Photo Chronicle of Mexico's Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity

text by Kristin Bricker

photos by Santiago Navarro

published in Upside Down World

On June 4, poet Javier Sicilia and farmer Julian LeBaron led a 500-person caravan through what one major Mexican magazine referred to as the country's "route of blood." Over the following week, the caravan passed through some of the most dangerous places in Mexico: Michoacan, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Chihuahua. The caravan ended on June 10 in Ciudad Juarez, which Sicilia dubbed Mexico's "epicenter of pain" because just over one-fifth of the country's homicides occurred in that city in 2010.

One of the caravan's principle goals was for drug war victims to network and organize. The caravan collected victims' stories and contact information in every town it visited.

Dozens of drug war victims from across the country, such as Nepomuceno Moreno Nuñez from Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, travelled with the caravan to meet other victims and share their stories.

Moreno Nuñez (above, right, shown hugging Javier Sicilia) wants to find his son, 18-year-old Jorge Mario Moreno León, who was kidnapped and disappeared along with five friends on July 1, 2010.

Moreno Nuñez spoke with the kidnappers when they answered Jorge Mario's cell phone. They told him that the young men were kidnapped because they collaborated with the Beltran Leyva criminal organization. "They made a mistake," laments Moreno Nuñez. "They said that one of the boys [Mario Enrique Diaz Islas] was the son of an accomplice to the Beltran Leyvas. It's not true." In reality, Mario Enrique's father, Mario Diaz Garduño, was the director of the Hermosillo municipal Health Department.

The kidnappers killed Mario Enrique. Two families paid million-peso ransoms for their sons, who were released. Jorge Mario remains disappeared along with his friends José Francisco Mercado Ortega and Geovany Otero.

Moreno Nuñez knows that his son survived the initial kidnapping because the kidnappers put Jorge Mario on the phone. Despite evidence that Jorge Mario and his friends could have still been alive, local authorities refused to act. Moreno Nuñez carried out his own investigation into his son's disappearance. "I told [the government], 'Here's the investigation; here's the names of who did it and everything.' I have photos, addresses, everything. I know who it was," says Moreno Nuñez. "They did nothing."

Moreno Nuñez is too familiar with Mexico's version of "justice." For four years, he was imprisoned without charge for a murder the authorities eventually admitted he did not commit. A judge absolved and released Moreno Nuñez in October 2009, just ten months before his son disappeared.

On June 4 in Morelia, Michoacan, (above) drug war victims took the stage at the exact location where unidentified individuals attacked the 2008 Independence Day celebrations with fragmentation grenades, killing five. During each stop along the route, victims who travelled with the caravan and local victims packed the stage beyond capacity. They all shared their experiences living at the mercy of organized crime, soldiers, militarized federal police, and corrupt local police forces. The victims' experiences varied, but all of them were hasta la madre ("fed up") with violence and impunity.

Indigenous residents of Cherán, Michoacan, marched with the caravan in Morelia with their faces covered. Residents have maintainedbarricades in Cherán since April 15 to keep out kidnappers and illegal loggers who are in league with organized crime.

The Zapatista-allied National Indigenous Congress (CNI) has had significant presence in Cherán for years. The CNI's influence has likely played a role in Cherán's organizing style and politics. Plagued for years by corrupt or useless political parties, Cherán made the decision to to put up the barricades in a town assembly. Residents refuse to let political parties participate in their organizing process. They hope to drive out the parties and replace local electoral politics with "uses and customs," or traditional governance mechanisms.
"In this unjust war, we indigenous peoples are not only victims of organized crime," Cherán resident Salvador Campanur Sánchez told President Felipe Calderón during a recent dialogue. "We're also the victims of the Mexican state's institutional violence." As a "starting point," Cherán demands that the Mexican government implement the San Andres Accords, a 1996 indigenous rights agreement between the Zapatistas and the government that the government later betrayed.

Cherán residents accompanied the caravan to Juarez. A caravan had to escort them back home to Cherán because it was too dangerous for them to return alone.

Many of the people who rallied with the caravan in downtown Zacatecas on June 5 were family members of disappeared politicians.

Juan Carlos Guardado Méndez, former mayor of Fresnillo, Zacatecas, waskidnapped along with his driver this past February. At least 17 mayors have been murdered in Mexico since 2010. Guardado's case isn't included in that statistic because the government doesn't keep an official count of disappearances.
While violence against Mexico's mayors is commonly blamed on organized crime, Guardado's brother (shown above) believes that the "most probable" scenario is that his brother was kidnapped for political reasons. "We've talked to a lot of people, even some that we shouldn't have," he says. "They said they don't have him."

"We believe he's alive," says Guardado's brother. "We believe they have him holed up somewhere, and they're waiting for the time to pass, for information that he probably knows to become useless. We believe that someone very important is behind his kidnapping."

Unfortunately for the Guardado family, it is increasingly easy to sweep political crimes under the carpet amidst rampant corruption, impunity, and violence. The government finds it increasingly easy to blame all of its woes on organized crime, and the truth becomes lost in the chaos that has gripped the country.

As the caravan travelled to Durango, 6-year-old Francisco Fernando Rodriguez Flores flagged it down from the side of the freeway. Francisco showed Javier Sicilia a picture of his father, Fernando Rodriguez Maturiño, whose body was found a few months ago wrapped in a blanket. Authorities told Francisco's mother to abandon her husband's murder case, because the blanket was a message that the crime should not be investigated.

Vivien Echavari, whose three sons were gunned down in Durango, is outraged at Calderón's callous attitude towards victims and their families. She takes offense that the president shrugs off civilian deaths as "collateral damage." "The President said that sacrifice is necessary," Echavari told a rally in downtown Durango. "Sir, you made me sacrifice three sons. You destroyed my life and left me with nothing!"

Families United for Freedom and Justice (FULJ) helped organize the caravan's arrival in Monterrey. The organization includes missing police officers' families as well as families of civilians disappeared by police. They might seem like strange bedfellows, but they've all learned the same tragic lesson: that the government treats disappeared cops with the same distain as it treats disappeared civilians.

The government lied and abandoned San Nicolas municipal police officer Mario Jorge Tovar Martinez's family when he disappeared following months of threats and harassment. "They told my daughter-in-law that they would pay her his salary and benefits for five years," says Tovar's mother Laura. "That lasted ten months and then they forgot about us." The mayor told her that he would meet with her every fifteen days regarding her son's case. "I met with him once, and after that they refused to see me," says Laura. "What's worse, they told me 'Don't get the press involved, ma'am, or we'll forget all about you.'"

Melchor Flores' father (pictured above during theMarch for Peace with Justice and Dignity in May) traveled to Monterrey from Mexico State to demand that the government present his son alive. Melchor Flores was a well-known performance artist better known as the "Galactic Cowboy." Flores' character, a flirtatious, silver-plated robotic cowboy, has appeared on television programs and commercials. He was best known as a street performer who moved when passersby deposited coins in his tin can.

The Galactic Cowboy became a working class hero in January 2009 when police arrested him for working on the street without a permit. He'd been arrested for the same offense many times before, but that particular arrest turned into a comedy of the absurd when a TV news crew entered the Monterrey police station where he was held and filmed the Galactic Cowboy performing in police custody. "I told [the police] that if they wanted to arrest me for working, that's fine," Flores told Televisa during his detention. "I've applied for a permit, but no one wants to give me one." Police released Flores after he paid a $500 peso fine.

One month later, the Galactic Cowboy disappeared along with two friends. Witnesses saw Monterrey municipal police put the three men in patrol cars, and they wrote down the vehicles' license plate numbers. The men haven't been seen since. The Monterrey police department officially denies that it ever had them in custody despite the fact that two police officerstestified that their department participated in the kidnapping.

The Galactic Cowboy's numerous arrests and subsequent disappearance has drawn the ire of many Mexicans who question the government's priorities during one of the worst unemployment crises in Mexico's history. The government's own census bureau admitted this month that Mexico's informal sector employs more people than the formal sector. As more Mexicans fall into poverty, work in organized crime becomes a tempting or necessary alternative.
The Galactic Cowboy's father wants to know why police in one of the country's most dangerous cities arrested and disappeared his son, an entertainer. "The Nuevo Leon government stole my son from me because he was making an honest living!"

