By Rolando Garrido Romo1
This December 1st marks two years since Enrique Peña Nieto became President of Mexico.
It has been two years that the main problems facing the Mexican people have worsened: violence, insecurity, impunity, corruption, repression, inequality, poverty, abuse of the powerful, privileges to a minority and exclusion for most.
The data speak for itself (www.oecd.org):
According to recent data (2011-2014), 3.9% of people in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report having suffered an assault or theft during the past 12 months. However, there are important differences between countries. Rates of Canada, US, Japan, Poland and the UK are below 2%, but reaching more than 6% in Chile, Israel and Belgium, and 12.8% in Mexico (it is the last place in the OECD rating).
In the homicide rate (average number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants), Mexico ranks second to last with 23.4 homicides (Brazil is the last place with 25.5)2.
In the total score on the security issue (from 0-10), Mexico ranks last in the OECD with a rating of 0.4, while Brazil is the penultimate place with a rating of 2.1 (the first is Japan with 9.9).
On the revenue Mexico ranks third from the bottom of the OECD with a rating of 0.7, above only of Turkey (0.6) and Brazil (0.1). In household disposable income (the one who earns a family in a year, after taxes), Mexico ranks second to last place with $ 12.850 (Brazil ranks last with $10.310).
In the overall rating on education Mexico is in last place with 1.2 (after Brazil with 1.9). In the table of the percentage of graduates of upper secondary education between 25 and 64 years, Mexico has a rate of 36.3%, up only from Turkey and Portugal.
In other areas the rating of Mexico is: housing 3.7 (place 33 of 36); environment 4.5 (place 33 of 36) and health 5.0 (place 31 of 36).
Mexico has been part of the OECD for 20 years, and in these two decades has not left the last two or three places of the table in the main items measured by this organization, and the situation has remained the same in the two years in office of president Peña Nieto.
These data demonstrate that after 26 years of neoliberal governments (if we start counting with the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988), most of the Mexican population has not seen any improvement in their standard of living, safety, education, health, income, housing and environment. At best, it has remained stagnant for a quarter century, which is said to have been behind compared to other countries. Two and a half decades lost for most of the people of Mexico.
Economic growth in Mexico is insufficient (the first year of the reign of Peña GDP grew 1.1% and this 2014 will be 2%)3 to give decent jobs to most of the population, and currently 60% of the economically active population works in the informal sector; in addition, according to the OECD, the risk of falling into poverty in Mexico is one of the highest within the organization, because while only between 9 and 11% of the population of OECD countries fall into this risk, for Mexico the percentage is between 19 and 21% (Report All aboard: making inclusive growth possible). For its part, the World Bank has noted that poverty in Mexico affects 52% of the population, a percentage that has not changed in the last 20 years.
However, the 2014 census for billionaires who makes the Swiss bank UBS (UBS Billionaire Wealth and 2014)4, Mexico was ranked at number 21 among 40 countries with the highest number of billionaires. Adding the resources of the 27 individuals and families considered in the study, together with a combined fortune of 169 billion dollars (14% of GDP in Mexico); in addition the number of billionaires rose from 22 in 2013 to 27 in 2014 (an increase of 23% when the economy does not grow above 2% per year).
Peña Nieto's government maintains the economic policy that has been implemented in the country for a quarter century, which favors the concentration of economic growth in a minority of plutocrats, who have enough power to decisively influence the political process and therefore the kind of policies that are implemented in the country.
The governments of the PRI and the PAN5 who have ruled over the last 30 years, have begun welfare policies toward the poor, so that poverty does not overflow uncontrollably, through programs such as "Solidarity" (Salinas), "Opportunities" (the PAN governments) and now "Prospera" (Peña). None have decisively impacted the lives of the majority of the population, and conversely, other policies related to economic policy (removal of subsidies on energy, increased VAT and withdrawal of the state in education and health, leaving the market cater to growing segments of the population in these areas) have nullified the few benefits of such welfare policies.
With regard to corruption, according to Transparency International (Transparency.org), 52% of the population in Mexico considers that in the last two years has increased "a lot" corruption in the country, and another 19% considers that has increased. Also, 90% believe that the police are corrupt, 87% believe that officials and public servants are also, 91% think so of leaders and leading representatives of political parties and 80% of members of the Judiciary.
Here it is worth mentioning that the greatest corruption scandal just give out in the country in the month of November this year, when CNN in Spanish reporter, Carmen Aristegui, through her website Aristeguinoticias.com, announced that president Peña’s wife, former actress of the T.V. consortium Televisa, Angelica Rivera, owns two properties valued at more than $7 million in one of the most expensive areas of Mexico City (Lomas de Chapultepec), and that in one of them had just built a huge mansion (now known as "the White House of las Lomas")6, through the construction company TEYA belonging to GRUPO HIGA, owned by businessman Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu.
Cantu Hinojosa’s companies were during the government of Peña Nieto in the State of Mexico (2005-2011), the most favored in public works contracts (almost 2 billion dollars), and during the presidential campaign of Peña Nieto, Hinojosa Cantu rented his private planes to Peña for his travels.
Cantu Hinojosa and his HIGA Group was the group associated with China Railway Construction Group, a Chinese company that won the contract to build the fast train between Mexico and Queretaro, with an estimated investment of more than 50 billion pesos ($3600 million), being the only company that was registered in the public bid for the concession to build the railway.
Shortly before traveling to China to the APEC Summit, Peña Nieto revoked the concession to the company, since it was learned that it was about to be released information about the properties of his wife, and the relationship of these properties with the construction company of Cantu Hinojosa.
