Mexico's Drug War - Page 61

The son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán may be among the half-dozen men abducted by a squad of gunmen at a restaurant in the Mexican beach resort of Puerto Vallarta, according to authorities.

Authorities in the western state of Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is located, earlier said that 10 to 12 men had been kidnapped from the upscale restaurant, based on the confused nature of the evidence at the crime scene. Some women who were with the abducted men at the restaurant weren’t taken, and one person who had been dining with the group left just moments before the abduction.

But prosecutors later clarified in a statement that six men were abducted by a squad of seven armed assailants.

Jalisco attorney general Eduardo Almaguer told Radio Formula that “it is presumed”, though not yet certain, that Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán was among the kidnapped men.

Experts say Guzmán assumed control of parts of his father’s business after he was re-arrested in January.

Authorities have been taking fingerprints from the scene, viewing video images and checking identifications related to five vehicles – some luxury models – left behind by the victims at the restaurant.

Almaguer said “several of them (the victims) had false identities”, which complicated efforts to determine who they were.

He said the abduction was the work of a “criminal group” that operates in the area, and while he would not identify the gang by name, the largest group operating in the state is the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

A 16-hectare piece of land in San Pedro de las Colonias, Coahuila, has been described as an “extermination camp” because of the large number of human remains and bullet shells that have been found there.

Located 60 kilometers from the city of Torreón in the ejido of Patrocinio, the area is now being called “La Esperanza,” hope in Spanish, by a group of citizens dedicated to searching for missing people.

Grupo Vida was formed last year by about 35 parents aged from 50 to 70 who lost children in the years between 2004 and 2013. They banded together after tiring of the few advances by official investigators.

The group has been working in Patrocinio since April 2015 and to date have found 3,147 fragments of human remains.

On a normal search day volunteers will find countless shell casings of diverse calibers, bone fragments and teeth.

According to local witness accounts, crime gangs used to frequent the area. Here, they would shoot their victims and cremate their remains in metal drums.

Given that the area is remote and undeveloped, Patrocinio was a favored place for gangs to perform what appear to have been “mass executions.”

One, Sonia Castañeda, has been looking for her son since August 2014.

“My heart tells me my son is no longer alive, but working here I can give hope to other families,” she told the newspaper Milenio.

A prominent Mexican journalist reported Wednesday that the sons of Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman say they were wounded in an attack they blamed on a rival drug gang figure and onetime "top lieutenant" for their father.

Ciro Gomez Leyva said he received word about Saturday's purported attack in a handwritten letter from Guzman's sons that said they were with Sinaloa boss Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada at the time and that he was also targeted.

Gomez Leyva said the letter accused Damaso Lopez, another alleged Sinaloa figure who is believed to be disputing for control of the cartel, of betraying them. The letter said they had come to a meeting organized by Lopez only to find he was not there, and gunmen suddenly opened fire and killed their bodyguards. Guzman's sons said they and Zambada escaped.

Guzman lawyer Jose Refugio confirmed to local media that the letter came from the sons.

"I was aware of that, I know about that letter and I know they wrote that letter," Refugio told Radio Formula. "But it was not delivered through me."

Mexican authorities did not immediately confirm or otherwise comment on the purported attack.

Guzman was arrested for the third time in January 2016 and finally extradited to the United States last month. Some have speculated a bloody turf war could break out to fill the power vacuum.

Last August, his son Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar was one of a half-dozen people kidnapped by armed men from a restaurant in the Pacific coast city of Puerto Vallarta. He was released not long afterward.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Lopez was indicted by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2011, accused of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to launder money.

When the indictment was unsealed on March 7, 2013, he was said to be 47 years old. At the time, the Department of Justice called him "a top lieutenant" for Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel.

More than 250 skulls have been found in what appears to be a clandestine burial ground on the outskirts of the Mexican city of Veracruz.

State prosecutor Jorge Winckler said the clandestine burial pits appear to contain the victims of drug cartels killed years ago.

“For many years, the drug cartels disappeared people and the authorities were complacent,” Winckler said, in apparent reference to the administration of fugitive former state governor Javier Duarte and his predecessors.

In an interview with the Televisa network, Winckler did not specify when the skulls were found or by whom.