Masked residents of Torreon's marginalized neighborhoods risked their lives to tell the caravan about how militarization has turned their city into a living hell. In addition to the deployment of militarized Federal Police and soldiers to their city, the State Police are now commanded by a retired military general who trains his cops to shoot first and ask questions later. Interviewed by La Jornada about his policing style in Torreon, General Carlos Bibiano Villa Castillo said, "I like the adrenaline when I am on patrol. When I catch a Zeta or a Chapo I kill him. Why interrogate him? Let him tell Saint Peter what he did."
The problem with Torreon's public security strategy, say local residents, is that they're all treated as criminals in their own neighborhoods. Teenagers complain that soldiers use pat-downs as an excuse to rob and sexually abuse them. Families say that the soldiers use warrantless house searches to steal and break the few things they own. A mother complains that her son refuses to go to school because he's afraid of running into soldiers or police on his way there. A fourteen-year-old boy points to his colostomy bag. He says soldiers beat and stabbed him because he was standing on a street corner.

The residents are terrified that soldiers might see them in the news and retaliate, but they're tired of living with fear and violence. They said the recent mobilizations against the drug war have inspired them to organize. "I saw Javier Sicilia on television," says a mother who wishes to remain anonymous. "We had a meeting, and together we decided to come out today [to protest]. We're various neighborhoods. We're not just a couple of people. We're talking about what we're going to do about this, because they [the police and soldiers] don't help us, they just hurt us."
Chihuahua was one of the few states that didn't draw many new people out to the protests because many stayed home out of fear. Marta Garcia (shown above) carried a picture of her neighbor's husband to the march in Chihuahua City because her neighbor was too afraid to participate herself. The man in her photo, Oscar Zavala, was murdered on July 25, 2009, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a group of men waiting outside of his sister-in-law's baby shower in Chihuahua City.

On June 9, Federal Police sent protesters a message when they rounded up fifty people for the crime of being "suspicious" in an operation in Ciudad Juarez just before the caravan arrived there. Amongst the detainees was Laurencio Barranza, a seasoned Juarez activist who helped organize the caravan's activities in Chihuahua state. Barranza (shown above), a community organizer in Juarez's poorest neighborhoods, wasdetained for two hours and released without charge.

Most of the local participants in the caravan's activities were seasoned activists who have protested publicly for years, and they've suffered threats, attacks, murders, and arrests.

The anti-femicide contingent was one of the largest that participated in the caravan's activities in Chihuahua. They've denounced impunity and corruption in Chihuahua since 1993, when they warned that leaving young women's kidnappers and murderers unpunished would encourage more violence against them. Eighteen years later, it is painfully obvious that they were right. Murders of both women and men have risen sharply in Ciudad Juarez since Calderón deployed the military in the war on drugs. As the military's deployment set off a wave of violence, the very civilian institutions that the anti-femicide groups had criticized for over a decade--namely, the prosecutor's office and the police--found themselves too constrained by incompetence and corruption to punish violent offenders. The result is a situation of lawlessness in which anyone--police, soldier, criminal, civilian--can kidnap and kill with impunity.

Following the caravan, Javier Sicilia and other drug war victims met with President Calderón. They presented him with 25 unsolved cases of murders, disappearances, kidnappings, and massacres and have demanded that the government find and punish those responsible. Likewise, they presented the Attorney General of Nuevo Leon with 41 unsolved cases. Sicilia and Calderón agreed to create a commission to follow-up on the 25 cases that the victims' families presented to the federal government.

Sicilia says that he wants to hold a national conference for drug war victims and their families. In the meantime, Julian LeBaron says that drug war victims will organize another caravan, this time to the Mexico-Guatemala border to see how the drug war has affected Mexico's southern residents. 

Mexican Community Uses Barricades to Drive Out Organized Crime and Political Parties

by Kristin Bricker, Upside Down World

Cherán participates in the Caravan for Peace to Juarez.
Photo: Santiago Navarro GF

Armed with machetes, sticks, and farm tools, residents of Cherán, Michoacan, covered their faces with bandanas and set up barricades around their community on April 15. It is a scene reminiscent of Oaxaca in 2006, except this time, the barricades aren't meant to keep out paramilitary death squads; they keep out organized crime.

The barricades have come at a cost for the town's 12,600 residents. Schools have been shut down since Easter, and the economy has come to a standstill. However, without the barricades, kidnappers and illegal loggers who are in league with organized crime would continue to prey upon the town with complete impunity. For Cherán's residents, unabated impunity is unacceptable, because in addition to the usual laundry list of drug war crimes--murder, kidnapping, extortion, and torture--the illegal loggers, protected by organized crime, have destroyed an estimated 80% of Cherán's woodlands.

When the municipal, state, and federal governments refused to protect Cherán from organized crime, the community took matters into its own hands. Now, not only are they driving organized crime out of they're community, they're also kicking out the political parties, whom they blame for allowing insecurity and crime in Cherán to spiral out of control.

Upside Down World spoke with "Emilio" and "Salvador," two Cheran residents who have united with their neighbors to maintain the barricades around the clock for the past month-and-a-half. For fear of reprisal against their families, they requested that their real names not be used in this interview.

Impunity and Insecurity

Emilio: Illegal logging began in Cherán about ten years ago due to our own community authorities' irresponsibility and poor organization. That led us to the situation we're in today, and now we're paying a terrible price for their irresponsibility.

In recent years, the crime has only gotten worse in Cherán. Before, the loggers would arrive, they would ask permission to cut down the trees, and if you were protecting a certain area of forest, they would respect that. Now it's not like that. They enter private property without the owners' permission, and if the owners discover them they tie up the owners and beat them. And you see these loggers with their really nice trucks with four or five people in them, and they're armed with big, high-powered guns to threaten and scare the community members. As a result, over the past four years, a significant portion of our forests have been depleted.

Most of us who live in Cherán work in the fields, and we're ranchers. Organized crime has hit us hard there, too. They steal our cattle. A lot of ranchers stopped keeping cattle because of the insecurity.

Everyone in Cherán knows who is committing these crimes. The only ones who don't seem to know are the authorities.

The three levels of government--municipal, state, and federal--have completely ignored the community's demands for the past three or four years. It's criminal. In that time, about eleven people have died and even more have been disappeared; there are extortions and kidnappings, and the State hasn't done anything to stop these people who have squashed the dignity of the Cherán community. Now organized crime and the illegal loggers are collaborating. Organized crime protects the illegal loggers, because the illegal loggers pay "quotas" [fees] to organized crime in exchange for protection.

The political parties are responsible for this situation because they marginalized us and ignored organized crime and the indiscriminate theft of our forest resources. Since the political parties have become involved [in the community], they have imposed the people who serve as the community authorities. And we don't even know what those authorities are doing or why they're there.

It is the authorities' fault that the situation got so bad. Because who do I, a community member, go to to complain? I used to go to an authority and I would complain, and the authority would ignore me and wouldn't back me up, and I'm left standing there with my arms crossed. So when these heavily armed people started showing up, what were we supposed to do? What could we do, apart from turning around and running away? So compañeros started asking each other, what do we do? On a couple of occasions the people got together and tried to go and stop them, but since we went unarmed, we always left beaten and bruised and terrified.

I personally have tried to file formal complaints with the government in which I name criminals who have committed certain crimes. The government never even investigated those complaints, so I'm scared to even talk about them. I've filed complaints with the anti-kidnapping unit, with the Attorney General's Office, with the governor [of Michoacan], and we even went to Mexico City to file complaints with the Assistant Attorney General's Office for the Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO). And I haven't received any response from any of them. They haven't done anything. When we went to Morelia to inquire about how the investigation was progressing, they hadn't investigated because of the security situation in Cherán. They say that the safety of the officials they would send to investigate can't be guaranteed, so they don't send anyone. The criminals are outside Cherán, not inside. It makes us feel bad that they respond in that way, because there isn't a single official who knows what the problem is in Cherán, so the investigations into the disappearances and extortions don't go anywhere.

I have a brother who disappeared on February 10, 2010, because he demanded that the state and federal governments take responsibility for the environment, that they stop the illegal loggers so that our forests aren't depleted so rapidly. Before my brother was disappeared, he told me that the illegal loggers were threatening him. And now they've been threatening us since my brother disappeared. There's been no progress in the investigation. He disappeared without a trace.

The day my brother disappeared, two other people were also disappeared. An armed commando came into the town and kidnapped the two of them right out in the open. To this day we know nothing about where they are. We know even less about my brother, because no one saw what happened to him.

