MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Mexican town fed up with violence turns to army
By Tracy Wilkinson

In the state of Zacatecas, residents of Villanueva demanded that the military take over. The soldiers came, but drug war violence got worse.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drugs-breakdown26-2009feb26,0,7536662.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Mexican town fed up with violence turns to army
In the state of Zacatecas, residents of Villanueva demanded that the military take over. The soldiers came, but drug war violence got worse.
By Tracy Wilkinson

February 26, 2009

Reporting from Villanueva, Mexico — The people of Villanueva said they'd had enough. Men in cowboy hats, women with hand-scrawled signs, children on bikes -- they gathered outside town and blocked the main interstate highway.

"If you can't do it, quit!" they told their police force. They demanded that the army take over.

The army rolled into this town in Zacatecas state last month and ordered the police to stand down and surrender their weapons. They did.

Things only got worse. A few days later, Police Chief Romulo Madrid, a former military man said to be eager to cooperate with the army, was shot and killed outside his house at 10:30 on a bright morning. The mayor's chauffeur, a first cousin, was arrested in the shooting.

Five days later, gunmen working for a drug gang ambushed an army patrol. One soldier and four assailants were killed. Among the attackers captured was a police officer. Sources close to the military point to evidence that elements of the police force set up the army patrol.

For Mexicans to call on the armed forces, whose human rights record has been dubious at best, testifies to the firm conviction that the state and its civilian authorities, including the police, no longer protect them from the gang warfare of narcotics traffickers.

Shootings, kidnappings, extortion and threats have shattered the relative peace of Zacatecas, a central mountainous state that sends a greater proportion of its people as migrants to the United States than almost any other.

The unrest has disrupted immigration patterns, brought the local economy to its knees, destroyed small-town life and now threatens the upcoming planting season in an area that relies heavily on agriculture.

"They are impotent," Lorenzo Marquez, a merchant, said of the authorities. From the market stall where he sells cheese, sausage and jalapeno peppers, he has watched too many incidents of thugs hauling people away at gunpoint in broad daylight. "And we the people are even more impotent."



'Criminal groups'

Carlos Pinto, the powerful interior minister for Zacatecas, acknowledged that "criminal groups, every day more violent, are challenging the state."

"Our institutions are not proportionate to the needs," he said. "This problem grabbed us without our police being ready or properly equipped."

Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, says that immigration may increase from the state, and that citizens left here could take the law into their own hands.

"The threat is of social and political decomposition in Zacatecas, and in the nation, in which the authorities remain subordinated and violence is the norm," he said. "The situation has overtaken the government and its institutions."

Zacatecas has long been a corridor for smuggling routes from central Mexico northward, with the trafficking gangs from the Pacific state of Sinaloa in control of most activity. Then, several years ago, violence surged as members of the so-called Gulf cartel and their hired guns, the Zetas, began moving in to challenge their Sinaloa rivals.

Criminal opportunists move in as well, taking advantage of the fear and collapse of law and order.



The last straw

For the people of Villanueva, the last straw was the kidnapping last month of Roberto Garcia Cardenas, a retired professor in his 60s nicknamed El Pollero, the Chicken Man, for his part-time job selling chickens in the market. Garcia was also a money lender, a business that won him many properties, and many enemies.

Garcia's family was able to raise the 600,000 pesos (about $40,000) his kidnappers demanded. But when his children arrived to pay the ransom, the kidnappers seized them: a 24-year-old daughter who had given birth just a few weeks earlier, and a half-blind 17-year-old son. They sent Garcia out to gather a new ransom, this time more than 3 million pesos (about $200,000). "They threatened me and beat me," Garcia said of his kidnappers.

Garcia desperately drove through the streets of Villanueva, with megaphones on the roof of his car, offering to forgive the high interest he was charging if borrowers would pay the principal they owed. He tried to hawk some of his properties.

Eventually the children were freed in an operation that remains mysterious. The family, like most that have endured a similar ordeal, fled Zacatecas.

The Garcia story was only the most chilling in a long string of kidnappings. State prosecutor Ambrosio Romero said he registered 30 cases last year and six in January but acknowledged that far more cases are not reported. The perpetrators obtain information on their victims by surfing the Internet and often contact families in the U.S. to wire the ransom money. In some cases, kidnappers showed up with a public notary so the victim could sign over deeds to his properties.



Place of migration

For the last century or so, Zacatecas has sent tens of thousands of migrants to the United States to work, legally and illegally. They in turn send money back (about 10% of the state's GDP last year), and many eventually return to set up businesses, build homes (one story each year) and deal in property. Many ultimately retire in Zacatecas. All of that is changing.

For-sale signs are popping up everywhere; businesses such as restaurants, clothing stores and mechanic workshops are being shuttered. Many Zacatecas residents who live abroad have stopped returning. The horse tracks and dance halls that returning migrants favored have been abandoned. A public notary said her work validating business and property sales has fallen 80%. Antonio de la Torre del Rio, the mayor of Villanueva, says the construction company he owns, which was selling more than 150 tons of poured concrete a week, now doesn't sell that much in a month. According to one academic study, 75% of the towns in Zacatecas are shrinking in population.

Villanueva, with 32,000 people, was famous for musicians who congregate in the central plaza to be hired, mostly by returning migrants. But now the musicians -- norteños with their trumpets, black-suited mariachis, and the native-son tamboreros with their huge drums -- all stand around, idle and largely silent.

Jose Guardado slumped in a corner of Villanueva's leafy town square, his drum doubling as a billboard for his business. Guardado regrets his decision to move back to Villanueva after living in Washington state for 15 years; his brother Emiterio is already making plans to return to Chicago.

"People aren't coming," he said. "They're afraid of getting kidnapped, robbed, killed. The police are no help. The police and the bad guys, they're the same band."



Patronage vehicles

Mistrust of the police runs deep here and throughout Mexico. Local forces are seen as corrupt and infiltrated by drug gangs. But they also are traditional vehicles for patronage, and small-town mayors and state governors are usually loath to lose control of them.

Villanueva Mayor De la Torre initially accepted his people's clamor to hand security tasks over to the army. But he quickly changed his mind. He asked for his police to be reinstated, even though almost every member of the police force had flunked a test, administered by the army, to rate their qualifications and honesty.

De la Torre also defended his chauffeur and first cousin, arrested in the shooting of Madrid, the police chief.

