U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of Mexico is possible

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http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354




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[incarcerated]

http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...ad.php?t=21296

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It seems that the collapse is approaching....

LINK


Kidnapping, gunbattle leaves 21 dead south of Juarez

By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times

Posted: 02/10/2009 02:19:15 PM MST

Twenty-one people were killed early Tuesday between Villa Ahumada and Samalayuca following the reported kidnappings of nine people and shootouts between Mexican soldiers and the kidnappers, officials with the Joint Chihuahua Operation said.

Police also reported the deaths of four others whose bodies were found Tuesday in the Juárez area, for a total of 25 people killed, the most to date in less than 24 hours.

There was an unconfirmed report that a soldier was among the slain, according to the Associated Press in Mexico.

Enrique Torres, spokesman for Joint Chihuahua Operation, which is leading the crackdown against the drug cartels in the state of Chihuahua, said everything started when an armed commando began abducting people from their homes late Monday in Villa Ahumada, which is about 90 miles south of Juárez, along the Panamerican Highway.

The kidnappers allegedly picked up a total of nine people and shot to death six of them at a ranch at El Vergel, a nearby village.

The military was called in, went after the kidnappers, and set free three of the nine surviving people who were abducted.

Torres said several firefights broke out in different places between the soldiers and the armed kidnappers, resulting in 14 to 15 additional deaths during the shootings and a couple of vehicle crashes.

Last year, six people were massacred in Villa Ahumada in alleged confrontations between rival drug cartels.

Torres said authorities were piecing together the information

for a complete report on Tuesday's attacks.
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.

[incarcerated]

The original Joint Forces Command report can be found here:
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storya...08/JOE2008.pdf

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Thank you, Incarcerated. I see I have some interesting reading to do.

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It looks as if Mexico has an unemployment problem.

LINK

Mexico to lose up to 300,000 jobs, minister says
Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:32am GMT By Estelle Shirbon

PARIS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Mexico risks losing up to 300,000 jobs because of the economic crisis despite a government infrastructure spending programme that can employ some 750,000 people, Economy Minister Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said on Monday.

Mexico's economy is expected to shrink around 1 percent this year because of a slump in U.S. demand for manufactured exports from cars to refrigerators, while tourism and remittances from Mexicans living abroad are also being squeezed.

"The estimation we have is between 250,000 and 300,000 people," Ruiz Mateos told reporters during a visit to Paris, in answer to a question on how many Mexicans were expected to lose their jobs during the global economic slump.

Ruiz Mateos said the government was responding in two ways, with an infrastructure spending programme and with measures to support companies to dissuade them from laying off workers.

"We will do things that the government hadn't been able to do in recent years like cleaning roads, building secondary roads, renovating rural schools, and this could provide employment, more or less, for some 750,000 people," he said.

"In parallel, we have a jobs protection programme targeted at companies that will suffer a drop in demand for their exports and we think that with that programme we will save about half a million jobs that were going to be cut."

Mexican auto production and exports nosedived by more than 50 percent year-on-year in January, the latest sign of how the country is being hit by recession in its key trading partner, the United States.

Asked about this, Ruiz Mateos said that one positive sign was that none of the auto companies that had formally announced investment programmes in Mexico had dropped those plans.



AUTOS

"Ford (F.N) had announced a $3.5 billion investment programme last year and that is going ahead. General Motors (GM.N) announced investment of $600 million in a transmission plant and that is going ahead," he said.

It is unclear how long such plans will hold up, however, given the deep crisis ripping through the U.S. auto industry. General Motors is struggling to make deals with workers to cut costs, failing which it could be forced to consider bankruptcy.

Turning to trade matters, Ruiz Mateos said some Mexican steel producers had expressed concerns about the Buy American provision in Washington's stimulus package.

The provision requires that any public building or public works project funded by the package use only iron, steel and other manufactured goods produced in the United States.

