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Two men hung from bridge in Atizapán, Edomex

March 31, 2013, 9:12 am
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The bodies of two men were found hanging Saturday morning from an overpass located between Ignacio Zaragoza Boulevard and Lechería-Chamapa Highway, in the neighborhood of  Las Torres de Atizapán, Mexico State.

The men, between 20 and 30 years old, apparently were shot and then hung with ropes from the bridge.

On the road they found several shell casings and a narcomensaje, which is not, as of yet, being shared.

One of the victims was wearing gray sweatshirt and dark green pants, while the other wore blue sweatshirt and blue pants.

Prosecution personnel of Atizapán were made aware of the matter. Municipal, state police and municipal Civil Protection arrived on the scene.

Following the discovery,  an officer from the Special Police secured the perimeter of about 50 meters from the bridge Ignacio Zaragoza, so that the railways towards the City were closed to traffic.

At about 7:05 and with the help of a ladder, fire personnel released the bodies to the Forensic Medical Service.

To 8:00 traffic was restored in both directions and retired emergency services.

This is the second time that the bodies of dead people were found hanging from bridges in the state of Mexico. the first was on Paseo de Interlomas, Huixquilucan on August 11, 2011 where a decapitated man was hung from a bridge with a message from La Mano con Ojos. On November 17  2011, a body of another male was found hanging from the bridge Valle del Júcar, in the neighborhood Valle de Aragón, Ecatepec.

Mexirojo, Universal, El Porvenir
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The Texas Department of Public Safety Releases its “Threat Overview” for 2013, with Mexican Cartels at No. 1 Spot

March 31, 2013, 9:53 am
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Borderland Beat
 


According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Mexican drug cartels pose “the most significant organized crime threat to the state.” That’s according to the Texas Public Safety Threat Overview 2013, which was released today following its presentation at the 2013 Texas Emergency Management Conference in San Antonio earlier this week.
The 76-page report, which can be read HERE, identifies myriad “threats” to the state — everything from prison gangs to “criminal aliens” to child traffickers to terrorists (among them would-be Fountain Place bomber Hosam “Sam” Smadi) to drug traffickers bring “cheese” into schools around Northwest Dallas. As the DPS notes in its release this afternoon, its threat assessment was culled from info provided by myriad local and federal law enforcement agencies.
But, says the report, the cartels are No. 1 on the threat list. “Six of the eight cartels currently have command and control networks operating in the state, moving drugs and people into the United States, and transporting cash, weapons and stolen vehicles back to Mexico,” says today’s release.
Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw adds this in a prepared statement: “The impact of cartel crime is painfully obvious when we look to our neighbors in Mexico, with some 60,000 deaths since 2006 and continued cases of brutal torture. It is a top DPS priority to severely obstruct the range and power of Mexican drug organizations to affect the public safety of Texas citizens.”
According to the report, the Zetas and La Familia are the cartels most active in North Texas.
 
 Thanks to my sidekick Lacy for bringing this to my attention!
Source StateTxUS
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KIDNAPPED: ”I Prayed to God and Left Myself in His Hands”

March 31, 2013, 9:55 am
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Borderland Beat

Testimony #2: ”I Prayed to God and Left Myself in His Hands”
Héctor Gordoa was supposed to write about a murder that was posted as a clip on Youtube. He was about to face the same fate himself. He was released—if he promised to write what the drug mafia said. Or else his friends would die.
 
March 9, 2013, Text: Héctor Gordoa.  Translation from Spanish: Stuart Shield
My name is Héctor Gordoa. I am a Mexican journalist. Although I have faced risky situations of various kinds in my 25 years in the profession, I had never gone through an experience like this, an ordeal which has forced me to rethink both my professional and family life.
On 26 July, 2010, while engaged in an investigation of the Gómez Palacio prison in Durango, Mexico, I was abducted by a group of drug traffickers belonging to the Pacific Cartel, headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The investigation I was conducting focused on an assessment of the Comarca Lagunera, the region adjoining Coahuila and Durango, where a bloody turf war is being waged between the Pacific Cartel, which controls Durango, and Los Zetas, which rules in Coahuila, for control of drug, migrant and arms trafficking operations.
The river Nazas marks the boundary between the municipalities of Torreón in Coahuila from those of Gómez Palacio and Ciudad Lerdo in Durango.
The publication of a video on the Internet was an important piece of the investigation into the murder of 17 people in the country villa, the Italia Inn, in Torreón, Coahuila. In the clip, Rodolfo Nájera, a municipal policeman from Lerdo, confesses—having previously been tortured by his Zetainterrogators—that members of the Pacific Cartel, who were inmates of the prison, were allowed out at night so they could attack their rivals in Torreón. They then returned to the safe refuge of the Centro de Readaptación Social (Centre for Social Readaptation). At the end of the VIDEO, the policeman is executed.
This act prompted its rivals, the Pacific Cartel, to do the same. However, on this occasion, we— representatives of the media—were the targets.
 
The kidnapping took place just a few streets away from the Gómez Palacio prison. We were intercepted by three units of heavily armed men. They pointed high-powered rifles at us and got into the car. After slapping me several times, they forced me to drive and told me to follow one of their cars.
 
We proceeded to a dirt road off the highway to Lerdo, Durango. A military convoy was parked there. I almost decided to collide with them deliberately, but on reflection I suspected we were meant to take that route, and so drove on.
We pulled up in a clearing by an irrigation canal. They ordered us out of the car and told us to get in the boot. The outdoor temperature then was about 38 degrees Celsius; inside the boot I and my colleague, the cameraman Alejandro Hernández, were close to suffocation. Some 40 minutes later, they pulled us out and marched us to the foot of a tree. They had also kidnapped Javier Canales, a cameraman from Multimedios Laguna.
We heard our death sentence: “They’re f***ing dead!” and the sound of guns being cocked. One of the hit-men ordered me to put the T-shirt I was wearing on my head and cover my eyes with it. He then put the gun to my temple. I said the Lord’s Prayer and commended my soul to God. I heard nothing except the sound of a gun being cocked and a mocking laugh.
Just then, someone asked who Héctor Gordoa of Televisa México was. I realised that they wanted something from me, and I asked to speak to the leader of the group so I could find out what they needed and how I might be able to negotiate our release. It was incredible: the only people who knew I was in area were the Secretary of Public Security for the state of Durango and the mayor of Gomez Palacio. I had been sold out.
From there, the three of us were moved to a safe house. When we arrived, they led us into an unfinished room at the back of the building. It also housed six other captives. In the middle of the area was a bucket which we used as a toilet and which remained there, un-emptied, during the entire time of my captivity. We were tormented by the stench, the heat and ant and spider stings. Under the constant threats and beatings, we lost all sense of time.
Three of the other captives were agents of the Agencia Federal de Investigaciónwho were trying to establish the veracity of the video I mentioned earlier: Javier Ortega, Antonio Corona and Gerardo Arroyo. They had previously shot a video– featuring a municipal police officer and two taxi drivers – pointing to complicity on the part of federal agents in Los Zeta’s operations.
 
 The police officer, Ramón Gerardo Adame Acosta, was filmed in another video, also posted on the social networks, in which he was asked to identify links between state authorities and the municipalities of Coahuila on the one hand and Los Zetas on the other.
                Ramon Adame
The leader of the group, whom they addressed as ‘Adán’, had spoken to me on numerous occasions. He described how the Pacific Cartel was organized, explained why hostilities between the drug cartels had intensified, and confirmed that some authorities at federal, state and municipal level had become allied to them.
The conditions of our release was that the media groups Televisaand Milenio would broadcast these videos. I accordingly requested to be appointed interlocutor as this would give me scope to communicate with Denise Maerker, leading presenter and director of Televisa’s Punto dePartida, a weekly political analysis and discussion programme of which I was head of information, and to extend the ongoing dialogue with my captors.
Milenio agreed to these conditions but Televisa did not. We had to find a way to convince them that the decision wasn’t ours; we were merely employees of a news media company. On the second day, the negotiations came to an end.

The die was cast; now everything depended on us. We had to dialogue: they insisted that there should be an investigation into what was really happening in the Comarca Lagunera area, to which I replied that this was precisely why I had come there.
This would be the initial key to my freedom. On the morning of that Monday, I had interviewed the mayor of Gomez Palacio, several municipal police officers and relatives of guards and inmates of El Cereso prison. This would allow me to put a report together and include it in the programme. This was accepted, but my companions, Alejandro and Javier, were to be kept as hostages. If I didn't keep my part of the bargain, they would be killed.
They let me go on the Thursday afternoon. They dropped me in the industrial area of the municipality. I got out of the car, still blindfolded, and they placed the camera and the material for my report at my feet. I took off my blindfold, hailed a taxi and went straight to Televisa Laguna. My aim was to write and publish my report—which I did.
As we pulled up, I saw that the TV station was ringed by a guard of federal police, who failed to notice my arrival. Inside the building, they greeted me and notified the directors that I had been released. I asked for a computer and sat down to write. My one aim was to save my companions....continues on next page
Before I returned to the capital, the Chief of the Regional Division of the Federal Police, stopped by at the Televisa studios and asked me how I had managed to be set free and where the safe house was located. This annoyed me and clearly revealed the ineffectiveness of the authorities in operations like these.
Back in Mexico City, I waited for my report to be broadcast. However, the company had decided: there would be no program. At first, I couldn’t understand; the lives of my companions depended on that broadcast being made. However, Denise Maerker insisted that I see it from her perspective. Though I couldn’t accept it at the time, I now realize that it was the best decision she could have made. Not allowing a media outlet to yield to pressure of this kind ensured that such vicious schemes would not be repeated.
Two days later, my companions were released by the criminals. The alleged ‘rescue operation’ announced by the authorities is a fiction. They were freed because we persistently emphasized throughout our captivity that killing us would give them a bad image in the eyes of society, and that they would be compared to their rivals Los Zetas. This was what really led to our release.
Alejandro Hernández, my cameraman, fled from Mexico and applied for political asylum in another country. Javier Canales is lying low somewhere in Mexico. I continue in my profession, driven by my passion to inform people about the reality of Mexico today.
Unfortunately, I belong to that long list of professional colleagues who lead a life beset by uncertainty and insecurity because, like me, their freedom to inform has been imperiled and they have placed their physical safety and that of their families at risk.
Threats, extortions, abductions and even murder have become commonplace. When combined with lack of security and impunity, they render untenable the exercise of journalism in my country.
Though not a country at war, Mexico is currently one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. It is caught up in the midst of a bloody conflict between the drug cartels and the Mexican government, a war that has claimed the lives of some 70,000 people.
We communicators honor our commitment to society though our safety can never be guaranteed. In the last ten years, 84 media workers have been assassinated and 40 have disappeared without trace.
I thank God I am still alive. Unlike many colleagues in other media, I was supported in my work by the company, which employed me. However, we receive no benefits or compensation, nor are we are covered by medical or life insurance. Although I have now moved to another company, the conditions are the same.
The outlook for me is unclear; I ask myself what is the best option for someone who wishes to continue pursuing the exciting work of communicating to the general public. For me the answer lies in the day-to-day exercise of my chosen occupation. My commitment to it grows ever stronger as I see reporters equally committed to the profession and to society in areas fraught with danger.
Journalism is an exciting occupation, and a profession that carries considerable social responsibility. We serve the public with information and this is why we persevere, day after day, with our commitment.
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"La Barbie": An American Druglord

March 31, 2013, 11:58 am
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A Borderland Beat post revisit especially informative for newbies and a good read for all, even if it is a re-read
 
VANESSA GRIGORIADIS AND MARY CUDDEHE
On a warm morning in May a few years ago, Edgar Valdez, a drug lord who goes by the nickname La Barbie, woke up in one of the houses he owned in the resort city of Acapulco.

In the 1950s, this beautiful beach town was the premier haunt of American celebrities: Frank Sinatra used to prowl the hotel lounges, Elizabeth Taylor had her third of eight weddings here, and John F. Kennedy honeymooned on the coast with Jacqueline.

The glamour started to fade in the 1980s, but the city remained a popular vacation destination until a few years ago, when the Mexican cartels transformed Acapulco from a seaside paradise into one of the most violent flash points of the drug war.

As chief enforcer for the town's most powerful cartel, Barbie drove the celebrities away for good and made tourists nervous about straying too far into Acapulco when their cruise ships pulled into port. He felt bad about it, a little, but that is the way of the world, he thought – eat or be eaten.

Barbie has olive skin, but his nickname comes from his good looks and green eyes. He was known for his happy-go-lucky personality, though he could turn terrifying and bloodthirsty in an instant.
 

At 31, he still had the strong, raw body of the linebacker he had been in high school: five feet 10, 210 pounds. Barbie kept a glass case at home filled with 60 Rolexes and diamond-studded Audemars Piguets, but unlike most narcos, he didn't grow a beard or wear flashy gold jewelry.

He preferred to dress like a sophisticated South American on holiday, favoring polo jerseys with an emblem of a horseman and a stick, the kind that real Argentine jockeys wear. In fact, the myth of Barbie looms so large in Mexico that his addiction to the shirts started what's known as the Narco Polo trend, with working-class Mexicans clamoring to buy knockoff versions in street stalls.
 
"These shirts like Barbie's have become the fashion," Mario López, the governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, told reporters in June. "Many young people want to emulate men like him as idols."

But his fashion sensibility wasn't the only thing that distinguished Barbie from other Mexican drug lords: He was also a gringo, a middle-class suburban jock who was born and raised in Texas.

He is the only U.S. citizen known to have risen to the top of a Mexican cartel, and the only American on the State Department's list of targeted drug lords. (The U.S. government offered $2 million for information that would lead to his arrest.)
 
For years, as drugs flowed into Acapulco from Colombia, Barbie controlled the main distribution routes out of the city, moving as much as two tons of coke – that's 2 million grams – into the U.S. every month.

Most of the drugs went to Memphis and Atlanta, where Barbie is believed to have been the main supplier for several violent networks, including one run by the half brother of DJ Paul from Three 6 Mafia.
 
 Barbie cleared up to $130 million a year moving drugs in the States, but with typical boldness he made little effort to launder the money. Instead, he simply loaded the cash onto flatbed trailers and trucked it across the Mexican border.

In the lawless world of the cartels, that kind of money made Barbie a prime target. On this morning in Acapulco, he decided to eliminate the most immediate threat he faced.
 

One of the policemen he kept on his payroll had informed him that four hit men from the Zetas – one of the most violent cartels, led by elite, American-trained soldiers who defected from the Mexican army – had been sent to Acapulco to kill him. So Barbie dispatched some of his own guys to ambush the hit men.

When one of the assassins stopped in the town plaza to buy a phone card to call his sister, Barbie's men punched him in the gut and hustled him into a waiting SUV. To their surprise, however, the hit man had brought along his wife and two-year-old stepdaughter, figuring he might as well enjoy a family vacation while he was waiting to kill Barbie. Caught off guard, Barbie's men hustled them into another SUV, covering their faces with towels so they couldn't see.

The hit man and his family were taken to a house surrounded by an electric fence on the outskirts of Acapulco. According to testimony, Barbie's would-be assassin was then escorted to a bedroom upstairs, where he and his three Zeta accomplices were tied up and ordered to sit on top of a bunch of black garbage bags, which had been taped together to create a large tarp.
 
Barbie climbed the stairs in the afternoon, carrying a video camera and a pistol tucked in his belt.

With the camera on, he began interrogating the men, asking them where they came from and what kind of work they did for the Zetas. "I have the contacts in the army to find out about the patrols," one confessed.

"I am a recruiter for the Zetas," said another. "I worked as a 'hawk,'" said the third, adding that after he had kidnapped someone, his boss would tell him whether "they were going to take him to el guiso or not."

