Photos: Military display kicks off Independence Day celebration in Mexico

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderon presided over a spectacular patriotic cermony at Mexico's central military college to kick off festivities celebrating Independence Day, which is Sunday.

The "Thoughts on the Homeland" ceremony at the Heroic Military College in southern Mexico City lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours and featured dazzling displays of military might. For nearly six years the armed forces have played central role in the government's fight against drug-trafficking and organized crime.

Here are photos from Thursday's event. And here is a full video.

Suspected top Gulf cartel leader captured in Mexico

 

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities on Thursday announced the capture of the alleged top leader of the Gulf cartel, a potentially crippling blow to the drug-trafficking network that once dominated much of northern and southern Mexico but has recently lost ground to the vicious Zetas paramilitary force.

It was the second big catch of a suspected Gulf capo in 10 days.

Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, alias "El Coss," was arrested by Mexican marines Wednesday night at a home in the eastern port city of Tampico, in the border state of Tamaulipas (link in Spanish). Navy spokesman Vice Adm. Jose Luis Vergara said Costilla did not resist.

Flanked by masked marines, Costilla was presented to reporters Thursday morning. Mustachioed and beefy, he remained stone-faced during the appearance.

Costilla is one of the most-wanted fugitives in Mexico; in the United States, where he is also wanted on a range of drug-trafficking charges, officials had placed a $5-million bounty on his head.

Colombian president announces fall peace talks with rebels

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Prospects for an end to four decades of civil strife in Colombia inched closer to reality Tuesday as President Juan Manuel Santos announced that his government had agreed to start peace talks in Norway with the country’s largest rebel group in a bid to end the conflict.

The first open negotiations in a decade between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, will start in early October and span "months, not years," Santos said.

Santos was referring to the open-ended, three-year negotiations that collapsed in 2002 after accomplishing little more than disillusioning most Colombians and leaving the FARC militarily stronger.

The new talks will begin in Oslo and then move to Cuba, Santos said. Representatives of the Venezuelan and Chilean governments will act as facilitators.

Conscious that many Colombians, including former President Alvaro Uribe, are deeply skeptical of the talks, Santos said he personally was accepting responsibility for launching the negotiations.

“There comes a moment in history when you have to take risks to arrive at a solution,” Santos said during his 18-minute speech broadcast from the presidential palace in Bogota. “This is one of those moments.”

Mexican authorities still don't know why police shot 2 Americans

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities said Saturday they have questioned a dozen federal police agents to try to find out why Mexican police ambushed an SUV south of Mexico City and shot two U.S. government employees inside.

The two Americans, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, were hospitalized with gunshot wounds and reported in stable condition. A Mexican naval captain traveling with them sustained minor injuries in the Friday attack.

No one disputes that Mexican police opened fire on the Americans' black armored Toyota with diplomatic license plates. The question is why.

The Americans were traveling on the road to Cuernavaca, a popular tourist resort south of Mexico City, when their vehicle was intercepted by a carload of gunmen who gave chase as the Americans attempted to escape, U.S. and Mexican officials said. Federal police in at least three patrol cars joined the chase and opened fire on the Americans until the Mexican military, summoned by the naval captain under fire, intervened.

The carload of gunmen and the federal police reportedly fled the scene at that point.

The federal attorney general's office said in a statement that its investigators were interviewing 12 federal police agents to determine whether the incident was a case of mistaken identity, as some reports suggest, and that the police believed they were pursuing suspects.

Or were the police in cahoots with criminals and providing backup in an ambush aimed at stealing the car or killing its occupants, as some have speculated here?

39 killed in huge Venezuela oil refinery fire; gas leak suspected

This post has been updated. See note at bottom for details.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- An early morning explosion and fire at Venezuela's largest refinery killed at least 39 people Saturday and left the nation’s most important source for auto and airline fuel out of commission.

Giant flames and columns of smoke continued to billow from the Amuay refinery, located 200 miles west of Caracas, the capital, into the afternoon. 
 
