In Mexico, no jail time for small amounts of drugs
In a move meant to aid in the fight against traffickers, the nation puts into practice a law letting people possess limited quantities of marijuana and cocaine, and even heroin and methamphetamine.

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

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

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


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drugs23-2009aug23,0,6515822,print.story


latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drugs23-2009aug23,0,6595161.story
latimes.com
In Mexico, no jail time for small amounts of drugs
In a move meant to aid in the fight against traffickers, the nation puts into practice a law letting people possess limited quantities of marijuana and cocaine, and even heroin and methamphetamine.

By Tracy Wilkinson and Richard Marosi
August 23, 2009
Reporting from Tijuana and Mexico City

Mired in a bloody battle with major drug traffickers, Mexico is quietly eliminating jail time for possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.

The government of President Felipe Calderon says removing the penalties will help in its fight against traffickers by freeing up law enforcement resources and shifting attention from minor consumers to big-time dealers and drug lords. The law also provides for free treatment for addicts.

But critics say decriminalization sends the wrong message amid a drug war that has claimed more than 11,000 lives since late 2006. It will encourage consumption and add to Mexico's fast-growing ranks of addicts, opponents say.

With the law, Mexico joins a trend throughout Latin America of easing penalties for small-time drug use. But Mexico's law goes further than most in that it includes substances such as heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.

The law, which went into effect last week, did not stir huge controversy in Mexico, and Washington has not taken a public stance on it. But officials in some states that border the U.S. are worried that they will be flooded with American "drug tourists" seeking a penalty-free high.

That was not the fear Saturday on Tijuana's legendary Avenida Revolucion, the main tourist drag clogged with bars, restaurants and souvenir shops. Tourism has plummeted because of drug-fueled violence, the economic crisis and the recent flu epidemic, but no one was predicting that liberal drug laws would bring the tourists back.

"People who want drugs have always been able to just go down the street and buy them," said Adan Cardenas, a waiter at the Mystery Bar, where it's all-you-can-drink for $15.

The tourist police who patrol Tijuana said their marching orders remain the same: Anyone seen consuming drugs, whatever the amount, is taken to police headquarters.

"It's not like you can shoot up on the street or smoke a joint on the corner. If they catch you, you're still going to the police station," said Jack Doron, president of a downtown merchants association. He said it's still illegal to sell drugs, so there is no talk of opening Amsterdam-style hashish bars.

People caught with small amounts clearly intended for "personal and immediate use" and who are not known members of cartels will not be criminally prosecuted. They will be told of available clinics, and encouraged to enter a rehabilitation program. Rehab is mandatory when a user is caught a third time.

The permitted amounts include 5 grams of marijuana and 500 milligrams of cocaine -- enough for four or five pot cigarettes or four lines of coke -- and up to 40 milligrams of methamphetamine and 50 milligrams of heroin.

With the law, Calderon risks rankling his closest ally in the drug war: the U.S. Mexico's previous attempts to legalize drugs proved very controversial. When the Mexican Congress approved a similar decriminalization law in 2006, then-President Vicente Fox was forced to veto it under U.S. pressure.

In April, when the new law was making its way through the Mexican legislature, Michele Leonhart, acting director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said legalization "would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico."

Visiting Mexico in July, however, the United States' so-called drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, said he would take a "wait-and-see" attitude. If sanctions were "completely nonexistent . . . that would be a concern," he added.

Still, Calderon's government has shown signs of being worried about ruffling feathers in Washington. There was no official announcement that Calderon had signed the law; it was merely published in the official government paper of record.

The law was approved by Congress in late April, at the height of the flu outbreak that had grabbed the country's attention. And when The Times wrote about the law in June, Calderon's office would not discuss it.

The law requires local and state authorities to join in cracking down on illegal drug sales instead of leaving enforcement completely in the hands of federal authorities, and that in turn could bolster the broader war against the cartels, analysts said.

"The good thing about the law is that it sets up federal and local cooperation," said Samuel Gonzalez, an analyst who served as Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor in the 1990s. But, he said, it doesn't go far enough in setting up prevention and treatment programs, and, consequently, could lead to increased drug consumption.

Many in Mexico applauded the legislation because it shifts minor drug use away from courts and jails and into the realm of public health.

