"El Pozolero's" First Dissolved Victims Found and more

November 30, 2012, 7:41 am

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Borderland Beat
Calderon's Last Week

During this last week of Felipe Calderon's presidency, each day on average, 21 people were killed in the country. This figure is comparable only to 2010, when every 24 hours when gunmen killed 28 people.

Most of these crimes occurred in Chihuahua, Coahuila and Morelos, places where clashes and confrontation with the armed forces was on going and permanent, making these entities  the most tainted with violence in Mexico.

Billboards of arrests of alleged major kingpins have slowed the past week, the most relevant was Luis Alberto Cisneros, "El 18" who controlled Uruapan, for the Knights Templar and EL TJ, the long sought drug trafficker and sicario for La Mano con Ojos. One more capture of note is Comandante Sapo a NL Police Chief who operated three municipalities allegedly for los Zetas was arrested with seven others.

It is paradoxical that six months ago the authorities claimed that the violence in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua generally had decreased considerably. However, in the last four and a half days, four people were killed per day not to mention the unveiling of narcofosas in the Valle de Juarez..The Whole Valley Smells of Death

But the face of crime was more virulent in Coahuila. Murder scenes outside a temple, the remains of scattered through the streets, and depicting the last days of violence in Torreon, which killed 11 people,  so far this week. It is clearly a disputed territory between factions of the organization of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.
In Sinaloa an armed group of Sinaloa Cartel members  fighting Beltran Leyva Organization burned down the  village of Tatemas..Also there was the sad death of a crowned beauty queen who died in a shootout with the military, and a recently-fired AK-47 on the ground near her body. Susana Gamez was winner of the beauty competitions, among many, Model of the Year and Sinaloa Woman.  Dead at 22.

Morelos, is another of the trenches of this war with violence linked to the Beltran Leyva cartel, remains.During this period eight people have been killed, seven in one day.  And Guerrero, where the government recognized the presence of paramilitary groups who have murdered leaders, particularly related to environmental issues. This week there has been coverage regarding violence directly affecting tourism in Acapulco.

In Tijuana, they concentrated on uncovering remains of victims of El Pozolero's.

El Pozolero's First Dissolved Victims found- As you'd think not much left

Tijuana- Authorities Attorney Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO) located the first human remains, bones and blood of the 75 bodies they were seeking on a property used by Santiago Meza Lopez, alias "El Pozolero" in Baja California. Elements the SEIDO arrived in the city of Tijuana, Baja California, to begin the search for the missing and offer new hope to their families. The place has high walls of brick and a  concrete pit in the middle of the lot. It was covered with a slab of the same material, which was removed by the authorities.
The first human remains found were located in piece of land in the area Maclovio Rojas Farms, located east of Tijuana.This site was designated by the López Meza, as the place where more than 300 bodies were dissolved with caustic soda. Fernando Ocegueda Flores, president of the United Association for the Disappeared of Baja, California confirmed the discovery of the remains, admitting it was in some ways satisfying to know that this is the location of so many people, adding that since this is the first "El Pozoero" narcofosa found since his arrest in 2009, we'll continue looking for more, as it is presumed that there are 300 disintegrated bodies. Findings will be transferred to the Mexico City for analysis with the ultimate possibly to determine identity.

Update

Fernando Ocegueda, president of the United Association for the Disappeared of Baja California, revealed that they found a second "narcofosa" on the grounds that Santiago Meza Lopez, "El Pozolero," used to dissolve the bodies of victims of organized crime in the  Maclovio Rojas.

Ocegueda, in an interview with News Border Agency (AFN), outside the land located on Cioac Street in the elijo district located east of the city, the staff of the Deputy Attorney Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (Seido), continues to analyze the organic matter found in the "narcofosa."

He said that while performing they excavations they discovered that one of the ducts by which they drained the dissolved remains led to a second pit.

"They dissolved the bodies in acid, a key opened a duct and from gravity the solution fell to the 'narcofosa', it seems it drained filling the another 'narcofosa" he said.

The activist said  he believes the newly discovered grave is older, and therefore increase the number of bodies dissolved by "The Pozolero" arrested in early 2009.

Smurfs Post on a previous "El Pozolero" excavation

EL TJ-Sicario to El Compayito Detained
El TJ/ Badger Captured

The arrest of  Emilio Chamorro Almazán, “El Tejón” o “El TJ”, according to the attorney general of the state of Mexico, Miguel Ángel Contreras Nieto, happened from thorough intelligence work.  The subject and was finally located, captured  andseized with a .40-caliber pistol in the town of Xonacatlán. 

Toluca,- An important blow to organized crime came from the Ministerial Police (State of Mexico), when they captured Emilio Chamorro Almazán, "El TJ" and / or "The Badger." The Attorney General of the State of Mexico said the accused was major drug dealer in the municipalities of Naucalpan and Huixquilucan, and had been  the main hired killers for "La Mon Con Ojo." He's related to at least 12 murders, several kidnapping and extortion. 

El TJ was instructed by "El Companito" to kill at least 10 men and two women. His illicit activities began in 2004 with the Beltran Leyva Org. and later as the criminal group  weakened and almost disappeared, he joined the criminal organization La Mano con Ojos headed by Oscar Oswaldo Garcia Montoya who claimed him as his main hit man and enforcer. 
After being moved to the  PGJEM facilities, he was subjected to rigorous questioning and a series of investigations. The hit man confessed that after Oscar Oswaldo Garcia Montoya,  "El Companito, leader of La Mano con Ojos, was arrested in August 2011 by ministerial police, he formed a criminal group known as “Los Chamorros” y/o “Los Gaseros” who are the major drug dealers in the municipalities of Naucalpan and Huixquilucan. 

Nieto Contreras was extremely pleased with the capture of El TJ who was made available to the prosecution and awaits a judge .determine his legal status.

And lastly to Nuevo Leon.

NL Police Chief is Los Zetas' "Comandante Sapo" Captured with 7 Others

Monterrey. - The police chief of Aramberri was captured by State Highway Patrol suspected with links to Los Zetas.  They discovered he was combining jobs. As well as being a Los Zetas cell leader operating in the south of the state, Jose Enrique Gallegos Linan, 30, was first commander of the Municipal Police of Aramberri in Nuevo Leon.

Jose Enrique Gallegos Liñán was arrested with Aramberri's second commander Jorge Elias Chavez Medrano, 32, and the commander of Doctor Arroyo Police, Esteban García Fuente, 30.

José Enrique Gallegos Liñán, as leader of Los Zetas, was identified as "Comandante Sapo" or "Commander Toad"   

It  was said besides being the Chief of Police in  the community of Aramberri, "Comadante Sapo" was leader of Los Zetas in the municipalities of la Ascension as well as in Doctor Arroyo and supposedly in Galeana too.   

The three police officials were arrested today in Doctor Arroyo, along with five youths in  Matehuala and San Luis Potosi, identified as hitmen. The detainees names are Edgar Vazquez Morales, 22, Martin Garcia Martinez of 21, Cesar Espinoza Torres, 23, Jose Francisco Alvarez Rodriguez, 18, and Jose Eduardo Rodríguez López, a minor less than 17. 

A police source said that the detainees were secured with seven AK-47 known as goat horn, 30 magazines and about 100 rounds for firearms. 

The informant said that the detainees were caught in a Volkswagen Bora reported as stolen and a Nissan pickup that had hanging plates. Apparently the armed group went to Doctor Arroyo looking for drug dealers from a rival group to execute.. 

The State Highway Patrol, in response to anonymous calls, went to track them down and continued until they were all captured. 

Detainees are being investigated in relation to executions and other crimes committed in the south part of the state of Nuevo Leon.. 

All for now: "Viva Mexico"

Sources:Tijuana Hoy, Diario, PulsoSLP, Terra.com, YouTube Topic-Aramberri,  http://go,

  

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Enrique Nieto Peña: Violence Erupts as New Administration Takes Over in Mexico

December 1, 2012, 11:46 am

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Violence erupts as Yo Soy 132 destroys every business on Avenida Juarez

In the midnight ceremony the transfer of flag represents transfer of power

Enrique Nieto Peña has become the new leader of Mexico facing the challenge of the drugwar without a mandate earning only 38% support of electorate.  Today marks the return to power of the powerful but corrupt PRI party who is culpable of the drugwar, making pacts with drugtraffickers without thought of  the welfare of the American youth, or a vision of cartels becoming so large,  powerful  and wealthy, they could buy anything or anyone, rendering administrations powerless to control violence and establish security for its citizens. 

 To any logical person it would seem impossible for Peña to be able to change a policy of boots on the ground without a massive increase of violence, however he at times indicated he may do that, to what degree  is blurred    In one sense Peña is extremely lucky new president, for despite inheriting a country riven by violence and corruption, he takes over a nation of nearly 117 million with a resurgent economy that has become one of the most competitive in the world, surpassing Brazil in annual growth rate. …Paz, Chivis

(Video is the ceremony of transferring power)

TIME Magazine

Enrique Peña Nieto takes office today, Dec. 1, as the next President of Mexico—whose young and otherwise successful democracy is beset by narco-bloodshed (60,000 murders in the past six years), an underachieving economy (average annual growth of only 2% since 2000) and a feeling that its Latin American leadership role has been eclipsed by its fast-developing South American rival, Brazil. Peña, 46, the popular former governor of central Mexico state, convinced Mexican voters that his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000 as a corrupt, one-party dictatorship, has righted itself enough to right Mexico. (Read TIME International’s cover story on Peña, available to subscribers.) He spoke with TIME’s Latin America bureau chief, Tim Padgett, and Mexico reporter Dolly Mascareñas at his transition headquarters in Mexico City. Excerpts (translated from Spanish):

TIME: Your presidency marks a critical moment for Mexico. What are the most important things you have to do to lift it out of its hole of drug violence and anemic economic growth?

PEÑA NIETO: I’m feeling a renewed sense of hope and optimism about what we can do in the coming years. First, restore peace and tranquility in Mexico, which means altering our public security strategy: more effective law enforcement coordination, stronger judicial institutions. Second, reduce poverty and inequality. Some 52 million Mexicans live in poverty, and we’ve got to seek innovative solutions that not only give them aid but link them to productive activity. The socio-economic contrasts that persist [here] are unacceptable. Third, revive economic growth. We’ve built more favorable macroeconomic conditions in Mexico, but we have to promote more competition and raise our levels of [bank] credit, build up our development banks.



In your 2010 book, Mexico: The Great Hope, you criticize Mexico’s “ineffective state.” How will you make it more effective—you won only 38% of the presidential vote and the PRI was denied a congressional majority—especially when it comes to corruption, which costs Mexico almost a tenth of its trillion-dollar gross domestic product each year?

Mexico has proven by now that it’s a strong electoral democracy. Now we have to build a democracy that produces better results; if not, then you get a democracy of disenchantment. That means combating the social cancer of corruption. So I’m proposing an autonomous federal institute to ensure more transparency in public records, and an autonomous anti-corruption commission that would be part of Mexico’s Constitution.

Given the strength of the U.S. Latino vote in President Obama’s re-election this month, this a favorable moment for immigration reform. What are your expectations for bilateral relations, not just on immigration but the drug war and trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

I see a lot of opportunity right now. I think we can start moving beyond what is sometimes a monothematic relationship due to the [drug war] issue. We can start focusing on prosperity issues again, like better integrating our economies so we can present a more powerful regional block to the world. The TPP is a great opportunity in that regard. I believe immigration reform is a commitment of President Obama’s government, especially now that it gives him a chance to respond to the great demand expressed by U.S. Hispanic voters for establishing better mechanisms for [cross-border] mobility.

About the drug war, how do the marijuana legalization measures voters just approved in Colorado and Washington complicate drug interdiction for Mexico?

