While drug trafficking, gruesome killings and big drug seizures tend to grab the public's attention, experts say, the real action is in the money -- billions of dollars worth of it. A recent U.S. Senate report on money laundering provides some insight into just how much money the drug cartels are generating. The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on July 17 released its report titled "U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History." [continues 1114 words]
A weapon tied to "Operation Fast and Furious" was seized in Tijuana in connection with a drug cartel's conspiracy to kill the police chief of Tijuana, Baja California, who later became the Juarez police chief, according to a U.S. government report. The firearm was found Feb. 25, 2010, during an arrest of a criminal cell associated with Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental and Raydel "El Muletas" Lopez Uriarte, allies of the Sinaloa cartel. Tijuana police said they arrested four suspects in March 2010 in connection with a failed attempt to take out Julian Leyzaola, and that the suspects allegedly confessed to conspiring to assassinate the police chief on orders from Tijuana cartel leaders. [continues 774 words]
A Chihuahua state legislative report paints a grim picture of Valle de Juarez, a once-thriving agricultural and ranching community that produced world-class cotton and important grains like wheat, alfalfa, sorghum and oats. The legislators of different political parties blamed record violence in the Juarez region for the economic devastation. Authorities attributed the violence to warring drug cartels. State legislator Alex LeBaron Gonzalez said he and nine other lawmakers signed off on the Feb. 21 report, which they submitted to the Mexican federal government. [continues 290 words]
A Mexican officer assigned to guard President Felipe Calderon was accused of leaking information to drug cartels in exchange for bribes, training hit men through a private security firm, and supplying military weapons to groups like the Zetas, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable. The document also said another official who worked for Calderon leaked a copy of the president's medical file to one of the cartels. Concerning the accused military officer, "the cartels were using the information to avoid heightened security around the president, not to target him personally," said the document disclosed by online whistleblower WikiLeaks. [continues 499 words]
An elaborate security system has enabled Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman to evade capture thus far, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The cable also reveals that the Mexican army has two officers stationed at the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center, and that Mexico's army prefers to work closely with U.S. anti-drug agencies because it distrusts its country's civilian law enforcement. The cable summarizes a discussion last year between U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Guillermo Galvan Galvan. [continues 614 words]
The Mexican government has no control of its 577-mile border with Guatemala, where arms, drugs and immigrant smugglers appear to have free rein, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable disclosed recently by WikiLeaks. The document says that Mexico does not have enough resources to patrol the border. "Limited resources also undermine the effort: while there are 30,000 U.S. CBP officers on the 1,926-mile Mexican/U.S. border, only 125 Mexican immigration officials monitor the 577-mile border with Guatemala," the document states. [continues 810 words]
Chihuahua state officials will collaborate with a United Nations specialized unit to develop new anti-crime strategies in Mexico's northern border state, officials announced Tuesday. Chihuahua's new governor, Cesar Duarte, and Antonio Luigi Mazzitelli, a representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, signed an agreement of cooperation in Chihuahua City. U.N. experts will provide advice only to local law enforcement officials. Former United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime officials Carlos Castresana and Antonio Buscaglia, both prominent anti-organized-crime experts, traveled to Juarez in 2003 to review the files on murdered women, and offered recommendations. [continues 151 words]
U.S. and Mexico editors who supervise news coverage of Mexico's drug violence agreed that reporters face dangers similar to those encountered in war zones. Some of the hazards include being shot at, traveling through regions controlled by violent drug-traffickers, encountering "carjacking stations" posing as military checkpoints, and being used by informants with hidden agendas. Bulletproof vests are part of the equipment the Associated Press provides to its reporters in Mexico, said Wendy Benjamin, the AP's Texas news editor and leader of the news organization's international drug war beat team. [continues 415 words]
U.S. diplomats in Mexico were concerned that drug cartels might attack U.S. personnel and institutions, according to a leaked government document provided by Wikileaks. "We do know from sources that cartel members have at least contemplated the possibility of doing harm to our personnel and institutions, but we don't know enough about how DTO (drug-trafficking organizations) think and operate to know what factors might trigger a decision to mount such an attack, but the potential threat is very real," states a U.S. cable titled "The Battle Joined: Narco Violence Trends in 2008." [continues 386 words]
A prominent Mexican publisher painted a bleak picture of conditions in Mexico, while stressing that he plans to continue covering all aspects of the country with long-term improvement in mind. Alejandro Junco de la Vega, chairman and CEO of Grupo Reforma, which publishes several major dailies in Mexico, said Mexico "is a country clouded in a grimness of its own ... Our world seems to be the stuff of nightmares." Junco said one of his reporters in the state of Nuevo Leon recently was kidnapped but was found alive after his news organization reported the abduction to police, the military and other officials. [continues 547 words]
