http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-army-20101230,0,5694946,print.story


Mexican troops destroy more than 7 tons of illicit drugs in Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent city and a key drug corridor. (Alejandro Bringas, EPA / December 30, 2010)

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.


latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-army-20101230,0,6982556.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Mexico army's failures hamper drug war
The army often relies on numbers over intelligence and falls back on time-worn tactics, such as highway checkpoints, of limited use against drug traffickers. The shortcomings alarm U.S. officials.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
6:32 PM PST, December 29, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City
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Four years and 50,000 troops into President Felipe Calderon's drug war, the fighting has exposed severe limitations in the Mexican army's ability to wage unconventional warfare, tarnished its proud reputation and left the U.S. pointedly criticizing the force as "virtually blind" on the ground.

The army's shortcomings have complicated the government's struggle against the narcotics cartels, as the deadliest year of the war by far comes to a close.

Though long employed to destroy marijuana and poppy fields in the countryside, the army hadn't been trained for the type of operations needed to fight groups trafficking cocaine through border cities.

"The army has never worked in urban operations against drug trafficking, in urban cells," said Raul Benitez, a national security specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "It's the first time it is engaged in urban warfare. It has to learn."

Instead, the army often relies on numerical superiority over intelligence and has frequently fallen back on time-worn tactics, such as highway checkpoints, that are of limited use against drug traffickers, especially in cities.

Checkpoints have also been the scene of serious human rights violations, including deadly shootings of civilians. Allegations of abuse at the hands of the army, one of the most respected institutions in the country, have soared. Mexico's human rights commission this year received nearly double the number of complaints it had gotten in the previous three years combined.

The military has delivered important victories to the government by killing or capturing several senior cartel figures and confiscating large drug shipments. And the decision to put retired and active army officers in charge of police departments around the country has helped bring relative quiet to some violence-plagued cities, such as Tijuana.

But in places such as Ciudad Juarez, where Calderon has staked his political reputation, the death toll has skyrocketed since last year. Seven of every 10 stores have been forced to shut down as a result of extortion and threats, and nearly a quarter of a million people have fled the city in the last two years.

The failures have alarmed U.S. officials, who for more than a year have been training Mexican forces in counter-narcotics operations and who are footing a large part of the drug-war bill.

A series of secret diplomatic cables leaked recently revealed the United States' profound unease over Mexico's efforts, despite public assurances to the contrary, with stinging language criticizing the army as stymied by well-protected fugitive drug lords.

U.S. diplomats and Mexican intelligence officials say the Mexican military and police distrust each other, refuse to share intelligence and resist operating together, squandering important potential gains.

The Mexican army appears to have lost favor with U.S. officials who turn increasingly to the navy, whose special forces are more eager to work with the Americans and small enough in number to remain agile and less susceptible to corruption.

At the same time, however, the naval marines' small size confines them to limited commando operations taking out targeted cartel leaders or dismantling small cells, not the massive presence needed to rein in the most widespread violence and retake lost territory such as Juarez, the eastern border state of Tamaulipas or the Golden Triangle drug bastion where Durango, Chihuahua and Sinaloa states meet.

Not that the army has succeeded in those missions either.

"Mexicans are paying a high price … for a strategy that does not seem to have much impact," said Roderic Ai Camp, an expert on the Mexican military at Claremont McKenna College. "It is not reducing drug consumption in the U.S., it is not reducing drug-related income for the trafficking organizations, nor is it reducing their influence in other activities," such as kidnapping and people-smuggling.

"I don't see the army, or anyone else, winning this 'war' in the immediate future."

In the four years since Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels shortly after assuming office in December 2006, he has deployed more than 50,000 military troops, plus an estimated 30,000 federal police officers, to more than half of the country's 31 states.

In the diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website and published in numerous newspapers, U.S. officials noted that the army's inability to contain violence in Ciudad Juarez represented a demoralizing failure. Troops were eventually pulled out of Juarez and replaced with federal police officers.

Calderon's strategy relies in large part on taking down capos and splintering their organizations. In the short term, however, that has often led to more bloodletting as the battles for turf and succession escalate.

U.S. officials, who are giving Mexico $1.4 billion as part of the Merida Initiative to fight cartels and shore up law enforcement, repeatedly emphasize that their relationship with Mexican forces, including training exercises and intelligence-sharing, is stronger than ever.

Instead of relying on the army, however, U.S. efforts have focused on revamping the police and providing assistance to the navy special forces.

As The Times reported a year ago when marines killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, Washington has moved into an ever-tighter relationship with Mexican naval forces involving the exchange of real-time intelligence. In that Dec. 16, 2009, attack, U.S. officials supplied their Mexican counterparts with the precise location of Beltran Leyva, holed up in a luxurious apartment building in Cuernavaca. Beltran Leyva and four of his bodyguards died in the ensuing shootout.

What was unknown until the cables were leaked, however, is that the Americans gave that piece of intelligence to the army first, and the army refused to act. (The army did, however, kill Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villarreal, a top leader of the Sinaloa cartel, this summer in an upscale Guadalajara suburb.)

The navy "is well trained, well equipped and has shown itself capable of responding quickly to actionable intelligence," U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual wrote in a December 2009 cable. "Its success puts the army in the difficult position of explaining why it has been reluctant to act on good intelligence and conduct operations against high-level targets."

U.S. officials have found the navy a far more cooperative ally, describing its 2,000- to 3,000-strong commando forces as "willing, capable and ready." The army by contrast was viewed as slow and "risk averse."

The reasons are to be sought in the differing training, history and cultures of the two forces.

Army doctrine contains long lessons on the perceived expansionist ambitions of the United States, with the history of U.S. military interventions in Latin America a foremost topic. Consequently, the army has retained its long-standing wariness of the U.S., and that interferes with the intelligence-sharing central to the fight against drug cartels.

The navy, by contrast, is willing to share. It is a more goal-oriented force whose main task is interdiction at sea, a duty that fits more naturally with the work of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In addition to taking out Beltran Leyva, Mexican marines acting on U.S.-supplied information last month killed Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, alias Tony the Storm, a major leader of the Gulf cartel.

The army appears to be keenly aware of its shortcomings and has expressed interest in changing the nature of its relationship with U.S. authorities. In another leaked cable, the army's top commander, Gen. Guillermo Galvan Galvan, requested more U.S. help and acknowledged the need for rapid-deployment units that can better act on intelligence.

He described frustrated efforts to capture Mexico's most wanted fugitive, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, saying the Sinaloa cartel kingpin was moving around among 10 to 15 locations and was surrounded by "security circles of up to 300 men" and a network of spies that "make launching capture operations difficult."

U.S. officials said the army, following the navy's lead, has requested special operations training "for the first time."