Without a doubt, it opens space for a rethinking of our policy. It opens a debate about the course the drug war should be taking. It doesn’t necessarily mean the Mexican government is suddenly going to change what it’s doing now. But [state legalization] creates certain distortions and incongruences since it’s conflict with [U.S.] federal [law], and that will have an impact on how Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere respond. Personally, I’m against legalization; I don’t think it’s the [right] route. But I am in favor of a hemispheric debate on the effectiveness of the drug-war route we’re on now.

To reduce Mexico’s awful narco-violence, you’ve proposed a national “gendarmerie” and you’re putting the troubled federal police—15 of whose members are under arrest for allegedly being in the pay of drug cartels and ambushing two U.S. C.I.A. agents—under tighter control. But can you really cut the number of Mexico’s homicides by half, as you’ve pledged?

Cases like the one you mention make it obvious that Mexico needs a much more coordinated and professional judicial power, especially law enforcement and prosecution that makes more effective use of criminal intelligence. Only two of every 100 violent crimes in Mexico result in convictions. But preventing violence and promoting economic and social development are part of a vicious cycle. Without better economic opportunity you can’t have better public security, and vice versa.

You recently got the PRI to push through a major labor reform law, but your plan to allow private investment in Mexico’s state-owned oil industry for the first time in 75 years may be more important.

This is a big energy reform that will require a constitutional amendment. It’s a sensitive national issue for Mexicans, but I think in modern times, if we’re going to realize our energy potential, we have to expand capacity and infrastructure, and that means letting the private sector in. Not privatization but private participation. Brazil is a good example, so is Colombia. On the labor reform, President [Felipe] Calderón and I saw an opportunity to create a more modern framework. I think [its passage] signals more maturity among the political parties, more of an agreement-seeking attitude.

But can Mexico produce meaningful economic growth if you don’t reduce its suffocating business monopolies, especially in sectors like telecommunications and building materials?

I am pushing legislation to strengthen the government’s monopoly-busting organs. One of the most important parts of the bill is appeals reform, to prevent monopolies from being able to resort to the constant, endless litigation they use to avoid paying fines and sanctions. You’ll see, I’m committed to confronting and combating monopolistic practices, because the only way to realize the economic opportunity I’ve been talking about is greater competition, lower prices, better products.

No honeymoon: Violence erupts as Yo Soy 132 and Francisco Villa PopularFront  protests against Peña, destroying or damaging  every business on Avenida Juarez and spray painting congressional building: VIDEO

Blood pouring from a gaping wound- protester is hauled to safety by fellow protesters-

-continues on page two-

(MORE: Peña tell TIME; I want to make Mexico an emerging power )

The PRI is criticized for having aided monopolies. You say you’re the party’s new face, but critics charge you’re manipulated by its old guard. Has the PRI modernized itself seriously enough to modernize Mexico?

Yes. To get elected in Mexico today you have to compete like any democracy, and you don’t do that by being manipulated. The big challenge now for me and my party is to produce results. If we don’t, we can’t compete. Whatever people may think of it, in its 83 years my party has also proven it can produce results, that it can meet the demands of the time.

Many who know you say your best quality is your ability to listen, that you’re a dialoguista who knows how to negotiate and compromise, which Mexico admittedly could use more of today. Where does that come from?

I genuinely enjoy being among people. I’m not a politician who likes to read the people from a distance; you can’t take [their] temperature that way. I play golf, I love Mexican food—it’s one of the few cuisines in the world that can match France’s, and UNESCO backs me up on that.

We agree. But while mole poblano does rival coq au vin, you’ve lamented Mexico’s reduced regional and international leadership role. How will you regain it?

Mexico got distracted, in part by its security crisis, in part by its deepening relationship with the U.S. I think we’ve learned that our international leadership depends a lot on our internal circumstances. Today, look at Brazil; it’s been an economic growth engine. We have to have better social development, public security, economic growth. In the past, Mexico has traditionally been out front promoting things like regional peace initiatives and free trade, and when we improve our development at home we’ll project ourselves more strongly outside Mexico again.

Peña's Cabinet-click to enlarge:

 

 

 

Mexico Sends "Flashy" Narco To The US

December 2, 2012, 8:22 am

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Posted on Borderland Beat Forum by Athena

 

Did not fight extradiction charges

A flashy American fugitive who fled to Mexico to avoid arrest for leading a Houston-based drug-trafficking organization, has finally been returned  to the United States, officials said.

Raul Sergio Madrigal was flown from Mexico to Chicago, and is expected to be brought before a federal judge inHouston next week, officials said Friday. He’d been on the run since at least 2009, after leaving town as authorities prepared federal charges against him and more than a dozen of other defendants.

 Madrigal was first caught in May at the airport near the northern industrial city of Monterrey. He was snared there by FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration agents and their Mexican counterparts working on a anonymous tip submitted to the stophoustongangs.org Web site, FBI Agent Shauna Dunlap said.

 “Madrigal was one of the original Top Ten Most Wanted Gang Fugitives, that were featured on that Web site,” Dunlap said of the site that was launched in April 2012.

 When he was allegedly running a cocaine-trafficking operation, Madrigal was affiliated with the massive Houstone Tango Blast gang and had several high end sports cars that were confiscated by federal agents.

Madrigal had been on the run since 2009 before the Web campaign started. He didn’t last two months once the Web site launched the Most Wanted Gangster program, in which he was featured. Madrigal reportedly did not fight being sent back to the United States to face charges.

From Houston Chron an earlier article of him being on the run:

In one photo, FBI fugitive and Houston son Raul Madrigal is soaking in a giant bubble bath at an upscale Mexican hotel.

In another, the reputed drug boss with a shaved head and a whisper of a goatee is posing on the beach in Cabo San Lucas. And in others, also posted on the Web, he stares and extends a defiant middle finger, apparently at feds hunting him.

“He is kind of taunting us,” said Brian Ritchie, who leads the violent crimes and gangs task force for the FBI's Houston division, which has been trying to capture him for months.

Authorities contend Madrigal, 29, is a key member of the fast-growing Tango Blast — the largest gang in the city — and that from 2007 to 2009, he helped the Gulf Cartel pump millions of dollars worth of marijuana and cocaine into Houston and the surrounding area.

Fleeing to Mexico follows a Texas border crime tradition, but also speaks to what Washington sees as a growing threat posed by partnerships between Mexican drug cartels and U.S. gangs.

Assistant Attorney GeneralLabby Breuer testified before Congress last week that the Department of Justice  plans to step up investigations of the ties as part of a strategy similar to what was previously used to take on the mafia and other international syndicates.

Madrigal apparently made so much money that authorities intend to seize $18 million in assets in the case against him and 13 other defendants charged with trafficking under Operation Broken Star.



 

They've already seized nine of Madrigal's bling cars, including a Bentley sedan, two BMWs and two Maseratis. All look showroom clean and remain parked in a heavily secured storage facility until they are sold at auction.

A 6.5 carat diamond ring also was taken as drug proceeds, as was a customized three-wheel T-Rex motorcycle, complete with ostrich-skin seats and an LCD monitor.

Authorities won't say whether they expect to see Madrigal in handcuffs anytime soon but note he's likely in a dangerous country where he can't stand alone. “He has probably aligned himself with some people who offer the protection he deserves and has earned,” Ritchie said.

Made friends in prison
 

In Houston, the conspiracy is alleged to have started months after U.S.-born Madrigal was released from his second stint in a Texas prison, where agents speculate he reinforced dubious connections.

Authorities said Tango Blast is an appealing partner for traffickers because it has many members and is spread out across the state. Other more traditional Latino gangs, such as the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate, also work with the cartels, according to a recent law enforcement report.

“People are so worried the cartels are going to come over here, but they have these people at their beck and call,” said Pat Villafranca, an FBI spokeswoman in Houston.

The cartel has the drug supply while the U.S. gangs know the streets, have the contacts and can blend in.

“They get these guys to do their dirty work,” said Rick Moreno, a Houston police homicide investigator who has mapped out local gang connections to cartel murders, kidnappings and other crimes.

Among others charged in the conspiracy is Saul Salinas, the brother of a trafficker gunned down here in 2006. The case was recently solved and the suspects await trial.

Tango Blast has been able to strengthen behind bars by attracting prison inmates looking for protection.

-continues on page two-

Tango Blast has been able to strengthen behind bars by attracting prison inmates looking for protection.

“Madrigal hooked up with all these people he met in prison and out of prison,” the FBI's Ritchie said. His biggest connection was Mario Gonzalez, an accused cartel member and fugitive.

Madrigal is charged in a conspiracy to move at least a ton of weed, but he is believed to have used a network of stash houses to sell about 5,000 pounds a month, enough to roll more than 3 million joints every 30 days.

To read full document LINK HERE

Even if Madrigal, who has a list of prior criminal offenses, again sees a courtroom, there is no guarantee of conviction. Four times he's had charges against him dismissed, and he wasn't charged in the death of a rival killed in a shootout. He was convicted twice and went to prison, once for theft and again for drug dealing.

In the meantime, Madrigal's taunts give authorities motivation, said a veteran state law enforcement officer. “Old-school gangsters ... would never draw attention like that,” he said.

Posted on BB Forum by Athena READ ATHENA'S POST HERE

Sinaloa Cartel Sicario Arrested for 8 Murders in Chihuahua

December 2, 2012, 8:44 am

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Posted on Borderland Beat forum by Siski you kid

Dumb as he looks fingerprints on narco message led authorities to him

Chihuahua, Chihuahua. - Ministerial Police agents captured an alleged Sinaloa cartel hit man who allegedly participated in the execution of eight people  who were 'kidnapped'  last weekend in the municipalities of Jiménez and Valle de Allende, Chihuahua.

The arrest of Oscar Ontiveros Fernando Ruiz-Esparza , who was arrested by an intelligence operation conducted in Parral, where he sold drugs.

An  undercover was used to capture the defendant at the address located on the street 57 of the colony Madrid Miguel Hidalgo.

He said a .40 caliber handgun with 10 cartridges, 1 charger with 72 disk cartridges 7.62x39 caliber, .40 caliber 34 rounds of ammunition, a smoke grenade, a goat horn (AK47), a bulletproof vest and a communication radio.

Ruiz Esparza said to belong to the Sinaloa cartel, and his companions left their fingerprints embodied in a cardboard with a message in which he adjudged the crime to someone known as the M-10.

"The fingerprints were analyzed in the national database Identification System AFIS and information platform crossed with Mexico and that's how they came up with Oscar Fernando Ruiz Esparza , "the state official said.

He noted that the prosecution has a video where the detainee is involved in the uprising of the now deceased in Jimenez, Chihuahua, and leap from vehicles and persons involved in this crime.

 Authorities released this kidnapping video that will be used in trial:

Source: El Debate and You Tube

Posted on BB forum by Siski You Kid LINK HERE
Kidnap foto from "AJ" BB forum

Caballeros Templarios Reveal Agreement With PRI Party

December 2, 2012, 9:16 am

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Posted on Borderland Beat Forum by "AJ"

 

The criminal group of Knights Templar revealed alleged agreements that helped the PRI  recover the state of Michoacán in the elections of November 11, 2011.

Through various banners placed in Michoacán and Guanajuato, said that the approach was direct collaborations with Governor Fausto Vallejo.

They note that the commitments made ​​during the elections in Michoacan were organized with campaign leaders, but did not divulge names.

"The last three generations of leaders have had ties to our organization, the Caballeros Templarios and La Familia Michoacana, the connections must be indirect, but solid." cited the messages addressed to the governor of Michoacan.

"In your case, you know there are important figures of the top level who not only sympathize with us but who have subsisted with us."

The banners asked Governor Vallejo to define his position in the criminal organization.

The banners also blamed the Governor for the recent assassination of the former Mayor of Tiquicheo, [Maria Santos Gorrostieta] which was claimed by the Templarios themselves.

They noted that the commitments made ​​during the election were held with PRI leaders of the campaign, but did not reveal any names.

