Mangos street, in the Delicias neighborhood in the city of Cuauhtémoc. Officers of the State Investigation Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI) began following La Changa’s vehicle from a distance in order to avoid detection and to avoid a confrontation breaking out in the urban area. Carrasco added it was especially important to law enforcement not to close in yet because there was a lot of traffic on the streets which could have led to civilian casualties. AEI officers continued to follow from a distance until La Changa’s vehicle reached the outskirts of the city with the target’s vehicle almost reaching the Manuel Gómez Morín highway. After seeing La Changa’s vehicle drive closer to the highway, which would enable his fast escape, the officers rapidly accelerated and closed in on his vehicle. They caught up with his vehicle a few minutes before 9:00 pm at night, at the height of the Ingenierías road. When the officers tried to stop La Changa’s vehicle, a major shootout took place, not only did the AEI call for reinforcements, reportedly the Gente Nueva hitmen also called for reinforcements. The confrontation was reportedly so long that both sides received support from new armed men arriving at the site. Carrasco said that around five vehicles with armed men were involved on behalf of Gente Nueva by the end of the battle.
At some point, the shootout evolved into a car chase which continued on the Manuel Gómez Morín highway up to the Juárez road. Vehicles from both sides were taking such heavy bullet damage that even the specially modified and armored white Ford Expedition SUV of the District Attorney general broke down and ceased to be able to drive due to the damage it received to one of its tires. The chase reportedly continued on despite the District Attorney’s vehicle breaking down near the Cuauhtémoc Olympic Stadium, as the support of elements of the State Security Commission arrived and Carrasco Chacón boarded their vehicle in order to continue the pursuit of La Changa’s vehicle as it drove into the municipality of Carichí, in the direction of Bacaburiachi. Eventually they lost sight of his vehicle and the chase ended, with La Changa getting away. Diario de Juarez writes that “the last five years have been a time of terror for the entire area from Cuauhtémoc to San Juanito, and from Guerrero to Madera. The entire Mennonite corridor, with tens of thousands of inhabitants, has been taken over” by Gente Nueva del Tigre. La Changa reportedly had so much influence over the police and military in the Cuauhtémoc area that according to Diario de Juárez, La Changa was able to return to the city of Cuauhtémoc following the huge shootout with the AEI.
He reportedly returned to a safe house in the middle of the city, without being disturbed by local authorities despite all the heat the car chase should have brought down on him. However the brand new State Attorney General Roberto Javier Fierro Duarte made it a priority to take down La Changa. (Not to be confused with another famous Duarte from Chihuahua, César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, the former governor turned fugitive.) Arrest warrants were drawn up in relation to a suspected location where La Changa may have been staying. Diario de Juárez writes that corrupted state police officers and infiltrators into the planning from other law enforcement corporations almost jeopardized the outcome of the plan on multiple occasions, saying “there was no lack of subtle protest even in the location of the safe house and the way to raid it,” adding “Prosecutor Fierro and his commanders should spend less time considering the criminals they were targeting, and more time considering which police officers they were involving.” On September 23, at approximately 3:00pm, members of the AEI approached a home that was believed to be used as a safehouse, located on a street between the Los Frailes and Campo Real subdivisions in the heart of Cuauhtémoc city. An entry team AEI agent was injured when he broke down a door and received gunshots in his shield that bounced off his shield, ricocheting into his shoulder.
But the AEI team kept pushing forward and a shootout began between the bodyguards of La Changa, covering La Changa exit, while he made his way to an armored Mercedes vehicle. However, La Changa eventually surrendered, likely due to his vehicle being blocked in or due to the volume of fire. The injured entry team member was transferred via the helicopter Halcón 1, which landed right in front of Alsuper de la Juárez and Pacheco streets, where he was rushed into the helicopter in order to be flown to the state capital for immediate medical attention. In addition to the arrest of La Changa, the AEI successfully arrested three more people, including a woman and the chief of hitmen from "La Changa", who will also be prosecuted for attempted homicide against police officers. Then on September 25, 2021, the three male detainees were presented before the Control Judge Eduardo Alexis Ornelas Pérez in the criminal chambers of Aquiles Serdán's prison #1 (CERESO). The judge approved the preventative detention of Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias “La Changa”, Francisco “UB” and Adolfo “CO”, for the crimes of homicide in degree in attempt and possession of firearms for the exclusive use of the Armed Forces.
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Topic # 4: GRAPHIC: Cartel Turf War Reignites in Central Part of Mexican Border State
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/09/29/graphic-cartel-turf-war-reignites-in-central-part-of-mexican-border-state/
Synopsis:
Rival cartels reignited a bloody turf war for control of the central part of the border state of Tamaulipas. The fighting is manifesting itself through gruesome executions and targeted killings. One murder took place on earlier this week when gunmen suspected of being part of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas left an ice chest containing a severed human head outside the Tamaulipas State Police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria. The victim, Jared Antonio Zamora Mireles, was a mid-level leader of the Gulf Cartel in Ciudad Mante. Breitbart Texas has since obtained exclusive information revealing that Tamaulipas state police arrested Zamora on September 24 with his girlfriend and three other men. Authorities released him soon after. As Zamora walked out of the detention center, gunmen kidnapped him. His whereabouts were unknown until Monday when his head and a narco-banner were displayed. One day before, gunmen dumped the bodies of two men and a woman in northern Ciudad Victoria. The victims were bound and shot several times. Hours before, another man was shot in the southeastern side of the city. Nearby cities such as Xicoténcatl, Jaumave, Ocampo and Ciudad Mante have also seen a spike in murders, car jackings, and shootouts as the Gulf Cartel and the CDN-Los Zetas fight for control of drug territories.
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Topic # 5: Migrants returned to Mexico describe horror of kidnappings, torture, rape
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/migrants-returned-mexico-describe-horror-kidnappings-torture-rape-rcna2300
Photo # 1: Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of expelled migrants travel across the international bridge of Hidalgo, between Reynosa and McAllen every day
Photo # 2: Migrants stranded in Reynosa Plaza clean their clothes in a half-built building in front of the camp
Photo # 3: Hundreds of tents are concentrated in Reynosa Plaza near the border bridge
Photo # 4: Berta was the victim of a kidnapping after she was expelled from the U.S. at a border zone in Arizona
Photo # 5: The city of Reynosa, Mexico
Photo # 6: Berta shows the bruises on her body
The Story:
REYNOSA, Mexico — After Gustavo and his family were sent back to Mexico after they crossed the U.S. border, his two sons said they were hungry. Gustavo, a Honduran man, sat them on the steps of the bridge and crossed the street to buy them something to eat. He remembers that a car approached him as he walked those steps. “They put me in the car. The children stayed there, waiting for me, but I didn’t come back.” He had been kidnapped. Days later, on the same bridge, Jorge Geovanni Díaz, also from Honduras, found himself holding hands with his son, who is 7, after the U.S. returned them to Mexico. Discouraged, he called their smuggler, or coyote. They were picked up in front of the international bridge and taken to a bodega, where almost 200 people were hoping to cross the river again. All of a sudden, armed men came in and violently took them all away. For this man and his child, 44 harsh days in captivity began. When migrants arrive in these Mexican cities near the border, they’re the targets of a vicious criminal business that kidnaps them and can torture them for weeks, extorting thousands of dollars of ransom from their relatives over the phone. Those who are kidnapped know that if they don’t pay, the outstanding balances can end in death. Kimberlin Figueroa, another Honduran migrant, was also returned to Mexico by U.S. authorities. “The cars would come up to me and say, ‘Get in here, get in here, get in the car with us.’ I was afraid and didn't get in the car.” She said she was terrified, because on the way to northern Mexico she had already been kidnapped and she needed thousands of dollars to get her freedom. Noticias Telemundo Investiga interviewed more than 30 migrants who were kidnapped from 2019 to 2021.
Some spoke on camera and gave their names because they are in safe places and believe they should publicly report the criminal practices. Others avoided giving their full names because they fear reprisals from organized crime. Some spoke on condition of anonymity. Several of them, including minors, have witnessed the murders of other migrants who tried to flee or whose families were not sending enough ransom. The criminals tortured some of the abducted migrants with blows all over their bodies to pressure the families who must pay the ransoms. Women were often repeatedly sexually abused by one or more kidnappers, said a woman who was raped, as well as several people who witnessed the crimes. The cartels and other Mexican criminal groups make $600 to $20,000 per capture, in addition to the thousands of dollars migrants have already paid for the trip north. U.S. telephone numbers are the data most sought. Families in America, desperate at the thought of losing their loved ones, are besieged by criminals. According to the pro-immigrant group Human Rights First, at least 6,356 migrants have been victims of kidnappings, abuses or attacks since January. For migrants, the map of Mexico, starting in the south, is like a checkerboard where they have to show they’ve paid to journey through — and they have to pay it to the correct group.
The dreaded password
There’s something migrants trying the dangerous border crossing need to know at all times: the password. On Mexican highways, buses sometimes stop suddenly. Armed men ask migrants to get off, and they’re asked for a password that shows that they have paid the smuggler networks as they travel to the U.S. border. “If you travel from Monterrey to cities on the border, you will see how, in a distance of two hours, at least three times, these people will get off the bus and they will have to give their password, and if they don’t have a password, they are going to have to pay a fee to be allowed to advance to the other point until they reach the border,” said Nilda García, who researches organized crime at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. The situation can be twisted even more. Kimberlin, 27, and her 12-year-old son traversed Mexico on their own, without hiring a coyote to reach the U.S. The bus stopped. “They asked us who we were coming with, if we had a password,” she recalled. “We said: ‘No, no, we came alone. We want to get to the border.’ Then again they asked us for the ‘happy’ password and who we came with.” She and her son were kidnapped and held captive for more than a week, and her U.S. relatives had to fork out $9,000 in ransom. In some cases, attackers tell migrants that their coyotes did not make the necessary payments to the criminal group in control of that particular area — or some groups simply steal the detained migrants from one another.
‘They were connected to the taxi driver’
That is what happened to Jorge Geovanni Díaz and his son hours after they were expelled from the U.S. to Tamaulipas — one of the Mexican states where Noticias Telemundo Investiga has discovered more victims. First, an armed group entered a warehouse where the coyotes kept them. “They attacked 182 people, they took us to the mountains, and there we were kidnapped for a month and 14 days,” Díaz said. Once his family spent $6,000 and Díaz managed to get out, he fell into the hands of the taxi driver who had to return him to the Reynosa bus station. “They were connected to the taxi driver. They traded me to another cartel in Matamoros,” he said. He suffered a double kidnapping and had to pay $6,000 more.
‘All the people are watching you’
It’s not easy for migrant families to blend in when they're in Mexico. At bus stations, with their backpacks and their small children crying, they can be seen trying to find their way around and buying tickets to border cities. At inland airports, they show their Central American passports at immigration checks. At convenience stores, like Oxxo or 7-Eleven, they withdraw money that their families send them to survive. At the border bridges on the Mexico side, the missing laces from their shoes, removed by U.S. border authorities when they’re detained, attract attention. Many migrants hold their possessions in plastic bags with the U.S. government logo. It’s as if they carry bright labels, making them targets for organized crime, whose tentacles in the border cities seem infinite. “I arrived at the Nuevo Laredo bus station, a station where all the people are watching you, the most dangerous I have ever visited,” said Yorje Pérez, 23, who migrated from Venezuela. “They are waiting for you to speak, to hear your accent, know where you came from.” Pérez said his taxi driver heard him, figured out he was Venezuelan and told him he knew he would be seeking asylum in the U.S. He told Pérez he was going to notify the cartel in the area so it would kidnap him, and he held him in the taxi for hours until Pérez paid him $600. The hotel where the taxi driver dropped Pérez off triggered his fear even more. “I heard people arrive. They forced a door. ... I heard people yelling. I did not sleep. That was the worst night that I could have spent,” he said two months after the incident. He was eventually able to find lodging at a shelter in Mexico and later was able to cross into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.
‘The cartels have gotten into the shelters’
For Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz, who has been helping migrant families in Nuevo Laredo for years, there is no safe place for them in border cities — not even in shelters like his. “The cartels always pass by the shelter, take photos, see who’s there. They have abducted people very close to the shelter, one block away,” Ortiz said. “And we’ve had cases where the cartels have gotten into shelters to see what’s going on inside.” In his offices, Ortiz avoids leaving any sensitive material about migrants in writing, including information like their full names, nationalities or telephone numbers in the U.S. Other border activists who are not being identified by name have also felt that they have been stalked over the information in their computers. Describing the fear generated by the organized crime threats around the Reynosa migrant camp, Pastor Mari Luz Madrigal said, “We used to have a lot of people coming to help us, but they stopped coming.”
As she speaks, she hands out food and inflatable mattresses to a long line of migrant families. Madrigal crosses several days a week from Mission, Texas, to one of the largest migrant camps on the entire border. During the day, migrants notify one another when they have to go on errands at a nearby store in Reynosa, sometimes in groups. At night, they organize rounds of men and women who stay up until dawn controlling the entrances to the camp. Any unusual movement, any suspicious truck, is reported in a community chat. Berta, one of the volunteers, said that’s the only option to stay safe. Months ago, during a sudden downpour, a Honduran man and his son disappeared. “A man said that when he came out of the bathroom, he saw a truck stop, a man get out, pull them in and take them away,” she said as a couple of tears formed in her eyes.
The kidnapping and the cellphone info
Berta herself was kidnapped after she was expelled from the U.S. at a border zone in Arizona. She was put in a truck and told to lower her head and hand over her cellphone. All of the kidnapping survivors who spoke to Noticias Telemundo Investiga described the criminals’ obsession with mobile devices. “Leave your cellphones and your money,” the kidnappers told several of the victims. Some have their phones seized and unlocked, and all calls and messages are checked for communication with family members to extort money from them. Others are asked for their passwords so they can be written down in notebooks, or they permanently remove their PINs from their phones. Some interviewees even remembered a threat: that the kidnappers were going to cut off fingers to unlock the phones whenever they wanted. The abductors either call the relatives or have the kidnapped migrants talk on speaker mode.
Some migrants tensed up remembering what it was like to talk to relatives while the criminals listened in. To the recurring question from relatives on the other end of the phone — “But are you OK?” — they could answer only “All good.” Except it wasn’t. Survivors agreed that the kidnappings are strategically thought out. Abductors take photos and videos several times a day to make sure no one escapes. In other places, they take pictures of migrants and edit them on WhatsApp with their names, nationalities and dates of birth. Some witnesses saw how one of the cartels wrote every migrant’s name in three notebooks. Most of the phone numbers begin with the U.S. country code, +1.
U.S. relatives equal money to abductors
Berta was immediately asked whether she had a phone when she was abducted and thrown inside the truck. “I said yes. It was a simple cellphone, just calls and messages, and they took it from me. They checked it. ‘Let’s see who you talk to,’ and the only messages they found were from my mom and my brother who lives with my mom,” she said. They were U.S. numbers, she said, so they saw dollar signs. Migrants like her know little about where they are held. Moreover, sharing the location of an abduction site is one of the actions that can most anger the captors. Those who were kidnapped describe the places as warehouses or abandoned homes, often apartments, with a few mattresses on the floor and windows lined with aluminum foil so one cannot see the outside. “We were very controlled. We had no notion of time there. We didn’t know what day it was. We did not know the time, if it was day, it was night,” said José Antonio, a Nicaraguan migrant kidnapped in the Reynosa area. He and 16 others were held for 11 days. The kidnappers identified themselves as members of the Gulf Cartel, one of the most powerful and deadly groups in Mexico. The group heard that a fellow Honduran had fled. According to José Antonio’s account, the armed guards called someone they said was a local police officer, who found the fugitive in about 20 minutes. When he was returned, “they beat him, they cut off his ear and told him: ‘If you speak, if you scream, something is going to happen to you.’” The man was writhing in pain and said it hurt. At that point, one of the guards “shoots him in the head, in the forehead,” José Antonio said. They killed the Honduran migrant right there.
‘They abused the women’
Terror and silence marked the long hours in captivity, José Antonio said. The silence is broken only by the victims’ continual prayers. They’re seated apart from one another, without being able to speak, console one another or vent about the situation. At most, they knew their neighbor’s nationality and face. Most were women; there were also four minors. They were not given chances to bathe or change or really sleep, and they had to ask permission to go to the bathroom. The kidnappers distributed two bottles of water to the whole group and gave them food once a day: tortillas with beans or beans with spaghetti or tortillas with spaghetti. Two guards, always armed and with a ready insult, watched them 24 hours a day. They took drugs and drank alcohol and prayed to Santa Muerte, whose image was tattooed on their bodies and who was venerated in altars decorated with candles, grapes, bananas, apples and cigar boxes. José Antonio was beaten shortly after he was kidnapped and told his captors he had no money. “There were four blows to my leg, hip and spine,” he said. He was fleeing political repression in his country, which included threats, an arrest and a beating. He found it difficult to talk about his experiences in Nicaragua, but what was even harder was remembering the scenes he saw repeated too many times — what they did to the women.
“They abused women. They beat them,” he said. “They were put in a room. Four of them entered and raped them. When they took them out, they said: ‘Shut up. If you keep talking, yelling, you’re going to get another beating,’” José Antonio said. A victim corroborated a similar experience. A Honduran woman, identified as Sofia, and her two daughters were kidnapped in Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León. The criminals, who did not identify themselves as part of any organized group, put them in a house but realized that Sofia had no money or direct family to extort. “They left my daughters in a room and then took me,” Sofia said. She was told that if she didn’t go along, they would take her girls, instead. Sofia found herself in a room where she was locked up from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m and sexually abused. “Almost all night, one after another. I mean, they were sick. I think I fell asleep. I couldn’t take it anymore. Later, when I found out, I was already in the car again,” she said.
Forcing migrants to cross the border again
Most of those interviewed by Noticias Telemundo Investiga whose families paid ransoms for their freedom were not actually freed. Instead, they were taken to safe houses so criminals could take them to cross the U.S. border — even if the migrants didn’t want to cross. They sometimes would be asked for more ransom. “We were like 40 kidnapped people. All those who paid ransom were sent to the United States,” a survivor of a kidnapping, Excelso Espinosa of Honduras, testified in a criminal court in McAllen, Texas, after he was accused of illegal re-entry into the U.S. “I already wanted to return to Honduras,” Espinosa said. “They were the ones who, when my family paid the ransom, sent me here. ... They did not let us stay in Mexico nor leave for our country, either. They do business like that. It’s their business.”
A lucrative business in the shadow of the U.S.
The migrant’s testimony shows that the lucrative business of human trafficking continues even after kidnapped migrants are released. The income of human smugglers continues to grow with more crossings, more U.S. expulsions and more migrants stranded in Mexico. Customs and Border Protection returns to Mexico are approaching 900,000 this fiscal year, which has fueled the kidnapping business, according to several pro-immigrant groups. “By returning to one of the most dangerous areas of the country, such as this border, it exposes them and returns them to imminent danger,” said Ana Ortega, a researcher for Human Rights First. The returns sometimes take place in Mexican cities hundreds of miles from where migrants entered the U.S., in areas operated by rival criminal groups. The passwords migrants got from their coyotes are no longer useful. “The same cartels let them know, ‘Well, the password that you brought was so that you could pass that cartel’s territory, but now that you’re in our territory, now you have to pay, too," Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz said. More migrants have been returned to Mexico under the Trump administration's Title 42, which allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants to prevent the spread of Covid and which has continued during the Biden administration except for unaccompanied minors.
‘We have been very afraid’
Berta Hernández got a severe beating from the kidnappers when her mother was not able to send the ransom money, but she managed to leave the city where it happened. Still bruised on her back, arms and legs, she now lives with other migrants while waiting for humanitarian permission to enter the U.S. Kimberlin Figueroa was able to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds; she and her son are recovering from the kidnapping while living with their relatives. “We have been very scared. My son, if there is a knock on the door, his heart will race a lot. He thinks that they are coming to take us out and that it will happen to us again,” she said, her voice trembling. Jorge Geovanni Díaz’s son has never been the same. Díaz believes he became ill from seeing torture and murder when he was only 7 years old. After the kidnapping, the boy cried for days, and his nose bled for more. “He told me that he wanted to leave Mexico because they were going to kidnap us again,” Díaz said. Gustavo, who left his children on the steps of the international bridge to look for food, has not seen them again. The minors, helped financially by their family, crossed the border into the U.S. Gustavo still finds himself in danger, in a city where it’s hard to hide the fact he’s a migrant at the border.
