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.

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.

Mexico cartel leader's capture will have little effect on drug flow

LA Times 
By Tracy Wilkinson
July 16, 2013

The capture of the top leader of Mexico's most bloodthirsty and bloodcurdling drug cartel will have surprisingly little  effect on trafficking of cocaine and other illicit substances to the U.S., and on the violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives here in recent years.

If anything, the violence, at least in the short term, may surge as rivals and potential successors of Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, alias Z-40, head of the Zetas paramilitary gang, battle to take his place or his turf.

But for President Enrique Peña Nieto, the capture is a small coup. The 7-month-old government, marking its first major strike against organized crime, probably hopes the early-Monday arrest near the border town of Nuevo Laredo will score points in the theater of public opinion and especially among skeptics who doubt the new leader's vague and sporadic security policy.  Read more. 

Mexico's Zetas gang joins coal mining business for bigger profits

Public Radio International
February 26, 2013

Mexico's drug cartel, the Zetas, have joined the coal mining business to increase their profits outside of their lucrative drug trading business. But legal and illegal coal mining practices in the region have mining advocates concerned for the miners' safety and future coal mining practice.

The Zetas, one of Mexico's drug cartels, is adding another source of income to their arsenal with illegal coal mining in the Mexican state of Coahuila.

Mines in Coahuila produce 95 percent of Mexico's coal. From small-scale mines, the Zetas can sometimes make a greater profit margins with coal than selling illegal drugs. John Holman, a reporter for Al Jazeera, says Coahuila is home to numerous pothos, small mines, with very little regulation.

The Zetas typically use miners who aren't highly trained, Holman says, so they can pay them poorly and make greater profits.  Read more. 

Mexican drug gangs dig into mining industry

The Zetas cartel, one of Mexico's most violent groups, has moved into coal mining as it's "more lucrative than drugs".

Aljazeera: John Holman, Jan 04, 2013.

On October 7, Mexican marines swooped in on one of the most powerful men in organised crime. But as the navy triumphantly announced the death of Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the Zetas gang, there was puzzlement over where he had been found. Far from the Zeta's strongholds and practically unprotected, he had been watching a baseball game in the small mining village of Progreso.

Theories abounded as to what exactly Lazcano had been doing in Progreso, a one horse town in the wide open spaces of the sorthern state of Coahuila. Humberto Moreira, ex-governor of Coahuila says that he has the answer: "Heriberto Lazcano changed from being a killer, kidnapper and drug dealer to something still more lucrative: mining coal. That’s why he lived in the coal region, in a little village called Progreso."

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Moreira says that the Zetas gang is fast discovering that illegal mining is an even more lucrative venture than drug running.

"They discover a mine, extract the coal, sell it at $30, pay the miners a miserable salary... It's more lucrative than selling drugs." Read more. 

Zetas cartel occupies Mexico state of Coahuila

The aggressively expanding and gruesomely violent Zetas group dominates territory by controlling all aspects of local criminal businesses.

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
November 3, 2012

SALTILLO, Mexico — Few outside Coahuila state noticed. Headlines were rare. But steadily, inexorably, Mexico's third-largest state slipped under the control of its deadliest drug cartel, the Zetas.

The aggressively expanding Zetas took advantage of three things in this state right across the border from Texas: rampant political corruption, an intimidated and silent public, and, if new statements by the former governor are to be believed, a complicit and profiting segment of the business elite. It took scarcely three years.

What happened to Coahuila has been replicated in several Mexican states — not just the violent ones that get the most attention, but others that have more quietly succumbed to cartel domination. Their tragedies cast Mexico's security situation and democratic strength in a much darker light than is usually acknowledged by government officials who have been waging a war against the drug gangs for six years. Read more. 

Mexican Navy Says It Killed Ruthless Gang Kingpin

NY Times: By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD. MEXICO CITY — The Mexican Navy confirmed on Tuesday that it had killed Heriberto Lazcano, the founder and the principal leader of the Zetas, one of the most violent criminal gangs to terrorize the country in years.

But in a striking twist, an armed group quickly stole the body, a state prosecutor said Tuesday, leaving the authorities struggling to explain how such a major blow against Mexico’s criminal organizations could turn into an illustration of their persistent strength.

