Members of the Mexican Navy inspect a submarine seized in Salina Cruz port in Oaxaca. The 10-meter-long submarine was carrying cocaine and is an example of the growing sophistication of drug smugglers. "It's not a military submarine, it's 10 meters [33 feet] long and from what we know they're made in the Colombian jungle to carry drugs," said navy spokesman Capt. Benjamin Mar after the vessel was intercepted.

U.S. says it aided Mexico in sub capture
Intelligence provided by America played a role in Mexico's maritime seizure this week of a cocaine-laden vessel from Colombia.


"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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-sub19-2008jul19,0,303715.story
From the Los Angeles Times

U.S. says it aided Mexico in sub capture
Intelligence provided by America played a role in Mexico's maritime seizure this week of a cocaine-laden vessel from Colombia.

By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 19, 2008

MEXICO CITY — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that U.S. intelligence helped Mexico capture a cocaine-laden smuggling submarine this week.

As the Mexican navy finished hauling the 33-foot vessel to shore, Chertoff disclosed that the U.S. government had shared information with Mexican authorities before Wednesday's successful operation.

"We shared information with the Mexican navy, but the Mexican navy acted alone in actually executing the seizures: their marines, their helicopters, their naval vessels," Chertoff told reporters here after meetings with Mexican officials on security issues.

He did not specify what type of information U.S. officials had passed along before Mexican commandos seized the vessel and its four-member Colombian crew.

Though such homemade vessels are being used increasingly by Colombian drug suppliers as a way to evade radar detection, it was the first time one was captured off the coast of Mexico.

Mexican military officials said after getting the seized vessel to shore Friday that it held about 6 tons of cocaine.

Mexican commandos, lowered by rope from a helicopter, captured the semi-submersible craft and arrested its crew in the Pacific Ocean 125 miles off the southern state of Oaxaca.

The military had said it acted after receiving intelligence from domestic and international agencies, but did not elaborate.

Chertoff's remarks were the first confirmation of a U.S. role in the operation, which he called an example of cooperation between the two nations in crime fighting. He said the subs represent a growing threat in the effort by drug gangs to smuggle cocaine to the United States.

The four men arrested said they were fishermen and had been forced into making the journey by captors who threatened them and family members with death.

The suspects said they set sail from the Colombian port of Buenaventura a week earlier without knowing what the payload was or where the submarine, which they said was guided by a satellite navigation system, was heading.

U.S. anti-drug officials said about 40 of the homemade vessels had been spotted since 2007, but few had been seized because the crews often sink them to avoid capture.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

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Mexico faces new drug challenge: mini-submarines
Colombian suppliers have increasingly used small, semi-submersibles to try to smuggle drugs north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the U.S.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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-sub18-2008jul18,0,7517274.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Mexico faces new drug challenge: mini-submarines
Colombian suppliers have increasingly used small, semi-submersibles to try to smuggle drugs north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the U.S.

By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 18, 2008

MEXICO CITY — The capture was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine.

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.

Mexico's military confirmed Thursday that the men were Colombian, but it offered little new information on the capture of the mini-sub off the southern coast a day earlier.

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.

Colombian drug suppliers have increasingly used small, semi-submersible craft to try to smuggle narcotics north toward their eventual markets, mainly in the U.S. Colombian forces and the U.S. Coast Guard have seized more than a dozen such boats during the last 2 1/2 years.

U.S. officials say the craft are being used more often because they are harder to detect by radar. The seizures represent a fraction of the 40 or so vessels that have been spotted since 2007, according to U.S. authorities.

"When they think they might be caught, the crews tend to scuttle them," said Jose Ruiz, spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which monitors drug activities. "They get out of them, sink them, and the drugs go to the bottom of the ocean so they can't be recovered for evidence."

Wednesday's seizure of the olive, surfboard-shaped vessel in the Pacific about 125 miles off the state of Oaxaca was the first of its kind off the coast of Mexico, authorities said.

