Mexico's Drug War Has Decreased Life Expectancy For Men

Newsweek: A new report reveals how Mexico’s ongoing drug war has undone gains made in the life expectancy of men and women in the country, as the country’s homicide rate soared in the first decade of the 21st century.

Despite six decades of increase in life expectancy for Mexicans, thanks to the introduction of health care reform and improvements in quality of life, between 2005 and 2010 life expectancy for Mexican men between the ages of 15 and 50 across the country fell an average of .3 years. This decline is being attributed to drug war-related homicides, according to a new study from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, which was published in the journal Health Affairs on Tuesday. Read more. 

Chapo Guzman sends flowers to Jardines de Humaya cemetery

Proceso (Translated by Borderland Beat): A floral arrangement with about 70 red roses, was seen Monday November 2 in the Jardines de Humaya cemetery in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

An all capital written message in dark letters surrounding the floral arrangement reads, "FROM: JOAQUIN GUZMAN LOERA, TO: PERRILLO.

Doctors from Cuba and Costa Rica Examine Comatose Mexican Student

Latin American Herald Tribune: Two foreign neurologists have examined Aldo Gutierrez, an education student who has been in a coma since he and several classmates were shot in Iguala, a city in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, in September 2014, the Executive Commission for Assisting Victims, or CEAV, said Tuesday.

Calixto Machado, of the Cuban Neurology and Neurosurgery Institute, and Costa Rican neurologist Mauricio Chinchilla examined the comatose student last Friday, the CEAV said. Read more.

U.S. blocks some anti-drug funds for Mexico over human rights concerns

Washington Post: In a setback for its multibillion-dollar effort to help Mexico fight its drug war, the U.S. State Department has decided that Mexico failed to reach some human rights goals, triggering a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid.

The move, which has not been reported previously, affects a small portion of the annual anti-drug funds given to Mexico. But it is a clear sign of U.S. frustration. It comes as Mexico has been roiled by several cases of alleged abuses by security forces, including the disappearance of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero last year.

Through the Merida Initiative, a major U.S. program to support Mexico’s battle against its drug cartels, Congress has appropriated $2.3 billion since 2008 for equipment such as helicopters and border sensors as well as training programs for thousands of Mexican officials. Read more.

Mexican cartels now have a 'sophisticated farm-to-arm supply chain' for the US heroin trade

Business Insider: The heroin crisis in the US is worsening as the use of heroin surpasses that of cocaine and meth, and we know where a lot of the product is coming from.

Mexican drug cartels have taken over much of the heroin market in the US, smuggling an estimated 225,000 pounds over the border last year, The Washington Post reports.

Old Cartels Never Really Die…

FSN News: Despite recurrent pronouncements of death by some U.S. and Mexican officials, high-profile organized crime groups continue operating and shedding blood south of the border. Tijuana, where control of both the local and export drug business is the prize of contention, figures once again as a significant flashpoint of violence.

Violent rivalries were on public display this past week as at least five so-called narcomantas, or narco banners, were placed in highly visible spots in the Baja California border city of an estimated 1.6 million people.

'El Chapo' Guzman escape: Mexican prison officials charged

BBC: Four Mexican officials have been charged with aiding the escape of the notorious drugs lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from a maximum security prison.

Two are members of Mexico's secret service who were based at the prison. The others were control room employees who should have monitored his cell.

Young Hands in Mexico Feed Growing U.S. Demand for Heroin

NY Times: With her nimble hands, tiny feet and low center of gravity, Angelica Guerrero Ortega makes an excellent opium harvester.

Deployed along the Sierra Madre del Sur, where a record poppy crop covers the mountainsides in strokes of green, pink and purple, she navigates the inclines with the deftness of a ballerina. Read more. 