Following this scandal, the president's wife, Angelica Rivera, who was an actress for 23 years in Televisa (before marrying Peña Nieto in 2010), was forced to disclose the country, through television, how she acquired these expensive properties.
The explanation was that Televisa paid a "settlement" of her contract for 88 million pesos ($6,285,000), and thus was able to acquire her first property in Las Lomas; while the second, which is on one side of it, she is buying it to the construction company TEYA in monthly installments (until now, she has paid 14 million pesos).
The "explanation" of Mrs. Rivera (who made it in a scolding tone and "outrage" because her integrity was questioned) was a disaster, because in Mexico everyone knows that Televisa came to "rescue" Peña Nieto, and that the quid pro quo with Hinojosa was evident, who many believe "paid" the contract award of the fast train (and perhaps earlier contracts in the State of Mexico, or other future ones under President Peña presidency) with the mansion.
In any case, if Televisa "paid" that fabulous sum to an actress who nobody in Mexico consider her one of the most famous and important of the country (the highest sum Televisa paid for a multiyear contract went to Gloria Trevi, and only were 8 million pesos)7, it was not for services rendered to the company, but as part of the "buy" that this company made of the services of the new husband of Mrs. Rivera (as described in detail in the film of recent release, La Dictadura Perfecta – The Perfect Dictatorship-, where the filmmaker Luis Estrada describes how a large television consortium in Mexico manufactures the candidacy of a corrupt and mafia governor, and takes him to the presidency of the Republic).
With regard to violations of human rights, the government of Peña is now being questioned nationally and internationally, as was the one of Calderon Hinojosa (2006-2012).
The involvement of governments, police and members of the armed forces with organized crime has reached intolerable levels, even for a very condescending and permissive Mexican society on this issue, as the case of the 43 students in the rural normal Ayotzinapa8 that were kidnapped by municipal police of Iguala and Cocula (state of Guerrero) and delivered to the cartel hitmen known as Guerreros Unidos, to be tortured and killed, was the straw that broke the camel and sparked nationwide protests and protests from international organizations and NGOs around the world.
Also the Tlatlaya (State of Mexico) event has impacted heavily on the government of Peña Nieto, since in June 30, 2014 a group of military massacred 22 young in a cellar of the municipality, arguing that they were criminals.
At first both the state government and the federal government, supported the version of the Army, that the youth died during a "confrontation" and the much discredited National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) endorsed this version.
However, it had to be a US magazine, named Esquire, who took statements from several witnesses, which revealed what had really happened: an execution by the Army battalion who participated in these events. It was only then (September) that the case was resumed by the Attorney General's Office and the CNDH, leading to the arrest of 7 military who participated in this massacre.
Both cases, the Ayotzinapa-Iguala and the one of Tlatlaya, and the one of the "white house of Las Lomas" have cornered the government of Peña Nieto, who has started to react violently to the just demands of the Mexican society, not only for clarify and punish these acts of impunity and corruption, but to change a rotten system that only serves the interests of politicians and business groups obscenely rich, who do not care about the fate of the majority of Mexicans.
Thus, Peña began to change the narrative about the demands of the people for justice9, to the condemnation of "violent" groups of hooded men, whom during demonstrations by the case of Ayotzinapa, burned public buildings in Guerrero, Michoacán and Oaxaca and set fire to the front door of the National Palace in Mexico City (these persons could be professional provocateurs paid by the same federal government).
Thus, Peña Nieto and his cabinet members (Secretaries of the Interior, National Defense and the Navy) and the head of government of the Federal District (the Maxico City Mayor), have been trying to turn the situation, noting that the real problem is "the violent groups" who do not want peace and attack the rule of law.
They accuse them of trying to "destabilize" the government, and hence them being the main threat to the country; when the vast majority of the population has been demonstrated peacefully and is demanding a thorough clean of a corrupt political system, linked to the drug cartels and promoting a "crony capitalism", where only those close to political power and the small group of plutocrats who dominates the economy (with their transnational allies), have all the privileges and guarantees, while the people suffer from poverty and repression.
On November 20 (the day the start of the Mexican Revolution is commemorated), thousands of people, families, young, old, women and children marched peacefully to the Zocalo (main square) of Mexico City, demanding justice for the 43 Ayotzinapa missing.
After the demonstration, when there were still several thousand people in the Zocalo, hundreds of federal and Mexico city police attacked the crowd, without provocation, beating and abusing all people in their path, with the obvious intent to terrorize protesters and give a lesson to the people who want to express their dissatisfaction and complaints.
Eleven people were unjustly arrested and have now been imprisoned in distant prisons of Mexico City, which is triggering a new movement for their release. A large group of intellectuals and personalities are starting a movement to demand their release and punishment for the authorities responsible for this brutal repression.
Peña Nieto and Miguel Angel Mancera (head of government of Mexico City)10, have pointed out that the actions of the authorities were “correct” and they do not think to rectify.
So the government response is hardening, because it has no substantive responses to the demands of the population, and although these days Peña will propose the signing of a "pact" to the legality and the rule of law (one of several that have been signed in recent years and have remained on paper), the reality is that his government has demonstrated its repressor mood, tarnished by corruption, abusive and subordinate to Mexican billionaires and large transnational corporations, which will deepen the great national problems and eventually will cause a violent awakening of the dispossessed of Mexico.
