'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.

DEA Scandal: Drugs, Prostitutes and 'Grotesque' U.S. Double Standards

La Jornada (Translated by WorldMeets.US) The director of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA for its English acronym) Michele Leonhart resigned yesterday following a scandal involving DEA agents partying with prostitutes in Colombia - and after lawmakers in our neighboring country's House of Representatives issued a statement of no confidence in respect to her performance on the issue.

It should be recalled that last month, the U.S. Department of Justice released an internal report which revealed the involvement of some DEA officers at parties with prostitutes funded by drug cartels in Cartagena, Colombia, which was part of a broader investigation into another scandal in which Secret Service members in 2012 were involved with sex workers in that city as President Barack Obama participated in the Summit of the Americas. Read more. 

Mexico's Drug War Strategy Remains Unchanged With New Government

Huffington Post
By Katherine Corcoran

Mexico City - With the capture of two top drug lords in little more than a month, the new government of President Enrique Pena Nieto is following an old strategy it openly criticized for causing more violence and crime.

Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, a top leader of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, was detained Saturday in a military operation near the Texas border, just weeks after the arrest of the leader of the brutal Zetas cartel near another border city, Nuevo Laredo.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong took his post in December saying the strategy of former President Felipe Calderon to take out cartel leaders only made drug gangs more dangerous and violent. The new administration would focus less on leaders and more on reducing violence, he said.

Yet the new strategy appears almost identical to the old. The captures of Ramirez and top Zeta Miguel Angel Trevino Morales could cause a new spike in violence with battles over leadership of Mexico's two major cartels.  Read more. 

U.S. role at a crossroads in Mexico’s intelligence war on the cartels

The Washington Post 
By Dana Priest, Published: April 27

MEXICO CITY — For the past seven years, Mexico and the United States have put aside their tension-filled history on security matters to forge an unparalleled alliance against Mexico’s drug cartels, one based on sharing sensitive intelligence, U.S. training and joint operational planning.

But now, much of that hard-earned cooperation may be in jeopardy.

The December inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto brought the nationalistic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) back to power after 13 years, and with it a whiff of resentment over the deep U.S. involvement in Mexico’s fight against narco-traffickers.

The new administration has shifted priorities away from the U.S.-backed strategy of arresting kingpins, which sparked an unprecedented level of violence among the cartels, and toward an emphasis on prevention and keeping Mexico’s streets safe and calm, Mexican authorities said.  Read more. 

Mexico: Government Says Murders Tied to Organized Crime Have Fallen

The NY Times
By Randal C. Archibold
April 10, 2013

Mexico City - The new government here, which has complained that Mexico’s image has been sullied by persistent reports of violent crime, presented data on Wednesday that it said showed that murders related to organized crime had dropped sharply.

Though analysts raised concerns about how the information was compiled, the government said that since Dec. 1, when President Enrique Peña Nieto took office, there had been 4,249 homicides that bore the markings of organized crime. That was down 685, or about 14 percent, from the 4,934 over the same period a year earlier.

The government said it also had seized more marijuana and cocaine in the more recent period and reported a drop in kidnappings, but it did not release data on extortion, another crime often associated with criminal gangs.

Analysts questioned the criminal data, particularly homicides classified as related to organized crime. Though vetted by the federal government, much of that data originally comes from the 31 states and federal district, with inconsistent or misreporting of cases and subjective criteria on what constitutes a cartel-related crime.

Mexico divided over memorial to drug-war victims

USAToday 
ByAdriana Gomez Licon
Associated Press /  April 5, 2013

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico, a country suffering the turmoil of a drug war, can’t agree on how to honor the victims of a six-year assault on organized crime that has taken as many as 70,000 lives.

The government’s official monument was dedicated Friday, four months after its completion, in a public event where relatives of the missing chased after the dignitaries in tears, pleading for help in finding their loved ones.

Only some victims’ rights groups recognize the monument, while others picked an entirely different monument to place handkerchiefs painted with names and personal messages in protest of the official site, which does not bear a single victim’s name.

‘‘Other organizations asked us for other space because they’re against this one,’’ Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said at the official dedication of the government monument, which consists of steel panels bearing quotes from famous writers and thinkers. ‘‘What took us so long was trying to get agreement among the groups, and we failed.’’  Read more. 

Body-snatchers in Mexico?

I've been hearing a lot of off-the-record reports from journalist friends about a editorial board pressures to stop reporting on deaths. The general line is that government wants to show some progress (although Peña Nieto has now asked for a year to decrease the violence) and so the easiest way to reduce the figures is to stop counting.

This article could be part of that new tendency. The disappearance of bodies, suppression of the press, local officials encouraged to under-count-all; this bodes ill for those of us trying to track the drug war.

Miami Herald 
By Christopher Sherman
Associated Press

Reynosa, Mexico -- Heavy gunfire echoed along the main thoroughfare and across several neighborhoods in a firefight that lasted for hours, leaving perforated and burned vehicles scattered across the border city.