‘There's No Real Fight Against Drugs’

The Atlantic: The slight man at the breakfast table seemed more like an evangelical minister than someone who once brokered deals between Mexican drug lords and state governors. He wore a meticulously pressed button-down, a gold watch, gold-rimmed glasses, and a gold cross around his neck. His dark brown hair was styled in a comb-over. And when his breakfast companions started to tuck into their bowls of oatmeal and plates of salmon benedict, he cleared his throat and asked for a moment of silence.

“Would you mind if I say grace?” he asked.

The gathering last week at Le Peep café in San Antonio would seem unusual almost anywhere except south Texas, where Mexico kind of blends into the United States—and so does the drug trade. Seated next to the cartel operative was a senior Mexican intelligence official. And next to him was a veteran American counternarcotics agent. They bowed their heads for prayer and then proceeded to talk a peculiar kind of shop. Read more.

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. 

Violence haunts Mexico's election campaign

AFP: One murdered candidate, others threatened, bodyguards assigned to gubernatorial wannabes and calls for a boycott: The June election campaign in Mexico's Wild West is off to a rough start.

The June 7 mid-term vote for federal and state seats will be the first major ballot test for President Enrique Pena Nieto, almost half-way through his six-year term. Read more.

Mexico drug violence intensifies as elections approach

LA Times: A month before national elections, Mexico is witnessing a level of violence in which drug traffickers have directly confronted the army, raising questions about whether the government's progress in combating crime might be a hollow victory.

In an apparent first for the nation, a drug cartel in the prosperous state of Jalisco used rocket-propelled grenades to shoot down a military helicopter, killing at least six soldiers. Read more. 

$8.5 Million in Gold Reported Stolen from Sinaloa Mine

Americas Program, April 8:

News reports have come out regarding an armed heist of some 900 kilos of gold from a mine in Sinaloa.

All the information in the news articles comes from the company press release, found here.

The company reports that the "gold-bearing concentrate" containing some 7,000 ounces of gold was stolen from its El Gallo 1 mine in the state of Sinaloa. The company states that the mine works two gold deposits and a silver deposit "in the foothills of the Sierra Madre" located in the township of Mocorito on ejido and private lands. It further states that there were no injuries and no material damage and that business continues as usual.

The company, which has its head offices in Toronto, writes that the Mexican authorities are "vigorously investigating" the crime. Mexican authorities have issued no statements so far, a day after the April 7 announcement.

The amount of concentrate carted off and the apparent absence of a clash between company security forces and the robbers raises many questions regarding just how this crime occured. The company reports that the insurance company will be paying damages although "the Company's policy will not be sufficient to cover the entire expected loss."

In 2012 the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) reported seven open cases of mine robberies in silver and gold, in the states of Sonora, Durango, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas. Lately Michoacan has seen entire mining areas taken over by organized crime, with direct sales to China according to some sources, including this interview I did with Tania Vazquez some weeks back. Some reports indicate that agreements are made with drug cartels. Previous robberies have been mostly of lingots in transport but the PGR stated that some criminal groups have the capacity to refine gold-laden material.

An outright robbery of a refinery has been relatively rare. It will be interesting to watch for more information as this case continues.

Life after El Chapo: kingpin's arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war

The Guardian: The fortune-teller smiled as she gazed out towards the distant peaks of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring. Read more. 

Editorial: Mexico's Armed Forces Must Explain

La Jornada, February 10, 2015 8:29
Original in Spanish: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2015/02/10/editorial-sedena-precisiones-necesarias-1991.html
Translation: Americas Program

Yesterday, during the commemoration of the March of Loyalty--when Heroic Military College cadets escorted President Francisco I. Madero at the beginning of the 'tragic decade'--Secretary of Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda endorsed the subordination of military authorities to civil institutions. Referring to the military, he stated, "There are those who want to distance us from the people."  

This is a serious remark, not only because it comes from the head of the Department of Defense but because it is formulated at a time when members of the armed forces face charges for their alleged involvement in extrajudicial executions, including those perpetrated in Tlatlaya, State of Mexico in June last year, and when various sectors call for the alleged involvement of military personnel in the attack on normalistas in Iguala, Guerrero investigation, four months ago.