I feel as though I can't speak freely because we've been threatened. I'm not afraid for my own safety, but I have a family and young children. I don't want the criminals to punish me for speaking out by going after my family or another one of my brothers.

Erecting the Barricades
Emilio: Erecting the barricades in Cherán took about six months of planning and discussion. Before that, a lot have people had been beaten. The criminals began to have free reign in the town, and they corrupted it. The trucks loaded with illegally harvested wood would pass straight through the town. One time, the people were watching this happen, and they began to yell "Enough!" and they began to search for a way to stop it.

The town decided to rise up and put up barricades so that outsiders couldn't enter in order to ensure the community's safety. The barricades are still up because we haven't seen a response from the government. We are demanding that the government solve all of the crimes. We want justice.

Soon it will have been two months since we erected the barricades. Two months of intense sacrifice and struggle. Our children are missing school--that's a high price that they have to pay. Classes have been suspended since Easter vacation. The only thing I can leave my children with is an education. That's why I work, so that my children can receive an education and become better community members and better Mexicans.

The violence hasn't stopped despite the barricades. There are barricades in and around the town, so they can't come into the community to commit crimes. But out of necessity residents sometimes go out into the woods or they go out to feed their animals or lead them to pasture, and that's when organized crime takes advantage of the opportunity to sow fear.

Since we put up the barricades, the government sent some police and soldiers, but it's not enough.

Salvador: We don't know how exactly many police and soldiers the government has sent to the area because it varies. For example, since there was a rumor that [Javier] Sicilia [and the Caravan for Peace] were going to pass through Cherán today, today there were a lot of soldiers and federal and state police. They even brushed their hair and made themselves up real nice. But it's really relative. Sometimes they're there, and sometimes they're not.

Emilio: The criminals keep coming after us, and they keep disappearing people. So yes, there's a lot of police in the area, but what good are they? It might have diminished a little bit, but they are still logging illegally despite the police presence. I don't know if it's due to fatigue or what, but the police don't detain the loggers. There's even videos where the vehicles are leaving the forest with wood, and the state and federal police are right there and they don't do anything.

Salvador: And the day the police went to investigate a disappearance, the illegal loggers magically were nowhere to be found. Who warned them away? Is the state government in league with them? We don't know, but when there's a military or a police operation, the loggers disappear.

Recently, the press published some articles that we think came from the municipal president's office. The articles mention that the municipality is asking the public to stop sending aid to Cherán, because everything is back to normal there, even though absolutely nothing has been resolved. They're saying this so that people stop sending us aid, and it's worked, because now we're not receiving as much aid as we were before. Nonetheless, we continue to request that people send us aid, because we're still resisting.

Obviously it is not true that everything is back to normal in Cherán. It's so untrue that a few days ago one of the community members went to his fields to check his crops and his animals. And they kidnapped him, and we haven't heard from him since. Is that what they call security? Is the government really complying with its obligations here? Fifteen days ago, another compañero was kidnapped. Fortunately, he has now shown up. But this is how they're scaring us. There's no security, so how could the government be saying these things?

The government doesn't see the real problem here, which is that they're still illegally logging our forests. Today, at this moment, they're still pillaging our natural resources. The government doesn't even look at that problem.

Solidarity and the Road Ahead
Salvador: We won't stop until we achieve our goals. Our first objective has been achieved, and that was town unity.

Emilio: We have to be very organized so that the political parties don't come in and divide us. This dignified struggle has required a lot of sacrifice from the community. We won't let the [electoral] candidates break us or co-opt us. We are trying to govern ourselves through uses and customs [traditional governance mechanisms that exclude political parties]. Instead of helping us, the political parties in Cherán have left us to rot. All of the political parties are corrupt. They've violated us and led us to the situation we're in right now. That's why now, the people of Cherán are saying "no more political parties," because the political parties sunk Cherán.

Salvador: We decided against the political parties, because the parties only represent the people in power, and they're not interested in the people and their problems. That's become very clear to us since we rose up.

Emilio: There's a lot of people from Cherán who are in the United States. I have three brothers who live there. Now that the insecurity has gotten so bad, people from Cherán who live in the United States have sent us money to support us. A lot of Mexicans who live in Los Angeles and St. Louis have sent us money, as have social organizations. With their help, we've been able to travel to Morelia and Mexico City to demand justice. Because bus fare isn't cheap. And since we can't work, we wouldn't be able to pay travel costs otherwise.

When my brother was disappeared, the kidnappers demanded a ransom for his release, but then they didn't hand him over when we paid it. And since he disappeared, my family and I haven't been able to work because we're afraid. The majority of the people in Cherán are in the same situation. As a result, the town's economy has been affected so badly, and that's why we've been asking for solidarity from outside the community, solidarity in the form of food and money. And we thank all of the Mexicans who work so hard to earn a dollar in the US and send it to us so that we can keep struggling.

I ask for support from all of my fellow countrymen who are in the United States. But not just economically. Support us with ideas, because we need ideas to move forward with work projects so that we can create jobs in our community. Because before, a lot of our people also made a living from illegal logging. Now what are they going to do? So we really do want people to support us with ideas so that we can solve Cherán's economic problems.

Salvador: Please keep supporting us, and hopefully we'll achieve our dignified objective, which is peace. Our people are hardworking and they never beg. Today, we've decided that we won't beg, but we will ask for support, because it's necessary. We've kidnapped ourselves and our town in order to protect ourselves. We can't leave Cherán, but you can come visit us. The press is very welcome in our community. We treat them very well, because they're our voice to the outside world. That's how our voice has crossed borders into other countries, and they hear us demanding justice and peace. We're demanding justice for the fallen, the kidnapped, the forests, our rivers, and for Mother Nature. That's all we're asking for.

Mexican Armed Forces Will Manage Merida Initiative Planes

The equipment required an investment of $99 million dollars

by Notimex
Translation and notes by Kristin Bricker

Mexico - The Mexican Armed Forces will receive and manage the aircraft that the United States will hand over during the second half of 2009 under the Merida Iniciative.

This second shipment is in addition to another that includes bullet-proof vests, x-ray and Gamma-ray machines[1] to search shipments on the borders, and it will begin to arrive in Mexico in the first four months of this year.

The aircraft that will be delivered "in autumn" will be equipped with non-invasive inspection equipment, which will be regularly used by the Armed Forces, according to the United States ambassador.

Said equipment will be bought with USD$99 million that come from a US Defense Department Defense Security Cooperation Agency fund.

According to the United States embassy in Mexico, the equipment "will provide additional capacity to Mexico's efforts to secure the national territory, both land and water, and detect drug, money, and weapons contraband."

The specifics of the planes that will be delivered to Mexico are confidential for national security reasons (Chapter IV, Article 27, and Articles 13, 14, and 15 of the Federal Transparency and Access to Public Information Law).

The first package signed by both governments last December in the "Letter of Agreement" includes transfers of equipment, technology, and training for USD$197,175,000 and will arrive in Mexico within the first four months of 2009.

That first package is funded by the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement Cooperation Fund, which has USD$263,500,000 in funds.

The embassy as well as the Foreign Relations Secretary stated that the funding includes non-intrusive inspection equipment, computer equipment, and applied technology for data-processing and -sharing.

It also includes telecommunication devices, contraband-detection canines, and training programs.

Armored vehicles, bullet-proof vests, safety helmets, communications and equipment, and polygraphs for confidentiality control will also be sent.

The Integrated Ballistics Identification System[2], computer equipment to automate judicial processes, the National Police Registry (with municipal information-sharing), and passport and fingerprint scanners are also part of the shipment.

The non-invasive inspection equipment are "mobile inspection units" equipped with x-ray and gamma-ray equipment, "ion scanners capable of identifying explosives and narcotics," and equipment that "analyzes the molecular composition and measures objects' density."[3]

Instruments of this nature are used, for example, in the El Paso and Nuevo Laredo, Texas, Customs for trailers loaded with merchandise. The inspection is completed in a matter of minutes, whereas before it would have taken days to search each unit.

Translators' notes:

1. Gamma-ray machines are similar to x-ray machines. The are used to scan cargo containers, boxcars, and other large shipping containers.