"We as a group of outlaws were encouraged to show apathy towards the political party PAN by  important leaders that we had a mutual coordination with,  it was extensive, arduous and especially expensive."

According to these messages broadcasted in various parts of Michoacán, the aim of this strategy was to stop the PAN and assist PRI candidates.

The messages made by the Caballeros Templarios asked Governor Vallejo to repay the favors made during the electoral process.


Also in Guanajuato

Messages also were placed in Guanajuato, in the municipalities of Penjamo, Acambaro Cuerámaro, Jerécuaro, Celaya and Guanajuato.

The criminal organization, Caballeros Templarios stated that they supported, funded and mobilized people from the Vallejo campaign.

"We are doubtful of the commitments made ​​to us by the leaders of the PRI ", stated the message on the banner.

The cartel also noted that it was their duty  to  assure the PAN party would be defeated in the Michoacán governorship race.

The narco-banners accused the Vallejo family of sympathizing  with the Caballeros Templarios.

The cartel announced that there will be two more releases in banners, demanding that the PRI and the Governor of Michoacan keep their word to the Templarios.

"What is your position before this group officially battles with you?, Unofficially we are waiting for the fruits of our labor  from the (PRI) party, which for the moment we do not see. We know that before the media you must appear fair and impartial in fighting us,  but we unofficially have NO other choice after these months you been in office.", the Templarios stated  in one of their posts.

Source: REFORMA

Posted on BB Forum by "AJ" LINK HERE

Garcia Luna's narco ties documented

December 2, 2012, 10:57 pm

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J. Jesus Esquivel Proceso

Genaro Garcia Luna

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

United States intelligence services have an extensive and detailed file regarding Genaro Garcia Luna's alleged ties with drug traffickers, DEA sources tell Proceso. Added to the suspicions surrounding the person who served as Secretary of Public Security in Mexico is a pathetic episode in which he was the main actor. In a meeting of the Merida Initiative that took place last September in Washington, Barack Obama's security cabinet was surprised when Garcia Luna begged "forgiveness" for the attack by federal police officers against CIA agents at Tres Marias. "Deplorable" attitude, says one of the witnesses to the incident.

WASHINGTON (Proceso).-- On September 18, 2012, Genaro Garcia Luna's words left Barack Obama's security cabinet stunned: the head of the federal Public Security Secretariat (SSP) apologized for the attack by federal police agents against employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"I want to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of the institution and personally for the events that took place at Tres Marias," reads the transcript of Garcia Luna's words, contained in State Department "classified documents" -- of which Proceso has a copy-- referring to the meeting of the High Level Consulting Group of the Merida Initiative behind closed doors last September 18th in Washington.

Addressing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, Garcia Luna stated: "We will do everything to punish the persons responsible."

The State Department's classified documents -- in volumes 7 and 8, provided to Proceso by one of the  secretaries present at the meeting -- give the impression that Garcia Luna and Felipe Calderon know who carried out the attack against the CIA agents and a captain of the Mexican marines, and why the attack was carried out.

"The President has instructed us to do our part and our conviction is to carry out an efficient task. The responsible persons will be punished, undoubtedly.

"The agency will do everything necessary to resolve this case and, of course, maintain effectiveness in our cooperation with you," emphasized Garcia Luna in the apology directed at all the members of the United States security cabinet.

 

A truculent figure

CIA agents Stan Boss and Chase Garnes and a Mexican Marine captain were the victims of an attack on August 24 at Tres Marias, Morelos, carried out by federal police agents --then commanded by Garcia Luna-- wearing civilian clothes and using AK-47s.

Garcia Luna "spoke in Spanish, and I was stunned to hear his words apologizing to the United States for the Tres Marias incident, while the United States Border Patrol keeps killing Mexicans on the border and no one, on behalf of the U.S. government, apologizes for that," said the secretary who delivered the classified documents to Proceso.

CIA vehicle in the Tres Marias attack

Trusted fully by Calderon, Garcia Luna was always a truculent and mysterious figure for the United States government, which throughout the six-year term chose not to get involved and avoided commenting about the hundreds of reports it has about the former head of the SSP's ties with organized crime.

"The intelligence services have a bulky file of reports compiled in Mexico and the U.S. that point to  possible links that Garcia Luna has with members of drug trafficking (organizations). For example, with the Beltran Leyvas, with the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Some of this information goes back to the Fox administration," a DEA agent, who asked to remain anonymous, tells Proceso.

"If the (Enrique) Pena Nieto government decides to review and follow up the intelligence information regarding Garcia Luna, it's possible that this will clear up some of the doubts and mysteries there are in the Calderon government's struggle against drug trafficking," he specifies.

-- Why now, when Calderon's term is ending, are the U.S. agencies speaking out more openly about Garcia Luna? Why didn't they do this before, if they already had important intelligence information about his?-- the DEA source is asked.

-- Out or respect for Mexican institutions and because he was the direct contact with the United States, assigned by the Mexican president. Only because of that.

-- In the United States, is there proof that could directly implicate Garcia Luna with drug trafficking?

-- There's detailed information. Development of the investigations is the responsibility of Mexican federal authorities, if they have the will to do this and to develop an inquiry-- he answers.

Edgar Valdez Villareal, La Barbie, in a letter  published on November 28 in the journal Reforma, claims that Garcia Luna has been on the payroll of drug trafficking groups for ten years.

"I swear that he has received money from me, from drug trafficking and organized crime, also with a select group made up of Armando Espinosa de Benito, who works with the DEA and would  leak information to me; Luis Cardenas Palomino, Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, Fancisco Javier Garza Palacios, Igor Labastida Calderon, Facundo Rosas Rosas, Ramon Eduardo Pequeno Garcia and Gerardo Garay Cadena, who are also part of this group and receive money from organized crime and from me," says La Barbie.

(Excerpt from a report published in Proceso 1883, now in circulation).

Pena selects General Cienfuegos Zepda for Mexican Army top job

December 3, 2012, 9:00 pm

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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto last Friday presented his commander of Mexico's land and air forces, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, replacing outgoing Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) General Guillermo Galvan Galvan, according to Mexican news reports and official government sources.

General Cienfuegos Zepeda

General Cienfuegos Zepeda was elevated as head of the Mexican Army after his appointment to the post of Controller and Inspector of Mexican Air and Armed Forces last January, passing over two other top staff generals.

According to several news accounts, General Cienfuegos Zepeda has held several field commands during his career, which began January, 1964.

He is a graduate of Mexico's Heroico Colegio Militar military academy, and holds a masters degree in Military Administration for national security and defense from Colegio de Defensa Nacional.  He also attended staff and command courses at Escuela Superior de Guerra.

Public accounts of General Cienfuegos Zepeda indicates an infantry commander who tended to be low key throughout his career in various infantry unit commands.  Most of his experience is in military region and military zone commands in western and southern Mexico including Jalisco, Guerrero and Michoacan states.

His last regional command before taking the post as controller and inspector of the army was in Chiapas, the Mexican VII Military region, relieving General Cuauhtemoc Perez Antunez in April, 2011.  He came to that post from Military Region I in Distrito Federal.

One of the hallmarks of a Mexican commander being groomed for taking the top job are holding posts as military and air attache at foreign embassies. General Cienfuegos Zepeda was military attache to the embassies of Japan and Korea.

Little public information is available about General Cienfuegos Zepeda in his personal life.  It is known in Mexican press that he has been  friends with Pena Nieto for quite some time.

A recent tradition of allowing the incoming SEDENA to lead the Mexican Army during the Revolution Day parade was broken a second time this passed Revolution Day.  This writer watched the parade and not only did General Cienfuegos Zepeda not lead the parade, his name was also not even mentioned by any press accounts.

The tradition dates back to the inauguration of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado in 1982, but was broken starting with the election of former president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa in 2006, when General Galvan Galvan was appointed SEDENA despite General Juan Alfredo Oropeza Garnica having lead the 2006 Revolution Day parade.

General Oropeza Garnica was a dynamic frontline commander and counterinsurgency expert who fought leftists insurgents in Guerrero state, even becoming wounded in 1997 while he was commander of the 27th Military Zone.

General Oropeza Garnica was snubbed however because of his operation in El Charco in Guerrero state in 1998, where 11 insurgents were killed and another five were wounded in an early dawn ambush. Leftist and human rights groups claimed the 11 dead were unarmed, but later investigations showed the group was armed.

General Galvan Galvan

Every indication from press accounts in 2006 indicated the elevation of General Galvan Galvan to SEDENA was a compromise choice meant to quell opposition from Mexico's left after the Calderon's razor thin win.  The choice of General Galvan Galvan was notable because he was an artillery commander throughout his career, unlike his predecessors.


According to a column in El Universal dated November 1st, 2006 by journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio, General Cienfuegos Zepeda was a commander who was being considered for the top spot, while he was commander of IX Military Region in Guerrero, but had very little field command experience to that point.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com

Smoke Filled Rooms (part 1)

December 3, 2012, 5:39 am

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By ACI for Borderland Beat

It’s no secret that the drug war is a dirty war.  A war fought with deception, betrayal and lies.  As in any war information is often the single most prized possession.   This war is no different.  Informants may be the single most important asset the government possesses.  These people are not angles; they are often narcos, killers or any range of unsavory and unpleasant characters.  They provide information for gain not for justice.   

Informants by their very nature are part of the mechanism the government is trying to defeat.   This is the beginning of a series that illustrates the role one informant played in this ever evolving and ever changing war.  The following story is based on truth and it all started with an email.

Somewhere in Mexico

He stared at his computer screen; watching the curser blink.  In all of his years doing this kind of work he never thought he would do this.  An unsettling feeling set in; a combination of fear, excitement and betrayal.   The room was dark, the only light coming from the screen on the computer.  It was set up in a corner of the room and it was ancient.  The fan inside made an awful humming sound, a small radio played music in the background. 

The room itself wasn’t big; maybe 10 by 12 feet, the walls were bare except for a picture of the Virgin Mary in the center of a wall.  The room had tiles floors, not much in the way of furniture.  A mattress on the floor was covered by mound of sheets and cloths.  A few religious candles lay on the floor.  In the corner of the room was a small alter.  A statue of Santa Muerte was at the center.  It was surrounded with little offerings, several candles, some pesos, and a few pictures of Jesus Malverde.  There was no need to guess his occupation.    

Papers littered the floors; boxes filled with files were everywhere.  Many would kill for these files.  Old beer cans overflowing with cigarettes butts covered the desk.  There he sat, staring through the smoke at the screen.  The cursor continued to blink off and on the send button.  He knew once he sent this it would be final, it could not be undone.  But this information was worth money; a lot of money.  He sat in his chair; smoke rose in front of his face, his wire rimmed glasses reflected what was on the screen.  The ash on the end of his cigarette fell on to his lap, he wiped it away, and pondered what his next move was.

There was someone who could help, someone who knew what to do with information.  It was through his sister that he learned of a man, someone with the knowhow to take his information and convert it into money.  He was hesitant and scared.  This wasn’t about doing the right thing; this was about money, pure and simple.  He would try to tell himself he was righting his wrongs but he knew that was a lie.  He knew the risk he was about to take, he knew that he was putting those around him in danger.  After that thought the pit in his stomach grew and a bead of sweet ran down his brow, he wiped it away with his arm.  Was this worth it?  Could this man be trusted?   

Trust means something else when your life is on the line.  He thought how most people take this granted.  He sure did, he thought of the time when his girlfriend cheated on him.  A smirk came across his face.  Those were the simpler times when misplaced trust ended in a broken heart not a death sentence.  But this was an entirely different game, one which his life hung in the balance.  If this man wasn’t who he said he was he knew he was a dead man.    

He pressed the send button; there was no turning back now.

