16 indicted in California
Mex drug-smuggling probe

Los Angeles Times - Aug. 26, 2009

California authorities announced indictments Wednesdayagainst a distribution cell of the Sinaloa drug cartel that allegedly smuggled large amounts of cocaine and marijuana nto Southern California through the border crossing atCalexico.

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Aide in Probe of Mexican
Reporter's Slaying Is Shot Dead

Associated Press - August 28, 2009

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Aug. 27 -- Gunmen killed the aide of a Mexican federal agent investigating the death of a crime reporter -- a month after the first agent assigned to the case was shot dead, authorities said Thursday.

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Many killed in Mexico drug violence

Al Jazeerain English - Aug. 27, 2009

At least 13 people have been killed in seven attacks in the embattled Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities have said.

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Mayhem Crosses the
Border With Informers

U.S. Agents Recruiting Mexican Drug Figures

By William Booth

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, August 27, 2009

EL PASO -- José Daniel González was living the sweet life in America. He bought the $365,000 two-story Mediterranean

with the tile roof and swimming pool. He started a trucking company, was raising a family. But on a Friday night in May,

he was executed in his front yard -- eight shots, tight pattern, close range.

 

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Mexican decision to decriminalize pot, cocaine,
LSD continues to spark outrage worldwide

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The Narcotics Nod: Obama Gave Go-Ahead for Mexican Drug Law
According to an Associated Press report, U.S. law-enforcement is concerned that young Americans will take advantage of Mexico's new law legalizing use.

"It provides an officially sanctioned market for the consumption of the world's most dangerous drugs," San Diego

County Sheriff Bill Gore said. "For the people of San Diego the risk is direct and lethal.

