[TheDude]

Britain, Germany and Switzerland officially warn citizens about the dangers of travel in Mexico

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')osted: 27 Aug 2008 04:07 PM CDT
El Informador (Guadalajara, Jal.), El Universal (Mex. City), Frontera (Tijuana. B.C.) 8/27/08
Various European governments are now warning their citizens that when visiting Mexico they must protect themselves as much from the police as from the criminals because there are links between the police officers and criminal groups.

The German Chancery recommended its citizens not to resist if they are victims of some crime because the law breakers use their weapons immediately. Further it emphasizes that police forces are implicated in illicit activities.

Likewise, officials in Great Britain issued alerts to tourists due to the complaints of complicity between police and kidnappers. In its internet site, it points out that “express kidnappings” occur especially in Mexico City.

And the Swiss Dep’t. of Foreign Relations uses a section to explain criminality in Mexico and mentions that there’ve been known cases of police collusion in criminal activity.

[TheDude]

UPDATE 1- Mexico migrant remittances fall in July

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')EXICO CITY, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The amount of money sent home by Mexicans living abroad fell 6.93 percent in July from the same month in 2007, the biggest fall in more than a decade, the central bank said on Monday.

Remittances, one of Mexico's biggest sources of foreign currency, were $2.02 billion in July. During the first seven months of the year they totaled $13.6 billion, down 2.9 percent compared with the same period last year.

Remittances fell more in July than in any time since the central bank started keeping track in 1995.

[Cynus]

Organized crime takes control in parts of Mexico

MORELIA, Mexico — As helicopters circled overhead, trucks carrying Mexican army troops lurched through the colonial streets of this provincial capital to a central plaza, where a grenade had been discovered near the cathedral.

Law-enforcement agents cordoned off the plaza and removed the grenade. But the latest attempt at intimidation in Michoacan , the state where Mexican President Felipe Calderon first dispatched the military to confront the Mexican drug cartels, appears to have succeeded.

Fear of the drug gangs pervades this city about 200 miles west of Mexico City .

"Don't go to Aguililla or to Tepalcatepec or to Coalcoman!'' is the warning Victor Serrato , president of the State Commission on Human Rights in Morelia gives visitors. There is a risk of abduction, mistreatment or worse, he said.

...

The chilling reality of Mexico is the mounting evidence that organized crime has become the de facto power in parts of the country, and local authorities can no longer protect citizens and impart justice.
" Michoacan is one of the states where you feel most the breakdown of the social fabric because of this criminal activity," Serrato said.
"These cartels, which previously were dedicated to the narcotics business, have now turned to control a whole other series of activities," he said. "They are demanding payoffs not only from owners of illicit businesses, but what is more serious, they are demanding them from people who sell clothing in markets or the owners of small restaurants."

...

Paredes echoed Guillermo Valdes , the head of the government's intelligence organization CISEN, who framed the issue as a threat to democracy. Drug traffickers are attempting to take control of the government, he told foreign reporters recently.

[TheDude]

If I haven't already, here's a plug for the M3 Report, compiled by members of The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO). All the latest in corruption, beheadings, kidnappings, etc.

I heard a while back about a lawless zone in Los Angeles (which some would say is part of Mexico already...), which the cops/EMTs have simply written off - pay no attention to 911 calls, don't bother patrolling, etc. Started off as a block or two, and is expanding as time goes by. Maybe in the 84th/San Pedro area?

Getting Away With Murder in South L.A.'s Killing Zone

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne intersection. Seven unsolved homicides.

That’s the tally for the cross streets of San Pedro and 84th dating to the late 1980s. The spot is typical of many in South and Central Los Angeles where extraordinary numbers of people are murdered and the killers are never caught.

Unsolved homicides – killings for which no suspect is ever arrested – are stacked up block by block, mile by mile, in this part of Los Angeles.

From San Pedro and 84th streets, they stretch east, west and south – two on one street, six on another, a massive number of killings which, taken together, create a chilling map of violent lawlessness.

