A Nation on the Brink Mexico's
July 5 Legislative Elections

Part 2 of a three part series (Part 1)

Michael Collins and Kenneth Thomas

Mexico approaches this election confronting the rise of a narcostate, growing economic chaos, social inequalities, citizen disenchantment--or worse

As Mexico approaches the July 5^th mid-term elections, the nation confronts two critical problems. An expanding an increasingly violent "war on drugs" threatens to convert Mexico into a narcostate. This will lead to the inevitable compromise of the members of all political parties. An expanding economic crisis in the wake of NAFTA and the global financial situation, threatens private companies, the Central Bank, and government programs -- as well as the income and employment of most citizens. Rising social inequality and a workforce crisis mean that many, perhaps most, Mexicans live in conditions parallel to those of sub-Saharan Africa.

Disenchantment and dismay reign. The volatile political situation foreshadows a change in the air. Close to 80% of Mexicans voted in mid-term elections in the 90's. Tomorrow, turnout is expected to be less that 50%. An attempted "no confidence" vote on the government looms. Members of the various parties engage in what has been called "fratricide." And there is talk -- talk which hearkens back to the Revolution of 1910 -- that it's time for the people to ignore the major parties and take matters into their own hands.

The Old Guard

How are the political parties responding?

PAN. After securing the Presidency in 2006, the ruling National Action Party (PAN) launched a domestic "law and order" war on Mexico's drug cartels. It is unclear that this war has achieved its stated results. Shootouts in Acapulco, jail breaks with guards acting like teamsters for jailed narco traffickers, and the occasional physical and sexual assault by out of control troops are becoming the norm. Mexico seems transformed into a Sam Peckenpah movie set but the bullets are real and the death toll is staggering. A least 15,000 have been killed since 2007, despite the government's attempts to "disappear" the casualties on all sides. Recent reports suggest that many municipal and state governments have been infiltrated during this "war." Well above half the Mexican people doubt Calderon’s campaign will have any positive effect.

As well, possibly as a result of human rights abuses by federal troops, the narcotraffickers and their political apparatus have come to enjoy a level of popular support. One message left by the cartels may express this simply: "We do not kill women and children. We have honor."

PAN's proposals for economic growth and social improvement have been couched in terms of the development of free markets under the NAFTA model and the efficiency of private sector enterprises and projects. More recently, in the face of economic crisis, President of the Republic Filipe Calderon has begun to speak in a mystical rhetoric concerning the economy and the role of the people. For example:

"El mandatario llamó a generar los acuerdos que permitan lograr el desarrollo y generar los empleos 'que tanto necesitamos', y argumentó que "pensar en México, creer en México y trabajar por México debe ser la ruta de todos, más allá de nuestras diferencias'".

"The leader called for the creation of agreements which will generate development and the jobs 'which we all need,' and asked 'that we think of Mexico, believe in Mexico and work for a Mexico which will be the path for all, greater than all our differences.'" Dec. 18, 2008

While the terms here echo -- and may be meant to undercut -- ­­the PAN’s 2006 campaign "Coalition For the Good of All," it remains unclear what constitutes real meaning for the phrases "agreements which will generate development," "believing in Mexico" or how that belief and "the path for all" will fix the economic crisis or make parties that can't even achieve internal.

However, the PAN has also recently secured multi-billion lines of credit from United States Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These will be used to bail out failed Mexican firms. In addition, as President Calderon has promised, the funds will provide for social, infrastructural, and educational projects.

According to polls, the PAN is expected to lose 35 seats in the Chamber of Deputies from its current 170.

PRD. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has a different take on the war on drugs and the economy. A key PRD leader in the Senate called for the legalization of recreational drugs that fuel the war on drugs. The party has also shied away from supporting the use of the Army in street battles with drug cartel gunmen.

PRD is the only party that has attempted to chart a broad-based, well defined socio-economic program. Before the 2006 Presidential campaign, PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador assembled a team of experts to prepare an economic operating plan for Mexico. The plan included items such as mandatory reductions in the federal budget, negotiated cutbacks in entitlement programs such as social security and pensions, and reform of PeMex, as well as a program of educational and infrastructural investments.

After losing the controversial election in 2006, PRD presidential candidate AMLO outlined his vision for Mexican development. He included input from the six month's of protests in Mexico City after the July 2006 election, and attempted to implement the project by a coalition in the Congress. A later collapse of the coalition, as well as political infighting, quashed implementation of this program and left the PRD in a tenuous position for future elections.

PRD is expected to lose forty of its 126 seats in the Chamber of Deputies

PRI. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico from 1929 through 2000. Its rule has been characterized both by socialist and leftist tendencies, and the enforcement of a command economy with heavy traces of crony capitalism and tight controls over access to media, capital, public services -- and political office. Under such a "one-party" system, the PRI typically gained 75% of the vote. During a forty year period, PRI accomplished the "Mexican Miracle," which increased economic production six fold while the population only doubled.

The PRI has frequently been criticized as "wishy washy" in the war on drugs. PRI has advocated better implementation of law and policy. At the same time, the party has criticized for possibly having deep ties to the cartels trafficking in narcotics.