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Topic # 6: BELONGINGS FOUND IN A #CDN CREMATORIUM IN #NVO LAREDO
Source: https://www.valorportamaulipas.info/2021/09/encuentran-pertenencias-en-un.html
Synopsis:
Nuevo Laredo, Tamps.- The Tamaulipas Search Commission found a new death center for people, now in Nuevo Laredo. The discovery came after a series of operations that had an advance on a strip of abandoned ranches and houses near kilometers 26 of the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway. Search elements detected constructions with indications of illegal crematoria of bodies, shovels, axes and other objects that will be reviewed to try to determine what was happening in that area. The searches are related to the disappearance of at least a hundred women and men on the border with Nuevo León. The first discovery in that territory occurred at the end of June, when Tamaulipas authorities found reader credentials, cell phones, complete garments, metal tape, among other objects. The operations to enter said area are heavily guarded by elements of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), the National Guard and the Tamaulipas police. In addition, they have the collaboration of the Nuevo León security forces. Personnel from the Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office (FGJ), the National Search Commission (CNB) and the Attorney General's Office also participate in searches related to the disappearances reported in that federal channel. Yesterday morning, the head of the National Search Commission, Karla Quintana, confirmed "we have found an extermination zone," adding that they are trying to establish whether it is an active zone or with very recent use.
Extermination sites
This is the first extermination site found in Nuevo Laredo, which is added to the 57 places found and documented by groups of relatives of disappeared persons in Tamaulipas. These sites are distinguished by the criminal groups murdering people, cremating their bodies, destroying and hiding the bone fragments. In addition to that they dug clandestine graves to bury the corpses. In the southwest of Tamaulipas, the groups have identified 53 sites in the municipalities of Mante, Xicoténcatl, Llera de Canales, Gómez Farías and Ocampo; in the center of the state, one large in the town of Abasolo and two in Victoria, and on the border with the United States, one in Matamoros. Federal and state authorities have partially intervened with searches or removal of remains in 56 of those places. Findings of clandestine graves have not been common in Nuevo Laredo either.
According to the citizen graves platform, in that town the Tamaulipas Prosecutor's Office found 22 graves with 11 bodies and the FGR exhumed 14 bodies from 4 places. The northeast of Mexico has been the region of the country with the most extermination sites for people, said Karla Quintana Osuna. The federal official mentioned that the Commission has a registry in El Mante, Tamaulipas; Moctezuma, San Luis Potosí; Sponsorship, Coahuila; Claudio Station, in the Lagunera Region; and La Mano y Las Abejas, in Nuevo León. In a statement released on Monday, July 26, members of the United Forces for Our Disappeared in Nuevo León assured that 5 extermination sites have been identified in the entity: "Grutas de García", "Las Abejas", "Carboneras", "Los Arcos ”,“ Vallecillo ”and“ La Mano ”. In addition, they asked the National Search Commission and the State Attorney General's Office to define a detailed intervention plan for these places.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/cartel-killing-field-reportedly-found-just-miles-away-texas-border-discovery-lines-americans-went-missing/
nothing to see here
the real threat are the proud boys
and maga people
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I've crossed at Nuevo Laredo many, many times.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/analysis/accusations-against-mexicos-former-top-cop-grow-in-us-courts/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=3f7b3d9fdb-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-3f7b3d9fdb-350211146
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/more-civilians-take-up-arms-in-northeastern-chiapas/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=3f7b3d9fdb-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-3f7b3d9fdb-350211146
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I really do feel so sorry for the poor Mexicans who are the victims
of the cartels
and in the S and C Americas too
The American Blacks here think they have it so rough.............
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/gunman-shoots-kills-journalist-chiapas/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=jeeng
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1251431/roma-texas-now
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-security-strategy-criticism-forum/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=13b0792e93-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-13b0792e93-350211146
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Plata o plomo (Silver or lead) rejected , , , this time.
Wife of Mexican Cartel Boss Busted with $800K Cash in Texas Home (breitbart.com)
but not this time:
Eagle Pass police detective arrested in human smuggling investigation (expressnews.com)
The FBI on Tuesday arrested a longtime Eagle Pass police detective on charges that she helped harbor undocumented immigrants.
Detective Hazel Eileen Diaz became the target of a public corruption probe earlier this summer, as FBI...
A federal grand jury indicted Diaz on Dec. 8, along with Tomas Alejandro Mendez, 26; and Paola Nikole Cazares, 20, also of Eagle Pass.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office released little information on the case, and the indictment had not been made available to the public as of late Tuesday.
In August, the FBI raided four of Cazares’ properties in Eagle Pass that she rented. She was questioned but not arrested at the time.
The city suspended her with pay, but her status was unclear Tuesday. Diaz has been with the city for more than 30 years and was named employee of the year in 2015.
Aside from the public corruption case, Mendez and Cazares were arrested in December 2020 after a traffic stop by Maverick County deputies. A deputy who approached the 2007 Audi they were in smelled marijuana in the vehicle and questioned the pair, a report in the Del Rio and Eagle Pass News Leader said. The deputy saw Cazares put something in her mouth to hide it, and it turned out to be several small envelopes containing cocaine, the newspaper reported. Cazares was charged with possession of a controlled substance, while the driver of the vehicle, Méndez, was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, the report said.
guillermo.contreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland
The lawlessness is on our side of our non-border, with frightening levels of firepower.
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https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/12/19/texas-border-city-gun-store-owner-accused-of-selling-ammunition-bound-for-mexico/?fbclid=IwAR0R1NKJDjrnHhHcaDEGicJFP6Y73fl9ZtU3kbi_xb3UZZtomYIyjsw3fdY
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second post
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/fentanyl-overdoses-become-leading-cause-of-death-in-18-to-45-year-olds_4166280.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-12-20&mktids=aa38ff747fe6edf95b416cc78465295a&est=WRtqAWhott5PW08uDte3XrjomSNZEc8Y8LLh9e27gOfshozJutN2MDzHqN4r8MduTyAA
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second post
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/fentanyl-overdoses-become-leading-cause-of-death-in-18-to-45-year-olds_4166280.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-12-20&mktids=aa38ff747fe6edf95b416cc78465295a&est=WRtqAWhott5PW08uDte3XrjomSNZEc8Y8LLh9e27gOfshozJutN2MDzHqN4r8MduTyAA
[Epoch times articles don't come up for non-subscribers.]
It kills more people in their prime than Covid but the Left cannot make the connection between open border and Fentanyl deaths in their community, and human trafficking, and empowering drug lords and war lords and gangs.
What does it take to offend these people?
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/border-patrol-apprehends-sex-offenders-criminals-gang-members-smugglers-along
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Here is the ET article-- I would add that it is very reasonably priced and that I am very happy with my subscription. Would love to see people here sign up as well:
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Fentanyl Overdoses Become Leading Cause of Death in 18- to 45-Year-Olds
BY CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON December 19, 2021 Updated: December 20, 2021 biggersmaller Print
Fentanyl-related drug overdoses in 2020 became the top killer in adults aged 18 to 45—overtaking suicide, vehicle accidents, and gun violence, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by nonprofit group Families Against Fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, highly addictive, and deadly. Buyers may be unaware that the drugs they buy contain illicit fentanyl, a 2 milligram dose of which can be fatal.
The substance is most often manufactured in Mexico using chemicals supplied from China and trafficked across the southern border by Mexican drug cartels. Fentanyl is mixed with other narcotics to increase potency as well as pressed into counterfeit pain pills that are made to look like blue Oxycodone prescription pills and are commonly known as “Mexican oxys.”
Families Against Fentanyl is advocating for the U.S. government to designate fentanyl and its analogs as a weapon of mass destruction under federal statute.
The statute defines “weapon of mass destruction,” in part, as “any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxin or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors.”
More than 100,000 Americans, a record amount, died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April, according to CDC data. Fentanyl was involved in almost two-thirds of those deaths.
During 2020, as lockdowns became prolonged and widespread as a response to the pandemic, overdose fatalities accelerated.
“This represents a worsening of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States,” the CDC stated in an emergency health advisory issued more than a year ago, on Dec. 17, 2020.
An analysis by the Well Being Trust in May 2020 estimated a possible 75,000 additional “deaths of despair,” including suicide as well as drug and alcohol abuse over the ensuing several years, due to the shutdown measures.
Epoch Times Photo
Areas of influence of major Mexican cartels within the United States. (DEA report 2021)
Record Volume
This year, as the southern border became more porous, record amounts of drugs have been seized by authorities.
During fiscal year 2021, which ended in September, Customs and Border Protection confiscated 11,200 pounds of fentanyl, up from 2,150 pounds the year prior.
In addition, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized a record-breaking more than 20 million counterfeit pills containing fentanyl this year, according to Cheri Oz, DEA special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division.
Almost half of those were seized in Arizona, she said.
“The Sinaloa Cartel primarily uses the trafficking routes that run through Arizona,” Oz said during a Dec. 16 press conference. “Phoenix is historically known as a repackaging and distribution area.”
At the press conference, Oz announced the results of a two-month joint DEA and local Scottsdale, Arizona, drug trafficking operation run by the Sinaloa Cartel.
“In total during the two-month surge, we seized 3 million pills, 45 kilos of fentanyl powder, over 35 firearms, and arrested over 40 drug traffickers,” she said.
Epoch Times Photo
Illicit fentanyl-laced pills and other narcotics are displayed by law enforcement during a press conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Dec. 16, 2021. (Scottsdale PD)
Oz said drug traffickers are using social media platforms, posting emojis, and coded language that has specific meanings related to selling drugs more efficiently.
“Traffickers are using technology to get into your homes and sell pills to your children and loved ones,” Oz said. “Watch their social media and educate yourselves on the dangers and lingo of the online emojis being used.”
At least 76 recent cases involved drug traffickers using social media applications, including Snapchat, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, according to the DEA. The agency provides emoji decoding information on its website.
Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff Walther said, “It’s not just a drug,” it’s an “intended destabilizing influence in our country” wrought by the cartels and their partners.
“And if those across the border can continue to push this destabilizing influence in our country, we’re going to continue to see … these record numbers of seizures, because this is just flowing like a river into Arizona and then it has tendrils that go around the country,” Walther said during the press conference.
Congress has failed to pass legislation that would designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
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News
The Sierra Cartel published a video in October The Sierra Cartel published a video in October threatening the mayor of Iguala.
Unimpeded by authorities, Sierra Cartel solidifies and expands its hold in Guerrero
It continues to control dozens of communities, operating with impunity
Published on Monday, January 3, 2022
Facing little resistance from authorities, the Sierra Cartel consolidated and expanded its sphere of influence in Guerrero in 2021.
Based in Tlacotepec, the municipal seat of Heliodoro Castillo, the cartel forcibly took control of dozens of communities in Guerrero’s Sierra region in 2018, displacing thousands of people who are still too afraid to return home.
Since then, the Sierra Cartel – involved in the drug trade and a range of other illicit activities – has operated with impunity in the region, the newspaper El Universal reported, noting that authorities have not attempted to wrest back control of the communities they seized.
Last year, the crime group waged a war against rivals in Iguala, Guerrero’s third largest city, and moved into Huitzuico, a municipality in the state’s northern region that borders both Morelos and Puebla.
In Iguala, where there were 176 homicides in the first 11 months of last year, the Sierra Cartel’s main rival is a criminal organization called La Bandera (The Flag), according to the Guerrero Attorney General’s Office. That group is an offshoot of the Guerreros Unidos, a gang implicated in the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students who were abducted in Iguala in 2014.
A Sierra Cartel poster blames the Familia Michoacana for crime in Iguala and declares its members are narcos, not terrorists.
While other criminal groups operate in Iguala, the Sierra Cartel is now the dominant one. Its sway is such that it controls tortilla, meat and soft drink prices in the city, El Universal said. The cartel has also attacked newspaper offices in Iguala and threatened local journalists, forcing at least nine to flee.
The group has boasted of its increased influence in the city known as the birthplace of the Mexican flag, and recently issued a threat to new Mayor David Gama Pérez, warning him there would be consequences if he didn’t collaborate with its members.
Although the Sierra Cartel is considered the principal instigator of violence in Iguala, “almost nothing has been done to stop it,” El Universal said.
In late 2021, the cartel also made its presence felt in Huitzuico. El Universal reported that the group moved into that city in October and imposed their rule with murders and abductions. In November, the cartel established a 6:00 p.m. curfew and warned that anyone who failed to abide by it would be killed.
The organization kept its word: the day after the curfew took effect three men were shot and killed as they looked for somewhere to buy dinner at 9:00 p.m. Huitzuico residents subsequently complied with the curfew to the letter, going home before sundown and staying there until morning. All businesses closed by 6:00 p.m. and public transit services ended at the same time, El Universal said.
The newspaper reported that the Sierra Cartel also controls the prices of tortillas, meat, beer and soft drinks in Huitzuico, a city of approximately 20,000 people. Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado, who took office last October, visited the municipality late last year to announce a joint police/military operation against crime, but residents’ fear of the cartel remains and most continue to abide by the curfew.
Tlacotepec
The Sierra Cartel is also considering moving into Juan R. Escudero, a municipality about 60 kilometers inland from Acapulco.
After the recent murder of the founder of a self defense umbrella group called the United Front for the Security and Development of Guerrero, the cartel said it could dispatch 1,000 of its men to “pacify” the municipality. The cartel’s presence in that municipality could facilitate its movement of drugs between Guerrero’s Sierra region and the state’s Pacific coast.
The Sierra Cartel’s successes in 2021 appears to have emboldened it. On December 22, about 100 of its members confronted state police on the Chichihualco-Chilpancingo highway and forced them to release two Sierra Cartel gangsters they had arrested. The state government has “remained silent” on the incident, El Universal said.
The Sierra Cartel is one of numerous criminal groups that operate in Guerrero. Among the others are Los Rojos and Los Ardillos, which have been engaged in a turf war for years.
The former group and the Guerreros Unidos were designated by the United States Department of the Treasury last month under an executive order – Imposing Sanctions on Foreign Persons Involved in the Global Illicit Drug Trade – issued by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Criminal groups are largely responsible for the high levels of violence in Guerrero, where there were 1,130 homicides in the first 11 months of last year. That made the state Mexico’s ninth most violent after Guanajuato, Baja California, Michoacán, México state, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Sonora and Zacatecas.
With reports from El Universal
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/18/the-border-crisis-is-bad-but-in-mexico-a-larger-crisis-looms/?fbclid=IwAR1R8xf-HEpqDmxq2RkIVfFSWaDvpuz5ZF9JidFCS5BWaMp9dztcO8h21NU
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/opposition-coalition-denounces-narco-election-of-2021/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=9cdab95abf-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-9cdab95abf-350211146
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https://apnews.com/article/business-mexico-caribbean-army-improvised-explosives-af40ff9eae4c089b0d109e52bf9a0792?fbclid=IwAR3R3bQQ5CTeVZqn_uv283fKaW8pQVxkaIsPSgIkU1lfo2SYy_nITL6PeiU
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https://www.businessinsider.com/gunmen-on-jet-skis-increase-attacks-on-mexicos-tourist-beaches-2022-2?fbclid=IwAR1UUMkTOpIlruEmEw322EufZacqu2GwsX9cAEkVkqsKssRnzMyFx_BG2LA
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https://www.businessinsider.com/gunmen-on-jet-skis-increase-attacks-on-mexicos-tourist-beaches-2022-2?fbclid=IwAR1UUMkTOpIlruEmEw322EufZacqu2GwsX9cAEkVkqsKssRnzMyFx_BG2LA
Good thing we have a secure border!
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https://www.foxnews.com/us/mayra-padron-rifles-machine-gun-mexico-border-trampolines?fbclid=IwAR3Tiv_Q2235ga5regf7Y_VPJ0LOhJQhUnOQcMMfqY2BOG1hx2RgA2MWol8
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-cartel-terror-schools-in-mexico-give-cannibalism-exams-failure-is-not-an-option?fbclid=IwAR2XFkjfh62rRHrE5JfBBr52nCILi4jKWy0sQOsQt9E1mJJZIxtHPc8F-V0
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https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/mexican-cartel-borrows-middle-east-terrorists-brutal-tactics/?utm_source=Clarion+Project+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1fca4a0ff2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_02_24_07_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_60abb35148-1fca4a0ff2-7091200&mc_cid=1fca4a0ff2&mc_eid=361b583397
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https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/mexico/2022-04-01/mexican-military-archives-produce-new-revelations-ayotzinapa-case?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=90ec04b9-ce44-40ef-b57d-9960c4d0af1f
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second
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-russian-gru-spies-in-mexico-says-top-us-general-2022-4?fbclid=IwAR3a0AdaZq04svMzVdYgHC4Q-rWC6C9MjhdhyKAYq1GKiaM1PHR4S9uT5JQ
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-fourth-on-criminality-index/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=c2cc6097d8-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-c2cc6097d8-350211146
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mexico-president-trip-us/2022/05/06/id/1068707/
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/2204508/el-chapo
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Biden’s Bordersgate
What is Biden’s open borders/immigration goal? Is he trying to merge Mexico and the United States into one country? Don’t laugh!
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the president of Mexico, launched into a verbal attack on the United States Monday, and called for a continental “superstate” that intentionally erases the border of the United States and Mexico, merging the two countries. This would, of course, destroy America’s working and middle class.
Obrador also made this disclosure: He’s meeting with Biden at the White House next month to discuss this very issue of erasing our borders.
I would argue that Biden has already done that. He has handcuffed our Border Patrol agents and allowed millions of illegal aliens to pour into our country virtually unimpeded.
Meanwhile, Biden is reportedly attending the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week, where he will sign a “declaration on migration.” Among other things, it will commit the United States to “an equitable recovery in the hemisphere after the COVID-19 pandemic,” and “a focus on decarbonization, biodiversity, and clean energy jobs, and creating sustainable and inclusive trade.”
In other words, it’s a massive transfer of wealth and a hemispheric “Green New Deal.”
Why can’t Biden and Obrador talk this week in Los Angeles? Well, Obrador is refusing to attend the Summit because he’s standing in solidarity with the communist dictators of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, who also are not coming to the Summit.
But wait… There’s more!
Mexico’s president insisted that he will no longer tolerate “insults to immigrants and Mexicans,” and he demanded immigration reform. He attacked Cuban Americans for having disproportionate influence in our country, and he launched into a tirade against the Republican Party for its insistence on border security.
Can you imagine how Donald Trump would react to such statements? It’s impossible to imagine because no president of Mexico would dare say such things if Donald Trump were president of the United States!
The image of weakness that Joe Biden and “Border Czar” Kamala Harris are presenting to the world has convinced even the president of Mexico that he can demand the end of America!
Every Republican official should be blasting Obrador’s obnoxious demands and his offensive remarks. Every Republican candidate should be running hard against the left’s open borders agenda and the surrender of American sovereignty.
Biden’s open borders policies are a national scandal. They are a serious threat to our national security.
On this issue alone, Joe Biden deserves to be impeached.
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Yes.
Biden’s Bordersgate
What is Biden’s open borders/immigration goal? Is he trying to merge Mexico and the United States into one country? Don’t laugh!
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the president of Mexico, launched into a verbal attack on the United States Monday, and called for a continental “superstate” that intentionally erases the border of the United States and Mexico, merging the two countries. This would, of course, destroy America’s working and middle class.
Obrador also made this disclosure: He’s meeting with Biden at the White House next month to discuss this very issue of erasing our borders.
I would argue that Biden has already done that. He has handcuffed our Border Patrol agents and allowed millions of illegal aliens to pour into our country virtually unimpeded.
Meanwhile, Biden is reportedly attending the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week, where he will sign a “declaration on migration.” Among other things, it will commit the United States to “an equitable recovery in the hemisphere after the COVID-19 pandemic,” and “a focus on decarbonization, biodiversity, and clean energy jobs, and creating sustainable and inclusive trade.”
In other words, it’s a massive transfer of wealth and a hemispheric “Green New Deal.”
Why can’t Biden and Obrador talk this week in Los Angeles? Well, Obrador is refusing to attend the Summit because he’s standing in solidarity with the communist dictators of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, who also are not coming to the Summit.
But wait… There’s more!
Mexico’s president insisted that he will no longer tolerate “insults to immigrants and Mexicans,” and he demanded immigration reform. He attacked Cuban Americans for having disproportionate influence in our country, and he launched into a tirade against the Republican Party for its insistence on border security.
Can you imagine how Donald Trump would react to such statements? It’s impossible to imagine because no president of Mexico would dare say such things if Donald Trump were president of the United States!
The image of weakness that Joe Biden and “Border Czar” Kamala Harris are presenting to the world has convinced even the president of Mexico that he can demand the end of America!
Every Republican official should be blasting Obrador’s obnoxious demands and his offensive remarks. Every Republican candidate should be running hard against the left’s open borders agenda and the surrender of American sovereignty.