In such circumstances, an accusation like that made yesterday by General Cienfuegos does not contribute to clearing up society's expressions of distrust that affect institutionality as a whole and the armed forces in particular. If indeed the military commanders have identified a specific effort oriented to causing a rift between the armed forces and the civilian population, it would be appropriate to formulate a precise statement that clearly names whoever they are accusing of these acts.

In the absence of such specific information, what can be seen is a national situation of erosion of the image of the armed forces among various sectors of the population as a result of their involvement in tasks beyond their constitutional mandate. The main responsibility for this deterioration does not lie with the military, but with civil rulers who have abused both their authority and the loyalty extolled yesterday by the Secretary of Defense to address a public safety crisis that must be dealt with through statesmanship and not from a military logic.

Many voices from civil society have stated on numerous occasions that the central tasks of the Army, Navy and Air Force are to preserve security and national sovereignty, safeguard territorial integrity and help the population during disasters, not investigate or combat the various criminal groups that have increased in the country over the past few decades. Also, it has been stated many times that  sending in the military to perform police duties not only puts them at risk of being infiltrated by criminal groups, but creates an environment for the commission of human rights violations and, eventually, foments precisely the distance between civilians and the military that Cienfuegos warned of.

The Mexican military's discipline and loyalty to the civilian power structure are valuable and unquestionable attributes, and it is paradoxical and regrettable that successive governments have appealed to them to detract from the core mission of the armed forces and that by doing so this has  opened them up to public criticism.  

But if there has been a deliberate effort to distance the army from the people, the military command should come right out and express it openly and accurately.

Will the International Criminal Court Investigate Mexico's 'Drug War'?

InSightCrime: The violence of Mexico's so-called "war on drugs" has caught the attention of the international community, with calls for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to turn its attention to the country. If they're successful, high-level government officials -- or even leaders of drug trafficking organizations -- may be prosecuted in the Hague. But it's a difficult road ahead.

The ICC's Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) is the body that will decide if there's evidence that the most serious atrocities under international law have taken place in Mexican territory. According to the Rome Statute, drug trafficking isn't within the ICC's jurisdiction, but the way that different actors may either fight or defend the drug trade is -- if, for example, war crimes are committed, or crimes against humanity. Read more. 

Report from Guerrero: The real criminals

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Thousands March for Safe Return of Disappeared Youth

Saturday, Oct. 18. Acapulco:  Shops are closed, with metal shutters pulled tight over the storefronts.  Government employees have be18. en given the day off and warned to stay inside. Schools are out for the day, to the delight of the children. The new car agency has even removed the models from the show floor.

Acapulco, the Pearl of the Pacific, looks like it's in hurricane mode. But there was no hurricane Friday. The government ordered the city lockdown to scare people off the march. Despite the campaign to create fear among the local population, close to ten thousand people marched to demand the safe return of 43 education students, forcibly disappeared by local police on Sept. 26 in the nearby city of Iguala .

Acapulco is the most violent city in the nation, and murder and extortion are everyday events. One resident who defied official warnings and joined the march told me,  "You've seen those movies about the gangster days and Al Capone, with shoot-outs in the street and pay-offs to the cops? That's us. I used to think that only happened in movies."

But in a city where violence has become commonplace, for the city government the presence of citizens demonstrating for justice was the main threat to be reckoned with. 

"Due to the protest, municipal authorities decided to suspend work and close offices, to avoid exposing personnel," read the local Novedades Acapulco newspaper Friday. Municipal spokesperson Ricardo Castillo made the rounds of radio and television stations warning residents to remain inside their homes because of the possibility of violence.

"This is a peaceful march. Walk in your contingent, everyone behind the front banner. Men line up on the outside, women inside." March organizers gave specific instructions to the thousands of teachers, students, local residents and regional grassroots organizations, including indigenous community police. The protesters followed them to the letter and despite high emotions at the assassinations and disappearance of the students, the march proceeded without incident. Even the graffiti was reserved for OXXO stores and politicians' propaganda.