2. According to Wikipedia, "IBIS [the Integrated Ballistics Identification System] has been adopted as the platform of the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) Program, which is spearheaded by the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The integration of technology into over 200 sites across the US facilitates sharing of information between different law enforcement groups. The rapid dissemination of ballistics information, in turn, allows for tracking of gun-specific information and connection of a particular firearm to multiple crimes irrespective of geographic location." This is part of the ATF's Operation Gunrunner, which AFT agents will be deployed to Mexico to manage. The information-sharing bears the fingerprints of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which calls for North American security "cooperation" and information-sharing.

3. Narco News has documented repeated abuses of ion scanners in the US and Mexico. Ion scanners produce false positives in approximately 90% of cases because they confuse hand sanitizers, over-the-counter medications, perfumes, and melanin (which is abundantly present in people with dark skin) with contraband. They are meant to provide a quick scan to detect contraband. A negative result means that further inspection is not necessary. A positive result means that further inspection by other means is necessary and DOES NOT in and of itself prove the presence of contraband. Ion scanners are abused in the US prison system, where prison visitors are rejected based solely on positive ion scanner results. Narco News reported claims that ion scanners have been used to justify warrant-less neighborhood-wide military raids in Michoacan, Mexico.

Civilians Caught Up in Drug War

Tlaxcala is the only state without victims of organized crime

by Esther Sanchez, El Universal

In 2008, the war between the drug trafficking cartels left a record-breaking 5,630 people executed in the country. According to El Universal's count, in the past four years 12,061 people have died from organized crime; 46.5% of these murders occurred within the past year.

The daily average of victims in 2008 was 15, and the most violent day was November 3, when 58 homicides with the narcos' mark were reported. Of the fifteen, 19 were in Sinaloa and 12 in Durango.

In 2005 1,537 murders were recorded, 2,221 the following year, and 2,673 in 2007.

The federal government's operations have not inhibited the criminals, who shot up public security buildings and ambushed police with high-powered firearms and fragmentation grenades. Moreover, on multiple occasions they hung banners with with stories of intimidation and denunciations against government agents with links to drug trafficking.

That said, of 2008's victims, at least 429 were government officials or agents.

In this context, on May 27 in Culiacan, Sinaloa, hitmen from the Sinaloa cartel had a confrontation with federal agents where the hitmen threw grenades that killed seven agents. In September, another seven were ambushed and assasinated in Tancitaro, Michoacan.

Soldiers were also targeted; 20 were kidnapped and decapitated: 11 in Nuevo Leon, 8 in Guerrero, and one in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.

2,006 cases in Chihuahua

This year, only Tlaxcala avoided the bloodshed, and Chihuahua heads the number of drug murders with 2,006, 1,633 of which occurred in Ciuada Juarez.

In Chihuahua, the drug traffickers are in dispute over the cocaine routes to the United States. According to experts, the battle is between the Juarez and Gulf cartels.

Chihuahua is followed by Sinaloa with 950 executions, Baja California with 689, Durango with 273, and Guerrero with 241.

Mass Executions

2008 was also characterized by mass executions. One of the most significant cases occurred on September 12, when the bodies of 24 executed men were found in the vicinity of La Marquesa, State of Mexico. All of them had been shot in the head with .38 caliber, 9 mm, and .45 caliber weapons.

On August 28, a dozen decapitated bodies with signs of torture were recovered from two Yucatan municipalities.

Moreover, the war between narcos has infringed upon civilians' daily lives.

The most striking episode occurred on September 15 in Morelia, Michoacan, when two fragmentation grenades were detonated amidst a crowd that was celebrating Independence Day in the town square. The attack left eight dead and over 100 wounded.

Translated from Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Michoacan Joint Operation: Human Rights Disaster

Activist organizations accuse the government of using the anti-drug operation to repress indigenous communities, poor neighborhoods, and social justice organizations

On November 27, 2008, rural education students in Michoacan put down their books and headed to the state’s capital, Morelia, to commemorate repression they suffered in 2002 with a protest demanding more resources for their schools and the firing of Elba Esther Gordillo, political hack and despised president of the national teachers union, the SNTE. The students from the Normal Rural Vasco de Quiroga in Tiripetío, Michoacán, were accompanied by their counterparts from fourteen other states, all members of the Mexican Federation of Socialist Peasant Students (FECSM in its Spanish initials).

The rural education students, known in Mexico as normalistas, have held this protest every year since 2002. All of the normalistas come from poor rural villages. They attend increasingly under-funded schools called normales where they train to become teachers in under-funded rural schools. Every year, normalistas find that the federal budget allots their schools less and less money, meaning that some schools close and others reduce the number of students they accept. The normales have adjusted to the ongoing budget crisis by turning their schools into self-sufficient, self-managed cooperatives with livestock, farming, and carpentry workshops. Normalistas say that even though there is a need for teachers in rural schools, the normales are not training enough teachers.

The under-funding of the normales could be because the schools are hotbeds of resistance. The students often come from activist families and are activists themselves. Several Mexican revolutionary heroes such as Lucio Cabañas were normalistas. While the students train to become teachers, they study Marxist-Leninist theory. The normalistas say that this is so the future teachers and their future pupils will have the tools they need to analyze the poverty in which they live. The slogan painted on the wall of the Normal Rural Vasco de Quiroga sums up the normalista goal: “Educating and learning to defend the people.”

The Michoacan normalista protest began on November 27 as they always do. Since the students didn’t have the financial resources to rent buses to transport the hundreds of normalistas who planned to take part in the protest, they did what they do every year: they commandeered (the government says “kidnapped”) public transportation buses along the way. Every year, the students return the busses at the end of the protest.

As they do almost every year, the police stopped the caravan of busses. Going through the motions, the students organized a committee to negotiate with the police so that they would let a certain number of busses pass. Some witnesses say the negotiating committee was ready to turn over the busses in order to avoid arrests.

But this year was different: Michoacan’s State Preventative Police (PEP) director Mario Bautista told the students that they wouldn’t be allowed to pass. So, when the negotiating committee went to talk to the police, the signal was given for the police to attack. In a joint operation, the state’s Special Operations Group, the PEP, and the Ministerial Police, accompanied by federal police from the Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Investigation Agency, broke bus windows to launch teargas inside, forcing the students out. Videos from the attack show riot police forming a line next to a gas-filled bus. As students, all young women, fled the bus, the police hit them with their billy clubs. Multiple police hit each woman as she ran down the line even though none of the students resisted arrest. Police also threw rocks at the students and the busses, breaking several bus windows. Police beat several students with rocks, billy clubs, and thick wooden clubs and kicked them until they lost consciousness.

Police then opened fire on the protesters and the locals who came out of their houses to defend the students. While the police claim they only used rubber bullets, two students were injured by firearms. One normalista may lose his hand. A bullet fired from a police helicopter tore through it. Even though the young man was obviously injured and bleeding profusely, the helicopter that shot him gave pursuit and continued to fire on him.

By the end of the day, 139 people were arrested (130 of them women) and over 200 were injured. Many female detainees say police beat them and threatened to rape them. The nine male detainees say they were tortured. Their claims are substantiated by the wounds they had when the police released them pending trial. Contralinea reports that 19-year-old Rodrigo Talado Rodríguez, one of the arrested normalistas, left police custody with a bandaged head, a broken nose, two black eyes, and swollen lips.

The brutally excessive use of force against the normalista protest was the culmination of almost two years of increasing repression in Michoacan. Activists there blame the Michoacan Joint Operation for much of the repression they’ve experienced since the Operation began. However, activists aren’t the only ones feeling the heat: the Michoacan Joint Operation has created a climate where human rights and the rule of law don’t exist. In Michoacan, no one is safe.

Human Rights: The First Casualty of War

Michoacan is where Mexico’s drug war officially began. On September 6, 2006, a group of five armed men threw five decapitated heads on a dance floor in Uruapan, Michoacan. The incident made international headlines back then, but it wouldn’t today. Decapitated bodies or heads left in public areas are now commonplace and don’t always make the national news these days.

On December 11, 2006, Calderon fulfilled his campaign promise to crack down on organized crime by announcing that he would send 6,500 soldiers, marines, and federal police to his home state of Michoacan under the “Michoacan Joint Operation.” His choice of Michoacan to begin his military-led war on drugs was made all the more symbolic by the fact that the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) had recently taken control of the state. When Calderon made his announcement that he would deploy soldiers who take their orders from the President, the PRD was still actively opposing Calderon’s legitimacy as President due to the widespread electoral fraud that brought him to office.

