MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- A prison riot Wednesday in the troubled Mexican border town of Juarez left 20 dead and 15 wounded, an official said.
Mexican federal police patrol Monday on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, a major battleground for drug cartels.
None of the dead were police or military officials, said Enrique Torres, a spokesman for the joint operation at the Cereso Estatal de Ciudad Juarez prison.
Authorities called in 200 federal police agents and 50 army soldiers to help put down the riot; two helicopters and an airplane also were employed, he said.
Victor Valencia de los Santos, spokesman for the state government of Chihuahua, told El Universal newspaper the fighting began when rival gangs clashed at the end of conjugal visits.
El Universal identified the gangs as "Los Artistas Asesinos," or the Assassin Artists, and the Aztecas drug gang.
Police official Carlos Gonzalez told El Universal the fight was over control within the prison.
The high-security prison houses many of the nation's most dangerous drug traffickers. The uprising started at 7 a.m. local time and was quelled two hours later, El Universal said.
Don't Miss
The prison is located in a semi-desert area 17 miles (28 kilometers) south of Ciudad Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Juarez is one of the major battlegrounds as drug cartels fight each other and Mexican authorities.
"The situation in Ciudad Juarez is of special concern," the U.S. State Department said in a travel warning issued February 20. "Mexican authorities report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since January 2008. Additionally, this city of 1.6 million people experienced more than 17,000 car thefts and 1,650 carjackings in 2008."
Nationwide, Mexican officials report that more than 5,400 people were killed in 2008, more than double the tally for the previous year.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Street Scene, Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico
(click photo) photo by mxcartel-newsThis picture was taken by mxcartel-news in November, 2008. This district is a well known zone for the kidnapping for ransom of American tourists who stumble into this area at night. There is no police protection after dark on these streets. The Mexican Army withdraws to a barracks at night. Only danger walks at night.
Mxcartel-news.blogspot.com
Gulf Cartel's Zetas Strike U.S., Mexico
(click on chart)Evidence links grenade attacks in U.S., Mexico
01:59 PM CST on Thursday, February 12, 2009
By Angela Kocherga / 11 News Border Bureau
EL PASO, Texas -- Investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms tell the 11 News Border Bureau they have evidence linking grenades used in the attack on the U.S. Consulate, a Mexican television station and a bar in South Texas.
Officials examine a car related to a grenade attack on the offices of the television company Televisa in Monterrey, Mexico, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009.
Serial numbers recovered at the crime scene show the grenades came from the same stash.
“It is still under investigation. We don’t know exactly what the link is but yes, there is definitely association with the three attacks,” said Jim Needles, the assistant special agent in charge of the ATF’s office in Phoenix.
According to an unclassified report ATF sent to law enforcement agencies last week, the grenades are “linked to a major recovery of firearms and grenades in a Mexican warehouse with suspected ties to a drug cartel.”
We’re told that warehouse is in Monterrey, Mexico where two of the attacks happened.
ATF traced the explosives to a lot manufactured in South Korea. Investigators suspect the weapons cache belonged to the Zetas, enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.
The grenades tossed at the U.S. Consulate last October and at the Monterrey TV station in early January did not injury anyone.
In the TV station attack, masked gunmen opened fire and tossed a grenade at the station as it aired its nightly newscast, leaving behind a message warning the station about its coverage of drug gangs. The anchors asked viewers to call for help on the air.
The live grenade tossed on a pool table in San Juan, Texas on January 31 did not detonate because the attacker failed to pull a second safety pin. Investigators tell us three off-duty police officers were among the patrons inside the bar at the time.
“The violence is here. The violence is in the U.S. We hear about the violence in Mexico. It’s not just an issue for the Mexican authorities. It’s an issue for us here in the United States,” Needles said.
Officials examine a car related to a grenade attack on the offices of the television company Televisa in Monterrey, Mexico, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009.
Serial numbers recovered at the crime scene show the grenades came from the same stash.
“It is still under investigation. We don’t know exactly what the link is but yes, there is definitely association with the three attacks,” said Jim Needles, the assistant special agent in charge of the ATF’s office in Phoenix.
According to an unclassified report ATF sent to law enforcement agencies last week, the grenades are “linked to a major recovery of firearms and grenades in a Mexican warehouse with suspected ties to a drug cartel.”