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  • By Rick Kiel
  • Publisher, Wattching Mexico
  • ANALYSIS
  • Based on stories posted to www.watchingmexico.com
  • 1. Mexico’s attorney general suggests decriminalizing marijuana this week.
  • 2. Last month, leaders of all major parties, including the president’s own, said the drug war had gotten too closely, that the drug cartels killed 10 cops or soldiers for everyu smuggler they arrested.
  • Rick Kiel - Nine years living and reporting from Mexico.
  • Another 20 years visiting it constantly
  • Mexico waving the white flag in its drug war against the drug cartels was first signaled last month when leaders of all major parties, including that of the president, gave speeches that the war had become counter-productive.
  •  
  • “Why strike them any more, when they just hit us 10 times as hard,” was the combined message of the stalwart guardians of the Mexican state.
  •  
  • The white flag, one 10 times the size of the national flag of either nation, was run up Aug. 21 when the Mexican government said it wanted to decriminalize marijuana.
  •  
  • Even if the law stumbles at what I believe will be a huge outcry of Mexico’s best elements, the leadership now stands naked.
    Mexico has fought for 180 years now, since Santa Ana lost half the country to the Yanquis, to establish itself as a strong, independent nation.
  •  
  • But what does decriminalization say but how powerful tourism has become to prop up the Mexican economy, now that oil is tottering under its own history of corruption that bleeds so much hard currency out that only a small percentage of what is possible reaches the government coffers.
  •  
  • Mexico’s dependence on trade has come to mean dependence on selling to the barely tolerable North Americans, and that proved disastrous when Americans stopped buying cars and machinery from Mexico.
  •  
  • That left tourism and the twin blows of the Swine Flu and the drug violence has cut that source of state funds by 90%.
  •  
  • Guess what decriminalization says to the millions of U.S. and Canadian college kids who used to storm Mexico for spring brake. “Come on down!?”
  •  
  • You can not only get blasted by all the beer and tequila that you can swill out on our streets and clubs that are so personally offensive to conservative and reserved Mexican culture, but you’ll now be able to buy all the power Mexican grown grass you want as well.
  •  
  • Calderón’s presidency is stumbling towards its end in 2012. Under the Mexican system of no-reelection, the out going president was actually able to retain much of his power up to his very final weeks in office, in the 80 years of one party rule that ended only in the year 2000.
  •  
  • Now that he can’t even pick the person who’ll run for his own party, and after 12 years of conservative rule, with it even less likely that the National Action Party will win again, look for the drug war to wind down. That will mean the outward violence as well.
  •  
  • That will help bring the tourists back, and probably even lead to an explosion if marijuana becomes legit.
  •  
  • What will wait for future analysis is how the Mexican cartels were able to survive the high tech onslaught by Mexico and their American allies. As I started to stay, for the first time, the drug cartels had a huge sea in the receiving country to swim in, 50 million or 60 million Hispanics, living not only in big cities but also in small towns.
  •  
  • These Hispanics, legal and illegal in the United States and Canada, are not willing participants for the most part. They even take the first and most savage blows of reprisals, but they will open their doors, with no U.S. authorities to save them, to gather intelligence.
  •  
  • Our intelligence services are frantically trying to find Afghan and Arab speakers who won’t want to strap on a suicide bomb themselves – and remember, Islamic U.S. military men have carried out several deadly attacks against their Christian and Jewish fellow American soldiers, the CIA and FBI aren’t trying to find Hispanics to infiltrate the gangs INSIDE U.S. CITIES, never mind Mexican ones.
  •  
  • Another coming election is what happens if a leftist Mexican presidential candidate wins? How soon before Venezuelan’s presidential dog jets in to suggest a Hispanic oil cartel and whispers ways to overturn Mexico’s prohibition against reelection. Heck, Obama might wanna lend an ear there.
  •  
  • It was rather pathetic to watch President Obama stand alongside his Mexican counterpart in Guadalajara last month as they vowed to work together to defeat the drug mafias.
  •  
  • I even felt sorry for the guy. I’m sure that Obama has absolutely no knowledge of Mexican history or culture, of its great subtlety and sophistication, and how skilled Mexicans are at keeping it closed to outsiders.
  •  
  • Obama almost certainly wasn’t paying attention to Mexico’s last great drug war in the 1980s, just being a teenager and probably in his tootin’ stage himself, probably cheering on the Mexican grass producers to get their stuff safely across the border, as I did myself in my smoking days.
    President Reagan’s administration put great pressure on Mexico to clamp down on the drug trade. Mexico was just growing into importance as the “land bridge” for their then Columbian overlords.
  •  
  • Columbians had been using air and sea routes back then, even buying entire Caribbean islands to then run in their cocaine in high-speed boats or low flying planes.
  •  
  • When the Americans succeeded is squishing a lot of those routes, the Columbians sighed and turned to Mexico. Neither the Americans or the Columbians knew what this meant, that Mexican drug gangs, although local, had more than a 100 year history of thumbing their noses, buying off, or killing Mexican police and army officers.
  •  
  • The Mexicans soon enough became big dogs in this trade. The Mexican government dutifully found impressive tons of contraband drugs, but most of it came probably from prearranged settlements between cartels and bought-off officials, often eliminating competitors in two-fer solutions that made Americans happy.
  •  
  • Reagan met a few Mexican presidents and rhetorically patted their heads for their massive blows to the drug gangs but it was all a show.
  •  
  • President Calderón undoubtedly unleashed his all-out offensive against the growing power of the cartels, knowing he had to destroy them if he was ever to modernize Mexico.
  •  
  • Neither Calderón nor Bush or Obama knew they were fighting a two front war against a foe that was more ruthless in dispatching not only enemies but all family members of their enemies than the Nazis.
  •  
  • Unlike the situation the Columbians faced in the 1970s and early 80s in their hey days
  • ìWatching Mexicoî (www.watchingmexico.com) has been created to focus on the latest up-to-date news on Mexico's drug cartel, crime and corruption events, espeically kidnapping and narcotic-realated violence against Mexicans and foreigners. The site also carries frequent analysese of these events and their relationship to Mexico at large, i.e. politics and the economy, and towards its closest neightbors and global ramificaons.
  • Inside are pages that concentrate on.the special problems of taxi crime and kidnapping, car driving, street crime, con games aimed at foreigners and specific, current situatons to major cities and resorts, as well as rural doings.
  • Our audience includes Mexicos from all classes, when even farmers have laptops to download latest news that could affect crops, as well as foreigners in Mexico for busienss or pleasure, and those who married Mexicans or just fell love with the country, not a hard thing to do at all.
  • We recognize that Mexican culture is far more subtle and sophisticated than 99% of Americans have even a clue. Also, those of us who do have that clue still have little hope of penetrating the strong and supple veneer most Mexicans present to the outside world. Our Mexican associates can assist with that.
  •  
  • Get instant tweets on latest developments.
  • Follow- http://www.twitter.com/watchingmexico/
  •  
  •  

New York Post

By CYNTHIA R. FAGEN

Dude, you're not hallucinating.

South of the border, you won't get busted for possessing small amounts of hardcore drugs, as long as it's for personal use.

Mexico's newly minted law allows a person to own the equivalent of about five marijuana joints, four lines of cocaine, six dime bags of heroin and one hit of LSD.

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Big money fuels Mexico's narco-terror

Washingtron Times - Aug. 23, 2009

$10 billion a year crosses our southern border

Last week's brief "Three Amigos" summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, has been all but forgottenin the growing storm over health care reform.

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GULF TIMES
Aug. 28, 2009

US drug traffic earns $63bn per year: Mexican official

Drug trafficking in the US generates an annual income of $63 billion Mexico’s Secretary of Public Safety said on Wednesday. Genaro Garcia Luna told a security forum in the border city of Ciudad Juarez - the epicentre of Mexico’s drug violence - that 1kg of cocaine in Europe or the US can sell for almost 50 times as much as it sells for in some Latin American countries. “The cost of cocaine per kilogram in a country like Colombia or Mexico is $2,198, but in cities inside the US or Europe people buy it for up to $97,400” per kilogram, the Mexican official said.