The disaster occured  at a crucial moment in Venezuela’s presidential campaign in advance of its Oct. 7 election, with the efficiency of President Hugo Chavez’s government  a major campaign issue. State-owned oil company PDVSA is the owner and operator of the refinery.

A gas leak apparently caused the accident, which destroyed or damaged 11 tanks where propane gas, crude oil, naphtha and other chemicals were being stored. The refinery processes half of Venezuela’s fuel production.
 
It was too soon Saturday to say what impact the fire could have on U.S. gasoline prices. On average, Amuay exports about 360,000 barrels per day of refined gasoline, mostly unleaded fuels, to the eastern U.S.  Thus, U.S. motorists, who buy more than half of the complex’s average production of 645,000 barrels per day, could pay higher prices if the refinery remains out of commission.
 
The dead included 17 national guardsmen who were assigned to protect the sprawling refinery complex, one of the largest in the world. A 10-year old boy who lived nearby was also among the victims. At least 86 were injured with burn injuries. Social networks, however, reported that many more were still unaccounted for.

With the Amuay fire raging in the background, Venezuelan Defense Minister Henry Rangel Silva went on TV in the afternoon to offer condolences to family members of the guardsmen killed in the disaster. 
 
Energy Minster Rafael Ramirez, who also heads PDVSA, told reporters at the disaster site Saturday morning that some of the fires near the tanks were under control and that there were sufficient  inventories of fuel to ensure internal supplies and exports for 10 days.

UPDATE, 7:00 p.m., Aug. 25: The number of people who died was raised from 26 to 39.

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Photo: Firefighters and rescue teams work at the Amuay oil refinery in Punto Fijo, Venezuela, on Saturday. Credit: Diario EL Amanecer/Associated Press

Mexican federal police fire on U.S. officials' vehicle, injuring two

 

MEXICO CITY -- Two U.S. government employees were injured Friday when their truck was fired upon by Mexican federal police in a bizarre incident whose details, as provided by Mexican authorities, are far from clear, leaving open the possibility of a tragedy sparked by a case of mistaken identity.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement Friday saying the two embassy employees were attacked by "unknown assailants" and were in stable condition at a local hospital. The State Department statement did not mention the federal police, but the Mexican Naval Ministry, in a statement, said that the Americans' vehicle had indeed taken police fire.

According to the navy´s statement, the episode began at 8 a.m. near a highway linking the Mexican capital with the popular tourist destination of Cuernavaca. The Americans, accompanied by a Mexican naval official, were on a dirt road on their way to visit a military facility when they encountered a vehicle whose passengers displayed firearms. When the driver of the Americans'  truck tried to evade them, the armed men opened fire.

Moments later, the statement says, three other vehicles joined the chase, also shooting at the Americans' truck.

The statement acknowledges that federal police fired on the Americans' truck, but it does not specify whether the assailants in the cars were in fact members of the federal police force. Police officials declined to comment when contacted by The Times.

Mexico's federal police force has long been plagued with disturbing incidents of corruption, despite recent efforts by outgoing President Felipe Calderon to clean it up. The most recent high-profile incident occurred in late June, when members of the force confronted a group of allegedly corrupt fellow officers in the Mexico City airport, sparking a gun battle that left three officers dead.

At the same time, federal police are being asked to fight the powerful drug cartels that have taken hold in such states as Morelos, south of Mexico City, where Friday's incident occurred. 

Morelos has been particularly unstable since the 2009 slaying of drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva after a shootout with the Mexican military in Cuernavaca, the Morelian capital and a popular destination for foreign tourists and Mexico City residents. Much of the violence that has shaken Morelos is presumed to have been motivated by lower-level drug lords fighting to fill the power vacuum left by Beltran Leyva.

U.S. officials did not divulge the Americans' job description. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said U.S. officials were "working with Mexican authorities to investigate" the incident.

Mexican newspapers reported that the Americans' truck, a Toyota SUV bearing diplomatic plates issued by the Mexican government, had been hit by at least 30 bullets.

The United States' consular mission in Mexico is the world´s largest, and the two countries have exhibited unprecedented cooperation in fighting the Mexican drug cartels in recent years. Attacks on U.S. personnel in the country are rare but not unprecedented.