Madrid was gunned down Feb. 2 as he stepped from his home. The chauffeur, Antonio de la Torre Quiroz, was arrested as a material witness and remains under investigation. Two senior government sources close to the case said they believed the man served as a lure to get Madrid out of the house. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the investigation are not public.

Mayor De la Torre acknowledged that violence and fear have reached unprecedented levels. "Someone is kidnapped, and everyone says, 'Who's next?' " he said. "We can't continue this way. The town is dying."

If citizens don't trust the police, neither, it appears, does the military. An army patrol was ambushed Feb. 7 in the Zacatecas town of Fresnillo by drug-gang gunmen who attacked the soldiers from at least two flanks, killing a sergeant and leaving a colonel badly wounded. Among the attackers killed was a senior regional commander of the Zetas, and among those captured was a police officer.

Sources close to the military say that two police units meant to accompany the army patrol inexplicably missed a final turnoff along the route and were not present when the gunfire erupted.

wilkinson@latimes.com

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Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..." COLUMN ONE
Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
By Sam Quinones
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drug-kidnappings12-2009feb12,0,1264800.story
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE

Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

By Sam Quinones

February 12, 2009

Reporting from Phoenix — In broad daylight one January afternoon, on a street of ranch-style houses with kidney-shaped swimming pools, Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was kidnapped in front of his wife, daughter and three neighbors.

Two men with a gun grabbed the 34-year-old from his van and dragged him 50 yards to a waiting SUV. His wife threw rocks at the car, then gave chase in her own SUV. Neighbors in northwest Phoenix called police. Yet when police found her later, she at first denied there was a problem.

On the phone later, as detectives listened in, kidnappers said Perez-Torres had stolen someone's marijuana.

But police were used to conflicting story lines by now. It was Phoenix, after all: More ransom kidnappings happen here than in any other town in America, according to local and federal law enforcement authorities. Most every victim and suspect is connected to the drug-smuggling world, usually tracing back to the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, Phoenix police report.

Arizona has become the new drug gateway into the United States. Roughly half of all marijuana seized along the U.S.-Mexico border was taken on the state's 370-mile border with Mexico.

One result is an epidemic of kidnapping that many residents are barely aware of. Indeed, most every other crime here is down. But police received 366 kidnapping-for-ransom reports last year, and 359 in 2007. Police estimate twice that number go unreported.

In September, police spun off a separate detective unit to handle only these smuggling-related kidnappings and home-invasion robberies. Its detectives are now considered among the country's most expert in those crimes.

That Thursday afternoon last month, Perez-Torres' abduction fell to the unit's two most seasoned detectives, Gina Garcia and Arnulfo "Sal" Salgado, as they were about to leave work. Over the next 42 hours, the kidnapping would consume their every waking moment.

"You never know which way it's going to go," Garcia said. "Sometimes you hear the victim screaming, pleading for help, pleading for their life. You have to stay calm. Talk is huge in this business."

Talk got serious that night, about seven hours after Perez-Torres was abducted.

Over the phone, the kidnapper sounded drunk.

"Get moving," he told Andres, a partner with Perez-Torres in a small-scale auto sales business, who pretended to be the victim's brother. "Start selling things."

He demanded $150,000.

Standing with Andres in the department's "kidnap room" -- a small office with a window, television and tape recorder -- Garcia mouthed responses. "Tell him you want to talk to the victim," she said. "Don't agree to anything."

Garcia was a child when she crossed the Mexico-Arizona border illegally with her parents and eight siblings. She grew up in a tough Phoenix barrio, obtained legal status and was steered to police work by a youth activities program. Five years ago, she joined the kidnapping unit, and has worked hundreds of cases since then.

Her job is to steady the nerves of victims' relatives as they take calls from kidnappers, who often torture their victims while talking to the families. Sometimes she steps in and, in a bit of life-or-death theater, pretends to be the victim's cousin or friend. That's when her native norteño accent pays off.

Andres, who asked that his surname not be used for this article, didn't need much calming. He pleaded well -- not too whiny, not too insistent.

"Put yourself in my place. I want to know how my brother is. I want to hear his voice," he said. "Why don't you put him on the phone for a bit?"

The kidnapper refused, said he'd call the next morning. The conversation ended.

In Phoenix, kidnappers apparently don't call after midnight; usually, they're sleeping or they're high. So Garcia and the other detectives went home. It was late, and things were off to a typical start.

Ransom kidnapping is a rare crime in America. Most cops go their entire careers without handling one. These days, most kidnappings involve a husband taking a child from an estranged wife. That's how things were in Phoenix until a few years ago.

Then things changed in Sinaloa.

Along the Pacific Coast several hours south of Arizona, Sinaloa is the state where drug smuggling in Mexico began. Most Mexican cartels originated there. Kidnapping was how they collected debts. For many years, they kidnapped other smugglers and left law-abiding citizens alone.

But after several major traffickers died or went to prison, younger gunmen stopped playing by the old rules. In the late 1990s and 2000, Sinaloa had its first rash of kidnappings of legitimate merchants and businessmen.

Phoenix first saw large numbers of ransom kidnappings reported during these years as well.

A fast-growing city, Phoenix had long been a destination for Mexican immigrants, and for Sinaloans in particular. Today, Phoenix detectives say, only the rare kidnapper is not from Sinaloa. They often come from the same Sinaloan towns: Los Mochis, Leyva, Guasave.

Like construction or restaurant work, kidnapping in Phoenix relies on cheap Mexican laborers. The grunt work, like guarding the victim, is often done by young, unemployed illegal immigrants, desperate for work, who sign on for $50 to $200 a day, Garcia said.

Certain Phoenix bars -- Señor Lucky's, Bronco Bar and El Gran Mercado -- are known as places where kidnappers recruit, much the way builders go to Home Depot to hire day laborers, police say.

The day Perez-Torres was kidnapped, police raided a south Phoenix tire shop and found shotguns, ammunition and ballistic vests.

The business belonged to a man they suspected of setting up a kidnapping and home-invasion empire. He recruited illegal immigrants, provided them with criminal work and a place to live at the shop, then would order them around like a small-town baron, police said. Occasionally he'd hit them and interrogate them.

Kidnapping in Phoenix attracts immigrants whose American dream is to make it big in the underworld. In Mexico, cartels limit their options. But cartel control is weak in Phoenix. Many resort to kidnapping because "for once, they're the guys with the gun, the ones with the power," Salgado said. "They are in control. In Mexico they're not in control."