Somewhere in the US

Jack had lived quite the life.  If he told his life story no one would believe him, I didn’t at first.  Most would assume that he is some made up character in some crime novel.  It was the stuff movies are made of.  His life has been a tangled web of coincidence and luck.  Through a series of events he ended up being a CI or confidential informant for the FBI.  The case would end up shaping Jack’s life and world. 

Jack was picked purely because he knew the people that surrounding the government’s target.  The government thought Jack could get them access to a dangerous man on the run.  And they were right; with Jacks assistance the government finally arrested a man they have been hunting for years.  There was a substantial reward being offered and Jack wanted his piece.  Jack assumed as most would that upon capture he would receive his reward.  One might assume that a check would be sent out upon request, this however did not happen.  It took years for the reward to pay out and it was though this experience that Jack learned how the system worked.

Jack had several articles written about his struggle to obtain the reward, he exposed a system few talk about.  He gained recognition for his struggle.  Then one day he received an email.  It was from a man in Mexico.  The email simply stated; I know a man from Colombia who smuggles fifty tons of coke into the US regularly and I know where he is, regards Ivan.

To be continued....     

---

Bloody Zacatecas: 16 die

December 3, 2012, 10:24 pm

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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

A total of 16 individuals were murdered in ongoing drug and gang related violence in Zacatecas state since last week, according to Mexican news accounts.

According to a news item posted on El Sol de Zacatecas news daily, on Monday, one unidentified armed suspect was killed and three others were detained in an exchange of gunfire with a Policia Federal road patrol Monday.

Federal agents also seized quantities of weapons including one AK-47 rifle, one .22 caliber submachine gun, an M1 rifle, 11 weapons magazines,  188 rounds of ammunition and 18 stars used to puncture car tires.  Vehicles seized included one Oldsmobile sedan and one Ford Lobo (F-150) pickup truck.

EL Sol de Zacatecas reported that a total of eight individuals were found executed in three municipalities in Zacatecas.

According to an article, two unidentified young men were shot by armed suspects who were travelling in Valparaiso municipality Monday. Three died at the scene. The report also hints that the two victims were caught in the crossfire of rival criminal gangs in the area.

At 1000 hrs an unidentified man was found shot dead in his residence in Guadalupe municipality Monday. Two hours later another unidentified man was found shot to death in Juan Aldama municipality.  The victim was apparently fleeing the assault when he was shot.

A total of four unidentified females were found executed Saturday on the road between Jerez and Fresnillo municipalities by police.  The victims were between 15 and 20 years old had all been handcuffed.  A message left at the scene as a warning to other who help criminal groups.  The report did not detail which cartel or criminal group.

Seven other individuals were found murdered in Zacatecas state:

• Three unidentified young men were found shot to death in Zacatecas municipality Saturday.  The victims were found near the saloon La Quinta Itzel near the village of La Escondida.  The victims were in their 20s and all had been shot in the head.  A message had been left at the scene, but its contents were not disclosed.
• Two unidentified young men were found a few hours later also in Zacatecas municipality, near the facilities of Tecnologico Superior de Zacatecas.  Both victims were shot in the head.
• Two men were shot to death in Fresnillo municipality Sunday.  The victims were shot by armed suspects who were travelling aboard an SUV.  The victims were identified as Marvin Enrique Amaya Cabrera, 34, who died at the scene and Gilberto Rios, 25 who died while receiving medical attention.  The report said the shooters used AK-47s to kill the victims.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com

Fatal incident reflects new boldness among offshore smugglers

December 4, 2012, 3:55 pm

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Borderland Beat

A suspected drug smuggler who captained the boat that allegedly knocked a U.S. Coast Guardsman into the ocean, resulting in his death, told authorities he was "taking gasoline to some lost friends," according to federal prosecutors.

 

The 13-page affidavit in support of charging two Mexican nationals — boat captain Jose Mejia-Leyva and Manuel Beltran-Higuera — in the death of Terrell Horne III details a violent confrontation near Santa Cruz Island on Sunday before the the suspects surrendered.

 

After telling authorities he was taking gas to friends who he said were north of Los Angeles, Mejia-Leyva asked for an attorney and stopped answering questions, prosecutors said.

 

 

LA Times

 

The small Coast Guard inflatable vessel was 20 yards from the panga, an open fishing boat that law enforcement officers say has become the craft of choice to ferry untold numbers of marijuana bales and undocumented immigrants from Mexico   to Southern California.

Spotted earlier by a Coast Guard cutter, the panga was running without lights, a standard practice in the illicit trade, according to investigators.

        (Photo of family-wife is pregnant)

The four men on the boat dispatched from the cutter Halibut approached it cautiously, about 200 yards from the shore of Santa Cruz Island, off the Santa Barbara coast. In the darkness, they turned on their blue flashing lights and shouted, in English and Spanish: "Stop! Police! Put your hands up!" according to court documents filed Monday.

In response, the two men aboard the panga throttled their engines and headed straight at the small Coast Guard boat, ignoring shots fired by a crew member, provoking a collision that left a chief petty officer dead and his colleague injured. Then the two men kept going.

One of two men thrown out of the inflatable, Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III of Redondo Beach, died of a head injury caused by a propeller, according to the affidavit, which was filed in connection with the murder case against two suspects detained as they tried to flee to Mexico.

Officials say the tragedy underscores the dangers posed by smugglers who have foregone well-policed land routes in favor of the sea. Although more than 500 maritime smuggling incidents have been logged off the Southern California coast since 2010, this was the first violent death, authorities said.

"Most of our interdictions off of California can only be described as benign," Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers said. "There may be an attempt to evade, there may be a short pursuit, but we haven't had anything like this."

The men on the panga, Jose Mejia Leyva and Manuel Beltran Higuera, both Mexican nationals, were charged in Horne's death in U.S. District Court. Authorities believe they had been supplying gasoline to other smuggling craft operating off the California coast.

According to the affidavit, military aircraft followed their 30-foot craft as it made its way toward Mexico. With the two men futilely trying to restart their sputtering engine 20 miles north of the border, another Coast Guard vessel overtook them. Crew members demanded their surrender at gunpoint. When the men kept trying to start their engine, the Coast Guard crew doused them with pepper spray.

Encounters with seaborne smuggling have nearly doubled since 2010, with the steepest increases found along the more secluded, less patrolled beaches of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In Santa Barbara County, the surge has alarmed local authorities. In an April letter to Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara), Sheriff Bill Brown said the county experienced 16 "panga incidents" since the previous July, including the beaching of a four-engine, 45-foot "super-panga" that could easily have outpaced his department's sole vessel.

"It's a direct byproduct of increased pressure at the border and increased maritime enforcement to the south of us," Brown said in an interview Monday. "They're going further out to sea and they're coming further north."

Capps said she is asking federal agencies for additional enforcement funds in Santa Barbara.

The greatest number of coastal smuggling cases still occurs in San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties. But intensive interagency efforts based in San Diego and Long Beach have forced some smugglers farther up the coast, officials said.

"It's not so much that efforts are being stepped up as that agencies are pooling knowledge and experience and expertise," Eggers said. "The beautiful thing about Los Angeles is that there's a ton of law enforcement here."

Upgraded technology, such as infrared radar and enhanced video, is being shared among agencies, he said, along with "actionable intelligence."

But smugglers have powerful incentives to take the risk. Dozens of people, paying an average of $6,000 apiece, can cram into each panga. Police say marijuana bales hauled by a typical panga can sell for millions. There's a huge expanse of sea — the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is nearly 1,500 square miles — and major roads, including U.S. 101, run right by potential landing areas.

Boat pilots often try to outrun law enforcement and some high-speed chases have ended with U.S. officers shooting out gasoline tanks or performing swerving maneuvers to stop the pangas, said a federal law enforcement officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"They aggressively try to get away, but not turn their boat on another boat like they did the other night," the officer said.

On occasion, the rugged terrain of Channel Islands National Park has served as a staging area for smugglers. 

In 2010, authorities seized 2,448 pounds of marijuana hidden in brush in a canyon on Santa Rosa Island, and arrested four people hiding nearby.

In 2011, 15 suspected illegal immigrants were stranded for three days on Santa Cruz Island, abandoned by the panga pilot who had transported them. They were rescued after calling 911 and hailing a boater.

Sunday's incident at Santa Cruz Island occurred in Smugglers Cove, where tequila traders from Mexico once stashed their goods before the trip ashore, Brown said.

"To a certain extent, we have history repeating itself," he said.

In June, six people were arrested as they unloaded 1.5 tons of marijuana from their panga at Santa Barbara County's El Capitan State Beach. The Gaviota coast has been a landing spot for smugglers dating back to the Spanish colonial era.

Arraignment for the two men charged in Horne's death has been set for Dec. 21.

In another panga case Monday, a federal judge took note of the weekend's deadly encounter as he handed a sentence of nearly four years to a Mexican man whose marijuana-laden panga got stuck in rocks near Deer Creek Canyon in Malibu.

U.S. District Judge John F. Walter said the tragedy made it impossible to view the many sea smuggling cases on his docket as "lighthearted" capers.

"It has taken on now a much more serious tone in light of the events this weekend," Walter said, adding, "Something needs to be done about this rash of panga boats."

The defendant, Antonio Robles-Garcia, was arrested in January. His attorney, Dale Rubin, said he had signed on because was desperate to get to the U.S. and work.

Criminal complaint on page two- click image for better clarity-
For full 14 pages LINK HERE

Beauty Queen's Last Order: "Do Not Shoot," Contradictions and More Contradictions

December 4, 2012, 5:12 pm

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Borderland Beat

The clearer Proceso version of the events surrounding the death of Maria Susana Flores Gamez is overly truncated, glossing over some important points provided in the original Riodoce version. Riodoce's version is too lengthy and sometimes fails to acknowledge seemingly deliberate misinterpretations of events in the various reports by the military. Neither publication is at fault. In my opinion, it was the military that purposefullly created smokescreens of confusion by leaving out facts. It may be still early in the process, and a clearer, interpretation may be pending.  Havana

The tragic death of Sinaloa Woman winner of 2012 exceeds the epic imagery of glamorous drug trafficking.  In the midst of conflicting versions, the authorities fail to provide a credible report of clashes between gunmen and army elements which overwhelmed the young Maria Susana Flores Gamez in the dawn of November 24. Witnesses say the shooting soldiers shot her even as she surrendered, begging them not to.  Exclusively, Proceso presents fragments of a vivid chronicle of those events that the Sinaloa weekly Ríodoce published in this week's edition. 

MEXICO CITY (Proceso) - "Do not shoot!" She pleaded. "Do not shoot!"  She shouted again. But her words were lost in the rattle of the G-3. The bursts from the army, did not cease,  having pursued them since Caitime. The skirmish continued for several minutes. The beauty queen was killed by a bullet that shattered a carotid artery in the left side of her neck, according to the medical report made in the preliminary investigation. 

Farewell to the glamor,  the catwalk, to photo shoots, to the crown. The winner of the Sinaloa Woman 2012 beauty, Maria Susana Flores Gamez, stepped down from the white pick up,  "carrying a long gun," said the military information delivered to the PGR along with various weapons, magazines, rounds of ammunition and implements of war, which interviewed neighbors (by Riodoce) in El Palmar de Los Leal contradict, she yelled for surrender to the Army.

The vehicle from which the girl descended was destroyed upon entering El Palmar de los Leal, Mocorito. Several rifles were found lying on the ground around her, including an AK-47, known as "goat horn," which authorities say, she was carrying when she got out of the vehicle.

She was abandoned to her fate by Orso Ivan Gastelum , El Cholo, and three more gunmen. Upon entering the town, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel hitmen in the area, instructed to "the miss ": "Say you were  kidnapped ... they're not going to do anything, they'll let you go."

That said,  the gunmen released a burst into the air to distract the army, who were trying to encircle them, El Cholo escaped with the rest between the houses and weeds, into  those valleys that produce sesame and vegetables.

The Nightmare

It all started in Caitime, a village of perhaps five thousand inhabitants which is divided by Mexico 15,  approximately 20 kilómeters south of the city of Guamúchil.

