MEXICO CITY

The Cadereyta refinery, located in the state of Nuevo Leon, is owned by Mexican state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

A Pemex press officer would only say that the company was gathering information and would issue a statement once it had more facts.

The Nuevo Leon state Civil Protection agency said the explosion occurred just after 10:30 a.m. EDT at or near the Cadereyta refinery, which is around 22 miles east of the business capital of Monterrey, according to local newspaper El Universal’s Web site.

Cadereyta processed 217,000 barrels a day of crude oil in 2009, accounting for close to 17% of Pemex’s refining output that year.

Pemex produced 1.47 million barrels a day of refined products at its six refineries in the first seven months of this year, including 445,000 barrels a day of gasoline.

In what has been deemed a tragic and fatal error, elements of the Mexican Army opened fire on a vehicle whose driver ignored orders to stop in a military checkpoint.

The incident resulted in the death of a father and son and five family members injured.

The events occurred shortly after 10:00 p.m. Sunday on the Monterrey-Laredo highway in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon.

Officials close to the investigation stated a convoy of soldiers ordered the driver of a gray Malibu to stop, when the driver ignored their orders, a persecution was initiated, which later led to the military opening fire on the vehicle.

It wasn’t until the vehicle stopped and soldiers moved in to investigate that they realized their error. Six family members were injured and a 15 year old boy who had been in the backseat was killed instantly.

After calling Red Cross and state and federal officials, the site was immediately secured by the same military elements involved in the incident.

First to arrive at the scene was the Red Cross who reported the injury of two men, two women, and two children. Due to the nature of their injuries, one man and one women were immediately transported to a local hospital while paramedics continued evaluating the other four. The lifeless body of 15 year old Gabriel Alejandro Castellanos León was laid out to the side of the vehicle to await ministerial police and forensic authorities.

Hours after the incident it was established that one of the men injured was identified as 52 year old Vicente Leon Ramirez, father of the deceased teen, Alejandro Gabriel. His death, caused by a gunshot wound to the lower spine and two to his left arm, was reported shortly after 2:00 a.m.

His wife, Patricia Castellanos Corpus, 45, who was hospitalized for a bullet in the left shoulder, stated they never saw a military checkpoint and were unaware of any attempt by the military to detain them until after the persecution had began and the soldiers began shooting.

Also identified were Iliana León Castellanos, 24, and Tomas Guadalupe Rodríguez Hernández, aged 28. The woman, who is the daughter of Vicente and Patricia, had one gunshot wound in the face. Her husband presented four gunshot wounds, three to the spine, which doctor’s determined too risky to remove, and one to the head.

Tomas Guadalupe, 9, and Victor Eduardo Rodriguez de Leon, 8, children of Iliana and Tomas Guadalupe each suffered suffered injuries caused by shattering glass. Both children, as well as their grandmother, Patricia, have since been treated and released from the hospital.

José Luis de León Castellano, son and brother of the deceased, stated in a phone interview, his mother, sister, and brother-in-law who was driving the vehicle, declared the military opened fire not because of an ignored checkpoint, but because the family had attempted to pass a moving military convoy.
militares atacan a familia
Cargado por adlervonstahl. – Mira las noticias más recientes en video.

The Attorney General of Military Justice initiated a preliminary inquiry to investigate the events. In a press release, the Ministry of National Defense said today the troops involved are members of a Base of Operations within the Permanent Campaign Against Drug Trafficking and Federal Law Enforcement of Firearms and Explosives.

“The Ministry of Defense expresses the deepest condolences to the families of those killed in these acts, and reaffirms its commitment to the citizens to act in strict accordance with the rule of law and respect for human rights.”

In a live press conference, the Secretary General of Nuevo Leon, Javier Treviño Cantú, announced the position of the Mexican army, whose commanders of the Seventh military zone was present at the meeting, and stated that it would punish those responsible for the incident.

Cantu Treviño announced the State will pay all hospital and funeral expenses incurred by the family.

The National Human Rights Commission has launched a formal complaint and has deployed personnel to contact the family to gather testimonies and assist the family legally, medically, and emotionally in this time of tragedy.

What? Wouldn’t you and I be in prison for doing that, providing we survived the experience? What’s this “tried to fire” business? How could the guy still be walking the streets, let alone being provided a badge and a gun?

Police responded to the pawnbroker business at 1608 Broadway after receiving a call of shots fired about 5 p.m.

The site also is known as Jack’s Loan Office.

According to Gary police, a Jack’s employee told officers that four males entered the shop and displayed a handgun, demanding money and guns.

