August 13, 2008
M3 Report
Murders continue - National Commission of Human Rights calls for national front against organized crime
El Universal (Mexico City) 8/12/08 - An officer of the Federal Police attending the Higher Academy of Public Security in San Luis Potosí was murdered while enroute to the city of Querétaro with two other students.
These murders are causing fear at the academy and the staff is calling for measures to increase security. Active Officers who attend the academy for advanced training are petitioning the director for authorization to carry weapons, since present regulations do not allow it. The officers who were murdered were not armed. The agents fear that the enemy is within.
- The subdirector of police in Tepalcaltepec, Michoacan was murdered by an armed group last night. This makes the third ranking police officer assassinated in the state this month.
- In Aguascalientes, two men were gunned down this morning near a police station. They have not yet been identified.
- In Monterrey, Nuevo León business owners are asking support from the federal government to halt the insecurity in the state. Fear of reprisal and lack of official action is given for citizens failure to to participate in reporting criminal activities.
- Twenty people were murdered in the state of Chihuahua in the past two days. The murders were in different parts of the state and there appears to be no connection in the rash of criminal events.
- In its editorial, Exasperated with the impunity, El Universal observes in part, Yesterday the National Commission of Human Rights called for the construction of a national front against organized crime, worried because 99% of crimes continue with impunity, the distrust of police authorities is reflected in the reporting of only 10% of crimes, the procedures are inefficient and the penitentiary system is ineffective because of corruption.
The worst is that chiefs and agents of the forces responsible for public security are involved in crime and that some of the heads of criminal groups direct operations from jail by way of cell phones or instructions transmitted through their defense lawyers. The mess becomes more tangled every day.
The editorial goes on to call for reforms in enforcement by following the examples already established in other countries. It concludes, The political will is indeed lacking at all levels of authority to set aside their acrimonious quarreling and attend to what ought to matter most to us at this time. Its a huge task for the authorities and the people and all the (political) parties in the 32 states of the Republic. Enough of wanting to benefit from the mistakes of others. We are going to win or lose this war, all Mexicans together. Lets count on winning it, correctly and quickly.
El Debate (Sinaloa) 8/12/08
The unexplained temporary withdrawal of federal troops from four key inspection areas of Guamúchil, Sinaloa has arroused suspicion. The federal forces had been assigned to the areas with orders not to abandon them. Then according to an anonymous
source, at 10pm last Saturday evening they received orders to leave and no reason was given. They were ordered back to their posts at 3am Sunday morning. No one seems to know why the five-hour gap in surveillance was given.
Mexican Federal Police to increase resourses to combat kidnapping
Posted: 11 Aug 2008 11:55 PM CDT
Saturday, 8/9/08
El Universal (Mexico City) 8/9/08
- The lucrative business of kidnapping for ransom in Mexico has increased through the 90s to the present until it has deeply affected the social fabric. The kidnapping of prominent people and their relatives continues unabated and appears to have become a thousand headed Hydra that no hero can defeat.
- Federal police seized a shipment of 25 kilos of cocaine at the International Airport in Mexico City that arrived from Bogotá, Colombia. No arrests were reported.
- This is what is going to happen to those who work with Mayo Zambada, advertised the message on top of the bodies of two men found Saturday morning on a street in Tijuana, Baja California. In the style of narco-murders, the two showed signs of torture and strangulation and they were wrapped in blankets, then bound with adhesive tape.
Correo , Peru.com (Both: Lima, Peru) 8/9/08
Two Chinese using stolen Peruvian government issued aliens I.D.s were arrested along with their two smugglers as the four prepared to travel out of Lima by bus toward the Bolivian border.
One of the two smugglers is a half-Chinese Peruvian surnamed Chong; he is bilingual and said to recruit Chinese for travel to the U.S. via Spain, Peru & Bolivia. The cost to the smuggled aliens was said to be up to forty thousand dollars depending on the routing.
Neither site explained the rationale for travel from Peru to Bolivia, though one mentioned it was to get a visa there.
El Financiero (Mexico City) 8/9/08
Beginning Monday, Mexican federal police are scheduled to increase their capacity to combat the widespread crime of kidnapping. The agency will be adding units specializing in crises management, negotiations and operations. Among their functions will be to coordinate investigations to identify subjects and organizations engaged in kidnapping, permitting the agency to break up the gangs.
Diarion de Xalapa (Veracruz) 8/9/08
The arrest of six mexicans and two Colombians in Panamá City in possession of 67 kilos of cocaine is said to reveal the pressure of the Mexican cartels in Panamá.
Sunday, 8/10/08
El Universal (Mexico City) 8/10/08
Civil groups are planning silent demonstrations for August 30 in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara to protest and bring public and official attention to the violence that plagues the country. The Citizens Movement of Expression has established a website to rally citizen involvement in the marches while dressed in white and without speeches or shouted slogans, on the premise that silence make the loudest statement. Their aim is to demonstrate solidarity of the people in the hope of returning some day to the safety and tranquility Mexico had.
La Hora (Quito, Ecuador) 8/10/08
A quite long article details the growing control of the South American cocaine traffic by Mexican mafias. The first paragraph reads: The fearsome Mexican drug cartels, allied with paramilitaries and guerillas, are winning the war against their Colombian equivalents and now run the multi-million business from Ecuador.