Economically, it is difficult to understand PRI's platform or approach. It's also hard to tell how the voters see PRI's economic policy. Historically, the PRI fell from influence during pressures for openings for foreign development of the Mexican economic system. More specifically, the party took the blame for the post-1988 failures of US-led "open market" economics. Yet PRI remains a party closely identified by many with the nation itself.

Pre election polls strongly suggest that the PRI will be the biggest apparent "winner" on Sunday, more than doubling its current 106 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

"Nullification!?!" A forth major candidate on July 5 will be "voto nulo," (null vote). Voters are urged to deliberately void their ballot to cast a vote of "no confidence." The recipients are those who run a political system that continually fails to accomplish anything. The "null" option has also been described as the best statement possible of disillusionment and distrust with the electoral system and institutions. Voto nulo is the sleeper in this election (see part 3 of this series on Election Day). It's was pegged at 11% in a poll just reported on June 30th.

Some heavy crazyness from the Glenn Beck show:

Michael Sheuer, former head of the Bin Laden unit at CIA under Clinton and Bush, appeared on Glenn Beck's show to criticize Obama's use of unarmed National Guard soldiers to police the Mexican border.

And he dropped this little gem, "the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

The right really has utterly lost it. They're openly screeching and begging for a new Islamic terror attack so they can clamp down like they did after 9/11 except even more and better. And they feel it must be done to save us from those awful awful brown-skinned hordes.

Utterly surreal.

Cynics like me will tell you that it really doesn't matter that much who's in the White House, but I'd wager to say that the Honduran coupsters and their opposition would tell you different.

Apparently, U.S. officials are talking to with ex-Honduran President Zelaya even as they have led the way on the OAS declaring a 72 hour ultimatum to the coupsters:

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya met senior US officials on the sidelines of an Organization of American States meeting, on the eve of his departure Wednesday for Panama, US officials said.

The White House and the State Department said that the deposed leader met late Tuesday with Tom Shannon, US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and Dan Restrepo, the top Latin America advisor on the national security council.

"Shannon reiterated the US commitment to seeing a return to the constitutional order in Honduras," a US official said, of the meeting on the fringes of the OAS in Washington.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs noted the 72-hour deadline imposed by the OAS for Zelaya's reinstatement following a coup on Sunday.

The U.S. Ambassador to Honduras
has announced our refusal to recognize any other government of Honduras: "we refuse to recognize any Government of Honduras other than the constitutionally legitimate government of President Zelaya."

As a consequence, Zalaya has agreed to post-pone his return to Honduras for 72 hours.

Rafael Alegria, Via Campesina International leader has spoken about the situation in the rural parts of the country:

LC: Are you experiencing repression?

RA: Yes, there are battalions placed in strategic zones across the country that don't allow protesters to travel, protesters against the coup. In the region of Quebracho, in the eastern part of the country, the military shot out the tires of eleven buses heading for Tegucigalpa.

They are recruiting young people, ages 12-30 for military service. We don't know what the purpose is, but they are inciting people saying there could be a war. They are also calling out reservists and persons retired from the armed forces... This is the situation we are seeing now.

There are some individuals from the military who want to talk to the popular movement but there is a decision on the part of the social movements that as long as constitutional order and democratic process is not reinstated, we cannot support or dialogue with people who form part of the coup in Honduras.

LC: There have been reports that some battalions have broken with the coup: Is this true? What is the position of the army?

RA: There are battalions that are refusing to repress the population and basically are against the coup, but they're not saying this publicly. We believe that it isn't the whole army that is against the people of Honduras, but the military command (Estado Mayor), in complicity with the groups holding de facto power who have carried out the coup. These are the sectors that oppose democratization and citizen participation in the country.

Andrew Sullivan has been running reports from Honduran supporters of the coup. Al Giordano claims these reports are coming from the oligarchy. More from Al in the full entry:

A Three Part Series Part 1

In the wake of Felipe Calderon’s surprising electoral win over Andrés Manual Lopez-Obrador in 2006 Presidential Elections, demonstrators protesting alleged election fraud occupied the center of Mexico City from July through December. On three occasions, crowds of over one million were reported. Image: Erasmo Lopez

The left-leaning President of Honduras was ousted in a military coup this weekend. From the NYT:

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was ousted by the army on Sunday, capping months of tensions over his efforts to lift presidential term limits.

In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Mr. Zelaya, a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, angrily denounced the coup as illegal. “I am the president of Honduras,” he insisted at the airport in San José, Costa Rica, still wearing his pajamas.

Later Sunday the Honduran Congress voted him out of office, replacing him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

The military offered no public explanation for its actions, but the Supreme Court issued a statement saying that the military had acted to defend the law against “those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution’s provisions.”

The coup has been denounced by: Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez (linkage courtesy of the Washington Times, nice one), UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Cuba, and the head of the Organization of American States.

Some analysis from Reuters:

The most serious immediate risk is that Chavez, who has championed a new wave of socialism across Latin America, takes military action. However, he has a history of making military threats and not following up on them.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist rebel who has aligned his country with Venezuela, called the coup "an act of terrorism" but has not threatened further action. Nicaragua borders Honduras.

Ecuador's left-wing President Rafael Correa said he would participate in military action only if his envoys are threatened.