Galvan acknowledged the risk to his institution's prestige that comes with its involvement in the drug war. Still, Galvan said he was reconciled to what many here see as an ominous prospect: The army anticipates fighting this treacherous war "for the next seven to 10 years."

wilkinson@latimes.com

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-michoacan-20101212,0,7367730,print.story

Federal police stand guard in Apatzingan, in Mexico's Michoacan state. At least 11 people were confirmed killed in battles that began Wednesday, including five federal police officers and an 8-month-old. (Reuters / December 10, 2010)

Corruption sweep in Mexico's Michoacan unravels in the courts

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar. http://www.warriorthemovie.com
•

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-michoacan-20101212,0,6080015.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Corruption sweep in Mexico's Michoacan unravels in the courts
An examination of the sealed case file shows prosecutors relied on evidence that didn't hold up under judicial scrutiny and on three anonymous paid informants whose testimony was largely hearsay.
By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
December 12, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City and Morelia, Mexico
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When 35 mayors, prosecutors, police chiefs and other officials in the state of Michoacan were hauled into jail and accused of taking bribes from a cartel last year, it looked as if the federal government was finally attacking the political collusion that has long nurtured the drug gangs.
But instead of heralding a bold new front in Mexican President Felipe Calderon's 4-year-old drug war, the case has turned out to be an embarrassing example of how that offensive is failing.
More than a year later, the prosecution is in ruins.
Judges ruled that the evidence was too flimsy, and all but one of the suspects has been freed. Many have returned to their old jobs, accusing the government of a politically motivated witch hunt during an election season.
The high-profile collapse underscores fundamental defects in the Mexican criminal justice system, including the country's ministerios publicos, a combination detective and prosecutor. These officials are poorly paid, frequently lack professional training and have been known to throw cases in exchange for bribes or to escape possible retribution.
"This is the weak link of the Mexican criminal justice system," said John Mill Ackerman, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and editor in chief of the Mexican Law Review. "If the ministerio publico doesn't do its job right — even if you have an honest judge — you're not going to be able to convict."
An examination of the sealed case file shows that prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence that didn't hold up under judicial scrutiny and on three anonymous paid informants whose testimony consisted largely of hearsay.
Court files in criminal cases in Mexico, unlike in the United States, are not public. The Times obtained the file from participants in the case, opening a rare window onto the workings of the Mexican judiciary.
Some suspects were accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars a month from La Familia, the dominant cartel in Michoacan, according to the court filings. But there was no sign that investigators found or even looked for proof in the accused officials' financial holdings or telephone records.
In affidavits, Mexican federal police described stakeouts in which they watched alleged drug figures hand suitcases and envelopes to people the officers said they believed to be corrupt officials. But investigators were not sure of the identities of the recipients, and the file contains no evidence that they ever determined what was in the bundles. The accused officials denied they were at such meetings.
The disintegration of the case has added to skepticism among Mexicans already mistrustful of the justice system. The Calderon government's suggestion that judges acted improperly won't do much for public confidence either.
"If even a case with so much resonance and so much attention can't end in conviction," political analyst Alfonso Zarate asked, "what can we expect from the rest of the cases that don't claim as much attention?"
++
La Familia, one of Mexico's newest drug cartels, has grown steadily in ruthless power and influence in Michoacan, Calderon's picturesque home state.
Unlike other criminal organizations, La Familia has deep roots in society, projects a cult-like aura and sees itself as a political player. It has penetrated city halls and police departments while maintaining tight control over methamphetamine labs and vast marijuana fields.
It had long been an open secret that numerous Michoacan officials took money to facilitate La Familia's operations or turn a blind eye. The arrests last year stunned many who thought so-called narcopoliticos were untouchable.
Ignacio Mendoza, then deputy state prosecutor for Michoacan, was on vacation in Las Vegas with his wife and friends when Mexican soldiers and federal police swept into the state May 26, 2009, in a surprise roundup. When he got word that he was among those wanted, Mendoza went home the next day and turned himself in.
He says he assumed he would give a statement and be done. Instead, he was bundled off to a row of small cells where he found his boss, state prosecutor Miguel Garcia Hurtado, and a who's who of Michoacan's political and law enforcement elite.
The indictment accused Mendoza of accepting $20,000 a month to provide La Familia with protection and to inform its henchmen about pending military operations, information to which Mendoza says he did not have access.
In an affidavit, four federal agents said they watched from a neighboring table as Mendoza and a police commander met in a Sanborn's restaurant in the state capital, Morelia, with an alleged La Familia leader known as "El Tio," or "Uncle." At the end of a 15-minute meeting, the alleged drug boss handed over a black suitcase. Its contents were not revealed, and it was not clear from the court documents examined by The Times whether any photographs were taken.
Mendoza insists the meeting never happened.
After Mendoza had spent eight months in prison, a judge threw out the case, saying the testimony by the prosecution witnesses was vague and contradictory and didn't meet legal standards of proof.
"Their case was full of inconsistencies and lies. We are not the Sisters of Charity, but what they accused us of was not true," Mendoza said in an interview.
He said the case was riddled with errors, including mistaken names of suspects, reports of surveillance at locations that didn't exist, and an allegation that dirty money financed a political candidate who was appointed to office, not elected.
A witness who claimed Mendoza met with cartel leader Jose de Jesus "El Chango" Mendez later could not recognize Mendoza's photograph when police showed it to him, according to the court file.
In bits and pieces, the broader prosecution unraveled as district judges and appeals courts examined the evidence.
Three suspects were freed almost immediately and nine others eventually acquitted. In 22 other cases, judges set aside charges or granted injunctions halting proceedings.
"Once I got out of prison, I knew we would all get out," Mendoza said. "The kernels were falling from the cob."
Mendoza, 39, whose family has strong ties to the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, said he is convinced he was targeted because of his politics. He has not returned to the prosecutor's office but is working as a special advisor to leftist Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy of the PRD.
One of the last to be freed was Mario Bautista, who at the time of his arrest was commander of the Michoacan state police. He was one of the nine detainees acquitted by a judge.
"I was a police officer for 32 years, and in 10 minutes they destroyed my life," said Bautista, who was accused of accepting $20,000 a month from La Familia's reputed boss, Nazario Moreno. "We had to prove our innocence."
Among those accused was also Genaro Guizar, mayor of the remote city of Apatzingan, a stronghold of La Familia. Guizar is a U.S. citizen who lived for many years in San Jose, where he made a small fortune operating restaurants and liquor stores. He returned to his native Michoacan in 2004.
In court filings, prosecutors alleged that Guizar was point man for the importation of chemicals used in La Familia's methamphetamine labs and for distributing the finished product.
In an interview, Guizar, 63, said the charges were politically motivated and presumed he had powers he did not. Guizar, who owns a 400-acre lime farm in semitropical flatlands around Apatzingan, was freed in April after a judge declared him not guilty. He is back at work, inaugurating hospitals, meeting voters and even attending a meeting with Calderon.
"Calderon just had to try to impress the world, to prove that he was catching traffickers," Guizar said. "But we are all out now. So you tell me what he achieved."
Some of the former prisoners strain credulity in denying any knowledge of or dealings with La Familia. Mendoza claimed he'd never heard of Servando "La Tuta" Gomez Martinez, one of Mexico's most notorious drug suspects, until he was questioned in jail. Bautista said it wasn't his job to investigate the cartel because drug trafficking is a federal crime, not a state offense. Guizar said, essentially, that one survives by not noticing.
Guizar noted proudly that he moved about without the bodyguards who escort most officials: "If you don't get involved, you shouldn't be afraid."
++
The piece of evidence that federal authorities regarded as a smoking gun was discovered when police captured Luis Gomez, the son of "La Tuta," in January 2009.
In the younger man's Cheyenne truck, police testified, was an Excel spreadsheet listing La Familia payoffs to 28 mayors, police commanders and other officials. Judges said prosecutors never proved a direct link between La Familia and the suspects, rendering the spreadsheet meaningless.
Much of the case was based on the testimony of three witnesses identified in court records with code names: "Ricardo," "Emilio" and "Paco."
Far from bolstering the prosecution, these paid informants contributed to its unraveling. Judges said they found it improbable that the informants could know all they claimed to know about so many defendants, and that much of their testimony was mere hearsay.
"Ricardo," a former Michoacan police officer who said he had worked as a bagman for La Familia, offered a lengthy list of officials to whom he allegedly delivered cash. But defense attorneys say "Ricardo," once charged with kidnapping, became an oft-used government witness in 2005 — before much of what he testified to happened.
In case after case, evidence was thrown out on the ground that it was hearsay or came from unqualified witnesses, such as street vendors speaking about payments to top officials.
Calderon's office and the federal attorney general's office did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
In public comments in October, Mexican officials accused the Michoacan judge, Efrain Cazares, of ignoring evidence and overstepping his power. Some officials hinted at judicial misconduct. Calderon, a lawyer, called the judge's standards "absurd," saying Cazares erred in rejecting testimony from the unnamed witnesses.
The government's heavy reliance on unnamed "cooperating witnesses" was a fundamental flaw, analysts said.
"This is where the process broke down," said Pedro Jose Penaloza, a criminologist who teaches at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City.
In the same case, charges are pending against a federal congressman, Julio Cesar Godoy, half brother of the Michoacan governor. Accused before his July 2009 election victory of having ties to La Familia, he vanished for 15 months. Then, in September, he slipped past police surrounding the Chamber of Deputies to take the oath of office.
As a congressman, Godoy is immune from prosecution.
Federal prosecutors are trying to strip Godoy's immunity. But that decision rests with his fellow congressmen — far from the reach of Mexican law enforcement.
ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
wilkinson@latimes.com
Ellingwood reported from Mexico City and Wilkinson from Morelia. Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times


