Originally Posted by Francois Cellier

The Mexican government is hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered by the thugs. Worst of all, the drug dealers have considerably more money than the government, and police are poorly paid. Consequently, corruption is rampant. The drug cartels have infiltrated all branches of government, and I don't know how the government is going to extricate itself from the widespread corruption ever again.

This would be why the gangsters surrounded the President and killed him in a gun battle?

There is a lot more to who fights for who than money. The mass of the population does not want to be ruled by thugs, and will fight them even if poorly paid. If they don't mismanage things horribly, the government can wield overwhelming power with this base of support. The thugs are 'hopelessly outnumbered' by the general population.

Still, that IF is significant....

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From the Guardian

Leading politician RodolfoTorre Cantú murdered in Mexico

Drug cartels blamed for high profile killing of would-be governor, who was tipped to win election in Tamaulipas

By Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
The Guardian
Tuesday 29 June 2010


Gunmen assumed to be linked to Mexico's drug cartels have assassinated a leading politician who was almost certain to win a forthcoming governorship election in the embattled northern state of Tamaulipas, sending shockwaves through national politics.

Rodolfo Torre Cantú was killed alongside at least four members of his entourage when their two vehicles were ambushed yesterday morning, a few miles outside the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. They had been on their way to a rally in the final days of campaigning before Sunday's poll.

"We cannot allow [organised] crime to impose its will and its perverse rules on the decision of citizens and in elections," Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, said after condemning the attack. Flanked by the minister of defence, the interior minister and the attorney general Calderón called for a united front to, "recuperate Mexico from the hands of crime".

Torre Cantú is by far the highest profile political murder associated with Mexico's escalating drug wars that have killed over 23,000 people since 2007. Nothing remotely equivalent has happened in Mexico since presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was killed in 1994.

Tamaulipas is among the states hardest hit by the violence, with the death toll accompanied by extortion and generalised terror that ensures most local media no longer even report major gunbattles for fear of angering the gunmen.

The local front is rooted in the rivalry between the old guard leadership of the Gulf cartel and the organisation's erstwhile enforcers known as Los Zetas who have since set up their own independent criminal organisation. The Gulf is said to be allied with trafficking organisations based in other parts of the country, including the Sinaloa cartel, headed by Mexico's most famous trafficker, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

Observers say it was an assassination waiting to happen. The turf wars between the drug cartels date back to 2005 but have intensified since Calderón launched a military-led offensive against them in December 2006.

"It is part of the escalation," said former drug tsar Samuel Gonzalez, an implacable critic of the Calderón offensive he believes puts too much emphasis on police and military action instead of rooting out corruption. "If things don't change much more blood will flow."

According to Gonzalez, the assassination of Torre Cantú initially looks like an attempt by the Zetas to remove somebody they perceived as an enemy before he took office as governor. The state government of Tamaulipas has long been accused of collusion with the Gulf cartel.

Torre Cantú belonged to the Institutional Revolutionary party, or PRI, which governed between 1929 and 2000. Since that date the presidency has been in the hands of the National Action party, or PAN, but the PRI still controls the majority of the country's 32 states.Some of the polls leading into the last week of campaigning gave the assassinated 46-year-old candidate as much as a 30 percentage point lead over his nearest rival.

The Tamaulipas electoral authority was due to meet to decide whether to postpone the elections in the wake of the murder.

From the Independent

Why even prison can't stop Mexico's brutal drug lords

The gang had the perfect alibi when their rivals were gunned down – they were in jail. But they weren't – the guards had let them out, and even lent them their guns

By Guy Adams
Tuesday, 27 July 2010


It was a messy business, clearing-up after the carload of masked gunmen who burst into the function room at a suburban hotel in the city of Torreon in northern Mexico last Saturday night and began randomly spraying bullets into a crowded dancefloor full of young men and women.

A total of 17 people were killed and dozens more injured in the apparently indiscriminate attack, which lasted two minutes and, according to witnesses, was carried out by four suspects, who fired 120 bullets at revellers attending a birthday party organised via Facebook.

Yet when detectives began picking through the blood-stained evidence left behind after the latest atrocity in a drug-related crime wave which Mexico's government estimates has killed 25,000 people in the past five years, they made a discovery that turned an ordinarily grisly massacre into something astonishing.

Forensic examinations of the bullet casings found on the function suite's floor revealed that they had all been fired from one of four AR-15 assault rifles which were supposed to belong to guards at a prison in the neighbouring state of Durango.