The dawn of November 24, a convoy with dozens of soldiers crept into town with the order to hunt Orso Ivan Gastelum, El Cholo, an operator of Joaquin "El Chapo Guzman", who in August 2009  escaped from the prison in Culiacan after a farewell party.  It's assumed his employer had given that word.

The uniformed officers didn't arrive in official vehicles, but in particular trucks, including double wheeled armored ones. The same vehicles military forces seized three years before in Guasave from hitmen Isidro Meza Flores, El Chapo Isidro, a sworn enemy of the El Cholo. They were hidden under straw bundles.

When Orso Ivan Gastelum's circle of security realized that armed men surrounded the house, they alerted their boss, who was in another hideout, less than 100 meters away. Thinking that it was a rival Guasave group, they began shooting at the strangers. But when they found that it was not the Chapo Isidro they faced but soldiers instead, they took all the weapons that could and mounted in at least two trucks and fled knocking down bushes, fences, speeding down a dirt road leading to El Progreso.

Thus began a chase that spanned three villages and over 15 kilometers and would end when the military shot Susana María Flores Gámez, at the entrance of El Palmar de Los Leal.

Back in the first skirmish a soldier had been shot and  killed.  Later More soldiers and gunmen would die, including a worker who crossed the shooting and was killed.

One of the military reports integrated into the investigation given to Seido informs that the military received an anonymous denouncement at 21:30 hours on Friday the 23rd in which they said, " People belonging o organized crime established a military check point very early in the morning in some of the access areas entering the town"

An operation was planned and executed at 05:00 the following day. When they arrived, some gunmen fled in their trucks up to a house. The soldiers followed them and were greeted with bullets by offenders who received reinforcements from the interior of the property.

In the scuffle Eleazar López Bernal was shot.  Some gunmen managed to escape, but they were chased and gave in, capitulated: "We surrender. Do not shoot," says the military  report they detained Alvaro Cázarez Iribe with AR-15 rifle, Gabino Ramirez Lopez, who was carrying an AK-47, and Giovanny Rodriguez Beltran, with another "goat horn".

They are all under arrest  at SEIDO in Mexico City, where they were taken last Thursday.

Also in Caitime they seized six trucks and an arsenal: six AK-47, AR-15 rifle, a grenade launcher attachment, 40 mm caliber grenade, two defensive grenades, a .45 millimeters caliber Colt pistol 37 different chargers, and 1,308 thousand different cartridges. Also clothing and tactical gear.

(Extract from the report published in 1833 Proceso already in circulation)

RioDoce: not in its entirety.

A surprise confrontation between the military and the boss of the Sinaloa cartel hitmen, Orso Ivan Gastelum, authorities give different versions of events. The military reveals that the beauty queen killed in the fray, Susana Flores María Gámez, fired a gun and sodium rhodizonate tests show positive barium and lead. But there are doubts, suspicions and contradictions. Gabriela Soto / Miguel Angel Vega

"Do not shoot!" She pleaded. "Do not shoot!" She shouted again. But her words were lost in the rattle of the G-3. The bursts of the Army that were chasing from Caitime did not cease. It was a scuffle that continued for several minutes. The beauty queen was killed by a bullet that shattered the carotid artery in the  left side of her neck, according to the medical report to the preliminary integrated report 141/2012. 

Goodbye glamor to the runway, the sessions photo, to the crown. The winner of the contest Sinaloa Woman 2012, Maria Susana Flores Gamez, descended from the white pickup truck, "carrying a long gun," said the military part delivered to the PGR with various weapons, magazines, rounds of ammunition and implements of war . Yelling her surrender to elements of the army, interviewed neighbors by Riodoce in Palmar de Leal

The vehicle that she came out of was destroyed leaving as they entered the town of El Palmar de Los Leal. Several rifles were lying around her, including an AK-47, commonly known as "goat horn", which, authorities say, she was carrying . 

She was abandoned to its fate by Orso Iván Gastélum, el Cholo,  and three more gunmen . Upon entering the ejido, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel hitmen in the area, instructed to miss: "Say you kidnap ... not going to do anything, you let go." That said, the Cholo escaped with the rest.

Before leaving, they released a burst into the air to distract the army which was trying to corral them.. Then ran between the houses and weeds, in those valleys that produce vegetables and sesame. 

Yet the military report got that  she served as a retaining wall  for the escape of criminals: "that vehicle left in a spot, as a block to help the second truck flee the scene, but shooting continued, resulting in a female person, coming out of the vehicle carrying a long gun, a situation that the other assailants took to their advantage being impossible to capture three wounded comrades,"says the document. Earlier, the same party explains that in one of the assaults in the chase, the gunmen wounded a "military element first then later two more military elements ". 

*** All started in a village of Caitime perhaps 500 thousand inhabitants that divides Mexico Highway 15, approximately 20 kilometers south of the city of Guamuchil. early Saturday November 24, a convoy of dozens of soldiers crept into town with the order to hunt down Orso Ivan Gastelum. El Cholo, an operator of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. in August 2009 he escaped from the prison in Culiacan after giving a farewell party where he boasted that his employer had given word. 

Uniformed officers did not arrive in cars, but in particular trucks, including double wheeled armored ones that three years earlier, military forces had seized in Guasave from  Isidro Meza Flores, El Chapo Isidro hitmen, El Cholo's sworn enemy. They were hidden under straw bales

When Orso Ivan Gastelum security circle realized that armed men surrounded the house, they alerted his boss, who was in another safety hideout, not a hundred yards away. 

Thinking that it was Guasave rival groups began shooting at strangers. But he realized that was not who faced Chapo Isidro, but soldiers, they took all the weapons can be mounted on at least two trucks and knocking down bushes and fences went speeding down a dirt road leading to El Progreso .

Thus began a chase and death that spanned three towns and over 15 kilometers would end when the military shot Maria Susana Flores Gamez, at the entrance of El Palmar of Leal. Another soldier had been a hit and a soldier dead, product of the first skirmish. Then came more soldiers and gunmen, including a laborer who crossed the shooting and was killed. 

One of the military reports built on research submitted to the Deputy Attorney Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO), reports that the military elements received an anonymous report at 21:30 am on Friday, November 23, because "members of organized crime in the early morning hours,  established military-like checkpoints areas of access to the village." So we planned an operation and executed at 05:00 pm the following day. When they arrived, there were gunmen, who fled in their truck up to a house. The soldiers followed them and were greeted with bullets from firearms by criminals, who received reinforcements from the interior of the property. "Wounding at that time a corporal of infantry, so it is repelled by killing one of our aggressors ... while other assailants continued firing from within said building for 15 minutes, "he detailed.

Eleazar López Bernal  was killed in the skirmish. Some gunmen managed to escape, but they  capitulated: "We surrender. Do not shoot,"  The military report -detained Alvaro Cázarez Iribe with AR-15 rifle, Gabino Ramirez Lopez, who was carrying an AK-47 and Giovanny Rodriguez Beltran, with another "goat horn". They are all under arrest in the City SEIDO Mexico, where they were taken last Thursday. In Caitime they seized six different trucks and an arsenal: six AK-47, AR-15 rifle, a grenade launcher attachment, 40 mm caliber grenade, two defensive grenades , a .45 caliber Colt pistol millimeters, plus 37 different chargers, and 308 thousand different cartridges. Likewise tactical clothing and equipment. 

*** After the first skirmish in Caitime, a chase following El Cholo commenced, who was accompanied by Maria Susana. According to eyewitness reports, the gunmen fled to Mexico Highway 15 and  took a dirt road of about 11 kilometers, weeds and walled, known by locals as Zaragoza, which connects with El Progress. 

According to the military side, three vehicles were introduced by the aforementioned gap: a Ford pickup , armored plates TX-31-216, a Cheyenne Silverado armored gray-silver, TZ-44 076 plates, and a Captiva Sport truck the same color as the above, but with plates VMZ-7794-0. Drivers traveling through a gap near Caitime, 

the two integrated helicopter in the operation 

observing the shootings. Of the three vehicles, it was only possible to stop one. It was driven by Felipe de Jesus Ortiz Reyes, "who proceeded to surrender, lying on the ground, being held by military personnel." 

In the same operation they secured two other vehicles, but no information about where, how, or what happened to the offenders. That information omitted from military report but submitted by military researchers. Nor did it mention that the aggressors belong criminal group, although it is common knowledge to those who are part of Populli Sinaloa cartel. 

Die at Dawn 

The morning of that day, Rosario Méndez rose shortly before five o'clock. His wife, Sara  Conception Yañes, already had prepared his  lunch so, El Chayo, as he was known , took the bag with tacos that his gave him, grabbed his cap and went out to the street where a truck that would take him to his work was waiting. His wife said goodbye and did not know it wouldbe the last time see him alive. 

According to testimony from people in El Progreso,  the chase coming from  Caitimen passing through town. The  hit men, seeing that the Dodge Ram pickup that El Chayo was traveling in was stopped outside a house waiting for them to open the gate, el Cholo's people violently stopped beside it, the gunmen ran and pulled out El Chayo and the driver of the unit, while the other assassins truck blocked the van to keep the boss safe.  All this happened in seconds, and the military was a just few feet away and started shooting left and right against the gunmen. Several of those shots pierced Chayo's body repeatedly, who had no time to lie on the floor, as did his companion. 

Jacinto Yanes, 68,  night ranch watchman's, recalls with horror, to see and hear the gunmen violently through the truck, and heard the shots from the military, quickly threw himself to the ground and began to crawl next to side of a tree. "Wished at the time wanted that the earth to swallow me, because those thunder and buzzing is the ugliest thing  that can happen to a person," he told Ríodoce, days after the shooting. 

El Cholo and Maria Susana Flores Gamez, who were traveling in the first of the trucks could not continue due to punctured tires by the shots, got out, covering from the military fire, they switched to the unit that pulled up seconds before. 

They continued on the escape route to El Palmar de los Leal, a population that is two kilometers south  of El Progreso. The truck that had crossed their escort, also started following him, while the military continued after the gunmen. 

Gone was the terror, and the shattered body of El Chayo, who had fallen as if struck.

Chasing was to to be limitless. After all they had killed a soldier and wounded two others. That's why, say Ríodoce sources, ElCholo was telling Maria Susana, amid the flight, they would have to separate. 

"Soldiers are not going to shoot a woman," he said. "When you get caught, say you had been kidnapped ... they will let go."

Nobody could pinpoint exactly what the beauty queen answered him. 

By then the violent chase entered El Palmar, where, passing the first bridge Cholo's people turned left and there, under a tree stopped the truck, got out with guns in hand and moved to another unit. 

Soldiers reached there and seeing the truck crossed the road blocking, soldiers armed and barricaded themselves, without inquiring further, began firing. 

There began a new hell, because the shooting did not stop until several minutes later. 

A neighbor interviewed by Ríodoce said, before the soldiers fired, Susana's voice was heard calling "don't shoot!". But the sounds died in the blasts. 

Conflicting Versions

When the shooting stopped, the town looked like a swarm of soldiers, marines and federales. There were two helicopters flying over the area, and the military forces did not let  absolutely anybodythe place, but also prevented residents from leaving their homes.

"I did not want to peek, because I was afraid ... hey, many shots, and we with children and expecting it to end, as we were lying on the ground, "said a man who declined to give his name. 

As explained, not even prosecutors could enter the place, as the Army conducted its work expertise. 

According Ríodoce sources, El Cholo had been hurt, but just  grazed. One of his gunmen would be in worse condition, since one of the shots would have broken an arm, days later, the arm had to be amputated. 

But the military version of the first part of the death of "the Miss" is also different. The document specifies that Maria Susana was traveling in armored truck along with others, and she was carrying a "long gun", but it doesn't say she shot at  the military, as it should have been institutionally specified.

