Sun, Sex, Slaughter and Social Disaster: Summer Vacation in Acapulco 2015

FNSNews: Bullets and bodies haven’t stopped Mexican tourists from visiting the traditional summer playground of Acapulco. Despite a cresting wave of violence in recent days, local authorities tagged the hotel occupancy rate at 69.8 percent on July 21, when summer vacation 2015 was in full gear.

But since the beginning of the month, Acapulco’s streets have been painted in blood, with three, four, five or more homicides registered practically every day. In some cases, roving bands of gunslingers have shot it out with rivals in low-income residential neighborhoods. Read more. 

Pre-Election Day Violence Spikes in Mexico

Frontera NorteSur: Less than two weeks before Mexicans are scheduled to go to the polls in mid-term Congressional, municipal and state elections, violence is on the upswing. The most affected regions include the border city of Tijuana, the Chihuahua-Sinaloa borderlands, and the states of Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Michoacan and Jalisco.

Tijuana killings between groups of street-level drug dealers apparently connected to the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) and Arellano Felix cartels, the last group repeatedly declared finished by U.S. and Mexican authorities, recalls the bloodletting of the past decade when the city was considered one of the most violent in the country.

Later touted for its presumed public safety, Tijuana recently has been replete with narco banners threatening individuals displayed in public, executions in broad daylight and the dumping of victims’ severed heads on public streets.

Mexico charges three with 'terrorism' after cartel violence

AFP: A Mexican judge has charged three people with terrorism over their roles in a day of violence launched by a drug cartel in Jalisco state last week, authorities said.

Three other people were released because they were "arbitrarily" detained, the council said.T he suspects were accused of organized crime "with the goal of committing ... terrorism" by burning vehicles and using them to block roads around Mexico's second biggest city, Guadalajara, the Federal Judicial Council said. Read more. 

11 Numbers To Help You Understand The Violence Rocking Mexico

Huffington Post: On Sept. 26, dozens of students at a Mexican teachers' college went missing after a protest in the city of Iguala. They were last seen being hauled off into police vans and haven't been heard from since.

While searching for the missing students, investigators have uncovered a string of mass graves, police working for drug cartels and government officials at the helm of criminal operations.  Read more. 

Enough! Mexico Is Ready to Explode

Huffington Post: Mexico has been profoundly shaken by atrocities and high-level corruption in Guerrero. The earthquake's epicenter is Iguala, the state's third largest city.

Fifty thousand marchers thronged Mexico City's main avenues last Wednesday, and demonstrations took place all over the country. More than 80 delegates to the Inter-University Assembly have called for a nationwide halt to all educational activities on Nov. 5, and are asking other social groups to join them. Protesters set fire to state headquarters in Chilpancingo, Guerrero's capital, and are sacking supermarkets and shopping centers. Read more. 

Behind Mexico’s latest massacre: Authorities were warned but didn’t listen

The Hill: The U.S. government-funded Merida Initiative was supposed to bolster Mexican government efforts to promote the rule of law and human rights. The accountability failures exposed by the Iguala atrocity suggest that it’s time to take a closer look, to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money is part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Yet so far, Mexico’s government has long treated Guerrero’s civil society as a threat rather than as a partner – jailing its leaders – like Nestora Salgado, a migrant who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in the state of Washington. She returned to her hometown of Olinala to lead the community police, taking on rapists and murderers. Her “crime” was to challenge her local government’s collaboration with organized crime, naming names. She remains in federal prison even though a court dismissed the charges – and her daughter has recently received death threats. Read more.

Boomer Expatriates Demand Security

By fnsnews 
Published June 3, 2014

Foreign-born residents joined Mexican nationals in a recent demonstration demanding security for a storied but troubled town. Dressed in white and carrying candles, about 400 people staged a silent march late last week through San Miguel de Allende in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
Ruth Kear,  a former U.S. resident who currently lives in San Miguel de Allende, articulated public safety fears held by a growing number of residents which, in her case, is based on personal experience. Kear told a Mexican reporter that she had been robbed three times in her home, including on two occasions by armed and masked thieves.