"What is el guiso?" asked Barbie.

"It's when they grab someone, they get information about moving drugs or money, they get what they want, and then, after torturing him, they execute him," the hit man said.

"They take him to a ranch or one of those places, they shoot him in the head, they throw him in a can, and they burn him with different fuels like diesel and gasoline."

The words came spilling forth. As Barbie questioned them, the men told detailed stories about kidnapping rivals, killing reporters, burying people's daughters. They must have thought they were going to get some concessions for divulging so many secrets. But Barbie had other plans. He raised his gun. "And you, buddy?" he asked the fourth hit man.

The man never got a chance to answer. Suddenly, a gun entered the frame and blew the guy's head off.

The hit man's wife and stepdaughter were kept in the house overnight. The next morning, Barbie's men, whom he taught to be merciful to women, gave the little girl a bowl of cereal with a banana and let her swim in the pool out back.
 
Later, they sent her away with her mother, giving them 1,000 pesos for bus fare. Before they left, one of Barbie's men told the wife, "Your husband said to tell you that he loves you."

Barbie believed in vengeance, and in taking care of his enemies. Over his 15 years in the drug trade, he had managed to alienate the leaders of almost every major cartel in Mexico: the Zetas, the Gulf cartel, even the Sinaloa and Beltrán-Leyva cartels he worked for.

"Barbie had enemies galore," says George Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary and the author of Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State.

 "He could have set the Guinness World Record for people who wanted to kill him."

Yet Barbie remained chillingly detached, unable to see the connection between his personal savagery and the way his own family and friends came to fear him.

"Even with all the bad things he's done, Barbie always thought the world looked on him kindly," says a law-enforcement source familiar with Barbie.


 "He's just one of those blithe-living guys who thinks his life is charmed."

Like many Texans, Barbie grew up right across the border from Mexico, in the city of Laredo. The place feels like something from a Mexican postcard, with cobblestone plazas and picturesque waterfalls – except for the massive, multilane bridge to Mexico that cuts straight through town.

Until the drug war, everyone in Laredo saw the two sides of the border as one; many families, after all, had blood ties in both Mexico and the States.

As a kid, Barbie loved to visit Nuevo Laredo, a border town bustling with donkeys, food carts, girls in little embroidered dresses, shoeshine boys and the smell of roasting corn. It was like stepping into another world, and all you had to do was cross the bridge.

In high school, Barbie was in the popular crowd, horsing around in the breezeways outside of class and waging egg wars after school. On weekends, he went to keggers on ranches, played elaborate scavenger games and hung out with his steady sweetheart, Virginia Perez, a bubbly, blue-eyed blonde.
 
He grew up in a middle-class development on the outskirts of Laredo, a kind of no man's land where Burger Kings didn't begin to sprout up until the Nineties.

Even the people of Laredo considered it "Indian territory," an area rife with dope and illegal immigrants. Barbie's parents raised him and his five siblings in a tidy, orange-trimmed home with palm trees in the front. "They're regular Ozzie and Harriets," says Jose Baeza, a spokesman for the Laredo police department. "They're business owners, PTA, morning-jog people."

At school, Barbie was an inside linebacker on the football team in a year when the United Longhorns won the district championship. He was a solid player, getting a sack or two a game, but he was never a star.

His nickname came from his coach. "We called him Ken Doll, mostly because his hair was blond and kinky like the doll's," says a friend from that time.

"Then the coach upped the ante to Barbie, and it took off like wildfire." Barbie took the teasing in stride. "He was a joker with a good sense of humor, walking around in his jockstrap and snapping his towel," recalls a teammate.

When he got an infection his senior year and had to be circumcised, he showed it off in the locker room, telling everyone, "Hey, look, guys, I got my turkey neck cut off."

Barbie never sold drugs in high school, according to friends, but he and his buddies engaged in a common teenage exploit in Laredo: roping cows in the middle of the night, loading them onto trailers and selling them to the highest bidder.




Mostly, he liked hitting the bars across the border after a game on Friday night, and driving his Chevy with its custom red-and-gold paint job, especially on a desolate stretch of road where there was nothing but desert in the distance.

One night, two months before graduation, he collided with another car. The other driver, a middle-school guidance counselor, died instantly. Barbie faced trial for criminally negligent homicide but was cleared of all charges.

"I don't know how it affected him," recalls a friend. "The weird thing is that right away, Edgar came back to football practice, and he seemed exactly like the same guy, just horsing around."

When Barbie graduated from high school soon after, his dad pushed him to go to college. But Barbie, who was a terrible student, decided to pursue a more lucrative career path – one that didn't involve hitting the books.

Before long he was hanging out at border nightclubs, being flashy with his cash. "One night at Sombrero's bar in Nuevo Laredo, the bartender told me that el güero" – a white guy – "wanted to send over some bottles of alcohol," says a friend from high school.


"Barbie never even came over to talk to us, but when we left we saw him outside, in a black Jeep Cherokee. He stopped to say hi, and we saw that he had bulletproof windows. We just thought he was rich."

By age 20, Barbie was deeply involved in drug dealing. Laredo is the biggest commercial land crossing on the Mexican border, and customs agents can check only a small fraction of the 8,000 trucks that pass through the town every day. Barbie knew that if he could smuggle pot from Mexico in his truck, the resale price would instantly skyrocket.

He started out bringing in small quantities, just to pocket a little extra spending money. But once he realized how much there was to be made, he and a friend began smuggling as much as 150 pounds of pot over the border at a time. Eventually, they expanded into cocaine, making their initial sales by FedExing the drugs to midlevel traffickers in Louisville and Memphis.

The year Barbie turned 21, his family's fortunes took an unexpected turn when one of his sisters won $1 million in the Texas Lottery. The Valdezes began making plans to move to the ritzy part of town, and Barbie married Virginia, his high school girlfriend. But the sudden influx of cash did nothing to stem his drug dealing. He had a good eye for deals – and, even more important, for when to walk away.

"I met him at a Popeye's in town to do a deal for 300 pounds of marijuana," recalls Martin Cuellar, a sheriff in Laredo, who was working undercover at the time. "He seemed ready to work with me, but then he stopped answering his phone.

I guess he smelled something." Even when those close to him got busted, Barbie always seemed to elude jail. At one point, the cops captured a trafficker in Mexico who was supplying Barbie with cocaine. When they dug up the guy's backyard, they found the bodies of a missing Texas couple.

Finally, in 1998, Barbie's luck ran out. Police succeeded in planting an informant among Barbie's men, and he and a dozen members of his crew were indicted in Laredo for shipping at least 700 pounds of marijuana to San Antonio and 133 pounds to St. Louis.

Terrified, Barbie pursued the time-honored path for criminals on the lam: He fled across the border into Mexico. Instead of putting an end to his career as a drug dealer, the indictment inadvertently paved the way for his rise to the top of the Mexican cartels.

For a 25-year-old drug dealer on the run in the Nineties, Nuevo Laredo was an ideal spot to do business. The violence among the Mexican cartels had not yet exploded, and there were pockets along the border where the drug trade remained largely free from their influence.

Barbie was one of about 20 independent traffickers who worked under the eye of Dionisio Garcia, an established trafficker who sold them coke and required them to pay $60,000 a month as a piso, or tax, which was used to pay off corrupt border agents.

From the start, Barbie liked operating on his own. Over the next decade, he learned how to gather intelligence on the cops and other dealers through a network of "falcons" – a league of spies composed of cab drivers, waiters and street vendors.
Unlike his flashier rivals, he liked to keep a low profile, driving a Chevy Malibu and a Nissan Sentra, though he demanded that the cars be washed regularly – he hated any hint of sloppiness. Barbie's close associates didn't look like average narcos: He insisted they be polite, quiet and clean, never come to work drunk or high, and never hurt women or children.

But the calm along the border didn't last. Within a few years, the big cartels started warring for regional control, and Nuevo Laredo, one of the jewels of the trafficking trade, suddenly became too valuable to remain independent.

By 2002, the Zetas began to move into the area in allegiance with the Gulf cartel, which was run by Osiel Cardenas, better known by his nickname, the Friend Killer. Cardenas' first order of business was to get rid of Garcia, who was left to die a grisly death in his red underwear.

Then Cardenas took over and immediately jacked up the price of cocaine. "From now on," he told the independent suppliers, "you're going to buy coke from me, or you're going to pay me the tax."

Barbie was angry about the killing of Garcia, but all he could do was bide his time. It didn't take long for Cardenas to run afoul of the law: Within a year, he was captured by the Mexican army.
 

With the Friend Killer gone, Barbie, then 29, staged a brazen tax revolt: He decided to stop paying the piso imposed by the cartels. "Barbie stiffed the Gulf cartel on the tax for a ton of cocaine that they had fronted him," says a law-enforcement source. "They didn't take that too kindly. It was a big moment, the one that started the cycle of violence in Laredo for the next few years." Continue on next page

The Zeta-Gulf alliance immediately put a price on Barbie's head, and he was forced to turn to a rival cartel for protection. Garcia had been on friendly terms with the Beltrán-Leyva cartel, which was run by four brothers – Arturo, Alfredo, Héctor and Carlos – all with the gaudy narco look that Barbie eschewed.
 
They operated mostly in western Mexico, but they were planning to seize control of the Laredo border after aligning themselves with Joaquín Guzmán, the head of the Sinaloa cartel.

El Chapo, as he is known, is the world's most infamous drug trafficker, the one who escaped from a maximum-security prison in a laundry cart in 2001, dug an air-conditioned tunnel between Tijuana and San Diego, and made an appearance on the Forbes list of the World's Most Powerful People.

These days, he quietly directs the Sinaloa cartel from a mountainous part of Mexico where a single road goes in and out, his outer security posted hours away from his door.

When Barbie heard that Chapo had ordered the Beltráns to seize the Laredo crossing, he saw the opening he had been waiting for. He rushed to Monterrey, an industrial city a few hours south of Laredo, and made his pitch to Arturo, the fat, eccentric, cocaine-addicted head of the Beltrán clan.

Arturo quickly saw the value of an American kid who knew both sides of the border, and he promised Barbie protection if he could help them win the crossing.

For Barbie, the war with the Zetas was personal – he wanted to see them go down not only for blowing up his spot but for killing one of his men, a young trafficker he called his "godbrother" and considered family. Swearing revenge on the Zetas, he threw himself into directing the Beltrán forces, hoping to massacre as many of his rivals as possible.

In 2005, more than 150 murders occurred in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 350,000, and almost all of them were connected to the war between the Sinaloa and the Beltráns on one side, and the Gulf and the Zetas on the other.

 "Barbie would rent hotel rooms for 10 or 15 people and send them out at night to go look for Gulf-cartel members," says a law-enforcement source. "He knew that the municipal police were helping the Gulf, so he targeted them for a time, too."

Barbie and Arturo even flew to Mexico City to present a $1.5 million bribe to an intelligence commander in return for protection in Nuevo Laredo. Two months later, the officer sent to protect Barbie was shot dead by the Gulf cartel.

Brutal acts were committed on both sides: Barbie killed a brother of the Zetas' enforcer, who in turn murdered one of Barbie's allies and raped the man's granddaughter.

In the end, the Zetas proved too strong for Barbie. With their military expertise and connections, they were able to up the ante by detonating car bombs, and Barbie suffered a further blow when U.S. agents stopped one of his tractor-trailers on the Laredo border, seizing 949 kilos of cocaine.

He had also reached a low point in his personal life.

He separated from his wife, Virginia, and sent his two sons to be raised by his parents in Texas. To make matters worse, Virginia's mother was arrested while working in the drug trade when police stopped her at a private airport in Gainesville, Georgia, with more than $1 million in cash in her Cessna.

The Sinaloa cartel, she told the cops, gave her $3,000 for every $100,000 in drugs she brought into the U.S.

Even though he had lost the Laredo crossing, Barbie had become extremely close to Arturo: "Arturo trusted him like a brother," said a law-enforcement source. The Beltráns decided to give Barbie a job as the manager of their enforcement wing, known as the Patrols. Barbie gave his men comical nicknames, like the Monster, the Korean and the Clown.

He also moved to the Beltrán stronghold of Acapulco, where business was good and life would be a little easier. In the resort city, Barbie had time to enjoy himself. He drank Moët rosé and played a lot of tennis, Xbox and Wii, at one point giving an associate $3,000 and telling him to buy as many video games as possible.

For safety, Barbie moved around constantly between his homes on the beach, in the ranch country and in the tony Mexico City suburb of Santa Fe, where he had several apartments in different luxury complexes.
 
He liked to call them "the offices," and he even soundproofed a "torture room" in one of them. "One time, Barbie had a guy in there who had been screaming for two days," recalls one of his associates. "Then one of Barbie's guys who was in charge of security came in with a chain saw. Barbie told us, 'Something is going to go down in there, guys. Plug your ears. Don't listen.'"

Barbie proved to have a flair for the dramatic. In a major innovation in the drug war, the videotaped murder of the Zeta hit men who had tried to kill him was mailed to the media, and eventually made its way to The Dallas Morning News, a paper read by many in Barbie's hometown of Laredo.

It was the beginning of a whole new style of publicity that would soon be adopted by all of the cartels: offing your enemies and posting the evidence online as a warning.

In Barbie's warped mind, he assumed everyone would applaud his brutal actions – after all, Acapulco was his turf, and he was just trying to protect it. To bolster his popularity, Barbie placed a full-page ad in a major Mexican newspaper, blaming the Zetas for the cycle of violence.

In an open letter, he implored the government to "end the great cancer of narco-kidnappers, and murderers of women and children." It was a moving note, full of emotion. "I may not be a white dove," he wrote, "but I am sure of what I have done and what I am responsible for."

The Mexican press ate Barbie up, eagerly chronicling his exploits. He bought flashy discos, closing them down a few nights a week to party in them himself. He made frequent appearances at after-hours clubs called "los afters," where he took Ecstasy.
 
 He reportedly dated a famous soap-opera star, and paid $100,000 to have a film made of his life, though he pulled out once he realized the script would implicate his friends and family.

In 2006, when Barbie turned 33, he staged his "wedding" to Priscilla Montemayor, the 17-year-old daughter of one of his partners known as El Charro. Priscilla was a beautiful Texas girl with an easy smile, and she didn't mind the narco lifestyle: Not only was her father in the life, but one of her great-uncles had been killed by the Zetas during the border war.

Barbie refused to divorce Virginia, fearing she might win custody of their kids. He was older now, and family was important to him. He also announced that he didn't want to be called La Barbie anymore; rival narcos were spreading rumors about all the attention he paid to his clothes and personal appearance, whispering that he was a homosexual.

From now on, he declared, he preferred to go by a more masculine-sounding nickname: El Señor, or Sir.

Things seemed to be looking up for Barbie. Business was booming, he had the protection of one of Mexico's most powerful cartels, and he felt secure in Acapulco, where the Beltrán brothers spent millions bribing cops and government officials.

Then one morning in January 2008, Barbie and the Beltráns received a shock. Alfredo, "The Red Ant," the tall, handsome Beltrán brother who managed a pair of assassin squads called the Blondies and the Baldies, was ambushed and arrested by police at his apartment in Culiacán. He was led away in handcuffs, and the cops confiscated nearly $1 million in cash.

Barbie and the Beltrán brothers were enraged. They knew there was only one person with the motive and the means to take down Alfredo: Chapo, their longtime ally in the Sinaloa cartel. Chapo was reportedly displeased with the growing power the Beltráns and Barbie held over Acapulco.

"Chapo doesn't run a very hierarchical cartel – his allies are more like a loose federation of warlords, like in Afghanistan," says Scott Stewart, an analyst with the intelligence firm Stratfor.