-------
Notes:
1 independent political analyst (analisispolitico-rgarrido.blogspot.mx). Mexican government civil servant for 20 years (1988-2008); national journalism award 1989 (club of journalists of mexico). Internationalist (national autonomous university of mexico). Contact: rgarrido63@outlook.com
2 Although Brazil is not part of the OECD, there is an agreement to include statistics in studies of the organization.
3 Bancomundial.org
4 Billionairecensus.com
5 Revolutionary Institutional Party (center-right) and Action Nacional Party (right).
6 “The design of the residence was in charge of Mexican architect Miguel Angel Aragones and his photos are still exhibited in www.aragones.com.mx, entitled Casa La Palma.The blueprint of the house is available on the website archdaily.com, bearing the logo of Aragon and located on the street Sierra Gorda. They also show a date: October 2010, a month before Peña Nieto and Rivera got married "(Aristeguinoticias.com)
7 Regeneración.mx
8 See State Crime in Iguala, Guerrero (Mexico), by Rolando Garrido, article appeared in The Vineyard of the Saker (Vineyardsaker.blogspot.com) last October 18.
9 Recall that in Mexico, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI.org.mx), crimes go unreported and unpunished reach 95%. That is 95 out of 100 crimes in the country go unpunished.
10 Linked to the leftist and discredited Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who postulated and sheltered the mafioso mayor of Iguala José Luis Abarca and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda, and the ousted governor of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre. Mancera is linked to a group of businessmen who control public works of the Federal District, which have been enriched with concessions such as the imposition of parking meters in thousands of streets and with contracts for building works, poorly made in the roads of the city; also they have managed to change the "land use" of residential areas to build malls and office buildings. Just 26 November PRD founder and three-time presidential candidate (1988, 1994 and 2000), C. Cárdenas resigned from the party for all these scandals.
Showing posts with label mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mexico. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Saturday, October 18, 2014
State Crime in Iguala, Guerrero (Mexico)
By Rolando Garrido Romo
In these days the people of Mexico are facing a double assault by the political and economic elite of the country, subservient to Washington, which mainly aims to strengthen control over financial and natural resources of the country through the implementation of reforms imposed by the government of president Peña Nieto; and at the same time criminalizing social protest, suppressing all dissent sample or rejection by popular organizations, students, educators, farmers and workers to such predatory and exclusionary model.
In this context a state crime was committed against rural students in the state of Guerrero, where the complicity between municipal and state authorities to organized crime, and the indifference and failure of federal authorities led to another tragedy against country's poorest population.
On the night of 26 last September and the morning of the 27th, a group of about 200 students from the Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa (municipality of Tixtla), Guerrero (southwestern Mexico) were attacked with firearms by municipal police of the city of Iguala and a group of men in civilian clothes.
The students of Ayotzinapa had taken some passenger buses with which they moved to the neighboring town of Iguala, in order to raise money to go to Mexico City, and attend the march of October 2nd which is held every year in commemorating the Slaughter of Tlatelolco in 1968 (during which the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered the murder of dozens of students who performed a rally in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, precisely protesting against government repression and lack of democracy in the country).
The march on October 2, 2014 was of additional importance, since in recent weeks had developed a student movement at the National Polytechnic Institute (an institution created in 1936 by President Lazaro Cardenas, who in 1938 expropriated the oil industry at large transnational corporations) to reject a series of reforms involving the degradation of their academic level and the conversion of the Institute into a provider of technical second level personnel for transnational corporations.
Although the government had an initial response to the demands of students (repeal the reforms and dismiss the director of the Institute), the student`s assemblies were in favor of greater involvement of students and teachers in the direction of the school and in the determination of plans and programs of study, so that the student`s protest continues in this academic institution.
The shooting attack of Iguala municipal police and gunmen who accompanied her, caused the killing of 6 people, 4 of them students, a woman who was in a taxi and then a young football player (team Hornets of the Third Division of professional football) who was on a bus with peers (after participating in a game), which was also shot by the police, who believed that the players were also students of Ayotzinapa.
Some of the students then decided to report the assault they suffered, before the media, but the place where they tried to take out the press conference that same night, was also shot by the armed group in civilian clothes, so students had to flee.
Later it was learned that 43 students were missing, and no authority was aware of his whereabouts.
That night, the body of a young man (Julio César Mondragón Fuentes) who was tortured, put out his eyes and found skinned face, was found in the street. Later was known that he was one of the students missing that tragic night.
In the days following, national outrage at the attack on defenseless young, forced the state government to deposit with the Public Prosecutor to 22 police officers involved in the attack, and at the same time, it was the Mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca Velasquez who requested his resignation and disappeared along with his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who the day of the incident, paid a report as president of the institution responsible for childcare and family (Integral Development of the Family, DIF) in Iguala.
The subsequent protests of Ayotzinapa’s students, as the demands of the return of the missing students by their parents, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the OAS and even the State Department of the United States (usually let these facts unaccounted when they are committed by allied regimes, such as the one that currently governs Mexico) forced the government of Peña Nieto to attract the investigation at federal level.
Once the Attorney General's Office began investigating, arrested 10 of the gunmen who had participated in the attack and it was they who announced that they were part of a drug cartel known as “Guerreros Unidos”, one of whose leaders known as "Chucky", had given the order to kill the students. It was they also who gave the location of 9 unmarked graves on the outskirts of Iguala, where the authorities found 43 bodies so far, those who have already practiced forensic examinations and DNA tests, of which 28 bodies according to the Attorney General’s Office, do not correspond to DNA from relatives of the missing students. Still need to know the identity of the other 15 bodies found and if those that are in new mass graves found on 14 and 15 October, are of the missing students.
Later (October 13) 14 municipal police officers of Cocula (adjacent to Iguala), who apparently also participated in the attack and in the delivery of the 43 disappeared students to the cartel “Guerreros Unidos”, were arrested, along with the mayor and the director of public security of the municipality of Cocula.
