Calderon hails arrest in cash case
The owner of a mansion in Mexico City where $207 million was found is arraigned in the U.S.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexdrugs25jul25,1,1067322.story?coll=la-headlines-world
From the Los Angeles Times
Calderon hails arrest in cash case
The owner of a mansion in Mexico City where $207 million was found is arraigned in the U.S.
By Héctor Tobar
Times Staff Writer

July 25, 2007

MEXICO CITY — A week ago, Zhenli Ye Gon was the toast of the Mexican media.

Speaking to reporters by telephone while in hiding, he said he would prove that senior officials of the government of President Felipe Calderon were responsible for the $207 million in illicit cash found in his Mexico City home.

On Tuesday, Ye Gon was in a U.S. courtroom, having been captured hours earlier at a restaurant in suburban Washington by U.S. agents who traced his cellphone. And Calderon was claiming victory in a case that officials say yielded the biggest haul of drug money in history.

"Today, those who commit crimes should know that my government will not spare any resources or effort to hunt them down wherever they may be, inside or outside our national territory," Calderon said at a speech at his alma mater here, the Free School of Law.

Agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration arrested Ye Gon in Wheaton, Md., on Monday night, about four months after police entered his Mexico City mansion on suspicion that he was running a methamphetamine production ring.

With its massive haul of cash, involving more than 2 tons of U.S. $100 bills, and allegations of official complicity, the case has come to symbolize the wealth and power behind the international trade in illicit drugs.

A 44-year-old naturalized Mexican of Chinese descent, Ye Gon was arraigned Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington on drug-trafficking charges. Mexican authorities alerted their U.S. counterparts last month that they thought Ye Gon was in the United States.

Mexican authorities have said they will request Ye Gon's extradition on a variety of drug-trafficking charges. If convicted in Mexico, he faces up to 73 years in prison.

U.S. authorities filed their own charges against Ye Gon last month.

On Tuesday, U.S. officials released an affidavit by a DEA agent in Mexico with new details on the scale of Ye Gon's alleged operation. He is said to have imported enough chemicals to produce methamphetamine worth $724 million on the street.

A note discovered at Ye Gon's home refers to apparent assistance from corrupt Mexican customs officials, the affidavit said.

Ye Gon traveled often to Las Vegas to launder drug money and to gamble, the affidavit said. Between 2004 and 2007, records from Las Vegas hotels and casinos show, Ye Gon had gambling losses of $125.9 million.

The DEA also conducted tests in April at Ye Gon's Mexican pharmaceutical plant and found ephedrine, a stimulant and decongestant used to manufacture methamphetamine.

Martin McMahon, a Washington lawyer representing Ye Gon, told the Associated Press that the charges against his client were "complete nonsense…. He has never had drugs, and he didn't have any drugs on him when he was arrested."

If he is extradited, Ye Gon will not receive a fair trial in Mexico, McMahon said.

"President Calderon has already said he is going to jail," McMahon said. "We will vigorously oppose his extradition."

In statements made before his arrest, Ye Gon said Mexican officials had forced him to store the money in his home. He said the funds were destined for use in Calderon's 2006 presidential campaign and "terrorist" activities. Calderon called the statements a "tall tale."

Ye Gon's arrest comes amid growing concern in Mexico that his alleged drug operation may have flourished thanks to the complicity of corrupt officials.

According to news reports here, an investigation by the Mexican attorney general's office is focusing on the role of drug regulators and of a high-ranking tax and customs official, Luis Roberto Patron Arregui.

The investigation has found that Patron Arregui assisted Ye Gon by providing false documents that allowed Ye Gon's company to import chemicals required to produce pseudoephedrine, also a precursor to methamphetamine.

During the administration of President Vicente Fox, Patron Arregui ran the customs office at the Pacific port of Manzanillo.

After winning the presidency last year, Calderon named Patron Arregui to head the national customs office, but Congress refused to even hold confirmation hearings because of allegations that he was corrupt.

Patron Arregui instead became the No. 2 official in Mexico's tax collection agency. He is related by marriage to the Coppel family, a key backer of Calderon's presidential campaign.