According to the narrative, a white pickup traveling at high speed towards El Progreso, upon passing a military checkpoint fired at them. They proceeded to repel and started to chase. 

Later in the agricultural zone, the soldiers endured a second attack. Also the gunmen robbed a truck and continued escaping. Arriving  at the next town, soldiers were met with another attack from that same pickup truck, the one, the model was traveling in . 

"Started a third attack by assailants traveling in an armored white truck, wounded the first military person, a little up the road, two other military elements were wounded, repelling the cited aggression . Finally stopping their progression in a different spot, their truck served as block to the second truck aiding the criminals to flee the scene." 

"But nevertheless, the assault continued , resulting in a female casualty, the one who stepped from the vehicle carrying a rifle, at that moment the attackers took advantage of order escape place" 

The military version concluded without informing what happened to the rest of the attackers who were traveling with her, it is deduced that the truck served as a  "wall"  the attackers used to escape from the other truck. 

From that time the military gained control. They gave notice to civil authorities . But the prosecutor, stationed in the county seat of Mocorito, had to wait two hours to initiate proceedings on the body of the miss, because they wouldn't let anybody through. 

Attorney Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez initially said that she ( the beauty was with the gunmen and he refused to point out if she shot.) Days later the prosecutor passed the problem to the PGR when they attested that they performed the rhodizonate sodium test on the corpse. This, according to the written statement resulted positive for barium and lead. 

General Moises Melo Garcia  adopted the same position when asked about Maria Susana's participation in the facts, according to a media: "I think they are exaggerating the situation, I could not confirm that which PGR is saying (if she fired) , in which case it is they who have to report what happened that day," he said. 

About the facts the Department of Defense issued no official statement and only limited to develop parts of confrontation which they were given by the PGR.

 Beauty and tragedy 

The brief history of Mary Susan was marked by glamor, beauty and tragedy. At age eight her father was killed during a confrontation. Then the girl was under the care of her mother, but she found solace in the beauty contests in which she began to participate. 

Leopoldo Sánchez, fashion promoter in Guamúchil said that Susana was first queen of Talent and Fantasy contest, and later Queen of  her high school.

Then she began with the catwalks until she became Miss Sinaloa of Tourism 

"She was a healthy girl, very pretty and very funny ... never heard that she hung out in those environments," explained the promoter to Ríodoce.

Sometime  in those these events, or outside of them, she ran into Orso Ivan Gastelum, but it's a story whose details few know and no one wants to tell.

The night of Friday 23, Maria Susana was in Culiacán and reportedly told her mother that she would go to the Livestock Show to see a Jenny Rivera concert.

But something tragic happened that morning because she was in Caitime, in a El Cholo safe house, that Army intelligence sources had already located, and that same morning, they had the order to assault. 

That's  why when the mother of Maria Susana got the call that her daughter had been "injured" in a shootout in Caitime, which she  first received with horror and then with disbelief. 

"No, my daughter is in Culiacán. She went to the fair to see Jenny Rivera with her ​​friends, "She reportedly told the bearers of bad news. 

Rooted/vetted/ arraigned by la SEIDO

— Álvaro Cázarez Iribe.

— Gabino Ramírez López.

— Giovanny Rodríguez Beltrán.

— Felipe de Jesús Ortíz Reyes.

Secured:

— Chevrolet Tornado, pick up, white.

— Chevrolet Silverado, pick up, roja.

— Dodge Dakota, pick up, white

— Toyota Sienna, suv, grey.

— Toyota Tundra, pick up 4X4, grey.

— General Motors Silverado, suv, black

— Dodge Ram, de redilas, blanca.

— 6 armas AK-47.

— 1 fusil AR-15.

— 1 Grenade launcher attachment.

— 1 grenade calibre .40 milímeters.

— 2 granadas de fragmentación defensivas.

— 1 Colt pistol calibre .45 milímetros.

— 37  various magazines.

— 1,308 different rounds.

Sources: Proceso, Riodoce

MANTAS: In Piedras CDG Sends Message to Citizens - While in N. Laredo Z40 Warns of Imposters

December 4, 2012, 8:52 pm

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Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat

Mantas in Piedras Negras and Nuevo Laredo

TEXT TRANSLATION:

In the last days, Piedras Negras has been seen as the red (bloody) border of the year, this is due to the presence of the Zetas in the state of Coahuila. It is enough, no more deaths, enough of the death of innocent men, women and children. Estela Salinas, leader of  the San Joaquin plaza (colonia)  and her daughters Dardy and Ximena (a girl of 13 years old) are the last (recent) family that lost their lives in hands of the bastards Zetas.

8 of 10 families have suffered of the loss of a family member  in hands of the Zetas, 131 inmates were threaten and  forced to escape from prison and work  as sicarios, in which more than 20 have died in confrontations with militaries, El Henano, leader of the plaza gave them freedom only to die. These are your last days Z40-Z42- cock sucker Henano, you forced us to destroy you for killing our family.

Citizens of Piedras Negras do your part by denouncing to the authorities the presence of these filthy Zetas, the government of Mexico will make justice, but us on our part will vengeance.

ATTE:Gulf Cartel

 Estella Salinas wearing jeans below, here representing Piedras Negras traders in a protest aginst unlawful confiscation of goods by the tax department, is mentioned in the manta as killed along with her two daughters

Meanwhile In Nuevo Laredo:

Mantas signed by Z40, warn against criminals posing as him or his Zetas, get the word to him he asks, or tell the PGR...

TEXT TRANSLATION:

To the people of Nuevo Laredo, I ask you a favor

Do not listen to the phone calls that extortionists make, telling you that they belong to the group of the Zetas or that they are Z40.  (Saying) That you need to deposit into a bank account, they are extortionists that are taking advantage of the name of the group or of my name to extort the town people, when they do that don’t continue with the phone call.

Hang up and send them to fuck their mother.

Yesterday, somebody told me that 2 delinquents went to his business and asked for 500 pesos and that Z40 was sending them. Those people are also extortionist that are taking advantage of the people to get money for their addiction.

So I invite you to denounce them, if you have somebody that can give us the information or  if not, denounce them to the PGR, Ministerial or the Army.

Sincerely Z40

Sources to write this post: PN_Narco - Meny blog- my sleuthing partner TexPatNMex

Pena replaces two in Mexican Army general staff

December 5, 2012, 9:00 pm

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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Five days into his administration, Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto has opted not to shake up general staff appointments at his defense ministry, replacing only two top staff positions, according to Mexican news accounts and official government information.

General Mendez Bazan

Wednesday, it has been reported without official confirmation, that the head of the army and army operations chief would be the first two changes in the Mexican Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) general staff.  Press reports have said that the two appointments may the the only two of SEDENA's general staff appointments.

General Virgilio Mendez Bazan was appointed as head of the Mexican Army, coming from X Military Region in Yucatan state in southern Mexico. He replaces General Carlos Demetrio Gaytan Ochoa. General Martin Cordero Luqueño has been appointed to replace General Mendez Bazan as commander of the X Military Region.

General Mendez Bazan is a 1967 graduate of Mexico's Heroico Colegio Militar military academy and an infantry commander, according to data supplied by SEDENA on its website, and, between 2002 and 2005, has held command in the 22nd Military Zone in Mexico state. He was promoted to general de division in 2009.  Like his commander, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, he is reportedly a friend of Pena Nieto.

The army's new operations chief is General Roble Arturo Granados Gallardo, is a 1972 graduate of Heroico Colegio Militar military academy and an infantry commander who was previously commander of the Mexican 13th Military Zone in Nayarit in western Mexico, a command he held in 2004, according to data supplied by SEDENA.  An article which appeared on the website of El Universal news daily, he has held other military zone commands before his elevation to army operations chief.

General Granados Gallardo replaces General Luis Arturo Oliver Cen, a highly experienced former field commander and cavalryman, who was once an aspirant to become head of the army.

Last Tuesday, Pena Nieto attended Artillery Day in Mexico City where in a speech he reiterated his goal of eventually returning the Mexican Army to the barracks, as a means of ending drug war violence which has been a feature of Mexico's struggle against drug cartels and organized crime since 2007.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com

2 Mexican military die in plane crash

December 5, 2012, 10:04 pm

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Two Mexican military aviators were killed Wednesday morning in an Mexican Navy airplane crash in Baja California Sur, in Mexico, according to Mexican news accounts.

According to a news account posted on the website of Proceso news weekly, the men who died were identified as Mexican Navy Lieutenant Commander Adrian Ignacio Gonzalez Vargas, and Mexican Air Force Major Alfonso Barajas Jesus Verduzco. Both men were flight instructors.

According to the report,  the two military men were on a training mission aboard a Moravan Zlin 242L single engine aircraft at about 1130 hrs when the aircraft crashed.  The location of the crash was 36 kilometers southeast of La Paz, Baja California Sur.

The pilot and passenger were flying out of the naval aviation school in La Paz, part of the Mexican 2nd Naval Zone.  The aircraft was destroyed in the crash.

One week after end of Laguna Segura, SEDENA reinforces La Laguna

December 6, 2012, 9:00 pm

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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

One week following the end of the security operation known as Laguna Segura and in the wake of several criminal incidents, elements of the Mexican Army and Durango state police are scheduled to arrive in La Laguna, perhaps within hours to reinforce security operations in the area, according to Mexican news accounts.

According to a news item posted on the website of El Sol de Durango news daily, three unidentified youths were found shot once in the head on the road between Nuevo Gomez Palacio and the village of La Borrega in Durango state late Tuesday afternoon.  All three of the victims were under 16 years old.

In a separate incident, three men was killed when armed suspects attacked a business in Gomez Palacio Thursday, according to a news item posted on the website of EL Diario de Coahuila news daily.

The assault took place at Gruas ABSA on Bulevar Ejercito Mexicano, where armed suspects also set four cranes afire wounding two others.  The dead were identified as Oscar Sanchez Martinez, 23 , who died at the scene and, Pablo Sanchez Ruvalcaba, 56, and Nestor Joaquin Landeros, who died while receiving medical attention.  Wounded in the fire were Samuel Mendoza Hernandez, 39, Torreon, Coahuila, and Homero Garcia Meza, 21, Gomez Palacio.

Only two months ago then Mexican interior minister Alejandro Poire Romero arrived in Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila state, to make a review of security conditions in La Laguna, later making the determination that since violence had been reduced, the Laguna Segura operation could come to an end.

La Laguna is an area in eastern Coahuila and western Durango states which includes 10 municipalities of both states as well as the cities of Torreon, Coahuila and Gomez Palacio, Durango.  Its location is on the northern most contiguous east west highway that connects the east and west coasts of Mexico, Mexico Federal Highway 40.

Alejando Poire Romero

For his part, Coahuila governor Ruben Moreira Valdes, his hands have been full in dealing with the breakdown in security in the Piedra Negras region of northern Coahuila state, where 131 inmates at a Centro de Readaptacion Social (CERESO) escaped, creating a massive security headache, with a severe uptick in violent incidents in the wake of the mass prison escape.

Governor Moreira Valdes also suffered the loss of his nephew, Eduardo Moreira who was working for Coahuila state in Ciudad Acuna, and who was killed allegedly on orders of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, leader of Los Zetas, who himself was killed in an exchange of gunfire with a naval infantry unit in northern Coahuila state.

Jorge Herrera Caldera

Durango Governor Jorge Herrera Caldera has been publicly less than enthusiastic at the news, protesting the security operation should continue.

Laguna Segura was initiated  November, 2011, as a comprehensive joint program controlled by the Mexican Army, including the 10th Military Zone and later the IX Military Region, which intended to address jurisdictional problems  especially in pursuits against organized crime groups which pass through the area.  The program was also intended to clean state police and assist 10 municipalities in and around La Laguna in cleaning their police corporations, as well as provide a choke point for drug cartels' movement of product and shooters north.

At one point Laguna Segura claimed as many as 4,000 federal operatives in the area.

