Jalisco villagers have set up camp against the bulldozers

El Daily Post: The grey mists of morning rise in the valley of Ahuisculco, bringing the new day to the roadside encampment where ten hardy villagers have spent the night around the fire, drinking coffee and sharing stories to ward off chill and exhaustion. One by one, reinforcements begin to arrive from the nearby village with chicharrones, chismes and good cheer.

It’s another day in the plantón, the protest encampment blocking the path of the bulldozers – where hundreds of villagers of this town of 5,000 have taken a stand for more than a month to protect their water supply from the excavations of a shadowy corporation that has yet to be identified. Here in the entrance to the construction zone that menaces their springs they’ve blocked the construction with their bodies, building a temporary encampment complete with kitchen, port-a-potties, sound system and now an open-air tent chapel with their beloved “Chaparrita,” the miraculous Virgin of the Ascension. Read more.

Huge volcanic explosion in Mexico captured in stunning time-lapse video

Note: A good example of, what they are calling, "pyroclastic flow", super hot gases that go down from an eruption.  This volcano is just south of Guadalajara.

Yahoo News: See video

#YoSoy132 Pronouncement

Mexico City, December 7, 2012!

Pronouncement!

The events of Dec. 1 confirm the trepidations that during the last few months have sealed a wave of indignation opening the way for the mass mobilization of the countries multiple sectors. We recognize an orchestrated overwhelming onslaught against social movements and particularly against youth and the 132 Movement. With these facts we are forced to endure the imposition of Peña.

We denounce the aggressive operation mounted by the military and police in the center of Mexico City whose responsibility falls on federal and state government security commissions. A similar operation was repeated in other cities, and especially Guadalajara.

The violence came from state security forces and began with the erection of a fence spanning San Lázaro and the neighboring colonies. The testimonies and video speak for themselves of how the government introduced confrontation and provocation, with arbitrary detentions and also by dealing blows, sexual harassment and point blank shots of rubber bullets aimed at protesters.

We call for a well organized, united, and wide campaign for the preservation of democratic liberties beginning with the immediate release of all men and women political prisoners.

For all of the above:

1. We demand that the penal actions exercised against the 58 men and 11 women remanded under the criminal statues of 287/2012 of the 47 court of the Mexico City jail all of them men and women victims of a political strategy and orchestrated media coverage by the Mexican state in coordination with methods of communication that have also criminalized at a minimum five of the remanded with their presumed innocence under threat and in detriment to the human rights of this process.

2. As it is we demand the repeal of article 362 of the Mexico City penal code that describes the crime as and attack on public peace (equivalent to the crime of federal terrorism laws) as in the rest of the state penal codes which contemplate by treating the crime as an attempt to blame the victims of the very disturbance of the public peace conducted by the state and for trying to act as a trap using the same to reprimand fights, manifestations and social protests along the history but under another regime as occurred in the atrocities of 1968 and 1971 under the penalty of social crisis. The investigation and punishment should fall exclusively on those responsible for the provocations and state violence. We reject the politicization of justice that does not lead to the construction of an authentically direct democratic state.

3. We demand guaranteed rights for all men and women. We protest against the criminalization of the struggle and social protest, we also demand respect for the character of our mobilizations and actions that the #YoSoy132 movement in its peaceful approach carries out.

IMMEDIATE LIBERTY FOR ALL WOMEN AND MEN POLITICAL PRISONERS!

WE ARE ALL PRISONERS! NOT ONE MORE ISOLATED STRUGGLE!

BECAUSE PROTESTING IS NOT A CRIME!

National Assembly of the #YoSoy132 Movement!

Mexico captures cartel 'operations chief'

Al Jazeera: Eliot Alberto Radillo accused of overseeing extortion and drug trafficking activities for the New Generation cartel.

Federal police in Mexico have presented an alleged operations chief of the New Generation cartel who is suspected of overseeing extortion and drug trafficking activities for the drugs gang across various states.