At this point we must begin to untangle the web of mafia relations between much of the Mexican political class (without distinction of parties) with drug trafficking organizations, businessmen who launder money (along with banks) and different levels of municipal, state and federal government officials who protect criminal enterprises through the police (and often, middle and high level ranking officials of the armed forces are also involved), in exchange for funding for their campaigns and for huge profits that are transferred to them by their criminal associates.
The governor of the state of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre Rivero, is occupying the governorship of the state for the second time, as it did the first time replacing a despotic and dictatorial governor, Ruben Figueroa, who had to take leave from his post in 1995, after he ordered the killing of peasants of the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero, who were to apply attention to their demands to the state government.
Aguirre then was part of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and replaced his "compadre" Figueroa, who never had to be accountable to justice for the slaughter of Aguas Blancas. Aguirre ruled from 1996 until 1999.
Subsequently, Aguirre wanted to be governor again in 2010, but this time his party, the PRI, decided to run Aguirre's cousin, Manuel Añorve, who was the mayor of Acapulco.
Aguirre expressed his disagreement and left the PRI, so he sought the nomination for governor by the leftist PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), who does not care about his PRI past and prompted the governor, who won the election in 2010.
Since he rose to the governorship in April 2011, Aguirre has turned the state of Guerrero to a private business, as for example, he has appointed to government positions 38 immediate family members; so do other officials, such as Secretary of Finance and Administration, Jorge Salgado Leyva, who has 20 relatives in various state offices.
Aguirre has entrusted to his nephew, Ernesto Aguirre being the liaison with groups of political and economic power, to apply for "commissions" and percentage required to approve projects, investment, government procurement, etc. The governor's brother, named Carlos Mateo Aguirre, is in charge of controlling everything related to public works by the state.
Also, the governor is pushing his son Angel Aguirre Jr. to be the candidate for mayor of Acapulco.
"Dangerous ", i.e. with drug gangs, relationships correspond to the cousin of the governor, Victor Hugo Aguirre Garzón, who is in charge of drug trafficking in Acapulco.
Aguirre, along with his Health Secretary, Lazaro Mazon (who is identified with the leftist newly created political party, National Regeneration Movement), and the current so-called New Left, which dominates the Party of the Democratic Revolution, were the main political patronage for José Luis Abarca to became mayor of Iguala.
Abarca is married to Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who is the sister of Alberto Pineda Villa (aka "El Borrado"), and Marco Antonio Pineda Villa, who were operators of the drug cartel of the Beltran Leyva brothers ("coincidentally" few days after the murders of Ayotzinapa, was arrested in San Miguel Allende, Hector Beltran Leyva, leader of the cartel of the same name, along with a well-known businessman who was responsible for washing drug money, Germán Goyeneche, and who had close ties with the political class of the state of Querétaro) and then formed the cartel “Guerreros Unidos” (on 10 October, another brother of Maria de los Angeles, named Salomon, was arrested in Cuernavaca for drug crimes).
The same mother of Maria de los Angeles, Maria Leonor Villa Ortuño, is considered part of the criminal organization, and just provide a video in which she accuses the governor Aguirre of having received funding for his campaign in 2010, by the cartel of the Beltran Leyva and that is the governor who protects “Guerreros Unidos” (this cartel has a bloody dispute with another drug trafficking organization in Guerrero known as “Los Rojos”).
Mayor Abarca was driving his wife Maria de los Angeles to achieve Iguala municipal presidency next year, and the presentation of her report as president of the municipal DIF in the night of September 26, was to be used as his primary campaign launch, so knowing the mobilization of the students of Ayotzinapa, the Mayor and his wife ordered the police and thugs to stop the students at all cost, to avoid "tarnishing" the act of launching of the candidacy of Maria de los Angeles.
Hence the direct orders for the slaughter came from the municipal authorities, but state and federal authorities were complicit, as it is now known that a number of students were retained by Mexican Army soldiers, without providing them with any help; and the state police, which is also based in Iguala, did not intervene to stop the attack, even though all corporations learned about these facts in minutes.
Additionally, both the state government and the federal, were aware that the Mayor Abarca had directly participated in the kidnapping and murder of three leaders of the Popular Unity organization, who had demanded support for that peasant organization and had directly accused the mayor of taking possession of the resources destined to them. These three leaders were massacred and the mayor apparently shot to the head of one of them (Arturo Hernández Cardona), with a shotgun. This was known since the middle of 2013, but neither the state government nor the federal government initiated a thorough investigation into these events.
It should also be noted that Aguirre, since he was with the ruling PRI, was very close to the current president Peña Nieto, and once it became governor for the second time, supported by the leftist PRD, boasted his good relationship with Peña Nieto who was then governor of the State of Mexico and was constantly invited to Aguirre’s family parties and government festivities.
Now Peña has tried to distance himself from the governor and called him to take responsibility, while it pressed for his resignation, which has triggered a flood of words between state and federal government, in order to dilute their responsibilities in these facts.
In this context, it is important to note that the rural students of Ayotzinapa are part of a segment of the population that has been traditionally excluded, demonized and punished by the State, especially since the coming to power of neoliberal governments (1982), who have attempted to disappear the Rural Normal Schools (created in the 20’s), where young farmers are trained not only as teachers for rural areas, but also as social organizers and promoters and as trainers and assistants in agricultural production.
Permanently, the state and the federal governments, have decreased budget allocations for these schools and have attempted to transform curricula or close them up; but students, teachers and parents have mobilized again and again to stop it.
It is worth to mention that the famous Mexican guerrilla fighter Lucio Cabañas, originally from Atoyac de Alvarez, Guerrero, studied precisely in the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, where he graduated as a rural teacher, subsequently adhering to Guerrero Civic Association (Asociación Cívica Guerrerense), who ran another graduate of Ayotzinapa, Genaro Vázquez.