After further investigation which saw the director of the jail in the town of Gomez Palacio and three of his officials placed under house arrest, the Attorney General announced that he had uncovered a conspiracy shocking even by the standards of a country that has grown used to shocking levels of violence and corruption.

For several months, according to detectives, guards at the prison have apparently been releasing select groups of inmates, lending them automatic weapons, and sending them off in official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings. After carrying out the attacks, the prisoners have been driving back to jail, handing over the firearms and returning quietly to their cells. The authorities that help facilitate their murderous sprees are said to have received huge cash payments in return.

No one knows exactly how many of the audacious murders and contract killings have been plotted behind bars, but Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office, said that ballistics tests had linked the AR-15s to two attacks at bars in Torreon in February and May, in which 16 people were killed. "According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorisation of the prison director to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards weapons for the executions," he told a news conference on Sunday afternoon. "The criminals carried out their executions as part of a settling of accounts with members of a rival organised crime gang. But they also killed several innocent civilians, in a cowardly manner, before returning to their cells."

Mr Najera added that four prison officials, including the director, Margarita Rojas, and the security chief, are now being held under a form of house arrest while detectives continue their investigation into the alleged crimes. Investigators are questioning all the prison guards, together with roughly half the inmates.

The case, which has dominated the weekend news in Mexico, provides a graphic illustration of the extent to which well-funded drug cartels have managed to permeate the country's apparently corruptible officialdom. Huge profits, of roughly 3,000 per cent per delivery, are being made by gangs smuggling cocaine from South America, where it is produced, to the USA, where it is mostly consumed. The billion-dollar trade has given criminals vast resources with which to bribe police chiefs, politicians, soldiers and now prison guards.

In northern states such as Durango, a recent spike in violence – in which the hotel massacre was the latest major incident – has been attributed to a dispute between the Gulf cartel which traditionally controlled local smuggling routes, and a breakaway gang known as the Zetas, who once worked as their "enforcers".

The discovery that foot-soldiers for the rival cartels have been able to continue their activities from behind bars represents a blow to the credibility of the Mexican President Felipe Calderon's so-called "war on drugs", which kickstarted the recent round of violence when it was launched in 2006. Many important drug barons have been arrested and imprisoned during the course of Mr Calderon's campaign, in which the army has been brought in to investigate and arrest gang members. This weekend in Ciudad Juarez, now one of the most violent cities in the world, police captured Luis Vazquez Barragan, a top member of the La Linea gang, who was wanted on suspicion of several recent murders and a car bombing.

Removing gang leaders from the streets has not so far put a stop to the drug trade, however. Instead, it has merely prompted increases in violence as would-be successors fight amongst each other for the highly lucrative cocaine routes that remain. Even before the scandal at Gomez Palacio, the country's justice system has for years been considered hugely inefficient at the business of investigating crimes, catching criminals and convicting people. Recent reports estimate less than two per cent of crimes reported in Mexico actually result in prison sentences.

Being incarcerated does not by any means lead to an inmate being cut off from the outside world, either. If you drive past prisons in most of Mexico's towns and cities, you will see crowds of visitors arriving at the entrance carrying supplies of food and other creature comforts for relatives who are inside.

As a result, Mexico's prisons are safe havens for many criminal groups. Prisoners have been caught running telephone extortion rings from jail. Escape attempts in which prison officials are in some way complicit remain common. In May 2009, 53 men walked out of their cells at a prison in the central state of Zacatecas, and fled in waiting cars.

The country's Interior Secretary, Francisco Blake Mora, said yesterday that the latest scandal at Gomez Palacio "can only be seen as a wake-up call for authorities to address, once again, the state of deterioration in many local law enforcement institutions". And his government would review "the alleged complicity of authorities so that the criminals, instead of being behind bars, leave with impunity, armed and equipped to commit acts as deplorable as the one last week," he said. "We cannot allow this kind of thing to happen again."

Then don't incarcerate. Just execute. Save time, money and lives.

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From Stratfor

Mexico's Juarez Cartel Gets Desperate

By Scott Stewart
August 5, 2010 | 0856 GMT


On Aug. 3, the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, Mexico, reopened after being closed for four days. On July 29, the consulate had announced in a warden message that it would be closed July 30 and would remain closed until a review of the consulate’s security posture could be completed.

