Randal C. Archibold | Mexico City | May 18

NYT - The Mexican government detained three high-ranking Army generals this week, including a former second in command at the Defense Ministry, suggesting the depths drug cartels have gone in trying to infiltrate one of the primary forces President Felipe Calderón has counted on to combat them.

The arrests of a group of generals were without precedent in recent memory, and local news reports suggested that the corruption investigation was continuing and could net other key figures in the drug war.

The three generals, Mexican officials have said, played a role in facilitating drug trafficking, and the accusations against the third general, arrested Thursday night, include that he ignored a tip by American drug agents about an imminent airplane delivery of a drug cartel’s cocaine in December 2007.

El Paso | Apr 27

The Guardian - Federal prosecutors said Friday there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges against a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the shooting death of a 15-year-old Mexican national in 2010.

The agent didn't act inconsistently with Border Patrol policy or training regarding the use of force in the death of Sergio Hernandez-Guereca, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement announcing the decision, which was quickly denounced by the Mexican government.

U.S. authorities have said the agent shot Hernandez while trying to arrest illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande on June 7, 2010. Some witnesses said people on the Mexican side of the river, including Hernandez, were throwing rocks at the agent. Border agents are generally allowed to use lethal force against rock throwers.

Towards the beginning of the cult classic Dazed & Confused, a high school senior named Slater, inquires of baby-faced freshman Mitch, "are you cool?" What Slater was really asking--in this ode to 1970s youth and the counterculture--was do you smoke pot?

Ahh the 70s. Back before the Reagan Revolution kicked the kooky, corrupt and thoroughly counterproductive War On Drugs into high gear. Suddenly this country lost its collective mind, suffering a lapse in judgment that vaunted well past ill-advised and just beyond "they have weapons of mass destruction" to what might best be labeled "the mind of Ted Nugent."

Tara Bahrampour | April 23

WaPo - A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more Mexicans now leave the United States for Mexico than the other way around, according to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center.

It is the first reversal in the trend since the Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other factors may make it permanent.

The New York Times: "Confronted with evidence of widespread corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing". I wish I could say I'm surprised.

Mexico City | April 21

AP - A volcano outside of one of the world's largest cities, Mexico City, has begun spewing ash and molten rock, forcing the authorities to raise the level of alert for fear of an eruption.

Eruptions from the Popocatepetl volcano began to grow larger a week ago as columns of ash began pouring from more than 60 openings in the 17,886 foot high cone.

On Friday a low pitched roar and rolling towers of ash and steam were spewed out as some of the pressure built up inside the magma chamber escaped.

Apr 13 | Mark Stevenson | AP

A video "mockumentary" that shows children as kidnappers, corrupt cops and drug traffickers sparked a fierce debate in violence-torn Mexico on Thursday, with some people calling it a needed wake-up call while others described it as political manipulation or even child abuse.

Kids playing the role of businessmen, criminals and corrupt officials are seen robbing, paying bribes and shooting it out in a mock Mexico made up entirely of children, all to the deceptively laid-back tune of the 1970s ballad "Una Manana," or "One Morning."

Produced by a foundation supported by private companies and universities and distributed over the Internet, the video ends with a direct message to the candidates in the Mexico's July 1 presidential race. A little girl faces the camera and says: "If this is the future that awaits me, I don't want it. Enough of working for your political parties instead of for us. Enough of cosmetic changes."

Kathleen Hennessey | Washington | Apr 4

LA Times - Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday pushed for a revival of a ban on assault weapons in the U.S., arguing that the ban's expiration has led to the spread of guns across the border and a spike in violence in Mexico.

"The expiring of the assault weapons ban in the year 2004 coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the harshest - the harshest - period of violence we've ever seen," Calderon said, through an interpreter, at a White House news conference on Monday.

The Mexican leader was in Washington to meet with President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for summit on economic cooperation and trade between the three countries. But the ongoing drug war in Mexico largely overshadowed those conversations.

In remarks to reporters in the Rose Garden, Calderon urged the U.S. to do more to tamp down on gun trafficking and emphasized that the drug cartels that crime organizations are operating on both sides of the border. He claimed a direct connection between the weakening of gun laws in the U.S. and deaths in his country.

