Borderland Beat |  |
- Detained Mexican ActivistNestora Salgado to Be Freed
- 'El Wicked', killer of activist Marisela Escobedo, dies in prison
- Brother of Candidate for Mayor of Coyuca, Guerrero Arrested, Wanted by U.S.
| Detained Mexican ActivistNestora Salgado to Be Freed Posted: 31 Dec 2014 10:39 PM PST Detained community police leader and activist, Nestora Salgado, is to be released, according to legislators.  For those of you who are not familiar with the story of Nestora, here is a little background excerpted from the Forum article. To read the entire article go to the Forum hyperlink above. At first, the 41-year-old mother of three was, in the words of a supporter, "a sensation" in her mountainous Guerrero homeland, where she returned recently after 20 years in the United States. As she led this remote town in an uprising against vicious criminals, she was fierce, confident, and charismatic. "She had more right to be the leader because she has more guts than any man," said villager Marisela Jimenez. On the day in October when Olinala (her hometown) rebelled, it was Salgado who commandeered a police patrol car and used its megaphone to call people into the streets. "Leave your fear at home! Come out!"  And, as church bells tolled in solidarity, they came out, by the thousands. Within days, they had expelled many of the crooks, villagers say. But her adopted American "can-do" met a Mexican "can't-be." Today, Salgado sits in a Mexican penitentiary, far from her home and her people, accused of kidnapping and guilty, certainly, of having run afoul of a clash of cultures, politics and generations-old clan rivalries.  The name of Salgado's hometown, Olinala, means "place of earthquakes" in the Nahuatl language. By bus, it would take hours to get there from the nearest city, if there were buses. But few buses go. The single paved road in and out of Olinala looks as though a giant chewed its edges and took big bites out of bends where rock slides can obliterate the pathway in a matter of minutes. Salgado left this place long ago. Already a mother of two at age 20, she followed her then-husband to the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, worked hard as a waitress, had another child, divorced, remarried, ended up in Seattle and became a U.S. citizen. Always tough-minded, relatives say, she learned about basic civil rights and how to demand them, and the potential power of women. She began trips back home, staying longer each time, taking donated money and clothing to neighbors, building a house, room by room, and making plans to settle permanently. The Guerrero she returned to, however, had changed. Los Rojos had taken over. Los Rojos — the Reds — were a thuggish branch of one of the bigger drug cartels taking up positions through central Mexico. During the last couple of years, they managed to terrorize Olinala with small numbers of outlaws who, according to many in the town, had the protection of corrupt police and recently elected politicians. The catalyst for the uprising was the Oct. 27 funeral of a taxi driver who, after refusing to pay extortion money to Los Rojos, had been kidnapped and killed. As townspeople buried the man, a rumor flew among the mourners that another cabbie had been kidnapped. Passions were high. Authorities were doing nothing. The town rebelled, thousands pouring into the streets, led by Nestora Salgado.  "The people here did not know how to defend themselves. She was the first to take charge. She commanded respect." It was a giddy moment, by all accounts, with most of the townspeople united about the need to defend themselves. "Fear and necessity motivate us," Salgado told an interviewer before her arrest. "We were fed up with authorities not doing anything." She knew some of the risks: "Do not squash us like cockroaches," she warned the government. Guerrero has a long tradition of legally recognized community policing under rules for indigenous populations that were enacted largely in response to a 1995 massacre of peasants by state security forces. There are specific requirements and restrictions: Their guns must be single-shot rifles and low-caliber pistols  Salgado and her supporters said they were availing themselves of those rules for indigenous pueblos to form a community police force under what is formally known as the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities, or CRAC. Other towns across Guerrero followed suit. That summer (2013) , Salgado and her group arrested three teenage girls and accused them of dealing cocaine for their narco boyfriends. They sent the girls to a detention center at Paraiso. Then she arrested a politically connected City Hall official and two associates, accusing them of stealing a cow. The three men were detained after the people who had been transporting the cow were killed in an ambush. That arrest was probably the last straw. Salgado's allies insist that each time they turned a suspect over to government officials, he or she was immediately released. State authorities sent in the army to free the three cow theft suspects and arrest Salgado and 30 of her associates. It was late August; within hours, she was accused of kidnapping three adults and three minors (the girls, who were also freed) and transported to a federal penitentiary in Nayarit. "I have nothing against the lady," Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre said at the time. "What I cannot permit, as governor … is people taking justice in their own hands. We cannot live by the law of the jungle."