In February 2011, a pair of U.S. immigration agents traveling in an SUV in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi were attacked by drug cartel members. One of the agents was injured by gunfire and the other, Jaime Zapata, was killed. A consular employee and her husband were shot and killed in the city of Juarez in 2010.

 --Richard Fausset

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Photo: An armored U.S. Embassy vehicle is checked by Mexican military personnel after it was attacked on the highway leading to the city of Cuernavaca on Friday, Aug. 24, 2012. Two U.S. government employees were shot and wounded in the attack. Credit: Alexandre Meneghini / Associated Press 

Was Mexican prison warden's kidnap retaliation for penal reforms?

MEXICO CITY -- Three years ago, when the armed gang showed up at Cieneguillas prison, they managed to free 53 inmates -- including killers, kidnappers and drug cartel gunmen. Not a shot was fired, and the warden was arrested on suspicion that it was an inside job.

On Thursday, an armed gang came again.

But this time they came for the new warden.

Her name is Fabiola Quiroz Zarate, and officials in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas say she was forcibly taken from her home Thursday in the city of Fresnillo, along with a nephew who served as her bodyguard, and a visiting friend.

The state attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into the kidnapping, and has advanced two possible motives for the crime -- both of them tied to changes that have been put into effect recently with the purported goal of firming up Mexico’s notoriously weak prison system.

The first theory is that the kidnapping was in retaliation for the transfer of more than 60 prisoners from the state-run Cieneguillas prison to higher-security federal facilities in other parts of the country.

The second theory is that the kidnapping was a response to tighter security measures that have recently been established at Cieneguillas, which Quiroz has overseen since December 2011.

“The principal line of investigation is that this might have been a reaction or response from organized crime to the operations and actions that authorities have carried out to improve the function of our penal establishments,” said Arturo Nahle, the state attorney general, in a television interview.

That kind of explanation is a common one from Mexican officials after one of their prisons is targeted by organized criminals, though it is often difficult to tell whether such explanations are self-serving, given the rampant corruption in the Mexican penal system.

No one doubts that reform is necessary. In recent years, Mexico's prisons have proved to be disturbingly dangerous, porous and corrupt, plagued by deadly riots, escapes of drug cartel capos, and officials bought off by El Narco.

The 2009 prison break at Cieneguillas was one of many high-profile embarrassments in recent years, though notable for its brazenness. The liberating convoy came on a Saturday in May, riding in 17 vehicles, along with a helicopter, rounding up the inmates and hauling them away with no real resistance. Some of the prisoners sprung from the maximum security section had been classified as “highly dangerous” by authorities.

In July 2010, guards allowed inmates to leave their cells in a prison in the northern state of Durango, giving them the opportunity to carry out a revenge-fueled massacre of 17 people, using weapons the inmates had borrowed from the guards. Five months later, 140 inmates escaped from a prison in violence-plagued Tamaulipas state with the suspected help of prison personnel.

In February, 30 members of the Zetas drug cartel escaped from a prison in the city of Apodaca, Monterrey, during a deadly brawl, again with the apparent complicity of prison officials.

The government of outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon has been attempting to overhaul of the prison system as part of the $1.6-billion security cooperation agreement with the United States known as the Merida Initiative. The U.S. has provided new equipment, funds and training for Mexican prison officials, helping to establish a new prison guard academy and sending prison managers for training in New Mexico and Colorado.

Zacatecas, a storied, mineral-rich mountain region northwest of Mexico City, is one of numerous states that have suffered mightily in recent years from the violence connected to warring drug gangs and the security forces trying to tame them. This month alone, officials discovered eight decomposed bodies found in a van with evidence of torture; a shootout with Marines left four suspected gunmen dead; and there was reported afternoon shootout between rival cartels in the small city of Tepetongo.