“They put a pistol to my head and said, ‘Miss, do you want to taste the bullet?’” Kear was quoted.  “I am afraid. Now I have many bad dreams. When I am in my studio, sometimes I see those men.”
The mounting complaints of insecurity contrast sharply with San Miguel de Allende’s commercialized image as a laid-back cultural and historic destination.

The cradle of Mexican independence, San Miguel de Allende was selected as the best city in the world in Conde Nast Traveler magazine’s 2013 reader’s choice poll.  Classified by the Mexican federal government as among the nation’s “magic towns,” San Miguel de Allende has also been designated as a World Heritage Site  by the United Nations.

Over the decades, the small city of 160,383 inhabitants (2010 Census), has attracted a sizable expatriate community drawn from North America,  Europe, Asia and Latin America. An estimated 14,000 local residents are foreign-born, mainly from the United States, but also from Canada, England, Japan, Colombia, and other nations.

Aging retirees from the baby boom generation who retired to San Miguel Allende stand out in the expatriate population.  Read more. 

"Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2013" Now Available

Justice in Mexico Project 
April 15, 2014

The Justice in Mexico Project (JMP) based at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of San Diego is pleased to announce the publication of “Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2013.” Thanks to the generous funding of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this is the project’s fifth annual report providing a detailed analysis of the problem of crime and violence in Mexico, which has been a major preoccupation for both policymakers and ordinary people in Mexico, as well as a shared concern for the U.S. government and its citizens. Justice in Mexico’s annual reports have compiled the latest available data and analysis to evaluate problems of crime and violence related to drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico. These reports are especially intended to inform a U.S. and English language audience, since international news media coverage of Mexico tends to be fleeting and gravitates toward sporadic, sensationalistic incidents rather than the analysis of broader issues and longer-term trends.  Read more. 

United States is Ready to Help Mexico in Michoacan: John Kerry

January 18, 2014
La Jornada - Mexico

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, reiterated today Washington’s “concern” about the situation in the state of Michoacán, where federal forces intervened this week after the action of self-defense groups increased against local cartels.

“Yes, we are concerned,” recognized Kerry after meeting this Friday in Washington with his Mexican counterpart, José Antonio Meade, within the context of a meeting of the North American chancellors, in which Canada also participated.

“We are not afraid, but yes we are concerned and we are going to work with the government; we are ready to try to be useful if we can,” he added in response to a question from a journalist.

Their words are similar to those expressed two days ago by an important official from the State Department to a group of media in Washington, including the Dpa, who assured that the United States government gobierno was “extremely concerned” over the situation in Michoacán after the resurgence of the activities of the self-defense groups.

“We’re talking about communities that are already under pressure from the drug trafficking and criminal organizations, and now they find themselves in the midst of a battle between those that assert that they protect those communities and those that use them in their own interest,” the official said on condition of anonymity. He pointed out that the problem is that: “it is not clear if any of those actors are truly interested in what is best for their towns.”

Just like Kerry today, the source assured that the United States “is ready” to offer any kind of help to Mexico, always and when it is requested, something that, he specified, has not happened as of now.

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.

On Mexico’s western front, cartel violence escalates

The Washington Post 
By Nick Miroff
July 25, 2013

Mexico City -  Last week, Mexican authorities were celebrating the capture of one of the country’s most notorious drug lords.

This week, they are facing a stunning escalation of cartel-related violence in an entirely different region — a sobering reminder that the grinding battle here against organized crime is being fought on multiple fronts.

In the past three days, gunmen in the convulsive western state of Michoacan have staged eight guerrilla-style ambushes on Mexican federal police convoys, killing four officers and wounding at least 15.

Open combat involving government security forces, criminal gangs and the local militias that have emerged to fight them have left at least 42 people dead in the past week in Michoacan, according to tallies by Mexico’s Reforma newspaper. Mexican officials said they are sending an additional 2,000 soldiers and police officers to prevent the violence from spiraling further out of control.  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. 

