Thread: Northward Flow of Mexicans Likely to Increase After Election

CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES

"SURGE TWO":NORTHWARD FLOOD OF MEXICANS LIKELY TO INCREASE AFTER U.S. ELECTION

By George W. Grayson
October 2008

Backgrounders and Reports

(PLease see the original article at http://www.cis.org/surge2 to view referenced statistical tables and "End Notes".)

Introduction

Escalating violence highlighted by decapitations, torture, and kidnappings plagues Mexicans, with drug cartel hit men and run-of-the-mill thugs generally targeting their victims. Money, revenge, ransom, extortion, access to drugs, and turf battles often explain these heinous activities. On September 15, 2008, however, a major act of terrorism took place for the first time. Around 11 p.m., as thousands of revelers celebrated the country’s Independence Day in Morelia, miscreants heaved fragmentation grenades into the crowd. When the smoke cleared, eight people lay dead, and more than 100 men, women, and children suffered wounds. TV networks beamed video footage of the blood-drenched scene to unbelieving viewers across the country.

Hundreds of military personnel and federal police flooded in to provide security for shocked citizens and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) offered $1 million (10 million pesos) for information leading to the capture of the masterminds and perpetrators of the carnage. Still, Deputy Emilio Gamboa Patrón, owner of a super-sized closet of skeletons and a big shot in the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), admitted that citizens were afraid to cooperate with authorities because so many law-enforcement officials were allied with criminal organizations.1 The army, held in higher esteem, may have more success in attracting informants.

Meanwhile, President Felipe Calderón and other dumfounded politicians speculated on who inflicted the wanton slaughter in the picturesque colonial city, 150 miles to the west of Mexico City in the chief executive’s home state of Michoacán.

Were the perpetrators members of the powerful Gulf Cartel, headquartered just below Texas in Tamaulipas state, whose military component is known as Los Zetas? Did they belong to the Gulf Cartel’s chief rival, the Sinaloa Cartel, centered in Sinaloa state, which nestles between the Sierra Madres and the Pacific Ocean? Could they be affiliated with La Familia (The Family) a shadowy drug gang that took credit for hanging seven banners blaming Los Zetas, three members of which have been taken into custody? Might they be guerrillas either in thrall to drug mafias or launching a freelance strike?

Apart from the delinquents’ identity was the ominous possibility that the attack foreshadowed an escalation in the strife: from homing in on specific victims to indiscriminate terrorism as occurred in Colombia two decades ago. The “Morelia massacreâ€

They'd be better off going south of their border, no room here for them.