Mexican officials capture key lieutenant of Sinaloa drug cartel

MEXICO CITY -- A drug capo described by Mexican officials as "one of the most important lieutenants" for Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the fugitive leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has been captured, the Defense Ministry announced Sunday.

Jesus Alfredo Salazar Ramirez, known as "The Doll," was taken into custody Thursday by military officials and federal prosecutors in the state of Mexico, outside the capital, according to a news release [link in Spanish]. Salazar is the alleged leader of a cell within the Sinaloa cartel known as "The Salazars" and is wanted in both the U.S. and Mexico on drug trafficking charges.

Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel is probably the most powerful in Mexico. Many Mexicans suspect the federal government has favored the Sinaloa gang in its six-year crackdown on the myriad groups that control drug production and distribution in the country.

The government of outgoing President Felipe Calderon strenuously denies such rumors and argues that it has gone after all cartels with equal zeal. The arrest of Salazar may bolster that argument among some here, especially as it comes after the arrest last week of another top Sinaloa lieutenant, Jose Salgueiro Nevarez, alias "El Che."

Calderon leaves office in December with Mexicans deeply divided about his legacy and his career-defining decision to crack down on the drug cartels. The president boasts that his government has killed or captured two-thirds of the 37 most dangerous criminals in the country.

But more than 50,000 people have died since Calderon unleashed the Mexican military on the drug gangs, and it is unclear if the cartels' power has ebbed: The Times' Tracy Wilkinson reported Saturday that Coahuila, Mexico's third-largest state, has quietly been taken over by the Sinaloa cartel's bloodthirsty rivals, the Zetas.

Salazar, Mexican officials allege, controlled the growth, production and trafficking of drugs in the state of Sonora, which borders Arizona and New Mexico; and part of the state of Chihuahua, which borders New Mexico and Texas. Most of the drugs, officials said, was sent to the U.S.

Officials said Salazar is also suspected of directing numerous executions, including the slaying of Mexican peace activist Nepomuceno Moreno in November 2011. Moreno was a grieving father who had joined the high-profile peace movement headed by poet Javier Sicilia.

Moreno had accused police of abducting his son. He was gunned down by men who intercepted his car in the Sonoran capital, Hermosillo.

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-- Richard Fausset 

Photo: Mexican authorities Sunday provided a photo of alleged Sinaloa drug cartel figure Jesus Alfredo Salazar Ramirez, who was taken into custody last week. Credit: Sedena

Study: Pot legalization in U.S. states could hurt Mexican cartels

MEXICO CITY -- This may not weigh heavily on the minds of voters in Seattle, but if Washington and two other U.S. states decide to legalize marijuana in next week's election, the effect on drug traffickers in Mexico could be enormous.

Such is the suggestion of a new study by a Mexican think tank.

"It could be the biggest structural blow that [Mexican] drug trafficking has experienced in a generation," Alejandro Hope, security expert with the Mexican Competitiveness Institute, said in presenting the report.

Producing and distributing marijuana inside the U.S. would supply a less expensive and better quality drug to the millions of American who smoke it, Hope said. Demand for Mexican pot would decline, cutting into cartels' profits by 22% to 30%, the study calculates.

The consequences would be most dramatic, Hope added, for the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which is based in western Mexico and controls most of the marijuana production.

It is estimated that around one-third of Mexican drug gangs' income is from marijuana, surpassed only and narrowly by cocaine.

Arrest in Mexican reporter's killing met with doubt

MEXICO CITY -- Veracruz state authorities announced an arrest in the killing of a well-known reporter, but the slain woman's colleagues and friends greeted the news with skepticism and scorn.

Regina Martinez, a veteran reporter for the muckraking national newsmagazine Proceso, was killed in her home in the Veracruz capital, Xalapa, about six months ago. She was one of more than half a dozen journalists and former journalists who have been slain or gone missing in Veracruz in the last two years. Local reporters --  many of whom have fled to Mexico City in fear of their lives --  blame drug traffickers and corrupt authorities.

Late Tuesday, the Veracruz state prosecutor announced the arrest of a two-bit thief, Jose Antonio Hernandez, and said he had confessed to beating Martinez to death. The motive was robbery, prosecutor Amadeo Flores Espinosa said, and a second suspect remains at large.

