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Mexico deploys federal forces against organized crime along border, Pacific coast
http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_n...
June 14, 2005
NUEVO LAREDO, Tamaulipas Soldiers and federal agents began patrolling this embattled border city Monday while dozens of Nuevo Laredo police officers
were investigated for possible links with organized crime, officials said Monday.
The action was part of a larger effort, dubbed "Operation Secure Mexico," in which the government deployed federal forces to three states to contain
surging violence linked to organized crime.
The new deployment comes amid evidence that organized crime has penetrated some local police departments, presidential spokesman Rub?n ?guilar told a
news conference in Mexico City.
"There are very clear clues of the relationship between the police of Nuevo Laredo with drug trafficking; thus the decided action," ?guilar said.
?guilar also said that as part of the anti-crime operation, the administration of President Vicente Fox had asked the United States to step up its
efforts to halt the flow of arms into Mexico.
"We have asked U.S. authorities for better collaboration," he said. "The type of high-tech weaponry that some of these groups have clearly comes from
the United States."
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza had issued a statement last Thursday decrying "the rapidly degenerating situation along the border and the
near-lawlessness in some parts."
Prior to this past weekend's action, Fox already had sent hundreds of soldiers and federal agents to the border cities in March to restore order. But
concerns about lawlessness were re-ignited last week with the killing of Nuevo Laredo's police chief just hours after he took office.
Federal police and troops stood guard outside city police stations across the border city of Nuevo Laredo on Monday, two days after local police
opened fire on a convoy of federal agents wounding one as they arrived at the city across the U.S. border from Laredo, Texas.
About 60 police officers who got off the night shift early Monday remained inside the Nuevo Laredo police headquarters but officials wouldn't say
whether they were under arrest.
Local police could have suspected the convoy was a front: Mexican criminal groups often attempt to pass themselves off as law enforcement. But the
Attorney General's Office (PGR) has insisted that its investigative police made no provocative movements and never fired.
There was no sign of city police officers at work in Nuevo Laredo on Monday. The PGR and local officials refused to say whether the city police
department had been formally closed or taken over.
Forty-one city police were detained immediately after Saturday's confrontation and were flown to Mexico City for questioning.
Despite concerns about corruption, federal authorities have to rely on state and local police "who know how crime operates, who is who in every
place," ?guilar said.
Federal police and investigators backed up by military forces made more than 70 arrests as they arrived over the weekend in the states of Baja
California, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, ?guilar said.
?guilar declined to say how many officers and troops were participating in the new operation, which will include military highway patrols and
roadblocks.
Violence has surged in many of the northern border cities as reputed drug kingpin Joaqu?n "El Chapo" Guzm?n leads an offensive to control drug
smuggling along the entire MexicoU.S. border, according to federal prosecutors.
The new federal deployment also targets Guzm?n's home state of Sinaloa, the home state of many drug chieftains that has seen more than 250 killings
this year.
Mexico City Mayor Andr?s Manuel L?pez Obrador, speaking at his daily press conference Monday, said that he approved of Fox's plan to ratchet up the
fight against crime and offered the assistance of the city government to the effort.
"Anything that is done to guarantee the peace and public security must be supported," said the mayor, who has often clashed with Fox in the past.
L?pez Obrador is the current favorite to replace Fox as president in the upcoming 2006 elections.
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Anonymous
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Martial Law as Media Stunt in the Failed War on Drugs
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/14/104713/876
"We are not in the era of Al Capone and Prohibition.?
- Slain Police Chief Alejandro Dom?nguez Cuello, prior to his death
By Al Giordano,
Jun 14th, 2005
It?s a wet dream for Commercial Media journalists: The new police chief of the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo took office last Wednesday. Nine
hours later he was gunned down. US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza quickly issued a press release harping a song of I-told-you-so: ??A few weeks ago,
I asked the State Department to re-issue a public announcement about the on-going violence in the border region.?
By Saturday, Mexican President Vicente Fox sent in a convoy of federal police who, on an access road to a country club near the city, ended up in a
shootout with local police. Newspaper editorialists salivated: ?Until Mexico takes aggressive measures to fight crime and combat the violence that has
spilled into the streets, the country will remain unsafe for residents and tourists,? lectures one such boilerplate text in the San Antonio
Express-News, which in a careless turn of the pen declares ?the country? ? an entire nation, not just the border city ? unsafe.
