Mexico arrests ex-cop over slayings

World News Report: Police arrested a man “identified as Abraham Torres Tranquilino” for alleged involvement in the killing of Ruben Espinosa, rights activist Nadia Vera and three other female victims, Mexico City prosecutor Rodolfo Rios said in a statement.

Espinosa and the other victims were found dead on July 31 this year in a Mexico City apartment, their hands bound and their bodies bearing signs of torture. Read more. 

Mexico City sinking as aquifer exhausted

Upi: As Mexico City continues to pull water from the aquifer below, its ground is sinking. The process is called subsidence. Now, the city's subsidence can be visualized from the perspective of low Earth orbit.

The European Space Agency hascreated an ariel composite image-- compiled using satellite imagery collected between October 3 and December 2 -- showing the city's rate of subsidence. Some areas of the city are sinking as much as one inch per month. Read more. 

Mexico Police Clash With Protesters Opposing Pena Nieto Plan

Bloomberg 
By Nacha Cattan and Eric Martin
October 3, 2013

Mexico City police blocked the entrance to the stock exchange yesterday as thousands rallied on the main business boulevard and clashed with officers to protest President Enrique Pena Nieto’s economic agenda.

Police said about 30,000 students, teachers and supporters closed off the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard, with hundreds outside the Bolsa Mexicana (BOLSAA) and U.S. Embassy. Officers clad in riot gear used fire extinguishers and tear gas to defend themselves against protesters attacking with sticks, rocks and Molotov cocktails in the capital’s historic center. Thirty two officers were injured and 102 protesters detained, Mexico City police said in a statement.  Read more. 

Mexico: Where a doctor sleeps with a loaded gun, bulletproof vest

GlobalPost
June 24, 2013

Ecatepec, Mexico — A family doctor in this tattered suburb of Mexico City, Roman Gomez tends to his patients under the constant threat of death from neighborhood thugs.

A squad of state policemen stands round-the-clock guard at the four-story building that serves both as Gomez's clinic and home, vetting all who enter. He wears a bulletproof vest under his medical tunic, keeps a large pistol tucked into his belt, rarely ventures into the street.

Gomez, 53, has lived this way since early February, when he shot and killed two of three armed men who burst into his crowded waiting room to collect $20,000 in protection money. Now members of the dead men's gang are gunning for Gomez.  Read more. 

Mexico Goes After the Narcos—Before They Join the Gangs

Time

By Ioan Grillo and Dolly Mascareñas / Nezahualcóyotl
Feb. 25, 2013

The gunshots at dawn woke residents of the cinder block homes in Nezahualcóyotl, a working-class city on the edge of the Mexican capital, making a few people duck for cover behind their beds. When they finally peered out their windows, they saw the corpses of two young men, one stacked over the other, besides a threatening note written on cardboard and signed by the drug cartel called La Familia. The double murder, which took place on Feb. 16, was the latest in a series of killings that have brought the drug war to the edges of Mexico City – the mountain capital that has long been viewed as a safe haven from cartel violence ravaging other parts of Mexico.

Recently installed President Enrique Peña Nieto hopes to reverse this trend with a new anti crime strategy – transforming poor neighborhoods like Nezahualcóyotl where cartels make their bastions and preventing young people from joining their criminal armies. On Feb. 12, Peña Nieto announced there would be more than $9 billion for crime prevention aimed at 57 hotspots. “We must put special emphasis on prevention, because we can’t only keep employing more sophisticated weapons, better equipment, more police, a higher presence of the armed forces in the country as the only form of combating organized crime,” Peña Nieto said. Rather than just shooting or incarcerating the seemingly endless ranks of cartel gunmen, the president hopes to stop young people from becoming assassins in the first place.  Read more.

Drug war rages on the edge of Mexico City

Global Post
By Dudley Althaus
January 26, 2013

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — For all the murderous mayhem that has haunted Mexico in recent years, its capital city has remained essentially untouched.

