NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
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Foreign News Report
The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.
El Diario (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 8/13/08
– Corruption by public servants represents an annual cost of 60 billion dollars to Mexico, an amount four time larger than the income from petroleum exports, and 9% of the GDP, according to World Bank figures. A Mexican congressman, Hugo Martinez, said that acts of corruption at the federal, state and local levels, as well as concessions and services by private parties, increased from 115 to 197 million, according to the National Corruption & Good Gov’t. index. “Corruption engenders loss of credibility for the State, government and public administration, it inhibits citizens’ participation in public affairs, induces illegality and inadequate assignment of funds as well as their appropriation by political and economic groups, with high costs to society.”
– Pedro Aragones, director of investigative services of the state of Chihuahua’s AG’s office, was shot to death and his “ministerial police” escort gravely wounded in a car-to-car gunfire assault in the state’s capital city, Chihuahua.
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Excelsior (Mexico City) 8/13/08
(First paragraph of an op column by Armando Roman)
“End of the social compact”
The State has collapsed: Mexico is a jungle. The warnings, the claims, the demands, in the media, on the street, were many. Nevertheless, our “authorities” did not listen to the millions of Mexicans who shouted to them to be careful and not to allow us to arrive where we have. The same is true for those many other Mexicans who lack a civic conscience, who could care less about their fellow man and who, in the context of the institutional orphan status which characterizes us, choose to rob, kidnap, rape, murder and a very long etcetera! The lack of legality and conscience of those who opt for crime has resulted in that the Mexican social compact – which in itself had never been complete – may now have become totally dissolved.
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a.m. (Leon, Guanajuato) 8/13/08
Juan Lopez, Social and Human Development Secretary, spoke before a local congress in Guanajuato and said that in that state there are 769,000 persons in “extreme poverty”, living in 149,000 dwellings. Of that number, 215 thousand live in “nutritional poverty” – not being able to pay for their food – because they earn 500 pesos or less per month. Guanajuato is also among Mexico’s leaders in suicides, lack of access to health and “expulsion” (read: source of migrants) of workers. (Note: Guanajuato, with close to 5 million inhabitants, is slightly smaller than Maryland)
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Cuarto Poder (Tuxtla, Chiapas) , La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico City) 8/13/08
The president (read: Chief Justice) of Mexico’s Supreme Court, Guillermo Ortiz, urged all sectors of government to act against insecurity and said that society’s indignation is justified because its integrity is threatened. He called for more technical and professional expertise in crime case investigations and for “adequate, complete, sensible and useful laws, with precise and severe punishment against crime. He added that the legislature must create laws which determine “unavoidable procedures” so that judges may legitimately impose punishment and sanctions.
Summed up : for the legislature: clear, useful and powerful laws. For the executive: professional investigations, as well as crime prevention and prosecution of criminals. For the judicial: just, impartial and objective sentences.
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Noroeste (Culiacan, Sinaloa) 8/13/08
Sinaloa State AG’s office data show that of an average 2,022 crimes officially reported, only 331 cases result in sentences for the perpetrators. That 16% rises to 96% when cases not officially reported are taken into account. All this due to lack of resources, lack of training and personnel background clearances.
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Norte (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 8/13/08
Of the approximately 760 homicides which have occurred so far this year only nine cases have been referred to criminal courts.
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Diario Xalapa (Xalapa, Veracruz; part of large “o.e.m.” paper group) 8/13/08
During the current year organized crime has assassinated 62 Mexican federal agents including high ranking personnel, an average of 7.7 a month. In the majority of cases the victims were ambushed or forcibly abducted by strongly armed “commandos.”
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El Debate (Culiacan, Sinaloa) 8/13/08
(the following report makes the number in the previous item already obsolete)
Two federal “preventive police” officers were murdered before dawn today (Wed.) in the Mazatlan, Sinaloa, area. Thugs armed with assault rifles fired on them as the two agents arrived at a locale.
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El Diario de Coahuila (Saltillo, Coah.) 8/13/08
– A newspaper archive search from 2002 to date by “El Universal” reveals that active duty or ex-police officers were involved in half of the kidnapping cases reported. The cases involve federal, state and local police agents.
– The Public Security Secretary of the state of Sinaloa, Josefina Garcia, admitted the failure by all three levels of government regarding the Culiacan-Navolato Joint Operation, given that homicides (637 to date), auto theft and commercial establishment robberies “do not cease.”
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El Informador (Guadalajara, Jalisco) 8/13/08
An average of one hundred prison inmates escape Mexican jails yearly, which reveals the inefficiency and corruption of prison officials, as well as the “self-government” by the inmates. 496 prisoners fled from 2003 to 2007, a figure which could reach higher if it is contrasted with press reports of each event. During the same period there were 207 homicides within the jails as well as 157 suicides.
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El Porvenir (Monterrey, Nuevo Leon) 8/13/08
Besides impunity, the lack of economic growth and of generation of employment are the causes of crime due to the “desperation” by people in not being able to find jobs. This, according to Armando Paredes, president of Mexico’s Enterprisal Coordinating Council, who added that those persons represent an easy target for narcotraffickers. Nevertheless, the main problem is impunity, since only one out of one hundred crimes is punished.
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El Universal (Mexico City) 8/13/08
– “SIEDO” , a sub-agency of Mexico’s Dep’t. of Justice (a unit specializing in the investigations about organized crime) has been found to have been infiltrated by the Beltran-Leyva brothers’ drug cartel. Two “high level” officials, one a coordinator of technical services, and the other a police personnel coordinator, plus a federal agent have been detained. (This figure was updated by another paper that said that six “SIEDO” personnel are now in preliminary detention.)
– There were thirteen homicides in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, in the last 24 hours; one of them was a police officer. These deaths bring up to 33 the number of victims in Juarez in the last 72 hours.
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Ensenada (Ensenada, Baja Calif.) 8/13/08
About a dozen men managed to escape when Mex. naval personnel saw them unloading a launch at a dock in El Sauzal (quite close to Ensenada, B.C.) The load: 106 packages of weed weighing 1,522 kilos.
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(The attachment is a bar graph showing the amounts, in billions of dollars, of individual monetary remittances sent by Mexicans abroad back into Mexico.)
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– end of report –
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