Calderon has since deployed approximately 45,000 soldiers and at least 5,000 federal police to approximately eleven states. In 2009, it plans to expand military operations to an additional six states.

Human rights have suffered under the Michoacan Joint Operation. For the past two years, Michoacan has led the country in the number of human rights complaints filed against the military. During the first six months of 2007 about half of the complaints filed with Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) against the military were filed in Michoacan. By May 2008, Michoacan’s lead closed as Calderon deployed troops to other states, but it still led second-place Tamaulipas by 71 complaints. While the overall number of complaints filed with Michoacan’s official State Human Rights Commission (CEDH) has stayed constant throughout the Operation at about 2,500 per year, complaints involving torture are on the rise. In 2007 the CEDH received 10 complaints of torture; in 2008, it received 54.

The CNDH, which only receives complaints against the military and federal police, reported receiving 52 complaints in the first six months of the Michoacan Joint Operation. The complaints included five cases of rape; four of the victims were juveniles. The complaints also included two cases of torture and another ten cases that involved physical injuries. In one of the torture cases, soldiers mistook a Michoacan man for a drug kingpin, covered his head with a plastic bag, beat him with the butts of their rifles, and applied electric shocks to his testicles. They later released the man without charges. The last time the CNDH published state-by-state human rights complaints statistics was May 2008. By that time—almost a year and a half into the Michoacan Joint Operation—the military alone had accumulated 139 complaints.

While the military has opened a human rights department to address complaints and CNDH recommendations, the 2009 federal budget does not allocate any money to this department. With no operating funds, it’s not likely the department will stay open. The budget cut for the military’s human rights department comes within the context of significantly increased overall funding for the military in the 2009 budget, so this human rights oversight is not due to a lack of funds—just a lack of will.

Operation Repression

In the months leading up to the normalista protest, relations between activist groups and the military and police had already reached a boiling point. The Army’s arrival and assumption of policing responsibilities seems to have set off a blanket disregard for human rights in the state at all levels of law enforcement, from municipal police up to the military.

On August 29, 2008, the National Front for Socialist Struggle (FNLS) released a communiqué denouncing the repression and violence that comes with militarization. It called for actions on August 29-31, including a march, a conference, and a rally “as a way of demanding that the State and Federal governments end the militarization of the state and the country, because far from ending organized crime, it only provokes fear and insecurity amongst Michoacan families.” The days of action were called in protest of warrant-less house searches and detentions and disappearances carried out by police and federal agents. Normalistas from the Normal Rural Vasco de Quiroga in Tiripetío—the same ones whom police brutally attacked three months later—participated in the protest in which over one thousand people marched to the governor's office.

At a press conference during an earlier FNLS protest, Jorge Ceja Ramos of the Santa Fe de la Laguna Health Commission said that Calderon’s security policy has left communities “practically under siege.”

“Militarizing the country doesn’t guarantee security for Mexicans,” Ceja Ramos said. La Jornada reports that press conference participants said Michoacan has bigger problems, such as a lack of funding for education. Ceja Ramos told press conference attendees that poor education is a “fundamental problem” that causes poverty and migration.

But activists see other aims behind the fight against organized crime: Ceja Ramos told La Jornada, “they are determined to annihilate all social and popular movements and struggles.”

The “Ricardo Flores Magon” Popular and Indigenous Peasant Organization (OCIP-RFM) participated in the days of action to demand the Mexican Army’s immediate withdraw from their communities. They say the Army’s presence has come with systematic human rights violations, illegal searches, and other aggressions. The OCIP-RFM is a member of the FNLS and has certainly experienced its share of violence at the hands of authorities in Michoacan, particularly in the Tabiquera la Loma community in Uruapilla, Michoacan.

In December 2007, police destroyed OCIP-RFM member Moisés Molina Rodríguez’s house in the Tabiquera la Loma community. Then, on June 12, 2008, they disappeared him and tortured him for 15 days.

On July 4, 2008, Avenicio Reyna Cruz, another OCIP-RFM member from the same community, was kidnapped and tortured for over 17 hours. He was kidnapped over a land dispute with another organization. Reyna Cruz was kidnapped by two of the opposing organization’s lawyers, who were accompanied by armed State Judicial Police. Reyna Cruz claims that the plan was to murder him and his neighbor Molina Rodriguez. But other neighbors recognized and could have identified the lawyers, so the attackers chose to kidnap Reyna Cruz instead. The lawyers, one of whom was identified as Guadalupe Guia Carrion, beat him in the car, telling him they were going to kill him, and that if he and his organization didn’t leave the lands where they currently resided, they would evict them, killing men, women, and children in the process. The neighbors tried to stop the car when they saw the kidnapping play out, but the police pointed their weapons at the neighbors and told them: “Step aside, jerks. We didn’t kill the other jerk because we didn’t want to, that’s why we kicked his ass, but we’ll do the worst to you motherfuckers.” Upon release, Reyna Cruz was hospitalized for six broken ribs and internal bleeding.

The latest police aggression against the Tabiquera la Loma community in Uruapilla occurred during the repression of the normalista protest. In what appears to be direct reprisal for the normalista and OCIP-RFM participation in the August FNLS protest against militarization, the state and federal police stopped the normalista protest on the highway directly in front of Tabiquera la Loma. This “coincidence” seems even less coincidental when the police’s timing is taken into account: rather than stopping the protest as soon as the normalistas took over their first bus, the police waited eight hours until the normalista caravan was in front of Tabiquera la Loma to carry out their operation. By that time the normalistas had already taken between 21 busses, many of which were damaged in the police attack. When the police began their operation against the normalistas, Tabiquera residents came out of their homes in an attempt to defend their compañeros. An FNLS source tells Narco News that Tabiquera community members also felt the police’s wrath during the joint operation.

Plan Mexico Armament: Tools of Repression

On September 1, 2008, the Michoacan government received threats of attacks against the military parades that were planned for Independence Day. The threats did not specify which city or cities would be attacked. The Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which has a presence in Michoacan, and sources within the FNLS say that as a result of the threats, the military carried out operations all over Morelia, with a strong emphasis on activists’ homes and colonias populares, which are poor, organized neighborhoods.

The military operation failed to prevent the threatened attack. Suspected drug cartel members threw two fragmentation grenades at the Independence Day celebration in Morelia on September 15, killing eight people and injuring dozens more.

In a communiqué released shortly after the attacks, the EPR says that the military operations carried out in the colonias populares involved house-to-house searches. Instead of a warrant issued by a judge, the military came with an order signed by the military commander in charge of the zone. The EPR says the military justified its warrant-less raids with ion scanners, which are used to detect the presense of drugs or arms. The ion scanners tested positive in the colonias populares, giving the military the legitimacy it needed to raid whole neighborhoods.

The military’s use of ion scanners in warrant-less raids is particularly important. Michoacan has used ion scanners since at least 2006 to detect drugs in vehicles passing through the state. Using ion scanners to quickly scan vehicles in order to let vehicles that test negative pass without further inspection and to flag vehicles that require closer revision is a valid use of ion scanners. However, ion scanners are easily abused by authorities as a means of harassing citizens, as in the case of the Morelia raids.

Approximately 91% of ion scanners’ positives are false positives. Ion scanners measure the size of molecules to detect contraband such as drugs or firearms. The problem with ion scanners is that many molecules found in over-the-counter medications, hand sanitizer, melanin (found in abundance in people with dark skin, such as indigenous Mexicans), lotions, poppy seeds, and perfumes test positive for drugs in ion scans. In Mexico, ion scanners have also mistaken cheese for cocaine.

The US government acknowledges ion scanners’ inaccuracy, but that doesn’t prevent US prison officials from using ion scanners to harass prison visitors. Some prisons in the US use positive ion scanner results to turn away prison visitors without any further inspection to confirm the presence of contraband.

Ion scanners’ notorious inaccuracy has also not kept the US government from donating the devices to the Mexican military under Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative. Part of the USD$116.5 million in equipment, armament, and training that the US has donated to the Mexican military under Plan Mexico will come in the form of ion scanners.