Large cities like Monterrey and Ciudad Juarez have become synonymous with brutal drug war killings, while Mexico City's nearly 9 million residents have been largely spared.

But recent carnage in Mexico state, enveloping the capital like a folded tortilla, has many worried that's about to change.

Gangland slaughter on the fringes of Mexico's capital has claimed some 60 lives in 10 days, mocking President Enrique Pena Nieto's promise to reduce violence with better local law enforcement.

In response, federal and state officials have beefed up army patrols in the state's largest cities, hard on the capital's borders — and people are taking note.  Read more.

Honoring Drug War Dead, and Spurring a Debate

The NY Times

By Randal Archibold
Published: January 23, 2013

MEXICO CITY — Reeling from a drug war that has killed tens of thousands and a boom in violent crime in general, Mexico has built a memorial to victims of violence. But like a crime scene still under investigation, it sits off limits behind white tarp, wrapped in questions and uncertainty.

A series of rusted metal slabs amid reflecting pools in a corner of Mexico City’s biggest park, the memorial now stands as an accidental metaphor for the fog and doubts that swirl around the country’s layered debates on violence and victimhood.

Rushed to completion by President Felipe Calderón, whose six-year term was overwhelmed by the explosion of violence, the site has not yet publicly opened. On Nov. 30, in Mr. Calderón’s last 90 minutes in office, his administration sent a short e-mail to reporters announcing that the memorial was complete and in the hands of the civic groups that had called for it.

But in fact the transfer of the military-owned site has been mired in bureaucratic delays, and there remains disagreement over who the victims are — particularly in the bloody war against drug cartels and other organized crime that has consumed the country.  Read more. 

Newfound aquifer may ease Mexico City's water woes

Los Angeles Times
By Richard Fausset
January 21, 2013

MEXICO CITY — It turns out a partial solution to this unwieldy megacity's vexing water problem may have been under residents' feet all along — albeit a long way down.

Mexico City government officials Monday announced the discovery of an aquifer more than a mile below ground that could provide enough water for at least some of the metropolitan area's 20 million residents. Officials say the aquifer could reduce the city's dependence on water pumped from outlying areas and reduce the strain on the region's shallower aquifers — the over-pumping of which is causing the city to sink precipitously, in some cases more than a foot each year. Read more.

Realistic, Shiny Toy Guns In Mexico City Destroyed By Authorities

Huffington Post: January 4, 2012

MEXICO -- Mexico City authorities say they have destroyed thousands of toy guns in an effort to fight real crimes committed with fake weapons.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said Friday that officials believe that at least three of every 10 violent crimes in Mexico City is committed with a realistic toy gun.

The guns were confiscated from shops in Mexico City and the surrounding state of Mexico. Mexico bans virtually all civilian gun ownership and requires that toy weapons be made of transparent or brightly colored plastic. Sunday is Three Kings Day, when Mexican children receive the largest number of holiday gifts. Read more. 

In crime-toughened Mexico City, cash-for-weapons exchange extended

Los Angeles Times 

By Daniel Hernandez
January 3, 2013.

MEXICO CITY -- Promised that no questions would be asked, they've brought in handguns, pistols, rifles, grenades, bullets, and dozens of gun replicas that may or may not have been used to spook a robbery victim.

Hundreds of people have turned in nearly a thousand weapons and at least one grenade-launcher in nine days in exchange for gifts and cash -- as well as anonymity -- in a holiday pilot program that has exceeded government expectations in Mexico's populous capital.

The program, "For Your Family, Voluntary Disarming," was launched at the historic Santuario de la Cuevita church in the crime-toughened borough of Iztapalapa on Christmas Eve, with promises of tablet computers and bicycles for handing over any firearms.

By Dec. 31, when the pilot was supposed to end, about 900 weapons had been turned in, said Rodolfo Rivera, the Mexico City police department official in charge of the program. His team restarted the exchange on Wednesday. Read more. 