 "He isn't always looking over everyone's shoulder, but whenever someone starts to get too big for his britches and pose some sort of leadership challenge, that person suddenly seems to start having problems."

Chapo's perceived move against the Beltráns sparked an all-out war. A few months later, Chapo's 22-year-old son was killed by multiple gunmen on the same day that assassins ambushed Mexico's new federal police chief. \

Soon, corpses were turning up all along the Pacific coast. President Felipe Calderón sent in thousands of troops, but more than 580 people, including 64 policemen, died in the dispute.

If the Beltráns had a strong leader, they could probably have withstood Chapo's attack. But Arturo, the head of the cartel, was becoming more and more erratic, partying at all hours and reportedly even dabbling in cannibalism.

"I was friends with Arturo," Barbie would later report. "But when he was on drugs, he wanted to kill me. And when he wasn't, everything was cool."

On the verge of a paranoid break, Arturo retreated to his house in Cuernavaca, where he sat by the pool, lazily flicking $100 bills at girls he hired to entertain him. One night in December 2009, he hired 24 strippers and a Grammy-winning norteño band to come over for a party.
 
Barbie was there too, keeping an eye on the two dozen or so bodyguards with gold-and-diamond-studded pistols who roamed the property. But just as the party was getting started, Mexican special forces suddenly stormed the house. As chaos erupted and the girls scrambled to hide from the gunfire, Arturo fled with his most trusted men to a nearby condo.

A few days later, just before Christmas, 200 government commandos descended on the condo in armored trucks and helicopters. Armed with only half a dozen men and a few grenades, Arturo barricaded himself inside, cowering next to his statue of Guadalupe. Grabbing the phone, he called Barbie. There was no way he was going to surrender, he declared. He begged his friend to send more men to back him up.

This time, though, Barbie didn't obey his boss. In fact, he didn't seem particularly interested in helping his friend and patron. He told Arturo the situation was hopeless, and urged him to turn himself in. "Why fight?" he said. "You could die."

"No way, no way," Arturo said. He was going to shoot his way out of the condo, he told Barbie, or die trying.

Within hours, Arturo's body was riddled with bullets, his face blown to smithereens. According to one law-enforcement source, the commandos had no intention of taking him alive, and he was killed in the chaos of the raid.

U.S. officials considered it one of the biggest victories to date in the drug war. "Arturo wasn't a big fish," boasted Anthony Placido, the chief of intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "He was a whale."

The Beltráns wasted no time in retaliating. The night of the funeral for a commando who had been killed in the raid, assassins went to the home of the soldier's family and machine-gunned his mother, sister, aunt and brother in their sleep, leaving behind nearly three dozen spent bullet casings.
 
The Beltráns also began to wonder if someone close to them had played a role in their brother's death. "Arturo Beltrán was very secure in that area, and had total control," says Francisco Gomez, a crime reporter with El Universal newspaper in Mexico City. "Arturo couldn't have gone down unless somebody close betrayed him."

Héctor, the Beltrán brother who took over the cartel, thought he knew who that was. Someone close to Arturo, who stood to advance from his death. Someone with no blood ties to the family. Someone who was not even Mexican.

"Héctor immediately blamed Barbie," says a law-enforcement source. "He condemned Barbie, and put out the word that he wanted him killed."  

Héctor decided to strengthen his ties to the Zetas. For protection, Barbie allied himself with a chiseled trafficker named the Indian, a powerful lieutenant in the Beltrán cartel. He also turned to El Charro, the father of his new wife, Priscilla, who reluctantly agreed to support his son-in-law.
 
Barbie dreamed of fighting off the Beltráns and running his own independent operation, just as he had as a young buck back in Nuevo Laredo. He was done with the Mexican cartels, he said – too much of a headache. In 2010, he started his own outfit, the Independent Acapulco Cartel. The former linebacker from Texas was now a full-fledged Mexican drug lord.

But taking on the Beltráns meant fighting the Mexican army, whose support often went to the highest bidder. Shortly after Barbie declared his independence, the authorities raided his high-rise complex in Acapulco.

Alerted by his outer security, Barbie escaped downstairs as the soldiers burst into the apartment. He fled on a motorcycle wearing a backpack full of grenades. "Look at me!" he yelled. "I'm Rambo!"

A former associate shakes his head at the story. "He was totally amped," Barbie's man recalls. "That was when we realized our boss was out of his goddamn mind."

As Barbie struggled to maintain control of Acapulco, the war with the Beltráns escalated. Decapitated bodies were hung from bridges. Thirteen people, including five police officers, were killed on a holiday weekend.
 
An eight-year-old was gunned down during a shootout on Acapulco's main tourist drag. Hundreds of people were killed as Barbie tried to carve out his own turf. Sometimes the bloodshed was personal: When four bodies, one of them headless, were dumped on a sidewalk, a note attached to the corpses mocked Barbie for his fashion sense and fussy grooming.

"Here are your homosexuals," it read. "This will happen to all the traitors and those who support you."

Just as Barbie had once failed to seize control of Nuevo Laredo from the Zetas, he now found himself losing ground against the Beltráns.

He suffered a major setback when the Indian was captured by the Mexican police. His men were always making boneheaded mistakes – including one that threatened to unravel everything Barbie had worked to build.

For years, one of Barbie's best "customers" was Craig Petties (at left), a violent cocaine dealer from Memphis accused of murdering six police informants. The half brother of DJ Paul, founder of the rap group Three 6 Mafia, Petties had fled the U.S. after he was caught with 600 pounds of marijuana in his home. In Mexico, he hung out with Barbie until he was arrested by the police for a minor infraction. 

According to a source close to the case, that was when one of Barbie's assassins, Carlos Guajardo, waltzed into the prison to ask how much money the jailers wanted to spring Petties. Unfortunately for Guajardo, he happened to ask the question of an honest Mexican jailer, who promptly arrested him.
 
When the cops ran his name, they learned that Guajardo went by the nickname the Blackboard, because he had a huge tattoo of Jesus on his back, underlined with the phrase ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME. They also found the U.S. warrant for Petties, which they had missed the first time. Both Petties and Guajardo were shipped back to America to stand trial.

With his allies dwindling, Barbie was once again on the run. He moved back and forth between Acapulco and Cuernavaca and Mexico City, rarely staying anywhere for more than a night, and started looking for a new country that would take him in. He wasn't comfortable as a hunted man – he couldn't enjoy his wealth, or party at nightclubs, or go to fancy restaurants.

One day, desperate to go out and do something, anything, he told one of his men to put on a baseball cap and drive him to the main tourist strip in Acapulco. They bought ice cream cones and walked down the street with its T-shirt stands and tourist shops, the sun warming their faces.
 
After a half-hour, though, Barbie started to get nervous. There, was that person looking at him, over by the street corner? Was that a sniper, there on that roof? Barbie retreated to his car, more sullen than ever.

Not long afterward, the federales showed up at one of Barbie's homes near Acapulco. He wasn't there, but they roughed up Priscilla and her mother, which scared him badly. He thought about turning himself in, but couldn't bring himself to do it. Then, a few weeks later, one of Barbie's assistants was pulled over by the police on the way to a carwash in Mexico City.

Two officers jumped out of their black truck, guns drawn. "Freeze, motherfucker!" they screamed. They demanded to know where Barbie was. "Where is that son of a bitch?" one officer said. "Don't bullshit, or I'll cut off your balls and feed them to you."
 
 The cops informed the man that they had apprehended his family on their way to the vet with a sick dog. Terrified, the assistant caved. Barbie was at a ranch house on a secluded lot, he told them. Police descended on the hide-out, and Barbie was seized while he was trying to flee through a side door.

The police paraded Barbie around the station so the press could get plenty of photos, which were soon splashed all over the media. President Calderón tweeted the news, reveling in the capture:
 
Barbie was one more name he could cross off his list of the 37 "most wanted" drug lords. For the past few years, Calderón has focused on big-name drug arrests like Barbie's, but it's unclear whether the strategy is working. To date, more than 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war, and the death toll continues to rise.

At first, Barbie was confined to a temporary holding cell in Mexico City, where his lawyer was allowed to bring him moisturizer, Crocs and fresh polo shirts. But these days, he is being held in one of the most violent prisons in Mexico, charged with murder, money laundering and trafficking illegal narcotics.
 
He is locked in solitary confinement almost 24 hours a day, a video camera monitoring his every move. He isn't allowed visitors, nor contact with other prisoners. Once or twice a week, officers wearing ski masks and toting machine guns remove him for a shower. He gets a phone call every 10 days.

The Mexican government agreed in November to extradite Barbie to the U.S., where he faces charges in Atlanta, New Orleans and Laredo. So far, though, there's no sign he'll be handed over to the Americans anytime soon.
 
 
 "According to the Mexicans, he was supposed to be back in the U.S. in 60 days," says Barbie's attorney, Kent Schaffer. "But since they've consistently lied, that could be anywhere from 120 days to three years – if they don't kill him." A U.S. investigator reports that Barbie has been "severely beaten" while in custody.

Barbie was shocked to discover that his own country didn't want to save him. In his twisted self-image, he's still an all-American good guy. According to several law-enforcement sources familiar with the case, Barbie has secretly been talking to the DEA for at least two years. He was the one, it turns out, who betrayed Arturo Beltrán, telling the cops where they could find the drug kingpin.
 
Barbie apparently wanted Arturo gone so he could take over the Beltrán cartel – but he was also trying to cut a deal with the DEA, just in case things didn't work out and he was forced to turn himself in. "He wanted to use his information as a bargaining chip," says a law-enforcement source.

Once or twice a year, Barbie would call the DEA, or his older brother, Abel, a former probation officer in Texas, would call on his behalf. In return for surrendering, Barbie wanted immunity and permission to bring $5 million into the U.S.

"The DEA made overtures to Edgar, and they told him they could do all sorts of things," says Schaffer. "But they never cleared it with the Justice Department, so they didn't have the authority to do it."

Now, after years of stalling, Barbie has discovered it's too late to cut a deal. All his information is old, and much of his network has been captured or killed – even Priscilla's dad, who confessed to ordering the murders of 20 tourists last year, because he thought they were members of a rival cartel.
 
Wherever Barbie winds up facing trial, no one expects him to receive less than life in prison. In Memphis, his old customer Petties may be willing to turn evidence against him, to avoid the death penalty for murdering four rivals.

In Laredo, Barbie's family is hopeful that he will end up in a prison near them. But since he was arrested, they have reportedly started to squabble among themselves.

Barbie's parents now live in a mansion in a lovely, upscale development of Laredo, all curving streets and mowed lawns. Several Porsches and Lexuses are parked in the driveway.

It's a far cry from the tiny home where they raised their son Edgar, a fun-loving kid who liked football and beer and driving too fast.


His father, a lithe man with sparkling green eyes, is careful to distance himself from the boy who became La Barbie. "I'm not the judge, or the confessor," he says, a smile playing around his lips. "At this point, this is between my son and God."

Before he was captured, Barbie did have a bit of good news: He was going to have his first baby girl, his second child with Priscilla.

His daughter was born in a hospital in Laredo. He couldn't be there; it was simply too dangerous for him to come to Texas. But he was glad it happened that way. He wanted her to be an American citizen.
 
Source: Rolling Stone Magazine
Images added by Chivis, original text unedited
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His Life Threatened: "ValorXTamaulipas" Disappears from Facebook and Twitter

April 1, 2013, 8:05 pm
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Borderland Beat: Written and Submitted by Tijuano

 
This past February the organized crime offered 600 thousand Mexican Pesos(about 50000 USD) to anyone who gave information about the creator of Valor Por Tamaulipas. The objective: “To shut his mouth”.
The social network accounts of “Valor por Tamaulipas” that used to give alert about risky situations along Tamaulipas state disappeared.

Twitter´s account @ValorTamaulipas and its Facebook page which contained citizen reports where deleted and at this moment the reasons are unknown.
 
 

Note from Chivis:  In todays issue of La Jornada they referenced VXT other FB page however some are saying it is not real, at this time I would caution posted anything of it or any other attributed to VXT.  others believe it is the same person because it was formed a month ago, this cryptic message appeared today:

"because of the risk that means I'm done with this page (the original), I decided to create this one, so that if the first page is blocked somehow this new page will still work sending possible SDR (risk situations) that may occur, please follow me
Proceso is reporting the twitter page @RespXTamaulipas is the new page as the admin for forced to closed the others due to insecurity.  Link HERE
 

 Here is the coordinating FB PAGE and admin message ( bing translated):
 
Public opinion: in relation to the suspension of accounts on Twitter and Facebook user value by Tamaulipas; We inform the following: it was recently made public, threats against our colleague, which at the time were evaluated and analyzed to determine the veracity of them.
In recent months, the collaboration of our partner's cause was diminished also by labor issues that they demanded his time. Rarely had to momentarily suspend its SDR releases by such circumstances.

 In addition, at certain times; He also showed his courage and enthusiasm to continue to participate actively, to inform and protect citizens Tamaulipas, also joining charity campaigns and some other altruistic character were added to the cause of serving the community.

 Today, we announce a temporary suspension in the activities of both accounts, in order to strengthen the work of our blog and thus also, protect administrators from these pages.
We are confident and very certain of the support of our people and of the uncertainty that can generate such abrupt interruption of releases. Soon we will be reinstating  our accounts and generating again objective, truthful and timely information that serves the Tamaulipas  people and all the good people who pass by our State.

 It is necessary at this time to pause in our activities and redefine our objectives.

I appreciate the attention and support, as well as the concern of every one of the followers and ask not specular false information regarding the administrator of VxT, from this moment, accounts sisters are joining to be a virtual, active community at the service of our people.

 It is not me just say don't be fooled, my new colleagues help me to improve accounts and manage information in the best possible way; This work stoppage is temporary

 
 To read the new Proceso Article LINK HERE
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Sinaloa:CDG Alliance Over BLO Again Allied

April 1, 2013, 10:14 pm
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Borderland Beat
 
The alliance of Gulf Cartel and CDS (The Federation)  has ended;  that is a rumor that is growing and recent events indicate.
 
At the beginning of the rupture between CDG and Zetas, the CDS led by Sinaloa Cartel, supported the Gulf Cartel, while sicarios of the Familia Michoacana Cartel, arrived to Tamaulipas to reinforce the lines.  Sinaloa financially supported and provided weapons for their allies in Tamaulipas.
CDG and his maximum leader Eduardo Costilla Sanchez “El Coss” set aside their historical conflict  with the Sinaloa Cartel, to take action on cleaning of Zetas in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon.
Betrayals and infighting in the CDG, little by little, compromised the alliance.  The death of Commander Guerra represented a tough hit to the people of Sinaloa, since he allowed them to work without fee for the right of passing.
 
The CDS Federation attempted to rectify the situation and an urgent meeting is called in Matamoros, Mayo Zambada and Chapo Guzman would be present with Mario Ramirez Trevino aka El X-20 and Pelónand El Gringo, to pacify the internal conflict.
The meeting is confirmed for August 8-.  A squad is sent comprised of El Azul and Rey de Reyes.  Commander Diablo backs them up from Ciudad Victoria where they have made inroads.
Aug 7 2012 - The squad makes it to Matamoros.  At 8pm a series of blockades, presumably ordered by Mario Pelon, paralyzes the city.  The Marina receives an anonymous call about armed civilians. The squad is attacked by sicarios. 
The local group informs them that they are being attacked by Zetas and fractions of the Rojos, but on the radio frequency  they are told that they have been betrayed and  to leave the city.
El Gringo alerts his allies and after a fierce shootout they manage to leave the city while being chased for about 50 kilometers.  In Ciudad Victoria they receive help from Commander Diablo.
In Sinaloa, Mayo Zambada informs Chapo of the situation, he takes things in a calm manner and says, “Let them kill themselves first, do not attack CDG at the moment”.
Differences between Cardena and Costilla by the one who wanted total control of CDG in Tamaulipas, Mario Pelon. Costilla heads south, mainly to Tampico.
Once Coss and his people fall, Mario Pelon gains control of CDG.
The alliance with the federation continues with Gringo from Reynosa and the Ribereña with El Puma.
 