But Ruiz Mateos said Mexico had been reassured by changes to the Buy American provision made by Congress, which stipulate that it "be applied in a manner consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements."

Mexico and the United States are members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and Ruiz Mateos said that commitment by Washington ensured Mexican rights under NAFTA would be respected.

"We are satisfied with that. I think it will be a programme that will incentivise and lift the U.S. economy and that will be a great help to overcome the global crisis," he said.

Ruiz Mateos also said Mexico and the United States would soon resolve their dispute over new U.S. meat labelling rules, which he called "a minor problem". The rules, which are due to take effect on March 16, require that meat packages in U.S. supermarket carry country-of-origin labels.

Canadian and Mexican officials have argued the rules would lead U.S. meat plants and consumers to discriminate against their animals, though Canada has already dropped its complaints. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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Today's Wall Street Journal suggests that two gangs - one being the Zetas - can field as many as 10,000 (ten thousand) gunmen at a time.

I cannot help but wonder about the beauty of snow covered northern lands...

LINK

The Perilous State of Mexico
With drug-fueled violence and corruption escalating sharply, many fear drug cartels have grown too powerful for Mexico to control. Why things are getting worse, and what it means for the United States.
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By DAVID LUHNOW and JOSé DE CORDOBA

Reuters
Mexican marines stand guard next to about 7 tons of confiscated cocaine on Feb. 16.

Monterrey, Mexico

Detective Ramon Jasso was heading to work in this bustling city a few days ago when an SUV pulled alongside and slowed ominously. Within seconds, gunmen fired 97 bullets at the 37-year-old policeman, killing him instantly.

Mr. Jasso had been warned. The day before, someone called his cellphone and said he would be killed if he didn't immediately release a young man who had been arrested for organizing a violent protest in support of the city's drug gangs. The demonstrators were demanding that the Mexican army withdraw from the drug war. The protests have since spread from Monterrey -- once a model of order and industry -- to five other cities.

Drug Wars in Mexico
View Slideshow

Brian L. Frank for The Wall Street Journal
Gang members and dealers line the streets of Tepitoto, Mexico City
View Slideshow

Associated Press
Police and forensic workers carried two bodies in Villa Ahumada.
Much as Pakistan is fighting for survival against Islamic radicals, Mexico is waging a do-or-die battle with the world's most powerful drug cartels. Last year, some 6,000 people died in drug-related violence here, more than twice the number killed the previous year. The dead included several dozen who were beheaded, a chilling echo of the scare tactics used by Islamic radicals. Mexican drug gangs even have an unofficial religion: They worship La Santa Muerte, a Mexican version of the Grim Reaper.

In growing parts of the country, drug gangs now extort businesses, setting up a parallel tax system that threatens the government monopoly on raising tax money. In Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, handwritten signs pasted on schools warned teachers to hand over their Christmas bonuses or die. A General Motors distributorship at a midsize Mexican city was extorted for months at a time, according to a high-ranking Mexican official. A GM spokeswoman in Mexico had no comment.

"We are at war," says Aldo Fasci, a good-looking lawyer who is the top police official for Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is the capital. "The gangs have taken over the border, our highways and our cops. And now, with these protests, they are trying to take over our cities

The parallels between Pakistan and Mexico are strong enough that the U.S. military singled them out recently as the two countries where there is a risk the government could suffer a swift and catastrophic collapse, becoming a failed state.

Pakistan is the greater worry because the risk of collapse is higher and because it has nuclear weapons. But Mexico is also scary: It has 100 million people on the southern doorstep of the U.S., meaning any serious instability would flood the U.S. with refugees. Mexico is also the U.S.'s second biggest trading partner.

Mexico's cartels already have tentacles that stretch across the border. The U.S. Justice Department said recently that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat to the United States," operating in at least 230 cities and towns. Crimes connected to Mexican cartels are spreading across the Southwest. Phoenix had more than 370 kidnapping cases last year, turning it into the kidnapping capital of the U.S. Most of the victims were illegal aliens or linked to the drugs trade.