It was 7 p.m. Friday. After several phone calls, the kidnappers ordered money to be taken to an intersection in west Phoenix.

Perez-Torres' family had come in that afternoon with $12,000, which they said was from selling cars.

So detectives lied.

"We told the suspect we do have the 150K," said Sgt. Phil Roberts, a unit supervisor. "We're going to tell him whatever he wants."

The case now passed to Salgado, who went undercover, accompanying Andres -- still posing as Perez-Torres' brother -- into west Phoenix.

Nine years ago, Salgado was the first Phoenix detective to investigate the smuggler kidnappings. He comforted the victim's family, negotiated, oversaw rescues. He learned to listen for compassion or cold-bloodedness.

For about a year, Salgado worked alone. The caseload grew incessantly. Today, probably no detective in America has worked more ransom kidnapping cases.

During an investigation, Salgado barely sleeps. When it's over, he crashes hard. Twice, dentists prescribed mouth guards to keep him from grinding his teeth. He chewed through each in a week.

To hear Salgado describe it, each kidnapping is like a jazz improvisation, with every move creating two or three new possibilities, which detectives must anticipate, depending on the suspect's tone of voice and what's come before.

"None are alike, and they're all the same," Salgado said. "You don't know what to expect, but you know what to expect."

With that in mind, Salgado set out that night in a pickup truck with Andres.

Few west Phoenix residents perceived the ballet of two unwitting suspects and dozens of officers that silently swept back and forth through their neighborhood.

Kidnappers called to tell Salgado and Andres to drive around with their windows down. They ordered them to stop at a gas station, then to get out and raise their shirts. Other officers watched from the shadows, giving them a wide berth.

For more than an hour kidnappers ordered Salgado and Andres through maneuvers, looking for signs of cops, apparently unaware of the undercover officers silently cruising the area looking for the kidnappers.

Then things happened fast. Officers were following a suspicious bronze Chevy truck, when the driver bolted down a residential street and into a driveway. Two men jumped out and ran. One dropped a gun.

Officers grabbed them after a short chase and before they could call their accomplices. If anything happened to Perez-Torres, officers said, they'd be charged with murder. The two men caved. He was being held, they said, in a house in Mesa, half an hour away.

A caravan of cops now sped for Mesa. They got there as three men were pushing Perez-Torres into a brown truck; a black Chrysler idled nearby. Both sped off but didn't get far. Police arrested three more men.

By 9:30, Juan Perez-Torres was safe, and five of his alleged kidnappers were about to be questioned.

They told detectives a bleak border tale.

Max Portillo, 24, said he'd been having trouble with a drug smuggler in Nogales, Mexico, known as "El Chueco" -- Twisted. El Chueco said Perez-Torres owed him for a load of marijuana, and he wanted someone to kidnap him.

Portillo said he recruited the others at bars. Another suspect, Abel Mosqueda, said he met Portillo at El Gran Mercado. Mosqueda told detectives he was out of work and needed money. Among the five of them, they had one gun: a black .45. They said they'd never kidnapped before.

How much of it was true? "That voice," Gina Garcia said, "I'm sure he's done this before from the way he conducted the negotiation."

But detectives hadn't time for the case's murky motives. They had the kidnappers' confessions and other evidence. Prosecutors had been getting plea-bargains of 12 years in prison for less. In a few months, they'd have trouble remembering the case.

Detectives now check victims for warrants and have dogs sniff ransom money for drugs, under the theory that today's victims are tomorrow's suspects. They've seized property valued at close to $1 million.

Phoenix police say they have never lost a victim during a rescue attempt. But detectives wondered how long their record would hold, and how long they could stave off the violence that has left more than 8,000 people dead in Mexico in the last two years.

"The way I understand it, the vice president of the Bank of Mexico has to go to work with armed escorts," Sgt. Roberts said. "The vice president of Wells Fargo in Phoenix does not. We're trying to prevent that from happening. If the United States as a whole doesn't do something about this, it's possible it could go that way."

About 4 a.m. Saturday, the family of Juan Francisco Perez-Torres huddled in the police lobby, waiting to drive him home. He denied smuggling drugs. Fixing and selling used cars was how he made his money, he said. No detective believed him.

Six hours later, Garcia finally went home. She hadn't slept in more than a day. Nonetheless, she had passed up a chance to move up to sergeant.

"It's good to save people, and it's good to put people away," she said.

The job was in Salgado's blood as well, and he couldn't quit it.

"The thing about kidnapping is," he said, "it's the only crime that's occurring as it's being investigated."

This one was now done.

sam.quinones@latimes.com

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Border drug war is too close for comfort
Tiny Columbus, N.M., a haven for baby boomer retirees seeking cheap living, small-town values and solitude, can't quite believe that a bloody brawl has broken out on its doorstep.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bordertown19-2009feb19,0,7443711.story
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE

Border drug war is too close for comfort
Tiny Columbus, N.M., a haven for baby boomer retirees seeking cheap living, small-town values and solitude, can't quite believe that a bloody brawl has broken out on its doorstep.

By Scott Kraft

February 19, 2009

Reporting from Columbus, N.M. — The day began gently here on the U.S.-Mexico border. The cold, starry sky gave way to the orange smile of a sunrise.

Over at the Pancho Villa Cafe, short-order cook Maria Gutierrez whipped up her egg and chopped tortilla special. Down the street, Martha Skinner, still in her housecoat, brewed a pot of coffee for guests at her bed and breakfast. Her husband, the local judge, walked two blocks to his courtroom to hear the week's entire caseload: one pet owner cited for keeping her dog chained up, another for allowing her dog off-leash.

Columbus, a settlement of 1,800 people clinging to a wind-swept patch of high desert in southern New Mexico, was a picture of tranquillity.

But less than three miles south, in the once-quaint Mexican town of Palomas, a war is being waged. Over the last year, a drug feud that has killed more than 1,350 people in sprawling Ciudad Juarez has spread to tiny Palomas, 70 miles west, where more than 40 people have been gunned down, a dozen within a baseball toss of the border. More -- no one knows how many -- have been kidnapped, and the Palomas police chief fled across the border last year and has asked for political asylum.

Now Columbus is on edge. A haven for baby boomer retirees seeking cheap living, small-town values and blissful, if unpolished, solitude, Columbus can't quite believe that a bloody brawl has broken out on its doorstep. The anxiety increased recently when Columbus disbanded its five-member police force after a local political squabble, putting its safety in the hands of the county sheriff based half an hour away. Many are ruing the decision. Angry and fretful residents packed a recent village trustees meeting to argue the case.