--
hector.tobar@latimes.com

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Mexican cartels outgun towns
Ill-prepared and often corrupt, rural and border city police and officials are the weakest link in the war on drugs.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-towns9jul09,0,400506.story?coll=la-home-center
From the Los Angeles Times
Mexican cartels outgun towns
Ill-prepared and often corrupt, rural and border city police and officials are the weakest link in the war on drugs.
By Héctor Tobar and Carlos Martínez
Times Staff Writers

July 9, 2007

NACO, MEXICO — The message came on police emergency radio: An army of drug traffickers with machine guns mounted on their pickup trucks was headed toward this town of 5,000 people on the Arizona-Mexico border.

Like a sheriff in a western, police chief and part-time schoolteacher Juan Bracamontes gritted his teeth and assembled his 15 officers, who had nothing better than old .38-caliber revolvers to face off against the enemy.

"Those who want to leave can leave," the chief said. "Those who want to stay and fight, line up behind me and we'll give it to them good."

One officer quit on the spot. The others deployed around the town, but not before taking off their uniforms and abandoning their patrol cars for unmarked vehicles.

In other Mexican towns, local authorities have not shown as much courage in the face of threats from cash-rich drug traffickers. Underarmed, under-prepared and often corrupt, small-town officials and police are the Achilles' heel of President Felipe Calderon's offensive against the nation's drug traffickers.

Calderon has made the battle to rein in Mexico's drug cartels the centerpiece of his presidency, committing large portions of the army and much of the federal police force to the effort.

The cartels have been fighting one another for control of smuggling routes to the United States. The resulting violence claimed more than 2,000 lives last year, and the killings this year have been on a pace to exceed that toll.

In the rural and border areas where smugglers operate, police frequently find themselves on the front line of the drug wars. Arresting a cartel operative might mean death. Even those who agree to protect one band of traffickers risk being attacked by rival gunmen.

Municipal officers account for 60% of the police force in Mexico, with state and federal police making up the rest. Mexican officials and analysts say city police and city officials receive a big share of the estimated $3 billion that drug traffickers pay in bribes each year.

Officials at Mexico's Public Safety Secretariat estimate that traffickers pay police an average monthly bribe of $500 to $600, roughly equal to a starting officer's monthly salary in towns such as Naco and neighboring Cananea.

"The training these officers receive is very precarious, as is their pay," said Raul Benitez, a professor at American University in Washington and a specialist in Mexican security issues. In many towns, Benitez said, the only requirement for becoming a police officer is being a friend of the mayor: The police force is a prime political plum.

These undertrained officers face an increasingly sophisticated enemy, as Mexico's drug cartels form small armies in which many of the "troops" have at least some military-style training.

Two days before the report of a "caravan of death" headed for Naco, as many as 50 armed men attacked Cananea. Five municipal officers were kidnapped and killed in the May 16 incident. Within hours, half of the 48-officer Cananea police force had turned in their guns and quit.

"We have no protection," several Cananea officers told reporters gathered around the town's police station. With allegations of links to traffickers swirling around the force, eight officers were fired, as was the police chief.

"On the one side organized crime is killing police officers, and on the other side the government is investigating and firing them," said Jose Arturo Yanez, a researcher at the Professional Police Training Institute in Mexico City. "No one is protecting them."

Security officials have resigned or been fired en masse in at least 18 states in nearly every region of Mexico.

Dozens have walked away from their jobs. A few have fled in the face of arrest warrants. Others, such as Orlando Valencia of Cananea, disappear from their offices.

Valencia was both the mayor's spokesman and the city emergency coordinator. In late May, he disappeared, and officials announced that they were seeking his arrest on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers in their escape after the attack on Cananea.

Even for those brave enough to serve in the country's most dangerous towns, discretion is usually the better part of valor. One high-ranking police official in a town in Zacatecas state explained the advice he gives his officers to keep them safe:

"I told them that if they see something suspicious, they should withdraw," said the official, who asked not to be named. "It doesn't matter what it is, just withdraw…. These people are well-armed and we just have the basics."

After an encounter with suspected cartel hit men, many officers in his town received telephone death threats. A good chunk of the force resigned.

"I don't know why they quit," the official said. "And you know what? I don't care."

