“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring. Read more.
The MexicoBlog of the Americas Program, a fiscally sponsored program of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is written by Laura Carlsen. I monitor and analyze international press on Mexico, with a focus on security, immigration, human rights and social movements for peace and justice, from a feminist perspective. And sometimes I simply muse.
Showing posts with label drug war "success". Show all posts
Showing posts with label drug war "success". Show all posts
Feb 23, 2015
Life after El Chapo: kingpin's arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war
The Guardian: The fortune-teller smiled as she gazed out towards the distant peaks of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.
“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring. Read more.
“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring. Read more.
Oct 10, 2014
Mexico captures Juarez Cartel boss -government source
Reuters: Mexico captured the leader of the once-feared Juarez Cartel in the country's restive north on Thursday, the second drug kingpin to fall in just over a week, a government source said.
Vicente Carrillo, 51, long-time head of the Juarez Cartel, was a fierce rival of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world's most wanted drug boss until his capture in February. Read more.
Vicente Carrillo, 51, long-time head of the Juarez Cartel, was a fierce rival of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world's most wanted drug boss until his capture in February. Read more.
Feb 27, 2014
El Chapo's Capture Will Help Restore Mexico's Reputation (Milenio, Mexico)*
*This article, translated by our friends at WorldMeetsUs, views the capture in a positive light as a blow against impunity. Curiously, at the same time the author notes that 'unleashing violence' is a probably outcome of the capture. Again, we have different opinions based on different perspectives--the most positive tend to emphasize the improvement in the image of the Peña Nieto government--breaking the commonly held ideas that the government favored the Sinaloa Cartel and that the PRI would negotiate with cartels. The more negative perspective, like ours, fear for the repercussions in public safety and likely ineffectiveness in terms of eliminating organized crime activity.
Milenio
Translated by WorldMeetsUs
February 25, 2014
It must be said: The capture of El Chapo Guzman is an undeniable achievement of Enrique Peña Nieto's government. It is a success no matter how one looks at it. It was a success for the armed forces, for the way the information is handled, and in terms of the operational effectiveness and perseverance in achieving a single goal: to stop and imprison the most wanted drug trafficker in the world.
Independent of the undeniable and justifiable satisfaction that the government feels, Mexicans, too, must be satisfied with the government's performance in this regard. The capture of the legendary narco is a down payment in the fight against crime and impunity.
The operation to arrest him reflects well on the professionalism of specialized corps of the Marines and Army. No longer need we imagine surgical operations as an element of quirky movies or the capabilities of forces in other countries. In Mexico there are institutions that function properly, and the successes of operations against crime, whether government run or not, should give us all some peace of mind and boost our sense of confidence.
Milenio
Translated by WorldMeetsUs
February 25, 2014
Independent of the undeniable and justifiable satisfaction that the government feels, Mexicans, too, must be satisfied with the government's performance in this regard. The capture of the legendary narco is a down payment in the fight against crime and impunity.
The operation to arrest him reflects well on the professionalism of specialized corps of the Marines and Army. No longer need we imagine surgical operations as an element of quirky movies or the capabilities of forces in other countries. In Mexico there are institutions that function properly, and the successes of operations against crime, whether government run or not, should give us all some peace of mind and boost our sense of confidence.
Feb 25, 2014
Capture of El Chapo: Like a Drop of Water in Rain (La Jornada, Mexico)
February 25, 2014
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.
Mar 28, 2012
Head of US Armed Forces Discusses Combatting Transnational Organized Crime
This brief article from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey gives several indications as to why the war on drugs drags on despite its failure. In his assessment of the threat posed by "transnational organized crime", Dempsey lumps in a series of threats that have no known basis in fact, including the transportation of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction through organized crime networks. There is no mention of the social roots of crime, and the model presented 'a la Colombiana' --"The military can clear an area, but if the government cannot hold it -- and bring jobs, education and health care benefits -- it will lose that area" continues to conceive of the fight on crime as a domestic military occupation.
American Forces Press Service By Jim GaramonTransnational organized crime is not specifically mentioned in the new defense strategy, but leaders understand the threat, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at U.S. Southern Command today.
One of the command's main missions is to deal with the threat posed by drug cartels, human traffickers and gunrunners -- what the command calls transnational organized crime. The command works with regional allies and with U.S. interagency partners to combat this transnational threat.
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey spoke during a Southcom town hall meeting before leaving for a visit to regional allies. Before the town hall, he met with Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, Southcom’s commander, and received briefings on the range and breadth of threats and opportunities in the region.
