Designated immigration agents authorized to participate in drug enforcement
An agreement is reached to limit drug trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico border, a move intended to end the turf war between the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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-smuggling19-2009jun19,0,1373014.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Designated immigration agents authorized to participate in drug enforcement
An agreement is reached to limit drug trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico border, a move intended to end the turf war between the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
By Josh Meyer

June 19, 2009

Reporting from Washington — In an effort to plug a hole in U.S.-Mexico drug enforcement, the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced an agreement Thursday that will give designated immigration agents expanded powers to pursue drug investigations.

A key goal is to end the long-standing turf battles between the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement that many critics believe have hampered investigations.

The agreement will allow an "unlimited" number of ICE agents to be cross-designated as DEA agents, giving them the authority to investigate suspected drug smugglers at the border and internationally -- a prerogative that in the past has been jealously guarded by the DEA.

Both departments also pledged greater information sharing and better coordination of activities.

"Moving past old disputes and ensuring cooperation between all levels of our departments has been one of our top priorities since taking office," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement.

The agreement "will strengthen our efforts to combat international narcotics smuggling, streamline operations and bring better intelligence to our frontline personnel," they said.

But the announcement did not satisfy Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who has complained for years about the turf battles between the two agencies. Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and co-chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, said the two did not go far enough in addressing the problems.

"They've kicked the can down the road, which could lead to more of the same squabbles we're trying to get rid of," Grassley said in a statement.

Officials at both departments refused to release the actual agreement, saying that doing so could give the cartels confidential information about government operations and resources.

It will be in force for one year and then reviewed, with possible changes made before it is renewed for another two years, DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart and ICE Assistant Secretary John T. Morton said in a conference call.

Bradley C. Schreiber, a senior advisor at the Department of Homeland Security from 2007 until earlier this year, said it is uncertain what effect the agreement will have on a stormy relationship that has become institutionalized over several years.

Schreiber said the DEA had been trying to protect its role as the nation's primary drug enforcement agency in battles with the U.S. Customs Service and, later, Homeland Security.

ICE has also been sharply criticized, by Grassley and federal watchdog auditors, for not sharing information with the DEA and not participating in its special counter-narcotics fusion center.

Schreiber said that as many as 1,300 ICE agents had cross-designation in the past, but in practice, many of them were barred from actually participating in investigations and other drug enforcement efforts. In addition, thousands of other seasoned ICE agents were effectively sidelined in the drug war because they did not get the cross-designation, he said.

At the same time, the FBI has shifted agents to counter-terrorism and the DEA expanded its activities around the world without hiring more agents, leaving the Mexico border vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated drug traffickers, according to Schreiber, Grassley and other critics.

The agreement will allow designated ICE agents to investigate drug cases and a wide array of other crimes in coordination with the DEA -- as long as there is a clear connection to the U.S. border.

"This is one piece of the puzzle in making America safer," Schreiber said. "Now the federal government is one step closer to taking ownership of the southwest border by putting more boots on the ground, more much-needed personnel on the front lines of the drug war."

josh.meyer@latimes.com

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Mexican police fleeing cartels find U.S. reluctant to grant asylum

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/local/la-me-mexico-police15-2009jun15,0,4732502.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Mexican police fleeing cartels find U.S. reluctant to grant asylum
Officers often must choose between doing drug gangs' bidding or risking death by refusing. Some who have come to the U.S. to escape the dilemma find the system unsympathetic.
By Andrew Becker

June 15, 2009

Julio Ledezma had been chief of police in La Junta, a town of 8,700 in northern Mexico, for barely three months when a pair of strangers paid him a visit.

They said an aide to the mayor had sent them, and they bore gifts: a briefcase stuffed with cash and a truck for Ledezma's personal use.

In return, the new chief was to distract federal police at security checkpoints with fake calls for assistance. The diversion would allow drug traffickers to drive through the area without inspection.

Ledezma could refuse -- and be killed.

He could take the bribe -- and be owned by the Juarez cartel.

