From the Independent

Top Mexico drug boss killed in gun battle

200 marines bring down feared trafficker renowned for beheading his rivals

By Guy Adams
Friday, 18 December 2009


It took two hundred marines, dozens of armoured vehicles, 10 hand grenades, and several hundred machine-gun rounds. The house-to-house gun battle began early on Wednesday morning and lasted two hours. By the end, five men lay dead. One of them was Arturo Beltran Leyva. This is how you bring down one of the world's top drug barons.

Mexico's security forces are celebrating the assassination of Beltran Leyva, known by the nickname "boss of bosses", during a night-time raid on an upmarket block of flats in Cuernavaca, just south of the nation's capital. Three associates were killed and a fourth committed suicide during the closing stages of the shootout, a Navy spokesman claimed.

The killing marked the biggest victory yet for President Felipe Calderón in his high-profile "war" on drugs. Beltran Leyva led one of the nation's six major cartels, and his influence and reputation for extraordinary violence had seen a $2.1 million [£1.31m] bounty placed on his head.

Witnesses told how troops went from door to door of the apartment complex, evacuating residents to a basement gym, before raiding the flat where Beltran Leyva was holed up. Three sailors were injured by hand grenades in the subsequent battle, during which an Associated Press reporter counted 10 major explosions.

It marked a suitably violent end to a career that began in the 1970s, when the 48-year-old Beltran Leyva cut his criminal teeth working for Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. He broke away in 2003, and built up an organisation that controlled a swathe of the major north-western routes via which cocaine and heroin are smuggled from South America to the US.

His business model revolved around fear. Rivals would be found beheaded, with a sheet of paper saying "boss of bosses" attached to their mutilated corpse. His gang also enjoyed great success bribing politicians and security officials to tip them off about forthcoming police and military raids.

The state of Morelos, where Cuernavaca is located, has seen dozens of grisly murders in recent months, which some believe helped lead security forces to narrow their search for the drug baron. On Friday, sailors raided a party in the mountain town of Tepoztlan, where they killed three alleged Beltran Leyva Cartel members and detained 11.

President Calderón has committed 49,000 troops to fighting a "war on drugs". Battles between police and rival cartels left 6,000 dead last year, and have so far killed almost 7,500 in 2009, mostly in US border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.

Mexico's Government cites the levels of violence as evidence that it is winning, arguing that the wave of killings represent the death throes of a wounded beast. But most analysts aren't so sure. There remains a strong market for narcotics in the US, giving smugglers profit margins of up to 30,000 per cent. Thanks to relaxed gun laws in states such as Texas, there is also a vibrant cross-border arms trade to equip the country's six major cartels.

Beltran Leyva has four brothers, three of whom are still at large, so the future leadership of his gang is not in much doubt. Other groups also appear to be thriving: on Wednesday, the severed heads of six policemen were found near a church in the north of the country, in an attack blamed on the rival Gulf Cartel.

Originally Posted by Francois Cellier

Mexico's Government cites the levels of violence as evidence that it is winning, arguing that the wave of killings represent the death throes of a wounded beast.

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.

Cuernavaca is not at all like Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez. Cuernavaca is a lovely up-scale township about 30 miles South of Mexico City. A freeway takes you from Mexico to Cuernavaca across a mountain range. You first climb from 2000 m.a.s. (altitude of Mexico City) to 3500 m.a.s., and then drive down a South-facing very long slope. The first houses of Cuernavaca start at about 2600 m.a.s., whereas the city ends only at 600 m.a.s. Thus the city spreads over 2000 m of altitude difference. It's a city with elegant country clubs and beautifully decorated large malls. It offers plenty of restaurants for the upper class. There are many good-sized villas in gated communities. This is where rich city dwellers buy their weekend houses.

When I visited Cuernavaca last (about 10 years ago), there wasn't too much crime yet in that city, but Mexico has gone downhill fast since then. Especially due to the rapid depletion of the Cantarell oil fields (Pemex used to generate 40% of the tax income of Mexico), the government is now notoriously short on cash, and consequently, the thugs can do as they please.

A few months ago there was chatter about Mexico becoming a failed state but I haven't heard it much recently. Are matters improving?

I haven't heard much either lately, but I doubt that the situation has improved. The financial dilemma is still the same. Cantarell is dying fast.

The Economist has a correspondent in Mexico but the last report that was published was on November 19. It sounded modestly up-beat:

A different kind of recession

Nov 19th 2009 | MEXICO CITY

In some ways the pain is less bad than the statistics suggest. But recovery will be harder than in the past unless complacency gives way to reform

THE last time Mexico suffered an economic slump, in 1995, it turned to its northern neighbour for help. The United States organised a $50 billion bail-out. Together with the boost provided by the enactment of the North American Free-Trade Agreement shortly before, that helped Mexico to rebound smartly from devaluation and recession.