"What is going on across the border is going to go on for a while, folks," said Joseph Rivera, a regal figure with a bushy, silver mustache who works for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "People are leaving Palomas like jack rabbits and coming here."

Robert Odom, a former town trustee, warned that the town was pushing its luck. "So far, knock on wood, it's been narco-traffickers attacking their own people," he said. "But it's only a matter of time before it spills over here."

The last time an internal war in Mexico spilled over into Columbus, as every schoolchild here knows, was in 1916, when the Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa led a predawn raid that killed 18 Americans and touched off an international incident. A yearlong U.S. military expedition in Mexico failed to capture Villa.

Time healed those wounds, though. A state park and a handful of businesses in Columbus bear Villa's name. And the town celebrates his assault each March by inviting Mexicans on horseback over to reenact the raid.

Like so many towns hugging the 2,000-mile frontier between the United States and Mexico, Columbus and Palomas are inextricably linked.

Several hundred children, most of them U.S. citizens born to Mexican parents, cross from Mexico daily to attend public school, while some Columbus residents commute daily to work in Palomas, or to see the less expensive dentists, pharmacists and auto mechanics there.

But another, newer brand of cross-border activity has fed the town's paranoia. Several residents of Palomas have bought property in Columbus recently, paying cash.

Skinner, the B&B owner who's also the town's lone real estate agent, had her best sales year in 2008, even with the market nationwide in a nose-dive. New Cadillac Escalades, and cars with thousand-dollar chrome rims, have appeared suddenly, in a town without a single traffic light.

Columbus residents think they know what those trends mean: The men who traffic drugs in Mexico are moving their families to Columbus for sanctuary. And where the drug lords go, residents assume, violence is sure to follow.

"Everybody knows this is happening. It's a small town and everyone knows everybody else," said Eugene Sierra, 57, a former Columbus police chief. "Our concern is that they'll be followed by people who want to do away with them, and innocent people in the line of fire will be hurt. Without any law enforcement here, it's wide open."

Columbus would appear to be about as well protected as any border city in America.

The crossing here is flanked by six miles of 15- to 18-foot-tall fencing and another 35 miles of waist-high vehicle barriers. Motion sensors and cameras sprout among fields of onions and jalapenos, and a beefed-up Border Patrol force of 350 has helped drive arrests of illegal crossers to a tenth of what they were two years ago.

Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos said drug seizures are down sharply, and violence linked to Mexican drug cartels remains rare -- though the shooting death of a 15-year-old high school student in Deming late last year appears to have been drug-related.

"There are definitely drug connections here, but it's hard for them to carry on their trade openly," Cobos said. "So they have to go way, way underground."

The assurances of the sheriff and from the Border Patrol haven't calmed fears. Some of those kidnapped in Mexico have relatives in Columbus. Photos of men beheaded by the cartels pop up on cellphone messages here, a not-so-subtle warning of what can happen to those who betray the drug families.

Columbus residents who cross into Palomas say they are unnerved by the eerie calm of what once was a bustling, growing community of 7,000. The population has fallen by a third and tourist crossings have slowed to a trickle.

On a recent weekday the streets were empty, save for a lone mariachi band serenading a local man on his birthday.

There's no hospital in Palomas. The Columbus ambulance service averages a call a day at the border, mostly for heart attacks and pregnancies. Ken Riley, an EMT for the service who lives in Palomas, considers the nature of the call before deciding whether to meet his colleagues at the border.

"I have my own little rule," Riley said. "Any time there's a call for an ambulance at the port of entry, and it's for someone with a gunshot wound, I pull my covers up and stay in bed."

Columbus has had long-standing trouble keeping a police force. The latest crisis began three months ago when the town closed its dilapidated police station because of a faulty lock on the evidence room. Not long afterward, an officer was injured while trying to break up a bar fight and two off-duty officers were suspended. Then, the police chief resigned.

With no police station, and just one police officer, the town dissolved the department and asked Sheriff Cobos to take over.

But the sheriff's 30 deputies, based in Deming, cover an arealarger than the state of Rhode Island, and the county was asking for $26,000 a month to provide policing here. Residents felt exposed and they directed their fury at the mayor, Eddie Espinoza.

Like his constituents, Espinoza, a burly, combative 49-year-old retired Navy man, was concerned about the disintegration across the border. On a Sunday morning last year, he was undergoing a root canal in Palomas when bandits broke in and robbed his dentist. "It took all of three minutes," Espinoza recalled.

But the mayor hadn't had much luck with his police chiefs. Since his landslide election in 2006, six chiefs have left. A few quit; he fired the others.

"I don't know why it's so hard to be a police officer in Columbus," Espinoza said. "It's not that difficult to be a police officer." Some blame the mayor for hiring poorly.

"They have this history of hiring people we've fired, and then expecting great results," Cobos said.

One of the mayor's main critics is Robert Odom, a 58-year-old writer who moved here from Santa Fe, N.M., three years ago. Odom, the author of "Autobiography of a Redneck Hindu," about his spiritual journey, was elected a village trustee last year but resigned a few months ago in a dispute with Espinoza.

"We need our own police department, no matter what," Odom said, preparing a pot of French press coffee at the home he shares with his partner. "It's impossible to live next door to someone -- and we live literally next door to Palomas -- without being affected by what's happening in their yard."

Odom and 70 other residents signed a petition last month urging the mayor to "save our Columbus police." Espinoza seemed to get the message: within days, he appointed a committee to search for a new chief.

As for Odom and the petition co-signers, Espinoza said, "Columbus has its share of characters, and you've got to be able to be tolerant." He paused. "Sometimes it's difficult having to deal with the public."

Espinoza agreed with his opponents, though, that the city can't count on the county or federal authorities for protection. "The problem is that we're like a stepchild to everybody," he said. "We're just a small municipality."

It was, in fact, the drowsy remoteness of this community that attracted people like Skinner. Now 71, she came here 20 years ago from Glendale, Calif., and built Martha's Place Inn. She preceded Espinoza as mayor, and during her tenure the population tripled, driven mostly by retirees who fell in love with the mild weather, rustic beauty and low cost of living. (The top sale price for a home last year? $82,000.)