With that, the authorities in Veracruz declared the case solved. But many of those close to Martinez, along with press freedom advocates, were not buying it.

14 kidnapped Central American migrants found in Mexico

 

MEXICO CITY -- As a group of mothers from Honduras, Guatemala and other countries travels across Mexico in search of missing relatives, the Mexican navy on Monday announced that it had freed 14 Central Americans kidnapped by suspected drug traffickers.

Thousands of migrants from Central America go missing every year as they attempt to reach the United States through Mexico. They are often kidnapped by Mexican gangsters, held for ransom, forced to work for cartels or on marijuana farms, or killed. Many turn up in hidden mass graves.

Naval marines acting on what they described as an anonymous tip over the weekend discovered 14 migrants being held against their will in a shack in the town of Altamira, in the violent border state of Tamaulipas (link in Spanish). The state has been the scene of several massacres of Central American and Mexican migrants.

The rescued men and women looked for the most part young and skinny, judging by a video released by the navy. They told authorities they had been kidnapped in different places in Tamaulipas and were from Central America, the navy said. The navy did not offer a breakdown of nationalities and said their "migratory status" would be corroborated. They stand a good chance of being deported.

Two men who apparently were holding the migrants were arrested, the navy said.

Monday's announcement from the navy gives hope to groups searching for the missing that more  victims may still be alive.

A caravan of mothers  this month embarked on a 19-day, 14-state journey through Mexico. All 40 or so mothers are looking for children, spouses or other relatives who vanished on their way north. Through the efforts of the organizers -- they've staged a caravan every of the last several years -- and other migrant-rights activists, a few missing relatives have been found and reunited with mothers.

Human rights groups say government neglect and refusal to recognize the problem of the missing result in  families left with the task of searching on their own, sometimes going state to state to offer DNA evidence when bodies turn up.

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-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: Central American migrants ride on top of a train in Veracruz state, one of the precarious ways in which they try to reach the U.S., in June 2011. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency

 

 

 

 

 

 

Party over? Alcohol sales banned on Mexico's Plaza Garibaldi

MEXICO CITY -- Will the last wailing, stumbling drunk person on Mexico City's Plaza Garibaldi please turn off the lights on the way out?

The government of Mexico City, where drinking until dawn has long been a competitive pastime, has banned the sale and drinking of alcoholic beverages on the esplanade of Plaza Garibaldi. Public drinking was a previously tolerated custom at the meeting point for hundreds of struggling busking mariachi musicians and their glad-to-be-sad customers.

Authorities said alcohol would still be sold at the bars and cantinas that ring Garibaldi, but the practice of chugging beers or downing mixed drinks outdoors in the early-morning hours with mariachis crooning nearby will halt under Operation Zero Tolerance, said Alberto Esteva, subsecretary of public policy at City Hall.

Under the administration of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, the city has invested about $26.8 million to revitalize Plaza Garibaldi, mostly on the construction of its Museum of Tequila and Mezcal and the repaving of the square. The outdoor alcohol ban is one more step in that plan, Esteva said in an interview.

"We gave the vendors alternative options, they didn't respond, and the city had to make a decision," the official said. "Garibaldi is about evoking that Mexican-ness, those customs, but permanent drunkenness is not one of them."

Alcohol sales were first barred Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon, without a vendor in sight on Garibaldi's wide expanse, mariachis and business owners expressed ambivalence about the new policy.

"There will be fewer people, because that's why they come downtown. To drink, drink here, and go somewhere else," said Soledad Diaz de Dios, whose family owns a recently renovated pulque bar on the square, La Hermosa Hortencia. "But [the drinking on the plaza] is also bad, for the tourism aspect."

Complaints of violence, public vomiting and marijuana smoking have grown. The plaza has also seen large brawls and confrontations with police involving semi-homeless youths, identified as "punks" by some of the musicians. Reportedly, drinks on the plaza are also sometimes spiked with substances meant to alter drinkers' mental states and thus make them vulnerable to assault.

"[The policy] is good, in quotation marks," said trumpet player Jesus Rosas. "Every Thursday through Saturday night, the party starts. And what's the party? Fights, breaking bottles, robberies."

