Politicians are starting to be targets on the "outer layer of the onion".
"Mexican prosecutors say hooded gunmen have killed the mayor of a small town in northern Mexico. He is the third mayor to have been slain in the last month, apparently by Mexico's drug cartels."
Source: AP
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Mexican Politics Goes To The Next Level
It appears that Mexican politics has moved to the next level.
"Mexican gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre Cantu, the leading PRI candidate in Tamaulipas state, was gunned down Monday by suspected drug cartel hitmen. President Felipe Calderon says the drug lords are interfering with Mexico's election process. The leading candidate for governor of the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, was gunned down Monday in one of the highest profile assassinations since a presidential candidate was murdered in 1994."
Source: Christian Science Monitor
"The weakest fall first with more to follow. The onion gets peeled back one layer of a time."
Random Roving, March 6, 2009 - "Peeling Back The Onion"
Don't forget. It has happened here.
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"Mexican gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre Cantu, the leading PRI candidate in Tamaulipas state, was gunned down Monday by suspected drug cartel hitmen. President Felipe Calderon says the drug lords are interfering with Mexico's election process. The leading candidate for governor of the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, was gunned down Monday in one of the highest profile assassinations since a presidential candidate was murdered in 1994."
Source: Christian Science Monitor
"The weakest fall first with more to follow. The onion gets peeled back one layer of a time."
Random Roving, March 6, 2009 - "Peeling Back The Onion"
Don't forget. It has happened here.
.jpg)
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Flight From Mexico
I've had the privledge of coaching my daughter's basketball team for the past several years. Last year, we fielded a very talented team. Three of the girls were from Mexico and were absolutely wonderful and were great contributors to the team. Their families live in our north Houston suburb, while their fathers commute to Mexico every week for business. The mothers stated that it just wasn't safe to live in Mexico because people with money are ransom targets. Over the years, I've been amazed at how many families do this. Obviously, they are the privledged few.
The Houston Chronicle reported this story today:
The rich flee Mexico drug violence
Fearing for their lives, affluent seek asylum in Houston, other Texas cities
By JAMES PINKERTONCopyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
March 8, 2009, 11:23PM
Mexican businessman Jorge Hernandez abruptly relocated his family to Houston last year, terrified that family members would be abducted by kidnappers. He had ample reason to be afraid. He left in August, days after a father was kidnapped for ransom as he dropped his child off at the same school Hernandez’s children attended in a north Mexico city. “One night, I told my wife ‘Pack the bags — we’re leaving,’" Hernandez said. “The fear we felt caused us to get in the car and drive for 12 hours to get to Houston.”
The 43-year-old businessman joined a growing number of affluent and middle-class Mexicans fleeing comfortable lives in Mexico for the comparative safety of Houston and other major Texas cities. They are desperate to escape an unprecedented wave of lawlessness in their home country where warring drug cartels — whose fighting claimed more than 6,000 victims last year — have also taken up kidnapping as a lucrative business.
Monterrey, the nation’s third-largest city and Mexico’s industrial powerhouse, had two kidnappings a day last year, according to the El Manana newspaper. Businessmen like Hernandez have been joined by hundreds or perhaps thousands of middle-class Mexicans seeking asylum at U.S. ports of entry across from Mexican border towns where violent gunbattles have raged. Last year, 2,231 Mexican citizens sought asylum in the U.S., a significant increase from 1,366 in 2006. “It seems to me there are more people coming now than there have been in the last couple of years, and the flow is increasing,” said John W. Meyer, a Houston immigration lawyer hired by Hernandez to process his visa.
Most of these Mexican expatriates are business owners who can afford to commute to Mexico several days a week and can enroll their children in private schools and buy homes in Houston. Many Mexicans who qualify for work or investor visas have settled in neighborhoods near the Galleria and The Woodlands, officials said. “We’ve seen some of that increase over the last couple of years,” said Nick Wolda, president of the visitor’s bureau in The Woodlands. “For the Mexican audience, The Woodlands is a desirable location: the schools, the parks, the pathways. What we’re finding is people coming here are investing in businesses, or being transferred from companies.”
