the suppliants

The latest casualties in the war in Mexico: Retired Mexican Generals & Active Duty USAF Staff Sgts

In order to better protect the citizenry, many mayors in Mexican cities have hired retired Mexican army officers, usually generals, to be secretaries of security.  These military professionals obviously pose a serious threat to the cartels and so therefore they are high-priority targets.  Here is a run-down of retired officers who took over public security positions who have been assassinated this year:

February:  General Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñonez (ret), two of his aides (active duty officers - a major and a lieutenant), and his civillian driver were kidnapped, tortured and executed in Cancun - less than 24 hours after the retired general took the public security position.  Less than 24 hours...

April:  Colonel Arturo Navarro (ret), was gunned down in Piedras Negras, 18 days after taking the position of chief of police.  Navarro was a veteran of the elite presidential security unit.

August:  General Juan Carlos Rodriguez (ret), was named police chief of the northern city of Monclova and narrowly escaped an assassination attempt which killed three of his bodyguards.  He had been on the job for almost two months.

This week here in Monterrey the new municipal mayors took office and installed their new cabinets.  The following municipalities hired retired army officers as either chiefs of police or secretaries of public security: 

Escobedo:  Brigadier General Hermelindo Lara Cruz (ret)

García:  Brigadier General Juan Arturo Esparza (ret)

Guadalupe:  General Angel Fernando Pérez (ret)

San Pedro:  Brigadier General Gonzalo Miguel Adalid Mier (ret)

Santa Catarina:  General Marcial Herrera (ret)

Yesterday after watching the news report about the installation of these retired military men I commented to my wife, "I hope they have strong security details and don't forget to wear their body armor to work."  Given the history it is obvious that these guys are marked men.

So this morning after getting up we turn on the local news to see the sad news that Gen. Esparza of Garcia was gunned down last night along with four members of his security detail as he responded to an emergency call from the municipality's mayor who was being threatened by cartel operatives.  The retired general's truck was ambushed by more than 30 cartel operatives.  The general had been on the job since Monday - three days.  

On another breaking news story:  it's not a good idea for active duty U.S. military personnel to go to strip clubs in Mexican border towns.  U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. David Booher, assigned to the medical unit of the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, was among five men gunned down yesterday in a strip club in Juarez, Mexico.

UPDATE:

This morning (Friday, Nov. 6) the district police supervisor of the city of Juarez was assassinated.  He was a former army officer. 

Kids with guns...

From an article in today's Washington Post: 

The number of minors swept up in Mexico's drug wars - as killers and victims - is soaring, with US and Mexican officials warning that a toxic culture of fast money, drug abuse and murder is creating a "lost generation." Although the exploitation of children by criminals is timeless, authorities say the cartels are responding to new realities here. They have stepped up recruiting to replace tens of thousands of members who have been killed or arrested during President Felipe Calderón's US-backed war against the traffickers. The crackdown has led the cartels to diversify their operations, moving from the transshipment of narcotics to extortion, immigrant smuggling and kidnapping. It also has sparked intense rivalries, with youngsters serving as expendable foot soldiers in battles over trafficking routes to the United States and local markets that serve a growing number of Mexican drug users.

Kids With Guns (Gorillaz)Kids with guns
Kids with guns
Taking over
But it won't be long
They mesmerized, skeletons
Kids with guns
Kids with guns
Easy does it, easy does it, they got something to say "no" to

Drinking out (Push it real, push it)
Pacifier (Push it real, push it)
Vitamin Souls(push it real, push it)
The Street desire Push it real, push it
Doesn't make sense to (Push it real, push it)
But it won't be long (Push it real, push it)
Kids with guns
Kids with guns
Easy does it, easy does it, they got something to say "no" to

And they're turning us into monsters
Turning us into fire
Turning us into monsters
It's all desire
It's all desire
It's all desire

Drinking out
Pacifier
Sinking soul
Where you are
Doesn't make sense to
But it won't be long
Cause kids with guns
Kids with guns
Easy does it, easy does it, they got something to "no" to

And they're turning us into monsters
Turning us into fire
Turning us into monsters
It's all desire
It's all desire
It's all desire

Push it real push it push it
Push it real push it push it
Push it real push it push it
Push it real push it push it
Push it real push it push it

Push It, Push It, Real

Public Enemy #1: The Police

One thing about Mexico that everyone can agree on is this:  many if not most police officers are corrupt.  Last week here in Monterrey these two officers were arrested as being part of the Gulf cartel.  They were used as hit men and were arrested in uniform while at a house where several kidnapping victims were being kept.  Once again, the army to the rescue.  But the army, as I've said again and again, is a short-term solution.  In the long-term the government has to restructure Mexico's 2,022 municipal police forces.  I was delighted to hear the news on Friday that Mexico's secretary for public safety, Génaro García Luna, who probably has the most dangerous cabinet position on the planet, announced a proposal to disband the 2,022 local police forces and combine them with the state level law enforcement.  Although I've yet to read the proposal, it definitely sounds like a step in the right direction.  Here's the article in full:

Mexico's top security official on Friday proposed disbanding Mexico's 2,022 municipal police forces and combining them with state law enforcement agencies to better combat corruption and crime.