The seizure provided images of speeding navy patrol boats and adrenaline-charged commandos perched atop the vessel -- a showy victory for President Felipe Calderon and his 18-month-old crackdown on drug-trafficking gangs.

The crackdown has sent 45,000 federal troops and police agents into the streets along the U.S. border and other key drug-smuggling corridors. Drug gangs have ratcheted up their capabilities by adding grenades and bazookas to their arsenals and, authorities say, outfitting cars with bombs for possible use against government forces.

Now authorities apparently face a maritime weapon as smugglers seek ways to move their product to U.S. consumers.

"Mexico is not prepared for this," said Guillermo Garduño, a national security specialist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. "If there is a naval front by the traffickers, it means the need [for Mexico] to restructure or modify its naval forces."

Unlike numerous other Latin American nations, Mexico does not have a submarine force, which was considered expensive and unnecessary.

But the growing use of small, hard-to-detect underwater craft could alter that thinking since such vessels could also be used by terrorists against Mexican oil-drilling equipment in the Gulf of Mexico, Garduño said.

In a statement, the navy said its forces moved in on the vessel after receiving intelligence from "national and international agencies."

Vergara declined to elaborate on the source of the intelligence or how the sub was tracked. In a television interview, he said that although such vessels can evade radar by staying just below the surface, they're easy to spot from the air because they cannot go deep.

U.S. officials in Mexico City praised the operation but would say only that they routinely cooperate with Mexican authorities to fight drug trafficking.

The crew members, interviewed by Mexican media on land as they were led into custody Wednesday, said they left the port city of Buenaventura, on Colombia's Pacific coast, seven days earlier. If so, they had traveled at least 1,300 miles before their capture.

The men, ranging in age from their 20s to late 50s, claimed to be fishermen and said they had been kidnapped and forced to make the journey by men who threatened their families. The sailors claimed they were unaware of the contents or destination of the craft, which they said was guided by a satellite navigation system. It was unclear how much control they had over the sub.

"They told us we had to take [the sub] where they sent us," suspect Rafael Jimenez, 27, was quoted in the Reforma newspaper as saying.

The men said they were to be paid $500 each.

Buenaventura is one of the places where Colombian authorities have seized the fiberglass mini-subs, some while still under construction. Officials believe that at least some of the boats have been built at the behest of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, of FARC, a rebel group widely considered the country's leading drug trafficker.

The homemade vessels have become increasingly sophisticated, with self-propelled models powered by 350-horsepower diesel engines and equipped with ballast and communications systems that make them hard to spot.

The vessels can be almost fully submerged, though they lack the diving and resurfacing abilities of true submarines.

U.S. law enforcement officials have expressed concern that the vessels could eventually be used by terrorists against American targets.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau and Times staff writer Vimal Patel in Washington contributed to this report.

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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE Drug war mayhem instills a new fear
Drug-related killings have taken thousands of lives, but now those uninvolved in the cartel battles are falling victim, even children. 

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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-innocents16-2008jul16,0,4608414.story
From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Drug war mayhem instills a new fear
Drug-related killings have taken thousands of lives, but now those uninvolved in the cartel battles are falling victim, even children.

By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 16, 2008

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO — 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.

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.

That description isn't redundant in a country in the grip of a raging drug war: The vast majority of the thousands of dead are thought to have some connection to the cartels. They have been hired hit men, drug runners, corrupt police officers.

Suddenly, however, this rough-and-tumble town and other Mexican cities have become citadels of fear even for many who thought they were safe from the mayhem: a pregnant woman washing her car, a 4-year-old, a father and son in their home. And Alexia, who was killed last month.

"Over the years you get used to the violence, but then, in 10 minutes, everything changes," said Alexia's aunt, Cecilia Rodriguez, 37.

In the last few days, the neighboring state of Sinaloa has been shocked by a wave of violence that has taken the lives of many innocents, including another 12-year-old girl. Authorities said Tuesday that more than 1,200 additional federal police were deployed to Sinaloa as part of a nationwide government offensive involving about 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers.