"I know that if we don't stop the traffic of weapons into Mexico, if we don't have mechanisms to forbid the sale of weapons such as we had in the '90s, or for registry of guns, at least for assault weapons, then we are never going to be able to stop the violence in Mexico or stop a future turning of those guns upon the U.S.," he said.

The Stupid, It Burns

Mexico City | March 20

CBS - A strong, long 7.6 earthquake with an epicenter in Guerrero state shook central southern Mexico on Tuesday, swaying buildings in Mexico City and sending frightened workers and residents into the streets.

The U.S. Geological Survey set the intensity at 7.6 on the Richter scale and said the epicenter was 11 miles underground. Mexico's National Seismological Survey said the temblor had an epicenter southwest of Ometepec.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard's Twitter account said the water system and other "strategic services" were not experiencing problems.

McClatchy - Mexico has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. If any of the nation's 112 million citizens want to buy firearms, there's only one store where they can do it legally. It's on a sprawling military base and run by the army

Nothing highlights the cultural and legal differences between Mexico and the United States as starkly as Mexico's lone gun shop, whose ponderous name is the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales.

In contrast, the four U.S. border states — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — have 20,834 firearms dealers licensed by the U.S. government, according to Marc Willis, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
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Calderon said organized crime in Mexico had grown stronger due to "unlimited access to high-powered weapons that are sold freely and indiscriminately in the United States of America."

I do worry that as I get older I'm turning into some lefty kind of John McCain! I saw that Texas has issued a warning to college students not to head to Mexico for spring break because of drug-related violence there and I have to admit my first reaction was "I wouldn't have bothered warning them". There's a bit of me feels that if these more-money-than-sense partiers can't be bothered to follow the news and work this out for themselves, they're probably too stupid to be in college. Let them have a fast lesson in Darwinism. And get orf my lawrn!

Nick Miroff & William Booth | Mexico City | Feb 15

WaPo - When U.S. special agent Jaime Zapata was shot dead one year ago on a notorious stretch of highway in central Mexico, he was driving a $160,000 armored Chevy Suburban, built to exacting government standards, designed to defeat high-velocity gunfire, fragmentation grenades and land mines.

But the vehicle had a basic, fatal flaw.

Forced off the road in a well-coordinated ambush, surrounded by drug cartel gunmen brandishing AK-47s, Zapata and his partner, Victor Avila, rolled to a stop. Zapata put the vehicle in park.

The door locks popped up.

That terrifying sound — a quiet click — set into motion events that remain under investigation. When Zapata needed it most, the Suburban’s elaborate armoring was rendered worthless by a consumer-friendly automatic setting useful for family vacations and hurried commuters but not for U.S. agents driving through a red zone in Mexico.

Olga Rodriguez | Mexico City | Feb 7

Houston Chronicle - Mexico's conservative ruling party is gambling that this country known for machismo is ready for a female president and have chosen a devout Roman Catholic and popular former congresswoman who says she sympathizes with the causes of the poor.

Josefina Vazquez Mota, a 51-year-old economist, became the first female presidential candidate from any of Mexico's major parties late Sunday when she convincingly won the National Action Party's primary.

Her victory marks a milestone for women in Mexico, a country where they were not allowed to vote until 1953. The first female governor did not take office until 1989. Only a handful have been elected since.

National Action hopes Mexico is ready to follow in the footsteps of Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile and other Latin American countries that have elected female leaders recently.

Vazquez Mota, who is still married to her high school sweetheart, won national attention after publishing a 1999 book titled "God, Please Make Me A Widow," which is described as a call to women to stop being afraid of developing their potential.

She has said she wrote the book based on her own experience of being a woman who chose to work over staying at home to raise her three daughters, defying the role she was expected to fulfill.

Vazquez Mota told El Universal newspaper in an interview published Monday that she has experienced Mexico's machismo first hand during her campaign.

"One of the hardest questions I have been asked is 'How will you manage the army if you are having menstrual cramps?'" she told the newspaper. "I have also been asked if I will have the courage to face criminals. My answer is that courage is not a matter of gender."