Local police have fewer resources to fight crime, and their lower salaries make them more susceptible to corruption, Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said.

"Public safety should be a state policy," he added.

Consolidating police forces would improve communication among officials, he said, and bring greater security to areas where local police have traditionally lacked the means to fight crime. Nearly 90 percent of the country's municipal police forces have staffs of less than 100 people, he said.

Garcia Luna spoke to reporters at the end of a meeting of public safety chiefs from Mexico's 31 states and the capital, where officials presented a report titled "A New Police Model."

The report describes local police as "an easy target for corruption," with more than 60 percent of them receiving monthly salaries of only 4,000 pesos (about $300). Most of them have completed less than 10 years of schooling and are either at basic education levels or illiterate, according to the report.

Incorporating them into state forces would help prevent organized crime from corrupting them, the report said.

Garcia Luna said federal legislators would have to approve any changes to the country's police structure.

President Felipe Calderon has acknowledged that corruption permeates Mexican police at all levels. He has relied on the army to fight ruthless drug cartels, deploying tens of thousands of soldiers across the country since taking office in late 2006. Gang violence has since surged, claiming more than 13,800 lives.

Crackdowns on local police have also become an increasingly common part of the drug war.

In September, the Pacific coast resort city of Cancun fired 30 police officers in an effort to clean up the image of a force long plagued by corruption. In June, nearly 80 police officers suspected of working with drug smugglers were arrested in 18 towns across the northern state of Nuevo Leon after soldiers found lists of police names in the possession of traffickers.

Mexico's 159,734 municipal police make up nearly 40 percent of Mexico's police forces.

The squeeze ...

The army and federal police forces are doing a pretty good job these days of making arrests in the Drug War - at least here on the local front.  On September 22 the army, acting on an anonymous tip - once again proving that the public is the best intelligence service, raided a Monterrey cartel safe house and confiscated the equivalent of $5.4 million USD ($3.7 in actual US currency and $23 million Mexican pesos).  Also, four cartel operatives (I prefer not to mention the specific cartel) were arrested, 5 vehicles were seized, as were an unstated amount of drugs.   What makes this particular seize interesting was that the money was already earmarked and placed in envelopes for distribution to the many bribe recipients - mostly local police forces but one envelope was curiously marked "press."  

Now while this huge confiscation of cash may seem like a victory for the government, it actually makes things more difficult for the average Mexican who lives in these municipalities.  This is because when the drug revenues are seized by the government the cartels are forced to look for other means of income and a common means is to squeeze local business owners.  It's the age-old Mafia tactic of offering "protection" to local businesses in exchange for cash.  In our town several businesses have closed down - businesses that have been in operation for years and years.  While the owners certainly keep mum about why they closed, it is obvious as to why.  Last week a friend told me that his cousin had to shut down his deposito (a beer & liquor store) because the cartels were demanding a payout of $10,000 pesos ($770 USD) every 8 days.  That amount was unsustainable and so, like many other businesses, he simply closed down.  One would think that the cartels would be business-savvy enough to at least make their extortion demands economically feasible for the business owners.  Like their use of violence, they are also cutting their own throats with their greed.   

UPDATE:  As if things weren't bad enough for the cartels, the gringos are now growing their own pot!  This article in today's Washington Post, Cartels Face an Economic Battle:  U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers, explains that globalization even has a downside to the drug trade:  "While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy."  And now those darn gringos are growing it themselves.  So the question remains, what does this mean for the average Mexican?  The squeeze will only worsen... 

Mexico Drug War Reading Update

Recently a spate of new articles & blog posts have been published:

"America Fiddles in Asia While Mexico Burns on Our Very Border,"  @ Fabius Maximus

"Mexico:  Emergence of An Unexpected Threat,"  @ STRATFOR Global Intelligence

"A 'New' Dynamic in the Western Hemisphere Security Environment:  The Mexican Zetas and Other Private Armies,"  @ the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute

"Desertion, Low Morale, and Readiness:  Assessing the Mexican Army's Involvement in the War Against the Cartels and Its Impact on Capabilities for Traditional Responses,"   @ RGE Monitor

How to Get Things Done in Afghanistan

This is a snippet of dialogue from Jeremy Gilley's documentary film, The Day After Peace.  In this part of the film (around the 1 hour mark) Jeremy and Jude Law are in Afghanistan trying to figure out how to get a UN immunization program to remote villages and are frustrated by the lack of progress in getting things done.  Until, that is, they sit down with Michael Semple, the deputy to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan: 

SEMPLE:  "You're talking about organizing immunizations in insecure areas - areas where people associated with the government do not venture to at present because of fear for their lives."

GILLEY:  "But is there something we can do, somebody we can talk to to say, look, there's children in this area we know for a fact that are suffering due to the fact that we are unable to give them humanitarian assistance...?"