Farming has been the economic backbone, supplemented by tourists who came to see Pancho Villa State Park, Villa's death mask at the depot museum or the restored buildings on Broadway that figured in Villa's raid. A few came to see City of the Sun, a commune where residents live in homes built from rusted car parts, jalapeno barrels, tires, bottles and other recycled material. ("They're different up there, but they're nice people," said Linda Werner, the town librarian.)

But most tourists came to take advantage of inexpensive medical care and pharmaceuticals across the border. That trade has mostly evaporated with the drug violence.

Martha's Place has been kept afloat for the last year by temporary workers building the border fence. "The tourism business has been awful," Skinner said. "But that fence has kept us in business."

The inn's guests one recent week included a customs officer, a fence welder, a contractor working on lighting at the border fence and a Los Angeles writer researching his next novel. The welder was forced to check out early, though. Four state police officers showed up on a cold night and arrested him at gunpoint, leading him away in handcuffs to face an auto theft charge.

"There's nothing like a small town," Skinner said the next morning, pausing from a game of computer solitaire and smiling serenely. "It's like living in a comic book most days."

But that small-town charm is showing signs of fatigue.

"I wake up every morning and thank God my wife and I found this little place," local developer Gene McCall told the village trustees recently. Then, pointing his walking cane at the mayor, he added, "Let's keep it that way."

scott.kraft@latimes.com

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Police officer, 10 relatives killed in attacks in Tabasco
Gunmen hit the homes of Carlos Reyes Lopez and extended family; a 2-year-old nephew and five other children are among the dead. Reyes Lopez was a member of an elite force.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-violence16-2009feb16,0,2922749.story

From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Police officer, 10 relatives killed in attacks in Tabasco
Gunmen hit the homes of Carlos Reyes Lopez and extended family; a 2-year-old nephew and five other children are among the dead. Reyes Lopez was a member of an elite force.
By Tracy Wilkinson

February 16, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — A team of gunmen in southeastern Mexico opened fire on the homes of a state police officer and his extended family, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children, authorities said Sunday.

The shootings Saturday night in the state of Tabasco stunned an oil-rich part of Mexico that has not experienced the same level of drug-related warfare common elsewhere in the country, despite its position of strategic importance to traffickers.

The killing of police officer Carlos Reyes Lopez came days after police in Tabasco captured four gunmen and left one suspect dead. Although some speculate that the motive was retaliation, the state prosecutor's office also suggested that a personal dispute involving the Reyes Lopez family might have been behind the attack.

Reyes Lopez and 10 members of his family, including a 2-year-old nephew, were killed. The 12th victim was a fruit vendor who was there to deliver frozen strawberries. No arrests were reported.

"They killed my brother Carlos, his whole family, my son, my mother. . . . They killed everyone," said a sobbing survivor identified as a sister of the dead officer and mother of the 2-year-old, according to an account in Tabasco Hoy newspaper.

The newspaper said Reyes Lopez was a member of an elite police agency formed last year amid efforts to rid public security forces of rampant corruption. Members of the new force had to pass rigorous exams, drug testing and additional vetting procedures.

In other violence, gunmen using grenades and assault rifles attacked, for the fourth time in two days, a police station in the state of Michoacan. A police officer was injured in Saturday night's incident, adding to two other officers and eight civilians who have been wounded in the string of attacks.

Michoacan is the home state of President Felipe Calderon, and a drug mafia called La Familia has been making inroads in parts of the state.

In Mexico City, authorities discovered the decapitated bodies of two women in the trunk of a parked car. The heads were in a cooler in the car's back seat, newspapers reported Sunday. Seven people were reported killed in a shootout at a restaurant in Jalisco state and five at a wake in Durango state.

Also on Sunday, colleagues reported the killing of a photographer for a newspaper in the town of Iguala, in Guerrero state. And the Mexican navy announced the discovery and confiscation of 7 tons of cocaine on a ship off the Pacific coast.

wilkinson@latimes.com

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Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..." COLUMN ONE
Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
By Sam Quinones
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drug-kidnappings12-2009feb12,0,1264800.story
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE

Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

By Sam Quinones

February 12, 2009

Reporting from Phoenix — In broad daylight one January afternoon, on a street of ranch-style houses with kidney-shaped swimming pools, Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was kidnapped in front of his wife, daughter and three neighbors.

Two men with a gun grabbed the 34-year-old from his van and dragged him 50 yards to a waiting SUV. His wife threw rocks at the car, then gave chase in her own SUV. Neighbors in northwest Phoenix called police. Yet when police found her later, she at first denied there was a problem.

On the phone later, as detectives listened in, kidnappers said Perez-Torres had stolen someone's marijuana.

But police were used to conflicting story lines by now. It was Phoenix, after all: More ransom kidnappings happen here than in any other town in America, according to local and federal law enforcement authorities. Most every victim and suspect is connected to the drug-smuggling world, usually tracing back to the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, Phoenix police report.

Arizona has become the new drug gateway into the United States. Roughly half of all marijuana seized along the U.S.-Mexico border was taken on the state's 370-mile border with Mexico.

One result is an epidemic of kidnapping that many residents are barely aware of. Indeed, most every other crime here is down. But police received 366 kidnapping-for-ransom reports last year, and 359 in 2007. Police estimate twice that number go unreported.

In September, police spun off a separate detective unit to handle only these smuggling-related kidnappings and home-invasion robberies. Its detectives are now considered among the country's most expert in those crimes.

That Thursday afternoon last month, Perez-Torres' abduction fell to the unit's two most seasoned detectives, Gina Garcia and Arnulfo "Sal" Salgado, as they were about to leave work. Over the next 42 hours, the kidnapping would consume their every waking moment.

"You never know which way it's going to go," Garcia said. "Sometimes you hear the victim screaming, pleading for help, pleading for their life. You have to stay calm. Talk is huge in this business."

Talk got serious that night, about seven hours after Perez-Torres was abducted.

Over the phone, the kidnapper sounded drunk.

"Get moving," he told Andres, a partner with Perez-Torres in a small-scale auto sales business, who pretended to be the victim's brother. "Start selling things."

He demanded $150,000.

Standing with Andres in the department's "kidnap room" -- a small office with a window, television and tape recorder -- Garcia mouthed responses. "Tell him you want to talk to the victim," she said. "Don't agree to anything."

Garcia was a child when she crossed the Mexico-Arizona border illegally with her parents and eight siblings. She grew up in a tough Phoenix barrio, obtained legal status and was steered to police work by a youth activities program. Five years ago, she joined the kidnapping unit, and has worked hundreds of cases since then.