He chose to stall. He told the men he had to talk to his boss first. He approached civic leaders, trying to rally support. Word got back to the traffickers, and on Ledezma's 45th birthday, six men with military rifles surrounded his home while he was out buying steaks and jalapeños for his birthday dinner.

The gunmen told his wife that they would find him and kill him, no matter where he went in Mexico. They waited about 20 minutes, then left.

When Ledezma returned, he realized that resistance was not an option. He drove to Juarez with his wife and their 15-year-old daughter and crossed the Bridge of the Americas into El Paso. There, they asked for political asylum.

Their request will probably be rejected, because asylum is reserved for people fleeing political oppression or ethnic discrimination. Police officers who stood up to drug cartels don't necessarily qualify.

Indeed, the U.S. government is aggressively fighting Ledezma's petition on the grounds that the threat that caused him to flee is inherent to police work, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Beckett. U.S. immigration officials said they could not comment because asylum cases are confidential.

As drug violence has worsened in Mexico, businesspeople, journalists and other professionals have been seeking refuge in the U.S. But few have as much at stake as law enforcement figures who defy the cartels.

No statistics are available on how many police officers have sought asylum in this country, but government sources and immigration attorneys suggest the number is increasing.

That is no surprise, because Mexican police have been "left out in the cold by the very institution they sought to protect," said Bruce J. Einhorn, a retired immigration judge in Los Angeles who directs an asylum clinic at Pepperdine University School of Law.

Police officers seeking refuge in this country face an uncertain future. If their asylum applications are rejected, they can be deported to Mexico, to face near-certain retaliation from the cartels. To avoid such a fate, they can try to strike a deal with U.S. authorities to provide information about drug trafficking in Mexico. Or they can try to remain in this country illegally.

Their plight poses a quandary for U.S. officials, who are seeking to bolster honest Mexican police to curb the influence of the cartels.

"These cases are problematic," said Kathleen Walker, an El Paso lawyer and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. "It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole."

In recent months, judges have granted refuge to a few Mexicans fleeing drug-related violence, according to immigration lawyers. But none were police officers.

George Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and an expert on U.S.-Mexico relations, said that if immigration judges began to grant asylum liberally to people fleeing the cartels, "We'd have literally tens of thousands of police officers coming to the United States, not to mention some mayors, too."

Cartels' long reach

In some cases, disillusioned or terrified officers simply head for a border post and ask for asylum. They are held in detention facilities while waiting for their applications to be reviewed by asylum officers and a federal immigration court, a process that can take years. More often, Mexican police enter the country on visitor visas; they then have up to a year to apply for asylum. Such applicants typically remain free while awaiting a ruling.

Through immigration lawyers, interviews were arranged with Ledezma and two other Mexican police officers now in this country. Their accounts provide a glimpse of the drug cartels' reach and brazenness.

One of the officers, a detective in Baja California, received a call seeking inside information about two jailed murder suspects linked to the cartels.

The 39-year-old detective, interviewed on condition that he would be identified only as Alvarez, said he suspected that a fellow officer had set him up for the bribery attempt.

Alvarez said he had been brash enough to ask how some of his colleagues could afford fancy clothes, new cars and expensive weapons on their $1,000-a-month salaries.

The anonymous caller wanted to know about interrogations of the two suspects. Alvarez had had the men moved from a jail cell to police headquarters so he could question them about a pair of killings he was investigating.

"He said, 'You transferred some of my guys who work for me. And I want you to let me know every time you go to see them,' " Alvarez recalled.

No money was offered, but Alvarez knew how the traffickers worked. They paid $3,000 upfront, he said, and $2,000 more each time a cop tipped them to a raid or gave other information.

"I told him, 'You should call someone else. I'm not that kind of person,' " Alvarez said. "He said, 'You're not going to listen to me? You're not going to do it?' "

Two weeks later, Alvarez got another call. It was his daughter, reporting that armed men had been seen outside their home. Alvarez asked a supervisor for protection. The supervisor shrugged and said there was nothing he could do.