The navy said that it had killed Mr. Lazcano in a battle between marines and men armed with guns and grenades on Sunday afternoon in Coahuila State in northern Mexico.

His death may be one of President Felipe Calderón’s biggest victories against drug and organized-crime groups, and it comes two months before the president ends his six-year term with a legacy marked by an escalation of the fight against gangs and the brutal violence they have wrought. Read more.

Mexico captures top Zetas drug lord, in major blow to cartel

L.A. Times, September 27, 2012

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's navy has captured "Zeta-50," a top leader of a faction of the recently divided Zetas drug cartel, in an operation in the city of San Luis Potosi, news reports said late Wednesday.

"A person who is presumed to be, and acknowledges being, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, was captured," the navy said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

The capture of Velazquez, also known by the alias "El Taliban," would deal a major blow to the fractious Zetas group and raise new doubts about the future of the criminal power dynamic in Mexico's violent northeast region.

Authorities indicated that they would provide more information Thursday on Velasquez's arrest, as he was being transferred to Mexico City, reports said. Read more. 

Marines in Mexico detain 35 Veracruz police officers

LATimesBlog: MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's marines on Monday said they detained 35 Veracruz state police officers who were allegedly working for the Zetas drug cartel.

In a short statement, authorities said the police officers were detained Saturday in two groups, 16 at the airport in the city of San Luis Potosi, in a neighboring state of the same name, and 19 in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz.

The marines released the names of the suspected officers but did not offer other details on the arrests or say why they were suspected of working for the Zetas. Four of those arrested were women, the marines said.

Veracruz's government did not have an immediate response to the announcement. Read more. 

Activists to take Mexico massacre case to World Court

EFE: Human rights defenders, clergymen and academics said they will petition the International Court of Justice to investigate the 2010 massacre of 72 mostly Central American migrants in San Fernando, a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, amid persistent impunity in the case.

More than 30 activists gathered in Mexico City Tuesday to pay tribute to the 72 Honduran, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Ecuadorian and Brazilian migrants who were killed in that municipality in August 2010 by suspected members of the Los Zetas criminal gang.

The Zetas, a gang of special forces deserters turned outlaws that is regarded as Mexico's most violent drug cartel, apparently killed the migrants after they refused to work as couriers or enforcers.

During the ceremony at the offices of the Mexican Federal District's Human Rights Commission, Mexico City's ombud's office, the participants lamented that no steps have been taken to prosecute any federal, state or municipal authorities - whether civilians, police or military - whose actions or omissions contributed to the tragedy. Read more.

Surge in violence in Mexico's drug war? Figures are inconclusive

LA Times Blogs: Daniel Hernandez. MEXICO CITY -- A recent string of deadly incidents tied to Mexico's drug war does not appear to indicate a surge in the violence but does suggest a new flash point as the fearsome Zetas cartel shows signs of splitting apart.

Fourteen bodies were found dumped in San Luis Potosi state on Thursday, and the mayor-elect of the city of Matehuala in the same state was killed in an attack along with one of his campaign aides as
they left a party Sunday. Read more. 

New Home for Juveniles Recruited to Drug Trade

Texas Tribune: EAGLE PASS, Tex. — Freddie knows he is lucky. If he were six months older, he could be in a state prison.
Or he could have been labeled a snitch and treated as such by Mexican cartel operatives.

Or he could be dead. Instead, Freddie will be free in December after finishing a year of court-ordered juvenile probation in his drug smuggling case. And he owes his good fortune to Bruce Ballou, the chief juvenile probation officer for Maverick, Zavala and Dimmit Counties. Read more.

Rumored Zetas split: Would this bring more violence or peace for Mexico?

CSM: Patrick Corcoran. A weakening of the Zetas in the northeast may discourage the drug gang's forays into other parts of Mexico, but internal strife often leads to more murders, writes InSight Crime.

Reports of a split between the two leaders of Mexico’s notorious Zetas drug gang suggest that a violent power struggle may be brewing in the group's northeastern home turf, a conflict which could shake the established order in the country's criminal underworld.

According to a new report from Proceso, the partnership of the Zetas' two main leaders – Heriberto Lazcano, alias “Z-3”, and Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, alias “Z-40” – has come under strain, and the two appear to be headed for an open confrontation. Read more.

