Mexico

Safety in numbers

By Peter Krupa | Published: February 8, 2010

Visit Mexico! (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

You would think from media reports that traveling to Mexico is a good way to get decapitated. But technically, that’s only true if you’re a law enforcement official in a border state. The AP points out that in fact, the murder rate in Mexico has been falling since 1997, when it reached a high of 17 murders per 100,000 people.

The murder rate in Mexico today is 14 per 100,000 people, and in Mexico City, it’s only 9 per 100,000 people. That’s comparable to L.A., and significantly better than Washington, D.C., where the murder rate is 30 per 100,000.

I can testify to the relative safeness of Mexico City from personal experience. Last year I spent 10 days there and did not come back dead. Instead, I enjoyed many hours wandering around the Centro Historico, looking at the architecture, and eating everything I could find. I visited nearby pyramids, went to a play, and hung out with friends in several other historic neighborhoods. It was one of the best vacations of my life.

Of course, they occasionally kill someone and sew his face to a soccer ball, but for you as a tourist, this only means your plane ticket will be cheaper because all the other Americans are scared out of their minds.

If Mexico still sounds too risky for you, that’s OK, but you sure as hell better forget about the 2016 Olympics. Last anyone released official statistics, the murder rate in Brazil was 24 per 100,000 people.

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Floods rock Mexico City

By Peter Krupa | Published: February 5, 2010

Source: La Jornada

Mexico City is experiencing the worst floods in two decades after 48 straight hours of rain.The government has declared a state of emergency, and the sheer volume of water has completely overwhelmed the city’s underground drainage system. Thousands have been effected.

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Payback

By Peter Krupa | Published: February 5, 2010

Remember that Mexican lawmaker who made horribly racist comments about Haitians because he was forced to “donate” part of his government salary to the relief effort? Turns out, he offended some people, and now his party has kicked him out.

Also, a Haitian with a fine understanding of public relations disasters dropped by “El Chunko’s” office to pay him back the $2,400 of his salary that had been sent to Haiti.

I’m guessing the money was accepted with mixed feelings.

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The politics of a massacre

By Peter Krupa | Published: February 3, 2010

Monday’s birthday party massacre in Ciudad Juárez is turning into something of a political emergency for Calderón. Both the Senate and angry family members are blaming him for the killings. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission is sending personnel to offer “legal advice” to family members of the victims. And a group of NGOs is seizing the moment to call for Calderón to resign.

Source: Excélsior

He’s listening. In a speech during his official visit to Japan, Calderón retreated from his emphasis on military/law enforcement solutions and floated the suggestion of “an integral strategy including social justice, addiction treatment and prevention, a search for employment opportunities, of recreational and educational opportunities for young people.”

Of course, this is silly, considering that the problem in Juarez isn’t jobless, shiftless, drug-addicted young people, but well-funded, ruthless, mafioso adults who act with impunity and are probably after more in life than a high school-equivalency degree and a game of ping-pong at the local rec center.

The fact that the outcry over a single incident of brutality perpetrated on innocents could cause Calderón to backtrack from his military solution so quickly tells me that the political situation might be more vulnerable to terrorism than I had previously thought.

Still, the second part of Calderón’s response appears to be an attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of his strategy by  eliminating the perpetrators of the massacre as abruptly as possible. The hope, perhaps, is that national outrage over the incident will be eliminated along with them. Thus, we have an incredibly efficient military operation that managed to just straight-up kill one of the leaders of the hit squad and capture several others.

Amazing, the efficiency of the Mexican military when it’s politically expedient.

Also posted in Human Rights, War on drugs | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Narcos and terrorism

By Peter Krupa | Published: February 2, 2010

Yesterday’s birthday party massacre of 13 14 students and two adults in Ciudad Juarez is one of the more unsettling acts of violence to take place during Calderón’s war on the drug cartels. The problem is that so far, it appears to have been either random or a mistake. None of the individuals present at the party had any obvious connections to drug cartels.

The incident underscores the fact that sensible gang-on-gang violence can quickly turn senseless. It’s not too much of a stretch for bloodthirsty killers to graduate to straight-up terrorism to accomplish political goals. Pablo Escobar certainly did so during his struggle with the Colombian government.

Now, I doubt this particular incident is an example of terrorism. It doesn’t appear the government is putting nearly enough much pressure on the cartels for them to lash out at the public like this. But it’s an interesting test for how the public would react should the Mexican cartels start setting off car bombs and carrying out political kidnappings.

So far, victims have been calling on the government to act, which it has done by offering a 1 million peso reward. The Mexican Senate is demanding answers, while at least one member of Congress has requested that martial law be implemented in Ciudad Juarez. Amazingly, a suspect (fall guy?) has been arrested as well.

That means that if terrorism is the strategy, the country is not yet terrified. It also means that if, as suggested in this excellent article in The Atlantic, military authorities often look the other way when these massacres take place, some army officer somewhere is having a very heated conversation with a mafia don.

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“They look so much alike”

By Peter Krupa | Published: January 29, 2010

Racist.

