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New Group: Children of the Devil is Born

October 26, 2012, 6:36 pm
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Borderland Beat


THE CHILDREN OF THE DEVIL

THE NEW GROUP FORMS

The rupture of the Zetas establishes a new splinter group now with the  Gulf Cartel (CDG),  Presently, they are in San Luis Potosi, and some regions of  Huasteca and Zacatecas.
After the death of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, El Lazca,  new alliances between the different factions of the zetas have increased.
According to a recent military intelligence report, not only division and confrontations existed among the zetas group lead by “El Lazca” and Miguel Angel Treviño , aka, Z-40, but one of the principal operators regional level, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, aka Z-50 or Taliban, had distanced himself from both of them and once again became a part of CDG.  The Taliban was chief of plaza in San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Monterrey and parts of  Coahuila.
On the other hand, Ivan had tested divisions among the loyal people of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, aka El Coss, and the people of Cardenas Guillen. Intelligence information suggested that El Coss – arrested on September 12th by the Navy- had turned in Mario Cardenas Guillen, aka M-1 or El Gordo, and Juan Gabriel Montes Sermeño, aka El Sierra.
"Los Rojos" the faction formerly commanded  by the brothers of Osiel has  now formed a new group with  commands given by “El Taliban”.  The new group is using the name  of " Los-hijos-del-diablo“, (The sons of the Devil”), with a presence  only in San Luis Potosi, some zones of the Huasteca and Zacatecas.
The 42 year old Z-50, , confessed, after being arrested by the Army/navy, that he had started his delinquent career on with of Gulf Cartel and that he had never stopped belonging to that group, according to the same source.
He attributes the responsibility for the deaths of the previous months in San Luis Potosí, to Los Zetas, but denies being part of them. Similarly, rejects joining the Knights Templar and accepts that he had always belonged to the Gulf Cartel. "Since I started working, I started with them," he says.
 
DEATH OF A SON
In his battle with Z-40, he explains that Z-40 began to act in a psychotic way, “doing shitty stuff and killing many people." But above all, he accuses Treviño of killing his eldest son, Carlos Velazquez.
According to the description of El Taliban, Treviño killed his son in Anahuac. He recognizes that some people had said that his son might be alive, but he says that he doesn’t believe that.
“I know the Zetas very well, they say that they have him alive but they don’t, just as they said with a brother in law”. I even have information that they  were burned alive in Monterrey, he remarks.
The kidnapping of the son of Taliban was one of the motives that provoked the clash between the the leaders.
But Taliban, for which PGR offered 30 million pesos to the person that collaborated with his capture, also had clashes with the Zetas of Lazcano, seeking independence and staying with the control of the entities that had been assigned to him by Lazcano.
Unofficial reports refer that Trevino had turned in the Taliban to the authorities, as well as El Lazca and at least a dozen local leaders, with the intention of taking over the remainder of the Zetas in the country.
This entire situation caused the return of Ivan Velazquez to the Gulf Cartel, specifically with the faction of Cardenas Guillen.
On the report, El Taliban said he was native of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas; started his criminal activities stealing cars on his native town and that he has a passport issued by the government of the United States with a picture of him with a mustache that he has not use in a long time.
Ivan Velazquez also denies allying with the Knight Templar, under the orders of Servando Gomez Martinez, aka “La Tuta”.
 
100 PERCENT SURE
After the PGR announced that they will exhume the remains of one of the parents of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Affairs, said that the United States has no doubts that the stolen corpse is that of "El Lazca".
In an interview with The Guardian, Brownfield said that before the body disappeared that they took enough DNA samples to verify his identity, so it is "almost a 100 percent certainty " that the former leader of Los Zetas was killed.
For its part, the PGR reported that within two to three weeks  the results  of the genetic sample analysis will be available of samples taken from a  relative of Lazcano Lazcano.
 
However, PGR reiterated that the identity of "El Lazca" is fully confirmed, but it is to comply 100 percent with legal requirements.
To the Secretary, the death of capo on October 7th in Progreso, Coahuila, represents a strong blow  to "the most powerful organization in Mexico."
 Sources: Indigo Report and Narco Mexico Drugs Gangs
read additional info on the BB forum post by Smoothe the Hustler here
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With Narco Tanks, and RPG7s, Radio Towers: Should They Still Be Labeled Drug Traffickers?

October 27, 2012, 9:58 am
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Borderland Beat

Terrorists?
The term “Drug” Traffickers has become an incongruity.  With war like weaponry, 300 foot communication  towers, armored narco tanks,  holding the media, politicians and society entrapped by terror, isn’t it time the term be changed to Narco-Terrorists?  True is the fact  there is not a hard definition or legal definition of the word terrorist.  Also true,  the term is traditionally used to describe acts that cause terror in order to  overthrow and run the government,  or impose a religion or ideology by acts of terror. But I offer that what organized criminal groups has imposed on the United States of Mexico is unequivocally terrorism.
 When Dr. Robert Bunker (Small Wars) tells me this week “Pretty sad when RPGs are now so common” (in Mexico),  I say it is time we call these groups that have a large part of the nation controlled by terror, those who kidnap, extort, behead (then display), explode buildings, vehicles,   and terrorize a society…TERRORISTS.  There!  That is what they are, plain and complex, Narco-Terrorists. …Paz, Chivis
On guard as a relative of El Lazca is exhumed for DNA sampling
Ioan Grillo/Mexico City
 
When a Mexican SWAT team stopped a stolen Cadillac van in the border city of Piedras Negras, it was not a surprise when they were greeted by a tirade of bullets as the criminals blasted and ran. But after they kicked open the trunk, the officers realized they could have been victims of more catastrophic firepower. The gunmen had been in possession of an arsenal of weapons that included three Soviet-made antitank rockets complete with an RPG-7 shoulder-fired launcher. If the criminals had got a rocket off, they could easily have blown the SWAT vehicle to pieces. RPG-7s can also take out helicopters and were used in the Black Hawk Down episode in Somalia in 1993.
These are those found in Escalade SUV
The rockets, found on Saturday, are part of an increasingly destructive array of weaponry wielded by Mexican drug cartels, like the feared Zetas, in reaction to attacks on them by police and soldiers. While security forces have taken down several key cartel bosses this year, gunmen have struck back, setting off five car bombs, hundreds of fragmentation grenades and several shoulder-fired rockets. Soldiers even seized one homemade three-ton tank with a revolving gun turret. When Mexican marines on Oct. 7 claimed to have killed Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, he was also alleged to be found with an RPG-7. (Lazcano’s corpse was stolen from the morgue, and the Zetas are now believed to be led by his No. 2, Miguel Treviño.)
  (Hit Probability)

The shoulder-fired rockets cause particular worry because of their range and explosive power. Mexican dignitaries often move in helicopters with the army flying Black Hawks supplied by the U.S. under the Mérida Initiative. “The RPG-7 is a weapon that causes incredible devastation from Iraq to Afghanistan,” says Rachel Stohl, an expert on arms proliferation at the Stimson Center in Washington. “When they fall into the hands of criminal groups, it changes the dynamics and escalates the conflict. Instead of just a gunfight on a street, you have military firepower.”
 
Combatants normally use RPG-7 rockets to target nearby vehicles, but they can reach up to 3,000 ft. (900 m) and are sometimes wielded as a form of artillery, scattering shrapnel at anyone close by. Those fearing spillover were quick to note that gunmen in Piedras Negras could potentially fire a rocket over the Rio Grande into the neighboring U.S. city of Eagle Pass. There have been sporadic gunfights across the river over the years, with gunmen recently firing at U.S. Border Patrol agents near the Texas town of Los Ebanos. (More often, Mexicans have been the victims, like when Border Patrol agents shot dead a 16-year-old boy in Sonora state this month.)
The gun trade has been a long-running bone of contention over the Rio Grande, with Mexico complaining that most of the firearms used by cartel assassins are purchased from U.S. stores. Of almost 100,000 guns seized at Mexican crime scenes since 2007, 68% have been traced to the U.S. The U.S. gun lobby argues that heavier weapons such as the Soviet rockets and fragmentation grenades come from the other direction, smuggled from Central America. Thousands of RPG-7s were used by all sides in the region’s Cold War conflicts in the 1980s. Since then, gangs have stolen many from lingering stockpiles in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras to sell them on the black market. The Honduran government reports that it lost 22 RPG-7s and several rockets in a single 2010 theft. On a visit to Honduras earlier this year, a senior police officer said he had intelligence of Zeta operatives going to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to buy hardware.
When groups like the Zetas wield rockets and tanks, some pundits question whether they should continue to be labeled as drug traffickers — or need a more martial description. The cartel was founded in 1998 by 14 Mexican army defectors, and they carried their battle tactics into the crime world. “The Zetas are a criminal paramilitary organization that is spreading through Mexico and Central America like the bubonic plague,” says Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Zetas have used their firepower to make their stronghold in northeast Mexico, by the Rio Grande Valley, the country’s most violent corner. While other regions, like the area around Ciudad Juárez, have seen significant decreases in murders since 2010, Coahuila state, home to Piedras Negras, has witnessed its bloodiest year on record, with more than 640 gangland killings; neighboring Nuevo León has recorded over 1,000 such deaths since January. In total, almost 60,000 people have fallen in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón took power in 2006 and declared a military offensive on cartels. In the same period, 25 of Mexico’s 37 most wanted cartel bosses have been killed or arrested.
The buildup of cartel weaponry could also be a problem for incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto when he takes office in December. Peña Nieto, who returns the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power after 12 years in the wilderness, has promised to halve the number of homicides in Mexico in his first year. While all applaud the target, Peña Nieto has given little concrete information about how he will achieve the goal. When Zeta squads roam the countryside with RPG-7s, some say Peña Nieto could be forced to continue a military line similar to Calderón’s. “There will probably be a change in rhetoric,” says political analyst Jorge Chabat, “but there is a little room for maneuver in tactics.”
Source: Time World, Milenio, Zocalo
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A Portrait of Maverick Official

October 27, 2012, 1:17 pm
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By Jason Buch
mysanantonio.com

Borderland Beat
Maverick County Commissioner Rodolfo Heredia is accussed of smuggling money into the United States from Mexico after selling his truck to a Zetas associate.

Maverick County Commissioner Rodolfo Bainet Heredia was involved in a bid-rigging scheme, engaged in sex tourism and sold his truck to the presumptive leader of the Zetas drug cartel, an FBI agent said Tuesday during Heredia's detention hearing.

A federal magistrate judge ordered Heredia, 54, to be held without bail on cash-smuggling and money-laundering charges.

Heredia, who was arrested last week, has been indicted only on those charges, fairly minor in comparison to the allegations made during the hearing.

His attorney, John Convery, called the allegations made by the FBI agent a “character assassination.”

FBI agent Jarrett Doss testified that Drug Enforcement Administration agents investigating the Zetas in Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico, twin border cities downstream from Del Rio, began tapping Heredia's phone calls in 2009.

Because he's an elected official, the DEA handed the case over to the FBI, Doss said.

In 2011, Heredia sold his Ford pickup to an associate of the Zetas and had two associates smuggle the $13,000 paid to him back into the U.S., according to the indictment.

After the sale, agents were listening to Heredia's phone calls.

“Mr. Heredia said, ‘I'm selling my truck to ‘40,'' presumably the Zetas leader,” Doss said.