The closure appears to be linked to a message found on July 15, signed by La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel. This message was discovered at the scene shortly after a small improvised explosive device (IED) in a car was used in a well-coordinated ambush against federal police agents in Juarez, killing two agents. In the message, La Linea claimed credit for the attack and demanded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and FBI investigate and remove the head of Chihuahua State Police Intelligence (CIPOL), who the message said is working with the Sinaloa Federation and its leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. The message threatened that if the intelligence official was not removed by July 30, La Linea would deploy a car bomb with 100 kilograms of high explosives in Juarez.

The deadline has now passed without incident and the consulate has reopened. Examining this chain of events provides some valuable insights into the security of U.S. diplomatic facilities as well as the current state of events in Juarez, a city that in recent years has experienced levels of violence normally associated with an active war zone.


Security Standards

When considering the threats in Juarez that led to the closure of the U.S. consulate, it is useful to examine the building itself. The consulate is housed in a new building that was constructed in accordance with security specifications laid out by the U.S. State Department’s Standard Embassy Design (SED) program, standards first established by the Inman Commission in 1985. This means that the building was constructed using a design intended to withstand a terrorist attack and providing concentric rings of security. In addition to an advanced concrete structure and blast-resistant windows, such facilities also feature a substantial perimeter wall intended to protect the facility and to provide a standoff distance of at least 100 feet from any potential explosive device. This standoff distance is crucial in defending against large vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) because such a device can cause catastrophic damage to even a well-designed structure if it is allowed to get close to the structure before detonation. When combined, a heavy perimeter wall, sufficient standoff distance and advanced structural design have proved very effective in withstanding even large attacks.

The U.S. Consulate in Juarez is a well-designed building with adequate standoff. Certainly, the building could withstand the type of attacks that the cartels in Mexico have conducted to date, which have largely consisted of armed assaults, grenade attacks (the U.S. consulates in Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo have been attacked using hand grenades in the past two years) and occasional attacks involving small IEDs.

The building and its perimeter would also likely withstand a VBIED attack of the size threatened by La Linea, but such an attack in not something the U.S. government would want to risk. Despite the security design of the Juarez consulate, a VBIED attack would likely cause substantial damage to the facility and could result in the deaths of people outside the building. Perhaps the most vulnerable people during such an attack would be the hundreds of Mexican citizens (and other foreigners) who visit the consulate every day to apply for immigrant visas. Juarez and Mexico City are the only two U.S. diplomatic posts in Mexico that issue immigrant visas and both have a very heavy flow of visa applicants. U.S. consulates also frequently have a number of American citizens who visit each day in search of consular services.

Such visitors are screened at a security facility located on the edge of the consulate’s perimeter in order to keep weapons from entering the consulate complex. This screening facility/waiting area lacks standoff distance and would provide a soft target vulnerable to an attack. The local guards who provide perimeter security for the facility and screen visitors would also be vulnerable. The concern over the vulnerability of visitors was evidenced in the warden message that announced the Juarez consulate’s closure. In the message, people were urged to avoid the area of the consulate during the closure, which not only would reduce the risk of collateral damage if an attack occurred but would also give security personnel less activity to monitor for potential threats.

One other intriguing point about the security at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez and its closure due to La Linea’s VBIED threat is that the incident did not occur at a diplomatic post in a far-away terrorist hotspot like Yemen, Iraq or Pakistan. The U.S. Consulate in Juarez is located less than seven miles from downtown El Paso, Texas.


Desperate Measures

As we noted some months back, there have been persistent rumors that the Mexican government has favored the Sinaloa cartel and its leader, Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka “El Chapo.” This charge has been leveled by opposing cartels (like Los Zetas and the Juarez cartel), and events on the ground have seemingly supported the accusations, despite occasional indications to the contrary, like the July 29 death of Sinaloa operative Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal in a shootout with the Mexican military.

Whether or not such charges are true, it is quite evident that the Juarez cartel believes them to be so, and has acted accordingly. For example, in March, three local employees of the U.S. Consulate in Juarez were murdered, two of whom were U.S. citizens. According to the Mexican newspaper El Diario, a member of the Los Aztecas street gang was arrested and has confessed to his participation in the murders. Los Aztecas and its American cousin, Barrio Azteca, are both closely linked to the Juarez cartel. According to El Diario, the arrested Azteca member said that a decision was made by leaders in the Barrio Azteca gang and Juarez cartel to attack U.S. citizens in the Juarez area in an effort to force the U.S. government to intervene in the Mexican government’s war against the cartels and act as a “neutral referee,” thereby helping to counter the Mexican government’s favoritism toward El Chapo and the Sinaloa Federation.