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.

Gun battles interrupt traffic in the middle of the day along Triumph of the Republic Boulevard and the city's other main drags; corpses, sometimes mutilated or headless, turn up at shopping centers and fast-food joints; hospitals come under machine-gun fire. Ominous voices break into emergency-frequency radio traffic, warning paramedics not to pick up bodies, journalists not to approach the scene.

Nearly a third of Mexico's drug-related killings in this record year have been registered in Juarez and its surroundings.

Take last month, for example: In one not particularly unusual weekend, 17 people, including a journalist, were killed; the sister-in-law of a U.S. congressman was kidnapped; and a dozen businesses were set ablaze after receiving threats.

The month before that, Juarez's top police commander resigned and fled after his second- and third-in-command were assassinated along with a dozen or so other officers, some named on a hit list. In a setback to basic democracy, civilian authorities have essentially been supplanted by the army. Retired artillery officer Roberto Orduña Cruz took over public security, pledging tough measures to crack down on violent organized crime.

In Juarez, as in much of Mexico, the drug war boils down to a turf battle between rival drug gangs, often referred to as cartels. Here, one faction led by the notorious Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from the neighboring state of Sinaloa is trying to wrest control from the consortium of gangs that has traditionally dominated the drug trade, the so-called Juarez cartel.

Both groups have well-armed private armies that mercilessly eliminate enemies and potential impediments such as police detectives. Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz says he believes people can still live a normal life in Juarez, and that most residents support the government's actions. But he also evinces the kind of resigned fatalism that breeds despair. The drug war, he suggests, will end only when both sides have ended up killing each other.

"It is more probable that a decision by the two groups ends this than does intervention by the government," Reyes said in an interview. Like many residents of Juarez, he also maintains a home across the border in El Paso.

Reyes acknowledged that the performance of the police has not inspired confidence. Last year's police commander was arrested in February on charges of attempting to smuggle a ton of marijuana into the U.S. through El Paso. He pleaded guilty in a U.S. court. Reyes said the police are being overhauled and screened in an effort to remove the corrupt and the drug users among them.

Up to 20% of the police force is corrupt and will be fired, said a senior official who requested anonymity because the purge is ongoing.

It is true, as the mayor insists, that the number of "innocent victims" is minuscule in the grand scale of things, which is why there isn't much public outrage at a sustained or national level.

But as the violence becomes more widespread, and the number of innocents caught up in it grows, support for Calderon's campaign could erode.

In Juarez, according to a tally by the Excelsior newspaper, 52 innocent men, women and children have been killed this year, though in some cases the victims were the offspring or spouses of targets. It may be that the cartels are breaking with their tradition of avoiding civilian casualties in order to put pressure on Calderon.

Father Mario Manriquez, a parish priest, said the spillover violence was infecting a population that preferred to look the other way and say the bloodshed didn't touch it because it wasn't involved -- a posture adopted either out of survival instincts, or self-deception.

"We have been pretending that we were living just fine, but in reality we chose a bad path," Manriquez said. "It's time to look in the mirror and correct the makeup."

As a young activist priest, Manriquez is determined to save his working-class parish from the drug war. But he is losing the battle. The teams he sent out to survey residents, in hopes of identifying needs and providing better social services, had to be pulled back. It has reached a point where no one would open their doors because of fear and alienation.

Or, as the priest put it, because of a hardening of the soul.

Juarez still has a somewhat ambivalent reaction to the violence. People are killed every day and fear is pervasive, yet residents don't lock their car doors when they park, and City Hall, though it looks like a fortress, has no metal detectors or other ways to screen visitors. Mariachi musicians and the cowboy-hatted singers of norteño ballads, guitars in hand, gather along Juarez Boulevard at dusk, even though tourists have all but vanished.

Alexia's family thought of itself as immune, even if the young girl was disturbed by the daily news reports and longed to go away.