Vazquez created in 1962-63 the National Revolutionary Civic Association (Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria), after a brutal repression suffered by members of this organization, precisely in the city of Iguala, which convinced Vàzquez to go underground to fight the repressive Mexican authorities.
The same will happened next with Lucio Cabanas, who would experience firsthand another brutal repression in 1967 by state and federal authorities in Atoyac, leading him to create the Party of the Poor and the Peasants' Justice Brigade to fight in the underground, against the Mexican government.
Also, after the Aguas Blancas massacre, in 1996, the Popular Revolutionary Army appeared (Ejército Popular Revolucionario, EPR), in response to the repression suffered by the peasants by Guerrero state authorities.
Now, following the disappearance of students of Ayotzinapa, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), an EPR detachment, has stated that it has created a Justice Brigade to punish cartel “Guerreros Unidos”, for the murder of the rural students.
For its part, the EZLN (the Zapatistas in Chiapas) mobilized thousands of grassroots supporters in a silent march in support of the missing students.
Several schools and colleges of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Metropolitan Autonomous University and the National Pedagogical University, have initiated a strike in support of students and demand of the appearance of the 43 missing students.
There is a proposal in Congress for the disappearance of powers in the state of Guerrero, given that Governor Aguirre refuses to leave office, but the measure will not fix the situation of this state, which is handled by political groups associated with drug cartels and business groups who get rich juicy concessions, so the arrival of an acting governor to the state will only serve to distract public opinion and eventually make the people forget about the responsibility, political and criminal of the governor and the omissions (perhaps intentional) of the federal government, on these facts; not forgetting that the Mayor of Iguala, his wife and the director of Public Safety of that city, Felipe Flores Velasquez, are still fugitives.
In these days the people of Mexico are facing a double assault by the political and economic elite of the country, subservient to Washington, which mainly aims to strengthen control over financial and natural resources of the country through the implementation of reforms imposed by the government of president Peña Nieto; and at the same time criminalizing social protest, suppressing all dissent sample or rejection by popular organizations, students, educators, farmers and workers to such predatory and exclusionary model.
In this context a state crime was committed against rural students in the state of Guerrero, where the complicity between municipal and state authorities to organized crime, and the indifference and failure of federal authorities led to another tragedy against country's poorest population.
On the night of 26 last September and the morning of the 27th, a group of about 200 students from the Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa (municipality of Tixtla), Guerrero (southwestern Mexico) were attacked with firearms by municipal police of the city of Iguala and a group of men in civilian clothes.
The students of Ayotzinapa had taken some passenger buses with which they moved to the neighboring town of Iguala, in order to raise money to go to Mexico City, and attend the march of October 2nd which is held every year in commemorating the Slaughter of Tlatelolco in 1968 (during which the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered the murder of dozens of students who performed a rally in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, precisely protesting against government repression and lack of democracy in the country).
The march on October 2, 2014 was of additional importance, since in recent weeks had developed a student movement at the National Polytechnic Institute (an institution created in 1936 by President Lazaro Cardenas, who in 1938 expropriated the oil industry at large transnational corporations) to reject a series of reforms involving the degradation of their academic level and the conversion of the Institute into a provider of technical second level personnel for transnational corporations.
Although the government had an initial response to the demands of students (repeal the reforms and dismiss the director of the Institute), the student`s assemblies were in favor of greater involvement of students and teachers in the direction of the school and in the determination of plans and programs of study, so that the student`s protest continues in this academic institution.
The shooting attack of Iguala municipal police and gunmen who accompanied her, caused the killing of 6 people, 4 of them students, a woman who was in a taxi and then a young football player (team Hornets of the Third Division of professional football) who was on a bus with peers (after participating in a game), which was also shot by the police, who believed that the players were also students of Ayotzinapa.
Some of the students then decided to report the assault they suffered, before the media, but the place where they tried to take out the press conference that same night, was also shot by the armed group in civilian clothes, so students had to flee.
Later it was learned that 43 students were missing, and no authority was aware of his whereabouts.
That night, the body of a young man (Julio César Mondragón Fuentes) who was tortured, put out his eyes and found skinned face, was found in the street. Later was known that he was one of the students missing that tragic night.
In the days following, national outrage at the attack on defenseless young, forced the state government to deposit with the Public Prosecutor to 22 police officers involved in the attack, and at the same time, it was the Mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca Velasquez who requested his resignation and disappeared along with his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who the day of the incident, paid a report as president of the institution responsible for childcare and family (Integral Development of the Family, DIF) in Iguala.
The subsequent protests of Ayotzinapa’s students, as the demands of the return of the missing students by their parents, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the OAS and even the State Department of the United States (usually let these facts unaccounted when they are committed by allied regimes, such as the one that currently governs Mexico) forced the government of Peña Nieto to attract the investigation at federal level.
Once the Attorney General's Office began investigating, arrested 10 of the gunmen who had participated in the attack and it was they who announced that they were part of a drug cartel known as “Guerreros Unidos”, one of whose leaders known as "Chucky", had given the order to kill the students. It was they also who gave the location of 9 unmarked graves on the outskirts of Iguala, where the authorities found 43 bodies so far, those who have already practiced forensic examinations and DNA tests, of which 28 bodies according to the Attorney General’s Office, do not correspond to DNA from relatives of the missing students. Still need to know the identity of the other 15 bodies found and if those that are in new mass graves found on 14 and 15 October, are of the missing students.