A Mexican congressman and radio host took an early lead for the Asshole of the Year Award when he hated on Haitians for being black. Said Ariel Gómez León, a.k.a. “El Chunko”:

“In the media, for example on television, we see the faces of the people when aid is handed out. They’re not faces of need – more like the faces of insatiable abusers… Since they’re all so black and they look so much alike, they should be marked with permanent ink so that they don’t get a second helping; the ink has to be white, since the ink used by the Federal Electoral Institute wouldn’t be noticed because they’re so black.”

Gómez was apparently annoyed because the government deducted part of his salary as a congressman to send aid to Haiti. He now says it was a joke that got picked up on an open mic.

But come on, Gómez, tell us how you really feel.

Also posted in Odd, Politics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Women imprisioned for having abortions

By Peter Krupa | Published: January 29, 2010

Eight women are being prosecuted for murder in Veracruz after having abortions, according to an NGO called the Veracruz Women’s Institute (Instituto Veracruz de la Mujer). According to the article in La Jornada, several of the abortions were actually miscarriages brought on by medical treatment. Five of the women have already been sentenced to 12-15 years in prison.

I would have thought the Mexican authorities had bigger problems to worry about.

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“Strange Bedfellows”

By Peter Krupa | Published: January 26, 2010

In state elections all over Mexico, the left-wing Party for the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) are joining forces against the old-guard, authoritarian, and oxymoronically-named Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Patrick Corcoran of Gancho gives a great overview of the situation over at Mexidata.info:

This plan is a striking reflection of the utter corruption of many PRI governors, deemed the leaders of “authoritarian governments” by PRD President Jesús Ortega. That two parties with such serious disagreements about public policy and political practices as the PAN and the PRD are willing to combine forces against a common adversary is a testament to the uniting power of governors like Puebla’s Mario Marín, who is believed to have ordered the kidnapping of a journalist and to have protected a network of child pornographers.

Such alliances would be a small-scale return to the political climate of the second half of the twentieth century, in which parties on the left and the right often made common cause in opposing the authoritarian PRI. The return of such a state of affairs seems to have worried the PRI (Senate leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones oddly referred to the alliances a “deformity,” as though by uniting against the PRI the two parties were disobeying God’s great political plan), and it should.

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Not from their mothers

By Peter Krupa | Published: January 26, 2010

One wonders where Mexican gangsters get such colorful nicknames: Los 20, El Borrado, El Chupón. Then again, one is probably safer not knowing.

Also posted in Side notes, War on drugs | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

  • DAILY LINKS

    • The Nation has a long, wonky, wonderful article on Mexican maize cultivation, the effects of NAFTA, and the dangers of genetically-modified seeds. Author Peter Canby backs up his excellent writing with piles and piles of meticulous research. Not to be missed. [link, via SM] (Image from Joel Penner.)

    • Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas ended his hunger strike yesterday after 134 days. Farinas decided to end his strike after the Cuban government said it would release political prisoners rounded up in the "Black Spring" crackdown of 2003. Get well soon. [link]

    • The Uruguayan selection, which has made it to the quarter finals of the World Cup, just received a shipment of half a ton of fine cuts of beef for the mother of all asados in preparation for a contest against Ghana on Friday: "450 kilos of lomo, 200 of entrecot, 75 of vacío, 75 of colita de cuadril, 150 of ojo de bife and 50 kg of picaña." [link]

    • Hitmen have assassinated the PRI candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. Torre was gunned down along with six others at about 10:30 this morning on a highway on the way to a campaign event. Drug mafias are assumed to be responsible. [link]

    • From the days when coups were something of a regional sport, new documents detail a famous British ballerina's role in a plot to topple the government of Panama. The plan was to use her yacht to gather men and arms, then "land somewhere and collect in the hills." It didn't work. [link]

    • Mexico's Attorney General's Office has posted on its web site irrefutable evidence that gold-plated AR-15s and diamond-studded pistol grips are not nearly as cool-looking as they sound. The deadly knick-knack collection is said to belong to Valencia Cartel leader El Lobo. [link]

    • Two Brazilian ranchers were sentenced to 30 years in prison apiece for ordering the killing of an environmentalist nun: "Prosecutors said the pair offered to pay a gunman $25,000 to kill the 73-year-old [Dorothy] Stang because she had prevented them from stealing a piece of land that the government had granted to a group of poor farmers." [link]


    • This video of a kidnapping and car chase in Mexico is notable mainly for the bad-assitude of the TV journalists who were on this like white on rice. Well done, gentlemen.

    • The Economist takes a peak at the Mockus phenomenon in Colombia: "His moustacheless beard gives him the air of a Baltic pastor... He is financing his campaign with a bank overdraft. His supporters rely on Facebook and make their own posters; street vendors sell unofficial campaign T-shirts." [link]

    • Some cruise lines will cease traveling to Antarctica after this cruise season, as a ban on the use and carriage of heavy fuel oil goes into effect next year. The ban came after a 2007 incident when a Gap Adventures ship got punctured by ice and sank, causing a mess. [link]