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Old 02-20-2011, 16:45   #1
lindy
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Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

This is getting ridiculous. I mean it's MEXICO for Pete's sake and not DC or Baltimore.


Even by Juarez standards, a deadly 72 hours

(CNN) -- Fifty-three people were killed in a 72-hour span in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, making it one of the deadliest three-day periods in recent memory, state attorney general's office spokesman Arturo Sandoval told CNN Sunday.

Among the dead were four police officers from three different agencies, Sandoval said.

"This is the worst violence we've seen this year," he said, referring to the three days from Thursday through Saturday.

The bloodshed started on Thursday with 14 people killed, including a municipal police officer.

Friday was the most violent day, leaving 20 people dead. A municipal police officer was killed by an assassin who belonged to a band of carjackers. Hours later, a state police investigator was executed on his drive home.

On Saturday, a highway police officer was killed by a driver who confronted the patrolman after the officer gave him a ticket. The officer was shot 10 times at close range in the middle of the afternoon. In all, 19 people were killed that day in separate shootings throughout the city.

Juarez is one of Mexico's deadliest cities and an epicenter of drug cartel violence. The Juarez cartel and the Sinaloa cartel are fighting a bloody turf war in the region for lucrative smuggling routes, and for drug-dealing territory in the city.

The sudden spike in violence left the city morgue overwhelmed. There were issues with where to store the bodies.

In light of the violence, Juarez Mayor Hector "Teto" Murguia is expected to name a new municipal police chief on Monday, local newspapers reported.

Municipal police spokesman Adrian Sanchez told CNN he has read those reports, but that the police department has no official confirmation that a new chief will be appointed.

"At this time we continue serving our current boss until we are given new orders," Sanchez said.

In the first 40 days of 2011, Juarez is averaging eight homicides per day, Sandoval said. Also, in February, at least 24 women have been killed in 20 days.
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Old 02-20-2011, 17:31   #2
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Mexico's drug war leaves ghost towns in its wake

Is this Bosnia or Kosovo? I knew it was the new wild west but damn...it is REALLY bad down there.


TIERRAS COLORADAS, Mexico - Just after Christmas, drug hitmen rolled into the isolated village of Tierras Coloradas and burned it down, leaving more than 150 people, mostly children, homeless in the raw mountain winter.

The residents, Tepehuan Indians who speak Spanish as a second language and have no electricity or running water, had already fled into the woods, sleeping under trees or hiding in caves after a raid by a feared drug gang on Dec. 26.

Using murder and intimidation, rival cartels are fighting for control of this drug-growing area. A group of armed men came searching for a man rumored to be cultivating marijuana.

He died trying to defend himself, but not before killing a suspected drug trafficking leader, and residents were sure the gang would return for revenge.

“We saw they killed one person and we thought, ‘Now they are going to kill everyone.’ So we ran,” said Jose, a village leader, standing in front of the charred remains of the one-room pre-school, with mangled desk chairs strewn outside.

On Dec. 28, two days after the initial raid, a column of 50 to 60 men, some in military-type uniforms and ski masks, filed on foot down a steep mountain road and torched three dozen homes — about half the village — as well as two schools, 17 trucks, the radio receiver and the community store.

The attack on Tierras Coloradas is one of the most dramatic examples yet of a still largely hidden phenomenon of Mexico’s drugs war: people forced from their homes by the violence.

“The situation is out of control,” Durango state prosecutor Ramiro Ortiz said in an interview at his office last week. “Organized crime has no limits any more. They don’t respect women or children. It’s a situation of total brutality.”

President Felipe Calderon’s four-year-old army-led campaign against the cartels has shaken up the balance of power in Mexico’s criminal underworld and sparked a wave of turf wars, sometimes trapping civilians in their midst.