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--Richard Fausset. Cecilia Sanchez in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

Photo: Soldiers patrol outside Cieneguillas state prison in central Mexico on Saturday, May 16, 2009. That day, an armed gang freed more than 50 inmates from the prison, including two dozen with ties to a powerful drug cartel, in a raid that took just five minutes, according to state Gov. Amalia Garcia Medina. Credit: Oscar Baez / Associated Press

Amid drug war, Mexico homicide rate up for fourth straight year

MEXICO CITY -- A study has found that Mexico’s homicide rate rose for the fourth year in a row in 2011, this time by 5.6% compared with the previous year -- a fact that will come as little surprise to Mexicans who continue to be bombarded each morning with the latest stomach-turning details of the country’s drug war.

What is less clear, however, is what the new numbers say about outgoing President Felipe Calderon’s controversial and nearly 6-year-old  decision to deploy the military to battle the country’s entrenched drug-trafficking gangs.

Is this the short-term pain that Mexico must endure in order to achieve a long-term peace? Or are the increased slayings the inevitable -- and ineluctable -- result of a strategy that Calderon’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, has essentially promised to continue, with a few alterations?

The new data, released this week by Mexico’s statistics and geography institute, show that 27,199 people were killed in Mexico last year -- or 24 homicides per 100,000 people. The rate in 2007 was 8 per 100,000. Last year it was 23 per 100,000.

The data include all homicides in Mexico, not just the drug-related ones, but they are likely to inspire the same head-scratching and political jockeying that narco-related statistics do, and which have become a kind of morbid parlor game here.

The ramifications, of course, extend far beyond Mexico: The U.S. government estimates that Mexican drug cartels maintain a commercial presence in at least 230 American cities. In 2009, the Justice Department called them the "greatest organized crime threat to the United States."

So is the situation improving in Mexico? Different numbers suggest different answers. The Times’ Daniel Hernandez reported last week that the analysts at Mexico City-based Lantia Consultores have found that homicides tied to organized crime increased 10% in the first half of 2012 compared with the last half of 2011. Calderon, however, recently said that drug-related homicides decreased 15% -- although he was comparing the first half of 2011 and the first half of 2012.

As he prepares to step down from his six-year term in December, Calderon, 50, has continued to make the case that his strategy of prosecuting the drug gangs, and targeting their leaders, has been a success. In a speech this month, he said his government had captured or killed 22 of the country’s 37 most powerful criminals, and he reiterated that he essentially had no choice but to confront the cartels head-on.

At times, the effort to dismantle the gangs has led to an appreciable uptick in violence. After the Mexican navy killed kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in a 2009 shootout, a war among his underlings ensued, and continues to plague the states of Morelos and Guerrero.

Peña Nieto, the incoming president, has pledged to find a way to reduce the violence that affects Mexicans’ everyday lives, but he has not yet divulged his strategy for doing so.

The new homicide numbers “show that violence is still a really important issue,”  said Eric Olson, associate director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“How [Peña Nieto]  is going to seek to reduce violence is an open question, but it’s still a worthwhile priority,” he said.

The Calderon government has not been forthcoming in recent months with statistics on the number of homicides that were specifically tied to the drug trade, but an unofficial count puts the number of people killed in drug violence at more than 50,000 since Calderon deployed the military in December 2006.

While the overall homicide rate in Mexico has been climbing, it's been diminishing dramatically in the country where most of the drugs are consumed. The Bureau of Justice Statistics put the U.S. homicide rate at 4.2 per 100,000 residents in 2010, the lowest rate in four decades.

Mexico still compares favorably to a number of other Latin American countries that have also been destabilized by drug cartels and gang violence. In 2010, Honduras suffered 82.1 homicides per 100,000 residents. In Colombia that year, the homicide rate stood at 33.4 per 100,000, despite notable government success in its war on the cocaine trade there.

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Photo: Municipal and federal police surround the body of a fallen officer after gunmen attacked a municipal police car in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico,  in November 2010. Photo credit: Raymundo Ruiz / Associated Press

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange urges U.S. to end 'war on whistle-blowers'

LONDON -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday called on the U.S. to end its "war on whistle-blowers" and demanded the release of Bradley Manning, the American soldier suspected of passing thousands of classified documents to Assange's secret-spilling website.

Assange made the appeal from the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for two months in an effort to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault. It was the 41-year-old Australian's first public appearance since seeking refuge inside
the embassy June 19.