According to a news item posted on the website of El Siglo de Durango news daily, Durango state Secretaria de Seguridad Publica del Estado (SSPE), Antonio Rosso Holguin, announced that Durango Policia Acrediable units and units of the Mexican Army would move into the area and would be coordinated this time by Durango state.

Antonio Rosso Holguin

SSPE Rosso Holguin also said that Policia Federal (PF) units could return to the area, but not yet, as hotels housing PF units were already full. Some PF quarters were attacked by armed suspects last month.  He also indicated that Torreon may not be protected by units with the 10th Military Zone, which is based in Durango.

So far, no announcement has been released by the Mexican  Secretaria de Defensa Nacional  (SEDENA) the  controlling agency for the Mexican Army relating to the new security arrangements. 

Mexican news accounts indicate that the state security structure in Coahuila is currently focussed on the Piedras Negras area, where shootings and shootouts have become commonplace.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com

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U.S. Marine: Chained to bed in Mexican jail

December 7, 2012, 11:11 am

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Borderland Beat Posted by  Athena Borderland Beat Forum.   MEXICO CITY — As a U.S. Marine, Jon Hammar endured nightmarish tension patrolling the war-ravaged streets of Iraq’s Fallujah. When he came home, the brutality of war still pinging around his brain, mental peace proved elusive.  Surfing provided the only respite.  “The only time Hammar is not losing his mind is when he’s on the water,” said a fellow Marine veteran, Ian McDonough.  Hammar and McDonough devised a plan: They’d buy a used motor home, load on the surfboards and drive from the Miami area to Costa Rica to find “someplace to be left alone, someplace far off the grid,” McDonough said.  They made it to only the Mexican border. Hammar is in a Matamoros prison, where he spends much of his time chained to a bed and facing death threats from gangsters. He’s off the grid, for sure, in walking distance of the U.S. border. But it’s more of a black hole than a place to heal a troubled soul.  The reason might seem ludicrous. Hammar took a six-decade-old shotgun into Mexico. The .410 bore Sears & Roebuck shotgun once belonged to his great-grandfather. The firearm had been handed down through the generations, and it had become almost a part of Hammar, suitable for shooting birds and rabbits.  But Mexican prosecutors who looked at the disassembled relic in the 1972 Winnebago motor home dismissed the U.S. registration papers Hammar had filled out. They charged him with a serious crime: possession of a weapon restricted for use to Mexico’s armed forces.  Hammar isn’t the only American accused of questionable gun-related charges at Mexico’s border. Last April, a truck driver who was carrying ammunition through Texas got lost near the border, dipped into Mexico to make a U-turn and was forced to spend more than six months in jail.  It’s been months since Hammar’s Aug. 13 arrest, and his former Marine comrades are livid and dumbfounded, impotent to help. “It’s heartbreaking. This is a guy who I served with in numerous combat situations, and he was one of the best we had,” said veteran Marine Sgt. James Garcia.  Hammar, 27, joined the Marines and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq before receiving an honorable discharge in 2007, serving another four years in inactive reserve. In Fallujah, one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq, Hammar’s Marine battalion was hit hard, with 13 killed in action and more than 100 wounded, Garcia said.  “There were days where it was like, dude, I may not make it out of here,” Garcia said. “If it wasn’t the IEDs, it was the car bombs or the suicide bombs.”  In Afghanistan, the Marine unit provided security for President Hamid Karzai, protected election polls and disrupted insurgent cells around Kabul.  Hammar did not have an easy re-entry to civilian life. After recurring bouts of depression, he voluntarily checked into The Pathway Home, a residential treatment center for veterans in California’s Napa Valley, in August 2011 for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. He graduated nine months later.  “A big portion of his PTSD is survivor’s guilt. It’s a loss of innocence,” said Olivia Hammar, his mother, a Miami-Dade County magazine publisher. “You’re still trying to process all your friends who didn’t come home.”  After leaving Pathway, Jon Hammar and Ian McDonough spent $1,400 on the used Winnebago, splashed out another $3,000 to outfit it and mapped a route to Costa Rica, hitting surf breaks in Cocoa Beach, Fla., and in Louisiana and Texas along the way to Mexico. Inside the rolling white beast were up to nine surfboards.  “We begged him not to go, specifically because we were worried about his safety in Mexico, but they were fearless Marines and were undaunted,” Olivia Hammar said in an email.  McDonough, a U.S. citizen who’s lived off and on for three years in Argentina, said he and his friend were wary of dangers as they approached the Los Indios border crossing, which links Brownsville, Texas, with Matamoros, Mexico.  “We had enough gas in the vehicle that we were going to make it to southern Mexico before nightfall,” McDonough said. “We weren’t going to stop.”  The issue of the shotgun came up near the border. “I told him that we probably shouldn’t take the shotgun with us,” McDonough said. “And he said, ‘No, I’m going to get it cleared with customs at the gate.’ So I said, ‘That’s fine. As long as it’s legit.’ ”  The Customs and Border Protection agent said it was all right to take the shotgun, McDonough said, adding that the agent told them: “ ‘All you have to do is register it.’ So they gave us a piece of paper and said, ‘This is your registration. You’ve got to pay this much.’ They gave us the piece of paper to give to the Mexican authorities.”  As soon as the Winnebago lumbered over the bridge and they handed over the form to Mexican agents, trouble began. The two spent several days in custody, separated from each other. Mexican authorities eventually freed McDonough, perhaps because of his Argentine residency, and he walked back to Brownsville.  On Aug. 18, Mexican prosecutors leveled serious charges against Hammar. Curiously, it wasn’t the type of shotgun that broke Mexican law. It was the length of the barrel, which the formal citation said was shorter than 25 inches, although a discrepancy has emerged over how the barrel was measured.  “It’s a glorified BB gun,” Olivia Hammar said.  Indeed, Mexico’s criminal groups routinely wield AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, high-powered .50-caliber sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other potent weaponry. If Hammar had any intention of causing mayhem, using his great-grandfather’s proud firearm would have been like Daniel Boone and his muzzle-loading Tick-Licker fighting a modern U.S. Marine.  Back in April, the Dallas truck driver, Jabin Bogan, carrying 25,000 pounds of ammunition in his 18-wheeler, said he got lost in El Paso en route to a delivery in Phoenix. When he lurched to a stop at the Mexican border, asking to turn around, a Customs and Border Protection agent told him it was impossible. He was told to enter Mexico and make a U-turn. He had no passport and couldn’t speak Spanish.  The ammunition was openly displayed on nine pallets in the truck, most of it of a caliber unsuitable for the AK-47 and AR-15 rifles favored by Mexico’s cartels.  Mexican prosecutors charged him with crimes that could have brought more than 25 years in prison.  “My son was not trying to deliver no drugs or no guns to nobody,” Bogan’s mother, Aletha Smith, told an ABC-TV affiliate in Texas.  Through pressure from members of the U.S. Congress, Bogan was freed Nov. 23, and he returned to a tearful reunion in Dallas with his family.  While his ordeal was difficult, Hammar’s has been worse.  Once Hammar was sent to a state prison in Matamoros, mixed in with the general inmate population, late-night phone calls began to his parents in Palmetto Bay, Fla.  “They said, ‘I have your son. We need money.’ I said, ‘I’m going to call the (U.S.) consulate.’ They said, ‘The consulate can’t help you.’ Then they put him on the phone. He said, ‘Mom, you need to pay them,’ ” Olivia Hammar recalled.  Over subsequent calls, the extortionists offered a Western Union account number and demanded an initial payment of $1,800.  Frantic, the Hammars contacted U.S. diplomats, who helped get their son out of a general cellblock into solitary confinement. They didn’t pay the extortion. Nor did they speak to the news media until now.  “He was housed in a wing controlled by the drug cartel,” said Eddie Varon-Levy, a Mexican lawyer hired by the family.  Varon-Levy said that Hammar, if convicted, could receive a sentence of anywhere from three to 12 years in a federal prison.  Making matters worse is the nature of Hammar’s confinement, a matter that’s drawn the attention of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Hammars’ local representative.  “His family has described a very disturbing situation that includes their son being chained to a bed in a very small cell and receiving calls from fellow inmates threatening his life if they did not send them money,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “The family also says that the jail where their son is being held is controlled by the dreaded and brutal Zetas drug cartel. The family wants their son back home, and I will do my best to help them."  For all the toughness instilled by the Marine Corps, friends say Hammar is a gentle soul.  “Hammar doesn’t take meds. Hammar doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink. Hammar doesn’t do any of that. He surfs,” McDonough said. “If you meet Hammar, you have to like him. He’s always there for you. If you need something, he’ll literally give you everything.”  So far, Hammar’s parents have gotten little help from U.S. diplomats.  “They take a real hands-off approach. Unless your life is at threat, they aren’t going to do anything,” Olivia Hammar said.  For Garcia and dozens of other Marines who’ve learned of Hammar’s plight, it’s hardly conceivable not to take action.  “He doesn’t deserve this,” Garcia said. “We never leave a brother behind. We never leave a Marine behind. We have to do something.”  Source: Tim Johnson Sun Herald, McClatchy Newspapers

FULL LENGTH FILM: "Breaking the Taboo"

December 7, 2012, 2:30 pm

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Chivis Martínez Borderland Beat
 

 Richard Branson' 'Breaking The Taboo' Takes Aim At The War On Drugs

This film Sundog Pictures released its feature documentary "Breaking the Taboo" to YouTube on Friday, giving the world a free look at its nearly hour-long film.   

Narrated by Oscar winning actor Morgan Freeman, "Breaking the Taboo" is produced by Sam Branson's indie Sundog Pictures and Brazilian co-production partner Spray Filmes and was directed by Cosmo Feilding Mellen and Fernando Grostein Andrade. Featuring interviews with several current or former presidents from around the world, such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, the film follows The Global Commission on Drug Policy on a mission to break the political taboo over the United States led War on Drugs and expose what it calls the biggest failure of global policy in the last 40 years.

A big thank you to Borderland reader "Gerardo D" for bringing the film to my attention.  You readers continue to play an important part of my contributions by sending information to me. Thank you-thank you!

A disclaimer of sorts, remember this is a film produced by others and is not necessarily a point of view I have either in whole or part, that is up to each of you to decide for yourselves.

[The video plays satisfactorily on full screen mode]

 

 

Source: Sundog Pictures

Saltillo: Four Found Hanging Off Bridge

December 7, 2012, 6:03 pm

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Borderland Beat

 

 

The Attorney General of the State (PGJE) reported through a press conference, that they have identified  one of the four people who were discovered hanging from a bridge of the Distributor Road El Sarape.

The identified man Carlos Omar Gonzalez Molina was 20 years of age who, according to the ongoing investigation by the authorities, was engaged in criminal activity as a “halcon” or lookout, for which cartel was not specified.

Gonzales Molina was reported missing on Dec. 6. The other three bodies have not been identified.

It was at 05:15 hrs today when the alert was triggered by a report of four dead people hanging from the Serape distributor road bridge. The deseased were four men, aged between 17 and 35 years. The bodies were hung on the inside lane from east to west. The bodies bore signs of intense torture and were wrapped from head to toe.

A few meters from the scene on Highway 57 and Juan Navarro was an abandoned Neon vehicle, gray with 9798 UCD plates and Texas license plates J31TGX.   inside the vehicle found no traces or signs of violence but there were signs of attempts  to torch the vehicle.

When the spokesman Sergio Sisbles was asked if a message accompanied the bodies, he declined to answer directly saying “a full report with details will be forthcoming”.

Right.

 

Sources used for this post: Zocalo Saltillo and Vanguardia Saltillo

Scorn and oblivion for disappeared federal police officers

December 7, 2012, 8:17 pm

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Proceso

December 6, 2012

Marcela Turati

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

True heroes, in Felipe Calderon's rhetoric, dozens of federal police agents who disappeared in his war against drug trafficking (some estimate there are more than one hundred) do not deserve the slightest consideration  from their commanders. Mothers of the victims, who are desperately looking for their children, tend to be scorned by the commanders, who don't give them any information and at times suggest to them that they should have them declared dead so they can have access to certain benefits...