A handcuffed Eliot Alberto Radillo, also known as "El Pancho", appeared alongside masked police officers in front of the media on Monday after his detention with another alleged member, Juan Carlos Salazar. Read more.

The Kingpins: The fight for Guadalajara

The New Yorker: At the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Enrique Peña Nieto, who is forty-five, boyishly handsome, and generally expected to be the next President of Mexico, was asked to name three books that had influenced him. He mentioned the Bible, or, at least, “some parts” (unspecified), and “The Eagle’s Throne,” a Carlos Fuentes novel (though he named the historian Enrique Krauze as the author). And, for a few excruciating minutes, that was all he could come up with. The crowd laughed wickedly. Peña Nieto’s wife, a former soap-opera star, squirmed in the front row. His teen-age daughter didn’t help matters when, in a tweet, she scorned “all of the idiots who form part of the proletariat and only criticize those they envy.

That debacle was in December. It did nothing to slow Peña Nieto’s well-financed march toward the election, which will take place on July 1st, but it did provide a welcome distraction for Guadalajarans, who are justly proud of their annual book fair. It is the second largest in Latin America, drawing more than half a million visitors, nearly two thousand publishers, and hundreds of authors, including, over the years, Nadine Gordimer, William Styron, and Toni Morrison. Guadalajarans sometimes offer it up as Exhibit A for the case that the city is a civilized place where life goes on unmarked by the violence that disfigures large parts of Mexico. Read more.

Mexico marines detain a son of most-wanted Mexican drug lord

AP: MEXICO CITY — Mexican marines on Thursday detained a young man they believe is one of the sons of Mexico’s most-wanted drug kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

The presumed son, identified by the Navy as Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, was allegedly taking on an increasing leadership role in Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel and purportedly served as the administrator of his father’s fortune, estimated by Forbes magazine at about $1 billion. Read more.

18 more headless bodies found at Mexico tourist lake

Daily News: Police found 18 dismembered and beheaded bodies inside two vans in an area frequented by tourists near the city of Guadalajara in western Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.

Jalisco state Prosecutor Tomas Coronado said earlier police found 15 severed human heads in the vans a few miles from Lake Chapala and his office confirmed later in a statement that three more heads had been found along with the other body parts.

"The bodies are dismembered," Coronado said in an interview transcript provided by his office. He said authorities received a phone call alerting them to the presence of two minivans on a dirt access road near Lake Chapala, which is popular with tourists and American retirees. read more

Drug War: Guadalajara: Profiles in War

La Jornada: Like many other things which have begun out of ignorance, when Calderón christened his offensive against crime “a war,” not even he had any idea what he was initiating. He understood even less the implications that a war, any war, has on the people and state institutions. Today he is learning the costs to the Mexican people. One example is Guadalajara.

He strolled into a nightmare, still not understanding its scope, without knowing what he was doing. His obsequious advisors from Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), Navy (Semar), Secretariat of Public Security (SSP), and the Attorney General (PGR) fell silent and let him wander. Although it’s been said a thousand times, it will never be enough in the face of the historic, brutal damage whose final scope we do not yet know.

By the end of this administration, as a result of the violence which has broken out, there will have been 60 thousand people killed and 220 thousand displaced and in search of safety in Ciudad Juarez alone, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a Norwegian center specialized in the subject, which has puts us on the level of Somalia, Libya, and Iraq.

Calderón’s refrain is “we can’t stop fighting crime.” It turns out that in five years, no one has asked him to. What would have been desirable was that we fight crime with a minimal amount of perspective, intelligence, and common sense, which we did not. We have gotten ourselves in a totally atypical war, but a war nonetheless. Should anyone doubt that fact, he should see the images of the conflict in Guadalajara. Let him tell us how they’re from those seen in Cairo, Iraq, or Afghanistan. There are belligerents, there are disputed and innocent casualties, including minors, there is the use of the weapons, tactics, and operations (or whatever you’d like to call them) of war. There are dead, wounded, a population in flight, the destruction of property. So?