“I want to assure you that we recognize the threat that transnational organized crime presents, not just because of what they transport to our shores, but what they could also transport -- terrorists and weapons and weapons of mass destruction,” the general said. Read more
American Forces Press Service By Jim GaramonTransnational organized crime is not specifically mentioned in the new defense strategy, but leaders understand the threat, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at U.S. Southern Command today.
One of the command's main missions is to deal with the threat posed by drug cartels, human traffickers and gunrunners -- what the command calls transnational organized crime. The command works with regional allies and with U.S. interagency partners to combat this transnational threat.
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey spoke during a Southcom town hall meeting before leaving for a visit to regional allies. Before the town hall, he met with Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, Southcom’s commander, and received briefings on the range and breadth of threats and opportunities in the region.
“I want to assure you that we recognize the threat that transnational organized crime presents, not just because of what they transport to our shores, but what they could also transport -- terrorists and weapons and weapons of mass destruction,” the general said. Read more
Jan 5, 2012
Drug War: Mexican drug kingpin to get lighter prison sentence than lower-ranking operatives
AP/Washington Post: "Mexican drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix stood attentively in court, acknowledging his guilt as a federal judge read a plea agreement that detailed his role at the helm of one of the world’s most powerful cartels in the 1990s. ... His cartel, which once had an iron-tight grip on the drug trade along California’s border with Mexico, has struggled in recent years as other cartels have become more ruthless than ever.
Under an agreement with federal prosecutors, Arellano Felix, 58, can be sentenced to no more than 25 years in prison — a lighter punishment than ordered for lower-ranking members of his once-mighty, Tijuana-based cartel." read more
Under an agreement with federal prosecutors, Arellano Felix, 58, can be sentenced to no more than 25 years in prison — a lighter punishment than ordered for lower-ranking members of his once-mighty, Tijuana-based cartel." read more
Nov 9, 2011
Drug War: US official: Drug traffic may return to Caribbean
Well, now, let's see. The U.S. pushed the narcos out of the Caribbean and into Mexico and Central America. Now it may be pushing them back into the Caribbean. How is this a strategy? It sounds like the game of Whack-a-mole or, as they prefer to call it in Latin America, the cockroach effect. Whack 'em in one place and they just move to another.
Boston.com: "A top U.S. State Department official said Tuesday that drug traffickers may return to old Caribbean smuggling routes as law enforcement pressure builds against them in Mexico and Central America.
Boston.com: "A top U.S. State Department official said Tuesday that drug traffickers may return to old Caribbean smuggling routes as law enforcement pressure builds against them in Mexico and Central America.
William Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, said the Caribbean routes used to ship cocaine and other drugs in the 1970s and 1980s are the most logical for traffickers. Those routes led most often to South Florida but also to other Southern U.S. states. "I do not see it right now, but simple logic and common sense tells you that you probably are going to see it in the next two or three years," Brownfield said in an interview. "They are going to look for alternative routes."" read more
Sep 19, 2011
Drug War - Drug Policy: How Dodgy Numbers Distort the Drug Trade
InSight Crime: "Public perceptions of Mexico's drug trade are largely based on unreliable estimates by government agencies, who have an incentive to make the threat seem as large as possible.
Take, for instance, the estimate that the amount of illicit cash flowing across the U.S. border to Mexican capos is between $18 billion and $39 billion annually. It is immediately apparent that this is a huge range; an economist who estimated that the U.S. economy was worth between between $10 trillion and $20 trillion would be laughed at. (The real number is a bit less than $15 trillion.) For those familiar with such statistics, the lack of clarity over the government's methodology is equally worrying."
Take, for instance, the estimate that the amount of illicit cash flowing across the U.S. border to Mexican capos is between $18 billion and $39 billion annually. It is immediately apparent that this is a huge range; an economist who estimated that the U.S. economy was worth between between $10 trillion and $20 trillion would be laughed at. (The real number is a bit less than $15 trillion.) For those familiar with such statistics, the lack of clarity over the government's methodology is equally worrying."
Sep 13, 2011
Mexico Drug War: Zetas Arrests Show Gang Moving Up Calderon's List
Insightcrime: "Mexico's arrest of 80 alleged Zetas, and confiscation of a wealth of high-tech communications material in the Gulf state of Veracruz, is a further sign that the gang is the top priority of the Calderon administration."