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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drug-lord-20101211,0,6005257,print.story


Federal police stand guard in Apatzingan, in Mexico's Michoacan state. At least 11 people were confirmed killed in battles that began Wednesday, including five federal police officers and an 8-month-old. (Reuters / December 10, 2010)

La Familia cartel leader believed killed in Michoacan violence

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar. http://www.warriorthemovie.com

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drug-lord-20101211,0,3271149.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
La Familia cartel leader believed killed in Michoacan violence
Mexican authorities believe Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, a.k.a. 'El Mas Loco,' died in the fighting that raged between drug traffickers and federal troops this week.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

December 11, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

Mexican authorities said Friday that they believe a top leader of the violent La Familia cartel was killed during two days of pitched fighting in the home state of President Felipe Calderon.

In violence that erupted Wednesday afternoon and raged until early Friday, federal forces deployed in the western state of Michoacan battled scores of gunmen from La Familia who torched vehicles and barricaded roads in a dozen cities. At least 11 people were confirmed killed, including five federal police officers and an 8-month-old.

Government security spokesman Alejandro Poire said officials had received information that La Familia founder Nazario Moreno Gonzalez — a.k.a. "El Mas Loco" (the craziest) — was killed in the shooting.

He acknowledged, however, that La Familia gunmen carried away their dead and injured as they retreated, making an exact accounting of who and how many died impossible.

Still, Poire said the group had been "significantly weakened."

"This is the moment to intensify pressure on this organization in order to diminish criminal activity in the region efficiently and permanently," he said.

Moreno's death would be a significant blow to the cartel, which is among the newest in Mexico and one of the most brutal.

La Familia first gained national attention by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall in September 2006. Two months later, Calderon sent troops into Michoacan for the first time to take on traffickers. Nevertheless, La Familia swiftly rose to a spot on the short list of dangerous cartels, dominating the methamphetamine trade and steadily diversifying into counterfeiting, extortion and kidnapping.

Based in Michoacan, where it has infiltrated police ranks and city halls, the group has spread into neighboring Guerrero and Mexico states, as well as at least 30 U.S. towns and cities, including the Los Angeles area.

Moreno gave La Familia a patina of pseudo-religious, cultlike mystique. He carried a self-published "bible," recruited members at drug rehab centers and insisted that the group's traffickers and hit men lead lives free of drug or alcohol consumption. He cast himself and the cartel as protectors of Michoacan.

Moreno also had a bounty on his head of about $2 million, placed by the Mexican government. The charges listed on his wanted poster include drug trafficking in Mexico and the U.S., kidnapping and homicide. He was considered one of the two top leaders of La Familia.

The heaviest fighting this week in Michoacan took place around the town of Apatzingan, a La Familia stronghold, where Mexican marines and army troops backed by helicopters fanned out across the countryside, according to witnesses, and were pushing the offensive as late as Friday afternoon. If Moreno was indeed killed, La Familia could retaliate, a prospect that has set residents on edge.

"The situation is very critical," Apatzingan Mayor Genaro Guizar said by telephone. "There is hardly anyone on the streets, and traffic has stopped."

He sent city hall employees home early and told them to stay inside.

In the state capital, Morelia, businesses were shuttered Friday and parents kept their children home from school. On Thursday, gunmen forced motorists from their vehicles and set cars, trucks and buses on fire to block all roads leading into the capital. Parts of Morelia, a picturesque, colonial-era city once popular with tourists, were ringed with black smoke.

La Familia recently used banners and fliers to offer a truce and say it was ready to disband. The government ignored the offer, saying it showed the group was battered and in decline. But others in Michoacan viewed the offer as a ploy that foreshadowed a new offensive by the cartel.

"What we have witnessed in the last few days is the demonstration of a criminal organization repudiated by the public and that has found itself significantly weakened," Poire said. "That has been proved by its false calls for a truce."

wilkinson@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-arrest-20101129,0,6461849,print.story


Federal policemen accompany suspected Aztecas gang leader Arturo Gallegos Castrellon in Mexico City. Authorities say Gallegos confessed to involvement in 80% of the recent killings in Ciudad Juarez. (Mario Guzman, European Pressphoto Agency / November 27, 2010)

Gang leader blamed in Ciudad Juarez violence arrested

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar. http://www.warriorthemovie.com



latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-arrest-20101129,0,6676756.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Gang leader blamed in Ciudad Juarez violence arrested
Arturo Gallegos Castrellon is described as the main leader of the Aztecas street gang. Mexican authorities say he confessed to numerous killings, including that of a U.S. consular employee that was previously blamed on a different Aztecas leader.
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
November 29, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City
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Mexican authorities said Sunday that they had arrested the main leader of the Aztecas, a Ciudad Juarez street gang blamed for much of the violence in the troubled border city.

Federal police officials in Mexico City said Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, 32, was arrested in Juarez on Saturday. They said he confessed to taking part in several high-profile slayings, including the fatal shootings of a U.S. consular staffer and two other people in March and the ambush of a teen party in January that killed 15 people.

Authorities said Gallegos told them he was responsible for 80% of the killings in the border city since August 2009. Since early 2008, more than 6,500 people have died in drug-related violence there, according to unofficial tallies.

Among Gallegos' suspected victims were five Mexican federal police officers, the public safety secretariat said in a statement.

It was impossible to verify the suspect's alleged confessions. It is not uncommon for Mexican police to report that arrestees have admitted to numerous crimes.

The Aztecas, who are allied with the Juarez drug-trafficking cartel and claim members on both sides of the U.S.- Mexico border, are believed responsible for much of the violence that has turned Ciudad Juarez into Mexico's deadliest city.

Police said Gallegos ordered the March 13 shootings that killed two U.S. citizens — consular staffer Lesley A. Enriquez and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs — and the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate. The statement said Gallegos also played a role in the January attack in the Villas del Salvarcar neighborhood that left 15 dead, but it did not provide details.

Mexican authorities had previously said that a different Aztecas leader, Jesus Ernesto Chavez, ordered the attacks that killed Enriquez and her husband. Chavez was arrested in July.

On Sunday, authorities said Gallegos was responsible for killings, extortion and drug dealing throughout Ciudad Juarez.

The Aztecas and other street gangs have served as foot soldiers in a 3-year-old war between the Juarez-based cartel and a trafficking group based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

Similar turf battles have raged across Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against cartels soon after taking office in December 2006. Drug-related violence has escalated each year since. About 30,000 people have been killed.

In Ciudad Juarez, the Calderon government has sought to improve social services and job opportunities to counter social ills that, officials say, draw young people into violent gangs. But a drive begun this year to build parks, schools and hospitals and offer job training has not slowed the pace of killings.