Meanwhile, many Mexicans in border towns wracked by violence are crossing international bridges and requesting asylum. “We have seen an increase in the number of asylum claims at our ports of entry, and this is one factor among a number that we are seeing as part of the situation along the border,” said Mike Friel, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In El Paso, asylum claims by Mexican citizens have increased from 12 in fiscal year 2005 to 80 last year, according to CBP records. “We’re seeing complete families fleeing from our sister city Juarez. They are middle-class business people. ... Their loved ones are being kidnapped, and they are asking extremely high amounts of money,” said Elvia Garcia, outreach coordinator for the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project in El Paso. Garcia said other nonprofit legal agencies in El Paso have been inundated with calls from hundreds of Juarez residents who have crossed the border on tourist visas and now want to seek asylum.‘
Ricardo Ainslie, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has produced a documentary on Mexico’s kidnapping industry. He said the kidnappings have motivated many of the nation’s leading professionals to leave. “In Mexico, there is a real anxiety about it because it’s a huge brain drain. The money and talent is leaving Mexico in huge numbers to San Diego, San Antonio and Austin,” Ainslie said. Hernandez said he had to leave Mexico when he saw the drug gang battles in the streets and the police and military presence. But while the family was drawn to Houston because of the culture and educational opportunities for his wife and three children, it has been hard to transition. “Your family suffers,” Hernandez said. “But when you turn on the TV and listen to the news from Mexico, that’s when you say to yourself you made the right decision to leave.”
The USA Today recently reported about Mexican drug cartels in Atlanta:
In a city where Coca Cola, United Parcel Service and Home Depot are the titans of industry, there are new powerful forces on the block: Mexican drug cartels. Their presence and ruthless tactics are largely unknown to most here. Yet, of the 195 U.S. cities where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are operating, federal law enforcement officials say Atlanta has emerged as the new gateway to the troubled Southwest border.
Rival drug cartels, the same violent groups warring in Mexico for control of routes to lucrative U.S. markets, have established Atlanta as the principal distribution center for the entire eastern U.S., according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
The Houston Chronicle reported this story today:
The rich flee Mexico drug violence
Fearing for their lives, affluent seek asylum in Houston, other Texas cities
By JAMES PINKERTONCopyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
March 8, 2009, 11:23PM
Mexican businessman Jorge Hernandez abruptly relocated his family to Houston last year, terrified that family members would be abducted by kidnappers. He had ample reason to be afraid. He left in August, days after a father was kidnapped for ransom as he dropped his child off at the same school Hernandez’s children attended in a north Mexico city. “One night, I told my wife ‘Pack the bags — we’re leaving,’" Hernandez said. “The fear we felt caused us to get in the car and drive for 12 hours to get to Houston.”
The 43-year-old businessman joined a growing number of affluent and middle-class Mexicans fleeing comfortable lives in Mexico for the comparative safety of Houston and other major Texas cities. They are desperate to escape an unprecedented wave of lawlessness in their home country where warring drug cartels — whose fighting claimed more than 6,000 victims last year — have also taken up kidnapping as a lucrative business.
Monterrey, the nation’s third-largest city and Mexico’s industrial powerhouse, had two kidnappings a day last year, according to the El Manana newspaper. Businessmen like Hernandez have been joined by hundreds or perhaps thousands of middle-class Mexicans seeking asylum at U.S. ports of entry across from Mexican border towns where violent gunbattles have raged. Last year, 2,231 Mexican citizens sought asylum in the U.S., a significant increase from 1,366 in 2006. “It seems to me there are more people coming now than there have been in the last couple of years, and the flow is increasing,” said John W. Meyer, a Houston immigration lawyer hired by Hernandez to process his visa.
Most of these Mexican expatriates are business owners who can afford to commute to Mexico several days a week and can enroll their children in private schools and buy homes in Houston. Many Mexicans who qualify for work or investor visas have settled in neighborhoods near the Galleria and The Woodlands, officials said. “We’ve seen some of that increase over the last couple of years,” said Nick Wolda, president of the visitor’s bureau in The Woodlands. “For the Mexican audience, The Woodlands is a desirable location: the schools, the parks, the pathways. What we’re finding is people coming here are investing in businesses, or being transferred from companies.”