Social media exploded with reports of dozens dead. Witnesses saw at least 12.

But the hours of intense gun battles in Reynosa on March 10 gave way to an official body count the next day of a head-scratching two.

The men who handle the city's dead insist the real figure is upward of 35, likely even more than 50. Ask where those bodies are and they avert their eyes and shift in their seats.

Cartel members, they say, are retrieving and burying their own casualties.

"Physically, there are no bodies," said Ramon Martinez, director of Funerales San Jose in Reynosa, who put the toll at between 40 and 50. "It's very delicate."

If Reynosa is an example, even the government can't count how many are dying from drug violence. The Felipe Calderon government stopped counting in September 2011. Since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office Dec. 1, the government has issued monthly statistics, saying that January killings were down slightly from December, and that February saw the lowest number of killings in 40 months - without providing numbers for the other 39 months.

Mexico Seeks US Help for Anti-Drug Social Programs

Associated Press
Mexico City,  February 15, 2013

A top security official says Mexico will ask the U.S. to focus anti-drug aid more on social programs and prevention.

Mexican Assistant Interior Secretary Roberto Campa says only about 2 percent of the current $1.9 billion in American aid under the Merida Initiative is earmarked for social programs. Most goes for intelligence, transport and the training for Mexican law enforcement agencies.

Campa said Thursday the previous administration's social programs were poorly organized and late.

President Enrique Pena Nieto has pledged to focus less on armed conflict and more on addressing the underlying social issues that fuel the drug violence that has cost more than 70,000 lives since 2006.

That plan includes a $9.2 billion program to provide greater employment and educational opportunities for youths who otherwise might join cartels.

A quieter drug war in Mexico, but no less deadly

The Washington Post
By Nick Miroff, Published: February 1

MEXICO CITY — As a tactical matter, the gangsters and government security forces fighting Mexico’s drug war have typically opted for the spectacular over the subtle.

Massacres, beheadings and other unspeakable cruelties became cartels’ preferred form of violence. In response, the government sent masked troops with machine guns to patrol Mexico’s streets and paraded its captured drug suspects on television like hunting trophies.


But in the past few months, that has changed. Mexico’s drug war has gone quiet.

Not less lethal. Just less loud.

The country’s drug-related homicide numbers remain essentially undiminished. More than 12,000 people were murdered last year in gangland violence, according to the latest Mexican media tallies, roughly the same number that were slain in 2010 and 2011.  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. 

Harvard Slammed For Giving Ex-President Of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, One-Year Fellowship

The Huffington Post: January 7, 2013.

Harvard is taking flack for handing a fellowship to former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who led an assault on organized crime that plunged his country into a human rights crisis.

Calderón is set to begin lecturing at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government this month as the university’s first Angelopoulous Global Public Leaders fellow. Critics point to the startling violence that characterized Calderón’s presidency, saying he shouldn’t be rewarded with a paid position at a prestigious university.

“In awarding Mr. Calderón a high-profile fellowship, the Kennedy School is telling the world that former leaders, however questionable their leadership, are worthy of recognition,” Marion Lloyd, a Harvard alum and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education. “It is an unfortunate and dangerous message.”

An estimated 60,000 people died violent deaths during Calderón’s presidency. Mexico’s attorney general has documented 25,000 disappearances during that time. Read more. 

Why Mexico's election doesn't matter to Americans

Global Post: Analysis: The winner of Sunday's Mexican presidential election is unlikely to change course on US trade and the drug war.

Something remarkable happened, or rather, didn’t happen, in the middle of Mexico’s June 10 presidential debate when the three leading candidates were asked to share their views on foreign policy.

Not a single one — not even leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — used the opportunity to question the two pillars of the US-Mexico relationship: free trade and the shared fight against Mexico’s drug cartels. Read more. 

For Mexican voters gripped by fear, few good choices

Washington Post: Tampico, Mexico — The two Mexicos exist side by side in this steamy port city built by wildcatters and stevedores: the good, modern, more prosperous Mexico and the really bad Mexico, where gun battles break out at the local T.G.I. Friday’s and kidnapping crews roam middle-class neighborhoods, snatching teenage girls.

Voters here have their lives on the line in Mexico’s presidential election Sunday, in a city a few hours’ drive south of Texas where the municipal police were so hopelessly corrupt that they had their weapons taken away and their duties transferred to convoys of masked soldiers deployed to stem outright panic after two former mayors were abducted.

The vote, many residents say, is the worst kind of choice, between candidates and parties they don’t especially like or trust. Read more.

In Mexico, State Seeks to Ban Narco-Messages

InSight Crime: The governor of Sinaloa state, west Mexico, is trying to outlaw the posting of "narcomantas," public banners hung by drug gangs to threaten enemies or improve their image, in an initiative that seems both counterproductive and doomed to fail.

Governor Mario Lopez Valdez has introduced a bill that would make it illegal to hang the banners or to serve as a lookout, also known as a “halcone”, for criminal groups, as Riodoce reported.