But as a US Customs agent admitted yesterday in a rare moment of candor, none of this grand show of force is going to make anybody any safer?
The story of Nuevo Laredo under Martial Law makes for a great motion picture, putting even Soderbergh to shame, and causes lots of huffing and puffing
by the press corps feeling courageous as its members take official dictation from hotel rooms along the border. Not one of them, yet, has investigated
or asked questions about the systemic causes of the violence. And why would they? The Commercial Media loves the violence! It sells papers, boosts
ratings, and will no doubt bring awards to the worst offenders among the professional simulators.
Fox, on Monday, sent in the Armed Forces to occupy the city, rounding up 720 police officers for interrogation, subjecting them to polygraph and urine
tests for drugs, taking away their cell phones but apparently not, in the case of one who the attorney general?s office claims killed himself while he
was interrogated last night, their guns.
But according to at least one candid agent of the US Department of Homeland Security?s Burea of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), all this
expenditure and muscle ain?t gonna make anybody safer.
"When the Mexican government puts pressure on them, it's like a fumigator, and they'll come across the border like c-ckroaches," said Al Pe?a, who
heads criminal investigations for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement,? reports the Houston Chronicle. The agent, of course, for the
sake of his job security, had to then backpedal and put a smiley face on it all: ?I think we are coming to see something positive, but it's
unfortunate that all these people have died to get where we are.?
It?s the Prohibition, Stupid
The slain police chief, Alejandro Dom?nguez Coello told reporters last January: ?"We are not in the era of Al Capone and Prohibition.? Yeah. Right.
There?s a fitting epitaph for his tombstone.
But in at least one sense, the late police chief had a point: During the era of alcohol prohibition in the United States (1918-1933), unlike today,
Mexico did not adhere to the policy. As the website Tijuana.com, of another famous Mexican border city, recounts:
?In 1917, San Diego banned cabaret dancing. Tijuana capitalized on this idiocy by building scores of cabarets and casinos. By now the fledging
community of Hollywood had heard all about Tijuana and its irresistibly short three hour drive down the California coast. That trek soon became a
pilgrimage when, in 1920, the United States launched Prohibition and outlawed alcoholic beverages. Tijuana gladly welcomed America's thirsty citizens
with open arms that have never closed and a nightlife that never sleeps!?
Nuevo Laredo, until very recently, had a hopping nightlife, just like Tijuana (in a large part because of overly strict "drinking age" laws and
enforcement on the US side of the border). But as that city?s daily El Ma?ana reports today: ?The Golden Era for Restaurants Is Over.? Cheesy Tex-Mex
bars like ?Se?or Frog?s? (of the ?Carlos & Charlie?s? chain) that are favorite gringo watering holes have shut their doors in Nuevo Laredo?s
historic center, ever since US State Department ?travel advisories? began frightening the Texans away.
?Our clientele is 80 percent North American and 20 percent national,? Pablo Longoria, manager of the Dorado restaurant in Nuevo Laredo told El Ma?ana.
?You can see the situation as it is today: there are no clients.?
Once again, Mexico bears the brunt of the US-imposed ?War on Drugs? and we have Martial Law in Nuevo Laredo. National Mexican political columnist
Carlos Ram?rez wonders aloud today if this latest maneuver ?could mean the first step toward a Plan Colombia for Mexico.?
The hammer slams down upon Nuevo Laredo, today an occupied city. But for as long as governments uphold a policy of prohibition on drugs (instead of
the kinds of regulations that, since 1933, ended the similar violence that once surrounded the former prohibition on alcohol in the United States),
narco-trafficking, and all the gangland violence it brings, will march on.
It?s like the golf ball under the rug: Swat it down in Nuevo Laredo, and, as the aforementioned Homeland Security agent admitted, it will just pop up
somewhere else.
Mexico doesn?t need a ?Plan Colombia.? She needs a ?Plan Tijuana? of the kind she had in the 1920s. When it comes to the drug war, Mexico is a
battered wife. She needs a divorce from the brutal prohibition that a shotgun wedding with US drug policy has historically imposed upon her.
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The Gull
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Thank you Margie.
�I won\'t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.� William F. Buckley, Jr.
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