One of the fascinating things about Latin America is the way variations on the same themes play out slightly differently in the various LatAm nations. Since the rise of Hugo Chavez there has been a flurry of left-leaning governments elected in Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras (Zelaya moved left AFTER being elected), Guatemala, Ecuador (even in Mexico, although Andrés Manuel López Obrador was never allowed to take office, he possibly got the most votes in the 2006 election).

The recent unrest in Guatemala and this apparently successful military coup in Honduras could be indications that the leftist wave has crested. The Peruvian elections in 2010 could test that thesis, or prove it wrong.

UPDATE: NarcoNews is reporting some alarming news retracted an earlier report:

Correction: News reports translated by Narco News on Monday that Honduran political leader Cesar Ham had been assassinated appear not to be accurate. This report says otherwise, that Ham is alive and well. We apologize for any confusion caused by our first report, and share in the world's relief that the reports we initially translated were inaccurate.

They insist that leftist leader and honduran Cesar Ham is alive and safe
by Chevige Gonzalez Marco, Aporrea

Luther Castillo, coordinator of Honduran social movements, in an interview with the Cuban television program Mesa Redonda, denied that the leader of the Democratic Unification Party, Cesar Ham, has been assassinated.

Castillo also denied that Ham has been detained and said that he remains in a secure location, faced with the possibility of repression by the coup leaders.

If this report is confirmed, it will mark an alarming shift in events. So far the Honduran coup has been free of some of the worst traits of the many 20th century Latin American coups. The military immediately surrendered power and there had been no casualties.

If Ham has indeed been murdered, this raises the stakes dramatically.

Phew. Glad Ham is alright. Not surprised that false information is finding its way onto Notimex, NarcoNews' source.

More analysis from Charles Lemos of MyDD in the full entry:

Elisabeth Malkin | Mexico City | June 28

NYT - The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the army on Sunday after pressing ahead with plans for a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election, in the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war.

Soldiers entered the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and disarmed the presidential guard early Sunday, military officials said. Mr. Zelaya’s private secretary, Eduardo Enrique Reina, confirmed the arrest.

Mr. Zelaya flew into exile in Costa Rica, telling a local television station, “They are creating a monster they will not be able to contain.”

From World Politics Review:

Latin America is now home to some of the world's most fearsome third-generation gangs. Central American maras such as MS-13 and M-18 have tens of thousands of members spread across several countries. The First Capital Command (PCC) of Sao Paulo, with perhaps 100,000 members, dominates the slums and prisons of South America's largest city and maintains alliances with mafia groups throughout South America. In Mexico, the drug trade has given rise to groups like Los Zetas, a relatively small organization that has nonetheless carved out lucrative trafficking and distribution networks, while cultivating relations with gangs in Central America and the U.S..

Third-generation gangs in Latin America share several key characteristics. They all participate in a broad range of criminal enterprises -- among them drug trafficking, human smuggling, kidnapping, extortion, arms dealing, contract killings, and money laundering. They are well-organized, with top-level bosses overseeing multi-tiered structures that operate according to a division of labor. They are also technologically sophisticated, using Web sites for recruiting and propaganda purposes, as well as electronic surveillance to track and eliminate their rivals.

Above all, these gangs are extremely violent. They use a panoply of advanced weapons -- including rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices -- to strike with astounding brazenness and savagery. Torture, beheadings, assassinations, and even massacres of innocent civilians have become commonplace. Though often described as senseless or random, this violence, which invariably comes in response to government crackdowns on gang activity, in fact serves to intimidate the state -- and the population -- into allowing the gangs a free hand in pursuing their lucrative business dealings.

Across the region, gangs like the PCC, the maras, and the Zetas have now gone a step further, using violence to carve out geographic areas where the government is essentially powerless to intervene. In some cities, gang violence has become so intense that the authorities have effectively surrendered them to the gangs. Just as Cold War-era insurgents had their "liberated zones," the gangs now control sectors where they effectively "rule."

Along with violence, the use of corruption also plays an integral role in undermining state institutions. Latin American criminals have long used the formula of "plata o plomo" -- "money or bullets" -- to corrupt government officials. Third-generation gangs have become masters of this strategy. Confronted with the choice between an easy payout and a gruesome death, law enforcement personnel frequently opt for the former.

Consigning a market as large as recreational drugs to the black market is creating non-state actors who have the resources necessary to cut into the state's monopoly on violence. This genie is going to be a bitch to put back in the bottle.

Prohibition exponentially increased the resources of what had been relatively small time Italian and Jewish street gangs of labor sluggers, pimps and gamblers. Even after Prohibition was repealed, the gangs had enough financial resources to quickly diversify out of bootlegging and into labor racketeering on a mass scale, among other things.

The systematic corruption of the American Labor movement that began with Lepke Buchalter, Gurrah Shapiro, Tommy Lucchese arguably did as much to discredit the left as Stalinism did.

The timing was really tragic too, as American Labor only really came into its own in the 1930s after more than 50 years of crushing and violent struggle that left a string of martyrs we've since forgotten and gave the rest of us weekends, eight hour workdays, etc etc.

I shudder to think what fruit the current massive investment in criminal infrastructure will bear.

Tim Hirsch | Sao Paulo | June 26

BBC - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has approved a controversial bill allowing Amazon farmers to acquire an area of public land larger than France.