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Eros Hoagland/Redux
A service for slain police officers in Tijuana
Former U.S. antidrug czar Barry McCaffrey said Mexico risks becoming a "narco-state" within five years if things don't improve. Outgoing CIA director Michael Hayden listed Mexico alongside Iran as a possible top challenge for President Obama. Other analysts say the risk is not that the Mexican state collapses, but rather becomes like Russia, a state heavily influenced by mafias.

Such comparisons are probably a stretch -- for now anyway. Beyond the headline-grabbing violence, Mexico is stable. It has a thriving democracy, the world's 13th-largest economy and a growing middle class. And as many as 90% of those killed are believed to be linked to the trade in some way, say officials.

"We have a serious problem. The drug gangs have penetrated many institutions. But we're not talking about an institutional collapse. That is wrong," says Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora.

Officials in both Washington and Mexico City also say the rising violence has a silver lining: It means that after decades of complicity or ignoring the problem, the Mexican government is finally cracking down on the drug cartels and forcing them to fight back or fight with one another for turf. One telling statistic: In the first three years of President Felipe Calderon's six-year term, Mexico's army has had 153 clashes with drug gangs. In the six years of his predecessor Vicente Fox's term, there were only 16."

If Mexico isn't a failed state, though, it is a country with a weak state -- one the narcos seem to be weakening further.

"The Mexican state is in danger," says Gerardo Priego, a deputy from Mr. Calderon's ruling center-right party, known as the PAN. "We are not yet a failed state, but if we don't take action soon, we will become one very soon."

Mexican academic Edgardo Buscaglia estimates there are 200 counties in Mexico -- some 8% of the total -- where drug gangs wield more influence behind the scenes than the authorities. With fearsome arsenals of rocket-propelled grenades, bazookas and automatic weapons, cartels are often better armed than the police and even the soldiers they fight. The number of weapons confiscated last year from drug gangs in Mexico could arm the entire army of El Salvador, by one estimate. Where do most of the weapons come from? The U.S.

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Agencia Reforma
Investigating the death of policeman Ramon Jasso
Last year alone, gunmen fired shots and threw a grenade, which didn't explode, at the U.S. consulate in Monterrey. The head of Mexico's federal police was murdered in a hit ordered by one of his own men, whom officials say was working for the drug cartels. Mexico's top antidrug prosecutor was arrested and charged with being on a cartel payroll, along with several other senior officials. One man in Tijuana admitted to dissolving some 300 bodies in vats of acid on behalf of a drug gang.

The publisher of Mexico's most influential newspaper chain moved his family from Monterrey to Texas after he was threatened and gunmen paid a visit to his ranch. Other businessmen from cities across Mexico have done the same.

"I have never seen such a difficult situation" in Mexico, says Alejandro Junco, who publishes Reforma in Mexico City and El Norte in Monterrey. Mr. Junco now commutes every week to Mexico from Texas.

A few weeks ago, a recently retired army general hired to help the resort city of Cancun crack down on drug gangs was tortured and killed. His wrists and ankles were broken during the torture. Federal officials' main suspect: the Cancun police chief, who has been stripped of his duties and put under house arrest during the investigation.

Every day brings a new horror. In Ciudad Juarez on Friday, gunmen killed a police officer and a prison guard, and left a sign on their bodies saying they would kill one officer every two days until the city police chief resigns. He quit late Friday.

Analysts and diplomats worry that drug traffickers may increase their hold on Mexico's political process during midterm congressional elections scheduled for July.

Mauricio Fernandez Garza, the scion of a wealthy Monterrey family, says he was approached by a cartel when he was a gubernatorial candidate in 2003 and told the cartel would foot the bill for the campaign if he promised to "look the other way" on the drugs trade. He says he declined the offer. He lost the election.