The Sinaloa Cartel makes a truce with the Beltran Leyva, sworn enemies of the CDG.  This leads to the execution of El Gringo because he represents a threat to Mario Pelon's leadership.  There is talk about a pact between El Gringo and Sinaloa to let them use the Ribereña pathway.

March 23rd in a safe house of the CDG in Monterrey are dropped off bodies with a message for Mario Pelón.....

From the Sinaloa federation:
Only as a traitor could you be somebody, Mario Pelon. You betrayed those who fed you just to gain power. You took down my closest CDG collaborators, and you already told your suck ass Metros that you personally executed Metro 3, my associate. However, the Metros decided to trust you, and you ordered an attack from behind on my other associates in Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas. I'm referring to the man who had my total trust and was the chief of security for El Coss, El Comandante Guerra.

 You knew that by getting him out of the way you could weaken El Coss's organization, and like a good, treacherous dog, you hit him from behind, you and that asshole, M4, who is in hell already for being a treacherous dog.  Then you set up my principal associate, El Coss, with the Navy in Tampico.

Finally, you also betrayed El Gringo; you knew he was in your way  to becoming the only leader. And I'm not forgetting what you did to my people when I sent El Azul, El Rey de Reyes and El Comandante Diablo to Matamoros to fix those problems you were having. Again, you attacked from behind, you attacked them when they entered Matamoros. You told me it was Los Zetas; El Azul almost didn't make it, had it not been for El Rey de Reyes. You have failed the Sinaloa federation.

That's why, starting right now, the Sinaloa Cartel will cease having any connection with the Gulf Cartel. The Frontera Chica will be my next target. You and all that bunch of Metros who are only good at betrayal, repent all you can because soon I will be in those places, Miguel Aleman, Reynosa, Rio Bravo and Matamoros are too much for you (more than you can handle). Only a capo can control them.You're just a dog who came from the Ministerial (police).

XCartel de SinaloaX

We are family, one single organization" 

R1 is still alive; now he is a member of the CDS, Tamaulipas will not see peace soon...
Source: Chuy News
 
Thanks to Lacy and Emiliano for their continuing help and friendship, and my buddy Vato
 
 
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Easter Week Ends With 72 Deaths In Four Days

April 1, 2013, 11:12 pm
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Human head found in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua

Since the past “Holy Thursday” until the evening of Easter Sunday, at least 72 people were killed in different parts of the country, according to a new overall count of deaths in violent acts by Aristegui Noticias.

Despite the thousands of people who vacationed in tourist zones in the country and the vacation of millions of Mexicans during this season, organized crime did not cede, and the spiral of violence continued.

Most executions occurred in the state of Sinaloa, with at least 16 deaths, followed by Chihuahua with 14, Morelos with 7, Durango with 6, The State of Mexico with 5, and both Guerrero and Jalisco with 4.
Among the violent events in the country, the one that stands out was the murder of seven people in a bar in Chihuahua on “Holy Thursday”.

This is a comprehensive picture of the various crimes, reported by various local and national media, who are credited and linked to at the end of this article.  

Some events from “Holy Thursday”

El Llano de los Peraza
The early hours of last Thursday (March 28), 5 men were found dead in the town of El Llano de los Peraza, municipality of Sinaloa de Leyva, in the mountainous Sinaloan land.  Police reports indicated that the 5 men were shot to death.

Mogabi

On the night of that day, in the capital of Chihuahua, 7 people were murdered.  The 7 people consisted of 3 women and 4 men, who were inside a bar located in the center of the city.  According to witnesses, at the bar Mogabi, a hooded individual arrived—wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying an assault rifle, shot at customers.

Meanwhile, 4 people were shot to death by firearms in different parts of La Laguna, in Durango.   Police reports first detailed the discovery of a male corpse, who died from at least one bullet wound caused by a firearm in Gómez Palacio Jiménez, near El Vergel, of Gómez Palacio.

Two other males, both with a gunshot wound to the head, were found dead in San Pedro de las Colonias, Durango.  Another man was murdered in Gomez Palacio, from two gunshot wounds.  In Tepehuanes, a girl and her father were killed.

More assassinated on “Good Friday”


Similar to the representation of the way of the cross of Jesus Christ in different parts of the country, a young lavacoches (car washer) was executed in the plaza Las Águilas in the colony Prados de San Vicente, in San Luis Potosí.
 
Father and son shot to death
In Juarez, a double homicide occurred in the colony Carlos Chavira, when a group of gunmen opened fire on a father and son, on Friday afternoon when they were in the backyard of a home grilling meat.  On that same day, the discovery of a corpse in a bin was reported.

In Quintana Roo, 2 gunmen shot at point blank range and killed a man in charge of a brothel (it was known as a "massage house"); another person who was injured in this attack died in a hospital at noon on Saturday.


Multiple executions on “Holy Saturday”

In Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, in the morning a human head was found; while on Saturday night, 2 young men were injured after being attacked by gunshots, one of them died while being transferred to receive medical care.


Tijuana, Baja California
In Tijuana, Baja California, 2 men were executed in different events during the course of the day on Saturday night and early Sunday.  The first crime occurred in the municipal office Centenario, the second in the colony Mariano Matamoros.



In the State of México, an armed commando riddled to death a youth who was selling lingerie in a street market in Ixtapaluca.
Leon, Guanajuato
 
Hermosillo, Sonora

More dead on Sunday

The lifeless bodies of six people shot to death were found in different locations on Sunday The Attorney General of Sinaloa reported.  The crimes occurred in Culiacán, Navolato, and in Guasave.  It was also reported that a protected witness of the PGR during the “Michoacanazo” Onofre Hernández Valdés, was killed from two gunshots inside his house in Jiutepec, Morelos.

In Monterrey, after being pulled out of a taxi and made to kneel in the middle of the street, a man who was being abducted was executed with 5 bullets in the chest in the colony Condesa.  In Nuevo León, they also killed a person in Apodacaand another in Guadalupe.

In Guerrero, 4 men were killed in different colonies of Acapulco and Coyuca de Benítez, one of them was a taxi driver.

Meanwhile in Morelos at least 6 people were executed, in most cases it is presumed that it is because of organized crime, which attacked their victims in public, despite the operation that keeps deploying state authorities in the state. 

Overall, this is an overview of the violent deaths that occurred in various states, since last Thursday leading up to Sunday:


Sinaloa = 16
José Ayala Olguín 20 years old
Ricardo Ramírez Martínez 25 years old
Félix Espinoza Zamorano 34 years old
Feliciano Ramírez Cota 50 years old
Marino Chávez Armenta 30 years old


Chihuahua = 14

Morelos = 7
Onofre Hernández Valdés “Emilio” 


Durango = 6
Víctor Manuel Hernández Gutiérrez, 31 years old
José Ignacio Mendoza Sandate, 22 years old
Carlos José Muro Medellín, 26 years old


Estado de México = 5

Jalisco = 4

Guerrero = 4
Daniel Domínguez Carmona— A taxi driver
Rey David Olivera Ávila 32 years old— Another taxi driver


Nuevo León = 3

Michoacán = 3

Tijuana = 3

San Luis Potosí = 1
Jorge Javier Negrete Cerda


Quintana Roo = 1
Juan Luis Robera Rodríguez 33 years old


Guanajuato = 1
Érick Alfredo Barrón Vázquez, 19 years old


Sonora = 1
Jose Ramon Garibay Rodriguez 48 years old


Tabasco = 1

Coahuila = 1

DF = 1

Source: Aristegui Noticias
Sources used by Aristegui Noticias: La Policíaca, Proceso, Frontera, El Sol de San Luis, Excélsior, El Diario de Juárez, El Diario de Juárez 2, El Sol de México, El Sol de Morelia, El Sol de Morelia 2, El Norte, Dqr.com, Milenio, El Siglo de Torreón, Periódico AM, El Imparcial,  Sexenio, Blog del Narco, El Universal, Reforma and Notimex)
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INFILTRATION: Mexican Cartels Move Agents Deep Inside US Borders

April 2, 2013, 11:59 pm
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Borderland Beat


Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world’s most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.
If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels’ move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.
Cartel activity in the U.S. is certainly not new. Starting in the 1990s, the ruthless syndicates became the nation’s No. 1 supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot here.
But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.
“It’s probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime,” said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office.
The cartel threat looms so large that one of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpins — a man who has never set foot in Chicago — was recently named the city’s Public Enemy No. 1, the same notorious label once assigned to Al Capone.
The Chicago Crime Commission, a non-government agency that tracks crime trends in the region, said it considers Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in Chicago and in many cities across the U.S.
Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem — of then-nascent cartels expanding their power — “and didn’t nip the problem in the bud,” said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking program in Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “And see where they are now.”
Riley sounds a similar alarm: “People think, `The border’s 1,700 miles away. This isn’t our problem.’ Well, it is. These days, we operate as if Chicago is on the border.”
Border states from Texas to California have long grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
Mexican drug cartels “are taking over our neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee in February. State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers, not the ones trafficking drugs on the ground.
For years, cartels were more inclined to make deals in Mexico with American traffickers, who would then handle transportation to and distribution within major cities, said Art Bilek, a former organized crime investigator who is now executive vice president of the crime commission.
 
As their organizations grew more sophisticated, the cartels began scheming to keep more profits for themselves. So leaders sought to cut out middlemen and assume more direct control, pushing aside American traffickers, he said.
Beginning two or three years ago, authorities noticed that cartels were putting “deputies on the ground here,” Bilek said. “Chicago became such a massive market … it was critical that they had firm control.”
To help fight the syndicates, Chicago recently opened a first-of-its-kind facility at a secret location where 70 federal agents work side-by-side with police and prosecutors. Their primary focus is the point of contact between suburban-based cartel operatives and city street gangs who act as retail salesmen.

That is when both sides are most vulnerable to detection, when they are most likely to meet in the open or use cellphones that can be wiretapped.
 
Others are skeptical about claims cartels are expanding their presence, saying law-enforcement agencies are prone to exaggerating threats to justify bigger budgets.
David Shirk, of the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute, said there is a dearth of reliable intelligence that cartels are dispatching operatives from Mexico on a large scale.
“We know astonishingly little about the structure and dynamics of cartels north of the border,” Shirk said. “We need to be very cautious about the assumptions we make.”
Statistics from the DEA suggest a heightened cartel presence in more U.S. cities. In 2008, around 230 American communities reported some level of cartel presence. That number climbed to more than 1,200 in 2011, the most recent year for which information is available, though the increase is partly due to better reporting.
Dozens of federal agents and local police interviewed by the AP said they have identified cartel members or operatives using wiretapped conversations, informants or confessions. Hundreds of court documents reviewed by the AP appear to support those statements.
“This is the first time we’ve been seeing it — cartels who have their operatives actually sent here,” said Richard Pearson, a lieutenant with the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, which arrested four alleged operatives of the Zetas cartel in November in the suburb of Okolona.
 
People who live on the tree-lined street where authorities seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana and more than $1 million in cash were shocked to learn their low-key neighbors were accused of working for one of Mexico’s most violent drug syndicates, Pearson said.
Jack Riley Chicago DEA Chief
One of the best documented cases is Jose Gonzalez-Zavala, who was dispatched to the U.S. by the La Familia cartel, according to court filings.
 
In 2008, the former taxi driver and father of five moved into a spacious home at 1416 Brookfield Drive in a middle-class neighborhood of Joliet, southwest of Chicago. From there, court papers indicate, he oversaw wholesale shipments of cocaine in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.
Wiretap transcripts reveal he called an unidentified cartel boss in Mexico almost every day, displaying the deference any midlevel executive might show to someone higher up the corporate ladder. Once he stammered as he explained that one customer would not pay a debt until after a trip.
“No,” snaps the boss. “What we need is for him to pay.”
The same cartel assigned Jorge Guadalupe Ayala-German to guard a Chicago-area stash house for $300 a week, plus a promised $35,000 lump-sum payment once he returned to Mexico after a year or two, according to court documents.
Ayala-German brought his wife and child to help give the house the appearance of an ordinary family residence. But he was arrested before he could return home and pleaded guilty to multiple trafficking charges. He will be sentenced later this year.
Socorro Hernandez-Rodriguez was convicted in 2011 of heading a massive drug operation in suburban Atlanta’s Gwinnett County. The chief prosecutor said he and his associates were high-ranking figures in the La Familia cartel — an allegation defense lawyers denied.
And at the end of February outside Columbus, Ohio, authorities arrested 34-year-old Isaac Eli Perez Neri, who allegedly told investigators he was a debt collector for the Sinaloa cartel.
An Atlanta attorney who has represented reputed cartel members says authorities sometimes overstate the threat such men pose.
“Often, you have a kid whose first time leaving Mexico is sleeping on a mattress at a stash house playing Game Boy, eating Burger King, just checking drugs or money in and out,” said Bruce Harvey. “Then he’s arrested and gets a gargantuan sentence. It’s sad.”
Because cartels accumulate houses full of cash, they run the constant risk associates will skim off the top. That points to the main reason cartels prefer their own people: Trust is hard to come by in their cutthroat world.
 
There’s also a fear factor. Cartels can exert more control on their operatives than on middlemen, often by threatening to torture or kill loved ones back home.
 
Danny Porter, chief prosecutor in Gwinnett County, Ga., said he has tried to entice dozens of suspected cartel members to cooperate with American authorities. Nearly all declined. Some laughed in his face.
“They say, `We are more scared of them (the cartels) than we are of you. We talk and they’ll boil our family in acid,”‘ Porter said. “Their families are essentially hostages.”
Citing the safety of his own family, Gonzalez-Zavala declined to cooperate with authorities in excange for years being shaved off his 40-year sentence.
In other cases, cartel brass send their own family members to the U.S.
“They’re sometimes married or related to people in the cartels,” Porter said. “They don’t hire casual labor.” So meticulous have cartels become that some even have operatives fill out job applications before being dispatched to the U.S., Riley added.

In Mexico, the cartels are known for a staggering number of killings — more than 50,000, according to one tally. Beheadings are sometimes a signature.
So far, cartels don’t appear to be directly responsible for large numbers of slayings in the United States, though the Texas Department of Public Safety reported 22 killings and five kidnappings in Texas at the hands of Mexican cartels from 2010 through mid- 2011.
Still, police worry that increased cartel activity could fuel heightened violence.
In Chicago, the police commander who oversees narcotics investigations, James O’Grady, said street-gang disputes over turf account for most of the city’s uptick in murders last year, when slayings topped 500 for the first time since 2008.

Although the cartels aren’t dictating the territorial wars, they are the source of drugs.
Riley’s assessment is stark: He argues that the cartels should be seen as an underlying cause of Chicago’s disturbingly high murder rate.
“They are the puppeteers,” he said. “Maybe the shooter didn’t know and maybe the victim didn’t know that. But if you follow it down the line, the cartels are ultimately responsible.”
Associated Press
Thanks to "Empire23" of BB Forum for the heads up
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Was this child a killer?

