Blog of the Gods

Mexican Villages dig moats to repel bandits

2009-03-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

CUAUHTEMOC, Mexico — Little town, big hell.

That proverb about turmoil in small communities has never seemed truer than in this gangster-besieged village and a neighboring one in the bean fields and desert scrub a long day’s drive south of the Rio Grande.

That proverb about turmoil in small communities has never seemed truer than in this gangster-besieged village and a neighboring one in the bean fields and desert scrub a long day’s drive south of the Rio Grande.

Since right before Christmas, armed raiders repeatedly have swept into both villages to carry away local men. Government help arrived too late, or not at all.

Terrified villagers — at the urging of army officers who couldn’t be there around the clock — have clawed moats across every access road but one into their communities, hoping to repel the raids.

“This was a means of preservation,” said Ruben Solis, 47, a farmers’ leader in Cuauhtemoc, a collection of adobe and concrete houses called home by 3,700 people. “It’s better to struggle this way than to face the consequences.”

But shortly after midnight last Sunday, villagers said, as many as 15 SUVs loaded with pistoleros attacked nearby San Angel, population 250, and kidnapped five people. Four victims were returned unharmed a few days later. The fifth hostage, a teenage boy, was held to exchange for the intended target the raiders missed, villagers said.

“We have support of the federal forces,” said an official of the dirt-street village. “Security is what we’re lacking.”

After the earthworks were dug in both villages, volunteers manned checkpoints at the remaining open entrances. Those sentinels, however, were removed when it was decided they couldn’t stop a serious attack, anyhow .

“We aren’t able to confront this sort of thing,” Solis said. “We have a few shotguns, some .22 rifles, a few pistols — nothing compared to what they have.”

President Felipe Calderon’s war on Mexico’s drug gangsters has met with mixed success since he began deploying about 45,000 soldiers and federal police after assuming office in December 2006. The federal forces have been able to defeat the gunmen in open combat but unable, so far, to extinguish the bloodshed or the crime.

Narcotics-related violence killed at least 6,000 people last year and looks likely to match that toll again by Christmas. Kidnappings, extortions and bank robberies are on the rise in many cities and even in rural flyspecks like Cuauhtemoc and San Angel.

Though still far less serious, the troubles faintly echo those of a century ago when Cuencame township, which includes Cuauhtemoc and San Angel, suffered massacres and guerrilla attacks in the lead-up to the Mexican Revolution.

Most of Mexico’s violence these days isn’t politically inspired, but the gangsters’ hit-and-run tactics often mirror those of an insurgency. Government forces frequently find themselves without adequate manpower to be everywhere at once.

“This is really the job of the federal government,” Solis said of his town’s efforts at self-defense. “But they don’t have enough men to keep up. There is delinquency wherever you go.”

Fear of the Zetas
Like others across central and western Mexico, many in and around these villages assume their tormentors are the Zetas, gunmen aligned with the Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros and other cities bordering South Texas.

Government officials blame much of Mexico’s violence on wars between gangs like the Zetas, whose founders were army deserters, for control of smuggling corridors, local drug sales and other rackets.

Solis said he and other townspeople suspect those who raided Cuauhtémoc in early February, kidnapping the 23-year-old son of a bean-and-grain trader, are simply “bad characters from the area who have just taken the Zeta name.”

Fear of the Zetas borders on hysteria in this corner of Durango state, residents and officials agreed. Village boys playing with toy trucks have taken to shouting “here come the Zetas” when staging chases, Solis said.

When a rumor started March 10 in a town nearby that scores of Zetas were planning to attack, stores in the area closed, classes were canceled and people fled.

“A psychosis prevails across the whole region,” said Isidro Aguilar, the police chief of Guadalupe Victoria, a market town 25 miles from Cuauhtemoc, who otherwise denied that the area faces a crime plague. “There are people who are taking advantage of it.”

Still, people’s paranoia doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get them.

Gangsters have staged platoon-strength raids on towns in Chihuahua and other nearby states. Kidnappings have increased, as well as cold-call extortion attempts to even poor residents of the area.

A number of merchants, as well as two members of the city council, have been kidnapped in Guadalupe Victoria since late December, residents said. Ransoms, they said, have reached several hundred thousand dollars.

“No one knows who took them. No one knows anything,” said Gilberto Cabello, the head of the town’s merchants association. “Everyone is left wondering who is next.”

Defense left to the town
Not surprisingly, villagers in Cuauhtemoc and San Angel remain on edge, sharply eyeing strangers, careful not to say too much to outsiders.

“The less said about this, the better,” said a city hall official in Cuencame, the township seat. “It can be dangerous to say too much.”

Soldiers and federal police took up the defense of Cuauhtemoc and San Angel last week after the towns’ plight played on the front page of a Mexico City newspaper. But the patrols evaporated after a few days, leaving nothing but the ditches in the villagers’ defense.

“That’s the way it is,” said a sun-weathered Roberto Fuentes, who was helping build a sidewalk a block from one of Cuauhtemoc’s earthworks. “If the government doesn’t do it, we have to.

“Here, the people are defending the town.”

Mexican police force on strike after grenade attack | Reuters

2009-02-24T16:18:00.000-08:00

This is completely appropriate in my estimation. The police alone can not stop the narco-terrorists, and are taking the brunt of their assaults. Hundreds of police have died, and not just those with gang connections.

Perhaps we should relocate troops from Iraq to Mexico, to work in conjunction with the Mexican Army to finally take these drug gangs apart. A failed Mexican state is sure to cause many, many more problems for the USA than a failed Iraqi state.
Not to mention the horrible problems it is causing the long suffering people of Mexico, the vast majority of whom are decent, hardworking individuals who only want to live a normal life.

The situation is rapidly deteriorating from 'horrible' to 'unsustainable nightmare'.

MEXICO CITY, Feb 23 (Reuters) - The entire local police force in a Mexican beach resort town walked off the job on Monday demanding better pay and benefits to compensate for the rising dangers they face from drug violence.

More than 300 municipal police officers in Zihuatanejo, a town on the Pacific coast north of Acapulco popular with foreign tourists, went on strike after grenades were lobbed at their offices over the weekend.

Some 6,000 people were killed last year in clashes between rival drug cartels and security forces that have escalated since President Felipe Calderon deployed some 45,000 soldiers and federal police around Mexico to clamp down on cartels.

More than 500 of those killed in last year's drug violence were police.

On Saturday, gunmen threw two grenades at the main police station in Zihuatanejo. While no one was killed, police say they are not adequately covered if a future attack is fatal.

"We are seeing a lot things here that we have never seen before. It is our job to serve the citizens, but we need assurances that our families will be protected if one of us is killed," a member of Zihuatanejo's municipal police told Reuters.

The police want to have direct talks with Calderon to request improved benefits and an increase in their roughly $350 (5,200 pesos) per month salaries before they go back to work. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; editing by Todd Eastham)

Mexican police force on strike after grenade attack | Reuters

Gunmen attack Mexican governor's convoy, kill bodyguard | Front page | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

2009-02-23T13:55:00.000-08:00

You have to grudgingly respect the sheer brazeness of the narco-terrorists of Mexico. They have killed the head of the Mexican equivelant of the FBI, now they are attacking a Governor's motocade.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen have attacked a convoy carrying the governor of a violence-wracked border state, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding two other agents.

It was not clear if the attackers were targeting Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza, but he canceled a trip today to meet with federal officials in Mexico City about security problems in his state, where hundreds have died in drug-related violence in recent months.

Baeza said gunmen in two cars fired high-powered weapons at a vehicle two cars behind his in a convoy in the state capital, Chihuahua city, on Sunday night. The two wounded agents were in stable condition today and one of the attackers was hospitalized with a gunshot to the head. The other attackers fled.

The governor told a news conference shortly before midnight Sunday that he doesn’t know if the attackers were aiming for him: “We don’t want to speculate.”

But rich, heavily armed gangs battling for turf on the doorstep of the U.S. narcotics market have increasingly challenged the government on all levels, even ambushing troops sent to battle the cartels.

The convoy attack came two days after the police chief of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua’s biggest city, bowed to crime gang demands to resign because they threatened to kill at least one of his officers every 48 hours.

Reyes Baeza asked federal officials to investigate because he said the assailants fired high-powered weapons that Mexican law says can only be used by the military.

Federal officials say more than 6,000 people died in drug-related violence across Mexico last year, and no state suffered more than Chihuahua. Ciudad Juarez alone recorded 1,600 killings.

Gunmen attack Mexican governor's convoy, kill bodyguard | Front page | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Gunmen kill 12 in Mexico, including 5 children

2009-02-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

Gunmen kill 12 in Mexico, including 5 children
Published: 2/15/09, 2:06 PM EDT
By MARK STEVENSON

TABASCO, Mexico (AP) - Gunmen have killed a state police officer and 10 members of his family, including five children, authorities said Sunday.

The shooting late Saturday also killed a street vendor in front of the house of state police officer Carlos Reyes, said Tabasco deputy prosecutor Alex Alvarez. Among the five children killed was a 2-year-old boy.

"It is confirmed that (the assailants) wanted to kill the state police officer but they killed his whole family," Alvarez said.

Alvarez said three other people were wounded the attack in the town of Monte Largo, near Mexico's border with Guatemala.

Police hadn't determined a motive for the attack but Alvarez said Reyes directed a car chase and raids on two homes on Wednesday that led to the death of three suspected gang members and the arrest of seven others.

In Mexico City, authorities on Saturday found the decomposing bodies of two women in the trunk of a car that had been abandoned for at least a week, the Reforma newspaper reported.

A city investigator told the newspaper that the women had been decapitated and the heads left inside a cooler in the back seat of the car.

He said one of the women had been arrested in 1999 for the kidnapping of nine relatives of an alleged drug dealer.

More than 6,000 people died last year in a wave of drug-related violence.

AT&T

A New Weapon in the Cartel Arsenal: Hand Grenades

2009-02-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

Grenades used in three recent attacks in Monterrey, Mexico, and Pharr, Texas, all originated from the same lot delivered from South Korea...

That the grenade used in the third attack reportedly came from Mexico indicates that in addition to the well-known path of weapons flowing from the United States into Mexico, arms also are flowing from Mexico into the United States.

The first of the three attacks targeted the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico. In the second incident, again in Monterrey, gunmen attacked a local TV station on Jan. 12 in an attempt to intimidate the news agency into cutting back reporting on cartel activities. The feared group Los Zetas— which originally came from the ranks of Mexico’s special forces — reportedly was behind both attacks.

In the third attack, three Hispanic men on Jan. 31 tossed a grenade into a night club near Pharr, Texas — a Stratfor source has indicated might have belonged to the Bandidos motorcycle gang. The Bandidos have ties to Mexican cartels, as well as a reputation for violence.

The Bandidos gang and groups like it are known to have used improvised explosive devices like pipe bombs.

Mexico’s military is known to use South Korean grenades. High levels of corruption in Mexico make it very likely that members of the Mexican military sold the grenades to Los Zetas.

Gangs north of the border are known to collaborate closely with cartels in Mexico the flow of arms from south to north — specifically grenades — is a new discovery.

U.S. officials already have expressed concerns of being out-gunned by well-armed Mexican killing squads that use high-powered, automatic weapons. The addition of grenades to the arsenals of gangs north of the border represents even more of a threat to U.S. law enforcement.

Mexico, U.S.: A New Weapon in the Cartel Arsenal

Mexican gang violence kills 21

2009-02-11T15:11:00.000-08:00

A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the US-Mexican border region, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.

The violence on Tuesday started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 130km south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua State.

Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said.

Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead on Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded.

Mexico has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government crackdown. President Felipe Calderon said on Monday that more than 6000 people have died in drug-related violence.

Villa Ahumada, a town of 1500 people, was virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when gangs killed two consecutive police chiefs, and two officers. The rest of the 20-member force resigned in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over for months until the town was able to recruit new officers.

The town’s mayor, Fidel Chavez, fled to the state capital for his own safety.

Also on Tuesday, Tijuana city police said emergency officials responding to a report of a car on fire found a sport utility vehicle engulfed in flames and two charred bodies inside.

And in Tepotzotlan, a small town outside Mexico City, two heads in coolers were found inside a car, according to an official with the Mexico state prosecutor’s office, who was not authorised to give her name. The heads were accompanied by a message threatening the municipal police chief. Decapitations have become commonplace in Mexico’s drug violence.

In other violence late on Monday, armed men forced their way into a Mexican prison in Torreon, then killed three prisoners by beating them and setting them on fire in a bathroom. The assailants also freed nine inmates before escaping, state prosecutors said in a statement on Tuesday.

Fighting between rival gangs left another two inmates dead on Tuesday at an overcrowded prison in central Mexico, said Carlos Gil Abarca, a spokesman for the prevention and rehabilitation office of the Mexico state government.

Mexican gang violence kills 21

The Dark Religion of the Santa Muerte | KTSM.com | El Paso · Las Cruces · Juarez

2009-02-03T04:40:00.000-08:00

Yet another reason to vacation in Hawaii this year.

Tijuana mexico, 2006, four people are arrested and charged with murder.

Police say the four were drug smugglers, who turned on one of their partners. The victim, was tied to a chair. His captors wanted the money he had taken from them. They weren't happy when they found out he had spent it.

"This subject gets a saw and cuts off his leg, cuts off another leg, cuts off his arm. He's dead and then this girl gets the cutting saw and cuts off his head and takes his head and offers it up to Santa Muerte." says Robert Almonte, the head of the Texas Narcotics Officers Association.

Santa Muerte, the saint of death, was given the head as an offering.

"They never recovered the head and she kept insisting that Santa Muerte had it." says Almonte.

Two years later and 1,400 miles away, nearly 7,000 people gather on a street in Tapita, a barrio in Mexico City. It looks like your typical procession. Crowds of believers praying, bringing their sick for healing and their children for blessing. But, there is nothing typical about the object of their worship.

Again, it's Santa Muerte. The saint of death is not a real saint, recognized by the catholic church. That doesn't matter to her worshippers who blow marijuana smoke into her face to activate her power.

Depicted as a woman, she is nothing more than a skeleton, draped in cloth. But her increasing popularity and rise to god-like status among believers in Mexico is unprecedented.

Like most saints, Santa Muerte can be found as a figurine, attached to charms, on the ends of rosaries or on candles or clothing. She also has become a common sight as a tattooed image on the bodies of her followers.

Typically, she is depicted, holding either a globe, or a set of scales.

"The globe, the world is her domain. The scales of justice, that's what she is going to look at when she comes to get you after you die and that is going to determine whether she takes you to heaven or hell. Part of that determination is did you worship her, did you worship her properly." explains Almonte.

Almonte says Santa Muerte is drawing two distinct groups of followers.

The first, those in Mexico's poorest neighborhoods. Far more alarming, the second group, Mexican drug traffickers.

"You can pray to have a load of drugs smuggled in United States safely. You can pray for someone to get killed." says Almonte.

Among narcos, Santa Muerte is not simply a cultural icon. She is real power and real protection.

At the Webb County Jail in South Texas, inmates can be found praying at an altar that the Jail's director allowed them to set up. The altar is to Santa Muerte.

On the table, several pictures of the death saint. There are prayers written on notebook paper and around those prayers are offerings. Candy bars, soda, anything inmates can buy, they will offer.

These men, arrested on charges of drug trafficking, continue to ask for protection and help.

"The santa muerte influences people who want to justify a destructive way of living. The santa muerte is an outward symbol of their inner destructive lifestyle." says Father Arturo Banuelas, Pastor at St. Pius Catholic Church.

Banuelas is very familiar with the growing popularity of Santa Muerte. He is also very concerned about what it means for her so-called followers.

"When you get close to symbols of darkness then the things of darkness flow into your life like killing and violence and revenge." explains Banuelas.

He goes on to say that Santa Muerte is not some dark power from which drug traffickers are gaining strength and protection. She is actually a symbol of what is happening in their souls.

"All people have goodness inside themselves but sometimes they make choices to use the worst parts of the themselves and therefore create a system, create a structure, create a religious symbol that justifies not having to use their better side."

For many drug traffickers, the worship of Santa Muerte goes beyond simple offerings. Human offerings are also part of the equation.

"The Sinoloa Cartel were taken to a couple of public shrines in Nuevo Laredo last year and they were taken there by members of the Gulf Cartel and they were executed at the Santa Muerte shrine. So yeah, they wanted to execute them but why at the Santa Muerte shrine? I believe it was an offering to Santa Muerte at the same time." says Almonte.

In Juarez, we have no official record of killings associated with Santa Muerte but that doesn't mean they are not happening. Of the 1,600 murders in Juarez last year, there were two predominant kinds. First, the executions where someone is shot 300 times. Second, where bodies are found decapitated and stacked. In fact, in 2008 those decapitated and stacked bodies were found at least five different times.

September, 2008, Yucantan, Mexico, just outside of cancun. Eleven bodies are found, heads cut off, and the bodies stacked on top of each other. In a nearby field, police find a circle where there are eleven burned spots. Authorities believe the heads of the eleven victims were burned here. Days later, when police raid the homes of the men they say were involved they found shrines to Santa Muerte. Investigators believe that was also an offering to Santa Muerte.

Banuelas explains the human offerings this way. "Just cut off somebody's head and give it to the Santa Muerte and you think you're being religious and they are violating everything that is religious in their soul."

Only on 9: The Dark Religion of the Santa Muerte | KTSM.com | El Paso · Las Cruces · Juarez

Nuevo Laredo police arrest six in connection to "express" kidnappings on both sides of border

2009-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

The trend of Mexico's troubles crossing the border is accelerating.

Nuevo Laredo police have arrested six men in connection to two kidnappings.
According to authorities the kidnappings have happened on both sides of the border.
Our Noraida Negron has the latest.
It’s a story you'll see only on eight.
They are called express kidnappers.
They take their victims to the nearest ATMs and take all of their money.
Then they ask the victims family for ransom money.
The Nuevo Laredo police department arrested six men in connection to these kidnappings.
And they were able to save one of their victims.
" Iniciamos con las investigaciones se logro recuperar a la muchachita."
Nuevo Laredo police commander says the 21-year-old was found after they investigated a report made by a family member.
The men are Francisco Gonzalez, Jose Manuel Briones, Oscar Omar Macias, Ezequiel Ortegon, Jesus Gonzalez and Juan Antonio Gutierrez.
" En entrevistas con estas personas se logro que nos confiaran..."
The commander says the men confessed to kidnapping the 21 year old and two others.
" Organize el de Jesus Garcia..."
According to their confessions they had kidnapped a man that worked at a hardware store and another man that worked at a pizza place in Nuevo Laredo.
The kidnappers did get ransom money for the kidnappings.
" Cuanto te dieron? 20 mil y por este? 70."
Allegedly the kidnappers got more than five thousand dollars for those other kidnappings.
Police also recovered part of that money and two vehicles that were allegedly used in the crimes.
" Se recuperaron 2 vehiculos que utilizaban en los hechos mas recientes."

If you recognize these men Nuevo Laredo police want you to call the police department and make a report against them.
Police fear there may be other victims out there.
Another man that participated in these kidnappings is still on the run... And police are looking for him.

Updated: Nuevo Laredo police arrest six in connection to "express" kidnappings on both sides of border | KGNS | Local

Mexico vacation became a disaster

2009-02-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

By Debra Smith
Herald Writer

ARLINGTON -- Robert Hood left for a fishing trip along the coast of Mexico, and when he finally returned, he was never the same.

Mexican police arrested Hood on arson charges after someone set fire to a fishing shack near where he was staying in San Felipe. Hood, a World War II veteran with a spotless record, languished for days in a filthy, crowded Mexican prison in 1982.

Hood was eventually released after a barrage of bad press from both sides of the border began to hurt tourism.

He came home 50 pounds lighter and was broken emotionally, said his son, Gary Hood of Stanwood. His father talked of hearing other prisoners being tortured and beaten. The prison was so crowded, his father spoke of sleeping standing up.

"It changed my dad," Hood said. "He became reclusive, not as happy. He was like a prisoner of war."

Hood can't help but be struck by the apparent similarities in his late father's case and that of Edward Chrisman, 88, who is being held in a Mexican prison, the Carcel de Mexicali in the state of Baja California Norte.

Edward Chrisman, a longtime resident of Arlington, was wintering in Yuma, Ariz., when he decided to take a quick trip across the border with his grandson, Gary Chrisman Jr. Mexican police arrested both men the same day, Jan. 8, saying the pair tried to pay young girls to pose nude for photos.

The Chrisman family maintains the men are innocent. The family said Gary Chrisman Jr. stopped at a convenience store for a soda and, while there, asked a mother if he could take photos of her daughters. He'd been taking photos of Mexican culture all day with a new camera. The mother granted permission and he gave her $25. He snapped head shots of the two fully-clothed girls and left the store. Edward Chrisman never even went into the store.

Family members were asked by an intermediary to pay $2,000 to the prosecuting attorney "to make the situation disappear," Shannon Perkins, Edward Chrisman's granddaughter, said. The payment was not made.

The pair has been held in a crowded Mexicali prison as their family members travel across the border daily trying to get them released. They fear Edward Chrisman, who apparently has contracted pneumonia at the prison, won't survive the ordeal.

Trial could be months away.

About 400 Americans are detained in Mexican prisons at any time, said Charles Smith, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Consulate General in Tijuana. His office monitors the Baja peninsula in Mexico, where the Chrismans are being held. Of all Americans arrested on foreign soil, one in five is arrested in Baja California.

U.S. has little recourse

When Americans hear about cases such as the Chrismans, they want to know why the U.S. government can't do something to help. The U.S. Consulate only has the authority to monitor conditions of American prisoners. No other agency or U.S. politician can do much more.

While in Mexico, "You are subject to the same judicial system as the people living in Mexico," Smith said.

And Mexico is no place to get tangled up with the law.

Human rights organizations report problems with overcrowded prisons, corrupt officials and human rights abuses for both prisoners and victims.

Americans won't find that mentioned on Mexico's tourism Web site.

A chasm exists between Mexican law and how justice is meted out, according to a 2007 report from Amnesty International.

Individuals are sometimes detained on the basis of obviously flawed or spurious evidence, often well beyond the country's legal limits allowed for pretrial detention, the organization found. Others are denied access to adequate legal advice at precisely the point when they are most at risk for torture and other abuses.

Joe King, a former U.S. Customs special agent who worked in San Diego, has a more blunt assessment.

"It's a dump," said King, who now teaches about terrorism and organized crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "The prisons are all rat traps and they're all corrupt."

King has worked in law enforcement internationally, including undercover in Northern Ireland and Beirut, Lebanon.

When it comes to Mexico, "The only way I'd go back there is if I were a hostage," he said.

He said it's common for cars with American license plates to get pulled over in Mexico. It happened to him regularly.

"Who are you going to shake down, a local guy who knows you or your cousin? Or somebody who is not likely to complain?" he said.

It's not unheard of for Americans to become entangled with the Mexican judicial system without cause, said David Shirk, a University of San Diego professor involved in the Trans-Border Institute. The research institute advocates for changes in the Mexican judicial system.

"We do see cases of predatory behavior by law enforcement who are trying to extract bribes, especially by tourists in cases where they can extract material gain," he said.

However, Shirk said he doesn't see how police would gain by improperly detaining the Chrismans.

Holes in the system

The concept of Mexico's legal system is similar to that in many European countries. Unlike the U.S. model, two sides do not vigorously compete in front of a neutral court.

In Mexico, a prosecutor gathers evidence and then presents it to a judge, who decides if there is enough evidence to move forward with a trial, he said. It's presumed the court is engaged in finding truth. Until recently, the Mexican court system was less public and relied heavily on slow-moving rulings made in writing.

A legal system like Mexico's works markedly better in Spain and France, where there is well-developed legal infrastructure, Shirk said. Mexico doesn't have the professionals needed to support the system, and that results in backlogs, delays and little ability to determine if someone should be released on bail.

More than 40 percent of prisoners in Mexico have never been convicted of a crime, Human Rights Watch reported in its 2009 World Report. These prisoners are held in pretrial detention, often waiting years for a trial. Inmates frequently are subject to abuses, including extortion by guards.

In 2008, Mexico passed constitutional reform to overhaul the criminal justice system.

Jorge Vargas, a law professor at the University of San Diego, said he receives calls from all over the U.S. seeking his counsel on cases like the Chrismans' ordeal.

"My impression is sometimes the information you get from families is objective and sometimes it's rather exaggerated," he said.

Many Americans arrested by Mexican police are quick to cry corruption, he said.

"In some cases, the Americans aren't truthful and the system is not that lousy," said Vargas, who has worked as an attorney for the Mexican government and in international law for the United Nations.

American prisons have serious problems too, including racial disparities, gangs, drugs, murders and other violence within penitentiary walls.

Harsh conditions

The Chrisman family has been told it may be months before the cases against Edward Chrisman and his grandson go to trial.

The family fears that Edward Chrisman's health is failing.

He appears pale, weak and dehydrated, said his son, Gary Chrisman Sr. The family learned from a prison doctor he's being treated for pneumonia and extreme insomnia. Prison officials moved him to a section for the elderly where conditions are better, including warm showers and a bed with a mattress.

Earlier, Edward Chrisman was kept in a small, concrete cell with dozens of other men. He had to sleep on a metal bed frame with no mattress. That's where his grandson remains.

Mexican prisons generally are overcrowded and often unsanitary, Shirk said. The quality and quantity of food served is often poor. Prisoners have to buy virtually everything they need, including blankets and clean clothing, Shirk said.

On the other hand, Mexican prisoners often have more freedoms behind the walls than in American institutions. Some prisons feature mini-villages where prisoners can set up taco stands. Inmates are allowed conjugal visits.

Still, Mexican prisons are harsh places for the elderly, Shirk said.

"His family has cause to be concerned," he said.

In 1982, it was bad publicity, not the law, that set Gary Hood's father free.

"These border towns need tourists spending their dollars," Hood said. "Even in that short period of time, it was bad enough the mayor and the police chief made things happen."

Hood grew up in the California border town of Chula Vista, south of San Diego, but you won't catch him setting foot in Mexico.

"I wouldn't go to Mexico if they paid me a billion dollars," he said. "My dad was never the same."

HeraldNet: Mexico vacation became a disaster

Mexico man 'dissolved 300 bodies'

2009-01-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

Even by Mexican crime standards this is horrific.

A man arrested by Mexican police says he disposed of 300 bodies for a drugs gang over the past decade by dissolving them in chemicals.

Santiago Meza, called the "stew maker", said he was paid $600 (£440) a week to dissolve the bodies of murdered rival gang members in caustic soda.

He was presented to the media by the Mexican army after being arrested on Thursday near the city of Tijuana.

Over 700 people died in the US border city last year in an ongoing drugs war.

The Mexican army says it believes Mr Meza's claims are true.

"They brought me the bodies and I just got rid of them," Mr Meza told journalists at a construction site where he disposed of the bodies over a 10-year period. "I didn't feel anything."

The 300 corpses were said to belong to murdered rivals of Mexican drug kingpin Teodoro Garcia Simental, who is battling for control over drug trafficking routes through Tijuana, after defecting from the powerful Arellano Felix cartel.

Mr Meza was quoted by AP news agency as saying that he "would apologise" if he could speak to relatives of the victims.

Mexico's drug violence has surged and grown more gruesome in recent years, particularly in the northern border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.

