Mexico's Drug War - Page 11

MEXICO CITY (AFP) – Northern Mexico was shaken by a weekend of violence, with 34 deaths blamed on drug cartels and a series of grenade attacks that injured a dozen people, officials said Sunday.

Twelve people were hurt in a late night grenade attack at a busy plaza outside Monterrey, according to officials who said it was one of four bombings to rock the industrial border city over the weekend.

Authorities said Sunday that the grenade was thrown by unidentified assailants at about 11 pm Saturday (0400 GMT Sunday) near the town hall in Guadalupe, a suburb of the bustling city near the border with the United States.

Earlier Saturday, three explosive devices were detonated, including one near the US consulate and another not far from a prosecutor's office that wounded a guard. The blasts damaged roads and nearby vehicles, said police, who have yet to identify the culprits.

MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent lawmakers a proposal to abolish Mexico's notoriously corrupt and ineffective municipal police forces.

Under the initiative, each of Mexico's 31 states would have just one police department under the command of the governor.

Calderon raised the idea months ago and formally submitted it to the Senate on Wednesday. He says the goal is to reduce corruption by eliminating hundreds of small police departments whose officers are poorly educated and badly paid.

Mexico has more than 2,000 local and state police departments. Many have been infiltrated by powerful drug cartels. And in some small towns, entire forces have quit after coming under attack by gangs that easily outgun them.

On October 13 2010 04:50 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Holy shit the severed head of the lead Mexican investigator on the Falcon Lake incident was delivered to army hq today.

MEXICO CITY – A radio station broadcast what it described as a telephone conversation in which a federal lawmaker and one of Mexico's biggest drug lords express support for each other.

W Radio said the alleged conversation took place last year between lawmaker Cesar Godoy and La Familia cartel leader Servando Gomez, known as "La Tuta." In it, Godoy and Gomez express support for each other and discuss bribing a reporter.

Godoy represents the western state of Michoacan, La Familia's stronghold. He already faces federal charges for allegedly protecting the cartel but has immunity from arrest because he is a congressman.

MONTERREY, Mexico – Mexican marines battled suspected drug cartel gunmen whose allies erected at least a dozen roadblocks in the northeastern city of Monterrey, authorities said Friday. One marine and three gunmen were killed.

The gunmen opened fire and threw grenades at a marine patrol Thursday night on a highway on the western city limits, according to a Navy statement.

At the same time, gang members used buses and other vehicles to block at least a dozen main avenues in downtown Monterrey, said Alejandro Garza y Garza, the attorney general of Nuevo Leon state, where Mexico's third-largest city is located.

TIJUANA, Mexico – Mexican security forces seized at least 105 tons of U.S.-bound marijuana in the border city of Tijuana on Monday, by far the biggest pot bust in the country in recent years.

Soldiers and police grabbed the drugs in pre-dawn raids in three neighborhoods after police arrested 11 people following a shootout, army Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mujica said at a news conference.

The marijuana was found wrapped in 10,000 packages, which were displayed to journalists by soldiers in masks. Duarte said the drug had an estimated street value in Mexico of 4.2 billion pesos, about $340 million.

TIJUANA, Mexico – Mexican security forces seized at least 105 tons of U.S.-bound marijuana in the border city of Tijuana on Monday, by far the biggest pot bust in the country in recent years.

On October 19 2010 12:02 imweakless wrote:

holy shit thats huge..

Godoy represents the western state of Michoacan, La Familia's stronghold. He already faces federal charges for allegedly protecting the cartel but has immunity from arrest because he is a congressman.

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Mexican soldiers battled gunmen in two cities across the border from Texas on Wednesday, prompting panicked parents to pull children from school and factories to warn workers to stay inside. Assailants in a third city threw a grenade at an army barracks.

The U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo warned American citizens to stay indoors. The statement said there were reports of drug gangs blocking at least one intersection near the consulate in the city across from Laredo, Texas.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's federal police on Thursday announced they had arrested a drug gang member who detonated a car bomb that killed three people in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Federal police regional security chief Luis Cardenas Palomino said Fernando Contreras used a cell phone to detonate the June 15 car bomb that killed a federal police officer and two civilians.

Cardenas Palomino said that after the attack, Contreras was sent to Chihuahua city as the leader there for La Linea drug gang allied with the Juarez drug cartel.

On October 21 2010 18:13 ZerglingSoup wrote:
I am so thoroughly horrified by this situation every time I think about it or read about it. So many people are wrapped up in this... It makes me terribly sad. Many of my friends and co-workers have family down there and have to risk their lives just to travel down for a visit. I can't imagine what it must be like to live under the shadow of these cartels.

The saddest thing is, that this is directly caused by my countrymen. Not my government, or the big corporations or whoever else gets flamed for it, but rather my own flagrantly self-gratifying society that upholds whatever will make us feel good as what it is we live for. Anyone who thinks that legalizing this poison is dreaming. Sure you may hurt cartel profits, but this would only cause the violence to escalate. And with all the resources at their disposal, these cartels would certainly find a way to get a foothold in the newly legalized supply chain and would be under very weak obligation to clean up their acts back home.

The problem lies with us here in the states and our wholesale lack of self-control or real concern for our southern neighbors. We can live perfectly productive and happy lives without narcotics, yet because it's fun and it feels good, we go ahead and partake, tell our friends how cool we are for partaking, and directly feed the travesty down south while blaming it all on the government because its an easy way to shrug away our own responsibility.

It is frustrating to think of all the positive things we could be doing with our fists full of money instead of directly funding murder and brutality in someone else's country.