April 3, 2013, 1:23 am
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Proceso (4-2-13)

[Background: Jorge Armando Moreno, 13 years old, was killed on February 27, 2013. His body was found with five other bodies on the side of the highway between Morelos and Vetagrande, about six miles from the state capital of Zacatecas. All the bodies showed signs of torture. Jorge Armando had been arrested on February 4, 2013, along with several suspected members of the Zeta Cartel and several Guatemalan individuals accused of organized crime activities. Although the prosecutor claimed that the boy had confessed to having committed ten murders, the judge released him into his mother's custody because he was not yet 14 years old, the minimum age for incarceration in the state's juvenile detention center. --un vato]

 
Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat
 
Detained and tortured by federal police, Jorge Armando was kidnapped again and tortured by a criminal organization -- believed to have been Zetas -- and then murdered. He was 13 years old. In the television news media he was called "the child assassin" because that is how he was portrayed by the state attorney general, and for the media, it was easy to disseminate the nickname. To this day, neither the Zacat3ecas Attorney General nor the Federal Attorney General (PGR) have issued corrections. This would constitute an admission that, in reality, the boy was the victim of the police and the criminals they say they're fighting.

ZACATECAS, ZAC. (Proceso).-- Federal police arrested him the afternoon of February 4 and then tortured him, along with 14 other persons, supposedly because he belonged to a criminal organization. Two days later, a judge released him because he was just 13 years old.

Although he was at risk, no authority provided him protection because an official disclosed -- and the media assumed-- that he was a "child assassin." That can no longer be proven or contradicted because the child was again tortured, then murdered.

At dawn on February 28, the ministerial police found his body, with five others, on the side of the highway between Morelos and Vetagrande, five miles north of the capital of Zacatecas. He was executed with large caliber weapons.

The death of the minor shocked Zacatecas society. The Network for Infant Rights in Mexico (Redim: Red por los Derechos de la Infancia en Mexico), the Organization for Social Development and Education for All (Odisea A.C.); (Organizacion para el Desarrollo Social y la Educacion para Todos) and the State Commission on Human Rights (CEDH: Comision Estatal de Derechos Humanos) are demanding that the public officials who failed to respect the adolescent's due process rights be identified and held accountable, because, they argue, he was victimized by organized crime and by the authorities.

Mexico's Office of Attorney General (PGR) and Federal police (FP) are not giving out any information on the events in which their personnel intervened; the State Office of Attorney General (PGJE: Procuraduria General de Justicia del Estado) has denied any responsibility in the case and the State's Superior Justice Tribunal (Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado) has remained silent on the matter.

The 14 persons who were arrested with the minor in early February have already been transferred by the PF to the SEIDO facilities [special unit for organized crime investigation] in Mexico City, where they remain incarcerated. 
 
Being a child in Zacatecas
 
Jorge Armando Moreno Leos dropped out of elementary school at the age of 10, when his family fell apart. He lived a few months with his father, but then he went back with his mother and two younger sisters.

For three years, he earned a living on the street: washing cars, dumping the neighbors' trash and selling popsicles, But he also learned to use drugs on the street.

He dreamed of buying his mother a washing machine, but he didn't have enough money, so he decided to do what many others had done and joined the Zetas two and a half months ago.

His mother, Maria Isabel Leos, begged him to get out of that life and to go back to school, since he had finished grade school in June of 2012 in the Zacatecas Institute for Adult Education (IZEA: Instituto Zacatecano de Educacion para los Adultos) with an "A" grade point average, which is why Governor Miguel Alonso Reyes had awarded him a showy, three color diploma the following November, only four months before Jorge Armando was murdered.

Mrs. Leos talks about him with tears in her eyes: "My life went away with Jorge because he was a very good boy. Like all children, he was rebellious, he liked to go out with his friends. He dropped out of school because I work and he wanted to help me."

She describes him: "He was very helpful. You can talk to everybody and nobody believes it when you tell them he was the so-called "child assassin." He would see a person outside his house and ask, 'Can I help you sweep?', 'Can I help you take out the trash?', 'You want me to wash your car?'

He sold popsicles on the street when those people (Los Zetas) grabbed him. The boy would tell me that he was going to buy me a washing machine, that they were going to give him the money. I would tell him, 'Don't believe them, m'ijo (my son)', Because he never had any money! They promised him a lot of things that weren't true." 

She supports her daughters working as a street vendor. She found out her son was arrested by the PF because he saw his photograph in the morning news on TV Azteca Zacatecas. 24 days later, she learned of his murder the same way.

Today, she's begging President Enrique Pena Nieto and Govenor Miguel Alonso Reyes for protection for her and her daughters. She doesn't want anything else, because, since the death of Jorge Armando, she has received messages and calls with death threats on her cell phone, from alleged members of the "three letters" organization.

Meanwhile, she lives terrified with her daughters, unable to get a full time job. She still owes the costs of her son's funeral because the state social security office let her rent the casket and chapel for the wake and the funeral.

The "killer" who never killed

On the afternoon of February 4, 2013, in a leak to the news media, not through an official communique, the local government disclosed that, in an "intelligence" operation, the PF arrested 15 suspected criminals and delivered them to the Federal Public Ministry in the City of Zacatecas: five were is a safe house in the Lomas del Lago subdivision and eight in the Condessa Hotel, with the latter individuals being from Guatemala.

The news story and the photographs were published the nest day in the press and in electronic media. In the mid-afternoon, Maria Isabel Leos found out from the TV that her son was detained.

With difficulty, she got a relative to give her a ride to the PGR installations, located on the west side as you leave the city of Zacatecas, but it was already dark, recalls the lady, "and they did not let me see my son. I stayed there about three hours, and they told me I had to go to court the next day."   [continues on next page]

But it was not until the 6th that, through court order No. 35 of the Zacatecas Judicial Authority, judge Frida Jazmin Rubio Renteria, a specialist on juvenile justice matters, ordered the director of the Juvenile Detention Center (Centro de Internamiento y Atencion Integral Juvenil) to release Jorge Armando, once it was established that he was 13 years old.  

The minor was delivered to his mother, but he only stayed with her a few hours then returned to the streets. During that brief period, he told Mrs. Leos how the federal police treated him during the 24 hours before they delivered him to the Public Ministry (MP: Ministerio Publico).

"The boy came home very beat up on his body -- she says indignantly-- I asked him what was wrong, because even his left hand was very swollen. He told me that the "federales" would wrap him up in a blanket, throw him on the floor and kick him, they would kick him several times on the body, one of them would step on his hand and another would kick him.

"He told me that the "federales" kept them detained in the Howard Johnson Hotel (the agency's principal center of operations). And that another one would get a pistol and fire it beside his ear to make him talk."

When Jorge Armando went out again, his mother began o hear that the "child assassin" was free. "I don't know where that name came from. Suddenly, I began to hear that in the news Also, a woman PGR lawyer came here to the house and told me: "Pay no attention to what they're saying, it's not true, you know very well why the boy is (being held). They're going to start to speculate and say things in the news that are not true."

In fact, says Mrs. Leos, "it was even said that I am dead along with the boy. In most of the media and for everybody, I died along with the boy, they killed both of us."

She blames Zacatecas Attorney General Arturo Nahle Garcia, for calling Jorge Armando "child killer" and attributing to him the murder of ten people. "I don't know why Nahle keeps making those statements; he's never made it clear that Jorge was not under arrest for that and that I wasn't killed along with him."

When asked whether her son confessed murdering 10 people, she denies it. "At the court, from the time I went there to ask about him, they would say: 'It's just that the kid is a heavy because he's the one who gives orders here in Zacatecas'. How is a 13 year old boy, who had been with them (the criminals), at most, two and a half months, and I don't think it was even that long, how could he be the boss of all of them?"

And, in fact, in the notice from the court that she personally received at her home on February 19, captioned Criminal Case No. 14/2013, it specifies that the minor Jorge Armando Moreno Leos is accused of several crimes, except that of homicide.

"...For the offense of organized crime, violation of the federal weapons and explosives law by keeping firearms reserved for the exclusive use by the Army, Navy and National Air Force, and the possession of ammunition reserved for the exclusive use by the Army, Navy and National Air Force, committed to the detriment of society."

The mother had received the court communication so that on February 20, she would present herself and her son before the court to initiate his prosecution and determine his legal status with respect to the crimes he was accused of. But Jorge was no longer in the house and did not go to the hearing. Maria Isabel went before the court by herself.

Fragment of a report published in Proceso, edition  No. 1900,  already in circulation. 
 
Note:  Thank you to the reader who requested this story be posted and sent in links. 
 
The story condemning the child was in fact posted here on BB also of his death, at time the mother begged people to believe that her son was being framed no one was buying her story, read Havana's post HERE .  This new post story casts doubt on the guilt of other so called teen assassins.  In Mexico the lives of innocents are taken and used for many nefarious reasons.  Sadly, life is cheap in Mexico, even the lives of children. 
 
The government was successful in creating  indignation , and exasperation in the public, this is part of the statement issued in February and perhaps reveals the objective intended of why an innocent child would be framed, if that be the case.:
 
"State Attorney Arturo Nahle Garcia said, "really the boy can be even more dangerous because of his age, so it is necessary to reevaluate the criminal age of a person".
 
The boys mother was wrongly reported dead and among the bodies found with her son.  Until today I did not know she was alive.  Read that post by Havana HERE.   Reading the comments of readers there were few sympathetic comments, as we put our faith in the word of the government, when will we ever learn?.....Paz, Chivis
 
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Bloody readjustments: the view from Washington

April 3, 2013, 11:30 pm
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Proceso/El Diario de Coahuila (4-1-13)

Jesus Esquivel

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

Despite the daily confrontations and murders in northern Mexico, the U.S. military and a drug trafficking analyst argue that extreme violence associated with organized crime has gradually shifted away from the border area to settle in the center of the country. It involves, they insist, a readjustment by the cartels and is not the result of a successful government strategy.

WASHINGTON, DC (Apro).-- The violence that is lashing the State of Mexico, Michoacan, Morelos, Hidalgo, and other states in central Mexico, is due to a dispute over territory among drug trafficking cartels, and is not the result of the government's purported success in its battle against them in the northern states, claim United States specialists.

"There has been a slight decrease in the levels of violence in the states in northern Mexico, but it's anecdotal. There's extreme violence in other parts of the country due to territorial disputes among the cartels," says Jeffrey Davis, a U.S. Army captain and spokesperson for the Northern Command (Northcom) in an interview with Proceso.

Davis agrees with the analysis that his superior, General Charles Jacoby, Commander of Northcom, presented Wednesday, February 20, to the Congressional Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives.

"The violence situation has changed a little; today there is less of it in the north and more in states in Mexico's interior. There has been a percentage decrease in 2013 (in the north), but it has shifted to, and increased, in other parts of the country," Jacoby stated in his testimony before U.S. congress.

The same day that Jacoby was presenting his analysis regarding narco violence in northern Mexico, one of the most intense confrontations between suspected drug traffickers took place in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

"The testimony of General Jacoby in Congress was based on what he observes from day to day in Mexico: I insist, it is simply an anecdotal evaluation. What is true is that there has been a change from north to south with respect to the level of violence," points out Davis in a telephone conversation.

Northcom, the arm of the United States Department of Defense tasked with watching and monitoring everything that happens in an area that runs from Mexico to Canada, admits that so far this year "there was a slight decrease, in statistical terms,"  in the levels of narco violence in the Mexican states on the border with the United States.

The reasons


Consulted on the causes of the violence that afflicts the state of Mexico, in particular, the state governed by Enrique Pena Nieto for six years, a specialist in the United States comments: "It's due to the dispute between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas for territory."

An expert on intelligence matters and with a broad knowledge of Mexico's drug trafficking problems, the specialist -- who spoke only on the condition that his identity not be revealed-- agrees with Northcom with respect to the reality of the narco violence in the country's north.

In the States of Mexico, Hidalgo, Michoacan, and other states in central Mexico, including states in the south that border Guatemala and Belize-- according to intelligence reports analyzed by the specialist-- the narco violence was provoked and caused by Los Zetas.

"When Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano was killed by the Navy (October 7, 2012), Los Zetas were left without a leader who knew about military tactics. In order to survive, they began to move towards the center of the country, where they have come face to face with the Sinaloa Cartel and La FamiliaMichoacana," he emphasizes.  

According to this expert, the almost nomadic actions of Los Zetas are because Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, "El Z-40", (leader of the group) lacks the expertise and military skills that his partner had.

"He chose the easiest paths to maintain certain power; he associated with Central American criminal organizations and small criminal groups that were already operating in central Mexico. He did this to take control of the drug trafficking routes that run from the south to the north," he comments.

Another motivation that forced the Zetas to "invade" territories in Central Mexico that were almost totally under the control of the Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel, was the presence of the Army, Navy and Federal Police in the northern states, mainly in Tamaulipas, where they took on the drug traffickers directly.

"When Los Zetas moved from the north and tried to take over the south-north drug, weapons and money smuggling corridors, narco violence broke out in the State of Mexico and Michoacan. The Zetas ran into Chapo's people, who they still erroneously think they are going to defeat," says this specialist on intelligence and drug trafficking matters.   

Gulf in decline


The new reality of narco violence in Central Mexico is a result of the logistical dispute between Los Zetas, El Chapo and La Familia Michoacana, with some participation by the Beltran Leyva Organization, insist the sources that were consulted. But the most important plazas for transporting drugs into the United States are located in the north.

In Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua and Sonora, the territorial disputes between cartels continue, but the displacement of Los Zetas towards the south and the weakening of the Gulf and Juarez cartels has allowed El Chapo to establish a certain degree of control in the region. That's the reason behind the decrease in the levels of violence that Jacoby pointed out to the United States Congress.

After the capture of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, "El Coss," on September 12, 2012, the Gulf Cartel was left without a leader, and this triggered an internal dispute for control of the organization.

The expert argues that this in turn caused a repositioning of control over the northern plazas by the Sinaloa Cartel, and confused Z-40 even more, and he chose to move south to try to take over other territories.

"The internal dispute within the Gulf Cartel benefits El Chapo. We know that the fights for control of the group are being carried out by factions led by Miguel Villarreal, El Gringo --allegedly killed on February 20 during the confrontation in Reynosa --; Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, "El X-20"; Sergio Ortegon Silva and Juan Reyes Mejia," explains the expert.

Another reason for the apparent lull in narco violence in the north is the rumor of the forced retirement of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, "El Viceroy", leader of the Juarez Cartel, who -- it is said -- negotiated an agreement with El Chapo to divide plazas up and end the threat and presence of Los Zetas.

Bloody war


"Z-40 and his gangland partners want to broaden their domains in southern and central Mexico, that's why they're engaged in a fierce and bloody battle with El Chapo's people," sates the specialist.

He adds that the presence of these criminals in places like the state of Mexico, for example, at the same time triggers the rise of of small groups that pass themselves off as Zetas to commit crimes unrelated to the drug trafficking group. "They rob, kidnap, extort and murder using the Zetas' criminal label," he indicates. 

(Drug) corridors in southern and central Mexico are especially valuable for drug cartels. With respect to plazas that are located in the south, that border with Central America, or that provide ingress and egress in the area, these are valuable for building clandestine landing strips for aircraft and small planes that transport drugs from South America, Guatemala, Belize or Honduras.

"There are also ocean routes for fast boats and land based centers for loading drugs that are transported towards the interior before they end up in the north," explains the expert.

The territories in the State of Mexico, Hidalgo, Morelos, Queretaro and Michoacan " are valuable "because they are densely populated zones, and this makes them prized jewels for drug traffickers: They are ideal points for moving drugs north and strategically valuable for hiding product," he explains.

Confidential reports from the Mexican as well as the United States governments, which the source claimed it had access to, indicate hundreds drug warehouses are concentrated in the State of Mexico and in the very capital of the country.  "This explains perfectly why, since the arrival of Los Zetas into these areas, acts of narco violence traditionally associated with disputes amongst narcos for the plazas in northern Mexico began to be reported," he adds. 

Pena Nieto's Challenge

On Tuesday, February 19, the report "Pena Nieto's Challenge: Criminal Cartels and the Rule of Law in Mexico" was released simultaneously in Mexico, Bogota and Brussels.