Jay Price | Fayetteville | Jan 25

The (Raleigh) News & Observer - Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema, the con man extraordinaire from Fayetteville who spent years in an Afghan prison for running a private jail and torture chamber while claiming to be a secret Pentagon operative, has reportedly died in Mexico.

His death at age 55 marks the end of perhaps the most colorful, unpleasant and self-dramatizing character to tread North Carolina soil since Blackbeard.

Idema was a former soldier who reinvented himself repeatedly as he ran cons from Fayetteville, N.C. to Uzbekistan. At various times he claimed to be a businessman, author, “superpatriot” terrorist hunter, drug and gun smuggler, bodyguard, security consultant, CIA paramilitary operator, Pentagon-backed special operator and, finally, charter boat captain.

The cause of death was complications from AIDS, according to local newspaper reports in Mexico and a former girlfriend, Penny Alessi, who was in contact with him until days before his death.

He apparently succumbed several days ago, but a U.S. State Department official in Washington said the government has not been able to confirm his death. A consulate official in Merida, Mexico, said the office is being careful because they’ve had trouble confirming his identity.

They are hardly the first.

Ginger Thompson | Washington | Oct 24

NYT - American law enforcement agencies have significantly built up networks of Mexican informants that have allowed them to secretly infiltrate some of that country’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations, according to security officials on both sides of the border.

As the United States has opened new law enforcement and intelligence outposts across Mexico in recent years, Washington’s networks of informants have grown there as well, current and former officials said. They have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counternarcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.

Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants — including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives — partly because of concerns about corruption among the Mexican police, and partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil.

“The Mexicans sort of roll their eyes and say we know it’s happening, even though it’s not supposed to be happening,” said Eric L. Olson, an expert on Mexican security matters at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“That’s what makes this so hard,” he said. “The United States is using tools in a country where officials are still uncomfortable with those tools.”

In recent years, Mexican attitudes about American involvement in matters of national security have softened, as waves of drug-related violence have left about 40,000 people dead. And the United States, hoping to shore up Mexico’s stability and prevent its violence from spilling across the border, has expanded its role in ways unthinkable five years ago, including flying drones in Mexican skies.

The efforts have been credited with breaking up several of Mexico’s largest cartels into smaller — and presumably less dangerous — crime groups. But the violence continues, as does the northward flow of illegal drugs.

This whole article just rings of propaganda or disinformation or sumptin

Oct 21

BBC - Mexican President Felipe Calderon says violence along his country's border with the US is fuelled in part by the US opting to deport rather than prosecute criminals.

It was cheaper to send them back rather than try them, Mr Calderon said.

Such people, he said, then joined forces with criminal gangs in Mexico.

Nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants were deported in the past fiscal year, half of whom had been convicted of a crime, US officials said on Tuesday.

President Calderon's remarks came during a speech at an immigration conference in Mexico City.

"There are many factors in the violence that some border cities in Mexico are experiencing but one of them is because the American authorities are deporting some 60,000 or 70,000 migrants a year to cities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana," he said.

Among these, "there are many who really are criminals, who have committed some crime, and it is simply cheaper to leave them on the Mexican side of the border than to begin a legal process... to decide if they are guilty or not."

Mr Calderon said the deported criminals then linked up with criminal networks in Mexico.

Figures released by US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday show that a record 396,906 illegal aliens were removed in 2010-2011.

The majority of these were from Mexico.

Nota Bene: Inspired by Quiet Bill's work in the comment section I'm going to declare this an open/compilation thread for all the news about the Iran-NarcoCartel plot. So, keep adding links in the comment section and we'll keep this thread close to the top of all posts.

October 14, 2011 Update:

Handful of stories on the Iran-narcocartel plot out today:

The Mexican Quds Dog and his Tail - by Col. Pat Lang. This one is a must read, especially in the context of a former intelligence pro.

Ignatius: CIA Is Involved with the Iran Plot, So It Must Be True! - by Emptywheel.