Alvarez fled with his family, entering the U.S. at San Ysidro on visitor visas. He is living in Southern California, working at a supermarket.

He said Mexican police need more support and better pay to resist the cartels. Otherwise, Alvarez said, "There won't be any honest cops left."

Officers targeted

An officer in the border city of Juarez, who asked to be identified only as Jesus, was on vacation last spring when his supervisor and a fellow officer were shot to death in the same truck Jesus drove when on duty.

A cartel had targeted members of the city's police force because many of them worked with the rival Juarez drug organization. The traffickers broadcast death threats over a stolen police radio.

In the weeks leading up to the killings, Jesus and fellow officers patrolled only in groups. He switched personal cars and never drove an official car home.

After the slayings, he reluctantly concluded that he had no future in Mexico law enforcement.

He is now living in Colorado, where he has applied for asylum.

"The reality is that I can't trust anybody in Mexico," Jesus said.

A case of do or die

Police work was in Julio Ledezma's blood. His father was a police officer, and Ledezma was a mounted officer in Juarez before turning in his badge for something different: He moved 320 miles south and became a mariachi singer and vocal instructor in La Junta.

Nearly 15 years later, in 2007, reform fervor swept the area after President Felipe Calderon's PAN party won regional elections. Ledezma said he was impressed with talk of reorganizing La Junta's "deplorable" police department. A civic leader encouraged him to apply, and he became chief in November 2007.

His predecessor, he recalled, offered some advice: "Some people are going to visit you. My suggestion is you cooperate with them."

Undeterred, Ledezma recruited and trained new officers and outfitted them with weapons and bulletproof vests. Then the two cartel representatives confronted him with their offer: Join us or die.

Playing for time, Ledezma told the men that he couldn't accept without talking to the mayor's chief of staff. One of the traffickers pulled out a cellphone and dialed the man's number. He was connected on speakerphone.

The point was made: Ledezma could expect no help.

Ledezma regrets leaving behind friends, family and the life he had built in Mexico. He is living in the U.S. interior but asked that the location not be revealed, for safety reasons.

"It hurts to be here" he said. But crossing the border was his only option.

"They never forget," he said of the men who threatened him. "Sooner or later they'll catch you."

abecker@cironline.org

This report is published in cooperation with the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, where Becker is a staff reporter.

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Handguns are stored in a government warehouse in Mexico City. A U.S. report says the growing number of weapons being smuggled into Mexico comprise more than 90% of the seized firearms that can be traced by authorities.


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/la-na-arms-smuggling18-2009jun18,0,5564843.story?track=rss
From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Gun flow south is a crisis for two nations
A report says the U.S. failure to curb smuggling has strengthened drug cartels.

By Josh Meyer

11:19 PM PDT, June 17, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The United States lacks a coordinated strategy to stem the flow of weapons smuggled across its southern border, a failure that has fueled the rise of powerful criminal cartels and violence in Mexico, a government watchdog agency report has found.

The report by the congressional Government Accountability Office, the first federal assessment of the issue, offered blistering conclusions that will probably influence the debate over the role of U.S.-made weaponry as violence threatens to spill across the Mexico border.

According to a draft copy of the report, which will be released today, the growing number of weapons being smuggled into Mexico comprise more than 90% of the seized firearms that can be traced by authorities there.

The document also cited recent U.S. intelligence indicating that most weapons were being smuggled in specifically for the syndicates -- and being used not only against the Mexican government but also to expand their drug trafficking operation in the United States.

"The U.S. government lacks a strategy to address arms trafficking to Mexico," the report said in blunt terms. "Individual U.S. agencies have undertaken a variety of activities and projects to combat arms trafficking to Mexico, but they are not part of a comprehensive U.S. government-wide strategy for addressing the problem."

Obama administration officials said that, although they could not comment on the report before it was released, they have taken steps to reduce the flow of weapons, long a source of frustration to Mexican authorities.

This month, for instance, the administration announced a Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy that included a section on arms trafficking.