Two demands dominated the march: safe return of the missing students, and the resignation of the state governor, Angel Aguirre. Aguirre is blamed for the impunity that characterizes the state, a "cemetery of organized crime", where the surrounding hills hide hundreds of bodies and body parts in mass graves. Members of the criminal gang, Guerreros Unidos, implicated in the disappearances originally led investigators to the supposed grave of the students, but the Attorney General announced this week that the semi-burned bodies are not those of the students. The fact that everyone has forgotten to even ask whose bodies were in the graves gives an idea of how "normal" mass graves and unidentified bodies have become in this part of the country.

The false warnings of violent protest are just the latest in years, if not decades, of government efforts to criminalize the students of the rural teaching college, Ayotzinapa. Casting a permanent image of dangerous youth threatening law-abiding citizens is part of a strategy to isolate the students. 

Now they are the victims of police who opened fire and murdered six people, abducting and disappearing 43 with the participation of Guerreros Unidos, an organized crime gang, But still, the press and government officials continue to paint the young people as the problem. Within local society, residents have grown soused to media and poltiicians'  harangues against the students for commandeering buses and blocking roads, that many will tell you privately that they belive the dead and missing got what they deserved.

But thousands more don't agree. The movement to support the students and hold all levels of government accountable for the crime is growing. As the federal government insists that organized crime is behind the disappearance with just a few corrupt politicians, at the march not one of the chants or slogans or demands was directed at organized crime. All laid responsibility at the feet of the government, primarily the state government.

First, because citizens can't make demands of organized crime. Criminals are criminals. It is the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens, which in Guerrero is clearly not happening.  Second, because the protesters view the drug cartels and the state as partners. 

"Sicarios, policia--la misma porquería" read one sign. (Hit men, police--the same trash"). The mayor of Iguala implicated in the attack on the students of Ayotzinapa and currently on the run, allegedly has tied through his wife and friends to the local crime gang. He is accused of knocking off people who cross him, notably grassroots leader, Arturo Hernandez Cardona, two years ago who he is said to have murdered in person.

This also is not the first time that the governments' hostility toward Ayotzinapa has led to violence.  In 2011 police assassinated two students at a roadblock in a crime for which no one was held accountable.

The media and political push to blame the victims is particularly surreal when compared to the attitude of the state towards the real criminals. The state Congress decided yesterday--three weeks after the crime--to withdraw immunity for the mayor, José Luis Abarca. It's not even clear if the federal government has issued an arrest order for him despite his obvious involvement in the crime from the outset.

Now Abarca is long gone,  on the lam and with a 21-day lead on police who apparently have little interest in capturing him. One can't help but doubt that justice will prevail.

Tamaulipas: A Death Trap for Mexico's Military

Vanguardia - Source: 24 Horas
Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat
June 2, 2014

Sixty soldiers have died in operations against drug trafficking in the past 18 months; the Gulf and the Nueva Generacion (Jalisco's New Generation cartel) are the main aggressors.

REYNOSA.- A total of 60 Mexican Army soldiers have died in the first 18 months of this presidential term while taking part in operations implemented against organized crime and drug trafficking. One in three has lost his life in Tamaulipas.

Jalisco and Michoacan are states that have also seen soldiers fall, six in each case from December, 2012, until now. Next are Durango and Chihuahua with five (deaths) each,  Sinaloa with four, and the rest in seven other states.

Two attacks have resulted in the greatest number of deaths for the military. In both cases, the criminals had an advantage because they were ambushes, not direct confrontations.

One of them took place just this past May 13, at kilometer marker 70 on the Ameca-Mascota highway, right at the arches at the entrance to the municipality of Guachinango. A convoy of six soldiers with the 32nd Infantry Battalion were sent to obtain a sample from an illegal fuel tap. When the military transport was traveling through the area, a pickup truck blocked the road and triggered the ambush. More than 20 gunmen with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion) fired several volleys with their AK-47 assault rifles from the east side of the road, from about 40 meters away. The criminals also used fragmentation grenades.

