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Thursday, March 12, 2015

Borderland Beat

Borderland Beat

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Los Rojos leave message with decapitated Guerrero mayoral candidate

Posted: 12 Mar 2015 01:02 AM PDT

Lucio R. written with material from Sur Acapulco-SinEmbargo-Reforma
The tragic history of the Quinonez Nava Family

Two and one half years ago:
On October 11, 2012, the son of the late Mayor and Aidé Nava, Francisco Quinonez Nava was kidnapped; his captors had demanded 300,000 pesos for his release; the youth remains missing.

Nine months ago:
On June 28, 2014, the husband of Aidé Nava , former PRD mayor in 2009-2012, Quinonez Francisco Ramirez, was shot dead at the entrance to the city.

On March 9th of this week:
Armed men intercepted Aidé Nava González vehicle on the road to Chilapa, she was shot and decapitated.

The PRD mayoral front-runner candidate  of  Ahuacuot-Zingo, municipality, Aidé Nava González, was kidnapped this week by gunmen who intercepted her Ford truck at 6:30 in the evening at the intersection  Tecoanapa, and Chilapa-Ahuacuotzingo road. 

Nava Gonzalez headed to the county seat traveling with her  campaign team, when she was intercepted. 

Yesterday, two days after being kidnapped,  Aidé Nava González, was found murdered.  With her decapitated body was a message from "Los Rojos" cartel that covered her body, but her head was lying next to a rock on top of the banner.

Los Rojos are aggressively muscling their way into territory previously controlled by their foe, the weakened Guerreros UnidosCartel.

The message read:
"This will happen to all the fucking politicians who don't want to align with us, you fucking traitors.
Attn,
Puro Rojos ZNS ." 
Her husband was a former PRD mayor in the years of 2009-2012.  Was shot and killed in 2014, in Tierras Prietas, his wife Aidé was with him when he was killed.

G.U. turncoats: 'Sierra Unida' group cleans up Iguala Plaza for 'Los Rojos'

Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:58 PM PDT

Lucio R. Borderland Beat written using some material from Nueva Aera, Solo Chilpo, AcaSur, BB

Sierra Cartel challenging the weaken cartel Guerreros Unidos

for the all important Iguala territory

Media interest in the case of the missing normalistas of Guerrero has diminished.

The worldwide audience once hungry of any detail of the shocking case may assume that the situation in Iguala, Guerrero has improved after the events of last September 26th and 27th.

After all, the malevolent mayor Jose Abarca and his wife are imprisoned.Same goes for the municipal police, who acted on orders from the mayor's office, to kidnap and kill the normalistas group.

And the leadership of the Guerreros Unidos Cartel are either dead or incarcerated.  

Federal forces have taken over policing of Iguala, one would hope security of the city would be exponentially better.

But according to the people of Iguala, that is far from the reality.In fact things are worse.Violence has exploded, and according to residents, the federal Gendarmerie is not doing much to control the situation.

For example; In separate incidents, four members of a family, and a taxi driver were killed last two days of February and first week of March recorded in the city of Iguala where the Federal Police Gendarmerie Division took over security after the slaughter and disappearance of the 43 missing normalistas Ayotzinapa.
 
In this multiple victim crime wave, 19 people were killed in a 5 day period,  in this strategic area for the Guerrero drug trade. 

Supposedly, 14 of the 19 killed allegedly had ties to the Guerreros Unidos Cartel.  However, people on the ground say it is a mix bag of narcos and innocents.  If there is a vendetta against an innocent for whatever reason, the "chapulines" (those that jump sides aka grasshopper) are using the opportunity to settle scores.

In an apparent  move to capitalize on the weaken state of  Guerreros Unidos, derived from the fall out of the normalistas case,  the organized crime group Cártel de la Sierra (AKA Sierra Unida) is challenging the remnants of G.U. for control of the region.  As of now, G.U. barely maintains control of the Iguala Plaza, but is compromised in strength because of key arrests and federal intervention.

The killings include:

A shooting was reported at   in the Colonia  Educación  authorities found four people gunned down inside a  home on Calle Raúl Isidro Burgos.