In the hot land, Mexicans just say no to drug cartels

Los Angeles Times
By Tracy Wilkinson
June 11, 2013

COALCOMAN, Mexico — Rafael Garcia slaps the oversize wooden desk where he sits, one of the last mayors still in office in this region of Mexican farm country known as Tierra Caliente — hot land.

Mayors from a couple of the nearest towns fled with their drug-cartel pals, people here say, when locals took up arms against them.

But at Garcia's City Hall, the facade is festooned with hand-lettered signs supporting local gunmen who challenged the cartel, loosely referred to as community "self-defense" guards, comunitarios. Several cities in Tierra Caliente are now patrolled by such groups, whose members, often masked, man checkpoints and pull over passing vehicles for inspection. They have reached a kind of tense coexistence with the army, which moved in a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to bring order.  Read more. 

Worry grows over Mexico vigilante movement

Armed citizen patrols fighting drug cartel violence join forces with a radical teachers union in Guerrero state opposed to an education reform law.

The Los Angeles Times

By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez
April 11, 2013

Mexico City - Debate is intensifying over armed vigilante patrols that have sprung up in crime-plagued sections of rural Mexico, particularly in the state of Guerrero, where some patrols joined forces this week with a radical teachers union that has been wreaking havoc with massive protests, vandalism and violent confrontations with police.

The two groups, on the surface, would appear to have little in common. The vigilante patrols, typically made up of masked campesinos, are among dozens that have emerged in the countryside in recent months, purporting to protect their communities from the depredations of the drug cartels. The state-level teachers union, meanwhile, has taken to the streets to protest a sweeping education reform law backed by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Their alliance was announced in a joint meeting Sunday. A leader of the vigilantes said they were joining with the teachers because it was the vigilantes' "watchword to fight against injustice."  Read more. 

Mapping the Unidentified Victims of Mexico's Drug War

InSight Crime, Written by Geoffrey Ramsey Sunday, 18 November 2012

An investigative report by Milenio suggests that of the 60,000 people killed in the last six years in Mexico's fight against organized crime, nearly half have not been identified by the government. It also finds evidence that state officials may be tampering with the public record of these deaths.

The months-long investigation published in October found that at least 24,102 of the 60,000 Mexicans that have died in circumstances related to the fight against organized crime since 2006, have yet to be identified, and are classified by officials as "NN," ("ningun nombre," or no name). Below is a map compiled by the paper of the states with the highest reported concentrations of these unidentified victims.

Even more alarming, this is a conservative estimate. State officials were extremely uncooperative with the investigation. The state of Tamaulipas, for example, simply refused to release any data on the number of NNs to the newspaper, saying that it was a federal matter and not the state's responsibility.

The government of Veracruz also put up a fight against releasing the data to Milenio, arguing that to do so would put its officials "at risk" and potentially violate the privacy of the victims. While a freedom of information request filed by the paper was approved in Mexican courts, the state has yet to provide a comprehensive list of cases of unidentified murder victims. The local governments 30 of 212 municipalities in Veracruz did provide information to Milenio, however; according to this data, it was the state with the most unidentified victims in the country, with 5,245.  Read more. 

Ciudad Juarez Launches Aggressive Campaign For Female Crime Victims

Fox News Latino, by Joseph Kolb
Published September 19, 2012

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico –  In a small room at the Fiscalía Especializada en Atención a Mujeres Víctimas por Razones de Género, Bernardo Manzano stood pensively with his hands cuffed behind his back, while two police officers stood on either side of him as he was photographed and questioned by more than a dozen reporters.

Not a drug dealer this time. The 43-year-old maquiladora worker was about to be charged with sexually assaulting his wife.

Parading suspects accused of committing crimes against women in front of the media have become increasingly common here, in the wake of a combined and aggressive campaign by Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua state to curb these kind of offenses.

A 20-year legacy of crimes against women, especially the well-publicized killing of women in the late 1990s – popularly known as ‘femicides’-- has given this border city international notoriety.
The new prosecutor's office, which opened in March, deals exclusively with crimes against women but is not limited to legal matters. The modern three-story building houses a one-stop service center that includes special prosecutors and investigators, but also provides child care, medical, counseling and financial support services. In the coming months it will also provide temporary shelter for women and children facing domestic violence.