The estimated 50 cartel hit men who descended on Cananea had attended a two-month camp to prepare for their assault, said Sonora state authorities, who interviewed the surviving hit men. The training was led by a former member of the Hermosillo city police department. And federal officials said at least four of the gunmen were army veterans.

The hit men were working on behalf of a drug-trade organization allied with a local trafficker, Francisco Hernandez Garcia, also known as "The Two Thousand."

The Two Thousand had agreements with local police chiefs to protect his shipments, according to news reports. Such agreements are called compromisos here, a Spanish word meaning commitments or obligations.

But the pacts were broken, setting off a series of violent incidents that climaxed with the raid on Cananea.

Home to 30,000 people, Cananea is famous for a 1906 miners' strike that helped spark the Mexican Revolution. Set amid the dun hills of the Sonoran Desert, it is a place where the daily routine of police work rarely involves anything more violent than a domestic dispute or drunken fight at a party.

All that changed early on the morning of May 16. Cananea police received word that a pair of officers had been attacked and beaten at a checkpoint outside town. Five officers were dispatched to assist them.

The five set off with shotguns and .223-caliber rifles recently provided by state authorities, though the bulletproof vests promised by the state had not yet arrived, officials said. When the officers reached the scene, they encountered four dozen cartel hit men: The officers surrendered without firing a shot; they were later tortured and executed.

The mayor summoned help. State and federal officers tracked the gunmen to a remote mountain settlement. In the ensuing gunfight, 15 suspected cartel hit men were killed.

"There hadn't been a battle like that here since the revolution," said Martin Ballesteros Rios, now Cananea's acting chief of police.

Gabriel Hurtado, the police chief at the time, was fired five days later; sources say he had abandoned his post. Although he faces no charges, there are rumors. He hasn't been seen in the town since he left, officials said.

Ballesteros Rios stepped in.

The acting chief says he isn't worried about what might happen to him, despite warnings from friends and relatives.

"My conscience is clean, because I don't have any compromisos with anyone," he said.

Thirty miles away in Naco, Mayor Jose Lorenzo Villegas has fired six police chiefs during his two terms in office. He fired Chief Roberto Tacho in January; weeks later, U.S. officials arrested the former lawman as he allegedly tried to smuggle about 60 pounds of marijuana into the United States.

Tacho and his brother Ramon were part of a small circle that until recently controlled the police in three neighboring towns — Naco, Cananea and Agua Prieta. Ramon Tacho, the police chief of Agua Prieta, was assassinated outside his office in February by suspected cartel hit men.

In Naco, a windblown town of squat buildings hugging the U.S. border, there is a growing sense that the community is being drawn into a larger conflict.

On the day the drug traffickers' army was reported to be headed their way, town residents responded as though war had broken out.

Businesses and schools shut down. City Hall was evacuated, and some officials fled to the United States.

U.S. Border Patrol agents with machine guns took up positions on the roof of the border-crossing station in Naco, Ariz., which overlooks the Mexican Naco's small downtown.

Mayor Villegas was in Hermosillo, Sonora's state capital, picking up new 9-millimeter pistols and AR-15 rifles issued to his police force.

"We lived some very ugly moments that day," the 34-year-old mayor said. "By phone, people were telling me I should declare a state of siege."

But the report of the "caravan of death" headed for Naco turned out to be a false alarm.

At the end of the day, after the crisis had passed, Villegas arrived in Naco with boxes of pistols and rifles.

"Look at this beautiful thing," Police Chief Bracamontes said, taking one of the new pistols from its holster. "And this one too," he said, raising a sleek, black AR-15 rifle that was propped up against the wall of his office.

Like most of the new weapons, it still hasn't been fired.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

--

Tobar reported from Naco and Martínez from Zacatecas.

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br />















 

Mexico's feared band of hired guns takes a hit

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-zetas3jul03,1,679889.story?coll=la-headlines-world

From the Los Angeles Times
Mexico's feared band of hired guns takes a hit
By Carlos Martínez
Times Staff Writer

July 3, 2007

MEXICO CITY — Luis Reyes Enriquez was lying on the bed of a $13-per-night hotel room in a provincial town when federal troops came for him. Reyes, a leader in Mexico City of the infamous band of hit men known as the Zetas, was caught off guard: He was hung over from a wedding party the night before.