In practice, minor consumption was rarely punished in Mexico and often left to the discretion of a court or an arresting officer, which in turn led to corruption when police officers used the arrests to extort money from the offenders. Fewer than 15% of people arrested for possessing small amounts of drugs since late 2006 were charged with a crime, according to the attorney general's office.

But Mexico is also under-equipped to deal with a growing addiction problem. Government studies estimate that the number of addicts in Mexico has doubled since 2002, and clinics and rehab centers can handle only a fraction of them.

The law has won praise from several opposition political parties here and pro-legalization groups in the U.S.

"This new law is a step in the right direction," Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance Network, said in a statement. "Mexico is trying to make the right choices on law enforcement priorities."

Opponents include the Roman Catholic Church and a number of experts in social work, addiction treatment and at-risk youths. Permitting any use, they argued, implicitly condones the sale and purchase of drugs and results in more earnings for the big cartels the government is battling.

wilkinson@latimes.com

richard.marosi@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

br />

In Mexico, Obama's words do for now
Mexicans are gratified by the visiting President Barack Obama's repeated expressions of goodwill and partnership. But they are cautious, because there is a history of thwarted expectations.

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-obama-mexico18-2009apr18,0,654367.story
From the Los Angeles Times

In Mexico, Obama's words do for now
Mexicans are gratified by the visiting President Barack Obama's repeated expressions of goodwill and partnership. But they are cautious, because there is a history of thwarted expectations.

By Tracy Wilkinson

April 18, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — Even before he sat down to a gala dinner of shrimp and roasted cactus, President Obama had charmed much of Mexico, with his repeated use of the word "partner," assurances of shared responsibility in the drug war and promises to reform immigration policy.

Obama's counterpart, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, spoke enthusiastically of a "new era" in U.S.-Mexican relations. The two leaders found common ground in their visions of intertwined economies and a need to cooperate on a host of issues.

If expressing goodwill was Obama's goal here, he succeeded. At the same time, there were few concrete steps taken during the 20-hour visit to Mexico, the first stop on his first official trip to Latin America. He departed Friday for the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, and Mexico had little to show for the U.S. president's stopover.

"Yesterday was a very promising day for relations between Mexico and the United States -- the cordial environment, the empathy between the two heads of state, the quality of the speeches, all lead one to expect a genuine improvement in the bilateral relationship," noted commentator Denise Maerker. "But, be careful. This is not the first time that a meeting like this generates great expectations."

Two of Mexico's priorities -- reviving the U.S. government's ban on assault weapons and opening U.S. roads to Mexican trucks as provided for in the North American Free Trade Agreement -- were left unfulfilled.

And most discussion and proposals concerning the drug war emphasized military solutions (a U.S. offer of more Black Hawk helicopters, for example), with less attention given to such insidious root causes as corruption in Mexico and consumption in the United States.

Obama's mission here was in large part aimed at repairing damage caused not just by the years of perceived neglect under the Bush administration, but also by fierce criticism of Mexico emanating from Washington this year.

Brazen killings and kidnappings; clashes between army troops and traffickers; high-level and escalating corruption -- all led to some U.S. experts characterizing Mexico as a potential failed state. Calderon was furious over the description, and the Obama administration has worked for the last month or so to reassure Mexico that it considers it a valued ally rather than a failed state.

Nevertheless, U.S. authorities are alarmed by the level of drug-crime violence that undermines the Calderon government and is spilling over the border into U.S. cities.

The kind of keen interest in and regard for Mexico that Obama transmitted is something that has ebbed and flowed through generations of U.S.-Mexican relations, political analyst Sergio Aguayo said.

"The difference this time is that never in the last century has Mexican stability been so threatened by an enemy so strong, and with so much tension concentrated along the border," he said.

Although Mexicans generally saw the Obama visit as purely symbolic, they were gratified that issues such as immigration reform also got an airing. In Mexico, as in Europe, Obama benefits from simply not being George W. Bush.

"We get a sense that we are dealing with a different type of government . . . one more in tune with the problems that are important to Mexicans, such as inequality and bottom-to-top development," said Patricia Escamilla, a researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana.

At Thursday night's state dinner, on the patio of Mexico City's much-acclaimed Anthropological Museum, with a giant Aztec calendar as backdrop, guests included Mexican Cabinet members, union leaders, opposition politicians from the left and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian novelist who lives in Mexico.

Several guests toted copies of Obama's first book (translated into Spanish and now selling here) and asked for and received his autograph, said people who were present.