Later (October 13) 14 municipal police officers of Cocula (adjacent to Iguala), who apparently also participated in the attack and in the delivery of the 43 disappeared students to the cartel “Guerreros Unidos”, were arrested, along with the mayor and the director of public security of the municipality of Cocula.
At this point we must begin to untangle the web of mafia relations between much of the Mexican political class (without distinction of parties) with drug trafficking organizations, businessmen who launder money (along with banks) and different levels of municipal, state and federal government officials who protect criminal enterprises through the police (and often, middle and high level ranking officials of the armed forces are also involved), in exchange for funding for their campaigns and for huge profits that are transferred to them by their criminal associates.
The governor of the state of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre Rivero, is occupying the governorship of the state for the second time, as it did the first time replacing a despotic and dictatorial governor, Ruben Figueroa, who had to take leave from his post in 1995, after he ordered the killing of peasants of the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero, who were to apply attention to their demands to the state government.
Aguirre then was part of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and replaced his "compadre" Figueroa, who never had to be accountable to justice for the slaughter of Aguas Blancas. Aguirre ruled from 1996 until 1999.
Subsequently, Aguirre wanted to be governor again in 2010, but this time his party, the PRI, decided to run Aguirre's cousin, Manuel Añorve, who was the mayor of Acapulco.
Aguirre expressed his disagreement and left the PRI, so he sought the nomination for governor by the leftist PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), who does not care about his PRI past and prompted the governor, who won the election in 2010.
Since he rose to the governorship in April 2011, Aguirre has turned the state of Guerrero to a private business, as for example, he has appointed to government positions 38 immediate family members; so do other officials, such as Secretary of Finance and Administration, Jorge Salgado Leyva, who has 20 relatives in various state offices.
Aguirre has entrusted to his nephew, Ernesto Aguirre being the liaison with groups of political and economic power, to apply for "commissions" and percentage required to approve projects, investment, government procurement, etc. The governor's brother, named Carlos Mateo Aguirre, is in charge of controlling everything related to public works by the state.
Also, the governor is pushing his son Angel Aguirre Jr. to be the candidate for mayor of Acapulco.
"Dangerous ", i.e. with drug gangs, relationships correspond to the cousin of the governor, Victor Hugo Aguirre Garzón, who is in charge of drug trafficking in Acapulco.
Aguirre, along with his Health Secretary, Lazaro Mazon (who is identified with the leftist newly created political party, National Regeneration Movement), and the current so-called New Left, which dominates the Party of the Democratic Revolution, were the main political patronage for José Luis Abarca to became mayor of Iguala.
Abarca is married to Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who is the sister of Alberto Pineda Villa (aka "El Borrado"), and Marco Antonio Pineda Villa, who were operators of the drug cartel of the Beltran Leyva brothers ("coincidentally" few days after the murders of Ayotzinapa, was arrested in San Miguel Allende, Hector Beltran Leyva, leader of the cartel of the same name, along with a well-known businessman who was responsible for washing drug money, Germán Goyeneche, and who had close ties with the political class of the state of Querétaro) and then formed the cartel “Guerreros Unidos” (on 10 October, another brother of Maria de los Angeles, named Salomon, was arrested in Cuernavaca for drug crimes).
The same mother of Maria de los Angeles, Maria Leonor Villa Ortuño, is considered part of the criminal organization, and just provide a video in which she accuses the governor Aguirre of having received funding for his campaign in 2010, by the cartel of the Beltran Leyva and that is the governor who protects “Guerreros Unidos” (this cartel has a bloody dispute with another drug trafficking organization in Guerrero known as “Los Rojos”).
Mayor Abarca was driving his wife Maria de los Angeles to achieve Iguala municipal presidency next year, and the presentation of her report as president of the municipal DIF in the night of September 26, was to be used as his primary campaign launch, so knowing the mobilization of the students of Ayotzinapa, the Mayor and his wife ordered the police and thugs to stop the students at all cost, to avoid "tarnishing" the act of launching of the candidacy of Maria de los Angeles.
Hence the direct orders for the slaughter came from the municipal authorities, but state and federal authorities were complicit, as it is now known that a number of students were retained by Mexican Army soldiers, without providing them with any help; and the state police, which is also based in Iguala, did not intervene to stop the attack, even though all corporations learned about these facts in minutes.
Additionally, both the state government and the federal, were aware that the Mayor Abarca had directly participated in the kidnapping and murder of three leaders of the Popular Unity organization, who had demanded support for that peasant organization and had directly accused the mayor of taking possession of the resources destined to them. These three leaders were massacred and the mayor apparently shot to the head of one of them (Arturo Hernández Cardona), with a shotgun. This was known since the middle of 2013, but neither the state government nor the federal government initiated a thorough investigation into these events.
It should also be noted that Aguirre, since he was with the ruling PRI, was very close to the current president Peña Nieto, and once it became governor for the second time, supported by the leftist PRD, boasted his good relationship with Peña Nieto who was then governor of the State of Mexico and was constantly invited to Aguirre’s family parties and government festivities.
Now Peña has tried to distance himself from the governor and called him to take responsibility, while it pressed for his resignation, which has triggered a flood of words between state and federal government, in order to dilute their responsibilities in these facts.
In this context, it is important to note that the rural students of Ayotzinapa are part of a segment of the population that has been traditionally excluded, demonized and punished by the State, especially since the coming to power of neoliberal governments (1982), who have attempted to disappear the Rural Normal Schools (created in the 20’s), where young farmers are trained not only as teachers for rural areas, but also as social organizers and promoters and as trainers and assistants in agricultural production.
Permanently, the state and the federal governments, have decreased budget allocations for these schools and have attempted to transform curricula or close them up; but students, teachers and parents have mobilized again and again to stop it.