Also on Friday, two human heads were found inside coolers near police stations in the central Guanajuato state, officials said. The heads were accompanied by a note threatening allies of the "La Familia" drug cartel.

Drug-related violence claimed 5,700 lives across Mexico last year, more than double the number of victims in 2007.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Mexico man 'dissolved 300 bodies'

Several injured in Matamoros prison riot | matamoros, injured, prison - Breaking News - Brownsville Herald

2009-01-23T07:03:00.000-08:00

The first prison riot on BOTG in several years. It is interesting that prisioners have guns, and would rather use them to kill each other and settle gang scores than escape. Go figure?

MATAMOROS - At least two people are dead and dozens are injured during a riot at a Matamoros prison.

A Mexico City news agency says the riot started this morning at Centro de Readaptacion socieal (Cereso) de Matamoros, located in the community of Santa Adelaida on the out-skirts of Matamoros.

The riot began at 9 a.m. when a fight broke out between a group of inmates armed with guns. An hour later, authorities had not been able to enter the prison. At the time prison director Pedro Benavides said no one had been killed in the shooting.

The Brownsville Herald has learned two inmates are dead and 36 others were hurt. Their injuries are unknown.

Relatives of the inmates have been outside the prison, waiting to learn about the fate of their loved ones.

Several injured in Matamoros prison riot | matamoros, injured, prison - Breaking News - Brownsville Herald

Heads Found In Ice Box As Police Battle Drug-Related Violence In State Of Chihuahua

2009-01-22T13:14:00.000-08:00

More beheading. More police officers killed. Not a good start to the new year.

Three heads have been found in an ice box in a town in Mexico, near its border with Texas.

Mexican troops are fighting a drugs war

They were found about 30 miles from Ciudad Juarez, in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua, the state that sees most of the country's brutal drug violence.

A headless body was also found dumped in a dirty canal a few miles away and officials said the body might belong to one of six policemen kidnapped over the weekend.

Mexican police and soldiers are battling a wave of drug-related violence across the country, particularly in northern border areas, with more than 5,300 killed last year.

Four of the officers' heads were found earlier.

Hitmen cut off Commander Martin Castro's head and left it in an ice cooler in front of the local police station.

Statement from Mexican officials

On Monday, the head of a police chief was found in another ice cooler.

The police commander was abducted on Saturday, along with five other police officers and a civilian, only five days after starting his job.

"Hitmen cut off commander Martin Castro's head and left it in an ice cooler in front of the local police station," said state justice authorities.

Six bodies in police uniforms bearing signs of torture and gunshot wounds were also found on Monday, officials said.

The federal government two years ago launched a clampdown on drug-related violence, involving the deployment of around 36,000 troops across the country.

Mexico: Heads Found In Ice Box As Police Battle Drug-Related Violence In State Of Chihuahua | World News | Sky News

Mexico violence felt in North Texas

2009-01-22T13:10:00.000-08:00

To imagine that Mexico can collapse into narco-anarchy and it will not effect the USA is naive in the extreme. Expect to see much more of this north of the border in the coming years.

The violence south of the border is staggering, and it's crossing the border and spreading fear in some North Texas homes with ties to Mexico.

The daily headlines in Mexico's newspapers are a bloody wake up call. The death tolls are rising every day. More than 5,500 murders were reported in 2008, and more than 1,600 of those were in Juarez just south of El Paso.

There were also more than 1,000 kidnappings, 65 of which ended in death.

As the violence grows, so are the numbers of North Texans who are being touched by the crimes.

"Thank God we are a poor family," said Jose Galvez, a North Texas resident. "We don't have the things in old Mexico that would make somebody be interested in taking somebody."

Galvez said he checks on his family in Mexico every month. His relatives have never been a target, but he said the violence hits close to home.

"It breaks you because these are people that you know, not necessarily relatives, but people you talk to," he said.

Extortion is at the center of many of the kidnappings and violence.

"I have known of at least three families where one of their loved ones has been taken," Galvez said. "And luckily, in those two cases, the loved one has been returned."

News 8 tried to reach victims, many expressed concerns of being targeted once again.

Meanwhile, Galvez said the gangs are doing their homework.

"They study and they know each of the family members," he said. "They are looking for ways or people that would have something valuable that they can exchange in return."

History professor John Chavez, from Southern Methodist University, said Mexico's crackdown on drug cartels has fueled even more crime.

"Those who used to be employed by the cartels are losing work, illegal work, and they are consequently becoming common crooks," he said.

Innocent families with no ties to the drug war have been targets, which has led some with money to buy safety across the border in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.

"Even some in the middle class and the upper class in Mexico are moving temporally to the U.S. side," Chavez said.

The United States and Mexico are keeping an eye on the violence, and Galvez said he is as well.

For now, he is holding back on visiting his relatives.

"You want to go see them," he said. "It hurts because you don't know what you are going to encounter."

Mexico violence felt in North Texas | Texas Cable News | TXCN.com | News for Texas | Local News: TV

Ten killed across Mexico in Christmas Eve drug violence

2008-12-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

CIUDAD JUAREZ (AFP) -- Ten people, including a police officer, were killed across Mexico in the hours before Christmas, in the latest spasm of violence in the country's brutal drug war, officials said on Friday.

Officials said the body of Javier Coapango, coordinator of public security for a town just outside Mexico City, was found dumped along the side of a road on Christmas eve. He had been kidnapped on December 17.

Another man was fatally shot in southern Mexico, while eight other corpses were found in the north, near the country's border with the United States, authorities said.

A state Justice Department official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said the bodies were discovered by a farmer.

The bodies were found near the town of Tuxtla Chico, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of another border settlement where Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers engaged in a series of gunbattles that killed 17 people last month.

Feuding drug cartels have engaged in a brutal battle for dominance, with more than 5,300 people have been killed this year across Mexico.

The rampant violence comes despite the deployment of 36,000 troops across the country.

Narco-Terrorists

2008-12-27T22:40:00.000-08:00

I don't recall hearing the term "narco-terrorist" but it is a good one. Nice to see some more detailed reporting on the ins and outs of the cartels. In the past such reporting has proved dangerous to those reporting it.

SEMENZAGSEMENZA@VICAD.COM
December 27, 2008 - 11:27 p.m.
NUEVO LAREDO – One of the most ruthless drug cartels in history owns Nuevo Laredo, and its sights are set on controlling a highway that leads straight to Victoria.

After years of fighting in the streets, just three hours southwest of Victoria, the public violence is suddenly calm. At first glance, the Laredo corridor appears peaceful again.

Hidden beneath this 18-month lull, however, a sinister story surfaces. The brutal Gulf Cartel seized control of a border city, strangling public confidence with murder, terror, extortion, corruption and kidnapping.

Nuevo Laredo newspaper reporters, threatened with murder, no longer cover the streets, which are still rife with violence.

After winning a three-year war against a rival, the Gulf Cartel operates unimpeded. With ownership of a lucrative entry port, the cartel is focused on controlling U.S. Highway 59, which winds to your back door.

Documentary filmmaker Rusty Fleming spent three years on the border and in Mexico to chronicle the violence. For the first time, Fleming agreed to revisit the Laredo corridor to show firsthand what’s at work in this lucrative entry port.

He agreed to again travel deep into Nuevo Laredo – to city corners held by the Gulf Cartel. Three Advocate journalists visited eerie cartel shrines, the locations of kidnappings and the home of an assassinated police chief.

Signs of the cartel violence that some say is headed Victoria’s way linger everywhere in this once-peaceful Mexican city.

Victoria Advocate - Narco-Terrorists

8 bodies found in plastic bags in southern Mexico

2008-12-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

It is hard to keep track of all the carnage. I think the 5,300 dead number is on the low side though. Not sure why the obsession with beheading. Did they learn that from the Jihadis? Hanging heads on a Christmas tree is certainly grim.

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico — Eight bodies were found stuffed in plastic garbage bags and dumped on a rural road near the Guatemalan border in an area plagued by drug violence, authorities in southern Chiapas state said Tuesday.

The victims have yet to be identified, but police believe they may include Mexicans, Guatemalans or Colombians.

A state Justice Department official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said the bodies were discovered by a farmer. At least one had bruises and marks indicating he may have been tortured.

The bodies were found near the town of Tuxtla Chico, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of another border settlement where Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers engaged in a series of gunbattles that killed 17 people last month.

Brutal slayings by drug cartels are on the rise in Mexico, and officials estimate that more than 5,300 people have died in organized crime-related slayings this year.

On Sunday, the decapitated bodies of eight army soldiers were found along an urban boulevard in the southern state of Guerrero.

In a press statement on Tuesday, Mexico's Defense Department slammed what it called "inappropriate and hurtful" comments on the soldiers' deaths.

While the department did not specify what had offended it, one Mexican newspaper ran an editorial cartoon Tuesday titled "December Decorations" that showed the hand of a drug trafficker hanging severed heads with military-style haircuts on a Christmas tree as if they were ornaments.

8 bodies found in plastic bags in southern Mexico | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

4 Police Gunned Down in Mexico Border Town

2008-12-21T23:26:00.000-08:00

Not only are the killers brazen, but they are obviously so sadistic that the think noting of making a joke of killing someone. According to the story "Another victim, identified as Gerardo Padilla, 25, had been decapitated; a Santa Claus hat was on his head, which had been placed between his legs."

One would say they need to bring in the Army, but they have and the narcotraficantes just decapitated 14 of them, as well. (See previous blog posting.)

4 Police Gunned Down in Mexico Border Town
List of 28 police officers threatened by name in list attached to 4 dead bodies.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO -- Four municipal police were killed and one wounded in simultaneous attacks at various locations in this violent metropolis just across the border from El Paso, Texas, authorities said.

The attacks occurred around midnight Sunday when cartel hit men fired shots at a police substation inside Ciudad Juarez General Hospital, a security cabin at a residential community, a police station in the southwestern part of the city and a patrol car near one of the U.S.-Mexico border crossings.

Two officers were killed at the hospital, one inside the patrol car and the fourth at the Aldama precinct house, the city's Public Safety Office said.

In response to these attacks, the municipal police instituted a rule on Monday requiring officers patrol the city in caravans of between two and four vehicles.

Separately, authorities said that on Monday they found four bodies a few meters (yards) from the Juarez command post of the Chihuahua state police, together with a message threatening 28 police officers by name.

The bodies were handcuffed and had their eyes blindfolded. Another victim, identified as Gerardo Padilla, 25, had been decapitated; a Santa Claus hat was on his head, which had been placed between his legs.

Ciudad Juarez is Mexico's most violent city, accounting for 1,400 of the more than 5,400 gangland murders reported nationwide so far this year.

Authorities attribute the carnage to battles over smuggling routes to the United States and internal power struggles within Mexico's powerful drug cartels.

Since taking office, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police to nearly a dozen states in a bid to crush the cartels.

The operation, however, has failed to put a dent in the violence due, according to experts, to the drug gangs' ability to buy off the police and even high-ranking prosecutors.

Latin American Herald Tribune - 4 Police Gunned Down in Mexico Border Town

Nine men decapitated in Mexico drug violence

2008-12-21T23:20:00.000-08:00

gIt is quite extraordinary that the drug gangs have taken to this level of gruesome violence and intimidation. One usually expects criminals to mind their business, but in Mexico they seem intent on challenging the social order.

MEXICO CITY, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Mexican police found nine decapitated bodies on Sunday in a city near the tourist resort of Acapulco, and at least some of the victims might have been soldiers who were battling against powerful drug gangs.

The bodies of the men, which were marked with signs of torture, were left on the side of a highway, while their heads were stuffed in a plastic bag found outside a shopping center, police in the state of Guerrero told Reuters.

Local media reported that nine soldiers were abducted on Saturday as they left a regional military base near the city of Chilpancingo, about an hour north of Acapulco. An army spokesperson could not confirm that the victims were soldiers.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police since 2006 to take on cartels that move cocaine and other drugs into the United States.

A note left with the severed heads warned that more authorities would be decapitated, the state police said. The state police chief said some of the victims were soldiers, Reforma newspaper reported.

Calderon's offensive has helped fuel a major increase in drug violence. More than 5,300 have died so far this year, over twice as many as in 2007, according to the attorney general's office. (Reporting by Jason Lange and Armando Tovar, editing by Philip Barbara)

Reuters AlertNet - Nine men decapitated in Mexico drug violence-police

In Mexico, Cartel Assassins of Increasing Skill

2008-12-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

Not a glimmer of hope anywhere in this story. The bad guys are winning, the good guys are dying.

In Mexico, Cartel Assassins of Increasing Skill - washingtonpost.com

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.

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."

Indiscriminate drug killings sow terror in Mexico - Yahoo! News

2008-12-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

It just keeps getting worse. So much for cheap beer in TJ.

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Gunmen are deliberately killing innocent people with random shootings at bars, restaurants and shopping malls in the city of Tijuana in a new scare tactic that takes Mexico's drug war to new depths.

Hit squads have killed at least 50 people, including around 10 children, since October in an escalation of violence in public places that security officials say is akin to terrorism.

The indiscriminate attacks, including shootings in cinemas, pool halls and restaurants, appear to be an attempt by the weakened Arellano Felix cartel to show security forces and rival gangs that it is still a force despite setbacks.

In one recent attack, gunmen in body armor and armed with assault rifles stormed into Tijuana's popular Crazy Banana pool hall and opened fire on customers, killing four men and a woman.

"We were playing pool and these masked men came in shouting and started firing at everyone," said day laborer Juan Miguel at the scene, wiping blood from his head after the attack. He declined to give his surname.

"Anyone close to them was immediately killed," he said.

City police say none of the pool hall victims appeared to have links to drug gangs, a marked change from drug killings across Mexico this year when hit squads have gone after specific targets even if they also clumsily killed others.

"In fact, we don't see a clear target in any of the recent killings of this kind. We cannot rule out that these are terror-style acts," said Juan Salvador Ortiz, a deputy prosecutor for Baja California state, home to Tijuana.

Police and anti-drug experts believe Tijuana's Arellano Felix organization, which has been hurt by the arrests of former leaders and a turf war with other gangs, is behind the shootings as it desperately tries to hold its ground.

Under a nationwide clampdown on drug gangs, President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers and federal police to Baja California since January 2007, complicating life for the Arellano Felix clan that became notorious and made a fortune in the 1990s for smuggling cocaine into California, one of the world's top drug markets.

Soldiers have made big drug seizures and captured more Arellano Felix leaders but have failed to stop the violence.

"The Tijuana turf is too valuable to lose. They are doing this to stay in the city, to show their power and ridicule the authorities," said Victor Clark, a drug trade expert at San Diego State University, of the public shootings.

"Empty streets make it easier for them to operate."

HORRIFYING VIOLENCE

Drug killings throughout Mexico have skyrocketed this year, scaring off investment and prompting the United States to send hundreds of millions of dollars to help its southern neighbor.

The number of fatalities has more than doubled to nearly 5,400 people so far this year and 2009 could be even worse, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said on Monday.

The army has warned people in Tijuana to stay indoors as much as possible, angering city residents.

"We cannot live locked up. They are the ones who should be behind bars," Tijuana's Archbishop Rafael Romo told Reuters.

The new scare tactics come amid a shocking level of violence in Tijuana, once a freewheeling city serving tequila, sex and medicine to Americans crossing over from San Diego.

Tijuana has seen more than 700 people killed this year in drug-related violence as Mexico's most-wanted man Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, a prison escapee who leads a cartel from the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, tries to gain control.

The rival Gulf cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, has joined the fight, fanning out from its home turf across the border from Texas.

The three biggest gangs are using horrifying methods to outdo each other, beheading victims, cutting up bodies, dumping them in barrels of acid and even storming hospitals to finish off targets they had left wounded but clinging to life.

In the first major attack on civilians, suspected drug gang members threw grenades into a packed crowd celebrating Mexico's independence day in September in the western city of Morelia, killing eight people and wounding more than 100.

Indiscriminate drug killings sow terror in Mexico - Yahoo! News

Mexican drug cartels infiltrating Guatemala (gang shootout - 18 dead)

2008-12-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

Like a cancer spreading through a body the naroctrafficantes are extending their reach both North and South. The American law enforcement has some ability to temper this, does Guatemala?

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (CNN) -- Mexican narcotraffickers are gaining an increasing presence in Guatemalan territory.

That was made clear Sunday, when at least 18 people were killed in a face-off between members of a local cartel and a Mexican cartel in a frontier zone between Mexico and Guatemala.

"The hypothesis we have is clear, and it is that several cartels here that are operating in Guatemalan territory already have certain alliances with Mexican cartels, specifically the alliances that have been made for the passage of drugs," said Marlene Blanco Lapola, chief of the National Civil Police.

At the crime scene, police found vehicles that were registered in Tamaulipas, a state in northeast Mexico, and documents that indicate the Mexican origins of some of the dead.

According to authorities, pressure that Mexico has exerted on these groups could have led them to use nearby Guatemalan territory instead.

"We are studying the arrival of many Mexicans, specifically members of the Zeta group, who have wanted to come to take advantage of the Guatemalan territory, a situation that we -- as authorities -- will not permit," Blanco said, referring to one group of narcotraffickers.

According to one political analyst, this week's killings are an example of the globalization of crime. He believes that conditions in Guatemala made the country ripe for the establishment of such groups.

"It's no secret to anybody that the institutions in our country are weak, that they lack human and technical resources," said the analyst, Manuel Villacorta.

"Without doubt, organized crime is taking advantage of these evident levels of vulnerability that the Guatemalan institutions present," Villacorta said.

Experts point out that two other events of similar violence have occurred this year in Guatemala, underscoring the fact that the groups feel they are free to act with impunity.

Mexican drug cartels infiltrating Guatemala - CNN.com

26 Killed in Mexico Drug Violence Over Weekend

2008-12-08T11:56:00.000-08:00

Wow, worse than normal, which is a sad thing to say.

CHILPANCINGO, MEXICO -- At least 26 people were killed in Mexico over the weekend in separate incidents, including 10 who died in a shootout between soldiers and gunmen in Guerrero state and five murdered at a bar in Ciudad Juarez.

Ciudad Juarez, located across the border from El Paso, Texas, is considered the country's most violent city, with more than 1,400 murders reported this year.

Gunmen burst into Alamo's bar in Juarez early Sunday and opened fire, killing five people and wounding four others.

This was the second attack of this type in less than two weeks. On Nov. 28, gunmen murdered eight men at a seafood restaurant in the border city, which is in Chihuahua state.

A couple and a man were shot to death in separate incidents while driving in Ciudad Juarez.

Three bodies were also found in Juarez, including one dumped in a soccer field and two others in the city's southeast section.

The victims, who were between 25 and 30, were wrapped in blankets and their hands and feet had been tied, a trademark of the gunmen who work for Mexico's drug cartels.

In Tecate, a city in the northwestern state of Baja California, two people were gunned down and a third wounded in a shooting on Saturday night.

Army troops, meanwhile, battled gunmen in a series of clashes in Palos Blancos, a town in the southern state of Guerrero.

A soldier and nine gunmen were killed in the running gunbattles, which lasted about half a day and also involved police.

Soldiers, along with federal, state and municipal police officers, responded when a shootout started between rival gangs, the Public Safety Secretariat said.

When they arrived at the scene, the security forces were greeted by gunfire and engaged the gunmen in the series of shootouts, which also left two police officers wounded.

The gunbattles started at around 3:00 a.m. Sunday and did not end until about 2:00 p.m.

After the shooting ended, police conducted a search and found a body in an abandoned vehicle, and seized 10 other automobiles, 14 rifles, five pistols and two hand grenades.

The crime scene in Palos Altos has been cordoned off by some 400 soldiers and police officers.

In Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, two heads and a threatening message were found in a bucket near the Technical Institute.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces, as rival gangs vie for control of lucrative smuggling and distribution routes into the United States.

Armed groups linked to Mexico's drug cartels murdered around 2,700 people in 2007 and 1,500 in 2006, with the death toll this year already at more than 5,000, according to press tallies.

The majority of the killings have occurred in the states of Chihuahua, Baja California and Sinaloa.

Experts say that Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organizations are the Tijuana cartel, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel. Two other large drug trafficking organizations, the Juarez and Milenio cartels, also operate in the country.

Tackling the problem of drug-related violence, according to experts, is a major challenge both because of Mexico's notoriously corrupt security forces and because honest police officers are fearful of taking on the heavily armed drug mobs.

Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police to nearly a dozen of Mexico's 31 states in a bid to stem the wave of violence unleashed by drug traffickers.

The anti-drug operation, however, has failed to put a dent in the violence due, according to experts, to drug cartels' ability to buy off the police and even high-ranking prosecutors.

The Attorney General's Office recently began investigating its own staff, particularly the SIEDO organized crime unit's members and the Federal Investigations Agency, Mexico's equivalent of the FBI.

As part of the probe, begun after a protected informant revealed links between drug cartel kingpins and police, a dozen high-ranking officials, including erstwhile drug czar Noe Ramirez, have been arrested.

The initial investigation concluded that Ramirez received $500,000 a month for sharing intelligence with drug lords.

Latin American Herald Tribune - 26 Killed in Mexico Drug Violence Over Weekend

Rescued Immigrants claim kidnapping, rape, torture

2008-12-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

The border is a dangerous place for all sides of the triangle, smugglers, the smuggled and law enforcement. It seems like the real fix has to be made in Mexico (and further south).

The Monitor
Jeremy Roebuck
Dec. 2, 2008

EDINBURG — Mario Olivares Cifuentes thought he understood the risks of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tales of migrants drowning in the Rio Grande or succumbing to the oppressive South Texas sun spread frequently among those hoping to make the trek.

But for Olivares, a Guatemalan migrant, the real danger emerged only after passing those natural perils.

For almost a day, he and 20 of his countrymen were allegedly kidnapped, tortured, raped and held for ransom in a stash house east of Edinburg before federal agents rescued them last week.

Their purported tormentors — a group of Mexican nationals believed to have abducted the immigrants from another smuggling organization — are set to appear before a federal judge today. (Wednesday)

"These are just some of the many risks that illegal immigrants face when crossing illegally," said Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, whose office has since joined the investigation.

U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered the 21 Guatemalan nationals on Nov. 25 packed in a cramped mobile home near the intersection of Tower and Texas roads. But as they interviewed the group of men and women a more harrowing picture of the conditions they had lived through emerged.

"All of the aliens claimed they had been constantly terrorized by their captors," said Guadalupe Sanchez, a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in an affidavit filed in the case.

According to Sanchez' affidavit, the migrants were guided to an Hidalgo stash house Nov. 24 after crossing the Rio Grande with a group of coyotes.

But within an hour of their arrival, five armed men burst into the building and abducted them. The men guided the Guatemalans to another location, where they reportedly turned their weapons on their victims.

The men threatened the immigrants' lives if they could not secure ransoms from family members in the United States and abroad, the Guatemalans later told agents.

Olivares reported being tied up overnight and beaten by the men, according to court filings. Three other women said they were taken into back rooms and raped by their captors.

ICE agents arrested the five purported kidnappers soon after the stash house raid.

Andres Perez Moshan, 26; Humberto Alvarez Cheo, 20; Roberto Salinas Martinez, 23; and Euclides Moreno Dominguez, 26; all face federal human smuggling charges. The fifth - a 16-year-old juvenile - is being held as a witness in the case but has not been charged with a crime.

Two of the men - Perez and Moreno - will also face state charges of aggravated sexual assault for alleged attacks on the woman.

It was not clear Tuesday whether any of the suspects had retained or had attorneys appointed for them.

If convicted on all charges, the men could face 10 years in federal prison. Those charged with rape also face the possibility of a life sentence in a state facility.

Fifteen of their alleged victims remain in ICE custody pending their return to their home country. Six others - including the three purported rape victims — are being held in the United States to testify in the ongoing criminal case.

"Crimes perpetrated on illegal immigrants like this happen much more frequently than people realize," the sheriff said. "Most of the time, they go unreported."

News: Rescued immigrants claim kidnapping, rape, torture | rescued, claim, torture - News - TheMonitor.com

12 Gunmen Kill 8 at Restaurant along Texas Border

2008-12-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

Not much to give thanks for in Ciudad Juarez this weekend. It is difficult to imagine how hard life must be there now.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Over 40 Murders Reported this Week

New details on a deadly discovery across the border from El Paso. This morning police in Ciudad Juarez say at least 12 masked gun men opened fire inside an upscale seafood restaurant and killed at least eight people. The attack comes a day after seven men were found executed in a school soccer field in an upper class neighborhood in Juarez.

In all, 40 murders were reported over the holiday week along the border near El Paso. Police say the men were armed with AK-47 and fired off more than 100 rounds.

New Details: 12 Gunmen Kill 8 at Restaurant along Texas Border

Police Get Death Threats from Drug Cartels with Funeral Flowers in Mexico

2008-11-25T12:38:00.000-08:00

No end in sight. The recent firings of corrupt police are theoretically good, but now you have 500 angry-expolice. Did they get their uniforms back?

TIJUANA, MEXICO -- Gunmen suspected of working for organized crime groups killed three men in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, while another group of hired guns left funeral wreaths with threats aimed at police chiefs in the northern city of Hermosillo, officials said.

Mario Arnulfo Meza Reyes, 27, and Jose de Jesus Perez Castañeda, 28, were gunned down on a street in Tijuana's Libertad neighborhood, the Attorney General's Office in Baja California state, where the border city is located, said.

The body of an unidentified man who had been shot in the head was found in Tijuana's La Morita II district, the AG's office said.

Over the weekend, gunmen killed more than a dozen people in Tijuana, and some 650 people have been murdered in the border city, which is near San Diego, California, this year.

In Hermosillo, the capital of neighboring Sonora state, police found six funeral wreaths at different locations bearing threats against police commanders, the Sonora AG's office said.

The threats were signed by "Los Zetas," a group of army special forces veterans and deserters who initially worked as hitmen for the Gulf cartel and took over the criminal organization when its leaders were arrested.

"The 'narcowreaths' were left by unidentified individuals at different public places in the city during the early morning hours" of Monday, the AG's office said, without identifying who the threats were made against.

Mexican drug cartel gunmen use different methods to intimidate officials and rival traffickers, such as leaving threatening messages on bodies or in public places.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces, as rival gangs vie for control of lucrative smuggling and distribution routes.

Armed groups linked to Mexico's drug cartels murdered around 2,700 people in 2007 and 1,500 in 2006, with the death toll this year already at more than 5,000, according to press tallies.

The majority of the killings have occurred in the states of Chihuahua, Baja California, where Tijuana is located, and Sinaloa.

Experts say that Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organizations are the Tijuana cartel, which is run by the Arellano Felix brothers, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel. Two other large drug trafficking organizations, the Juarez and Milenio cartels, also operate in the country.

The Sinaloa organization is the oldest cartel in Mexico and is led by Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, who was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and pulled off a Hollywood-style jailbreak when he escaped from the Puente Grande maximum-security prison in the western state of Jalisco on Jan. 19, 2001.

Tackling the problem of drug-related violence, according to experts, is a major challenge both because of Mexico's notoriously corrupt security forces and because honest police officers are fearful of taking on the heavily armed drug mobs.

Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police to nearly a dozen of Mexico's 31 states in a bid to stem the wave of violence unleashed by drug traffickers.