Sep 10, 2011
The Border: For U.S.-Mexico border town, September 11 brought high wall
Reuters: "(Reuters) - When news broke of the airliners striking the twin towers in New York 10 years ago, Mexican bookkeeper Jose Manuel Madrid was readying for work in his tiny hometown on the Arizona border.
Watching the tragedy unfold on television, he had no inkling of how it would transform the lives of residents in the remote community of Naco straddling the international border."
Watching the tragedy unfold on television, he had no inkling of how it would transform the lives of residents in the remote community of Naco straddling the international border."
Sep 7, 2011
Laura's Blog: Drug War Madness
In 1936, a church group commissioned a film to strike fear in the hearts of young people tempted to smoke marijuana. But it was not until the 1970s that Reefer Madness — billed as “the original classic that was not afraid to make up the truth” due to its grotesque portrayal of the supposed dangers of marijuana — obtained cult status.
After the scare tactics of the 1930s, U.S. marijuana policy varied depending on the political climate, even as scientific research consistently debunked extreme claims that the plant caused uncontrollable violent behavior, physical addiction, and insanity.
Then on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon launched his signature “war on drugs.” The new crackdown on illegal drug use shifted the issue from a local health and public safety problem to a series of federal agencies under the direct control of the president. President Ronald Reagan later doubled down on the drug war, ushering in an age of mass incarceration.
Like the film before it, the drug war model not only criminalized but also demonized illegal drug dealing and use — and the individuals involved — in moralistic and military terms. In many states, selling marijuana carried longer sentences than murder. Although the abuse of legal drugs now kills more people than illegal drugs, the architects of the drug war continues to promote the view that it is some inherent evil of the substance, rather than the way individuals and groups use it, that determines whether a drug is a threat to society or an accepted social custom.
The Drug Policy Alliance has revealed that U.S. authorities arrest some 800,000 people a year for marijuana use. Two-thirds of those incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses are black or Hispanic, even though consumption rates for whites are equal. Largely because of drug laws and draconian enforcement, the United States has become the world champion in imprisoning its own people, often destroying the hopes and futures of its youth. The United States spends more than $51 billion a year on the domestic war on drugs alone.
Exporting the War
The export version of the drug war has an even darker side. It makes the implicit racism of the domestic war overt. Foreign drug lords are stereotypically portrayed as the root of an evil enterprise that, in fact, takes place mostly in the United States, where street sales generate the multibillion-dollar profits of the business. Under the guise of the drug war, the U.S. government has sponsored military responses in other countries that the Constitution prohibits domestically — for good reasons.
Attention is diverted from the social roots of drug abuse and addiction at home to a foreign threat to the American way of life — a way of life that, regardless of one’s moral beliefs, has always been characterized by the widespread use of mind-altering drugs. The false war model of good vs. evil, ally vs. enemy precludes many community-based solutions that have proven to be far more effective. U.S. taxpayers pay billions of dollars to fumigate foreign lands, pursue drug traffickers, and patrol borders as well as land and sea routes to intercept shipments.
None of this has worked. More than a decade and $8 billion into Plan Colombia, that Andean nation is the number-one cocaine producer in the world. Mexico has exploded into violence as the arrests and killings of cartel leaders spark turf battles that bathe whole regions in blood.
Last month, 52 people lost their lives in an attack on a casino in Monterrey, Mexico. The news shocked Mexico since it represents yet another escalation of violence, but it’s become almost routine alongside daily drug-war deaths. For U.S. citizens, it was further proof that Mexico is under an assault by organized crime.
According to some Mexican researchers, the sudden rise in violence in Mexico correlates directly to when President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown in the war on drugs by sending troops and federal police into the streets in 2006. Meanwhile, Mexican citizens have also taken to the streets to proclaim the war on drugs directly responsible for the growing bloodshed in their country and demand a change in strategy. Calderon has refused to consider alternative models.
Obama's Drug-War Failure
This year the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report that concludes that “Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won.”
Instead, the Obama administration has added fist and firepower to the drug wars. Ignoring 40 years of policy failure, Obama has broken campaign promises to seek a more humane and effective drug policy. His administration has failed to support international harm reduction models, reversed a decision not to go after state medical marijuana regimes voted by popular referendums, reaffirmed marijuana’s classification as a schedule 1 controlled substance with no medical value, and expanded drug wars in Mexico and Central America.