The arrest of the man also known as "Zeta 12" and "El Rex" was the latest in a series of blows in recent weeks to the Zetas, an organization born in the late 1990s when the Gulf cartel of drug traffickers began recruiting Mexican army deserters.

Reyes, 39, was an army deserter, as well as a former federal police officer who had once been assigned to work in the attorney general's office. As a well-trained gunman with an official pedigree, he was precisely the kind of man who helped build the Zetas' reputation as a paramilitary army at the service of drug traffickers.

Since taking office in December, President Felipe Calderon has declared an aggressive war on drugs and deployed thousands of federal troops throughout several Mexican states.

During the first seven months of his administration, authorities have arrested five Zeta leaders. A sixth Zeta was killed in an ambush with rivals. And the group's leader and founder, Osiel Cardenas, has been extradited to face drug-trafficking charges in the United States.

Three years ago, the Mexican attorney general's office had 44 members of the Zetas on its most-wanted list. As of May, with a growing number of Zetas in prison or dead in gun battles with authorities and rival traffickers, the number had declined to 27.

Analysts say Calderon's crackdown, along with a split in the Gulf cartel that is pitting old partners in crime against each other, is leading the Zetas to seek new avenues of income, such as kidnapping and extortion.

"There has been a clear effect on the Mexican drug market, which in turn has reduced the cash flow of these criminal groups and forced them to diversify their activities," said Erubiel Tirado, a security expert at the Ibero-American University here. "All of a sudden they're kidnapping businessmen. That's when they put themselves more at risk of getting caught."

A kidnapping scheme led to the arrest this year of Nabor Vargas, also a Zeta member.

Vargas, alias "El Debora," was captured in April when federal agents stormed a house in Ciudad del Carmen in the Gulf state of Campeche, looking for kidnapping victims and weapons. After a brief standoff, authorities rescued a prominent local businessman and arrested 19 people.

To the surprise of authorities, the kidnappers were being led by El Debora, one of the most-wanted criminals in Mexico and one of the first soldiers to desert and join the Zetas.

Vargas "was one of the founders of the Zetas and one of the few active members who was personally recruited by Osiel Cardenas," columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio wrote in the newspaper El Universal. For Vargas to be engaged in a kidnapping scheme illustrated a tremendous fall from power, Riva Palacio said.

It was an anonymous call that alerted police to the presence of Reyes in Atotonilco, a town in Hidalgo state, according to news reports. El Rex had attended a friend's wedding, and his heavily armed crew attracted the attention of residents.

In the early hours of June 24, after a night of partying, he headed to La Fuente Hotel to rest, unaware that he was under surveillance by dozens of soldiers and federal agents. He was arrested without incident. When authorities presented him to the media the next day in Mexico City, he was still dressed in a khaki suit and white dress shirt.

Not all arrests of Zetas are the result of the federal crackdown. Some are simply slip-ups by criminals known for their impulsive and reckless behavior.

Such was the case of Jose Ramon Davila Lopez, alias "El Cholo," who was arrested in February in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

According to the newspaper Reforma, El Cholo was cruising through the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, with his girlfriend when he caught a passerby staring at them. For a man considered one of Mexico's most dangerous criminals, this was apparently a grave insult.

El Cholo threw his car into reverse and called out: "What are you looking at?" A few seconds later he pulled a gun and opened fire, narrowly missing the man who had offended him.

The gunfire attracted local police. After a brief shootout, El Cholo was taken in. It took authorities six days to identify him as one of the Zetas.

Although it remains unclear how much power the Zetas still have, U.S. officials say the Mexican government is making important progress in many of the states where it has deployed troops to fight the drug trade.

"By going to places like Michoacan, Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Tabasco and Veracruz, you're able to knock many of these cells off their base of operations and circles of protection," said a senior U.S. official who asked not to be named. Mexican authorities are beginning to penetrate the "command-and-control structure" of several trafficking organizations, the official said.

Times staff writer Héctor Tobar contributed to this report.

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