The victims are: Marco Rojas Robles, 67, and his wife Arminda Avila Sanchez, 64, and their two sons Mark, 39  and Carlos Robles Avila, 20.

Earlier in the morning,  a body of  executed man was discovered inside a taxi on Juan N. Álvarez street in  colonia Educación.

The victim, Israel Benítez Diaz, 22, was the driver. His killers left a manta message  on the dashboard with the following threat against carriers:      
This will happen to those who work for 'Los Tilos and 'Yuca' (G.U.) in Taxis and Combis.  We have the fucking list.  We will fight, not hide.
Attn:   S.U.
In another killing, armed men on motorcycles attacked people at the Los Peques car wash where a former municipal official identified as Luis Beltran Acosta was killed and a youth was injured. The assassins left behind a note that read:
"All Guerreros Unidos Get Out, Attn: Sierra Unida" 
The group has taken to the practice of leaving messages on many of the killings, so there is no confusion of who is conducting the killings and their motive.
 "We Came for Guerreros Unidos"
"We are here to clear out the scourge" 
One was left hanging next to the federal gendarmerie Iguala headquarters.

 It read in part:

"We do not kill children and innocent people for us the family is sacred, our  war is against Guerreros Unidos.  Sierra Unida disclaims the cowardly act of Guerreros Unidos, killing the doctor of the colonia educación,  killed along with three members of his family, and the executions of a mother and son in  col San José." Signed the avengers of the future S.U.

The text continues to point the finger at G.U. for all killings of innocents, saying they were victims of Guerreros Unidos group, including the normalistas and all the killings of innocents since the tragedy.  

Be mindful this group declaring they do not kill innocents were members of G.U. during the time when they killed hundreds if not thousands of people including innocents.  Additionally, G.U. sicarios have  implemented the cockroach plan and have abandoned Iguala 

Last October the federal government had located a cell called Los Peques or Los Tilos, who are a part of Guerreros Unidos.  

The latter maintains control of drug dealing in the area of ​​Iguala where municipal police and gunmen attacked and kidnapped 43 normalistas of Ayotzinapa during the night of Friday 26 and Saturday morning September 27th.

The agency Apro announced that 100 members of this group of assassins, left the city of Iguala and retreated  an hour south, in the community of Carrizalillo, of the municipality of Eduardo Neri, 

Official reports state that brothers Víctor, 'El Oso'; Mateo, 'El Gordo' and Salvador 'El Chava', Benítez Palacios, owners of a car wash located on Calle Juan N. Alvarez, along with municipal police,participated in the attack and taking of the normalistas.

Reports state that these brothers are at the service of Ángel, Adrián and Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, who are brothers of Mario Casarrubias, founder of Guerreros Unidos cartel, based in Mérida, Querétaro, Iguala and State of Mexico.

Residents have made complaints charging the Federal Police and the Gendarmerie with a failure of duty, and doing little or nothing to stop violence in a city where robberies, kidnappings and murder, remain the same or worse than the government of Jose Luis Abarca, now imprisoned in maximum security prison of Almoloya.

The Sierra Unida group (aka Sierra Unida Revolucionaria (SUR), are former members of Guerreros Unidos who joined Los Rojos to fight against what remains  their former cartel membership, after the federal crack down on G.U. rendered the cartel tentative and leaderless. 

Leaders arrested include; Sidronio Casarrubias "El Chino" and  Salomón Pineda Villa "El Molón" (left) brother of the former Iguala first lady María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of  José Luis Abarca, and  Además Benjamín Mondragón Pereda "El Bejamón" who authorities say took his own life after being cornered by federal police.

Benítez Palacios brothers know as  "Los Tilos" or "Los Pelones" (G.U.) have also retreated from Iguala. With the plaza being void of leadership the Sierra Unida group joined Los Rojos.

Los Rojos, who have maintained a rivalry with G.U. and since October 2014, exerting power over G.U. through executions and harassment.  Both G.U.  and Los Rojos are divisions of cartel Beltran Leyva, whose head, Arturo, was killed in December 2009 in the capital of Morelos, Cuernavaca.