A struggle ensued between an employee and one of the would-be robbers with a gun. The employee was able to disarm the person and handcuff him inside the store.

The suspect was apparently disarmed of a plastic toy gun, according to police.

The other robbers ran out of the shop, shooting at employees, said police, who also stated one of the employees shot back and struck one of the robbers.

El Diario de Coahuila

In Tamaulipas, violence consumes everyone. Terror paralyzes the authorities, businessmen, politicians and all its citizens. The war between the Gulf Cartel and its rival Los Zetas has the border state on the verge of collapse.

REYNOSA, Tamaulipas .- The news of the murder of 72 Central and South American migrants on a ranch in the municipality of San Fernando, which appeared on Tuesday, August 24, shocked the world, but not Tamaulipas. The locals say that this case is not even 10% of what happens in the state and is covered up by the authorities.

Diverse sources, who opted for anonymity, agree that in the seven months since the Gulf cartel (CDG), in partnership with “La Familia Michoacana” and the Sinaloa cartel, declared war on his former allies: “Los Zetas”, the terror has now reached all social sectors and the majority of municipalities in this state.

In Tamaulipas, extreme discretion is the only lifesaving option. In one way or another journalists, politicians, government officials and ordinary citizens try to hide in plain sight. One of the anonymous politicians interviewed for this story said: “If before it was dangerous to talk, now it is impossible to do, you are playing with your life. We’ve all been victims of violence or have a friend, relative or neighbor who has been. For the most part we take it in silence since it is impossible to denounce the offender. We fear both the police and drug traffickers equally.”

In Reynosa shootings and “narco” blockades are daily occurrences. Skirmishes between rival criminal groups, and involving the Army and Marines, occur in the most central locations and during business hours. Mass executions, prisoner escapes and attacks on police headquarters or the media have become part of every day life. Now terrorism has been ushered in with the explosion of car bombs.

Between August 27 and 29, criminal groups executed seven bomb attacks, two car bombs at the facilities of Televisa and a police building in Ciudad Victoria, three bombs in public places near the international bridge in Reynosa, one more against police offices in Tampico, and a grenade thrown at the Naval base at Matamoros.

The war between the two rival criminal groups is wearing down both opponents. Each requires ever more money, food, vehicles and fuel to continue fighting. The casualties are high, and each side needs new fighters to replace the fallen and continue the conflict. What is most worrying, say anonymous sources, “This is already out of control and civilians are paying the consequences.”

Everyday violence

Despite growing violence, state officials refuse to discuss the problem. Public Security Secretary, Ives Soberon, and the Tamaulipas Attorney General, Jaime Rodriguez Inurrigarro, have not held a press conference since the assassination of the PRI candidate for governor, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, which occurred last June 28.

Before this year the violence was at the level of to two or three incidents a week throughout the state, but since February 2010 the shootings, executions, kidnappings and attacks happen every day in Tampico, Altamira, Cd Madero, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Valle Hermoso, Rio Bravo, Ciudad Victoria, Cd Mante, Reynosa, the border “Frontera Chica” municipalities and rural areas of the state, says a local businessman. And he adds that after the murder of Torre Cantú the warfare between the groups has spiraled upwards.

Today, Tamaulipas citizens find out what is happening in their cities and towns through social network sites that launch exchange data and warnings when they find out that there is a confrontation. Sometimes they panic when they read a message about curfews or rumors about threats to kill school children, although the information is usually false.

When a local newspaper does publish a story on the violence it is usually ordered by one of the warring factions to discredit a rival or to discredit the Army or Marines.

Subsidiaries of Televisa in Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria have been under attack in the last month. The most recent was a car bomb in Ciudad Victoria immediately after the 72 murdered immigrants were discovered.

And as freedom of information has been restricted for several years, free transit across the state has been disrupted in recent months. Now, for example, criminals place roadblocks on the roads and highways to rob or steal vehicles from their drivers. Rapes of women are also occurring in these roadblocks. The schedules and travel of Tamaulipas citizens is increasingly limited.

The lawlessness reaches even high state government officials. Undersecretary of Education, Bladimir Martinez, and Secretary of Agricultural Development, Víctor de León Ortiz, were stripped of their official vehicles by criminals.

They even took De Leon’s leather boots. (Hours later De Leon’s boots and vehicles were returned as a courtesy by the criminals).

Impact on the economy

The instability also affects the economy in Tamaulipas.