It is worth to mention that the famous Mexican guerrilla fighter Lucio Cabañas, originally from Atoyac de Alvarez, Guerrero, studied precisely in the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, where he graduated as a rural teacher, subsequently adhering to Guerrero Civic Association (Asociación Cívica Guerrerense), who ran another graduate of Ayotzinapa, Genaro Vázquez.
Vazquez created in 1962-63 the National Revolutionary Civic Association (Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria), after a brutal repression suffered by members of this organization, precisely in the city of Iguala, which convinced Vàzquez to go underground to fight the repressive Mexican authorities.
The same will happened next with Lucio Cabanas, who would experience firsthand another brutal repression in 1967 by state and federal authorities in Atoyac, leading him to create the Party of the Poor and the Peasants' Justice Brigade to fight in the underground, against the Mexican government.
Also, after the Aguas Blancas massacre, in 1996, the Popular Revolutionary Army appeared (Ejército Popular Revolucionario, EPR), in response to the repression suffered by the peasants by Guerrero state authorities.
Now, following the disappearance of students of Ayotzinapa, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), an EPR detachment, has stated that it has created a Justice Brigade to punish cartel “Guerreros Unidos”, for the murder of the rural students.
For its part, the EZLN (the Zapatistas in Chiapas) mobilized thousands of grassroots supporters in a silent march in support of the missing students.
Several schools and colleges of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Metropolitan Autonomous University and the National Pedagogical University, have initiated a strike in support of students and demand of the appearance of the 43 missing students.
There is a proposal in Congress for the disappearance of powers in the state of Guerrero, given that Governor Aguirre refuses to leave office, but the measure will not fix the situation of this state, which is handled by political groups associated with drug cartels and business groups who get rich juicy concessions, so the arrival of an acting governor to the state will only serve to distract public opinion and eventually make the people forget about the responsibility, political and criminal of the governor and the omissions (perhaps intentional) of the federal government, on these facts; not forgetting that the Mayor of Iguala, his wife and the director of Public Safety of that city, Felipe Flores Velasquez, are still fugitives.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Mexican Drug War Intel Report: Over 22,000 Dead, Police Detain 27% of the Zetas’ Foot Soldiers, Open Hunting Season On Cops
By Pancho Montana for Exiled online
Hey there drug war fans, I got some statistics to throw your way. While you gringos pay attention to the unemployment rate and foreclosure statistics, we here in Mexico track the national kill count—how many people died, who suffered the losses and where the action went down. The latest numbers were just released: they are compiled by the federal government, so they are not 100% accurate. For starters, the body count should be higher. But hey, with over 20,000 dead, the situation looks bad enough to me, whether they fudged the numbers or not.
Kill count
* 22,000+ Killed since start of war against narcotraffic, from Dec. 2006 to Mar. 2010 (when president Calderon started his term).
* 3,300+ Killed from Jan. to March 2010.
Arrests w/breakdown by cartel*
* 121,000 Narco-arrests since 2006.
* - 27% Gulf Cartel/Zetas.
* -24% Pacific/Sinaloa Cartel.
* -17% Cartel de Juarez
* -14% Beltran Leyva
* -13% Arellano Felix
*no specific number given
Shootout count
Violence has been on the rise because of territorial realignment, fragmentation of the cartels and internal restructuring . Law enforcement agents of all branches (state, federal, military) have now become targets for sicarios.
* 1,286 Firefights counted form December 2008 to March 2010.
* 977 Narcos against authorities.
* 309 Narcos against narcos.
Casualties by region
* 6,757 Official narco-related deaths in Chihuahua since Calderon started his term
* (4,324 From the city of Ciudad Juarez alone)
* 3,136 In Sinaloa, the cradle of narco-traffickers.
* 1,826 In Guerrero.
Intelligence: Cartel on Cartel warfare
Cartels team up on the Zetas: The new phase of the war appears to be an offensive to exterminate the Zetas by an alliance between the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and the Michoacan Family. They claim to be doing this because the Zetas corrupted the business and preyed on the civilian population, which brought too much attention and became bad for business. So they are looking to go back to the old days. Civilians are getting war-weary and accept don’t mind this “social cleansing” campaign so long as the kidnappings, car thefts and extortions stop.
Cartels-of-Mexico
The Sinaloa Cartel expands territory: They are taking advantage of the chaos to exterminate their other rivals, like the Beltran Leyva. In the last couple of months they started turning the Nayarit riviera and Acapulco into the usual macabre circus act of decapitated bodies, bullet-ridden cars and piles of charred bodies. The DEA is Sinaloa Cartel’s #1 admirer and PR Agent and it claims that El Chapo Guzman is winning the war against Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and his Juarez Cartel. That means Sinaloa is the lord of the routes into the US.
The Sinaloa Cartel appears to be using the violence to consolidate territory, secure and expand shipment routes and some cross-border access—then start moving product into America. War or no war, they got a job to do.
West side calm: In the Pacific they have an alliance in Michoacan with the Milenio Cartel and the Family; And in Jalisco, with the old school capo Nacho Coronel. But Oaxaca, Guerrero and Nayarit are pretty much controlled by what remains of the Beltran Leyva Cartel.
The importance of the Pacific lies in all of its many ports–this means they can receive container ships full of the necessary ingredients to make synthetic drugs, or receive cocaine from South America. Control of the Pacific is vital to ensure reliable imports of product into the country.
The in-land routes serve to move the drugs closer to the border, which they do by hiding the goods in trailer trucks masquerading as fruit transport or whatever they think of, whatever regularly goes to and from the border towns.
Of course, the air and the sea can still be used to move drugs inside the country, but the main destination is always the United States: market número uno.
