The recent violence in Mexico, much of it drug-related, is showing no signs of letting up.
A grisly discovery Thursday on the Yucatan peninsula -- one of the country's most popular tourist destinations -- saw the violence spread to a state that, until now, largely has been spared the problems seen in other parts of Mexico. Although the Yucatan has seen scattered violence, it had not been a scene of severe fighting between drug-trafficking groups. Ken Ellingwood reports: "In a sign of the spreading violence in Mexico, 11 decapitated bodies were found late Thursday near the colonial city of Merida on the Yucatan peninsula, officials said."
"The bodies bore signs of torture and some were unclothed. Yucatan state officials said a 12th decapitated body was found later about 120 miles south of Merida, a city that is often used as a tourist gateway to the famed Maya ruins at Chichen Itza."
Warring drug gangs have routinely decapitated rivals during the last two years as they battle for coveted routes for smuggling drugs into the United States.
Four decapitated bodies were found in Tijuana earlier this week in a incident likely linked to drug trafficking.
Drug-related violence in Mexico has grown more savage amid a crackdown on traffickers by the government of President Felipe Calderon, says Ellingwood, and more than 2,500 people have died in drug violence, according to unofficial tallies by Mexican news organizations.
Go here for our special report on the drug-related violence in Mexico, Mexico Under Siege.
Click here for more on Mexico and here for more on the drug trade across Latin America.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Mexican soldiers march in last year's Independence Day parade in Mexico City. President Felipe Calderon has deployed 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers to try to secure large swaths of the country against entrenched drug traffickers. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times
The gruesome discoveries this week of five bodies in Tijuana, four of them decapitated, have shattered a period of relative calm and revived concerns that organized crime groups are escalating their battle for control of this border city.
Two bodies were found Monday morning on a hillside, one with its head placed on its upper back, reports Richard Marosi.
Three more bodies were discovered Tuesday morning in an illegal dump.
Their heads, charred from gasoline burns, were placed at their feet, according to the Baja California state attorney general's office.
Authorities have not identified the victims.
To read the full report on the bodies found in Tijuana, click here.
For more on the drug trade across Latin America, click here.
For our special report on Mexico Under Siege, see here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Facing wide public indignation over Mexico's crime epidemic, President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed new steps to fight kidnapping and other violent offenses, writes Ken Ellingwood of the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City.
He called for anti-abduction squads, special high-security prisons with separate areas for kidnappers, closer tracking of cellphones and more aid for local authorities to combat what he described as the "cancer of criminality" that has developed in Mexico.
Calderon summoned governors and police officials from across Mexico to chart a way out of a crisis that has dominated the news and put the nation's leaders on the defensive.
The crime issue has dominated the Mexican agenda since the killing this month of a 14-year-old kidnapping victim, Fernando Marti. The kidnapping, which appeared to involve at least two Mexico City police officers, tapped deep resentment over impunity and corruption.
Read the rest of Ellingwood's report on anti-crime measures in Mexico here.
Click here for more on the drug trade.
For our special report on Mexico's drug violence problems, go to our Mexico Under Siege page.
For more on Mexico in general, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
The governor of violence-torn Chihuahua state on Monday urged President Felipe Calderon to revamp his anti-crime strategy after a weekend shooting there killed 13 people, including a baby, reports the L.A. Times' Ken Ellingwood.
Gunmen opened fire Saturday on a family gathering in the northern border state, which has become Mexico's most violent spot amid bloody feuding between drug gangs and a government crackdown on them.
Following the attack, Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza called on federal authorities to improve intelligence gathering, clean up corrupt police forces and review a government offensive that has deployed more than 3,000 troops and federal agents in Chihuahua.
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Gunshot victims of drug violence in Mexico are being treated in the United States at tax payers' expense, according to this report from the L.A. Times' Miguel Bustillo.
Using the wounding of deputy police chief Lorenzo de la Torre Torres as an example, Bustillo writes: "The only hospital within a 280-mile radius to offer state-of-the-art trauma care, Thomason has become an unwilling treatment center of choice for law enforcement officials and others in the vicinity wounded in Mexico's drug turf battles. The violence has killed more than 2,000 people this year, and more than double that number in the 20 months since President Felipe Calderon began deploying 40,000 troops across the country to crack down on narcotics trafficking."
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, Ken Ellingwood reports that anti-crime activists in Mexico say they have audio proof that the former attorney general of coastal Tabasco state was in league with drug traffickers while in office.