Officials said Gallegos was arrested on drug-trafficking charges in the United States in 1996, but did not elaborate.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-dread-20101119,0,5740920,print.story
A Mexican soldier stands next to a slain gunman, dressed in military fatigues, after a raid in September in the vicinity of Ciudad Mier, near Nuevo Laredo. (Associated Press / November 19,

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.


latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-dread-20101119,0,5797149.story
latimes.com
FOREIGN EXCHANGE
A city fogged in by fear and uncertainty
A visit to Nuevo Laredo, in the violence-ridden state of Tamaulipas, reveals a city in limbo. Residents try to go about their lives but with one eye out for gunfights and narco roadblocks.
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
4:20 PM PST, November 18, 2010
Reporting from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
advertisement

One minute you're shaking it on a dance floor throbbing with happy wedding guests. The next you're navigating darkened, forlorn streets, hoping the bad guys have the night off.

Such is the fractured feel of life in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where the death of a drug lord has intensified months-long fighting between rival cartels and left residents in a dread-filled state of limbo. They know something awful is going on around them, but usually little more than that.

In Nuevo Laredo for a cousin's wedding, I found a city fogged in by fear and not-knowing, a jittery place where people go to work, then check Facebook and Twitter for reports of gunfights in the streets.

Here, "normal" life means racing to retrieve your children from school when reports crackle of fresh fighting. It means driving down streets suddenly closed by narcobloqueos, lightning roadblocks erected by gunmen who seize cars and park them to head off police or rivals.

Residents swap tidbits on the latest balacera, or gunfight, but the versions are incomplete, like shards of a remembered nightmare. In the end, they only add to the sense of a reality that cannot be trusted. Did drug henchmen really hang a death-threat banner from the Walmart store?

When a city bus was caught in a gunfight in July, killing more than a dozen people (no one is certain of the exact toll), it wasn't reported in Nuevo Laredo's main newspaper, which itself has faced grenade attacks. Last week, as the city tensed with reports of another extended gun battle (unconfirmed by authorities), the newspaper's lead crime item was about a hit-and-run involving a bicycle.

I read that story over green tea in a trendy cafe that could have been a continent away from the drug war. Respite comes in snatches. The wedding celebrants, gowned and suited under strands of twinkling lights, sipped whiskey and water and took to the dance floor with a delight that, given the troubles outside, seemed like affirmation. You could even excuse the "Hot-Hot-Hot" conga line.

Down the street, Burger King offered a hedge against the perils: home delivery. When we arrived at a cousin's house for carne asada, she had something like news. "There was a shootout yesterday," she said in a hushed, child-proof voice. As usual, details were elusive.

If dread drapes Nuevo Laredo, panic reigns elsewhere in Tamaulipas.

Months of carnage have chased many residents from the colonial town of Ciudad Mier, about 75 miles southeast of Nuevo Laredo. During the last two weeks, more than 300 residents have taken shelter in a Lions Club in a neighboring town, huddled under donated blankets, like refugees.

Ciudad Mier residents say authorities, including the army, have failed to keep the ranching town safe.

"For more than eight months, our city has been in the hands of organized crime," reads a six-page plea for help.

The appeal said the trouble began in February when gunmen in 40 pickup trucks stormed the town's police headquarters, rounded up all the officers and stole weapons and radios. The thugs then set fire to 10 homes and hauled off a bunch of residents.

Since then, the city of 6,500 has been plagued by gunfights and kidnappings. School programs have been canceled, hospitals have shut their doors and no one goes outside after 7 p.m., according to the plea.

People fear that the clashes will grow bloodier because Mexican forces killed a top leader of the Gulf cartel, Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, known as "Tony Tormenta," in a fierce battle Nov. 5 in the border city of Matamoros.

Where that eruption will occur is anyone's guess.

Tamaulipas residents know little for sure, but are braced for a bloody winter.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-depravity-20101109,0,1563812,print.story


Pablo Szmulewicz /
A painting by Pablo Szmulewicz. "People are losing the ability to be shocked, and when you lose the capacity for shock, it creates an opening for worse things," Szmulewicz said.

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.

Dismembered bodies, warped minds

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-depravity-20101109,0,5270636.story
latimes.com


MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Dismembered bodies, warped minds
The extreme violence produced by the drug war is seen as a form of social disfigurement in which Mexican values get more distorted each time a mutilated body is found.
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

5:05 PM PST, November 8, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

Pablo Szmulewicz, a Mexico City artist, remembers the pitch from the newspaper hawker who held a front page with chopped-up human bodies.

"He told me: 'Buy it — it's a good story,'" Szmulewicz said, recalling the encounter that took place three months ago in the central state of Morelos. "I'm saying, 'But … these are people.'"

Szmulewicz knew he had found a terrible inspiration. When he got home, he downloaded death-scene images from the Internet and went to work.

The result is a series of paintings depicting discarded bodies, bound and blindfolded and lying in heaps; rows of severed heads, arrayed on shelves and eerily lifelike, are based on photos of real victims, bruises and all.

The 55-year-old painter has no idea where he will exhibit his new work, a departure from his favored themes, such as migration. But he hopes to challenge what he sees as a growing societal callousness to the carnage that is Mexico's drug war.

"People are losing the ability to be shocked, and when you lose the capacity for shock, it creates an opening for worse things," Szmulewicz said. "The reality is so harsh, so heartbreaking, that people look the other way to survive."

Bodies are dangled headless from highway overpasses. Heads turn up in ice chests and trash bags. Corpses are found marked by torture wounds and taunting, hand-scrawled messages. Body parts, rearranged for humiliating effect, are left for all to see.

Mexicans have watched the carnage — at first with horror and disbelief, but increasingly with a stunned fatigue as drug-trafficking gangs try to one-up rivals or scare authorities with new heights of savagery.

Some worry that people could adapt to depravity as the new norm: The nation's health secretary, Jose Angel Cordova, said last week that, four years into the drug war, Mexico risked becoming a country where "killing someone can be seen as normal or natural."

The violence bleeds into Mexican life.

Grade-school children draw severed heads and point-blank executions of blindfolded victims. A recent billboard campaign for a life insurance company in Mexico City warned that "people are dying who weren't dying before." The new feature film "El Infierno," or "Hell," has been stirring uneasy laughter with its all-too-real depiction of small-town drug killers lopping off limbs.

"My concern is that there is no opposition to the barbarity, to the insanity," Szmulewicz said. "It can't be part of our daily landscape."

-----

The question, printed on a snow-white banner, is plaintive and scolding at once. "If crime is organized," the banner asks, "why aren't we?"

The sign is among a series of nearly 100 anti-violence banners that have popped up, anonymously, in and around Mexico City this fall, posted by a group working in secret and the dead of night.

Taking a page from the narco-traffickers, those behind the undercover effort hang their banners from footbridges and highway overpasses for maximum effect. Last month, they placed a "Why aren't we?" banner on the same bridge in the city of Cuernavaca where hit men had hung the corpses of victims.

"How many have to die for us to get together and do something?" a person identifying himself as Arturo Calzada wrote on the group's blog. The group, which calls itself Be United Mexicans, did not respond to an interview request submitted via Twitter.

That it has to act with such stealth is a sign of how difficult the group's task is likely to be. Mexicans may be jittery, but, given their history of corrupt, top-down rule, they are also deeply distrustful of the authorities and reluctant to take a stand.

Instead, many avert their eyes and mutter, "El que nada debe, nada teme" — roughly translated, a person who doesn't get involved has nothing to fear.

----

When President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and announced he was going after the drug cartels with full force, extreme violence was already part of the landscape. But it was still rare.

People were aghast when gunmen dumped five human heads on the dance floor of a bar in Michoacan in 2006. Since then, more than 600 people have been beheaded as feuding among drug factions intensified in the face of the government crackdown. Now decapitations often garner little more than summary mention on the TV news or in the country's main newspapers.