Tierras Coloradas lies in the heart of a marijuana and opium poppy growing region known as Mexico’s “Golden Triangle,” and is more than 11 hours by car on poor roads and dirt tracks from Durango’s state capital,

The rule of law is evaporating in the region as drug gangs extend their power. Jose said he tried to call the municipal police on the village’s only radio the day before it was reduced to ashes but he was told there were ‘dangerous people’ on the road who wouldn’t let police through.

“We were waiting and waiting but they never came,” said 24-year-old Maria Guadalupe, wearing the traditional Tepehuan dress of brightly colored satin blouse and skirt lined with ruffles, paired with fuzzy fluorescent socks.

Walking with difficulty because of a limp, she fled with her mother, seven brothers and sisters and a four-month old niece. The villagers hid in the mountains for nearly a week before soldiers arrived to secure what was left of the town.

In the northern states of Durango, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, cartels fighting for control of lucrative smuggling routes to the United States have threatened entire towns with ultimatums to flee or be killed.

No official numbers exist, but the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, or IDMC, estimates 115,000 people have been displaced by Mexico’s drug violence.

Another 115,000 or more have fled and slipped into the United States, IDMC says. Some leave and then move back, creating a floating population that is hard to track.

“The focus of the government is obviously on beating the cartels ... Beyond keeping a tally of people who have been killed, they are not tracking the impact of this violence on the civilian population,” IDMC’s Mexico program director Sebastian Albuja said.

GHOST TOWNS

Compared to Colombia, where some 3.4 million people have been displaced by a decades-long conflict involving cocaine-smuggling guerrilla, paramilitary and other armed groups, Mexico’s problem is still small.

But as violence grows, with more than 34,000 drug killings in the past four years, Calderon is coming under increasing pressure to help states burdened by drug war refugees.

Durango’s state government needs millions of dollars to rebuild homes and schools in Tierras Coloradas and to resettle some 1,400 people who fled towns in the nearby municipality of Pueblo Nuevo because of threats from drug traffickers.

“People have left not because they want to, but because they are forced to by the situation,” state governor Jorge Herrera said when he helicoptered into Tierras Coloradas to hand out stoves, rice, beans, oil, sacks of cement and bricks.

Durango is not the only state with drug war ghost towns. Last November, some 300 residents of Ciudad Mier — once dubbed one of Mexico’s “magical pueblos” for its rich history — fled after gunmen told people to clear out.

The surrounding region in Tamaulipas state, near the Texas border, has been plagued by spiraling violence as the Zetas gang, a group of military deserters, tries to grab key towns from its arch-rival, the Gulf cartel.

There are similar scenes of burned-out homes and shuttered businesses around Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s most violent city.

Last year, thugs told residents of Praxedis G. Guerrero, an hour outside of Juarez, they had until Easter Sunday to leave town. About 50 houses were burned and one-third of the population left for good. Those who stayed live in fear.

“People don’t go out. There are no dances, no parties because of the threats they’ll be machine-gunned,” said a 40-year-old farm worker in Praxedis’ silent central plaza.

Officials blame much of the violence around Ciudad Juarez on Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, muscling in on territory controlled by the Juarez Cartel.

Around Tierras Coloradas, Guzman’s group is trying to halt an incursion by the Zetas. Some impoverished towns in Durango’s remote canyons are thought to be involved in planting illegal crops and are now caught up in battles between rival groups.

Until there is development and job opportunities in the poorest, indigenous parts of Mexico, many towns like Tierras Coloradas will continue to live under threat, said a local congressman who represented the region before he was severely wounded in a cartel ambush that killed a local mayor.

“There is still fear about what will happen when the security forces leave,” said the politician, who now uses a walker and speaks with a slur. “No one knows if the people who did this will come back.”
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"There are times in your life you'll be required to perform an exceedingly difficult task to the best of your ability, regardless of your perceived capability. Mental toughness is what will carry the day during these times. In other words, you suck it up and do what you have to do." - Razor
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Old 02-20-2011, 20:46   #3
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Terrible.

I take it the place is off limits to Ft. Bliss personnel.