The goal of the operation was to regain control of territory controlled by Mexico's drug cartels. EFE

Latin American Herald Tribune - Police Get Death Threats from Drug Cartels with Funeral Flowers in Mexico

Drug cartel gunmen ambush police in Culiacan, killing five officers.

2008-11-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

More serious madness down Old Mexico way.

Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico -- The fourth corpse pulled from the bullet-shattered pickup truck didn't have the benefit of a body bag. Only the face was covered (with a useless bulletproof vest). The victim's red shirt was even redder, soaked with blood. His bare arm hung limply from a gurney as he was lifted to a wagon from the morgue, the toes of his boots pointed skyward, at odd angles.

He was one of five federal and state police agents killed in a brazen shootout Wednesday night on the city's prominent Emiliano Zapata Boulevard. The officers were ambushed by gunmen in three vehicles who opened fire at an intersection outside an enormous casino called Play.

The shooters escaped. Police, emergency workers and soldiers converged on the scene, as the casino's blue and purple neon lights blinked garishly over the dead men slumped in the cab and bed of the pocked pickup. In all, 10 people were killed in Sinaloa state during a 24-hour period ended Wednesday night, a deadly slice of the burgeoning Mexican drug war. Nationwide, more than 4,000 people have been killed this year, according to Mexican media reports, many of them law enforcement agents doing battle with powerful drug gangs.

Sinaloa, a fertile state on the Pacific coast, has long been at the center of Mexico's drug trade. It has become a hub of violence since President Felipe Calderon dispatched an army of soldiers and federal police to take on some of the biggest drug lords.

The alarming level of violence -- shootouts and kidnappings almost every day -- has sown panic and fear among a normally resilient citizenry.

"To live in Culiacan is a risk," said Javier Valdez, a journalist and writer who hours before the killings addressed university students about the dangers of working here. "There is a psychosis -- you breathe it, live it, smell it, sweat it."

This week, grenades were hurled at the offices of Culiacan's largest-circulation newspaper, El Debate. Although no one was hurt, the act was widely seen as a message of intimidation.

The slain police agents (seven have been killed here in seven days) were part of a unit dedicated to cracking down on the rampant streets sales of cocaine, marijuana and other narcotics. They were ambushed a couple of blocks from their headquarters, shortly after they dropped off a suspect. Two other federal police officers with the agents were seriously injured.

After the bodies were taken away and investigators from a variety of agencies (some mistrustful of each other) did their work, a tow truck operator began the task of hauling away the agents' vehicle, riddled by scores of high-caliber bullets, its tires flattened.

Suddenly, a white Honda Civic sped up, wheels screeching to a stop after somehow managing to penetrate police cordons. Three women and two men jumped out. They were relatives of one of the agents.

"Mi hijo! Mi hijo!" screamed one woman. "My son, my son!"

They cried and flailed their arms; one of the men, a brother perhaps, beat the hood of his car with his fists. "Oh, no, no, no," he moaned.

"Silence!" an officer in charge commanded. "Ladies, calm yourselves."

"You don't understand," one of the younger women cried back.

"Yes, ma'am, I do," he said.

Behind them, the tow truck cranked and wheezed as it heaved the pickup onto its flatbed.

Inconsolable, the family left for the morgue, one of dozens that have sprung up here and do brisk business.

The tow truck left as well, taking away its own casualty. At the ambush site, the air smelled of spilled gasoline. Three investigators in rubber gloves picked up spent shells, scattered for many feet, filling several plastic bags.

Drug cartel gunmen ambush police in Culiacan, killing five officers. - Los Angeles Times: "MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Another bloody night in Sinaloa, Mexico"

Two Texas Tech employees gunned down in Juarez

2008-11-24T13:36:00.000-08:00

Given the number of bullets fired into the car I see two possibilities: either they had come to the attention of the Juarez criminals somehow (dealing, pissing them off) or it was case of mistaken identity based on the car. Given the car had US license plates, the latter seems unlikely. So I am suspecting there is a lot more to this than a harmless shopping trip gone wrong. But, hey, anything can happen in Mexico.

EL PASO -- The violence in Juarez hits home over the weekend as two Americans are gunned down.

Officials with the Juarez Municipal Police confirmed two Americans -- a man and a woman -- were gunned down this afternoon in the Colonia Cuatro Siglos near the intersection of Hermanos Escobar and Rafael Perez Serna.

They were identified as Roberto Martínez and Ruth Velasco. Police estimated Martinez's age as being between 55 and 60 years and that of Velasco as being in between 35 and 40 years.

Investigators determined Martinez was driving the KIA Amanti and Velasco was his passenger. More than 50 bullet casings were found near the vehicle.

El Diario de Juarez reports another woman and a child were also in the vehicle -- which had New Mexico plates -- during the incident but were not hurt.

Margaret Althoff-Olivas, a spokeswoman for Thomason Hospital, knew Martinez and VElasco and confirmed they both worked for Texas Tech Medical Center. Martinez was a military veteran, she added.

"These were two very caring and very competent healthcare professionals and our hearts absolutely ache. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families. They were part of our family. They will be greatly missed. This should not have happened. Their loss is absolutely devastating to so many. I hope whoever did this is caught," she said.

KVIA.com El Paso, Las Cruces - Weather, News, Sports - Two Texas Tech employees gunned down in Juarez

Ciudad Juarez Journalist Shot Dead

2008-11-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

Another sad story of journalists being killed in Mexico. Attempting to cover the drug wars is dangerous.

(AP)CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A crime reporter in the violent Mexican border city of Juarez was killed Thursday, adding to dozens of journalist deaths in a country where newspapers are so fearful, many refuse to cover drug violence.

Armando Rodriguez had covered crime for 10 years in Ciudad Juarez, working for El Diario newspaper.

He was shot several times as he sat warming up his car outside his home.

A special federal prosecutor in charge of journalist killings will investigate the death in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Officials did not immediately have any suspects or motive.

Mexico has become one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists, in part because drug gangs target reporters whose stories detail their activities.

Many reporters refuse to put their bylines on stories, and many newspapers have stopped covering the drug gangs altogether.

With Rodriguez's death, 24 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, at least seven of them in direct reprisal for their reports on crime, and seven others have disappeared since 2005, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Rodriguez's death shows the need for Mexico to do more to protect the media, said the committee's Carlos Lauria.

"Mexico needs to break the cycle of impunity in crimes against journalists," he said.

Drug-related killings are soaring as cartels battle each other for lucrative routes used to deliver cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs to consumers in the United States.

President Felipe Calderon is cracking down and the cartels have responded with a vengeance, more than 4,000 people have been killed so far this year, more than 1,000 in Ciudad Juarez alone.

Corruption is widespread, reaching as high as the federal Attorney General's office, and the drug gangs often control more than the drug trade, extorting money from business leaders and even teachers.

On Wednesday, an anonymous banner appeared at the door of a public Ciudad Juarez kindergarten, threatening to attack the schoolchildren if the teachers don't hand over their Christmas bonuses.

Classes were immediately suspended as police decided what security measures to take.

Also Thursday, state police said at least one gunshot was fired outside the U.S. Consulate in the northern city of Monterrey, the third attack on the building in less than two months.

One of the bullets cracked the glass of Isais Perez's nearby fruit cart.

"I was going to take out some oranges to cut them up, and I heard the shot," he said.

"I didn't see a car, but it was loud. I went to buy a cigarette, and when I got back, I saw the impact."

In separate incidents last month, an unexploded grenade was tossed at the consulate and gunshots were fired, prompting officials to suspend visa services.

In the northwestern city of Culiacan, at least three of 27 kidnapped farm workers were safely released on Thursday.

It was still unclear why the group was abducted.

Assailants rousted the farmworkers from bed before dawn Monday at a vegetable farm just outside Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, then drove off with the group in a caravan of sport utility vehicles.

The three farm workers released told police they were driven to a mountainous area, fed for three days and then dropped off by the side of a highway and given 100 pesos each for a bus back to Culiacan.

The workers were blindfolded for part of the journey, so they couldn't tell authorities exactly where they had been.

Prosecutors believe the rest may also have been released and are trying to contact them to investigate the case further.

In the border city of Tijuana, meanwhile, three people were gunned down Thursday and police discovered a decomposing human head left near a hardware store.

Laredo Morning Times - LMTonline.com - > News

Burned, cut-up body left at Mexican police station

2008-11-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Seven people are dead after a string of gruesome attacks in the Mexican border city of Juarez.

State police say a man's burned and headless body was found dumped in front of a police station. His severed hands lay next to his body, each holding kitchen lighters. A note left behind was directed to the Aztecas drug gang.

Police later found two men and two women executed in a sport utility vehicle parked outside a Social Security clinic. And a woman's body was found stuffed in a black trash bag.

Police chased a truck that opened fire on a state vehicle, causing a car crash that killed a bystander and injured four others.

All of the deaths were Monday. Police are investigating.

Now: Burned, cut-up body left at Mexican police station | police, body, left : TheMonitor.com

In Mexico, beheaded man hung from overpass

2008-11-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

In Mexico, beheaded man hung from overpass

11/06/2008

Associated Press

A beheaded man was hung from an overpass Thursday, a gruesome display even for this northern border city long used to drug-related violence.

Shortly after the grisly sighting about 5 a.m., police found the victim's head in a black bag in a nearby plaza, said state police spokesman Alejandro Pariente.

Pariente said the body was wearing black jeans, a red T-shirt and white sneakers, and was handcuffed. A banner apparently directed at rival drug-gang members was hung next to the corpse.

The victim's father identified the 23-year-old man.

Elsewhere, masked men gunned down two police officers in a convenience store in Chihuahua City, the capital of Chihuahua state, where Juarez is located, said Eduardo Esparza, spokesman for the state attorney general's office. After the killing Wednesday evening, assailants left a toy pig next to the bodies. Two shoppers also were wounded.

On Tuesday, a man wearing a pig mask was found hung in a residence in Ciudad Juarez. Near the body was a message threatening to do the same to others. Police believe the message was from drug gangs.

Drug violence has been escalating across Mexico and cartels have turned to increasingly gruesome methods to send a message to their rivals and police. Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, has registered one of the highest murder rates in the country, with more than 1,000 people killed so far this year.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Texas/Southwest

Police chief, 3 detectives gunned down in Mexico | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

2008-11-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

More top law enforcement officers getting shot dead in Mexico. How sad for everyone involved.

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen killed a state police chief in the border city of Nogales and three police detectives in central Guanajuato state, as a wave of drug-related violence batters Mexican security forces, authorities said Monday.

In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, authorities on Monday found the bullet-riddled bodies of six men in a vegetable warehouse along with more than 100 shell casings from assault rifles.

The bodies of three other men were found in a sport utility vehicle on a Tijuana street on Sunday. All had apparently been shot to death.

On Sunday night, Sonora state police chief Juan Manuel Pavon Felix was shot dead as he entered a hotel with his bodyguard and other officers, according to a statement from the state investigative police office.

Pavon had just finished directing police operations in the city, the statement said.

In Guanajuato, the state attorney general reported that gunmen killed three state police detectives on Monday at a restaurant near the border with the violence-plagued state of Michoacan, where drug cartels have been fighting bloody turf battles.

Scores of soldiers and police officers have been killed in escalating drug violence across Mexico.

On Monday, the government announced that a lawyer who has worked for the country's intelligence and national security agency, Rodrigo Esparza, has been named the new commissioner of federal police.

His predecessor, Gerardo Garay, resigned last week amid allegations that drug gangs have infiltrated senior levels of crime-fighting agencies.

Police chief, 3 detectives gunned down in Mexico | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Mexican Toddler Killed While Fleeing Shootout With Mother (21 Dead in 24 Hours)

2008-10-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

More dangerous than Iraq now? This is an amazing article.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Four men were shot dead in front of a crowd at an amusement park, a toddler died after the car he was traveling in crashed during a gunbattle, and a businessman was killed after leading a protest against violence, officials said Thursday.

All together, 21 people died during 24 hours across Mexico, which is waging a fierce battle against drug traffickers and other criminal gangs.

In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, the four men were shot inside a go-cart rental at the Xtreme amusement park Wednesday night, said Alejandro Pariente, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office. The park had been filled with teenagers, bicycling through obstacle courses, skating and rappelling.

Police had no suspects and had not disclosed possible motives for the shootings.

Elsewhere in the city, a used car salesman was shot to death while driving down a main boulevard hours after leading hundreds of other business owners in a protest against kidnappings and extortion, Pariente said.

The protesters had gathered at the Treasury Department's local offices, threatening to close their businesses or stop paying taxes if they did not receive police protection. One protester, who refused to give his name because he feared for his safety, said hundreds of business owners have been targeted by extortioners who demand up to US$500 a week for "protection" against crime. Others have been kidnapped for ransom.

In Tijuana, a 1-year-old boy was killed when the car he was riding in crashed as the driver tried to flee a gunbattle late Wednesday between police and three armed men, officials in the state prosecutor's office said. The toddler, who had been sitting in his mother's lap, died from the impact of the crash.

Two men were taken into custody after the shooting, and one officer was wounded.

Two other people were found dead early Thursday in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California, including a badly burned corpse left in a trash bin.

Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez have both seen nearly daily killings as Mexico is swept up in a wave of drug-related bloodshed. Officials blame the violence on cartels fighting over lucrative smuggling routes.

Elsewhere in northern Mexico, 10 gunmen were killed in running battles with state police in the city of Nogales, across the border from Nogales, Arizona, according to a police statement.

The fighting started when assailants in a car opened fire on police searching another vehicle. The police fired back, killing one of the armed men and injuring another.

The rest of the gunmen fled in both cars, at one point hurling grenades at the police pursuing them. One of the fleeing cars crashed into a wall, killing three gunmen. Three gunmen in the other car were killed in a subsequent shootout with the police, and others died at local hospitals.

Outside the northeastern city of Monterrey, meanwhile, a soldier, the director of a security firm and third man were found stabbed to death alongside a highway Wednesday, officials from the prosecutor's office said. At least 10 soldiers have been found dead in Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is located, in the past two weeks.

FOXNews.com - Mexican Toddler Killed While Fleeing Shootout With Mother - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

Monterrey gunfire shuts U.S. consulate

2008-10-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

The official US spokes-monkey says: "“No one should believe they can attack a United States government facility with impunity.” Ha, ha, ha. Sure, the banditos are quaking in their boots I am sure.

Monterrey gunfire shuts U.S. consulate.

Recommend 0 Sean Mattson - Express-News MONTERREY, Mexico — The U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey suspended visa service Thursday as combat-ready police surrounded the building after reports of nearby gunfire.

The midday mobilization came just four days after two assailants attacked the consulate with at least six .45-caliber gunshots and a hand grenade that did not detonate.

“I have made the decision to suspend visa services to the public for the rest of the day today while we assess the security situation,” Tony Garza, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said in a statement Thursday.

The shooting came less than 24 hours after Garza visited the consulate to investigate Sunday's attack.

It was unclear how close Thursday's shots were to the consulate, which is one of the United States' busiest visa issuers.

By late Thursday, authorities had made no arrests in Sunday's attack, nor had they cited a motive or shared leads in the investigation.

One high-ranking Nuevo León state official said he doubted Sunday's attack was carried out by organized crime.

“If it had been organized crime, I think they would have set off the (grenade) and shot with a different type of weapon,” said Aldo Fasci, the state's public security minister.

Garza, after his Wednesday visit to Monterrey, said authorities would find those responsible for the attack.

“They will find that it was a mistake to target a United States consulate,” he said in a statement. “No one should believe they can attack a United States government facility with impunity.”

Monterrey gunfire shuts U.S. consulate

Four People Wounded During Gun Battle in Mexico[Matamoros]

2008-10-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

There is a nice video of the action at the link.
More border wars.

Shootout lasted several hours

MATAMOROS, Mexico - Four people were wounded during a shootout between suspected drug cartel members and the Mexican Military on Thursday.

Officials say the shootout lasted several hours, one soldier and four suspected cartel members were wounded.

Many Americans heading out of Matamoros had no idea what had happened.

"The truth is I don't know more, just the one street is all closed," says Daniel Quintanal.

Mexican media is reporting that four suspected cartel members were arrested as they tried to cross the river into America. The U.S. Border Patrol was unable to confirm the report.

Four People Wounded During Gun Battle in Mexico[Matamoros]

Nogales, Sonora named in new US travel warning

2008-10-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

All of Mexico has problems, but the border towns are really no-go areas for tourists at this point. Public shootouts in shopping malls "during daylight hours". If at night it would still be OK to go there? Ha!

Nogales, Sonora named in new US travel warning By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.14.2008

The increasing levels of drug-related violence in Nogales, Sonora, has earned the Mexican border city a dubious distinction: it’s mentioned in a new travel warning issued by the U.S. Department of State alongside notoriously dangerous cities such as Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo.

Previous warnings have talked in general terms about precautions to take when traveling in Mexico along the U.S.-Mexican border region but did not single out any Sonoran city. This new warning mentions Nogales as one of the cities that have “recently experienced public shootouts during daylight hours in shopping centers and other public venues.”
It also mentions Route 15 between Nogales and Hermosillo as an area where “criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles.”"

More than two dozen die amid Mexico violence - Los Angeles Times

2008-10-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

MEXICO CITY -- In another violent spasm, more than two dozen people were killed in Mexico within hours late Thursday and early Friday, including a newspaper publisher, two federal agents and a group gunned down as they drank at a bar.

The slayings came as Mexico endures an unprecedented wave of drug-related warfare that has claimed thousands of lives as narcotics trafficking networks battle among themselves and with authorities.

In the northern city of Chihuahua, 11 people died when four masked men dressed in black entered the Rio Rosas bar late Thursday and raked customers with gunfire. Seven people were wounded. The gunmen reportedly gained entrance by telling a guard that they were conducting a routine inspection. They disappeared into the night after the shootings, state prosecutors said, and no arrests had been made.

A columnist for a local newspaper was among the dead.

Early Friday, two federal agents and two suspected drug traffickers were killed in a shootout along the highway between Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez, a city that borders Texas and has been an epicenter of drug violence.

In a separate incident, Miguel Angel Villagomez, the editor and publisher of La Noticia, a daily newspaper in the state of Michoacan, was found dead Friday morning with three gunshots to his body.

Associates said Villagomez left the newspaper office, in the Pacific port city of Lazaro Cardenas, on Thursday afternoon to give one of his employees a ride home. He was apparently followed, intercepted and seized, the associates said.

Francisco Rivera, deputy editor, said the paper recently published photographs of banners that had appeared in the city, purportedly the work of drug traffickers, and that might have been the reason Villagomez was targeted.

"We don't see any other motive," Rivera said in a telephone interview.

The banners, dozens of which have popped up in cities all over the country, offer rewards for the capture of suspects in a Sept. 15 grenade attack on civilians in the Michoacan state capital of Morelia, and appear to be part of a mutual finger-pointing campaign between rival drug gangs.

Journalist advocacy groups have rated Mexico as one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a reporter. The Inter American Press Assn. this week urged Mexican authorities to end what is in effect impunity for the killers of journalists by more seriously investigating such crimes.

In Tijuana, where fighting has surged in recent weeks and dozens have died, 13 people were reported killed late Thursday and early Friday. Among those shot to death, authorities said, was Francisco Javier Salas, a newspaper vendor. He may have been targeted after witnessing a slaying, Mexican media reported.

More than two dozen die amid Mexico violence - Los Angeles Times

Mexican police beat, kill Oregon tourist

2008-10-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

Mexican police are found guilty in the fatal beating of an Oregon tourist

Sam Botner was arrested and assaulted at a jail in Cabo.
By Mark Workhoven
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Four Mexican officers are found guilty in the death of an Oregon tourist near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The Yoncalla tourist on vacation was beaten in a Mexican jail, after getting arrested for stabbing a man outside his rented condo. A judge decided to convict the four Mexican jail guards of manslaughter. A surveillance video shows the men beating Sam Botner to death in a Cabo San Lucas jail. Botner and his wife were vacationing in Mexico to celebrate his completion of a commercial fishing trip.

News Radio 1190 KEX

12 decapitated bodies found in Mexico - Yahoo! News

2008-08-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

MERIDA, Mexico (AFP) - Twelve decapitated bodies bearing signs of torture were found Thursday in eastern Mexico, authorities said, adding that they were still looking for the heads.

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Eleven headless male bodies were found piled on top of each other and covered with blankets in a suburb of the city of Merida, the capital of Yucatan state.

Some of the cadavers also had their legs tied, an AFP photographer saw. One was completely naked, while others wore denim clothing. Some of the murdered men had tattooed arms.

A twelfth body was found in a town called Buctzotz, 70 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Merida. Its head is also missing.

Jose Guzman, a Yucatan state prosecutor, said the bodies were found by townspeople but that the heads were still missing.

"We believe that the 12 executions were an isolated incident and not part of a strategy to destabilize the state," Guzman told reporters.

A top Mexican public security official who visited Merida recently had noted that the city had remained largely untouched by the drug war that has left more than 2,600 dead in Mexico so far this year.

Just four drug-related murders had been reported in Yucatan state this year, according to El Universal newspaper.

Decapitated bodies have appeared in southern and northern Mexico, and authorities say they are revenge killings between rival drug cartels.

In recent years, drug trafficking gangs have resorted to decapitations and dismemberments against their foes in northern and southern Mexico. Hitmen often leave notes on the bodies indicating it was a drug-related assassination.

12 decapitated bodies found in Mexico - Yahoo! News

Gunmen kill at least 14 at benefit race - El Paso Times

2008-08-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Gunmen kill at least 14 at benefit race - El Paso Times: "Gunmen kill at least 14 at benefit race
El Paso Times Staff
Article Launched: 08/18/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

EL PASO -- At least 14 people were killed and another 12 suffered gunshot wounds Saturday in the mountain community of Creel, Chihuahua, when several masked men opened fire using automatic rifles during a benefit race, a newspaper in Chihuahua and the Associated Press reported.
Details of the incident and the number of victims vary, but the newspaper El Heraldo reported that about 10 masked men arrived at the race in sport utility vehicles and opened fire, killing men, women and a 1-year-old child. The newspaper reported that tourists ran to hide in restaurants.
Creel is in southwestern Chihuahua in the heart of the Sierra Madre mountains and is frequented by U.S. tourists who want to visit Tarahumara Indian villages.
El Heraldo reported the killings were related to the ongoing drug war that has taken hold in Chihuahua, including Juárez, where more than 800 people have been killed since the beginning of the year."

800 Dead: El Pasoans stay uneasy as slayings continue - El Paso Times

2008-08-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Juarez, Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo are the big three of centers of the Mexican drug war, but the violence pops up everywhere from the resort cities on the Pacific to Mexico City itself. No where is off limits.

Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 08/18/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

EL PASO -- A massacre at a drug rehab center last week helped propel the death toll in Juárez to more than 800 homicides so far this year as the city is rapidly emerging among the deadliest in the Americas.
More than 100 people have been slain in August alone as the rate of street shootings, mob-style executions and other homicides has increased since a war between the Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels erupted in January.

The inability of Mexican authorities to rein in the violence is increasing concerns on the U.S. side of the border.

"I find how brazen this (violence) is. To me, if you wanted to see what terrorism is like, you are looking at it full-fledged over there" in Juárez, El Paso police Chief Greg Allen said. "People getting killed in broad daylight in front of everyone, in police stations. That type of thing should make people very uncomfortable."

Allen maintains that the chances that drug violence in Juárez will spill into El Paso remains unlikely due to cooperation among law enforcement agencies.

"If it would have happened, it would have already happened, in my opinion," Allen said.

El Paso has had 12 homicides this year. Juárez had 13 killings Wednesday alone.

That day, eight men were killed and five others wounded when acommando-style group fired a barrage of more than 60 rounds during a religious service in a Juárez drug rehabilitation center.

There were five other homicides that day.

The homicide rate has quickened to an average of about 3.5

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homicides per day in Juárez compared with an average of 1.7 homicides per day during the first 14 days in January shortly after the cartel war began. Juárez averaged 0.8 homicides per day last year.
By comparison, Medellin, Colombia, had 6,349 homicides or nearly 18 per day in 1991 during the murderous reign of drug lord Pablo Escobar, the Miami Herald reported in a recent article on that city's rebirth. Medellin has a population of about 2.1 million. In 2007, the murder count was 653, or less than two per day.

Juárez, with an estimated population close to 2 million, is the battleground in a turf war such as the one fought a few years ago in Nuevo Laredo by the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel reputedly led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Nuevo Laredo, with a population of about 350,000, has had about 500 murders since 2003, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service on Mexico's drug cartels.

"The violence in Juárez is similar to that which took place in Nuevo Laredo a few years ago, but the numbers of victims is greater (in Juárez) because Juárez is a bigger city, hence a larger drug plaza," said Howard Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has researched drug trafficking.

"In Laredo, the situation basically settled down because the Gulf cartel won and held on to their territory," Campbell said.

"In Juárez, it is not clear yet who will win, although it appears that Chapo may have the edge. The Mexican government so far has been unable to control or stop the violence."Ê

The violence in Juárez has been the subject of articles in newspapers and magazines from New York to Los Angeles. Tourists, missionaries and others planning to visit the borderland regularly ask whether it is safe.

"None of these incidents are tourism-related. None of these people affected are tourists," said Pifas Silva, spokesman for the El Paso Convention and Visitors Bureau. The bureau advises visitors to Juárez to travel during daylight hours, travel with groups of two or more and visit popular tourist attractions only.

In a trip to Juárez last week, Chihuahua Gov. José Reyes Baeza complained that the media was paying too much attention to the violence in his state. "It should not be the only topic ... in the mass media. We have many good things to share with other Mexicans watching us from afar," the governor said.

Juárez city leaders have acknowledged that some economic development opportunities have been lost in the past eight months due to safety concerns.

"This whole thing is very bad for our region because of the murders and insecurity, the negativeÊeffect on tourism, and theÊoverall bad image it creates.

"Who would want to visit or set up a business in Juárez at present?" Campbell said.

El Pasoans stay uneasy as slayings continue - El Paso Times

Mexico Rates At The Top For Kidnappings | KGNS | Local

2008-08-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

Blog of the Gods was begun based on an offhand comment I made that Mexico was more dangerous than Iraq. At the time I made that comment it was not true. In fact Iraq was about 10X more dangerous. However in the last three years the situation has changed. Mexico is beset by an even bigger crime wave, including endless killings (30 last weekend in one city alone). Meanwhile, Iraq has improved considerably. It is difficult to get good statistics to make the comparison, but the trend lines certainly point to it eventually being true.