"It makes me afraid for the country we are constructing," said Raul Villamil Uriarte, a social psychologist. "I feel depressed. I feel ashamed. I think the generation of my children won't have a country that is peaceful and calm."

Villamil, 53, said the drumbeat of extreme violence has paralyzed Mexico with a kind of collective post-traumatic stress.

"We haven't recovered from what happened yesterday when something even worse happens today," he said.

Villamil said he sees the mutilation of bodies as a form of social disfigurement: Mexican values get warped a bit each time a beheaded or dismembered corpse is found. The result is an "upside-down world" in which killers assert their legitimacy through awful acts and repudiate "all the rest of us mistaken idiots who want to stay on the right path," he said.

"We never imagined heads, decapitated, and then pretty soon they appeared. Then you said, 'OK, what's next?' And there are decapitated bodies, with the heads of pigs in place of their own heads," Villamil said. "It keeps going faster and faster."

-----

As the public response gets more muted, the hit men have turned to steadily grislier methods to draw notice for their exploits.

"Organized crime — in the cruelest way it can — is sending a message," said Cuitlahuac Cardoso, director of the coroner's office in Cuernavaca, where this year bodies have been scattered in pieces and hung headless from bridges. "It is sending a message to society. It is sending a message to the authorities. It is sending a message to rivals."

Messages need a messenger, of course, and often it is Mexico's media, which offer wide, if indirect, exposure even when bodies are deposited late at night. The country has a long tradition of publishing gory photographs of killings and accidents in its crime-oriented tabloids. But the drug war has thrust equally gruesome images onto the news pages of mainstream media, stoking debate over how much is too much.

Hector Aguilar Camin, who writes a column in the daily Milenio newspaper, publicly upbraided editors in April for running a photograph of a pile of bodies on the front page. He said such displays cheapen traditional journalism and distort reality by creating the impression that the violence is more prevalent than it is.

"Violence has imposed its barbarous law and turned the media into allies of its evil message," he wrote, urging restraint.

But Aguilar conceded his cause was probably quixotic, in part because it was likely to be viewed as a call for censorship. "I understand this is a doomed argument," he said.

Still, hit men don't need newspapers or prime-time television. The violent images are increasingly showing up in newer media: on YouTube and narco-related blogs, which gangs use to threaten and taunt one another.

A video that has made the rounds by e-mail shows masked men interrogating a rival foot soldier, blindfolded and bound. At the end, with camera running and the subject alive, the questioner pulls out a knife and saws the prisoner's head off.

-----

The reality of rampant brutality is itself an illustration of a kind of growing acceptance, at least within a segment of Mexican society. But, it turns out, even hit men need to be conditioned to new depths.

An accused former enforcer for the notorious cartel known as La Familia told police this year that he took newcomers to a far-off spot in the Michoacan hills for lessons. They learned how to behead and dismember people — using real victims.

The suspect, former state police officer Miguel Ortiz Miranda, said in a videotaped statement that peer pressure worked on reluctant trainees. After watching others cut into victims, they eventually joined in.

In a matter-of-fact tone, Ortiz said the dead were dismembered with a foot-long butcher's knife and then burned over a pit fire until no trace remained.

"It's not difficult," he explained, saying he had no qualms.

"Nothing," he said. "You don't feel anything."

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

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105 tons of marijuana seized in Baja California

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1019-mexico-pot-bust-20101019,0,4331193,print.story

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.



latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1019-mexico-pot-bust-20101019,0,2045400.story
latimes.com
105 tons of marijuana seized in Baja California
It is believed to be one of the largest drug busts in recent Mexican history, authorities say. The pot was hidden inside cargo containers stored in a warehouse in an industrial area of Tijuana.
By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times
October 19, 2010
Reporting from San Diego



Baja California authorities seized 105 tons of marijuana Monday morning in what is believed to be one of the largest drug busts in recent Mexican history, according to Mexican authorities and media reports.

About 10,000 packages of marijuana were hidden inside six cargo containers stored in a warehouse in an industrial area of the border city of Tijuana. The marijuana was discovered after police on routine patrol intercepted a convoy of vehicles escorting a tractor-trailer that had left the warehouse, officials said.

After a shootout, 11 people were arrested. Police and soldiers, acting on information from the suspects, raided the warehouse and two homes near the coast, where smaller amounts of marijuana were found.

The neatly packaged cannabis — guarded by masked, heavily armed soldiers — was later displayed for the media at Morelos Army Base in Tijuana. Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica, the military's top commander in Baja California, said the drugs had an estimated street value of 4.2 billion pesos, or about $340 million.

The drugs were destined for the United States, he said.

The seizure is the latest blow against organized crime in Baja California, a major staging ground for drug smuggling into California. In April, the military seized 19 tons of pot in a Tijuana warehouse. Security forces have also arrested many major drug cartel figures and significantly reduced the kind of gang-war violence that afflicts other border cities.

"With these results, it is evidence once again that the strategy … continues striking the operations and financial structure of the organized crime groups," said a statement released by the Mexican military.

richard.marosi@latimes.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

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Mexican federal police patrol the streets of Acapulco last week after the suspected abduction of a group of 20 tourists. (Pedro Pardo, AFP/Getty Images / October 6, 2010)

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-missing-20101018,0,6320337.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
The case of the 20 missing Mexican tourists doesn't add up
Relatives insist they are ordinary guys. The government focuses on their unusual travel arrangements. Police have little to offer, and Acapulco expresses skepticism about what the travelers were up to.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

October 18, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

It's one of the more puzzling episodes in a drug war heaped with unsolved cases: 20 Mexican men travel to Acapulco together and are kidnapped en masse as soon as they arrive.
Two weeks later, there has been no trace of the men. Investigators have yet to announce any good leads, even though two others from the group were not taken.
Against the backdrop of Mexico's extraordinary drug violence, it's tempting to write off the Sept. 30 disappearance as another grim skirmish between rival traffickers. Group kidnappings have been a common feature of the feuding, though generally with fewer victims.
But in the Acapulco case, the pieces don't add up neatly.
Relatives back in the western state of Michoacan insist they were no drug henchmen, but ordinary guys: mechanics, students, deliverymen, an accountant, a physician. Loved ones said the friends and co-workers saved up for months for an annual, guys-only weekend in the seaside resort.
"None of them had any ties or relationship with any group that is involved in illicit acts … and had no conflicts with anyone, or threats of any kind," the relatives said in a joint statement issued shortly after the men disappeared.
Family members listed the men's names and ages — 17 to 58 — and jobs. Nine of the missing worked in the same wheel-alignment shop in Michoacan.
Still, it's hard to explain why 20 law-abiding men would be seized at gunpoint on the way to beach-side relaxation. Authorities have made comments casting doubt that the men were mere tourists, but have not specified a motive for the disappearances.
The outcome of the mystery matters to Acapulco, which is struggling to recover some of its former cachet and can hardly afford the image of gunmen seizing innocent visitors.
Sensitive to the effect of violence on the country's crucial tourism industry, Mexican officials have said the rising bloodshed nationwide is not aimed at travelers. That has been largely true: Even though drug-related violence has killed more than 300 people in and around Acapulco since 2006, for instance, most of it has been far from the main tourist zone.
The missing men arrived in four cars from Michoacan, itself a violent, drug-trafficking hot spot, and were apparently heading to or hunting for a hotel when seized. The kidnappings were reported by one of two members of the group who had split off to go to the store when the others were taken.
A state police commander first raised an eyebrow, saying it was unusual for a group of men to go on vacation without family members. And Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo, governor of the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, was also quick to express skepticism.
"We assume it has to do with organized crime," Torreblanca said a day after the news broke. "I don't think anyone comes to deliberately carry out an attack on 20 tourists."
When the families complained that officials appeared to be blaming the victims, the authorities backed off, announcing that checks showed that none of the missing men had criminal records.
When the men's vehicles were recovered, investigators found signs of a road trip — suitcases, beer, cookies — but no weapons or contraband.
But last week, Mexico's tourism minister, Gloria Guevara, reignited tensions when she said the missing men "didn't fit the usual profile" of a tourist.
"A tourist usually travels with family, has a hotel reservation, arrives directly at his hotel and fits certain profiles," she told a congressional committee when a question about the case came up. Guevara stopped short of tying the men to criminal activities, but the implication seemed clear.
Families of the men fired back, accusing Guevara of a "lack of responsibility" and offering papers showing the group had reserved rooms for the three-day stay in a hotel they did not publicly identify.
"We're very worried about our family members because we don't know anything about them, and now we are angry that [officials] keep insisting that they weren't tourists," a relative who identified herself only by her first name, Katia, said during a radio interview.
Early this year, President Felipe Calderon came under fire and apologized to grieving survivors in Ciudad Juarez after he initially said gang revenge was behind a fatal shooting attack that killed 15 people at a teen party. It turned out that none of the victims had anything to do with gangs.
The Michoacan families say they don't want the mystery of the missing men to be brushed aside. "What we want is to have news about them and for our suffering to end," Katia said.
On Wednesday, Guerrero's state prosecutor, David Augusto Sotelo, announced that investigators were following two possible leads. But he refused to say what they were.
ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times