We’re told that warehouse is in Monterrey, Mexico where two of the attacks happened.
ATF traced the explosives to a lot manufactured in South Korea. Investigators suspect the weapons cache belonged to the Zetas, enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.
The grenades tossed at the U.S. Consulate last October and at the Monterrey TV station in early January did not injury anyone.
In the TV station attack, masked gunmen opened fire and tossed a grenade at the station as it aired its nightly newscast, leaving behind a message warning the station about its coverage of drug gangs. The anchors asked viewers to call for help on the air.
The live grenade tossed on a pool table in San Juan, Texas on January 31 did not detonate because the attacker failed to pull a second safety pin. Investigators tell us three off-duty police officers were among the patrons inside the bar at the time.
“The violence is here. The violence is in the U.S. We hear about the violence in Mexico. It’s not just an issue for the Mexican authorities. It’s an issue for us here in the United States,” Needles said.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Drug-related violence in Mexico kills 21
© 2009 The Associated Press
Feb. 11, 2009
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people along the U.S.-Mexican border region, setting off gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.
The hours-long skirmishes around the town of Ciudad Ahumada on Tuesday are part of a wave of drug violence that has engulfed parts of Mexico — and has even spilled across the border — as the army confronts savage narcotics cartels that are flush with drug money and guns from the U.S.
President Felipe Calderon says that more than 6,000 people died last year in drug-related violence, and U.S. authorities have reported a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions linked to the cartels — some of it in cities far from the border, such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Tuesday's bloodshed began when gunmen kidnapped nine suspected members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and executed six of them along the PanAmerican Highway outside of the town, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state. Villa Ahumada is 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of the border city of El Paso, Texas.
Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts were not immediately known, Torres said.
Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded.
© 2009 The Associated Press
Feb. 11, 2009
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people along the U.S.-Mexican border region, setting off gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.
The hours-long skirmishes around the town of Ciudad Ahumada on Tuesday are part of a wave of drug violence that has engulfed parts of Mexico — and has even spilled across the border — as the army confronts savage narcotics cartels that are flush with drug money and guns from the U.S.
President Felipe Calderon says that more than 6,000 people died last year in drug-related violence, and U.S. authorities have reported a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions linked to the cartels — some of it in cities far from the border, such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Tuesday's bloodshed began when gunmen kidnapped nine suspected members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and executed six of them along the PanAmerican Highway outside of the town, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state. Villa Ahumada is 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of the border city of El Paso, Texas.
Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts were not immediately known, Torres said.
Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Click on Map to see in larger window
Mxcartel-news has visited and met many people in Tamaulipas (Gulf Cartel) and Jalisco (Sinaloa Cartel). These groups have the same goals and perhaps these goals can be somewhat mitigated to reduce the widespread killing taking place. I know that these groups all consist of similar personalities with similar intentions. Perhaps these similarities may be able to lead to a similar consensus among the parties. The moral question focusing on drug usage has little to do with this dynamic. The drugs will forever be moving from south to north. We first need to focus how this never ending process can proceed without the violence and deal later with the abuse of the drugs themselves.
Mxcartel-new.blogspot.com
Help for the Corpses in Juarez
Juarez Crime Lab restores dried-out corpses with rehydration
10:28 AM CST on Monday, February 9, 2009
By Angela Kocherga / 11 News
JUAREZ, Mexico
There’s new hope for families searching for missing loved ones around Juarez, Mexico.
The Juarez Crime Lab has a new method of identifying bodies abandoned in the harsh desert
climate there: rehydration.
Using a technique developed by Dr. Alejandro Hernandez, lab workers are able to restore
mummified, cardboard-like skin back to a recognizable texture.
The lab is able to recover fingerprints, and sometimes restore other identifying marks on the
body, like moles, scars, tattoos and – in one case – a woman’s entire face.
10:28 AM CST on Monday, February 9, 2009
By Angela Kocherga / 11 News
JUAREZ, Mexico
There’s new hope for families searching for missing loved ones around Juarez, Mexico.
The Juarez Crime Lab has a new method of identifying bodies abandoned in the harsh desert
climate there: rehydration.
Using a technique developed by Dr. Alejandro Hernandez, lab workers are able to restore
mummified, cardboard-like skin back to a recognizable texture.