There is bad news for Mexico today ... as a new study puts them at the top of the list for kidnappings.
A study released Thursday by the non-governmental organization I-K-V Pax Christi says there have been more kidnappings in Mexico than in any other part of the world.
Could this new information keep tourists from visiting our border country?
Our Annette Garcia has more on the story.
From food ... to music ... Mexico ... is a country rich in culture.
in the last few years .. However ... news of Feuding drug cartels and rising crime rates has taken their toll on Mexico’s image.
“Since the drug wars we just don’t go anymore.
“I just don’t think its worth the risk.”
Now a new studies involving kidnappings ... continues dampening the outlook for our neighboring country.
“of the estimated one hundred thousand kidnappings worldwide ... most of those happened right here in Mexico. The number is higher than that of Iraq and Pakistan.”
For many living in Mexico.... The news isn’t surprising.
“Si las authoridades tengan occopado ... or no pueden.. No se que esta pasando ... pero enseguridad si lo ay.”
She says she doesn’t know if it’s a problem with authorities ... but there definitely is a sense of insecurity.
The feeling ... not mutual.. With Milton Wemming ...who says he's been coming to Nuevo Laredo since the age of 14 ...
“I think most everything down here is drug related i think if you stay away from the drugs you’re okay.”
a quick trip ... others agree .. Isn’t anything to worry about.
“I’ve been to Nuevo Laredo a couple of times but I don’t have that kind of fear.”
but with several hundred people .. Now missing in Mexico ... those living on the u.s. side of the border only hope things will get better.
“I think its horrible ... they have to get these guys and stop the violence so everyone can enjoy Mexico for what it is ... a great country.”
After Mexico ... some of the top ten countries with the most kidnappings include ... Iraq ... India ... South Africa ... Brazil ... Pakistan ... Venezuela and Bangladesh.

Mexico Rates At The Top For Kidnappings | KGNS | Local

30 dead in worst weekend of Mexico violence this year

2008-08-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

Well 25 died in a bombing in an Iraqi market and that's all over the news. The worst attack in months there. Meanwhile, a lot closer to home, 30 dead in a single day in Mexico gets little coverage.

At this point it is probably more dangerous to be a Mexican policeman than an American soldier in Iraq.

More than 30 people died in the worst weekend of violence this year in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua, the scene of daily drug gang turf wars, police said Monday.
Heavily-armed assassins killed nine people in separate incidents late Sunday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, local police said, following the slaying of 21 people the previous night -- including a baby and a four-year-old boy -- at a village dance in the town of Creel.

Drug-related violence in Mexico has killed 2,682 people since the start of the year -- nine more than in all of 2007 -- with nearly half in Chihuahua state, daily El Universal reported Saturday.

Ciudad Juarez -- across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, where local drug gangs are battling the powerful Sinaloa cartel -- has the highest murder toll, with some 800 so far this year, according to an AFP count.

Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country since early 2007, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and related violence.

But the murder rate has climbed dramatically in two years, from 1,410 in 2006.

30 dead in worst weekend of Mexico violence this year

Mexican gnmen kill 8 youths and a police cheif and take hostages

2008-07-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

Best to avoid Sinaloa as a vacation destination. Wow, it seems to be spiraling out of control in the whole country now. Used to be this was only in Nuevo Laredo, then Tijuana, now it is everywhere.

MEXICO CITY – Gunmen killed eight youths and a police chief and took dozens of restaurant patrons hostage for hours in two attacks in the drug gang-ridden state of Sinaloa, officials saidSunday.

A group of hitmen sprayed four cars with bullets on a busy street in the city of Guamuchil in the early hours of Sunday, killing five young men and three female minors, a police source told Reuters.

In an earlier attack on Saturday, six other armed men caused pandemonium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan by taking refuge in a shopping mall to escape security forces after they shot dead local police chief Sixto Escobedo when he resisted their attempt to kidnap him.
The attackers, dressed in police uniforms, took some 40 people hostage in a restaurant inside the mall while they negotiated their escape with police.

Drug gang killings in Mexico have soared to unprecedented levels, with some 1,700 people dead so far this year, as an army-led crackdown intensifies turf wars between rival gangs, whose hitmen are increasingly taking their battles public with daylight shootouts in busy streets.

President Felipe Calderón began his crackdown in late 2006 but opinion polls show many Mexicans worry he is failing to gain the upper hand on cartels, who have grown bold enough to post threats or recruiting advertisements on street banners.

Hitmen, who are known to sometimes don police gear, often dump bodies with torture marks or severed heads in public, and while the vast majority of the victims are drug gang members, a few dozen civilians have been killed in street battles.

It was unclear if Sunday's victims had links to drug gangs, who have been known to target rival gangs' family members.

“They killed three girls and five male youths,” a local police source in Guamuchil said. Two others were injured.

Sinaloa state in northwestern Mexico is one of the areas most affected by drug violence and is home to Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

Images on Mexican online media Sunday, some captured by witnesses on their cell phones, showed frantic shoppers rushing away from the mall in Mazatlan and screaming employees in the food mall seeking shelter as gun shots ring out.

“The alleged delinquents took hostages at a restaurant for several hours. There was a negotiation in which they got a vehicle for their exit. They took (two) hostages with them, then released them and escaped,” a spokesman for the Sinaloa government told Reuters Sunday.

Local media said Escobedo, who was shot when he refused to get in the gunmen's car, was a local police commander.

More than 500 policemen, including a handful of senior commanders, have been killed since Calderón's crackdown began.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Mexico -- Mexico gunmen kill youths, take hostages

Mexican gnmen kill 8 youths and a police cheif and take hostages

2008-07-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Best to avoid Sinaloa as a vacation destination. Wow, it seems to be spiraling out of control in the whole country now. Used to be this was only in Nuevo Laredo, then Tijuana, now it is everywhere.

MEXICO CITY – Gunmen killed eight youths and a police chief and took dozens of restaurant patrons hostage for hours in two attacks in the drug gang-ridden state of Sinaloa, officials saidSunday.

A group of hitmen sprayed four cars with bullets on a busy street in the city of Guamuchil in the early hours of Sunday, killing five young men and three female minors, a police source told Reuters.

In an earlier attack on Saturday, six other armed men caused pandemonium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan by taking refuge in a shopping mall to escape security forces after they shot dead local police chief Sixto Escobedo when he resisted their attempt to kidnap him.
The attackers, dressed in police uniforms, took some 40 people hostage in a restaurant inside the mall while they negotiated their escape with police.

Drug gang killings in Mexico have soared to unprecedented levels, with some 1,700 people dead so far this year, as an army-led crackdown intensifies turf wars between rival gangs, whose hitmen are increasingly taking their battles public with daylight shootouts in busy streets.

President Felipe Calderón began his crackdown in late 2006 but opinion polls show many Mexicans worry he is failing to gain the upper hand on cartels, who have grown bold enough to post threats or recruiting advertisements on street banners.

Hitmen, who are known to sometimes don police gear, often dump bodies with torture marks or severed heads in public, and while the vast majority of the victims are drug gang members, a few dozen civilians have been killed in street battles.

It was unclear if Sunday's victims had links to drug gangs, who have been known to target rival gangs' family members.

“They killed three girls and five male youths,” a local police source in Guamuchil said. Two others were injured.

Sinaloa state in northwestern Mexico is one of the areas most affected by drug violence and is home to Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

Images on Mexican online media Sunday, some captured by witnesses on their cell phones, showed frantic shoppers rushing away from the mall in Mazatlan and screaming employees in the food mall seeking shelter as gun shots ring out.

“The alleged delinquents took hostages at a restaurant for several hours. There was a negotiation in which they got a vehicle for their exit. They took (two) hostages with them, then released them and escaped,” a spokesman for the Sinaloa government told Reuters Sunday.

Local media said Escobedo, who was shot when he refused to get in the gunmen's car, was a local police commander.

More than 500 policemen, including a handful of senior commanders, have been killed since Calderón's crackdown began.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Mexico -- Mexico gunmen kill youths, take hostages

The drug war just across the border

2008-06-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

We can give $1.6 billion to Mexico to fight this war but I don't think it's going to make a difference. The corruption is too widespread. One suspects a lot of it will be siphoned off by the very people we are hoping to fight.

Somehow I've missed the "heads in ice-coolers" part of this story up till now. Interesting twist on a now-common tactic in the MexiDrugWar: beheading.

Is Mexico more dangerous than Iraq now? At some point the decreasing violence in Iraq line and the increasing violence in Mexico line will cross.

Clarence Page
June 29, 2008
As if our military didn't have its hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan, the head of the Minuteman Project border security group seems to think Minutemen might make good narcotics cops.

Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist suggested in recent radio interviews that the U.S. give Mexico 12 months to corral its criminal drug cartels and rising violence, particularly in border towns such as Juarez and Tijuana—or deploy the U.S. Army to do the job.

That's the Minutemen. Their remedies for the drug war next door sound simplistic, but at least they're paying attention.

While most of us north of the border have been absorbed with our presidential sweepstakes and other happenings, our southern neighbor has exploded into the full-scale drug violence previously associated with Colombia or Peru.

For now, we're not sending troops, just money. The Senate last Thursday approved a $1.6 billion, three-year package of anti-drug assistance to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Known as the "Merida Initiative," it includes $400 million for military equipment and technical assistance for Mexico's anti-drug fight. The bill was passed earlier by the House and President Bush is expected to sign it.

Mexico's government cheered the bill because it waters down proposed restrictions that would have required Mexico to change the way it handles allegations of human rights abuses by its military. Mexican leaders threatened to reject the money if there were too many restrictions on their sovereignty.

But the omission brought jeers from Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, such as the Friends of Brad Will, founded in the name of a freelance New York journalist who was shot and killed while shooting video of a teachers strike in Oaxaca two years ago. A native of Chicago's North Shore, Will was 36.

His final video shows protesters hurling rocks and captures the sounds of gunshots, along with a shout: "Stop taking photos!" A shot is heard whizzing toward Will. He was struck in the abdomen and once in the right side.

Within days, state authorities took two men into custody, a local town councilor and his security chief. But they were released less than two months later. A state judge ruled that they were not close enough to have shot Will.

No further suspects were brought in. Publicity eventually helped nudge federal authorities into taking the case over, but they have not made much more progress. Capturing his own killing on video did not save Will from becoming one of thousands of casualties related to drugs or politics in Mexico in recent years.

Twenty-one journalists have been killed in Mexico, seven of them in direct reprisal for their work, since 2000, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of which I am a board member. Seven others have disappeared in the last three years.

"Mexico is not at war," said Joel Simon, executive director of CPJ. "And yet it is one of the world's most dangerous countries for the press."

But that's only a sliver of the thousands of drug-related murders of non-journalists in Mexico. By various counts, more than 4,000 people—including some 500 local, state and federal police officers—have been killed in the 18 months since President Felipe Calderon launched his campaign against the drug gangs.

Gang wars have escalated in recent years over smuggling routes to the United States and over control of local police forces. Among other particularly grisly touches, drug gangs in the northern state of Durango recently have left severed heads with warning notes attached in coolers by the side of the road.

Journalists such as Francisco Ortiz Franco, co-editor of the Tijuana newsweekly Zeta, have been killed for aggressively covering corruption and drug trafficking. At age 50, Franco was fatally shot in front of his children on a downtown Tijuana street.

Cases like his led to a meeting between President Calderon, who has sent federal troops in to bring peace to some towns, and CPJ board members, including me, in Mexico City June 9. Among other press freedom reforms, Calderon agreed to work toward laws that would protect speech and press freedoms at the federal level, not just the states, where corruption is more rampant.

With hundreds of millions of Washington anti-drug dollars still pending at the time, Calderon had ample reason to speak in glowing terms about human rights reforms. Now he needs to follow his talk with action—and Americans need to keep an eye on how well our money is being used.

The drug war just across the border -- chicagotribune.com

Pharr man found tortured, shot dead in Reynosa[South Texas/Mexico]

2008-06-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

Going to these border towns to get drunk is like taking a vacation in the Gaza Strip. Not a very bright thing to do.

McALLEN - A local resident was found wrapped, tortured and shot execution-style in Reynosa on Friday, according to a Mexican news report released Sunday.

Ramiro Torres Hernández, 24, - a manager of a Burger King in McAllen - was found inside an abandoned vehicle's trunk in a rural field heading toward Rio Bravo in Ejido El Porvenir, El Universal wire service reported.

Tamaulipas state police identified Torres as a Pharr resident.

His visibly tortured body was wrapped in a blanket inside the trunk of a white 2000 Buick sporting Texas license plates, El Universal reported. He had been shot in the head.

Reynosa resident Javier Hernández García, 45, identified Torres as his nephew.

Hernández told authorities Torres arrived drunk in Reynosa on Wednesday at about 3 p.m. About an hour later, Torres went out to buy some more beer and never returned, El Universal reported the uncle as saying.

Mexican authorities were continuing their investigation late Sunday.

Pharr man found tortured, shot dead in Reynosa[South Texas/Mexico]

Mexican Army Members Busted for Home Invasion and Murder (Phoenix, AZ)

2008-06-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

Hopefully we will get more details later. Whether they are active Mexican Army, retired, ore merely drug gang militia it probably doesn't matter much to the people they were jacking up.

As BOTG has predicted and now sees, the border chaos is not limited to the Mexican side. It's not even limited to the border, it is spreading like a malignant cancer into our cities small and large.

Police reports show that three men arrested in a Phoenix home invasion and homicide Monday may have been active members of the Mexican Army.

While on the J.D. Hayworth show, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Mark Spencer said that the men involved were hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and assassinations.

The Monday morning incident at 8329 W. Cypress St. resulted in the death of the homeowner. Between 50 and 100 rounds were fired at the house.

Spencer said a police officer told him that one of the men captured said they were completely prepared to ambush Phoenix police, but ran out of ammunition.

He added that all were all dressed in military tactical gear and were armed with AR-15 assault rifles. Three other men involved in the invasion escaped.

Click Here to listen to Mark Spencer's entire interview on the J.D. Hayworth show.

However, Phoenix Police have not confirmed the men were Mexican Army members.

Sgt. Joel Tranter said one suspect revealed that he had "prior military training," but "no credible evidence" that any of them were active in the military.

KFYI - "The Valley's Talk Station"

5 Assassinated in Novolato

2008-06-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

Mexico City, Jun 22 (EFE).- Police found the bodies of five people who were killed with AK-47 assault rifles in Novolato, a city in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, in an apparent settling of scores between organized-crime groups, prosecutors told Efe.

The bodies were found early Saturday lined up on the edge of an irrigation canal at the main entrance to the city's San Pedro neighborhood.

"The five bodies had the hands tied behind their backs and were betweeen 25 and 30 years" old, a spokesman for the Sinaloa Attorney General's Office said.

Police found 104 bullet casings from AK-47 assault rifles at the crime scene, leading investigators to conclude the victims were gunned down by organized-crime groups.

The bodies did not have any identification on them, but three of the victims were apparently reported missing on Friday, officials said.

"Two of every three homicides in this state are linked to organized crime due to the modus operandi," the Sinaloa Attorney General's Office spokesman said.

So far this year, there have been 395 murders linked to organized crime in Sinaloa, or about 2.2 per day.

Last week, gunmen believed to be working for organized-crime groups murdered a police officer in Sinaloa.

Officer Ricardo Beltran Villa was gunned down in Culiacan, where the government deployed 2,700 soldiers and federal agents last month in an effort to stem the wave of drug-related violence.

Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, is one of the cities most affected by drug trafficking in Mexico.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces, as rival gangs vie for control of lucrative smuggling and distribution routes.

Armed groups linked to Mexico's drug cartels murdered more than 2,700 people in 2007, and the death toll so far this year stands at some 1,700.

Experts say that Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organizations are the Tijuana cartel, which is run by the Arellano Felix brothers, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel. Two other large drug trafficking organizations, the Juarez and Milenio cartels, also operate in the country.

The Sinaloa organization is the oldest cartel in Mexico and is led by Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, who was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and pulled off a Hollywood-style jailbreak when he escaped from the Puente Grande maximum-security prison in the western state of Jalisco on Jan. 19, 2001, and has been a major headache for authorities and rival drug lords ever since.

Guzman, considered extremely violent, is one of the most-wanted criminals in Mexico and the United States, where the Drug Enforcement Administration has offered a reward of $5 million for him.

On May 10, officials confirmed the death of Edgar Guzman, one of the drug lord's six sons, in a shootout in Culiacan in which gunmen used grenade launchers and bazookas.

The killing of the Sinaloa cartel chief's son and the arrest soon after of his cousin, Alfonso Gutierrez Loera, 25, prompted analysts to predict a new wave of violence in Mexico.

Analysts, moreover, said Guzman has been waging a battle for control of the cartel with the Beltran Leyva brothers.

Tackling the problem of drug-related violence, according to experts, is a major challenge both because of Mexico's notoriously corrupt security forces and because honest police officers are fearful of taking on the heavily armed drug mobs.

Some 40 army and navy personnel, 30 federal police officers and about 200 state law-enforcement agents were killed last year, with most of the killings occurring in northern and southern Mexico, according to official figures.

Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police to nearly a dozen of Mexico's 31 states in a bid to stem the wave of violence unleashed by drug traffickers. The goal of the operation was to regain control of territory controlled by Mexico's drug cartels

Macro*World Investor

Ciudad Juarez: 3 police officers killed in gunbattle

2008-06-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Drug cartels are believed to be behind a series of banners hung Monday in this crime-ridden border city that blamed rival gangs for spiraling violence.

The six banners appeared along different avenues of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, city police spokesman Jaime Torres said. They were taken down immediately.

One of the banners blamed reputed Sinaloa drug-cartel chief Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman for the city's rising crime, including brazen daylight shootouts and increasing numbers of homicides.

"You know that before there wasn't this type of violence," the banner said.

Juarez, located in the northern state of Chihuahua and home base of the powerful Juarez drug cartel, has been among the hardest-hit cities in an explosion of violence across Mexico.

More than a dozen police officers have been killed in the city this year, and several bystanders, including a pregnant woman and a 12-year-old girl, have been killed in the crossfire.

In the neighboring state of Sonora, one state police officer and two federal agents were killed in a running battle with dozens of gunmen that lasted several hours Sunday, Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours said Monday. One of the gunmen was wounded.

President Felipe Calderon and top police officials say the increasing violence that has plagued numerous states across the country is the cartels' response to a nationwide, organized crime crackdown in which they have sent thousands of police and soldiers to drug hotspots, including Juarez.

Now: Mexican officials say cartels hung signs; 3 police officers killed in gunbattle | police, juarez, city : TheMonitor.com

Americans Missing in Mexico a Diplomatic Priority, Says Texas Congressman -- 06/17/2008

2008-06-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

By Penny Starr
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
June 17, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - The more than two dozen U.S. citizens who have disappeared in recent years in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, should be accounted for, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D.-Texas), told Cybercast News Service .

Cuellar said he believes U.S. law enforcement at the local, state, and federal level are "doing their best," but that Mexico is a sovereign nation and does not view solving these cases as a priority.

"The problem is the jurisdiction of another country," said Cuellar, whose constituency includes the border town of Laredo - Nuevo Laredo, Mexico is less than one mile away. "If it was people missing on this side, I think we would be talking about another story."

But in the case of Americans who traveled from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo and were never seen again, Cuellar said it is up to the Mexicans to solve these cases.

"How do you get the Mexican government to respond?" Cuellar said.

He then used the word "frustrated" to describe how he and the families whose relatives have disappeared feel as years pass without any concrete information about what happened to their loved ones. Although many of the cases are considered kidnappings by the FBI - as confirmed by the Bureau for CNSNews.com -- without witnesses Mexican authorities consider these individuals as missing.

The U.S. State Department told Cybercast News Service that it does not make public the number of Americans who are kidnapped or missing aboard, a fact Cuellar finds unacceptable.

"I think that information should be available," Cuellar said. "I will be talking to the State Department about that."

Cuellar said he has made violence along the U.S.-Mexico border a priority in his two terms in Congress. But he said he became acutely aware of how many families had lost loved ones in Mexico when William Slemaker, who lives in Laredo, contacted his office in early 2005.

Slemaker's stepdaughter, Yvette Martinez, and her friend, Brenda Cisneros, went to Nuevo Laredo to see a concert on Sept. 17, 2004, and never returned home. As Slemaker searched for his daughter, he discovered that many other families had experienced the same kind of tragedy. With the help of friends, Slemaker started the Web site laredosmissing.com to draw attention to the dozens of Americans in Laredo who have gone missing in Mexico.

Cuellar said he has worked to try to bring attention to Slemaker's daughter and the missing relatives of other families, including writing letters to President Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nevada). Aside from acknowledging they had received the letters, nothing was done, Cuellar said.

Cuellar said he has also contacted Mexican President Felipe Calderon and has met with other high-ranking Mexican authorities, including Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, the Mexican attorney general, with no tangible results.

The most promising response, Cuellar said, came from U.S. Ambassador Antonio Garza, who about two years ago formed a joint task force consisting of U.S. and Mexican law enforcement personnel. The idea was to encourage cooperation to solve violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including the cases of Americans who disappeared in Mexico.

To date, however, Cuellar could not say what the task force has accomplished.

"We're still waiting on an update on that," Cuellar said.

As for Slemaker, he admits his daughter made some bad decisions, including marrying a man who had been convicted and jailed on drug charges. But that does not mean his family is unaffected, including closure for his daughter's two young daughters, now 12 and 11, who he and his wife, Maria, are now rearing since their mother's disappearance.

Cuellar agreed and said that whether Americans missing in Mexico were involved in drugs or other illegal activities - or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - their families deserve respect.

"I want to do everything possible to get answers," Cuellar said. "They definitely have to give the families closure."

Americans Missing in Mexico a Diplomatic Priority, Says Texas Congressman -- 06/17/2008

Worldpress.org - International Editor of the Year Award

2008-06-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

Three brave Mexican editors recieve the "Editor of the Year" award after dying in the line of duty covering the Mexican drug wars.

Since 1975, Worldpress.org has presented the International Editor of the Year Award to an editor or editors outside the United States whose work best exemplifies the principles of journalism.

In recognition of enterprise, courage and leadership in advancing the freedom and responsibility of the press, enhancing human rights and fostering excellence in journalism, our 2005-2006 choice honors three Mexican journalists posthumously.

Raúl Gibb Guerrero, Dolores Guadalupe García Escamilla and Alfredo Jiménez Mota gave the ultimate sacrifice in their pursuit of journalistic excellence and freedom of press. Their courage, tenacity, and dedication in covering sensitive subjects, especially drug trafficking, caused them to live in a danger zone of threats and violence, which ultimately led to their murders. They led three very separate lives, but had the love of their country and press freedom in common.

Worldpress.org - International Editor of the Year Award

Three Girls Used by Mexican Drug Gangs as Shields, One Dies

2008-06-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

deutsche presse via email, no url | 6/11/8

Posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 10:15:57 AM by NativeNewYorker

Mexico City (dpa) - A 12-year-old girl died in northern Mexico after alleged members of a drug gang forced her and two friends into a van, apparently using them as human shields in a shootout, Mexican media reported Wednesday.

The girl reportedly died on Monday in Ciudad Juarez, a violent city on the border with the United States. The girls were in a park when they were forced into the van. Later, they were used in a shootout with another vehicle.

The authorities presumed the drug gang attempted to use the girls as a shield, to keep at bay a rival group that was chasing them.

Around the abandoned van, police found 21 AK-47 bullet shells.

In the back seat they found the body of a girl. Her two friends were found alive, although one of them suffered non-life-threatening wounds.

The rival gang reportedly took the van driver, while another person travelling with the girls managed to escape.

Chihuahua state Governor Jose Reyes Baeza asked the central government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon ``to intensify the presence of security forces in the state'' to contain the ongoing wave of violence and prevent the deaths of more innocent people.

THREE GIRLS USED BY MEXICAN DRUG GANGS AS SHIELDS, ONE DIES

Crime wave forces Mexican upper-class residents to flee - People's Daily Online

2008-06-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

Horrific details of the kidnapping wave. Focus on TJ buy Nuevo Laredo has has the same problem for years now, and it is seeping across the border.

A crime wave has led to an exodus of upper-class residents at Mexican border towns to flee to the United States to escape kidnappings and violence in Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.

Such migrations have become increasingly common in metropolitan areas along the U.S.-Mexico border, as the ongoing violence of a brutal drug war has disrupted lives in Mexican border towns like Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo, the paper said.

The Mexican government has sent more than 3,000 troops into Tijuana in the last 1 1/2 years, and on several occasions soldiers have shot it out with drug cartel gunmen on residential streets.

Real estate agents tell of clients with fingers missing, sliced off by kidnappers who sent them to relatives as proof the victims were alive.

Tijuana, which borders San Diego, about 80 miles (128 kilometers) south of Los Angeles, suffers more kidnappings than almost any other city outside Baghdad, the report said.

As the crime wave was mounting, most abductions are not reported to authorities, but victim support groups and others estimate the number in the hundreds in the last three to four years, according to the report.

Experts say the Mexican government's crackdown on drug cartels may have inadvertently intensified the problem.

With Tijuana's major organized crime group, the Arellano Felix drug cartel, ravaged by arrests and killings, cartel lieutenants have been turning more and more to kidnappings to supplement their dwindling drug profits, the report said.

Crime wave forces Mexican upper-class residents to flee - People's Daily Online

Mexico Violence Brings Wounded Man To Thomason Hospital - News Story - KFOX El Paso

2008-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

As regular readers of Blog of the Gods know Mexican drug fueds often extend from the street to the hospital where the woulded are given the coup-de-grace by their assassins. So the American hospital staff has done very well to take extra precautions.

Thomason Hospital was on lockdown Friday night after a patient arrived with ties to the violence in Mexico.

Administrators said they were on heightened alert and have asked the El Paso County Sheriff's Office to assist in security.

Outside the hospital, it's evident with sheriff's deputies on the campus, security is tighter.

Inside we're told all visitors must pass though screening, including metal detectors.

Hospital officials said the unidentified man was brought to Thomason with multiple gunshot wounds.

"Apparently the patient had been flown to Juarez from another Mexican community and then was taken to the Bridge of the Americas," said Margaret Althoff-Olivas, hospital director of communications.

Two women claiming to be the wife and sister of the victim said the victim is a sub-director at the Casas Grandes Police Department, just outside of Juarez.

But security at the hospital would not tell them much more than they told KFOX.

El Paso County sheriff's spokesman, Jesse Tovar, said, "I can't confirm or release exactly who he was, what was his role, what he did, what was he part of all. I can say is we're taking necessary measures for the security of the hospital staff patients and visitors."

For fear of death or further violence, the family declined to speak on camera, but they said the victim called Thursday at 8 p.m. telling them he had been shot and would be taken to El Paso in the morning for treatment where security was heightened.

"Unfortunately for our patients and visitors and staff we have had to put the hospital on lockdown." said Althoff-Olivas

Visitors to Thomason Hospital said they were either turned away or asked to go through a metal detector. Either way they said they were upset and this situation should be handled across the border.

"They need to be treated in Mexico actually. Honestly we pay tax dollars for this hospital, and they need to be treated over there, " said El Paso resident Kathy Green.

The hospital will remain on lockdown until further notice.

The Sheriff's Office won't say how many or where they will staff deputies.

"We have sufficient security in place to respond to any necessity the hospital may need, " said Tovar.

At this time the hospital will not release the man's name, age or information about his wounds or care.

Mexico Violence Brings Wounded Man To Thomason Hospital - News Story - KFOX El Paso

Federal police shut down Nuevo Laredo radio station

2008-06-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

Federal police shut down Nuevo Laredo radio station
Mexican federal agents shut down a Nuevo Laredo radio station Wednesday. Authorities said it was taken off the air for operating without a permit but one media report characterized the raid as linked to organized crime.

Newspaper La Jornada identified the station as La Tremenda de los Dos Laredos, which you could find on your FM dial at 106.5 in the Laredo area up until about 2 p.m. yesterday.

The Mexico City newspaper reported authorities detained employees for "various hours" while they gave statements to the police. La Jornada called the raid "violent" and reported that banging on doors and breaking glass were among the last sounds transmitted by the station, right as it was wrapping up the afternoon newscast.