Apprehensions decline 18%; drug seizures dip The number of apprehensions by Border Patrol agents in the El Paso Sector declined during the past year, but undocumented immigrants are facing greater dangers before reaching the border. For the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, agents apprehended 12,251 undocumented immigrants, 18 percent less than in the previous year. Valeria Morales, a supervisory Border Patrol agent, attributed the decline to having more agents on patrol, technology to monitor border incursions and the border fence. [continues 738 words]
WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing online site, obtained 2,836 U.S. documents related to Mexico and 8,324 documents related to narcotics -- both areas of great interest to the border region. However, the public will have to wait to learn what most of those cables contain because WikiLeaks does not plan to release all 251,287 of its leaked documents at once. The site is coordinating the release of documents, mostly U.S. diplomatic cables, with selected major U.S. and international media partners. As of Monday, only 272 cables had been released. [continues 546 words]
Drug use among teenagers is on the rise and more so among minorities, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Overall teen drug use increased from 2008 to 2009. One in 10 youths ages 12 to 17 and one in five young adults ages 18 to 25 reported drug use in the past month. Among black females ages 12 to 17, drug use increased from 7.3 percent in 2008 to 10.4 percent in 2009, and drug use by Hispanic males in the same age group rose from 9.2 percent in 2008 to 12.8 percent in 2009. [continues 419 words]
Juarez residents are caught between drug violence and human-rights violations by Mexico's security forces, according to a report released Tuesday by the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, and the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, known as Center Prodh. The report, "Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez," focuses on human-rights violations during Joint Operation Chihuahua. The report cites five cases that involved alleged acts of torture, disappearance and sexual harassment of women by Mexican soldiers who were deployed to Juarez for the operation that began in March 2008. [continues 272 words]
About 230,000 people have left Juarez, many of them because of the violence and insecurity, according to a study by the Autonomous University of Juarez (UACJ). About 54 percent of those went to the United States and 45 percent to El Paso. The drug violence in Mexico is likely to continue past Felipe Calderon's term and through the next president's administration, said Samuel Logan, regional analyst for Latin America at iJET Intelligent Risk Systems in Washington. Edgardo Buscaglia, a prominent global organized crime expert, says you can't put a deadline on the drug violence. In Colombia, the battled lasted 20 years before improvements were noted. And, unless the government adopts a different strategy, Buscaglia said Mexico will continue its path toward becoming a failed stated. In a telephone interview, Buscaglia, who was in Berlin, alleged that a third of Mexico's politicians are compromised by organized crime, and that Calderon does not have the political support he needs to carry out a full frontal war against the cartels. [end]
Three women's bodies were dumped in Juarez on Sept. 6 in areas of great importance in Mexican history. Claudia Leticia Estrada, 34, was left at a street crossing in the Colonia de Independencia. Claudia E. Tiscareno Hernandez, 22, and an unidentified woman, 20 to 25 years old, were found near 15 de Septiembre and Monte de las Cruces in the Colonia Miguel Allende. All three were killed by gunfire. Then their bodies were tossed in places with names associated with Mexico's War of Independence from Spain. Mexico will observe its independence on Wednesday. [continues 655 words]
Mexico's bloody drug war can be traced to seven cartel-related conflicts, the Mexican government recently reported. And a Texas-born drug kingpin recently arrested in Mexico, Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal, said Juarez was the flash point for the fighting. The government report, titled "Information on the Criminal Phenomenon in Mexico," says 80 percent of the drug-related homicides (22,701 out of 28,353 ) took place in 162 communities, Juarez among the highest. The biggest number of drug-related deaths involves Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman Loera's battles against four other drug-trafficking organizations. [continues 1142 words]
City police radio dispatchers Sunday alerted officers about potential violence in El Paso stemming from Mexican drug cartel rivalries. Detective Mike Baranyay said the bulletin sent out over the police radio frequency was based on unconfirmed intelligence that police received from the Alliance for Combating Transnational Threats. Baranyay said he could not release what was in the bulletin because it was coded "law enforcement sensitive," but the broadcast that dispatchers repeated several times on Sunday mentioned Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman Loera, plans for a kidnapping in El Paso, the Aztecas gang and an alleged hit man nicknamed "Carnicero" (butcher). [continues 532 words]
Chihuahua and five other states account for most of the murders in Mexico attributed to the drug wars, according to the just-released "2010 Mid-Year Report on Drug Violence." The University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute is the host of the Justice in Mexico Project's report by several academics. Between January and June, Chihuahua state had the highest number of slayings (1,665), and Sinaloa state had the second highest number of deaths (1,221), according to the report. [continues 199 words]
Authorities reported finding the dismembered body of a Mexican federal agent early Sunday in Juarez. The remains were found near a shopping center, along with a message, purportedly from a drug cartel. Officials would not disclose what the message said. On Saturday, federal agents in Juarez protested against their commanders, whom they alleged had orchestrated extortions, robberies and drug-related crimes, and unjustly framed a fellow agent who was charged with drug possession. The agents made their allegations public in front of reporters, and clashed with federal agents who tried to safeguard the commanders -- Ricardo Duque Chavez, Antelmo Castaneda Silva, Joel Ortega Montenegro and Salomon Alarcon Romero. [continues 176 words]