But the president vetoed some of the most contentious clauses that would have enabled absentee landlords and companies to benefit from the measure.

Smaller parcels of public land will be handed over for free, and larger ones at reduced or market rates.

Critics say it will amount to an amnesty for illegal land-grabbers.

The law is intended to end the chaotic state of land occupation in the Amazon.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers have no legal title over their land, with claims often dating back decades.

** Brazil's Lula says may seek presidency in 2014

June 26

BBC - Tensions are rising in Honduras after President Manuel Zelaya ignored a court order to reinstate the army chief.

Mr Zelaya fired Gen Romeo Vasquez after he refused to help with a referendum on constitutional change that could allow the president to seek a second term.

Both Congress and the courts have already deemed the planned referendum unlawful.

The Supreme Court ordered Gen Vasquez reinstated on Thursday but Mr Zelaya told crowds he refused to comply.

"We will not obey the Supreme Court," the president told cheering supporters in front of the presidential offices.

"The court, which only imparts justice for the powerful, the rich and the bankers, only causes problems for democracy," he said.

This is a fun one from the Christian Science Monitor:

Colombian drug traffickers' latest transport vehicle of choice, known as narcosubs or semisubmersibles, are made to avoid detection. Once loaded with anywhere from four to 10 tons of cocaine, only about one foot of the homemade vessels rises above water as they make the 15-day, 1,500-mile journey from Colombia's southern Pacific coast to the shores of Mexico.

Forty-two semisubs have been seized since 1993 – with three nabbed in the first week of June alone. But laws have not yet caught up with the drug traffickers.

It is still legal in Colombia to build, transport, or possess unregistered semisubmersible vessels. So, if no drugs are found in a seizure on land or at sea, there is no crime. But a bill that gives authorities the tools to prosecute anyone linked to the subs is soon to become law. Prison sentences for those convicted range from six to 14 years.

The bill follows a new law passed last fall in the United States that outlaws unregistered subs in international waters, regardless of whether they can be shown to have been carrying drugs. Typically, crews that are detected by naval authorities open an emergency valve built into the subs to scuttle the vessels and their cargo. With the evidence of cocaine at the bottom of the sea, officials had been obliged by international law to treat the crew as castaways.
...
Once the hatch is open, the nauseating smell of diesel fuel wafts from the cramped cabin where usually four men make the two-week journey: a captain, a machinist, a navigator, and a cargo representative who makes sure the cocaine reaches the buyer on the other end.

For the duration of the journey they eat canned sausages and tuna and drink Gatorade or Red Bull energy drinks. To relieve themselves, they must climb out of the cabin and tie themselves to the sub so they don't fall into the sea.

For big-time traffickers, the subs are the most efficient way to get their product to market. A single sub that slips through the dragnets can carry as much as 10 tons of cocaine. At a price of about $25,000 per kilo, the subs may carry as much as $250 million worth of merchandise.

The use of subs started being explored by some of Colombia's top drug runners in the mid-1990s, says Montoya. The so-called "go-fast" boats that tried to outrun Coast Guard patrols were being caught. The go-fasts had replaced cocaine-laden planes when they became too easy to detect.

This just illustrates the wack-a-mole aspect of the farcical "War on Drugs." The laws of the market are pretty irresistible, when demand has money, supply will find a way.

June 23

AFP - US President Barack Obama on Tuesday declined to apologize for a past CIA interventions and alleged coup attempts in Latin America, after talks with Chilean leader Michele Bachelet.

"I'm interested in going forward, not looking backward," said Obama, who has pledged to reinvigorate ties with Latin America, after what his advisors believe was neglect during the previous Bush administration.

"I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world. I think there have been times where we've made mistakes," Obama said in the Oval Office.

"But I think that what is important is looking at what our policies are today, and what my administration intends to do in cooperating with the region."

Obama was asked by a Chilean journalist whether he would apologize for past CIA operations in the region, like an apparent US-backed coup attempt in Chile in 1973.

Sibylla Brodzinsky | Tumaco, Colombia | June 23

CSM - In Colombia, drug war targets 'narcosubs'
Traffickers have long run semi-submersibles up the Pacific coast to Mexico. New laws aim to crack down on the vessels' manufacture.

Lt. Oscar Calderón had been at sea with his men for four days, waiting. They watched the waves as they patrolled Colombia's Pacific coastline. On the fourth night, a US surveillance plane picked up a signal. The cocaine submarine it had detected was on the move.

Lieutenant Calderón peered into the moonless night to try to pinpoint the vessel, which rides just below the sea's surface.

Every so often the surveillance team would radio in the latest position of the sub, but the men at sea saw nothing.

Colombian drug traffickers' latest transport vehicle of choice, known as narcosubs or semisubmersibles, are made to avoid detection. Once loaded with anywhere from four to 10 tons of cocaine, only about one foot of the homemade vessels rises above water as they make the 15-day, 1,500-mile journey from Colombia's southern Pacific coast to the shores of Mexico.

"It could have been 50 meters in front of me, and even with night-vision goggles and everything, I saw nothing," Calderón remembers. But the surveillance team led Calderón and his men into a small jungle-covered estuary south of this coastal Pacific city, and what they found there made the night-long hunt worth the wait.

