Monday, October 13, 2008
Drug
Wars in Mexico, State Elections and Human Rights
Frontera
NorteSur
A few lyrics from an old
Bob Marley song went like this:
War in the east
War in the west
War up north
War down south
Although
Marley's tune spoke about a different place and different circumstances, it captured the situation in Mexico during the last
days of September and the first days of October. Across the country more bodies piled up, more grenades were tossed and more
psychological warfare banners were displayed in a murky battle for public opinion.
The worst carnage was centered in
Tijuana, where drug cartels are battling for control of the local market bordering the United States. Anywhere from 53 to
61 people were found gruesomely murdered in a period of nine days according to various press reports. In one case, two victims
were hanged from a public overpass, and in another instance a dozen bodies were dumped in front of an elementary school.
Several
of the Tijuana murders were accompanied by messages directed against "El Ingeniero," an individual identified as Fernando
Sanchez Arellano, who allegedly is the current head of the Arellano Felix family that has long dominated the Tijuana drug
trade.
According to media accounts, a new set of challengers consisting of dissident Arellano Felix members supported
by Chapo Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel is attempting to wrest control of the Tijuana "plaza" from the old organization, which in
turn is supported by an alliance of the Juarez Cartel, the Beltran-Leyva organization and the Zetas.
Four months ago,
Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a high official with Mexico's Office of the Federal Attorney General (PGR), declared that
the federal government had paralyzed Chapo Guzman's operations.
Closely following two local prison uprisings that left
at least 23 people dead last month, the Tijuana violence is another sign that the war between rival cartels which escalated
in Ciudad Juarez earlier this year has moved west. In between Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, the border city of Nogales, Sonora,
has become another battleground. From January to August of this year, 67 killings blamed on drug trafficking were counted
in Nogales.
Cited in the Mexican press, a Colombian newspaper, El Tiempo, reported that the Mexican violence was connected
to events in Colombia, where US-supported anti-drug campaigns and cartel restructurings have created power vacuums and competition
for control of the international cocaine trade.
As summer turned into fall, violence showed no let-up in Mexico, with
Friday, October 3, recorded as the bloodiest day in the year so far. At least 42 people were reported murdered across the
country on Bloody Friday alone.
In Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, prominent individuals like Francisco Sagrero Villareal
were among the slain. A 43-year-old Ciudad Juarez resident who had been in the public limelight for posting signs asking that
bodies not be dumped in his neighborhood, Sagrero was killed as bullets riddled his home on October 3.
In Chihuahua City, Aldo
Arenivar Serna, a former deputy state attorney general, was gunned down in a shopping center parking lot. At the time of his
murder, Arenivar was a member of a law firm associated with Fernando Rodriguez Moreno, the current head of the PRI political
party's fraction in the Chihuahua state legislature.
To the south, in the state of Durango, three people were reported
killed in an October 3 clash between Mexican soldiers and suspected drug traffickers that was punctuated by automatic weapons
fire and a grenade explosion.
Meanwhile, six individuals from Durango were arraigned by the PGR for allegedly participating
in recent violent attacks in the Juarez Valley bordering the US.
The incidents included the burning of a ranch and
several homes, the kidnappings of at least two people and the murder of one. Reports of numerous families fleeing the rural
zone continued to appear in the Mexican press.
Violence reared in many other areas including Sinaloa, Puebla and Nuevo
Leon, where nine patrol cars belonging to the Federal Preventive Police were torched. On October 3, the mayor of the town
of Ixtapan de la Sal in the state of Mexico, Salvador Vergara, was gunned down.
As the first week of October drew to
a close, an estimated 3,000-3,500 people had been killed in narco-related violence in Mexico this year.
Arriving in
Mexico City October 6 for meetings with high-ranking Calderon administration officials, US Attorney General Michael Mukasey
declined to characterize the overall security situation as a crisis.
"There is no reason to be pessimistic," Mukasey
was quoted in the Mexican press. The Bush administration's top law enforcement official said anti-narcotics assistance approved
by the US Congress as part of the so-called Merida Initiative should begin flowing within the next couple of weeks. Mukasey
expressed confidence that the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels were losing ground and would "fall over the long-term."
On the
streets, however, unknown individuals claiming the Gulf Cartel showed no intention of giving up anytime soon. So-called narco-banners
purportedly signed by the group were displayed in Tamaulipas, Puebla, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Durango, Sonora, and Veracruz
states on the same day Mukasey touched down in Mexico.
The messages were similar to banners previously displayed in
Reynosa, Cancun, Oaxaca and Mexico City that blamed a rival organization, La Familia, for the September 15 Independence Day
celebration grenade attack in Morelia, Michoacan, that killed eight innocent bystanders. The banners offered rewards of millions
of dollars for anyone helping to capture the alleged perpetrators of the attack.
In a bizarre twist to an already extraordinary
situation, one of the messages claimed that members of La Familia, crazed by methamphetamines, had moved from being simple
drug traffickers to Islamic-inspired terrorists.