Calling All Whistleblowers: Mexicoleaks hopes to find the ‘Mexican Snowden’

Posted: 11 Mar 2015 08:21 PM PDT

Borderland Beat posted by DD Republished from Fusion


| March 11, 2015
 
MexicoLeaks web page
Mexico, it seems, has been beset by a ceaseless string of political scandals that date back to…well, sometime around 500 BC, when the Aztec God Quetzalcohuātl got drunk and "allegedly" slept with his sister.

The ignominy of Mexico's political class, it turns out, was just getting started. Today, some 2,500 years later, a new online tool is being rolled out to give Mexican whistleblowers a chance to denounce the corruption they see around them every day.

On Tuesday, Free Press Unlimited, an organization funded by the Dutch government, the European Union and private enterprise that describes its mission as helping "local journalists in war zones and conflict areas provide their audience with trustworthy news and information," launched the website Mexicoleaks to encourage Mexicans to anonymously step forward with tips and information about alleged wrongdoing and graft.


"We don't accept rumors, opinions or first hand accounts. We seek information of public interest that evidences corruption."

Mexicoleaks is partnering with eight Mexican news outlets and civil society organizations that will be granted digital inboxes to receive information submitted to the site. Whistleblowers can choose which media outlet they want to receive their leaked info.

"The Mexican Constitution recognizes freedom of expression and the right to information. The State must guarantee the exercise of both."

Mexico's media giants were not invited to participate in the Mexicoleaks project and critics argue many of the participating news outlets have a leftist editorial bent.

"We are going to follow a journalistic agenda, not a political agenda," said reporter Homero Campa, whose employer, Proceso magazine, is participating in the project.

"The criteria that will guide us will be if the information is of public interest," he told Fusion. "After six months there will be an evaluation process and other media outlets could be invited."

Journalist Luis Guillermo Hernandez said there is a need for greater scrutiny of government officials and businessmen. He thinks Mexicoleaks can help. "If we don't do it now, Mexico will not be viable as a country in the future," he said.

Luis Fernando Garcia, a spokesman for the digital rights group R3D, said the site's aim is to "defend Mexicans from government and corporate threats." At a press conference in Mexico City, Garcia said the website could find the "Mexican Snowden" and encouraged people from government security and intelligence agencies to "safely" submit classified information that evidences wrongdoing.

Unlike Wikileaks, not all of the submitted information will be published. Reporters will work to verify information provided in the leaks and contact any mentioned parties for comment.

"When submitting information that serves to evidence abuse and corruption, you are helping to build a more transparent and just country."

Representatives say the website is safeguarded to protect users who provide documents.

"The system is very hard to hack, and you can't bombard the information through the use of bots," said journalist and activist Eduard Martin-Borregon.

The system asks users to download Tor, an Internet search engine that hides IP addresses. Submitted documents generate an electronic receipt with a number allowing whistleblowers to establish written communication with the recipient journalists.
Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 7.38.31 PM
Cyber security expert Rodrigo Samano said the system isn't entirely foolproof, however.

"You have to take into account whistleblowers will most likely not have an advanced IT background," he told Fusion. "Tor-encrypted browsing might make it hard for the receiver to find out the identity of the sender, but not impossible."

Samano explained whistleblowers should perform several additional steps not yet pointed out by the site. He said anyone who submits information should do it from a public network, connect with a disposable computer and perform a wiping procedure after the deed.

"This is a noble cause but it's not well implemented. Most of the time, if you add a little forensic information technology and the carelessness of people or lack of knowledge it makes pinpointing the source fairly easy," Samano said.

Mexicoleaks representatives said a similar project in Spain has proven successful. In Mexico it remains to be seen if this digital platform is able to promote a new type of citizen journalism and whistleblowing culture.

The website has been up only a few hours and there's already hiccups. Media outlet MVS Noticias published a written statement Tuesday night saying it does not form part of the Mexicoleaks platform in spite of being named as one of the participatory brands. "The use of our brand, without expressed authorization from its proprietaries, constitutes not only a grievance and offense, but a deception to society, since it implicates an unfortunate abuse of trust," reads the statement.

Nonetheless, if the website is able to properly function and win the trust of Mexicans, the timing of its arrival couldn't be worst for the nation's embattled political class which has been taking one hit after another, pummeled by a steady drumbeat of corruption and alleged conflict of interest scandals.