In Mexico, activist mother of missing man is slain

Los Angeles Times 
By Tracy Wilkinson
May 20, 2014

For 2 1/2 years, Sandra Luz Hernandez, like so many Mexican mothers, searched for her missing son.

Her activism grew steadily over time. She hung posters of her son and others who had disappeared. She led marches through her hometown of Culiacan, in the infamous drug cartel state of Sinaloa. She staged sit-ins outside the governor's office to demand justice. She scoured morgues and clandestine mass graves.

Last week, friends and colleagues say, her activism got her killed. Gunmen leaped from an SUV, put on masks and shot Hernandez dead in broad daylight on a Culiacan street. Read more. 

Action Alert: New Commander of Colombian Army Oversaw Civilian Killings, Tell Congress no US Aid

Note from the Americas Program: We encourage our readers of the Americas MexicoBlog to sign on to this message. Although it relates to Colombia and not Mexico, it is directly related to our work to stop U.S. support for the bloody drug war and support human rights. As you know, SOAW is one of our partners in the Mesoamerican Working Group (MAWG), as is John Lindsay-Poland, who is doing ground-breaking human rights work on the false positives. The US government is holding up Colombia as the model for security in the region--we must talk about the . Our program is working on research now to ascertain what SOA graduates in Mexico are linked to human rights violations and therefore subject to Leahy Law restrictions. 
If anyone would like to help with that research, please drop us a line at: lecarlsen@gmail.com

Take Action: Send a message to the State Department
School of the Americas Instructor Who Oversaw Dozens of Killings Leads U.S.-Backed Army

In the wake of Colombian military scandals earlier this year, General Jaime Lasprilla Villamizar has been appointed commander of the Colombian Army. He had just served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and previously as commander of Joint Task Force Omega – both units that have been the focus of U.S. assistance in Colombia.

The special operations unit, known by its Spanish acronym CCOES, has been a key vehicle for U.S. military aid in Colombia. A Washington Post investigation in December reported that the unit is sent in after bombing runs to gather bodies of guerrillas and other material. CCOES is the Colombian counterpart to the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which conducts secret targeted killings around the world.

A former instructor at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (the SOA's new name), General Lasprilla previous commanded Task Force Omega, which received tens of millions of dollars in U.S. training, supplies and equipment, under Washington’s ill-conceived drug war and ‘war on terror.’

There is just one catch. In 2006-2007, Lasprilla directed the Ninth Brigade in Colombia’s Huila Department, which was responsible for at least 75 killings of civilians under his command. Under the U.S. Leahy Law, aiding a foreign unit is prohibited if there is credible information that the unit’s commander committed gross human rights abuses. To abide by Leahy Law, Washington must end its assistance to the Colombian Army, until those responsible for the killings committed under Lasprilla’s command are brought to justice.

Take Action: Click here to send a message to the State Department. Most of the killings committed under Lasprilla in Huila are called “false positives,” many under investigation by Colombian human rights prosecutors. “False positives” were executions of civilians by troops who then claimed the victims were guerrillas killed in combat. The Army reportedly carried out more than 4,000 such killings from 2002 to 2010.

Lasprilla was an instructor at WHINSEC in 2002-2003, and studied for a year at the National Defense University in Washington in 2005-06, just before his deployment to Huila.

Take action: Send a message to Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Tom Malinowski, and urge him to apply Leahy Law to the Colombian Army under General Lasprilla’s command: http://SOAW.org/colombia

Article by John Lindsay-Poland, one of the authors of the upcoming report The Rise and Fall of “False Positive” Killings in Colombia. The research in the report shows that the 25 Colombian WHINSEC instructors and graduates from 2001 to 2003 for which any subsequent information was available, 12 of them – 48% - had either been charged with a serious crime or commanded units whose members had reportedly committed multiple extrajudicial killings.