He was careful to remain on embassy property and thus out of reach of British police, who have vowed to arrest him the instant he crosses into the public domain. By international convention, embassies are the sovereign territory of the countries they represent.

Assange thanked Ecuador for granting him political asylum Thursday and said President Rafael Correa had displayed courage, although Correa has been criticized for cracking down on journalists in his own country.

Assange made no mention of the actual allegations he is fleeing –- namely, that he sexually assaulted two women in Stockholm in August 2010. The Swedish government had asked for his arrest and extradition from Britain so that investigators could question Assange, who acknowledges having sex with the women but insists that it was consensual.

Assange and his supporters say the allegations are merely a pretext for his eventual extradition to the U.S., which they believe wants to try him -– and perhaps execute him –- for espionage. As yet, no charges have formally been brought against Assange in the U.S.

"We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America," Assange told a crowd of supporters who waited outside the Ecuadorean Embassy, in one of London's toniest neighborhoods.

"Will it return and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice and bring us all into a dangerous world in which journalists fall silent from the fear of prosecution?" Assange said. "I ask President Obama to do the right thing."

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Photo: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange delivers a statement Sunday from a balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he has sought asylum in London. Credit: Facundo Arrizabalaga / EPA

 

Ecuador grants asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

LONDON -- Ecuador said Thursday it would grant political asylum to Julian Assange, the controversial founder of the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks website who has been holed up for nearly two months inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault.

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said that Assange's legal and procedural rights had been violated, and that Ecuador accepted his argument that he faced possible political persecution by the United States, which is angry over his release of secret government files.

"We believe his fears are legitimate," Patino told reporters in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, Thursday morning.

PHOTOS: Assange granted asylum in Ecuador

The much-anticipated decision immediately turned Assange's legal fight into a diplomatic standoff between Ecuador and Britain, which says that it is obliged to turn Assange, 41, over to authorities in Sweden, a fellow member of the European Union.

For Assange himself, the announcement from Quito remains only a symbolic victory for the moment. Britain has refused to grant him safe passage out of the country; rather, police say that Assange is subject to immediate arrest if he sets foot outside the embassy because he breached his bail conditions.

Assange's supporters gathered outside the embassy before the decision was announced. A few protesters were arrested after scuffles with police, Sky News reported.

Ecuador's decision comes amid increasing acrimony between London and Quito over the Assange case. On Wednesday, Patino sharply rebuked the British government for what he described as a threat to raid its embassy to arrest Assange. By convention, embassies are considered sovereign territory of the countries they represent.

Ecuador is not "a British colony," Patino warned.

Assange, who is an Australian citizen, denies allegations that he sexually assaulted two women in Stockholm in August 2010. He has acknowledged having sex with them on separate occasions but disputes their accusations that coercion or force was involved.

He and his supporters insist that the allegations are part of a plot to remove him from Britain and ultimately to ship him to the U.S., which Assange says wants to try –- and possibly execute -– him for orchestrating the leak of thousands of classified State Department and Pentagon documents.

Assange took refuge inside Ecuador's embassy, located in one of London's toniest districts, on June 19, after his legal appeals against being sent to Sweden were virtually exhausted. Earlier that month, Britain's Supreme Court ruled that his extradition could proceed.

The request for political asylum in a third country was a bizarre twist in a saga that has dragged on since Assange was first arrested in December 2010. Although Assange remained "beyond the reach" of police while inside the embassy, Scotland Yard warned that he faced arrest the moment he stepped outside it for violating his bail conditions, which obligated him to abide by a nightly curfew at a
designated address.

The WikiLeaks founder had previously developed some kind of rapport with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. Assange interviewed Correa on a Kremlin-backed television show called "Russia Today," a sympathetic exchange in which the two men traded gibes about American arrogance.

Critics have noted the irony of Assange, a free-speech campaigner, appealing for help from a leader who has been accused of mounting a crackdown on journalists in Ecuador.

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-- Henry Chu

Special correspondent Cristina Munoz in Quito contributed to this report.