She was walking with two other girls, a cousin and her good friend, to buy the insurance that border Mexicans need to cross into the U.S. Her aunt was planning a trip.

By most accounts, the three girls were picked up by young men in a dark SUV, which almost immediately came under gunfire. In the back-and-forth shooting, Alexia was killed; the other two girls escaped when the vehicle crashed.

Alexia was buried in her favorite color, pink. At the funeral, her father, Hugo Moreno, found it necessary to proclaim that he in no way worked for drug traffickers. One of the other girls was whisked away to El Paso, and the third is in therapy, her family says.

To the horror of Alexia's family, one group of traffickers tried to seize upon her death for its own propaganda. Using the traffickers' preferred form of communication, they strung a banner across one of the city's main thoroughfares, accusing their rival, Guzman, of killing innocents.

Alexia had dreamed of escaping her tortured city, to flee across the river to El Paso, where she longed to join her mother, the family recalled.

"I still can't believe I wake up and don't see her," said Alexia's grandmother, Belen Reyes, 75. She raised the girl, after the mother moved to El Paso, here in a gritty neighborhood of small houses sitting side by side on dusty, cracked-asphalt streets, all named for lagoons, though there isn't a body of water in sight.

"With everything that is going on here, you cannot live as you wish," she said. "They said it would get better with the soldiers, but it's only gotten worse."

Reyes; Rodriguez, the aunt; and other relatives gathered on the family's concrete porch laughed bitterly when asked if they thought the authorities would find Alexia's killer.

There will be no justice, they said.

Despite more than 500 killings here this year, no one has been prosecuted.

wilkinson@latimes.com

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Sinaloa rocked by soaring drug violence
At least 21 people are killed in five days as turf wars between splintered gangs appear to heat up.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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-mexviolence15-2008jul15,0,880920.story

From the Los Angeles Times
Sinaloa rocked by soaring drug violence
At least 21 people are killed in five days as turf wars between splintered gangs appear to heat up.
By Marla Dickerson and Cecilia Sánchez
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

July 15, 2008

MEXICO CITY — 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 state of Sinaloa, in one of the worst spasms of violence in memory in a region long conditioned to narcotics-related savagery.

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.

"Sinaloa Bloodbath" read a headline from El Sol de Sinaloa, a daily newspaper. The article Monday on its website was accompanied by a photo of corpses slumped in the back of a bullet-riddled pickup truck. An editorial in Monday's national daily El Universal questioned President Felipe Calderon's decision to aggressively pursue the nation's drug kingpins, a strategy the United States has encouraged and backed with millions of dollars in assistance.

"Direct confrontation has only escalated the violence," the newspaper said. "The worst thing that can happen is for us to become accustomed to the dramatic daily count of deaths and kidnappings caused by narcotics assassins."

Authorities were still sorting through the carnage in Sinaloa as the body count continued to rise Monday. But law enforcement and Mexican media accounts provided a picture of the relentless violence:

* On Thursday, gunmen in Culiacan shot dead six people inside an auto repair shop and three more outside. The victims included a 61-year-old university professor and his son, 37, also a professor. Later confrontations between the gunmen and authorities left three police officers dead.

* Early Saturday in Culiacan, rival traffickers engaged in a shoot-out, using automatic weapons and bazookas in a neighborhood in the northern part of the city. Police reported no deaths or injuries in that 15-minute clash, but photos of the scene show the pavement littered with heavy-caliber shell casings and homes scarred with bullet holes.

* On Saturday evening in the beach resort of Mazatlan, gunmen shot to death a high-ranking police official, then stormed a restaurant in a popular shopping mall, where they held patrons hostage before escaping. No customers were killed or injured. Photos from local newspapers show terrified shoppers running from the mall.

* Early Sunday morning in the city of Guamuchil, eight people leaving a quinceañera party were shot to death in their vehicles while they waited at a stoplight. Among the dead were several teenagers and the 12-year-old girl. The guest of honor -- 15-year-old Maribel Lopez Marquez -- was also injured in the attack, according to police.