The government reprehensibly continues to expand the failed drug war in the face of the budget crisis and drastic cutbacks in schools, healthcare, and basic social programs. A good example is the multimillion-dollar boondoggle called the “Merida Initiative.” Under this ill-conceived regional security cooperation measure, the United States sends intelligence and defense equipment and provides military and police training for Mexico and, to a lesser degree, Central American countries. This drug-war strategy has increased violence in Mexico and led to a severe deterioration in public safety, rule of law, and human rights. The resources go to Mexican security forces notorious for corruption and even complicity with organized crime.
The results of the drug war in Mexico have been nothing short of catastrophic. Since it began, nearly 50,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in drug-war-related violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes, children have been orphaned and traumatized, men, and thousands have been kidnapped and still missing.
The attacks on cartels — including the killing or capture of leaders — spark turf wars that rage throughout Mexico, with the worst concentrated along the northern border. In response, some cartels have reorganized, with splinter groups frequently employing far more violent tactics than their parent organizations. Military operations have pushed the violence around the country in what experts call a “whack-a-mole” strategy that shows no signs of letting up.
The invented threat of reefer madness has been replaced with the real disaster ofdrug war madness —government perseverance with lethal and ineffective policies. The drug war, with its exaggerated claims and mistaken focus on confronting drug trafficking with police and military force, has cost the United States and its targeted suppliers like Colombia and Mexico millions of dollars and thousands of lives.
In Mexico, a peace movement has arisen against the drug war. It has opened up dialogue with the government but been met with an absolute refusal to consider other options. In the United States, drug-policy reform turns up at the top of lists of issues for town-hall discussions, but politicians dismiss the issue because it's taboo or too risky for their political aspirations.
Policymakers must come to their senses regarding the madness of the drug-war strategy. If they don't voluntarily propose reforms, then citizens will have to force them to do so.
After the scare tactics of the 1930s, U.S. marijuana policy varied depending on the political climate, even as scientific research consistently debunked extreme claims that the plant caused uncontrollable violent behavior, physical addiction, and insanity.
Then on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon launched his signature “war on drugs.” The new crackdown on illegal drug use shifted the issue from a local health and public safety problem to a series of federal agencies under the direct control of the president. President Ronald Reagan later doubled down on the drug war, ushering in an age of mass incarceration.
Like the film before it, the drug war model not only criminalized but also demonized illegal drug dealing and use — and the individuals involved — in moralistic and military terms. In many states, selling marijuana carried longer sentences than murder. Although the abuse of legal drugs now kills more people than illegal drugs, the architects of the drug war continues to promote the view that it is some inherent evil of the substance, rather than the way individuals and groups use it, that determines whether a drug is a threat to society or an accepted social custom.
The Drug Policy Alliance has revealed that U.S. authorities arrest some 800,000 people a year for marijuana use. Two-thirds of those incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses are black or Hispanic, even though consumption rates for whites are equal. Largely because of drug laws and draconian enforcement, the United States has become the world champion in imprisoning its own people, often destroying the hopes and futures of its youth. The United States spends more than $51 billion a year on the domestic war on drugs alone.
Exporting the War
The export version of the drug war has an even darker side. It makes the implicit racism of the domestic war overt. Foreign drug lords are stereotypically portrayed as the root of an evil enterprise that, in fact, takes place mostly in the United States, where street sales generate the multibillion-dollar profits of the business. Under the guise of the drug war, the U.S. government has sponsored military responses in other countries that the Constitution prohibits domestically — for good reasons.
Attention is diverted from the social roots of drug abuse and addiction at home to a foreign threat to the American way of life — a way of life that, regardless of one’s moral beliefs, has always been characterized by the widespread use of mind-altering drugs. The false war model of good vs. evil, ally vs. enemy precludes many community-based solutions that have proven to be far more effective. U.S. taxpayers pay billions of dollars to fumigate foreign lands, pursue drug traffickers, and patrol borders as well as land and sea routes to intercept shipments.
None of this has worked. More than a decade and $8 billion into Plan Colombia, that Andean nation is the number-one cocaine producer in the world. Mexico has exploded into violence as the arrests and killings of cartel leaders spark turf battles that bathe whole regions in blood.
Last month, 52 people lost their lives in an attack on a casino in Monterrey, Mexico. The news shocked Mexico since it represents yet another escalation of violence, but it’s become almost routine alongside daily drug-war deaths. For U.S. citizens, it was further proof that Mexico is under an assault by organized crime.
According to some Mexican researchers, the sudden rise in violence in Mexico correlates directly to when President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown in the war on drugs by sending troops and federal police into the streets in 2006. Meanwhile, Mexican citizens have also taken to the streets to proclaim the war on drugs directly responsible for the growing bloodshed in their country and demand a change in strategy. Calderon has refused to consider alternative models.