Some businesses went bankrupt because the uncertainty has aggravated the economic crisis in many areas, while others preferred to shut down because of the heavy burden of the extortions imposed on them by criminal groups to assure security.

The extortion also reaches farmers and ranchers when thugs hear that they generate revenues by selling herds or raising crops.

Combine harvester owners from Guanajuato and Jalisco who always provided their services refused to service the Tamaulipas sorghum crop this year. They said they were unwilling to pay the high extortion fees that are required for each of their machines to work.

In Reynosa, the Maquiladora Association moved its offices to McAllen, Texas.
In Tampico, the industrial conglomerate Grupo Alfa threatened to close its production plants and leave the area due to the growing wave of abductions of businessmen.

That happened after one of the directors of the company, Carlos Flores, was taken from his home with his wife and son on Wednesday, August 11 of this year.

The former PAN mayor of Tampico, Arturo Elizondo, owner of the convenience store chain Arteli, was kidnapped two days after the elections of July 4. He stayed a week in captivity and gained his freedom upon payment of 30 million pesos.

Today, Arturo Elizondo and his family live in the United States, as do dozens of prominent businessmen in the region.

Another former mayor of Tampico, Fernando Lopez Azcarraga, a cousin of the owner of Televisa, Emilio Azcarraga Jean, was abducted on Thursday, September 2.

His whereabouts are still unknown.

Search for resources

However, the warring factions are no longer selective in who they kidnap as thousands of poor, undocumented migrants are deprived of their freedom for relatively meager ransoms which many families can’t pay.

The reason is simple. Organized crime must constantly replenish their resources to finance their war.

In San Fernando, where the bodies of the 72 illegal migrants from Central and South America were found, there have been 20 kidnappings of local residents in recent weeks. A number of the victims held for ransom, others were forced to join the ranks of organized crime.

One farmer reports that in April an armed group stripped him of his property. “There are many other farms and ranches like mine” he says.

These properties are used as barracks or training camps, and also to hide the victims of kidnappings or executions. Such was the case of the hunting ranch between Mier and General Trevino, where an army operation last Thursday resulted in the deaths of 28 criminals.

Gas station owners also complain that caravans of up to 10 to 50 vehicles drive to their establishments to fill their tanks, but the drivers never pay for the fuel. The losses are great, they say.

In recent weeks a pamphlet has been circulating in the northern citrus growing area of the state that calls on the inhabitants to revolt and take the law into their own hands. The Secretary General of state Government, Hugo Andrés Araujo, said only that authorities were aware of the document.

Authority Vacuum

The forced recruitment of undocumented migrants, including the situation that led to the execution of the 72 men and women in the municipality of San Fernando, is noting new for the locals.

Nor are they surprised about the death toll. Residents argue that this is not the first slaughter of its kind that occurs in that area. “If you knew this time, it was because some of the victims survived,” they say. “The criminal groups are becoming desperate to acquire gunmen and continue their war.”

At least four times criminal gangs have entered the prisons of Reynosa and Matamoros and rescued prisoners, to date a total of 91 prisoners, in order to replenish their organizations. In the last incident, a school bus was driven into the prison in Matamoros and with weapons in hand the attackers forced prisoners to climb in.

The vacuum of authority is disgraceful. “Today more than ever, mayors and state and municipal officials are increasingly desperate to have their terms ended because they are suffering constant threats from both sides and still have to wait until January to hand over office,” says a federal deputy.

The fear among public servants increased with the recent execution of the mayor of Hidalgo, Marco Antonio Leal García, which occurred on August 29.

There are cases such as the mayor of Tampico, Inguanzo Oscar Perez, who disappeared from public view for a month, the mayor of Camargo, José Correa, who took refuge in the United States for a few months after drug traffickers burned his home and office, and the PAN mayor of the Municipality of Mendez, who closed the town hall a month ago after an armed group shot up the building, whose facade has more than a thousand impacts.

The mayor of the town of Abasolo, Luis Ortiz Jaramillo, was abducted on Sunday, August 15, and released two days later. Several days before, the last five uniformed municipal policemen were executed.

Miranda Amarante Morato, director of the state of Tamaulipas ministerial police, has lived in the United States since March.

The “lost dead”

In Tamaulipas it is common that the authorities withhold information concerning the operation of the drug cartels or the deaths of government officials.

The most recent case is the state police investigator Roberto Suarez, who disappeared along with another officer when he returned to San Fernando after viewing the location of the 72 bodies of the murdered illegal migrants.