This time the United States is the problem, rather than the solution. The impact of the recession triggered by the bursting of America’s housing bubble has been even more severe south of the Rio Grande: although data for the third quarter, due to be released on November 20th, should confirm that Mexico has finally pulled out of recession, its GDP shrank by 9.7% in the year to June. That is a shocking number, far worse than the performance of countries like Canada or the Dominican Republic whose economies have similarly close links to the United States.



Yet in other ways too, this recession is very different from 1995 (see chart). The impact on daily life is much less apparent. In Mexico City restaurants remain full and rush-hour traffic as snarling as ever. That is because those in jobs have been relatively unaffected, while in 1995 the purchasing power of their wages was crushed by inflation. The rise in unemployment has been temporarily blunted by a government subsidy that helps companies postpone lay-offs. Those that lose their jobs can tap their retirement accounts, or draw on less formal savings. Samuel Sánchez, a bricklayer waiting at a day labourer’s market in Mexico City, says his wife has been selling off farm animals every fortnight to feed their family. The poorest Mexicans have been largely unaffected, since they are concentrated in the south and mainly work in farming, where output has held up.

Yet all this is cold comfort. The recession has exposed structural weaknesses in Mexico’s economy. NAFTA brought a torrent of American investment as manufacturers set up plants south of the border to take advantage of lower labour costs. This influx brought modernisation and new technology, and underpinned rapid economic growth in the late-1990s.

But NAFTA has left Mexico highly dependent on the health of the American economy, and on a few lines of cross-border business in particular. These include car manufacturing, the construction industry and tourism. They have been among the hardest hit by this recession. Scarcer credit and shredded confidence have caused American consumers to delay as many purchases as possible, particularly those of the pricier durable goods Mexico produces. With exports plummeting, unemployment in northern industrial cities such as Saltillo has leapt into double digits. [...]

If you cut it off there you might assume that the fucking Americans are the problem yet again, but the article concludes that Mexico's politicians will only have themselves to blaime if they fail to undertake the structural reforms than are needed for the nation to be fully competitive.

There is no "failed nation" talk.

From the Independent

Revenge attack on family of soldier killed in drugs raid

Five die in latest episode in Mexican drugs war that has left 14,000 dead

By David Usborne
Thursday, 24 December 2009


It was meant to be a good spell for the Mexican government and its campaign against the drug cartels. Last week, soldiers cornered and gunned down Arturo Beltran Leyva – the "boss of bosses" – and only one of their own, a Marine Ensign, Angulo Cordova, perished in the operation. Progress had been made, at last.

But no one is celebrating today.

Just hours after the soldier was buried as a hero in the southern state of Tabasco, with a televised ceremony that featured a grateful Navy Secretary presenting the dead man's mother with the flag that had lain on his coffin, gunmen burst into the family home and opened fire. The latest victims of this savage conflict: the marine's mother, sister and aunt. His brother died on the way to hospital.

Thus Mexico enters the festive season more fearful than ever that the battle with the cartels that President Felipe Calderon began when he cameto power in 2006 is not curbing the violence as promised, but making it worse. Those who have died in drug-related violence since then now number at least 14,000.

The cruel slaying of the marine's family in Tabasco – officials said gunmen broke down the door with a sledge hammer before spraying the rooms inside with bullets – were being treated by the government yesterday as a reprisal killing, directly linked to the execution of Beltran Leyva in the city of Cuernavaca, about an hour south of Mexico City, last Thursday.

"These contemptible events are proof of how unscrupulously organised crime operates, attacking innocent lives, and they can only strengthen us in our determination to banish this singular cancer," President Calderon said in a statement, calling the new murders "a cowardly and contemptible" act.

Even as Mexicans everywhere were digesting the cold cruelty of the Tabasco slayings , far to the north in the state of Coahuila gunmen fired rounds of bullets into a restaurant where the mayor of the US border town of Eagle Pass was eating a meal with the State Attorney General Jesus Torres. Neither man was hurt in the attack, but a woman who was leaving the restaurant at the time was killed.

Barely a day seems to pass without reports of bloodshed as the cartels, vying for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the US, fight both with each other and with the federal forces, who include not just the police but roughly 50,000 army troops deployed by Calderon. Bodies, sometimes with the heads missing, are routinely dumped in public view, providing grim reminders of the security crisis.

The majority of those killed are the foot soldiers of the competing cartels. Also in the firing line, however, are government forces as well as government officials, including prosecutors and judges. This week also saw the slaying in Sinaloa state of its tourism minister.