The agent testified that “40” is the call sign of Miguel Treviño Morales, a top-ranking member of the Zetas who is presumed to have taken over the cartel following the death of its leader earlier this month.

The U.S. Treasury Department forbids conducting business with the Zetas as an organization and Treviño Morales as an individual, Doss said.

The charges against Heredia don't warrant holding him without bond, Convery said.

The lawyer showed up at court with a stack of letters from Eagle Pass luminaries outlining why the longtime county commissioner should be released pending his trial.

The charges also shouldn't affect his role as an elected official, Maverick County Judge David Saucedo said.

“From what I can see, it's got nothing to do with his role as a county commissioner,” Saucedo said. “It's apparently a claim of money laundering from the sale of a private vehicle. I have spoken with the Texas Association of Counties. He's innocent until proven guilty, so we'll just have to wait until the case goes through the legal system.”

But Doss went on to outline allegations that went far beyond the charges against Heredia.

“Sources of information indicated that as part of Mr. Heredia's position as commissioner for Precinct 2, he's operating a bid-rigging and bribe kickback scheme,” the agent said.

And, with the courtroom full of Heredia's family and supporters, Doss alleged that the commissioner had committed sex crimes as well.

“There are various accounts of Mr. Heredia traveling to Mexico for sexual purposes, to have sex with underage people,” Doss said.

The agent testified that in wiretaps, agents heard Heredia make other references to the Zetas, and that his associates dealt with the organization as well.

On one occasion, Doss testified, one of Heredia's co-defendants was overheard speaking on the phone with a trafficker who boasted he had made someone “disappear into the mines.”

Prosecutors argued that because of his frequent travels to Mexico, Heredia constituted a flight risk, and because of his association with the Zetas, Heredia could be a threat to witnesses.

The commissioner's brother, Eagle Pass lawyer Claudio Heredia, said his sibling is a grandfather, a respected member of the community and isn't a flight risk nor a threat.

“Rudy is a gentle person. He's very kind to people. I've been approached by a lot of people after his arrest who say they're praying for him,” Claudio Herrera said. “He's respected. He's very well-liked. Of all my brothers, he's the least violent. He wouldn't hurt a soul.”

In his argument, Convery called Doss's testimony “a character assassination that has nothing to do with the charged offense.”

“There's a lot of mud-slinging in this very small case,” he said.

The judge didn't agree. Citing the allegations of Heredia's close association with the Zetas, Magistrate Judge Collis White ruled that Heredia, and co-defendant David Gelacio, 28, be held without bond.

A third defendant, Jose Luis Aguilar, 62, is scheduled to have a detention hearing Friday. All three face up to 20 years in prison.
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Destroying Drug Cartels, the Mathematical Way

October 27, 2012, 1:27 pm
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Borderland Beat

By Sara Reardon
New Scientist

"Killing drug lords gets headlines, but complexity analysis suggests they are the wrong people to target to bring down a cartel."

One more gangland death

WHEN the Mexican navy announced on 9 October that Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the country's most violent criminal cartel, Los Zetas, had been killed it was hailed as a major victory in the war on drugs. But it's doubtful that Lazcano's death will be the end of Los Zetas - or reduce violence in Mexico. After all, there is already a new leader.

More useful targets might be those apparently minor players with key connections, according to a complexity analysis approach that could help Colombia - the world's largest producer of cocaine - investigate and prosecute cartel members.

Complexity analysis depicts drugs cartels as a complex network with each member as a node and their interactions as lines between them. Algorithms compute the strength and importance of the connections. At first glance, taking out a central "hub" seems like a good idea.

When Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, for example, the Medellin cartel he was in charge of fell apart. But like a hydra, chopping off the head only caused the cartel to splinter into smaller networks. By 1996, 300 "baby cartels" had sprung up in Colombia, says Michael Lawrence of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation in Canada, and they are still powerful today.

Mexican officials are currently copying the top-down approach, says Lawrence, but he doubts it will work. "Network theory tells us how tenuous the current policy is," he says.

Now Colombian prosecutors have a new tool to add to their investigation methods: network analysis. This can be an integral part of the modern war on drugs, says Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran, director of the Vortex Foundation based in Bogotá.

Vortex uses network-analysis algorithms to construct diagrams for court cases that show the interactions between cartel members, governors and law enforcers. These reveal links that are not otherwise visible, what Salcedo-Albaran calls "betweeners" - people who are not well-connected, but serve as a bridge linking two groups.

In Mexico and Colombia, these are often police or governors who are paid by the cartels.

"The betweener is the guy who connects the illegal with the legal," says Salcedo-Albaran. Because many cartels depend on their close ties with the law to operate successfully, removing the betweeners could devastate their operations.

It's a reasonable strategy, says Michael Kenney of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, although it shouldn't be the only one governments use. The ideal strategy depends on government goals. If it is the end of the drug trade they are after, removing the leaders may work.

But if the goal is to reduce violence, as incoming Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has vowed to do, targeting kingpins like Lazcano will have the opposite effect, says Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Smaller organisations that emerge from a broken cartel tend to assert their power by torturing and killing people.

Fighting all these factions would require even more firepower. Sean Gourley, of the data analysis organisation Quid in San Francisco, used public data from nine recent insurgencies, including Colombia's drug war, to determine mathematically how these battles play out (Nature, doi.org/bv2tf5). "Unfortunately, if you put more forces on the ground, you elongate the violence," he says.

Data collected by the Transborder Institute in San Diego, California, supports this. Prior to the crackdowns that began in 2006, drug-related crimes in Mexico killed about 3700 people per year. In 2011, that number was more than 16,000.

"People keep saying that the violence [in Mexico] will get worse before it gets better, and the cartels are at the end of their lives, but those predictions have been going on for years," says Lawrence. At some point, he suggests, a more mathematical approach will win out.

Lost your cartel? Just Google it
Mexican cartels aren't subtle about their whereabouts. To intimidate their rivals and the government, they advertise their latest crimes through the media and threaten each other on blogs and websites.

But this practice has been revealing their inner workings to Viridiana Rios and Michele Coscia of Harvard University. In a paper that will be presented at the CIKM conference in Hawaii this month, the two created a program called MOGO that searches Google News for references to the different cartels, their locations and their influence between 1999 and 2011.

They used MOGO to construct a map showing where all the cartels were working at each point in time. Their map turned out to be quite accurate, correlating closely with those developed by the global intelligence firm Stratfor.

The cartels' movements reveal a lot about their business strategies, says Rios. Some, such as Los Zetas, are very aggressive, expanding quickly into new territories and competing with rivals. Older organisations such as Sinaloa prefer to strengthen their own territories rather than seek new ones. Understanding the cartels' logic might make it easier to predict their movements, Rios says.
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Life, times and tragedies of the Trevino clan

October 27, 2012, 10:03 pm
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Anabel Hernandez for Proceso 10-27-2012

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

Once the governments of Mexico and United States declared Heriberto Lazcano dead, the Zeta leadership passed to Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, "El Z-40", "La Mona", or "El Muerto". He is part of an extensive Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas,  family, made up of 13 brothers, of whom at least six have been involved in drug trafficking in the last 15 years. In intelligence files from both countries and court files from the United States, Proceso found  revealing facts on the life, criminal activities and the tragedy that surrounds the Trevino clan.

MEXICO, D.F. (proceso.com.mx) -- El Z-40 was born June 28, 1973, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, a Zeta bastion for more than a decade. His parents are Rodolfo Trevino, who was already 49 years old when Miguel Angel was born, and Maria Arcelia Morales, then 34. 

The Trevino Morales couple procreated an extensive family: Juan Francisco, aka Kiko Ozuna (1955), Arcelia, Chelo (1957), Irma (1959), Alicia (1961), Rodolfo (1963), Maria Guadalupe (1964), Jose (1966), Ana Isabel (1968), Jesus (1970), Miguel Angel (1973), Oscar Omar, "Alejandro" or "El 42" (1976), Cristina (1978) and Adolfo (1980).

According to information from government intelligence agencies, Mexican as well as U.S.,  Maria Arcelia Morales was alive up to 2007; today she would be 74 years old.  She lived in Nuevo Laredo, had a passport to visit some of her children and grandchildren who live in the United States and had a Lincoln Navigator wagon registered in her name.

The Trevino criminal history began 19 years ago, with Juan Francisco, aka "Kiko Ozuna", the oldest son of the Trevino Morales couple.  On December 29, 1993, in a random inspection by the U.S. customs service, Juan Francisco's vehicle was stopped and he twice denied he was carrying more than $10,000 in cash. When they searched the car, they found $47,984.00, which was confiscated.

That year, the DEA and the Border Patrol had begun an investigation into the trafficking of tons of marihuana from Nuevo Laredo into Texas, but they only had a few pieces of the puzzle. According to criminal case file No. 3:95-CR--189-R, in the Northern District Court in Texas, of which there is a copy, in October 1994, the United States government charged Juan Francisco Trevino, another Trevino by the name of Armando -- it's not known if they are related--, Abraham Padilla (Benny), Abel Lopez, Fernando Quiroz (Vanna), Hipolito Ortiz (Polo), Oscar de Leon (Pelon), and Edel Isaac with criminal enterprise for possession of more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lbs) with the intent to distribute. At that time, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales was only 21 years old.

On October 18, 1994, Juan Francisco Trevino, Armando Trevino and Pedro Sanchez appeared before a magistrate and, based on the law then in effect, asked for a speedy trial which should have been held within 70 days after they voluntarily appeared in court.

On May 26, 1995, Juan Francisco filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him for violating his right to a speedy trial. On June 15, 1995, a court of original jurisdiction held a hearing and dismissed the charges that had been filed in October, 1994.

Kiko Ozuna believed he would be freed from prison immediately. He didn't know that some days prior, on June 7, the prosecution had filed new charges against him for another conspiracy to distribute more than a ton of marihuana in the United States. While he was waiting for a speedy trial, the DEA obtained sufficient evidence to convict him. As in the majority of these cases, the agency accomplished this through accomplices that went into the informants and protected witness program. Those statements completely sunk Juan Francisco.

Everardo Ramirez, introduced as a government witness by the prosecution, testified in court that an individual with the surnames Tovar Ozuna introduced him to Juan Francisco Trevino, who offered him employment. The work consisted of transporting marihuana from Nuevo Laredo to Dallas. Ramirez's first duty was to store the weed in his house for several days then take it to the house of Pablo de Luna.

"The following month, at the request of Tovar Ozuna, Ramirez agreed to store and deliver marihuana that was to be transported to Dallas. Tovar's job was to bring the marihuana across the (Rio Grande) river for Juan Trevino and (take it) to Ramirez. For his part, Ramirez would take it to Pablo de Luna's house, where it was stored and then transported using a business on the border," states the court file.

Ramirez testified that he had participated in trafficking marihuana from Nuevo Laredo to Dallas about three times a month for a year and a half. He added that the largest load he stored was 600 lbs (272 kilograms) and that on U.S. territory they transported the drug on Suburban station wagons, using private roads on a large ranch to avoid police checkpoints. Frank Staggs, owner of the ranch, testified that the ranch caretaker was Armando Trevino.

