After decades at ‘supermax,’ Mexican cartel capo gets transfer

Borderland Beat: Serving life in prison just got a little easier for Gulf Cartel godfather Juan Garcia Abrego.

After nearly 20 years in the so-called federal “supermax,” where some of the nation’s most notorious inmates are kept, Garcia Abrego was recently transferred to a high-security penitentiary, according to federal records. Read more. 

"El Chapo" re-arrested in Mexico

CBS/AP: Responding to what was seen as one of the biggest embarrassments of his administration - Guzman's July 11 escape through a tunnel from Mexico's highest-security prison - Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account on Friday: "mission accomplished: we have him."

Benjamin Bergman, a spokesman for the Mexican marines, said El Chapo was rearrested after a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa early Friday. He said Guzman was in "good condition."

Five people have been killed and one Mexican marine wounded in the clash. The Mexican Navy said in a statement that marines acting on a tip raided a home in the town of Los Mochis before dawn. They were fired on from inside the structure. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. The marine's injuries were not life threatening. Read more. 

Censor or die: The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels

Washington Post: As deadline descended on El Mañana’s newsroom and reporters rushed to file their stories, someone in the employ of a local drug cartel called with a demand from his crime boss.

The caller was a journalist for another newspaper, known here as an enlace, or “link” to the cartel. The compromised journalist barked out the order: Publish an article saying the mayor in Matamoros had not paid the cartel $2 million a month in protection fees, as an El Mañana front-page story had alleged the day before.

“They want us to say he’s not guilty,” the editor who took the call told his colleagues during the episode in late October. Knowing glances passed between them as a visiting Washington Post reporter looked on.

They all knew that defiance carried a high price. Read more.

Violence, drugs dash Mexico Triqui people's dream of new start far from home

Reuters: In Baja California, Gabino Bautista yearns for his homeland thousands of miles south of the northern Mexican state, but the bullet wounds in his body remind him he can never go back.

Bautista is one of about 15,000 members of the Triqui indigenous tribe forced by drug-related violence to flee mountainous San Juan Copala in Mexico's southern Oaxaca state for a fresh start, only to find life in northern Mexico is worse.

Fighting in Oaxaca left Bautista, 51, with punctured lungs from gunshots that cost his parents their lives and sent him north to Baja California, where fellow Triqui founded the settlement of 'New Copala' in 1989. Read more. 

Chapo Guzman sends flowers to Jardines de Humaya cemetery

Proceso (Translated by Borderland Beat): A floral arrangement with about 70 red roses, was seen Monday November 2 in the Jardines de Humaya cemetery in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

An all capital written message in dark letters surrounding the floral arrangement reads, "FROM: JOAQUIN GUZMAN LOERA, TO: PERRILLO.

Mexican cartels now have a 'sophisticated farm-to-arm supply chain' for the US heroin trade

Business Insider: The heroin crisis in the US is worsening as the use of heroin surpasses that of cocaine and meth, and we know where a lot of the product is coming from.

Mexican drug cartels have taken over much of the heroin market in the US, smuggling an estimated 225,000 pounds over the border last year, The Washington Post reports.

Old Cartels Never Really Die…

FSN News: Despite recurrent pronouncements of death by some U.S. and Mexican officials, high-profile organized crime groups continue operating and shedding blood south of the border. Tijuana, where control of both the local and export drug business is the prize of contention, figures once again as a significant flashpoint of violence.

Violent rivalries were on public display this past week as at least five so-called narcomantas, or narco banners, were placed in highly visible spots in the Baja California border city of an estimated 1.6 million people.

'El Chapo' Guzman escape: Mexican prison officials charged

BBC: Four Mexican officials have been charged with aiding the escape of the notorious drugs lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from a maximum security prison.

Two are members of Mexico's secret service who were based at the prison. The others were control room employees who should have monitored his cell.

In his hometown, fugitive Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo' is a hero to many

LA Times: A new shipment of caps arrived at Isaias Rodriguez's Culiacan store, black canvas with the image of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman — once again the world's most-wanted drug lord — embossed in gold on the front.

The hats came in just a week or so after El Chapo escaped from a high-security prison in July, via a ventilated, well-lighted tunnel just under a mile long.

Rodriguez, 46, said this is the first time he has sold merchandise that depicts Guzman, who was born and made in Culiacan. The latter's escape has been good for business. Read more. 

Sinaloa Cartel Grew More Powerful During Chapo’s Prison Stay

Latin American Herald Tribune: The Sinaloa drug cartel became more powerful during kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman’s most recent 17-month prison stay, Mexico City daily El Universal reported, citing information obtained from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.

Guzman was captured on Feb. 22, 2014, in Mazatlan, a Pacific coast city in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, and imprisoned at the Altiplano I maximum-security penitentiary until he escaped on July 11 of this year through a 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) underground tunnel that led from his cell to a deserted building. Read more. 

Eight family members decapitated in north Mexico

AFP: Eight people from the same family, including two minors, were kidnapped by masked gunmen and their decapitated bodies were found days later in northern Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.

The bodies were found after a ninth member of the Martinez family escaped Sunday's abduction near Casa Quemada, in the state of Chihuahua, and alerted the authorities, prosecutors said. Read more. 

Mexico imports gasoline as thefts cause shortages

AFP: Mexico is importing 75,000 extra barrels of gasoline per day in an "unprecedented" move to mitigate shortages in several states caused by illegal pipeline taps, authorities said.

An official at the state-run energy firm Pemex said the "extraordinary measures" were needed to supply service stations in several cities. Read more. 