Her job is to steady the nerves of victims' relatives as they take calls from kidnappers, who often torture their victims while talking to the families. Sometimes she steps in and, in a bit of life-or-death theater, pretends to be the victim's cousin or friend. That's when her native norteño accent pays off.

Andres, who asked that his surname not be used for this article, didn't need much calming. He pleaded well -- not too whiny, not too insistent.

"Put yourself in my place. I want to know how my brother is. I want to hear his voice," he said. "Why don't you put him on the phone for a bit?"

The kidnapper refused, said he'd call the next morning. The conversation ended.

In Phoenix, kidnappers apparently don't call after midnight; usually, they're sleeping or they're high. So Garcia and the other detectives went home. It was late, and things were off to a typical start.

Ransom kidnapping is a rare crime in America. Most cops go their entire careers without handling one. These days, most kidnappings involve a husband taking a child from an estranged wife. That's how things were in Phoenix until a few years ago.

Then things changed in Sinaloa.

Along the Pacific Coast several hours south of Arizona, Sinaloa is the state where drug smuggling in Mexico began. Most Mexican cartels originated there. Kidnapping was how they collected debts. For many years, they kidnapped other smugglers and left law-abiding citizens alone.

But after several major traffickers died or went to prison, younger gunmen stopped playing by the old rules. In the late 1990s and 2000, Sinaloa had its first rash of kidnappings of legitimate merchants and businessmen.

Phoenix first saw large numbers of ransom kidnappings reported during these years as well.

A fast-growing city, Phoenix had long been a destination for Mexican immigrants, and for Sinaloans in particular. Today, Phoenix detectives say, only the rare kidnapper is not from Sinaloa. They often come from the same Sinaloan towns: Los Mochis, Leyva, Guasave.

Like construction or restaurant work, kidnapping in Phoenix relies on cheap Mexican laborers. The grunt work, like guarding the victim, is often done by young, unemployed illegal immigrants, desperate for work, who sign on for $50 to $200 a day, Garcia said.

Certain Phoenix bars -- Señor Lucky's, Bronco Bar and El Gran Mercado -- are known as places where kidnappers recruit, much the way builders go to Home Depot to hire day laborers, police say.

The day Perez-Torres was kidnapped, police raided a south Phoenix tire shop and found shotguns, ammunition and ballistic vests.

The business belonged to a man they suspected of setting up a kidnapping and home-invasion empire. He recruited illegal immigrants, provided them with criminal work and a place to live at the shop, then would order them around like a small-town baron, police said. Occasionally he'd hit them and interrogate them.

Kidnapping in Phoenix attracts immigrants whose American dream is to make it big in the underworld. In Mexico, cartels limit their options. But cartel control is weak in Phoenix. Many resort to kidnapping because "for once, they're the guys with the gun, the ones with the power," Salgado said. "They are in control. In Mexico they're not in control."

It was 7 p.m. Friday. After several phone calls, the kidnappers ordered money to be taken to an intersection in west Phoenix.

Perez-Torres' family had come in that afternoon with $12,000, which they said was from selling cars.

So detectives lied.

"We told the suspect we do have the 150K," said Sgt. Phil Roberts, a unit supervisor. "We're going to tell him whatever he wants."

The case now passed to Salgado, who went undercover, accompanying Andres -- still posing as Perez-Torres' brother -- into west Phoenix.

Nine years ago, Salgado was the first Phoenix detective to investigate the smuggler kidnappings. He comforted the victim's family, negotiated, oversaw rescues. He learned to listen for compassion or cold-bloodedness.

For about a year, Salgado worked alone. The caseload grew incessantly. Today, probably no detective in America has worked more ransom kidnapping cases.

During an investigation, Salgado barely sleeps. When it's over, he crashes hard. Twice, dentists prescribed mouth guards to keep him from grinding his teeth. He chewed through each in a week.

To hear Salgado describe it, each kidnapping is like a jazz improvisation, with every move creating two or three new possibilities, which detectives must anticipate, depending on the suspect's tone of voice and what's come before.

"None are alike, and they're all the same," Salgado said. "You don't know what to expect, but you know what to expect."

With that in mind, Salgado set out that night in a pickup truck with Andres.

Few west Phoenix residents perceived the ballet of two unwitting suspects and dozens of officers that silently swept back and forth through their neighborhood.

Kidnappers called to tell Salgado and Andres to drive around with their windows down. They ordered them to stop at a gas station, then to get out and raise their shirts. Other officers watched from the shadows, giving them a wide berth.

For more than an hour kidnappers ordered Salgado and Andres through maneuvers, looking for signs of cops, apparently unaware of the undercover officers silently cruising the area looking for the kidnappers.

Then things happened fast. Officers were following a suspicious bronze Chevy truck, when the driver bolted down a residential street and into a driveway. Two men jumped out and ran. One dropped a gun.

Officers grabbed them after a short chase and before they could call their accomplices. If anything happened to Perez-Torres, officers said, they'd be charged with murder. The two men caved. He was being held, they said, in a house in Mesa, half an hour away.

A caravan of cops now sped for Mesa. They got there as three men were pushing Perez-Torres into a brown truck; a black Chrysler idled nearby. Both sped off but didn't get far. Police arrested three more men.

By 9:30, Juan Perez-Torres was safe, and five of his alleged kidnappers were about to be questioned.

They told detectives a bleak border tale.

Max Portillo, 24, said he'd been having trouble with a drug smuggler in Nogales, Mexico, known as "El Chueco" -- Twisted. El Chueco said Perez-Torres owed him for a load of marijuana, and he wanted someone to kidnap him.

Portillo said he recruited the others at bars. Another suspect, Abel Mosqueda, said he met Portillo at El Gran Mercado. Mosqueda told detectives he was out of work and needed money. Among the five of them, they had one gun: a black .45. They said they'd never kidnapped before.

How much of it was true? "That voice," Gina Garcia said, "I'm sure he's done this before from the way he conducted the negotiation."

But detectives hadn't time for the case's murky motives. They had the kidnappers' confessions and other evidence. Prosecutors had been getting plea-bargains of 12 years in prison for less. In a few months, they'd have trouble remembering the case.

Detectives now check victims for warrants and have dogs sniff ransom money for drugs, under the theory that today's victims are tomorrow's suspects. They've seized property valued at close to $1 million.

Phoenix police say they have never lost a victim during a rescue attempt. But detectives wondered how long their record would hold, and how long they could stave off the violence that has left more than 8,000 people dead in Mexico in the last two years.