The lab is able to recover fingerprints, and sometimes restore other identifying marks on the
body, like moles, scars, tattoos and – in one case – a woman’s entire face.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Why I Do This
Mxcartel-news has had the opportunity to visit
some of the narcolistas' area of control over the last
six years. Numerous visits to Sinaloa's sphere in Estada Jalisco
and recent forays into the Gulf Cartel's sphere
six years. Numerous visits to Sinaloa's sphere in Estada Jalisco
and recent forays into the Gulf Cartel's sphere
in of influence Estada Tamulipas legitimize my stories.
First hand I have lived the life and documented the activities
of these organizations. I have no opinion about the drug trade. I dowant to do my small part in stopping the killing. For this reason
I do this. Still do not know how to do it. But will try anyway.
Mxcartel-news.blogspot.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Arming the Cartels
Cartels in Mexico's drug war get guns from US
By JACQUES BILLEAUD – 2 hours ago
PHOENIX (AP) — As police approached a drug cartel's safe house in northwestern Mexico last May, gunmen inside poured on fire with powerful assault rifles and grenades, killing seven officers whose weapons were no match.
Four more lawmen were wounded in the bloodbath and a cache of weapons was seized, including a single AK-47 assault rifle that authorities say was purchased 800 miles away at a Phoenix gun shop and smuggled into Mexico.
The rifle's presence in Mexico underscores two realities in the government's war against drug traffickers: Nearly all the guns the cartels use are smuggled into Mexico from the U.S., and officials say a small number of corrupt American weapons dealers are making the gun running possible.
"It's a war," said Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona and New Mexico. "It's a war between the drug cartels. And it's a war between the government and the drug cartels. And the weapons of war are the weapons that they are acquiring illegally here in the United States."
By JACQUES BILLEAUD – 2 hours ago
PHOENIX (AP) — As police approached a drug cartel's safe house in northwestern Mexico last May, gunmen inside poured on fire with powerful assault rifles and grenades, killing seven officers whose weapons were no match.
Four more lawmen were wounded in the bloodbath and a cache of weapons was seized, including a single AK-47 assault rifle that authorities say was purchased 800 miles away at a Phoenix gun shop and smuggled into Mexico.
The rifle's presence in Mexico underscores two realities in the government's war against drug traffickers: Nearly all the guns the cartels use are smuggled into Mexico from the U.S., and officials say a small number of corrupt American weapons dealers are making the gun running possible.
"It's a war," said Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona and New Mexico. "It's a war between the drug cartels. And it's a war between the government and the drug cartels. And the weapons of war are the weapons that they are acquiring illegally here in the United States."
Monday, January 26, 2009
Cartel "Stewmaker"
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- A suspect in police custody calls himself a "stewmaker" for a Mexican drug lord, saying he disposed of about 300 bodies by dissolving them in acid.
Santiago Meza Lopez has asked for forgiveness from the families of those he says he targeted.
Santiago Meza Lopez was arrested Thursday in Ensenada, Baja California, but it took police 24 hours to identify him. He says he works for drug lord Teodoro Garcia Simental, also known as "el Teo," a powerful drug trafficker.
Meza, who is shown handcuffed and flanked by guards in video released by the government, calls himself "Teo's stewmaker" and says he was paid $600 a week for his macabre duties. The victims, he said, were men who owed Garcia something or had betrayed him.
A native of Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Meza was arrested along with three other people, including a minor female who said she was contracted for a social event. Other people sought by police were in the area at the time but were able to escape, officials said.
Now, Meza is asking for forgiveness.
"To the families, please forgive me," he said in the video.
Mexican police have not specifically said whether they believe that all elements of Meza's story are credible.
He has told police where he buried some of the bodies.
Now authorities, along with citizens groups and the families of the disappeared, are searching for them.
They hope Meza could have information about the location of their friends and relatives.
Authorities say Garcia formed part of the Arellano Felix cartel but is currently said by intelligence sources to be operating with the Sinaloa cartel.
Officials say seven brothers and four sisters of the Arellano-Felix family inherited the Tijuana, Mexico-based drug cartel from Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo in 1989, after his arrest for drug trafficking.