The entire article - in Spanish - can be seen at:
http://www.lahora.com.ec/frontEnd/main.php?idSeccion=757911
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La Prensa Grafica (San Salvador, El Salvador) 8/10/08
A report about the murder of three men carried this side item titled More Homicides: Other assassinations were recorded since dawn yesterday in various parts of the country. According to figures from the National Police, the daily average of homicides up to July is 8.7. (El Salvador is slightly smaller than Massachusetts)
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Prensa Libre (Guatemala City, Guatemala) 8/10/08
Yesterdays day of violence left eight people dead in different events in the department of Guatemala. (The country of Guatemala, slightly smaller than Tennessee, has 22 departments (states), one also called Guatemala)
Correo (Lima, Peru) 8/9/08
Oscar Leal Aguilar, a 30 year old Mexican, was murdered in broad daylight on a street in Callao, near Limas international airport. Speculation centers on narcotraffic hitmen, since the killers used a handgun with a silencer and shot the victim on the lower part of the back of his head; they then fled on a motorcycle as quickly as they had appeared and took a briefcase the victim had been carrying.
El Porvenir (Monterrey, Nuevo León) 8/10/08
[Mexican Rambo - A story unfolding out of Zirándaro, Guerrero is the stuff from which folk legends are born.]
It started early Saturday morning when state and federal agents arrived to arrest Pascual Monje Solís, suspected of murdering a police agent several days before. The suspect, El Monje (the monk) as he is called and whom some consider a mythical person, is ex-military trained in the Army Special Forces whose high qualifications gained him the position of presidential guard for former president José López Portillo. After that assignment, he left government service to join a guerrilla group in the Tierra Caliente region of Northeast Guerrero state.
When officers arrived to arrest him, El Monje fired the first shot killing a ministerial police officer He then took refuge in an adobe house with walls nearly two feet thick from which he held police at bay throughout the day and into the night. During the battle, police tossed molotov cocktails, burning the roof off the dwelling in hopes the fire and smoke would drive him out, but to no avail. Police then resumed the fight and lost two more officers to bullet wounds. In the evening, reinforcement army troops arrived and called for El Monje to surrender, but he refused. The soldiers then began to launch rifle grenades, but each launch was met with responding bursts of gunfire from the house. In all, they fired eight grenades without success. At 10 p.m., they decided to suspend the fight for the night and cordoned off the area. They planned to resume Sunday morning with mortars and grenade launchers in light of the fact that the more than 4,000 rounds previously fired had not achieved their goal.
Officials indicated that despite the planned offensive launched this morning (Sunday), El Monje has not been arrested and there is some indication that he was able to escape the police cordon.
Monday, 8/11/08
El Universal (Mexico City) 8/11/08
- Regarding the shootout with El Monje over the weekend, official sources now confirm that the ex-presidential guard and an accomplice whose identity is unknown, were indeed able to escape the area, apparently during the night.
- The sub-director of police in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Jesús Manuel López Cantú, was assassinated by an armed commando of four men in two vehicles as he was en route to work with an escort who was also killed. López was head of an anti-drug unit and had received threats on his life. Playa del Carmen is a popular tourist destination down the coast from Cancún.
El Porvenir (Monterrey, Nuevo León) 8/11/08
In the first seven months of 2008 at least 90,000 Mexican children have been deported by the US government in its anti-immigrant policy, with the consequent separation of thousands of families. This statement from the PRI partys workgroup on immigration matters in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies (US equiv: House of Representatives) estimates that 15% of those children (13,500) live on the Mexican side near the border without any government protection. The coordinator of the partisan workgroup said that during the same period, 300,000 adults have been deported back to Mexico. The document also charges that besides the abandonment of thousands of children on the Mexican side of the border, it is estimated that for every three adults deported, they leave a helpless Mexican infant behind in the US.
The children are left in the charge of human smugglers to bring them to the US with their parents and in that intent they are deposited and practically abandoned on the Mexican border since their family, for fear of deportation, does not reclaim them, he said. [Note: We can't figure this one out either.]
The coordinator continues that just in seven months, the 90,000 children born in Mexico, but who accompanied their parents in search of better opportunities in the US, have been expelled by the US government as a consequence of massive deportations. He points out that, of the estimated 13,500 children parked along the northern border of Mexico, some stay in government or church provided shelters but others remain abandoned and turn to begging in order to survive and try to return to the US.
The OEM newspaper La Voz de la Frontera (Mexicali, Baja California) adds to their copy of this story, There is disdain by the US for these children and there doesnt exist a program of support for them on the part of the Mexican government.
[Editorial note: Whichever way these observations are interpreted, it would appear that illegal immigration is more destructive to family unity than deportations.]
Milenio (Mexico City) 8/11/08
The Attorney General of the Federal District (Mexico DF) has initiated a program of rewards for information leading to the capture of kidnapping gangs. The amount of monetary rewards will be according to the value of the information and informants will remain anonymous. Frontera (Tijuana, Baja California) adds that the reward can be up to 500,000 pesos (nearly $50,000 US).
Cambio de Michoacán (Morelia, Michoacán) 8/11/08
The body of the municipal police commander of Huaniqueo, Michoacán was found tortured and executed. His body was located near the city cemetery after authorities received an anonymous phone call. He had been abducted last Friday.
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Frontera (Tijuana, Baja California) 8/11/08
Headline: 98% of crimes in the country go unpunished. The president of a national employers group said, Today any citizen can be a victim. There are criminals for all.
La Prensa (Mexico City) 8/11/08
Mexican Immigration (INM) is hoping to find a solution with Cuba over the trafficking of Cubans through Mexico. Records indicate that in the past eight years, there have been 1,246 illegal Cubans turned over to INM.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
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Foreign News Report
The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis.