The 58-page report written by the International Crisis Group (ICG, based in Brussels) points out that, in terms of the the war against drug trafficking and organized crime, Pena Nieto's government is faced with a great challenge: how to contain criminals who commit all sorts of crimes without caring about respect and integrity of their victim's human rights.

"Cartels have hundreds of armed men and they have become diversified criminal groups who not only traffic drugs, but also carry out massive kidnappings, supervise extortion and extract resources from the state petroleum industry.," says the report by the Belgium group, which characterizes itself as an organization dedicated to preventing world conflict.

When discussing the violence that the drug traffic generates in Mexico, the ICG points to the use of Army and Navy troops as the best alternative for controlling drug traffickers, but, with respect to this, he points out:

"Military forces continue to battle against them (the criminals) in large areas of the country, in polemic missions that often end in shootouts instead of criminal investigations." For that reason, it warns Pena Nieto that his government must build effective police and judicial systems, because if it fails to do this, violence will continue or could even get worse. 

"The transformation of cartels into death squads who are fighting for territorial control with military weapons challenges the Mexican government's monopoly on the use of force in some areas. The brutality of the crimes cripple the trust that citizens place on the government's ability to protect them, ad corruption from drug money damages their trust in public institutions. Cartels challenge the nature of the State, not with the threat of taking it over, but rather, by damaging and weakening it."
    
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Message From Chapo to Z40

April 4, 2013, 6:17 pm
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At least two narco banners, appeared today early morning on two pedestrian bridges of Nuevo Laredo, the banners were quickly removed by personnel of the Police.

The messages that were seen at 06:15 am were signed by El Chapo Guzman, which was chastising and blaming Z 40 for the bloody murder of migrants in Ciudad Victoria.
Below is the translated text of the narcomessage:

" To Z-40 and corrupt authorities
It had to be you buddy, the filth doesn't get off of you, we’ll have to will take it off of you, look, that killing the braceros in Victoria, sick motherfucker (Tamaulipas 9 immigrant farmers killed/dismembered)  
what is that sending to kill braceros (emigrant laborers) in Victoria, sick motherfucker. You didn't have enough balls Z-40, ... but we will keep cleaning Nuevo Laredo, not even the support of "H" will help you.

Well, you see buddy, every minute that you live,  more innocents  die. Confront us you asshole, show your face. Not even the help from your gay commander Wenceslao Gaznarez or from from your corrupt city mayor Benjamin Galvan will be of any use to you.
We give our support to CDG to clean Mexico of Zetas.

Atte: El Chapo Guzman
 

 

Source: Amigos de Tamaulipas and TexMex

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Los Zetas and MS-13 team up in Central America

April 4, 2013, 11:14 pm
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"Tijuano" for Borderland Beat

 
The Salvadoran Mara  has become a major link in the human and drug smuggling chains that Los Zetas have in Central America.
The services that these Centro American gang originated in Los Angeles provides to the ruthless Mexican cartel have passed from simply bringing protection to drug shipments, to being actively involved in the logistics of cocaine trafficking, human smuggling and weapon sales to Los Zetas.
In exchange, the former military wing of the Gulf Cartel provides with military training to some members of the criminal group.
A study run by the International Assessment and Strategy Center in the US titled “Central American Gangs and Transnational Criminal Organizations, The    Changing Relationships          in a Time of Turmoil” reveals that MS-13 from El Salvador has established an unprecedented new relationship with the Mexican cartel.

According to the study, up until recent years the  main task of the Salvadoran gangs was to protect the cocaine shipments coming from South America, which once arriving to El Salvador belonged to the Mexican Cartels.

However, in recent months, according to testimonies from gang members and Salvadoran police officers consulted for the report, the cartel of Los Zetas and MS-13 have reached more lucrative arrangements for both in their criminal activities.
 
When the Mexican cartels presence began to grow in the region and they began to seize control of the Central American drug routes, mainly in the triangle comprised of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

 Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) grew in fire power, setting aside their reliance on small caliber weapons, acquiring instead AK-47 rifles, grenades, grenade launchers and antitank projectiles, which most of the time are sold to Los Zetas or interchanged for small quantities of cocaine which they later sell in the local market.
 
According to the report, the weapons acquired by the MS-13 for Los Zetas are mainly purchased in Nicaragua, although they are also purchased to corrupt military men from Honduras and El Salvador, coupled with this, the report continues, MS-13 keeps an efficient and independent network of human trafficking to move gang members from and to the United States.
 
This network allows them to bring Central America to the United States in only 72 hours. Nowadays, the report says, their structure is merging with the smuggling networks of Los Zetas in an unprecedented alliance for both groups.

The reports even states that all the Central American “coyotes” or “polleros” (human smugglers) that use the routes controlled by Los Zetas are members of MS-13, which could mean the first real consolidation of two human smuggling networks in the region.

They see themselves as partners
One of the main dogmas preached in MS-13 is “The group works for nobody”. The study mentions that there have been efforts by Los Zetas, mostly successful, to recruit the best and most talented killers and hit men from MS-13.
Finally the report states that the relationship between these groups is evolving to cooperation levels never before seen. It says that some associated cells of MS-13 like the “Fulton Locos Salvatruchas” and the “Hollywood Loco Salvatrucho”, which are the most vicious groups, have received training from Los Zetas.

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Mexico's Blog del Narco Author is Revealed as a Young Woman

April 5, 2013, 7:19 am
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Borderland Beat

Vaya Con Dios, "Lucy!" y Blog del Narco!

This story was produced in partnership with the Guardian, where a version of this story also appears.
Guardian version   , Texas Observer   

For three years Blog de Narco has chronicled Mexico's drug war with graphic images and shocking stories that few others dare show, drawing millions of readers, acclaim, denunciations – and speculation about its author's identity.

Blog del Narco, an internet sensation dubbed a "front-row seat" to Mexico's agony over drugs, has become a must-read for authorities, drug gangs and ordinary people because it lays bare, day after day, the horrific violence censored by the mainstream media.
The anonymous author has been a source of mystery, with Mexico wondering who he is and his motivation for such risky reporting.

Now in their first major interview since launching the blog, the author has spoken to the Guardian and the Texas Observer – and has revealed that she is, in fact, a young woman.
"I don't think people ever imagined it was a woman doing this," said the blogger, who asked to use pseudonym Lucy to protect her real identity.
"Who am I? I'm in my mid-20s, I live in northern Mexico, I'm a journalist. I'm a woman, I'm single, I have no children. And I love Mexico."

This is the first time Lucy has spoken directly about the motivations for running a blog which could cost her her life. In the early days, her male colleague who manages the technical side engaged in a few short, anonymous email exchanges with reporters, but neither has spoken out since.

The telephone interview was arranged through an anonymous intermediary. The Guardian then took steps to verify that Lucy was in control of the blog.


She said she wanted to show the truth of what was happening to help turn the page. "I'm in love with my culture, with my country, despite all that's going on. Because we're not all bad. We're not all narcos. We're not all corrupt. We're not all murderers. We are well educated, even if many (foreign) people think otherwise."

She and her colleague live in daily fear of retribution, either from the cartels or government forces. She revealed that a young man and woman tortured, disembowelled and hung from a bridge in September 2011 – murders which shocked even atrocity-hardened Mexicans – were collaborators on the blog. "They used to send us photographs. That was very hard, very painful." The threats, she said, have recently become more serious.

Despite those fears, however, Lucy has written a book that gives an inside account of the blog and provides the most gruesome, explicit account yet of the mayhem that the cartel wars have brought to Mexico. Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside Mexico's Violent Drug War, is now on sale in English and Spanish, and documents a full year of killings from 2010, a pivotal year.

"I did the book to show what was happening," she said. "When I finished, I was able to breathe, because I had worried about being killed before finishing. But the book is there, it's there on paper, a testament to what we have suffered in Mexico in these years of war."
Adam Parfrey, head of the independent Washington-based publisher Feral House, which specialises in taboo topics, said the book would be bound in a police-tape type band as warning of its contents. "It's gruesome and horrible. It goes far beyond anything I've ever dealt with. It's an important element of what's happening in our southern neighbour."

The inside account of Blog del Narco comes at a sensitive time. President Barack Obama is due to visit Mexico in early May for talks with his counterpart, Enrique Peña Nieto, who since taking office last December has tamped down confrontations with the drug lords and the ensuing media attention.

Even so, drug-related violence claimed nearly 3,200 lives in his administration's first three months, according to government figures, and in recent weeks killings have spiked along the border, and even in the tourist city of Cancún. Cartels are increasingly sending agents to live and work in US cities such as Chicago, according to recent AP investigation

The legalisation of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has intensified pressure on the US government to review its four-decade-old "war" on marijuana, cocaine and other narcotics, much of it trafficked through Mexico.

After President Felipe Calderón declared his own war on Mexico's drug cartels in 2006, sparking turf battles between groups like Sinaloa, La Línea and the Zetas, and bloody interventions by the police and armed forces, who have been accused of siding with criminals. More than 70,000 people died and 27,000 disappeared by the time he finished his term last year.

Intimidation of journalists – dozens have been murdered, often sadistically – neutered news coverage by newspapers, radio and television stations. Massacres, kidnappings, corruption, even pitched battles in city centres, often went unreported.

Blog del Narco sprang up three years ago to fill the vacuum left by cowed journalistic colleagues who could not even report vital information such as narco roadblocks and kidnappings.
Over time, Blog del Narco acquired multiple sources, including drug gangs, and became indispensable reading, drawing more than 3m hits monthly. It provides bulletins, pictures and video of abductions, shootouts, executions and the discovery of bodies as well as severed human heads, limbs and torsos. One video showed cartel members interrogating a captured rival and then decapitating him.

Critics accuse the blog of being a public relations forum for drug dealers, but Lucy said the material showed reality and helped families identify missing relatives. "If it wasn't for the blog often bodies wouldn't be identified."

Narcos occasionally sent photos of them partying with pop stars, but the blog refused to publish such material, she said. The blog takes advertising from car and mobile-phone makers, among others. Lucy has told no friends about her clandestine activity. "My close family knows. No one else."

The blog had come under repeated cyber-attack – the government was more aggressive than narcos in this regard, Lucy said – but the main concern was being identified and captured, either by narcos or government forces who have been accused of multiple abuses.
"We change where we live every month. We've been in basements. It's very difficult. We hide our equipment in different places. If the authorities get close we run."

A sign left by the young couple disembowelled in 2011 in the state of Tamaulipas said the bloggers were next. Lucy had not met the couple but received material from them via email. A few days later, another contributor was killed. A keyboard, mouse and sign mentioning the blog were strewn over the corpse. "It's very painful. But they believed this work was necessary." 

Lucy said it was too soon to judge Peña Nieto's administration but that she had already noted one change. In contrast to Calderón-era officials, who cowed journalists with threats and bribes, the new government appeared to want to do it through repressive laws, she said. The government denies wanting to stifle the media.

"We have thought about quitting the blog thousands of times. But we haven't, because we have to get the message out. They have stolen our tranquility, our dreams, our peace." Lucy said she was tired of living in fear but had no plans to give up the blog. It has spawned other anonymous blogs carrying similar material.

The revelation she was female would surprise many, said Lucy. "It's a strong blow to Mexican machismo and the idea women are weaker, more delicate. There is an expectation for women to always look pretty. But we're much more than that."

She tried to relax, she said, with music, coffee and cigarettes. She missed having a normal life. "My only boyfriend is the blog. A whole phase of my life – boyfriends, going to parties, hanging out with friends – I've missed it. Getting married, having babies – there's not been time to think of any of that."

Lucy hoped the book, which focuses on 2010 and 2011, will stand as a historical record. In addition to stomach-turning photographs, it includes a glossary of terms such as encintado – the binding of a victim with duct tape – and encobijado – wrapping a murdered person in a blanket or sheet. It will initially be on sale only in the US but the publisher, Feral House, hopes Mexican booksellers will stock it.

Lucy said she had recently take a paying job but would continue the blog.
"My plans for the future? To live. That's my hope for the short, medium and long term."

Texas Observer on Why BlogdelNarco became Mexico's most important website

InSight Crime Analysis

Social media has become an increasingly important source of information on Mexico's drug war, as traditional media have resorted to self-censorship to protect themselves. However, those reporting online also face very serious risks. The dangers faced by bloggers like Lucy is illustrated by the deaths in Tamaulipas, as well as recent threats against sites like Facebook page Valor por Tamulipas, which seems to have been taken down in recent days.
A report last year by US NGO Freedom House found many journalists using social media were not taking adequate privacy precautions online. Nearly 70 percent of the journalists surveyed had been threatened.


The book is called "Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside the Mexico's Violent Drug War" and will be released in Spanish and English on April 16. 

Insight crime, Guardian, Texas Observer, Borderland Beat, Blog del Narco, Borderland Beat,
Borderland Beat, NarcoBolo, Amazon

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CJNG Releases New Video

April 5, 2013, 4:35 pm
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Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat

 
A  new video in which Cartel of Jalisco New Generation (C.J.N.G) sends a narco communiqué directed to the citizens of Jalisco.

Seen on the video are more than 70 armed men, uniformed and hooded. Sitting at a table, in the center of the scene is a man who is delivering the narrative.  Hanging at the rear is a banner with the initials of CJNG and the names of the states which they claim to operate in; Colima, Nayarit, Jalisco, Veracruz and Guerrero.
 
The following is the video narrative translated and paraphrased:
The hooded man begins;

“Today Wednesday April 3rd, 2013, with respect we give this announcement to all the population of the state of Jalisco, we are speaking to you and the Federal and Municipal forces.  The purpose for this video is to specify and reiterate that we are a cartel of broad criteria”.
There are some groups that after seeing themselves defeated search for ways to discredit us with accusations, which are well known by all of you that we don’t do.  Such as implementing fees, abduction and extortion, though it is a daily occurrence in other states, it is well known that we don’t do that. 

Big entrepreneurs and families that had been affected by other cartels, in various states, are transferring to live here.
 
We,  that belong to this cartel have to live clandestinely, since our acts require so, but with all due respect that society, authorities, political field and the Mexican people deserves, we advise you know that we are in the best character to maintain, in the places that we are present, the peace and tranquility that the Mexicans hope for, and for those that make attempts against the state will be receive what they deserve.
Here is a message sent by el señor; "Bark dogs,  while you keep barking you know that I am advancing”.
 
 
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Mexican Army seizes 5 tons from Chapo in BCS

April 5, 2013, 8:14 pm
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Tijuano for Borderland Beat

 
Almost 5 tons of Marijuana were seized in a check point in San Ignacio, BCS.
The first investigations regarding this seizure of almost 5 tons of drugs in a checkpoint in San Ignacio, BCS exposed that the shipment was property of the Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
The narcotic came from Sinaloa and had Tijuana as destination, after crossing without issue the checkpoints installed in 4 cities in Sinaloa and 4 more in Sonora, as well as 2 checkpoints in Baja California Sur it was finally detected by members of the Mexican Army belonging to the 40th Military Zone in the 2nd Region.
The seizure automatically became the 2nd biggest hit in history to the Sinaloa Cartel in the state, where paradoxically, only one person was detained.
First reports indicate that the drug came hidden inside a gas tanker with PG2544-A as tags, no company names and with stickers of “Danger, transports hazardous material”, the following was found inside the tanker:
1.    481 large packages and 50 small packages containing marijuana with a total weight of 4 tons 763 kilograms (10,500 lbs.)
2.    10 plastic containers with a total weight of 5.9 kilograms (13 pounds) of Crystal Meth.
The drugs have an approximated value -according to military estimates- of almost 77 million Mexican Pesos (about 6.4 million USD)
The detainee explains that the route the drug travelled started in Navolato, crossed thru Culiacan, Guasave, Guamuchil and Los Mochis in Sinaloa, from there it entered Sonora passing thru Navojoa, Ciudad Obregon, Empalme and Guaymas.

