Mexican drug violence hits U.S. officials

Killings in what may be the most violent city in the world, Ciudad Juarez, finally touched US personnel over the weekend, as a pregnant consular employee and her husband were gunned down (their 7-month old baby was unharmed), while the Mexican husband of another consular employee was also found shot in his car. The New York Times reports that a gang known as Los Aztecas, and tied to the Juarez cartel, was likely responsible, while the Washington Post quotes an unnamed US official saying that the case "appears to be one of mistaken identity."

This is the front-page story in most papers today, and provoked condemnation over the weekend from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. According to the Wall Street Journal report, President Calderon, who will make his third visit to Juarez in the past two weeks, is "expected to announce details this week of a recent change of strategy that will focus on attemps to "re-stitch" the fabric of society in the border city, focusing more on creating jobs, building schools, opening parks, and providing counseling for drug addicts trying to kick the habit." Meanwhile, consular officers all along the border are now reportedly being allowed to set up residence in the U.S.

The Los Angeles Times notes that this was a particularly bloody weekend in Mexico, with the following statistics:

• Thirteen people killed around the popular beach resort of Acapulco,
• 20 others died in fighting elsewhere in the state of Guerrero
• Eight people slain at a birthday party for a farmer in the drug-producing state of Sinaloa

Meanwhile, nearly 800 miles away near the southern tip of Texas, open warfare between rival drug trafficking organizations has broken out in Reynosa (just across the border from McAllen, Texas). According to the WSJ, the Zetas are battling the Gulf Cartel for territorial control, with fifty people killed thus far this year in firefights that break out nearly daily. The Journal reminds us of an important bit of history about these two groups:

In the 1990s, Osiel Cárdenas, the then-leader of the Gulf Cartel, brought Los Zetas into existence after recruiting 30 members of the Airborne Special Forces Group, an elite Mexican army squadron that had been trained in the U.S.

The defectors took on the name Los Zetas and became a feared enforcement wing of Mr. Cárdenas's organization, known for assassinations and the use of army materiel such as bombs and AK-47 assault rifles.

With the arrest of Mr. Cárdenas in 2003, the two groups began to operate independently. Mr. Cárdenas, who was extradited to the U.S. in 2007, was sentenced last month in a U.S. court in Texas to 25 years in prison on felony charges.

Most harrowing is the fact that eight journalists were kidnapped between Feb. 18 and March 3: one was found dead with signs of torture, two were released alive, and five are still missing, according to the Inter-American Press Association. Things are so bad, according to one AP report, that "residents tweet to let each other know of the latest gunbattle and what streets to avoid, and Reynosa officials have set up their own feed on the social networking site Twitter." And what the drug traffickers do not accomplish with intimidation of journalists, may be carried out with old-fashioned corruption. According to a Reuters report this weekend, "hitmen from the Gulf cartel based over the border from Texas are paying reporters around $500 a month and showering them with liquor and prostitutes to intimidate and silence colleagues at radio stations and newspapers in towns near the Laredo-Brownsville area." In a related story, the Wall Street Journal also reports today that "Wachovia Bank, a part of Wells Fargo & Co., is in talks with the Justice Department to settle U.S. government allegations that a failure in bank controls enabled Mexican exchange houses to launder drug money."

On the heels of Senate testimony last week by US Southcom Commander Douglas Fraser about Venezuela's possible ties to the Basque terrorist organization ETA, and noted here last Friday, the New York Times published a long story on Saturday by Simon Romero (from Caracas) and Andres Cala (from Madrid) that should probably make Fraser wince at his previous comments. The Times report notes that Arturo Cubillas, reportedly the head of the ETA in Venezuela, is actually employed by the Chavez government as head of security for the National Land Institute. (His wife is also a key advisor to the vice president.) Cubillas was among several ETA operatives deported from Algeria following failed peace negotiations. The story also reports on information in the March 1 indictment by a respected judge in Spain's National Court:

Judge Velasco’s indictment, based largely on testimony from demobilized FARC guerrillas and FARC computer files obtained by Colombia’s army, describes a 20-day training course led by Mr. Cubillas in 2007 in Apure State for 13 FARC rebels and 7 members of a smaller Venezuelan guerrilla group, the Bolivarian Liberation Front.

For what it's worth, Francisco Toro at Caracas Chronicles was somewhat disturbed by the fact that Cubillas' employment with the Chavez government got buried in the Times report. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald runs a story about Chavez criticizing a website he accused of spreading false rumors, this coming a few days "after the state-run telecommunications company, CANTV, announced that it plans to establish a centralized, government-controlled gateway that all Internet traffic." This is probably something to keep an eye on.

There are several stories on Haiti today. First, the Washington Post writes about the exodus of some 600,000 Haitians from the capital of Port-au-Prince to the countryside, a migration which Haitian and international aid officials might be "one of the largest and most wrenching in the hemisphere." The Miami Herald has a story about the second visit of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to Haiti, and details many of the remaining challenges of finding adequate shelter for the majority of the estimated 1.3 million homeless. But it also notes his concern for reports of gang violence, especially for women and girls in displaced persons camps, recalling that of 5000 prisoners who fled detention during the earthquake, only 200 have been captured. Finally, a story in The Nation magazine critiques the approach being taken by the international community to Haiti's reconstruction as exclusionary and top-down.

In other recent news:

• Reports are still coming in on yesterday's congressional elections in Colombia, but the AP reports that pro-Uribe parties are expected to dominate. One new party, PIN, replete with family members and others linked to the paramilitaries, appears to have come in fourth, besting both of the two center-left parties, the Greens and the Alternative Development Pole. (Look for more on this in coming days from Abigail Poe and Adam Isacson, who will take over this space for the remainder of this week.)
  
• The positive legacy of Michelle Bachelet is noted in a weekend piece by a Chilean journalist published in the Washington Post Outlook section, while the New York Times publishes an AP report this morning about the nearly nationwide blackout suffered in Chile last night. Another WSJ story on the devastating impact of the earthquake on Chile's wine industry gets kudos for its title: "Chilean Winemakers Feel Quake Hangover."
• On the organized crime front, the Economist has two stories, one somewhat optimistic about some minimal progress being made in Guatemala, another more worrisome about Jamaica.
• Right-wing press outlets are signaling that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is considering putting a hold on the Obama administration's nominee to be Ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, dredging up old charges related to the fact that she used to date a guy who may have been a Cuban intelligence asset. Aponte had previously been nominated to a post in the Dominican Republic, but withdrew her name because of the controversy. In fact, the FBI had cleared her at the time, but that of course is not enough to stop DeMint, who Politico wrote last week was vying to be the Tea Party's best friend in Washington. A heartfelt endorsement of Aponte by a friend of hers can be read here. An interesting factoid in this case is that, like Sonia Sotomayor, Aponte is a member of the exclusive, all-womens' club, the Belizean Grove.
• Finally, there's an AP story about China's purchase of a 50 percent stake in an Argentine oil company, with China's National Offshore Oil Corporation head calling it "a very good beachhead for us to enter Latin America."

-- David Holiday