Paris | June 23

Reuters - Signals from the flight data recorders of the Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, Le Monde newspaper said on its website on Tuesday.

An Air France spokeswoman said she could not confirm the report. The Transport Ministry and the air accident investigation office could not be reached immediately for comment.

Le Monde said French naval vessels had picked up a weak signal from the flight recorders and that a mini submarine had been dispatched on Monday to try and find the "black boxes" on the bottom of the rugged ocean floor.

UPDATE: Air France denies black box detected

June 23

BBC - Seven police officers have been killed in an ambush by Farc rebels in the south-western province of Cauca, authorities in Colombia say.

Officials said the attack was part of a wider battle in which at least 25 rebels were killed when the Colombian airforce bombed their base.

A regional Farc commander accused of several car bombings in the city of Cali is thought to be among the dead.

President Alvaro Uribe has weakened the Farc since he took office in 2002.

But the left-wing rebel movement is still active in large areas of rural Colombia.

Police said a local rebel commander known as "El Enano", or "The Midget", appeared to be among the guerrillas killed in the fighting near the town of Buenos Aires, in the province of Cauca.

This won't surprise anyone who's paying attention, from Narco News:

On June 5, the Peruvian National Police (PNP) massacred up to fifty unarmed Awajún and Wampi indigenous people in Bagua who had blockaded roads in protest of land reforms related to a recently implemented US-Peru free trade agreement. Witnesses report that the PNP shot live ammunition from the ground, rooftops, and police helicopters. Anywhere between 61-400 people are reported missing following the attack.

Narco News has discovered that US drug war money is all over the massacre. The US government has not only spent the past two decades funding the helicopters used in the massacre, it also trained the PNP in "riot control."
...
The Peruvian National Police is a militarized police force and Peru's only national police force, meaning that Peru lacks a civilian federal police force. For this reason, the militarized PNP carries out regular policing functions in Peru, such as maintaining the peace and providing public security. Furthermore, "Counternarcotics operations in Peru are implemented primarily through the Ministry of the Interior by the Peruvian National Police," according to the US Government Accounting Office (GOA, now known as the Government Accountability Office). For this reason, the PNP receives a significant chunk of US drug war aid to Peru.

Basic details of the Bagua massacre such as exactly which police departments participated and how many indigenous protesters died remain unavailable two weeks after the massacre. Peru's La Primera newspaper--the only news outlet to provide information on specific police departments that participated in the massacre--writes, "The police operation was carried out by about 600 armed police from the Dinoes [Special Operations Department] and from the Anti-Drugs Department (DINANDRO), who shot head-on at protesters' bodies." Dinoes and DINANDRO are two forces within the Peruvian National Police.

Of particular interest is the participation of the anti-drugs police force, known as DINANDRO in its Spanish abbreviation. Between 2002 and 2007, the United States spent over $79 million on the PNP. 2002-2004 funds were for "training and field exercises to enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct basic road and riverine exercises, as well as to provide security for eradication teams in outlying areas. These enhanced law enforcement efforts will require additional vehicles, communications, field gear, emergency/safety reaction gear, and drug detector canines." In 2007, the US government's funding for the DIRANDRO was expanded to "enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct advanced road interdiction, riot control, greater security for eradication teams, and interdiction in hard-core areas." [emphasis added]. In 2007 the US government also debuted the first of at least four "Pre-Police Schools" for students that have completed secondary school education (that is, these schools are an alternative to high school). The "Pre-Police Scho

The fiasco in the Amazon is beginning to seriously impact the poll numbers of Peruvian President Alan Garcia.

Caracas | June 21

Reuters - President Hugo Chavez has vowed to shake up the rules governing intellectual property rights on medicines and other products in Venezuela, the socialist's latest move against the private sector.

"A song is intellectual property, but an invention or a scientific discovery should be knowledge for the world, especially medicine," Chavez said late on Saturday.

"That a laboratory does not allow us to make a medicine because they have the patent, no, no, no," Chavez said.

Chavez, who has nationalized many Venezuela industries and is critical of the private sector, ordered his trade minister to analyze the patent rules in the OPEC nation.

From the AP:

When Mario Anguiano successfully ran for mayor of Colima three years ago, no one much cared that his brother and cousin were in prison on drug charges.

Now that he's running for governor of Colima state, a banner appeared in the capital city mocking Anguiano's family ties by linking him to the Zetas, a gang of drug hit men:

"Welcome to Colima! Soon to be territory of our boss of bosses, Mario Anguiano Moreno. The Zetas support you, and we are with you until death."

The drug war is playing in Mexico elections like never before. Usually a taboo subject hiding in plain sight, drug-trafficking didn't figure prominently in political campaigns, even in places like the Pacific coast state of Colima, where Manzanillo port is a major transshipment point for U.S.-bound cocaine.

Anguiano's Institutional Revolutionary Party denies any involvement with drug traffickers and accused the ruling National Action Party of hanging the banner - which it denies.

But in the July 5 midterm elections for 500 congressional seats, six governors and 565 mayors, President Felipe Calderon's party, known as the PAN, is aggressively painting opponents as soft on drugs and itself as the only party gutsy enough to take on the cartels.