The president reportedly fawned over Garcia Marquez, telling him he'd read everything he'd ever written.

To the most realistic eye, Obama's show of support for Mexico may or may not translate into new initiatives, more money or changed laws.

"Six months ago, Mexico was not on the Americans' map, and now we are certainly there," said Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, an analyst and former diplomat. "The big question is follow-up. Obama gave good signals. That it translate into concrete acts and agreements, that's the complicated part."

wilkinson@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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Amid vendors and musicians in the tree-lined central plaza, police in Tecate, Mexico, handcuff a man on unspecified charges. Last December, deputy commander Juan Jose Soriano was assassinated after he reported a cross-border smuggling tunnel. Some suspect the police force has been corrupted by drug lords. More photos >>>

In Mexico, a police victory against smuggling brings deadly revenge Juan Jose Soriano, deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department, helped U.S. authorities find a drug-smuggling tunnel. The next morning, gunmen shot him 45 times in his bedroom.

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

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

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

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-soriano7-2008sep07,0,6331687.story
From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

In Mexico, a police victory against smuggling brings deadly revenge
Juan Jose Soriano, deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department, helped U.S. authorities find a drug-smuggling tunnel. The next morning, gunmen shot him 45 times in his bedroom.

By Richard Marosi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 7, 2008

Tecate, Mexico

Adrug-sniffing dog pulled the U.S. Border Patrol agent to a rusty cargo container in the storage yard just north of the Mexican border. Peeking inside, he saw stacks of bundled marijuana and a man with a gun tucked in his waistband.

The officer and the man locked eyes for a moment before the smuggler scrambled down a hole and disappeared. By the time backup agents cast their flashlights into the opening, he was long gone, through a winding tunnel to Mexico.

U.S. authorities called a trusted friend on the other side, Juan Jose Soriano.

The deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department gathered the entire shift of 30 officers at the decrepit police headquarters on Avenida Benito Juarez. Soriano knew any of them might leak information to the tunnel's gangster operators. So he took their cellphones and sent them away on a ruse about a car chase near the border.

The veteran officer told only a few trusted aides about the tunnel. Later that day, the officers went into the U.S. and traversed the length of the passageway to an empty building, where they found computers, ledgers and other key evidence.

For U.S. authorities, it was an encouraging example of cross-border cooperation in the drug war. For Mexico's crime bosses, it was a police victory that could not go unpunished.

That night last December, while Soriano slept with his wife and baby daughter, two heavily armed men broke into his house and shot him 45 times. The 35-year-old father of three young daughters died in his bedroom. He had lasted two days as the second-in-command of the department.

The death of a police officer is generally greeted in Mexico with a knowing smirk. All too often, it is assumed the cop in question was playing for both sides in the raging drug war that has claimed at least 2,000 lives in Mexico this year.

But all indications, from U.S. and Mexican sources, suggestthat Soriano was among the good ones, poorly paid but somehow immune to the lure of big money and the threat of deadly firepower from Mexico's violent drug gangs.

Cooperation with U.S. law enforcement ranges from secretive intelligence sharing to high-profile raids and arrests. It is aggressive police work that runs the risk of death for honest cops.

An intense, soft-spoken man, Soriano struggled for years to clean up the troubled department. But his corruption-busting ways earned him only contempt from many cops. At the small shrine to fallen officers in the courtyard at police headquarters, Soriano's image is conspicuously absent.

"It's a shame," said Donald McDermott, a former Border Patrol assistant chief who worked with Soriano. "He was one of the good guys. . . . His untimely demise was a blow to border enforcement on both sides of the border."

A city of 120,000 tucked in the rugged mountains 40 miles east of Tijuana, Tecate is best known for its tree-lined plaza and beer brewery. But its tranquil veneer masks its reputation as a hub of organized crime groups that use the surrounding area of boulder-strewn peaks and remote valleys as a launching pad for smuggling drugs and humans.

The 200-member police department has long been suspected of functioning as an arm of the drug cartels, providing protection and ensuring that smuggling routes remain open along the 75 miles of border for which the department is responsible.

Soriano stood apart: an aggressive, disciplined lawman who aspired to become police chief, according to law enforcement sources on both sides of the border. Unlike most Mexican cops, he had a degree in police science. And he spent three years working for Grupo Beta, a federal immigrant-safety force with whom he once saved 65 immigrants in a snowstorm.