Meanwhile, many Mexicans in border towns wracked by violence are crossing international bridges and requesting asylum. “We have seen an increase in the number of asylum claims at our ports of entry, and this is one factor among a number that we are seeing as part of the situation along the border,” said Mike Friel, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In El Paso, asylum claims by Mexican citizens have increased from 12 in fiscal year 2005 to 80 last year, according to CBP records. “We’re seeing complete families fleeing from our sister city Juarez. They are middle-class business people. ... Their loved ones are being kidnapped, and they are asking extremely high amounts of money,” said Elvia Garcia, outreach coordinator for the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project in El Paso. Garcia said other nonprofit legal agencies in El Paso have been inundated with calls from hundreds of Juarez residents who have crossed the border on tourist visas and now want to seek asylum.‘
Ricardo Ainslie, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has produced a documentary on Mexico’s kidnapping industry. He said the kidnappings have motivated many of the nation’s leading professionals to leave. “In Mexico, there is a real anxiety about it because it’s a huge brain drain. The money and talent is leaving Mexico in huge numbers to San Diego, San Antonio and Austin,” Ainslie said. Hernandez said he had to leave Mexico when he saw the drug gang battles in the streets and the police and military presence. But while the family was drawn to Houston because of the culture and educational opportunities for his wife and three children, it has been hard to transition. “Your family suffers,” Hernandez said. “But when you turn on the TV and listen to the news from Mexico, that’s when you say to yourself you made the right decision to leave.”
The USA Today recently reported about Mexican drug cartels in Atlanta:
In a city where Coca Cola, United Parcel Service and Home Depot are the titans of industry, there are new powerful forces on the block: Mexican drug cartels. Their presence and ruthless tactics are largely unknown to most here. Yet, of the 195 U.S. cities where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are operating, federal law enforcement officials say Atlanta has emerged as the new gateway to the troubled Southwest border.
Rival drug cartels, the same violent groups warring in Mexico for control of routes to lucrative U.S. markets, have established Atlanta as the principal distribution center for the entire eastern U.S., according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Trouble Along The Border
Last weekend we had some neighbors over for dinner. One neighbor works in the Fed's Homeland Security department. Halfway through the evening he snuck out to his house and returned saying "I just checked my email and something big is going on along the Mexican border". He's always a little mysterious about what his role is in the department. He basically said that the drug war has hit a "new level". He stated that we now have three drones flying along the border and that our troop level has increased significantly. The article below just appeared in USA Today.
Mexican drug gangs wage war
By Chris Hawley, USA TODAY
VILLA AHUMADA, Mexico —
Prosecutors say they are still trying to determine whether Munoz's son was an innocent bystander, or involved with the gangs. Either way, Munoz attributes his death to the unprecedented combination of drug-related violence and economic misery that is ravaging northern Mexico — and showing signs of spreading into the United States. "He never caused any trouble for anybody. But in this town, you never know who's going to decide you're a problem," Munoz said. "This is a town without laws."
That's literally true — the entire police force of Villa Ahumada, a community of 10,000 people 80 miles south of El Paso, deserted its posts last May after drug gangs executed the police chief and two officers. The crime wave, plus the crippling recession that has rippled here from the U.S., has caused the town's export factories — possibly the only source of reputable, steady employment — to slash production. "It's just one thing after another," says Villa Ahumada's mayor, Fidel Chavez. "First the economy, and now this."
The story is similar across much of Mexico's 2,000-mile-long northern border: a wave of beheadings, grenade attacks and shootouts as drug cartels battle each other for supremacy and lash out against Mexican President Felipe Calderon's drive to destroy their smuggling operations. The death toll from drug-related violence in Mexico last year surpassed 6,000, more than double the previous year, raising questions about whether Calderon's government can prevail against a brutal and often better-armed enemy without additional help from the U.S. government.
"People are scared and they have reason to be," says Michael Shifter, a Latin America specialist at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. "The economic crisis is just going to aggravate the situation. It's very hard to imagine how things will get better in the short term." That's bad news in broad swaths of the United States, where Mexican drug gangs have extended their operations to at least 230 cities from Texas to Alaska, according to a recent Justice Department report. Police in Atlanta and Phoenix, both major drug transit points, have blamed a wave of kidnappings on the spreading turf war among the cartels. Drug-related violence has become ever more brazen and frequent, including a rise in attacks on Border Patrol agents.