* Early Monday, suspected rival drug gangs clashed again in a residential neighborhood in Culiacan. Assailants attacked a home with Molotov cocktails, burned vehicles and opened fire with high-powered weapons. No injuries or deaths were reported. But there were unconfirmed reports of two more drug-related shooting deaths in Mazatlan.

The state, home to the so-called Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, has become a battleground for traffickers feuding for control of the drug trade. Calderon has sent 3,500 army troops and federal police to the region as part of a nationwide offensive that observers say has both helped and hurt the situation.

The effort has resulted in high-profile arrests as well as the seizures of large caches of drugs and weapons. But the removal of top leaders has set off a power struggle among underlings eager to use violence to establish authority.

"The old drug lords often acted as mediators" to keep the peace, said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based security analyst. "The new, young guys are not disposed to negotiate."

Mexico's drug war remains extremely fluid. Across the nation, established trafficking alliances are fracturing and new ones forming. On any given day, even veteran observers have difficulty figuring out who is fighting whom.

Still, experts say some of the violence in Sinaloa stems from bad blood between cartel leader Guzman and the Beltran Leyva brothers -- Hector Alfredo, Carlos Alberto and Marcos Arturo. Known as "The Three Gentlemen," the siblings for years were confidants of Guzman.

The rumored power struggle burst into public this year with the arrest of Hector Alfredo. Nicknamed "El Mochomo," for a desert ant with a vicious sting, he is alleged to be involved in money laundering and payoffs to corrupt officials. He reportedly was carrying $90,000 in cash and a cache of pricey wristwatches when he was seized in Sinaloa by elite military forces in January.

According to a popular law enforcement theory, the Beltran Leyvas believe that Guzman ratted out their brother and have retaliated with a vengeance. Unidentified assassins shot and killed Guzman's son Edgar, 22, and two friends in a Culiacan parking lot in May. Other Guzman relatives and associates have been captured by authorities, ostensibly with the help of tips provided by the Beltran Leyva brothers.

"Factions of the Sinaloa cartel are fighting each other," Chabat said. "That's why we're seeing all this violence."

Chabat said the cartels might be violating a long-standing custom to avoid civilian casualties in order to put pressure on Calderon to back off. Although polls have shown that the president's tough stance has largely been popular with the public, recent events may be changing minds.

"The situation is out of control," said Gerardo Contreras, manager of a shoe store in the mall were people were taken hostage. "The people of Sinaloa ask the president to stop this violence. The killing of innocent people can't continue."

marla.dickerson@latimes.com

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Gunmen in Mexico kill 12 in brazen attack

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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 ..."

Gunmen in Mexico kill 12 in brazen attack

EPA / El Debate de Sinaloa
Authorities investigate the killings at an auto repair shop. The fleeing gunmen traded fire with police who gave chase in a busy commercial area. Sinaloa state is notorious for drug-related violence, but officials gave no motive for the shootings.

In broad daylight near the center of Sinaloa's capital, Culiacan, gunmen kill nine at an auto repair shop and then three police officers in pursuit.

By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2008

MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen shot 12 people to death in broad daylight near the center of Culiacan on Thursday, marking one of the more bloody and brazen recent attacks in the capital of a state beset by drug trafficking and violence.

The Sinaloa state prosecutor's office said armed men opened fire in an auto repair shop about 11:20 a.m., killing six people inside and three more just outside the doors. Fleeing in sport utility vehicles, the gunmen then traded fire with police officers who gave chase in a busy commercial area filled with stores and fast-food restaurants.


•
• Mexico City police chief, top prosecutor quit
• La Plaza blog: MORE ON MEXICO

The dead included three police officers. One was killed during the chase, and the other two died in a hospital.

The gunmen escaped. There were no immediate arrests.