Then, in the wake of the July 15 IED ambush in Juarez, La Linea left the message threatening to deploy a VBIED in Juarez if the FBI and DEA did not investigate and remove the head of CIPOL. Using an IED in an ambush to get the world’s attention (which it did) and then threatening to attack using an even larger device is further evidence that the Juarez cartel believes the Mexican government is favoring Sinaloa.

And this brings us to the current situation in Juarez. The Juarez cartel is wounded, its La Linea enforcer group and Los Aztecas ally having been hit heavily in recent months by both the Mexican government and Sinaloa forces. The last thing the group wants to do is invite the full weight of the U.S. government down upon its head by becoming the Mexican version of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel, which launched a war of terror upon Colombia that featured large VBIEDs and resulted in Escobar’s death and the destruction of his organization. In a similar case closer to home for the Juarez cartel, one of that cartel’s predecessors, the Guadalajara cartel, was dismantled after the U.S. government turned the full force of its drug enforcement power against the organization following the 1985 torture and execution of U.S. DEA special agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Intervention by the U.S. government prompted by the Juarez cartel not only would focus on the organization in Mexico but also would likely result in U.S. law enforcement going after the organization’s assets and personnel inside the United States, which could be devastating for the cartel.

The current leader of the Juarez cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, is the nephew of Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, one of the leaders of the Guadalajara cartel and one of the Mexican traffickers arrested in 1985 and convicted of killing Camarena. Fonseca Carrillo was also convicted of murdering two American tourists in Guadalajara in 1985 and a host of other charges. Now in his late 70s and reportedly suffering from cancer, Fonseca Carrillo will die in prison. Because of this family history, there is very little doubt that Carrillo Fuentes realizes the potential danger of using such tactics against the U.S. government.

And yet despite these dangers, both to the organization and to himself, Carrillo Fuentes and his followers have apparently tried to draw the U.S. government deeper into the conflict in Juarez (though they have been careful so far not to assassinate any U.S. diplomats or conduct any large and indiscriminate terrorist attacks). At present, the Juarez cartel seems to be walking a tight line of trying to get the U.S. government’s attention in Juarez while not doing anything too provocative.

These actions reflect the desperate situation in which the cartel finds itself. In practical terms, an increase in U.S. activity in Juarez would not only hurt Sinaloa but also impact the ability of the Juarez cartel to traffic narcotics. Although the FBI has already noted that it believes Sinaloa now controls the flow of narcotics through Juarez, the willingness of the Juarez cartel to suffer this type of impact on its own operations indicates that the organization believes the deck is stacked against it and that it needs an outside force to help counter the combined efforts of the Sinaloa Federation and the Mexican government.

For its part, the U.S. government has not shown the willingness to become more actively involved in Juarez, nor does it have the permission of the Mexican government to do so. The Mexicans are very protective of their sovereignty, and the U.S. government has shown that it will not overstep its bounds unless it is provoked by an incident like the Camarena murder. This means that the limited threats and attacks the Juarez cartel has been using are unlikely to result in any real increase in the U.S. presence in Juarez.

Ordinarily our assessment would be that the various Mexican cartels learned from the Camarena case and Escobar’s experience in Colombia and have been very careful not to provoke the U.S. government and to avoid being labeled narco-terrorists. It simply would not be good for business, and the cartels are, in fact, businesses, even though they specialize in an illicit trade. That said, in the recent past, we have witnessed cartels doing things inside Mexico that used to be considered taboo, like selling narcotics on Mexico’s domestic market, in an effort to raise money so they can continue their fight for control of their territory. (Their ability to make money has been affected not only by the cartel wars but also by drug interdiction efforts.) We have also seen cartels that are desperate for cash becoming increasingly involved in human smuggling and in kidnapping and extortion rackets.

It will be important to watch the Juarez cartel closely over the next few months as the United States refuses to become more involved and as the cartel becomes increasingly desperate. We believe the Sinaloa Federation and the Mexican government will continue aggressively to target the remnants of the Juarez cartel. Faced with this continued onslaught, will the Juarez cartel choose to go quietly into the night and allow Sinaloa to exercise uncontested control over the Juarez plaza, or will it in desperation undertake an even more audacious attempt to draw the United States into Juarez? Killing U.S. consulate employees has not succeeded in increasing the U.S. presence, and neither has threatening a VBIED, so it may feel compelled to take things up a notch.

Although we have not yet seen a VBIED deployed in Mexico, explosives are readily available in the country, and the July 15 attack demonstrated that La Linea has the ability to deploy a small IED in a fairly sophisticated manner. It is quite possible that La Linea could use that same technology to craft a larger device, even a VBIED. The capability, then, seems to be there for larger attacks. This leaves the intent part of the threat equation. It will be important to see, above all, if desperation pushes Carrillo Fuentes and the Juarez cartel to take the next, large step.