[TheDude]

SeekingAlpha, Sept 7th: Mexico: Running Out of Oil and Options »

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')il exports will certainly have dried up on that timeframe. The balance of resources between the government and criminal groups will deteriorate rapidly in coming years, and the US may face a de facto criminalized narco-state as a neighbor with violence spilling across its Southern borders. Other implications would include a massive surge in illegal immigration from the current estimated 450,000 a year as impoverished Mexicans flee both declining living standards and rampant lawlessness, and the US losing energy security by becoming even more dependent on oil shipped huge distances from the Persian Gulf and West Africa.

Ironically, the success of US policies to support the Colombian government now threaten to undermine the strategically far more important Mexican one, a classic case of the law of unintended consequences in action. It will take more than that fancy new border fence or oil drilling in Alaska to address the looming crisis that will almost inevitably explode by the end of the new President's first term.

I have been bearish of emerging markets in general in recent months, and Mexico is one of the most vulnerable to capital flight as the combination of falling oil prices and production creates a fiscal crisis in 2009.

[wisconsin_cur]

NYTimes: The right thing to wear on the wrong end of a gun


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut tucked on a leafy side street in the Polanco neighborhood is a shop unlike the others, one whose bustling business says much about the dire state of security in this country. At Miguel Caballero, named after its Colombian owner, all the garments are bulletproof.

There are bulletproof leather jackets and bulletproof polo shirts. Armored guayabera shirts hang next to protective windbreakers, parkas and even white ruffled tuxedo shirts. Every member of the sales staff has had to take a turn being shot while wearing one of the products, which range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $7,000, so they can attest to the efficacy of the secret fabric.

“If feels like a punch,” a salesman said of the shot to the stomach he received.

Just who is willing to fork over thousands of dollars for these chic shields? Customers include Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, not to mention assorted royalty, movie stars and other V.I.P.’s.

As Mexico grapples with an increase in drug-related violence, sales are steadily on the rise, the company said, though it declined to provide precise figures.

[wisconsin_cur]

Drug Killings impact youth

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')exico’s explosion of drug-related violence has caught the attention of the country’s children. Experts say the atrocities that young people are hearing about, and all too frequently witnessing, are hardening them, traumatizing them, filling their heads with images that are hard to shake.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '
')And when something is "normal" it is then natural to partake in such activities or believe that this is the way that world works.

Sleep well those along the southern border.

[wisconsin_cur]

Sometimes a plane crash is just a plane crash but this smells funny.


Mexican Interior Minister Killed in Plane Crash

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')EXICO CITY — Mexico’s interior minister and seven others onboard a government jet died Tuesday night when it crashed into a tony business district here during rush hour, igniting cars and sending dozens of people to local hospitals.

The minister, Juan Camilo Mourino, 37, had been one of President Felipe Calderon’s closest advisers and a rising star in the National Action Party. He headed the government’s security apparatus and was the president’s point man in the increasingly bloody drug war.

Mr. Calderon, in an emotional news conference, said Mr. Mourino’s children ought to know that he had worked “until his last moment to leave them with a better country.”

The Lear jet, carrying three crew members, Mr. Mourino and four of his aides, came down on busy Reforma Avenue about 6:45 p.m., scattering wreckage over a vast area.

“It fell on top of all the traffic, which you know is completely stopped,” said Arturo Sanchez Rios, a food vendor. “I saw 10 to 15 cars explode in a manner of seconds.”

[natts]

Too bad, the crash doesn't seem so accidental.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('natts', 'T')oo bad, the crash doesn't seem so accidental.

[natts]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')Nothing seems so accidental to peakoilers.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('natts', 'T')oo bad, the crash doesn't seem so accidental.

[Cynus]

Drug Wars ongoing problem for Mexico

Terror and a grim warning about future instability struck our NAFTA partner, Mexico, on the day Barack Obama became Presidentelect of the United States.

There was no press attention in Canada, and hardly any in the United States, about the crash during rush hour in downtown Mexico City of a Lear jet carrying the second-highest official in the Mexican government, Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, along with key drug interdiction officials. Thirteen people died in the plane and on the ground, and 40 were injured.