In 2003, Soriano took charge of Tecate's SWAT-like special response team. In a break from past practices, he reached out to U.S. agencies for training opportunities and cross-border crime fighting.

Soriano's officers arrested border bandits, disrupted smuggling operations and went where cops hadn't gone in years, say U.S. and Mexican sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation.

Soriano was a go-to source for the U.S. Border Patrol and other agencies and was a regular at binational meetings, where he shared information with his U.S. counterparts. "He wanted to do things the right way," said one Mexican law enforcement source. "But that was a problem for many people."

Police brass reassigned Soriano to a desk job in 2005. "They took away his wings. They weren't ready for where he was going," said one U.S. law enforcement source.

Late last year, Tecate's new mayor salvaged Soriano's career, asking him to take the No. 2 job at the department. Law enforcement contacts across the border applauded the move and didn't wait long to restore ties.

This time, though, the stakes were higher.

A well-concealed tunnel can generate tens of millions of dollars in drug profits for traffickers, who pay huge amounts of protection money to keep them open and threaten anyone who talks about their location.

It was crucial to quickly find the opening of the tunnel discovered that December morning. U.S. authorities didn't want the operators to have time to clear out the drugs and other evidence. In other tunnel cases, Mexican authorities had been slow to respond, allowing crime bosses to abscond with drugs.

Soriano took immediate action. After confiscating the cops' cellphones, he dispatched them to the four-lane border crossing and told them to look out for a fugitive trying to flee from California authorities. Then he and several trusted officers started searching for the tunnel in homes and businesses near the border. He kept a close watch on crooked cops, who he feared would slip away to warn the tunnel operators.

The search failed. Someone would have to traverse the length of the passageway to find the opening.

Soriano volunteered seven officers. They crossed into the U.S. and descended into the tunnel while U.S. and Mexican authorities waited for them to surface in Mexico. About 45 minutes later, the Mexican team climbed up the 80-foot-deep shaft into a vacant two-story building a block south of the border.

A Virgin of Guadalupe picture hung near the opening. Nearby were computer monitors and scribbled ledgers. Soriano, alerted by a radio call from his team, arrived at the building just ahead of the crush of reporters and other police. Mexican federal agents took over the crime scene.

At about 2 a.m. the next morning, a convoy of vehicles drove down the deeply rutted dirt road leading to Soriano's modest house, which was decorated with a string of Christmas lights. Two men armed with AK-47s broke in. Soriano jumped out of bed, but the men stopped him before he could grab his weapons in the hallway.

Soriano seemed to recognize his attackers and begged them not to shoot, a source said. But the men opened fire, the spray of bullets coming within inches of Soriano's year-old daughter sleeping in the crib by his bed.

Since Soriano's death, relations between the Tecate Police Department and U.S. agencies have been almost nonexistent. The force doesn't have a liaison officer, and the border lands are more lawless than ever, Mexican sources say.

Soriano's slaying sent a message to other cops who would dare cooperate with U.S. authorities.

That was clear at Soriano's funeral, where many cops seemed to be celebrating his death, said one person who attended. Some laughed, while others chatted loudly in gestures of disrespect.

Mexican authorities suspect police were involved in the slaying, either as the triggermen or the lookouts for hit men. Nobody has been arrested in the case.

Meanwhile, the tunnel investigation has stalled. There have been no arrests, and it is unknown who was behind the construction and financing of the passageway.

On the day of the tunnel discovery, Soriano turned over a largely intact crime scene. But soon, dozens of soldiers, police, federal agents and reporters gathered to marvel at the sophisticated lighting and water pumping system. Other unidentified people seemed to linger for no apparent reason, said U.S. and Mexican sources.

The computers and other evidence had vanished.

Soriano once wrote on an employment evaluation that he wanted to be a police commander and lead a team of loyal, aggressive cops whom he would treat as friends. "I want to be surrounded by honest police who would never betray anyone."

richard.marosi@latimes.com

Times staff writer Robert Lopez contributed to this report.

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In Mexico, reporters learn not to name names
The drug business has become so deadly that those covering it risk their lives.

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

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

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

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-notebook14jan14,1,3763464.story?coll=la-headlines-world
From the Los Angeles Times
E-MAIL FROM ABROAD

In Mexico, reporters learn not to name names
The drug business has become so deadly that those covering it risk their lives.