But there is more: in Guadalajara, like throughout the rest of the country, there is societal unrest. It has created a culture of fear and with it a cruel and egotistical individualism, a distancing from traditional social ties known as cohesion, solidarity, which were always so rich in our society. Today it seems the mental slogan is “every man for himself.” It’s the fear taking over.

The federal and state institutions have suffered a decrease in their prestige, and rightly so. Like the Army and the Navy, the PGR , the police, the prosecutors and local courts are not prepared for the quick strength which was required. The penitentiary system has exploded because it was offered loads of power and control which it could hardly resist. Like in few other cases, corruption, paired with with inefficiency, lack of infrastructure, and the absence of technological systems, made already existing vices explode. Thus, the chain of enforcement, prosecution, sentencing, and the reversal of sentences simply blew up in the faces of the Mexican people.

These are the most visible injuries. There are others about which little has been said: international discredit; the loss of moral standing in international bodies; the disbursed public budget, carefully disguised by the administration. The fall of productivity in services, industry, and agriculture; the unemployment caused by the closing of multiple sources due to insecurity or even extortion, a widespread crime. The rise in common crimes, result of corruption of officials and impunity, is another result.

The population’s emotional insecurity will continue as long as there is no cohesive reconstruction project. It will continue because they see the moral destruction of official structures, beginning with the highest representatives in power. The authorities have lost respectability and confidence in the eyes of the people. The was rill leave behind feelings which will be projected through future generations. There are already significant delays in education and culture, a major setback for displaced persons. It’s creating a country with a feeling of being at permanent risk, on the defensive, and believing that the entire future will be a disaster.

The unfinished balance will be terribly negative. Not only are the incredibly painful scenes of fire and death in Guadalajara; they are lamentably repetitive. There will come a time you will organize, complement and expose such a burden, and in that moment Calderón and his cabinet’s responsibilities will be exposed to history’s judgement. There is talk of ending impunity! That’s the place to start." Spanish original

By Jorge Carrillo Olea 

Original translation by Michael Kane, Intern, Center for International Policy  

Drug War: Arrest of “El 85” generates chaos in Guadalajara, Mexico

Justice in Mexico: "On Friday March 9th, members of the Mexican Army (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, SEDENA) captured Erick “El 85” Valencia Salazar –alleged leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, CJNG)–, and Otoniel “Tony Montana” Mendoza, allegedly second in charge of the same organization. SEDENA confirmed that they conducted a precise operation in Zapopan –the wealthiest municipality of the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara– in the state of Jalisco, where the two leaders of CJNG were captured.

After the operation, a series of shootings and blockades occurred in the streets and highways of Guadalajara and surrounding areas. The roads were blocked with buses, some of them burned. The governor of Jalisco, Emilio González Márquez, reported later in the day that 25 vehicles were burned at 16 different points of the state, 11 within the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. Authorities detained 16 people apparently involved in the incidents, two of them minors. The events caused fear among the population and generated chaos in the city." read more

Drug War: 15 tons of meth found in Mexico

Rather than being a "victory" in the war against drugs, this tells us that meth production is growing rapidly and is far greater than the government agencies have previously calculated.

Houston Chronicle: "Mexican troops have made an historic seizure of 15 tons of pure methamphetamine in the western state of Jalisco, the Mexican army said in a statement released late Wednesday.

Soldiers discovered the huge cache in... a suburb of Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara. ... The find ... is more than four times the size of a major seizure last summer of 3.4 tons (3.1 metric tons) and more than twice the total amount of meth seized in Mexico in 2009. ... According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total meth seizures worldwide were 31 metric tons in 2009." read more

Mexico drug war: How one DEA killing began a brutal war

BBC News: "Twenty seven years ago, the kidnap, torture and murder of a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent by Mexican drug traffickers sparked one of the biggest manhunts the US government has ever launched in North America. It also offered an ominous warning of things to come." read more

Drug War Bloodshed: Chicago area teen's killing in Mexico prompts fear among Mexican immigrants in Chicago

Chicago Tribune: "In a small town in western Mexico, Jazmin Reyes, 16, waited for her new boyfriend from the United States. She and Alexis Marron had been emailing each other for months, but when they finally met a few weeks ago, she said it was "love at first sight."

