On a morning of slow news, the new issue of Economist examines the “shifting battle lines” of the drug war in Northeast Mexico. The report comes from the city of Reynosa – the Mexican border city in the state of Tamaulipas whose “cut-price dentists and prostitutes” are known for having attracted “streams of Texan visitors.” That Reynosa, however, is difficult to find today, says the magazine. Until this year an “uneasy alliance” between the drug-trafficking Gulf cartel and the Zetas, the notorious gang of former Mexican special-forces soldiers who were enlisted by the Gulf cartel in the 1990s, had held at bay the sort of violence typically associated with cities like Juarez. Today, with the alliance between the Gulf cartel and the Zetas in tatters, the situation looks significantly different. And cartel members, civilians, politicians, and journalists alike have become the victims of Tamaulipas’s “re-organized crime.” Here’s how the Economist describes it:
“The schism has made the north-east one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. The border cities in this region are smaller than those further west. But the violence in Tamaulipas state … is now as bad or worse than in Juárez, reckons Jesús Cantú, a political scientist at the Technological Institute of Monterrey. Politicians who try to make a difference pay dearly. On May 13th José Mario Guajardo, a mayoral candidate in the town of Valle Hermoso, was murdered along with his son and an employee.”
The tide may just now be turning as Gulf cartel looks to be getting the best of Zetas on the northeast’s unmarked battle fields. Zeta members are deserting and new recruits are proving more difficult to find than before, says the magazine. And, interestingly, that comes as welcome news to many of the area’s most powerful drug traffickers in the process of diversifying their trafficking portfolio. According to the Economist, crystal methamphetamine is quickly becoming the drug of choice for Tamaulipas crime syndicates, requiring large “factories” for its production. Apparently the Zetas penchant for kidnapping and extortion has brought more frequent police incursions to Tamaulipas and the “business-minded” traffickers have been none too happy about this. The Economist’s lose-lose outlook: “The sooner the traffickers are rid of the troublesome Zetas, the sooner they can get on with business.”
Below the headline today:
· That story from Mexico comes out as Mexican President Felipe Calderón, doubling as the chairman of the country’s National Public Safety Council, approved a plan Thursday for all of Mexico’s municipal police departments to be subsumed under state law enforcement agencies. The plan must still be ratified by the Mexican Congress and a majority of Mexico’s 31 state legislatures and the federal district of Mexico City. According to the president, the new plan would provide much needed clarity, unity, and structure for the struggle against organized crime. In Calderón’s words: “There is no better response to criminality than institutional solutions that endure beyond administrations.”
· Also on the transnational aspects of the drug war, the AP reports on the seizure of “the largest weapons cache in a decade.” The discovery came near Laredo, Texas on Saturday where police pulled over a truck “laden with brand new assault rifles, bayonets and ammunition,” believed to have been headed for Mexico. By the numbers that’s 147 boxed assault rifles, 200 high-capacity magazines, 53 bayonets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The quote of the day comes from Laredo police investigator Joe Baeza, commenting on the seizure, the two men arrested, and the cargo’s presumed destination. “Two Joe Blows aren't going to buy a bunch of weapons and it stops there. We're pretty positive it was headed to Mexico.”
· Moving south, El Faro reports that Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes is planning a visit to Cuba in the coming weeks or months. No date has been set, but the trip comes after Funes re-established diplomatic relations with the island just one year ago. Among the items that will likely be on the agenda: bi-lateral medical and medicine exchanges/cooperation.
· In Guatemala, a piece at Global Post reports on the presentation of the new book La Masacre de Panzos by American anthropologist Victoria Sanford. The book presentation is notable for its location: the community center of the Guatemalan village where the notorious 1978 killings took place. Sanford’s book was published with support from the Soros Foundation of Guatemala and, says the article, “a local teachers association invited [Professor Sanford] to present it in Panzos with a panel of authors and dignitaries, including a ranking government human rights monitor.”