Obama's Drug-War Failure
This year the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report that concludes that “Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won.”
Instead, the Obama administration has added fist and firepower to the drug wars. Ignoring 40 years of policy failure, Obama has broken campaign promises to seek a more humane and effective drug policy. His administration has failed to support international harm reduction models, reversed a decision not to go after state medical marijuana regimes voted by popular referendums, reaffirmed marijuana’s classification as a schedule 1 controlled substance with no medical value, and expanded drug wars in Mexico and Central America.
The government reprehensibly continues to expand the failed drug war in the face of the budget crisis and drastic cutbacks in schools, healthcare, and basic social programs. A good example is the multimillion-dollar boondoggle called the “Merida Initiative.” Under this ill-conceived regional security cooperation measure, the United States sends intelligence and defense equipment and provides military and police training for Mexico and, to a lesser degree, Central American countries. This drug-war strategy has increased violence in Mexico and led to a severe deterioration in public safety, rule of law, and human rights. The resources go to Mexican security forces notorious for corruption and even complicity with organized crime.
The results of the drug war in Mexico have been nothing short of catastrophic. Since it began, nearly 50,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in drug-war-related violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes, children have been orphaned and traumatized, men, and thousands have been kidnapped and still missing.
The attacks on cartels — including the killing or capture of leaders — spark turf wars that rage throughout Mexico, with the worst concentrated along the northern border. In response, some cartels have reorganized, with splinter groups frequently employing far more violent tactics than their parent organizations. Military operations have pushed the violence around the country in what experts call a “whack-a-mole” strategy that shows no signs of letting up.
The invented threat of reefer madness has been replaced with the real disaster ofdrug war madness —government perseverance with lethal and ineffective policies. The drug war, with its exaggerated claims and mistaken focus on confronting drug trafficking with police and military force, has cost the United States and its targeted suppliers like Colombia and Mexico millions of dollars and thousands of lives.
In Mexico, a peace movement has arisen against the drug war. It has opened up dialogue with the government but been met with an absolute refusal to consider other options. In the United States, drug-policy reform turns up at the top of lists of issues for town-hall discussions, but politicians dismiss the issue because it's taboo or too risky for their political aspirations.
Policymakers must come to their senses regarding the madness of the drug-war strategy. If they don't voluntarily propose reforms, then citizens will have to force them to do so.
Sep 3, 2011
Mexico Drug War: Mexican President Vows to Continue Drug Gang Crackdown
President Calderon sticks to his guns, literally. This, in spite of his recent allusions to the U.S. needing to change its drug prohibition policy.
Voice of America: "Mexico's president is vowing to fight to the last day of his term against the drug cartels that have spread insecurity and taken over towns and police forces across Mexico. In a speech to the nation Friday, President Felipe Calderon said if the government backed down from its military crackdown, the country would be "totally dominated" by the drug gangs. He said the current strategy is the only way to "end this cancer" of drug trafficking and the ensuing violence. "
Voice of America: "Mexico's president is vowing to fight to the last day of his term against the drug cartels that have spread insecurity and taken over towns and police forces across Mexico. In a speech to the nation Friday, President Felipe Calderon said if the government backed down from its military crackdown, the country would be "totally dominated" by the drug gangs. He said the current strategy is the only way to "end this cancer" of drug trafficking and the ensuing violence. "
Mexico Drug War: Mexican officials report slaying of high-ranking Gulf Cartel leader
TheMonitor.com: "Mexican authorities on Friday announced the death of a man believed to be the No. 2 leader in the Gulf Cartel, saying the slaying appeared to have been the result an internal power struggle. Samuel Flores Borrego, 39, also known as “Metro 3,” was gunned down alongside a high-ranking police official from Diaz Ordaz known as Eloy Lerma Garcia, according to a statement from the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office.
... Preliminary investigation of the incident that led to Flores death points to a power struggle within the Gulf Cartel, according to the Mexican army and the Mexico Attorney General’s Office (PGR). Official information sources identified Flores as the cartel boss responsible for overseeing operations in the Reynosa area."
... Preliminary investigation of the incident that led to Flores death points to a power struggle within the Gulf Cartel, according to the Mexican army and the Mexico Attorney General’s Office (PGR). Official information sources identified Flores as the cartel boss responsible for overseeing operations in the Reynosa area."