EPA
Cardenas police officers with alleged links to drug trafficking are detained in September.
Mexico has long been in the crosshairs of the drug war. In the 1980s, the drug of choice for local traffickers was marijuana, and much like today, accusations of high-level Mexican corruption were common. In 1985, DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured to death by local traffickers, with the aid of a former president's brother-in-law. In 1997, the country's antidrug czar Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was jailed after it emerged he was in the employ of a powerful trafficker.

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Article, continued:

Drawn by the opportunity to supply the U.S. drug market, powerful trafficking groups have emerged on Mexico's Pacific coast, its Gulf coast, in the northern desert state of Chihuahua and in the wild-west state of Sinaloa, home to most of Mexico's original trafficking families. These groups, notorious for their shifting alliances and backstabbing ways, have fought for years for control of trafficking routes. Personal hatreds have marked fights over market share with barbaric violence.

Several new factors in the past few years added to the violence, however. In 2000, Mexicans voted out the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled for 71 years. The end of a one-party state loosened authoritarian control and broke the old alliances cemented through corruption that kept a check on drug-related violence.

Another factor was 9/11. After the attacks, tighter border security prompted some gangs to sell cocaine in Mexico instead, breaking an unspoken agreement with the government that gangs would be tolerated as long as they didn't sell the drugs in Mexico but passed them on instead to the gringos. Since 2001, local demand for cocaine has grown an estimated 20% per year. The creation of a local market only encouraged infighting over the spoils.

17. Officials say the protests are organized by drug cartels.
Things started getting really nasty in 2004, when Osiel Cardenas, then leader of the Gulf Cartel, killed Arturo "the Chicken" Guzman, the brother of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, a leader of the Sinaloa cartel. Mr. Guzman soon tried to take over Nuevo Laredo, the border city controlled by Mr. Cardenas with the help of the Zetas, former elite Mexican soldiers who defected to the drug traffickers, as well as most of the Nuevo Laredo police, who in fact worked for the Zetas. The struggle for Nuevo Laredo culminated in a pitched battle when gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to attack a safe house belonging to the other cartel. The all-out battle led the U.S. to close its consulate for a week. The violence soon spread as the two groups fought for dominance all over Mexico's northern border.

Monterrey, just a hundred miles to the south, seemed unperturbed. Can-do, confident and modern, Monterrey likes to think of itself as more American than Mexican. It's the home of Mexico's best university, Tecnologico de Monterrey, modeled on MIT, as well as the country's most prosperous suburb, San Pedro Garza Garcia, and local units of 1,500 U.S. companies. Its police are considered among Mexico's best. In the 1990s, the San Diego Padres came to play a few regular season games here and there was heady talk of Monterrey landing a pro baseball team.

As violence engulfed Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey business leaders, police chiefs and government officials were of one mind: It wouldn't happen here. "We have drawn a line in the sand and told the drug lords they cross it at their peril," state governor Natividad Gonzalez said in a 2005 interview.

What the governor apparently didn't know is that, for years, Monterrey's relative calm was due to an unspoken agreement between rival drug lords whose families lived quietly in the wealthy San Pedro enclave, a place where their wealth would not be conspicuous, say local police. But Monterrey was too big a local drug market to ignore for both sides, and soon fighting broke out.

By 2006, the murder rate spiked and cops were getting shot at point-blank on the streets. San Pedro Police Chief Hector Ayala was gunned down. Months later, Marcelo Garza y Garza, the chief of state police investigations, a well-known San Pedro resident and the DEA's main contact in the city, was murdered outside the town's largest Roman Catholic church. U.S. law-enforcement officials believe he was betrayed to the Zetas by a corrupt cop.