Nobody can have fun anymore.
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Old 02-20-2011, 21:35   #4
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Officials blame much of the violence around Ciudad Juarez on Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, muscling in on territory controlled by the Juarez Cartel
I've heard of some guys who are pretty good at rolling up HVT/HPTs.

Just sayin'
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Old 02-20-2011, 22:18   #5
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The price of bus passes is going up.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110221/..._war_mexico_16

12 taxi drivers, fares killed in Mexican resort

Sun Feb 20, 8:12 pm ET
ACAPULCO, Mexico – A spate of attacks on taxis in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco has left 12 taxi drivers or passengers dead, police said Sunday, just hours before the Mexican Open tennis tournament is scheduled to start.

Acapulco has been the scene of bloody drug cartel turf wars, and taxi drivers have often been targeted for extortion or recruited by the gangs to act as lookouts or transport drugs.

The organizers of the largest tennis tournament in Latin America said in a statement Sunday that the Mexican government has assured them that appropriate security measures have been taken for the event that starts Monday.

Police in Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, said that four suspects had been detained in relation with some of the attacks. The suspects had guns, a grenade and a machete that police say may have been used to decapitate some of the victims.

The attacks began Friday, when five taxi drivers were found dead in or near their vehicles.

The slaughter continued Saturday, when a driver was found bound and shot to death near his taxi, and two others were found dead of bullet wounds inside their vehicles. One of the drivers had been beheaded.

Gunmen opened fire on yet another taxi, killing the driver and three passengers.

On Sunday, the violence came closer to the city's tourist zone, where the tennis matches are held. Five cars were set afire and a man's body was found hacked to pieces outside an apartment building.

Dozens of cars have been set ablaze in Acapulco in recent days, for reasons that are not entirely clear....

Spanish player David Ferrer, winner of the last Acapulco tournament, downplayed the danger.

"I think things are being greatly exaggerated," Ferrer said. "We tennis players have all the guarantees" for personal safety.
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Last edited by incarcerated; 02-20-2011 at 22:52.
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Old 02-21-2011, 00:08   #6
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When I was at Bliss in the early 90's, we went to Juarez every weekend. And some week nights too. Tequila poppers for $.50 each, and a Mexican metal band playing early Metallica covers all night... Man, how things change... It's sad.
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Old 02-21-2011, 08:33   #7
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Been off limits to Bliss folks for at least the past 3 years. Didn't really matter though - damn near every weekend we had at least one SPC or below in the ED after having his ass kicked in CJ.

Of course, once they were stitched and sober - they left with the MP's.

Post CDR doesn't take CJ lightly...nor should he.

Americans are almost as big a target in CJ as rival cartel members. Bragging rights.

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Ain't no one getting out of this world alive. All you can do is try to have some choice in the way you go. Prepare yourself (and your affairs), and when your number is up, die on your feet fighting rather than on your knees. And make the SOBs pay dearly."
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Old 02-21-2011, 08:48   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lindy View Post
“We saw they killed one person and we thought, ‘Now they are going to kill everyone.’ So we ran,” said Jose, a village leader
The root of the problem
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Old 02-21-2011, 09:19   #9
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Predator / Mq 9 Reaper

"..........On Dec. 28, two days after the initial raid, a column of 50 to 60 men, some in military-type uniforms and ski masks, filed on foot down a steep mountain road and torched three dozen homes — about half the village —............"

Predator / MQ 9 Reaper

Sounds like the home team could use a few. Maybe time for the War on Drugs to become a war - or legalize it.
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Old 02-23-2011, 15:13   #10
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Just remember- All the killing in Mexico is the United Sates' fault. We supply the weapons and the money to buy them because of our insatiable thirst for recreational narcotics. I feel so guilty.
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Old 02-23-2011, 15:21   #11
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Give the A.O. back to 7th Group with carte blanche on logistics, and Mexico would be a friendly little tourist country in 18 months.