But without the open-air drinking to go along with the mariachis, norteños, and jarochos, will Plaza Garibaldi ever be the same? Mariachis have complained to the city that the museum, for example, blocks access to the plaza, reducing their customer base.

"It hasn't been reformed, it's been completely tronado," huffed old-timer David Figueroa, a guitar player, using a slang term for broken, failed or flopped.

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-- Daniel Hernandez 

Photo: Soledad Diaz de Dios, a vendor at the pulque bar La Hermosa Hortencia, worries that fewer people will come to Plaza Garibaldi with the new alcohol ban on the square. Credit: Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times 

U.N. rights chief decries U.S. Border Patrol's 'excessive force'

MEXICO CITY -- The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized U.S. Border Patrol officers Thursday for resorting to “excessive use of force,” according to news reports, a week after a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot by officers after allegedly throwing rocks at them near the Mexican border town of Nogales.

“There have been very many young people, teenagers, who have been killed at the border,” the commissioner, Navi Pillay, said at a news conference in Geneva, according to wire services. “The reports reaching me are that there has been excessive use of force by the U.S. border patrols while they are enforcing the immigration laws.”

U.S. officials allege that the shooting victim, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, was smuggling drugs before the Oct. 10 incident, which has been strongly condemned by the Mexican government.

The FBI is investigating the matter, and the Department of Homeland Security is reviewing its guidelines for the use of force by border agencies.

At least 16 civilians have been killed by border agents since 2010, many of them during rock-throwing incidents involving suspected drug smugglers.

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--Richard Fausset

Photo:  A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle keeps watch along the border fence in Nogales, Ariz, on Aug. 9, 2012.  Credit: Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press

Two-thirds of most-wanted Mexican drug lords are in custody, dead

MEXICO CITY -- The government of President Felipe Calderon has made the elimination of top capo suspects from a most-wanted list of 37 men the barometer for success in its fight against organized crime.

With the slaying of Zeta cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano earlier this month, that number has now been reduced by 25, or about two-thirds of the total, as identified on a list published by the attorney general's office in March 2009 (link in Spanish).

But have the captures or killings of cartel leaders helped stem the violence in Mexico or reduce the flow of drugs to the United States? Not significantly, L.A. Times correspondents in Mexico have concluded in a variety of articles since December 2006, when the government's military-led assault on the cartels began. The death or capture of a cartel leader, analysts repeatedly argue, usually sparks infighting for succession among lieutenants and thus more bloodshed. 

The most-wanted man in Mexico, meanwhile, Sinaloa cartel alliance chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, remains conspicuously at large. But weeks away from the end of Calderon's term, Mexico's security forces have plenty of "gets" to point to in the country's efforts against criminal gangs.

Here's a partial list of the major cartel chiefs who have been taken down so far.

Mexico's Senate approves bill to fight money-laundering epidemic

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico’s Senate on Thursday unanimously approved an anti-money laundering bill in  hope of stemming a multibillion-dollar tide of illicit cash that flows from the nation’s powerful drug cartels and has seeped into nearly every corner of the Mexican economy.

The bill, which was approved this year  by the lower chamber, has been under consideration for more than two years in the Mexican Congress and could help the struggling nation in its fight against the narco gangs. Although  the outgoing administration of Felipe Calderon has managed to kill or capture more than two-thirds of the country’s most-wanted drug capos, it has struggled to hit them in their bank accounts.

Calderon, who leaves office in December, has long supported a stronger anti-laundering statute, and on Thursday -- a day when Amnesty International was criticizing him for failing to have taken more effective action to stem human-rights abuses committed in his six-year fight against the narcos -- the president sent a tweet congratulating the legislators.

“This will allow us to cut the economic resources of organized crime,” he wrote. “This is big news.”

The bill, which now heads to the president's desk for his signature, establishes a new specialized prosecution unit to go after money launderers and lays out a number of new reporting requirements for major transactions. Casinos will have to report big-money bets, and charity groups will have to inform the government of particularly generous donations. The sale of expensive boats, cars,  airplanes and jewelry also must be reported.

Among other things, the bill will prohibit the use of cash in many real-estate transactions, require banks to flag big credit card bills and force Mexican notaries, who handle most real-estate deals here, to report suspicious activity.