· Into Colombia, this week’s Economist offers its take on Juan Manuel Santos’s resounding round-one victory in last Sunday’s presidential vote. Meanwhile, the first round-two poll numbers are out (from the Centro Nacional de Consultoría), giving Santos a 61.6% to 29.8% edge over Antanas Mockus. Santos also picked up the support of approx. 85% of Liberal Party congressmen this week, according to El Tiempo. Meanwhile, in the Mockus camp, the former Bogotá mayor held private meetings with the left-leaning Polo Democrático’s candidate Gustavo Petro Thursday. Very few of the talks’ details were disclosed by Mockus following the meeting, however.
· Also in Colombia, EFE reports that a preliminary investigation was launched by the country’s attorney general’s office this week, examining Defense Minister Camilo Ospina and outgoing armed forces chief Gen. Freddy Padilla de Leon’s role in multiple extrajudicial killings carried out by the Colombian military. The investigation, part of the country’s “false positives” scandal, comes from a complaint filed on Jan. 23 by lawyer and journalist Felipe Zuleta. It also follows a recently released report on Colombia from the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.
· At IPS, more on the new CEPAL report on Latin America’s tax system which I am finding to be quite fascinating.
· The BBC has a report on a new series of Operation Condor-related trials beginning in Argentina. The trials will bring five former intelligence and military officials before the court in relation to the murder of 65 individuals between 1976 and 1985 at the infamous Automotores Orletti detention center.
· Also fascinating new reports circulating this week reveal the previously unknown hand of the United States in the 1971 coup against Juan José Torres in Bolivia. The coup brought Gen. Hugo Banzer to power until 1978. According to researcher Robert Baird, “the only proof (until now) [of US participation in the coup] was a Washington Post report published a week after the event, which said that US Air Force Major Rober J. Lundin had advised the plotters and lent them a long-range radio. The report was never substantiated, however, and the State Department denied it immediately, asserting unequivocally that the US played no part in the overthrow of Torres. Here’s the new information Baird has dug up:
“Minutes from a July 8, 1971 meeting of the 40 Committee (an executive-branch group chaired by Henry Kissinger and tasked with oversight of covert operations) included discussion of a CIA proposal to give $410,000 to a group of opposition politicians and military leaders, money that they knew would be used to overthrow Torres. (Under Sec of State U. Alexis Johnson: “what we are actually organizing is a coup in itself, isn’t it?”) Though the committee decided to wait to hear from Ambassador Ernest Siracus (he opposed the measure) the plan was ultimately approved. The same day that the coup began in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, an NSC staffer reported to Kissinger that the CIA had transferred money to two high-ranking members of the opposition.”
· An interesting piece at Foreign Policy looks at how Brazilian ethanol could neutralize the effect of any new UN sanctions on Iran.
· Which leads to today’s opinions. Also at Foreign Policy, Alex Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research offers his take on Latin America-Middle East relations. “Whether in the media or in U.S. policy circles, the words ‘Middle East’ and ‘South America’ are rarely mentioned together in a positive light,” says Main. Whether it’s Hezbollah in the Tri-border region, Iran in Venezuela, or now Brazil’s role in brokering a new nuclear pact with Iran, Main contends that “the U.S.'s own troubled relations with Iran and the rest of the Middle East, have strongly colored U.S. perceptions of Latin America's relations with that distant region.” In reality, however, the relationship between the two regions is better understood by the increasingly popular notion of South-South cooperation, “whereby developing nations turn to one another to develop trade and technical cooperation, and to break their economic dependence on traditional industrialized powers.” Finally, back to our lead this morning by way of a recent op-ed by Felipe Calderón’s security adviser Joaquín Villalobos, who considers the threat of Central America and the Caribbean becoming a “narco-region.” That possibility seems pretty grim. He writes:
“Central America and the Caribbean have optimal conditions to become a narco-region that could include multiple failed states, endemic and brutal violence, and migration on an even larger scale than the present.”
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