For more on our Mexico Under Siege series, click here.
Click here for more on the drug trade and here for Mexico.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Drug and gang-related violence continued in Mexico this week. In the northern border town of Juarez, gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center on Wednesday night.
They shot and killed eight patients and injured six others, the BBC reports this morning. The hooded gunmen, all wearing body armor, burst into the drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation center, dragged the patients to the patio and shot them.
About 40 people have been killed in drug cartel-related violence in the city this week.
In July, Tracy Wilkinson reported from Juarez on how drug-related killings have taken thousands of lives. Ciudad Juarez has become a singular symbol of Mexico's drug war, a concentration of everything that can go wrong. About 3,000 troops of the Mexican army arrived here after President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug traffickers, yet the killings have soared.
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Anti-crime activists in Mexico say they have audio proof that the former attorney general of coastal Tabasco state was in league with drug traffickers while in office.
An audio recording aired this week purportedly contains a telephone conversation between the former state prosecutor, Gustavo Rosario Torres, and a deputy as they discussed an expected payment from an apparent cocaine deal.
The recording was played during a news conference by activist Jose Antonio Ortega Sanchez, who heads a Mexico City-based group called the Citizens Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice. It is one of two audio recordings that Ortega’s group and a second organization say are evidence of corruption by Rosario, who served as Tabasco’s prosecutor before he resigned last month.
One of the recordings purportedly captures a conversation between Rosario and the deputy state attorney general, Alex Alvarez, in which the two men discuss an awaited delivery of cash.
The scratchy-sounding audio files have been posted, with added transcription in the original Spanish, on the website of a Mexican online magazine called Reporte Indigo.
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Another day, another alarming revelation of alleged involvement by government officials in Mexican drug-trafficking.
As the L.A. Times' Ken Ellingwood reports today, six members of the Mexican government's top organized-crime unit have been arrested on suspicion of leaking information to drug traffickers.
"An official in the Mexican attorney general's office said a supervisor and five agents are thought to have passed tips to smugglers in the west-central state of Sinaloa for about three months."
According to a Mexican official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, "The men disclosed details about evidence that had been seized during government raids and information about arrestees. He said authorities were looking into possible involvement by other employees of the agency, known as SIEDO, its initials in Spanish."
"SIEDO, which investigates drug and arms smuggling as well as kidnapping and terrorism cases, is well known and generally trusted by American law enforcement agencies."
"Confirmation that SIEDO was infiltrated by drug traffickers would be a black eye for the 400-member agency and for President Felipe Calderon's 20-month-old offensive against organized crime."
"Mexico is awaiting $400 million in U.S. crime-fighting aid [under the so-called Merida Initiative] as the first installment in what the two nations describe as a stepped-up joint push to combat the flow of illegal drugs into the United States."
-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City
A top U.S. anti-drug official says coca production in Bolivia is still rising despite government efforts to eradicate coca fields, says this Associated Press report from La Paz.
The State Department's top drug enforcement officer, Assistant Secretary David Johnson, says Bolivia's eradication efforts have been creative and have reached the goals set by the government.
But Johnson said Tuesday after meeting with President Evo Morales that "coca production continues to rise by significant quantities" despite these efforts.
Coca is the main ingredient in cocaine, but also has traditional uses in Andean nations.
In 2006, Morales implemented a program to eradicate 12,355 acres (5,000 hectares) of coca a year. But this eradication has been accompanied by new cultivation elsewhere.
-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City
In Mexico's drug war, Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito racked up crime-fighting credentials worthy of the Dark Knight, making record seizures of drugs and weapons and forcing out top Baja California law enforcement officials he accused of corruption and of having links to organized crime, writes the L.A. Times' Richard Marosi. "But in a surprise move Thursday, the general was relieved of his command, abruptly ending his controversial 20-month stint as the leader of President Felipe Calderon's army-led battle against organized crime in the northern states of Baja California and Sonora."
"Aponte won broad public support for aggressive tactics against drug gangs whose turf wars have left hundreds dead here, but he generated controversy by denouncing scores of police officers, prosecutors and officials by name in blistering letters published in newspapers across the state."
Meanwhile, Richard A. Serrano reports on how high-powered automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from U.S. border states into Mexico, fueling a war among drug traffickers, the army and police that has left thousands dead. "The munitions are hidden under trucks and stashed in the trunks of cars, or concealed under the clothing of people who brazenly walk across the international bridges. They are showing up in seizures and in the aftermath of shootouts between the cartels and police in Mexico."