U.S. officials estimate that Mexican drug cartels send $19 billion to $29 billion in ill-gotten cash from the United States to their home country every year, and some Mexican officials have put the annual  of laundered money at $50 billion, representing a staggering 3% of the legitimate  Mexican economy.

As with many reform efforts in Mexico, passing a law will \help only so much. To make a real dent in the drug trade, it also must be enforced. Observers have suggested that the government has neglected to crack down hard on money laundering for fear that it would damage the rest of the economy.

Mexico approved an asset-forfeiture law in 2008 similar to ones in Italy and Colombia that made a big difference in their fights against organized crime, allowing the governments to seize and sell ill-gotten properties. But Mexican prosecutors have used the 2008 law sparingly.

-- Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez

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Photo: Soldiers carry a table loaded with seized U.S. dollars at a media presentation in Mexico  City last year. The cache of $15.3 million found in a car in downtown Tijuana is believed by authorities to belong to members of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Credit: Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press

 

Jaded Mexicans air doubts about killing of top Zeta leader

MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican Navy says it is "100% certain" that it was Heriberto Lazcano, notorious leader of the notorious Zeta paramilitary cartel, who was killed in a shootout with marines over the weekend.

But try telling that to the average Mexican.

Ever skeptical, and distrustful of governments that historically concealed the truth, Mexicans on Wednesday were debating whether the corpse really was the man known as "The Executioner," expressing lots of doubt and asking many questions.

Authorities did not help their credibility, of course, when they managed to lose the body.

“In Mexico, we can believe in chupacabras [a mythical blood-sucking monster], in UFOs and even in [cult favorite] Saint Death,” Maria Olmos, a secretary, said as she worked out Wednesday morning in the gym, which was abuzz with theories about Lazcano. “But we will never believe what the authorities tell us.”

“Maybe they threw his body in the Rio Bravo, imitating what the U.S. did with Osama [bin Laden],” a man identifying himself as Jose Luis Morales said via Twitter.

Body of slain Mexican drug boss stolen by armed gang

 

MEXICO CITY -- The body of the man identified by Mexican authorities as the top leader of the vicious Zetas paramilitary cartel was stolen from a funeral home by an armed commando unit, officials said Tuesday.

At the same time that the Mexican navy confirmed the identity of Heriberto Lazcano, alias The Executioner, based on fingerprints, local officials in Coahuila state acknowledged the body was missing. Lazcano was slain in the northern Mexican state on Sunday.

"The owner of the Garcia funeral home called us at 8:05 a.m. [Monday] to say that at about 1 or 1:30 a.m. an armed commando, faces covered and well-guarded, showed up, overpowered the personnel and took away the bodies in a hearse from the funeral home, forcing the owner to drive it," Coahuila state prosecutor Homero Ramos said in a brief appearance before journalists. 

The remarkable turn of events left a raft of unanswered questions. What was the body of one of the most notorious drug cartel chieftains doing unguarded in a funeral home less than 24 hours after his death? How can authorities definitively identify the body if there is no body?

Ramos did not take questions. It may be that no one realized the dead man was Lazcano when he was taken to the funeral home, which is apparently where the autopsy and other forensic tests were conducted.

The elimination of Lazcano, a founding member and top leader of one of the world's bloodiest drug cartels, should be a major victory for the government of President Felipe Calderon, who leaves office in less than eight weeks and who nearly six years ago launched a military-led offensive against trafficking networks. Lazcano is the most important figure felled in that fight.

Officials suggested they had harvested sufficient evidence from the body to make the ID. But the loss of the corpse will fuel suspicions among cynical Mexicans about the true identity and circumstances of the slaying -- not to mention the sloppiness of letting the body be stolen.

Naval officials said Lazcano was shot to death after attacking a special forces patrol with grenades and gunfire. A rocket launcher was found in his possession, the navy said. One other man with him was also killed.

Both the navy and Coahuila state prosecutors said Lazcano was identified based on his fingerprints, which were presumably on file because he once served in an elite unit of the Mexican army before going on to join and build up the Zetas. In addition, the navy released two photos of the dead man and said they appeared to match the known physical traits of Lazcano, who would be 36 or 37.

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-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: This photo released by Mexico's navy on Tuesday allegedly shows the body of Zeta drug cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano while in the possession of Mexico's Medical Forensic Service. Credit: Associated Press / Mexican navy