The government has declared war on the drugcartels and over 10,000 are feared to have died.

Cash flow to Mexico
stays slow

Los Angeles Times - Aug. 26, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City - Cash remittances from Mexicans living abroad keep tumbling, with a second-quarter drop of 17.9% compared with the same period last year, officials said Tuesday.

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Pictire above - Store where "illegal" cheese sold

L.A. crackdown on unpasteurized
Mexican cheese snares four

One of those charged with misdemeanors says the product is vital to his Oaxacan restaurant. An official says the problem is health risks from unlicensed cheese.

For years, relatives of Zeferino Garcia in Mexico's Oaxaca state routinely sent him a cargo of quesillo cheese by airplane. From Tijuana, the bulk of unpasteurized cheese would be brought to his restaurant and two stores in Los Angeles. Life was good, he thought, and tasty.

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WATCHING MEXICO has been created to focus on the latest up-to-date news on Mexico's drug cartel, crime and corruption events, espeically kidnapping and narcotic-realated violence against Mexicans and foreigners. The site also carries frequent analysese of these events and their relationship to Mexico at large, i.e. politics and the economy, and towards its closest neightbors and global ramificaons.

Inside are pages that concentrate on.the special problems of taxi crime and kidnapping, car driving, street crime, con games aimed at foreigners and specific, current situatons to major cities and resorts, as well as rural doings.

Our audience includes Mexicos from all classes, when even farmers have laptops to download latest news that could affect crops, as well as foreigners in Mexico for busienss or pleasure, and those who married Mexicans or just fell love with the country, not a hard thing to do at all.

We recognize that Mexican culture is far more subtle and sophisticated than 99% of Americans have even a clue. Also, those of us who do have that clue still have little hope of penetrating the strong and supple veneer most Mexicans present to the outside world. Our Mexican associates can assist with that.

Mexicans themselves are the most vulnerable victims of the confluence of forces that has brought the drug and corruption wars to their homeland, and only they can win the struggle.

We want to make www.watchingmexico.com partially a kind of Mexican-focused Drudge Report, bringing links to the latest news articles from Spanish and English language media on Mexico, and the Mexican drug war, border problems, narcotics mafia, the kidnapping gangs often led by active duty police officers, but also the business successes and opportunities of living and working in Mexico. The second part will consist of analyses of major news, as well as in-depth looks at parts of Mexico and how it relates to current events, and advice from insiders on how to succeed in Mexico, not only in business and just living there, but avoiding kidnapping gangs, even the petty ones who use taxis to find victims to empty their ATM accounts over a period of days.

Please bookmark us and sign up to www.twitter.com/watchingmexico to get instant notices of the latest news, including where danger could have popped up, or where the scene is calm.

Get instant latest tweets by following:
"http://www.twitter.com/watchingmexico"

Click Here forJump to Previous home page stories that will lead further backward.

Please, please email us with corrections, comments, suggestions at: watchingmexico@watchingmexico.com

Mexico violence is actually down, Mex Attorney Gen Says

Los Angeles Times – Aug. 22

A drug war is raging, but the Mexican attorney general points to statistics that indicate homicides have declined nationwide in the last 15 years. Critics dismiss his argument as so much spin.

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Local authorities: Mexico drug
decriminalization sends wrong message

Ana Ley - The Monitor - August 22, 2009

A new Mexican law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin sends the wrong message to a country caught in a grueling drug war, local law enforcement officials said Friday.

 

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Mexico decriminalizes
small-scale drug possession

Associated Press - Aug 21

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday—a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers.

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HRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Mexico quietly decriminalizes drug use

Now marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and heroin will be tolerated for personal use. It's part of a bid to free up resources and jail space so that authorities can focus efforts on big-time traffickers

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New York Times

In Mexico, Ambivalence on a Drug Law

 IJUANA, Mexico — Yolanda Espinosa’s eyes darted this way and that. Her hands trembled. For Ms. Espinosa, a cocaine and heroin addict in desperate need of a fix, a new Mexican law decriminalizing the possession of small quantities of drugs had a definite appeal.

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Mexico legalizes heroin, cocaine possession

August 24, 2009

THE INDEPENDENT OF LONDON

A controversial new law decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of heroin, marijuana, cocaine and other illicit substances was quietly slipped on to the statute books in Mexico today.

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Others Pay Dearly For Our Cheap Thrills

David Penberthy | August 22, 2009

Article from: The Australian

ON the present sickening trend, the number of Mexicans killed in the drug-related bloodshed that has paralysed the country since January 2007 will hit 10,000 within the next few weeks, possibly even days.

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Suspected drug gunmen kill Mexican
army officerin bowling alley

The Associated Press Saturday, August 22, 2009

SLIDE SHOW OF SHOOTING SITE ON LINK

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Gunmen killed an army officer and another man in a bowling alley in Ciudad Juarez, a border city that has seen Mexico's highest levels of drug-related violence in recent years, police said Saturday.

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