Swapping guns for cash in Mexico City

Al Jazeera 

Mexico City uses new approach to combat violence a month after a 10-year-old boy was killed in a movie theatre.

Mexico City is offering cash and computers in exchange for guns to help combat violence.

This voluntary disarmament programme comes a month after a 10-year boy was killed by a stray bullet inside a movie theatre.

The exchange point is in Iztapalapa, a borough of the Mexican capital where youth crime is among the highest.

Civilian gun ownership is illegal under Mexican law unless the owner buys the weapon from a special government run shop.

The voluntary disarmament program has been met with mixed feelings. Read more. 

#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!

69 People Jailed Following Violent Mexico Protests

ABC News By Manuel Rueda
Dec. 4, 2012

Sixty-nine people have been sent to jail in Mexico City, for allegedly destroying businesses and public property during protests held on Saturday against Mexico's new president.

These detainees, who were in temporary detention centers until Monday, have been charged with "rioting," and "disturbing the public peace," and if convicted could face five to 30 years in jail.

But the charges brought against these 69 individuals have been vehemently rejected by social movements who participated in Saturday's protests against Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. These groups are accusing police of using excessive force on Saturday and of imprisoning the 69 protesters as an intimidation tactic.


On Monday afternoon, members of the YoSoy132 Student Movement, the Communist Party and a half dozen more political groups held a rally at Mexico City's Independence Monument to call for the liberation of these detainees.

"They weren't doing anything but voicing their opposition against an imposed president who is bad for the country," said Aura Sorita, holding a poster with the pictures of two university students. Sorita's friends, Mary Montezuma and Obed Palgod, were detained during Saturday's protests and are now being held in separate Mexico City penitentiaries.  Read more. 

The man who remade Mexico City

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has given Mexico's capital – once infamous for its pollution, lawlessness, and general chaos – new appeal thanks to environmental and civic programs.

The Christian Science Monitor By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / November 22, 2012

Mexico  City

Jose Guadalupe Gonzalez walks among giant paper-mache renderings of fantastical dragons and serpents, called alebrijes, with his wife and two teenage daughters in the middle of Mexico City’s Zocalo to celebrate Day of the Dead. Later, the family considered catching a play for free, also in the main plaza, or strolling along the nearby, new pedestrian streets of downtown Mexico.

In the winter the Gonzalez family goes ice-skating in the same spot. And on Sundays, any time of the year, they can hop on free bicycles and ride along Reforma, the city's most icononic thoroughfare.

In many ways, Mr. Gonzalez says his native city is an unrecognizable place, having transformed under leftist administrations and particularly the city’s outgoing Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who has become an international star of sorts among the municipal set.  Read more. 

In Mexico, racism hides in plain view

CNN By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

(CNN) -- Mexico City, home to 20 million people, represents the paradox of the modern Mexico, the side-by-side juxtaposition -- in everything from politics to architecture -- of old and new.
Turn a corner, and you'll see a church that is 300 years old. Turn another, and you can get Wi-Fi in a Starbucks.

The Distrito Federal, also known as Mexico City, serves as a constant reminder that Mexicans are about maintaining tradition, except when they're sidestepping it. They're about moving forward, except when they are unable to let go of the past. They're about preserving memory, except when they have amnesia.

For example, when it comes to forgiving the corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party (also known by its initials, PRI), whose leaders brutalized the Mexican people and plundered the country for much of the 20th century, they have short memories; they recently returned the PRI to power by electing Enrique Pena Nieto to the presidency. He takes office December 1.

But when it comes to the aftermath of the U.S.-Mexican war, which lasted from 1846 to 1848 and resulted in the United States seizing half of Mexico's territory -- the modern-day U.S. Southwest -- Mexicans' memories are long, and forgiveness isn't easy to find. Even after all these years, in diplomatic circles, you still hear talk of the "sovereignty" issue -- which, loosely defined, means the constant effort by Mexico to keep the United States from meddling in its domestic affairs and the need for the U.S. to tread lightly. Read more. 