"Official sources revealed that it was suspected that the signal was used for transmitting messages of members of organized crime," noted La Jornada, but it didn't name the officials. Authorities, in a brief press release issued late last night, did not explicitly mention organized crime.

But authorities said the raid was carried out under "Operation Tamaulipas", the name of the federal police and military crackdown on drug gangs in the border state of the same name.

MySA.com: Beyond the Border

Shootout in Mexico kills 7 federal police

2008-05-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

The wholesale intimidation of law enforcment in Mexico continues, and seems to be increasing. This is a very sad day. The Federal Police are the gooodest good-guys that Mexico has. Imagine 7 FBI agents being killed in the USA. It would lead every news broadcast, and be a story that continued for days. Not so in Mexico where this is, sadly, just a slightly larger version of every day reality.

Shootout in Mexico kills 7 federal police
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO – 1 hour ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Seven federal police and a suspected hit man were killed in a shootout Tuesday as authorities surrounded a suspected drug safe house in Culiacan, home to the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Four other federal police were hospitalized with wounds, and police took two suspected cartel members into custody, according to a federal police statement.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent nearly 3,000 federal police and soldiers into Sinaloa state two weeks ago as part of his campaign to take back parts of Mexico controlled by drug lords. In all, Calderon has sent more than 20,000 security forces to confront the drug trade, and the cartels have responded by targeting police and other security officials.

At least three banners threatening 21 local police officers by name were hung in the violent northern city of Chihuahua over the weekend.

"The officers are uneasy," Chihuahua state prosecutor's spokesman Eduardo Esparza said Tuesday. "They have been instructed to be in direct contact with the police station and to be extremely careful."

In the nearby border city of Juarez, a death list of 22 officers was left at a monument to fallen police four months ago, addressed to "those who still don't believe" in the power of the cartels.

Of the 22, seven have been killed and three wounded in assassination attempts. All but one of the others have quit.

The Associated Press: Shootout in Mexico kills 7 federal police

Bad Moon Rising: The Crisis in Ciudad Juarez

2008-05-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Amazing stats in this article: 14 dead cops. At least 420 dead total. One city!

This was a good summary: "... the unresolved femicides, aggressions against residents of the Lomas de Poleo neighborhood, round-the-clock drug markets and the proliferation of thousands of illegally-imported cars as examples of unanswered wake up calls. “There is no government or authority capable of putting order to the situation,” Ortiz said.

by Frontra NorteSur
By last weekend, what began as a public safety crisis earlier this year had evolved into a broader political-economic one as well. Stirred in with the narco war are rising street crime and kidnappings for ransom, all of which creates a generalized sense of insecurity. Talk is emerging of a “Nuevo Laredo Effect.”

Posted on May 27, 2008
Known for its irreverent tone and sarcastic headlines, Ciudad Juarez’s Lapolaka.com news service summed up the mood in the border city: “Ciudad Juarez is out of control, and it is entering into a stage of collective hysteria and war this Friday.” The Internet news site was, of course, referring to a still-mysterious and widely-distributed e-mail that warned of extreme violence planned for Ciudad Juarez last weekend. In a city ravaged by seemingly endless killings connected to a war between rival drug cartels, many people took the advice of the e-mail seriously and stayed home. Business at bars and restaurants evaporated, a bull fight was canceled and a concert featuring what passes these days as the old US rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival was similarly given the no-go.

“Ciudad Juarez resembled a ghost town on Saturday afternoon and evening,” said journalism student Claudia Moreno Torres.

“I’ve never seen a crisis like this one before,” said Pascual Hernandez, a restaurant owner in the Avenida Juarez tourist district who counts 40 years in the business. By last weekend, what began as a public safety crisis earlier this year had evolved into a broader political-economic one as well. Restaurants, bars, hotels, pharmacies, and other businesses have reported losing between 20-70 percent of normal sales in recent days.

Leopoldina Aguirre Anchondo, executive director of the Small Business Chamber of Commerce, said 350 small businesses have shut their doors since the beginning of 2008. Stirred in with the narco war and rising street crime, kidnappings for ransom, which could exceed more than 40 cases this year so far, are creating a generalized sense of insecurity.

According to Jorge Pedroza Serrano, executive director of the Maquiladora Association, it was business as usual for the hundreds of export factories that supply the U.S. consumer market. “Our workers and employees can circulate throughout the different sections of the city with the certainty that their physical integrity is respected,” Serrano insisted. “The different police agencies are ready to make sure of that.”

Talk is emerging of a “Nuevo Laredo Effect” shaking Ciudad Juarez, in allusion to the narco war that devastated Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, several years ago, when pitched street battles that even included bazookas dried up tourism, shut down businesses and sent perhaps thousands fleeing across the border to Laredo, Texas. Already, prominent Juarenses are reported lying low in neighboring El Paso, Texas.

Last weekend’s events partially bore out the e-mail’s predictions. On Friday, a man was kidnapped in front of his 6-year-old daughter at the Plaza Juarez Mall. While no massacres occurred in bars or restaurants, 25 people were reported murdered gangland style in separate incidents between May 23 and 25. In a gruesome scene, the bodies of five men were found dumped between a church and maquiladora export plant. Two of the victims were decapitated, and a “narco-message” bearing the signature of “La Linea,” reportedly a group of corrupt policemen, was left as a warning to others. Early Sunday morning, arsonists torched the La Finca bar, Vaqueras y Broncos nightclub and a National Autos lot.

The latest slayings brought this year’s murder toll to at least 371 victims, a statistic which surpasses the homicide count of 316 for all of 2007. So many killings are taking place that bodies are stacking up in the city morgue. And this year’s murder roll doesn’t include the 46 bodies discovered in two clandestine graves. According to Jaime Hervella, director of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons in El Paso, the bodies could have been buried from five to 10 years ago. Not one corpse has been publicly identified so far, Hervella said.

“Juarez has been lost to us,” shrugged Arturo Dominguez, president of the city public safety commission. “The crime rate comes from not paying attention. All of us, citizens, functionaries and businessmen, lost control of the city watching was happening on the corner but saying nothing. It is regrettable there is no order, but if we’ve lost control, we shouldn’t at least lose hope.”

Prominent residents of the city were buried during the bloody month of May. Longtime bar operator Willie Moya, who ran Hooligan’s, Vaqueras y Broncos, Frida’s, Tabasco’s, Arriba Chihuahua, Willy’s Country Disco and other clubs popular among both US and Mexican citizens, was gunned down outside one of his establishments. The 48-year-old Moya was called Ciudad Juarez’s “King Midas” by some members of the local community.

Former federal Congressman Carlos Camacho, who served as the Chihuahua state delegate for the Attorney General for Environmental Protection, was kidnapped by men possibly dressed as soldiers and strangled to death. Camacho was known by many environmental activists from both sides of the border for his fervent opposition to a nuclear waste dump that was planned for Sierra Blanca, Texas, during the 1990s.

Targeted by killers, police continued falling in the line of hostile gunfire. Two municipal policemen were gunned down May 24 near the Delicias substation, bringing to 14 the number of city cops slain this year so far.

On May 25, a new list of policemen targeted for death was discovered posted in Chihuahua City. Unlike the previous list which focused Ciudad Juarez municipal policemen, the latest one also puts state officers squarely in the aim of assassins.

Last weekend’s events, in which an anonymous e-mail triggered the partial shutdown of an industrial city of more than 1.3 million people, raised hotly-debated questions about media, cyberspace, government and the drug culture. The Spanish-language U.S. television network Univision reported that organized crime succeeded in bringing a city to its knees by means of an anonymous threat, but the truth of the matter is that no one is sure who was the author of the e-mail. Theories ranged from criminal gangs to social conservatives to a teenager playing a bad joke on the Internet.

Ricardo Ramirez Vela, president of the local branch of the Canirac restaurant industry association, floated a novel theory: “I don’t doubt that this (e-mail) could have come from people who have businesses in the United States and are trying to profit from what is happening in our city.”

Across the Rio Grande, the jolting e-mail and ongoing violence sparked an emotionally charged but intellectually challenged exchange on the El Paso Times web site. A contributor who claimed to have witnessed the aftermath of a recent execution offered a tip of practical advice to anyone visiting Ciudad Juarez. He advised motorists to keep their windows cracked and the radio tuned down so sounds of gunshots could be easily heard.

While some writers took the opportunity to explore issues like the connection between the consumption of illegal drugs in the United States and violence in Mexico, others used the forum as a platform to expound thinly-disguised racist attitudes toward Mexicans. Some called for closing the border, deploying U.S. troops, constructing a huge wall and firing Patriot missiles into Mexico. As one writer commented in response to the proposal for an artillery barrage, Patriot missiles are shot into the air at other missiles. Until now, Ciudad Juarez’s latest narco war has not spilled across the border into the U.S., though the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City cautioned citizens about visiting the city last weekend.

Many people questioned the actions of elected officials, law enforcement authorities and the federal government. Even as new bodies were piling up for processing in the city morgue, Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza and Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz flew off to a mass transportation conference in Bogota, Colombia. Mayor Reyes left the city in the hands of a retired military officer, former Major Roberto Orduna, who was appointed only days earlier and almost immediately faced a rebellion by a unit of officers complaining of unreasonably long work shifts.

Out of sight during Ciudad Juarez’s worst crisis in recent years, the mayor and the governor drew critical comments in the press. Both men cut short their trips only to return to a blood-soaked homeland.

Many citizens wonder what the army is really doing in their city. Since March, more than 3,000 federal troops and police have been dispatched to Ciudad Juarez as part of an officially-proclaimed campaign to quell violence and bring organized crime to heel, but the violence has only worsened since the federales put their boots on the ground. With trained troops supposedly on patrol, it’s not clear how groups of armed men can freely roam the streets executing victims in broad daylight and burning down buildings without at least one or two of the assailants getting caught.

Hernan Ortiz, spokesman for the Popular Independent Organization, said the current round of events wasn’t surprising in view of the impunity that is practically institutionalized. Ortiz cited the unresolved femicides, aggressions against residents of the Lomas de Poleo neighborhood, round-the-clock drug markets and the proliferation of thousands of illegally-imported cars as examples of unanswered wake up calls.

“There is no government or authority capable of putting order to the situation,” Ortiz said. “The crimes against women are also a point of reference that says everything about the existing problem.”

By the evening of May 25, some residents were ready to lay their city’s deep heartaches to rest. A rowdy crowd of tens of thousands braved the uncertain evening and overwhelmed the city’s airport to greet Ciudad Juarez’s returning Indios soccer team. In a weekend match, the local heroes defeated the Esmeraldas in the rival team’s hometown of Leon, Guanajuato. The game witnessed a riot, with police firing tear gas and helicopters buzzing fans.

The collective euphoria at the airport aside, the lyrics from an old Creedence Clearwater Revival that were not sang live in Ciudad Juarez as expected perhaps best captured the spirit of the times in the troubled border city:

I see the bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin.
I see bad times today.

Don’t go around tonight,
Well, it’s bound to take your life

.
There’s a bad moon on the rise…

***

Bad Moon Rising: The Crisis in Ciudad Juarez - Newspaper Tree El Paso

More public death threats against Chihuahua police

2008-05-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

A very brief review of Blog Of The Gods will convince anyone that such threats are to be taken very seriously. The number of police killed in Mexico but the drug gangs is high.

via NAFBPO (National Alliance of Former Border Patrol Officers (USA))

El Diario (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 5/26/08

Three large signs with the names of police officers to be executed appeared yesterday (Sun.) morning hung from pedestrian overpasses in different points of the city of Chihuahua (capital of the state of Chihuahua.) Twenty-one officers are named, most of them from the State Public Security Dep't. and from the state's Att'y. General's office. Last January, a similar death threat list of seventeen Juarez police officers was left at the Monument to the Police in Juarez. (A number of them have been executed since then.)

More public death threats ...

E-mail 'bloodbath' threat paralyzes Mexican city

2008-05-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

400 dead in Juarez, too. Don't see as many stories about it as TJ or NL for some reason.

Mexico's northern border town of Juarez, infamous for its history of drug-related violence, has gone into lockdown after an e-mail began circulating warning of an unparalleled "bloodbath" in the coming days.
Shops, bars and restaurants have shut and soldiers are patrolling the streets, giving a surreal and dangerous tone to this city of 1.4 million people which sits just across the US border from the Texan town of El Paso.

Authorities are taking seriously the anonymous e-mail, which menaced "the bloodiest and most violent weekend in the history of Juarez."

The place is already reeling from a surge in murders that has claimed around 400 lives so far this year, several of them police officers and members of rival narcotics gangs.

The US embassy to Mexico has told US citizens that the message represented a "potential threat" and that public places, nightspots and the main streets in Juarez should all be avoided.

In Juarez, nerves frayed by the rising body count -- including at least 20 people killed over the past weekend, among them two policemen gunned down as they finished their shift -- have begun to shred in terror because of the much-forwarded e-mail, even though its veracity was unknown.

"We don't have any information to suspect that the e-mails are real," mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said on Sunday.

Nevertheless, he said, extra police were being sent to those streets and areas mentioned in the message.

The army has already been reinforcing security in the city since March, though its presence has done little to deter the crime wave. Each weekend has seen an average of around 25 murders.

Municipal officials believe the violence gripping the city is the result of a war between drug cartels.

Reyes Ferriz had claimed early last week that the conflict was having no impact on life in general in Juarez. But the sudden evacuation of the streets after the e-mails paints a different picture.

One measure of the effect of the threat was the time it takes to cross one of the bridges into El Paso.

Usually, it is a trip of more than an hour. On the weekend, vehicles were crossing over in less than five minutes.

Migrant kidnappings by Mexican cops on the rise

2008-05-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

Please note: this is a slightly out of sync posting from March of this year that I misposted to a different blog. I am returning it to the rightful place.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Cases of corrupt Mexican police kidnapping undocumented Central American migrants for ransom as they travel overland to the United States are on the rise, a United Nations official said on Saturday.

Jorge Bustamante, the U.N.'s special investigator for migrant rights, said extorting ransoms from migrants could be more lucrative for unscrupulous police than working for drug smuggling gangs.

"They kidnap migrants, ask them for information, relatives' phone numbers; then they extort money from the families," Bustamante said, presenting the conclusions of a week-long study of how undocumented migrants are treated in Mexico.

Bustamante told a news conference both federal and local police were involved in kidnapping rackets on Mexico's northern and southern borders. "It's an abuse and it's increasing," he said.

Tens of thousands of poor Central Americans make the long trek north through Mexico each year on their way to cross the U.S. border illegally. Many are mistreated and forced to pay bribes by both criminal gangs and police.

Bustamante said he met a Salvadoran man in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula who said his wife was still missing after police recently abducted and held the couple.

"It's a big business that involves everyone from taxi drivers to police chiefs. It's a business whose profits rival those of drug trafficking," Bustamante said.

Bustamante, who was invited to carry out his study by the Mexican government, criticized Mexico for doing little to improve the lot of migrants on its territory while at the same time demanding better treatment from the United States of illegal Mexican migrants there.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Eric Walsh)

Another Mexican town's police force quits out of fear

2008-05-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

It's not just the border anymore. It's everywhere, or at least a lot of places in Mexico. This is a new level of breakdown. The narcotraficantes have eliminated one layer of resistance to their hegemony. Several remain, but they are not convincing.

By NATALIA PARRA
Associated Press

ACAPULCO, Mexico — A southern Mexican town's 15-member police force has quit for fear of being assassinated in retaliation for a shootout with gunmen, a security official said Thursday.

Zirandaro was the second town in less than two weeks to be left without its police force as Mexico's drug cartels wage increasingly bold attacks against security forces. On Monday, the military took over a town near Texas after all 20 of its police officers were either killed, run out of town or quit.

Eight members of Zirandaro's police never returned to work after a May 13 shootout with gunmen that left a 32-year-old man dead, said Juan Heriberto Salinas Altes, the public safety secretary of the southern state of Guerrero.

The other seven officers — including the police chief — quit days later.

"The Zirandaro police quit the service because they feared the criminals would return to seek revenge," Salinas Altas told a news conference.

The identities of the gunmen were not known, but Salinas Altas said cells of both the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels were operating in the area.

About 20 Guerrero state police officers have taken over security responsibilities in Zirandaro, a town of about 24,000 people.

President Felipe Calderon has said the attacks against Mexican police show that cartels feel threatened by his crackdown against drug trafficking. Since taking office in 2006, he has sent more than 25,000 troops to drug hotspots.

But the disintegration of two municipal forces shows how vulnerable police feel in a country where, despite efforts to fight corruption, they can't be sure their colleagues are not on the cartels' payrolls.

Earlier this month, Mexico's acting federal police chief was killed in his home by an assassin who had keys to his house. A fellow federal police officer and four other people with alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel were arrested in the killing.

President Bush's administration has pushed Congress to approve an initial US$550 million (euro349 million) to help fight drug crime in Mexico and Central America.

The U.S. Senate approved only US$450 million (euro285 million) for the plan on Monday, while the House has approved US$461.5 million (euro293 million).

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Antonio Garza, nonetheless said approval of the funding "signaled congressional support for this important measure to enhance ongoing U.S. programs for cooperating and coordinating with the Mexican government."

The two chambers must agree on a final version of the bill before sending it to Bush for final approval.

Another Mexican town's police force quits out of fear | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Two policemen shot, bodies dumped on Mexico highway | Reuters

2008-05-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

We'll never know if they were good, honest police who were killed because they were trying to do their job or were hopelessly corrupt. Well the latter is a good guess, actually.
Guzman is the same fellow whose son was killed a few weeks back in a ambush at the mini-mart that involved more than 500 rounds being fired.

Also, 34 drug killings in one day! That's a new record I'm pretty sure.

By Cyntia Barrera Diaz

MEXICO CITY, May 21 (Reuters) - Two Mexican policemen were shot and their bodies dumped in a car on a busy Mexico City-bound highway, police said on Wednesday, the latest in a spurt of brutal drug gang murders near the capital.

The bodies, which showed torture marks, were left with death threats directed at anyone backing powerful drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.

They were found late on Tuesday in the trunk of a car abandoned on the Cuernavaca-Mexico City highway, a route used by commuters between the capital and the small colonial city where many have weekend homes.

"This is what will happen to those hanging out with El Chapo and El Mayo Zambada," one of the messages left with the bodies read, according to the daily Reforma. The newspaper said the victims' hands and feet were bound.

Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is a key aide of Guzman's Sinaloa cartel that controls smuggling turf in northwestern Mexico.

Amelio Gomez, head of Mexico City's judicial police, told Mexican radio the slain policemen worked in the nearby central state of Morelos.

The two men were wrapped in bandages from the shoulders to the waist and one of them had been shot in the head at close range, Reforma said.

Killings between rival drug gangs have soared in recent weeks and attacks in or near the capital are on the rise. The murder this month in Mexico City of a senior federal police chief in charge of drug investigations shocked the country.

Another Mexican daily, El Universal, said Tuesday was the country's bloodiest day this year, with 34 drug killings.

Some media reports say the spike in violence could be due to a fracture within Guzman's cartel as one of its boldest operatives, Arturo Beltran Leyva, seeks to establish his own drug empire.

Beltran's brother, Alfredo, was captured by Mexican troops in January after a tip-off from Guzman in exchange for the release of one of his sons from jail, media reports say.

The recent killing of another of Guzman's sons, which experts think may have been ordered by the Beltran Leyva gang, and the arrest of one of his cousins are believed to have triggered more violence from the Sinaloa cartel.

Last month, police arrested nine alleged Sinaloa cartel members after a gunbattle that killed two police officers.

The operation was spearheaded by regional commissioner Edgar Millan, the police chief ambushed and shot dead a week later. Five more police chiefs have been killed in May.

Calderon has deployed some 25,000 troops and federal police to combat drug cartels since taking office in late 2006, but his campaign has failed to curb violence. Some 1,300 people have been killed in drug-related murders this year. (Editing by Catherine Bremer)

Two policemen shot, bodies dumped on Mexico highway | Reuters

Violence erupts in Mexico's drugs heartland

2008-05-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

Wow! 300 dead in Sinaloa, which has a very small population. Also the shooting of Shorty Guzman included firing 500 rounds! It's that type of violence that has caused even the US State Department to start warning people off of visiting Mexico. (Of corse few tourists go to Culiacan.)

No happy ending in sight ... stay tuned.

CULIACAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Violence has exploded in Mexico's drug smuggling heartland in a three-way battle between rival gangs and security forces, the biggest challenge yet to President Felipe Calderon's war against the cartels.

About 300 people have died in drug murders so far this year in Sinaloa, an arid western state that serves as the home turf of one of Mexico's main drug gangs and where traffickers worship a bandit as their own patron saint.

The killing spilled over to Mexico City this month when assassins hired by Sinaloan smugglers shot dead one of Mexico's top federal policemen at his home, in a direct challenge to the government.

Calderon has staked his reputation on weakening the cartels, and responded to the murder by sending an extra 2,700 soldiers to Sinaloa to try to tame the state.

But Sinaloa's hitmen, known for their swagger, were undaunted. A gang threw grenades at a police station and machine-gunned three houses just hours after the troop deployment, killing one person in the town of Guamuchil.

Synonymous for many Mexicans with drugs and "narcocorrido" folk ballads that glamorize the lives of leading traffickers, Sinaloa had a tradition of growing marijuana and opium long before U.S. illegal drug demand took off in the 1960s.

The cartel now mostly smuggles methamphetamines and South American cocaine up the Pacific coast.

"There has always been violence here because this is where drug trafficking was born ... but before it was under control," said 73-year-old Culiacan native Juan Murray.

Residents of state capital Culiacan say they now rarely go out at night because of the violence which they fear will worsen after rival drug hitmen killed the son of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.

In a military-style attack, armed men from a rival faction gunned Edgar Guzman down at a strip mall in central Culiacan, on May 8, leaving 500 bullet casings strewn on the ground. Some 20 cars nearby were damaged in the withering gunfire.

The murder is widely attributed to the Beltran Leyva family, former allies in the cartel who have recently split with Guzman. The city expects bloody recriminations.

"The gangs are fighting each other and now with the army here the only thing we can do is hide in our houses," said Yira Sanchez, 26, holding her one-year-old daughter.

BRUTAL FIGHT

Beyond its own internal strife, the Sinaloa gang is locked in a nationwide turf war with the Gulf cartel and both sides abduct, torture and murder their rivals, sometimes beheading them.

While the Sinaloans have managed to stage attacks in Gulf territory just south of Texas, outsiders rarely penetrate Sinaloa.

Calderon, who has sent 25,000 troops against the crime syndicates since taking office in December 2006, has scored successes against the Gulf cartel, extraditing its leader Osiel Cardenas to the United States last year.

But the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration complains that Mexico's federal forces are hindered by corrupt local police and the respect shown to Sinaloan drug bosses by the state's residents.

"This is the center of gravity of narcotics activity from a historical perspective and its going to take a very concerted effort to be successful," said Fred Burton, an analyst for the U.S.-based private intelligence firm Stratfor.

Despite the gang's power, residents say the Sinaloa cartel is now splitting after the January arrest of senior member Alfredo Beltran Leyva, seized with almost $1 million in cash.

The Beltran Leyva family is playing a more prominent role and has been blamed by the Mexican media for the killing in the capital earlier this month of Edgar Millan, the No. 2 in one of Mexico's federal police forces.

That shooting raised fears that Mexico could spiral down into a drug conflict like the one in Colombia in the 1980s and '90s, when traffickers planted car bombs and even downed a commercial jet in a terror campaign against the government.

"The attack on Millan has taken it to another level," said Statfor's Burton. "It is a signal to Calderon that these groups are very capable of reaching out and killing who they want to, where they want to."

Some 1,300 people have died in Mexico's drug conflict this year but most of the deaths are still among rival traffickers.

In Sinaloa, the local economy is closely linked to drugs and traffickers even have their own patron saint.

Near the old statehouse in Culiacan, devotees flock to the shrine of Jesus Malverde an outlaw figure who, according to local legend, robbed from corrupt officials and gave the spoils to the poor in the early 1900s.

Vendors hawk everything from keychains to tequila glasses with his image.

Soldiers wearing ski-masks in the sweltering heat last week shut down foreign exchange stores on Culiacan's Juarez Street to crack down on money laundering.

"The economy of Culiacan is half tomatoes ... and half marijuana and poppies. If they are really going to fight the narcos here, the economy of the state will completely collapse," said one street vendor too scared to give his name.

(Additional reporting by Anahi Rama; Editing by Kieran Murray)

Violence erupts in Mexico's drugs heartland

US Warns Tourists of 'Small-Unit Combat' at Mexico Border -- 05/16/2008

2008-05-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

The State Department is now making it official: the border areas of Mexico are extremely dangerous, particularly if you are involved in any unsavory activity.

By Penny Starr
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
May 16, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. State Department has issued an alert, warning travelers that the "equivalent to military small-unit combat" is taking place across the southern U.S. border in Mexico and that Americans are being kidnapped and murdered there.

"Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades," said the State Department alert.

"Confrontations have taken place in numerous towns and cities in northern Mexico, including Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California, and Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua," reads the alert. "The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted."

The State Department particularly urged that Americans be wary when traveling in that part of Mexico closest to the United States. "U.S. citizens are urged to be especially alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region," said the alert.

Murder and kidnapping of Americans has become routine in Tijuana, which sits just across the border from San Diego, California, according to the State Department, and sometimes heavily armed attackers wear the uniforms of the Mexican police or military.

"Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007," says the alert. "Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas. Criminals are armed with a wide array of sophisticated weapons. In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles."

The alert also warns Americans to avoid areas where drugs and prostitution are evident and to "refrain from displaying expensive-looking jewelry, large amounts of money and other valuable items."

In light of this alert, which was first issued on Apr. 14, and was listed as "current as of today, Thursday May 15 17:51:35 2008" on State's Web site on Wednesday, Cybercast News Service submitted a number of questions to the State Department via e-mail, and received non-responsive answers the next day. Cybercast News Service's questions were as follows:

-- "The alert says 'attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, Mexican police forces, criminal justice officials and journalists.' Can you provide more details about who has been attacked and the result of those attacks, including injuries, fatalities and legal ramifications?

-- "The alert says violence has 'escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.' Can you provide more information, including the number of incidents involving these kinds of weapons and the number of weapons confiscated?

-- "The alert says that violence not related to drug trafficking has increased in Tijuana and Ciudad Jarez, with 'dozens of U.S. citizens ... kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007.' How many people were kidnapped or murdered and how do those numbers compare with the numbers in prior years?"

-- "The alert recommends that Americans avoid areas where prostitution and drug dealing occurs. Where are those areas?"

-- "How many incidents in 2007 and other years are recorded that show U.S. citizens being followed or harassed in the border areas, including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros and Tijuana?"

-- "How many kidnapping cases of U.S. citizens remain unsolved?"

-- "What actions is the state department taking to reduce the violence on the border?"

The State Department's written answer to those questions is as follows:

"The State Department's Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management (ACS) administers the Consular Information Program, which informs the public of conditions abroad that may affect their safety and security.

"Travel Alerts are issued to disseminate information about short-term conditions, generally within a particular country, that pose imminent risks to the security of U.S. citizens. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, coups, anniversaries of terrorist events, election-related demonstrations or violence, and high-profile events such as international conferences or regional sports events are examples of conditions that might generate a Travel Alert.