The GAO report's authors, however, said that strategy and similar Obama administration efforts were in the early stages and unlikely to significantly improve the situation quickly. They also said the Merida Initiative -- $1.4 billion in initial aid allotted under the George W. Bush administration -- had provided no dedicated funding to address the issue of weapons trafficking.

In the meantime, illegally obtained U.S. weapons -- including an increasing number of automatic rifles -- are being used to kill thousands of Mexican police, soldiers, elected officials and civilians, the report said.

Jess T. Ford, the GAO's director of international affairs and trade, is scheduled to deliver testimony on the findings at a House hearing today.

Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere that is holding today's hearing, said he was troubled by the findings.

"It is simply unacceptable that the United States not only consumes the majority of the drugs flowing from Mexico but also arms the very cartels that contribute to the daily violence that is devastating Mexico," said Engel, who requested the report.

The GAO singled out the two agencies primarily responsible for combating weapons trafficking for criticism -- the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The auditors said those agencies had not effectively coordinated their efforts, in part because they lacked clear roles and responsibilities and had been operating under an outdated interagency agreement. As a result, the agencies duplicated one another's initiatives, leading to confusion.

They also lack the kind of systematic analysis and reporting of weapons trafficking data -- such as how many firearms they have seized that were destined for Mexico -- that would allow authorities to better investigate and prosecute cases.

In response, Justice Department and Homeland Security officials acknowledged that they were working to address some shortcomings the GAO identified.

ATF Assistant Director W. Larry Ford said that his agency and ICE were working to complete a memorandum of understanding "to maximize our joint effectiveness to combat violent crime along the Southwest border."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said interagency cooperation "has been a priority of mine since I became secretary."

"Any agreement between ICE and DEA will increase our ability to secure the border, curtail drug trafficking and make our country safer," Napolitano said in a statement. "I am very optimistic that we will reach an agreement soon."

But the GAO criticisms go beyond operational concerns. Some findings cited laws and policies in the U.S. and Mexico that could make it difficult to institute lasting reforms such as lax U.S. laws for collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases, and a lack of required background checks for private firearms sales.

Moreover, they said, the United States was not doing enough to help Mexico with fighting weapons trafficking and related corruption on its side of the border.

The two countries have not established a bilateral, multiagency arms-trafficking task force, and Mexico has not fully implemented the ATF's electronic firearms tracing system -- "an important tool for U.S. arms trafficking investigations in the United States," Jess Ford planned to say in his testimony, according to the report.

Another significant challenge, according to Ford, was corruption within the Mexican government.

"Despite President [Felipe] Calderon's efforts to combat organized crime," Ford will say, "extensive corruption at the federal, state and local levels of Mexican law enforcement impedes U.S. efforts to develop effective and dependable partnerships with Mexican government entities in combating arms trafficking."

josh.meyer@latimes.com

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Authorities have boosted security at a Guatemala City prison since the arrests of members of the Zetas, a violent drug gang from Mexico.

Drug violence spilling into Guatemala

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-guatemala-drugs4-2009jun04,0,6042185.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Drug violence spilling into Guatemala
Mexican drug gangs under pressure at home are moving operations to Guatemala, whose proximity, weak law enforcement and deep-rooted corruption provide fertile ground, officials and analysts say.

By Ken Ellingwood

June 4, 2009

Reporting from Amatitlan, Guatemala — Twice before, the anti-drug agents had gotten a tip about a load of cocaine at the hulking industrial park on this dreary stretch of highway half an hour outside Guatemala City. Twice before, a U.S. official said, they had found nothing.

On their third visit, they found a firing squad.

Gunmen unleashed a furious barrage of bullets and at least one grenade, in some cases finishing the job point-blank. When the shooting stopped that day in April, five of the 10 Guatemalan agents lay dead and a sixth was wounded.