Everardo Ramirez also testified that he would go to a hotel in Dallas to meet with Jose Trevino Morales, the brother of Juan Francisco, who was in charge of paying him for his services. It took the United States government years to detect and stop Jose's criminal activities, who, 17 years later, turned out to be the head of the Zeta money laundering network in the United States through the quarter horse racing business.

Another key prosecution witness was Joe Chavez, who worked for Kiko Ozuna. In  December of 1993, he approached DEA Special Agent Armando Ramirez and offered to become an informant. "He had a feeling this thing (the criminal network) was going to collapse," the court file points out. On January 24, 1994, Joe tipped off the DEA special agent about a marihuana shipment that was going to be delivered to Dallas on January 26. Agent Ramirez, working undercover, helped Joe Chavez load more than 463 kilograms (about 1,019 lbs) of marihuana on a Suburban (parked) next to a mobile home in Laredo.

When the load got to Dallas, (law enforcement) agents were waiting and they arrested Riky Trevino and Abel Lopez. "Chavez testified that the marihuana that was seized was destined for, or belonged to, Francisco Trevino Morales," states the court file. That was enough for the oldest of the Trevino brothers to lose all hope of getting out of prison.

On December 1, 1995, Kiko Ozuna was sentenced to 22 years in prison, which will be completed in 2017, when he is 62 years old.  He was sent to a prison close to Laredo, and, according to the terms of the sentence, when he is released he will be on supervised probation for five years "with normal conditions and with four additional conditions."

Juan Francisco Trevino Morales is still in prison. His younger brother, Miguel Angel, followed in his footsteps and surpassed him, becoming the leader of one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the continent, the Zetas, which last year the Barack Obama administration classified as a "global menace" comparable to the Camorra in Italy, the Yakuza in Japan and the Circle of the Brothers in Russia.         
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Kingpin Strategy

October 28, 2012, 7:30 am
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Borderland Beat


Earlier this month, the Mexican navy announced the death of Heriberto Lazcano, the leader of Mexico’s violent Zetas drug cartel, during a firefight with the marines. The slaying was hailed as a significant victory for the government of President Felipe Calderón, which has made the elimination of top cartel leaders a priority in its fight against organized crime. But will a strategy to target drug kingpins pay off in the long-term? Baker Institute fellows weigh the pros and cons of the approach in a five-day installment of the Baker Institute Viewpoints series. Today, Nathan Jones, and Gary J. Hale, the institute’s Alfred C. Glassell III Postdoctoral Fellow in Drug Policy, argues that alone, the strategy cannot “effectively manage organized crime networks in Latin America.”

The kingpin strategy is a 20-year-old targeting methodology developed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1992 to target the command-and-control elements of major drug trafficking organizations. The strategy initially targeted cocaine trafficking organizations operating out of Medellin and Cali, Colombia, with most of the focus placed on the Cali cartel. As the strategy evolved and resulted in important gains, it was adopted as a model by Colombia and Mexico, with some variations. Components of the kingpin strategy model are still in use today, though it has been further refined and currently operates under the larger U.S. Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime as a means by which to disrupt and dismantle any groups that would bring harm to U.S. national security.

The original kingpin strategy was developed after reviewing the drug trafficking business cycle, which included certain successive critical nodes of activity, namely production, transportation, distribution and recapitalization of the enterprise —  a process similar to any other commercial enterprise, such as a manufacturer of toys or furniture. In the case of drug trafficking organizations, the DEA reasoned that it was futile to attack the cartel’s business activities per se, and that the common thread among all of the critical nodes was the command-and-control elements that provided the leadership, authority, management and direction for those activities. It was decided that better success could be achieved by focusing on the people committing the crimes, and not the crimes themselves, especially given that many transnational criminal organizations are involved in multiple criminal activities around the world.

In the 1990s, the Medellín and Cali cartels dominated the cocaine business from the “source to the street” but by the end of the decade, both cartels were eliminated by the Colombian government. Several proof of concepts emerged from the binational campaign waged against those cartels. The best practices passed on by the United States to the Colombians, in the form of the kingpin strategy, were essential to the dissolution of the cartels. The Colombian application of the strategy focused on the destruction of the cartels — not for the purpose of stopping drug exports but rather, for the purpose of self-preservation, since the cartels were intent on destroying the government.

The Colombian government chose to employ their own version of the kingpin strategy to destroy the cartels — a strategy that hinged on locating, capturing and incapacitating the kingpins and key lieutenants, while vigorously attacking the vulnerabilities of their organizations, including disrupting their cash flow and sources of supply.

In the case of Mexico, President Felipe Calderón similarly describes his kingpin strategy as government efforts to arrest of key drug cartel leadership figures. The most common criticism Mexico’s kingpin strategy argues against the removal of command-and-control elements to debilitate an organization. Critics assert that arresting or killing cartel chieftains leaves a leadership void, fracturing the cartels and causing violence to increase in the areas of Mexico where the arrests took place. However, Calderón argues that removing kingpins does not increase the violence in states that are already among the most dangerous in Mexico.

The kingpin strategy has been proven effective in Mexico, when considered in the context of the Zetas’ evolution. When originally created, the Mexican Zetas began as the internal enforcement arm of the larger Gulf cartel. After splitting from the Gulf cartel in 2010, its leader, Heriberto Lazcano, greatly expanded the scope of Zeta criminal activities. Targeting the Zetas’ involvement in any one of of its expanded range of crimes — including drug trafficking, kidnapping, murder, extortion, liquor sales, prostitution, pirated DVD and CD sales, petroleum theft, corruption of politicians as well as “traditional organized criminal” activities — would have been much more difficult than targeting key leadership figures like Lazcano under the kingpin strategy.

By targeting criminals, not crimes, kingpin strategies and similar models have merit and have proved to be successful if applied properly against command, communications and control elements of the business cycle of transnational criminal organizations. When coupled with rule-of-law reforms and other law enforcement and intelligence institution building efforts, governments have a better chance of successfully confronting the criminality that affects national and regional security issues.

Kingpin strategies have become one of the most hotly debated tactics in the “war on drugs” and the “global war on terrorism.” Kingpin decapitations, or strikes as they are often called, disrupt illicit networks — but create instability and therefore unintended consequences such as increased homicide and kidnap rates. Additionally, illicit networks adapt to the strategy and restructure themselves accordingly. While kingpin strategies can fragment cartels, the root causes of drug prohibition and weak state capacity must be addressed in tandem to effectively manage organized crime networks in Latin America.

The notion of targeting insurgent or cartel leadership figures — also known as high value targets (HVTs) — has long been considered an efficient way to disrupt illicit networks. In warfare, it was historically considered “ungentlemanly” to target officers. Nonetheless, American revolutionaries targeted British officers to maximize the disruption, confusion and chaos in British units.

Targeting drug kingpins became a staple of Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Defense strategies to combat terrorist and narcotics networks in the 1990s. In Medellin, Colombia, the U.S. and Colombian governments targeted Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin cartel. 

Colombian authorities did not target him for his trafficking but rather for the threat he posed to the state by engaging in car bombings, assassinations and the corruption of judges. As detailed in Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo, getting Escobar was difficult until the intelligence given to the Colombians by the Americans was in turn fed to a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which we now know was supported by the Cali cartel. Los Pepes began targeted assassinations of Escobar’s lawyers and accountants until Escobar was on the run and Colombian law enforcement authorities could kill him.

Networks adapt to these targeting strategies by increasing compartmentation. The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in Algeria compartmentalized cells to a degree never before seen in the face of French capture and torture, as shown in the film The Battle of Algiers.

Networks that are no longer hierarchically organized (i.e., flat networks) challenge states by limiting the disruption that the arrest or death of one leader can accomplish. For example, Al Qaeda was disrupted by the death of Osama bin Laden, but the network continues, as the apparent Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya attests. Hierarchies can also be resilient in the face of decapitation strikes because they have immediate succession mechanisms — but those successors, if known, can be simultaneously targeted, allowing the entire command structure to be eliminated in one fell swoop.

Mexico’s drug war

Mexico refers to its conflict in the drug war as a battle against organized crime, rather than a struggle against drugs. Like drugs, organized crime is a problem that can only be managed — though a war against specific organized crime groups is ostensibly winnable as opposed to wars on societal problems like terrorism, drugs and poverty.

The kingpin strategy is a key component of Mexico’s war on organized crime. Indeed, Mexico’s government has published a most wanted list with 37 cartel capos, 23 of whom have been killed or arrested by government forces.  Additionally, rivals killed two, leaving only 12 of the original 37 remaining. The most recent kingpin killed was the head of Los Zetas, Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, killed in Progreso Coahuila approximately two weeks ago.

Unfortunately, where the Mexican government has decapitated these cartels, violence has increased. The argument has been that various factions of the networks fight among each other for dominance, resulting in higher homicide rates.  In an upcoming publication in the journal Trends in Organized Crime, I argue that in addition to increased homicide rates, one of the unintended consequences of kingpin decapitations is an increase in kidnap rates. This is the result of cells in networks that are cut off from drug-related profits; they then increase freelance activities by expanding into kidnapping and extortion. The El Teo faction of the Tijuana cartel in 2008 was a good example of this.

The  administration of President Felipe Calderón argue that these short-term spikes in violence are to be expected after decapitations, but will eventually result in a more peaceful equilibrium. This argument has lost resonance among the Mexican population, which punished his ruling party July’s presidential election. The assertion may be true over a long enough timeline and, indeed, appeared to be the case in Colombia where, following the decapitation of major cartels, the disbandment of paramilitaries and the weakening of left-wing insurgents resulted in security gains. It should be noted that 300-400 cartelitos now handle drug trafficking out of the country in an efficient yet lower level of violence (Colombia has had traditionally high homicide rates, so the significant relative improvement might not be obvious to an outside observer).

Addressing root causes

There are two root causes of drug violence in Mexico: (1) the global drug prohibition regime, and (2) weak state capacity. The global drug prohibition regime has allowed high profits for drug trafficking networks that allow them to corrupt and influence the state. On the other hand, the Mexican state has traditionally had little capacity to address the basic social needs of the society and has lacked the security apparatus to address potential threats like cartels.  During eras in which the government colluded with traffickers, this weakness, while present, was not apparent. 

As the Mexican government transitioned to an equilibrium of many trafficking networks and many weak law enforcement agencies, it has had scant ability to control traffickers.  The quality and size of those agencies must be dramatically improved in addition to improved social services and the expanded delivery of those services. Kingpin strategies have helped to improve state security capacity by forcing the Mexican government to invest in intelligence capacity.

Kingpin strategies will weaken illicit networks, but will also fragment them into smaller diversified criminal groups that necessitate improved state and local governance as they become hyper-violent local problems. The Mexican government is slowly but surely beginning to build improved state capacity. The final piece of the puzzle that will assist the Mexican government in achieving a more rapid and peaceful equilibrium as it weakens cartels and improves its own capacity is to address the fundamental political-economic source of profitable drug networks, the global drug prohibition regime.

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The Unnamed of Calderon Leave Their Mark

October 29, 2012, 10:42 am
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Mexico • 24,102 people: the equivalent of half a football stadium or a medium-sized town is the approximate number of bodies that have gone to the grave at the end of the current administration. And most importantly, it is a highly conservative estimate. It does includes full records of Mexico's most violent states, such as Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas.