Biden’s open borders policies are a national scandal. They are a serious threat to our national security.
On this issue alone, Joe Biden deserves to be impeached.
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Mexico offers support. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said countries should build economic self-sufficiency and reduce their reliance on China, proposing a five-point plan to increase U.S.-Mexican cooperation in energy, agriculture and other sectors. He also said Mexico will increase oil exports to the U.S. to reduce inflationary fuel pressure on both countries, and will spend $1.5 billion modernizing Mexico’s border with the United States.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/14-arrested-after-shootout-on-mexico-city-cuernavaca/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=webpush
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/migrants-find-new-route-into-mexico-via-tabasco-but-also-dangers/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=webpush
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https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexico-city-residents-angered-influx-americans-speaking-english-gentrifying-area-report?fbclid=IwAR0q04CV7q0MXaExElO3_ySCOs-nTEac25ih26XSAlcQd2BXNT_sllJ6if8
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second
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/police-seize-1-68-tonnes-of-us-bound-cocaine-in-record-bust-for-mexico-city/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=webpush
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/puebla-self-defense-force-fighting-narcos-10-years/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=webpush
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tijuana-under-attack-sudden-eruption-cartel-violence-leaves-cars-burned-across-border?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=851
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/burning-vehicles-block-highways-baja-guanajuato/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=webpush
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Drone Captures Images of Mexican Drug Cartel Camp
By Allan Stein September 1, 2022 Updated: September 2, 2022biggersmaller Print
This is the fifth and final article in a series on illegal drug and human smuggling along Arizona’s border with Mexico. (Read: parts one, two, three, and four)
ARIVACA, Ariz.—The first gunshots seemed to come down the mountain on the other side of Arizona’s border fence with Mexico, just east of Arivaca, where rival drug cartel factions battle to the death for supremacy.
Sam, my security guide, listened closely as more shots rang out.
They were hunters, no doubt, though not the kind you would typically expect.
“Where exactly do you think the shots are coming from?” I asked Sam nervously from the back seat of his pickup truck.
“I think they’re to the right,” Sam said, focused on the nearest mountain. “They could be on top of that big peak as well.”
It’s not as if we were invisible, clambering noisily up the winding dirt fire road in the border zone known as the California Gulch, part of the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona.
Our arrival in Sam’s gargantuan white Chevy Silverado on the sweltering morning of Aug. 25 was about as clandestine as a bullhorn in a public library.
“They could be warning shots”—for us, Sam said. “But this is where they’re coming. Right here.”
Sam is the pseudonym he uses to conceal his identity and that of his security company in Arizona. He’s been threatened by the Sinaloa Cartel for conducting border-watching activities. He now fears for the safety of his employees and family.
Epoch Times Photo
Actual drone still footage shows a Mexican drug cartel faction (red dot) camped out just over the U.S. border near Arivaca, Ariz., on Aug. 25. (Courtesy of a private Arizona security company)
Below our position, the unfinished Trump border wall and fence stretched east and west for miles, then abruptly stopped. On the U.S. side of the border, cattle grazed among dry clumps of grass or basked in the imperfect shade of sparse shrubbery, swatting flies with their tails.
The jagged peaks on the Mexican side of the steel-grated border fence loomed green and majestic. Strange, though, how nature doesn’t immediately reveal its secrets. Hidden among the Las Guijas Mountains are some of the worst elements of the Sinaloa Cartel, Sam said.
“How strong is your stomach?” Kyle, Sam’s security specialist, had asked me the day before.
The fact that I enjoyed watching gory horror movies was good enough for Kyle to share an actual cell phone video of a man being mauled by two pit bulls in a Mexican border town not far from us.
Unfortunately some things cannot be unseen.
Kyle said that kind of cartel brutality is common in cities and towns on the Mexican side of the border fence.
Epoch Times Photo
Kyle, a private security specialist in Arizona, operates a surveillance drone using an electronic console just east of Arivaca, Ariz., on Aug. 25. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
“These guys are battling for control of the Sinaloa Cartel. You have fights within fights,” said Sam, speaking both from experience and professional intelligence gathering.
Sam believes cartel mayhem eventually will spill across the U.S. border in military force, bringing death and destruction to Americans—but not if a coalition of private citizens, law enforcement, and security firms that he envisions has its say.
The real battle, he said, is not about winning hearts and minds.
It’s about matching intel with intel, using superior surveillance techniques and equipment to beat the drug and human smugglers.
For this purpose, Sam’s company recently acquired a $33,000 JTI-branded drone which they frequently use to conduct border reconnaissance missions for clients and law enforcement.
Epoch Times Photo
Close-up drone footage shows a rival drug cartel faction member talking on a hand-held radio in an enclose on the Mexican side of the border fence east of Arivaca, Ariz., on Aug. 25. (Courtesy Arizona private security company)
The drone is a beast of versatility equipped with high-definition and thermal cameras, and high-powered zoom lenses.
Kyle operates the drone from the pickup bed using a console and laptop computer for imaging purposes. The drone has a maximum range of five miles traveling at speeds over 48 mph hundreds of feet above the ground. Batteries are interchangeable and last 45 minutes on a single charge.
You can hear the drone yet rarely see it at higher altitudes housed in fortified gray plastic with four propellers to carry it aloft.
Epoch Times Photo
Closeup drone footage shows a heavily armed Mexican drug cartel faction member walking near Arizona’s border with Mexico on Aug. 25. Seconds later, the man took aim at the drone with his rifle hoping to shoot it down. (Photos courtesy Arizona private security company)
Sam and Kyle’s mission today was to seek out and photograph nearby cartel encampments on Mexico’s side of the border fence.
Kyle took the drone out of a suitcase, then placed it in the middle of the fire road as he prepared for take-off. With the push of a console button, the drone whirred to life, propellers spinning like a supercharged weed-whacker.
Up—up—and away the drone went with the turn of a joystick.
Kyle monitored the action on the console screen while Sam watched on a laptop computer. The rugged mountain terrain below seemed alien in both viewfinders, taking shape when Kyle maneuvered to a lower altitude.
“My guess is there are two factions here,” Sam said. “One is trying to keep [the other] from pushing east, the other west. We think they’re on the peak right below us—oh, there they are!”
One of the factions is Los Chapitos, whose founder is Ivan Archivaldo-Guzman Salazar, alias “Chapito,” a Mexican narco trafficker and son of imprisoned druglord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Guzman was head of the Sinaloa Cartel until his arrest and extradition to the United States in 2017.
Epoch Times Photo
An Arizona private security firm keeps high-tech equipment, including a surveillance drone, secure in heavy-duty suitcases in the back of a company pickup truck on Aug. 25. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
The other faction is El Mayo, led by suspected Mexican drug kingpin Ismael Maro Zambada Garcia.
Sam said both factions currently are at war to control the entire Sinaloa Cartel on Arizona’s southern flank.
High above the nearest mountain less than a half mile away, the drone’s camera suddenly spied two blue tarps spaced about 25 yards apart. In one of the tents, a man could be seen talking frantically on a hand-held radio.
As Kyle zoomed in closer, the screen showed another man in body armor walking out of the bush, carrying what appeared to be an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle—definitely cartel.
“We found his [expletive]!” Sam shouted and gave Kyle a fist pump, but it was too soon to celebrate.
At that moment, the man looked up and saw the drone.
He raised his rifle, and took aim.
Epoch Times Photo
Sam, owner of a private security firm in Arizona, keeps watch with binoculars over the U.S. border wall with Mexico on Aug. 25. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
“He’s trying to find out where [the drone noise] is coming from,” Sam cried. “Whoah! Whoah! Get out of there!”
Kyle hit the joystick and the drone moved to a safe distance—just before the man could get off a shot.
He was now running in our direction. “He’s got a ways to go to get to the border wall,” Sam said.
But it was time to get out of there—fast. Though getting out would be harder than getting in.
Along the escape route were unforeseen twists and turns and a few dead ends that took us closer to the border fence and the rifle-wielding cartel member.
Finally, after many false starts and turns, we found our way back to the main fire road and out of danger.
Sam and Kyle had promised a “hot spot” of cartel activity today, and they delivered.
For Americans living near Arizona’s southern border wall, however, it keeps getting hotter every day.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxoHxx5CopU
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Extending an invitation. During a meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited Mexico to participate in the U.S.’ new $50 billion investment in semiconductor production, manufacturing and research and development. AMLO said his government planned to make the northern border state of Sonora a leader in lithium, electric vehicle and solar energy production.
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:roll:
Extending an invitation. During a meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited Mexico to participate in the U.S.’ new $50 billion investment in semiconductor production, manufacturing and research and development. AMLO said his government planned to make the northern border state of Sonora a leader in lithium, electric vehicle and solar energy production.
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Exactly.
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A Fracture in Mexico's Opposition Coalition Will Boost the Government of Lopez Obrador
4 MIN READSep 16, 2022 | 14:27 GMT
A member of the National Guard on Dec. 2, 2021, in Guadalajara, Mexico.
A member of the National Guard on Dec. 2, 2021, in Guadalajara, Mexico.
(ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)
The Institutional Revolutionary Party's decision to support a government effort to pass a constitutional amendment extending Mexico's National Guard will likely weaken the coalition between the main opposition parties, boosting the government ahead of gubernatorial elections. In a Sept. 14 vote in the lower house of the Mexican legislature, 64 legislators from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the country's main opposition party, joined the governing National Regeneration Movement-led alliance to vote in favor of a constitutional amendment to extend the existence of the National Guard through 2028. The National Action Party and the Democratic Revolution Party, which with the PRI belong to the opposition coalition Va por Mexico, criticized the PRI and questioned the future of the opposition bloc's legislative agenda.
In 2019, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promoted a constitutional amendment that created the National Guard and authorized continued military involvement in policing until 2024. In early September, PRI congresswoman Yolanda de la Torre put forward a constitutional amendment to extend the National Guard's existence through 2028.
On Sept. 14, 335 legislators voted in favor — just one more than the number required for a constitutional amendment — versus 152 opposed coming from opposition parties PAN, PRD and center left party Movimiento Ciudadano, and one abstention.
The Senate will debate and vote on the constitutional amendment the week of Sept. 19, which is likely to be a contentious process. The National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) and its allies will need the support of at least 10 PRI senators to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage. As PRI President Alejandro Moreno supports the initiative, it will likely pass.
The PRI move will likely create a prolonged fracture in the opposition coalition that will benefit the Mexican government ahead of 2023 gubernatorial elections. The PRI probably is supporting the extension of the National Guard to prevent a temporary decrease in the size of Mexico's security forces while the country rebuilds its national police force, which the party believes would result in increased cartel activity and migrants. But PRI support for the amendment will weaken the Va por Mexico oppositional alliance, decreasing communication between its members and risking reduced cohesion on other policies. Such a fracture in the opposition coalition will likely weaken the PRI's party ahead of June 2023 gubernatorial elections in Mexico and Coahuila states, in which PRI governors will face opponents from MORENA and other parties.
While MORENA and its allies control enough seats in the Mexican legislature to pass ordinary legislation, it lacks the numbers to pass constitutional reforms, which means that they need support from the opposition to do so. Va por Mexico was formed in late 2020 to prevent the government from reforming the constitution. The PRI, PRD and PAN have been political rivals for decades, however, which means that their coalition is ideologically fractured. After the formation of the coalition, the three parties continued to field their own candidates and compete in legislative and local elections.
Though individual members of the PAN and PRD have called for a formal rupture to the Va por Mexico coalition, the two parties' leadership has only criticized the PRI's voting choices, not announced a formal break.
The PRI will likely continue to vote against the government's initiatives in areas such as energy or electoral reforms, while its support of the constitutional amendment ensures that the National Guard will remain Mexico's predominant security body. PRI leadership has indicated strong opposition to the government on other policies such as efforts to bolster state-owned energy companies against the private sector and carry out electoral reforms. While the PRI may be more willing to support some aspects of MORENA's policy platform, such as increased funding for agricultural production, it will likely be unwilling to support key aspects of Lopez Obrador's policy platform unless the government waters them down. This means that Lopez Obrador will likely be forced to implement his keystone policies via legislation that could be challenged in court; the government previously has implemented legislation later blocked as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, subsequent administrations can reverse policy implemented via regulatory bodies. PRI support for the constitutional amendment will likely lead to security continuity and prevent disruptions in trade, as the National Guard ensures security in places such as ports and ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The PRI voted against MORENA's proposed constitutional amendment aimed at bolstering Mexico's state-owned energy companies against private competitors April 17. Party leadership also announced that it would refuse to negotiate a potential amendment to eliminate the National Electoral Institute in favor of a different electoral institute after Lopez Obrador's MORENA party suggested the two parties negotiate over their two separate constitutional reform proposals.
As recently as early September, PRI legislators and senators voted against MORENA-proposed legislation seeking to bring the National Guard under the purview of the military.
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/23/the-border-crisis-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-in-mexico-a-cartel-crisis-looms/
The Border Crisis Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg. In Mexico, A Cartel Crisis Looms
BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON
SEPTEMBER 23, 2022
6 MIN READ
This week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that apprehensions of illegal immigrants surpassed 2.1 million for the fiscal year in August, with more than 203,000 apprehensions last month alone, marking six straight months of southwest border arrests exceeding 200,000.
Nothing like this has ever happened before. The 2.1 million figure represents an all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 1.7 million, set in fiscal year 2021. That is to say, every year President Joe Biden has been in office has been a record-breaking year of illegal immigration. Biden’s policies are directly responsible for the ongoing border crisis, which will continue unabated until those policies change. Whatever the number ends up being for 2022, the number for 2023 will almost certainly be higher.
But the shocking volume of arrests at the border, and the dramatic footage of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande or lining up by the hundreds along stretches of the border wall (or scaling it), can blind us to another, less obvious crisis unfolding on the Mexican side of the border that we need to understand if we hope to craft policies that will put an end to mass illegal immigration.
That crisis, put simply, is the gradual takeover of the Mexican state by cartels. I hesitate to call them “drug cartels,” because what these criminal organizations do goes far beyond the manufacture and trafficking of narcotics. In addition to drugs, Mexican cartels are now involved in industrial agriculture, port operations, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, and even the control and distribution of water in drought-stricken parts of the country.
These twin crises are connected. Although the border crisis is a direct result of Biden’s policies, the cartels are exploiting those policies for profit. One estimate from Homeland Security Investigations puts the figure at $13 billion annually, up from just $500 million in 2018. That is to say, illegal immigration has been industrialized by these cartels and their smuggling networks. It is not too much to say they have turned the southwest border into a vast black market, not just for deadly drugs such as fentanyl, but also for illegal immigration.
A new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (where, full disclosure, I once worked and am today a senior fellow) sheds some much-needed light on how the cartels have accomplished this. Their involvement in migrant smuggling — a vast enterprise that involves transportation, surveillance, logistics, accounting, and stash houses on both sides of the border — is a natural extension of their increasing involvement in nearly every facet of Mexico’s economic and political life.
The report, whose author has remained anonymous for safety reasons, chronicles the recent history of deep collusion between the Mexican state and the country’s most powerful drug cartels: “The unfortunate reality is that criminal cartels have burrowed their way into the government — and vice versa. Well-meaning public servants, of whom Mexico has many, are powerless against a nexus of senior officeholders, societal elites, and criminal cartels.”
The rot in the Mexican state, the report makes clear, goes to the very top. In 2018, just before President Enrique Peña Nieto left office, Ivan Reyes Arzate, a high-ranking member in the Mexican Federal Police, was found guilty in U.S. federal court on charges of obstructing a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation of international drug trafficking and money laundering. The case “represented the first time a high-level foreign law enforcement officer was held criminally accountable in a U.S. courtroom for interfering with a transnational organized crime investigation,” according to the TPPF report.
But if Peña Nieto’s time in office was marked by a curtailment of U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation, Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has sought to shut down such cooperation almost entirely. Thanks to a new law pushed by López Obrador’s administration aimed at curbing the operations of foreign agents (clearly aimed at the DEA), decades of U.S.-Mexico bilateral cooperation has been effectively ended. In addition to this new law, López Obrador in April shut down an elite anti-narcotic unit that had worked with the DEA for 25 years.
Since taking office, López Obrador has pursued a posture of passivity toward the cartels, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, the country’s most powerful. In so doing, Mexico’s president has transformed his naïve campaign slogan, abrazos no balazos (“hugs not bullets”), into a policy framework that can only be understood as a rebuke of the United States in favor of the cartels.
What is also different now than in the past, the TPPF report explains, is that the cartels “increasingly supplant the legitimate sovereignty of the Mexican state with their own — often in cooperation with major elements of that state. The qualitative difference since 2018 has been the near-open role of the current Mexican president in allowing, and perhaps even participating in, that cooperation.” Indeed, by some estimates cartels now control up to 40 percent of Mexican territory.
If that sounds outlandish, it is not because the facts don’t support such a conclusion but because corporate media in the U.S. are for the most part unwilling or unable to cover the issue in depth or accurately convey its implications for America.
The implications are this: As the Mexican state succumbs to the cartels, Mexico’s problems will become America’s problems. That doesn’t just mean a worsening border crisis but a breakdown of law and order all up and down the border, on both sides of the Rio Grande, and a worsening drug crisis in American cities far from the border. It means the corruption of Mexican officialdom will gradually spread to American officialdom, just as the operations of Mexican cartels have spread to every corner of the United States.
What to do about all this? The first step is for the United States to stop treating Mexico like a partner or a peer with whom we can work together to address common challenges. Our entire posture has to shift. We have to begin treating Mexico less like an ally and more like a hostile neighbor. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, to his credit, this week took the extraordinary step of issuing an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. While that might not do much on its own, it at least sends a signal to Washington that it is time for the federal government to do the same.
There is of course a historical precedent for this, and indeed the relatively peaceful interregnum of the past 80 years is a departure from the historical norm of U.S.-Mexico relations. We are now returning to the norm, whether policymakers in Washington realize it or not.
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https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/mexico/2022-09-30/echeverrias-legacy-co-opt-and-control?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=c069abc2-39e7-4cce-b4a2-504f1ff2a687
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/mexico/mexico-dying-democracy-amlo-toll-authoritarian-populism-denise-dresser?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=Mexico%E2%80%99s%20Dying%20Democracy&utm_content=20221021&utm_term=FA%20Today%20-%20112017
Mexico’s Dying Democracy
AMLO and the Toll of Authoritarian Populism
By Denise Dresser
Page url
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/mexico/mexico-dying-democracy-amlo-toll-authoritarian-populism-denise-dresser
When Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office four years ago, he promised to deliver what he branded a “Fourth Transformation,” the next in a series of defining junctures in Mexican history: the War of Independence in the early 1800s, the liberal movement of President Benito Juárez later that century, and the Revolution of 1910. To “make Mexico great again,” he said he would fight deeply ingrained corruption and eradicate persistent poverty. But in the name of his agenda, López Obrador has removed checks and balances, weakened autonomous institutions, and seized discretionary control of the budget. Arguing that police forces cannot stop the country’s mounting insecurity, he has supplanted them with the Mexican military and endowed it with unprecedented economic and political power. Today, the armed forces carry out his bidding on multiple fronts and have become a pillar of support for the government. López Obrador, or AMLO as he is known, seems intent on restoring something akin to the dominant-party rule that characterized Mexican politics from 1929 to 2000, but with a militarized twist.
Despite these questionable moves, the president and his party, Morena, remain popular. His supporters applaud the return of a strong and unencumbered leader, capable of enacting change in a country that is clamoring for more social justice for the many and less entitlement for the few. But his presidency, and the country’s trajectory, worry scholars, activists, opposition parties, and members of civil society who fought to dismantle the hegemony of the former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which was in power for 71 years, and now seek to defend Mexico’s transition to multiparty democracy. These critics contend that López Obrador is polarizing the populace and jeopardizing the country’s fledgling democracy with his routine attacks on civil society organizations, his stated desire to take apart key institutions, and his use of the bully pulpit to lambaste the media and members of the opposition.
His playbook is like those of strongmen in other countries, who argue that they have too many constraints on their power to effect foundational change, promote participatory politics, and rid the country of immoral and rapacious elites. Yet as Western scholars have lamented the rise of autocrats in Hungary, Nicaragua, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, and even the United States, they have often overlooked Mexico’s prominence in the growing list of countries where democracy is being subverted by elected leaders.