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In the Sonora state village of Pitiquito, where citizens say the Sinaloa cartel is "on our side of the war," loved ones say goodbye to Edgar Castillo Pico, 23, a popular musician who died in an accident. ONe woman said a crime boss paid for the nice coffin and other funeral expenses. He is a generous man and protects us. Everybody loves him here," she said of the gang leader. (Don Bartlett/Los Angeles Times/October 6, 2010)

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

"Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.


times.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sonora-convoy-20101017,0,2660678.story
latimes.com
Mexico convoy threads its way through strange drug war in Sonora state
A heavily armed convoy heads off to deliver pensions to people caught behind the siege line as one drug cartel tries to starve out another in a sinister battle for trafficking routes into Arizona.

By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times

8:42 PM PDT, October 16, 2010

Reporting from Altar, Mexico


With an escort of 60 officers with assault rifles, a convoy heads off to deliver pensions to people caught behind the siege line as one drug cartel tries to wait out another in a sinister battle for scores of human and drug trafficking routes into Arizona.

The police chiefs met in the dusty plaza with a federal official clutching a black bag filled with pesos: $40,000 in government pensions for the senior citizens living in the pueblos of the nearby foothills.

A convoy of seven vehicles rumbled into the plaza, the trucks squeezing between taco and T-shirt vendors who gawked at the 60 or so federal and state police officers toting assault rifles.

The crack squad had captured drug cartel kingpins and battled gangs from Baja California to Michoacan. On this day they slipped on their ski masks to escort the police chiefs on a mission of mercy to a lost corner of Mexico.

They would be heading deep into the scrublands of the Sonora Desert where hundreds of cartel gunmen controlled the pueblos and ambushed intruders on hillside roads that have become blood-spattered shooting galleries.

The convoy was outmanned, outgunned and probably didn't even have the element of surprise. Cartel lookouts — they could be anybody: taxi drivers, store owners, fellow cops — had no doubt already tipped off the organized crime groups. Cellphone conversations were routinely intercepted.

"I'm talking here and the mafia is listening," said one commander who, like many police, residents and officials, spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concern. "They already know we're coming."

The convoy turned past the small church and the local newspaper office, its windows blasted out, and ran every red light and stop sign leaving town.

----

This is Mexico's hidden drug war.

Ciudad Juarez and other violence-torn urban areas may rack up large body counts and capture headlines and presidential visits. But here in the northern part of the state of Sonora, two of Mexico's strongest drug cartels are waging a battle for scores of human and drug trafficking routes into Arizona that may be just as sinister.

One of the gangs is using a slow, bloodless strategy of patience over confrontation: It's trying to starve out its rivals.

The result is a siege of medieval proportions that has cut off a region about the size of Rhode Island from government services, and severed a lifeline to thousands of ranch hands, storekeepers and retirees. Few dare leaving on the roads, and even fewer brave going in.

"Nobody will guarantee my security," said Juan Alberto Lopez, a consultant who was supposed to drive up into the foothills for meetings with pueblo officials. "They told me they would come down to Altar," he said. "But they haven't shown up."

The war escalated this summer when Beltran-Leyva cartel gunmen took over the string of pueblos and ranch lands stretching 50 miles from Altar to the Arizona border. Their foes in the Sinaloa drug cartel have since surrounded them. They patrol the four main winding roads leading in and out of the hills and block almost all food and gasoline shipments.

There have been massacres and scores of kidnappings, but the war has gone largely unnoticed because of its remoteness, intimidation of journalists and the slow-motion tactics.

"The problem is that one gang is hiding out, very well concealed," said a high-level Sonora state law enforcement official. "And the other group wants to get them out, to restore control over that area."

Caught in the middle are an estimated 5,000 people who every day wake up with questions: Were there any kidnappings overnight? Have the gunmen taken over another ranch? Are there any tortillas in the store?

One grandmother in Saric, grief-stricken over the kidnapping of three sons, said she tried to get help from the mayor, but he hasn't been seen in days.

She's losing hope: "Our town is dying."

----

Before heading out on its 40-mile journey into the foothills, the convoy took over all the pumps at a Pemex gasoline station. The officers bought sodas and chips, and stuffed them into their bag lunches; food might be scarce along the way.

The police chiefs shook hands with some of the officers. It wasn't clear whether they were greetings or wishes of good luck.

Few reporters have ventured into the area, and public officials refuse to provide much information, fearing retaliation. Since September, two mayors, a police chief and at least 11 officers have fled, joining hundreds, perhaps thousands, of residents who had abandoned the region because of the tightening siege.

Hungry, encircled gunmen have invaded ranches to slaughter cattle. They roam pueblos in large convoys, kidnapping people and tossing their tortured bodies into the road. Many residents stay indoors when night falls, avoiding contact with the Beltran-Leyva gunmen, and stay off the roads for fear of being stopped at highway checkpoints set up by the Sinaloa gang.

"We're living desperate times here. They're not letting supplies through.... We're down to basics, beans and potatoes," said one longtime female resident of Tubutama, a pueblo perched on a mesa and known for its white-washed mission church and plaza, where locals and visiting Americans on mission tours once sipped drinks and listened to bands on summer nights.

----

The two cartels are warring over Mexico's most valuable region for smuggling people into the United States, with an infrastructure of drivers, guides, suppliers and fleabag hotels that has pumped millions of immigrants across the border. Each cartel has allied itself with local gangs with names like the Wild Boars and the Masked Ones.

In the scorching valley south of the foothills, most residents appear to have sided with the Sinaloa group, saying they at least have brought order to the messy business of smuggling drugs and people across the border.

Cartel toll takers monitor the Altar-Sasabe highway leading toward the frontier, making sure each immigrant-loaded van has paid the $100 fee for each. Rogue gangs that preyed on vulnerable immigrants have been chased out by the cartel, say some residents and immigrant safety groups.

Life in the valley follows a relatively secure, if hyper-vigilant, routine. When a pair of reporters walked through the town of Pitiquito a day before the convoy hit the road, a pack of teenagers and men wielding a club and a baseball bat descended on them.

"Whose side are you on? What are you doing here?" one of them asked.

A middle-aged woman walking with her teenage daughter later explained that the town was controlled by a young Sinaloan crime boss greatly respected by residents. Two of his gunmen had joined hundreds that afternoon in a funeral procession for a popular musician killed in an accident. The crime boss probably paid for the funeral, she said.