Mexico rethinks drugs strategy as violence escalates | World news | The Guardian

Quote:

Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, launched his presidency three and a half years ago with an unprecedented military-led offensive against the country's drug cartels. Since then 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence that continues to escalate, with little sign that the power of the traffickers has been reduced. Yesterday Calderón finally accepted that the strategy had failed to rein in the cartels, and called on his growing number of critics to help him revise the government's approach to the drug wars. "I agree that the strategy should be questioned," the president said. "And so I am willing to receive and analyse proposals of how to change and improve it." The admission came days after Calderón's predecessor called for drugs to be legalised. Vicente Fox, who also belongs to the National Action party, said prohibition had failed to curb violence and corruption. "We should consider legalising the production, sale and distribution of drugs," Fox wrote on his blog. "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked." Calderón himself fervently opposes legalisation, although he recently called for a "fundamental debate" on the issue. He has also claimed that Fox's relative inaction in the face of the cartels' growing power contributed to the current situation. In the latest of a series of government-organised debates on the drug war, Calderón repeated that unilateral legalisation would increase drug use and do little to reduce the cartels' income. But he was forced to listen to blistering attacks on the government strategy by opposition leaders. "The government's strategy is not working," Jesus Ortega, leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution party, said. "If the government only attacks the traffickers then the error, and the failure, of the strategy is evident." Ortega also railed against the use of the army and navy in anti-drugs operations. Critics of the offensive say the military's lack of preparation for an internal policing role has caused human rights abuses. Calderón said he agreed that withdrawing the military was desirable, but impossible until civilian state and municipal police forces had been purged of rampant corruption and were strong enough to face the problem on their own. The sessions also produced complaints about the scant attention paid by the government to the money-laundering that fuels the illegal industry and finances the violence. Mexican drug trafficking is estimated to be worth anywhere between $10 billion (£6.4b) and $40b a year. Calderón admitted that not enough had been done to track illicit earnings but said the government had trouble hiring top financial experts who could make much more money in the private sector without putting themselves in danger. The president agreed with calls by other leaders on the need to improve education and employment opportunities for young people to help them avoid drug use or recruitment by the cartels. Analysts said the Mexican president's new willingness to open the debate marks a dramatic departure from his previous tendency to equate any criticism with a capitulation to organised crime. "In almost four years the government cannot claim any kind of victory and the debate is the result of the crisis of legitimacy in the strategy," said Samuel Gonzalez, a former Mexican drugs tsar who has been pushing for a rethink for years. "But at least it is now being discussed and that has to be a good thing." The debate was also seen as an attempt to spread responsibility for the bloodshed. "If we join together we can win this battle," Calderón said. "But if we continue to lack coordination and blame each other, the simple truth is that we cannot move forward. I understand perfectly well that there is a perception that the war is being lost, but I do not share it." The main problem, he said, is that local public institutions are too weak to maintain control when the forces withdraw. He added: "I am asking for the political parties for their help, their strength and their collaboration to allow us to rebuild the institutions of security and justice at all levels," he said. "We can beat the criminals. We can re-establish the rule of law in this country." Turf wars Mexico's drug violence is rooted in a series of turf wars between different trafficking organisations that are also involved in other illegal activities, such as kidnapping, extortion and people trafficking. The violence and the number of civilian casualties has increased since December 2006, when the government launched an offensive against them involving tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police. The main axis of the war is the rivalry between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas – a group founded by renegade special forces troops. Sinaloa, led by the country's most famous kingpin, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, is based in the Pacific coast state of the same name. The Zetas control much of the Gulf coast. Both Sinaloa and the Zetas are also present in other parts of the country. One of the most intense current battles is for control of the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, just across from Texas, where Zetas are fighting their erstwhile bosses in the Gulf Cartel, which has now reputedly allied with Sinaloa. Other relevant trafficking organisations involved in the wars include La Linea, which is based in Ciudad Juarez, just across from El Paso in Texas, and is trying to hold off the encroachment of Sinaloa. Here the extreme violence is intertwined with rivalry between local youth gangs reflecting a dramatic degree of social decomposition. Elsewhere, the quasi sect-like group called La Familia is rooted in the central state of Michoacan, and the Tijuana cartel maintains its bastion in the border city just over from San Diego in California. The Beltran Leyva group is involved in a bitter struggle for control of the organisation following the death of its leader in a navy operation last year.