López Obrador’s personalistic style of governing is a form of democratic backsliding. His rhetoric and policy decisions have put democratic norms and institutions at risk. He has reshaped the Mexican political ecosystem so quickly and fluidly that defending democracy has become extremely difficult, for civil society groups as well as opposition parties. López Obrador is eroding, in word and in deed, the democratic norms and rules that Mexico has developed since the PRI lost its grip on the political system. He denies the legitimacy of his opponents by deeming them “traitors to the country.” He tolerates criminality and violence to justify the militarization of the country. And he has displayed a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of critics, including those in the media. Reports of Mexican democracy’s death may be exaggerated; it is not dead. But it is grievously ill. And López Obrador’s leadership is affecting U.S.-Mexican relations in a way that could turn back the clock on three decades of economic integration, revive the previous mistrust between the two countries, and halt collaboration on issues of binational concern, including security, immigration, and climate change. The Biden administration does not seem to fully understand the dangers that loom ahead as Mexico becomes a more insecure, more militarized, and less democratic country.
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
According to a saying popular in Mexico in the 1970s, “Not a leaf moves without the president knowing about it.” That is how the country worked until Mexico’s transition to electoral democracy in the 1990s. Then, power became more dispersed, incipient checks and balances were put in place, and autonomous institutions, independent from the presidency, were created. A highly imperfect, and in many ways dysfunctional, political system emerged. Over the past four years, however, López Obrador has sought to re-create many of the political and institutional arrangements that characterized dominant-party rule. He is putting in place a strong presidency with ample discretionary powers, capable of dominating Congress, influencing the judiciary, determining economic policy, remaking the apparatus of the state according to the president’s personal preferences, and exercising metaconstitutional powers, such as issuing decrees that enable the armed forces to be in charge of public security or allow them to carry out public works without fulfilling legal requirements.
López Obrador argues that he is cleaning house and combating corruption. He says he can do so only by being in full command of all levers of government. The fight against the model of economic liberalization and political competition that emerged in the 1990s—which the president derides as “neoliberal”—has led to bypassing Congress and the constitution, ignoring regulatory procedures, and channeling a growing number of government activities to his cronies and the military. Dismissing the state as a “rheumatic elephant,” López Obrador has proceeded to undermine Mexico’s civil service, regulatory bodies, and administrative institutions, either by breaking them up or by filling them with his own loyalists. The Human Rights Commission is led by Rosario Piedra, a militant member of Morena, who kowtows to the president while remaining silent on human rights violations committed by the military. The Energy Regulation Commission, an oversight body, has been staffed by men with personal and political ties to Rocío Nahle, the minister of energy. López Obrador has also let months go by without naming new members to the Competition Commission, a regulatory institution responsible for investigating and sanctioning monopolistic practices, which is currently understaffed and without a president. In decree after decree, López Obrador has eviscerated the Mexican state, often in the name of fiscal austerity, while giving many plutocrats free rein and refusing to carry out fiscal reform that would tax his rich allies. He may disparage neoliberalism, but Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would approve of his behavior.
In recent years, political movements across the ideological spectrum in many liberal democracies have called for “bringing the state back in”—that is, shoring up the capacity of the state to address inequality, regulate markets, combat climate change, and respond to global health emergencies. The reverse is taking place in Mexico, with significant social and political ramifications. The government’s reluctance to design a fiscal rescue package or social welfare spending policies to soften the blow from the COVID-19 pandemic had devastating effects. As a result of what López Obrador described as “republican austerity,” Mexico has suffered one of the world’s highest excess mortality rates during the pandemic, with over 600,000 Mexicans dying of COVID-19. The ranks of the poor have swelled by almost four million people since 2019, according to the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy. During the first year of the pandemic, vaccines were scarce, hospitals were beyond capacity, over one million businesses collapsed, and immigration to the United States rose sharply. Today, fewer Mexicans have public health-care coverage than at any point over the last 20 years, and the education system lies in shambles as a result of government disinvestment and mismanagement. A study carried out by the School of Governance at the Monterrey Institute of Technology reports that since the pandemic began in 2020, over one million children abandoned school, and there was a historic reduction of enrollment for all grades.
These consequences all flow from López Obrador’s style of governing. He has formulated ineffective policies using questionable assumptions, such as his belief that the most indebted state oil company in the world—Pemex—can recover past levels of production and help the economy grow, instead of dragging it down. He has developed a personalistic method of carrying out policies, one that is prone to clientelism, including the distribution of cash to the poor, and based on an unreliable, politically motivated census developed by his party. And he has terminated initiatives in a haphazard and seemingly arbitrary way, for example, eliminating government-run trusts for science, technology, and educational evaluation. Arguing that a slew of government-run programs were corrupt, including childcare facilities, women’s shelters, and environmental institutes, he proceeded to shut them down by decree and without evidence of malfeasance.
López Obrador’s personalistic style of governing is a form of democratic backsliding.
López Obrador’s government claims to embody progressive values, but it contradicts them at every turn. It refuses to tax the rich, to prioritize the fight against climate change, and to support activists who decry the country’s growing number of femicides. An average of 11 women are killed every day in Mexico, in what the UN calls a “femicide pandemic,” but the government has cut funding for public shelters for the victims of gender-related violence. López Obrador promises to “put the poor first,” but his government’s budgetary allocations belie that assertion. He has done away with a broad swath of social safety nets, leaving the dispossessed in a more dire situation than when he assumed office. The 2021 National Poll on Health and Nutrition shows that as a result of cuts to the public health system—and the dismantling of prior national health coverage such as Seguro Popular, or Popular Insurance—the poorest segments of the population spend a greater percentage of their income on health care than they did under previous governments, and 66 percent of the uninsured have been forced to seek private care.
López Obrador champions direct cash transfers to the poor, but new social programs have been plagued by financial irregularities, charges of corruption, and wasted resources. The Federal Auditing Commission has documented these failings in two of the most touted government initiatives: “Planting Life,” in which beneficiaries burned down trees in order to receive public funds to plant new ones, and “Young Building the Future,” in which funds were disbursed to nonexistent companies that hired nonexistent workers.
Meanwhile, federal budget cuts are starving institutions that have been fundamental to the construction of level-playing-field capitalism, such as the Competition Commission and the Federal Telecommunications Institute. Funding has also been slashed for independent bodies that have been particularly important to Mexico’s path to democracy, including the National Electoral Institute, the Federal Transparency Institute, and the National Human Rights Commission. By flooding these institutions with partisan loyalists and delegitimizing their work by calling them instruments of “the conservative, hypocritical elite,” López Obrador is harming their ability to carry out their roles as checks and balances on the government. Positioning himself as the sole representative of “the will of the people,” López Obrador is rigorously adhering to the authoritarian populist playbook.
His actions have damaged not only Mexico’s democracy but also its economy. Domestic and foreign investment have dwindled as the government botched its response to the pandemic; rolled back reforms that had helped boost growth, such as investment in renewable energy; and created regulatory uncertainty, thanks to the president’s adversarial attitude toward the parts of the private sector that do not comply with his clientelistic system. Between 2019 and 2021, when bad economic conditions worsened with the COVID-19 crisis, Mexico’s GDP shrank more than that of any other Latin American country. And the prospects for a recovery are dim, given global inflation and investor distrust in López Obrador’s economic leadership.
For years, López Obrador decried what he called “the mafia in power” and railed against greedy oligarchs and their accomplices operating within the structure of the state. But instead of tackling social inequality at its source by strengthening the state’s capacity to promote growth and more fairly redistribute its gains, López Obrador has simply reproduced the crony-capitalist model that defined the Mexican economy since the PRI seized control in 1929. His government has maintained and developed strategic alliances with some of the wealthiest members of Mexico’s business community, earning the praise and support of influential figures such as the telecommunication magnates Carlos Slim and Ricardo Salinas Pliego. Both have been the beneficiaries of discretionary government contracts in the banking, telecommunications, and construction sectors. By revising the Mexican tradition of mixing state capitalism and oligarchy, López Obrador and his party are emulating the PRI’s vision of governance as a system for distributing the spoils.
MILITARIZING MEXICO
First as an opposition leader and later in his 2018 presidential campaign, López Obrador decried the government’s growing use of the Mexican military to combat drug trafficking and cartel-related violence, a practice that began in the 1990s and escalated under López Obrador’s two immediate predecessors, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. One of López Obrador’s most popular campaign slogans was abrazos, no balazos (hugs, not bullets), and he promised to return the armed forces to the barracks. He garnered significant support among left-wing and progressive voters precisely because he vowed to redesign the failed security strategy that Calderón and Peña Nieto pursued. Both previous presidents had given the armed forces expansive powers, which led to an explosion in human rights violations but no significant reduction in homicides or other types of crime. López Obrador vowed to address the root causes of violence by channeling more public resources to the poor and keeping the military off the streets.
But in a surprising about-face, shortly after assuming office, López Obrador started to backtrack on his vow to demilitarize the country. Pressured by prominent generals who viewed his stance as unrealistic, López Obrador argued that because the police force was corrupt and inefficient, the army would have to maintain and even broaden its role. He pushed through a constitutional reform in 2019 that established a new militarized force called the National Guard that was to take over public security for five years. But from the start, López Obrador undermined what was supposed to be civilian control and oversight by naming Luis Rodríguez Bucio, a recently retired general, as head of the new body and staffing it largely with active members of the armed forces.
Instead of reining in Mexico’s army, López Obrador has unleashed it. Over the past three years, the armed forces have taken on unparalleled political and economic roles. The military is now operating outside civilian control, in open defiance of the Mexican constitution, which states that the military cannot be in charge of public security. As a result of presidential decrees, the military has become omnipresent: building airports, running the country’s ports, controlling customs, distributing money to the poor, implementing social programs, and detaining immigrants. According to the National Militarization Index created by the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, a research institute based in Mexico City, during the past decade, the military has gradually taken over 246 activities that used to be in the hands of civilians. The armed forces have been allocated larger and larger amounts of federal money, and many projects under their control have been reclassified as “matters of public security,” thus removing them from public scrutiny under Mexico’s National Transparency Law. Admittedly, López Obrador inherited armed forces that were increasingly given roles traditionally carried out by the police. But he has made things far worse by eliminating any semblance of civilian oversight or accountability. He has placed the National Guard under the direct control of the defense ministry, doing away with even the pretense of civilian control.
As he tries to win the loyalty of the military, López Obrador has ignored its history of acting with impunity and violating human rights. He parades with generals at his side and invites them to his morning press conference. At most public events, he surrounds himself with top brass, referring to them as el pueblo bueno (the good people) and claiming that they are incorruptible. But the history of the Mexican military is stained by its complicity with drug traffickers and criminals, beginning with the 1997 arrest of General Gutiérrez Rebollo, who was convicted of working with one of Mexico’s top drug lords. The Zetas, one of the most savage criminal groups in Mexico, was originally made up of members of the military who moved into the drug trade and conducted lucrative criminal operations. And in 2020, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles detained General Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s former minister of defense, and the U.S. government charged him with drug trafficking. In a reversal that remains unexplained, Washington later returned him to Mexico after negotiations between the Mexican government and the Trump administration’s attorney general, William Barr. Upon his arrival, Cienfuegos was rapidly exonerated by Mexican authorities, and two of his top collaborators remain in key military positions, including Luis Crescencio Sandoval, head of the ministry of defense.
The armed forces were also involved in the disappearance of 43 students in the town of Ayotzinapa in 2014, when the young men were kidnapped by local police and their allies in the drug trafficking trade in the region. Criminal gangs who pursued and ultimately killed the students were aided by members of the army’s 27th Battalion, including a general who was indicted in September 2022.
López Obrador is unwilling to limit the armed forces because he is governing with them, out of distrust for the civilian institutions of the state. He doesn’t believe that the country’s civil bureaucracy will be unconditionally loyal to him; the military, on the other hand, he says, is “fundamental and strategic” to his transformative project, and that may assure its longevity beyond his six years in office. He is also trying to carry out massive public works projects to cement his legacy, and the military provides an attractive option for getting things done quickly. López Obrador frequently refers to a supposed coup d’état that right-wing conspirators are allegedly preparing against him. He has clearly decided that a way of preventing that outcome is to have some of his most powerful potential enemies—including those in the military—inside the tent pissing out, instead of outside the tent pissing in.
The militarization of Mexican politics will be López Obrador’s most enduring and consequential policy decision. Future governments will be forced to either respect the enlarged power of the military or risk confronting it. Meanwhile, militarization is not producing the results López Obrador promised. According to the U.S. military, drug cartels have expanded their territory and now control a third of Mexico. Violence continues in many parts of the country, with over 100,000 people becoming the victims of forced disappearances since 2007, when the military was assigned to wage the “war on drugs.” Organized crime has access to increasingly lethal weaponry such as rocket-propelled grenades, and attacks on civilians in cities are now everyday occurrences. López Obrador’s term in office is on track to become the most violent in Mexico’s recent history.
DISMANTLING DEMOCRACY
Since Mexico’s democratic transition in 2000, the emphasis among reformers has been on building institutions that would assure accountability, transparency, and autonomy from the president and the ruling party. It was also important that opposition candidates have an equal chance in elections. López Obrador seems intent on undermining these objectives and erasing the country’s hard-won (albeit incomplete) democratic gains.
Despite its many flaws, Mexico’s electoral democracy had established basic rules for electoral competition that were largely respected. Fundamental to this system was the National Electoral Institute (INE), which is in charge of guaranteeing free and fair elections. For more than three decades, political scientists have viewed the INE, and its predecessor, the Federal Electoral Institute, as the jewel in the crown of Mexico’s democratic transition. Yet since arriving in office, López Obrador has taken aim at it. He associates it with the contentious election of 2006, in which he believes fraud prevented what should have been a victory for him, and the electoral authorities carried out only a partial recount of the vote. His stated goal is to replace the INE with a new entity overseen by his party, thus propelling the political system back to the era of PRI rule, when the party in power controlled every aspect of the electoral process.
López Obrador’s constant verbal attacks on the INE and substantial cuts to its budget have been accompanied by his frequent use of referendums and consultas populares (popular consultations) intended to establish what he calls a “true democracy.” Whenever the president feels that his agenda is being stalled by constitutional limitations, he establishes a mechanism for obtaining popular support for decisions that would otherwise be stopped by the courts. In 2019 he promoted a “popular consultation” to see whether the people supported the construction of the new Maya train line, the Dos Bocas oil refinery, and other large-scale public works, but his party did not install enough voting booths countrywide to assure the level of participation required by constitutional rules for the consultation process. Nonetheless, López Obrador used the “yes” vote to validate the advancement of his projects, even though they failed to comply with legal requirements such as conducting environmental impact studies. In addition, states governed by Morena had more voting booths than others did, thus skewing the result in favor of the president.
The implications are worrisome: if a badly organized instrument of direct democracy supports López Obrador’s views, he embraces it, even if that entails bending the law to his bidding. He publicly pressures and threatens judges and ministers of the Supreme Court when they attempt to place legal obstacles in his path, including their refusal to support his punitive policy of automatic prison without bail for petty crimes. Alejandro Gertz Manero, the pliant attorney general, has also come to López Obrador’s aid when the president wants his opponents jailed or indicted, as was the case with Jorge Luis Lavalle, a congressman who was put behind bars, without evidence, for allegedly taking bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company.
An average of 11 women are killed every day in Mexico.
This bullying and manipulation of the legal system makes it nearly impossible for opposition parties to sap support for López Obrador. Plus, they are burdened by a history of bad governance and corruption while in office and remain weak, divided, and leaderless. Although the opposition was able to wrest voter support away from Morena in Mexico City during elections in 2021, the party made significant electoral inroads at the state level and now controls 21 out of 32 governorships. According to the most recent public opinion polls, it is poised to win the presidency again in 2024. Because López Obrador is constitutionally limited to only one term in office, he will use the resources of the state to assure victory for a candidate he selects himself. Just like the PRI presidents of the past, López Obrador will choose a successor who will remain true to his vision, even if it means abandoning basic democratic principles.
The only true thorn in López Obrador’s side are Mexico’s feminists, a singular political movement that he does not seem to understand, cannot control, and has not been able to suppress. Women in Mexico are angry, and rightly so, given the tide of femicide sweeping the country. Women’s long-standing frustration with the government’s lack of response to the murders has been intensified by a president who seems impervious to and disdainful of their demands. Despite keeping his promise to establish gender parity in his cabinet, López Obrador has instituted policies and economic austerity that have been harmful to women. His government has closed publicly subsidized daycare centers, eliminated shelters for victims of domestic violence, defunded the National Women’s Institute, and cut many national programs that protect women, especially those in indigenous communities. Today, Mexican feminists are more energized and more combative than ever, while they seek to reframe the public debate in favor of their rights and against increased militarization. Throughout his term, women’s marches and public protests have been constant and have drawn enormous crowds. When they occur, López Obrador erects steel barriers around the presidential palace, a defensive measure no past president has ever resorted to. In the polls, support for the president among women has been falling because of his budget cuts, his repeated public attacks on feminism, and his tendency to tear-gas the protesters when they march.
PUSHING FOR MEXIT?
As part of his strategy to govern through fear and division, López Obrador has chosen to pursue an openly anti-American stance. In contrast with the conciliatory, even friendly posture that he assumed toward U.S. President Donald Trump, López Obrador has picked public fights with President Joe Biden on many issues, the most important being energy policy. López Obrador has pushed through a series of laws that discriminate against energy production by foreign companies and U.S.-generated energy in favor of state-owned oil and gas companies, such as Pemex and Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). U.S. and Canadian enterprises have assumed increasingly critical public stances, arguing that Mexico is violating commitments it made in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020.
To resolve the spat, the Biden administration pursued quiet diplomacy. John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, has visited Mexico several times over the last two years, while other senior U.S. officials expressed concern, hoping that behind-the-scenes pressure might lead López Obrador to reconsider his position and strike down measures that give electricity produced by the CFE an unfair edge over energy from private companies and cleaner sources such as wind and solar. The usual tools of diplomacy, however, proved of little use, as López Obrador dug in and began to escalate his attacks on the United States, frequently asserting that Mexico is “not a colony,” decrying American “interventionism” in his country’s internal affairs, calling Mexican defenders of free trade “treasonous,” and proclaiming that the USMCA violated Mexico’s sovereignty. To fire up his base, López Obrador has turned a trade dispute into a political battle.
Biden’s patience finally wore out, and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced in July that the administration would begin a process of dispute settlement consultations, a first step in what could lead to tariffs on a wide range of Mexican products. The Canadian government soon followed suit, challenging López Obrador’s effort to establish government control over the country’s oil and electricity sector and backtrack on the liberalization of the energy sector that the trade agreement established. If Mexico refuses to relent, and if the arbitration panel finds it to be in violation of the USMCA, the country could face severe financial penalties and compensatory tariffs. Even though Biden still depends on Mexico’s assistance with immigration and security issues, he seems to have decided it is time to stop an emboldened López Obrador. Although López Obrador has not openly threatened to exit the USMCA, his confrontational rhetoric and his unwillingness to reverse his nationalistic energy policies has generated concern in Washington and Ottawa.
Instead of reining in Mexico’s army, López Obrador has unleashed it.
For Mexico, leaving the agreement would be economic and political suicide. Mexico’s inclusion in a free-trade zone with its richer neighbors to the north has turned the country into a manufacturing powerhouse and has functioned as a guarantor of stability by reassuring international investors that the Mexican government would play by the rules. As a result of NAFTA and later the USMCA, investors came to see Mexico not as an unstable Latin American basket case but as a North American player that, in the event of a crisis, had a lender of last resort. When Mexico’s economy collapsed in 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton bypassed Congress to provide a $20 billion loan to help the country recover. Had Mexico not been a NAFTA partner, it would not have received that assistance. And if Mexico withdraws from the USMCA, Washington would be unlikely to rescue Mexico from a similar crisis.
By rejecting the political and economic tenets of the North American neighborhood, López Obrador is reviving views of Mexico as a country subject to pendular macroeconomic policy shifts and presidential whims, which produced crisis after crisis in the 1970s and 1980s. Even if he chooses not to withdraw from the USMCA, his erratic policymaking could lead to further disinvestment, capital flight, and a return to cyclical bouts of economic instability. In 2021, Mexico suffered record capital outflows of over $10 billion, caused by increased risk aversion among investors.
But López Obrador knows that playing the anti-Yankee card can yield political benefits, despite polls showing that a majority of the country supports free trade. With the 2024 presidential elections not far off, he believes that his popularity with an energized political base matters more than the maintenance of a trilateral trade accord. Scoring political points and amassing political capital matters more to him than avoiding a return to what the Mexican poet Octavio Paz once called the country’s “labyrinth of solitude,” where Mexico would once again waste away, brought down by protectionism, nationalism, corruption, crime, and poverty.