Home to the so-called Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the western state has a long history of drug violence. It has tallied more than 250 narcotics-related killings this year.

But even law enforcement officials were stunned by Thursday's audacious slayings.

"It wasn't in the wee hours. It wasn't on the outskirts of the city. It was in the full light of day in the center of Culiacan in a busy area," said Carlos Parras, spokesman for the prosecutor's office. "So it appears to us to be a very serious and historic event in that sense."

Parras said Sinaloa Gov. Jesus Aguilar Padilla canceled a trip to Europe to remain in Culiacan in the wake of the violence.

Police have not identified any of the nine bodies found at the auto repair shop. Nor would they give a motive for the slayings.

Mexico has been rocked this year by a wave of narcotics-related violence stemming in part from a turf war that has erupted between the Sinaloa cartel and rivals vying to control lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

The bloodshed also has been ratcheted up by a massive offensive launched by President Felipe Calderon to crack down on the drug trade.

About 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers have been deployed in the government effort, leading to some significant arrests and major seizures of narcotics and weapons.

Calderon asserts that the cartels have been hurt badly by the operation and that related violence -- including more than 2,000 killings this year nationwide -- is a sign that the drug gangs are desperate and disorganized.

Critics, however, say the massive deployment of troops has done little but push the violence from one area to another and note that several high-level law enforcement officials have been slain.

Traffickers in Sinaloa recently hung posters mocking the 3,600 troops there as "little lead soldiers."

marla.dickerson@latimes.com

Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

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11 bodies found in Tijuana over 3 days
Six are found Monday morning, shot execution-style and partially burned in what appears to be drug-related violence.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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-tijuana8-2008jul08,0,5556954.story
From the Los Angeles Times

11 bodies found in Tijuana over 3 days
Six are found Monday morning, shot execution-style and partially burned in what appears to be drug-related violence.

By Richard Marosi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 8, 2008

TIJUANA — Police discovered the tortured and burned bodies of six men in an empty lot Monday morning, ending a period of relative calm in this border city beset by drug war violence.

Eleven bodies have been discovered since Saturday in violence believed to be drug-related, including the corpse of a woman found in a barrel, state and federal authorities said.

The weekend tally pushed the city's death toll this year to more than 260, compared with about 152 homicides at this time last year, and underscored authorities' difficulties curbing organized crime.

None of the victims had been identified by late Monday, and authorities did not offer any motives for the killings. But the grisly nature of the deaths -- some of the victims' heads were wrapped in plastic -- suggested that the victims were killed by gangsters, authorities said.

Tijuana had remained relatively quiet since a shootout in April claimed the lives of 13 gunmen. That incident, police sources say, possibly stemmed from a feud between rival branches of the Arellano Felix drug cartel, which has controlled drug trafficking in the city for more than a decade.

It's unclear whether the latest killings augur more violence, authorities said. "We have to wait and see. . . . Obviously, we are worried," Deputy Atty. Gen. Salvador Ortiz Morales said at a news conference at police headquarters here.

The city's organized crime groups have been under pressure since President Felipe Calderon dispatched the Mexican military to Tijuana in January 2007. More than 3,000 soldiers, supported by federal and state agents, now spearhead the offensive against the cartels.

The weekend's slayings bore many hallmarks of organized crime hits. The six men found early Monday had been shot execution-style. Their bodies had been doused with gasoline and set ablaze; some of the victims were partially burned. On Saturday night, three men were found fatally shot in an SUV. The body of a man discovered Monday in the Tijuana River bore signs of torture and was wrapped in a carpet.

In other developments, gunmen in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, killed the head of the state police, Raymundo Gonzalez Mendoza. Five other people in Sinaloa also were slain, including two who were decapitated.

So far this year, more than 2,000 people have died in violence related to the drug war across the country, according to the Mexico City-based newspaper El Universal. Last year's total through June was 1,410, according to the newspaper.

richard.marosi@latimes.com

Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.