But victims’ advocacy groups have excavated and pressed authorities to excavate such sites for years to find missing loved ones.

The skulls and other bones were found in a wooded area known as Colinas de Santa Fe where activists have been exploring since at least mid-2016, sinking rods into the ground and withdrawing them to detect the telltale odor of decomposition.

When they find what they believe are burial pits, they alert authorities, who carry out the final excavations.

Winckler said excavations have covered only a third of the lot where the skulls were found, and more people may be buried there.

Winckler said excavations have covered only a third of the lot where the skulls were found, and more people may be buried there.

“I cannot imagine how many more people are illegally buried there,” Winckler said, noting the state has reports of about 2,400 people who are still missing.

“Veracruz is an enormous mass grave,” he said. “It is the biggest mass grave in Mexico and perhaps one of the biggest in the world.”

The state had long been dominated by the ferocious Zetas cartel. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel began moving in around 2011, sparking bloody turf battles.

Victims’ advocacy groups have criticized authorities for doing little to try to find or identify the state’s missing people, many of whom were kidnapped and never heard from again.

Drug cartels in other parts of Mexico have deposited victims’ bodies in mass graves before.

In the northern state of Durango, authorities found more than 300 bodies in a clandestine mass grave in the state capital in excavations starting in April 2011.

Those burial pits were excavated in part with the use of backhoes.

More than 250 bodies were discovered in April 2011 in burial pits in the town of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state, close to the US border.

Drug gangs in some places in Mexico have taken to burning or dissolving their victims’ bodies in corrosive substances in order to avoid discovery.

But the victims In Veracruz appear to have been buried relatively whole.

Investigators unearthed the skulls of 47 more suspected victims of Mexico's drug war in Veracruz state, just days after uncovering 250 skulls at a separate mass grave used by drug cartels, the state's attorney general said on Sunday.

Veracruz, on Mexico's Gulf coast, has long been a stomping ground for criminal gangs, who fight over lucrative drug and migrant smuggling routes.

Giving details on the latest grisly find, Jorge Winckler said the skulls and remains of multiple body parts were unearthed from eight unmarked graves, clustered in a 120 sq meter area, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the town of Alvarado.

So far, Winckler said, investigators had positively identified one three-person family, missing since September 2016, and the remains of two other men.

"The work continues," Winckler told a news conference, vowing to track down the perpetrators.

Just days earlier, investigators recovered more than 250 skulls from another unmarked grave 60 kilometers (37 miles)further north in the Gulf state of Veracruz.

That burial site was uncovered by relatives of missing family members, impatient with officials' apathetic response, who launched their own search for missing family members.

The relatives' groups have exposed the government's slow progress in attending to rights abuses and victims.

The former governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, who belonged to the country's ruling party, is a fugitive, fleeing organized crime charges.

Separately, on Sunday the Veracruz attorney general's office said it was investigating the murder of a journalist, Ricardo Monlui, who was shot dead in the town of Yanga.

Veracruz is the most dangerous state in Mexico for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in 2016 that at least six reporters had been killed for their work since 2010, when Duarte took office, adding it was investigating nine other cases.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — One of the top heroin traffickers for the sons of Sinaloa drug cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was arrested Thursday, Mexican prosecutors said.

Guzman's sons have largely taken over the cartel following their father's arrest last year and extradition to the United States.

The Attorney General's Office said Victor Manuel Felix was arrested at a tony apartment complex in an upscale suburb of Mexico City known as Santa Fe.

Felix is wanted on an extradition request for trafficking heroin to the United States. He also allegedly laundered money and acted as a financial operator for the sons, Ivan and Jesus Alfredo.

Prosecutors said Felix was with the sons when they were kidnapped by a rival gang from a restaurant in 2016. They were later released.

Felix, 30, is believed to have taken over the position from his father, Victor, who was arrested in 2011. He allegedly got heroin from other gangs that produced it in Guerrero and Jalisco states.

Heroin, and specifically Mexican heroin, is fueling a growing addiction and overdose problem in the United States. President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency on Thursday.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said in its 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment this week that Mexican heroin accounted for 93 percent of heroin tested in U.S. markets in 2015, practically displacing production from South America.