"The travel alert is a collaborative effort based on media reports and other information released within a particular country. It is provided so that American travellers (sic) can make an informed decision about their plans to visit a particular location at a particular time.

"For various reasons, American citizens often choose not to report their involvement in activities while abroad.

"Your best source for detailed statistics and information about specific locations would be from sources within Mexico."

US Warns Tourists of 'Small-Unit Combat' at Mexico Border -- 05/16/2008

Four killed in Mexico near border (Tijuana)

2008-05-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: A reader posted more details on this shooting. Apparently only the woman was American, and she had a history of drug dealing. So remove this from the "innocent tourist" category and add it to the much, much larger "drug runners killing each other off" category.

*****

Were these four friends out for some fun in Ensenada, or small time dealers who got in over their heads. Either way, it sucks to be them. The border is a scary place, no place to go for anyone just looking for a fun travel destination.

ROSARITO, Mexico (Reuters) - Four people believed to be Americans were shot in the head and dumped in a notorious drug-smuggling area in northern Mexico near the border with California, Mexican police said on Monday.

Police in the beach town of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego, said they discovered the bodies of three men and a woman on Sunday in an abandoned car in a remote patch of scrubland near the Pacific coast.

"The bodies had been there for at least a week. They were spotted by local people out hunting," a municipal police spokesman said.

Police concluded the victims were U.S. citizens because the vehicle had California license plates, the three men were of African-American appearance, the woman was Caucasian and a U.S. driver's license was found in the car, the spokesman said.

The remote area is one of many along the border used by drug gangs to smuggle marijuana and cocaine into the United States, police said.

Violence from Mexico's vicious war between rival cartels and the police and army has spilled over from the rough nearby city of Tijuana into once-quiet Rosarito and its outlying areas as gangs fight over smuggling routes into California.

Some 1,300 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico this year and more than 2,500 died in 2007.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Four Americans killed in Mexico near border: police | U.S. | Reuters

Suspected drug hit men dump head in Mexican city | International | Reuters

2008-05-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

Hmm. We had a slight break in the beheading trend there for a few months, now it's back in a big way. This report also includes a bonus crime: two wounded men in a hospital are shot dead there. That is at least the second occurance of finishing-off-the-drug-killing-in-the-hospital reported here at Blog of the Gods.

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Suspected Mexican drug hit men dumped the head of a murdered man on top of a car in the street, police said on Friday, in a rare outrage in the wealthy city of Monterrey.

The head, found on Thursday night on the roof of a car parked in a middle-class residential area, had a written message next to it signed by the Gulf cartel, the country's most violent drug organization.

The ears were chopped off, a senior state police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Mexican drug gangs, engaged in a bitter fight with each other and security forces, behead opponents to scare rivals, but this was the first such decapitation in Monterrey, home to large corporations and a wealthy business elite.

The message, written on cardboard or paper, suggested the victim may have been a common criminal who had passed himself off as a member of the Gulf cartel's feared Zetas hit squad.

"This is what happens to people who want to pass for Zetas," the message read, according to El Norte newspaper. The man's body has not been found, police sources said.

In Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, gunmen dressed as federal investigative agents forced their way into a city prison and freed six inmates on Friday, the state attorney general's office said.

The inmates were arrested in March, accused of working for the Zetas, Mexican media said.

Also on Friday in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas, drug hit men killed two rivals in a hospital near the city's main military base, police and doctors said.

The gunmen entered the private Hospital Juarez and shot the men in the waiting room in front of doctors and nurses. The two men had brought in two seriously wounded partners, fleeing from a gun battle.

"It happened at 2.30 a.m. and we called the police, but no one came until 7 in the morning," said a hospital nurse who declined to be named.

President Felipe Calderon has sent 25,000 troops and federal police to fight cartels across Mexico since 2006 -- including 2,500 troops to Ciudad Juarez in March and more than 2,700 this week to Sinaloa, the home state of kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.

Despite those efforts, six high-ranking police officers were killed in the past two weeks. Drug violence has killed more than 1,100 people in Mexico this year.

(Reporting by Gabriela Lopez and Robin Emmott in Monterrey and Ignacio Alvarado in Ciudad Juarez; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Suspected drug hit men dump head in Mexican city | International | Reuters

What's Wrong With Mexico?

2008-05-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

I usually don't include opinion pieces in this blog, but this one seemed very on target, so I've added it.

By John Gibson
Fox News

Some countries seem to never have to leave home to fight a war.

Take Mexico.

President Felipe Calderon has just sent thousands more troops into the northern state of Sinaloa to fight the drug cartels, which evidently have taken over both the Mexican side of the border with the United States and large swaths of Mexico proper near the border.

In the past two weeks, six senior police officers across Mexico have been assassinated by the cartels. The latest was Edgar Millan, who had been acting director of the federal police for just 30 days before he was shot outside his home in Mexico City. Up north, closer to the border, the cartels have even taken to decapitating their police victims to add an extra measure of horror to their assassination campaign.

As recently as last week the president promised (again) to take back the streets from the cartels. He's a little late out of the starting gate. Since he came to office in 2006 more than 3,500 people have died in the cartel violence. Drug hit men have even been targeting popular recording artists, who they kidnap and murder as punishment for hit songs that don't paint the cartel hombres in a favorable light.

We shall see how the Presidente does in this fight. So far the government of Mexico hasn't seemed up it. Cartel recruiters are so confident of their control of border towns they openly advertise gunmen jobs to soldiers willing to go AWOL from the army.

The whole sorry scene of the border war over control of drug routes has the air of an open insurrection that the government of Mexico seems powerless to put down. It's one thing to blame American drug consumers for the huge power of the cartels, it's quite another for the government to simply fail to stamp out the murderous insurrection with brutal force. It's a challenge to the very manhood of the Mexican government and there isn't a blue pill to cure this impotency.

Americans have had plenty of reason to mistrust the Mexican government over its inability to control the outflow of its citizens to the United States, where they live in legal limbo because they cannot make a living in their own home country. Americans even understand why the Mexican government wants its citizens in the U.S. (because they send home billions of dollars), but they resent deeply the Mexican government's complicity and facilitation of this wave of illegal immigration.

But the idea that the government cowers before armed gangs of drug cartel-paid gunmen is shocking. Mexico has virtually ceded a vast chunk of its sovereign territory to criminal gangs, watched its own officers of law and order hunted down and killed and seems unable to defend itself. Even the Maliki government in Iraq has finally decided to fight back against the illegal gangs of gunmen that threaten its very existence.

So what's wrong with Mexico? Doesn't it appear that Mexico is losing its status as a functional government if it can't even protect its own national police chief and many other local police officials? What is the nation of Mexico if it can't exert control within its own borders?

Mexico is so flacid it's pitiful and pathetic. The one upside, if you could call it that, is Mexicans certainly do not have to worry about living under an ironfisted police state.

What a sorry excuse for a government. Should somebody call the U.N.?

FOXNews.com - What's Wrong With Mexico? - John Gibson Radio

Drug hitmen attack police in Mexico hot spot

2008-05-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

Hand grenades seem to be pretty common with the drug gangs in Mexico now. Where do they get them? Mexican authorities blame the US for the proliferation of handguns and rifles in Mexico. I'm sure the handgun part is true. Many of the long guns they use appear to be military issue, full auto, based on the reports. (As in this one "machine guns"). Now also, use of grenades! This implies that the drug gangs have access to some government armory, somewhere. Grenades are not things that you can buy at "Joe's Guns" on Hwy. 99.

CULIACAN, Mexico, May 14 (Reuters) - Suspected drug hitmen threw grenades and opened fire on a police station in Mexico's Sinaloa state on Wednesday, just hours after the government sent thousands of troops to fight a powerful drug cartel there.

A group of 10 to 12 heavily armed men shot at the station with machine guns and attacked three other houses, killing one person, in the town of Guamuchil, about an hour away from Sinaloa's capital of Culiacan.

"They fired shots and threw (two) grenades and both of them exploded," a local policeman at the Guamuchil station told Reuters by telephone, asking not to be named.

The six policemen in the station were not injured in the attack in the early hours of the morning.

On Tuesday, President Felipe Calderon sent more than 2,700 troops into the state, known as the home of the country's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Soldiers patrolled Culiacan and a nearby town in military vehicles.

More than 1,100 people have been killed in Mexico this year as drug gangs fight each other and the security forces.

Calderon, a conservative who has sent 25,000 troops and federal police to fight drug cartels across Mexico since late 2006, pledged last week to take back Mexican streets from drug traffickers and gunmen.

But the latest attack shows the difficulty of a frontal attack on the drug cartels in their home territory. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Drug hitmen attack police in Mexico hot spot | Reuters

Violence in Mexico spills across US border

2008-05-14T09:57:00.001-07:00

"It's almost like a military fight". Yes, we are starting to suspect that, but of course we're not really treating it that way which mean using the military, not border patrol agents.

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.

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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.

Violence in Mexico spills across US border - Yahoo! News

Seven Dead in New Mexico Border Town Drug Killing

2008-05-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Governor Richardson is "Concerned". Isn't that nice!

Concerned is when your cat isn't home by dark. A full scale drug war killing thousands in the neighboring state seems like mabye Governor Richardson should be "alarmed" "deeply troubled" or even asking Bush to "send in the Marines".

We don't hear much about the New Mexico border. It is the smallest of the four states that have borders with Mexico. But that doesn't mean it is without group killings, just like TJ and Nuevo Laredo.

Note the latest trend of the banditos spraying hundreds of rounds in the contract killings. One assumes that either they don't know how to shoot, or that they are tyring to increase the intimidation (which is the point of all these kilings) by spraying bullets in such large numbers.

Either way it is a very scary trend.

DEMING, N.M. (AP) - Governor Richardson says he's concerned about violence along New Mexico's border with Mexico.

Authorities say seven men have been killed in the Mexican border town of Palomas in a turf war among drug cartels.

The Luna County Sheriff's Department says 162 gun shells were found where five men were killed Sunday in Palomas, across the border from Columbus, New Mexico.

Another 67 casings were found where a man and his son were fatally shot Friday.

A spokesman for Richardson says the governor has directed New Mexico public safety officials to be vigilant to ensure the problems don't spread into the United States.

Richardson also plans to ask New Mexico lawmakers to approve funding for an increased state law enforcement presence in the region.

El Paso/Las Cruces News, Weather, Sports and Entertainment - KDBC 4 - We are CBS! | Gov. Richardson concerned about border violence

Ciudad Juarez police chief gunned down by assassins

2008-05-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

Very dangerous to be a lawman in Mexico.

MEXICO CITY — Assassins gunned down a senior police official in the border city of Ciudad Juarez early Saturday as Mexico's gangsters pressed their counteroffensive against the country's security forces.

Municipal Police Chief Juan Antonio Roman was shot about 2 a.m. in front of his house on the outskirts of the city, which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

Another of Roman's police commanders was shot shortly before he was killed.

Roman's was one of more than 100 deaths, including those of at least 20 police officers, attributed to organized crime last week across Mexico. Among those killed were a top commander of the Federal Preventative Police, whose gray-uniformed agents have spearheaded a crackdown on the criminal underworld.

Gangland violence has been sweeping Mexico as powerful narcotics smuggling gangs battle one another for dominance. At stake are the lucrative smuggling routes through the country to transport cocaine, marijuana and other narcotics to U.S. consumers.

President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the gangsters upon taking office in December 2006, dispatching some 30,000 troops and federal police to the most violence-plagued communities.

While failing to seriously curtail narcotics traffic, the offensive has weakened some criminal organizations, enhancing bloody internal rivalries. By some media counts, more than 3,000 people have died in the past 17 months, including scores of police officers and soldiers.

Violence against police was rare until recently in Mexico, as gangsters preferred to use silver instead of lead to persuade officials to leave them alone. But amid Calderon's offensive, the gangs have started hitting at the local, state and federal police.

"It's a war between the cartels and against the state," said Victor Clark, a human rights activist in Tijuana. "The government action has dealt a blow to the interests of organized crime, And they're fighting back."

Roman's name headed a list of "executable" city police officers that was publicly posted by gangsters in January.

Standing in the street in front of his house, with his wife and three children inside, Roman managed to shoot back at his killers but was cut down in a volley of more than 60 bullets, said Jaime Torres, a Ciudad Juarez police spokesman.

"He was able to repel the attack, but he was outnumbered," Torres said. "It's a very sad day."

Calderon called Friday for his nation to unite against the gangs. But years of endemic police corruption and abuses have left many Mexicans cynical.

Mexican officials have acknowledged that some officers — especially local and state forces — have been killed for their role in protecting one criminal gang or another rather than in the line of duty.

"They haven't been able to break the ties between the organized criminals, police and political power," said Clark, noting that 144 municipal and state police officers were fired in Baja California last week.

The federal police commander killed Thursday, Edgar Millan, was met by assassins as he arrived home in Mexico City. Investigators suspect they were helped by someone from within the federal police.

dqalthaus@yahoo.com
marionlloyd@gmail.com

Ciudad Juarez police chief gunned down by assassins | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Acting head of Mexico's federal police killed in capital | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

2008-05-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

Wow! That's a very big fish indeed. The drug gangs are completely brazen and fear no man. Mexico is close to being a failed state if it cannot even protect it's most senior leaders from gangland assassination.

Acting head of Mexico's federal police killed in capital

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press

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MEXICO CITY — The acting chief of Mexico's federal police was shot dead early Thursday outside his home in the capital.

The Public Safety Department said Edgar Millan Gomez was shot 10 times and died hours later in a hospital. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.

A police official, who was not authorized to give his name, said Millan had been temporarily heading the federal police since his superior was promoted to a deputy Cabinet position on March 1.

Police have arrested a suspect with a record of car theft but have not yet determined a motive for the pre-dawn attack Thursday. The official said police were investigating possible drug links.

Mexico has suffered a wave of organized crime and drug-related violence in which more than 2,500 people died last year alone.

Millan was in charge of coordinating drug operations with the military. Since taking office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 24,000 troops to drug hotspots. Cartels have lashed back, killing soldiers and federal police.

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 armed 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.

Calderon condemned the attack on Millan.

"The government of Mexico expresses its deepest sympathy in light of this cowardly killing of an exemplary official, committed to the safety of Mexican families," Calderon's office said in a statement.

Millan helped capture one of Mexico's most feared kidnappers, Andres Caletri, in 2000, and helped 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.

Acting head of Mexico's federal police killed in capital | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Wave of organised crime kills 21 in Mexico

2008-05-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

No end in sight. In fact it seems to be getting worse...

Wave of organised crime kills 21 in Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — Sixty gunmen stormed a ranch, killing 10 people, as a surge of organized crime across Mexico left at least 21 dead.

Gunmen with automatic weapons stormed the ranch of prominent landowner Rogaciano Alba Alvarez, who was the target of two attacks in two days, authorities said.

Six people were wounded in the assault on the ranch in Petatlan, Guerrero state.

"Early this morning (Sunday), shortly after midnight, some 60 gunmen launched an assault on the home of Rogaciano Alba Alvarez, head of the Guerrero Cattlemen's Association, with at least nine people killed and another six seriously injured," a state official told AFP.

Another person died later on the way to the hospital. The owner was not among those killed.

Hitmen arrived at the Alba ranch in six pickup trucks and opened fire with AK-47s, killing the ranch workers. The state official said one of the owner's daughter was believed to have been kidnapped.

The violence came just 24 hours after Alba narrowly escaped an attack by another hit squad Saturday at a hotel in Iguala, also in Guerrero state. Seven people were killed in that incident and another eight wounded.

The hotel was hit as the ranchers were preparing an industry convention.

Alba, who also was targeted in an attack in 2006, is a past mayor of Petatlan (1993-1995). Local media have linked him to paramilitary groups accused of killing 17 members of a local rural workers organization.

Meanwhile, four police officers were killed in an ambush in the northern state of Sinaloa late Friday, authorities said. A local media report said another two local police officers had also been killed.

Federal and state authorities on Friday arrested 13 hitmen in Sinaloa and seized weapons and 379,000 dollars as part of the government's national anti-organized crime operation.

Since December 2006, President Felipe Calderon's federal government has deployed 36,000 military troops and thousands of police around the country in an operation aimed at clamping down on organized crime.

Officials claimed the rising death toll showed that criminals were panicking about the clampdown.

"This reaction by organized crime reflects how the Mexican government is fighting it in an unprecedented and systematic way," Public Safety chief Genaro Garcia Luna said at a weekend ceremony honoring policemen slain in recent days.

So far, organized crime has been behind a total of 1,100 deaths throughout Mexico since the beginning of this year, according to a tally by El Universal newspaper.

Wave of organised crime kills 21 in Mexico

6 die in Mexico gunbattle: Police vs. Army

2008-04-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

The area around Monterrey now seems to be having these kind of incidents with some regularity. How very unfortunate for everyone who lives there.

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY — Six men were confirmed dead Friday in a gunbattle between state police and two off-duty soldiers along an 80-mile stretch of desert highway south of the border at Laredo.

Three state policemen, the two men reported to be active-duty soldiers and a civilian were killed.

The violence appeared to be sparked by a drunken argument between the soldiers and the civilian, said Luis Carlos Treviño, the attorney general of Nuevo Leon state where the killings occurred. An autopsy, he said, indicated a high level of alcohol in the soldiers' bloodstreams.

There was no immediate indication that the killings were linked to the region's ubiquitous narcotics trafficking and drug-related violence, Treviño said. The military had no immediate comment on the incident.

Nuevo Leon Gov. Natividad Gonzalez told reporters in Monterrey that state officials were demanding an explication from the army, which has traditionally been closed-mouthed about its operations.

"There is a very good communication with the regional military command," Gonzalez said in a press conference.

"There will have to be an explanation for what happened today."

Soldiers stole pickup

Thousands of Mexican troops and federal police have been deployed to the arid ranchlands and burgeoning industrial cities bordering South Texas from Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico. The region is the domain of the so-called Gulf Cartel, a narcotics smuggling organization that employs ex-soldiers as assassins.

The rampage began about 10:30 p.m. Thursday when the soldiers stole a pickup truck, then abducted and killed the civilian in the town of Lampazos, about midway between Monterrey and the U.S.-Mexico border, according to El Norte, a Monterrey newspaper.

Stealing another vehicle, the two soldiers fled south along a main highway toward Monterrey. State police agents intercepted them near the town of Villaldama, igniting a shootout that left one of the policemen dead and other fatally wounded.

The uniformed assailants then stole the patrol car of the fallen officers, and continued fleeing south. Tracking the patrol car by its global positioning system, state and municipal police caught up with the men near Salinas Victoria, on the northern outskirts of Monterrey.

Second gunbattle erupts

In a second shootout, the two soldiers and another state police agent were killed. Both soldiers were reported to be carrying Galil rifles, weapons used by the Mexican military.

Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, have been the sites of gangland violence as the Gulf Cartel battled with rivals from the Pacific Coast for control of smuggling routes.

Repeating a similar action in 2005, President Felipe Calderon last December ordered thousands of federal troops and police into the area in an attempt to quell the violence. A similar military deployment was ordered last week for Ciuadad Juarez, across from El Paso, and other areas of Chihuahua state, where the bloodshed has been among Mexico's worst this year.

6 die in Mexico gunbattle south of border from Laredo | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Five indicted in cross-border kidnapping ring.

2008-04-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Basically "No Country for Old Men" was a documentary.

Federal prosecutors announced Wednesday that a grand jury has indicted five men on kidnapping conspiracy charges related to a January incident involving cross-border drug trafficking and torture.

Charged in the indictment, and each facing life in prison if convicted, were Crystal City residents Heriberto Macias Diaz, David Perez and William Davalos, and San Antonio residents Leroy Guerra Garcia and Mark Anthony Jiminez.

The men are accused of conspiring to kidnap a Pearsall tow truck driver and taking him to Piedras Negras, where he was tortured and threatened with death, all to find the location of missing drug money, according to federal prosecutors

MySA.com: Metro | State

Focus on U.S.-Mexico Cooperation Ignores Differing Interests in Drug War

2008-03-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

One of the best detailed articles to appear anywhere on this topic. Reposted here in full.

Patrick Corcoran | 26 Mar 2008
World Politics Review Exclusive

TORRÉON, Mexico -- The Merida Initiative is a billion-dollar anti-drug aid package that only a kindergarten teacher could love: The results are not important, just the mere idea that the United States and Mexico are cooperating makes it worthwhile. The focus on the two countries overcoming their prickly past and learning to play nice ignores the fact that their interests in the war on drugs are not the same. What solves Mexican problems won't necessarily work on American ones, and what works for Washington could make things a lot worse south of the Rio Grande. The increased commitment and cooperation promised by the Merida Initiative can't change that.

The Mexican drug problem lies not in the consumption of cocaine, marijuana, or meth (though drug abuse is rising here), but rather in the incredible influence American users have indirectly bestowed upon the Mexican cartels, and the latter's tendency to solve problems and send messages with dead bodies. The United States has the opposite problem. There are no scandals about the nexus of political power and drug traffickers. Drug gangs are a general nuisance, a lethal danger in some communities, but the state is not threatened by cartels. Americans snort, smoke, and inject too much, but the nastiest symptoms of the drug wars rage south of the border.

The number of drug-related killings in Mexico has steadily increased over the past decade, topping out last year at around 2,500. Drug dealers wage war openly in border cities like Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana. Ricardo Ravelo, the dean of Mexican journalists on the narco beat, has estimated that half of the nation's cops are allied with the drug cartels. (Half!) With the possible exception of the mid-1990s, Mexico has never seemed so vulnerable to drug traffickers as it has over the past two years.

The scale of the violence reflects the degree to which drug trafficking has invaded Mexico's economy. The various cartels (the industry is in a constant state of flux, but most experts count about a half-dozen major cartels, with the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels being the most dominant) generate billions of dollars of revenue; nearly every expert agrees that the cartels' revenues exceed $10 billion annually, and some estimate a much greater total. One analyst, Samuel Gonzalez of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, estimates the drug trade's slice of Mexico's economic pie at 4 percent. That 4 percent is no less active than legitimate money. Drug income reinvents and reproduces itself in the purchases of restaurants, cars, houses, and everything else such business brings with it. As Ravelo detailed in his 2005 book "Los Capos," many cities (your author's Torreón prominently included) rely on drug trafficking as a vital economic crutch.

Although its leaders might like to pretend otherwise, Mexico would suffer drastic economic consequences if the drug trade came to a screeching halt. The abrupt removal of 4 percent of the nation's economic activity would be equal to a severe recession. While Mexican society wants to rid itself of the cartels, it wouldn't sacrifice its economic well-being to do so. The late Jesús Blancornelas, Ravelo's legendary predecessor as the foremost chronicler of the drug trade, includes a revealing anecdote in his book "El Cártel:"

[Sinaloa Governor Juan Sigfrido Millán] remembered the first action of the army against the drug trafficking, called Operation Condor, and it was headed by José Hernández Toledo with great vigor. The effects were immediate: he weakened the mafias, but then something unexpected happened, according to the memory of Governor Millán: the automobile distributors, the real estate executives, the bank managers, and certain businessmen began to complain because of the drop in their sales or cash flow. "The economy plummeted," remembered the governor.

Hernández Toledo resisted and even scolded the businessmen eager for him to ease up, and Sinaloa remained relatively calm as long as the army was nearby. Eventually, though, the operation was weakened, and the cartels went right back to work along the state's long Pacific coast.

The consequences resulting from a too-sharp decline in drug trafficking wouldn't be strictly economic. Even if the Mexican government manages to reduce cartels' capacity to traffic drugs, the men running the organizations won't simply go get jobs selling insurance. Those not arrested or killed will probably branch off into other criminal fields, like bank robbery or kidnapping. Something like this has happened in the past five years or so in Tijuana, where the famous Arellano Felix cartel has been gravely debilitated. The cartel's erstwhile members have made the city increasingly unpleasant, if not uninhabitable. Since a kidnapping is more of a public nuisance than a peaceful drug transaction, separating criminal gangs from their sources and shutting down their smuggling routes is not a necessarily positive development in terms of public security.

The ideal scenario for Mexico would be the gradual replacement of the violence-prone supercartels with smaller and less ambitious drug trafficking groups that lack the means as well as the inclination to threaten the government. The drugs and the cash would keep flowing for the time being, but with less bloodshed. In time, Mexico could wean its economy off of its drug dependency. The Merida Initiative may be able to aid Mexico in this endeavor; Plan Colombia did coincide with the atomization of the Colombian drug trafficking organizations (apart from the guerilla groups and paramilitaries), and the baby cartels that dominate much of the landscape today are less menacing than was Pablo Escobar.

But based on the statements of American officials, no one is aiming for a reorganization of the Mexican cartels. In fact, it's hard to pin down exactly what the United States is aiming for. Officials talk admiringly about the Merida Initiative opening a new era of bilateral trust, but rarely do they link the rhetoric to concrete goals. Indeed, the entire thrust of American policy can be boiled down to one word: cooperation.

A few examples: the joint statement announcing the plan in October was titled, "A New Paradigm for Security Cooperation." Thomas Shannon, the State Department's top man in Latin America, told lawmakers in a congressional hearing, "The Merida Initiative would combine each nation's domestic efforts with broader regional cooperation to multiply the effects of our actions." John Negroponte, the State Department's No. 2, used an interview with Mexico's Televisa to strike the same themes: "[The Initiative] is a strategic cooperation between our two countries to fight this common problem." (In that one brief appearance, he used the magic word six other times as well.) The Barney-esque emphasis spans both sides of the border. Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa refused to call the Merida Initiative an aid package, opting instead for the friendlier "program of cooperation." A Google search of the words "Merida Initiative cooperation" yields more than 81,000 results.

What's missing in the comments above, and presumably the overwhelming majority of the 81,000 articles, is any articulation of objectives that goes beyond the one ubiquitous noun. The lack of complexity is partly explained by the fact that those quoted are government officials, and thereby incapable of speaking in anything other than broad platitudes. But even their platitudes reflect a lack of understanding. What they say about bilateral cooperation is true; a more trusting relationship would be great. The question is, to what end? More collaboration alone won't make an adequate solution to each nation's drug problem suddenly appear. Indeed, despite the enhanced relationship, it's a near certainty that for both nations a solution will remain out of reach.

There are three possible results of the Merida Initiative, none of which will satisfy both sides. The first is that despite some splashy takedowns of kingpins, nothing much changes, drugs continue entering the United States by the ton, and the cartels continue tormenting Mexico. The second is that, over the next five years, Mexico makes great strides in weakening the cartels and reducing the violence, and the bilateral pact is perceived as being a big part of that, but the drugs continue to flow northward through Mexico. The third, and least likely scenario, is that Mexico manages to reduce the drug trade to a shell of its former self and in five or 10 years is basically free of drug violence, thanks to in large part to the Merida Initiative.

The first two options, which will almost certainly end up being the actual result, are failures from an American point of view. The third option, which I wouldn't bet on even at 100 to 1 odds, could be even worse for Mexico. Whatever the end result, someone's walking away disappointed.