PEDESTAL POLITICS
More than a government, López Obrador’s administration is a daily act of political theater. His is a performative presidency that spins a tale of a heroic fight against privileged elites, perverted feminists, and corrupt experts, all conspiring against the public. He claims that he alone represents the will of the pure, true people. His rhetoric is simple: he seeks a seismic shift, not a mere course correction. He isn’t interested in renovating; he wants to burn down the house. López Obrador believes that he embodies a moral revolution, unconstrained by the imperatives of democracy or the niceties of constitutional rule.
The core goal of López Obrador’s presidency is the maintenance of personal popularity to assure that his party remains in power. His government is therefore uninterested in the material consequences of its policies and actions. It doesn’t matter whether the critics think the performance is any good; all that matters is that the audience keeps applauding. As a political strategy, it has worked so far: recent polls show that over 60 percent of Mexicans approve of López Obrador personally, regardless of the well-documented and easily observable adverse effects his rule has had on the economy, on crime, and on democratic consolidation.
His continued popularity does not bode well for Mexico’s future. Stepped-up military involvement in domestic affairs is a threat to democracy and human rights. López Obrador’s assault on the state will destroy or degrade the democratic institutions that Mexican reformers had managed to build over the last 30 years. His inward-looking policies will inhibit economic recovery and Mexico’s entrance into competitive post-pandemic global markets. Crony capitalism will perpetuate a system based on favors, concessions, and collusion that will favor the powerful and hurt consumers and citizens.
Democracy relies on rules, procedures, and institutions—not a leader endowed with mythical qualities. The cult of personality that the Mexican president has promoted and the polarizing ideas that he has injected into the public sphere have created an “us against them” environment. Mexican politics is increasingly fueled by fear and resentment instead of by debate, deliberation, and fact-based arguments, and public discourse has become unmoored from any sense of what is best for the country. Mexico has a long history of placing its destiny in the hands of an authoritarian president as it lurches from crisis to crisis. Now, López Obrador is taking the country down a familiar path, not to a strong, healthy democracy but to a lawless, corrupt kleptocracy, supported by people who should know better.
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In fighting globalism, the Zapatistas brought the world to Chiapas
Leigh Thelmadatter
Leigh Thelmadatter
December 31, 2022
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EZLN sign in Chiapas, Mexico
When talks with the federal government failed, the EZLN focused on carving out autonomous territory, (Photo: Hajor/Wikimedia Commons)
For those of us 50 and older, it seems like yesterday — the masked, charismatic Subcomandante Marcos taking the world by storm to demand justice for a jungle people threatened by globalization and “the new world order.”
He and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) made their dramatic appearance on January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The treaty had been decried by many, but this armed insurgency cut through all that.
EZLN didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Chiapas has had a long and sometimes violent history of conflict. The Zapatistas, named after the Mexican Revolution general Emiliano Zapata, organized in 1983 after decades of failure to resolve economic, political and cultural issues.
But they remained obscure until they took over seven towns by force, including San Cristóbal de la Casas, making a declaration there that got Mexico’s and the world’s attention.
Subcomandante Marcos
Subcomandante Marcos, with trademark baclava and pipe, was the leader and spokesman for the EZLN. (José Villa at VillaPhotography/Creative Commons)
Actual fighting with federal forces only lasted two weeks.
The Zapatistas had impeccable timing: the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had severely weakened (and would officially fall six years later). And instead of limiting their actions to petitioning the Mexican political system, the EZLN reached out internationally via contacts and the Internet.
To people outside Mexico, it made for a great underdog story. And as word spread, foreign journalists flocked to Chiapas, giving them nearly glowing coverage.
This forced the Mexican government to sign the San Andrés Peace Accords in 1996, but it balked in 2001 when the Zapatistas marched to Mexico City to have it formally put into law. Instead, the congress passed a watered-down version, and the Zapatistas broke all talks with them.
EZLN Comandanta Ramona
The EZLN’s gender egalitarianism and female leaders like Comandanta Ramona attracted much international support. (Photo: Heriberto Rodríguez/Creative Commons)
Instead, they focused on creating an “autonomous zone” with the support of certain areas of Chiapas and the international leftist community. Their success with foreign organizations is somewhat unusual and comes not only because EZLN fights for indigenous rights and against capitalism and globalism, but also because their organization is a mix of traditional and modern sensibilities, which inspired organizers to allow women a more visible role in their movement.
However, it is ironic that an anti-globalism movement would have decades-long ties with foreign organizations. It has been vital to their survival. International organizations provide donations and outlets for selling products like coffee in a way they say provides an alternative to globalism that does not abuse native peoples.
The connection to the world outside Mexico has influenced Zapatista priorities, causing them to adopt stances on issues as varied as gender identity, the Ukraine-Russia conflict, COVID policies, rail lines in Norwegian Sami territory and Mexico’s Maya Train project.
The effectiveness of the autonomous strategy locally is debatable. It has meant developing local solutions for needs such as healthcare and education. However, Chiapas, including Zapatista territory, remains extremely impoverished.
Map of territory claimed by various Zapatista groups
Map of territory claimed by various Zapatista groups. (Graphic: Hxltdq/Creative Commons)
Traditional farming practices are not enough to live on, and migration out to other parts of Mexico and to the United States has been significant in the past couple of decades. Illegal logging, especially in the Lacandon Rainforest, has led to severe environmental degradation, says local activist Eric Eberman of the Colibri-Tz’unun Reserve.
The lack of federal troops has made the zone attractive to both human and drug smugglers.
The irony does not stop with the fact of international contacts.
Subcomandante Marcos might have been the best tourism spokesman the state ever had. While some tourism and foreign residents had been in Chiapas prior to 1994, the news coverage brought the curious and the idealistic, not only to experience the native cultures, but with the hope of engaging someone in a black Zapatista balaclava as well.
San Cristobal de las Casas
Miguel Hidalgo street in present-day San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, full of foreign tourists (Photo: Protoplasmakid/Creative Commons)
For a time, there were so people arriving many that this tourism took on the name zapaturismo. As late as 2009, markets were filled with Zapatista-themed merchandise. At this point, it has all but disappeared.
Zapatourism hasn’t completely disappeared, but it is certainly not a matter of driving up to one of the communities to say hello. Some tourism offices in San Cristóbal might give you information about entering Zapatista territory but will tell you that doing so is at your own risk.
There is some indication that some Zapatistas are becoming more open to the idea of visitors again, such as the community of Oventic; however, I would recommend contacting an organization that works with the Zapatistas to find out what may or may not be possible through their contacts.
The memory of the uprising has faded since the movement mostly shuns the press, but tourism continues to grow in Chiapas, especially in San Cristóbal. In the past 30 years or so, the city has transformed from a small, isolated town to a cosmopolitan center welcoming hundreds of thousands of travelers each year. It also hosts a significant and growing number of foreign residents.
Cafe Rebelde coffee brand
Promotional photograph for coffee advertised in 2017 as “grown on Zapatista lands by Zapatista hands” and distributed worldwide. The brand is still for sale, and distributor Essential Trading Coop says a fraction of sales still go to a nonprofit organizing community projects in the Zapatistas’ autonomous communities.
The tourism has led to a now fairly large community of resident foreigners. Researcher Gustavo Sánchez Espinosa of the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) calls them “lifestyle migrants.”
These are people with incomes in dollars euros, etc., who come to Chiapas looking for some kind of change in their life. They look to live in an exotic locale, but over time, also look for certain amenities from back home — and businesses spring up to accommodate those needs. Mestizo Mexicans call them “neo-hippies;” local indigenous people call them alemantik or gringotik.
The majority of these settle in and around the historic center because of its majestic colonial architecture. But today, this area is now a jumble of the native and the foreign, with streets filled with European-style cafes, organic merchandise stores with streets filled with indigenous women selling handcrafts and other goods, along with people with huge backpacks and neo-hippie clothes and hair. Such residents separate themselves from other migrants, from places like Central America and other parts of Chiapas, attracted to the city for economic reasons.
In a way, the division revives the original purpose of the historic center, which began as a fort, then became an enclave for the colonial Spanish, with the poor and indigenous on the periphery.
It is highly unlikely that Marcos or any of the other leaders imagined that their stand against the outside world would instead bring the world to their doorstep.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
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https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/death-toll-rises-19-prison-attack-mexican-border-town-2023-01-03/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=010323
MEXICO CITY, Jan 2 (Reuters) - An attack on a prison in the Mexican border town of Juarez left 19 dead and allowed a cartel kingpin to escape along with two dozen other prisoners, authorities said Monday.
An armed group, traveling in armored vehicles, launched almost-simultaneous attacks on the prison and the municipal police station, Defense Minister Luis Crescencio Sandoval said in a news conference.
Authorities said the Sunday morning attack had coincided with preparations for New Year's Day visits. They initially said the death toll was at least 14, but by Monday, Sandoval said, this had risen to 19: 10 guards, seven prisoners and two attackers.
The attack allowed 25 inmates, including Ernesto Alfredo Pinon de la Cruz, also known as "El Neto," to escape. Pinon is a top gunman for the Juarez-based "Los Mexicles" cartel, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez said at the news conference.
Federal authorities were called in to contain the unrest. They later found a "VIP zone" in the state-run prison with drugs and money, said Rodriguez, who slammed the Chihuahua state administration.
"That's the state's responsibility, because federal authorities can't intervene in these places," Rodriguez said.
She added that state authorities had not requested that any dangerous prisoners, such as "El Neto," be transferred from the overcrowded prison to a higher-security location.
State prosecutor Roberto Javier Duarte said in a separate news conference on Monday that state authorities would "completely clean out the penitentiary system" in response to the attack and that those guilty of corruption would be prosecuted.
Later Monday, Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez said in a statement that Chihuahua authorities had requested the inexpensive transfer of an undetermined number of prisoners to federal sites.
The incident Sunday resulted in one of the highest death tolls from prison attacks in Mexico in recent years.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/juarez-prison-head-focus-of-probe-manhunt-underway-for-fugitives/?utm_source=MND%20mail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MNT&pnespid=tbR8CScXOKhCxaTR_z7tCoOepQytDod9dLntm_5ttkxmbnE.snSN_jY5PQQi8CBPFVJRsyrF
Ciudad Juárez prison head focus of probe as authorities search for fugitives
The head of Cereso No. 3 prison in Ciudad Juárez, Alejandro Alvarado Téllez, center, is now under investigation for allegedly allowing multiple prohibited items into the prison under his charge. (Photo: State of Chihuahua)
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The director of the Cereso No. 3 prison in Ciudad Juárez was fired on Tuesday, following a prison raid that left 19 people dead and allowed at least 27 prisoners to escape.
According to a statement by the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office, former director Alejandro Alvarado Téllez and several other prison staff members are under investigation for the events leading up to the jailbreak.
Authorities are investigating whether they failed in their duties to maintain security or even allowed prohibited objects to enter the prison.
The raid occurred on the morning of Jan. 1 after gunmen attacked the penal institution, seeking to free a leader of the local Mexicles gang, Ernesto Alfredo Pinon de la Cruz, alias “El Neto.” Nineteen people were killed in the gun battle, including 10 guards. At least 27 prisoners escaped, including the gang leader and his lieutenant.
Prisoners being transferred out of Cereso No. 3 in Juarez, Chihuahua
In the aftermath of the raid, hundreds of prisoners are being transferred out of Cereso No. 3 to other prisons around the country. (Photo: Cuartoscuro)
When federal authorities regained control of the prison, they found that El Neto had been staying in a “VIP zone” within the center, with access to drugs and money.
On Tuesday, the Defense Ministry (Sedena) announced that it had deployed 200 military personnel to Ciudad Juárez to reinforce security. The additional troops will join the hunt for the fugitive prisoners, alongside over 900 members of the army and National Guard already in the city.
At least five criminals who escaped in the breakout have been captured, along with weapons, drugs and cash. Meanwhile, seven people have died in clashes during the manhunt, including two police officers. Five criminals armed with tactical weaponry were killed in a police chase after firing on search units.
In addition, one fugitive was caught on security cameras attempting to cross the United States border into El Paso, Texas.
Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos listening to updates on authorities' attempts to track down fugitive prisoners after a prison break in Juarez
Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos, center, listening to updates on authorities’ attempts to track down fugitive prisoners. (Photo: Gov. of Chihuahua)
“After the sighting, the authorities of El Paso, Texas, were informed with the relevant information, and immediately a joint search operation was implemented on both sides of the border,” the state government said.
191 prisoners from the Cereso have been transferred to other federal prisons around the country. They had been charged with crimes including murder, kidnapping, rape and organized crime activity.
“This operation concluded safely and successfully; with these movements, the state government was supported in guaranteeing the governability of the center after the events of Jan. 1,” read a statement by the Defense Ministry (Sedena).
According to the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office, the transfer of “El Neto” and 179 other prisoners from the Cereso has been under consideration since a previous escape attempt on Aug. 11. The request was on hold pending an analysis of capacity in other centers.
Ernesto Alfredo Piñon de la Cruz, alias “El Neto"
Ernesto Alfredo Piñon de la Cruz, alias “El Neto” lived like a king in Cereso No. 3, authorities say, with access to drugs and money. He’s been involved in organized crime since starting his own gang while still a teen and becoming a regional leader in the Juárez Cartel at age 18. (Photo: social media)
They added that “El Neto,” who has been jailed since 2009, was initially held in another prison but has fought a long legal battle to be transferred and then kept in the Cereso. From the prison, he allegedly coordinated numerous violent attacks by the Mexicles gang, one of the most powerful criminal cells in Ciudad Juárez.
With reports from Animal Político, Reuters and Excelsior
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-el-chapos-son-arrested-blow-sinaloa-cartel?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1160
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/judge-halts-extradition-to-u-s-as-the-legal-fight-over-guzmans-fate-begins/?utm_source=MND%20mail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MNT&pnespid=7eY4DCReK.kU0f_fryntGZ6Tth2rSJFlNevn0eV3tBhmJ5Rbwg.THi0c1fhsnkSgtM9cAq4w
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https://www.americanpartisan.org/2023/01/all-out-war-mexico-deploys-soldiers-heavy-armour-to-fight-sinaloa-cartel-as-gangsters-rampage-after-arrest-of-el-chapos-son/?fbclid=IwAR1hz_J1iEdeLiAa0ZCr_56NegOsYte7Q8MRiQhCIB8oPd4UlO6fVMBwgqo
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/opposition-parties-alliance-2024-presidential-election/?utm_source=MND%20mail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MNT&pnespid=p6ZjVytJNq0e1uiRqTDqSp2I5gK_WMNnI.bkyvIyrQNmq1ByvHBWUUBDZwHJSoNv6Ch4FKI1
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http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2022/12/cjng-only-cartel-to-have-had-its-own.html
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https://www.amazon.com/NOGALES-MEMOIR-COURAGE-SURVIVAL-ESCAPE/dp/0595444539
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February 8, 2023
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Mexico Will Benefit From Washington’s Chip Focus
The U.S. wants to build a North American semiconductor supply chain.
By: Allison Fedirka
The United States is prioritizing the creation of a regional semiconductor production chain to give itself alternatives to Asian firms, especially those with ties to China. Even for the country that invented the semiconductor, this is a massive task. The manufacture of cutting-edge chips is incredibly expensive and complicated, and just a few companies around the world are dominant. If the U.S. is going to succeed in its chips drive, it will need to involve Mexico.
Chip Race
Today, semiconductors are used in everything from consumer goods (computers, cellphones, automobiles, etc.) to military equipment and communication satellites. But despite the ubiquity of chips in modern technology, the manufacturing equipment for more than three-quarters of the global chip supply comes from just five companies. Three of these firms (Applied Materials, Lam Research Corp. and KLA Corp.) are in the United States, and the other two are in U.S. allies: the Netherlands’ ASML and Japan’s Tokyo Electron. ASML holds a monopoly on the machinery needed to make the most advanced semiconductors.
The U.S. is determined to defend and extend this advantage over China. In 2022, Washington passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which allotted $52.7 billion for the research, development and manufacturing of microchips. It also passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which supports the manufacture of electric vehicles and relevant chips in North America. Internationally, the U.S. in late January convinced Japan and the Netherlands to work with it on restricting semiconductor technology sales to China. This builds on a 2019 agreement that banned ASML from exporting its most advanced machinery to China. The latest agreement expands these restrictions, although details have not been released. The U.S. is likely trying to strike a balance between pressuring China and not spurring Beijing to accelerate development of domestic capabilities.
Over time, Washington wants to reduce its own reliance on foreign firms, particularly those tied to China as well as companies like ASML. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, from 1990 to 2021, the U.S. share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity fell to 12 percent from 37 percent. Most of it is now in Asia. The U.S. is now trying to coax chipmakers into moving to North America. Major players like GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung Foundry, TSMC and Texas Instruments are building new semiconductor production facilities in the United States, especially New York, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Washington is mainly focused on the automotive sector, where the U.S. is highly integrated with Canada and Mexico. This sector plays a major role in driving the U.S. and Mexican economies. The three countries agreed to develop a joint chipmaking initiative, including coordinating supply chains and investments. They also want to work together to map critical minerals.
Typical Global Semiconductor Production Pattern
(click to enlarge)
Mexico’s Advantages
About 40 percent of U.S. semiconductor plants are in states along its southern border, a significant opportunity for Mexico. Likewise, many of Mexico’s manufacturing hubs, especially for high-end manufacturing and automobiles, are in northern border states. Mexico’s foreign minister estimates that a quarter or more of imports from Asia could be replaced by North American production, boosted by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.
Nearshoring Opportunities in Latin America
(click to enlarge)
The Mexican government has already begun laying the diplomatic groundwork to support its chip ambitions. At the beginning of the year – prior to the U.S.-Japan-Netherlands agreement – Japan’s foreign minister was in Mexico discussing trade and semiconductors. Later in January, a Dutch delegation along with U.S. officials visited the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California for talks on investment opportunities, with a focus on agro-industry, electric vehicles, semiconductors, supply chains and energy.
Talks are also underway between the Mexican government and the business community. Firms like Intel, Skyworks Solutions, Texas Instruments and Infineon Technologies are already operating in Mexico and working on chip R&D and test manufacturing. Conversations with Taiwanese chipmakers like TSMC are ongoing. Foxconn, the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturer, already established a headquarters in Mexico in order to be closer to clients (mostly in the electronic vehicles sector) in North America. Mexico is also working with the Inter-American Development Bank to identify semiconductor opportunities, and with the National College of Professional Technical Education to produce more skilled workers to serve in chip manufacturing. Finally, Mexican industry and higher education institutions have partnered with Arizona State University to boost the production of semiconductors in North America through training and increased production capacity in northwest border states.
FDI Inflows to Mexico
(click to enlarge)
Some in Mexico hope that Washington’s semiconductor drive will help develop the country's southern region. This would help the government solve one of its biggest challenges, but the initiative is no quick fix. Currently, Mexico’s chip industry is limited to lower-skill roles like assembly, testing and packaging – ideal starting points for the development of more skilled, formal work in Mexico’s underdeveloped south. Moreover, chipmaking uses large amounts of water, which is more plentiful in southern Mexico. But although the south is close to the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec, giving exporters quick access to the Atlantic and Pacific, its transportation (and energy) infrastructure is poor. Existing Mexican industrial complexes, particularly for automobiles, are farther north, in Guadalajara, Nuevo Leon, Baja California, Aguascalientes and Chihuahua. Semiconductor manufacturing will probably stay close to these clusters to leverage existing infrastructure and shorter distances to the United States.
Rules and Rivals
While Mexico is on paper a promising location for chipmakers, there are several challenges it must address to play a major role in the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing chain. First, the U.S. and Mexico are at odds over the government’s management of the electricity sector. A stable and secure electricity supply is critical for chipmaking, but future investments in the Mexican electricity network are in jeopardy because of these disputes, which adds risk for manufacturers. Similarly, U.S. companies have taken issue with Mexico’s labor laws. This recurring point of contention generally occurs at the company or plant level and cannot be ruled out. Foreign firms also want Mexico to alter its regulations and incentives to make itself a better business environment for semiconductor manufacturing.
However, the main threat to U.S.-Mexican cooperation is increasing Chinese investment in Mexico. The U.S. will expect Mexico to restrict Chinese firms from entering the Mexican segments of the North American chip supply chain. This is a major reason Washington wants much closer coordination with Mexico City on strategic goods. It is also why the U.S. is starting with less sophisticated chips used in things like cars rather than high-end products related to defense. The U.S. can leverage its relationships with Japan and South Korea – which already relocated some manufacturing to Mexico – to encourage non-Chinese investment in the country. And of course, the U.S. can threaten to restrict investment, trade, remittances, etc. to its southern neighbor to drive its point home.