Terror in Coahuila: Up to 300 disappeared in Mexico’s forgotten massacre

Posted: 11 Mar 2015 08:22 PM PDT

Borderland Beat posted by DD
This story from Aljazeera was posted on BB Forum yesterday by Bjeff.

DD: Most of the basic facts in this story has been presented here on BB in the past, but I am posting it here because I think it important to keep reminding the public and main stream media of the scope of the problem and that the "missing 43" that has gotten so much media attention is only the tip of the iceberg.

Aljazeera editor's note:  Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series, "Terror in Coahuila." In light of the 43 Mexican students who went missing in the southern state of Guerrero last year, Al Jazeera is investigating earlier atrocities that occurred in the northern state of Coahuila but escaped the world's attention. Part two of this series explores links between the region's vast energy reserves and its so-called drug war, and part three will look at how violence and corruption in the state's prisons mirrored what was happening on the streets.   

By  Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez
on average six kidnapping happen every day!
 SALTILLO, Mexico — Anita had just returned from a chemotherapy session in Monterrey, an hourlong bus ride away, after waiting two hours for her pain to subside after the radiation. The following morning, another difficult journey awaited her. She and several other mothers were meeting with Rubén Moreira, the governor of the northern state of Coahuila, to discuss the case of their missing children.

"I'm a strong woman. I have to be strong and keep going until I die because I want to find my son," Anita said while slowly eating a bowl of vegetable soup at a local restaurant. The temperature at the eatery was pleasant, but Anita remained bundled up in her coat and a winter hat to cover her head, bald from the chemotherapy. "I'm a bit cold, but it doesn't matter. The heart is colder when you're missing a son."



After 43 poor students from Ayotzinapa Normal School, a teachers' training college in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero, went missing in September, mass demonstrations across the country called for their return. Police abducted the 43 students and handed them over to a drug cartel to be executed. The killings were allegedly ordered by Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca, according to a series of confessions.

Besides unleashing a scandal of immense proportions, the case of the 43 missing students highlights the need to review the long list of victims of the war among drug cartels, which is most severe in northern states like Coahuila.

While the 43 Ayotzinapa students captured headlines around the world, atrocities in Coahuila two years earlier went virtually ignored — confined to oblivion by an information vacuum created by fear, impunity and government intimidation. Like Iguala, the violence in Coahuila is marked by collusion between authorities and criminal groups such that victims and residents are never quite clear who the perpetrators are. They are left with a sense of enormous complicity.

José Willibardo, 20, Anita's younger son, was violently abducted from their home on March 5, 2012. The gunmen who took him carried high-caliber arms and were guarded by local police. The testimony offered by one of José's older brothers, Luis Ángel, and two of his sisters-in-law states that José was dragged from his bedroom to a pickup truck that whisked him away.



"He is a good boy. He's 20 years old but has the body of a 15-year-old," said Anita. "But he wasn't a coward like the people who took him." She said the gunmen were merciless with José, who had no criminal record, because he refused to work for them as a hired assassin or kidnapper. She identified the man who directed the beating as one of José's childhood friends from Allende, a 20-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas.

The gunmen also abducted Luis Ángel. His pregnant wife told authorities that the gunmen handcuffed him and beat him unconscious before placing him in a second waiting car. The kidnappers then sped away.
Luis Ángel returned alive. The same police officers who supervised his kidnapping took him home, according to Anita, his legs and torso covered in burns, his ribs broken, his face disfigured. "Instead of tears, he was crying blood," she said.

His captors covered him in diesel fuel and lit him on fire after torturing him, Luis Ángel told his family. His mother bombarded him with distressed questions. "Please don't look for Wily any longer," he told her. "He's dead."

José's body has not been found.

The Zetas, a criminal enterprise originally formed by deserters from the Mexican army in the early 2000s, violently penetrated Coahuila in 2009, imposing a reign of terror through extortion, kidnapping, torture, disappearance and murder of civilians. Meanwhile, no government authority confronted them, explaining the violence as a war among cartels being waged for control of the border.