The fleeing killers, identified by authorities as members of the Mexican drug gang known as the Zetas, left behind a cargo truck packed with 700 pounds of cocaine. More stunning was the cache found in a brick warehouse: 11 M-60 machine guns, eight Claymore mines, a Chinese-made antitank rocket, more than 500 grenades, commando uniforms, bulletproof vests and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

"They were preparing for war," said the adjunct director of the National Civilian Police, Rember Larios.

As Mexican President Felipe Calderon presses a 2 1/2 -year-old offensive against narcotics traffickers in his country, the war has spilled south into Guatemala, where proximity, weak law enforcement and deeply rooted corruption provide fertile ground for Mexico's gangs, say officials and analysts in the region.

During the last year and a half, the Zetas have carved a bloody trail across Guatemala's northern and eastern provinces. More than 6,000 people were slain in Guatemala in 2008. Police say most of the killings were linked to the drug trade.

As the recent blood bath shows, the violence is now threatening the capital, deep in the interior.

Authorities say Mexican drug gangs, primarily the Zetas and rivals from the state of Sinaloa, are ramping up operations in Central America to evade increased marine patrols near Mexico as they relay drug shipments to the United States and Europe.

The gangs are also ferrying military-style weapons north into Mexico to fight Calderon's forces and opposing gangsters while also vying to take over street sales in Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America -- including here in Guatemala, which is still recovering from its 36-year civil war.

"They're looking for new areas," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to comment on the matter. "They need a place where they can operate with impunity."

Since January 2008, Guatemalan police have arrested about 30 suspects who they said were working for the Zetas, the armed wing of the so-called Gulf cartel, based in northeastern Mexico.

The Zetas, formed in the 1990s from former Mexican special forces, have shaken Mexico in recent years through hundreds of well-planned killings and an expanding reach. The group has decapitated numerous rivals, dumping the heads in public places with menacing messages.



Authorities on edge

The spreading influence of Mexican traffickers has Guatemalan authorities on edge and is beginning to stir concern in Washington that powerful drug gangs could imperil fragile Guatemala and its weak neighbor, Honduras.

U.S. Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) urged Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last month to steer more law-enforcement help to Guatemala, warning that it is even weaker than Mexico.

"It is essential that we view our efforts to combat drugs and violence in the Western Hemisphere in a more holistic way," said Engel, who chairs the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Guatemalan police commanders say their 20,000 officers cannot match the firepower of the Mexican traffickers, who have made growing use in Mexico of military-type arms, such as 40-millimeter grenades and .50-caliber rifles capable of piercing armor.

Recent seizures in Guatemala have yielded similar weapons. "These are things we have seen only in photos of Iraq and the Gulf," said Larios, the police commander. "Not in Guatemala."

But devising a response is complicated by Guatemala's troubled past. The memory of the army's brutal conduct during the civil war means that it would be politically dicey for Guatemalan leaders to respond by mobilizing the military, as Calderon has done in Mexico.

Guatemala's army, which once ran the country, has been reined in since the 1996 peace accords, and many residents and human rights activists would be loath to lend it broad policing power. The military is summoned to back up civilian police and patrol distant reaches.

Foreign traffickers have long operated in Guatemala with the help of local smugglers. During the 1980s and early '90s, Colombian drug lords controlled the northbound pipeline for contraband, but Guatemalan and Mexican traffickers later took over.

Sinaloa-based kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, now Mexico's most-wanted drug suspect, was arrested in Guatemala in 1993. He was extradited to Mexico, but escaped from prison in 2001.

But Calderon's war on drug cartels in Mexico is creating a new wave. Pressured in Mexico, traffickers are shifting to Guatemala to store and repackage drugs, stockpile weapons and hide drug money, experts say.

U.S. officials say they believe more drugs are moving through Guatemala than before Calderon's crackdown. A recent analysis by Alberto Islas, a security specialist in Mexico, found foreign reserves in Guatemala's central bank growing robustly, despite economic troubles and falling transfers from Guatemalans abroad -- a sign that crime groups are parking money here.

The Zetas, who have reportedly gotten help from Guatemalan former special forces known as Kaibiles, have announced their presence with spectacular violence.