It said Mexico's opium production more than tripled between 2013 and 2016.

The DEA said Mexico's increasingly refined "white powder" heroin is purer than other varieties. "Increasing poppy cultivation in Mexico, the primary supplier of U.S. heroin markets, ensures it will remain high-purity," the U.S. anti-drug agency said.

The accusations made in three Texas courtrooms were staggering. Witness after witness described how a notorious drug cartel pumped money into Mexican electoral campaigns and paid off individual politicians and policemen in the border state of Coahuila to look the other way as hundreds of people were massacred or forcibly disappeared.

The Texas court testimonies – gathered in a report released this week by the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law and Fray Juan de Larios Diocesan Human Rights Centre in Coahuila – give one of the most complete accounts so far of how organized crime has attempted to capture the institutions of democracy in Mexico’s regions.

The report prompted outrage among activists who have worked with victims of violence. But the accusations were met with sharp denials from Mexican politicians and a pointed lack of interest from judicial officials.

The Mexican public, meanwhile, mostly shrugged, even as the country endures its most violent year on record and the crackdown on organised crime seems unlikely to end anytime soon.

“The lack of action from government is to be expected,” said Jorge Kawas, a security analyst in the city of Monterrey. “But the lack of outrage by Mexicans is just disheartening.

“We’ve become numb to excessive violence. There’s no leadership in government or in the streets and Mexican media is practically useless for holding power accountable.”

Allegations that Mexican politicians have acted in cahoots with drugs cartels have been common for decades, though such accusations have seldom resulted in thorough investigations, let alone criminal convictions. Even after sworn testimony in US courts has described corruption, Mexican officials appear unwilling to act.

“For Mexicans, it’s always sad to hear that the real investigations against crime and corruption in Mexico have to be done elsewhere in order for them to actually mean something or obtain a result,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos.

Mexico’s militarized crackdown on drug cartels over the past decade has cost more than 200,000 lives and left more than 30,000 missing. But by its own terms, it has been a failure: 2017 is shaping up to be the country’s the most violent year on record.

Los Zetas, a band of elite soldiers who became cartel enforcers and then established their own criminal empire, have been weakened in recent years after their senior leaders were kidnapped or killed and the group split into rival factions.

But from 2006 to 2014 the group terrorised swaths of north-eastern Mexico. In Coahuila, an arid state butting up against Texas, Los Zetas killed hundreds of people and burned their bodies before scattering the ashes in the desert.

The cartel carried out a string of massacres, including a 2011 rampage through the town of Allende which left about 300 dead.

They also spent millions on bribery, according to testimony gathered in this week’s report and given in separate criminal trials between 2013 and 2016.

“The Zetas paid bribes and integrated police officers into their hierarchy to ensure the cartel would be able to continue their illicit operations without resistance,” it said.

“Witnesses described a level of Zeta control which extended to city police chiefs, state and federal prosecutors, state prisons, sectors of the federal police and the Mexican army, and state politicians.”

The report also quoted explosive accusations made in US courts that Los Zetas paid off a pair of Coahuila state governors and pumped millions into state elections elsewhere in the country.

Some observers urged caution, saying witness statements alone – especially from those cooperating the authorities – were not enough to establish guilt.

“These guys clearly have a motive to blame others, to incriminate others. Whatever they’re saying should be read within this context,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst.

“It’s hard to believe that in the Zetas’ peak years [in Coahuila state], 2010, 2011, 2012, they had no connections with the state apparatus in Coahuila,” he added. “Did it go to the top? I’m not sure.”

Javier Garza, former editor of the Coahuila newspaper El Siglo de Torreón said that such questions would probably go unanswered by Mexican authorities. “These statements were told under oath so supposedly what they’re saying is true, but it’s never been corroborated because nobody in Mexico investigated.”

On June 17 2017 02:45 xtorn wrote:
Dont know if it fits the topic as its technically part fiction, but if you have Netflix, they released a series about El Chapo today.

On November 18 2017 21:21 blunderfulguy wrote:... it's like they're in a billion dollar artificial bubble every time; same with the groups that travel to major cities for classes, though they've been going to Spain and Portugal more over the years iirc.