Today, the notorious cartel is split into two factions that have engaged in brutal fighting that has accounted for nearly all the violence in Tijuana, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. More than 400 people were killed last year in drug-related violence.
Eduardo Arellano-Felix, who police said was the last remaining brother to have an active role in the cartel, was arrested in October.
Santiago Meza Lopez has asked for forgiveness from the families of those he says he targeted.
Santiago Meza Lopez was arrested Thursday in Ensenada, Baja California, but it took police 24 hours to identify him. He says he works for drug lord Teodoro Garcia Simental, also known as "el Teo," a powerful drug trafficker.
Meza, who is shown handcuffed and flanked by guards in video released by the government, calls himself "Teo's stewmaker" and says he was paid $600 a week for his macabre duties. The victims, he said, were men who owed Garcia something or had betrayed him.
A native of Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Meza was arrested along with three other people, including a minor female who said she was contracted for a social event. Other people sought by police were in the area at the time but were able to escape, officials said.
Now, Meza is asking for forgiveness.
"To the families, please forgive me," he said in the video.
Mexican police have not specifically said whether they believe that all elements of Meza's story are credible.
He has told police where he buried some of the bodies.
Now authorities, along with citizens groups and the families of the disappeared, are searching for them.
They hope Meza could have information about the location of their friends and relatives.
Authorities say Garcia formed part of the Arellano Felix cartel but is currently said by intelligence sources to be operating with the Sinaloa cartel.
Officials say seven brothers and four sisters of the Arellano-Felix family inherited the Tijuana, Mexico-based drug cartel from Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo in 1989, after his arrest for drug trafficking.
Today, the notorious cartel is split into two factions that have engaged in brutal fighting that has accounted for nearly all the violence in Tijuana, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. More than 400 people were killed last year in drug-related violence.
Eduardo Arellano-Felix, who police said was the last remaining brother to have an active role in the cartel, was arrested in October.
News from the Frontline
Battlefield: Juarez
Darkening days in Juarez
Many fear Mexican city's drug violence puts nation at risk of collapse
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Mexican troops patrol Ciudad Juarez, near the bridge that leads to El Paso, last year. In 2008, almost a third of the gangland murders in Mexico took place in Juarez.ResourcesCITY UNDER SIEGEFacts and figures about the violence plaguing the Mexican border city of Juarez:80: Estimated number of murders in Juarez through the first three weeks of 2009.10: Number of people found murdered in Juarez on one day (Jan. 14) of this year.1,600:: Approximate number of murders in Juarez in 2008, almost one-third of the country’s 5,400 gangland-style slayings last year.500: Estimated number of gangs in and around Juarez.CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — In this carnage-racked border city of 1.3 million, more than 80 murders have been clocked in the past three weeks, and kidnappings, extortions, robberies and rapes further bedevil an already rattled population.So far, the new year looks to be bringing as much, if not more, havoc than the last.“Walking in the streets of Juarez is an extreme sport,” said political scientist Tony Payan, an expert on border violence, repeating a grim quip making the rounds.Though little more than 1 percent of Mexico’s 105 million population lives in Juarez, it accounted for almost one-third of the country’s nearly 5,400 gangland murders last year, according to the federal government. And with President Felipe Calderon’s war on the country’s powerful drug syndicates unlikely to abate, this city bordering El Paso looks to remain a prime battleground.Some U.S. security experts warn that Mexico teeters on meltdown — of being a “failed state.” Mexican leaders shrug off the notion, but Juarez’s criminal chaos wails like a siren before an approaching storm.“Those of us on the border are evidence of how raw things can get,” said Lucinda Vargas, a former World Bank official who heads the Juarez Strategic Plan, a think tank. “There is not a corner of the city that escapes the effects of crime.”Beyond gangstersOnce contained largely to the gangsters themselves, the mayhem has become generalized.Consider Tuesday, alone:• • Authorities recovered the decapitated head of a police chief from a town just downriver. Three other heads stuffed into a cooler were left on the steps of a city hall in a neighboring village.• • Two state police detectives were shot to death in their patrol truck in a downtown Juarez parking lot.