Even though the government seems to place an emphasis on activists during its anti-drug operations in Michoacan, it’s important to point out that no links between insurgent organizations and drug traffickers have been found to date in Mexico. But that doesn’t mean that the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Agency won’t attempt to insinuate or fabricate those links in its rhetoric in order to justify its repression. In an official DEA PowerPoint presentation recently leaked to Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy, the DEA argued that the possibility exists that drug cartels will seek allies in insurgent organizations: “DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] will further reach out to the Mexican military and foreign paramilitary and possible insurgent organizations in order to acquire much needed human and material support to fend off advances by competing Cartels.” Similarly, in a report obtained by the Mexican daily Milenio entitled “The National Defense Department in Combat Against Drug Trafficking,” Mexico's National Defense Department says "a symbiosis between [drug cartels and] armed groups who are hostile to the government is forseeable."

While there is no proof that insurgent organizations are in any way allied with drug traffickers, these organizations are opposing the militarization that comes with the drug war and are therefore drug war targets themselves. As the EPR stated in a recent communiqué, “their ‘war’ has bloodied the country and its costs are plainly seen in the thousands of deaths, the de facto annulment of constitutional rights, and the permanent violation of human rights. This is what they call democracy?”

In the following video from the normalista protest, police are seen carrying heavy boards which they later used to beat students. Police are also seen beating and kicking unarmed female students who are not resisting arrest, which set off active resistance amongst the normalistas:

US Releases $90 million in Plan Mexico Military Hardware and Training

Sources within the US Congress have confirmed to Narco News that the US government has released approximately USD$90 million of the $116.5 million in foreign military financing (FMF) under Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative or Plan Merida. The $90 million comprises approximately 77% of Mexico's total FMF allotment under Plan Mexico in 2008.

The US Congress authorized the release of up to 85%, or $99 million, of 2008 FMF funds pending a report from the Secretary of State on Mexico's compliance with the human rights conditions laid out in Plan Mexico. However, congressional sources state that Mexico has not yet met the human rights conditions, so the State Department has not submitted the report.

The human rights conditions are minimal--they requite the establishment of a commission to receive complaints about police conduct, that the Mexican government regularly meet with Mexican human rights organizations so that they can "make recommendations concerning the implementation of" Plan Mexico (thereby excluding from the consultations any NGOs that oppose the military aid package), that civilian prosecutors and judges investigate and prosecute federal police and military forces who are accused of committing human rights abuses, and that evidence obtained through torture not be used in court.

This last point will be particularly difficult for the Secretary of State to certify given that the Mexican weekly Proceso revealed this month that the three suspects arrested by the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) in the Morelia, Michoacan, "narcoterrorist" grenade attack case were tortured by a drug cartel or Mexican security forces into saying they were members of the Los Zetas criminal organization and that they threw the grenades that killed eight people on Mexico's Independence Day. Official memos leaked to Proceso from an unidentified intelligence agency confirm that security authorities in Michoacan met with representatives from the La Familia drug cartel prior to the arrests "agreeing that they would detain various people" and accuse them of carrying out the Morelia attack. One theory that competes with the official hypothesis that Los Zetas carried out the Morelia attack is that La Familia carried out the attack in order to provoke a military crackdown on Los Zetas, who have been running contraband through La Familia's turf.

Military Hardware

The Defense Department’s Security Cooperation Agency, which administers the FMF program, defines Foreign Military Financing as “the U.S. government program for financing through grants or loans the acquisition of U.S. military articles, services, and training.”

At this time it is unknown what military hardware the $90 million purchased and what hardware is still pending the release of the human rights report. However, the Plan Mexico spending plan, which Narco News published in September, outlines how the 2008 FMF will be spent.

According to the spending plan, FMF funding will provide up to two CASA 235 aircraft. The spending plan states: “In addition to up to two aircraft, the package provided will include logistics support (primarily spare parts and limited technical support) for three years. Funding will also support transition training (training for experienced pilots to fly a new type of aircraft) for Mexican pilots.” CASA 235 planes have the ability to use night vision equipment, two computers to transmit and receive information from a military base or control center, and room for 57 soldiers with all of their equipment or 48 parachutists. CASA 235s can also carry six anti-ship missiles and two MK46 torpedoes or Exocet M-39 anti-ship missiles.

Mexico will also receive up to five BH-412 EP (Bell Helicopter) medium-lift utility helicopters along with a logistics support package for two years for new aircraft and possibly four Mexico-owned helicopters already in service. This includes training for pilots. BH-412s are designed to rapidly deploy military forces, which, according to the spending plan, will “establish security needed for successful interdiction of arms, drugs, and persons.” BH-412s carry 1-2 crewmembers and 13-14 soldiers and are equipped for day and night flight.

FMF funding will also refurbish and completely equip two Cessna Citation II C-550 surveillance aircraft for the Mexican Office of the Attorney General (PGR). Cessna Citations have radar and cameras. They can be outfitted with weapons and often are when they’re used in the war on drugs. In 2001, Cessna Citations provided by the US government and piloted by Peruvian pilots under the direction of CIA agents killed a US missionary and her baby in Peru when they were mistaken for drug traffickers.

Plan Mexico will provide an undetermined number of ion scanners “to support the efforts of the Mexican Navy (SEMAR) and Mexican Army/Air Force (SEDENA) to control their national territory and the southern approach to the United States.” The ion scanners come with a standard maintenance package. The spending plan notes that they’re “capable of detecting both explosives and narcotics” and will be “used by SEDENA to help detect illicit drug and arms trafficking through remote areas of Mexico and will support the GOM’s [government of Mexico’s] effort to mount a robust interdiction system via land routes.” Ion scanners analyze the size of molecules to test for the presence of drugs. They are meant to provide a preliminary assessment: a positive test result does not confirm the presence of drugs, but should trigger a more thorough inspection. Ion scanners are known to produce more false positives than true positives and are widely abused by prison authorities in the US to harass prison visitors by denying them access.

This is the first year in recent memory that Mexico will receive FMF funds from the United States. Up until now, Mexico was cut off from receiving US military assistance because it is a party to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Under US law, countries who are parties to the Rome Statute can only receive US military aid if they enter into an Article 98 agreement in which they promise to not prosecute US citizens in the ICC. Mexico has not entered into an Article 98 agreement, but the law banning parties to the Rome Statute contains a loophole: the president can waive the law, allowing the country to receive FMF, if he deems it to be in the US' "national interest."

More Armament

According to the spending plan, Mexico will also receive armored vehicles, bulletproof vests, and related “technical assistance” provided under Plan Mexico’s anti-narcotics section. These funds, however, are pending the signing of a letter of agreement between the US and Mexican governments. The letter of agreement outlines how the Plan Mexico training and equipment will be transferred. El Financiero reports that Condoleezza Rice's Mexican counterpart, Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, believes the letter of agreement will be finalized and signed this week.

Morelia Case: Confessions “Under Torture”

By Jorge Carrasco Araizaga and Francisco Castellanos J., Proceso
Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker

Through confessions obtained “under torture” and with multiple irregularities, the Federal Attorney General’s office (PGR in its Spanish initials) maintains the three alleged culprits under arrest in the September 15 terrorist attack in Morelia, Michoacan—which left eight people dead and 106 injured—even though many family members and neighbors assure that the accused were in Lazaro Cardenas [250 miles south of Morelia] the moment the attacks occurred.

Juan Carlos Castro Galeana, Julio Cesar Mondragon Mendoza, and Alfredo Rosas Elicea, the suspects in the grenade attack, were kidnapped and tortured by armed men in Lazaro Cardenas and later brought to a house in Apatzingan, where they were tormented again, before federal authorities took charge of them.

According to the criminal investigation PGR/SIEDO/UEITA/110/2008, the accused say they were kidnapped and psychologically and physically tortured for days so that they would confess to the attack and to being members of Los Zetas.

According to their statements, which Proceso had access to, the kidnappings happened between September 18-23 in Lazaro Cardenas, a port city in the zone controlled by the La Familia cartel, which is involved in a turf war with Los Zetas for control of drug trafficking in Michoacan. La Familia had offered to undertake its own investigation to find people responsible for the attack.

Despite the fact that the Assistant Attorney General for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO), Marisela Morales Ibañez, credited an anonymous call that revealed the location of those who are now detained, a memo provided to this weekly by a member of an intelligence organization says that on September 18 “there was a meeting between the security authorites in Michoacan and La F. (La Familia), in some cabins in the vicinity of Cuitzeo (security barracks), agreeing that they would detain various people” in order to blame the Morelia attacks and the grenade attack against the Michoacan Assistant Attorney General’s Office in Lazaro Cardenas, which occurred this past August.