In November, a gun battle between trafficking gangs in the northwestern province of Huehuetenango, apparently over a disputed horse-race wager, left at least 17 people dead. Officials say the real toll may have been twice that, but many bodies apparently were hauled off before police arrived.

Several months earlier, in March, 11 people were killed when Zeta gunmen ambushed a suspected Guatemalan trafficker, Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon, and bodyguards at a swimming pool in the eastern province of Zacapa.

Guatemalan police say the high-profile arrests of a suspected top-ranking Zeta commander, Daniel Perez Rojas, and others show that the government of President Alvaro Colom is clamping down on drug trafficking.

They cite as evidence a jump in drug and weapons seizures since January 2008, when Colom took office. So far this year, authorities say, they have captured close to $2 billion worth of contraband and cash, roughly triple the figure for all of 2007, officials said.

"[Colom] has ordered a full-frontal attack against all organized crime, especially drug trafficking," said Roberto Solorzano, vice minister for public security in the Interior Ministry.

Nonetheless, unproven charges of drug ties have swirled around Colom, a left-leaning former businessman, since the 2007 presidential campaign. A Guatemala City attorney, Rodrigo Rosenberg, created a scandal when he charged last month that the president's inner circle was using the nation's rural-development bank, Banrural, to launder money. The videotaped allegations came out a day after Rosenberg was shot dead by unidentified assailants.

Many analysts say drug gangs, unchecked, could turn Guatemala into a full-fledged narco-state.

Despite efforts to clean up police forces, the criminal-justice system in Guatemala is rife with corruption and deeply mistrusted. Banking oversight is lax. And persistent poverty means a ready supply of potential helpers for the cash-rich drug gangs.

Already, traffickers operate freely in rural stretches nearest Mexico: building secret airstrips in the northern province of Peten to ferry shipments of cocaine, paying small-time farmers to grow poppy and moving contraband across the porous frontier into Mexico.

"If you can say Mexico is a failed state, Guatemala is worse," said Mario Merida, a security analyst and columnist in Guatemala City.



Fight for dominance

The battle among drug gangs to dominate smuggling and local sales has increased violence that was already at epidemic levels in Guatemala, officials and analysts say.

The rising drug violence has added to an overall sense of insecurity in the capital, where armed guards stand outside many businesses and residents say they are afraid to venture out at night.

In one suspected drug hit recently, gunmen in Guatemala City methodically stopped traffic and then opened fire on a woman in a car. Investigators found 79 spent shells at the death scene, including from an 8.6-millimeter rifle, often used by snipers.

Solorzano, the Interior Ministry official, said Guatemalan leaders are honing a new request for U.S. aid to train and equip police for fighting drug gangs. His country last year was allotted $10.6 million as a first installment of the so-called Merida Initiative, the lion's share of which is destined for Mexico: $1.4 billion over three years. Guatemala will receive a portion of $105 million approved for Central America this year.

While they wait for assistance, Guatemalan officials brace for more violence from Mexican traffickers.

The jitters are on display at the Guatemala City prison where Perez and the other suspected Zeta gunmen are held. Helmeted soldiers and special forces police in black berets guard the crumbling road leading to the main gate. Troops hide in the bushes on the steep hillside above it. Armored military vehicles, with .50-caliber machine guns front and back, make constant passes.

But perhaps the authorities' most eloquent sign of worry about a mass breakout sits outside the entrance. It is a mobile antiaircraft gun, placed there in case Mexican gangsters swoop down from the sky.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com


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Rafael Cedeño Hernandez and other suspected La Familia men were detained in April in Michoacan state. Last week, 10 mayors and 20 other local officials were held across the state in a related inquiry. Officials say La Familia has tainted all levels of political life in Michoacan.

Mexico drug traffickers corrupt politics

The cult-like La Familia Michoacana has contaminated city halls across one state, federal officials say. It sometimes decides who runs and who doesn't, who lives and who dies.