Meanwhile the Christian Science Monitor does some stenography for opponents of the Obama Administration's campaign to slow the export of guns from the U.S. to Mexico:

"This is just factoid laundering of the GAO," says Dave Kopel, a fellow at the conservative Independence Institute in Golden, Colo. "Basically, because Hillary Clinton or some Mexican cabinet official says something is true, then it's officially true."

The effort by some Congressional Democrats, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to bring the issue to light, says Vizzard, is largely to placate Mexican counterparts, who are seeing a burst of violence as police attempt to tamp down drug cartels. He adds that it's also an opportunity under a Democratic US president to make an international point about America's role in the Mexico bloodshed.

"Washington has to pacify the Mexican government, and, rightfully, the Mexican government is pointing at the US saying, 'You guys keep talking about our drugs going to the US. What about your guns coming down here?' " says Vizzard, adding, "And they legitimately have a beef."

After weeks of violent protests, the Peruvian Congress voted to repeal a series of Presidential decrees that would have opined the Amazon to commercial exploitation:

The decrees, issued by Mr. García as part of a regulatory overhaul for a trade deal with the United States, were intended to open parts of jungle to investment and allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to attain permits for petroleum, biofuels and hydroelectric projects.

Other disputed decrees by Mr. García remain in effect, raising the prospect of new protests. Still, Mr. García acknowledged in a speech late Wednesday that his government had made a crucial mistake by not including native groups in discussions over the decrees before he issued them.

Terry Wade and Marco Aquino, writing for Reuters, say this is a big deal:

Peru's indigenous movement, which was dormant for years, has burst to life and could become a powerful political force like those in Andean neighbors Ecuador and Bolivia.

A coalition of tribes in Peru's Amazon rain forest led months of blockades that turned into bloody clashes with police and forced Congress to overturn two laws that indigenous leaders said would put ancestral lands in the hands of foreign mining and oil companies.

President Alan Garcia's cabinet chief, Yehude Simon, said this week he will resign for botching the negotiations with tribes and failing to avert the violence that killed at least 34 people earlier this month.

In a classic case of sunlight being the antidote for repressive regimes, the photographic evidence of state brutality against protesters just came out today. The photos are horrific.

Laura Carlson ads:

The recent clash between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian national police sends a powerful message from the Amazon jungle straight to Washington. The enormous social, political, and environmental costs of the free trade model are no longer acceptable.

In addition to the dead, hundreds remain missing and reports that the police threw the bodies of the protestors in the river to hide the real death toll have begun to circulate. Survival International and Amazon Watch have deplored the violence, the subsequent crackdown on NGOs in Peru, and the role that the free-trade agreement played in the crisis.

In May 2004 the U.S. and Peruvian governments began negotiations for a free trade agreement and signed the bilateral agreement on December 8, 2005. The signing provoked the first round of widespread protests, led by small farmers. Demonstrations against the agreement continued up through the signing of the ratified version by former president Bush and President Garcia in January of this year; four protestors were killed in 2008.

No doubt exists about the connection between the protests, the executive decrees, and the U.S. free trade agreement. In his televised mea culpa, Garcia began by stating that the repudiated measures were designed to eliminate illegal logging and informal mining (by legalizing it in the hands of transnationals, according to critics) and was "a demand of ecologist and progressive sectors in the North American Congress in negotiations to pass the Free Trade Agreement".

Quite a news two-fer for Bolivia today.

First the UK Guardian asks if Boliva can really be trusted to manage its new found wealth in Lithium:

Foreign companies are afraid to deal with a government that confiscates assets and rips up contracts, said Carlos Alberto López, a former energy minister and consultant with Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Bolivia's ­ideological face does not square with business and commercial realities. I doubt lithium's potential will be realised in the short or medium term." Pessimists fear a fiasco: carmakers lacking batteries to power electric vehicles and Bolivia, one of the continent's poorest countries, losing an opportunity to develop. President Evo Morales, a former llama herder and trade union leader, has a different fear: that western multinationals will suck the wealth of Salar de Uyuni like capitalist vampires. Morales swept to power in 2005 promising to end 500 years of plunder. Lithium is a test case. "The government of Bolivia will never give away control of this natural resource," he said. He acknowledges, however, that a foreign partner is needed.

The government is talking to France's Bollore Group, South Korea's LG Group and Japan's Sumitomo and Mitsubishi. Bollore has been asked to join the government's scientific commission on lithium, suggesting it has the edge.

To me, as someone with only the most basic understanding of Bolivia's history, its pretty damn obvious why they are leery of giving rapacious multinationals unfettered access to their vast Lithium resources (believed to be half the world's supply). For hundreds of years, the Spanish conquerers used Bolivian slave labor to mine vast fortunes in silver from the Andres mountains. None of that wealth was invested in Bolivia. Rather it was squandered in centuries of religious wars in Europe. Evo Morales is only doing his job in trying to make sure that Bolivia gets a fair share of the wealth they own.

Been to West Virginia lately? The wholesale mountaintop removal is just the latest chapter in a century and a half long tale of theft of a region's mineral wealth by outside business interests. When the coal is gone, West Virginians will be poorer than ever and they won't even have a beautiful landscape to call home anymore. The rest of us will have played many hours of Xbox burning that coal though.

The foreign multinationals venting about Bolivia not putting out easy remind me of predatory frat boys grousing about that a girl who doesn't want to get drunk at their frat house must be a lesbian.