As the agency in charge of the operation, the intelligence organization identifies a person known as El Tutas and specifies that three days before the PGR announced the detentions, the alleged attackers were detained “in the outskirts of Cuatro Caminos (near Apatzingan) on the property belonging to someone called El Becerro.”

However, the official version is that the whereabouts of the accused were unknown until September 24 in the afternoon, when they appeared in the Antunez mountains in Apatzingan thanks to an anonymous call that the PGR’s Mexico City telephone number 53-46-81-21 received.

The head of SIEDO presented them to the press a few days later on Friday, September 26, as those who had confessed to tossing the two grenades the night of the Cry for Independence in downtown Morelia: one in the Melchor Ocampo plaza, in front of the Government Palace, and the other in the intersection of Madero and Quintana Roo streets.

The assistant attorney general assured that, represented by court-appointed lawyers, they said they were Zetas. Moreover, the PGR released a video in which the detained men not only declare themselves guilty, but, lead on by the district attorney, they also give details as to how they supposedly tossed the grenades.

This video is one of the aspects challenged by defense attorney Mario Patricio Solano, who maintains that the defendants’ first statements to the district attorney assigned to the SIEDO were made while they were blindfolded, without a lawyer, and without a medical exam that would have certified the torture they received. For that reason they filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).

Meanwhile, up until last week the PGR had neglected to question the detained men’s families and neighbors, who hope to demonstrate that on the night of September 15 the accused were in Lazaro Cardenas, where they live, during the Morelia attack. At least 15 people, the majority of them neighbors, have offered to testify.

One of the family members states, “Leonel Godoy (the governor of Michoacan) should ask his parents. His parents live three blocks from one of the detained men’s houses.”

Detained since September 27 in the PGR’s National Detention Center in Mexico City’s Doctores neighborhood, on October 13 the accused filed an appeal with the 7th District Criminal Appeals Court in Mexico City against their detention. SIEDO’s Special Unit for Investigations Related to Terrorism, Stockpiles, and Arms Trafficking (UEITA) is in charge of their detention.

They are accused of organized crime, terrorism, and possession of a military-issue firearm. Their 40-day pre-trail detention period expired on November 5, but it can be extended for up to an additional 40 days.

The PGR has not only avoided calling the witnesses offered by the accused, but it has also not responded to the defense’s requests for the videos of the attacks from the Melchor Ocampo plaza, as well as the September 18-26 videos from the toll booths on the stretches of highway in Lazaro Cardenas, Apatzingan, and Morelia, the time period in which the accused were kidnapped and were handed over to the PGR.

The videos are fundamental for the defense, says the lawyer, not only to verify their claims about their kidnapping and transfer, but also to determine the time and place in which the PGR took charge of them.

The Kidnappings

According to reports obtained by Proceso in Apatzingan, on September 25 at 10am a Casa 229 plane marked XB-BIC arrived in that city. After an hour and a half a Suburban truck with tinted windows approached the aircraft.

Three blindfolded, handcuffed, and beaten people were taken out of the car. They put them on the plane and from there were brought to Mexico City, according to witnesses to the transfer.

Not even the commander of the 43 Military Zone, Gen. Julio Abdon Pedroza Jurado, headquartered in Apatzingan, was notified of the arrival. Only a lieutenant who was guarding the airport, Pablo L. Sidar, was informed.

As soon as the SIEDO made known the capture of the alleged Zetas, various journalists arrived in Apatzingan in order to investigate the time and place of the arrests. No one could give them an answer: not the PGR delegation, not the state attorney general’s office, and not the Military Zone.

“We don’t know anything. You see that this is closely guarded. They come from Mexico City, they carry out the operation, they take them away, and they don’t tell anyone,” was the brief response from a couple of local authorities.

Not withstanding, the detained men’s families and neighbors—interviewed by Proceso in Lazaro Cardenas and Mexico City—explain, as witnesses and from the detained men’s accounts, the manner in which the kidnappings and torture occurred, the conditions of their handover to the PGR, and their first statements to the SIEDO.

Upon presenting the suspects, Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales limited herself to saying that, thanks to an anonymous call received by the PGR on September 24, the accused “were located and detained” in a house in Apatzingan, and from there transferred to Mexico City.

But the families say that “they were kidnapped in Lazaro Cardenas, in different houses and on different days, by unidentified armed men, who handed them over to the authorities after torturing them for days.”

The first man to be kidnapped was 38-year-old Juan Carlos Castro Galeana, identified as El Grande. His sister Magali and his wife Esperanza Fajardo Ruiz recount that on September 18, just before 2pm, he was kidnapped while he was in the Gonzalez Body Shop in Lazaro Cardenas, where he worked.

He was there with the business owner and another worker—from whom the PGR has still not taken statements—when three men in a white Mitsubishi pick-up truck without plates arrived. “They ordered him into the pick-up at gunpoint. They beat him and covered his face.

“That’s when the torment began. They asked him why he had thrown the grenades, which he denied. Later they tied his hands with packing tape and beat him with boards. He told us that later they dragged him to a river and left him there all night. He also says that they had him with his arms up for a whole day, always blindfolded,” says Magali.

Moreover, they threatened to slit his throat and those of his wife and brother if he didn’t declare himself guilty. Not only that, he had to respond exactly as they ordered him to. If he made a mistake they beat him more, she says.

Despite the punishment, during the ordeal they gave him a lot of water and food. He noticed that he was in three different places. In one place there were multiple people.

According to the relatives, the seconding man to be kidnapped was Julio Cesar Mondragon Mendoza, whom the PGR identified as having the alias El Tierra Caliente. He is 35 years old and works for a construction company. On Sunday, September 21, at about 3pm, five armed people picked him up while he was washing his car outside his house.

Yudith Medina Ayala, Cesar Mondragon’s wife, says that the five men violently put him into a car. The pattern was the same: psychological and physical torture and death threats so that he would take responsibility for the terrorist attacks.

His wife says he was hung by the feet with a chain and whipped, and that they also beat him with a board and burned him with cigarettes. They also put his head into a bag of water mixed with some other substance, which they also did to the other two people.

Cesar Mondragon also received severe blows to the nose. It was his composite sketch that the Michoacan Attorney General’s Office circulated just days after the attacks.

The third kidnapping was that of Alfredo Rosas Elicea, alias El Socio and/or Valiente. He is 45 years old, a father of three, and also a construction worker. He was violently removed from his house. His kidnapping was the most brief, but he was the most injured because he refused to implicate himself. “They broke five ribs, he’s at risk of going deaf in one ear, and they caused complications with his diabetes,” says his wife Julia Sanchez Vezquez.

“They told my husband: ‘you threw the grenade.’ But he didn’t want to accept that. That’s why they beat him the most. At times he fainted, and they had to bathe him so he came to. He was so bad off that after being presented in SIEDO he was hospitalized for five days in the Medical Tower,” in the Tabacalera neighborhood, says Julia Sanchez.

In contrast to El Grande’s family, the other two wives didn’t report their husbands’ disappearances. “We didn’t because we thought that it was a kidnapping and that we would receive a call asking for ransom,” explains Yudith Medina.

In their statements to the SIEDO, the detained men testified that the kidnappers never left them alone, but that when the PGR agents arrived at the house where they were being held, they found them on the floor, blindfolded, handcuffed, and with their feet tied.

The families say, “When the agents asked them who they were, they responded, ‘We’re Los Zetas.’ That was the signal. That was when they took them to the Apatzingan airport. Upon landing in Mexico City, they were threatened again, ‘Well, you already know the truth and what you have to say. If not, you’re going to get fucked up.’”

According to the record of the anonymous tip, which is part of the investigation, the SIEDO doesn’t know the origin of the call. The caller ID said, “Outside.” However, the work was already done for Marisela Morales’ office.

The caller said, “I want to report the people who tossed the grenades on September 15 in Morelia, because what they did was rotten. They’re in the Antunez mountains in Apatzingan. They’re tied up, in a house with a white metal door. The house is under construction. It’s located next to a soccer field and in front you can see a huge antenna. You can’t miss it. You need to go get them fast.