Throughout the six years of Calderon's Presidency, thousands of bodies have been buried in obscurity. Several more bodies are added every week: They are migrants, innocents, homeless, homeless families, criminals, and victims of homicide. There are bones and bodily remains apparently unclaimed without owners, which are often buried and stacked in cemeteries across the country from the U.S. border to the Yucatan Peninsula. These faceless corpses are listed in official records only as NN.  No Name.
Extensive research from Milenio, based on over 470 records requests filed with state forensic medical services, municipal governments and even with the administration of small local cemeteries, brings a rough sketch that outlines a national atlas of unidentified bodies.

Among the data emerging from the research are two parallel events: 1) some attorneys general do not want to reveal the numbers of unidentified dead under their power. And 2) the number of bodies sent to grave has climbed every year since the beginning of Calderon's term, on par with the number of executed criminals and victims killed in violence overall. On average, 10 bodies unclaimed name or have been buried daily.

So far, with the figures for 2012 still unfinished and updated only through August 2011, and September, 2011 starts a period in which the remains of more people were placed in public areas, without the benefit of a tombstone which completely ending the identification process: 4, 927 corpses never were claimed in that year, during which, coincidentally, it was the year with the highest number of executions linked to organized crime in all of Felipe Calderón's administration.
The picture painted by the obtained documents clearly shows that in some cities, like Juarez and Monterrey, and Celaya, many corpses were in state of abandonment that were left to he abilities of the cemetery to process.. Consequently, new ditches in cemeteries have had to be excavated. It is a scenario that is repeated across the Republic, with mass graves or cemeteries running out of space, they have begun to recycle their spaces, removing and discarding the remains of seven years old.

Some cities and states saw the number of unidentified -NNs  (no-names) rapidly multiply. In Nayarit, the figures tripled in three years. In Baja California, they grew by 100 percent. In Torreón, they multiplied 10 times. In the port of Veracruz, there were over a thousand unidentified bodies in 2011. Durango, they went from having eight bodies buried without a name in 2006 jumpedto 438 in 2011 (see graphic above).
Not only that. The lack of control in the management of unidentified remains in many government entities, but also this  is found in many private entities as well, as evidenced by several of the responses in this process. The report which took more than three months in development and for which it was necessary to create a database from accumulated data with thousands of figures. But these are the ones that have been recovered: the missing may never be computed. Fifty municipalities have lost their files prior to 2008 and 2009 and many have lost records from the location of bodies which makes later further study, investigation and identification unlikely. 

Some states, such as Michoacan, never recognized integrating a state-based data on unidentified bodies and have only just begun that process, although the violence has left thousands killed in that state. The Michoacan Attorney General can not answer how many bodies  the medical examiner received in the administration. "No statistic has the" justified reliance.

"The information on unidentified bodies held by government which have entered the medical examiner is not located together in one place or  well documented in a single organized relationship over the entire state." But the PGJE-Michoacán said they are already working to correct this deficiency.

Requests for transparency, which will be available for public consultation www.milenio.com not only gives an idea of the general situation of unidentified bodies, but shows different levels of progress in terms of transparency in the country and states. 

To obtain the data, it was necessary to use emails and state portals (Infomex, Saimex, Guanajuato Unit), without neglecting numerous phone calls and liaison to Social Communication to correct "mistakes" such as file loss, illegible documents and pages offline for weeks. 

A total of 479 petitions submitted under pseudonyms, some were answered but some 191-230 all went unanswered. That is, they were completely ignored by the authorities. Another 40 applications were rejected, declared missing or classified as confidential state security. 

Many states and municipalities provided the information without delay, as the Federal District, Sonora, Chihuahua and Guanajuato, among others. Their municipalities administrations relations' prepared detailed statistics, held their forensic medical services and burial administrations open. In general, information was available in 25 of the 31 states and over 210 cities and towns. 
It is these responses that arise the well disguised facts detailing how Mexico processes the nameless dead. For example, the bodies in Jalisco after taking a DNA sample are burned. The remaining ashes and a small jar with genetic material remain in niches, waiting for a possible identification. On the other hand, Monterrey is very precise: keeps track of pathological parts, ie limbs, organs retrieved from hospitals or in public. Some cities in Sonora to open their old graves  of people who no longer have family and Pachuca records fetuses - aborted, or abandoned - among all the bodies sent to their graves.

But there is the other side. There are states that did their best not to reveal the number of unidentified bodies processed in forensic services. Despite repeated calls, it was impossible to locate any transparency in the Office of Tamaulipas and that agency spokesman, Ruben Dario, said flatly that "there is no such data anyway because there was a transition of government and we do not know what happened before.  He went further: Tamaulipas  does not collect corpses because "that is the job of the Attorney General."

Some states shaved their numbers or have calculation mistakes. The Attorney General of Sinaloa reported only a few bodies were  sent in to their company of calculation.   only 54 dead bodies from the mass graves in 2011,  and 227 in the entire administration. But a simple review of the medical service page, where scanned images are stored for unclaimed bodies, puts skepticism and doubts on those numbers. Its database of unidentified, unclaimed deceased located a total of 332 people during the administration.  91 bodies in 2011 alone, double the figure reported via transparency-were left in the hands the coroner.

In other states requesting the information, it turned out to be a tangled process and impossible to fulfill. In states like Oaxaca it is asked to bring a printed card facilities its attorney. In Campeche and Chiapas no transparency or even reliable systems: its pages are several months out of service and don't support questions. Baja California Sur has not bothered to open a service at all yet.

The State of Mexico deserves mention. Data from corpses in mass graves were obtained by their municipalities and their central government, which put various obstacles to prevent the information was disclosed. While most municipalities mexiquenses data revealed their bodies were sent to the pit, the Attorney General made "mistakes"  attaching files to the responses on its website.  the unit promised responsible for its transparency, "It will be resolved quickly," but a month has passed.

Beyond the technical problems, there are the negatives. That was the case of the Attorney General from the Offices of Veracruz and Aguascalientes as well as the prosecution office in Yucatán. The first two entities classified data as confidential, all information relating to the number of bodies received and processed by their respective forensic services (although municipalities delivered their data promptly without any problem). The Yucatan, for instance declared itself incompetent to answer any questions because, they said, that is not within its powers to have the bodies.


With respect to Veracruz, the argument went thus far: they literally said that the permanence of government, its institutions and to the territorial integrity of the state "would be at risk" to be known such data, in addition it would "invade privacy" of the unknown corpses.

Milenio appealed to the Veracruz Institute of Access Information (LAVI) to review that decision convinced that there is no invasion of privacy of a body without identity. Also cited was one of the criteria of the Federal Institute of Access to Information statistics stating that, whatever their nature, is public.

In the end, the LAVI ruled in favor of this newspaper to consider their arguments and held that the argument of the Attorney Veracruz "lacked legal validity." So far, the PGJE has not complied with the mandate to disclose its files of unidentified bodies.
Despite that, some thirty Veracruz municipalities themselves provided the information requested. And it was this that allowed the construction of a map, incomplete but functional, on the situation of unidentified bodies and unclaimed in Veracruz. From this data it was revealed that the state has resorted to more graves. In total, six years so far and still waiting for the state figures that  the attorney could generate, municipal administrations have documented burial of 5,245 people. The highest figure in the entire country.

24,102 people is the most concrete figure has been added under this methodology. And yet, it is a conservative figure. Beyond Monterrey, failed to ask the municipal level in violent entities such as Nuevo Leon-Guerrero much less, and the requests that were made to the municipalities of Sinaloa Infomex system disappeared  by a "computer error" that two months later, has not been corrected by the State Commission on Access to Public Information. There were lost data from Culiacán, Badiraguato, Mazatlan and Los Mochis that, most likely, it would have increased the number of NNs (no names).

Milenio

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The Knights Templar Ranch is Raided

October 30, 2012, 9:24 am
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In Michoacan, army troops seized a ranch allegedly owned by Enrique Plancarte Solis, "La Chiva"/ Kike Plancarte or just "Kiki," noted as one of the main leaders of the criminal organization The Knights Templar.

The Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) said yesterday in a statement that the confiscation took place last Saturday after a gun battle with an  number of people in which one of the suspects died.

The Mexican army seized weapons, drugs, and money on a ranch in the western state of Michoacan apparently owned by Enrique Plancarte Solís, one of the alleged leaders of the criminal organization the Knights Templar.

The rest of the "Knights" managed to escape from the ranch, located in the town of Los Cuiniques, in the town of Apatzingán.  The ranch "was used by organized crime for various illegal purposes."

In the building, military personnel found 15 handguns, 19 rifles, 1 Barret rifle, more than a hundred grenades, three rockets, 1 anti-tank rocket launchers, 339 magazines of different calibers, over 22,000 cartridges and five swords.

Also confiscated 1.1 million pesos (equivalent to about $85,000), $3123.10 in American dollars, two vehicles, and small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and crystal. 

According to the Ministry of Defense, this operation "managed to affect the Knights  of Templar's criminal organization through limiting their operational and logistical structures and their areas of influence."

The Knights Templar is a pseudorreligious organization that emerged din 2011 after the death of the leader of the Familia Michoacana, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, alias "El Chayo", in a clash with security forces in 2010.

Soon the group, led by Servando Gómez Martínez, alias "La Tuta"; Enrique Plancarte, "La Chiva," Dionisio Loya Plantare, "el Tio," managed to gain control of the drug trade in Michoacán and extended their  area of influence to neighboring regions.

Monday in Mexico 14 People Died  Alleged

MEXICO CITY (approved). - A total of 14 people, among them five women and a child, were killed Monday in separate cases in five states of the country, allegedly the incidents are related to organized crime.

In broad daylight, in a Guachochi supermarket , Chihuahua, gunmen executed a 30 year old woman identified as Elizabeth Castillo Carrillo, in front of a friend and her three year old son. She received seven bullets in her face, hands and chest outside a supermarket.

Castillo was shot when her  friend and her son were settling in the vehicle,  as she walked in the back of the car preparing to get inside. Still alive, paramedics took her to a hospital but died minutes later.

In Nuevo Leon, on Monday afternoon, two women and a 13 year old boy were killed while buying beer in the neighborhood Nuevo San Rafael, in Guadalupe.

Gunmen arrived on a premises on  Circunvalación and Privada Zuazua Streets, opened fire on their victims who were inside. Unofficially, it was reported that the three dead were relatives.

In Jalisco, seven people were shot dead in the last yesterday in different incidents allegedly related to organized crime

Tonala Police reported that Monday afternoon there was a shooting in streets of the town of San Miguel de la Punta, south of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. 

According to police, gunmen stormed a house in the neighborhood Lomas de San Miguel. Three men died and the injured woman was rescued by local medical services while in one of the bedrooms.

Of the victims,  two of the men and women were apparently in the house, One of those who died was outside and assumed one of the alleged gunmen.

In another development, near José María Morelos, in the town of Tomatlan, on the north coast of Jalisco, the bodies of two men, ages 26 and 40 were found with multiple gunshot wounds. Both had been deprived of their freedom last Saturday night.

In addition, Monday morning, in an area at kilometer 23 of the road free  highway from Lagos de Moreno to Leon  the bodies of two  men about 25 years old were found. They show signs of being beaten and given the "coup de grace".

In Morelos, two women were killed in violent incidents in different municipalities Tlaquiltenango  and Yecapixtla, informed the Attorney General of Morelos.

One victim was found on a dirt road near the highway Cartonera to Yecapixtla, near Centennial Ranch. The body was lying on the ground and had various injuries.