None of Mexico’s challenges are insurmountable. And the U.S. interest in becoming self-sufficient in semiconductor production, as well as the importance of the auto industry to the U.S. economy, means the U.S. will be very willing to work with Mexico to find solutions.
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WHAT SAY WE?
The U.S. Must Defeat Mexico’s Drug Cartels
The narco-terrorists are more like ISIS than the American mafia.
By William P. Barr
March 2, 2023 1:04 pm ET
A bus set on fire by cartel gunmen in Culiacán, Mexico, Oct. 17, 2019.
PHOTO: REUTERS
America can no longer tolerate narco-terrorist cartels. Operating from havens in Mexico, their production of deadly drugs on an industrial scale is flooding our country with this poison. The time is long past to deal with this outrage decisively. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) and Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) have proposed a joint resolution giving the president authority to use the U.S. military against these cartels in Mexico. This is a necessary step and puts the focus where it must be.
Overdose deaths every year—more than 100,000—exceed the number of Americans killed in action during the bloodiest year of World War II. But the devastation from drug abuse goes much deeper. A 2017 analysis, accounting for the costs of healthcare, criminal justice, lost productivity and social and family services, estimated that the total cost of America’s drug epidemic was more than $1 trillion annually, or 5% of gross domestic product. Given the explosion in illicit drug deaths since then, this estimate now seems conservative.
Almost all illicit drugs coming into the U.S. are controlled by the Mexican cartels, principally those based in the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco. These paramilitary organizations use bribery and terror tactics to entrench themselves as essentially states within the state, controlling large areas of Mexico. They have become so powerful they can confront the Mexican government with the narcoterrorists’ stark choice: “plata o plomo”—silver or lead. If they can’t buy off officials, they try to cow them with threats of violence.
An antidrug strategy that leaves the drug supply chain untouched will have minimal impact. Real progress requires aggressively attacking the drug supply at its source. The head of the snake is in Mexico, and that is where the main thrust of our efforts must be directed. Experience in the early 1990s proved this, when the U.S. and Colombian governments joined in an all-out attack on the Medellín and Cali cartels inside Colombia, successfully eliminating them. Unfortunately, in the mid-1990s, we pulled back from this kind of extraterritorial engagement.
Mexican cartels have flourished because Mexican administrations haven’t been willing to take them on. The exception was President Felipe Calderón (2006-12) who wanted to go full bore against the cartels, but American priorities were elsewhere at the time. Today, the cartels’ chief enabler is President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO. When he came to power at the end of 2018, he announced the switch to a policy of “hugs, not bullets” and shut down counternarcotics cooperation with the U.S. Under strong pressure from President Trump, he occasionally engaged in a high-profile operation to create the illusion of cooperation, but these were smoke screens. In reality, AMLO is unwilling to take action that would seriously challenge the cartels. He shields them by consistently invoking Mexico’s sovereignty to block the U.S. from taking effective action.
This posture should anger Americans. Under international law, a government has a duty to ensure that lawless groups don’t use its territory to carry out predations against its neighbors. If a government is unwilling or unable to do so, then the country being harmed has the right to take direct action to eliminate the threat, with or without the host country’s approval.
Even if AMLO were willing to move against the cartels, Mexico can’t do the job itself. Its criminal-justice system is dysfunctional: 95% of all violent crimes go unpunished. Pervasive corruption at every level of Mexico’s government makes it almost impossible to mount effective law-enforcement or military operations without the cartels being tipped off in advance. The big cartels have become potent paramilitary forces, with heavily armed mobile units able to stand their ground against the Mexican military.
In October 2019, when Mexican troops went into Sinaloa and arrested El Chapo’s son, they were surrounded by 700 cartel paramilitary fighters with armored cars, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, and the military was forced to release its prisoner. This past January, it repeated the operation with 4,000 troops, supported by aircraft. As a former Mexican security official complained, the military simply withdrew after capturing El Chapo’s son, leaving the cartel army intact and free to rampage around the state.
What will it take to defeat the Mexican cartels? First, a far more aggressive American effort inside Mexico than ever before, including a significant U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence presence, as well as select military capabilities. Optimally, the Mexican government will support and participate in this effort, and it is likely to do so once they understand that the U.S. is committed to do whatever is necessary to cripple the cartels, whether or not the Mexican government participates.
Second, the danger cartels pose to the U.S. requires that we confront them primarily as national-security threats, not a law-enforcement matter. These narco-terrorist groups are more like ISIS than like the American mafia. Case-by-case prosecution of individuals can be a part of an overall effort, but the only way to defeat them is to use every tool at our disposal inside Mexico. Merely designating the cartels as terrorist groups will do nothing by itself. The real question is whether we are willing to go after them as we would a terrorist group.
The goal isn’t a perfect Mexico. Our objective must be to degrade the cartels to the point that Mexican governments can muster the will and the wherewithal to keep them in check. We can’t get caught in the trap of “nation building.” Attempts to reform Mexico’s institutions and surmount its pervasive corruption will get nowhere as long as cartels hold the dominance they do.
The cartels have Mexico in a python-like stranglehold. American leadership is needed to help Mexico break free. We can’t accept a failed narco-state on our border, providing sanctuary to narco-terrorist groups preying on the American people.
Mr. Barr is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of the memoir “One Damn Thing After Another.” He served as U.S. attorney general, 1991-93 and 2019-20.
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My first thought is that Barr's proposal is really stupid. He would have us "plow the sea" and war with a goodly portion of the Mexican population that economically benefits from the profit bonanza.
Solution is simple: ENFORCE OUR BORDER!!!
I would also note the failure to note or deal with the origin of the ingredients and/or the fentanyl itself in China.
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The Narco Threat to Mexican Democracy
AMLO’s attack on the country’s electoral authority is a political gift to the cartels.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady hedcutBy Mary Anastasia O’GradyFollow
March 5, 2023 2:27 pm ET
Political-party officials carted off by armed men in pickup trucks; candidates made to withdraw from election races under death threats; citizens denied the secrecy of the voting booth; gun-toting thugs stuffing ballot boxes; a severed head, with open eyes, rolled into a polling station on voting day.
These are a few of the acts of terrorism allegedly perpetrated by Mexican cartels before, during and after the June 6, 2021, local and federal elections in seven Mexican states. The crimes are described in a 53-page report put together with the support of a coalition of three opposition political parties—the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the National Action Party and the Democratic Revolutionary Party.
The report, whose claims are based on local news stories and first-person testimony, hasn’t been released to the public. In the version I have seen, the author and witnesses aren’t named—for their protection. But in August 2021 the document was hand-delivered to the Organization of American States in Washington and reported in the Mexican press.
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The report describes coercion, intimidation, terror and even murder to ensure election outcomes favored by one cartel or another. Eighteen months after the report’s release, it remains highly relevant.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party have spent the past four years trying to eliminate institutional checks on executive power. They’ve been only partially successful, and with Mr. López Obrador’s one-term limit up in December 2024, time is running out.
That’s the good news. But even after AMLO, as the president is known, leaves office, he’s likely to remain the Morena party boss. If Morena’s as-yet-unnamed candidate wins the July 2024 presidential election and the party retains at least a plurality in Congress, Mr. López Obrador’s influence on the national agenda can be expected to remain significant.
AMLO’s presidential tenure, which began in December 2018, has been characterized by vengeance toward anyone who gets in his way, politically speaking. This includes the country’s electoral institute. Mr. López Obrador blames the institute, known by its initials as the INE, for his defeat at the polls in 2006. He seems to view it as a future threat.
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Thanks to the makeup of Mexico’s Congress, Morena has the ability to politicize the INE by naming new members to the board. But the party also recently passed a package of legislation that sharply curtails the INE’s ability to do its job. On Feb. 26 hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the nation’s streets to protest the reforms. Unmoved, AMLO signed them into law on Thursday. Supreme Court challenges to follow.
The trouble for AMLO is that the INE is one of Mexico’s most respected institutions. Assigned to supervise campaigns, voter registration and election day, it’s credited with helping the country move from a one-party autocracy that lasted seven decades to a young democracy.
The INE isn’t a law-enforcement body. But by increasing the sense among citizens that elections are an important civic exercise, it has the ability to raise turnout. Ordinary Mexicans have engaged in the democratic process as the INE has mapped population centers, set up convenient nongovernment voting locations, and recruited and trained poll workers. Mexico needs more grass-roots electoral participation, not less, if it hopes to dilute the power of the cartels.
It’s difficult to air the facts around political violence fully. Speaking out is dangerous. But voter, candidate and observer suppression at the point of a gun, in certain pockets of the country, is no secret. Cartels need to control turf and uncooperative officials raise their costs. Over six decades of the U.S. “war on drugs,” thousands of Mexican judges, police, prosecutors, politicians and military have died trying to stop narcos from meeting American demand for illegal opioids.
Lethal synthetic drugs are increasingly woven into counterfeit prescription pills, “candies,” heroin and cocaine. Consumers looking for a temporary high from something they think isn’t going to cause lasting harm are being poisoned in huge numbers, causing untold heartbreak for tens of thousands of families.
This is angering Americans, but organized crime is no picnic for Mexicans either. The cartels pull down billions every year from the narco industry, extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking. They use the money to buy weapons, technology and vehicles and to bribe officials—on both sides of the border.
Mexico isn’t a failed state. But things can always get worse, and they will if cartels gain political power. The signs aren’t good: On a trip to Sinaloa in 2020, Mr. López Obrador went out of his way to greet the mother of the notorious drug lord Joaquín Guzmán. On June 7, 2021, at a press conference the day after elections, AMLO said that criminal groups had behaved well. Now he wants to slay the electoral watchdog, which may be one of the last lines of defense against a narco-state.
Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcSveAyWBVk
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3geNfcn85g
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Some thoughts on the recent noise, started by AG Barr and echoed by many others about going military in Mexico blah blah.
Profoundly foolish IMHO.
Note the Zeihan 2 above wherein he makes the point about Sinaloa and others being BUSINESSES with an attitude of "don't shit where you eat", thus enabling them to integrate into the local fabric. Witness the "apology" and turning over those responsible for the attack on the four black Americans in Matamoros.
Our military would have no fg idea at whom to shoot, and would be disrupting lots of business "understandings". When blended with the STRONG traditional Mexican hostility to American interventions, the result would be chaos.
Note too Zeihan's comment about NG Jalisco going full Chicago in Phoenix and elsewhere. Few people realize just how deeply we ALREADY are penetrated, nor of the quasi-military capabilities of the Cartels.
My understanding is that the Cartels now make more money on human trafficking/the illegal alien trade than on drugs. The first order of business must be to fg fully seize control of our border and shut down the illegal alien trade. Invading Mexico simply not necessary or wise.
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Some thoughts on the recent noise, started by AG Barr and echoed by many others about going military in Mexico blah blah.
Profoundly foolish IMHO.
Note the Zeihan 2 above wherein he makes the point about Sinaloa and others being BUSINESSES with an attitude of "don't shit where you eat", thus enabling them to integrate into the local fabric. Witness the "apology" and turning over those responsible for the attack on the four black Americans in Matamoros.
Our military would have no fg idea at whom to shoot, and would be disrupting lots of business "understandings". When blended with the STRONG traditional Mexican hostility to American interventions, the result would be chaos.
Note too Zeihan's comment about NG Jalisco going full Chicago in Phoenix and elsewhere. Few people realize just how deeply we ALREADY are penetrated, nor of the quasi-military capabilities of the Cartels.
My understanding is that the Cartels now make more money on human trafficking/the illegal alien trade than on drugs. The first order of business must be to fg fully seize control of our border and shut down the illegal alien trade. Invading Mexico simply not necessary or wise.
Where are our top Libertarian thinkers advocating that we legalize human trafficking to deprive the cartels of money?
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Silenced by the bitch slap of reality.
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Mexico and the cartels are the enemy of the American people, as is Deep State Barr.
Some thoughts on the recent noise, started by AG Barr and echoed by many others about going military in Mexico blah blah.
Profoundly foolish IMHO.
Note the Zeihan 2 above wherein he makes the point about Sinaloa and others being BUSINESSES with an attitude of "don't shit where you eat", thus enabling them to integrate into the local fabric. Witness the "apology" and turning over those responsible for the attack on the four black Americans in Matamoros.
Our military would have no fg idea at whom to shoot, and would be disrupting lots of business "understandings". When blended with the STRONG traditional Mexican hostility to American interventions, the result would be chaos.
Note too Zeihan's comment about NG Jalisco going full Chicago in Phoenix and elsewhere. Few people realize just how deeply we ALREADY are penetrated, nor of the quasi-military capabilities of the Cartels.
My understanding is that the Cartels now make more money on human trafficking/the illegal alien trade than on drugs. The first order of business must be to fg fully seize control of our border and shut down the illegal alien trade. Invading Mexico simply not necessary or wise.
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Mexico Can Get Worse
By JOHN FUND
March 7, 2023 12:23 PM
Its election-integrity agency is in danger.
No one denies that our southern neighbor Mexico is plagued by drug cartels that pump fentanyl across our border, cronyism that smothers economic growth, and rampant corruption.
But one thing Mexico can be proud of is its National Electoral Institute (INE), an independent, nonpartisan but government-funded organization. It was formed in the 1990s as disgust with the country’s authoritarian rule and the accompanying voter fraud became so pervasive that reforms were implemented. Mexico’s transition from one-party rule to the peaceful transfer of power to an opposition party in 2000 was enabled in large part by the trust people had in the INE.
But Mexico’s term-limited president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is trying to neuter the INE so he can ensure that a loyal sycophant will succeed him when he leaves office next year. His plan would slash the INE’s budget and limit its supervisory powers. Some 85 percent of its staff would have to be let go.
That could have catastrophic effects on whether a future election result stands. INE official Ciro Murayama told the Atlantic magazine that “the law establishes that if 20 percent of the polling stations in one election are not installed, that election should be annulled. It never happened in our history.” A lack of staffing could lead to such an annulment for the first time in over 100 years.
López Obrador is deadly serious about steamrolling his plan into law. He has nursed a grudge against INE ever since it presided over his narrow loss in the 2006 presidential election. The Mexican Senate voted 72 to 50 last month to curb the INE, prompting opponents of the bill to challenge it in the Supreme Court.
Mexicans are outraged, with more than 500,000 people jamming the streets of Mexico City in February to protest. López Obrador, a leftist demagogue, accused protest leaders of having “been part of the corruption in Mexico, they have belonged to the narco-state.”
Ironically, López Obrador has also descended to gaslighting his fellow citizens by declaring that the highly respected INE has ignored “the stuffing of ballot boxes, falsification of election records, and vote buying.”
“Let them go cheat somewhere else, they just want to keep stealing votes,” he said.
In reality, Mexico has an election system that is far more secure than ours. To obtain voter credentials in Mexico, a citizen must present a photo, write a legible signature, and give a thumbprint. To guard against tampering, the voter card includes a picture with a hologram covering it, a magnetic strip, and a serial number. In the United States, at a time of heightened security and rules that require citizens to show identification to travel or enter a building, states representing half of the country’s population don’t require any form of documentation in order to vote.
It’s encouraging that liberal groups such as the Brennan Center, which never met a voter-identification law it could support, have come to the defense of the INE’s anti-fraud and honest-election mission. A strong critic of the often-preposterous election claims of Donald Trump, it nonetheless noted that “the attack by a leftist president on Mexico’s independent electoral body is a reminder that resurgent authoritarianism can come from both the right and the left.”
Others on the left have fallen into a party line. The U.S. socialist magazine Jacobin called criticism that López Obrador is undermining democracy “a baseless charge.” The INE “is widely recognized to be riddled with excess expenditure and a top-heavy bureaucracy,” it added. “The new law simply mandates similar cost-saving measures to those that the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has applied to other governmental departments.”
Cleta Mitchell, a legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute in Washington, says Mexico’s struggle mirrors the one that blocked President Biden’s plan to effectively nationalize U.S. elections. Biden’s plan almost became law in 2021 but was blocked by renegade Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
“In the 1990s, Mexico had a set of laws enacted by one party to ensure their continued rule,” Mitchell told me. “That’s what I think about whenever I hear about another one of our blue states enacting laws to protect their power permanently. It is nothing short of tyrannical. And it is happening all across our country today.
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/mexicos-socialist-president-lopez-obrador-threatens-to-interfere-in-american-elections-announces-plan-to-ensure-not-one-vote-goes-to-republicans/
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sound like he is working for the cartels ! :wink:
you won't see any Mexico - Biden/Democrat election interference discussed in detail on the beady eyed Vanderbilt's Democrat propaganda show. (well there might be quick mention but the countered with a well placed Democrat operative who will then immediately discount it - so white hair can say he did mention it and claim he is a real journalist and be able to move on with Democrat talking points.
I watched part of his "town hall" on fetanyl
The part I did see , the name Biden never came up and a bunch of people pretending the open border has zero to do with it.
all drugs flown floated here and sent in by Fedex. :roll:
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/03/20/invading-mexico-is-yet-another-terrible-idea-n2620857
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What the Matamoros Kidnapping Says About the State of Cartel Violence in Mexico
undefined and Latin America Analyst at RANE
Carmen Colosi
Latin America Analyst at RANE, Stratfor
undefined and Global Security analyst with RANE
Caroline Hammer
Global Security analyst with RANE, Stratfor
12 MIN READMar 21, 2023 | 21:21 GMT
The recent armed attack on four U.S. citizens in the Mexican border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, illustrated well-documented security risks in Mexico's many crime hotspots, where gang and cartel violence disrupts daily life and hinders business operations. But while the demonstrated risks are nothing new, much about the incident was out of the ordinary, including the abnormal targeting of American civilians, the subsequent calls by U.S. Republicans for military intervention, and the cartel's highly out-of-character note apologizing for the whole affair. The oddities of the incident and the response to it by the cartel, as well as the Mexican and U.S. governments, confirm and expand on long-standing security, political and logistical risks from organized crime in Mexico.
The Attack
On Friday, March 3, the four American citizens entered Matamoros from Brownsville, Texas, in order to receive cosmetic surgery. A few hours after crossing the border, armed gunmen in trucks shot at their vehicle while they drove through the city, leading to a crash, after which the gunmen forced them out of their vehicle and into one of their trucks. During the incident, a stray bullet killed a Mexican woman at the scene of the initial attack. In a video of the attack that subsequently circulated on social media, three of the Americans appeared unconscious. Over the next few days, word of the kidnapping spread in U.S. media and the FBI announced a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims. Mexican authorities discovered two of the victims alive and two dead on March 7 in a cabin southeast of Matamoros. On March 8, the Mexican government deployed 200 members of the army and 100 members of the National Guard to Matamoros to strengthen security in the border region. Based on the location of the incident, it was clear that the Gulf Cartel — once one of Mexico's most powerful criminal groups — was likely behind the attack. This appeared to be confirmed on March 9, when five men were left beaten and tied up in the street, along with a narco banner apologizing for the attacks signed ''the Scorpions,'' a faction of the Gulf Cartel. The banner claimed the men were the perpetrators of the attack and that the attack was a mistake ''caused by lack of discipline.''
The Cartel's Response
Mexican cartels are widely understood to not want to target U.S. citizens or tourists from other countries, except in circumstances where they're involved in drug trafficking. While the response to the murder or kidnapping of Mexican citizens or migrants from poor countries would barely make national Mexican news, security risks to Americans (and other, usually Western, foreigners) create an outsized backlash that cartels view as simply bad for business and thus not worth it. This was acutely demonstrated by the response to the Matamoros attack and kidnapping; the level of media coverage, the FBI reward and the hundreds of newly-deployed Mexican troops all make cartel operations more difficult and threaten their ability to make money.
The Gulf Cartel faction's apology note — an uncharacteristic action for a group with a penchant for extreme violence — also demonstrates the Scorpions leaders' immediate recognition that their people made a mistake. Criminal groups elsewhere in Mexico have similarly learned this lesson, with massive security deployments to Baja California Sur state in 2017 and Quintana Roo state in 2021 and 2022 following violence in tourist areas that killed and injured foreigners. Cartels know the Mexican government will devote ample resources to ensure the safety of foreigners and particularly tourists, and they'd prefer to avoid such encroachment into their territory.
Intentions aside, the attack and murder of two Americans in Matamoros was not the first incident that illustrates that mistakes can and do occur. In January 2020, gunmen likely belonging to the Northeast Cartel in Ciudad Mier, another border town in the Tamaulipas state, attacked an American family and killed their 13-year-old child. The attack may have occurred because the perpetrators believed the family's SUV resembled the SUVs used by rival cartels. Mexican cartels vary in size and structure, but while all are hierarchical, they tend to also be decentralized, providing lower-ranking members the leeway to launch rash attacks to gain their leadership's approval, in retaliation for violence by rivals, or for personal financial gain. When cartel attacks on foreign tourists do occur, they are most likely cases of mistaken identity in which cartels think the victims belong to a rival cartel, making such incidents far more likely in areas experiencing intense inter-cartel territorial struggles (Tamaulipas among them).
