Category Archives: Mexico/Central America

February 28, 2013

Guatemalan Gangs Employing “Child Hitmen”

Posted on February 28, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The legal provisions that exempt minors from prosecution for homicide permit criminal outfits to “act with impunity,” Rodolfo Diaz – an attorney with the Survivors’ Foundation, which counsels victims of violence – told Efe.

Capitalizing on Guatemalan laws shielding minors from criminal prosecution, organized crime gangs are training kids between 10 and 12 in the use of firearms and techniques for carrying out attacks and thus turning them into “child hitmen.”

“There are no official figures, but the cases are there for all to see,” a police officer told Efe.

Police security cameras captured footage Tuesday of a boy of around 10 pulling out an automatic pistol and shooting a taxi driver twice in the head on this capital’s north side.

That same footage shows the minor subsequently hiding the weapon under his clothes and, seemingly unfazed, boarding a bus and fleeing the scene as several stunned witnesses looked on.

Efe made repeated attempts to obtain a statement from the Interior Ministry about the crime but the calls went unanswered.

The police officer, however, said on condition of anonymity that “little” is being done to prevent children from being recruited by criminal gangs.

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Posted in Crime, Gangs, Law & Courts, Mexico/Central America, Murder

February 26, 2013

Mexican gangs threaten Internet activists

Posted on February 26, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

A price has been put on their lives, by gangs who want to find out the names of Mexican Internet activists have used the anonymity granted by social networks to denounce organised crime.

From the Facebook page Valor por Tamaulipas (Courage for Tamaulipas), which was created a year ago, and the Twitter account @ValorTamaulipas, activists who will not specify their ages or even genders, as they take on the interests of those in the violent north-eastern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas who now want to kill them.

“For us, this has become a race against the clock that we know we will not win. Something would have to happen, a miracle, for organised crime not to have the power it has, and there is neither the national nor the international will to end this cancer,” the activists told dpa in an interview done by Facebook.

A few days earlier, flyers emerged in Ciudad Victoria that offered 600,000 pesos (48,000 dollars) for the identities of the activists “or direct relatives, be they parents, siblings, children or wife.

“Good money to shut the gob of fucking busybodies like these jerks who think they’re heroes,” the flyers read, along with a phone number to which any information was to be reported.

This is not the first time the Internet activists have been the object of threats. In the past, someone allegedly belonging to the Gulf Cartel created a page called Antivalor por Tamaulipas to attack them.

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Posted in Crime, Gangs, La Raza, Mexico/Central America

February 9, 2013

Mexican mayors admit paying gangs to stay alive

Posted on February 9, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Gang members brazenly walk into city halls without warning to collect their extortion money, which amounts to around $800 per month. This happens right under the nose of federal troops who have been deployed since 2006 to crack down on the country’s drug cartels.

A Mexican mayor was having breakfast with his wife in a restaurant when he was gunned down this week. To avoid a similar fate, mayors in the western state of Michoacan admit they must pay off drug cartels.

Wilfrido Flores Villa, interim mayor of the Michoacan town of Nahutzen, was the 31st mayor to be killed in Mexico since a spiral of drug-related violence began to engulf the nation in 2006.

“The lack of security has affected us. It is something that everybody knows about but doesn’t talk about, because we are afraid of facing organized crime,” said one of five mayors who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

“We have to pay them a tax,” the mayor said. “They don’t leave you a choice. As the saying goes, ‘either cooperate, or it’s your neck.’”

The gangs operating in Michoacan, where the Knights Templar cartel emerged, shake down everybody from the wealthy to the poor. They must all pay up to avoid being kidnapped or killed.

“It’s not something we want to do. It’s something we are forced to do. We have nowhere to flee to. They don’t give you an option,” the mayor said.

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Posted in Crime, Drugs and Cartels, Gangs, Mexico/Central America

February 8, 2013

Holiday paradise? Drugs, violence, rape

Posted on February 8, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

From a 2009 shootout that killed 18 near Acapulco’s fabled Flamingo Hotel to this week’s attack, the resort once celebrated in Frank Sinatra songs and Elvis Presley movies has been the scene of body dumpings, beheadings and taxi-driver killings as gangs vie for drug transport routes once controlled by the now-decimated Beltran Leyva cartel.