Border cities see the most action: The jewel cities of the drug trade are the border towns: Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo. Border cities are important for the cross-border highway access and non-stop flow of traffic: cars, trucks, tourists and semis—all provide a lot of space to stash dope. Anybody who controls these cities has a gold mine, and the Sinaloa Cartel is craving them real bad.
That’s why Ciudad Juarez has been turning into an ever-worsening blood-bath: ever since El Chapo sent his sicarios to capture the plaza in 2008, it’s been 2 years of going from bad to worse to worse-than-bad. (Remember, more than 4,000 people have been killed here over the past two years.)
The last jewel left unsnatched appears to be Tijuana, the main plaza of the Arellano Felix Cartel, which now has total control of the border. So don’t be surprised if it starts going to hell again. It’s just business, Mexican Drug Cartel style.
Pancho Montana is an eXiled Special Mexican War on Drugs Correspondent. As a native of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, located in northern Mexico, Mr. Montana lives in Gulf Cartel territory. That means the streets belong to the Zetas, a paramilitary organization trained by the Yankees and hired by the Gulf Cartel to keep things civilized and business booming.
Hey there drug war fans, I got some statistics to throw your way. While you gringos pay attention to the unemployment rate and foreclosure statistics, we here in Mexico track the national kill count—how many people died, who suffered the losses and where the action went down. The latest numbers were just released: they are compiled by the federal government, so they are not 100% accurate. For starters, the body count should be higher. But hey, with over 20,000 dead, the situation looks bad enough to me, whether they fudged the numbers or not.
Kill count
* 22,000+ Killed since start of war against narcotraffic, from Dec. 2006 to Mar. 2010 (when president Calderon started his term).
* 3,300+ Killed from Jan. to March 2010.
Arrests w/breakdown by cartel*
* 121,000 Narco-arrests since 2006.
* - 27% Gulf Cartel/Zetas.
* -24% Pacific/Sinaloa Cartel.
* -17% Cartel de Juarez
* -14% Beltran Leyva
* -13% Arellano Felix
*no specific number given
Shootout count
Violence has been on the rise because of territorial realignment, fragmentation of the cartels and internal restructuring . Law enforcement agents of all branches (state, federal, military) have now become targets for sicarios.
* 1,286 Firefights counted form December 2008 to March 2010.
* 977 Narcos against authorities.
* 309 Narcos against narcos.
Casualties by region
* 6,757 Official narco-related deaths in Chihuahua since Calderon started his term
* (4,324 From the city of Ciudad Juarez alone)
* 3,136 In Sinaloa, the cradle of narco-traffickers.
* 1,826 In Guerrero.
Intelligence: Cartel on Cartel warfare
Cartels team up on the Zetas: The new phase of the war appears to be an offensive to exterminate the Zetas by an alliance between the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and the Michoacan Family. They claim to be doing this because the Zetas corrupted the business and preyed on the civilian population, which brought too much attention and became bad for business. So they are looking to go back to the old days. Civilians are getting war-weary and accept don’t mind this “social cleansing” campaign so long as the kidnappings, car thefts and extortions stop.
Cartels-of-Mexico
The Sinaloa Cartel expands territory: They are taking advantage of the chaos to exterminate their other rivals, like the Beltran Leyva. In the last couple of months they started turning the Nayarit riviera and Acapulco into the usual macabre circus act of decapitated bodies, bullet-ridden cars and piles of charred bodies. The DEA is Sinaloa Cartel’s #1 admirer and PR Agent and it claims that El Chapo Guzman is winning the war against Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and his Juarez Cartel. That means Sinaloa is the lord of the routes into the US.
The Sinaloa Cartel appears to be using the violence to consolidate territory, secure and expand shipment routes and some cross-border access—then start moving product into America. War or no war, they got a job to do.West side calm: In the Pacific they have an alliance in Michoacan with the Milenio Cartel and the Family; And in Jalisco, with the old school capo Nacho Coronel. But Oaxaca, Guerrero and Nayarit are pretty much controlled by what remains of the Beltran Leyva Cartel.
The importance of the Pacific lies in all of its many ports–this means they can receive container ships full of the necessary ingredients to make synthetic drugs, or receive cocaine from South America. Control of the Pacific is vital to ensure reliable imports of product into the country.
The in-land routes serve to move the drugs closer to the border, which they do by hiding the goods in trailer trucks masquerading as fruit transport or whatever they think of, whatever regularly goes to and from the border towns.
Of course, the air and the sea can still be used to move drugs inside the country, but the main destination is always the United States: market número uno.
Border cities see the most action: The jewel cities of the drug trade are the border towns: Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo. Border cities are important for the cross-border highway access and non-stop flow of traffic: cars, trucks, tourists and semis—all provide a lot of space to stash dope. Anybody who controls these cities has a gold mine, and the Sinaloa Cartel is craving them real bad.
That’s why Ciudad Juarez has been turning into an ever-worsening blood-bath: ever since El Chapo sent his sicarios to capture the plaza in 2008, it’s been 2 years of going from bad to worse to worse-than-bad. (Remember, more than 4,000 people have been killed here over the past two years.)
The last jewel left unsnatched appears to be Tijuana, the main plaza of the Arellano Felix Cartel, which now has total control of the border. So don’t be surprised if it starts going to hell again. It’s just business, Mexican Drug Cartel style.
Pancho Montana is an eXiled Special Mexican War on Drugs Correspondent. As a native of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, located in northern Mexico, Mr. Montana lives in Gulf Cartel territory. That means the streets belong to the Zetas, a paramilitary organization trained by the Yankees and hired by the Gulf Cartel to keep things civilized and business booming.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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