There are flaws with the plan's design -- for starters, there is way too much concentration on hardware, though Mexico's most immediate challenge is corrupt police -- but not even a perfectly conceived agreement could sweep under the rug the fact that the two countries want different results. Before sacrificing $1.4 billion to the altar of cooperation, both nations need to offer a more clear-headed analysis of this fundamental obstacle to bilateral drug policy.

Patrick Corcoran is a writer based in Torreón, Coahuila, in northern Mexico.

World Politics Review | Focus on U.S.-Mexico Cooperation Ignores Differing Interests in Drug War

Flood of Guns hits Mexico

2008-03-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Of course regular readers of Blog of the Gods know that much of the drug war is conducted among various law enforcement agencies in Mexico, so the claims made here don't ring entirely true. None the less there is no doubt that lots of guns are flowing south. Hey, it's one of the last things we make better than anyone else. Classic trade among nations, that.

JUAREZ, Mexico (CNN) -- A deadly trade is occurring along the U.S. border with Mexico, federal officials say -- a flood of guns, heading south, used by drug thugs to kill Mexican cops.

Authorities recently seized these .50-caliber bullets, already belted to be fed into a machine gun.

Mexico, guns are difficult to purchase legally. So, officials say, weapons easily purchased in the United States are turning up there.

"The same routes that are being used to traffic drugs north -- and the same organizations that have control over those routes -- are the same organizations that bring the money and the cash proceeds south as well as the guns and the ammunition," says Bill Newell, a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Police in Mexican border towns fear for their lives, and with good reason. Five high-ranking Mexican police officials have been killed this year in what Mexican officials say is an escalating war between police and drug cartels.

In Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, a police commander was gunned down in front of his home. The weapon used to kill Cmdr. Francisco Ledesma Salazar is believed to have been a .50-caliber rifle. The guns are illegal to purchase in Mexico but can be obtained just north of the border at gun shows and gun shops in the United States.

ATF special agent Tom Mangan says the .50-caliber rifle has become one of the "guns of choice" for the drug cartels. The weapon fires palm-sized .50-caliber rounds that can cut through just about anything.

Mangan showed CNN the power of the rifle on a gun range near Phoenix, Arizona. The weapon, a Barrett, was seized in an ATF raid. A round fired from 100 yards away tore through a car door and both sides of a bulletproof vest like those used by Mexican police.

"There's nothing that's going to stop this round," Mangan says.

The rifle was intercepted as it was being smuggled into Mexico. Mangan says investigators believe four others already had passed through the border.

The ATF has been trying to help Mexican police by cracking down on illegal purchases of guns and ammunition. Operation Gunrunner has led to several arrests and seizures of guns and ammo. But the operation has mainly shown just how big a problem exists, authorities say.

One recent seizure in a Yuma, Arizona, storage locker yielded 42 weapons and hundreds of rounds of .50-caliber bullets already belted to be fed into a machine gun-style weapon.

The guns confiscated included AK-47 rifles and dozens of Fabrique National pistols. The semiautomatic pistols fire a 5.7-by-28 millimeter round, which is technically a rifle round, according to the ATF. Newell says the round has a special nickname in Mexico. "It's called 'mata policias,' or 'cop killer,' " he says.

Mexican authorities along the border recently met with their counterparts in the United States, hoping more cooperation will lead to more arrests of criminals and fewer killings of Mexican police officers.

Guillermo Fonseca, Mexico's regional legal attaché for the West Coast, told CNN the violence in his country is "problem number 1" -- and police in his country are outgunned. Officers in Mexico lack heavy firepower, he says. With the presence of large-caliber weapons from the United States, drug cartels and criminals have the advantage in what he says is basically a war. Part of the solution, he says, is for the United States to give Mexico more information about who is selling these guns illegally in the United States. Then Mexico could go after the buyers.

"We have access to systems to trace guns that have been smuggled into Mexico, and that has worked very well," Fonseca told CNN. "We need more information about the people who are actually purchasing the guns. We need to prosecute those people, to convict those people. In our opinion, that's the next step we have to take."

Last year Mexican police confiscated 10,000 guns and $200 million in raids aimed at cracking down on border violence. Still, local police tread carefully, especially in neighborhoods controlled by the powerful drug cartels.

Officer Cesar Quitana patrols a dangerous barrio in Juarez, Mexico. He is armed with an M16 assault rifle -- a weapon that would be no match in a gunfight with drug lords.

"I think most of us feel scared just to bring this with us," he says, pointing to the rifle in the front seat of his patrol car. "But this is what we use to defend ourselves."

Sorry no link, got this on email.

Mexican Police Find Four Burned Bodies

2008-03-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of cities in Mexico that no one wants to enter, due to the completely out of control violence there.

EL PASO, Texas -- The killings in Juarez have spread outside of city limits and into other Mexican cities.

This after police said 4 cops were found dead and burned in the city of Palomas, Mexico, Friday.

The owner of the “Los Lamenots” ranch found the bodies and made the call to authorities.

The violence has gotten so bad, officials have advised for no one to enter the city.

Mexican Police Find Four Burned Bodies - News Story - KFOX El Paso

Gunmen kill 5 in attack on Mexico police | Reuters

2008-03-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

The drug wars rage in Mexico City, too. How sad for Mexico.

MEXICO CITY, March 22 (Reuters) - Suspected drug cartel gunmen killed five people in an attack on a police station in central Mexico and during their subsequent escape, authorities said on Saturday.

At least six masked, heavily armed men raided the police station in the town of Jerecuaro, in the state of Guanajuato, on Friday, shooting and killing two police officers and a secretary.

Making their escape in sport utility vehicles, they gunned down another two police officers on a nearby highway, state authorities said.

Police later found one of the gunmen dead of a gunshot wound in one of three abandoned bullet-riddled vehicles that also contained hand grenades, assault rifles, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, cocaine and police uniforms.

State police said the attack might have been a reprisal for a recent crackdown on drug cartels.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of soldiers and federal police to hot spots across Mexico, where cartel violence has killed more than 500 people so far this year, according to media, and left more than 2,500 dead in 2007.

In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Saturday, gunmen attacked a military checkpoint on a highway, killing one soldier before escaping, the army said in a statement.

More than 20 people were found dead in Mexico on Friday in violence linked to drug cartels, media reported. (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Gunmen kill 5 in attack on Mexico police | Reuters

Mass grave unearthed in midst of Mexico's drug war - Los Angeles Times

2008-03-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Mass grave unearthed in midst of Mexico's drug war

By Marla Dickerson and Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
March 15, 2008
MEXICO CITY -- Authorities in Ciudad Juarez said Friday that they had uncovered the remains of 33 people buried in the yard of an abandoned property, a mass grave believed to be linked to the city's violent drug trade.

The grisly discovery surfaced as part of a recent government crackdown on narcotics traffickers in this city across the border from El Paso that has been gripped by a spasm of drug-related killing unseen in years. Authorities said the Juarez drug cartel might be involved in the deaths.

The same area attracted worldwide attention for the violent deaths of hundreds of women and girls beginning in the early 1990s. Many of the cases remain unsolved.

Acting on an anonymous tip, federal police on March 1 began excavating a weedy lot hidden behind a cinder-block wall in a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side. Day one yielded six corpses. It took law enforcement nearly two weeks to uncover the other remains, working with sniffer dogs, shovels and a backhoe.

EARLIER FIND: Authorities excavate nine bodies recently from a yard in the border town of Ciudad Juarez. Officials believe that and the latest discovery to be the result of an almost routine effort by drug traffickers to reprimand members in their ranks.
The remains of 33 people are found in a shallow grave on an abandoned property in the border town of Ciudad Juarez.

All but three of the victims were men. Some were dismembered. Forensics experts said some of the corpses may have been buried for as long as five years. Police confirmed the body count Friday.

The discovery stunned neighbors in the normally tranquil La Cuesta neighborhood.

"We never imagined we were living across from a tomb," said one neighbor, who like others interviewed declined to be named for fear of reprisal.

It's the second such find in less than a month. Federal authorities unearthed nine bodies buried in the yard of a Ciudad Juarez home in late February after a drug bust.

Security experts say the discovery of old graves is a result of recent government efforts to strike hard at Mexico's drug cartels. Military and federal police have been deployed to Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and other trafficking hot spots across the country, a strategy that has resulted in some major drug and weapons seizures as well as some high-profile arrests.

This week, Gustavo Rivera Martinez, an alleged leader of the Arellano Felix cartel, was nabbed in Cabo San Lucas by federal agents. Mario Montemayor Covarrubias, identified by Mexican news media as a key leader of a kidnapping cell of the cartel, was arrested in Tijuana earlier this month after a seven-hour shootout with authorities.

Organized crime has resorted to unprecedented violence to intimidate informants and police. Dozens of people have been killed in drug-related slayings this year in Ciudad Juarez, authorities have said. Drug violence has claimed at least 70 victims in Tijuana. Some have been mutilated and left with gruesome messages warning informants not to cooperate with law enforcement. Police officers have been gunned down in their homes in front of their families.

In January, gunmen stormed the home of Tijuana Deputy Police Chief Margarito Saldana Rivera, 43, killing him, his wife and his two daughters, ages 12 and 20. Hours earlier another high-ranking officer and his deputy were shot as they sat in their car at a busy intersection. The attacks were believed to be in retaliation for the officers' helping foil the robbery of an armored car.

This week, gunmen also killed an immigrant safety officer as he patrolled a dangerous migrant-smuggling neighborhood near the border in Tijuana.

Organized crime's violent reaction shows that the latest crackdown is working, experts say.

"I'm inclined to believe that they are sticking with a confrontational policy that leads to these kinds of gun battles and high-profile shootouts," said Robert Donnelly, the coordinator of the Justice in Mexico Project at the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute. In contrast, experts said the 42 bodies unearthed at the two locations recently in Ciudad Juarez didn't appear to be part of the recent campaign of retribution, but a clandestine, almost routine, effort on the part of drug traffickers to reprimand members in their ranks.

"If you have a problem with a distributor or someone who's selling the drugs, you don't file a lawsuit against him. You just kill him," said Jorge Chabat, a security expert at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. "It's a way of establishing discipline."

Seasoned observers of Ciudad Juarez's drug wars said the latest discovery had a decidedly old-school flavor, if only because the killers took the trouble to bury the bodies. Since the 1990s, drug enforcers have evolved from dumping bodies in shallow graves to hiding them in car trunks to wrapping them in blankets to simply leaving them where they drop, said Louie Gilot, who writes about border affairs for the El Paso Times.

"In the past they'd be somewhat discreet, but they're getting bolder and bolder," Gilot said. "Now they just kill them in front of people in broad daylight."

Residents of Pedregal Street, where the 33 corpses were unearthed, said there was very little coming-and-going at the abandoned property. It consisted of little more than a small garage-type structure and a weed-choked lot surrounded by a cinder-block wall and a solid, locked metal gate that blocked their view.

One neighbor recalled strangers entering occasionally on weekends, and smelling the smoke of their barbecue.

"A lot of guys went in, but it was very quiet," the neighbor said. "We never saw luxury cars or anything suspicious."

Another remembered heavy vehicles entering with what neighbors thought might be loads of produce.

"We saw trucks and trailers entering with fruit. At least that's what we thought it was."

Mass grave unearthed in midst of Mexico's drug war - Los Angeles Times

Drug cartels terrorize Mexico border region

2008-03-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

"Drug traffickers are waging a terror campaign. The security of the nation is at stake." Yes, that's what is going on. So far the response, from either side of the border, has been completely inadequate to the scale of the problem.

Drug cartels terrorize Mexico border region

By MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIA
THE WASHINGTON POST
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 Saldana, 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 Saldana's tiny home. Rafael Garcia, an unemployed laborer who lives nearby, recalled thinking "it was a fireworks show," then sliding under his bed in fear.

In murdering not only Saldana, 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 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 Calderon 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 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 chasing suspected traffickers.

"The situation is deteriorating," said Victor Clark, a Tijuana human rights activist and drug expert. "Drug traffickers are waging a terror campaign. The security of the nation is at stake."

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 did not stop at a checkpoint.

"You're scared to leave your house," Alejandra Salinas, Meza's cousin, said 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?" asked Juan Jose Muniz Salinas, Reynosa's police chief. "It's impossible."

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.

"It wasn't worth it," said Muniz 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."

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.

Tijuana's new police chief, Jesus Alberto 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 bodyguards, 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.

In response, authorities in Baja California and several other border states have begun giving police polygraph 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."

Original Story Here

Mexican police chief requests asylum in New Mexico

2008-03-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

More proof, if any is needed, that the situation in Mexico remains grim. The police are overmatched by the drug gangs.

DEMING, N.M. (AP) - The police chief of a Mexican border town has requested asylum in the United States, where he told authorities his two officers have fled and he does not know their whereabouts.
The Luna County Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Border Patrol say Emilio Perez of Palomas came to the port of entry at Columbus late Tuesday night, requesting political asylum.

The agent-in-charge of the Border Patrol station in Deming, Rick Moody, says Perez is in the protection of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Authorities have reported an increase in drug-related violence in Palomas, where at least four people have been fatally shot in recent weeks.

KOB.com - Mexican police chief requests asylum in New Mexico

Migrant kidnappings by Mexican cops on the rise

2008-03-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

Mexican officials prey on Central American refugees while their government insists we treat every illegal like a well loved child. Mexico- heal thyself.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Cases of corrupt Mexican police kidnapping undocumented Central American migrants for ransom as they travel overland to the United States are on the rise, a United Nations official said on Saturday.

Jorge Bustamante, the U.N.'s special investigator for migrant rights, said extorting ransoms from migrants could be more lucrative for unscrupulous police than working for drug smuggling gangs.

"They kidnap migrants, ask them for information, relatives' phone numbers; then they extort money from the families," Bustamante said, presenting the conclusions of a week-long study of how undocumented migrants are treated in Mexico.

Bustamante told a news conference both federal and local police were involved in kidnapping rackets on Mexico's northern and southern borders. "It's an abuse and it's increasing," he said.

Tens of thousands of poor Central Americans make the long trek north through Mexico each year on their way to cross the U.S. border illegally. Many are mistreated and forced to pay bribes by both criminal gangs and police.

Bustamante said he met a Salvadoran man in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula who said his wife was still missing after police recently abducted and held the couple.

"It's a big business that involves everyone from taxi drivers to police chiefs. It's a business whose profits rival those of drug trafficking," Bustamante said.

Bustamante, who was invited to carry out his study by the Mexican government, criticized Mexico for doing little to improve the lot of migrants on its territory while at the same time demanding better treatment from the United States of illegal Mexican migrants there.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Eric Walsh)

Migrant kidnappings by Mexican cops on the rise: U.N.

Mexico Seizes Arsenal, Drugs in Tijuana

2008-03-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness it was only a 'brief shootout'. That's nice for a change.

By LUIS PEREZ – 11 hours ago

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Soldiers seized assault rifles, grenades, marijuana and bulletproof vests bearing police insignia after a brief shootout in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.

No one was wounded in the overnight exchange of fire with three suspects hunkered down in a house in La Mesa district, army Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito told reporters Friday.

Troops seized 91 assault rifles — some with butts of gold and ivory — along with 18 grenades, the bulletproof vests and more than 880 pounds of marijuana, Aponte Polito said. The three suspects, aged 25 to 33, were arrested.

The bust followed weeks of bloody confrontations along the U.S.-Mexico border between Mexican security forces and alleged drug cartel gunmen.

On Tuesday, army troops fought a seven-hour gunbattle with suspects who were hiding in a house in an upscale neighborhood of Tijuana.

When soldiers finally stormed the house, one person was found dead and two others were arrested. Several assault rifles, shotguns and police uniforms were also found.

Also Friday, police commander Ricardo Rodriguez was shot dead in a city plaza by gunmen who opened fire with assault rifles from a moving car, state police director Daniel Camarena said.

Rodriguez was killed a day after three mutilated bodies were dumped outside the offices of the federal Attorney General's office in Oaxaca.

And in the border state of Tamaulipas, soldiers arrested six police officers who allegedly received payoffs from members of the Gulf cartel, Mexico's Defense Department said in a statement.

The
Associated Press: Mexico Seizes Arsenal, Drugs in Tijuana

Mexican drug hitmen kill singer near U.S. border

2008-02-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

More singers! It's enough to make me switch to playing bass. No one would be evil enough to kill the bass player.

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Drug hitmen have killed a popular Mexican singer along with his manager and assistant near the U.S. border, authorities said on Wednesday, the latest murder among musicians who sing "narcocorrido" ballads glorifying drug traffickers.

The body of Jesus Rey David Alfaro, known as "The Little Rooster," was one of six that turned up tortured, murdered and pinned with threatening messages for Mexico's army last week in the border town of Tijuana near San Diego.

"We believe Alfaro had links to the Arellano Felix cartel," said an official with the Baja California state attorney general's office who declined to be named.

The official was referring to Tijuana's main drug smuggling cartel, which is fighting a gory turf war with traffickers from Mexico's Pacific state of Sinaloa, led by the country's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

At least half a dozen Mexican folk singers, who play narcocorridos and upbeat, brassy "grupera" music, have been killed since Mexico's drug war flared in 2006.

Alfaro, a regular act at Tijuana's biggest bars and music halls, was found covered in a blanket in wasteland on the edge of the city with rope marks around his neck, suggesting he was tortured before he was shot in the head, the attorney general's office said.

Drug hitmen pinned a message on his body saying "You'll be next," a taunt aimed at the thousands of soldiers sent by President Felipe Calderon to Tijuana to crush the drug gangs and clean up police forces working with the cartels.

Tijuana, long a transit point for narcotics heading to the United States, has seen a spike in murders this past year, with drug gangs even killing children. More than 2,500 people were killed in drug violence in Mexico last year and at least 320 people have died so far this year.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, editing by Todd Eastham)

Mexican drug hitmen kill singer near U.S. border - Yahoo! News

Drug War Mayhem Boils Over From Border to Border

2008-02-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Even areas that one would assume would be very secure, like the Mexico City Airport, are not. It's a long and interesting article from a pretty lefty magazine.

Tourists touching down at Mexico City International Airport are hereby forewarned not to trip over the human heads that may be rolling around at your feet when you disembark. Four have been found in recent weeks in and around the terminal complex although their corresponding bodies have not yet been located.

It continues here:

John Ross: Drug War Mayhem Boils Over From Border to Border

Meanwhile, Calderon's military offensive has failed to stem the harvest of death. Last year, with the troops in the field, 2791 victims (7.3 a day) were registered by authorities, 500 more than the 2221 counted in 2006 when the army was still under wraps. During the first 15 days of 2008, 114 victims were recorded - 11.7 a day - compared with 174 for the entire month of January 2007 - perhaps a fifth of the dead were beheaded or otherwise mutilated.

Drug violence has moved into Mexico City

2008-02-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

Crackdowns pushing cartels into capital, against government

08:46 AM CST on Friday, February 8, 2008
By LAURENCE ILIFF and ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News
acorchado@dallasnews.com; liliff@dallasnews.com

MEXICO CITY – Long a meeting place for Mexican drug cartels and their Colombian suppliers, this sprawling capital is now on the front lines of the government's drug war after the discovery of paramilitary narco cells planning a high-level assassination with possible collaboration of city police and former army soldiers.

The cells, uncovered in upscale neighborhoods favored by politicians and entertainers, had huge stockpiles of high-powered weapons, including grenade- and rocket-launchers, designed to penetrate the highest level of armor.

Juarez locked in deadly power struggle over drug cartels

"Mexico City was a peaceful place for narcos, as they coexisted with the government. But now it's beginning to look a lot like Bogotá," said Raul Benítez, a military and national security expert at the National Autonomous University. "Mexico City residents are not used to this kind of narco-violence, and that's sending shock waves across the population."

In the latest incident, the editor of El Real newspaper was shot to death Thursday as he drove in the Mexico City suburb of Chimalhuacán. And on Wednesday, Mexican authorities said they seized more than two tons of ephedrine – a chemical used to make amphetamines – at the capital's international airport, which has become an important transit point for drugs and weapons.

The ephedrine had been shipped from China in 155 boxes and was destined, through the Mexican Postal Service, for clandestine labs in the states of Colima, Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Michoacán and Mexico, officials said.

The latest military crackdown against cartels began Jan. 1 in cities like Nuevo Laredo, a Gulf cartel stronghold, and Culiacán, a Sinaloa cartel stronghold. The pressure may be pushing cartel operatives to more anonymous settings, such as the Mexico City metropolitan area, with its 18 million people.

After one raid late last month in the nation's capital, the head of intelligence for the capital's Judicial Police resigned amid reports that he was being investigated for allegedly providing bulletproof vests to a Sinaloa cartel hit squad that had set up shop in a tony southern Mexico City neighborhood.

In another recent bust, active police officers and former soldiers allegedly confessed to planning the assassination of a high-level official in the attorney general's office who has overseen the record number of extraditions of drug lords to the U.S.

The official, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, said his would-be assassins were likely working for the Sinaloa cartel, but they could have been working the Gulf cartel based on the Mexico-Texas border.

"I don't think I'm the most popular guy with any of them," he said in a radio interview.

Bigger battles

Analysts and officials say the recent activities show the rapid "Colombianization" of Mexico, a reference to the Colombian cartels' attacks on high-level law enforcement, judges, politicians and journalists during the 1980s and early 1990s in the city's top cities, including the capital, Bogotá.

And it's no longer just cartels battling each other for territory and control of smuggling routes, but cartels battling the government in the face of the crackdown.

"There's no difference between a Pablo Escobar in Colombia and a Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano," said a U.S. anti-drug official, comparing the fallen Colombian drug capo to Mr. Lazcano, the alleged head of the Zetas, the paramilitary enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel. The Zetas have adopted violent confrontations with the government, much like their Colombian counterparts did in retaliation for the extradition of South American drug figures to the U.S.

President Felipe Calderón's government is unwavering in its crackdown, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora vowed in a meeting with citizen groups that demanded results in their Mexico City neighborhoods.

"There will be no retreat," said Mr. Medina Mora. "We are not going to take a step back."

But in Mexico City, tough words will be increasingly scrutinized.

"On the border, the national media tend to ignore these issues," Mr. Medina Mora said. "That won't be the case here, and that will pose great risks for Calderón if he doesn't deliver."

Mexico City has long suffered from high levels of street crime and police corruption, but it had been relatively immune from the daily killings and cartel turf wars that have become features of border cities like Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana.

Last week, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard met with Bogotá's former mayor, Antanas Mokus, and solicited advice on dealing with the security challenges ahead.

The nation's capital has historically been a haven for drug traffickers, some of whom have lived side by side with some of the nation's elite. It's a place for financial operations and other transactions.

In August and September of last year, three of Mexico's most wanted were captured in Mexico City, including Juan Carlos de la Cruz Reyna, the alleged Gulf cartel link to Colombian suppliers, who were also arrested having lunch in the upscale Polanco neighborhood.

In mid-January, the Mexico City newspaper Reforma cited a city government study that said a police cartel was involved in moving drugs through the capital's international airport.

Recent drug seizures at the airport have sparked apparent retaliation against private customs brokers via al-Qaeda-style beheadings. After the Dec. 12 seizure of a half-ton of cocaine at the airport, three such brokers were executed and two of them had their heads severed, airport officials said. Allegedly, the Gulf cartel and its Zetas were involved in those killings.

Amid the growing violence, more than 500 city police have been stationed at the newly expanded international airport, the target of narco-traffickers fighting for control, officials say. An airport spokesman insisted the airport is safe for all passengers.

Conflicting reports

Mexico City police officials have differed on the level of penetration of the narcos, with Police Chief Joel Ortega acknowledging the phenomenon and Attorney General Rodolfo Félix Cárdenas saying there is no evidence the cartels have set up shop in the capital.

"We don't know if they are operating continuously in Mexico City," the city attorney general told reporters.

Despite the assurances, Ricardo McGregor, the head of intelligence for the attorney general's Judicial Police, resigned late last month after federal officials said he was under investigation on suspicion of providing the bulletproof vests seized in a recent raid on alleged Sinaloa operatives.

Mr. McGregor denied any wrongdoing and said he stepped down to facilitate the investigation. He said that the bulletproof vests were stolen from an armored car company that he used to work for, but that it happened during an armed robbery on the streets of Mexico City.

Up to 30 agents in the unit then failed to show up for work, according to media reports.

Meanwhile, neighbors of the narcos in Mexico City were caught off-guard by the discovery of narco cells next door.

Along the cobblestone streets of San Ángel, Jardines del Pedregal and Coyoacán they spoke in hushed tones and asked their names not be used for fear of retaliation.

A 41-year-old woman walking her dog in Coyoacán remarked, "I'm sure there are hundreds of other houses packed with narcos. We're not alone."

A mile away in San Ángel, a 71-year-old whispered, "Dios mío! I'm afraid to leave my house, and we're not on the border."

News assistant Javier García contributed to this report.

Drug violence has moved into Mexico City | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Mexico News

Kidnappings of U.S. citizens on rise

2008-02-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

Another Mexican crime wave that is slowly moving north.

Sophisticated Mexican groups plot abductions

By Tony Manolatos
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 6, 2008

Organized, well-financed and violent Mexican kidnapping cells are targeting a growing number of U.S. citizens visiting communities popular with San Diegans and other California residents.

Last year, at least 26 San Diego County residents were kidnapped and held for ransom in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach or Ensenada, local FBI agents overseeing the cases said yesterday. In 2006, at least 11 county residents had been kidnapped in the three communities.
“Some of the 26 were recovered, some were hurt and some were killed,” said agent Alex Horan, who directs the FBI's violent-crime squad in San Diego.

“It's not a pleasant experience. Victims have reported beatings, torture and there have been rapes. . . . Handcuffs and hoods over the head are common,” he said.

When contrasted to the 40 million border crossings made every year at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the kidnapping numbers are small. Most of the victims have business interests or family members in Mexico.

But authorities said anyone planning to visit Mexico should be cautious.

Kidnapped

The number of San Diego County residents kidnapped in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach and Ensenada rose sharply last year:

2008: 2

2007: 26

2006: 11

2005: 10

Source: FBI San Diego office

“I would certainly be concerned,” Horan said.

The U.S. Consulate in Tijuana issued a travel advisory last week that said U.S. citizens living and traveling in Mexico should be extra vigilant.

Gunfights and other violence linked to drug cartels have increased in Baja California, and more Mexican citizens have been kidnapped lately.

While some of the groups suspected of kidnapping Americans are connected to drug trafficking, most aren't, Horan said.

He described the kidnapping groups as sophisticated operations similar to terrorist cells, each with a boss and clear divisions of labor. Usually, one group is involved in scouting, another carries out the kidnapping, a third holds the victim and a fourth handles the ransom.

“They know who they're going after. I think they have a list,” Horan said. “These are kidnapping cells. . . . That's what they do. They do kidnappings all year long.”

While the FBI wouldn't say what the ransom demands are, or how often they're paid, agents said money is driving the increase.

“This is not about terrorizing people or retaliating. This is about making money, and obviously this is good business for them,” Horan said.

The scenario that fits about 90 percent of the FBI's kidnapping cases starts with a middle-class family with no criminal ties, who live in communities such as Chula Vista, San Diego and National City.

The family typically owns a business in Mexico and has relatives there. At least one family member, usually a man in his 40s, makes several personal and professional trips across the border.

While driving in Mexico, this person is pulled over by as many as 10 people posing as police.