By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 14, 2008

MEXICO CITY — The writer was one of the legion of underpaid beat reporters in Mexico, the kind who churn out four or five stories a day, for low pay and little recognition. They know all about the corrupt and violent dealings going on around them, even though they can't always pass on this knowledge to their readers.

He was going to brief me on the local situation, which involved some high-profile killings, various bands of criminals with colorful nicknames and the transport of large quantities of cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

But when I walked into his office, the reporter looked upset. He bit his lower lip and glanced down at the floor, seemingly trying to fight off tears. "I'm quitting," he said.

"What?" I said. "Why?"

In the 2 1/2 years I've been covering the so-called drug wars in Mexico and Central America, I've traveled to small-town police stations, government ministries and newsrooms where journalists require military protection.

Along the way, I've met many courageous people, and many people whose proximity to the drug traffickers' machinery of death has frightened them into silence. This reporter, the lone staffer in his bureau, was a little bit of both. I cannot mention his name, or the town he works in.

After announcing his resignation, he was silent for a time.

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" I asked. He shook his head. We sat like this for a few minutes, until he finally stood up and directed me to his desk.

He pointed to his computer screen and the window of an instant-messaging program, where a flashing missive declared: "You are bothering a lot of people."

It was a death threat: In the local idiom, to be told you are "bothering" someone is an unambiguous warning.

"They've been following me," he said. An hour and half a pack of cigarettes later, he had told me about a car with no license plates that appeared wherever he did, cruising slowly.

"But that's not the reason I'm quitting," he said. It was the low pay and the unfulfilled promises from his bosses (including a company car) that really had him angry. There was something wrong about having to take a bus to cover stories that could get you killed, he said. The threats were just the final straw.

In the end, the reporter stayed on his beat a bit longer and was transferred to a safer place, where he didn't have to cover so many funerals and drug busts -- and where he wouldn't "bother" people who didn't want to be bothered.

That's how it goes when you write about the drug trade: You get close to the story, and then you step away.

"I don't want to know any names," one prominent Mexico City drug expert told me over coffee one day, explaining how he had managed to write about organized crime for years without "bothering" anyone. "When people in the government offer to show me confidential reports, I say, 'Please, don't! I don't want to see them!' "

The expert writes about the drug war's "big picture," and thus avoids the most dangerous thing a writer can do here: reveal a name or a fact that directly affects a trafficker's operations.

The violence tied to the drug-trafficking business has grown more cruel and irrational as the mad scramble for easy money has grown more mad.

In recent years, the attacks have progressed from ambushes with automatic weapons to grenade assaults and grotesque beheadings. When a ton of cocaine falls from the sky, people barely take notice.

In March, police found 2 tons of $100 bills (more than $205 million) in a mansion four blocks from my house here. I've often walked past that now-abandoned house, fantasizing about discovering dollar bills floating in the nearby gutters like so much trash.

Not long ago, my aunt returned to her home in Guatemala City to discover her humble colonia sealed off with police tape. One of her neighbors, a small-time drug dealer, had been shot to death in his doorway. He had been extorting money from the local grocers and was friends with a police officer. All the neighbors knew this, but could do nothing.

My mother lives in Guatemala City too. Less than a mile from her home in the city center, one neighborhood is so infested with drug gangs that the army has set up a base, complete with sandbag parapets, in the local market.

And it was in Guatemala City in November that I came face to face with the drug dead, a body that had been wrapped up in plastic and dumped onto the street from an overpass.

I don't know who the victim was. The Guatemalan news media were too busy covering a presidential election that night (as was I), and the killing wasn't reported in the newspapers.

Nearly all of the drug-related crimes The Times reported on in the region last year remain unsolved, including the killing of several Mexican musicians and the slaying in Guatemala of three Salvadoran legislators.

The Guatemalan police officers arrested in the legislators' killings -- anti-narcotics officers said to be in the hire of drug traffickers -- were themselves killed a few days later in their jail cells. The masterminds of these crimes remain free.

When I traveled to Guatemala to write about the killings, I met several people with theories as to who might be responsible. I learned the names of families and businesses believed linked to the transshipment of drugs. Officials have leaked this information to local journalists, but no one will publish it.

"It's too dangerous," a journalist said. "There's no one here to protect us. And if we're killed, no one will be prosecuted."

Knowing that the piece of unverified information I'd been given could get someone killed, I wondered whether I should even write it down in my notebook.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

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