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

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-michoacan-drugs31-2009may31,0,1691370.story

From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Mexico drug traffickers corrupt politics
The cult-like La Familia Michoacana has contaminated city halls across one state, federal officials say. It sometimes decides who runs and who doesn't, who lives and who dies.

By Tracy Wilkinson

May 31, 2009

Reporting from Patzcuaro, Mexico — There are few places in Mexico that better illustrate the way traffickers have corrupted the political system from its very foundation than Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon.

A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing an agenda that goes beyond the usual money-only interests of drug cartels.

Whether by intimidation, purchase or direct order, drug gangs can sometimes dictate who is a candidate and who is not, and put some of their own people in races -- a perversion, critics say, of democracy itself.

Just last week it became clear how deeply embedded La Familia is. Federal authorities detained 10 mayors and 20 other local officials as part of a drug investigation, saying the organized-crime group has contaminated city halls across the state. The roundup comes at the height of the electoral season, as Michoacan and the rest of Mexico approach local and national contests July 5.

Dozens of mayors, city hall officials and politicians have been killed or abducted in Michoacan as La Familia has extended its control in the last couple of years.

When congressional candidate Gustavo Bucio Rodriguez was slain at his gasoline station last month, authorities went out of their way to convince political leaders that he was the victim of common crime, showing them a surveillance tape of the killing by a lone gunman.

A few days earlier, the message was unmistakable. Nicolas Leon, a two-time mayor of Lazaro Cardenas, site of Michoacan's huge port, was tortured and shot to death. Left on his body was a message signed "FM" (Familia Michoacana) warning that supporters of the Zetas, the enforcement arm of a rival trafficking group, would meet the same fate.

Unlike some drug syndicates, La Familia goes beyond the production and transport of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine and seeks political and social standing. It has created a cult-like mystique and developed pseudo-evangelical recruitment techniques that experts and law enforcement authorities say are unique in Mexico.

No party has been spared its influence or interference, politicians of all stripes said in a series of interviews conducted before the arrests of the mayors.

"It is a way to win power with fear, where the authorities either don't have the capability to fight it, or have the capability but not the inclination," said German Tena, president of the Michoacan branch of the country's ruling National Action Party.

"There are mayors and politicians who 'let things happen,' and there are some who have sold their soul to the devil," said a high-ranking Michoacan state official who agreed to discuss the sensitive topic of corruption in exchange for anonymity.

Generally, though, traffickers' political influence in Michoacan has less to do with winning office and more with controlling officeholders, to create a buffer of protection that allows their business to proceed unimpeded, said a security advisor to Calderon.

Several political leaders said they tell candidates to keep a low profile and counsel supporters not to be too public about their endorsements. And they rarely publicize the illegalities they see.

"If we know or hear that a candidate is mixed up with narcos, we are not going to denounce it," said Fabiola Alanis, who heads the Democratic Revolution Party in Michoacan. "It is not my job. It would put my candidates in danger. There is nothing to guarantee that they would wake up alive."

The Obama administration recently added La Familia to its "kingpin" list, a designation that makes it easier for U.S. authorities to go after its assets, including any money in U.S.-owned banks.

"La Familia is absolutely a priority," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. With its swift rise to the short list of dangerous cartels, La Familia is "a modern success story in Mexican narcotics trafficking," the official added.

And with similar speed, La Familia has established footholds in the United States. The organization has drug-running operations in 20 to 30 cities and towns across the country, including Los Angeles, the official said.

For decades, Michoacan has been popular with traffickers, who were attracted to its fertile soil, abundant water, the rugged hillsides that provide cover and the Pacific port that eases transport. Especially in the rough, sparsely populated southern tier of the state known as the Tierra Caliente (Hot Land), a few gangs profited from vast marijuana plantations and, later, dozens of methamphetamine labs.

La Familia emerged this decade as a local partner of the so-called Gulf cartel, whose operatives were moving into the region along with their ruthless paramilitary force, the Zetas. La Familia and the Zetas gradually muscled out most of the other gangs, and La Familia announced its dominance by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall in the Michoacan city of Uruapan in September 2006. The gruesome calling card soon became all too common in areas where drug traffickers settle accounts.