Policemen stand guard outside the house where six Spanish women tourists were raped at a resort in Acapulco.

The tourism world turned its eyes on Mexico after six Spanish women were raped by masked gunmen during a holiday in the long-troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

While there has been talk of reviving the golden era of the ’40s and ’50s, international tourists have long steered away from Acapulco, even before the drug violence of recent years, as the city fell into disrepair and glitzier Cancun and Los Cabos gained favour.

The question now is whether the attack will affect other resorts as Mexico prepares for its annual spring break onslaught and peak season.

The hours-long assault was carried out by a gang of masked gunmen who burst into the beachfront home before dawn on Monday and tied up the six men inside, then raped the women. A seventh Mexican woman was unharmed.

“We are really sorry about what happened with the Spanish tourists because… it is something that affects Mexico’s image,” said Juan Carlos Gonzalez, tourism secretary of Quintana Roo, the Caribbean coast state where Cancun is located and which hosted about 17 million tourists last year.

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Posted in Drugs and Cartels, Gangs, Mexico/Central America, Murder, Sex Crimes

January 22, 2013

In Mexico, self-defense squads battle violence

Posted on January 22, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Vigilantes patrol a dozen or more towns in rural Mexico, the unauthorized but often tolerated edge of a growing movement toward armed citizen self-defense squads across the country.


In this photo taken Friday Jan. 18, 2013, masked and armed men sit in the back of a pick-up truck at the entrance to the town of Ayutla, Mexico. Hundreds of men in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero have taken up arms to defend their villages against drug gangs, a vigilante movement born of frustration at extortion, killings and kidnappings in a region wracked by violence.

The young man at the roadside checkpoint wept softly behind the red bandanna that masked his face. At his side was a relic revolver, and his feet were shod in the muddy, broken boots of a farmer.

Haltingly, he told how his cousin’s body was found in a mass grave with about 40 other victims of a drug gang. Apparently, the cousin had caught a ride with an off-duty soldier and when gunmen stopped the vehicle, they killed everyone on the car.

“There isn’t one of us who hasn’t felt the pain … of seeing them take a family member and not being able to ever get them back,” said the young civilian self-defense patrol member, who identified himself as “just another representative of the people of the mountain.”

Now he has joined hundreds of other men in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero who have taken up arms to defend their villages against drug gangs, a vigilante movement born of frustration at extortion, killings and kidnappings that local police are unable, or unwilling, to stop.

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Posted in Drugs and Cartels, Gangs, Mexico/Central America

January 2, 2013

Killings of 4 members of Mexican family may be linked to fuel theft

Posted on January 2, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Pemex told Congress earlier this year that fuel theft was on the rise in Mexico and had become a source of income for transnational criminal organizations.


Coroner’s office specialists and emergency management office personnel pick up one of the four bodies found on Saturday, Dec. 29, and believed to be those of four members of a family who may have been killed by a Mexican gang involved in fuel theft.

The killings of four members of a family in Puebla, a state in central Mexico, may have been committed by a gang involved in fuel theft, police said.

The bodies of the four victims were found near the Valsequillo dam outside Puebla, the capital of the like-named state.

The victims may be members of a family that fled from the eastern state of Veracruz due to threats from organized crime groups, the Puebal Attorney General’s Office said.

One member of the family worked for state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in Veracruz and was presumably involved in fuel theft from pipelines, the AG’s office said in a statement.

The family was reported missing on Dec. 21 from its residence in Puebla, where they had relocated from Veracruz, one of the states most affected by drug-related violence in Mexico.

The decomposing bodies found near the dam were those of a man and woman between the ages of 45 and 50, and those of two young people between the ages of 18 and 20, all members of the same family, the AG’s office said.

Authorities have found millions of liters of fuel stolen by gangs in Puebla and Veracruz this year.

The gangs are also involved in kidnappings, officials said.

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Posted in Business, Crime, Gangs, Mexico/Central America, Murder

December 27, 2012

Cartels Dump Seventeen Mutilated Bodies Near U.S. Border

Posted on December 27, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The Mexican government estimates the number of cartel-related deaths to be over 30,000. Human rights groups estimate the number of missing persons in the conflict amounts to over 25,000.

Mexican authorities found 17 more mutilated bodies over the month of December near the US border.

