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STUNNING STORY OF MEXICO'S WEAK WILL IN WAR AGAINST DRUG LORDS. TRANSLATION FROM FROM EL UNIVERSAL NEWSPAPER IN WHICH ALL MAJOR PARTY LEADERS, INCLUDING ONE FROM THE RULING PARTY ITSELF, WARN INTERIOR MINISTER THAT HIS RECENT WORDS OF VOWING TO DESTROY NARCO GANGS "UNNECESSARILY PROVOKED THEM, AND WILL TRIGGER VIOLENT RESPONSE. READ SHORT ANALYSIS TO LEFT: Challenging Drug Lords is Dangerous Provocation, Political Leaders Say Politicians agree that more would be achieved without strong words, that would only exacerbate the climate of violence. RICARDO GÓMEZ AND ANDREA MERLO EL UNIVERSAL THURSDAY 23 JULY 2009 Legislators and leaders of various political forces in the country, including the ruling National Action Party (PAN) criticized Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont for openly challenging the criminal group known as “The Family,” to confront the government, saying they wanted to avoid damage to the society. Politicians accused Gomez Mint of "bullying" the gang, which they said would further exacerbate violence against the state security forces -- the Army, federal and local police -- while he is safe in Mexico City. Even the president of the Human Rights Commission of the City (CDHDF), Emil Alvarez Icaza said that the challenge is not acceptable because it can only create more violence. "I simply do not accept such expressions,” Alvarez Icaza. “It seems to me that of course the state should intervene to provide certainty, but I would fear that such statements contribute to the spiral of violence, "said the ombudsman capital.” The coordinator of the PAN in the Senate, Gustavo Madero, agreed that Gomez Mont statements were not "very successful" at this point when the war on drugs is at a peak. The coordinator of the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party, formed by winners of the Mexican civil war who governed Mexico from 1920-2000.] in the Senate, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, found that the Mexican government should not talk "in any way with the crime family, in all its expressions. But the PRD Senator Graco Ramírez [Party of the Democratic Revolution, formed by far leftists dissidents within PRI, including the son of a former Mexican president, in 1980s.] felt that Fernando Gomez Mont took a "bullying" to challenge the drug cartels, and that the call reflects what is wrong with the federal government in its fight against organized crime. In his view, it is a "hypocritical" attitude of putting at risk the lives of military and federal forces, but not combatting money laundering that feeds the drug cartels. Javier Orozco, a senator from the Green Party, said he recommended "prudence" to Gomez Mont, because it he was not up to the tasks to the challenges of launching the fight on organized crime. The secretary of the Committee of Public Security of the House of Representatives, David Mendoza (PRD), said that the challenge launched by Secretary Gomez Mont “was only bravado that contributes nothing to solving this serious problem, which is solved with intelligence efforts and not words. " PRI Congressman Samuel Aguilar also expressed disagreement with expressions of Gomez Mont. "And I thought the movies of the Wild West were ended. I think that is not the way to behave or for a Minister to express hmself, but he must behave as a man of state, "he said. In defense, the chairman of the Committee on Governance in the Chamber of Deputies, Diodoro Carrasco (PAN), said that the statement was the ratification of a strategy announced at the beginning of the administration of Felipe Calderon (PAN) who vowed to use all government force to defeat the drug trafficking gangs. [HISTORICAL NOTE: The much richer and more experienced Columbian cocaine gangs began to use Mexico as a land route to the United States in the 1980s, after U.S. authorities had succeeded in blocking many sea and air routes, including “encouraging” Caribbean governments to crack down on islands bought by Columbian drug lords. Mexican criminals began as employees of the Columbians but soon rose to challenge them for dominance of the drug trade.] Wilfrido Lazarus, coordinator of the PRI bloc in the Congress of Michoacan, said the Interior Minister committed a "dangerous provocation" for the state and its inhabitants. (With information from Claudia Bolańos, Jorge Ramos and Juan Arvizu) |
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Washington Post-New Strategy Urged in Mexico |