The Matamoros attack additionally shows how U.S. citizens and other foreigners who look like they may be locals or migrants may be at greater risk. Matamoros, like other Mexican cities and towns located near U.S. border crossings, has seen its population of migrants from other parts of the Americas surge over the last decade. In recent years, people escaping the poor security and economic conditions in Haiti have made up an increasing portion of Matamoros' migrant community. In February, NGOs estimated a total of 1,000 Haitian migrants were in Matamoros. Cartels and smaller local gangs commonly target migrants for kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, or to recruit (and sometimes outright force) them into their criminal enterprises, including drug trafficking.
The four Americans who were targeted in the recent attack were Black and it is possible the cartel members racially profiled them, believing they were migrants or Haitian traffickers encroaching on the Scorpion's territory (as Mexican and U.S. authorities reportedly theorized). The possibility that the gunmen racially profiled the Americans prior to the attack has already fueled fear among the city's migrants, leading 100 Haitian asylum-seekers to flee one of Matamoros' camps following the attack. Hispanic and Latino U.S. citizens have long faced similar risks in Mexico, and the Matamoros attack demonstrates that Black tourists and business travelers may be similarly at greater risk of a mistaken identity attack in Mexico's high-violence regions, especially those with large Haitian migrant populations.
The Mexican Government's Response
The Mexican government's quick reaction to the kidnapping illustrates the trend of Mexican authorities conducting a highly public and elevated security response when U.S. citizens or other tourists are victims of violent crime, given the importance of tourism to the Mexican economy. Tourism accounted for just over 7% of Mexico's total GDP in 2021 as the country attracted over 31 million visitors that year. The Mexican government will likely continue to prioritize sending security forces to areas where tourism serves as the lifeblood of the local economy (like Quintana Roo, Baja California and Baja California Sur) in an effort to maintain the image of low criminal activity in these popular tourist destinations, despite Mexico's overall high rate of violent crime.
But the kidnapping of the four U.S. citizens is unlikely to change Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's overall approach to containing cartel violence in his country. The Lopez Obrador administration has never clearly outlined a security strategy since taking office in December 2018. But the president's catchphrase of approaching cartels with ''hugs, not bullets'' has reflected his government's broadly non-interventionist approach to cartels' presence. As such, Mexico's security forces rarely seek to proactively combat cartel influence, opting instead to simply keep violent crime statistics down in tourist areas and major cities. This strategy relies heavily on the use of a militarized policing force created under his presidency called the National Guard, which has absorbed units and officers from the Federal Police, Military Police and Naval Police. The Lopez Obrador government will almost certainly continue to utilize the National Guard to attempt to curb migration patterns, protect critical infrastructure and ensure increased safety in tourist destinations. But these areas of emphasis will likely continue to leave certain areas vulnerable to the influence of cartels — especially in states where rival cartels are fighting for control over territory, which include Tamaulipas (where the four U.S. citizens were kidnapped), Michoacan, Mexico State and Guerrero.
The Lopez Obrador administration's reaction to the Matamoros attack will also raise the risk of protests in Mexico by showcasing the government's continued failure to address security threats facing Mexican citizens. Many Mexicans have already expressed anger on social media over their government's swift response to the kidnapping of U.S. citizens, which stands in stark contrast to the historically slow or nonexistent response to the daily kidnappings of Mexican citizens. According to data compiled by the Mexico-based Alto Al Secuestro (Association to Stop Kidnapping), there were 5,256 reported kidnappings in Mexico between December 2018 and January 2023 — an average of four per day. But Mexican authorities rarely respond to these kidnappings in a proactive manner unless U.S. citizens and other foreigners are involved.
Activists have previously organized mass protests over kidnappings in the country — most prominently in response to the kidnapping of 43 student teachers in Guerrero state in 2014, which saw some demonstrations turn violent. Against this backdrop, incidents that highlight the disparity in security reactions for foreigners and locals — like the Matamoros kidnapping — raise the risk of renewing such protests by reminding Mexican citizens of their government's apparent disregard for their safety.
The U.S. Government's Response
The United States remains highly unlikely to directly intervene in the fight against cartels in Mexico, despite Republican lawmakers' increased calls for such action following the Matamoros incident. In recent weeks, certain members of the Republican Party have used the kidnappings to criticize the Mexican government's record on security, with some — including Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — going so far as to propose legislation that would allow the U.S. military to intervene in Mexico. The draft bill would seek to designate nine of the most powerful Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, thus allowing U.S. armed forces to be dispatched to Mexico. Former U.S. President Donald Trump also suggested labeling Mexican cartels as terrorist entities, though his administration never followed through on the effort. While the legislation is currently being debated by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, it is highly unlikely to be passed as it has been criticized by Democrats and some Republicans for proposing to interfere with another country's security policy. But even on the off-chance that the bill is ratified, Lopez Obrador has indicated that his government would not cooperate with any U.S. armed forces sent to his country to contain cartel violence, stating such a deployment would ''breach Mexico's sovereignty.''
But while the United States is unlikely to respond at the federal level, U.S. state governments could make regulatory changes in an effort to push Mexico to increase security efforts. Similar violent events against U.S. citizens could spur U.S. authorities to implement increased border security measures in an effort to prevent cartel violence from spilling across the border. Such measures would most likely come from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who previously implemented inspections along his state's border with Mexico in response to a surge in illegal border crossings in April 2022. The measures imposed by the Texan state government slowed cross-border traffic to a crawl and angered truckers, who formed a blockade at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge that nearly stopped traffic in both directions for three days. Economists estimated that delays from the inspections, which were only in place for less than two weeks (from April 6 to April 15), led the U.S. economy to lose an estimated $8.97 billion, with Texas alone losing $4.23 billion, as fruits and vegetables rotted in trucks. The re-implementation of such measures would risk similar logistical and financial challenges.
The United States will also likely continue to release periodic statements to further warn citizens about the dangers of traveling to Mexico. In the aftermath of the U.S. citizens' deaths in Matamoros, the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Mexico released a statement warning the thousands of U.S. students expected to visit the country in the coming weeks for spring break to exercise caution and to avoid visiting Mexican states designated ''Do Not Travel'' on the U.S. State Department's website. The advisory is the latest in the U.S. diplomatic push to educate American citizens about the dangers of traveling in Mexico. Such statements will continue to appear in the future, particularly in reaction to U.S. citizens falling victim to violent crime.
Sticking to the Script
In Mexico's criminal landscape, there is little room for a change of course. Cartel members must always fight for their survival, lest risk being assassinated by rival criminals or arrested by authorities. The Mexican government must balance between enforcing security to keep high-priority areas safe (like economically-important tourism destinations), while still granting cartels enough leeway to stave off a larger backlash. And the U.S. government must respond verbally to threats to its citizens and provide whatever direct security assistance to Mexico that its southern neighbor will accept. Barring massive (and unlikely) changes to the economic and/or political environments in the United States and Mexico, or to the U.S. market for illegal drugs, the parties involved will be confined to these roles. Both countries' 2024 general elections provide potential wildcards in the form of opposition candidates. But for all their bluster, any new president in either country will almost certainly return to the standard script amid economic, security and political pressures.
Cartel violence is a slow-moving tragedy — Mexico's personal forever war. Organized crime bleeds the Mexican economy and contributes to poverty, even as new manufacturing facilities and tech startups improve conditions for few. Incidents like the attack on the four Americans in Matamoros, while horrific, are sadly the norm for locals in much of the country. And that grim reality is unlikely to change anytime soon. With no serious, existential threat from domestic security forces, cartels and smaller gangs will continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of locals, foreigners and businesses alike, requiring constant vigilance as crime rates forever fluctuate between ''acceptable'' and ''catastrophic.''
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-criticizes-dea-for-unauthorized-operations-in-mexico/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=email&trigger=click
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How dare him criticize those in the US who want to stop illegals from coming here
by the millions and the drugs:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-president-tells-florida-hispanics-174848052.html
sounds like he is in the pocket of cartel money being made off the illegas
HE IS ENEMY OF THE US AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED
at least on this topic
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Mexico is an enemy country.
How dare him criticize those in the US who want to stop illegals from coming here
by the millions and the drugs:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-president-tells-florida-hispanics-174848052.html
sounds like he is in the pocket of cartel money being made off the illegas
HE IS ENEMY OF THE US AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED
at least on this topic
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"Pobre Mexico. Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca a Los Estados Unidos"
Porfirio Diaz
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-promises-justice-for-nuevo-laredo-extrajudicial-killings/
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jun/19/public-backs-gop-calls-us-military-attack-mexican-/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=HHWLvgi5%2FyO%2BRehVKc%2BkBg5IiyUBAZ4918HCbk81dsTffGVKKmGmywjj9UEcBqky&bt_ts=1687264740696
As emotionally satisfying as this sounds, it is not at all clear to me that this is a good idea.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jun/19/public-backs-gop-calls-us-military-attack-mexican-/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=HHWLvgi5%2FyO%2BRehVKc%2BkBg5IiyUBAZ4918HCbk81dsTffGVKKmGmywjj9UEcBqky&bt_ts=1687264740696
As emotionally satisfying as this sounds, it is not at all clear to me that this is a good idea.
Better secure the border first.
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AMEN!!!
I have reached out to a BP friend for his thoughts on this.
IIRC he previously commented to me that declaring the Cartels to be terrorist organization would backfire by giving fresh legal basis for asylum claims.
High risks with this idea:
How do identify who to shoot?
What about likely STRONG nationalist anger from Mexican people?
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AMEN!!!
I have reached out to a BP friend for his thoughts on this.
IIRC he previously commented to me that declaring the Cartels to be terrorist organization would backfire by giving fresh legal basis for asylum claims.
High risks with this idea:
How do identify who to shoot?
What about likely STRONG nationalist anger from Mexican people?
The cartel corruption runs through every element of Mexican society. Much like our own corruption.
We need to unfcuk ourselves first.
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Indeed. Mexican Presidents get rich by getting paid by rival cartels to go after other cartels.
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Indeed. Mexican Presidents get rich by getting paid by rival cartels to go after other cartels.
Exactly.
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BTW at my recent seminar in Mexico City I was asked about the name for my knife system "Chupacabra" (roughly "meaning sucks blood of goats"-- something of a vampire like demon of semi-canine appearance) because in Mexico it was the nickname for now former President Salinas de Gortari.
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/community/is-amlo-that-bad-or-that-good-a-perspective-from-our-ceo/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=email&trigger=click
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/culture/who-is-santa-muerte/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caFtIPwNDlI
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/no-cbp-outbound-inspections/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=tipsheet&utm_term=members
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-unveils-first-interoceanic-railway-car-in-veracruz/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=email&trigger=click
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Mexico: Opposition Coalition Solidifies Around Single Figure
Aug 22, 2023 | 16:16 GMT
What Happened: President of the Chamber of Deputies Santiago Creel announced that he is dropping out of the race for the nomination of the opposition coalition's presidential nominee and put his support behind National Action Party Senator Xochitl Galvez Ruiz, La Jornada reported on Aug. 21.
Why It Matters: Galvez Ruiz, a relative political newcomer, could potentially satiate Mexico's strong anti-incumbent sentiment, while having a single strong candidate could also improve the opposition coalition's chance at winning Mexico's presidency. While Galvez Ruiz has voiced support for the government's existing social welfare programs, she has also pushed for an improved healthcare system and better employment opportunities for youth. Her strong pro-business stance will likely lead investors in the energy sector, and more specifically renewables, to look favorably upon her candidacy.
Background: The Broad Front for Mexico opposition coalition narrowed down the opposition candidates to three people on Aug. 15: Galvez Ruiz, who is currently polling at a 38.3% approval rating; the next highest opposition candidate is Beatriz Paredes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who has 26% of the vote and finally Santiago Creel with just over 20% of the vote.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/special-report-how-mexican-narcos-use-remittances-to-wire-u-s-drug-profits-home/ar-AA1frmf5?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c01fa62f12954c4a940c7b29911cedf7&ei=68&fbclid=IwAR0BPMoGQ-oQJc5p-cHH2XXx7e7SFMU9xJ9utXFg7R5ODPn2Q8PxJUyh_OU
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https://supportwin.co/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIq-eHvO-TgQMVPRaICR0wFQHAEAEYASAAEgJcnfD_BwE
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Mexico: Morena Nominates Sheinbaum as Presidential Candidate
Sep 7, 2023 | 15:25 GMT
What Happened: Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum secured the ruling Morena party's presidential nomination with 39.4% of the preferences, El Pais reported on Sept. 6. However, Former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who garnered 25.8% of the preferences, urged Morena to conduct a fresh selection of its 2024 presidential candidate, citing alleged irregularities in the polling process.
Why It Matters: Sheinbaum's win guarantees that the Morena presidential nominee will continue current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's economic and political vision of high spending on welfare and major public infrastructure projects. However, Sheinbaum may pursue more clean energy projects (likely under state-owned energy companies) in adherence to her policies as Mexico City mayor. Lopez Obrador is highly likely to serve as a special advisor to Sheinbaum should she win in 2024 and will likely maintain a high profile in the media in an effort to maintain control over Mexico's political arena. Meanwhile, Ebrard's comments signal that he may break from Morena.
Background: Mexico will hold general elections in June 2024. The Broad Front for Mexico opposition coalition chose Xochitl Galvez as its presidential nominee on Aug. 30, essentially guaranteeing that Mexico will elect its first female president in 2024.
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https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/mexico-ayotzinapa/2023-09-26/keeping-secrets-us-silence-about-ayotzinapa?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=820cdb21-cf17-4d21-9a31-cb3ef50342dc
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https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/mexico-ayotzinapa/2023-09-26/keeping-secrets-us-silence-about-ayotzinapa?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=820cdb21-cf17-4d21-9a31-cb3ef50342dc
Wow that's creepy. Seems to be a pattern that we don't take care of children.
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This affair has been a big deal in Mexico.
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https://mtntactical.com/knowledge/designating-mexican-cartels-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-implications-and-challenges/?utm_source=Mountain+Tactical+Institute&utm_campaign=eadab58ec2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_11_05_08_34_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-337f701e76-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=eadab58ec2&mc_eid=5a5a04a3b5
Designating Mexican Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations: Implications and Challenges
November 27, 2023 by Charlie Bausman
Recent proposals by politicians, attorney generals, and the State Department to label Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) has far-reaching implications, from law enforcement strategies to international politics and economics. This move could reshape U.S.-Mexico relations, impact border security, and influence the global fight against drug trafficking.
The push for such designations often cites the cartels’ involvement in acts that resemble those of traditional terrorist organizations, such as carrying out violent attacks, destabilizing regions, and challenging governmental authority. This topic has been further highlighted US by the incredible increase in fentanyl use in the United States, overwhelming violence within Mexico, and border security/immigration issues between the two nations.
However, there have been significant concerns and counterarguments against this approach. Critics argue that labeling cartels as terrorist organizations could complicate U.S.-Mexico relations, impact economic ties, and potentially lead to unintended consequences in law enforcement and immigration policies.
Current State of the Drug Trade in the US
The American War on Drugs began in 1971 by President Nixon, and the DEA was established shortly thereafter. In recent years, annual spending on anti-drug trafficking often exceeds $40 billion and over a trillion since it’s inception. Despite these efforts, the drug trade has grown exponentially, leading to an equally meteoric rise in addiction and overdose deaths.
Source: ChatGPT
Source: ChatGPT
The fentanyl epidemic in the U.S., with drugs predominantly supplied by Mexican cartels, is a major public health concern. For Americans aged 18-45, the leading cause of death is fentanyl and is responsible for 70% of US drug overdose deaths.
The drug is reported to be responsible for 71,000 deaths in 2021, and 73,000 deaths in 2022. From 2016 to 2021, the rate of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl increased from 5.7 per 100,000 people to 21.6 per 100,000. Drug seizures of fentanyl at the border have also increased 300% in the past two years, indicating the incredible volume proliferation of the drug.
Source: US Dept of Commerce
Cartel Violence in Mexico
Cartels in Mexico have led to an astounding increase in violence, most dramatically viewed by the homicide rate. The Mexico Peace Index found that the national organized crime rat has risen 64.2% in the past years. Homicides related to organized crime have taken over 20,000 lives annually for the past five years, and total annual homicides average approximately 35,000 in the same time frame.
Corruption is rampant amongst Mexican governmental entities that would serve as the front line of anti-trafficking efforts.
Law enforcement, the judicial system, the prison system, and the political system are regarded as compromised by cartel corruption efforts. Bribery is commonplace, and both local and national police forces were considered so tainted in the fight against the cartels that it was put into the hands of the Mexican military (where there have also been numerous implications of corruption).
Even the former Mexican President, Enrique Pena Nieto, was accused of receiving bribes from the Sinoloan Cartel during the US trial of famed drug lord ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.
Mexican journalism on the drug trade is inherently risky, leading to the murder of 76 journalists in the country since 2017. This is greater than the total of all of Latin America in the same time frame.
While reliable statistics on drug addiction and overdoses in Mexico are more challenging to acquire, it has been noted by several organizations that both have spiked in recent years, primarily due to fentanyl.
The Call for Cartels to be Classified as FTO’s
Former President Trump has consistently campaigned on naming Cartels as FTO’s, and called on the military to plan for strikes on Cartel leadership and infrastructure, despite rejections from his Secretary of Defense and Joint Chief of Staff.
Following the March, 2023 kidnapping of four American citizens and the deaths of two of the kidnapped, the FTO debate was renewed. Senator Lindsey Graham spearheaded the Ending the Notorious, Aggressive, and Remorseless Criminal Organization and Syndicates (NARCOS) Act along with five other GOP Senators. This was supported by a letter sent from twenty-one Attorneys General.
In the current Republican primary run, many of the candidates have stated they would support moves to classify cartels as FTO’s and the use of military force against them.
In response, Secretary of State Blinken made public statements that the department, responsible for the classification, would consider the move.
Potential Drawbacks
While the designation of Mexican cartels as FTOs could provide additional tools for combating their activities, it also carries significant risks and complexities, particularly in diplomatic and legal arenas.
Diplomatic Strain:
Such a designation could strain diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico might view this as an infringement on its sovereignty and an overstep into its internal affairs. This could hinder cooperation in areas like drug enforcement, immigration, and border security.
Impact on Trade and Economy:
Designating these cartels as FTOs could impact the vast trade relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. It could lead to stricter scrutiny of transactions, affecting businesses and economies on both sides of the border.
Legal and Law Enforcement Complications:
This designation would allow for more aggressive law enforcement actions against these groups. However, it could also complicate legal proceedings, potentially leading to broader interpretations of what constitutes support or association with these cartels.
Impact on Immigration:
Individuals fleeing violence in Mexico might be implicated or associated with these organizations, complicating asylum claims or leading to unjust treatment of immigrants and refugees.
Potential Escalation of Violence:
The designation might escalate violence, as cartels might respond with increased aggression both within Mexico and potentially against U.S. interests.
Challenges in Targeting Financial Networks:
While the designation aims to disrupt the financial networks of these organizations, it could also inadvertently affect legitimate businesses and individuals who might be unknowingly connected or coerced to do business with the cartels.
It Might Not Change Anything
The demand side of the drug trade remains incredibly strong in the US. The Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking stated the fentanyl crisis cannot be resolved without curbing addiction in the US, fueling the demand for illegal opioids.
While FTO enables financial tools to freeze cartel assets, experts say there is little to no gain in financial enforcement measures compared to the measures already in place.
Succession Issues: Would military action cause meaningful results in reducing the drug trade, or just cause further de-centralization and newer, more extreme organizations?
Potential Benefits
FTO designation would enable “Targeted actions against cartel leaders,” in the context of law enforcement and counter-terrorism operations. This refers to focused efforts to disrupt or neutralize the individuals at the highest levels of criminal organizations. These actions can take various forms and are typically more strategic and precise compared to broader law enforcement operations. Here’s a detailed look at what this could entail:
Military-Style Operations
Precision Strikes: In some cases, especially under a terrorist designation, military assets might be used to carry out precision strikes aimed at eliminating key cartel figures. This could include drone strikes or specialized military raids.
Special Forces Deployment: Deployment of special forces or specialized law enforcement units to capture or neutralize high-value targets in hostile environments.