"More than 90% of guns seized at the border or after raids and shootings in Mexico have been traced to the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Last year, 2,455 weapons traces requested by Mexico showed that guns had been purchased in the United States, according to the ATF. Texas, Arizona and California accounted for 1,805 of those traced weapons."
Click here to read more on Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito and here for more U.S arms heading south of the border into Mexico.
For more on the drug trade in general, click here.
Photo: General Sergio Aponte Polito, (center) commander of the military forces of Baja California and Baja California Governor José Guadalupe Osuna Millán (in suit left to Aponte) pass in reviue of the assembled federal troops, police and military in Tijuana, Mexico's City Hall April 29, 2008. Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Corrupt police are nothing new in Mexico. However, the latest development in the country -- in which two police officers have been arrested in suspicion of the kidnapping and slaying of the 14-year-old son of a rich businessman -- is a shocking reminder of the levels to which the nation's police work in collusion with the criminal underworld. A third man -- allegedly a civilian -- was also taken into custody in connection with the crime.
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 While Mexican authorities continued battling their drug trafficking problems, things farther south appear to be taking a turn for the worse.
Suspected drug flights from Venezuela to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola rose 44% over the first three months of the year, U.S. officials say, a surge in activity that some believe was behind Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's expressions of willingness to resume anti-drug cooperation with Washington.
Despite the possible rapprochement with Chavez three years after the leftist leader suspended joint anti-drug efforts, U.S. counter-narcotics officials in Venezuela and the Caribbean say they see no sign of cooperation or of reduced traffic, reports the Times' Chris Kraul.
Read on about Venezuela's drug flights here.
For more posts on the drug trade in the Americas, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Venezuela's foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, right, and Venezuela's interior minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, wave to journalists during an anti-drug summit in the Cartagena, Colombia, on Aug. 1. Fernando Vergara / Associated Press
Alleged drug kingpin Ever Villafane Martinez, a Colombian believed to be the main cocaine supplier to an offshoot of Mexico's notorious Sinaloa cartel, was arrested in Mexico City, federal police said Friday.
One of the hemisphere's most wanted fugitives, Villafane Martinez has been on the lam since 2001, when he escaped from a maximum-security lockup in Colombia while awaiting extradition to the United States on narcotics charges, writes Marla Dickerson.
His arrest was a rare piece of good news for President Felipe Calderon in his U.S.-backed war against Mexico's violent drug cartels. Authorities nabbed Villafane Martinez on Wednesday at a home in the Mexican capital's upscale Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood, where he apparently had lived for some time alongside millionaires and captains of industry.
Meanwhile, north of the border two Mexican federal agents were charged Friday with possession of alleged drug money after they were arrested at a West Covina home with more than $500,000, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, reports Richard Marosi.
Carlos Cedano Filippini, 35, the lead agent from the Mexicali office of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion, and Victor Manuel Juarez, 36, were arrested Wednesday as part of an ongoing narcotics investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Los Angeles Police Department.
Read the rest of this story about the arrest of Ever Villafane Martinez here.
To read on about the arrest of the two Mexican federal agents in Los Angeles, click here.
For more posts about the Mexican drug trade, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
A high-ranking official in the Mexican attorney general's office has resigned under pressure amid poor results in the nation's battle against kidnappers and drug traffickers, reports Marla Dickerson.
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La Plaza tries to follow discussion as it develops on the Merida Initiative, a bill that was approved by the United States Congress under which the Mexican government receive $400 million of help from the U.S in its fight against the country's powerful drug cartels and organized crime networks.
Reactions to the bill have been mixed. Some feel it's a good way to fight drug-related crime and violence in Mexico. Others are worried that the legislation puts more money into the hands of an already corrupt law enforcement branch in Mexico, which has a terrible human rights record. Click here for a la Plaza report on videos that surfaced in the country and show the Mexican police allegedly receiving lessons in torture.
The following links show the bill discussed on Democracy Now and Al Jazeera -- thanks to Americas MexicoBlog for the heads up:
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Mexico is as famous for its drug violence as it is for its tequila these days. As the country continues its bloody battle against the powerful drug cartels in the region, the popularity of some of the cultural facets that surround the drug trade are dropping. The whiskey is flowing at La Cantina when Calor Norteña kicks out the accordion jams for a homage to gangster Arturo Villarreal, who rose from drug cartel protege to crime boss in a six-year reign of mayhem and murder, writes Richard Marosi from Tijuana.