On Mexico City’s flat roofs, tiny gardens help feed families, provide an urban respite

The Kansas City Star, Tim Johnson

MEXICO CITY -- Climb to a rooftop and scan the horizon of this metropolis, and you’re likely to see nearby rooftops or balconies with vegetable gardens.

Urban rooftop gardening is on the cusp of a boom here, sponsored by a City Hall that sees gardening as a way to alleviate poverty, provide residents with their own healthy food and add some green to one of the world’s most populous cities.

In a program begun five years ago, Mexico City’s municipal government has given grants to 3,080 families to build gardens on their rooftops, sometimes sheltered by simple greenhouses to protect from nightly mountain chill and occasional hail. Many more families have attended urban gardening classes and struck out on their own to grow tomatoes, lettuce, chilies, scallions, guava, passion fruit and other edibles. Read more. 

Deportees flown to Mexico City in new program to bypass border towns

Reuters: Immigration officials on Tuesday flew 131 deportees to Mexico City in the maiden flight of a new program to send illegal immigrants to the interior of Mexico, rather than border towns where they are more likely to be exposed to criminals.

The two-month project is a collaborative effort between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, and is geared toward immigrants who come from the interior regions of Mexico.

In the past, many Mexican nationals deported from the United States have ended up in northern border towns, despite having no ties to the region. Deportees placed there have often sought to re-enter the United States illegally, or have fallen prey to criminal organizations, federal officials say. Read more.

Mexico deploys troops to outskirts of Mexico City

MEXICO CITY, Sept 20

(Reuters) - Mexico has sent soldiers to patrol a suburb of Mexico City for the first time to combat a rise in drug-related violence that is beginning to encroach on the capital.

From late Wednesday, a combined force of around 1,000 soldiers, federal police and local police took to the streets of Nezahualcoyotl on the capital's eastern flank, which has suffered from a dispute between two rival drug cartels.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon's fight against drug gangs has overshadowed his administration, and the deployment in Nezahualcoyotl brings the conflict into the home state of his successor Enrique Pena Nieto, who takes office in December.

The local government's request for troops in the sprawling municipality in the State of Mexico follows the murder there this weekend of Jaime Serrano, a local state congressman and member of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Some Nezahualcoyotl residents told Reuters they had been extorted by criminals identifying themselves as members of the La Familia drug gang.

"Things are getting worse and worse here," said one local man, who asked not to be named. "People here have got used to paying these people (the cartels). If you don't, they say they're going to kill you and your family." Read more. 

Mexicans see a losing battle in the war on crooked police

L.A. Times: Richard Fausset. MEXICO CITY — In the midst of a violent drug war, President Felipe Calderon fired crooked cops by the hundreds, and hired new ones — rigorously vetted and college educated — by the thousands. Salaries were doubled, new standards imposed and officers were subjected to extensive background checks.

A trustworthy federal police force was to be one of the most important legacies of Calderon's six-year term. And yet, just months before he is to leave office in December, the president found himself apologizing "profoundly" this week for an incident in which federal police allegedly opened fire on an SUV with diplomatic plates, injuring two Americans.

A dozen federal police officers are being detained while the Mexican attorney general's office investigates the incident. Many of the details remain unclear, including what may have motivated officers to open fire on the vehicle, which was traveling through dangerous countryside south of Mexico City. Read More.

Mexico replaces airport police after shootout

CNN: Mexican authorities have replaced 348 federal police at the country's largest airport after a shootout there left three officers dead.

The officers have been moved from Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport to assignments in other states, federal police said in a statement Sunday. They were replaced by officers who went through a "double background check," the statement said.

The reshuffling comes nearly two months after a shooting sent passengers scrambling and left shattered glass on the ground near a food court at the airport. Read more.