The second was found in a building in the town of Tlaquiltenango on Isabel la Católica  in the neighborhood of Gabriel Tepepan. The woman's body was lying in one of the bedrooms of the house, with an impact from a gun.

El Proceso

Hoy Los Angeles

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Search

National Guard Implement Changes with DTOs

October 31, 2012, 7:31 am
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Borderland Beat

To fight the drug cartels in Mexico, the National Guard and the Naval Special Operations Command are integrating a Global Information Network (GINA,  acronym in English). From communications,  they can locate criminal groups and other transnational criminal organizations, said David Baldwin,  the Deputy General of the National Guard of California, yesterday
Deputy General David Baldwin
Network diagrams show drug cartel  communications, which appear as images in three dimensions, detailing the time and space.  The United States is able to interpret and locate the place and the time the communicate took place, and sometimes where they will be later.
"That way we can have that information to destroy them," he explained. Meanwhile, he said, the National Guard is implementing a new operational strategy to confront the Mexican drug cartels already expanded their presence in California , where they use land,  sea routes and continue to sow in federal parks.
Pot encampment in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks - after raid
Because of the danger posed by these criminal organizations, members of the National Guard are operating with weapons in national parks where drug traffickers have even installed camps with armed surveillance, the General Baldwin added.

An illegal marijuana encampment, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area.
"Drug traffickers are using other routes to try to evade law enforcement and the military, why not just simply crossing in California, but also sailing to the coast and  near their established farms in the north woods, "explained General.

The actions taken by drug traffickers, he said, are being forcing us to change the way of attacking transnational drug trafficking organizations within the U.S. territory, which means new plans to react to that threat.

As a result of the expansion of drug trafficking routes into the sea, using big boats and then small boats to reach the coast, the National Guard also plans to use unmanned aircraft, for which awaits approval from the aviation authority of the United States.

Ultralight flights

Additionally, General Baldwin,  said the National Guard members are successfully using the "Sentinel" radar, in search of aerial surveillance evade U.S. space  especially useful to detect ultralight flights crossing the border to throw drugs into the United States. 


Since last April, the National Guard changed its strategy on the border with Mexico and increased air support instead of just adding to the number of elements on the border between the two countries. This strategy has increased surveillance capabilities in both air and ground, said the Department of Defense of the United States.

The National Guard members began the transition from  a  static rotation system ground support operations , to assets participating in mixed  aerial surveillance mixed to monitor  and detect threats on the border with Mexico, said Baldwin.

      DHS has been using radar detection for awhile now detecting ultralights

LaPoliciaca
National Parks



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Mi Sangre: Los Zetas Largest Supplier Arrested

October 31, 2012, 4:14 pm
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Borderland Beat
Jesús López Londoño, "Mi Sangre"
MEXICO CITY - After the capture of Colombian drug trafficker Jesús López Londoño, “Mi Sangre", the Mexican cartel, Los Zetas, are lacking their "the largest supplier of cocaine," said the director of the National Police  of Colombia, General José Roberto León.

López Londoño arrested on Tuesday the October 30, after a meeting with Los Zetas. He was wanted by Colombian authorities,  Interpol, and claimed by a Florida court for drug trafficking.

Carlos Mario, another alias with which the drug trafficker identified, left Colombia two years ago under pressure from security forces, and from then until his capture went through several countries in the region, until he was installed in the capital of Argentina, the General explained during a press conference.

Even, he said, there were two police operations before detaining "Mi Sangre," the first was in Argentina, where he managed to escape, and the second in Paraguay, a country in which a transaction was aborted because it coincided with the retirement of former President Fernando Lugo  last June.
"Two months ago he returned to Buenos Aires and we found him," said Leon, who stated that "Mi Sangre" was arrested thanks to intelligence reports and with the help of the Argentine authorities and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA , for its acronym in English), when allegedly processing documents in the embassy of Ecuador.

He said the kingpin lived in Argentina's capital with his wife and two children,  pretending to be a "Venezuelan businessman" and went on to live in up to six homes.

The criminal record of López Londoño  goes back to the 90s, while serving as one of the leaders of "Los Urabeños" a paramilitary group  for which he was a "financier," said the Colombian General.
"Mi Sangre" he said, controlled the remainder of the so called Envigado Office, which is based near Medellin, and is dedicated to laundering drug money as well as extortion and recruiting of assassins. The Envigado Office was created by Pablo Escobar, chief of the disappeared Medellin Cartel, after his death it was handed to Don Berna, alias of the drug dealer and paramilitary, Diego Fernando Murillo.

Don Berna was extradited to the US June 2008 together with 12 ex-chiefs of Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary organization with its dissolution in 2006 originated other drug dealing gangs like "Los Urabenos,"
According to the police chief, a series of "alliances with drug dealers and terrible delinquents" allowed López Londoño to know the Colombian geography and the distinct networks of drug dealing.

Their search and location for him utilized  technology to trace all his movements as well as satellite technogy in coordination with Argentine authorities.

Proceso



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"I Killed Brian Terry"

October 31, 2012, 6:13 pm
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Borderland Beat
 
Top photo from night of shooting

Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, one of the murderers of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, pled guilty to first degree murder in federal court in Tucson in exchange for prosecutors promising not to seek the death penalty.
Osorio-Arellanes, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Lionel Portillo-Meza were charged with crimes including first degree murder, second degree murder, conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, attempted interference with commerce by robbery, use and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, assault on a federal officer and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.
Osorio-Arellanes, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Lionel Portillo-Meza killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with guns from the U.S. government’s failed gun running scandal, Fast and Furious, during a firefight with the Border Patrol agents.
Osorio-Arellanes and the others had illegally entered the United States from Mexico for the purpose of robbing drug traffickers of their contraband. In addition to the murder of Agent Terry, the five defendants assaulted Border Patrol Agents William Castano, Gabriel Fragoza and Timothy Keller, who were with Agent Terry during the firefight.
 
Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the deaths of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and an unknown number of Mexican citizens. It also created an ongoing public safety hazard on both sides of the border. The failures happened because of conscious decisions to encourage gun dealers to sell to known traffickers and avoid interdicting those weapons or even questioning suspects, all in the hope that would lead law enforcement to cartel connections and a larger case, according to the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Manuel Osorio-Arellanes has been in custody since his arrest the night of the shooting.
Source: Arizona Daily
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Arrested "El Che" presumed lieutenant of "El Chapo" in Chihuahua

October 31, 2012, 10:15 pm
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Borderland Beat

Chihuahua. - Staff of the Department of National Defense in the state of Chihuahua detained José Salgueiro Nevarez, alias "El Che," alleged lieutenant of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in that state.

Through a statement, the Department of Defense reported that staff of the Military Zone 42 attached to the Military Region XI, conducted an operation in the city of Hidalgo del Parral, where in addition to Salgueiro Nevarez  five more people were arrested.

The federal agency said that they are Víctor Javier Hernández Márquez, alias “el Negro” and/or “Dientes de Ajo”; David Ruíz Rubio; Efrén Salgueiro González, alias “el Maniaco”, Brian Salgueiro Zepeda and Erick Salgueiro Peña.

According to the Department of Defense, the alleged lieutenant maintained control of marijuana production in areas south of Chihuahua, the movement of drugs into the United States, drug dealing, extortion from shopkeepers and businessmen, mainly miners of Hildago del Parral .

Meanwhile, Salgueiro González, “El Maniaco”, led a cell of sicarios who presumably are responsible for the execution of nine people in a room rented for parties , on February 4 this year, in the city of Chihuahua.

The Department of Defense (Sedena) said that this capture,  affects the structure of leadership and operational capacity of "Pacific Cartel" (CDS), led by Guzman Loera in the state of Chihuahua, including affecting its operation at national and international level.

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Narco Gold Mine: Coahuila Coal

November 1, 2012, 8:13 am
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Borderland Beat

Through coal exploitation, drug trafficking has found a "gold mine" in Coahuila. In that state, the illegal mining business yields an income of at least 6 million pesos per week. 
Official sources informed Reforma that the illegal exploitation of mineral allows organized crime to have a substantial source of income and a way to launder money by contracts with legally constituted companies that saw an opportunity to get the lowest cost of coal and sell it to CFE through la Promotora Mining Development (Prodemi.) 

Decree of Promotora
They added that the PGR is investigating three companies: Impulsora JBN, Perforaciones Técnicas Industriales (Technical Drilling and Mining Industries), and, Minera La Misión (Mining the Mission) for their alleged involvement in these illegal businesses.

"These people, Los Zetas, produced around 10,000 tonnes a week and are selling coal at 600 pesos (per tonne), "they explained. "They sold cheap for those who had placed an order with Prodemi, to make it more appealing buying from them and make a higher profit while these people (Prodemi)  launder money."

The source they identified as principal operator, José Reynol Bermea, head of Los Zetas in Sabinas, but only in the "division" of mining and renting machinery, and who allegedly was arrested by the Navy. 
José Reynol Bermea
 w/PRI candidate Melchor Sánchez de la Fuente 
"He was in charge for Z-40 in the coal region to handle the business of coal production in Agujita and Cloete. The pits that were closed and the steep cliffs on side of the highway from Sabinas to Nueva Rosita are theirs, on the land owned by state government." the sources said. 
Lozano accepted the problem 

PAN Senator and former Secretary of Labor, Javier Lozano, accepted that members of organized crime have a presence and are linked with work carried out in the mining area of Coahuila.

The lawmaker confirmed the revelations made by former state governor Humberto Moreira, who said that drug traffickers are involved in the business of mining coal to launder money. 

Lozano admitted that the problem was detected by the federal government, but he did not know if there are inquiries or criminal investigations related to these cases. 

Asked to Investigate Narco Links into Mining

The PRD in the Senate lobbied a proposal for a Special Commission to investigate the alleged involvement of organized crime in the exploitation of coal mines in Coahuila and the  working conditions of miners in the so  called "pocitos" (pits)-. 

The commission will be presented at a point of agreement, the vice-coordinator of the bench, Dolores Padierna, also seeks to generate a diagnosis and suggest improvements to the mining law.

The alleged links with organized crime to Coahuila mining was designated on October 25 by former Governor Humberto Moreira. 

Considerations highlight that the state of Coahuila is the largest producer of coal in the country with a extractions reaching more than 11.2 million tons, but stresses that it is coupled with a critical situation in the workplace. 

The special report on the security situation in the coal zone of Coahuila made by the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), clearly shows that the number of complaints received has been increasing because of claims due to fatalities attributable to the lack of health and safety conditions.


According to the report, in the last five years there have been 124 deaths related to coal mining in Coahuila, 80 of which have occurred in the so called pits.. 

"The exploitation of the so called coal pits" is a critical situation because working conditions are inhuman. The  operating situation, do not meet the official Mexican standard 032, so it is deduced that they operate in conditions of illegality," the report cites.

The Senator alerts in a contradictory way, the existence of the pits is very profitable because the cost of maintenance is almost nil and notes that because of working conditions, owners abuse the population in need of employment, providing work in precarious and enslaving  conditions.
                        
"In light of the statements of Coahuila's former governor Humberto Moreira noting that besides the problems described, there's the link to organized crime, we are obligated by elementary solidarity and in defense of justice with miners, to know deeply the working environment in the mines and report abuses and create better legislation for the benefit of those affected" he says. 