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Reporters covering Mexico drug wars risk their lives
As violence has soared, more than 30 reporters have died or disappeared in Mexico since 2000, the group Reporters Without Borders says.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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-journalists6-2008jul06,0,6443496.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Reporters covering Mexico drug wars risk their lives
As violence has soared, more than 30 reporters have died or disappeared in Mexico since 2000, the group Reporters Without Borders says.

By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 6, 2008

VILLAHERMOSA, MEXICO — Rodolfo Rincon had reason to feel cheery when he left his newspaper office on a January evening last year.

His report on drug dealing in coastal Tabasco state had made a splashy, two-page spread that day in the Tabasco Hoy.

That night, Rincon, considered one of the best police reporters in the state, had put the finishing touches on a story about ATM thieves for the next day's edition.

He strode from the glassy newsroom and hasn't been seen since.

Colleagues believe Rincon, 54, was captured, and probably killed, by drug traffickers aggrieved by his crime coverage. He is among more than 30 reporters killed or missing in Mexico since 2000 as drug violence has skyrocketed, according to Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

In many ways, Mexico's democratic evolution has afforded the news media greater freedom than at any time in modern history. But at the same time, reporters are working on a battlefield: Mexico is considered the most dangerous Latin American nation in which to be a journalist, and one of the riskiest in the world.

"Every day it's more difficult to practice journalism in Mexico, especially from the middle of a war between the government and narcos," said Ricardo Ravelo, a reporter at the national weekly magazine Proceso who covers drug trafficking. "We are in a no man's land."

Besides the killings and disappearances of reporters, criminal gangs have attacked newspaper offices with high-powered rifles and grenades. Anonymous threats are commonplace. Reporters have been seized, held for hours and beaten.

Journalists who want to report on crime are increasingly forced to weigh the risk of retribution by gangsters employing ever more gruesome methods.

In early June, for example, someone propped a severed head in front of a newspaper here accompanied by a handwritten threat against its director, Juan Padilla.

The newspaper, El Correo de Tabasco, had recently run numerous front-page stories and photographs about drug gangs, including an erroneous report that a top gunman in Tabasco for the so-called Gulf cartel had been captured.

When a second threatening note appeared at the same spot two days later, Padilla fled the country. His reporters now steer clear of the drug story, arguably the dominant topic in Mexico.

"We're not going to cover it," a veteran police reporter said. "We'll cover weddings, quinceañeras and baptisms."

News organizations, especially those along the border with the United States and in other drug hot spots, must navigate a minefield of potential hazards. Increasingly, Mexican journalists say, they withhold details about crimes unless provided in official statements by police or prosecutors. Some newspapers have stopped mentioning drug trafficking groups by name.

In Nuevo Laredo, a border city where drug gangs have battled ferociously for dominance, one newspaper editor acknowledged privately that it was safer to leave out details so no crime boss would think that coverage showed his side losing.

Other times, in a macabre twist on public relations, journalists have been pressured to publicize decapitations or other violent acts. Drug gangs view such publicity as a way to scare rivals and enhance their own standing in the underworld.

Self-censorship by news organizations means residents have to rely on the grapevine to find out what is going on in their communities.

"If there is a gunfight in the middle of the street and hundreds of people witness it, there is no assurance you'll read about it in the next day's newspaper," said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The New York-based group has pushed for a law that would treat violations of free expression as a federal crime. Currently, cases involving violence against journalists are usually handled by authorities at the state level. They seldom result in arrests or prosecution.

Two years ago amid escalating attacks, Mexico's federal government created a special prosecutor's office to investigate crimes against journalists. But media advocates say it has accomplished little because it is barred from pursuing drug cases and often has to wait for state officials to act first.

Media defenders say the best protection may be better journalism. Some journalists, who are generally poorly paid, have been bought off or coerced into supporting a particular crime group through what they choose to publish in their reports or leave out.

But reporting that is honest, well-grounded and impartial can shield journalists against perceptions of favoritism, which often invite trouble, media advocates say.