But people are becoming increasingly nervous that innocent bystanders are at increasing risk from the fighting and no single incident is likely to highlight that more vividly than the killing of the marine's kin, even as they were mourning his death.

For now, the government is only able to say that it will not be intimidated. "We must not let our guard down, the government must continue and complete its duty," Sebastian Calderon, a spokesman for the national Senate said yesterday, while admitting that the Tabasco events were a disaster for the President and his anti-drugs effort.

Certainly, it cut short any sense of accomplishment after the Cuernavaca siege. Beltran Leyva was the third most-wanted man in Mexico. He was one of five brothers who split from the Gulf Cartel to align themselves with a paramilitary group of former soldiers, Los Zetos, which has been credited with many of the most savage killings in the ongoing struggle.

From the Independent

Mexican drugs gangs blamed for killing of US consular staff

By Stephen Foley
Monday, 15 March 2010


Staff working at US consulates in towns along the Mexican border were told they could evacuate their families home following the killing of three people leaving a consular party in the city of Ciudad Juarez.

President Barack Obama condemned the killings, which raised the possibility of a new tactic in the violence associated with the Mexican government's US-supported war on the country's drug barons.

In two separate attacks, minutes apart, in broad daylight on Saturday afternoon, two cars leaving the house of a US consular employee were targeted by gunmen. In one, the husband of a staff member was murdered and two children were left injured. In the other, an American staff member and her husband were killed. Their baby was left crying in the back seat.

Ciudad Juarez has become one of the deadliest places in the country as rival drug barons battle for control of territory along the border with their lucrative US market, and the Mexican government, under President Felipe Calderon, attempts to restore control. Some 4,600 people have been killed following drug battles in the city in two years.

The White House's national security council spokesman said "the president is deeply saddened and outraged by the news", and that Mr Obama "shares in the outrage of the Mexican people at the murders of thousands in Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere in Mexico".

Mr Calderon also issued a statement of condemnation as details of the killings were released yesterday, and he promised to dedicate more resources to improving security.

The US told diplomatic staff in border towns including Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Monterrey y Matamoros that they could evacuate their families for the next month. If Saturday's victims are found to have been deliberately targeted because of their links to the consulate in Ciudad Juarez, it will be the first attack on American interests since a mortar was thrown into the consulate grounds in Monterrey in 2008.

Attacking Americans/the US feel like a mistake. It didn't work so well for the Columbian cartels... eventually.

__________________
Unless otherwise specified, I am posting as a regular poster. When I will act as a mod, I'll make sure you're in no doubt.

From the Guardian

Mexican drug clinic hit in fatal gun attack

Nineteen killed in raid on Chihuahua rehabilitation centre as 16 bodies found in Ciudad Madero amid drug gang turf war

By Amy Fallon and agencies
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 12 June 2010 12.08 BST


At least 35 people have been killed in attacks in two Mexican cities, as violence grows amid a turf war between rival drug gangs.

Nineteen men were killed and four wounded on Thursday when more than 30 gunmen burst into the Faith and Life drug rehabilitation centre in the northern city of Chihuahua, about 210 miles south of Ciudad Juarez and the border with El Paso, Texas, police said.

Yesterday, 14 men and two women were found dead in different parts of Ciudad Madero, in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas. Authorities had earlier said that 20 people were killed, but reduced that figure to 16.

Violence has increased this year in Tamaulipas amid a turf battle between the Gulf drug cartel and its former ally, the Zetas gang.

The massacres come only weeks after authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned silver mine, believed to be victims of Mexico's drug violence.

The men at the Faith and Life centre were woken shortly before 11pm and made to lie facedown along a hall, its director, Cristian Rey Ramirez, told Associated Press.

"There was no warning," said Ramirez, who was alerted to the attack by a phone call from the centre's pastor.

The attackers left messages accusing their victims of being criminals, Chihuahua state police spokesman Fidel Banuelos said.

Most of the victims were aged 30 to 40 and included a blind man, said the Rev Rene Castillo, who gives weekly sermons at the centre.

Among the dead was José Luis Zamarron Barraza, a heroin addict who arrived home a year ago from the US, said a relative who would not be named. "The only crime he committed was to use drugs and want to get clean," she said.

Of those taken to hospital, two were in a critical condition and two in a serious condition, officials said.

"Everyone is so scared now," Ramirez said.

Last April, two men and a woman were kidnapped while attending a memorial service at the centre. The building houses addicts for 90 days, although some of those attacked had been there for up to two years, Castillo said.

Two of Mexico's six major drug cartels are exploiting the rehabilitation centres to recruit hitmen and drug smugglers, often threatening to kill those who don't co-operate, police have said.

Others are killed for failing to pay for drugs or betraying a dealer.