Another passenger was former assistant attorney-general Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who had a multi-million-dollar price put on his head by the cartels because of his work against the drug trade during the administration of Vicente Fox.

It appears to be a message that the drug cartels will stop at nothing as they continue to corrupt and ruin the country as they did in Colombia.

In the past year, Mexico's drug-related murder rate became four times' higher than the casualty rate in Iraq among Americans. Some 4,000 people have been killed and the all-out war waged by Sr. Mourino, 37, resulted in assassinations of police chiefs, mayors and soldiers.

Clearly, this has grave implications for all NAFTA partners, notably the United States, which will see increased drug trafficking and illegal immigration as Mexico starts a possible descent into a kleptocracy.

[bratticus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')u]Juan Camilo Mourino benefited from Pemex
Mexico City-The documents last Sunday Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador delivered to the coordinators of the parliamentary Progressive Broad Front (FAP)-PRD, Convergencia and PT-containing a series of agreements to provide transportation service that Pemex Refining held with the Ivancar Specialized Transportation Company, which appears today the signing of Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino.

[TheDude]

Mexico Hedges All Oil Exports in '09 at $70

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')exico said it has hedged all of its oil exports for next year against a price of oil below $70 a barrel, in a sign of how some resource-rich nations are trying to protect themselves against slumping commodity prices amid a global economic slowdown.

Mexico's Finance Ministry said Thursday that it bought $1.5 billion of put options that guarantee Mexico will get at least $70 a barrel for some 330 million barrels.

If the price is above $70, then Mexico can choose not to exercise the option and sell for the market price.

Mexico has been hedging against the price of oil for years, but normally the country covers only a fraction of total exports. But the steep fall in the price of oil from last year's highs alarmed Mexican officials. The price corresponds to Mexico's expectations of oil income for next year's budget.

"We started this back in July, doing it very slowly to avoid affecting the market," said Rodrigo Brand, a Finance Ministry spokesman.

With oil at Wednesday's closing price, Mexico would have made $9.55 billion on the hedges, the Finance Ministry said.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', 'S')ometimes a plane crash is just a plane crash but this smells funny.


Mexican Interior Minister Killed in Plane Crash

[Cynus]

Mexico's Drug War Spills into the US

SAN DIEGO - The drug violence that has left about 4,000 people dead this year in Mexico is spreading deep into the United States, leaving a trail of slayings, kidnappings, and other crimes in at least 195 cities as far afield as Atlanta, Boston, Seattle, and Honolulu, according to federal authorities.

Residents of a quiet subdivision in Lilburn, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, awoke to the transborder crime wave in July, when a brigade of well-armored federal and state police officers surrounded a two-story colonial home, ordered neighbors to lock their doors, and flushed out three men described as members of a Mexican drug cartel. One was captured after he tried to slip down a storm drain. Another was caught in the ivy in Pete Bogerd's backyard.

A short while later, police hauled out a 31-year-old from the Dominican Republic who for nearly a week had been chained and tortured inside the basement, allegedly for not paying a $300,000 drug debt.

[galacticsurfer]

Italian and other Mafia slayings occur in germany for example. Theunderground economy is maybe 10% of global gDP and grwoing a lot faster as it pays no taxes. Once legitimate economy goes under I wonder what willhappen wtih criminal synidcates. For example in a GDII will mafias of all types go groke as nobody can afford drugs (luxury article)? And will mafias get swept away by authoritarian regimes of right or left? Perhaps the mafia is just a sing of destabilizing in the country and will go underground in a Mexican civil war that breaks out when oil is gone in 2-3 years.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')exican police discovered the heads of nine men in plastic bags yesterday, seven of them belonging to soldiers who had taken part in a military crackdown on the drug cartels.

Their tortured bodies were found a few hours later at the side of a motorway an hour north of Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero.

More than 5,300 people have been murdered across Mexico this year in a wave of drug-related attacks, despite a government clampdown on cartels involving the deployment of 36,000 troops across the country.

Residents of the town of Chilpancingo found the heads before dawn, local police said in a statement.