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ANALYSIS By Rick Kiel ANALYSIS OF STORY TO RIGHT OF POLITICAL LEADERS FEARFUL OF TRIGGERING DRUG GANG VIOLENCE BY DENOUNCING THEM. I deliberately chose the color "yellow" to form the borders of the stunning story that appeared in El Universal, on of Mexico's most important and widely read newspapers, yesterday. It is conceivable that El Universal's editors cherry-picked quotes to mount a political attack on the interior miinister. El Universial is no friend of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who took the main responsibility of dedicating his administration to fighting "total war" against the drug cartels. In effect, that meant throwing the army into the battle, alongside federal, state and local police forces. That proved significant for two reaons. The army was miuch larger and better trained, and were the only Mexican force that could outgun the drug gangs. Secondly, the army was the least corrupt armed official forces in the country. Notice I said "least corrupt," because we have seen many accounts of colonels and generals who provided for a very comfortable retirement by providing security for drug movements. In the early days, there was the notorious case of a general who deployed several battalions of army trooops to shut down a maor north -south highway near the U.S. border, to let Colombian cocaine cowboys to fly in blow to their then Mexican employees. President Calderon's offensive has unleashed a vicious, countrywide counter-movement by the guerrrillas, from open attacks across the tourist city of Acapulco, flagrant kidnapping of American expatriates who stood up to the drug mafias (and who have remained missing and presumed tortured and killed, with their murderers foot loose and fancy free) and horrifying not only along the U.S. borders, but into American cities, who absolute silence from U.S. federal officials. The cowardly pleas by leaders of all parties to please, please not to provoke the top drug gang, "The Family," demonstrates clearly that Calderon's drug war many not last but a few days into the term of his predecessor, due to be elected in 2012. With Mexico's economy still in wreckage from the global recession, especially U.S. woes, you couldn't blame Mexican voters of "throwing the bums out." That would mean ending the 12-year conservative rule of two PAN presidents Both of the other major parties are far left and far lefter. Just as Mexico's immediae neighbors to the south of Guatemala and non-touching Hondras, are flirting with overturning their constitutions to allow their current leftist presidents to try to become "president for life" like Venezuela's Kook In Chief Hugo Chavez, a leftist Mexican president would find many allies in other Latin American countries, including Cuba, to do away with that irritating constitutional provisioin of "No Re-election!" -- always in exclamation points for emphasis. And remember, Mexico was the sole Latin American country who rejected U.S. presssures to cut diplomatic ties with the then rogue regime of fidel castrol, who was openly trying to trigger Marxist revolutions in many other Latin countries. Beware 2012. |
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Calderón's U.S.-Backed War Against Drug Cartels Losing Political Support By William Booth and Steve Fainaru Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, July 28, 2009 MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderón is under growing pressure to overhaul a U.S.-backed anti-narcotics strategy that many political leaders and analysts said is failing amid spectacular drug cartel assaults against the government. "The people of Mexico are losing hope, and it is urgent that Congress, the political parties and the president reconsider this strategy," said Ramón Galindo, a senator and Calderón supporter who is a former mayor of Ciudad Juarez, a border city where more than 1,100 people have been killed this year. U.S. officials said they now believe Mexico faces a longer and bloodier campaign than anticipated and is likely to require more American aid. U.S. and Mexican officials increasingly draw comparisons to Colombia, where from 2000 to 2006 the United States spent $6 billion to help neutralize the cartels that once dominated the drug trade. While violence is sharply down in Colombia, cocaine production is up. |
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Captured Drug Cartel Leader |
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Police escort suspected drug cartel leader Jose Alberto Lopez Barron on Wednesday in Mexico City. |
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Speaking in a calm manner, Lopez Barron said that even if the cartel acted outside the law, it operates in an orderly manner and under rules that not only cartel members have to obey, but also residents in Arteaga, one of the cities the cartel controls. "You can't go around shooting off guns," Lopez Barron said. "You can't go around killing people, not only us but for the whole town. You can't speed in your vehicle. You can't traffick any kinds of drugs without telling us first." |
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PICTURE ABOVE: Chris Salerno, a cadet on the Coast Guard cutter Petrel, was in the control room on a patrol — for smugglers of drugs and people — off the coast of San Diego. NEW YORK TIMES By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD SAN DIEGO — They move north in rickety fishing boats, often overloaded and barely seaworthy, slipping through the darkness and hidden from the watchful radar of American patrols. Along beaches north of here, the migrants from Mexico and beyond scramble ashore, in groups of a dozen or two, and dash past stunned beachgoers, sometimes even leaving behind their boats, known as pangas. Drug smugglers, too, take this sea route, including one last month found paddling a surfboard north with a duffel bag full of marijuana on it. |