Today, the warring gangs still vie for control, though the Zetas have the upper hand. In much of the city, the gang is branching out into new types of criminal enterprise, especially extorting street vendors, nightclubs and other shops that operate on the margin of the law. These places used to be preyed upon by local cops, but no longer. The owner of a billiards hall says the Zetas told him they wanted a cut of the profits every month, a bill he ponies up. They also ordered him to allow someone to sell drugs at the hall, he says. "What can I do," he shrugs.

In the street market along the city's busy Reforma Ave, the Zetas sell pirated CDs, and have their own label: "Los Unicos," or "The Only Ones," with a logo of a black horse surrounded by four Zs. In Spanish, "Zeta" is how you pronounce the letter "Z." One vendor says some Zetas came to the stalls last year and ordered several vendors to start peddling the Zeta label CDs.

Many Monterrey residents are convinced that even a cut from bribes they pay local cops for traffic violations goes to the Zetas through corrupt cops. That kind of extra money to fund the drug gangs only worsens the balance of power between the state and the traffickers. The drugs trade in Mexico generates at least $10 billion in yearly revenues, Mexican officials say. The government's annual budget for federal law enforcement, not including the army: roughly $1.2 billion.

Both the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartels are believed to field as many as 10,000 gunmen each -- the size of a small army. The Zetas, for instance, can find fresh recruits easily in Monterrey's tough barrios, where the unemployment rate is high.

In Monterrey's Independencia neighborhood, one of the city's oldest, it is not the city government that controls the streets but the local pandillas, or gangs. During a recent workday, the streets were filled with young gangsters, sitting around playing marbles, chatting, and looking tough. At the entrance to a local primary school, a group of four men sat and smoked what appeared to be crack cocaine, what locals call "piedra" or rock.

Outsiders are clearly unwelcome. A reporter visiting in an unmarked SUV along with a state policeman wearing civilian clothes was enough to get plenty of hostile stares and a few mouthed expletives. One or two gang members pulled out their cell phones and began placing a call. "They're unsure whether we're cops or another drug gang," said Jorge, the state policeman, who did not want his full name used for fear of retaliation by the drug lords. "Either way, we move on or we're in trouble."

Jorge, clean cut and with an infectious smile, has been a state cop for more than 20 years. He earns 6,000 pesos -- $450 -- a month. It's an old saw in Mexico that police here don't make enough money to either resist being corrupted by the criminals or care enough to risk their lives going after them. In fact, corruption extends throughout the police forces. A senior state official said privately that he doesn't trust a single local police commander.

The state's former head of public security resigned amid allegations that he was in league with the Sinaloa cartel. The man who took his place is Mr. Fasci, a former top prosecutor. Mr. Fasci says officials are trying to improve coordination among Mexico's alphabet soup of different law enforcement bodies. In Monterrey's metropolitan area, there are 11 different municipal police forces, a state police, three branches of the federal police, and the army. Statewide, there are 70 different emergency numbers for the police. Making matters worse, narcotics smuggling is a federal crime, so local cops aren't supposed to prosecute it.

Mr. Fasci says the protests are organized by drug gangs, who go to barrios like Independencia and pay $30 to each person to block traffic, hold up signs like "no military repression." Mr. Fasci thinks the gangs are trying to goad the police into a crackdown that would generate antipathy for the authorities and the army. "We're not going to fall for it," he says.

Neither will the Mexican government call off the soldiers. Mexico has no choice but to deploy the army to do what corrupt and inefficient state and local police forces can't, says Mr. Fasci. And the protests are likely a sign the military is having success pressuring the drug gangs, say officials. Meanwhile, Mexico has passed a law that calls for an ambitious reform of all its state and municipal police forces. The problem: It could take 15 years or longer to complete, says Mr. Medina Mora, the attorney general.

The U.S., which is providing Mexico with some $400 million a year for equipment and training to combat drug traffickers, backs Mexico's stand. U.S. law enforcement officials are ecstatic about Mr. Calderon's get-tough approach. A U.S. law enforcement official says the Mexican military is trying to break down powerful drug cartels into smaller and more manageable drug gangs, like "breaking down boulders into pebbles." He adds: "It might be bloody, it might be ugly, but it has to be done."