 Then the cargo ship that covers the Guaymas-Santa Rosalia  route was used, from there it traveled by San Ignacio until the highway checkpoint where it was detected.
 
In the whole journey followed by the drugs nobody found it. Municipal, State, Ministerial and Federal police, even officers of the Navy Ministry didn´t discover the drugs which led to the detainee to believe he was “going to arrive without issues to Tijuana”.
 
The day of the seizure, the army men stopped vehicles in the San Ignacio community checkpoint and asked passengers to step out and allow for a routine check.
 
The officers told ZETA magazine that it was a high traffic day, because although few cars travelled the Transpeninsular highway, there were between 8 and 10 units awaiting examination.
 
The inspection was slow, since –according to military checkpoint protocols-, the passengers had to step out of the vehicles, explain their place of origin and destination, and also answer questions from an army officer regarding name and employment.

 All that data was written in a notebook along with the license plates, color, brand and model of the unit.
 
However, when the tanker was to be inspected the army personal noticed something was wrong right away. According to one of the officers that participated in the checkpoint there were many inconsistencies in the unit with the parameters set by the Energy Ministry. The following are some of them:
 
1.    The unit didn´t have the total capacity in liters painted on it.
2.    The number 1075 was missing from the red rhombus which is the mandatory    international symbol which identifies “LP Gas”.
3.    The unit was missing the “LP Gas distribution service” sticker.
All those were major clues to know that it was in fact a “camouflaged tanker”, then it was submitted to a meticulous inspection until they found the drug packages.
The driver was put under arrest and the drugs and unite were seized and put at the disposition of the Federal Attorney General office (Procuraduria General de la Republica).
Another major hit to the Sinaloa Cartel was given in November 19th, 2012 when officers belonging to the Mexican Navy seized 8 tons of marijuana that were being transported in deep seas aboard the shrimp vessel “Alejandro TJ”.
"Alejandro TJ"
In that operation there were 7 people arrested when they were detected 1.7 miles away from the Puerto Cortes naval base, in Isla Margarita. The vessel was carrying 2,292 packages of marijuana with a total weight of 8 thousand 127 kilograms.
The new route.

Navolato to Tijuana, new narco route.
The only detainee in the seizure said this wasn´t the first time he was in this situation and that he worked for the Sinaloa Cartel. The shipment was to be handed over in the city of Tijuana, in a place “yet to be defined”, and then sent to California. The criminal was not willing to cooperate until he “spoke with his lawyer”....[continues on next page]

About this historic seizure, and according to one member of the Coordination Group, the cartels are trying to change their drug smuggling routes, this after the Secondary Inspection Module in the maritime terminal in Pichilingue, La Paz stated operations, this is considered the main entrance spot in Baja California Sur.
This unit, which was inaugurated June 9th, 2012 is equipped with x-rays, weapon detectors, and the Plataforma Mexico system (which help identify criminals all over Mexico), it also has personnel from the State Public Safety Ministry, and Mexican Army and Navy.
From that point on and until January 2013, almost 20 criminals were apprehended when they arrived looking for a place to hide from their arrest warrants from states like Sinaloa, Baja California, Oaxaca, Durango and others.
That checkpoint is so functional that the United States Embassy recently proposed to include Baja California Sur in the Merida Initiative, and sent resources to equip the checkpoints in the airports of Los Cabos, La Paz and Guerrero Negro, because, according to an American Government analysis, “they are strategic points in matters of border security and inspection points in Mexico”.
In 2012, the terminal of Pichilingue was stage for some important hits, one of them in January 7th, when a shipment of 16 kilograms (35 lbs.) of heroin was seized. A smuggler by the name of Manuel Rodriguez Garcia was apprehended that day.
The drug belonged to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and was to be delivered to the State Police agent Miguel Alberto Ayala Peña, whom at the same time had to deliver it to the criminal organization known as “Los Zamudio”.
That same year, in the secondary inspection point the Mexican Army seized almost 650 kilograms of marijuana being transported in a “touristic” passenger bus. On this occasion 2 people were arrested, they confessed to be hired to transport the bus from Mazatlan to Vizcaino, and that the drug was to be handed over to the former plaza boss, Juan Beltran Beltran aka “El Indio”.
It was for this situation that the criminal organization of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman created a new route of drug smuggling –besides the ones he has by sea and air- between Guaymas, Sonora and Santa Rosalia. This new route offers some advantages according to a Coordination Group member analysis, the main ones being Santa Rosalia doesn´t have the high tech and certified personnel like Pichilingue and that Santa Rosalia has few personnel, mainly of the Navy Ministry and since it´s far from the main cities it’s not hard to bribe them.

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Mexican Army detains El Pipo in Zacatecas state

April 6, 2013, 9:00 pm
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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Numerous Mexican federal police and army counternarcotics operations taking place in the center of Zacatecas state has yielded the detention of a Gulf Cartel plaza boss, according to an anonymous correspondent for Borderland Beat.

A large police operation took place Thursday night in Zacatecas city in which the plaza boss was detained, said the correspondent.

According to data from AccesoZac supplied by the correspondent an alleged suspect identified only as El Pipo was formerly a Los Zetas operative before he went over to the Gulf Cartel. He is suspected of several killings in Zacateas city.  Clashes have occurred which have split some families whose loyalties are divided between Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, which have been vying for territory since 2010.

One of those clashes was a kidnapping and shootout in Zacatecas near the local Walmart and Soriana's stores.  A female victim was taken from her vehicle.

"There have been shootings almost daily, especially in Guadalupe, not big balaceras (shootouts)... and in the past few days there have been at least 2 nights when you could hear the helicopters up til really late, 2-4 am, which is unusual," said the correspondent.

Policia Federal units have detained since last Sunday a number of suspected drug traffickers in Zacetacas city area.

According to new accounts which  appeared on the websites of El Sol de Zacatecas and NTR Zacatecas news dailies, a total of seven suspects were detained in two separate operations, one on Calle Aragon,in España colony and one on a ranch in Mexico Federal Highway 54, known as El Rancho Milagro.

A total of 14 AK-47 rifles, 47 weapons magazines, 700 rounds of ammunition, and tactical gear were seized by Mexican security forces in both operations.

The detainees were identified Delena Felipe Rocha,  30, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Maldonado, 16, Jesus Rubalcaba Ivan Nava, 19, Raul Rodriguez Mora, 27, Guadalupe Macias Emilio Esquivel, 20,  Jairo Reyna Gonzalez, 18 and Hector Manuel Romero Garcia, 38.

Quantities of crack cocaine and powder cocaine packages for retail sale were seized as well as an undisclosed amount in cash.

Several police actions have taken place Friday and Saturday, including a shootout on the road  between Jerez municipality and Fresnillo between an element of the Mexican Army and armed suspects.  According to a post on  its Facebook page, AccesoZac claimed dead bodies were left on the road.

Last Tuesday a Mexican Army drug raid took place in Nochistlan municipality where soldiers secured two methamphetamine drug laboratories seizing large quantities of precursor materials.

According to its Facebook posting, a Mexican Army unit two days later detained two municipal police agents for violations of Mexico's Firearms and Explosives Act.  The Mexican Army is charged with enforcing Mexico's federal gun laws.


Special thanks to our anonymous correspondent in Zacatecas for the data.
Borderland Beat reporter Chivis Martinez contributed to this report.



http://www.oem.com.mx/elsoldezacatecas/notas/n2934177.htm
http://ntrzacatecas.com/2013/04/02/asegura-policia-federal-bodega-de-armas-en-zacatecas/
http://ntrzacatecas.com/2013/04/01/detiene-pf-a-criminales-asegura-arsenal-y-droga/

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
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"EL Mayo's Bad Night and The Proceso Interview

April 6, 2013, 9:28 pm
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Borderland Beat


 "El Mayo's Bad Night and The Proceso Zambada Interview"

Translated  by "Chumuko212" and previously posted on BB

He felt the Army close, "right over my head" Said el Mayo , but was able to flee.

That dusky afternoon Ismael Zambada Garcia was more restless than usual. His instinct as a man of the mountains notified him that things didn't look so good in the southern hill of Culiacán.

The guards passed him reports that was repetitive in the last couple days, mobilized Army was traveling through the zone. The soldiers installed camps through the helicopters that carried them and supplies.

"Choppers are very active", his people reported to him. "stay focused and ready", he ordered them.

The noise of the military helicopters arrived occasionally to the refuge. El Mayo Zambada's senses intensified when the silence permitted it, some nearby sounds caused him to know that things didn't look well.

And as the ridge began to darkened they received a radio notice that soldiers were near the den. "Leave, they're on you".

Some how, the troops approach el Mayo. Mocking the multiple circles of security that spread around the boss. In highways, roads, paths, hills and thickets were men "sow" themselves, some armed, others disguising them self with the environment. Watching the vanguard and the rearguard of the leader of Sinaloa's cartel.

With little time to decide the elusion, they started hearing the motor of helicopters. They were on their trail in the dark of night, disembarking a commando of masked military men. The branches of trees and abundant bushes protected them. Mayo with three of his bodyguards walked in the half-light, a reflection of survival told him to walk toward the shadows where it was darker.

Feeling the boots of the soldiers stepping their heels. The shouts of "¡There they are, there they go!" and the deafening crash of the propellers breaking the wind. It opted for running while taking cover, grasping the land and seeking that nothing betrayed him, not even the creak of branches.

Immediately after half an hour of running for the hills, the calm arrived. The stealth continued for two or three hours more. Walking on rocks, shrubs and avoiding the branches of mesquites. Not saying one word that could betray them before the almost sure presence of soldiers in the area.

Without knowing where they're going or where they're at, they kept moving to a fast pace. Already without gas the only compass they carried was the foreboding that continued their control to move on and aware that some of the gunmen knew of the situation, were already seeking to find them.

Mayo ordered to turn off the radios and to put the cell phones on vibrate, but without answering the calls. They spoke in a low voice and codes, was the necessary thing for transmitting vital instructions for them.
Mayo and Vicentilllo
Directing that he desired going to the height of a community whose name he mentioned. "There we got people that will help us escape". They didn't know the exact place of the location. Almost midnight, they saw the lights of a town. "Lets go there to seek someone that will guide us", they agreed.

While seeking out a man that knew the sierra like the palm of his hands. They found him not to old to bear the walk but not to young either, someone that knew the exact route to escape. "Get us out of here however you can and we're going to correspond very well", they told him.

They walked without stopping while the Army of personal security for el Mayo organized the search, inch by inch on the outsides of Culiacán bordering with Cosalá. His top gunmen had already ruled out that soldiers had captured their leader. Also Vicente Zambada Niebla, El Vicentillo, position an up to date with the circumstance in which his father was found. Placed himself in the front of operation to locate him.

Just as el Mayo came upon jumping streams, climbing up and down hills. El Vicentillo asked himself, did they go south of Culiacán? What had failed with the contacts in the Army, Police and the widespread of guards by routes and key points close to the den.

"What a way to begin the year", acknowledge the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, recalling the beginning of 2009.

It was already seven in the morning of the following day when they spotted the population where they wanted to arrive. Their spirit changed, they felt insurance and although the cellphones didn't have a signal by radio they began speaking to their gunmen and family."We are well, they're coming for us". As for the guide they thanked him and offered to seek him out, to reward him for his service. "Who serves el Mayo gets rich", one of the bodyguard commented him.

And yes, el Mayo escaped from being captured by the Army's Elite Forces sent directly from the Office of the secretary for the National Defense. They would find out later, that the guide received a gift of fortunes.
To this, Ismael Zambada refers it in the encounter that he maintained with the journalist Julio Scherer, in which gives account the magazine Process in its edition 1744:

—Have you felt the Army close? —Four times, el Chapo more.

—Really close? —Up, over my head. I fled for the hills, the one where I know the branches, the streams, the stones, everything. They get me if I stay still or become careless, As for el Chapo, if we meet today, I come from far and as soon as we finish, I leave. ...end [Source:RioDoce]

Interview With Ismael Zambada Garcia aka "EL MAYO", One Of The Most Wanted Drug Lords in The world.  Translated by Chivis Martinez
Ismael Zambada Garcia, aka "EL Mayo", one of the most wanted drug lords in the world, was interviewed at an undisclosed location, somewhere in the Sinaloa's hills, by the founder of the Mexican magazine, Proceso , Julio Scherer. 
 
This is a rough extract of the interview, and a picture in which the face of the 60 year old drug lord can be barely seen for the very first time since the 70's. (He's the one with the baseball cap, the R letter stands for Reporter, and the M, stands for Mayo, the drug lord's nickname)
 
R-I asked the Capo about Vicente "Vicentillo"
M- He is my son, the first of five, I call him "mijo". He is also my compadre.
R- Zambada continued with his personal account:
M- I got my wife, five women, 15 grandsons and one great-grand son. They, the six of them (the women), are here, at the ranch, daughters of the bush, just like me. the bush is my home, my family, my protection, my land, the water I drink. The land is always good, the sky, is not.
R- I don't understand.
M- sometimes the sky won't give us any rain.
R- There was a silence which I choose to broke the only possible way I could: Vicente?
M- I don't want to talk about him right now. I don't know if he is in Chicago or in New York. I know he was in Matamoros however.
R- I have to ask you...  talking about your son, do you live his extradition with such remorse that it tears into your fatherly love?
M- Today I'm not talking about "mijo". I cry for him.
R– Do we start recording?
(SILENCE).
R- I got a lot of questions, (I insisted, already drained).
M- Some other day, you got my word on that.
R- As I was observing him. He stands up over 6ft tall and he posses a fortress-like body, far from a barely pronounced gut. He wears a green tee-shirt buttoned up to the neck and his denim blue jeans keep the straight line of the well ironed clothes. He covers himself with a baseball cap and a mustache.
M- I have read all your books, and you don't lie (he tells me).
R- I stare at the Capo, his lips tightly close.
M- All of them lie, even Proceso lies. Your magazine is the first, informs more than the other magazines, but also lies. ...continues on next page