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READ FIRST VERSION OF STORY HERE
READ SECOND VERSIONOF STORY HERE |
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Ambushed by a Drug War Mormon Clans in Mexico Find Themselves Targets of the Cartels By William Booth Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, July 23, 2009 COLONIA LEBARON, Mexico -- Mormon pioneer Alma Dayer LeBaron had a vision when he moved his breakaway sect of polygamists to this valley 60 years ago: His many children would live in peace and prosperity among the pretty pecan orchards they would plant in the desert. |
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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 |
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WORLD BRIEFING | THE AMERICAS Mexico: 2 Arrested in Kidnapping By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: July 17, 2009 The federal police have arrested two men suspected of kidnapping a prominent businessman’s teenage son, whose killing set off nationwide protests against crime. A police official said Friday that the suspects, José Montiel, 34, and Noe Robles, 31, were believed to be members of a Mexico City gang responsible for at least 23 abductions. The victim, Fernando Martí, 14, the son of a sporting-goods magnate, was kidnapped at a fake police checkpoint in June 2008. His body and that of his driver were found two months later, even though the family had reportedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom. |
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TRANSLATION FROM EL UNIVERSAL NEWSPAPER Guatemalan President Blames Mexican Narco Crisis In radio, Guatemalan president speaks of insecurity EL UNIVERSAL THURSDAY 23 JULY 2009 GUATEMALA CITY jj(DPA [German News Agency] and EFE [Spanish News Agency]) -- The president of Guatemala, Álvaro Colom, said that he understood that maintaining Guatemala’s internal security generates discontent and pressure on leadership, but attributed part of the to the "invasion" of Mexican drug traffickers. The presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and Ecuador, Rafael Correa have previously opened their own radio programs for the same reason Colom did, to “listen” to the Guatemalan people. Guatemala’s climate of insecurity is due in part to "the invasion of drug traffickers in Mexico, the deepening of the drug trafficking, which is generating 41% of the murders,” Colom said. “The drug trade has rotted some of the layers of our society." Colom also blamed previous governments for the current situation. "We know that security is a big challenge," he said, but added: "It is a legacy left by the last two governments who allowed the strengthening of organized crime." Colom warned that “these scourges” impeded the search for solutions to fund the recovery of territories and the restoration of military bases in areas that were opened to drug traffickers after the signing of peace with the guerrillas in 1996, which involved reduction of the Armed Forces. [Guatemala was among the Central American countries involved in campaigns against guerrillas, mostly in the 1980s, which became proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union and its ally, Cuba. In one twist, the Marxist government of Nicaragua fought U.S.-backed guerrillas, who operated from bases in its northern neighbor, Honduras and its southern neighbor, Costa Rica.] "I understand the need for security, but we are trying to institutionalize the country,” Colom said. “There is no point making a show with a lot of elements of the police and the army if the result that we return to the same high degree of crime, so we have to go to the root of the solution." Colom said that his program ia not imitating Chavez in opening his own radio program. [accused of trying to use Venezuela’s oil wealth to set up a Marxist dictatorship, as well as supporting other leftist presidents to socialize their countries and override constitutions to become presidents for life” as he wants for himself – in Bolivia, Ecuador, and in early July, Honduras, sparking the ouster of the president.] Colom also denied that Chavez inspired him to start the program. "This is a program to get closer to people. It has nothing to do with President Chavez, we are not imitating or anything like that, "Colom said in his first radio broadcast of the Presidential Office. In the first question of the program, Colom denied he intends to promote reforms to the Constitution of Guatemala, instituted in 1985, or that he plans to seek re-election to the presidency, which is prohibited under Guatemalan law in force. During the 60 minute program, aired on the state radio station TWG state and a chain of stations from the Guatemalan Radio Schools (FGER), the president devoted the time to explaining the achievements of his government and answer questions and comments from citizens. The program will air weekly. Presidential Office, which will be distributed every Wednesday from 7 to 8 am (13:00 to 14:00 GMT), produced by the Communications Secretariat of the Presidency, a political communication strategy similar to those of Chávez and Correa. |
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