The Kingpins: The fight for Guadalajara

The New Yorker: At the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Enrique Peña Nieto, who is forty-five, boyishly handsome, and generally expected to be the next President of Mexico, was asked to name three books that had influenced him. He mentioned the Bible, or, at least, “some parts” (unspecified), and “The Eagle’s Throne,” a Carlos Fuentes novel (though he named the historian Enrique Krauze as the author). And, for a few excruciating minutes, that was all he could come up with. The crowd laughed wickedly. Peña Nieto’s wife, a former soap-opera star, squirmed in the front row. His teen-age daughter didn’t help matters when, in a tweet, she scorned “all of the idiots who form part of the proletariat and only criticize those they envy.

That debacle was in December. It did nothing to slow Peña Nieto’s well-financed march toward the election, which will take place on July 1st, but it did provide a welcome distraction for Guadalajarans, who are justly proud of their annual book fair. It is the second largest in Latin America, drawing more than half a million visitors, nearly two thousand publishers, and hundreds of authors, including, over the years, Nadine Gordimer, William Styron, and Toni Morrison. Guadalajarans sometimes offer it up as Exhibit A for the case that the city is a civilized place where life goes on unmarked by the violence that disfigures large parts of Mexico. 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.

Family of ICE agent slain in Mexico files wrongful death claim against US government

AP: WASHINGTON — The family of an Immigration and Customs agent slain in Mexico has filed a $25 million wrongful death claim against the U.S. government.

A pair of South Texas law firms representing the family of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata filed the claim June 14 and named ICE, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department as defendants. Attorneys for Zapata’s parents, Mary and Amador Zapata, named several supervisors at the agencies and FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder. Read more.

Mexico cartel accused of laundering money at U.S. racetracks

latimes.com: WASHINGTON — The unlikely marriage of a violent Mexican drug cartel and the all-American world of U.S. quarter horses has apparently ended with the arrest of one of the top suspected members of the Zetas gang after an uncanny run of good fortune at the track raised suspicions.

Charged Tuesday in Austin, Texas, with using horses to launder millions of dollars in drug proceeds were Jose Treviño Morales, his wife and five associates. They were taken into U.S. custody after scores of FBI agents in all-terrain vehicles and helicopters raided stables and ranches near Ruidoso, N.M., and Lexington, Okla.

Working on a tip from more than two years ago, law enforcement officials learned that the Zetas were allegedly laundering up to $1 million a month in the high circles of American-bred quarter horses. Read more. 

Mexico drug war displaces families in Sinaloa highlands

latimes.com: CULIACAN, Mexico — For generations, the extended Hernandez family tended fields of marijuana high in Sinaloa's western Sierra Madre highlands.

They sold their crops to representatives of the Sinaloa cartel for a fraction of what the drug would bring at the U.S. border and eked out a pittance.

Barefoot children never went to school; they just helped their dads with the planting and harvest. Women washed clothes in the river. They burned pine sap for light at night because there was no electricity.

But a couple of weeks ago, the fighting that has raged as the Zeta paramilitary force tries to encroach on the Sinaloa cartel's turf reached the string of ranchitos where the Hernandezes and scores of other families farmed. Read more. 

Mexico’s two major crime cartels now at war

Washington Post: MEXICO CITY — The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view — some of the victims most likely innocents.

With the groups no longer limiting themselves to regional skirmishes, the older, established drug-smuggling Sinaloa cartel is now fighting the brash, young paramilitary Zetas crime organization across multiple front lines in Mexico in a desperate battle, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and security analysts on both sides of the border.

As the number of total homicides in Mexico has been slowly dropping, the sensational violence spikes higher, creating an atmosphere of instability that makes Mexicans and American visitors fear travel in wide stretches of country that even Mexican military leaders concede are not completely under state control. Read more

Mexico: 8 Held in Investigation Into 49 Dismembered Bodies

The New York Times: Brief: The army said it had detained eight suspected members of the Gulf cartel and seized drugs, guns and hand grenades during investigations into the discovery last week of 49 dismembered bodies on a highway in northern Mexico. The suspects were apprehended on Thursday as part of an operation designed to capture those responsible for the grisly discovery in the city of Cadereyta, the Defense Department said. Officials did not say whether the eight suspects were directly involved in the 49 killings. The authorities had previously suggested that the rival Zetas cartel was responsible for the killings.