SEMPLE:  "There are foreign approaches to doing things in Afghanistan and there are Afghan approaches to doing things.  Most good things that are achieved in Afghanistan are achieved outside office hours, outside office structures, outside formal commitments, outside what anybody's contracted to do  - it's on very complicated networks of mutual obligation and self help and respect for each other.  When you engage the potency of Afghan networks of these informal obligations, things happen."

The immunizations were carried out - 1.2 million children were immunized on that International Peace Day (9/21/07) - this occured, of course, after Gilley & Law got off the formal grid and outside the Western mindset.

Murder's Thirsty Slake

For the second time this month

gunman gunman gunman gunman gunman

Have burst into a rehab center

And murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered

And murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered

And murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered

And murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered

And murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered and murdered

And murdered and murdered and murdered

Go ahead and count them:

Eighteen + ten more in murder's thirsty slake.

-The News Story Here

Why Mexico is not Colombia

In the latest issue of Foreign Policy is an article entitled, "Is Mexico the New Colombia?" which delves into the recent news media comparisons that Mexico could replace Colombia as Latin America's largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid to combat the drug trade.  In the authors' analysis, Mexico will most likely not become another Colombia:

A few factors, in particular, make Mexico's state of affairs quite different from the situation in Colombia. First, the government still maintains control over its territory and has not ceded ground to narcotraffickers at any time. Second, although the fight against the cartels has resulted in higher rates of violence, the hostility remains largely contained in a few states and among narcotraffickers vying for improved positions within the cartels or between them. Third, Mexico's drug trafficking violence on a per capital basis remains significantly lower than Colombia's. Even after years of President Alvaro Uribe's successful hard-line security policy against Colombia's narcotraffickers, violence in this country remains quite high: There were a total of 16,000 reported homicides in 2008 in a country of 45 million people. In Mexico, in contrast, narcotrafficking related violence is expected to cause about 6,000 casualties in 2009, in a country of more than 100 million. Fourth, Mexico's narcotraffickers have not targeted civilians in order to support a campaign of fear against the government, even if they do continue to target public officials specifically involved in the fight against them.

Gotta Love Those Mexico References in the Popular Media...

 From the HBO Series Generation Kill, season one pilot episode aptly entitled, "Get Some."  The following exchange takes place in a Humvee in the opening invasion of Iraq: 

CPL Person:  "How come we can't ever invade a cool country - you know - with chicks in bikinis?  ... This whole thing comes down to *babes* (slightly edited).  In the opinion of this Marine this war's about the *lack of babes*.

Evan Wright (embedded reporter):  "So it's not about oil or WMD's and it's not even about Saddam?"

CPL Person:  "No, Saddam's just part of the problem.  Look, if Saddam invested more in the *babe* infrastructure of Iraq than he did on his f*cking gay ass army, then this country would be no more f*cked up than, say, Mexico."

SGT Colbert:  "Ray!  Please shut up.  Thank you."

A little tour of the republic...

The seemingly endless school year (extended b/c of the swine flu) finally ended during the first week of July and so the wife and I decided to do a "second honeymoon" (18 yrs!) tour down to some of the colonial cities of central and southern Mexico.  So after spending two nights in the stunningly romantic city of Guanajuato we headed south to a convention - taking a route through the state of Michoacán.  As we entered, we saw convoys of army trucks full of soldiers heading into the state.  I've been aware that Michoacán's been a a bloody, embattled place for several years in the Drug Wars (the "Family" controls the state - for example, in May ten mayors were arrested for being La Familia operatives), but, seeing this ramped up army presence, I figured that something must be up.  Not having seen the news for several days, I was unaware that things had only days before heated up there when the Mexican government arrested the operations boss of the Michoacán-based La Familia cartel.  The cartel response was violent and immediate - within 45 minutes of the arrest, armed cartel units hit various police stations and sub-stations in eight cities and towns in the state.  They even tried (unsuccessfully) to spring their boss from the well-protected convoy rushing him out of the state!  But what really brought the iron heel of the government down was this:  on July 14, the cartel tortured and murdered twelve Mexican federal agents (eleven men and one being a woman - the murder of the female officer has the country in an outrage) and dumped the bodies along the side of a mountain highway.

So there we were right in the middle of it all.  I knew better than to snap pictures (even discreetly) of the troops so I didn't.  But driving behind the transports and passing them we saw the soldiers' faces - young men cradling their assault rifles in their arms, some of them smoking, some listening to iPods, some staring off to the beautiful green hills and mountains...entering a hostile, unforgiving state in their own country - where maybe they'll go toe to toe with armed cartel commando units - who strike suddenly with incredible force and with arms much better than these FAL-armed soldiers...

The best news article I've seen on these recent developments:  Drugs 'Taliban' Declares War on Mexican State

Stratfor's July 29 article "The Role of the Mexican Military in the Cartel War"