The senator noted that this commission  will actually focus on the situation of the mines in general, but it would begin with issue of the "the pits" because of the serious problems they have. 

**And he also pointed out that participation of foreign capital in mining exploration is up to 70%,  companies that pay Mexico the equivalent of 1.18 percent of the resources obtained from the national territory.** 

And also the deputies
In the Chamber of Deputies is the bench of PRI which promotes creating a special commission of mining, although it  does not  mention the problem of narco involvement in this activity. 

"Everyone is familiar with the historical issues which workers  in this sector have encountered with the mining companies in the country, so as legislators, we must be vigilant, cooperate and assist the head Federal Executive in mediation of interests, ensuring industry and protecting Labor and  human rights of the workers, "the point of the agreement shall be presented by PRI Adolfo Bonilla Gomez.
Ex-Governor of Coahuila Humberto Moreira in mourning
The following was taken from López Dóriga October 26th  interview with Humberto Moreira 

Humberto Moreira: "Since some months ago, it is an loud secret in the coal region of the state, that drug dealers started to switch their mode of operation, instead of kidnapping, or extortion fees, they felt like extracting coal (.....) in coal region, there are people who have a production of 100,000 tons and sell to 200,000, who buys the other 100  1 petition of mind to investigate all the new, recent miners who have arrived here, who are like Senor Lazcano."

López Dóriga: And why is Moriera so sure this coal ended up in the hands of the businessmen in the zone?  According to the ex-governor the coal production obtained was sold to CFE through legitimately formed businesses.

Humberto Moreira:"No way the bad guys are going to sell it themselves to the CFE or Prodemi.  Who was buying this coal from Senor Lazcano? They are entrepenuers (....) that means that there had to be intermediaries in order to buy this coal that gives electrical energy to the country.  They found this modus vivendi (way of life).

Selective Memory? Does Humberto Moreira Forget His Links to Javier Villarreal?

The former treasurer of Coahuila Javier Villarreal Hernandez ,
The companies that Javier Villarreal awarded Coal Contracts have helped Los Zetas wash 6 million pesos a week

Mexico City (November 1, 2012). - The former treasurer of the state of Coahuila,  Javier Villarreal Hernandez, who was the former financial trader for Governor Humberto Moreira, gave discretionary contracts to two of the three companies investigated by the PGR for their alleged involvement in money laundering through underground coal mining, official sources revealed. Villarreal was the chief architect of the "moreirazo" which consisted of forging documents for contracting debt of about 5 billion pesos during  Moreira's term as Coahuila governor, to lead the service in 2010 Tax Administration of Coahuila (SATEC). Officials reported that, as head of SATEC, Villarreal had control of the Promotora Mining Development (Prodemi) and awarded contracts to companies Perforaciones Técnicas Industriales (Technical Drilling and Mining Industries) and Impulsora JBN. These companies have helped Los Zetas, who seized underground mines to extract coal illegally, washed 6 million pesos a week, as published yesterday.  They would do this by buying the ore far below the market price and then selling it to Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) through Prodemi, which serves as an intermediary for producers of small-scale coal take to CFE. "In 2009,  contracts were awarded to Prodemi companies, and  Perforaciones Técnicas Industriales (Technical Drilling and Mining Industries) Impulsora JBN did not appear," said an informant. "But in 2010 the contracts were changed again and they granted Perforaciones Técnicas Industriales (Technical Drilling and Mining Industries) a drilling contract for 75, 000 tons per year, and to JBN, one for 120,000 tons. "These are the contracts which Villarreal gave them without going through the committee assignments or anything." Prodemi sources said the companies bought them more than they had contracted. "The argument is that (the officers) were afraid, but they  were not. Javier Villarreal gave orders," they added.

Javier Villarreal was head of the Tax Administration Service of Coahuila.  He is accused of contracting credits for at least 5 billion pesos using false documents.  He is wanted by U.S. a on charges of money laundering.  He is at large and has not been heard from since early February, when he was released on bail in a county near Dallas, Texas, after being arrested in a Mercedes Benz carrying $67,000

Reforma, Reforma
Miner's News, Sopitas





**And he also pointed out that participation of foreign capital in mining exploration is up to 70%,  companies that pay Mexico the equivalent of 1.18 percent of the resources obtained from the national territory.** 


(I translated literally, but it makes no sense to me. The numbers don't work but that's what it says)

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Accused of Rape: Man Executed and Hanged on ACA Bridge With Narco Message

November 1, 2012, 10:34 am
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Borderland Beat




A man executed with a shot to the head, was hanged on a bridge on the Autopista del Sol, Cuernavaca-Acapulco at Km 346 +200, towards the port of Acapulco

Authorities were alerted by motorists circulating at an early hour on the Highway of the Sol.. Preventive police arrived to the scene  with the ministerial prosecutor to record the facts and seek the services of forensic medical personnel and experts to initiate appropriate investigations and remove  the body hanging from the bridge. The bridge connects to Sabaniña village, just outside the port of Acapulco.

Narcomensaje

The body had a card containing a message which read:
“This happened to me for raping young girls, and is also going to happen to YOU Victor Garcia, Jose Garcia and Javier Garcia"
The body of the deceased was identified as Lamberto Carmen Flores, by his CURP card which was found in his wallet.  (CURP is a federal ID similar to Social Security)

On different parts of his body were tattoos, mostly pertaining to Santa Muerte.  Also observed was a single  9 mm bullet hole in the front part of his head. A cap found near by, apparently slipped from his head, also displayed a bullet hole, that aligned with the head bullet hole. His hands were bound with rope behind his back.

The body was taken to the Forensic Medical Service facilities instead, where his family  claimed it, and  gave their statements to the prosecutor.
 
 
Source: Narco Mexico Drugs Gangs
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Lazca: No Body No Death

November 1, 2012, 12:58 pm
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By Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat



No Body No Death
There was no body, though the government announced the tyrant dead.  They backed their claim with a few photos and firsthand accounts of eye witnesses.  The nation’s president weighed in “Scientific evidence proves he is dead” continuing he said  “we photographed the corpse, he has been 100% identified, it is unequivocally him”.
Lazca?
President Filipe Calderon?
 
Nope, it is Osama Bin Laden, and President Barack Obama.
 
About his decision not to release the death photos Obama said this on 60 Minutes; "We've done DNA sampling and testing. So there's no doubt we killed Osama bin Laden,” "And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football."
Mitchell A leading forensic expert in the country told the Free Press that confirming Bin Laden's identity, which couldn't be done by DNA alone, was "very much a classic forensic case."
"A little bit of DNA, facial recognition, eyewitness testimony -- it all came together”, he said in response to the question is a body needed for identification.
Holland, the former DNA technical leader at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory said the DNA may have been the clincher but wasn’t enough on its own for a positive ID. 
First Photo says Obama: "Let me get this straight you can't find the body of Lazca?... hahaha"
 Second photo Calderon says "Maybe it is next to the body of Bin Laden..."
Why is DNA not enough? 

First and foremost there was no known DNA sampling of OBL.  Secondly. there was no way to obtain a sample of OBL's parents.
Holland elaborated by explaining there was no DNA for comparison from OBL parents, and that is the optimal testing for identification.  Siblings will not be a perfect match and some siblings can have few matching strains.  In a case where there is DNA but no body,   DNA testing between siblings will result in clarification of sibling relationship, and nothing more.  Holland says DNA plus photo recognition, fingerprints, and witness accounts is the most optimal identification when there is no body.
Greater credential’s one will not find than those of Holland.  It was he who identified the remains of the Vietnam Unknown Solider, Lieutenant  Michael Blassie, and the last Russian Czar Nicholas Romanov.
Another prestigious forensic expert is Dr. Cyril Wecht, who has been the president of both the American Academy of Forensic Science and the American College of Legal Medicine, and currently heads the board of trustees of the American Board of Legal Medicine, has gone on record stating, ”Working through siblings, you can only go so far ...” .  He stressed that scars or dental impressions would go towards identification if lacking all other elements.
Dr. Holland stressed the point that he does in fact believe that it is OBL killed and whose body was buried at sea.  He based that conclusion on the sibling DNA in conjunction with photo recognition testing and eye witness account.
What about El Lazca?
This week an article was published in the Saltillo newspaper Zocalo with the provocative Tittle “El Lazca, No Body, No Certainty”.  The article was picked up by narco blogs but not by mainstream media.  Zocalo is a Coahuila Newspaper, often rumored to be directed by cartels, namely the Zetas, and heavily in support the PRI party.
If the article was written 3 decades ago perhaps it would be substantive to a point.  Mexican newspapers are written for Mexicans, and Mexico is a developing nation where the majority of its people are not educated to the facts of forensics and declaration of death sans body. “Unnamed sources” is the lowest denominator of proof and reality.  With that being established,  Zocalo reported this:
At the same time, the PGR points out “ the genetic analyzes of the father of "El Lazca" were made by the experts of the institution; however, expert service workers of the Attorney Office assured to this newspaper that they do not carry out the study of DNA of the progenitor of Lazcano, nor are they holding the samples taken in Coahuila, they only have the result of the autopsy, the corpse’s photographs and fingerprints”.
"Until we see the body, no one in the world can prove scientifically that the fingerprints submitted, is evidence that the deceased was Lazcano. Nor can they actually prove that the samples were taken from the exhibited corpse. There is no way of checking, even if they have exhumed the remains of the drug dealer's father. If the government says otherwise, they are lying, said forensic experts who requested anonymity”.
Click on any photo for enlargement
The emphasis on “only” is editing as was the underlined text.  Point being, only an autopsy, fingerprints and photos, keep in mind the words of leading forensic scientists about OBL. The fact that PGR took custody of the sampling rather than leaving the evidence with Coahuila is a huge plus in credibility.
Zocalo continues with its novela:
“On Wednesday 17, in a news conference, Jose Cuitláhuac Salinas, head of the now renamed Deputy Attorney Specialized in Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO) reported that it was impossible to locate the brothers of the drug trafficker to extract DNA samples, so the PGR requested the exhumation of the remains of the parents of Lazcano Lazcano, buried in the cemetery of El Tezontle, Hidalgo”.
This part of the report is curious if not absurd:
What is the most likely thing that could’ve happened?
“If we don’t have the complete evidence we fall in speculation, thinking that Heriberto Lazcano might now be a protected witness”.
"Lazcano might have made an agreement to enter the witness protection program in the United States. What good does the evidence do if it is doubtful if they were planted or supplanted? Lazcano himself could have given all the elements: his fingerprints, his blood, his DNA. So the only reliable test that would have is the body and it does not appear, "said an expert in criminology and forensic science who asks to remain anonymous.
So there you go folks!  Mystery solved
They also question the exhumation, as well as suggesting a body double and concludes that an unnamed expert says the fingerprints were conducted in a “tricky way”
According to The Zocalo, State and federal agencies conspired with the government of the United States to stage Lazca’s death so that he will enjoy a life in the US and abroad in the witness protection program.  Many comments and questions come to mind, but let’s begin with this;
WHY?
The fact is that Lazca was in Sabinas (Progreso) for months, beginning last spring.  This BB reporter was advised last June not to include the Sabinas CAM school in the invitations to a prom in Acuña, as violence could break out at any time due to a premier narco leader now living there.  People knew he was there, his girlfriend’s family lives there, and a rumor, not confirmed but would explain a lot if true, says the Garcia funeral parlor was owned by the brother of Lazca’s Girlfriend.