In March and April of 2011, the Zetas kept the northern municipalities of Allende, Piedras Negras, Nava, Zaragoza and Morelos — all close to the U.S. border — under constant attack. They fired their arms, set fire to several businesses and disappeared at least 300 people, according to testimony from residents. Gang members operated without a trace of military or civic intervention.

The majority of these cases happened in Allende, so that time referred to as the Allende Massacre.
Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. Armando Castilla, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia de Coahuila, says his publication was the first to report the case, in December 2013. In April of 2014, Allende's Mayor Luis Reynaldo Tapia Valadez told the national outlet La Jornada,

"There are approximately 300 [victims], but it's not out of the question that there are a few more."
It wasn't until January 2014 that the Coahuila government launched a formal investigation into the case. In December the state's attorney general, Homero Ramos Gloria, said the investigation found evidence of only 28 disappearances, not 300. The state says it does not know the status of another 1,808 missing people.
Coahuila authorities blamed the killings on Zetas leaders Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Ángel Treviño, known as Z-40, who allegedly carried out the attacks with his followers as revenge against Héctor Moreno and José Luis Gaytán Garza, former Zetas collaborators who testified against the group and benefited from the U.S. witness protection program. Zetas killed several of Gaytán Garza's and Moreno's family members and former employers.

But as with much of the violence in Mexico in recent years, police, military and civilian officials are often closely involved in the forced disappearances, kidnappings, torture and killing of thousands of citizens.
"There is no doubt that you could camouflage an attack by some politician as an assault by organized crime," said Castilla. "And the blame was always going to be placed on the criminals."



A girl arranges photographs of missing people at an altar during an event to commemorate the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances in Saltillo.
Daniel Becerril / Reuters / Landov
The official number of 1,808 disappeared in Coahuila is a hair-raising figure, more so because the majority of cases occurred in four years, since 2009. The real figure is unknown, but it likely far exceeds the official number, said Jorge Verástegui, founder of United Front for Coahuila's Disappeared, or Fundec.

"What I can say with certainty is that, in all the cases, the disappearances occurred with the consent or participation of some element of the state," said Verástegui.

Bishop Raúl Vera represents Coahuila's strongest voice against corruption, which he railed against as bishop of Guerrero state — where the Ayotzinapa students went missing — until 1994. For years he has pointed to the collusion between government authorities and organized crime.

"These disappearances in Coahuila are committed by police," he said. "I can't explain exactly why people disappear here, but a lot of it has to do with money. But above all, it's due to police conspiracies."

 Information vacuum

During the first national march organized to protest the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, an estimated 2,000 people took to the streets of Saltillo — the biggest protest in the city's history.
Verástegui thinks the large turnout is a result of the intense media scrutiny raised by the Ayotzinapa case.

"It's great to see people express themselves, but here there are more than 2,000 disappeared, and nobody seems to be aware of it," he said at a march in early December protesting the second anniversary of President Enrique Peña Nieto's inauguration.

As students and rights activists called for the president's resignation and for information on the whereabouts of the 43 missing students, not a single voice could be heard calling for justice for Coahuila's disappeared or the governor's resignation.

Vera agrees that an information vacuum helped keep the Coahuila disappearances hidden from the national consciousness, unlike the Iguala case. But he says there is another fundamental factor: The Iguala victims are students, and the government could not tie them to organized crime or guerrilla groups. In Coahuila that was a constant. Authorities not only were implicated in the disappearances but also discouraged any form of official complaint.

"If someone went to the public ministry to lodge a complaint, he was told, 'Why the complaint? That probably happened because you were involved with organized crime,'" said Ariana García, a family counselor in Piedras Negras. "There was an implicit threat in that and a criminalization of the victim."

In the restaurant, Anita said she was diagnosed with to breast cancer three months ago. Her doctor told her that the profound pain and anguish of losing her son may have contributed to her health woes.

Her son Luis Ángel was detained by police in July after being violently abducted from home and taken to a municipal jail, where he was tortured. This time, Anita immediately called a lawyer, which she believes saved his life.

"There was no investigation this time, just as there is no effort to find my younger son," she said. "The government just hopes I die, that the cancer kills me, so as to bury my son's case."
-This article was translated from Spanish by Alfonso Serrano

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