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 de Coahuila
(Saltillo, Coah.) 5/12/08
Five men were shot to death in Palomas, Chihuahua,
yesterday just two blocks away from the international border crossing (note:
next to Columbus, New Mexico, the town that Pancho Villa invaded). 175 assault
rifle shell casings were found at the scene. Palomas, a town of 7,000 pop., has
had 30 homicides linked to organized crime this year and 20 persons have been
kidnapped. Another five men were executed with high caliber firearms in
different events in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.
Six homicides were reported in Sinaloa and the body
of a decapitated unknown person was also located. Further, three men were
executed in Tlajomulco de Zuniga, Jalisco. (Note: the blood list continues with
reports of some half dozen additional violent deaths in a number of localities.)
The week starts with 23 executions.
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a.b.c.
(Mexico City) 5/12/08
(The following is a portion of an op/column by
Francisco Cardenas Ruiz regularly titled "Political Pulse"):
"If President Calderon doesn't do something, and
quickly, to stop the daily bloodbath which organized crime and narcotraffic are
giving to the nation and it is decided, once and for all, to cut the umbilical
cord which both have with municipal, state and federal authorities, his
government will continue losing not only the battles but the war itself which he
declared against them when he took office. Besides, he could be in imminent risk
that the families of the members of the army, navy and all police agencies which
participate in the anti-narco war will demand from him to put a stop to so much
violence before their members are also murdered. After the executions of top
level officials of the Federal Public Security Departments and those of some
states which occurred last week - the day before yesterday the director of the
Ciudad Juarez Municipal Police, Juan Antonio Roman Garcia, was riddled with 50
shots - and the death in a shootout in Culiacan of Edgar Guzman Lopez, one of
the sons of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, the worse thing is that two signs
appeared at that same place yesterday with direct threats against the governor
of Sinaloa, Jesus Aguilar Padilla, (saying) that they will make attempts against
his life. This confirms once again what we have been warning about in this
column: that sooner or later organized crime and narcotraffic are going to raise
their gun sights and their targets will not only be city police officers or
federal or state agents, but their supervisors and the chiefs of the latter, as
has already begun to happen. As long as there continue to be officials at any
federal, state or city level who have links and complicity with the drug cartels
and they (those officials) continue to furnish protection and facilities to
crime bosses and hired killers so that the latter can obtain information about
the operations and daily activities of the persons carrying out those operations
(then) those persons will keep on being executed in Mexico City or in any city
in the interior of the Republic."
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Cuarto Poder
(Tuxtla, Chiapas) 5/12/08
Felipe Arizmendi, the bishop of San Cristobal de las
Casas, Chiapas, commented on the recent decriminalization of illegal immigration
in Mexico and said that unfortunately it has not been made widely known because
of other ongoing national issues; he added "we are giving an example to the
United States because there it is all the reverse, any person who might be
undocumented is considered a wrongdoer" . He underlined that "an undocumented
person is not a delinquent but a human being who deserves attention and respect.
Let us hope that the United States will follow the good example we want to give
with this important measure and that we emphasize it in the most adequate way."
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Frontera (Tijuana, Baja Calif.) 5/12/08
73 vehicles a day were stolen in Tijuana during the first three months of the
year. A total of 6,724 vehicles were stolen from January to March, a 14%
increase over 2007. Mexicali came in second with 1,550, then Ensenada with 549.
The state of Baja Calif. total for the first three months reached 9,348
vehicles.
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El Sur (Acapulco, Guerrero) 5/12/08
Edward Francis Pellew, a tourist from London, U.K., was driving a rental car in
Acapulco last Saturday morning when he was stopped by local police officers who
accused him of speeding, almost hitting a woman and child and running two stop
signs on Costanera Ave. He replied that he had not been speeding since the
particular scenic road has a number of dangerous curves, that he had not seen
any woman and child and that he had been coming from Puerto Marques, not on the
Costanera. So an officer told him that his chief had ordered him to take him
in to their facility in handcuffs. Once inside the patrol unit - he could not
see its number because they blocked his view - they asked him for 400 pesos to
set him free; he replied he had no cash, only credit cards, so they took him to
an ATM where they no longer wanted 400 pesos but 3,000. They then let him go.
The tourist then presented a formal complaint to authorities and described the
officers in the presence of reporters. At that moment the director general of
the Acapulco Hotel and Tourism Association phoned and asked that Pellew's
complaint report not be published in the media and that a way would be sought to
resolve the problem.
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El Universal (Mexico City) 5/12/08
Rivalry between drug cartels for control of Sinaloa has caused 270 violent
deaths there so far this year, 41 more than in the same period last year. In May
alone the tally to date is 52; it includes 24 members of law enforcement
agencies. Local businessmen said that almost daily one or several bodies turn
up, wrapped in bedding, with hands and feet tied, or who fell prey to volleys of
gunfire from some automatic rifle. The violence in Sinaloa dates back more than
four decades and is due to the fact that this is an area that produces marihuana
and poppy and is also a strategic point for the transit of drugs from the
southeast of the country besides being the birthplace of the cartels' main
chiefs.
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La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico City) 5/12/08
A truck headed for Ciudad Juarez carrying household furniture was stopped in
Guanajuato. Inside the double false bottom: 19 Guatemalans, 9 Salvadorans, 3
Ecuadoreans, & 1 Honduran, all undocumented.
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Norte (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 5/12/08
Eight more homicides in this area yesterday (Sunday) brought the year's total
above 300 and to 43 to date in May, a month in which the daily average is nearly
four.
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Prensa Libre (Guatemala City, Guatemala) 5/12/08
The wave of violence in Guatemala has resulted in 876 deaths so far this year,
mostly by the use of firearms. One of the most recent victims was that of one of
this newspaper's reporters who had been working on "administrative corruption"
in southwestern Guatemala. Forty-three of the victims have been local and
interurban bus drivers, almost as many as the 51 murdered in all of 2007.
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Note : Prominent, front section items in both the "o.e.m." newspapers
(Mexico's nationwide chain of some 40 papers) and on "El Heraldo"
(Tegucigalpa, Honduras) today gave full coverage to The Washington Post feature
story detailing that more illegal aliens in custody in the U.S. have died in
the last few years while awaiting deportation than have terrorists died in
Guantanamo.