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From the Los Angeles Times

Mexican drug cartels cripple Pemex operations in basin

The kidnappings of five petroleum company workers along with 30 others have terrorized the oil community, paralyzing segments of the business. Months later, families have still heard nothing.

By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times September 6, 2010


Reporting from Reynosa, Mexico — The meandering network of pipes, wells and tankers belonging to the gigantic state oil company Pemex have long been an easy target of crooks and drug traffickers who siphon off natural gas, gasoline and even crude, robbing the Mexican treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Now the cartels have taken sabotage to a new level: They've hobbled key operations in parts of the Burgos Basin, home to Mexico's biggest natural gas fields.

Forced to defer production and curtail drilling and maintenance in a region that spreads through some of Mexico's most dangerous badlands, the world's seventh-largest oil producer has become another casualty of the drug war.

In May, gunmen wearing camouflage and tennis shoes kidnapped five Pemex workers as they rode to the front gate of the Gigante No. 1 natural gas plant in the Burgos Basin. One man was a mechanic, another specialized in pumps. All were dressed in their crisp khaki uniforms with the Pemex logo, ready for long shifts. They have not been heard from since.

The kidnappings, plus the reported disappearance of at least 30 other employees of subcontractors in the same region, have terrorized a community where jobs on the oil rigs and at the gas wells are handed down, father to son, for generations.

"The traffickers are establishing it clearly," said Sen. Graco Ramirez, a member of the congressional energy committee. "You collaborate, or you die."

The capacity of the traffickers to exert influence over a company as mighty as Pemex only solidifies the widely held perception that the cartels are growing in size and strength despite the government's crackdown.

"How is it," asked a relative of a kidnapped worker, "that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?"

The Burgos Basin stretches across the northern border state of Tamaulipas, where the Gigante No. 1 plant is located, and spills into the states of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The three states are awash in violence, theater of a ferocious battle between the once-dominant Gulf cartel and its brutal former henchmen, the Zeta paramilitaries.

Pemex, which is Mexico's largest income earner, pulling in nearly a third of the national budget, once staked great hopes on the area and its prospects for yielding gas, abundant thanks to the sandy soil and porous rock that make for ideal production and exploration conditions.

After dedicating nearly half a century to testing and exploration in the basin, Pemex in 2002 took the unusual step of opening it up to foreign investment, in contrast to Mexico's historic protectionist attitude toward natural resources. Pemex officials anticipated an injection upward of $8 billion.

Employees of Pemex and a handful of foreign-owned firms were earning well in the basin, living good lives and working in relative safety.

Then convoys of mysterious gunmen started plying the roadways, followed by shows of force, intimidation, beatings and, finally, the abductions. Pleas for help and better protection, union leaders and workers say, went unheeded. The exact motives behind the May kidnappings remain unclear.

Ramirez, the senator, said the cartel responsible, probably the Zetas, may be after technical information to elude the measures Pemex is taking to guard against the rampant thefts of gas and oil.

Whatever the motive, the effect has been to cripple operations in some areas of the basin.

"In the Burgos project, there are areas we cannot access," Carlos Morales Gil, director of exploration and production for Pemex, said during a news conference in the Tabasco city of Villahermosa in July. It was a startling admission.

"We are not going to enter any area where security is at risk," he added, calling for increased army and navy protection for oil and gas installations.

Pemex would not comment to The Times or make an official available for this story.

However, a confidential report submitted to Congress in July and made available to The Times acknowledged that stolen natural gas and delayed gas production have cost the company nearly $50 million in just the first five months of this year.

One of the U.S. firms working in Burgos, Halliburton, has spoken publicly of a deteriorating security situation that is slowing its work. But Halliburton said it had no plans to pull any of its 600 workers.

After the May Pemex kidnappings, families of the disappeared workers are too terrified to speak publicly to a reporter. Vague threats have come their way.

Instead, they live in fear, many of them here in the Tamaulipas city of Reynosa. They sit literally by their telephones waiting for word, a ransom demand, a call from the coroner's office. Anything would be better than not knowing.

"No one has called us," one desperate relative said. "We know nothing. If they wanted to send a message to Pemex, wouldn't they have killed them and left the bodies there?"

Those are the kinds of calculations, in what passes for reason, made in families who have lost their sons, husbands and brothers to a violent unknown.

Pemex has also sought to repress information on the kidnappings, possibly for the men's safety. Company general director Juan Jose Suarez Coppel acknowledged the abductions only in questioning from a congressional committee.