Upon assuming the presidency in December of that year, Calderon launched the first of tens of thousands of troops against drug traffickers here.

Nonetheless, La Familia is stronger today than ever. It has expanded into the neighboring states of Guerrero, Queretaro and Mexico, which abuts the national capital, Mexico City, while battling remaining pockets of the Gulf cartel.

La Familia also has steadily diversified into counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealerships. The group offers money or demands bribes; increasingly, people in Michoacan pay protection money to La Familia in lieu of taxes to the government.

At least 83 of Michoacan's 113 municipalities are compromised by narcos, said a Mexican intelligence source speaking on condition of anonymity.

Purported leaders include Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, "El Mas Loco" (The Craziest), who is described as a religious zealot who carries a self-published collection of aphorisms (his "bible," authorities say) and insists that the group's traffickers and hit men lead lives free of drugs and alcohol.

Another leader, Dionicio Loya Plancarte, "El Tio" (The Uncle), is a former military officer. Both have million-dollar bounties on their heads.

They recruit at drug rehab centers and indoctrinate followers with an ideology akin to religious fundamentalism, complete with group prayer sessions. Some armed guards wear uniforms with the FM logo, witnesses say. Failure by a recruit to live by the rules is said to be punishable by death.

Moreno Gonzalez has also forbidden the sale and consumption of methamphetamine in Michoacan because it is such a destructive drug. It is for export only, primarily to the U.S. The Mexican army recently seized 200 pounds of ready-to-ship meth in a single raid, and the attorney general's office has identified 39 labs in the state.

Another leader, Rafael Cedeño Hernandez, was captured last month while he and more than 40 other alleged La Familia associates were celebrating a baptism in a fancy hotel in Morelia, the state capital. They were still in their party clothes -- Cedeño in a crisp white guayabera shirt, one woman in a yellow fluffy frock -- when police paraded them, handcuffed, before television cameras.

Cedeño's brother, Daniel, was running for Congress. After the arrest, he quit the race.

Daniel Cedeño Hernandez was not the only candidate for national office accused of having ties to drug traffickers. Valentin Rodriguez, a powerful two-time mayor running for Congress in a district around Patzcuaro, here in central Michoacan, has fended off repeated accusations that he has worked with La Familia.

"I am completely clean," Rodriguez told Mexican journalists in early April when the accusations surfaced again. "If those [jerks] have proof, let them show it," he said.

Efforts during the last two weeks of April to reach Rodriguez, who goes by the nickname The Dagger, were unsuccessful. He grew up so poor, people who know him say, that he couldn't afford to go to school. Today he has the largest avocado-packing plant in Michoacan, worth, by his own account, $30 million.

Rodriguez, who represents the Institutional Revolutionary Party, has acknowledged that he was questioned by federal prosecutors investigating drug trafficking. He was never formally charged.

Last week, another congressional candidate was gunned down (he survived) in Michoacan; Julio Cesar Godoy, a congressional candidate who is the brother of the state's governor, was hauled in for questioning as part of the narco-politics investigation; and the body of a founding member of Godoy's party was discovered in neighboring Guerrero a month after he was abducted.

In 2007, two Labor Party candidates in a local race were intercepted on a road in the Tierra Caliente by gunmen who handed a cellphone to one of them. At the other end was this candidate's just-kidnapped wife, begging for her life. The demand: Drop out of the party and run on behalf of another party, to ensure its victory. They did, and the party won.

The story is told by Reginaldo Sandoval, president in Michoacan of the Labor Party, who was himself abducted, held for a day and ordered to silence his criticism of the government and organized crime and to leave the state.

"It is difficult for us to work without fear, especially for those candidates who have a possibility of winning," said Sandoval, who remains in Michoacan. "We are at the mercy of the organized criminals and drug traffickers. We have lost the drug war."

wilkinson@latimes.com

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