In both Mexico and the United States, most of the victims have been linked to the cartels. Nevertheless, several travel agencies, colleges (including the nearby University of Texas-El Paso) and even the U.S. military have discouraged travel to Mexico's border areas as spring break approaches — resulting in a loss of crucial tourism dollars that could make the Mexican economic crisis even worse.
More than 329,000 jobs have been lost in Mexico since June, the government says; that translates to as many as 30% of Mexican adults who are now unable to find full-time work. Rene Jimenez Ornelas, an expert on crime at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is among those who believe that unemployment could push more Mexicans into the ranks of the narcos. The gangster lifestyle has been glamorized by television shows and songs called narcocorridos, and it is a powerful temptation for many youths.
"What organized crime mostly has on the front lines are people who need to eat," Jimenez Ornelas said. So the cartels "have an 'army' available — not all of them, of course, but enough to have a good-sized force at their service."
Mexican drug gangs wage war
By Chris Hawley, USA TODAY
VILLA AHUMADA, Mexico —
Prosecutors say they are still trying to determine whether Munoz's son was an innocent bystander, or involved with the gangs. Either way, Munoz attributes his death to the unprecedented combination of drug-related violence and economic misery that is ravaging northern Mexico — and showing signs of spreading into the United States. "He never caused any trouble for anybody. But in this town, you never know who's going to decide you're a problem," Munoz said. "This is a town without laws."
That's literally true — the entire police force of Villa Ahumada, a community of 10,000 people 80 miles south of El Paso, deserted its posts last May after drug gangs executed the police chief and two officers. The crime wave, plus the crippling recession that has rippled here from the U.S., has caused the town's export factories — possibly the only source of reputable, steady employment — to slash production. "It's just one thing after another," says Villa Ahumada's mayor, Fidel Chavez. "First the economy, and now this."
The story is similar across much of Mexico's 2,000-mile-long northern border: a wave of beheadings, grenade attacks and shootouts as drug cartels battle each other for supremacy and lash out against Mexican President Felipe Calderon's drive to destroy their smuggling operations. The death toll from drug-related violence in Mexico last year surpassed 6,000, more than double the previous year, raising questions about whether Calderon's government can prevail against a brutal and often better-armed enemy without additional help from the U.S. government.
"People are scared and they have reason to be," says Michael Shifter, a Latin America specialist at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. "The economic crisis is just going to aggravate the situation. It's very hard to imagine how things will get better in the short term." That's bad news in broad swaths of the United States, where Mexican drug gangs have extended their operations to at least 230 cities from Texas to Alaska, according to a recent Justice Department report. Police in Atlanta and Phoenix, both major drug transit points, have blamed a wave of kidnappings on the spreading turf war among the cartels. Drug-related violence has become ever more brazen and frequent, including a rise in attacks on Border Patrol agents.
In both Mexico and the United States, most of the victims have been linked to the cartels. Nevertheless, several travel agencies, colleges (including the nearby University of Texas-El Paso) and even the U.S. military have discouraged travel to Mexico's border areas as spring break approaches — resulting in a loss of crucial tourism dollars that could make the Mexican economic crisis even worse.
More than 329,000 jobs have been lost in Mexico since June, the government says; that translates to as many as 30% of Mexican adults who are now unable to find full-time work. Rene Jimenez Ornelas, an expert on crime at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is among those who believe that unemployment could push more Mexicans into the ranks of the narcos. The gangster lifestyle has been glamorized by television shows and songs called narcocorridos, and it is a powerful temptation for many youths.
"What organized crime mostly has on the front lines are people who need to eat," Jimenez Ornelas said. So the cartels "have an 'army' available — not all of them, of course, but enough to have a good-sized force at their service."
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Mexico and The Great American Experiment
Source: El Paso Times 1/13/09
"Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities.
In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said "Predictions about the future are always risky ... Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America."
http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354
"Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities.
In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said "Predictions about the future are always risky ... Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America."
http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354
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