Enhanced Surveillance and Intelligence
Advanced Surveillance: Utilizing sophisticated surveillance technologies, including satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and cyber surveillance, to track the movements and activities of cartel leaders.
Intelligence Sharing: Increased sharing of intelligence between agencies and international partners to build a comprehensive understanding of cartel operations and hierarchy.
Financial and Legal Measures
Asset Freezing and Seizures: Targeting the financial assets of cartel leaders, including bank accounts, properties, and other investments, both domestically and internationally.
Legal Prosecutions: Focusing legal efforts on building strong cases against cartel leaders, potentially leading to extradition requests and trials in jurisdictions with stringent anti-terrorism and organized crime laws.
Targeted Sanctions
Individual Sanctions: Imposing sanctions on cartel leaders, including travel bans and prohibiting international financial transactions, to limit their global reach and access to resources.
Collaborative International Operations
Joint Task Forces: Forming joint task forces with other countries, especially those where cartels have a significant presence, to conduct operations aimed at capturing or neutralizing cartel leaders.
Extradition Agreements: Strengthening extradition agreements to facilitate the transfer of cartel leaders to face charges in countries with the legal framework to prosecute them effectively.
U.S. Firearms and Citizens in the Drug Trade
A critical aspect of the drug trade is the use of U.S.-sourced firearms as currency by Mexican cartels. The U.S. is a significant source of the firearms used by these cartels, often traded for drugs. This cycle fuels violence both in Mexico and the U.S. Designating cartels as FTOs could lead to stricter controls and monitoring of firearms exports and transactions, potentially disrupting this aspect of the trade. However, it may also drive these activities underground, making them harder to track and combat.
While there is a commonly held belief that cartels are responsible for the transit of drugs into the US, Customs and Border Patrol statistics report that 86% of convicted traffickers are US citizens, and 0.02% of illegal migrants possess any fentanyl whatsoever. The use of US citizens in trafficking further complicates how FTO enforcement would be handled by law enforcement agencies.
Retribution – Impact on US Law Enforcement & Military Personnel
Should US law enforcement and military personnel become actively involved in targeting cartel personnel under an FTO designation authority, the ramifications are unclear.
Unlike actions against terror organizations elsewhere, the geographic proximity enables the cartel violence to easily and rapidly strike back. Law Enforcement officers and their families work and live in the towns and cities along the border and could be targeted. US-based Mexcian gangs involved in the drug trade could be co-opted to target officers and military personnel nationwide.
Approximately 25 million US tourists travel to Mexico annually, and 1.6 million US citizens live Mexico. US diplomats, business representatives, expats, and tourists could be similarly targeted within Mexico.
The unanswerable question is would cartels react to US actions with the same level of violence exacted on Mexican law enforcement, military, and civilian populations? With an estimated 175,000 active cartel members, the potential for violence is severe.
Economic Impacts
Designating cartels as FTOs could profoundly affect business relations between the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is the US’s second-largest trade partner (second to China), with 600 billion dollars in total annual trade value. US foreign investment in Mexico is over 100 billion annually.
Of note, Mexico is the fifth largest automobile exporter in the world with factories of all major US-based automobile companies, including Ford, GYM, Honda, Nissan, and Chrysler. This represents an annual 68 billion dollar industry, with further factory expansion plans.
The FTO designation might impact foreign investment in Mexico. Investors could become wary of potential legal ramifications and the heightened security risks associated with investing in a country where FTOs operate.
Enhanced scrutiny and security measures might slow down trade processes, affecting industries and consumers in both countries.
These points become increasingly important as the US seeks other manufacturing options as a result of deteriorating China relations.
Conclusion
The potential designation of Mexican cartels as FTOs presents a complex matrix of benefits and challenges. While it promises enhanced law enforcement capabilities and a stronger stance against drug trafficking and related crimes, it also brings potential diplomatic strains, impacts on trade and foreign investment, and complex legal and ethical dilemmas. The decision will significantly influence U.S.-Mexico relations, the broader fight against international drug trafficking, and the future of border security and public health, particularly in light of the escalating fentanyl crisis.
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Americans going to or returning from Rocky Point have a choice to travel west through San Luis. That’s considered a relatively safe area. Or they can travel east, through Nogales. That route would send them straight through Caborca and Altar. Territory that is at the heart of the recent gang violence.
The violence is not isolated to Sasabe. Farther south, the towns of Altar, Caborca and Benjamin Hill have all seen flare-ups since the gangs began fighting. Photos and videos posted by Mexican media show rival gang members hanging from light posts – one of them on fire. And example after example of gunfights playing out along major Sonoran highways.
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Interesting piece how banks enable cartels while insulated from accountability:
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/drugs-elites-and-impunity-paradoxes-money-laundering-and-too-big-fail-concept
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My eyes started to glaze over reading that.
I found myself wondering about the consequences of an all-seeing all-knowing financial system.
Instead of destroying financial privacy in the name of fighting the cartels, maybe we should hit China over the head with a baseball bat for its role in the trade and actually control our borders instead?
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/mexico-calls-for-probe-into-why-mexican-drug-cartels-are-in-possession-of-u-s-military-grade-weapons/
My short answer is that they got them from the Mexican military and various Central American militaries.
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My eyes started to glaze over reading that.
I found myself wondering about the consequences of an all-seeing all-knowing financial system.
Instead of destroying financial privacy in the name of fighting the cartels, maybe we should hit China over the head with a baseball bat for its role in the trade and actually control our borders instead?
I think there were two big takeaways in the piece:
- The scope of Mexican dysfunction. 90% of crimes NEVER reported? The body count? The breadth of the corruption? All well sourced? With some in the US appearing to work so hard to bring something similar our way?
- The lack of US prosecutions where the bank in question was concerned. Why? Are pockets getting lined? Are spooks banking dark funds? It’s not like both haven’t happened….
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I've lived, travelled, studied, and worked in Mexico. Not reporting crimes to the police goes back to before the narco wars. The police were, and are, held in low regard.
One time I was knocked off my motorcyle by a car. It stopped for a moment then drove off but not before I got its license. I tried reporting this hit and run to various places and always got the runaround. No one could be bothered.
Now with the cartels it is far worse. Depending on the crime, reporting it can get you killed.
As for the bank thing, my concern remains-- having a capacity to go after laundering also means an end to banking privacy.
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As for the bank thing, my concern remains-- having a capacity to go after laundering also means an end to banking privacy.
I’m certainly not arguing for more regs, rather trying to figure which shell the pea is under. When you have congress critters & amok regulators yodeling for more enforcement tools while failing to use the ones at hand I wonder why. It appears to parallel the “gun control” effort: thousands of laws on the books that aren’t enforced vigorously (yo Hunter, how they hangin’?) while onerous new laws that primarily impact the law abiding are demanded.
At the end of the day our overlords aren’t all that creative: foster a set of circumstances that can be used as a poster child, wave that poster tither and yon, accuse anyone that fails to join the “solution” stampede of being cruel to baby ducks, children, & the favored class du jour, while our overlords utterly ignore any rules & regs that do result ala Diane Feinstein carrying a concealed firearm while denying that right to her constituents. The pattern is distinct. It’s time to call it out every time it’s seen.
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Just thinking:
we always hear the phrase "threat to democracy"
such as Russia , Communist China, nuclear war, climate change, Republicans, lawfare, right leaning SCOTUS, and of course the daily cries of Trump.
In Mexico political cartel corruption is rampant.
and the government is infiltrated the press is intimidated so the average citizen is a pawn a punk with no real say.....
I think we should keep in mind simple age old plain ***corruption***
What protects us from corruption. Supposedly inspector generals, judicial system, law and order etc. When these invariably fail we have the free press freedom of speech, but now when these fail we are simply screwed over.
There is a fine line between corruption vs influence.
Is offering Kari Lake millions to stay out of the Arizona race corruption?
Is Zuckerberg coming up with hundreds of millions to help Democrats win corruption?
Is CNN bribing anti Trumpers jobs corruption?
Is Trump calling Ga gov asking to find more votes (not necessarily to make them up etc) corruption?
Is the U of Penn Blinken Biden Chinese connections corruption?
I could go on forever.
I am thinking the biggest threat to Democracy in the US is corruption
of the legal system
of the financial system
of the very rich
of the press
JW is a breath of fresh air in this regard.
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Love JW. I regularly donate.
"Is Zuckerberg coming up with hundreds of millions to help Democrats win corruption?"
No, it is rigging the election.
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January 29, 2024
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How Mexico Plans to Reclaim Its Economy
There are competing ideas on how to dislodge organized crime from the formal economy.
By: Allison Fedirka
In Mexico, security and economic recovery are intertwined. Politicians and citizens alike understand that the country’s powerful criminal groups threaten both, and though they broadly agree that something should be done, no one agrees on the best path forward.
Partly this is because of geography. Throughout history, mountains, deserts, peninsulas and other features have divided Mexico into various subregions, many of which are too remote or too inaccessible for Mexico City to effectively govern. These power vacuums have given rise to independence movements, warlords, revolutions and even parallel governments. Organized criminal groups such as the Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation cartels are simply a contemporary expression of a historical reality.
Mexico's Physical Geographic Regions
(click to enlarge)
The problem for the federal government is the power these groups have been able to amass. Ignoring the sheer wealth generated from the lucrative drug trade, one of the biggest contributions to their power is the mass defection of Mexican armed forces. When Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (or PAN) assumed office in 2000, his government fundamentally redefined its relationship with the military, and servicemen lost a lot of the immunities, operational freedoms, financial benefits and social status afforded to them through 70 years of rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (or PRI). Whatever their reasons for joining, the cartels’ capabilities improved markedly, gaining the sophistication, organization and discipline typically reserved for the forces meant to police them.
More recently, cartels were able to massively expand their local influence at a low cost during the COVID-19 pandemic. In many remote locations, they stepped in to ensure the delivery of basic goods where the national government could not. This allowed organized crime to permeate even deeper into remote communities across the country.
Organized crime groups now control large portions of the formal and informal economies. To be sure, they still engage in illicit activities such as human, arms and narcotics trafficking, but increasingly they function like multinational corporations, with chief operating officers earning MBAs from top universities, assuming control over all branches of the business, working with the equivalent of subsidiaries and having strong ties to business in the rest of Latin America as well as Caribbean criminal groups. In the formal economy, they tend to function as adjuncts to government services. They monopolize local control of internet providers, source and provide pharmaceuticals, and engage in legitimate business activities such as manufacturing and selling their own cigarette brands. Nationally, they impose taxes and quotas on the avocado and lime industries, and they have even made inroads in the beer market.
The increased presence of organized crime groups in areas traditionally part of Mexico’s formal economy poses a new level of threat to the country. In years past, their presence might have scared off foreign investors or increased security and transportation costs. But now, it raises the question of who controls which parts of the national economy. This is particularly important as the country continues to recover from the pandemic – a tall order in its own right that becomes much more difficult if the government is limited on what it can do with its economy.
Politically, there is consensus that regaining control of the economy is essential for economic recovery and requires redefining the role of organized crime in the country. However, Mexican political circles remain divided over what strategy would be the most effective in achieving their goal. The two leading strategies are represented by Mexico’s top two presidential candidates. The candidate from the ruling Morena party, Claudia Sheinbaum, wants to double down on the strategy used by the PRI: a gentleman’s agreement whereby the cartels operate relatively freely within the parameters set forth by the government. The benefit of this strategy is that the government wouldn’t necessarily have to reclaim control of certain sectors or retake territory – both of which would eventuate in violence. Instead, negotiated agreements would enable the government and the cartels to work together on economic matters. The problem, of course, is that this strategy would reward the cartels by giving them power over the government. It would also likely see the weakening of key government institutions needed to subjugate the cartels. Unsurprisingly, there is opposition to this strategy within security and defense circles, which would be inclined to slow implementation or impede it entirely.
The second strategy – advocated by opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez, whose view represents the PRI, PAN and the Party of the Democratic Revolution – calls for a strong state offensive to retake what it has lost. The upside here is that it would target corruption and the economic power propping up organized crime, and if it succeeds, it would eliminate a security threat that has plagued Mexico and its economy for decades while giving Mexico City undisputed control over its economy. The downside is that it requires a ton of political capital, which will be hard to come by if the government is purging corrupt rank and file, struggling to keep up morale and buy-in among security forces, and managing the political fallout of what is sure to be mass death and destruction. The latter would scare off the foreign investment the country's economic recovery depends on. (A similar strategy was tried under President Felipe Calderon, with little success.)
Each strategy will shape Mexico’s economic recovery in its own way. The Morena strategy will minimize violence but could hamper national businesses and reduce FDI as investors will find it hard to trust such an arrangement in the long term. The second strategy will require a massive amount of money and resources, increasing the likelihood of economic pain in the short term for potential gains in the long term. Neither strategy will be immune to the vagaries of political implementation.
Geopolitically, the fight against organized crime seeks to answer one of Mexico’s most fundamental questions: Can the government find a way to be in full control of its territory and economy despite the country's geography and history? The Morena strategy essentially wants to work within those constraints, while the other believes Mexico can break out of its constraints – if it’s willing to pay the price.
Andres Araujo contributed to this analysis. Mr. Araujo is an intern at Geopolitical Futures and a student at the University of Valle de Atemajac in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he studies international relations.
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Some thoughts on the recent noise, started by AG Barr and echoed by many others about going military in Mexico blah blah.
Profoundly foolish IMHO.
Note the Zeihan 2 above wherein he makes the point about Sinaloa and others being BUSINESSES with an attitude of "don't shit where you eat", thus enabling them to integrate into the local fabric. Witness the "apology" and turning over those responsible for the attack on the four black Americans in Matamoros.
Our military would have no fg idea at whom to shoot, and would be disrupting lots of business "understandings". When blended with the STRONG traditional Mexican hostility to American interventions, the result would be chaos.
Note too Zeihan's comment about NG Jalisco going full Chicago in Phoenix and elsewhere. Few people realize just how deeply we ALREADY are penetrated, nor of the quasi-military capabilities of the Cartels.
My understanding is that the Cartels now make more money on human trafficking/the illegal alien trade than on drugs. The first order of business must be to fg fully seize control of our border and shut down the illegal alien trade. Invading Mexico simply not necessary or wise.
Where are our top Libertarian thinkers advocating that we legalize human trafficking to deprive the cartels of money?
About to post in this thread when I noticed this bit of abject sophistry. As has been pointed out by this libertarian deep thinker time and again, there is a difference between crimes with victims and supposed crimes where the person impacted is person partaking of the “criminal” behavior. The fact that this red herring is rolled out time and again reflects far more deeply on the person employing these sorts of facile distractions than on anyone advocating for liberty.
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This piece is more about Mexico than any US matter, though the US certainly plays an outsized hand in the pathologies examined here, and it certainly embraces its share of academic onanism, but with all that said it does fruitfully examine the current state of Mexico and the various forces leading to the current human catastrophes it endures:
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/organized-crime-groups-and-their-discourse-mexico
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https://dnyuz.com/2024/03/01/mexicos-presidential-race-is-shaping-up-to-be-a-blowout/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Sheinbaum
Mexico is ~90 % Christian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Mexico
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The world retains its ability to surprise.
BTW The Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores from back in the 70s IIRC named Rabassa was Jewish. There is a small but powerful Jewish community in Mexico City.
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https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=a352e7aec37a1d4b278cb4826a047f27_65e5e2b2_6d25b5f&selDate=20240304
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In Upcoming Elections, Mexico Weighs Its Political Future
The two leading candidates support divergent paths to the same end.
By: Allison Fedirka
The biggest question facing Mexico in the upcoming presidential election is how the country can balance democratic governance while also supporting strong centralized authority. The two leading candidates in the race represent opposite sides in this debate. The approach that prevails on June 2 will serve as the cornerstone of the administration and will shape its strategies toward security, economics and international engagement for years to come.
Despite the two leading candidates’ differing approaches, there is consensus among Mexican politicians and the general public on the main problems facing the next president. They agree on the need for a strong central authority that promotes national development and can wield control over regional governments. They also agree on the need to end the country’s drug war and find ways to take advantage of China’s economic decline and other opportunities created by the global economic climate. Where they differ is on how they believe Mexico can achieve these goals.
Mexico’s geography and history dictate that a strong central government is needed to keep the country together. National unity has been a challenge for Mexico as far back as Spanish colonization. Mountains, deserts, plateaus and peninsulas naturally segment the country, resulting in power vacuums, disparities in economic development and strong popular support for local leaders over distant federal ones. Over the years, this challenge has manifested in various forms, from separatist movements to parallel governments to revolutions. These internal fault lines tend to get aggravated during times of insecurity, economic hardship and political uncertainty.
Historically, the Mexican government dealt with governance challenges by centralizing power. Porfirio Diaz, who ruled the country from 1876 to 1880 and again from 1884 to 1911, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled from 1929 to 2000, stand out as the most prolific sources of centralized power in Mexican history. Diaz’s stints in office, known as the Porfiriato, were characterized by economic growth, modernization and limited personal freedoms. (This period did not end well, and helped kick off the Mexican revolution in 1910.) The PRI’s dominance differed in that the party ruled by relying on clientelism, rotating party figureheads and controlling political leadership at both the national and state levels.
The end of the PRI’s power monopoly set the stage for Mexico’s current governance dilemma. Politicians initially adjusted the constitution with the aim of reducing executive authority and empowering other government institutions, particularly the judiciary. This was viewed domestically as a democratization push, resulting in the expansion of political participation throughout Mexico and the decentralization of political power, with three different parties – the National Action Party, the PRI and the Morena party – occupying the presidency since 2000. However, the changes also undermined the power structure that kept order among the different interest groups vying for influence. Over the past 25 years, the democratization process has largely stalled, with some institutions weakening or collapsing completely due to political fragmentation. However, others have evolved and improved their standing – including, most notably, the Supreme Court. From this situation, a key question arose: How does a country that requires strong central control maintain democratic governance?
Traditional political theory offers two schools of thought. The first, institutionalism, prioritizes building institutions and enforcing existing norms. Constructivism, on the other hand, calls for building a strong public consensus around shared ideas and values and then creating norms based on these ideals. Both schools of thought revolve around constructing a strong foundation and enforcement mechanisms that, if executed successfully, will allow the government to project power across the country and, eventually, abroad. While the general concepts and end goals are similar, the strategies for achieving them drastically differ.
Mexico’s two leading presidential candidates each embody one of these schools of thought. The candidate of the ruling Morena party, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, has adopted a constructivist approach. Morena views the political party as the main vehicle connecting the central government with local governments and the people based on shared views and values. It also supports reducing the power of government institutions in favor of prioritizing the role of political parties, with the aim of reasserting control over the country. The party has reached deals with diverse groups to allow them to operate in exchange for their support during elections. Morena argues that this approach is democratic because it does not advocate the dissolution of state institutions, but the party’s outreach to groups outside the government has raised concerns that it could eventually undermine democratic institutions. Morena has faced opposition from different interests, like the Supreme Court and security forces, that have gained power in recent years and feel threatened by its governance strategy.
Meanwhile, opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez has adopted an institutionalist approach. The opposition has called for professionalization of institutional structures, which would help make them the center of the country’s political system and the main source of power projection within Mexico. Some of the more hardline members of this camp also support modernizing the constitution to formally change the country’s political system to one dominated by technocrat-run institutions. A major challenge facing this strategy is that it would require tearing down the old power structure before installing a new one. This would inevitably create political tensions and irk some powerful economic actors that benefit from the remnants of clientelism and crony capitalism.
Mexico's choice in the upcoming election is ultimately between returning to a governance system that worked in the past or transitioning to a new one. The outcome of this struggle will decide the future of influential groups in Mexico like the military and teachers' unions. It also runs a high risk of creating conflict among business elites who support different governance paths, based on what better serves their interests. Mexico’s ability to resolve this issue will also directly affect its ability to project power abroad and improve its international standing.
Andres Araujo contributed to this analysis. Mr. Araujo is an intern at Geopolitical Futures and a student at the University of Valle de Atemajac in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he studies international relations.
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(6) SHEINBAUM PROPOSES INDUSTRIAL PARKS FOR MIGRANTS: Mexican presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is likely to be the next president, proposed the construction of 10 new industrial parks in Mexico’s southern states in order to employ migrants.
“Migrants go to the United States because in their country they don’t have [opportunities]. The southern [Mexico] border is going to serve to employ migrants in a considerable percentage,” a Morena party official said.
Why It Matters: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has repeatedly requested more money from the United States in order to improve economic conditions. This may become an attractive target for U.S. foreign development aid for two reasons. First, because Mexico is a near-shoring option for U.S. manufacturing. And second, because it could make a small dent in the numbers of migrants headed towards the U.S. border. – M.S.