Thirteen of the bodies were discovered in two abandoned vehicles in two separate cities in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, bordering Texas. Four of the bodies were found hanging in public in the Mexican state of Coahuila, which also borders Texas.

The first vehicle contained the dismembered bodies of two women and three men. The mutilated corpses were in an abandoned potato chip delivery truck that had been left in a supermarket parking lot. Authorities said a threatening letter was left with the bodies from the Gulf Cartel.

The second vehicle was discovered in the town of Soto la Marina and contained an additional eight bodies. Authorities said these bodies also contained a note claiming the dead were members of affiliates of the Gulf Cartel.

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Posted in Drugs and Cartels, Mexico/Central America, Murder

December 21, 2012

Reps call for national travel boycott of Mexico over jailed Marine

Posted on December 21, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“Until U.S. Marine Jon Hammar is released, I am calling on all Americans to cancel their vacations to Mexico and not to book any travel there,” Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y. said, calling Hammar’s treatment at the hands of Mexican officials an “absolute disgrace.”

Two Republican congressmen called Thursday for a national travel boycott of Mexico until the country releases imprisoned former Marine Jon Hammar, urging “all Americans” to campaign for the war veteran’s freedom by turning off the tap on America’s tourism dollars.

The statements from Reps. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., and Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. — both Marine combat veterans — came as dozens of lawmakers pressed the Obama administration to more aggressively petition for Hammar’s release. Hammar, who is locked up in a notorious Mexican prison on what his family says is a trumped-up weapons charge, is increasingly gaining the attention of Congress.

Amid conflicting signals about whether U.S. officials were making progress toward his release, Grimm and Hunter called for a national effort to bring Hammar home.

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Posted in Law & Courts, Mexico/Central America, Military

December 8, 2012

13 bodies found in vehicles in northern Mexico

Posted on December 8, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Coahuila state security spokesman Sergio Sisbeles said the victims had been tortured and had their feet and hands bound with duct tape. None had been shot and authorities were still trying to determine the cause of death, he said.

Police found the mutilated bodies of 13 people inside two vehicles abandoned in separate towns of the northern border state of Tamaulipas, an official said Friday.

Authorities first found the cut-up bodies of two women and three men late Thursday in a potato chip delivery truck abandoned in the parking lot of a supermarket in the town of El Mante, a Tamaulipas state official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk about the case.

The official said police also found a threatening message allegedly signed by the Gulf drug cartel.

An hour later, police found eight bodies in the town of Soto la Marina along with a message alleging the victims were members of the Gulf cartel.

Northeastern Mexico along the border with Texas has been a war zone of shootouts and gruesome mass killings as the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels battle each other in the states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas—a region that is home to cattle ranches, sorghum fields and the industrial city of Monterrey. The Zetas were hit men for the Gulf cartel until they split in 2010, unleashing their bloody war.

In Coahuila on Friday, police found the bodies of four men hanging from a highway overpass in the capital city of Saltillo.

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Posted in Drugs and Cartels, Mexico/Central America, Murder

November 23, 2012

Why Is the Pres. of Mexico Trying to Change His Country’s Name?

Posted on November 23, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Calderon said that while the name change “doesn’t have the urgency of other reforms,” it should be seen as a relevant issue. “Mexico doesn’t need a name that emulates another country and that no one uses on a daily basis.”


Mexican President Felipe Calderon answers a questions after speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Monday, Sept. 24, 2012.

Mexico’s president is making one last attempt to get the “United States” out of Mexico – at least as far as the country’s name is concerned.

The name “United Mexican States,” or “Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” was adopted in 1824 after independence from Spain in imitation of Mexico’s democratic northern neighbor, but it is rarely used except on official documents, money and other government material.

Still, President Felipe Calderon called a news conference Thursday to announce that he wants to make the name simply “Mexico.” His country doesn’t need to copy anyone, he said.

Calderon first proposed the name change as a congressman in 2003 but the bill did not make it to a vote. The new constitutional reform he proposed would have to be approved by both houses of Congress and a majority of Mexico’s 31 state legislatures.

However, Calderon leaves office on Dec. 1, raising the question of whether his proposal is a largely symbolic gesture. His proposal was widely mocked on Twitter as a ridiculous parting shot from a lame-duck president.

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Posted in Government, Mexico/Central America