Deteriorating Fast

This from "When Giants Fall" - whether you agree or not -- it's important to read.


Deteriorating Fast

Maybe I'm wrong, but weren't Mexican authorities not so long ago asserting that conditions in that country were not as bad as many pessimists claimed? Based on the following collection of recent reports, it would seem that the opposite holds true and the situation is deteriorating fast:

"Mexico Says Cartels Turning Attacks on Authorities" (Associated Press)

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's drug cartels have changed tactics and are turning more attacks on authorities, rather than focusing their fire on rivals gangs, the country's top security official said Sunday.

Interior Secretary Fernandez Gomez-Mont said at a news conference that two back-to-back, bloody ambushes of government convoys -- both blamed on cartels -- represent a new tactic.

''In the last few weeks the dynamics of the violence have changed. The criminals have decided to directly confront and attack the authorities,'' Gomez-Mont said.

''They are trying to direct their fire power at what they fear most at this moment, which is the authorities,'' he said.

Officials here have long said that more than 90 percent of the death toll in Mexico's wave of drug violence -- which has claimed more than 22,700 lives since a government crackdown began in December 2006 -- are victims of disputes between rival gangs.

Mexican drug gangs have been known to target security officials. The nation's acting federal police chief was shot dead in May 2008 in an attack attributed to drug traffickers lashing back at President Felipe Calderon's offensive against organized crime.

But such high-profile attacks were rare in comparison to inter-gang warfare. But after the large-scale attacks on officials Friday and Saturday, ''casualties among the authorities are beginning to increase in this battle,'' Gomez-Mont said.

"Mexico Drug Wars: No End in Sight for Border Violence" (News-Register)

Nearly 3,400 people have been killed so far this year

Every 48 minutes, a drug war-related death occurs in Mexico, according to El Universal, a national Mexican newspaper. Although the U.S.-Mexico border is not close to Dallas, it affects college students who have family living in the border towns riddled by violence. In the Dallas County Community College District, there are 31 students whose residence country is Mexico and are under student visa status.

Jose Lopez, a college student who resides on the Mexican side of the Matamoros-Brownsville border, has to deal with everyday violence in his hometown. “Every time I go out I am afraid,” said Lopez, 19. “You never know what will happen when you see the luxury SUVs in groups of four driving down the street.”

The Associated Press reports that nearly 23,000 people have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels in late 2006. This information came from a Mexican government report given to the country’s congressmen April 12.

"Drug War Gunmen Kidnap Six People in Mexico Hotel Raids" (Christian Science Monitor)

In the latest surge of drug war violence, dozens of gunmen raided two Mexico hotels in Monterrey, the Holiday Inn and Hotel Mision. Four guests, two receptionists, and a guard were abducted.

Mexico's drug violence is spreading to the northern city of Monterrey, as rival gangs battle for turf.

In the middle of the night Wednesday, about three dozen gunmen stormed into the Holiday Inn Centro and the Hotel Mision, dragging a half dozen people away.

Monterrey is one of the nation’s business hubs that has in recent months found itself taking its turn in the violent throes of Mexico’s deadly violence.

The state attorney general of Nuevo Leon said that gunmen abducted three guests and a receptionist from the Holiday Inn and at another nearby hotel, another receptionist was abducted too. The gunmen appeared to be searching for specific people in the 17-floor hotel, said the attorney general.

It’s the latest in a series of attacks that touch the lives of bystanders apparently uninvolved in the drug trade. The motive is unclear about why these victims, three businessmen from Mexico City and a businesswoman from the border, as well as the two receptionists and possibly a guard outside the Holiday Inn, were hauled away. None of those abducted were foreigners.

Attorney general Alejandro Garza y Garza said the violent surge the city is experiencing can be explained by rivalries between gangs vying for power. "A lot of what we're going through right now is part of a readjustment among cartels," Mr. Garza y Garza was quoted as saying at a news conference in Monterrey.

While a "readjustment" might imply that it’s temporary, it’s little solace to residents. Monterrey is the same city that saw two university students killed in crossfire last month between the military and suspected drug traffickers, and where trucks and cars have been hijacked and burned to block streets (local media reported gunmen used the same tactic Wednesday in carrying out the hotel abductions).

"Mexico Arrests 5 Suspects in Police Slayings" (Associated Press)

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican police arrested five suspects in the killings of seven police officers and a bystander in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities said Monday.

The suspects are members of La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez drug cartel, according to a statement from a joint anti-crime task force in Chihuahua state.

The men confessed to Friday's ambush of two police patrol trucks as they were flagged down for help by an unidentified man, the federal, state and local task force said. Six federal police officers and one local police woman were killed.