On August 26 at noon,officers with the state police reported that the bodies of Suarez and another person had been located on the highway that connects San Fernando with the town of Mendez.

The officials said they had no doubt, for they knew Suarez. And when the family went to identify the body they were told the body had been “lost.”

Officials with the state Attorney General’s office said the men were “disappeared” and denied that the bodies had been located.

Borderland Beat

Félix survived his ordeal at the hands of the Zeta cartel, one of Mexico’s most ruthless drugs gangs. But he knows of many fellow migrants who suffered the same grisly fate as the 72 who were shot at an isolated ranch 70 miles from the border city of Reynosa.

“There are lots more dead migrants, they just haven’t found them,” says the 20-year-old Honduran, speaking at a shelter for migrants run by nuns in Reynosa.

Unlike those at the ranch who were travelling in one large group and kidnapped by an armed commando, Félix (whose name has been changed) was alone when he was picked up by a policeman. In an example of the official collusion that human rights activists have long claimed endangers migrants in Mexico, the officer took him to a Zeta safe house and left him there.

For a week he was a side-show for gunmen who beat him with planks and pistol handles and gave him electric shocks to intensify his screams when they put him on the phone to his poverty-stricken family, demanding money for his release. The rest of the time, he says, he was forced to watch his captors going about the more serious business of torturing information out of captured members of the Gulf cartel by cutting off different pieces of their bodies each day for about a week. Then they were killed, their mutilated bodies burnt to dust on the mountainside.

“They told me the same thing would happen to me, if the ransom didn’t arrive,” he says.

Félix’s father in Honduras and brother in Atlanta managed to raised $5,000 and wired it to Mexico. The Zetas demanded as much again and his family stopped answering the phone.

During his two-month ordeal Félix says he was moved to six different safe houses. In one he was crammed into a swelteringly hot small room with 80 other migrants. In another there were 120. Every day they were taken out individually to be beaten.

“Sometimes I couldn’t think of anything because of the pain,” Félix says. “Other times I would just sit there wondering how people could be that bad.” Every week, he says, about five migrants whose families had paid nothing were taken away. He assumes they were killed and their bodies destroyed.

He was offered his life in exchange for 12 weeks’ intensive training in the use of heavy weapons in a jungle camp and a monthly salary of $5,000. After that, his captors said, he would be a member of the cartel with money to burn. Desperation prompted him to ask if he would be allowed to see his family again, but they said no: “They told me that the only way out of being a Zeta was death or jail.”

Amazingly, he was spared. Dumped in Reynosa unable to walk and with his face so swollen he could hardly talk, somebody took him to the shelter. That was five months ago. Now he no longer vomits blood and his bruises have faded but he lives in limbo. He is reluctant to get himself deported to Honduras, where he feels he has no future, but too scared to try to cross illegally the US border, even if he had the money to pay a smuggler to show him the way. Many smugglers are linked to the cartels.

He doesn’t dare go out into the streets of Reynosa, because he is terrified of roaming kidnappers and the battles that periodically break out on the streets between the Zetas, the Gulf cartel and the military. In April, gunmen with “Gulf cartel” printed on their bulletproof jackets broke into the building where Félix is staying and lined everybody up against the wall. When they didn’t find who they were looking for they left.

Sister Ligia, one of the nuns at the shelter loses her habitual sprightliness for a moment: “That massacre at the ranch. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Guns, drugs, and La Barbie: Why America is responsible for Mexican drug cartels.

By Jacob Bronsther
The Public Philosopher

Drug lords like La Barbie threaten Mexico’s security with American-bought firearms, and finance their violent empires with American drug money.

To attribute moral responsibility to one nation for another’s domestic problems is usually a fraught process, since there are so many causal forces in play. But in this case, the connection is crystal clear. Mexican drug lords exist to feed the US drug market. And they get their guns through the US weapons market. We give the bad guys their money by buying their drugs; we sell them the guns that enable their continued existence; and they threaten a nation of more than 100 million people at our border.

Like a game of Whac-a-Mole where the moles are on cocaine, speak Spanish, and wield rocket-propelled grenades, the Mexican cartels, in existence for decades, emerged as kingpins when they filled the supply-side gap that opened up when Colombia’s Cali and Medellín cartels dissolved in the 1990s, along with the cocaine trafficking route through Florida.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican cartels now dominate the wholesale illegal drug market in the US, both by producing drugs in Mexico and trafficking those grown elsewhere in Latin America. The State Department estimates that 90 percent of the cocaine entering the US transits through Mexico. The cartels are also the biggest foreign supplier of marijuana to the United States, and a major supplier of methamphetamine and heroin. They distribute wholesale to their outlets in more than 2,500 American cities, leaving retail sales to various American gangs.