MEXICO, D.F. (Proceso).-- Suddenly, retired tortilla maker Margarita Sanitzio found the courage to break the silence that for three years has been tearing her up inside and said: "My son Esteban Morales Sanitzio disappeared when he was 28 yeras old. It was on December 3, 2009, in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan. He's a federal policeman; he disappeared with two fellow officers."

She found the courage to speak the truth because she saw the end of (Calderon's) six-year term approaching. Because on her trips to ask for information about her son she met other mothers with the same despair and with them she joined the Movement for Peace (Movimiento por la Paz). Because she shook off her fear, with which the Public Security Secretariat (SSP) wanted to immobilize her so she would not file a complaint.  And, above all, because of the instructions that the families of the disappeared police officers got from the agency before a new government took office: "Declare your family members dead."

"If they declare them dead, they won't look for them any more." That's her fear, she says, crying. "I'm asking them to continue looking for my son, if they ever looked for him, and don't leave him forgotten, don't call it a 'closed case' ...because for me, my son is not dead."

Margarita Sanitzio's story shares features with those of the rest of the family members of disappeared federal police officers, family members who were interviewed by this weekly. Stories that get lost in the murky halls of the SSP bureaucracy, where they refuse to give out information to the families.  In all cases, the families notified the police agencies of the disappearances before the police agencies notified them. The explanation they got was that the "desaparecidos" quit their jobs with the police force and they were treated like traitors. Because this response failed to satisfy them, and confronted with demands to look for their family members, the police commanders were forced to file criminal complaints on the disappearances.

The families had to put together their own jigsaw puzzles with the facts in a situation where witnesses appear to be trained to lie, where institutional silence reigns, where what little information they do receive is contradictory.

Rumors in the hallways

Federal police officers themselves talk about it.

A former police officer who resigned because he could not stand the psychological pressure told Proceso: "There are many 'levantados' (abducted persons). They get killed in operations and their commanders don't report their deaths. They don't even notify their families. I imagine it's so they won't claim the pension that the Secretariat pays out."

He told how in 2009, in an operation in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, right outside the hotel where they were staying, two fellow officers disappeared, he still remembers their names: "Cabanas" and "Ibanez." "Afterwards, we found two incinerated bodies, and right beside them their identifications and pay stubs; we believe it was them, but the commander didn't report their deaths. He said that they disappeared."

He and several fellow officers one day met the mother of one of these police officers. They would see her when she came to the base to ask for information. They saw her afterwards in the Movement for Peace.

"A fellow officer approached her one day and told her what we knew. The lady started crying. We didn't pay attention where the bodies ended up, we are not familiar with Zacatecas, but she was grateful for the information," he tells us.

A federal police officer on active duty, consulted on this matter, explained to Proceso that in the latter part of 2010, the Ministry of Public Security (SSP; Secretaria de Seguridad Publica) stopped performing funeral ceremonies for fellow officers "fallen" in battle. In addition, they stopped mentioning them in the roll calls to honor them and stopped adding their names to the 25 foot memorial they have inside Contel Base in Iztapalapa.

The names of federal police officers declared officially dead, who are listed on the white marble wall, amount to 384. Up until february, 2012, the Federal Police (PF) admitted that 41 of its members had disappeared during (Calderon's) six-year term. According to the facts provided to ElUniversal, which asked for the information through the Transparency Law (analogous to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act), the states where these disappearances took place were: Michoacan, 19; Tamaulipas, six; Nuevo Leon, three;  two each in the following states: Durango, Distrito Federal, Coahuila, Veracruz and Zacatecas,  while Baja California, Baja California Sur and Guerrero reported one each.

According to the information, in 2006 there was one agent reported missing; in 2008 there were four; in 2009, thirteen, in 2010, fifteen, and in 2011, eight. The numbers are inconsistent with the statements obtained from families and police and former police agents consulted for this report. 

"They have abducted ("levantado") many, many. Almost the majority of the commanders , to avoid problems, say that the missing officers were to blame because they went out drinking without permission. They immediately disclaim responsibility," says a career police officer, consulted by Proceso, who requested anonymity.

Another officer corroborated this information: "When one of us disappears, and it was not in combat, they prefer not to notify the base or the families, because if the commander says he gave them permission to go out, they'll take him to the Public Ministry for questioning. That's why they always say it was job abandonment." 

According to another police officer consulted on this, in dangerous areas, like Michoacan or Tamaulipas, there was never any strategy to prevent "levantones" (abductions). On some occasions, even police officers working in the intelligence area met with the same fate, although they supposedly have more information than the rest, they're better trained and they infiltrate those areas to investigate. That was the case with Jose Alfredo Silly Pena, police intelligence coordinator, and two subordinates in Buenaventura, Chihuahua, while they were investigating murders committed against the Mormon community. Subsequently, they were found dead in a mine.

A lawyer and former police officer, who handles cases involving federal, municipal and state police, and who requested that her name be kept out for safety reasons, explained the reasoning behind the disappearances within the agency.

"Before, when a fellow officer was abducted or was disappeared, search teams would be put together. Now, the commanders (most of them ex-military) don't care about anybody's life, only about their money. We're aware that they don't report the cases; it's easier to say they abandoned their jobs and stop paying their salary than to initiate an investigation."

This woman lawyer stated that commanders involved in drug trafficking don't want to be involved in legal matters for any reason, because they need to work quietly. That's why they do not go to the Public Ministry to report the disappearances of their subordinates.

"Police officers also tell us that there are commanders who kill their subordinates because of disputes, but report them as having quit their job", she added. Two of the sources consulted said this is possible.

 

continued on next page

Mothers of heroes, belittled

When Mrs. Sanitzio went with the wives and mothers of police officers Gustavo Sanchez Gonzalez and Prisciliano Gomez Jacinto to the Contel base in Iztapalapa to denounce that their family members had disappeared in Uruapan, they were told: "Don't tell your neighbors anything, don't go to Michoacan to look for them, don't say anything, because you could be placing them in danger". "They always put fear into us," she says.

What draws attention in the case files of corporals Sanitzio, Sanchez and Gomez is that even though the women reported their disappearance on December 4, 2009, it wasn't until the 9th that Commander Guillermo Frncisco Sanchez Mora filed a criminal complaint in Lazaro Cardenas.

"They called us from the PF to complete the process for a 'presumption of death' (declaration ). But that doesn't do me any good. What I want is justice. With my heart in my hand, I beg of them, that if they have my son in some place, to take pity on me and let him go. Life for me is not the same. The scar is forever. The strength for living dies. I hope their hearts soften and they let him go," she says, weeping.

Although she followed all possible leads, the last link in her journey was Provictima, the agency created by Felipe Calderon, where they told her to go to Michoacan to get evidence, and to ask the PF for her son's case file, which they have always refused to give her.  

"In Michoacan, they have 'disappeared' a lot of them, they just kept on taking them," they say in the ranks of the police officers. And more and more, the rumor gets out of the hallways, it sneaks into public debates, it's heard on loudspeakers, echoes on television.

On Sunday, November 25, 2012, during a demonstration outside outside the Palace of Fine Arts by family members of persons who disappeared during the presidential term, in repudiation of Felipe Calderon, Mrs. Patricia Manzanares Ochoa, mother of federal police officer Juan Hernandez Manzanares, who disappeared along with a fellow officer on February 20, 2011, in San Nicolas, Nuevo Leon, said that there are hundreds of 'disappeared' federal police officers.

"The head of the Federal Police is corrupt. They are the biggest thieves. They have 'disappeared' many young men, and the Federal (Police) does nothing, they never look for them... We demand that they tell us what they have done. All they want is for us to sign the presumption of death (papers) so we'll stop looking for them," she yells into the microphone.

Then it was Victor Rolon's turn, the uncle of a police officer, Adrian Dominguez Rolon, who disappeared with a fellow officer on February 17, 2011, in Uruapan. Victor cried: "There are many of them, many, because of corruption!"

During the interview, he stated: "The PF filed a report of job abandonment the very next day, but they did not want to file a criminal complaint on his disappearance. When his mother went to Uruapan to inquire about it, they gave contradictory versions; they lied, saying his cell phone rang as if it was disconnected. But it gave us a connection when we dialed. They didn't ask for the videos from the surveillance cameras; they said they didn't have the technology for tracing calls; they refused to give us the attendance lists; they didn't let us go into the Contel base, and they blocked all investigations. (They have done it) to this day."

Like the rest of them, he said that about six months ago, about 50 families were summoned to the Contel base, within the PF's jurisdictional area, so they would give their consent to issue a certificate for presumption of death for their family members.

"There are too many 'disappeared' federal police agents. Officers tell us that the commanders sell them to the cartels to satisfy drug debts. We don't know what to believe, but their silence is suspicious", commented the member of the Movement for Peace.

On Wednesday he 27th, during the Movement for Peace demonstration to bid farewell to the what they call the "sexenio de la muerte" (sexennial of death), a young woman, Adriana Nunez Rodriguez, was showing a poster with the photograph of her husband, Sub-inspector Rosendo Torres Cortes, bodyguard for Senator Guillermo Anaya when he was candidate for governor of Coahuila. Her husband disappeared July 10, 2011, in Ciudad Lerdo, Durango, when a group of municipal policemen intercepted him to take the armored pickup he was driving.

Six months pregnant, the young woman asked for information but they refused to provide it.

"They only went to my house to ask whether my husband had taken the armored pickup he was using to drive the senator around. They kept insisting that I knew where he kept the pickup. Nobody from the police ever called us again. What little we know was told to us by the SIEDO (sic) (now SEIDO, the specialized organized crime investigation unit at the Attorney General's office). And it was just three months ago that several of us women were invited to a meeting to inform us that we had to complete the 'presumption of death' (certificate), if we want their life insurance and want to continue to participate in the ISSSTE (similar to U.S. Social Security)," said this young woman, often in tears.

Also in the pavilion was Mrs. Araceli Rodriguez, the mother of Luis Angel, who disappeared November 16, 2009, in Atizapan, Michoacan, with eight fellow officers. She is the best-known mother of a federal police officer among the victims of violence , thanks to her activism within the Movement for Peace.

Authorities took Araceli to look at burial pits, burned bodies, to witness divers looking for bodies in lakes. They tried to give the wife of one of her son's fellow officers a burned cadaver without giving her a chance to view it before the burial. She found out it was not her husband when she noticed that the body had all its teeth, while her husband lacked eight teeth. "Go ahead and bury it, even if it's not yours," they insisted, "many families don't even have that."

The families of the federal police officers, the heroes of the war against drug trafficking, grieve like any other victim. Like the rest of them, they don't have a clue, evidence, a body to bury.

The mothers of Felipe Calderon's strongmen, those fallen in combat, are belittled just like any other victim. 

7 found dead in Zacatecas state

December 7, 2012, 10:38 pm

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Six unidentified individuals and one police agent were found dead in Zacatecas state Thursday afternoon, according to Mexican news reports.

According to a news item posted Thursday on the website of El Sol de Zacatecas, a municipal police patrol found the body of Policia Estatal Acreditable (PEA) agent Juan Ormidio Aguilar Lara in Calera municipality inside a Ferris wheel on El Montecillo ranch.

Aguilar Lara was a police commander who disappeared last Tuesday just after he started his vacation.  Aguilar Lara resided in Calera municipality.

Six other unidentified individuals were found in the same area, three men and three women.

In the same area the day before a patrol which included Policia Estatal Preventiva (PEP) and Policia Federal (PF) police detained three suspected criminals, weapons and three vehicles. It unclear in the report if the detainees had anything to do with the disappearance and death of Aguilar Lara.