• • A Juarez traffic police commander was kidnapped by unknown assailants.And then consider that 10 people were killed the previous Wednesday, Jan. 14, including a 19-year-old law student who was a varsity baseball pitcher. He had been abducted 30 hours earlier from his family’s townhouse near the border.The parents of the student, Jaime Irigoyen, said their son’s abductors wore army uniforms and spoke with southern Mexico accents, like many of the 3,000 soldiers patrolling the city’s streets.A Mexican army statement denied soldiers were involved.“That whoever deprived him of liberty were dressed in military-style uniforms in no way says they were soldiers,” the army said. “We call on the general public not to be fooled by criminal gangs.”But members of the public said they saw men in uniform commit crimes. Witnesses said the eight gunmen who stormed a prayer service at a drug rehabilitation center last August and killed eight people were attired in military garb as well.“They were dressed like soldiers,” Socorro Garcia, the Assemblies of God pastor who was leading the service, told reporters.No arrests in deathsAs in most of the city’s more than 1,600 homicides last year, no one has been arrested for the clinic attack nor for the student’s killing.“One can’t take refuge in a real rule of law, because it doesn’t exist here,” said Vargas, a Juarez native and reformer who nonetheless returns to El Paso each night.Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Washington has made contingency plans to bolster U.S. border defenses if gangsters seize control of a city like Juarez.And former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey recently warned that Mexico faces becoming a “narco state.” U.S. military planners have hypothesized that Mexico and Pakistan pose the greatest risk of sudden collapse.Mexican officials have dismissed such talk as overblown.“We are putting the house in order,” Calderon said in a recent speech. “Mexico has political stability.”True enough, perhaps. People still line up to pay their taxes and vote at election time. Public utilities work much of the time. Police direct traffic, patrol neighborhoods.Most of Mexico — and even much of Juarez — functions peacefully. But some fundamentals have gone dangerously awry.Problems amid progressInternational trade has built Juarez’s new highways, office towers and gated suburbs.But too many of the city’s people watch that progress with their noses pressed to a window. Factory jobs start at less that $50 a week, and even that work is dwindling amid the global recession. Criminal enterprise — selling narcotics in the neighborhoods, or helping to smuggle drugs to U.S. consumers — pays far more.Thousands of young men belong to the 500 street gangs that police estimate operate in Juarez.The gangs ally with the larger drug syndicates and battle one another for turf.“The young don’t have any long-range plans,” said sociologist Julia Monarrez, who studies the gender factors of Juarez’s violence, which also has claimed nearly 600 women since the early 1990s. “They are disposable.”But amid the violence here, many Juarez residents with money and U.S. visas have slipped across the Rio Grande to El Paso.As for those who remain, they shut themselves inside after sundown.“In a micro sense,” Vargas said, “Juarez is a failed state.”
Posted by egretbay@gmail.com at 10:13 AM 0 comments
Friday, January 23, 2009
MEXICO
Juarez vigilantes: We'll kill a crook every day
By Angela Kocherga / 11 News
JUAREZ, Mexico—A vigilante group in Juarez is saying they plan to take out criminals themselves if the government can’t get the job done.The group is calling themselves the Citizens Commando of Juarez.They are promising to kill a criminal every 24 hours unless the government cracks down on the drug cartel violence that plagues the city.Last year, hundreds of people perished because of the violence.The Citizens Commando sent out a ten-part manifesto giving the government until July to take action.The mayor of Juarez said he doesn’t know if the group will actually carry out their theat.He is asking citizens to be patient with crime-fighting efforts.
Posted by egretbay@gmail.com at 1:42 PM 0 comments
Thursday, January 22, 2009
U.S. Marines tossed from Tijuana
LOS ANGELES — For tens of thousands of U.S. Marines in Southern California, new orders from the brass amount to: Baghdad si, Tijuana no.Citing a wave of violence and murder in Mexico, the commanding officer of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton has made the popular military "R&R" destinations of Tijuana and nearby beaches effectively off-limits for his Marines.The order by Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland restricts travel into Mexico by the 44,000 members of the unit, many of whom have had multiple tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat zones under their belts — or are there now.The limits were first put in place for the Christmas holiday. Last week the commander extended the order indefinitely, said Mike Alvarez, civilian public information officer for the unit at Camp Pendleton."The situation in Mexico is now more dangerous than usual," he said. "The intent is just to look out for the Marines' safety and well-being."
Posted by egretbay@gmail.com
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