Lopez, whose state is among the most violent in Mexico and is home to many of Mexico’s most notorious capos, did not say what the penalties would be for breaking his proposed law.

Mantas have become an increasingly common element in Mexico’s criminal landscape over the past few years, with messages appearing on a regular basis to taunt enemies, call on the government to take action against rivals, improve a group's image with the public, or a combination of the three. Read more.

Drug War Politics: Mexicans want security, but candidates to succeed Calderon vague on drug war policy

The Washington Post: "Ever-expanding violence and insecurity have left many Mexicans desperate for a new leader who can stem the killings and pacify the gangsters. But public frustrationhas not translated into a substantive policy debate about how to change course, and political analysts say whoever succeeds Calderon will probably continue fighting the cartels in similar fashion — by working closely with the United States and relying heavily on the Mexican military." read more

Drug Reform and Politics: In war on drugs, dissent ‘unpatriotic’

Glenn Garvin - MiamiHerald.com: "I owe Kyle Vogt an apology. A former military policeman, he’s now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a group of former cops, prosecutors and judges that supports ending the war on drugs.

When I interviewed Vogt for a column earlier this year, everything he said about the high cost and low results of the war on drugs made perfect sense. But he made one claim which, though I smiled politely, I didn’t believe and didn’t use in my column: that dozens and dozens of drug cops have contacted LEAP to express their support.

“They’re afraid,” Vogt said. “Any policeman who says he thinks drugs should be legalized gets fired.” In civil-liberties-conscious America, patrolled by attack squadrons of ACLU lawyers? Get real, buddy, I thought. The war on drugs does enough damage without piling on with paranoid delusions." read more

Drug Reform: Mexico and Central American Countries Demand that the U.S. Either Curb Drug Consumption or Act to Regulate Their Sale

Translated by AMB from the Spanish in El Universal

The presidents of  the Latin American countries attending the eighth summit meeting of the Tuxtla System for Dialogue approved a formal request to the United States and other drug consuming countries that they curb drug consumption or, if they are unable to do that, act to regulate the drug market.

The declaration also included a demand that the U.S. stop the transit of arms to the criminals that provoke violence and the deaths of civilians and members of the security forces in Latin American and Caribbean nations.

The declaration, read by Alejandro Poiré, the recently appointed Secretary of the Interior of Mexico, pointed out that the majority of the criminals use arms sold by the consuming nations. In addition to aggravating the situation in recent years, this has generated an immense cost in lives, civilian as much as those of security forces.

What would be desirable, it stated, "would be a significant reduction in the demand for illegal drugs. Nevertheless, if that is not possible, as recent experience demonstrates, the authorities of the consuming countries ought then to explore the possible alternatives to eliminate the exorbinant profits of the criminals, including regulatory or market oriented options to this end. Thus, the transit of substances that continue provoking high levels of crime and violence in Latin American and Caribbean nations will be avoided."

The countries also demanded that, "the Congress of the United States and other countries that produce and sell arms establish effective means to register, regulate and impede the transit of assault arms and other highly dangerous arms to criminal groups in the region."

The member countries of the Tuxtla System include Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvado, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Panama, Columbia and the Dominican Republic. This summit was also attended by the president of Chile.

Legalization and Drug War Politics: Officers Punished for Supporting Eased Drug Laws

NYTimes.com: "“More and more members of the law enforcement community are speaking out against failed drug policies, and they don’t give up their right to share their insight and engage in this important debate simply because they receive government paychecks,” said Daniel Pochoda, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which is handling the case of Joe Miller.

Mr. Miller, a probation officer in Mohave County, near the California border, filed suit last month in Federal District Court after he was dismissed for adding his name to a letter by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition,..known as LEAP, expressing support for the decriminalization of marijuana.." read more

Drug War Politics: Newt Gingrich on the Drug War: Execute Mexican Cartel Leaders (And More Terribly Draconian Ideas)

Incredible! The "drugs deprive you of full citizenship and lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American" is an old argument from the Reagan War on Drugs.

AlterNet: "Republican presidential nominee contender Newt Gingrich said Saturday he would favor the use of the death penalty against Mexican drug trafficking organization leaders. The comments came in an interview with Yahoo News in which the former Georgia congressman and Speaker of the House also called medical marijuana in California "a joke" and suggested he would try to make life miserable for US drug users as a means of driving down drug use rates.

... "I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure," he said. "Look at the level of violence they've done to society. You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there's nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine or you can be in the tradition that says, 'These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.' If you're serious about the latter view, then we need to think through a strategy that makes it radically less likely that we're going to have drugs in this country."" read more

Drug War and Mexico Politics: Mexico to probe report of drug campaign financing

Associated Press: "Mexican federal prosecutors said Tuesday they are opening an investigation into a taped telephone conversation in which a reputed drug cartel leader purportedly threatens residents of a town in western Mexico to vote in favor of one candidate." read more