"He's the one on our side" of the war, one woman said. "He is a generous man and protects us. Nobody is even allowed to sell drugs here. Everybody loves him here."

In the sparsely populated foothill towns known as the pueblos de arriba, the towns up above, expressing such sentiments can be lethal.

-----

The government force began its steady ascent on the two-lane road and passed through the pueblo of Atil, where many residents avoid using telephones, believing the cartels can listen in.

One former resident, a middle-aged woman, said her son was kidnapped and killed this year, and that the family had to flee with a mattress strapped to their pickup truck. Though she's concerned for family members left behind in Atil, she won't call them.

Her son, she said, was slain execution-style and left on the side of the road.

"We haven't taken sides. We're not with one group or the other," said the woman, who asked that her identity and new home not be disclosed. "That's why I don't understand what happened. There are no answers."

The convoy passed Atil without incident, but as the road ascended further, the landscape began revealing signs of neglect and cartel activity. Vegetation and rocks from landslides encroached on the roadway; signs were defaced and gasoline stations abandoned.

Outside the community of Cerro Prieto, the roadway cut through a hilly area where the war's grisliest massacre occurred.

In July, Beltran-Leyva gunmen took positions above the road where 20-foot embankments provided an ideal ambush overlook; a convoy of Sinaloa gunmen approached. As the cars passed, the gang blockaded both ends of the road and opened fire on their boxed-in enemies. Twenty-one Sinaloa cartel members were killed. Based on the thousands of spent bullet casings, police estimate that there were more than 100 attackers.

New patches of black asphalt cover the blood. The convoy's drivers speeded through the embankments, careful not to bunch up their vehicles and leave them vulnerable to a similar ambush.

Attempts to root out the criminals have been frustrated by the rough terrain and guerrilla-style tactics used by the shadowy force, say federal and state agents. The gunmen strike and then rush back into the gullies and hills dotted with towering saguaro cactuses and mesquite patches.

"When we go up after them, there's nobody there. We can't find them," the high-level Sonora law enforcement official said.

The gangs seem to know everything. The federal police, who wear blue uniforms, overhear the chatter of cartel lookouts on their radios, reporting their positions with unsettling exactitude.

"They say, the blues … are heading your way," one federal police officer said.

"We know they're watching us, but we can't see them."

----
Turning onto a dirt road, the convoy approached the village of Saric, the deepest point in cartel-held territory.

They planned it so they'd arrive there early, wouldn't be caught after dark in the region considered the hardest-hit by the siege. The day before, people answering phones at the town hall didn't know the whereabouts of Mayor Fidel Lizarraga Celaya, and couldn't say when, or if, their 10 police officers would return.

Dozens of children, women and senior citizens were waiting for the convoy at the town hall. Many of the elderly pushed walkers across dusty streets. Some leaned on their weathered canes or sat in scratched-up wheelchairs. Conspicuously absent were young men. Residents said most had either fled, been killed or joined the cartels.

The federal official toting the black bag strode into the town hall, past the town's lone police car, a battered Nissan with a flat tire whose only apparent purpose was to provide shade for a sleeping, flea-infested dog. As officials began distributing the money — for the first time in four months —citizens gathered outside.

Several elderly women, speaking in hushed tones, said their town was controlled by gunmen who emerge at night and patrol the town in convoys of 20 to 30 vehicles. The gang members, hiding behind masks and tinted windows, stop for any "suspicious activity," such as using a cellphone or carrying food, questioning and in some cases kidnapping residents, they said.

Mail carriers, produce and soda distributors, even ambulances, have stopped going to the town, they said. They pointed to several abandoned homes. A middle-aged grocer looked at the dwindling stock on her shelves, saying two months had passed since her last deliveries. There was no meat or soda, or flour to make tortillas.

The only food supplies were brought in by older, longtime residents who shopped in Altar and were allowed through the cartel checkpoints, apparently trusted by gunmen to not pass along the food to rivals.

The meager supply was distributed among a close-knit circle of older, relatively well-off residents, said one woman. A few pesos could buy some food, toilet paper and medicine, but not much.

"I don't know what the poor people are doing for food," she said.

Seeing the federal police posted around the perimeter of the town hall emboldened the despairing Saric grandmother. She barged into the one-room police station and demanded that the authorities investigate the kidnappings of her sons.

A top police official, speaking privately later, made it clear that no investigation was likely. "I don't arrest any of them. That's how I stay alive."

Back in the town hall, the crowd parted for the arrival of the town's oldest resident. Manuel Aureliano, 100, was wheeled into a cramped office, where he presented his I.D. and was given a stack of 500-peso notes, for a total of about $450.

The great-great-grandfather clutched one 500-peso bill in his hand, kissed it and raised it over his head. Born during the Mexican Revolution, the deaf man celebrated the arrival of the government force like another national triumph, instead of a rare, small victory against the cartels.

"Gracias a Dios!" he yelled. "Viva Mexico!"

richard.marosi@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times


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atimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-colombia-20100926,0,2434157.story
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Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force imbued with "magical" powers ... is: a story of a young man's quest, after being separated from his biological parents at birth on an island in the archipelago of Vanuatu off the coast of Australia, to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the extremely topical setting of the wars between competing Mexican drug cartels and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil". "Warrior" was 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 multiethnic cast (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography .. and is targeted for the prime moving going demographic of 18 to 40 year old males and, because of the comedy, romance, cinematography and music score, females; and features: Vincent Klyn ("Cyborg", "Point Break") in the lead as the son of the divine force Dreadmon.; Ron Joseph ("Navy Seals", Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East LA") as the Mexican drug lord; Matt Gallini ("End of Days", "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") as the drug cartel's hit man; and Hector Mercado ("Delta Force 2") as the government's corrupt anti-drug czar.

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-colombia-20100926,0,2434157.story
latimes.com
Why Mexico is not the new Colombia when it comes to drug cartels
Comparisons took on a new urgency after a statement by Hillary Clinton, but a careful look at tactics, targets and the nature of the foe shows they're apples and oranges.
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
September 25, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City
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Car bombs. Political assassinations. Battlefield-style skirmishes between soldiers and heavily armed adversaries.

Across big stretches of Mexico, deepening drug-war mayhem is challenging the authority of the state and the underpinnings of democracy. Powerful cartels in effect hold entire regions under their thumb. They extort money from businesses, meddle in politics and kill with an impunity that mocks the government's ability to impose law and order.

The slaying of a gubernatorial candidate near the Texas border this year was the most stunning example of how the narco-traffickers warp Mexican politics. Mayors are elected, often with the backing of drug lords, and then killed when they get in the way.

Journalists are targets too. After a young photographer was gunned down in Ciudad Juarez Sept. 17, his newspaper, El Diario de Juarez, issued a plaintive appeal to the cartels in a front-page editorial. "We ask you to explain what you want from us," the newspaper said. "You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city because the legal authorities have not been able to stop our colleagues from falling."

As the death toll from drug-related violence nears 30,000 in four years, the impression that Mexico is losing control over big chunks of territory — the northern states of Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon and Durango at the top of this list — is prompting comparisons with the Colombia of years past. Under the combined onslaught of drug kingpins and leftist guerrillas, the South American country appeared to be in danger of collapse.

The Colombia comparison, long fodder for parlor debates in Mexico, gained new energy this month when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the tactics of Mexican cartels looked increasingly like those of a Colombia-style "insurgency," which the U.S. helped fight with a military and social assistance program known as Plan Colombia that cost more than $7 billion.

But is Mexico the new Colombia? As the Obama administration debates what course to take on Mexico, finding the right fix depends on getting the right diagnosis.

Clinton cited the need for a regional "equivalent" of Plan Colombia. After 10 years, the rebels' grip in Colombia has been reduced from more than a third of the country to less than a fifth. Violence is down and, with improved security, the economy is booming. However, tons of cocaine are still being produced and there have been widespread human rights abuses.