Framing Wikileaks for the inspiration of the plot - The Daily Beast. Man, this just keeps getting better. Not only does it now include Drug Cartels and Iranians but Wikileaks too! tEh awesome! Two questions: how the fuck do we link Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to this bad boy too? Hell, why not North Korea as well! As Donald Rumsfeld once said, "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Excellent and thought-provoking analysis by Gareth Port: FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation.

Finally, two stories out today reporting on Obama's promise to punish Iran, here and here. This is really staggering in light of the utter collapse of the trustworthiness of the plot. And it brings to mind "cui bono" as in who benefits from the plot's publicity, a la the questions from Col. Pat Lang:

The overwhelming likelihood is that this is someone's "information operation" intended to condition public attitudes for some purpose. The over riding question is that of where the ovens are located in which this confection was baked and who the bakers might be.

Was it the Iranians as a subtle threat of serious action?

Was it the Israelis?

Was it some combination of "rogue" American entities?

More as it develops.

There are elements of this story that seem....farfetched:

If Iranian government operatives really did try to contract a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., as the Obama Administration alleges today, then they weren't just being diabolical. They were being fairly stupid.

Mexico City | September 29

BBC - Mexico's Supreme Court has upheld an amendment to Baja California's state constitution that stipulates life begins at conception, in a move hailed by anti-abortion campaigners.

Although seven of the 11 justices deemed the measure unconstitutional, eight votes were needed to overturn it.

Tim Johnson | Cabo Pulmo | Sept 14

McClatchy - What's happened at the Cabo Pulmo marine reserve off the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula is fishy — in a good way.

Once severely depleted of fish, the reef system off Cabo Pulmo now teems with marine life, thanks to fishing restrictions imposed more than 10 years ago.

But environmentalists are worried that that ecological advance will be lost if the Mexican government allows a $2 billion development plan to go ahead that would place a "new Cancun" less than three miles north of the Cabo Pulmo marine sanctuary.

Mexico's Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources has given Spanish developer Hansa Urbana all but final approval for the project, which would turn desert scrubland into a bustling development of hotels, condos, golf courses and a large marina.

The government says such a resort would have no impact on the marine reserve.

That makes environmentalists seethe. They say the secretariat's speedy approvals are questionable and without scientific merit.

"This development is completely unjustifiable, especially since it's right next to the marine reserve," said Alejandro Olivera of the Mexico office of Greenpeace, the international activist group on conservation issues.

Olivera called the revival of Cabo Pulmo, the northernmost reef system along the Pacific coast of the Americas, "one of the best examples of marine conservation in Mexico."

. . . wrong with Mexico at the top of JSOC's wish list?

Fernie Ortiz | El Paso, TX | September 1

KVIA TV - Border Patrol officials are investigating an incursion by Mexican federal police into the United State on Thursday morning.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said armed officers with Mexico's Secretaria de Seguridad Publica federal police were in the incursion, which took place in El Paso, near the Border Patrol's Ysleta station.

The Mexican government, Border Patrol and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are investigating the incident. U.S. authorities responded to the incident.

McClatchy Newspapers, By Tim Johnson, August 17

Chapingo, Mexico — At this time of year, when corn grows high, some farmers go into their fields hoping that a disease has infected their crops.

They inspect for swollen husks, a telltale sign that a parasitic fungus has spread into a spongy iridescent mass inside the ears.

The farmers are pleased, for the fungus is one of the greatest delicacies of the Mexican kitchen. It's been called the Mexican truffle, and a "food of the gods." The unique, earthy taste has been part of local cuisine since Aztec times.

Tim Johnson | Arriaga, Mexico | August 11

McClatchy - One of Mexico's most powerful criminal gangs has muscled into the migrant-smuggling racket, changing what had been a relatively benign if risky industry of independent operators into a centralized business that often has deadly consequences for those who try to operate outside it.

Los Zetas, who earned a reputation for brutality by gunning down thousands of Mexicans in the ongoing battle for drug-smuggling routes to the United States, now control much of the illicit trade of moving migrant workers toward the U.S. border, experts in the trade say.

They've brought logistical know-how, using tractor-trailer trucks to carry ever larger loads of people and charging higher prices, as much as $30,000 per head for migrants from Asia and Africa who seek to get to the United States.