"We don't opt for silence. We opt for being rigorous," said Ravelo of Proceso magazine, which tracks the drug story closely. "We don't shut up. We prepare better."

In Villahermosa, discretion remains the better part of valor.

At Tabasco Hoy, a four-person team of crime reporters works under a sign that says "Justicia." Nearly 18 months after Rincon's disappearance, his computer still contains his working files, brimming with tidbits about the drug trade and hit men.

But the newspaper's rules of conduct have changed, said team leader Roberto Cuitlahuac, 45, a seasoned reporter with close-cropped hair and a photographer's vest.

Stories about organized crime now omit the reporter's name, a precaution becoming common among Mexican papers. And there is a level of fear among his colleagues that didn't exist before Rincon vanished, Cuitlahuac said.

A night earlier, he said, one of his reporters refused to cover a fatal shooting because she was afraid. Cuitlahuac had to call on someone else. But he understood.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

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This is the U.S. on drugs
Only cops and crooks have benefited from $2.5 trillion spent fighting trafficking.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

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/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-fleming5-2008jul05,0,5578842.story

From the Los Angeles Times

This is the U.S. on drugs
Only cops and crooks have benefited from $2.5 trillion spent fighting trafficking.

By David W. Fleming and James P. Gray

July 5, 2008

The United States' so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.

The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.

The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year -- tax free.

The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs.

Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work.

Fourth are the politicians who get elected and reelected by talking tough -- not smart, just tough -- about drugs and crime. But the tougher we get in prosecuting nonviolent drug crimes, the softer we get in the prosecution of everything else because of the limited resources to fund the criminal justice system.

The fifth group are people who make money from increased crime. They include those who build prisons and those who staff them. The prison guards union is one of the strongest lobbying groups in California today, and its ranks continue to grow.

And last are the terrorist groups worldwide that are principally financed by the sale of illegal drugs.

Who are the losers in this war? Literally everyone else, especially our children.

Today, there are more drugs on our streets at cheaper prices than ever before. There are more than 1.2 million people behind bars in the U.S., and a large percentage of them for nonviolent drug usage. Under our failed drug policy, it is easier for young people to obtain illegal drugs than a six-pack of beer. Why? Because the sellers of illegal drugs don't ask kids for IDs. As soon as we outlaw a substance, we abandon our ability to regulate and control the marketing of that substance.

After we came to our senses and repealed alcohol prohibition, homicides dropped by 60% and continued to decline until World War II. Today's murder rates would likely again plummet if we ended drug prohibition.

So what is the answer? Start by removing criminal penalties for marijuana, just as we did for alcohol. If we were to do this, according to state budget figures, California alone would save more than $1 billion annually, which we now spend in a futile effort to eradicate marijuana use and to jail nonviolent users. Is it any wonder that marijuana has become the largest cash crop in California?

We could generate billions of dollars by taxing the stuff, just as we do with tobacco and alcohol.

We should also reclassify most Schedule I drugs (drugs that the federal government alleges have no medicinal value, including marijuana and heroin) as Schedule II drugs (which require a prescription), with the government regulating their production, overseeing their potency, controlling their distribution and allowing licensed professionals (physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.) to prescribe them. This course of action would acknowledge that medical issues, such as drug addiction, are best left under the supervision of medical doctors instead of police officers.

The mission of the criminal justice system should always be to protect us from one another and not from ourselves. That means that drug users who drive a motor vehicle or commit other crimes while under the influence of these drugs would continue to be held criminally responsible for their actions, with strict penalties. But that said, the system should not be used to protect us from ourselves.

Ending drug prohibition, taxing and regulating drugs and spending tax dollars to treat addiction and dependency are the approaches that many of the world's industrialized countries are taking. Those approaches are ones that work.

David W. Fleming, a lawyer, is the chairman of the Los Angeles County Business Federation and immediate past chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. James P. Gray is a judge of the Orange County Superior Court.

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