Mexico’s cartels earn upward of $39 billion annually in illicit proceeds from the United States, the Justice Department estimates. To put that in context, it’s roughly equal to the global annual revenue of Google and Halliburton combined.

What’s more, we help them launder their money. From 2003 to 2008, Wachovia Corp. alone laundered at least $110 million, according to the Justice Department. Wachovia admitted to “serious and systematic” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and agreed to pay $160 million to resolve the criminal case against them. American Express Bank International and Western Union have also recently agreed to huge settlements with the government for laundering Mexican drug proceeds.

Buying guns in the US
While the cartels pay fewer taxes then their fellow Fortune 100 companies, their security overhead is more expensive. They cross the border for those purposes, too, where we welcome them with (open) arms. In Mexico, civilians need approval from the military to purchase firearms and cannot own high-powered pistols or large-caliber rifles. In the US, however, gun dealers can sell multiple military-style rifles to citizens without even reporting the sales.

The cartels hire people without criminal records to buy a handful of weapons at a time, from licensed dealers – there are 6,600 along the border alone – or private individuals at gun shows, and then drive them across the border. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Explosives estimates that 90 percent of the traced firearms recovered in Mexico originated in the US.

Flush with American money and guns, the cartels have wreaked havoc in Mexico, especially in the northern states along the 2,000-mile border. Since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón declared war on the cartels and deployed more than 45,000 troops, at least 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles.

The cartels’ violence features, among other tactics, beheading police officers, branding victims, shooting up newspaper offices after they post articles on corruption, intimidating voters, and assassinating leading law enforcement officials, elected leaders, journalists, and political candidates. The fear is so great that in some towns political parties cannot find anyone to run for mayor.

Intimidation and corruption
The parade of horribles is long. The list of Mexican officials either charged with drug conspiracy or placed in the cartels’ crosshairs indicates the level of internal corruption and terror the cartels can generate.

Rondolfo Torre, the leading gubernatorial candidate in the border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down about a month after Gregoria Sanchez, mayor of Cancun and candidate for Quintana Roo governor, was arrested for protecting the Beltran Levya and Zetas drug organizations. Meanwhile, former Quintana Roo Gov. Mario Villanueva was extradited earlier this summer to the US on charges of conspiring to import hundreds of tons of cocaine. Over in the western state of Sinaloa, agents of Mexico’s Federal Investigative Agency are believed to work as Sinaloa cartel enforcers. And the Attorney General’s Office reported in December 2005 that one-fifth of its officers were under investigation.

Through rampant kidnapping of employees, the cartels even shut down major northeastern operations of Pemex, the state oil company and largest source of national income. Their goal was not free oil – they’ve been stealing it for years – but rather, regional control.

Our responsibility
While it’s clear that certain members of our community are complicit to the situation south of the border, why does this morally implicate the entire nation and federal government? Surely, no US leader supports our illegal drug purchases and weapon sales. The response is that there are huge numbers of fellow citizens involved, and the government does little to combat the problem. A nation can be responsible for its inaction, too.

If we take our moral status seriously, both as a people that supports young democracies and as one that doesn’t inflict fatal damage on allies wantonly and glibly, then we need to prioritize this problem. From a more self-regarding perspective, consider that the chaos in parts of Mexico creates greater incentives for illegal immigration. And narco-states are not friendly neighbors.

As to the guns, there aren’t any magic policy bullets, but closing down the gun shops arrayed at the border, possibly though zoning laws, is a good start. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t cover Mexican drug lords, gladly. We should also increase the penalties for smuggling weapons.

As to the money, we need to think harder and faster about stemming the demand for drugs, and find the maturity to discuss the legalization and regulation of some recreational drugs, which would funnel the funds away from the cartels, even if we ultimately reject such arguments. A less dramatic start, however, would be a public advertising campaign that informs people where the money goes when they buy cocaine.

We must also fulfill our pledge under the Merida Initiative, signed by President Bush in 2006, to donate $1.3 billion worth of helicopters, police training, and other assistance for the war against the cartels.

Here’s the deal we’ve signed on to. In return for dangerous drugs and illegal immigrants, we give brutal drug lords billions of dollars and enough weapons to take on a major army, terrorize millions of civilians, and threaten a democracy. There’s no subtlety to our misdeeds. It’s moral philosophy for kindergartners.