Aguirre has since resigned as Governor of Guerrero in the wake of the disclosures of government corruption that has come out during the social movement of unrest and protests that have developed after the "Iguala Massacre". Only 2 people have been allowed to visit Nestora while she has been in prison, her sister and mother. And they were allowed only a 40 minute visit after traveling 40 hours on a bus to get there. And that was only after the US Embassy intervened with Mexican authorities requesting that the visit be allowed (intervention was because she is a US naturalized citizen). Nestora has not been forgotten and the reason for her purported imminent release may be because the protesters all over Mexico and internationally have included the release of her, Dr. Mireles and other political prisoners in their demands for justice for the "missing 43". Whatever the reason, the Guerrero state government has promised to terminate legal proceedings against community police leader and social activist, Nestora Salgado, before the year ends, according to legislators of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The legislators say they are confident that Salgado, community elected commander of the Regional Coordination of Communal Authorities – Community Police or CRAC in the predominantly indigenous community of Olinala, Guerrero will be set free in the coming hours. Last week, a committee of representatives met with Guerrero State authorities and cabinet members of the state's interim governor, Rogelio Ortega, to negotiate the release of Salgado and another 14 members of the CRAC, detained on August 21, 2013. In an interview with La Jornada Rep. Roberto Lopez Suarez (PRD), member of the human rights commission in Mexico's House of Representatives, said "The commitment of the governor is that Nestora will obtain her freedom without condition, and the rest of the 14 leaders of the community police that are in prison will also obtain their freedom in coming weeks." The federal government had already dropped charges against Salgado. Salgado, a naturalized U.S. citizen and defender of indigenous rights, was detained without an arrest warrant, accused of kidnapping, after she and other members of the CRAC detained local politicians and municipal police suspected of having ties with organized crime. The CRAC, formed in 1995, is a legally and constitutionally recognized innovative system of participatory justice and policing based on indigenous "uses and customs." The more than 18-year-old project operates in more than 128 indigenous and mestizo communities of the Costa Chica and la Montaña regions of Guerrero  | ||
| 'El Wicked', killer of activist Marisela Escobedo, dies in prison Posted: 31 Dec 2014 08:31 PM PST Lucio written with information from Borderland Beat archives of Havana and Chivis and facebook  The murderer of activist Marisela Escobedo, Jose Enrique Jiménez Zavala, "The Wicked", died of a massive heart attack, the Attorney General's Office reported.  The prosecutor said in a statement this afternoon. " in the field CPR was applied, then an ECP (electrocardiogram) confirmed that there were no vital signs,"he added. Once the prosecutors testified to the facts, the body of the inmate was taken to the Medical Examiner about the 1 AM hours of the morning for autopsy could be conducted.  El Wicked is in the above image and below is Marisela after the court ruling, setting her daughters killer free  Her teenaged daughter was tortured and killed by her boyfriend, Sergio Barraza Bocanegra, alias 'El Piwi' in Chihuahua in 2008. Marisela never gave up her fight for justice in her daughters case. Barraza Bocanegra confessed to her murder, and gave details to police. He was tried but incredulously, was found "not guilty" by a panel of judges. A devastated Marisela continued her fight and was doing so in December 2010 when she was gunned down, her assassination captured on video, in front of the government palace of Chihuahua.  'El Piwi' above Rubi below  El Piwi, Rubi's boyfriend, moved to Zacatecas after his release, where he married and allegedly continued his work with Los Zetas. He was killed in November, 2012, in clash occurring with elements of the Army , on a road linking the towns Joaquin Amaro and Tabasco. With the deaths of Sergio Barraza Bocanegra, and Jiménez Zavala, Marisela posthumously attained some level of justice. In the footage below, at around 1:30 you can see her being chased and eventually shot  | ||