Meanwhile Fox News is running with this jaw dropper of a study from the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

There are only 1,000 Muslims in Bolivia, a country of 9.7 million people, but the connection between some of the community’s religious leaders and Iran — as well as with fundamentalist factions in the Palestinian territories — has U.S. officials and terror experts keeping a watchful eye on them.

The report revealed a number of Muslim organizations in Bolivia whose leaders have publicly denounced U.S. foreign policy and have direct associations with extremists in the Middle East.

If you go through the article, the criteria for a Bolivian muslim being "linked to extremists" is pretty hilariously thin. One "suspect" has "voiced support for the Palestinian cause", another charitable organization is affiliated with a branch that was "raided by the FBI in the aftermath of 9/11". All the canards of guilt by association are on full display in this one.

Its pretty hilarious that the American right is so alarmed by little Evo Morales and his tiny country that they're trying to drag them into the international war against Islam. We have always been at war with Oceana I guess.

Josh Meyer | Washington | June 18

LA Times - The United States lacks a coordinated strategy to stem the flow of weapons across its southern border, a failure that has fueled the rise of powerful criminal cartels and violence in Mexico, according to a government watchdog agency report being released Thursday.

The report by the congressional Government Accountability Office represents the first federal assessment of the issue and offers blistering conclusions that likely will impact the debate over the role of U.S. weaponry as Mexican violence threatens to spill across the border.

A draft of the GAO report confirms that a growing number of increasingly lethal, U.S.-made weapons are being smuggled into Mexico and comprise more than 90% of firearms seized by authorities there.

The report also cites recent U.S. intelligence indicating that most of the weapons are being smuggled in specifically for the syndicates, and are being used not only against the Mexican government but also to help the cartels in their efforts to control drug distribution in U.S. cities.

"The U.S. government lacks a strategy to address arms trafficking to Mexico," the report says in blunt terms. "Individual U.S. agencies have undertaken a variety of activities and projects to combat arms trafficking to Mexico, but they are not part of a comprehensive U.S. government-wide strategy for addressing the problem."

Rory Carroll & Andres Schipani | Salar de Uyuni | June 18

The Guardian -

Half the world's reserves of lithium, the metallic element used to make batteries in electric cars, are believed to be in the salt desert, Salar de Uyuni. Photograph: Jose Luis Quintana/Reuters

Stand in the middle of Salar de Uyuni, the world's greatest salt desert, and the first word that springs to mind is ­nothing. As far as the eye can see, ­nothing. Not a shrub or tree, not a hill or valley, just an endless expanse of white.

This salt flat in Bolivia, the landlocked heart of South America, is a harsh and eerie landscape, perhaps the closest thing nature has to a void. From the Incas to the present day, humanity has made little impression here.

But that may be about to change. Dig down and you find brine – water saturated with salt – rich in deposits of lithium, the lightest metal.

As the invention of the pneumatic tyre turned rubber into a precious commodity in the 19th century, the world's tilt towards greener energy is expected to do the same for lithium in the 21st. For years, tiny amounts have been used in laptops, BlackBerrys and other devices, but now its main use is expected to be in batteries for electric cars, which campaigners, manufacturers and governments say will – or should – replace petrol and diesel vehicles.

For Bolivia, this is good news. It is thought to possess 5.4m tonnes of lithium, half the world's supply. "Lithium is very important for us and the world," Bolivia's mining and metallurgy minister, Luis Alberto Echazú, said. "We hope to extract 1,200 tonnes next year and that's just the beginning. When we're up and running we'll be producing 10, 15 times that."

I've been following this story for a few days and feel remiss for not posting on it here sooner. Only so many hours in the day. Here's the lead:

Three people, including the leader of a border watch group and an officer within that group, were arrested in connection with a May 30 home invasion that left a father and his daughter dead and the mother wounded, authorities said.
One of those arrested, Shawna Forde, is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a group out of Washington state that conducts operations along the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona. The group is not related to either the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps founded by Chris Simcox, or the Minuteman Project founded by Jim Gilchrist.
Authorities also arrested Jason Eugene Bush, 34, who serves as operations director for the Washington group, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, in connection with the shooting deaths of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia Flores, said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.

The next day this little nugget came out:

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

TalkingPointsMemo has this analysis:

No, it doesn't make sense to us either. But there's increasing evidence that something about the current climate -- the election of a pro-choice, African-American president, the economic downturn, or perhaps the ever-more unhinged flavor of even a lot of mainstream conservative rhetoric -- is prompting a greater number of confused and dangerous Americans to act out their bizarre and violent fantasies. And that's worth paying attention to, whether it makes sense or not.

I'd echo that point, but also feel compelled to point out that there is a long-standing dynamic in Latin America of right-wing paramilitaries, death squads and U.S. agents being irresistibly drawn to the lure of drug money. Left wing extremists like the FARC in Colombia and the Shining Path in Peru also have carved out their own bits of drug turf.

But its the violent right that's on the rise in the U.S., even as the legitimate right is fading. And the migration of drug war violence into the U.S. is mixing with that trend. Rest assured, as much as these people were fools and bunglers, there will be others and they won't all be caught their first time out.