Aug 31, 2011
Mexico Drug War: Mexico Casino Arson Suspects Deny Intending Massacre
InSight Crime: "Mexican authorities paraded five men accused of the Monterrey casino arson attack, who allegedly told investigators that they had not intended to kill so many people. Nuevo Leon Governor Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz told press that the men were members of the Zetas drug gang, and that they had confessed to lighting the blaze.
The suspects reportedly told police that they had intended to give a warning to the casino's owner to make extortion payments, but that "everything had got out of control." Prosecutors confirmed that the gunmen had told security guards to evacuate the casino before they set it on fire. This fits with InSight Crime's analysis, which pointed out that criminal groups would be unlikely to carry out such a deadly attack over an extortion payment."
The suspects reportedly told police that they had intended to give a warning to the casino's owner to make extortion payments, but that "everything had got out of control." Prosecutors confirmed that the gunmen had told security guards to evacuate the casino before they set it on fire. This fits with InSight Crime's analysis, which pointed out that criminal groups would be unlikely to carry out such a deadly attack over an extortion payment."
Aug 30, 2011
Mexico Drug War: Mexico Sends in 3,000 Feds After Casino Arson Attack
InSight Crime: "Some 1,500 army and air force troops and 1,500 Federal Police have been deployed in the state of Nuevo Leon, north Mexico, after an arson attack on a casino which killed 52 people."
Aug 29, 2011
Drug War: Mexico's Sinaloa cartel makes big move into meth
The Associated Press: "Mexico's most powerful drug cartel appears to be expanding methamphetamine production on a massive scale, filling a gap left by the breakdown of a rival gang that was once the top trafficker of the synthetic drug.
The globe-spanning Sinaloa cartel is suspected of dealing record tons of drugs and precursor chemicals processed in industrial-sized operations.
The apparent increase in the Sinaloa group's involvement comes as the Mexican government says it has dismantled the La Familia gang with key arrests and killings of its leadership, and as Mexico is once again the primary source of meth to the United States, according to U.S. drug intelligence reports."
The globe-spanning Sinaloa cartel is suspected of dealing record tons of drugs and precursor chemicals processed in industrial-sized operations.
The apparent increase in the Sinaloa group's involvement comes as the Mexican government says it has dismantled the La Familia gang with key arrests and killings of its leadership, and as Mexico is once again the primary source of meth to the United States, according to U.S. drug intelligence reports."
Whack-a-mole Drug War: Mexico Seizes 18 Tons Meth Chemicals Shipped from India
Ah, those TCO's. They're so ingenious!
InSight Crime: "Mexican authorities seized almost 18 tons of chemicals used to produce synthetic drugs in the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan. The cargo was found in an inspection of a Hong Kong-flagged vessel."
InSight Crime: "Mexican authorities seized almost 18 tons of chemicals used to produce synthetic drugs in the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan. The cargo was found in an inspection of a Hong Kong-flagged vessel."
Whack-a-mole Drug War: Battered state vows to solve Mexican security woes
msnbc.com: "MONTERREY, Mexico — Despite suffering one of the worst attacks on civilians in Mexico for years, the state of Nuevo Leon is undaunted because it believes a radical police overhaul will soon start winning the drug war. ... In an interview with Reuters, Nuevo Leon Interior Minister Javier Trevino said the state had a plan to beat organized crime -- starting with getting rid of half the police force, much of which had been corrupted by money from cartels.
Hundreds of protesters staged a demonstration outside government buildings in Monterrey on Sunday, calling on governor Rodrigo Medina to resign. ...Many locals blame Medina for the jump in fatalities, and organizers said Sunday's protest was the biggest to date against the governor.
Hundreds of protesters staged a demonstration outside government buildings in Monterrey on Sunday, calling on governor Rodrigo Medina to resign. ...Many locals blame Medina for the jump in fatalities, and organizers said Sunday's protest was the biggest to date against the governor.
Whack-a-mole Drug War: 5 detained in attack that killed 52 in Mexico
The Associated Press:" Nuevo Leon state Gov. Rodrigo Medina says police have arrested five suspects in an arson attack on a casino that killed 52 people in northern Mexico"
Whack-a-mole Drug War: Mexican authorities detain three over terrorism by Tweet
Examiner.com: "Mexico has taken three men into custody over allegedly Tweeting rumors of shootouts and other drug violence. The Tweets were designed to spread chaos and fear throughout the state of Veracruz, authorities said. ... The Tweets made claims of attackes by the Zetas drug cartel. In (the city of) Veracruz ..., as well as the neighboring city of Boca del Rio, parents rushed to schools in search of their children."
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