Thread: In Mexico, the week starts with 23 executions

In Mexico, the week starts with 23 executions
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Foreign News Report

El Diario de Coahuila (Saltillo, Coah.) 5/12/08

Five men were shot to death in Palomas, Chihuahua, yesterday just two blocks away from the international border crossing (note: next to Columbus, New Mexico, the town that Pancho Villa invaded). 175 assault rifle shell casings were found at the scene. Palomas, a town of 7,000 pop., has had 30 homicides linked to organized crime this year and 20 persons have been kidnapped. Another five men were executed with high caliber firearms in different events in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.
Six homicides were reported in Sinaloa and the body of a decapitated unknown person was also located. Further, three men were executed in Tlajomulco de Zuniga, Jalisco. (Note: the blood list continues with reports of some half dozen additional violent deaths in a number of localities.) The week starts with 23 executions.
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a.b.c. (Mexico City) 5/12/08

(The following is a portion of an op/column by Francisco Cardenas Ruiz regularly titled "Political Pulse"):

"If President Calderon doesn't do something, and quickly, to stop the daily bloodbath which organized crime and narcotraffic are giving to the nation and it is decided, once and for all, to cut the umbilical cord which both have with municipal, state and federal authorities, his government will continue losing not only the battles but the war itself which he declared against them when he took office. Besides, he could be in imminent risk that the families of the members of the army, navy and all police agencies which participate in the anti-narco war will demand from him to put a stop to so much violence before their members are also murdered. After the executions of top level officials of the Federal Public Security Departments and those of some states which occurred last week - the day before yesterday the director of the Ciudad Juarez Municipal Police, Juan Antonio Roman Garcia, was riddled with 50 shots - and the death in a shootout in Culiacan of Edgar Guzman Lopez, one of the sons of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, the worse thing is that two signs appeared at that same place yesterday with direct threats against the governor of Sinaloa, Jesus Aguilar Padilla, (saying) that they will make attempts against his life. This confirms once again what we have been warning about in this column: that sooner or later organized crime and narcotraffic are going to raise their gun sights and their targets will not only be city police officers or federal or state agents, but their supervisors and the chiefs of the latter, as has already begun to happen. As long as there continue to be officials at any federal, state or city level who have links and complicity with the drug cartels and they (those officials) continue to furnish protection and facilities to crime bosses and hired killers so that the latter can obtain information about the operations and daily activities of the persons carrying out those operations (then) those persons will keep on being executed in Mexico City or in any city in the interior of the Republic."
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Cuarto Poder (Tuxtla, Chiapas) 5/12/08

Felipe Arizmendi, the bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, commented on the recent decriminalization of illegal immigration in Mexico and said that unfortunately it has not been made widely known because of other ongoing national issues; he added "we are giving an example to the United States because there it is all the reverse, any person who might be undocumented is considered a wrongdoer" . He underlined that "an undocumented person is not a delinquent but a human being who deserves attention and respect. Let us hope that the United States will follow the good example we want to give with this important measure and that we emphasize it in the most adequate way."
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Frontera (Tijuana, Baja Calif.) 5/12/08

73 vehicles a day were stolen in Tijuana during the first three months of the year. A total of 6,724 vehicles were stolen from January to March, a 14% increase over 2007. Mexicali came in second with 1,550, then Ensenada with 549. The state of Baja Calif. total for the first three months reached 9,348 vehicles.
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El Sur (Acapulco, Guerrero) 5/12/08

Edward Francis Pellew, a tourist from London, U.K., was driving a rental car in Acapulco last Saturday morning when he was stopped by local police officers who accused him of speeding, almost hitting a woman and child and running two stop signs on Costanera Ave. He replied that he had not been speeding since the particular scenic road has a number of dangerous curves, that he had not seen any woman and child and that he had been coming from Puerto Marques, not on the Costanera. So an officer told him that his chief had ordered him to take him in to their facility in handcuffs. Once inside the patrol unit - he could not see its number because they blocked his view - they asked him for 400 pesos to set him free; he replied he had no cash, only credit cards, so they took him to an ATM where they no longer wanted 400 pesos but 3,000. They then let him go. The tourist then presented a formal complaint to authorities and described the officers in the presence of reporters. At that moment the director general of the Acapulco Hotel and Tourism Association phoned and asked that Pellew's complaint report not be published in the media and that a way would be sought to resolve the problem.
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El Universal (Mexico City) 5/12/08

Rivalry between drug cartels for control of Sinaloa has caused 270 violent deaths there so far this year, 41 more than in the same period last year. In May alone the tally to date is 52; it includes 24 members of law enforcement agencies. Local businessmen said that almost daily one or several bodies turn up, wrapped in bedding, with hands and feet tied, or who fell prey to volleys of gunfire from some automatic rifle. The violence in Sinaloa dates back more than four decades and is due to the fact that this is an area that produces marihuana and poppy and is also a strategic point for the transit of drugs from the southeast of the country besides being the birthplace of the cartels' main chiefs.
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La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico City) 5/12/08

A truck headed for Ciudad Juarez carrying household furniture was stopped in Guanajuato. Inside the double false bottom: 19 Guatemalans, 9 Salvadorans, 3 Ecuadoreans, & 1 Honduran, all undocumented.
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Norte (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 5/12/08

Eight more homicides in this area yesterday (Sunday) brought the year's total above 300 and to 43 to date in May, a month in which the daily average is nearly four.
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Prensa Libre (Guatemala City, Guatemala) 5/12/08

The wave of violence in Guatemala has resulted in 876 deaths so far this year, mostly by the use of firearms. One of the most recent victims was that of one of this newspaper's reporters who had been working on "administrative corruption" in southwestern Guatemala. Forty-three of the victims have been local and interurban bus drivers, almost as many as the 51 murdered in all of 2007.
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Note : Prominent, front section items in both the "o.e.m." newspapers (Mexico's nationwide chain of some 40 papers) and on "El Heraldo" (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) today gave full coverage to The Washington Post feature story detailing that more illegal aliens in custody in the U.S. have died in the last few years while awaiting deportation than have terrorists died in Guantanamo.
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- end of report -

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