In southern Guerrero state, meanwhile, issues of party politics, drugs,
insurgency and counterinsurgency came together to create a volatile backdrop for the October 5 state and municipal elections.
In the days leading up to the elections, several candidates and representatives from different political parties were killed
or attacked, reports of attempted vote-buying circulated and several organizations called on citizens to boycott the political
exercise.
On October 1, El Sur reporter Karina Contreras wrote that she and three colleagues from other Acapulco newspapers
were briefly detained by the Mexican army at a checkpoint set up on a road leading to land slated for the construction of
the planned La Parota dam. Facing the loss of their homes, many rural residents have organized stiff opposition to the project.
According to Contreras, the journalists refused soldiers' requests to erase film.
Three days later, on October 4, Francisco
Santos Arriola, a federal deputy from the center-left PRD party, narrowly escaped what was reported as an attempted
kidnapping by 15 armed men outside the Holiday Inn in the tourist resort of Ixtapa.
In a communiqué posted on the Internet,
the leftist Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) urged citizens to refrain from casting ballots. Born as an offshoot
from the Popular Revolutionary Party in 1998, the ERPI accused the state's major political parties of being in league with
drug traffickers and repressors.
"How can (people) vote for candidates for public office when they are representatives
of drug-trafficking groups?" the ERPI asked.
The guerrilla organization said paramilitary groups headed by military
officials were responsible for murdering and disappearing people in the Costa Chica, Costa Grande and Tierra Caliente regions
of the state.
In an interview with the Mexican press, a researcher from the Autonomous University of Guerrero credited
counterinsurgency motives for the promotion of drug trafficking in different regions of his impoverished state during the
1960s and 1970s.
"Now we can see the consequences of this stupidity just by looking at the wave of executions in these
regions, and especially in Tierra Caliente," said Arturo Miranda Ramirez. Calling Guerrero a "laboratory for repression,"
Miranda said the state has suffered massacres, counterinsurgency campaigns and low-intensity warfare for decades.
For
whatever reasons, a majority of eligible voters, perhaps as many as 60-65 percent, did indeed boycott the October 5 elections.
The
preliminary results gave the former ruling PRI, which lost many offices including the governorship and state congress in Guerrero
in recent years, a solid victory. If upheld, the vote reconfirms the tendency of the PRI to win elections where voter turnouts
are low, and it augurs well for the party in the upcoming 2009 federal congressional elections.
Irregularities were reported
in Sunday's Guerrero elections, including vote-buying and widespread delays in opening the polls on time.
In a serious outbreak
of political violence, members of a rural community in the state of Chiapas near the Guatemalan border accused state and federal
police of killing six people, injuring ten and detaining an undetermined of number of others in a conflict over the future
of the Chinkultic archeological ruin. Members of the Ejido Miguel Hidalgo, in the municipality of La Trinitaria, had earlier
seized the old Mayan city after contending that authorities were allowing a tourist dollar generating enterprise to fall into
disarray.
The dispute culminated in a police raid on the ejido in which counter-attacking residents captured scores
of officers and their weapons. On October 3, police responded with a tear-gas laden assault that resulted in the deaths and
injuries. Chiapas' state justice minister was later quoted as saying that five policemen are under investigation for four
deaths.
The nationwide violence coincided with Mexico's unofficial observance of the 40th anniversary of the massacre
of students in Mexico City. Different accounts hold the army responsible for killing anywhere between 26 and 300 students
during a pro-democracy demonstration on the eve of the 1968 Olympic Games held in the Mexican capital. Although subsequent
government probes linked members of the military, former President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, and his Interior Minister and the subsequent
president, Luis Echeverria, to the massacre, no one has ever been held accountable for the killings.
The memory of
October 2 was raised during a Ciudad Juarez protest staged by relatives of individuals accused of drug offenses last week.
Gathered outside federal court offices, scores of people accused the army of torturing suspects and fabricating legal charges.
"We don't want another Mexico 1968," read one protest placard.
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Sources:
El Universal, October 3, 4, 5, 6, 2008. Articles by Julieta Martinez, Francisco Meza-Carranza, Rafael Rivera, Silvia Otero, Notimex, and correspondents. Univision, October 6, 2008. Norte,
October 3, 2008. Articles by Pablo Hernandez Batista and Angel Zubia Garcia. Lapolaka.com,
October 1, 3 and 5, 2008. Frontenet.com, October 1, 2008. Article by Sergio Valdes. El Sur, October 2 , 5 and 6, 2008. Articles
by Karina Contreras, and editorial staff. Frontera/SUN, June 6, 2008 and October 4, 2008. La Jornada, September 25,
2008; October 2, 4 , 5, 6, 2008. Articles by Sergio Ocampo, Misael Habana, Antonio Heras, Saul Maldonado, Helio Enriquez,
Angeles Mariscal, Hermann Bellinghausen, correspondents, and the AFP news agency. La Voz de Nuevo Mexico/Agencia Reforma, October 3, 2008. Arizona Daily Star, September 14,
2008. Article by Brady McCombs. Cedema.org
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Reprinted with authorization
from Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source.
Translation FNS