Sofía, a medical assistant in Reynosa, a scruffy border city in northern Mexico, has a regular morning routine.

She wakes at 6am and readies her son for preschool; then she reviews her social media feeds for news of the latest murders.

Updates come via WhatsApp messages from friends and family: “There was a gun battle on X street”, “They found a body in Y neighbourhood”, “Avoid Z”.

In Mexico today, choosing your route to work can be a matter of life or death, but Sofía compares the daily drill to checking the weather on the way out the door. “It doesn’t rain water here,” she said. “It rains lead.”

It is 11 years since the then president Felipe Calderón launched a militarised crackdown on drug cartels deploying thousands of soldiers and promising an end to the violence and impunity. But the bloodletting continues, the rule of law remains elusive and accusations of human rights abuses by state security forces abound.

All the while, Mexico continues to race past a series a grim milestones: more than 200,000 dead and an estimated 30,000 missing, more than 850 clandestine graves unearthed. This year is set to be the country’s bloodiest since the government started releasing crime figures in 1997, with about 27,000 murders in the past 12 months.

Some of the worst violence in recent years has struck Reynosa and the surrounding state of Tamaulipas, which sits squeezed against the Gulf coast and the US border.

Once in a while, a particularly terrible incident here will make news around the world, such as the murder of Miriam Rodríguez, an activist for families of missing people, who was shot dead in her home on Mother’s Day.

But most crimes are not even reported in the local papers: journalists censor themselves to stay alive and drug cartels dictate press coverage.

“We don’t publish cartel and crime news in order to protect our journalists,” said one local news director, whose media outlet has been attacked by cartel gunmen. Eight journalists were murdered in Mexico in 2017, making it the most dangerous country for the press after Syria.

The information vacuum is filled by social media where bloody photographs of crime scenes and breaking news alerts on cartel shootouts are shared on anonymous accounts.

In Reynosa, violence has become a constant strand in everyday life. Morning commutes are held up by gun battles; movie theatres lock the doors if a shootout erupts during a screening. More than 90% of residents feel unsafe in the city, according to a September survey by the state statistics service.

Signs of the drug war are everywhere: trees and walls along the main boulevard are pockmarked with bullet holes. Drug dealers can be seen loafing on abandoned lots; every so often, rival convoys of gunmen battle on the streets.

Video cameras look down from rooftops; spies are all around. “They have eyes everywhere,” said one woman. “It could be the government or the cartels.”

The violence here first erupted around 2010 when the the Gulf cartel’s armed wing – a group of former soldiers known as Los Zetas – turned on their masters.

Since then, wave after wave of conflict has scorched through the state as rival factions emerge and collapse.

Fighting erupts over trafficking routes and the growing local drug markets, but state forces are also implicated: earlier this month, soldiers killed seven people, including two women, in what was described as a “confrontation”.

Crime hit such alarming levels this year that the local maquiladora industry – which pulls thousands to Reynosa every year to work in its export factories – warned that companies might be forced to relocate.

Amid the mayhem, ordinary life continues: shopping malls fill with families trying to escape the oppressive heat. Cars full of young people cruise the streets at night, banda music blaring from open windows.

“Life can’t stop. We have to get out and enjoy ourselves a little,” said Alonso de León, a local caterer. But he added: “The problem affecting us in Tamaulipas is the shootouts, this violence – in any other country this would be called terrorism.”

The government bristles at any suggestion that the country is at war. When the International Institute for Strategic Studies ranked Mexico as second-deadliest country in the world – ahead of warzones such as Afghanistan and Yemen – the foreign ministry responded angrily, pointing to higher murder rates in Brazil and Venezuela.

War or not, the bodycount keeps climbing.

And the violence is spreading: tourist areas have seen shootouts and decapitations, and even the capital has seen confrontations with armed groups. Earlier this month, the bodies of six men were found hanging from bridges in the resort city of Los Cabos.

All of which has been disastrous for the image of President Enrique Peña Nieto who took office in 2012 with an ambitious agenda to push through structural reforms and promote Mexico as an emerging economy.

Fighting crime seemed an afterthought.

“He thought that security issues in Mexico were a problem of perception so he embraced a policy of silence,” said Viridiana Ríos, scholar at the Wilson Centre in Washington.