"The law calls me a dangerous [criminal] so don't dare take me on because I have bullets to spare," the band members sing, as beer-swilling youths shout and long-nailed women twirl on the dance floor.
Since drug traffickers set foot in this border city, Mexican musicians have strummed along, chronicling their exploits in the traditional polka-based rhythms of the corrido. The sub-genre has been a soundtrack for the city, with bands like Calor Norteña sprinkling their repertoires with tunes about the city's most feared gunmen. But with drug war violence and kidnappings escalating, the narcocorridos are losing their swagger.
Radio stations have stopped playing the songs and promoters have banned the music from many public events. Nightclub owners ask bands to turn down narcocorrido requests. At the cavernous Las Pulgas nightclub downtown, managers banned the music two months ago -- a decision tantamount to West Hollywood's Whisky A Go-Go banning heavy metal hair bands in the 1980s.
Read more of Richard Marosi's report on about narcocorridos in Tijuana, "Mexico under siege: Muting the music of mayhem."
For more on Mexico's drug trafficking problems click here.
Photo: Alfredo Madrigal, a member of Herederos de la Frontera, plays accordion for admiring fans at the Baby Rock club in Tijuana. His group specializes in traditional Norteño-style ballads. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
The Dominican Republic's drug czar has criticized the United States for failing to support Caribbean nations in their fight against drug wars, while at the same time handing millions of dollars to Mexico and Central America to help them fight their powerful drug cartels and organized crime.
Quoted in Dominican Today this morning, Marino Vinicio Castillo, who is the drug advisor to the country's executive branch, said that the United States government's neglect of the Dominican Republic is obvious. "As an example he said Plan Merida, in which the U.S. gives US $500 million to Mexico and Central America to fight drug cartels, organized crime and human trafficking, but donates only US $2.5 million to Dominican Republic and Haiti for the same effort."
The Merida Initiative has been criticized as being too much money, coming too late, by some, and not enough money by others. Read here to see a discussion by two experts, and here to read more about Plan Merida in general.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
The capture was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine, writes The Times' Ken Ellingwood.
The 33-foot vessel turned out to be crammed with parcels apparently containing cocaine, possibly tons of it. The disheveled crew of four had emerged in stocking feet and baggy shorts, claiming to have shipped out from Colombia a week earlier under threat of death.
Capt. Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican navy, said authorities were hauling the "very well-constructed" vessel to shore and had yet to weigh the contraband, which he said probably amounted to tons.
The unusual episode suggests that the government, already struggling against drug traffickers by land and air, faces a vexing new front undersea.
Read more about drug smuggling submarines in Mexico here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Los Angeles
The nation's drug wars sank to new depths Wednesday as the Mexican navy announced it had seized a submarine that was transporting cocaine off the southern coast.
The navy intercepted the 33-foot vessel about 125 miles south of Puerto de Salina Cruz in Oaxaca state.
Jose Luis Vergara, a navy spokesman, said in a radio interview that special forces waited until the vessel surfaced before rappelling from helicopters and overpowering the four-man crew.
Read more about the drug trafficker's submarine here.
See the latest on Mexico's drug trade here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Los Angeles
Photo: Mexican navy sailors ride on top of a seized drug smuggling submarine as it was being towed by a navy ship off the coast of the Pacific resort city of Huatulco, Mexico. Credit: Miguel Angel Tovar / Associated Press
Scooped up by gunmen as she walked near her home, 12-year-old Alexia Moreno hardly had a chance. The gangsters were driving straight into a shootout. Within minutes, she was dead, shot in the head as she cowered in the back seat, writes the L.A. Times' Tracy Wilkinson from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
It was two weeks before her sixth-grade graduation.
Alexia's death in a city so accustomed to death struck a nerve because she was -- in this city tortured by killings, broad-daylight gun battles and rampant kidnappings -- an innocent victim.
Continue reading this story about drug violence in Mexico here.
Read more about Mexico's drug wars here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Los Angeles
Photo: A relative of Alexia Moreno touches her coffin during the burial ceremony in Ciudad Juarez. Alexia was shot in the head while cowering in the back seat of the vehicle into which she and her companions had been scooped up by gang members. Credit: Luis Torres / Diario de Juarez
"At least 21 people, including a 12-year-old girl and other ordinary citizens, have been killed by warring drug gangs since Thursday in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, in one of the worst spasms of violence in memory in a region long conditioned to narcotics-related savagery," writes the Times' Marla Dickerson and Cecilia Sanchez.