Demand in the U.S., of course, is the motor for the drugs trade. Three former respected heads of state in Latin America, including Mexico's former president Ernesto Zedillo, issued a joint report recently saying the drug war was too costly for countries like Mexico, and urged the U.S. to explore alternatives like decriminalizing marijuana.

Indeed, Mexican officials long ago gave up on thinking they might one day eliminate the drugs trade altogether. Victory now sounds a lot like what victory in Iraq might be for the U.S.: lower violence just enough so that people won't talk about it anymore.

Jorge Tello, an adviser to President Calderon on the drugs war, defines it like this: "It's like a rat-control problem. The rats are always down there in the sewers, you can't really get rid of them. But what you don't want are rats on people's front doors."

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More, this from USA Today. LINK

So...can the State of Texas keep the border secure?

[Ret10Echo]

Mexico troops enter drug war city
More than 1,500 Mexican troops have moved into a city on the US border being fought over by rival drug gangs.

Soldiers moved into Ciudad Juarez to try to regain control of a city in which more than 2,000 people have been murdered over the past year.

Officials say they intend to have 7,000 troops and police in position by the end of the week.

Rival gangs are battling for control of the city, which is a key entry point for drug smuggling into the US.

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said the troops were there in support of the local authorities.

"Ciudad Juarez worries us deeply," he said in an interview with Reuters news agency.

"It is the reason why there is a response by the federal government to support the request of local authorities. Public safety is a shared responsibility among the federal, state governments and municipalities."

He added: "In areas where drug traffickers have a lot of influence, sadly there is a risk that they will have an interest in influencing the formation of public power, particularly the local authority. This is something that concerns us."

Police chief quit

Last month, the police chief in Ciudad Juarez, Roberto Orduna, stepped down after drugs gangs threatened to kill at least one police officer every two days until he quit.

Mayor Jose Reyes had earlier insisted the city would not back down to criminal gangs.

But after a police officer and a prison guard were killed, he said Mr Orduna's departure was the only way the authorities could protect policemen.

Speaking after the latest deployment of troops in his city, Mr Reyes said the army and the local authorities were working together to help the troops work with local police and residents.

[RT AXE 10]

Mexico has an army of approx 130,000. Should the 2 big drug cartels combine they would total approx 100,000. and they're armed to the "T".... and have more funding...

[Bordercop]

Check out these stories...

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_117708...lpasotimes.com

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_118306...lpasotimes.com

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_117531...lpasotimes.com

It's getting worse every day.

[Rumblyguts]

Intersting, just received a campus-wide email about a State Dept. Travel Warning for Mexico. Spring Break's right around the corner...

[Ret10Echo]

Interesting comment from a BBC interview.

President Calderon said it was impossible to smuggle tonnes of cocaine into the United States without the complicity of some American authorities.

"There is trafficking in Mexico because there is corruption in Mexico," he told the BBC.

"But by the same argument if there is trafficking in the United States it is because there is some corruption in the United States... It is impossible to pass tonnes of cocaine to the United States without the complicity of some American authorities."



Full interview here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7971335.stm

[Richard]

Not the same old Juarez we used to play in...

Richard's $.02

Juarez: Running the Most Dangerous City in the Americas
Tim Padgett, Time, 27 Mar 2009

Jose Reyes Ferriz, mayor of the Mexican border city of Juarez, presides over what may be the western hemisphere's most dangerous town, certainly the hardest hit by Mexico's drug-war terror. Since the start of last year, Juarez has seen almost 2,000 drug-related murders. Reyes this month requested thousands of federal army soldiers to rein in the violence, which has subsided for the moment — giving him a chance to rebuild Juarez's corrupt police force. He talked with TIME's Tim Padgett this week about his police reform, drug-cartel death threats against him and comparisons of Juarez to Baghdad.