Clinton acknowledged that the program had "problems" — but said that it had worked. Irked Mexican officials dismissed Clinton's Colombia comparison as sloppy history and tartly offered that the only common thread was drug consumption in the United States. And while the two cases share broad-brush similarities, there also are important distinctions, including Mexico's profound sensitivity to outside interference.

Here is a breakdown of the two experiences:

The Nature of the Foe

Colombia's main leftist rebels, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, waged war in the name of Marxist ideology, calling for an overthrow of the traditional ruling oligarchy. Separately, the country faced a campaign of violence by drug cartels. To fund the insurgency, the rebels first took a cut from coca producers and traffickers – and then starting running their own drug labs and forming partnerships with the traffickers.

In contrast, the main aim of Mexican drug gangs is to move merchandise without interference from authorities. In many places, traffickers manipulate governors and mayors — and the police they control. Their ability to bully and extort has given them a form of power that resembles parallel rule.

But the goal is cash, not sovereignty. Drug lords don't want to collect trash, run schools or pave the streets. And very often, the violence the gangs unleash is directed against each other, not the government.

Mexico also is a much bigger country. While its social inequities are glaring, there is no sign of a broad-based rebel movement with which traffickers could join hands.

"We've got a criminal problem, not a guerrilla problem," said Bruce Bagley, who chairs the international studies department at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. "The drug lords don't want to take over. They want to be left alone. They want a state that's pliable and porous."

Territory

At the peak of Colombia's insurgency, the FARC controlled a large part of the country, including a Switzerland-size chunk with defined borders ceded to it by the government as a demilitarized zone known as the despeje, or clearing.

Mexico's drug gangs have relied on killing and intimidation tactics to challenge government control over large swaths by erasing a sense of law and order.

In the border state of Tamaulipas, a gubernatorial candidate who was heavily favored to win a July election was gunned down less than a week before the vote. Violence in neighboring Nuevo Leon state prompted the U.S. State Department last month to direct employees to remove their children from the city of Monterrey, a critically important and affluent industrial center.

In Clinton's words, U.S. officials worry about a "drug-trafficking threat that is in some cases morphing into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency."

But there are no borders defining any drug cartel's domain, making it difficult, even within regions, to say how much of the country lies outside effective government control on any given day. There is no force that appears anywhere near capable of toppling the government and, so far, no zone the Mexican army cannot reach when it wants.

Instead, cartel control is more fluid. It is measured in the extent to which residents stay indoors at night to avoid roving gunmen; the degree to which Mexican news media steer away from covering crime so they don't anger the trafficking groups.

The sense of siege hopscotches across Mexico like windblown fire across a landscape.

Targets and Tactics

During the worst days of Colombia's bloodshed, cartel hit men and guerrillas carried out spectacular bombings and assassinations that targeted judges, politicians, police and businesspeople.

Mexico, despite a steadily rising death toll, has seen nothing of that nature. Cartel gunmen have killed scores of police and some prosecutors. Police officers have been killed in the line of duty, or because they were moonlighting for one criminal group or another. But they have not been targeted as part of a sustained effort to topple the government.

Most of the killing stems from open warfare between heavily armed cartels.

The cartels have in a few instances resorted to car bombs and grenade attacks that raised fears they were turning to Colombia-style terrorist tactics.

U.S. officials were alarmed when a remote-controlled car bomb exploded in violence-racked Ciudad Juarez in July, killing a police officer and three other people. Two more bombs exploded in the weeks that followed. Attackers hurled grenades into an Independence Day crowd in Morelia, capital of the western state of Michoacan, in September 2008, killing eight people.

There have been no other such direct, terrorist-style assaults against civilians, but the drug gangs' wanton use of muscle and extreme violence nonetheless has sown terror across much of the country. Gory images of beheaded victims left by feuding gangs have added to a feeling of impotence and mistrust of government authorities.

Even though many Mexicans support the government's anti-crime campaign, the result is a society even more reluctant to join in.

State weakness

Colombia for years was outmatched by the power of foes who capitalized on porous borders, an army in tatters and weak government bodies. In his day, drug kingpin Pablo Escobar even managed to get himself elected an alternate member of Colombia's Congress.

Mexico's military, while stretched thin, is more reliable than Colombia's was at the start. But its police and court system, for many years rife with corruption, have proved ill-equipped to confront drug cartels. Widespread graft means that the criminals and the authorities often are one and the same, blurring the battle lines.

Under the former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, drug trafficking was allowed to flourish, and was at times even orchestrated by corrupt officials. Now, the federal government under President Felipe Calderon and his conservative National Action Party is purging corrupt police. But problems persist at the state and local level, and the justice system is overwhelmed by drug gangs armed with billions of dollars in profits and battlefield weaponry. Prosecutions have been few, convictions fewer.

Officials say it could take Mexico decades to create a trustworthy law enforcement system. In the meantime, Calderon has deployed 50,000 troops to take on the cartels. The troops' actions have raised widespread allegations of rights abuses and suspicion that some units may have been penetrated by traffickers. Lopsided arrest figures have triggered accusations that the government is favoring some cartels over others, a charge the president denies.

Despite its weak institutions, Colombia had a stronger civil society that ultimately rose up to demand and support government action. Colombian newspapers stood up to the violence. In 2002, Colombians elected President Alvaro Uribe, who promised to defeat the insurgents and traffickers rather than compromising with them. The government's willingness to tackle money laundering and seize traffickers' assets was considered a turning point.

Calderon took a page from Colombia by extraditing record numbers of drug suspects wanted in the U.S., reducing the odds that they could buy their freedom from leaky Mexican prisons. But he has done little to tackle money laundering.

These deficiencies could contribute to a fundamental breakdown in the state more closely parallel to Colombia. However, Calderon's government says that won't happen because it is tackling Mexico's institutional weaknesses head-on. "The important thing is we are acting in time," security affairs spokesman Alejandro Poire said.

Designing a prescription

In Colombia, U.S. policymakers put military advisors and special forces troops on the ground to address a drug problem that was largely based on production — one that could be attacked in large measure through wide-scale eradication.

But in Mexico, where the problem is equally one of breaking distribution networks, a Plan Colombia-style military role seems far less likely.

Clinton appeared to suggest that the U.S. military could help, "where appropriate." But sending U.S. troops would be anathema in Mexico, with its bitter history of foreign interventions and a wariness of the United States.

These are sensitivities well known to U.S. diplomats. In 2007, when Presidents Bush and Calderon negotiated the terms of a $1.4-billion U.S. security-aid program for Mexico, they called it the Merida Initiative to avoid echoes of Plan Colombia. And no U.S. officials have called for American boots on the ground in Mexico.

Although the Merida plan initially emphasized helicopters and other equipment aimed at fighting the drug trade, U.S. cooperation is now geared toward softer assistance, such as helping train and professionalize Mexican police cadets, prosecutors and judges.

Asked to lay out the probable next step in U.S. help, a senior American official here answered: "Institution building, institution building, institution building."

Some experts take issue with Clinton's upbeat characterization of the Colombia program, which has drawn numerous allegations of human rights abuses by the revamped Colombian army and right-wing paramilitaries.

The FARC may hold less than a fifth of Colombia, but it has not been eliminated. And while the country's largest drug cartels, those centered on Medellin and Cali, were crushed, scores of smaller ones took their place. Colombian cocaine production remains robust, according to most studies.

Bagley regards Plan Colombia as an unsuitable model for Mexico, which he said should focus on cleaning up corruption and creating a trustworthy justice system.

"They're misdiagnosing this," he said. "They're telling us Colombia was a success and you can export this to Mexico. And you can't."

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City and special correspondent Chris Kraul in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

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