I would definitely love to be in on that...
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Old 02-23-2011, 15:21   #12
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Just remember- All the killing in Mexico is the United Sates' fault. We supply the weapons and the money to buy them because of our insatiable thirst for recreational narcotics. I feel so guilty.
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

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Old 02-23-2011, 15:32   #13
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crime does pay!

Quote:
Originally Posted by mark46th View Post
Just remember- All the killing in Mexico is the United Sates' fault. We supply the weapons and the money to buy them because of our insatiable thirst for recreational narcotics. I feel so guilty.

Mexican economy grows fastest in 10 years

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s economy accelerated at the end of 2010 to lift annual growth to the fastest in a decade but low inflation means policymakers are likely to keep interest rates steady in coming months.

The economy grew 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three-month period, the national statistics agency said on Monday, nearly double the rate of the previous quarter.

For the year, the economy grew 5.5 percent, the best performance since 2000 and closing in on the higher growth rates enjoyed by regional peers like Chile and Brazil.

Although the increase was not enough to make up for the deep contraction of 2009, economists welcomed signs Mexico’s recovery is becoming more broadly-based.

Annual growth in services picked up to 4.2 percent. Industry, while decelerating from the previous quarter, rose 4.7 percent. “Manufacturing was stronger but most importantly the services sector grew significantly,” said JP Morgan economist Gabriel Casillas.

Domestic demand has been the missing link in the recovery so far, which also has been held back by a drug war that is leading some companies to cancel investments.

Export sector growth now appears to be spilling over into the wider economy by trimming unemployment rates and boosting retail spending.

“Growth is now more balanced,” Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero told a news conference.

Ivan Bocarando, general manager of Autotecnica Roca, a dealership of US carmaker Chrysler in the western city of Zapopan, said business in the final three months of last year was “satisfactory” but he saw better times ahead.

“I expect the first quarter to be a bit better, because it looks like the economy is picking up somewhat,” he said.

Compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, the economy expanded 4.6 percent. Cordero said drug cartel violence was “undoubtedly stunting a lot of commercial activity” in isolated parts of the country, but that there was no evidence this was slowing the wider economy.

Indeed, growth in factory exports accelerated during the period, and the country’s overall growth prospects have improved due to US plans to keep fiscal stimulus in place this year. Roughly 80 percent of Mexican exports go to the United States.

Nonetheless, Mexican bank Banorte reckons the country’s drug war is reducing long-term growth by 1-2 percentage points.

The bank bases its estimate on the historical economic performance of countries torn by violent conflict.

Mexico has lagged growth rates in Brazil, which likely grew as much as 8 percent last year. But so far it has avoided the inflation headache troubling many emerging markets as they outpace recoveries in the developed world. Brazil hiked interest rates several times in 2010. This has boosted Brazil’s currency to dizzying heights to the consternation of exporters.

In Mexico, however, inflation is decelerating as 2010 tax hikes fall off the annual reading, and the central bank will likely keep its benchmark rate on hold at 4.5 percent until the first quarter of next year, said Santander economist Rafael Camarena. Food inflation, which is gripping many emerging markets, remains a latent risk in Mexico.

The one-year interest rate swap was steady following the GDP data’s release, suggesting investors had not altered bets on the direction of monetary policy.

Mexico’s finance ministry growth of about 4 percent this year and the central bank is confident inflation will fall steadily towards its 3 percent target.
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"There are times in your life you'll be required to perform an exceedingly difficult task to the best of your ability, regardless of your perceived capability. Mental toughness is what will carry the day during these times. In other words, you suck it up and do what you have to do." - Razor
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Old 04-11-2011, 20:11   #14
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Give the A.O. back to 7th Group with carte blanche on logistics, and Mexico would be a friendly little tourist country in 18 months.

I would definitely love to be in on that...
Why isnt it? Its part of latin america and its the biggest danger to the US in the region *imo*.
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