"Bert" Moreira the former governor of Coahuila and brother of the current governor is not one I usually turn to for truth in reporting, however with that disclaimer intact I will say that he has stated in recent interviews that Lazca was living in Progreso and allowed to roam freely as in other citizen often without guards.
Why would state agencies and federal agencies conspire, especially since they don’t even like each much, if there existed this amazing conspiracy why have a state agency involved at all? Then we move to the extraordinarily ludicrous notion it was the United States and Mexico that conspired to fake his death.
If there is a conspiracy why not say there is DNA on file of Lazca?
Why not say they had a full set of fingerprints on file?
Why not say they had familial DNA on file?
In other words why not make it a whole lot tidier? There is no reason why the US would place a mass murderer on the streets of the US to work his horror on the citizens of the US.  No reason. 
There exists a far greater reason for the controversy.  Zetas want the questioning of Lazca's death.  They want to cause confusion especially within their rivals CDG and CDS.  This allows time to regroup.
So let’s take another look at what the experts surmise is the only method of identification:
Best method of identification in the event there is no corpse
1.    DNA match between child and parent
2.    Finger print match or palm
3.    Photographs
4.    Autopsy
5.    Facial photo recognition or reconstruction
6.    Eye witnesses verification
By these  accepted standards and protocols of leading forensics experts, by all the evidence set forth there is not a doubt that if there exists a Lazca DNA parental match that he is in fact dead.  
However using the same protocols is Osama Bin Laden  in fact alive and well, and possibly  in the United States of America in the Witness Protection Program? 
I better not give Zocalo any ideas.
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EI Lazca, 'I Took Care of the Nephew"

November 2, 2012, 2:05 pm
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Borderland Beat
Heriberto Lazcano, El Lazca ordered the death of Jose Eduardo Moreira Rodriguez
Mexico City • The leader of Los Zetas , Heriberto Lazcano, El Lazca , ordered the death of Jose Eduardo Moreira Rodriguez, son of Humberto Moreira, former governor of Coahuila, and not Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, el Z-40 as many previously assumed.

Officials close to the case revealed that (this info.) follows from the phone messages that the absolute leader of Los Zetas sent to his friend Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, La Ardilla, on October 3, when the crime was committed.

"La Ardilla" Caught

"La Ardilla" Presented

The transcripts of these discussions are held by the federal government, stated consulted officials.

In the material, it established that Heriberto Lazcano, El Lasca, reported the same day that Alexander Treviño Chavez, nephew of the Z-40, had been killed by state police, along with four members of the criminal organization.
El Lazca and La Ardilla
The news surprised La Ardilla, who assumed that the death occurred in their place, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, where Miguel Angel Trevino was second head of the cartel.
According to the transcripts, Lazcano said that the death had occurred in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, and made it clear "I have already taken care of the matter" ie, the murder of a relative of Governor Ruben Moreira.

It is also clear that Lazcano gave the order to avenge the death of Alejandro Treviño Chavez. The nephew of Treviño Morales who was living in Laredo, Texas, and his body was claimed by his widow of American nationality.

Revenge was executed three hours later and the victim, José Eduardo Moreira, was the Governor of Coahuila's nephew .

To commit the crime, officials narrated, El Lazca instructed that Miguel Angel Rodríguez Díaz, Alfa Metro, zeta boss in northern Coahuila to coordinate the operation.
After receiving the order, Miguel Angel asked for support from the military collusion with the group, particularly the operating deputy director of Acuña police , Rodolfo Castillo Montes.
El Lazca instructed that Miguel Angel Rodríguez Díaz, Alfa Metro, should coordinate the operation
Being aware of the request from Lazcano, the command contracted for the son of former national leader of the PRI, who cited in that municipality should trick him and  give him an "invitation". 
When José Eduardo came to the appointment, he was conquered by the police supervisor of Acuna, Victor Landeros Sifuentes, La Iguana , and Officer Jorge Tenorio Takajasi, El Taka .

After they handed him over to Carlos Arnulfo Flores Flores, El Flaco , head of Los Zetas in Acuña presented yesterday as the alleged perpetrator of the crime, who was accompanied by Ruben Sifuentes Cadena, El Shaggy .

The boy's body was found at 10 pm, three hours after being taken.

According to the messages, El Lazca complained that the group did not execute Rodolfo Castillo Montes, the only thing that could link them to the killing.

According to the consulted officials, the expert showed that Moreira's son was killed aboard the truck, while police said they found the body was in a dirt road.

It was found that it was not so and that they cleaned the vehicle by order from leaders of Los Zetas , officials said.
Carlos Arnulfo Flores Flores, aka El Flaco or El Fantasma
Another Version
The Army presented yesterday Carlos Arnulfo Flores Flores, El Flaco or El Fantasm , alleged head of Los Zetas plaza in Acuña and perpetrator of the murder of Jose Eduardo Moreira. The subject was arrested after a confrontation in Monclova, Coahuila.

However, officials assured that the crime was ordered by cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino, The Z-40, in retaliation for the death of his nephew.

Officials said that after the murder of Moreira, the members criminal cell left the city and took refuge in different parts of Coahuila.

The Department of Defense  (Sedena) confirmed that former Acuña deputy police supervisor RodolfoCastillo Montes, Victor Landeros Sifuentes, police supervisor were complicit for luring Jose Eduardo.

Then they handed him over to El Flaco, to El Shaggy and another man nicknamed El Pelon who took him away and killed him.

According to the Department of Defense (Sedena), El Z-40 ordered the execution of  the son of former Coahuila governor after the death of his nephew and the four Zetas who clashed with state security forces.

"By supporting the activities of  the authorities of Public Security  carried out by the Army and Air Force in Coahuila, it was learned that most of the members of Los Zetas cell in Acuña left the plaza and took refuge in various places, including the city of Monclova, where  Flores Flores was located. "

El Flaco was slightly injured and was made available to the SEIDO. In addition to El Flaco, César Zapata Riojas, El Nejo; José Gumaro Esquivel Flores, Gumaro, y Carlos Emanuel Espinoza Sifuentes, El Gordo, were arrested.

Chronological Timeline
Jose Eduardo Moreira was killed on 3 October. A command Acuña deceitfully lured him and handed him to Los  Zetas belonged to Carlos Arnulfo Flores.

Salvador Martinez Escobedo or Carlos Garcia, La Ardilla, alleged regional head of Los Zetas in Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, was arrested by Marines on October 6.

One day later, on Sunday October 7, the Marines shot down the absolute leader of the cartel, Heriberto Lazcano, El Lazca, in Progreso, Coahuila.
Lazcano's Last Stand

Milenio
Thanks to Tex Pat N Mex for the Photo


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Beltran Leyva Cartel Boss Arrested in Mexico City

November 2, 2012, 6:54 pm
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Borderland Beat

A suspected Beltran Leyva drug cartel boss who handled operations in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero was arrested by the Federal Police in Mexico City, the Public Safety Secretariat said Thursday.

Aldo Ramos de la Cruz, “suspected of being responsible for running logistics for the shipment and distribution of drugs from the state of Tamaulipas” to the United States, was detained on Wednesday, the secretariat said in a statement.

Ramos de la Cruz was in charge of the cartel’s business in Acapulco, a port city in Guerrero.

He is a close associate of Hector Beltran Leyva, known as “El H” and considered the top leader of the criminal organization, the secretariat said.

Ramos de la Cruz was arrested along with Leobardo Ortegon Vazquez, 26, a suspected informant who was in charge of the cartel boss’s personal security, the Public Safety Secretariat said.

The two men were arrested in the Granjas Coapa section of the Federal District, thanks to “intelligence reports,” the secretariat said.

The arrests of Jose Alberto Quiroz Perez on Sept. 5 and Carlos Arturo Torres Medina a month later led to Ramos de la Cruz, who is suspected of handling “the planting and harvest of marijuana and poppies in the mountains of Guerrero state,” the secretariat said.

An AK-47 assault rifle, ammunition, cell phones, marijuana and a BMW seized from the suspects were turned over to the federal Attorney General’s Office.

The criminal organization created by brothers Arturo, Mario Alberto, Carlos, Alfredo and Hector Beltran Leyva smuggles cocaine, marijuana and heroin, and has lucrative sidelines in people trafficking, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, contract killings and arms smuggling.

The Beltran Leyva cartel has been weakened by the killings and arrests of several of its leaders, as well as infighting.

The Beltran Leyva cartel arose as a splinter group of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Mexico’s oldest and most powerful drug trafficking organization, in 2008.

The criminal organization was led by Arturo Beltran Leyva, who died in a shootout with marines at a luxury condo in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos state, on Dec. 16, 2009.

Two weeks after Arturo was killed, Carlos Beltran Leyva was arrested in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, where he was going by the alias of Carlos Gamez.

Hector Beltran Leyva took over control of the cartel after Arturo’s death, but he had to battle a rival faction led by Edgar Valdez Villarreal for control of the organization.

Valdez Villarreal, known as “La Barbie,” was arrested by the Federal Police on Aug. 30, 2010.

Source: EFE
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Nearly 60,000 Drug War Deaths in Mexico Under Calderon

November 2, 2012, 6:59 pm
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According to Monterrey's Milenio daily, organized crime-related violence has claimed 57,449 lives in Mexico during the six-year presidency of Felipe Calderon, including 10,485 so far this year

Organized crime-related violence has claimed 57,449 lives in Mexico during the presidency of Felipe Calderon, whose six-year term ends on Dec. 1, according to a tally published Thursday by the Milenio daily.

Based on its own calculations, the Monterrey-based newspaper also put the number of drug war-related homicides thus far in 2012 at 10,485 and said 888 people were killed in October, the second-lowest monthly total this year.

Seven of Mexico’s 32 federal entities accounted for 72 percent of the homicides last month, according to Milenio. In October, the country’s most violent state was Guerrero with 145 murders, followed by Chihuahua with 139, Sinaloa with 94 and Nuevo Leon and Jalisco with 68 each.

The states that saw the biggest drop in homicides last month relative to September were Michoacan, Baja California and San Luis Potosi, in that order.

The last time the government updated the country’s drug war death toll was on Jan. 11, when it said 47,515 people had been killed in organized crime-related violence between Dec. 1, 2006, and Sept. 30, 2011.

In August, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which poet-turned-peace activist Javier Sicilia founded after his son was murdered by suspected drug-gang members, put the death toll from Mexico’s drug war at roughly 70,000.

Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, militarized the struggle against Mexico’s heavily armed, well-funded drug mobs shortly after taking office in December 2006, deploying tens of thousands of troops across the country.

The strategy has led to headline-grabbing killings or captures of 25 of the country’s 37 most-wanted criminal leaders – including Los Zetas cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano, killed in a shootout with marines on Oct. 7 – but the violence has continued unabated.

Calderon will be succeeded in a month by Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which will return to power after a 12-year hiatus.

Peña Nieto, who has vowed to bring down the violence during his six-year term, says he will keep the army on the streets in Mexico’s most insecure areas while bolstering the Federal Police’s capacity to fight crime.

The president-elect has said he will not seek accords or truces with drug gangs, as the PRI is widely suspected of doing in the past.