They're carrying weapons, wearing vests and using police jargon. Within a minute or two, someone is shoving a hood over the victim's head and dragging him into a vehicle. His car is left on the side of the road.

“We've had victims held for days to months,” Horan said.

Not every victim is Hispanic, but there have been “very few cases where a tourist is targeted at random,” said Eric Drickersen, who supervises the FBI's border liaison office in San Diego.

Some of the kidnappings go unreported because people fear retribution, Drickersen said.

Ransom demands are almost always made over the phone. The cross-border communication gives the FBI its jurisdiction. But the agents need authorization from Mexican authorities before they can carry out an operation across the border.

Mexican authorities have been helpful, their U.S. counterparts said.

“They're cooperating, but we would like them to do even more,” Drickersen said.

A week ago, Mexican authorities rescued two female real estate agents who were being held in a Tijuana neighborhood. The women were kidnapped Jan. 19 by three men after showing a property in southern Tijuana, the Baja California Attorney General's Office said in a statement.

The men called in a ransom demand of $350,000, the statement said. Family members negotiated a payment of $27,000 and dropped off the cash, but the women weren't released.

Baja California state agents tracked down the vehicle used to pick up the cash. The driver led authorities to the women, and three men were arrested.

Both women are Mexican citizens, although one is married to a U.S. resident. She and her husband live in Chula Vista.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Mexico > Tijuana & The Border -- Kidnappings of U.S. citizens on rise

Truck crashes into Tijuana airport after gunmen kill driver

2008-01-31T11:11:00.000-08:00

It keeps getting weirder.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Gunmen chased a pickup truck into Tijuana's international airport on Wednesday, firing at and killing the driver, whose vehicle crashed through the windows of the terminal and came to rest near a security check point.

Two women riding with the victim were wounded and the airport's operations were briefly interrupted, the Baja California state attorney general's office reported. The shooting occurred in the early morning when few people were at the terminal.

The gunmen fired into the pickup as it lay inside the airport lobby to make sure the driver was dead. They fled in another vehicle. Police said the driver had called an emergency number earlier to say he was being chased, but the call cut off. No arrests have been announced.

There was no immediate information on a motive in the attack, but Tijuana has been plagued in recent months by a spate of shootouts and killings of police, apparently involving gangs and drug traffickers.

Also Wednesday, the attorney general's office reported that the unidentified bodies of three men — two of whom had their hands bound and showed signs of torture — were found dumped in a vacant lot in Playas de Rosarito, near Tijuana.

It was the same spot where the bullet-riddled bodies of a Tijuana police official and another man were found in early January.

Local police in Playas de Rosarito, a city of 130,000, were forced to surrender their weapons last month for testing to determine links to any crimes. Armed state and federal agents are patrolling the city.

Truck crashes into Tijuana airport after gunmen kill driver | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Mexico police chief, three others killed in Oaxaca

2008-01-30T18:15:00.000-08:00

The 'drug smuggling cartels' can cover a lot mischief. Political assassination, for instance. It's hard to know what's really going on. But it is clear that being the Chief of Police in most of Mexico is a very, very dangerous job.

OAXACA, Mexico, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a local police chief and three other people on Wednesday in Oaxaca, a politically tense southern Mexican city where leftists held a months-long siege in 2006.

Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz said the murders were linked to drug smuggling cartels whose violent turf wars killed more than 2,500 people across Mexico last year.

Local police chief Alejandro Barrita was in charge of police units guarding banks and businesses on Oaxaca, a pretty colonial city still scarred by the protests of 2006.

Barrita was killed while he was exercising in a city park. The gunmen also killed his bodyguard and two other people doing exercise in the park, state police director Daniel Camarena told reporters.

Ruiz said the killings were a response to the increased military presence in Oaxaca. President Felipe Calderon has sent 25,000 troops across Mexico to try to control the escalating violence between rival drug gangs.

"This is a result of the fight against organized crime and ... is causing the deaths of our police chiefs," Ruiz told local radio.

Camarena said he was also investigating other motives.

Mexican rebel group Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, bombed natural gas and oil pipelines in 2007 to demand the release of two leftist activists it says were seized by the government in May in Oaxaca.

Oaxaca, a popular stop for European and U.S. tourists, in 2006 faced a violent conflict between state police and protesters calling for Ruiz to resign. (Reporting by Paulina Valencia; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Mexico police chief, three others killed in Oaxaca | Reuters

Mexican military surrounds Reynosa police station

2008-01-22T12:55:00.000-08:00

One hopes that this is a case of the good guys getting the bad guys, but most things near the border are not what they seem at first sight.

REYNOSA - Mexican military have surrounded the Reynosa Municipal Police Station, searching officers, vehicles and weapons.

Witnesses say the military surrounded the police station building around 7 a.m. today. More than 300 police officers across the city are being brought in to be searched, along with personal cars and police-issued weapons.

Officers at the city's precincts across the city are also being searched.

The military is undertaking similar operations today in Nuevo Laredo, Rio Bravo and Matamoros, according to press reports from Monterrey and Mexico City.

Military vehicles and personnel are blocking access to the station.

The raids come after weeks of violence has shocked citizens of the border cities as the Mexican military battles drug cartels.

The latest was three bodies found at the bottom of a canal in Reynosa. Police are investigating a link between drug gangs and those deaths.

Breaking News: Mexican military surrounds Reynosa police station | reynosa, police, military - Brownsville Herald

Mexican Federal agents arrest four police officers in Nuevo Laredo

2008-01-20T04:30:00.000-08:00

Interesting development, wonder if the guns are linked to recent crimes? At least the arrest didn't devolve into a 3 hour gun battle with several dead, as last weeks did.

MEXICO CITY — Federal agents arrested four police officers just south of the border with Texas on Saturday and were investigating where they got their guns, Mexican police said.

In a joint operation, federal police and soldiers arrested the officers early Saturday morning in the city of Nuevo Laredo across the border from Laredo, Texas, said a spokesman for Mexico's Public Safety Department who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.

"The army has stepped in to investigate the origin of their weapons," he said.

Mexican radio station Formato 21 said the officers had guns that weren't registered with their unit in the border state of Tamaulipas.

It wasn't immediately clear if the four officers were being investigated for corruption, which is widespread in Mexico, particularly in states like Tamaulipas plagued by organized crime.

In October, 25 federal police officers were detained in the state on suspicion of providing protection for the powerful Gulf drug cartel.

Mexico has long complained that much of the violence is fueled by U.S. guns smuggled south of the border, where drug traffickers and other organized gangs sometimes outgun police.

On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the U.S had begun giving Mexico access to an electronic database that lets police determine the origin of weapons seized from criminals and then notify U.S. authorities, who can then crack down on gun dealers.

The arrests Saturday came after two weeks of bloody clashes along the border between federal agents and gunmen allegedly working for the Arellano Felix and Gulf cartels.

On Thursday, a federal agent and a gunman who allegedly worked for the Arellano Felix cartel where killed in a three-hour shootout in Tijuana that forced the evacuations of nearby schools. Earlier in the week, gunmen shot dead three police officials and one of their wives in the city.

On Jan. 10, gunmen shot and killed two federal agents and a civilian in the central state of Michoacan. Two days earlier, two other federal agents were killed and three were injured during a shootout in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

A day before the Reynosa shootout, three suspected criminals were killed and 10 federal agents and soldiers wounded in a shootout in the town of Rio Bravo, across the border from Donna, Texas.

Federal agents arrest four police officers in Nuevo Laredo | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Border Patrol agent in Laredo aids smugglers

2008-01-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

The border continues to corrupt law enforcement on both sides, due to the huge amounts of money that can be made.

LAREDO, Texas — Calls from a Border Patrol agent's wife to him while he was on duty helped illegal immigrants on buses slip through a checkpoint.

Prosecutors say 32-year-old David Cruz and 35-year-old Susana Lopez-Portillo De Cruz pleaded guilty Thursday in Laredo to conspiring to transport and harbor illegal immigrants.

The case involved three 2007 incidents — in January, July and September — when a total of 25 illegal immigrants were bused from Laredo.

Prosecutors say Cruz would get calls from his wife letting him know the number of a particular bus and when it likely would reach his checkpoint so he could let it pass.

Cruz resigned in September.

Ex-BP agent in Laredo, wife in smuggling conspiracy | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

6 Executed Kidnapping Victims Found After Tijuana Shootout

2008-01-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

When you have to evacuate city hall and police headquarters your security situation is not good. On the other hand, if the reporting is correct, the police took down a drug gang safehouse. It is exactly the type of operation that needs to continue if the forces or order are going to recliam the border badlands.

6 Executed Kidnapping Victims Found After Tijuana Shootout
Authorities Say 4 Gunmen Taken Into Custody

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Officials said they found six executed kidnapping victims inside a Tijuana house following a three-hour shootout between gunmen and soldiers and police.

The victims, all male, were blindfolded and gagged and had been shot execution-style in the head, said Edgar Millan, a spokesman with the federal Public Safety Department, at a news conference in Tijuana.

Here is a link to the pictures, which are excellent.

One kidnapping suspect was also killed in the battle. Five police agents were wounded and four suspects taken into custody. Authorities said two of the kidnapping suspects are police officers.

Soldiers, state and local police were sent in to help control the firefight that began when federal agents prepared to raid a house near the U.S. border that police now say was a shelter for a cell of the Arellano Felix drug cartel.

Three nearby schools were evacuated, and television showed police running with small children in their arms while shots rang out.

One of the captured gunmen is a state police investigator and another a Tijuana police officer, Millan said. The four suspects will be flown to Mexico City for questioning.

Millan said officials recovered 11 automatic rifles and three bulletproof vests inside the house.

Already this week, gunmen shot and killed eight people in Tijuana, including two local police officers, as well as a district commander, his wife and his 12-year-old daughter.

Also Thursday, employees at Tijuana's City Hall and police headquarters were evacuated after receiving death threats over a police radio frequency, said Abraham Sarabia, a spokesman for city police.

Mexico has seen a spike in gang-related killings since the beginning of the year. The Mexican government has described the violence as revenge for President Felipe Calderon's year-old crackdown on organized crime that sent thousands of soldiers and federal police into violence-plagued cities nationwide.

In the central Mexican state of Hidalgo on Wednesday, assailants killed the director of public safety for the town of Tulancingo.

Jose Alvarado was shot more than 20 times, Hidalgo state police director Ahuizotl Figueroa said.

Two top Tijuana police officials found slain

2008-01-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

Tijuana is competeing with Nuevo Laredo to be the most dangerous city on the border. It seems to be winning at the momement. It's hard to know if the police are killed because they are on the wrong side, or the right side, of the law. Both are dangerous in Mexico.

TIJUANA – A high-ranking police official and his second-in-command were found shot to death late Monday in a central part of this city. The killings marked the second in less than two weeks of top municipal police officials.

The Baja California Attorney General's Office identified the victims as Jose de Jesus Arias Rico, chief of the central La Mesa District, and Elbert Escobedo Marquez, the assistant chief.

Their bodies were found slumped inside a 1988 blue Ford Escort. Numerous shells from 9-millimeter and .223-caliber weapons were found at the scene, according to a written statement.

The Agencia Fronteriza de Noticias, a Tijuana news agency, reported that the killings occurred at about 10:20 p.m. within the victims' district, a block from a busy intersection known as La Cinco y Diez.

In a written statement, Baja California's attorney general, Rommel Moreno Manjarrez, vowed to find those responsible for the crimes.

On Jan. 3, another district chief with the Tijuana municipal police was found dead four days after he was abducted from his home. His body and that of another Tijuana officer were found off a highway in an unpopulated area of Rosarito Beach.

Officials linked the killings to the victims' involvement with organized crime.

Tijuana police have faced rising attacks since Mayor Jorge Ramos' administration took office in December, vowing to eradicate corruption from the 2,300-officer force.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Mexico > Tijuana & The Border -- Two top Tijuana police officials found slain

Mexico takes fight to Zeta drug gang

2008-01-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

This is interesting as the Army has now esentially admitted they are at war. Not just police operations, but targeting some groups for military destruction. A sad, but needed, escalation in Mexico.

By LAURENCE ILIFF / The Dallas Morning News
liliff@dallasnews.com

MEXICO CITY – Thousands of soldiers and federal police have mounted a new operation along the Mexico-Texas border designed to break up cells of the Zetas paramilitary drug gang, with two bloody firefights just this week, in what Mexican and U.S. officials are calling a new strategy in the drug fight.

The plan of attack for the new year goes beyond patrolling streets in border towns such as Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa to actively tracking down Zeta cells in their safe houses, such as an operation Monday that left three heavily armed Zetas dead, said Patricio Patiño Arias, the deputy minister for intelligence and strategy at Mexico's Public Security Ministry.

KRISTEN LUCE/ The Monitor (McAllen, Texas)
Earlier this week, two federal agents were killed after a shootout with drug suspects in Reynosa, Mexico. "Since the first of January we have changed our operations," Mr. Patiño Arias told reporters. "It's no longer just patrolling, but rather a direct fight, a direct fight against specific objects, against specific targets that has grown out of important intelligence work."

One U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Mexican government appears to be seeking a direct confrontation with the Zetas, many of whom are former military officers or police.

"They [authorities] realize that putting out small fires isn't going to help them very much," said the official, who is not allowed to speak for attribution. "They're now entering the gates of hell as they try to dismantle the organization by targeting the key figures."

Among the targets: Heriberto Lazcano, the alleged leader of the Zetas. He is believed to be hiding somewhere in the Tampico area – the same Gulf Coast city where authorities seized 11 tons of cocaine after an October shootout between soldiers and Zetas.

Another target is Miguel Treviño, who is believed to work for Mr. Lazcano and to control the corridor that runs from Nuevo Laredo on the Texas border to the industrial city of Monterrey in the neighboring state of Nuevo León, officials said.

"The Mexican government is being much more deliberate; the targets they're going after are that much more sharp," the U.S. official said. "I think they're getting some good intelligence, and that's making all the difference."

Minute of silence

On Wednesday, President Felipe Calderón met with police chiefs from around the country and held a minute of silence for the hundreds of police and soldiers who have become casualties in the drug fight, including two killed in a shootout Tuesday in Reynosa.

"There have already been a lot of federal, state and municipal police, soldiers and marines who have lost their lives, especially in the last year, to guarantee the security of Mexicans," Mr. Calderón said. "It hasn't been easy, and there is much more to do."

Mr. Patiño Arias said the men killed and captured in Rio Bravo on Monday were part of a Zeta cell that reported to Mr. Lazcano, a former army officer.

Two men from Detroit and one from Texas were among those arrested in Monday's shootout in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas. The state is home base for the Gulf cartel, which uses the Zetas as its enforcement arm.

The Monitor newspaper of McAllen, Texas, reported that relatives of the man from Texas, identified as Esteban Valdez de los Santos of Pharr, say he was an innocent bystander. And they're working to get him released from a Mexico City prison.

That shootout came after federal police and soldiers followed an SUV that had run a roadblock and holed up in a safe house in front of the town's police station. Ten soldiers and police were injured by fragmentation grenades, but none seriously.

Mr. Patiño Arias said the type of armament used by the Zetas, including rocket launchers used to penetrate armored vehicles, has raised violence "to a new level."

This week's seizure of high-powered machine guns, grenade launchers and sniper rifles shows how easy it is for organized crime to obtain weapons on the U.S. side of the border and how the drug war is becoming an increasing military-style fight, he said.

Indeed, there are more soldiers in Tamaulipas than there are federal police, who number 1,100 officers.

"We are working closely with the armed forces," Mr. Patiño Arias said. "There are 2,300 troops, and they are redeployed at highway checkpoints and urban checkpoints in order to have a presence throughout the state. There is air power in Tamaulipas – planes, helicopters."

A senior U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said government pressure on the Zetas may be forcing them to breach a reported "truce" among cartel leaders, who reportedly had agreed to lie low and reduce violence. That worked for part of the summer and fall.

The Gulf cartel has been in a fierce turf war with the Sinaloa cartel, based in the northern state with the same name.

"The reason violence is increasing boils down to increased pressure on the cartels," the official said. "For now, the cartels may have a truce, but with pressure on them increasing, the usual response is to kick up the violence, especially against government law enforcement,"

The new year's wave of violence comes after a year in which a record 2,500 people were killed as part of the drug fight, mostly cartel gunmen and police. The killings also included four journalists, nearly a dozen musicians and the former mayor of Rio Bravo.

It also comes as the U.S. Congress considers $500 million in aid this year to Mexico for expensive equipment needed in the drug battle, such as helicopters and scanners.

That proposed first installment is part of the three-year, $1.4 billion Merida Initiative – named for the southern Mexico city where Mr. Calderón and President Bush announced a new framework in the drug fight that includes more direct U.S. financial help.

On the offense

Jorge Chabat, a Mexican commentator who closely follows the drug war, said the Rio Bravo operation did in fact suggest that government forces are targeting the Zetas with more precision and moving from "defense to offense."

"If this is for real, then it is a step in the right direction, although it will bring more violence in the short term," Mr. Chabat said. "I have the impression that they [authorities] are moving into a new phase in which they are not just defending themselves, but attacking as well."

Inevitably, however, the narcos are sure to fight back, as occurred already this week.

After the firefight in the streets of Rio Bravo, a group of gunmen in nearby Reynosa fired at three federal police officers after a car chase Tuesday, killing two of them.

Mexican media speculated the killings were an ambush and revenge for the deaths of the three Zetas a day earlier.

According to media accounts, 24 people have been killed so far this year in drug-related violence. They include the former mayor of La Huacana in the central state of Michoacán, four police officers and the assistant to a musical group. All bore the marks of gangland violence.

Staff writer Alfredo Corchado and news assistant Javier García contributed to this report.

WHO ARE THE ZETAS?
The Zetas were created by a group of highly trained military deserters to work as gunmen for the Gulf drug cartel. The group, first concentrated along Mexico's border with Texas, has made inroads in Acapulco, Monterrey, Veracruz and elsewhere in Mexico, and has extended its reach into U.S. cities, including Laredo and Dallas. Authorities say the Zetas continue to recruit from military and police forces and have made alliances with U.S. and Central American gangs.

Mexico takes fight to Zeta drug gang | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Mexico News

Mexican Drug Cartels Threaten Elections

2008-01-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

Not too surprising.

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 4 -- Drug cartels are trying to influence the outcomes of major elections in Mexico by kidnapping and threatening candidates, according to Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora.

The remarks by Medina Mora, released by his office Friday, underscored the Mexican government's growing willingness in recent months to acknowledge the threat drug cartels pose to the nation's fragile democracy. The problem is most severe, Medina Mora said, in the border states of Baja California and Tamaulipas, and in Michoacan, the home state of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

And Mora also added this, in case you haven't been paying attention:

"There are municipal police forces that have collapsed, that function more as an aid to organized crime than as protection for the public," Medina Mora said.

Mexican Drug Cartels Threaten Elections - washingtonpost.com

Mexican police abducted and killed near border.

2008-01-04T18:18:00.000-08:00

Tijuana is getting just as bad as Nuevo Laredo. The traficantes response to more Army and Police - kidnap and kill them right away.

TIJUANA, Mexico, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Three Mexican police were abducted, killed and dumped on a heavily patrolled road near the U.S. border on New Year's Day despite an influx of troops in the area, the state attorney general's office said on Thursday.

The policemen from the sprawling border city of Tijuana near San Diego, California -- one of them a senior city police officer -- were found wrapped in sheets outside the nearby beach town of Rosarito on a highway with several army checkpoints.

"This looks like a response by organized crime to the military's increased presence here," said an official from the Baja California state attorney general's office.

President Felipe Calderon has been using some 25,000 troops and federal police to battle powerful organized crime gangs and drug cartels since he came to power a year ago.

The government sent hundreds more troops to Tijuana and Rosarito in late December and disarmed Rosarito's police force after a failed attempt to kill the town's police chief raised suspicions it was infiltrated by drug gangs.

The police executions were the first drug-related murders in Baja California, Mexico's most violent state, this year.

In 2007, the state counted more than 400 drug-related killings as more than 2,500 people were killed nationwide in spite of the military assault on traffickers. (Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Robin Emmott, Editing by Sandra Maler)

Mexican police killed despite army surge near U.S.

Incoming mayor pledges to make town safe

2008-01-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

Interesting article goes into the attempts by the cartels to start electing politicians.

AP NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – For Ramón Garza, the incoming mayor here, the reminder is never too far away.

The last time a public official – a police chief – promised to restore law and order in a city many consider lawless, he was shot at least 40 times, seven hours after taking office.

Mr. Garza, a 45-year-old father of two, knows all too well the challenges ahead for his city and himself as he prepares to take office Tuesday.

"Look, I don't need to be reminded, but I'm here to tell you that the situation has improved," he said in a recent interview. "Three months ... after I take office, this city will be the safest border city; this city will be open for business for all Texans who have been coming here for generations."

Once a tourist attraction and a place to find cheap prescription drugs, Nuevo Laredo has been a staging ground for two warring drug cartels over the past five years.

The feud between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels has left hundreds dead, forced hundreds more to flee their homes, corrupted city officials and police alike, and led to heavy censorship of the media.

Some residents say the city is run more by powerful members of organized crime – cruising in their large black SUVs with tinted windows – than by elected officials.

Mr. Garza declined to be specific on his strategy, except to say, "This war will be won with intelligence, not with chaos."

Days after Mr. Garza's election – and after his interview with The Dallas Morning News – Mexico's President Felipe Calderón warned that narco-money had infiltrated elections in Tamaulipas – the state where Nuevo Laredo is located – and Michoacán.

Mr. Calderón and other officials said drug cartels are trying to penetrate electoral politics to protect themselves against the federal government's offensive.

"I strongly urge governors, mayors, legislators and the leaders of all the political parties that we unite against this," Mr. Calderón said, referring to the execution last month of the former mayor of Rio Bravo, Juan Antonio Guajardo, an unsuccessful candidate in the Nov. 11 mayoral race. He had denounced drug trafficking groups' participation in the electoral process. Rio Bravo is also in Tamaulipas.

Mexico's top law enforcement official, Genaro García Luna, has said that police intelligence confirms that drug groups are attempting to place allies in government, especially at the local level.

"There are indications, in terms of how they attempt to penetrate and seek to corrupt these [political] structures, and we are watching this," said Mr. García Luna, the public security minister.

Denies dirty money

During the interview, Mr. Garza, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, insisted that neither dirty money nor other influence from organized crime – namely the Gulf cartel and their enforcers, the Zetas – played any role in his second campaign for mayor.

"This was a campaign carried out by citizens who want to believe again, people who want to have pride in their community again," he said, noting his 50,000-plus vote advantage over his nearest rival. "My job is to generate confidence and help – along with citizens – return Nuevo Laredo to being a normal, vibrant city again. This is for everyone's good, including the narcos."

The former state legislator said he has no communication with criminal groups but refused to answer any other questions, citing fears of being misunderstood by residents or the criminals themselves.

He promised to restore order, to help residents overcome a "terrible nightmare," and to lure back those who out of fear fled across the border to Laredo. He said that he had met with more than 120 people from Nuevo Laredo now living in Laredo and that 80 of them pledged to return home.

Mr. Garza also embraced the Merida Initiative, the $1.4 billion U.S. aid proposal to give Mexico training and equipment to fight drug traffickers, whose high-tech weapons are often more deadly and sophisticated than anything the government has.

Funding of the initiative awaits approval in Congress, but in Mexico worries of a perceived loss of sovereignty dominate the debate. Mr. Garza minimizes those concerns, stressing, "There is no sovereignty without security."

Mr. Garza also proposes an institute to train to police officers become better public servants. He declined to provide more details, such as whether police officers would get a raise. Some believe the pay for police officers in Mexico is too low, making them vulnerable to corruption.

Asked whether he feared for his life, given the fate of other public servants, Mr. Garza paused before answering.

"We can't live in fear," he said. "I'm doing this for my children. I want to rescue our town again, making the vibrant border community that it has always been."

'Tensed calm'

Nuevo Laredo today shows signs of what Mr. Garza calls a "tensed calm."

Small groups of men – some of them holding hand radios – can be seen on street corners. They're believed to be falcones, or lookouts, paid weekly by the Zetas to keep an eye on anyone and anything.

Many businesses have "For Sale" signs, a reflection of the city's tough economic times.

Mr. Garza vows to restart the economy by luring back tourists and turning Nuevo Laredo into a high-tech hub, complete with free Internet service.

As Mr. Garza ate a steak at a restaurant on the U.S. side of the border, local politicians, waiters, the cook and former Nuevo Laredo residents stopped by to greet him and wish him well.

"Ramón is an excellent guy," said J.O. Alvarez, a customs broker in Laredo and one of Mr. Garza's friends. "He has a big job ahead, but if anyone can turn things around, it's him. We'll be rooting for him from this side."

But Mr. Garza's promises are met with some skepticism in Laredo.

One Mexican businessman, who would give his name only as "Miguel," said he had attended the expatriate meeting with Mr. Garza and had said he would return to Nuevo Laredo, a promise he fidgeted about.

"I drove across the border to vote for Ramón 'cause I believe in him," he said. "But it's not easy to defeat the monster there. Three months? Is he crazy?"

Staff writer Laurence Iliff in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Nuevo Laredo's incoming mayor pledges to make town safe in 3 months | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Texas Regional News

Narco-Terrorism Lurks South of the Border

2008-01-01T01:26:00.000-08:00

Long time readers of Blog Of The Gods are fully aware of the Narco-Terrorism lying south of the border, but readers of the MSM are not kept informed of the horible situation in many parts of Mexico.

Just across the Texas border, the Sinaola and Gulf drug cartels are waging a bloody war. In Monterrey, a city of 3.5 million people, a city of wealth and a previously quiet city with a major university, over 100 murders occurred in 2007, with 31 law enforcement officers as victims.

Not one 2007 cartel-related killing in the state of Nuevo León, where Monterrey is the capital, was solved as of the last week of December.
Monterrey lies about 2 hours from Nuevo Laredo (136 miles), just across the U.S.-Mexico border from Laredo Texas. In Laredo, Interstate 35 begins its run up the center of the United States that goes to Duluth Minnesota.

The narco-violence is not restricted to Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey or Acapulco. Recent reports detail the spread of the drug wars to Baja California, where on December 18th, at 1PM, ten cars approached the building where police chief of Playas de Rosarito, Jorge Eduardo Montero Alvarez were getting out of their cars, and opened fire. High caliber weapons were sued on both sides of the battle.

Just this past Friday, on December 29th, a police convoy in the central state of Zacatecas was attacked by heavily armed commandos, killing seven police officers and allowing two alleged kidnappers to escape. This attack was seemingly in retaliation for the capture of the kidnap suspects just hours earlier.

The killings capped a bloody year in Mexico’s brutal drug gang war, which claimed more than 2,200 lives in 2007, including scores of law enforcers.
It is suspected that the Zetas, deserters from the U.S.-trained, Mexican special operations forces, are responsible for the attacks. Known to some as “Los Zetas,” they are the armed militia supporting the Gulf Cartel in this drug war.

Considering the porosity of the U.S.-Mexican border, and despite President Calderone’s efforts to quell the violence using Mexican federal troops, this continuing drug violence has to be considered seriously.

By Jay Fraser on December 31, 2007 at 10:30 PM | Permalink

ThreatsWatch.Org: RapidRecon: Narco-Terrorism Lurks South of the Border