Peña Nieto’s government maintained the military focus of the drug war, and continued to target cartel kingpins. But analysts question the strategy, saying that it shatters larger criminal empires but leaves smaller – often more violent – factions fighting for the spoils.

Breaking up the cartels also has the perverse effect of encouraging crime groups to diversify, said Brian J Phillips, professor at the Centre for Teaching and Research in Economics.

“The new groups are more likely to raise money by kidnapping or extortion since that doesn’t require the logistics of drug trafficking,” he said. “And as long as demand exists in the USA, and supply is in or passing through Mexico, new criminal organisations will appear.”

When the country’s most-wanted crime boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was recaptured last year, Peña Nieto tweeted “Mission accomplished” but even that success has not caused any measurable reduction in crime: Guzmán’s extradition to the United States in January triggered a fresh wave of violence in his home state of Sinaloa.

Meanwhile rivals such as the Jalisco New Generation cartel – a fast-growing organisation specialising in methamphetamines and excessive violence – moved in on Sinaloa trafficking territories along the Pacific coast.

And the liberalisation of marijuana laws in some US states has prompted some farmers to switch to opium poppies, prompting fresh conflict around the heroin trade.

But despite the worsening violence, there has been little serious consideration of any fresh approaches. Earlier this month, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – the frontrunner in the 2018 presidential election – was widely condemned for floating a possible amnesty for criminals.

The proposal drew comparisons with the pax mafiosa before more than 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) ended in 2000, in which politicians turned a blind eye to drug-dealing in return for peace.

But analysts say even that would not work nowadays as the drug cartels have splintered.

“It’s a useless endeavour, given the broken criminal landscape,” said security analyst Jorge Kawas. “There’s no group of leaders who can be summoned to discuss stopping the violence.”

Politicians are nonetheless still perceived as allying themselves with criminals –especially during costly election campaigns.

“Mexico cannot stop dirty money going into the political system,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, an organised crime expert at Columbia University. “That’s the key to understanding why violence has increased in Mexico.”

Such accusations are all too familiar in Tamaulipas, where two of the past three governors have been indicted in US courts on drug and organised crime charges.

Meanwhile, police departments are dilapidated, dispirited, corrupt and underfunded as state and national politicians pass on security responsibilities on the armed forces.

Earlier this month, congress rammed through a controversial security law cementing the role of the military in the drug war – despite mounting accusations of human rights abuses committed by troops and marines.

In Tamaulipas, residents express exasperation with the flailing government response. But few ask too many questions about the violence around them: they just want the killing to end.

“I don’t care about organised crime,” said one woman, known online as Loba, or She-wolf. “They can traffic all the drugs they want so long as they don’t mess with ordinary people.”

Loba is one of the social media activists who report on cartel violence via Twitter and Facebook. It’s a perilous undertaking: at least two citizen journalists in Tamaulipas have been killed, and Loba herself was kidnapped by the Zetas in 2011 and held for 12 days before her family paid a £10,000 ($13,500) ransom.

When asked why she runs such risks, Loba answered: “Perhaps this can save someone from being shot.”

Mexico recorded more than 29,000 murders in 2017, the highest annual tally in decades, government figures have shown.

The country has struggled with years of violence as the state has battled drug cartels that have increasingly splintered into smaller, more bloodthirsty gangs.

The record 29,168 murders in 2017 is higher than the homicide rate at peak of Mexico’s drug war in 2011, when there were 27,213.

The interior ministry reported the figures on Sunday, which are the highest since comparable records began in 1997.

Violence is a central issue in July’s presidential election. The Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, faces an uphill battle to keep his ruling Institutional Revolutionary party in office.

There were 40% more murder investigations opened last year compared with 2013, Peña Nieto’s first full year in office.

The country’s homicide rate of 20.5 for every 100,000 inhabitants was still below that of Brazil and Colombia, both at 27, and well below El Salvador’s 60.8.

On Thursday Mexico dismissed a claim by Donald Trump that it was the most dangerous country in the world.

Drug violence and turf battles prompted by the expansion of the Jalisco New Generation cartel are believed to be a major factor behind the rising murder rate.