Calderon suggested in an interview with The New York Times in October 2011 that members of the PRI, which ruled Mexico uninterruptedly for 71 years, would be susceptible to making deals with organized crime the party regained power.

Source: EFE
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9 die in Reynosa shootouts

November 3, 2012, 9:00 pm
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Rantburg.com

A total of nine unidentified shooters  were killed and three armed suspects were detained in a series of shootouts between rival drug gangs and Mexican security forces early Saturday morning in the northern Mexican city of Reynosa, according to Mexican news accounts.

Foto: El Diario de Coahuila
According to a news item posted on the website of Excelsior news daily, the initial gunfight took place between drug gangs on the Reynosa-Monterrey highway at the southern entrance to the city at about 0600 hrs Saturday morning.  Four drug gang shooters were killed in that gunfight.

A subsequent confrontation took place in the Villa Florida colony with no one reported hurt.

Subsequently still, gunfights took place in the barrios Unidad Obrera, Granjas, Cumbres, Vista Hermosa, as well as Zona Centro of Reynosa.  A total of five shooters were reportedly killed in that series of gunfights.

Later, drug gang members blocked several major thoroughfares in the city, using hijacked heavy vehicles.

According to an account published on the website of El Universal news daily, among the streets affected by the roadblocking  campaign included Bulevar Hidalgo, the  highway to Monterrey and streets in Balcones and Villas del Roble colonies.

An undisclosed number of weapons and munitions were seized by Mexican security forces.

A video of the aftermath posted on Youtube.com by Excelsior:



Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
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Calderon’s Pursuit of Developed Nation Status and Why it is Denied

November 4, 2012, 10:57 am
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Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat
 Corruption, The Drugwar, Impunity and Inequality are Primary Factors
While addressing the US Chamber of Commerce last spring, Mexican President Felipe Calderon pitched the strength of the Mexican economy which he says experienced a growth rate of 1.5% CDP per year over the past two decades. It is his position that Mexico should leave the list of developing nations and join the ranks of developed countries.
The Good News
A recent study reveals a fast growing middle class, rate of birth is now within the numbers of developed nations dropping from 7.2 in the 60s to an average now of 2.3.  United States has an average of 2.3.  Another plus is that Mexico’s system of higher education (university) is expanding. Worth noting however is that this has been achieved in the private sector. Schools such as Tec Milenio, offers  a more affordable education and has expanded to 40 satellite campuses across the country.  Additionally, infrastructure is increasing at a commendable rate.
Nogocios, a business publication reports that 100k students graduate with engineering degrees each year.
Modernization of railway and harbor infrastructure has increased 175% since Calderon has been in office.
Indicators are in place that the Mexican economy will experience consistent growth as it forges into the near future. 
An article published in Foreign Policy suggest that the global community will do well shifting its focus toward the TIMBI nations.  “M” being Mexico.  The article goes on to predict the TIMBI nations will outpace BRICS in short time.  The Mexican economy should be as large as Russia and Spain by 2020 and larger than Italy by the year 2030.
The Bad News
 
Looking beyond economic indicators policy makers warn that the positive economic outlook must be in context of  how it applies to the nation as a whole.. According to The Economist, Mexico’s teachers union, composed of 1.2 million members, is the most powerful union in the country and has been cited as a determinate political force.
Critics say the union is to blame for Mexico’s dysfunctional educational system, a casualty of hard-fought and expensive legal battles that have been staged to protect out-of-touch, ineffective teachers. It is imperative that Mexican policymakers develop a system of laws and regulations capable of addressing the needs of workers as well as the general public in becoming a functional economy.
Economy does not make a developed nation alone.  The most damaging factors that has affected Mexico’s pursuit of Developed Nation status are corruption, the drugwar, and inequality.  In a nation in which  law and order is so absent that the solving of crimes are in the single digit percentile, with a corrupt system of justice, rampant corruption in politics, an education system that excludes 60% of its children, and a gross lack of security for its citizens, it is clear that Mexico has its work cut out for them.
In addition to poor test scores, international inspectors uncovered gross corruption in the international educational testing in Mexico.  Among the finding were “certain” children were to remain home during the testing.  Other school submitted the tests of female students foregoing male students.  Selected schools bypassed and even with tampering Mexico’s scores were at or near the bottom.  It is no wonder that the Calderon government ordered the test scores destroyed.

Mexican teachers do not have to be certified and when only one third passed proficiency tests the union deemed that acceptable citing, "you don't have to know how to do something to teach it".

There is no parity in public education.  Impoverished children may or may not receive an education.  Sometimes a travelling teacher or videos teachers sub for a live person.  Rural schools have a huge and rapid turn over as teacher are to stay at the school during the week, however without facilities to sleep, cook, or bathe teachers soon leave.  The  education is suppose to be free, but there is no such thing there are charges that in effect exclude impoverished children the beginning of a life of marginalization.

La Tuta's ID, click on to enlarge
 
To those that say, Mexico cannot afford to do better, if that is the case, and I do not agree, but less say it is the case, then divide equally and budget for what can be afforded.  That aside, Mexico can afford better, get rid of the teachers union, a union that pays funds to any teacher no matter the circumstance, La Tuta, leader of Knights Templar, was paid a salary until last year even though he had not stepped into a classroom in a decade and was a wanted criminal.

Tax structure in Mexico is almost non existent, one must be established from go, with this in place funds for a sound educational and health system can be established.
Below are points as published in the Washington Hemisphere Report.
Dysfunctional Public Education
Mexico’s education system, which consistently receives low ratings by international indicators, must also endure reforms. According to a Reuters report by Anahi Rama, 5 percent of Mexico’s GDP goes to education. While this allocation is proportional to those made by other developing countries, corruption renders much of this input largely ineffective. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in comparing education across 65 industrialized countries, ranked Mexico 46th in reading, 49th in mathematics, and 51st in science.

While 10 percent of U.S. students are able to complete the advanced math section of the OECD’s International Student Assessment exam, only 0.07 percent of Mexican students are able to do the same. Aside from low scores, graduation rates in Mexico pale in comparison to those in the United States. According to Reuters, Mexican public schools graduate only about 45 percent of secondary school students, while nearly 75 percent of U.S. high school students graduate.

Although Mexico’s constitution guarantees access to education for all citizens, it hardly guarantees quality. A skilled labor force is imperative to sustain Mexico’s economic growth, and while post-secondary education in Mexico looks to be on the rise, primary and secondary education still requires vast improvements. If Mexico is to secure a large, skilled labor force, salvaging public education will prove an essential policy initiative within the coming years.
PISA Scores 2011 (click to enlarge)
Income Inequality
Currently, Mexico’s income inequality is among the worst in the world. According to an OECD report published in 2008, Mexico ranks second in economic inequality among the 34 OECD nations, experiencing a level of disparity slightly less than that of Chile. The average income of the wealthiest 10 percent of Mexicans was around 26 times higher than the average income of the poorest 10 percent of Mexicans. Moreover, what is considered “middle class” in Mexico is certainly not comparable to the middle class in the United States, as Mexico’s middle class receives relatively low wages. For example, as noted by the Washington Post,Mexicans working for U.S. auto companies earn about 10 percent of what their American counterparts make.
Adding to the gap in income distribution is the propensity of top income earners to monopolize the economy; 40 percent of Mexican businesses remain “uncompetitive,” ultimately antithetical to the functioning of a market economy. For example, Tellcell, the telecommunications conglomerate owned by the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, now finds itself in a legal battle after facing anti-trust allegations, a common feature of Mexican business environment.
Reuters
Security
In light of persistent cartel violence, security arguably remains the most important concern for the majority of Mexicans. Mexico has been entirely unsuccessful at controlling violence within its borders, failing repeatedly to combat the cartels. The drug-related death toll, which has climbed above 50,000 since 2006, can be ascribed to the decision to militarize efforts to combat the drug cartels, made by former President Vicente Fox and sustained by Calderón’s administration. The militarization of Mexican security efforts has also resulted in mounting human rights violations.
According to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), the number of complaints against  the military has mounted dramatically, from 182 in 2006 to 1,230 in 2008, of which only 37 have seen daylight in the justice system. Underlying problems include the immense financial resources the drug cartels are capable of consigning to the struggle (estimated to be between USD 30 billion and 50 billion), lack of alternative employment, and the ineffective collaboration between Mexican and American drug policy. Regional heads of state have argued for alternative drug policies, such as decriminalization, even if they may not align with Washington’s heavy-handed approach to the drug trade.
Latin American nations recently demonstrated increased solidarity in pushing alternative policy solutions at the Sixth Summit of the Americas. Whether they be less militarized approaches to combating the drug trade or decriminalization, Mexico needs to heed the advice of its neighbors and remedy its failing militarized approach.
Photo Credit: Reuters top-Chivis Martinez Bottom
Mier Tamaulipas

Top photo: Cartels warned citizens to leave Mier or be killed. Bottom Photo displaced citizens in the makeshift San Miguel shelter, a Lyons Club, become emotional while listening to my speech. We learned those that presented themselves as helping the Mier people, the mayor and his family, had been withholding donations, subsequently never seen by the refugees as they never were given to Mier refugees.  We were thrown out of the shelter, given 15 minutes to pack up and get out when were refused to leave donations.  We gave our donations to each family personally...from the parking lot.
The Mayor’s office warned us the people would steal our donations, they did not; they pitched in by assisting us, carried the items outside and waited patiently in lines.  It was then we heard the truth about the mayor’s threats, demands for money and stealing donations.  Big donors such as the Red Cross played into the hands of the corrupt municipal government because of fear of being caught in the midst of violence.  While we were there was a shootout and the next day another directly in front of the shelter.  Our team stayed in Reynosa where a four hour shootout commenced that resulted in 6 killed.
Corruption
Likewise, Mexico needs to address its failure to uphold the rule of law, as widespread corruption still prevails in many sectors of public life, including the police force and gubernatorial offices. In Mexico, government and corruption seem to be synonymous. Transparency International’s Bribe Payers Index concluded that, in 2010, an estimated USD 2.5 billion in bribes were paid to police officials throughout Mexico. Importantly, the chain of corruption does not end at the local level. Julio César Godoy Toscano, a congressman with ties to the notorious La Familia cartel, was caught with USD 2 million in his bank account from “unknown sources.”
As previously mentioned, Mexican businesses also participate in rampant corruption, not only to co-opt labor unions but also to influence public figures. In a Transparency International study analyzing 28 economies in which firms were most likely to bribe officials, Mexico ranked third behind China and Russia. Few were surprised when Wal-Mart was accused of bribing local officials to win land contracts and gain permission to open stores early. Although the Calderón administration has made some efforts to fight corruption, they have proved insufficient, and the lack of transparency and accountability plaguing Mexican governance requires considerable redress.
Ousted from PRI leadership by charges of gross corruption
Conclusion
As Mexico marches down the road to developed-nation status, several factors will critically hinder Mexico’s progress unless promptly addressed. Rather than focusing solely on improving traditional economic indicators, such as GDP, Mexico’s government should pursue policies that will provide a foundation for more equitable, transparent, and sustainable economic development.

Sources used to compose this post: Washington report on the Hemisphere; Council on Hemispheric Affairs, PISA, UNOC, Human Rights Watch; Justice in Mexico Project Trans Border Institute Report "Armed with Impunity", The Economist
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