Marron, 18, a Rolling Meadows High School senior, had worked all summer so he could afford to visit relatives and see Reyes outside Guadalajara over Christmas. On Friday, he was driving with two friends to exchange Christmas gifts with her. He never made it." read more

Mexico Drug War: Authorities of State of Jalisco Detain Three for the Murder of 26 People

Translated by AMB

CNNMéxico: Jalisco state authorities arrested three people suspected in the deaths of 26 men whose bodies were dumped in a street in Guadalajara, the capital of the state, on November 24. The suspects claimed to belong to the Millennium cartel, according to the spokesman. Spanish original

Mexico Drug War: Rival cartels take bloody drug war to the heart of the country

McClatchy: "Mexico's two most powerful criminal gangs are locked in a titanic battle for control of the country's heartland in a struggle that's redrawn Mexico's map of violence. Violence has dropped along the U.S. border, with Ciudad Juárez, once considered the most violent city in the world, seeing a 35-per-cent drop in homicides this year.

That good news is balanced by bad news in Guadalajara, Culiacán and Veracruz, where the Sinaloa cartel, whose bulwark has always been Mexico's Pacific coast, and the Zetas, a violent gang that originally was created to protect the Gulf cartel along the Gulf of Mexico coast, are locked in a spiralling struggle that's seen each gang invade the other's territory." read more

Drug War: Guadalajara Body Dump Heralds Spread of Massacres in Mexico

InSight Crime: "With 26 dead bodies dumped on the streets of Guadalajara, mass killings in Mexico seem to be growing more common and spreading across the country, as each massacre raises the stakes for other criminal groups.

... While the scale of the violence was certain to grab attention, this incident reflects a couple of trends that are worth noting. One is that Guadalajara, a city of more than 4 million people a few hours inland from the Pacific coast, remains contested. It was long considered the territory of Sinaloa Cartel capo Ignacio Coronel, but his death in July 2010 encouraged Sinaloa’s enemies to enter the region, and Guadalajara has grown far more violent since." read more

Drug War Bloodshed: Guadalajara and Sinaloa Massacres Raise Questions

A reveiw of various speculations about what cartel dynamics are behing last weeks massacres in Guadalajara and Sinaloa and what they may portend.

Justice in Mexico: "In a new surge of cartel violence, the city of Guadalajara was shocked last Wednesday when vans full of bodies were found in the center of the city. ... a circle of parked vans loaded with 26 corpses was discovered in a busy area, during the morning of November 23, 2011.

... The Sinaloa cartel is considered to be the most powerful cartel in Mexico. Control of the Guadalajara area is very valuable to cartels as the routes that run through Guadalajara provide access to both Ciudad Juarez and Mexicali, both the ideal drug trafficking routes to the United States. Guadalajara is the gateway to the main highway running through western Mexico, including mega drug production state Michoacan, and continues north toward the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa where the Sinaloa Cartel is based." read more

Mexico Drug War: Zetas lay claim to Sinaloa turf

AFP: " The increasingly powerful Zetas are likely behind the killings of 50 people in strongholds of the rival Sinaloa cartel in western Mexico, analysts say.... The message left by the Zetas near some of the 26 corpses found Thursday in Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, make the targets quite clear: the Sinaloa gang and its fugitive boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

The messages also apparently slam an alleged alliance between Guzman and the leaders of Sinaloa state, where 24 bodies were found Wednesday, and Jalisco state, of which Guadalajara is the capital." read more