TIME: Why have the cartels issued death threats against you?

REYES: Organized crime here had infiltrated our police so deeply, and it was clear they didn't want a clean-up of the force. But it had to be done, and no other Mexican city has done such a widespread clean-up. And that caused the threats. Four weeks ago on a Sunday came the first public threat against me; but it was something we knew had been brewing for a while so I wasn't completely surprised or upset. I knew the consequences of the decisions I'd made.

The violence is a consequence of the Mexican political class's utter neglect of law enforcement, especially when the country was ruled by your party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Will that finally change now?

That's a key issue. As a country we really underestimated the value of police and looked down on police. That forced the issues we have now, particularly in Juarez. Our police department barely grew the past 15 years: we should have a force of 4,000 officers, but we have only 1,600. We knew about police corruption but as a society did nothing to force the clean-up of our department. Now it's become extremely difficult to do. It cost the lives of 50 people in city government last year, including two police directors.

Right now, with the military on your streets, things seem safer. But the soldiers can only stay so long. Can you really build a new, larger, reliable police force before they leave?

Yes, we can. About half [of the old force] are now out; most didn't pass the new "confidence exam." Our agreement with the federal government is that we'll have 3,000 new officers in place by the end of the year. So we're starting a huge recruitment effort. They'll have to have high school diplomas — we're hoping about 500 will be college graduates. They're going to be some of the best paid in the country and eligible for subsidized housing for the first time.

Are Washington and Mexico City focusing enough attention and resources under the anti-drug Merida Initiative toward local police reform?

The U.S. needs to assure that enough money is put toward making the police forces along the border sufficiently robust — precisely so they'll be the first line of defense for the U.S., just as it's equally important that U.S. border police be better able to stop the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico. The U.S. also needs to be able to share more information with Mexico — like intelligence about [U.S.-based] gangs like Barrio Azteca, whose members are used by the Mexican drug cartels to commit so much of the violence here.

Do you feel the Obama Administration, which this week announced plans to bring more federal agents to the border in large part for those purposes, is doing more than previous U.S. administrations to help your efforts?

Oh yeah. The previous Administration clearly felt that the problems with Mexico could be solved by building a big wall between the two countries to keep the problems here out of the U.S. That is clearly wrong, and President Obama recognizes that. His efforts are directed at the proper solutions for Mexico's problems — which at the end of the day become problems for the U.S. If we don't attack those problems now, the violence will escalate and go into the U.S. And [Mexican] President [Felipe] Calderon, of course, has been very involved in the effort to find solutions to Juarez's problems.

What was this city like before the soldiers arrived?

People didn't want to go outside. Most people stayed at home; most parents didn't want their kids to go to parties. Our city normally has vibrant night life, and that all but stopped for most of the past year.

How do you feel about the comparisons between Juarez and Baghdad?

Well, it was a situation where the numbers were there. The situation was there. We tried to keep information flowing to remind people that of the 1,600 [killed last year] only 30 were innocent civilians. More recently, as we've put pressure on the police, we're seeing what we call "opportunistic" crimes like kidnapping and extortion.

There have been reports that you and your family live part of each week now across the border in El Paso, that U.S. law enforcement has helped screen your bodyguards.

I now have six bodyguards who carry assault weapons instead of guns. But I live in Juarez, I work in Juarez, I sleep in Juarez. [The reports] were fueled by El Paso Mayor John Cook, a good friend of mine, who said when the threats started that if the [Juarez] mayor wants to come to El Paso we'll provide security for him. I told him I didn't need it.

Despite its current troubles, Juarez has a history of leading change in Mexico. The Mexican Revolution and maquiladora assembly plants began here; Juarez was the first city to elect an opposition mayor during the PRI's rule. Will it be the first to create a model police force?

I think that is what's happening. We, of course, didn't choose these circumstances that are forcing us to do it.

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...sletter-weekly