“These dudes are Zetas. They call one of them Juan Carlos Castro Galeana, alias El Grandote. This one threw the grenade that killed all those people. He’s about 1.9 meters tall, strong, robust, curly hair, between 35 and 40 years old, with a brown clear complexion. They call another one Julio Cesar Mondragon Mendoza, alias El Tierra Caliente. He’s about 35 years old, 1.7 meters tall. He’s got a shaved head. He has a beard and mustache; he’s light-skinned. Another is Alfredo Rosas Elicea, alias El Socio and/or El Valiente. He’s older, about 45 years old. He’s skinny, with short black hair, brown-skinned.”

The end of the call doesn’t jive with what the PGR reported. The caller said that there was “another man (whom) they call El Flaco.” Next, the record of the call says that the anonymous caller “added that their compañeros tied them up in a house to prevent them from deserting because they’re sorry for what they did. You have to go for them fast or you’ll lose.

“The boss is a man whom they call El Cesar. I’ve seen him around Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan. He’s also a Zeta. If you don’t believe me, go to the house I told you and you’ll see that what I’m saying is true.”

Despite the fact that the call was made at 2pm on September 24, it wasn’t until about 4pm the next day that only three SIEDO agents—Jose Martin Zarza Escamilla, Ignacio Moreno Aguilar, and Armando Javier Rojo Olivar—arrived at the house.

Moreno Aguilar stated in his report: “We were in the house’s entranceway. We heard people moaning… We asked them to come out with their hands up, and we heard them say that they couldn’t because they were tied up and handcuffed. Once inside we found three individuals in a room…seated on the floor…and we saw that their feet were tied up, and that they were handcuffed and blindfolded.”

When they were interrogated, he continued, “they stated that they belonged to the Zetas group” and that their compañeros had had them in the house since September 16, “since the three of us were the ones who threw the grenades… They put us here because when we realized the damage we’d caused… we complained to a man they call El Bola. That’s why they thought we’d desert the organization and put the identities of many members at risk, and that’s why they brought us here, they beat us, handcuffed us, and blindfolded us.”

According to the families, they only removed the men’s blindfolds before they signed the statement that implicated them. Afterwards, their SIEDO interrogators requested that they explain to them “with gestures” how they had thrown the grenades. This performance was what the PGR released on television…

The War Next Door

As drug cartels battle the government, Mexico descends into chaos

by GUY LAWSON

Rolling Stone, Issue 1065

The dead policeman is found propped against a tree off a dirt road on the outskirts of the city. He is dressed like a cartoon version of a Mexican cowboy, wearing a sombrero and wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket. The murder and symbolic mutilation of policía has become almost routine in Culiacán, capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa: Pablo Aispuro Ramírez is one of 90 cops to be killed here this year. There is a note pinned to the body, a warning to anyone who dares to oppose the powerful drug lord who ordered the execution.

"I'm a cop-cowboy!" the note reads. "Ahoo-ya! There are going to be more soon!"

In the United States, the War on Drugs is a political slogan for a policy disaster that has cost taxpayers at least $500 billion over the past 35 years. In Mexico, it is a brutal and bewildering conflict — a multisided civil war that has taken 3,000 lives this year alone and brought the federal government to a state of near-collapse. Narcotics are now one of the largest sectors of the Mexican economy, twice the size of tourism. Most of the country's drug trade involves transporting contraband from other sources — especially cocaine from Colombia — to satisfy the nearly insatiable demand in the U.S. But Mexico's narcotraficante cartels have also gotten into the production side of the industry, manufacturing 80 percent of the crystal meth sold in America, 14 percent of the heroin and most of the marijuana. What Mexico offers the global narcotics industry is proximity to the largest market on earth.

Until the Bush administration's crackdown on coca growers in Colombia began driving the drug trade further north, traffic through Mexico was relatively stable, overseen chiefly by the huge cartels based in Sinaloa. Known as "the federation," the traditional families that led Mexico's thriving narcotics business each controlled disparate areas of the U.S. border, much as the Mafia once divided up the boroughs of New York City. Perhaps the most ingenious and hardworking of these Mexican mobsters is Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as "El Chapo," or "Shorty." Chapo, who controls the border towns of Nogales and Mexicali, built massive underground tunnels to smuggle cocaine into Arizona. He concealed tons of cocaine in cans of chili peppers destined for California. He assembled a fleet of boats and trucks and airplanes with hidden compartments to enable them to slip past customs. To the U.S. government, he is one of the most wanted drug dealers in the world, a fugitive with a $5 million reward on his head. In Culiacán, he is more folk hero — part Pablo Escobar, part Robin Hood, part Billy the Kid.

"We respect him," the owner of a restaurant in the town of Altata tells me. "He grew up poor, planting corn and pot. Then he took trucks with false floors filled with pot to the United States, and speedboats from the coast to California. In Mexico we have a saying: He spread like humidity."

For years, Chapo shared the drug trade with other families in the federation. The Beltrán Leyva cartel was in charge of the traffic in Monterrey, and a former federal police officer known as "El Azul" ran Guadalajara. Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the cartel leader called "the Lord of the Skies," worked the border town of Ciudad Juárez, opposite El Paso. At the peak of his power, Fuentes was said to have paid $500 million a year in protection money. It was Fuentes who pioneered the traffic in Colombian coke, and who infamously died during plastic surgery to alter his appearance. (The two doctors alleged to have botched the operation were later found entombed in cement, their arms and legs bound.)

Over the past decade, however, that relatively stable structure has erupted into full-scale war — largely as the result of the unintended consequences of U.S. drug policy. When the Drug Enforcement Administration blocked cocaine shipments through the Caribbean during the 1980s, the trade simply migrated to overland routes through Mexico. Likewise, the DEA's success against the Cali and Medellín cartels in Colombia has only emboldened Mexico's narcos, driving the drug traffic ever closer to home. Newcomers on the Gulf Coast eager to break into the industry are challenging the rule of the existing cartels, sparking a bloody battle over territory and supply routes. And the Mexican government — under pressure from the United States to curb the flow of drugs — is waging an all-out campaign to destroy the cartels.

Indeed, much of the current bloodshed can be traced to the special forces that Mexico trained to find and arrest drug traffickers, receiving instruction from the U.S. military on tactics, intelligence-gathering, air assault and advanced weaponry. In the late 1990s, one of the new Gulf cartels began recruiting these American-trained soldiers to work as hired guns against the Sinaloan cartels, offering vastly higher wages than the government. Known as "Los Zetas" — the Mexican police's term for a high-ranking official — these mercenaries are now the most violent force in Mexico, moving massive amounts of drugs into the U.S. while murdering journalists and police and politicians who challenge their authority. Led by Heriberto "the Executioner" Lazcano, the Zeta paramilitaries are far more sophisticated in their weaponry and combat skills than the hapless and corruption-addled policía. It is as if the Navy SEALs or an FBI SWAT team went to work for the Russian mob.

Through the early part of the decade, the war steadily increased in intensity, but it was only with the inauguration of President Felipe Calderón in December 2006 that true chaos enveloped the nation. A conservative elected by a narrow margin, Calderón has made going after the drug traffickers a central part of his administration. He has deployed more than 40,000 federal soldiers across the country and imprisoned thousands of narcos, from lowly street dealers to drug lords and money launderers. But the result of Calderón's war has been catastrophe. In reply, the traffickers have directly attacked the legitimacy of the government, targeting politicians and senior law-enforcement officials. Ten days after Calderón took office, in what was seen as a message from the cartels, a cousin of his wife was killed and stuffed into the trunk of a car in Mexico City. In May, the chief of the federal police was gunned down in the capital. That same month, a village in the state of Chihuahua was overrun by 70 gunmen; the police chief and two officers were killed, the rest of the force quit in fear. In August, 12 decapitated bodies were left on the outskirts of Mérida on the Gulf Coast, the letter "Z" tattooed on their bodies, the calling card of Los Zetas. On September 15th — during a celebration of Mexican Independence Day — two fragmentation grenades exploded in the square of President Calderón's hometown of Morelia, killing eight civilians and wounding more than 100. The government's war on drugs has sparked a war on the government itself.

The war has now spread to America's own border. In three days in August, 43 people were killed in drug-related murders in and around Juárez, just across the river from El Paso. Experts agree that the violence could soon pose a threat to national security in America, with the already porous border turning into a floodgate for Mexican refugees and gangs. "I worry that the country's political class won't truly act until a major figure is assassinated," says Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the Institute of Social Research in Mexico City. "But right now it's not very clear what the 'war' means. No one is sure who is fighting who. It best resembles a circular firing squad."

[Read the entire story in the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands October 30, 2008.]