June 17

BBC -

The Mexican Navy says it has seized more than a tonne of cocaine hidden inside the carcasses of frozen sharks.

Armed officers found slabs of cocaine inside more than 20 sharks aboard a freight ship in the Gulf coast port of Progreso in Yucatan state.

Correspondents say cartels are coming up with increasingly creative ways of smuggling drugs into the US.

Shipments of cocaine have also been discovered hidden inside sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture.

"We are talking about more than a tonne of cocaine that was inside the ship," said Mexican Navy Commander Eduardo Villa.

"Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

In another development on Tuesday, the Mexican Navy unveiled what it described as one of the largest methamphetamine labs ever found in the country.

When officers stumbled across the enormous holding tank in a remote part of the northern state of Sinaloa last week they thought it might be used to water a marijuana plantation.

Instead, the tank fed water into two enormous sheds where investigators found 12,905 gallons (49,640 litres) of ephedrine, a chemical used to make methamphetamine.

Just a quick round up of Mexico news.

First off, the federales have been busy claiming scalps. In Tijuana they nabbed La Perra ("the bitch") aka Jose Filiberto Parra Ramos an enforcer for a rogue wing of the Arellano Felix cartel who have allied with the Sinaloa cartel against their former allies. I know that the ins and outs of which mid-level narco gets busted isn't really of global significance, but I also find the tactical stuff fascinating. One thing I've learned in 25 years of obsession with organized crime is that with a strong enforcer or #2 guy gets busted or whacked that its often a sign that someone is closing in on his boss. In this case, that's Teodoro Garcia Simental who got run out of Tijuana in April 2008 but went south and came back with new friends from Sinaloa in September and has been raising hell ever since. Losing Le Perra might be a serious blow to El Teo.

In Cancun, they've caught Juan Manuel Jurado Zarzoza, aka El Puma, a Gulf Cartel honcho who is believed to have ordered the kidnapping, torture and murder of a retired Mexican Army Brigadier General in February 2008. The General was sent in to clean up the infamously corrupt local police only to be betrayed to the narcos and sent to a horrible fate.

The same BBC story reports this little nugget about another mass arrest in Ciudad Juarez: "According to witnesses, the 25 men who were arrested there were wearing soldiers' uniforms." Presidente Calderon has sent in thousands of army troops to crack down in Juarez. Seems like the cartels are adapting to a new foe.

There's also this St. Petersburg Times report from Guatamala:

Guatemala's rise as a trafficking center is only the latest symptom of what experts call the "balloon effect." Pressure applied to other drug routes through the Caribbean to Miami, for example, forced drug lords to look to other more vulnerable transshipment points.

Guatemala is an ideal conduit for cocaine traffickers. Most of its 600 miles of border with Mexico are remote mountain and jungle, dotted with dirt airstrips. Ports on both the Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico are poorly policed.

U.S. officials estimate that 70 percent of the illegal drugs that enter the United States now pass through Central America. The Mexican cartels began moving part of their operations to Guatemala about three years ago, says Mexican security expert Alberto Islas. In part that was because of increased pressure by Mexican authorities. But they were also attracted by Guatemala's porous borders, and corruption in law enforcement, the judiciary and the banking system.

Deposits in the country's banking system have grown 20 percent annually over the last three years, despite economic troubles and falling remittances from Guatemalans abroad, Islas notes, a sign that organized crime is using local banks to launder money.

"Money from the drug trade has woven itself into the fiber of Guatemalan law enforcement and justice institutions," according to the U.S. State Department's annual narcotics report released in February.

All of this carnage is the result of an entirely elective "war on drugs" that is so obviously a failure that Nicholas Kristof is opining in the NYT about how stupid it is.

Andrew Becker | June 15

LA Times - Officers often must choose between doing drug gangs' bidding or risking death by refusing. Some who have come to the U.S. to escape the dilemma find the system unsympathetic.

Julio Ledezma had been chief of police in La Junta, a town of 8,700 in northern Mexico, for barely three months when a pair of strangers paid him a visit.

They said an aide to the mayor had sent them, and they bore gifts: a briefcase stuffed with cash and a truck for Ledezma's personal use.

In return, the new chief was to distract federal police at security checkpoints with fake calls for assistance. The diversion would allow drug traffickers to drive through the area without inspection.

Ledezma could refuse -- and be killed.

He could take the bribe -- and be owned by the Juarez cartel.

He chose to stall. He told the men he had to talk to his boss first. He approached civic leaders, trying to rally support. Word got back to the traffickers, and on Ledezma's 45th birthday, six men with military rifles surrounded his home while he was out buying steaks and jalapeños for his birthday dinner.

The gunmen told his wife that they would find him and kill him, no matter where he went in Mexico. They waited about 20 minutes, then left.

When Ledezma returned, he realized that resistance was not an option. He drove to Juarez with his wife and their 15-year-old daughter and crossed the Bridge of the Americas into El Paso. There, they asked for political asylum.

Their request will probably be rejected, because asylum is reserved for people fleeing political oppression or ethnic discrimination. Police officers who stood up to drug cartels don't necessarily qualify.

Indeed, the U.S. government is aggressively fighting Ledezma's petition on the grounds that the threat that caused him to flee is inherent to police work, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Beckett. U.S. immigration officials said they could not comment because asylum cases are confidential.