R- Can you site a case for me?
M- you talked about a wedding that didn't even existed.
R- Chapo's wedding?
M- You even gave up details of that wedding.
R- Sandra Avila talked about a party she went and in which also Chapo was present.
M- I knew about that party, but it was an exception in Chapo's life. If him or me were to exhibit ourselves that way, they would have had captured us already.
R- Have you ever felt the army too close to you.
M- Yes, four times, but Chapo has more.
R- How close?
M- Up in the sky, over my head. I escaped into the bush, of which I know his branches, the rivers, the stones, everything, if I keep myself quiet for a minute, or I'm careless, they could catch me, like they once did to Chapo. In order for us to meet today, I came from far away. And as soon as we're done, I will go away.
R- Are you afraid to be captured?
M- I feel panic of being behind bars.
R- If you get caught, would you end up with your life?
M- I don't know if i would have the arrests (balls) to kill myself. I want to think, yes, I would kill myself.
[R-I found out the Capo is careful with his words. He uses the term "arrests", and not the classic slang.  Zambada carries the bush in his body, but possesses his own confinement. His sons, his families, his grandsons, his son's and grandson's friends, all of them like to party. They frequently go to clubs and public places and the Capo can't come with them. He tells me that for him, there are no birthday parties, the celebrations, and the cakes for the kids, the happiness of the quinceaneras, the music, the dancing]
R- Is there any moment for tranquility in you?
M- I'm always afraid
R- Always?
M- Always
R- Will you finally get arrested?
M- Any time now, or may be never.
[R- Zambada is 60 years old and he got started in the drug trafficking business at 16. 44 years had passed which it gives him a great advantage on his today's prosecutors. He knows how to hide away, he knows how to escape and he is loved among the men and women where half of him lives, and half of him dies]
[R- There hasn't appeared any traitor yet, he suddenly expresses to himself]
R- How did you get started into the narco traffic business? His answer makes me smile.
M- Just because.
R- Just because?
R- Just because? I ask again.
M- Just because, (he answers again).
[R- There is no way in to that conversation and I keep myself to my own ideas: The narco as an irresistible and pitiless magnet that follows the money, the power, the yachts, the airplanes, the women, own and of others with the big houses and buildings, the jewels as colorful marbles to play with, the brutal impulse that leads to the summit. In the capacity of the narcotraffic exists, terrified without any horizon. The capacity of crushing.
Zambada doesn't ignore the prosecution the government has unleashed to capture him. That's their right and duty. However, he despises the army's barbaric actions. The soldiers, he says, brake doors and windows, they penetrate into the intimacy of the homes, they plant and spread terror. In this unleashed war they find immediate response to their actions. The result is the number of victims that grow. The capos are their targets, even though they are the unique figures of past times].
R- And what are they? I ask.
[R- Zambada responds with a fantastic example]
M- Let's say one day I decide to gave myself up to the government so they can execute me by fire squad. My case should be an example, a lesson to everybody. They execute me and euphoria explodes, but while days pass by, we would find out that nothing has changed.
R- Nothing after the fall of the Capo?
M- The problem with the narco, it wraps millions of people up. How to dominate them? and about the captured, dead and extradited Capos, their replacements are out there already.
[R- To Zambada's judgment, the government came to late to this war and there is nobody who can solve in days, the problems generated in years. With the government, infiltrated from the bottom up, time did it's "job" within the heart of the system and the corruption grew it's roots in the country. To he president, his collaborators cheat on him. They are liars and they inform him about advances that there are not true in this lost war]
R- Why is it lost?
M- The narco is within the society, rooted like the corruption
R– And what do you do now?
M– I work in agriculture and livestock farming, but if I can do a "business" in the united states, I do it.
R- I was pretending to dig in about the capo's fortune and I choose to use the Forbes magazine to get this topic into our conversation, I stared to his yes, faking to be anxious, "did you know that Forbes magazine includes Chapo among the biggest millionaires in the world?"
M- That's foolish.
[R- I had on my lips the following question, now superfluous, but I couldn't contain it anymore]
R- Could you figure in the Forbes list?
M- I already told you, that's foolish.
R– Is very well known your friendship with El Chapo Guzman and it couldn't bring any attention the fact that you could had been waiting for him outside of the Puente Grande prison the day he escaped. Could you tell me in which way did you lived that particular story?
M– "El Chapo" Guzmán and I are friends and compadres and we call each other on the phone frequently. But that story never existed. It's another lie they are trying to pin on me. Like the invention about me planning a hit on the President. I could never thought of that.
R– Zulema Hernandez, Chapo's mistress, told me about the corruption prevailing in Puente Grande and about the way that corruption made it easier for Chapo to escape. Do you have any knowledge about what went down that day and how things were developing?
M– I know that there was no bloodshed, only one dead. I don't know anything else.
R- With an unexpected question, Zambada surprises me:
M- Are you interested in Chapo?
R- Yes, of course.
M– Would you like to see him?.
R- I came to see you.
M- Would you like to see him?.
R- Of course.
M- I'm going to call him, may be you could see him.
[R- Our conversation comes to an end. Zambada, standing up, walks under the sun's plenitude and again, he surprises me]
M-How about a picture?
[R- I felt an absolutely unexplainable heat inside of me. The picture was the proof theauthenticity of the encounter with the capo.  Zambada called one of his bodyguards and he asked him for his hat, he put it on. It was white of fine quality]
M- How do you like it?
R- That hat it's so bright, it takes the personality off of you.
M- What about the cap?
R- I think so.
R- The bodyguard aimed with the camera, and shoots.......
 

 
 
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Javier Torres Felix aka "El JT": Released? New Photo

April 7, 2013, 10:14 am
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Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat

At left is the photo said to be the first after his release-on the right an older photo

According to an article published by the publication “La Pared” and posted on BB Forum by Sikiyou Kid, JT’s release date is Monday April 8, 2013. 
However, I have heard in Mexico rumblings of one theme, “JT was released in March”.   "El JT" is Javier  Torres Félix
 
JT was arrested in January 2004 in an operation by the Mexican Army in Tule in Valle de San Lorenzo. Subsequently, he spent two years in the Mexican prison system while extradition proceedings were conducted, and in November 2006 he was extradited to the United States. JT is closely associated with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and at the time of his arrest was the Sinaloa cartel sicario boss.

      Manuel Torres aka M1
JT’s brother is the deceased [José] Manuel Torres Félix aka “M1”.  It was after JT’s arrest that M1 elevated in the Sinaloa ranks, working with El Chapo Guzmán’s son Ovidio, he eventually became a high ranking leader. M1 was killed on October 13, 2012 in a shootout with the military in the Culiacán, Sinaloa colonia Oso Viejo.
JT has been incarcerated in Beckley federal prison located in Raleigh County, West Virginia.  Beckley is a medium security prison, he was originally scheduled for March 2013, although the date was changed to April 8, 2013.
Approximately 2 weeks ago rumors spread that JT had been released. I could find no reports of the release on either side of the border, but the rumors were persistent.  I was sent a message from BB reader "Loks", that  posted on FB, there was  a new photo purported being  the first post release photo of JT.  In the photo JT does look older, and in my opinion, it is him. 


In checking the “Inmate Locator” at the Federal Prison website, there are 21 Javier Torres’ incarcerated.   Three of the Javier Torres’ are scheduled for 2013 releases.  One was released in March, 2013, and the other two in late 2013.  However the age is off of the man released in March, it  is listed as 39, on the  inmate list from 1982 to present
 
Name

Register #

Age-Race-Sex

Release Date
http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/images/release_date_caption.gif

Location

1.

JAVIER TORRES

40188-086

38-White-M

03-15-2013

RELEASED
Sikiyou’s research did find a Javier Torres Felix in a BOP inmate search:

  Name Register # Age-Race-Sex Release Date Location

               1. JAVIER TORRES-FELIX  28848-016 44-White-M  UNKNOWN  BECKLEY 

It is peculiar that the lower search result is not on both federal websites dated 1982 to present.  Further,   is the “unknown” notation of Siskiyou’s result. 
Has he been released?
We will have to wait until tomorrow to know if the rumors in Mexico were fact, or just another one of those famous/ infamous Mexican novelas.
Read the article of JT's possible murder charges pending in Mexico HERE
Thanks Loks!

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When Mexico chose not to capture El Chapo Guzman

April 7, 2013, 1:33 pm
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El Diario de Coahuila/Proceso (4-6-2013)

J. Jesus Esquivel

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

[I have translated two articles that appeared in Proceso and other sources yesterday and today. In my opinion, together, they help illustrate the consequences of Mexican President's Enrique Pena Nieto's recently announced policy of limiting access to information about law enforcement efforts to combat drug trafficking in Mexico. This is the first.-- un vato]  
 
Since the war against the drug trafficking cartels broke out and intensified, one element has been present in the country: the DEA, the anti-drug agency in the United States that has personnel working here full time. Some of its agents are talking now, they say they carry weapons in Mexico and say that on several occasions they told the Mexican government of "El Chapo" Guzman's location... and nothing happened.

J. Jesus Esquivel, Proceso's Washington correspondent,  reveals these and other stories in the book "The DEA in Mexico: A hidden story told by the agents", soon to be published by Grijalbo. Below, some excerpts from Chapters 7 and 14 of the book. 

MEXICO, DF (apro).-- The Constitution of the United Mexican States (Constitucion Politica de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos) flately prohibits foreign agents and military personnel from carrying firearms within national borders. In 1992, in the Rules of the Game (Reglas del Juego), DEA agents were absolutely prohibited from carrying weapons. 

Sandalio Gonzalez, a Cuban born retired agents who spent a great deal of his life in national and international work in the DEA, says that personal safety is a very important part of the anti-drug operations that are carried out in Mexico and Colombia.

-- Do DEA agents in Mexico carry weapons?

-- Yes, all of them. All the agents carry weapons; only intelligence personnel in the DEA offices do not, since they are basically people who do bureaucratic work and who know how to manipulate technology in an investigation; they are the ones who do not go out to places where operations are being conducted.

-- Do DEA agents in Mexico carry weapons only when they are involved in an undercover operation, or are they always armed?

-- They always carry weapons, although there is no official type of weapon for DEA agents.

-- Do DEA agents carry weapons when they go to meetings with Mexican officials, police or military?

-- Yes. 

-- And they know it?

-- Sure, that is known but not talked about, that's the unwritten rule in Mexico on relationships with DEA agents. Neither federal police or the military search DEA agents; they never do this in meetings.

-- Have there been occasions when Mexican police or military search DEA agents to see whether they're carrying weapons?

-- It happens. When they wanted to fuck us over and they knew we were out of the office, they would send out a team of Federal Police or the military to set up roadblocks on the highway. They would stop you and fuck with you; they would search you, take your weapon or detain you for a while.

"It would be a mess when this happened, because the problem would only be resolved when somebody at the U.S. embassy would pick up the phone and negotiate with somebody from the Secretariat of Interior (Secretaria de Governacion), the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores); with the commanders of the Federal Police, the Army or the Navy. In one case, I'm almost certain that they had to talk to Los Pinos [The President].  

A Gentleman's Agreement

-- Has the DEA sought a solution to the question of the prohibition against carrying weapons in Mexico?

-- A few years ago, the United States government tied to resolve the problem. The Department's of State and Justice proposed to the Mexican government that if it would allow DEA to carry weapons in Mexican territory, Mexican agents would be allowed to carry weapons on U.S. ground. In the United States, in the states where Mexican consulates are located, there are agents of the PGR (Procuraduria General de la Republica; Mexico's Attorney General). But Mexico's response to Washington's proposal was a flat 'No'.

The prohibition against the DEA carrying weapons in Mexico is treated as a sort of "gentleman's agreement" that extends to personnel from other agencies:

"DEA agents are not the only U.S. agents who carry weapons in Mexico; this certainly is the case with the FBI, ATF, with all Custom's agents and the CIA. These last, I don't know why the hell they don't admit they're with the CIA since all of the Mexican government knows who they are. According to them, they are "vice consuls", but no vice consul carries weapons; only the CIA vice consul does that.   

-- Can it be said that the Mexican government keeps all U.S. agents in Mexico under observation to make sure they comply with the rules imposed on them?

-- Yes, but they not all treated the same, because in the case of DEA agents, when we are in a foreign country, we're not there as "secret agents," like many people think.

"When we're in a foreign country, we are not registered as agents or law enforcement officers of the DEA. In some cases, which is the case with Mexico, the agents are registered with the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs as diplomats -- political attache--; in other countries, they're given diplomatic identification under the category of technical or personnel administrator with the embassy or the consulate.

 That is, the government of the host country knows very well who is an agent and who is not, where they live, how many family members they have. Everything, they know everything, but nothing happens in Mexico."

Strengthened cartel

"The Sinaloa cartel is not weakened; on the contrary, it got stronger because of the corruption in the federal government, at very high levels. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to come to this conclusion. Why hasn't anybody arrested  "El Chapo" or any of his partners, like Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, or Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno, "El Azul"? All of them have been in the business for years, but, incredibly, nobody arrests them and they continue to be free."

-- Does the Mexican government really know where "El Chapo" and the rest of the Sinaloa Cartel members are hiding?

-- Yes, they know where they are. Of course they know, and they know where their relatives are. The Army or some of the police commanders who are supposedly looking for them don't mess with them or with their families because they know who is protecting them and how high up in the government (the protectors are).

-- Who protects "El Chapo" and the Sinaloa Cartel?

-- That's not for me to say. The day that certain politicians are arrested in Mexico, they're going to find out a lot of truths about the mysteries behind "El Chapo: and the Sinaloa Cartel.

-- What does the DEA know about "El Chapo"?

-- The DEA has a long list of Chapo's properties, his ranches, his homes. The Mexican government also has that list. Before, we were the only ones who had it, but we gave it to them.

"In several meetings with Mexican authorities, we would tell them: 'Look, we have this information'. They would respond by asking if "El Chapo" was in that place that very moment. Of course, we couldn't guarantee it, but we would explain that the property belonged to him, and it was necessary to investigate the lead, that an important operation would take time. They didn't pay attention to us."

-- Does "El Chapo" have many properties in Mexico?

-- Many. I remember one time, early in the Calderon administration, we gave the Army some information about a place in Sinaloa where he was due to arrive. It was one of his ranches, where they supposedly went to look for him, but they didn't tell us when they did it. Two or three days later, they called us to tell us: "He got away from us, we don't think he ever came to the place."

Why is "El Chapo" still free?

Calderon's military battle left Mexicans a wound that will not heal as his inheritance, a wound that will continue to bleed for a long time, mostly due to the impunity surrounding the more that 60,000 deaths and more than 20,000 'disappeared'.

"El Chapo" is emblematic of the failure of Calderon and Washington.

But, why is a criminal untouchable, why wasn't he captured or eliminated despite support from the White House and the Capital during Calderon's presidency?

"It was because of the enormous corruption that grew under Calderon's administration, that's why they cannot catch him," says, without the least hesitation, Jose Baeza, the DEA agent who left Mexico in 2008 at the end of his third tour in the fight against drug trafficking.

"'El Chapo' is an important capo -- Baeza explains--, there's no doubt about that. But he will never surpass Amado Carrillo Fuentes. 'El Chapo' has benefited from the publicity given to him by the media and from everything the Mexican government has said about him. He escaped from prison in (January 19) 2001, and more than 11 years have gone by. Why don't they arrest him? You don't think the Mexican government doesn't know where he or his family are? -- asks Baeza, who goes on to answer his own questions with three words--: because of corruption."

-- Does the Mexican government really know where "El Chapo" and his family are located? 

-- Sure, (the Mexican government) has gotten a lot of intelligence information from us, from other (U.S.) agencies and from its own military and civilian investigation services.

"They have never carried out an in-depth investigation to arrest his family, who is enjoying the money that "El Chapo" has accumulated from drug trafficking. They don't want to touch him; they don't want to touch his assets, nor his ranches nor his businesses. To me. it's very clear: the Calderon government doesn't want to go against him."
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Mexican government seals cartel information for twelve years

April 7, 2013, 1:55 pm
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Proceso (4-7-2013)

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

MEXICO, DF. (proceso.com.mx).--The Mexican Office of Attorney General (PGR: Procuraduria General de la Republica) has decided to restrict official reports about organized crime in the country for 12 years, such as the number of cartels, their names and their areas of operation.

The agency headed by Jesus Murillo Karam argues that disclosure of these facts would affect law enforcement strategies (used) to fight organized crime and would, in addition, even risk the lives of criminals themselves, according to Reforma (journal).

Pursuant to the Transparency law, the newspaper requested from the PGR information about the number of cartels that operate in the country, their structure and zones of influence.

However, the PGR argued that, due to the current situation in the country, giving out that information represents a risk to the safety of the persons mentioned in those reports, because different criminal organizations may obtain information that can be used against them, placing their physical integrity, including their lives, at risk. 

It adds: "Revealing information presents a clear threat to the development of strategies that are based on said document, in addition to revealing information about the location of persons directly related to organized crime, which represents a risk against their life and physical integrity, when they are directly identifiable and locatable."

The newspaper recalls that during the Felipe Calderon administration, the PGR, the Federal Public Safety Secretariat, the Federal Police and the Army gave detailed information about the principal criminal organizations that were operating in Mexico, the names of their leaders and the areas they controlled.
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