Details of the kidnappings come from a witness, another worker at Gigante No. 1 whose name The Times is withholding for security reasons. He was waiting at the gate because one of the arriving men was supposed to relieve him. When he saw the gunmen, he ducked into a guard shack, watching but staying out of view. He saw the gunmen stuff the five workers face-first onto the floors of their vehicles and then speed away.

His observations are contained in an investigation opened by state authorities, portions of which were made available to The Times.

The investigation was opened only at the insistence of the parents of one of the missing men.

The missing workers include Saul Garcia, 47, a short man with a salt-and-pepper mustache who called his wife, away visiting relatives, as he headed off to his shift and said he'd see her soon. And Christopher Cadena Garcia, at 22 the youngest, a beefy man well over 6 feet tall, who was planning to marry and who was doing the job his dad had done and his dad's dad before him.

Kidnappings represent just one twist in broad security problems haunting Pemex. Engineers detect hundreds of clandestine siphons every year that steal enormous quantities of petroleum, much of which is then smuggled to the U.S. and sold at market price. To find the illegal taps, Pemex recently started aerial inspections with helicopters and small aircraft — but they cannot fly very low lest they get shot at.

Pemex, for the first time, sued five U.S. companies this year in an attempt to recover damages for stolen petroleum products that the Mexicans said were worth more than $250 million. Pemex alleges the firms knowingly bought stolen fuel.

Alejandro Gertz, now a congressman and rector of the University of the Americas, conducted an investigation of security problems at Pemex in his capacity as national public security chief in 2004. He said the biggest problem was corruption and collusion between Pemex employees and the thieves. Simply by adding a system of more frequent and often-random inspections, he said, the company was able to recover millions of dollars' worth of petroleum products in just three months.

But he knew he had touched a nerve; he was soon out of a job and the inspections were halted.

The injection of violent drug cartels into the mix in the Burgos Basin area, he said, expands the problem exponentially.

"These are territories where the organized crime infrastructure, inside and outside of the police forces, has established power — a parallel power, a parallel government," Gertz said. "That territory is in the hands of a parallel power that has penetrated the government at all levels."

From the Journal Star

Cat tells workers to leave Mexico

Violence spurs order affecting 40 employees

By PAUL GORDON
Journal Star
Last update Sep 10, 2010 @ 09:45 AM


PEORIA — Caterpillar Inc. is telling its American employees in Mexico, particularly those with children, to return to the United States because of escalating violence there, the company said Thursday.

About 40 American employees of Caterpillar facilities in Mexico, including in Monterrey, are affected by the company's order. Those employees all are salaried or management, said company spokesman Jim Dugan.

"We have been and will continue to monitor and assess the security situation in Mexico and communicate with our employees in order to improve their safety. Based on recent guidance from the (U.S.) State Department, Caterpillar has informed expat employees in some regions of Mexico, including Monterrey, that they and their families should repatriate as soon as possible," Dugan said.

He added that employees working in those regions who do not have children have the option to continue with an assignment based on each person's situation.

"The company will continue to monitor the situation and will communicate with employees about additional safety and security measures. We have historically had some employees who commute to Mexico for work assignments, and we expect these changes may result in some additional employees following this practice," Dugan said.

He declined to discuss specific incidents of violence or threats.

Dugan said the company has taken action in the past to restrict or ban travel to regions where there is risk of violence or even because of severe weather.

"We have operations and dealers all over the world, so of course we pay attention to such things so we can make sure our people are safe," he said.

From Associated Press

25 slain in Mexican city; 85 escape border prison

OLIVIA TORRES
AP News
Sep 11, 2010 01:43 EDT


Gunmen killed 25 people in a series of drug-gang attacks in Ciudad Juarez, marking the deadliest day in more than two years for the Mexican border city. Farther east on the border, 85 inmates scaled the walls of a prison and escaped Friday in Mexico's biggest jail break in recent memory.

Despite the violence, President Felipe Calderon hotly disputed a statement this week by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying Mexico resembled Colombia two decades ago.

"These kind of comments like the ones made by Secretary of State Clinton ... so careless, so lacking in seriousness, are very painful for Mexico, because they damage Mexico's image terribly," Calderon told the Spanish-language network Univision.

"I think the main thing we have in common with Colombia is that both of our countries suffer from U.S. drug consumption," Calderon said. "We are both victims of the enormous American consumption of drugs, and now the sales of weapons."

The toll in Thursday's attacks in Ciudad Juarez included 15 people killed when attackers stormed four homes in three hours, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office of Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located.