The wave of deadly mayhem began with the audacious daytime shooting of a dozen people in the capital, Culiacan, and continued during the weekend and into Monday. The deaths of innocents, including the young girl, who had just left a party, have terrified the public and left many questioning the effectiveness of the federal government's ongoing crackdown on drug trafficking.
The United States Congress recently approved The Merida Initiative, which will give the Mexican Government U.S. $400 million to spend on their fight against the country's drug cartels.
-- Deborah Bonello in Los Angeles
At the end of last month, the Merida Initiative -- a $400 million aid package for Mexico aimed at helping the country fight its powerful drug cartels and organized crime networks -- was approved by the United States Congress.
The Merida Bill faced stiff opposition across the political spectrum and from both sides of the border. Detractors in the United States worry that the funding will put more resources into already corrupt law enforcement agencies in Mexico. Here in Mexico, critics are concerned that the help from the U.S. administration signals American interference in the country's affairs.
Here on La Plaza, we receive many comments and questions in response to posts on the issue of what is also known as Plan Mexico, which we have covered extensively. So today, we put questions about the aid package to two specialists on the subject.
Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas program for the Center for International Policy, which advocates foreign policy based on demilitarization and a respect for human rights. She writes extensively on Mexico.
Senator Patrick Leahy is a Vermont Democrat who heads the foreign operations subcommittee and is an advocate of the package.
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During his visit to Mexico this week, John McCain reiterated his support for allowing more immigrant workers to enter the United States on a temporary basis. But he said broad immigration reform should come only after the U.S. government has tightened the border adequately, including by building fences, reports the L.A. Times' Ken Ellingwood from Mexico City.
Migration is a big issue in Mexico, the main source of undocumented immigrant labor to the United States. Mexican migrants in the United States sent home about $24 billion in remittances last year.
"We must have comprehensive immigration reform, but the American people want our borders secured first," McCain said.
McCain's visit to Mexico, seen by some commentators here largely as a play for Latino votes in the United States (as was reported in La Plaza yesterday), came as the Calderon government has pursued a crackdown on drug trafficking. That crackdown will receive additional funding from the recent U.S-approved Merida Initiative aid package, which McCain also praised during his trip.
Click here to read Ellingwood's full report on McCain's visit.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Sen. John McCain gets a blessing from Msgr. Diego Monroy Ponce at the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City as McCain’s wife, Cindy, looks on. The basilica, built where a 16th century Indian peasant described a vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe, holds strong symbolism for Latino voters; credit: L.M. Otero / Associated Press.
President Felipe Calderon on Friday welcomed the U.S. Congress' approval of the Merida Initiative a day earlier, an aid injection from the United States that is aimed at helping Mexico in its fight against powerful drug cartels.
The bill has dropped a controversial requirement that Mexico meet certain human rights standards in order to receive the aid. Mexicans had objected to the human rights provision, saying that it amounted to outside meddling by the United States in Mexican affairs. But dropping the human rights requirements seems certain to anger numerous opposition groups to the aid package -- see this La Plaza post on the issue. Writes the Associated Press: Calderon said the bill "was an important step in the fight against international organized crime." He said its passage was due in part to Mexico's insistence that the United States share the burden in the fight against drug trafficking.
Quoted in the New York Times, José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, says of the approved package: “The big victory is for the rule of law. This will push the security forces in Mexico to a higher level of professionalism.”
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Mexico's Interior Secretary and Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa stressed that the anti-drug aid would include equipment, systems and training, not cash, and that no U.S. soldiers would be allowed to operate in Mexico as part of the plan.
"Mexico will not accept the presence of U.S. military personnel in Mexico," Espinosa said.
Meanwhile, Mexico's raging drug war claimed the lives of six more police officers, ambushed on patrol in the marijuana-rich state of Sinaloa, authorities said Friday.
The attack followed the slaying Thursday of a senior police commander, part of a long string of killings apparently aimed at eroding public confidence in the government's ability to challenge drug gangs, reports the L.A. Times' Tracy Wilkinson.
Last week, a report in the Christian Science Monitor questioned Calderon's use of the military in the fight against the country's drug cartels -- see that post here.
Read on...
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
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Chris Kraul
Buenos Aires:
Patrick McDonnell
Caribbean:
Carol Williams
Mexico City:
Hector Tobar
Deborah Bonello
Marla Dickerson
Ken Ellingwood
Reed Johnson
San Diego:
Richard Marosi
Washington:
Nicole Gaouette