"The way I understand it, the vice president of the Bank of Mexico has to go to work with armed escorts," Sgt. Roberts said. "The vice president of Wells Fargo in Phoenix does not. We're trying to prevent that from happening. If the United States as a whole doesn't do something about this, it's possible it could go that way."

About 4 a.m. Saturday, the family of Juan Francisco Perez-Torres huddled in the police lobby, waiting to drive him home. He denied smuggling drugs. Fixing and selling used cars was how he made his money, he said. No detective believed him.

Six hours later, Garcia finally went home. She hadn't slept in more than a day. Nonetheless, she had passed up a chance to move up to sergeant.

"It's good to save people, and it's good to put people away," she said.

The job was in Salgado's blood as well, and he couldn't quit it.

"The thing about kidnapping is," he said, "it's the only crime that's occurring as it's being investigated."

This one was now done.

sam.quinones@latimes.com

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AFP / Getty Images
Mexican federal police officers carry a body in Villa Ahumada, a town in the state of Chihuahua 80 miles south of Ciudad Juarez, after a series of events that included deadly shootouts between the army and gunmen who had abducted nine people and killed six of them.

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
In Mexico, 21 killed in burst of Chihuahua violence
Gunmen in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua abduct nine people and kill six of them before being killed themselves in shootouts with soldiers.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-shootout11-2009feb11,0,3161926.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
In Mexico, 21 killed in burst of Chihuahua violence
Gunmen in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua abduct nine people and kill six of them before being killed themselves in shootouts with soldiers.
By Ken Ellingwood and Cecilia Sánchez

February 11, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — Gunmen seized and killed six people, then got into a rolling shootout with Mexican soldiers Tuesday in a burst of violence that left at least 21 dead in the northern state of Chihuahua, officials said.

The scale of bloodletting was remarkable even for Chihuahua, the deadliest spot in Mexico as a year-old turf war has raged in the state between rival drug-trafficking groups.

Chihuahua, across the border from Texas and New Mexico, registered 2,000 drug- related killings last year, according to Mexican news media counts, and has logged more than 200 since Jan. 1.

Tuesday's incident began in the town of Villa Ahumada, which sits along a key highway route for smugglers 80 miles south of the violence-torn border city of Ciudad Juarez.

The region has been at the center of the war between Juarez-based traffickers and rivals from the northwestern state of Sinaloa. In May, dozens of attackers stormed Villa Ahumada, killing the police chief, two officers and three civilians. They also reportedly hauled off 10 other people.

On Tuesday, authorities said, the attackers kidnapped nine people and took them to a ranch, where they killed six of the captives before fleeing in two groups.

Mexican troops, who have led the government's crackdown on drug traffickers, caught up with seven of the gunmen and killed them during a shootout, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for joint military-police operations in Chihuahua. A soldier died and a second was wounded.

The remaining seven gunmen were killed later during separate clashes with soldiers who gave chase by land and helicopter. Three kidnapping victims were freed, Torres said.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed 45,000 troops across Mexico as part of a 2-year-old offensive against organized crime. The crackdown has exacerbated violent rivalries between big drug-smuggling organizations and contributed to a record number of killings.

Calderon told a Mexican newspaper Monday that more than 6,000 people died in the violence across Mexico last year. He said 90% of the dead were linked to criminal activities.

Tuesday's incident came as Mexican officials defended the use of the military in the drug war. Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont was quoted in Mexican news reports as saying the army's role was temporary and designed to give federal and local law enforcement officials time to clean up and improve police forces.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

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In a Mexico state, openness is the new order in the courts
Closed-door, written trials give way to U.S.-style proceedings in Chihuahua. The overhaul could help fight corruption and organized crime, analysts say.

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 movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drugs-courtreform6-2009feb06,0,918734.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
In a Mexico state, openness is the new order in the courts
Closed-door, written trials give way to U.S.-style proceedings in Chihuahua. The overhaul could help fight corruption and organized crime, analysts say.
By Ken Ellingwood

February 6, 2009

Reporting from Chihuahua, Mexico — Silvia Guadalupe Perez burst into tears as she named the bitter ingredients of her new life as a widow: three children emotionally adrift, a mounting pile of bills and meager factory wages to pay them.

"I can't . . . " Perez, 36, said as she sobbed on the witness stand. She took a sip of water and dabbed her eyes with a tissue before turning again to the prosecutor's gentle questioning.

A few paces away, the man convicted of mowing down her husband with a big-rig truck gnawed his lip and stared a hole into his cowboy boots. By day's end, a three-judge panel would deliver his punishment.

Courtroom dramas such as this sentencing are standard fare north of the U.S. border. But what's happening in the northern state of Chihuahua amounts to a revolution in Mexican justice. Far-reaching legal reforms have brought U.S.-style trials to the border state, providing a glimpse of the kind of change that experts say is needed throughout Mexico to rescue an opaque and graft-laden justice system besieged by organized crime.

Chihuahua has overturned centuries-old legal traditions and opened courts to public scrutiny as never before.

The reform effort in the state, whose largest city, Ciudad Juarez, has been racked by gruesome drug killings, comes as the government of President Felipe Calderon is locked in a war with narcotics traffickers. Many analysts say success against organized crime hinges on building a new judicial system and cleaning up corrupt police agencies.

Chihuahua's overhaul has attacked an ossified judicial system that many Mexicans long ago stopped trusting. In contrast to U.S. practice, detainees in Mexico are treated as guilty until proven innocent, and often are beaten until they confess. Trials are usually held behind closed doors and in writing, rather than in person. Witnesses rarely confront assailants in court.

Moreover, trials in other parts of Mexico can drag on for years, slowed by endless injunctions that are a favorite weapon of the rich, and by a clogged court calendar overloaded with small-potatoes cases, such as routine car accidents, which are treated in this country as crimes.

Since unveiling its new system two years ago, Chihuahua court officials have experimented with legal tools untried in Mexico: plea bargains, mediation, suspended sentences and probation. These mechanisms, familiar in the United States, are considered daring innovations to streamline Chihuahua's courts, officials say.

"You have a faster, more open system that is completely transparent," said Margarita Romero Sanchez, one of the state's 72 judges who were trained for oral proceedings by legal experts from foreign countries, including Chile, Costa Rica and the U.S.

The reforms aim to fix a system in which only one or two of every hundred crimes result in prosecution and conviction.