The suspects also confessed to 36 other slayings since 2009 and to extorting money from at least 21 businesses, the task force said.

In Mexico City, meanwhile, police arrested a man accused of negotiating cocaine shipments in Central America for a gang led by Texas-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal.

The suspect, Dagoberto Jimenez, was arrested Sunday, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the anti-narcotics division of Mexico's federal police.

Jimenez first supervised the arrival of cocaine shipments to the southern state of Campeche and then was promoted to negotiate cocaine purchases in Central America, Pequeno said.

Authorities say Valdez Villarreal is in a fight for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

"Juárez Nears 5,000 Killings" (El Paso Times)

Homicides in the Juárez drug war will soon surpass the 5,000 mark as a vicious conflict continues.

As of Sunday evening, there have been more than 760 murders this year, raising to 4,992 homicides in the Juárez area since 2008 when a drug cartel war erupted, according to a tally kept by the El Paso Times.

The war between the Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels that began in January 2008 sparked an unprecedented wave of murder, including daytime street shootings, mutilations and massacres.

By comparison, the number of deaths in Juárez surpasses the 4,393 members of the U.S. military who have died in the Iraq war since 2003.

The killings in Juárez have been unrelenting.

On Saturday night, gunmen burst into a funeral vigil for a slain teenager and opened fire, killing three women and wounding 10 others at a house in the Independencia 2 colonia in the southern part of Juárez.

Chihuahua state police said the shooters fired 44 rounds. Police identified the dead as Maria del Carmen Rangel Chacon, 65, Sara Orosco Rangel, 46, and Ernestina Rubio Martinez, who was 55 to 60 years old.

Juárez was still reeling from the brazen ambush of a police patrol that killed six federal officers, a city policewoman and another man on Friday afternoon on a busy street.

Officials said Juárez police are on "red alert," and patrols would now be done in squads of three or four vehicles in an attempt to deter further attacks.

"Relatives Worry About Loved Ones' Fates Amid Mexico Violence" (Brownsville Herald)

McALLEN — Mexico’s drug war has hit home for some people north of the Rio Grande.

Relatives of missing residents in northern Tamaulipas rely on little more than scant news reports for information about their loved ones. Police and military officials in border communities south of the Rio Grande remain virtually unreachable over the phone, while Americans say authorities there seem to dismiss pleas for help in locating missing people.

A surge in drug violence has left dozens of Mexicans dead along the Texas border in recent weeks. Brazen attacks by masked gunmen have become a part of life for many. Raw images of violence posted via social media show bodies splayed across bloody streets. Confusion reigns in northern Tamaulipas, where information about killings is hushed amid a media blackout and authorities remain notoriously tight-lipped about incidents of violence.

"The Zetas are here, heavily armed," said one man from the Camargo area who asked not to be identified. "We hope this will pass soon. It is unbearable."

The violence has been attributed to a three-way war among the area’s two dominant drug trafficking organizations and the federal government. The Zetas — a paramilitary organization founded by former members of Mexico’s special forces — have historically served as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. But in recent years, their operations have grown more independent to the point that they are now fighting with their old bosses for control of Tamaulipas’ valuable smuggling routes.

Some people in the United States claim to have received phone calls bearing chilling news of relatives being taken by the Zetas.

More than 22,700 people have been killed in Mexico’s drug war since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón launched a crackdown on his country’s entrenched narcotics syndicates, according to government estimates.

"Mexico Hobbled in Drug War by Arrests That Lead Nowhere" (Washington Post)

URUAPAN, MEXICO -- When soldiers swarmed into city halls last year to arrest 10 mayors for alleged ties to an infamous drug cartel, Mexican authorities and their U.S. government allies boasted that the age of impunity for corrupt Mexican politicians was finally over.

The mass detentions of elected officials from bustling towns dominated the news in Mexico, and they were seen as a bold new thrust in a vicious drug war that has left more than 22,000 dead as increasingly powerful drug cartels challenge the authority of the state.

But one by one, the government of President Felipe Calderón has quietly released the politicians as federal prosecutors dropped their cases and as judges ordered them set free for lack of evidence. U.S. diplomats who hailed the arrests now rarely mention them, except as a cautionary tale about how difficult it is to change Mexico's ineffective criminal-justice system.

The episode illustrates a central challenge faced by Mexico, where law enforcement authorities remain hard pressed to win major conspiracy cases, either because they arrest the wrong people or because prosecutors remain hobbled by incompetence.

It also suggests that despite Calderón's pledges of sweeping reform, Mexico has a long way to go in rebuilding its corrupt and hapless police and judiciary