| Brother of Candidate for Mayor of Coyuca, Guerrero Arrested, Wanted by U.S. Posted: 31 Dec 2014 12:25 PM PST As reported by Proceso  The brother of the PRD candidate for mayor, Cuauhtémoc Montúfar, and cousin of the sub-delegate of the SEDATU (Secretary of Agrarian, Territorial, and Urban Growth) in Guerrero, Erit Montúfar, is noted by the federal government for his alleged nexus with a criminal gang known as "Las Moscas", led by the Ramiro brothers and Ricardo Torres, who are accused by the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) of being in charge of the collection and transfer of drugs from the Tierra Caliente region to southern United States. The criminal gang "Las Moscas" forms part of the structure of the group of "Los Caballeros Templarios", who has under their control five of the nine municipalities of the Tierra Caliente of Guerrero: Pungarabato, Coyuca de Catalán, Zirándaro, Tlapehuala y Ajuchitlán del Progreso. The rest of the territories are dominated by the group "La Familia", which has their bastion in Arecelia and the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, seated in San Miguel Totolapan. In the communication emitted on Tuesday, the CNS confirmed the detention of six armed suspects in the municipality of Coyuca de Catalán. Although they did not specify the location and time of the operation, official reports consulted by Apro mentioned that the police action took place before dawn on Saturday the 27th in a cock fighting arena in the town of Tarétaro, belonging to the municipality of Coyuca de Catalán, located along the highway that connect to the resort of Zihuatanejo. During the action, the federal agents decommissioned four firearms (two rifles and two pistols), as well as 11 ammunition clips, 205 rounds of ammunition and three vehicles, two of which were armored. They also secured 22 IOUs of "victims of extortion", eight cellphones, six packets of marijuana and six bags of a substance with characteristics similar to heroin, the official communication indicated. The six men arrested are: Zaqueo Peñaloza Gómez, Amadeo Domínguez, Rodolfo Díaz, Isaí Iturbide, Francisco Madero Benítez and Ramiro Montúfar Burgos, who is wanted by the United States. "Ramiro Montúfar has an arrest warrant in the United States of America for crimes against health", the bulletin of the CNS pointed out. The detainees and the seized objects were put at the disposition of the Agent of the Ministery Public of the Federation ascribed to the Deputy Attorney Specialized in the Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO). Yesterday, Apro made known that the an internal report of the federal government indicated that another alleged criminal known as Euclides "El Quilles" Camacho Goicoechea, brother of the former mayor of Coyuca de Catalán and current local representative of the PRD party, Elí Camacho, escaped the federal operation. The Camacho Goicoechea brothers have been pointed out on repeated occasions for their alleged nexus with the criminal group "Los Caballeros Templarios". Additionally, Elí Camacho has publicly declared that in his path for the municipal administration he had to pact with drug traffickers to be able to work. The federal operation was conducted after the substitute governor, Rogelio Ortega Martínez, inaugurated the XXVI edition of the Feria del Oro in the municipal seat of Coyuca de Catalán on the morning of Friday the 26th. Ortega Martínez was with politicians connected with drug trafficking in the Tierra Caliente Region, such as the current federal representative of the PRD party, Catalino Duarte Ortuño. The former mayor of Zirándaro and former local representative is signaled by the federal government as a cousin of María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of the former mayor of Iguala, José Luís Abarca Velázquez,, both accused for their alleged responsibility in the massacre and disappearance of normalistas of Ayotzinapathree months ago in Iguala. Also present at the popular festival was the now detained Ramiro Montúfar and Euclides "El Quilles" Camacho, both going about mounted on imported horses that have a market value of over a million pesos, in front of a group that interprets corridos.  |
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