DEA's Leonhart Doomed? Committee Declares 'No Confidence' Amid Sex Party Scandal

U.S. News: Nearly two dozen lawmakers serving on the House oversight committee say it’s time for leadership change at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The current DEA administrator, Michele Leonhart, infuriated committee members Tuesday with her testimony about agents who repeatedly attended sex parties with prostitutes that were funded by drug cartel members. Read more. 

These are the 2 classic ways Mexican cartels launder money

Business Insider: Mexico is home to several drug trafficking organizations (DTOs): the Sinaloa cartel, La Familia cartel, Knights Templar cartel, Juarez cartel, and others.

Generally, these organizations buy cocaine processed in South America and smuggle it into the United States to sell. After that, however, they need a way to get the money back to Mexico — and secretly. Read more. 

Son of Mexico cartel boss pleads guilty to U.S. smuggling charge

Reuters: The son of a former Mexico cartel boss faces up to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to trying to smuggle ammunition across the Texas border into Mexico, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Osiel Cardenas, Jr., is the son of Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, who headed the Gulf Cartel in Northeastern Mexico until he was sentenced to 25 years in prison after his arrest in 2003. Read more. 

Mexican cartels steal billions from oil industry

AP: Mexico overcame 75 years of nationalist pride to reform its flagging, state-owned oil industry. But as it prepares to develop rich shale fields along the Gulf Coast, and attract foreign investors, another challenge awaits: taming the brutal drug cartels that rule the region and are stealing billions of dollars' worth of oil from pipelines.

Figures released by Petroleos Mexicanos last week show the gangs are becoming more prolific and sophisticated. So far this year, thieves across Mexico have drilled 2,481 illegal taps into state-owned pipelines, up more than one-third from the same period of 2013. Pemex estimates it's lost some 7.5 million barrels worth $1.15 billion. Read More. 

Violent Drug Cartels In Northern Mexico Threaten To Forestall Country's Fracking Boom

International Business Times: Violent drug cartels running rampant in northern Mexico are threatening to forestall the country’s much-anticipated fracking boom.

In a recent incident in Tamaulipas state, about 30 workers for oil and gas company Weatherford International were caught in the crossfire of gangs feuding for control of the U.S. drug market, Bloomberg News reported. Gunmen rolled up in a makeshift tank and blasted the hotel where the Weatherford workers were staying with bullets. The employees were forced to flee under police escort. Read more. 

A Bad Day or a New Bloodbath?

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

Ciudad Juarez News

May 28, 2014

In one of the bloodiest days in the last year or more, nine people were murdered Monday, May 26, in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez.  In separate incidents, guns, knives, hammers and possibly bare hands were the instruments of homicide.

A prominent lawyer, Salvador Urbina Quiroz, along with Judge Cesar Cordero, was gunned down by assassins as the two men were meeting in Urbina’s office on Monday afternoon.  The state prosecutor’s office (FGE), which is offering a $20,000 reward for the information leading to the arrests of the killers, said two suspects were captured on videotape at the crime scene.

Urbina was well-known in Ciudad Juarez for his leadership in professional associations, as well as his critical, published commentaries on legal affairs and the so-called drug war.

The 52-year-old criminal defense attorney handled controversial cases including the 2011 defenses of teacher Ana Isela Martinez, a young woman popularly known as “Miss Ana” who was imprisoned and falsely accused of trying to transport drugs to the United States, as well as four members of the Jaguars unit of the municipal police accused of killing four men.

Capture of El Chapo: Like a Drop of Water in Rain (La Jornada, Mexico)

February 25, 2014

La Jornada 

Translated by WorldMeets

In December 2013 , the Attorney General's Office released a list of 69 of the 122 capos most wanted for drug trafficking who were arrested or killed during President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration. This was a follow up on previous arrest priorities implemented under the administration of Felipe Calderón, the success of who's security strategy was measured based on the number of criminal detainees, and without connection to the nation's prevailing insecurity.

 

On February 21, during a presentation on governance and the rule of law as a strategy for development at the 2014 National Industrial Convention, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said that of the 122 criminal ringleaders, 74 have been detained.

Now, with the arrest of Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias El Chapo, the number of captured organized crime leaders has reached 75. However, it wasn't only the Mexican authorities that targeted El Chapo. The drug trafficker was one of the U.S. government's most wanted criminals, with the Obama Administration offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. Read more. 

Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History

National Security Archive 
Electronic Briefing Book No. 445
Edited by Michael Evans and Jesse Franzblau
November 6, 2013

Four months before the feared Zetas drug cartel kidnapped and murdered 72 migrants in northeastern Mexico, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said that narcotrafficking organizations in that region operated with "near total impunity in the face of compromised local security forces." As the date of the massacre drew nearer, another U.S. agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), reported new evidence linking the Zetas to soldiers from the Kaibiles, an elite Guatemalan special forces known for spectacular acts of cruelty and brutality during that country's civil war.

These records are among a set of U.S. documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and published today by the National Security Archive, providing a glimpse of what U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts were saying about the extreme violence that has engulfed Mexico's northern border state of Tamaulipas in recent years and the apparent complicity of Mexican officials. Just this week, a new round of violence in Tamaulipas took the lives of 13 more people, as drug-related violence flared yet again.

Some of these documents are featured in this week's edition of Proceso magazine, in an article by award-winning investigative journalist Marcela Turati. Her report highlights the unchecked power of the Zetas in the region and the inability or unwillingness of federal, state and local officials in Mexico to provide security for citizens and migrants traveling in the region.  Read more.