Similar programs have been adopted by some other states, such as Baja California, Oaxaca and Zacatecas. Last year the Mexican Congress approved oral trials in the federal courts as part of a judicial reform package that required changing the constitution.

Reform advocates contend that fair trials will force police to act more professionally. Slipshod police work due to poor training, thick caseloads and neglect remains a weak spot in the criminal justice system, officials acknowledge.

The changes also could help win the trust of the public. By this thinking, a robbery trial in Chihuahua represents a blow against impunity across Mexico.

"These behind-the-scenes criminal justice reforms are really what are going to make the difference in the long run," said David Shirk, who tracks law enforcement trends in Mexico and directs the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Chihuahua's reforms, spearheaded by Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza after his 2004 election, rolled out gradually, starting in January 2007 in the capital, also named Chihuahua. Oral trials began in Ciudad Juarez a year later and in the rest of the state in July.

In the capital's main courthouse, prosecutors and defense attorneys joust in public in sleek, wood-paneled courtrooms equipped with cameras that beam proceedings to a video control room. Information is recorded digitally; the piles of files that once filled entire rooms are nowhere in sight.

Perhaps the most basic change is that suspects are presumed innocent, reversing the inquisitional system brought by Spanish colonizers. The arrested are no longer tossed straight into jail, but can remain free while prosecutors present evidence in hopes of winning an indictment.

Many residents question whether the reforms that include more rights for the accused may be to blame for a yearlong wave of killings in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez. A little less than a year after the reforms debuted in the capital, lawmakers responded to public pressure and made more suspects subject to incarceration before appearing in court.

But killings tied to drug trafficking are federal offenses. Robberies, assaults and murders not linked to organized crime are handled in state courts.

Critics "don't distinguish," the state's attorney general, Patricia Gonzalez, said in an interview. "They believe it could be because of this new criminal justice system."

All agree that the flexibility of the new system is one of its best points. Having new ways to adjudicate cases, such as letting defendants plead guilty in return for lesser punishment, means that relatively few of them go through a long trial.

Of 1,112 cases filed in Chihuahua city last year, only eight went all the way to an oral trial. Six of those ended in conviction. Ciudad Juarez had 1,253 cases, but only six trials. In both cities, about a quarter of all cases ended in a plea bargain. Many other suspects received probation or had charges dropped after agreeing to compensate the victim.

Court officials say they want to keep the docket clear of minor matters. Now many cases are mediated through the state attorney general's office, allowing parties to reach a court-supervised deal instead of trial.

Judge Romero was trying to nudge one such case toward mediation on a recent day. A mechanic charged with smashing his pickup truck into a car sat glumly as Romero called a new hearing in six months. That is enough time, she said later, for the two sides to agree on a fair damage estimate, and for the defendant to avoid a possible five-year prison term.

"The trial under the old system would take three years. What good does it do to wait that long?" said Romero, 36. "The victim gets no satisfaction."

Some wrongs can't be fixed with a handshake.

Perez, the widow with three children, acknowledged on the stand that her husband's killer had offered to pay her $3,100. But funeral costs alone added up to $2,000, she noted.

Instead, the homicide case went to trial. Cuitlahuac Davila, 49, was convicted of running over her husband with a tractor-trailer after a booze-soaked argument.

The sentencing hearing, in front of a nearly empty gallery, lasted 90 minutes. Perez, bundled in a quilted nylon parka, cried some more and then took a seat next to the prosecutor. The three judges, in suits and ties, called a recess to decide the sentence.

Their answer came 10 hours later: Davila was to serve eight years in prison and pay $4,700 to the widow. Case No. 30/2008 had ended a year after its start, lightning-fast for Mexico. The sentence was read in open court -- the way it is done in Chihuahua these days.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

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Ex-general, 2 others found shot to death near Cancun
Mauro Enrique Tello is one of the highest-ranking officials to be killed in the lawlessness fueled by drug trafficking and other gang crime. Elsewhere in Mexico, 14 people are reported killed.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-violence4-2009feb04,0,3682861.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Ex-general, 2 others found shot to death near Cancun
Mauro Enrique Tello is one of the highest-ranking officials to be killed in the lawlessness fueled by drug trafficking and other gang crime. Elsewhere in Mexico, 14 people are reported killed.
By Tracy Wilkinson

February 4, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — The bodies of a longtimeMexican army general and two associates were discovered early Tuesday on a highway to Cancun, the latest execution-style victims of the violence sweeping Mexico.

Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello, who left the army last month and was working as a security consultant for the mayor of Cancun, is one of the highest-ranking officials killed in lawlessness fueled by drug trafficking and other gangland crime.

"Without a doubt, we are talking about an organized crime execution," state Atty. Gen. Bello Melchor Rodriguez told reporters. He said the bodies were found in a bullet-riddled SUV that had probably been intercepted on the dark road. The men had apparently been tortured before being killed with single shots to the head, Melchor said.

Killed with the general were an active-duty army lieutenant and a man thought to be a civilian who was serving as a bodyguard, authorities said.

There was speculation that the slayings were intended as a warning to Cancun officials, some of whom have sought to rid the popular beach resort of drug traffickers and other gangsters.

The notorious Gulf cartel, among the most ruthless of Mexico's drug gangs, is active in Cancun.

Tello and the two others "fell in the line of duty," Cancun Mayor Gregorio Sanchez said at a news conference. "We will continue with a firm hand. They are not going to intimidate us."

Tello served in the army's elite presidential guard but was dogged by controversy. More than a decade ago, when he was a senior official in Mexico City's Public Security Ministry, he was accused of the torture and murder of six detained youths. He spent a year in prison before he was ultimately cleared of the charges.

Elsewhere in Mexico, 14 people were reported killed between Monday night and late Tuesday afternoon in the border state of Chihuahua. Most of the dead were found in Ciudad Juarez.

In one incident, a man and a woman were gunned down in a supermarket parking lot and a third person was killed in the checkout line.

In Durango state, two police officers were killed Tuesday in a shootout, and another officer died when a police station in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas was attacked before dawn.

In the state of Zacatecas, the police chief of Villanueva was shot to death Monday. Residents had recently asked for army protection from criminals and drug gangs.

More than 5,300 people were killed last year in a raging drug war in which government forces are fighting traffickers and their hired guns, and the traffickers are fighting among themselves for control of lucrative drug routes to the U.S.

wilkinson@latimes.com

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