In the worst of those attacks, gunmen burst into a house and killed two young men — then killed four others for being witnesses.

Sandoval said it was the highest single-day murder toll in the city across from El Paso, Texas, since March 2008. He did not give more details of how many died back then, or say what day.

Two graffiti message appeared in Ciudad Juarez threatening Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the fugitive head of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

"You are killing our sons. You already did, and now we are going to kill your families," one sign read.

In the border city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, 85 inmates — 66 of whom were convicted or on trial for federal charges like weapons possession or drugs — scaled the Reynosa prison's 20-foot (6-meter) walls using ladders, said the Tamaulipas state public safety secretary, Jose Garza Garcia.

Garza Garcia said 44 prison guards and employees were under investigation. Two were missing.

"The guards evidently helped in the escape," he said. So far this year a total of 201 inmates have escaped from prisons in Tamaulipas.

Friday's escape was the largest single mass prison breakout in recent years. In 2009, armed assailants believed to be working for the Zetas drug gang broke 53 inmates out of a prison in the northern state of Zacatecas while guards stood by and did nothing to stop them.

Ciudad Juarez, with a population of 1.3 million, has become one of the world's most dangerous cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels.

Violence has continued unabated despite the deployment of thousands of soldiers to the city this year. Federal police, including a special investigative unit, later took over security in the city as part of a new strategy announced by President Felipe Calderon.

More than 2,100 people have been killed this year in Ciudad Juarez, putting the city on pace to surpass its previous high of 2,700, set last year.

Daily homicide tolls routinely reach double digits in Juarez; 24 people were killed Aug. 15.

Also Friday, Sandoval confirmed that a U.S. resident kidnapped in Ciudad Juarez last month was found dead.

Saul de la Rosa, 27, was abducted along with two other people when he crossed into Ciudad Juarez on Aug. 28. All three bodies were found Sept. 2, and Sandoval said documents found on De la Rosa indicated he was a U.S. resident.

Elsewhere in Mexico, at least five people were killed in the southern Pacific coast state of Guerrero, where various cartels are also fighting for territory, state police reported. One body was found floating in the ocean in a beach town just north of the resort city of Acapulco, his hands and feet bound.

In central Morelos state, a prison riot left one inmate dead and eight wounded. Guerrero and Morelos state have both been battlegrounds for control the Beltran Leyva cartel since its leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a December shootout with Marines.

One of the alleged kingpins fighting for control of Morelos, U.S.-born Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal, was captured Aug. 30 by federal police, but different accounts of how he was caught have since emerged.

The Mexican government has said the arrest was the result of a 1 1/2-year investigation and a carefully planned raid involving agents specially trained abroad.

But a copy of the booking report obtained by The Associated Press and other media outlets Thursday indicates the officers who arrested him did not initially know who they had caught. The officers' report says they detained Valdez after chasing him in a suspicious three-vehicle convoy for several miles.

On Friday, Valdez's U.S. lawyer, Kent Schaffer, told The Associated Press that Mexican authorities lured Valdez to a business 10 miles from his ranch by having a detained associate call and ask to meet him. He said Valdez drove to the place, got out of the car and found himself surrounded.

Schaffer said Valdez told him the associate was forced to make the call at gunpoint.

"He wasn't pulled over for traffic. He wasn't chased at all," Schaffer said. "From what I understand, an associate of Mr. Valdez was ordered at gunpoint to send him a message telling him to come meet."

A federal police spokesman, who was not authorized by department rules to be quoted by name, said an associate of Valdez's apparently did call Valdez just before he was caught, but said that happened while police were tailing the associate's car in Mexico City.

When the associate noticed the police, he opened fire and was killed in the ensuing gunbattle near a major shopping center, the spokesman said.

Also Friday, Mexico's attorney general said video tapes distributed by authorities showing Valdez giving a rambling account of his drug dealings are considered "interviews," and could not be formally submitted as evidence because his lawyer was not present. Attorney General Arturo Chavez said that in formal statements with his lawyer present, Valdez did not admit to the activities he acknowledged on the tapes.

Schaffer also said he filed an official request with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City asking that the U.S. government request Valdez be deported to face trial in the United States, where he faces charges in three states for allegedly trucking in tons of cocaine.

A Mexican judge last week ordered Valdez held for 40 days while prosecutors here decide whether to formally file organized crime and other charges. Mexican authorities have said deportation is a possibility but have made no decision.

why does this make me think of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables.....

__________________
....attached to sanity by a bungee cord.....