"Crimes against women are not going down, but now we have better collaboration with the municipal, state and federal police, as well as the forensic lab," said Silvia Najera, spokeswoman for the agency.  Read more. 

Traitors, Tattlers, Tourists and Terror

Frontera NorteSur September 12, 2012

Special Report

As the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon enters its final weeks, parts of Mexico remain awash in blood from the so-called narco war. And Mexico’s old beach  resort of Acapulco is among the most violent places. Practically on a daily basis, executions, shoot-outs and the discovery of dismembered bodies disturb the social peace.

The state of Guerrero’s biggest city, Acapulco is a hub of violence that extends into the countryside and reverberates back into the Pacific port city.

“The corridor of the Costa Grande of the state, from Acapulco to the municipality of La Union that borders the state of Michoacan, has been a constant news item because of the criminal acts that are now common in the zone,” recently wrote a reporter for the Guerrero daily El Sur.

In a possible retaliation for the dumping of 17 murdered men in La Union late last month, the bodies of 16 tortured men were found September 10 in a truck parked near police installations up the highway in the rural municipality of Coyuca de Catalan.

Signed by La Familia Michoacana, accompanying messages were directed against the rival Knights Templar; both organizations have common roots in the neighboring state of Michoacan. At least 11 of the earlier victims were identified as residents of Michoacan.

In Acapulco, press accounts report that at least 50 people were murdered from August 24 to September 10. Official numbers released by the Guerrero state government during the first week of September reported that 797 gangland-style homicides were recorded in Acapulco since the commencement of the government’s Operation Safe Guerrero anti-crime campaign in October 2011. Read more. 

Valdés: unsafe areas are obstacle to the electoral process

La Jornada (translation Americas Program) Leonardo Valdés, president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) warned the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the Special Prosecutor for the Investigation of Electoral Crimes (Fepade) that the existence of public insecurity, as well as legal loopholes, were the main obstacles to the electoral process. At a presentation of the 2012 Fepade work program, Valdés Zurita indicated that security is necessary for citizens who organize elections since, along with the development of the party system, elements which threaten the social compact have surged. He added that the existence of unsafe areas hurt social interaction and could eventually inhibit the development of democratic life.

“I therefore believe that the climate of insecurity and legal loopholes are the two main obstacles to the electoral process (...) We need the candidates to freely present their proposals all across the country; it is also necessary for leaders, candidates, officials, and supporters to avoid exploiting imperfections in the legal framework to interfere with voters’ choices.”

During his speech, the head of Fepade, Imelda Calvillo said the institution will pursue all leads where suspicions of illegal election processes take place, for which it has trained 29,000,069 people online, 33,000,395 in person in 25 states, and 349 Federal prosecutors.

He also noted the preliminary investigations will be exhaustively undertaken in a comprehensive manner and all lines of inquiry will be looked at with an integrated approach. Between January and today 627 investigations have been initiated, representing an increase of 58 percent over the same period last year.

Of these, he added, 339 have been resolved: 187 criminal prosecutions and 152 in other ways, representing a 23 percent increase compared to 275 recorded in 2011. Read Spanish Original. 

(Translation by Michael Kane, Americas Program) 

Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Anaylsis Through 2011

TransBorder Institute: This is the third annual report by the Trans-Border Institute (TBI) on drug violence in Mexico. As with previous reports, the purpose of this study is to examine the available data, specific patterns, contributing factors, and policy recommendations related to growing toll of the drug war in Mexico. read more

U.S. - Mexico Border: US to Change Mexico Deportation Policy, Aims to Drive Down Border Violence

InSight Crime:"The United States Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, has annonced that the US government will change its deportation policy for illegal Mexican migrants, flying them to their place of origin in an effort to combat border violence.

Napolitano made the announcement at a press conference in Mexico City, explaining that the US will pilot its new program in April by providing air transportation to Mexicans rather than using its current policy of dropping them on the border in northern Mexico. In the new policy, the Mexican government will then be responsible for aiding the migrants' journey from the airport to their homes." read more