CHIHUAHUA, Chihuahua - Six members of the prison system's Immediate Reaction Task Force (CERESO's Grupo Especial de Reacción Inmediata), including the commander, José Miguel García de la Cruz, were ambushed & killed next to the Omnibus station at Pistolas Meneses park on the north side of Chihuahua City.The ambush began around 7:20 Wednesday morning just after the officers left the home of a fellow member they had picked up to begin their daily duties.
Two officers died in the cab of the truck & another in the bed of the PU, while three officers managed to get out of the PU bed & tried to run for cover, but were gunned down several meters away in the street.
The attackers drove a blue Dodge Durango, a white Dodge Nitro & a maroon Ford Expedition. At least 10 gunmen opened fire on the officers. More than 300 rounds of .223 & 7.62mm ammunition were fired at the scene.
The CERESO PU crashed into the side of an Omnibus de Mexico bus which had just arrived from Juárez, dropped off passengers at the Pistolas Meneses station, & was pulling out to go to the main terminal. The driver & two passengers on board were uninjured, although the bus sustained numerous bullet impacts.
This attacked occurred just 2 days after La Linea painted a 'narco-message' on a local school wall in Colonia Insurgentes declaring war on CERESO for their supposed help of the Sinaloa DTO.
Sources for article: La Opcion; Entre Lineas; El Observador; El Pueblo; Omnia; El Teimpo; El Heraldo
Two officers died in the cab of the truck & another in the bed of the PU, while three officers managed to get out of the PU bed & tried to run for cover, but were gunned down several meters away in the street.
The attackers drove a blue Dodge Durango, a white Dodge Nitro & a maroon Ford Expedition. At least 10 gunmen opened fire on the officers. More than 300 rounds of .223 & 7.62mm ammunition were fired at the scene.
The CERESO PU crashed into the side of an Omnibus de Mexico bus which had just arrived from Juárez, dropped off passengers at the Pistolas Meneses station, & was pulling out to go to the main terminal. The driver & two passengers on board were uninjured, although the bus sustained numerous bullet impacts.
This attacked occurred just 2 days after La Linea painted a 'narco-message' on a local school wall in Colonia Insurgentes declaring war on CERESO for their supposed help of the Sinaloa DTO.
Sources for article: La Opcion; Entre Lineas; El Observador; El Pueblo; Omnia; El Teimpo; El Heraldo
The savage violence against officials is everyday. It's barbaric and disgusting. I think Mexico has sunk so low into oblivion that their only alternative is a regime change like Chile had in the '90s. A regime that adopted a "take no prisoners" approach to decimating the criminals. Anyone else have a better idea? It's horrible. What can they do?
ReplyDeletei totally agree with "So It Goes In Texas" and i think that Mexico must execute those animals and apply the death penalty in their courts.
ReplyDeleteThere were a LOT of problems with the way Chile handled itself in the 90's...but fundamentally I would agree that there needs to be serious talk in Mexico about enacting the death penalty, especially in the case of capital murder (or the equivalent in Mex court system). The government cannot function if their employees are scared to go to work, and right now there is no credible deterrent to punish people who commit these type of crimes, the prison have simply become another corrupted institution as well.
ReplyDeleteEnact the death penalty, arm the citizens to stop the petty crimes and kidnappings, and attack the problem as a war: use every resource. You have to be MORE brutal than the cartels because this is not a civilized war. Stop playing by the wrong rules.
ReplyDeleteAs bad as this sounds, they need to look to someone like Saddam Hussein as a model of how to control a brutal society. Saddam ruled the way he did because of the barbaric nature of the people, which now goes largely unchecked in modern Iraq. The average citizen lives the same life, anyone else pays the price.
When you display 500 Gulf Cartel members beheaded along with 500 of the Sinaloa Cartel members in the same way, the rest will get a clue their time is limited. The government has to be feared and it is not, it is laughed at, at this point in Mexican history.
while some are clueless to what is going on and only scratch the surface, i say keep Ranting.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that you have to be more brutal--you have to be more just. What does that mean? "The proper administration of the law; the fair and equitable treatment of ...; the principal of moral rightness..."
ReplyDeleteWhen the administrators of a government know that justice is on their side, and moral principles are valued above bribary and corruption, THEN it will be able to function as a democracy and rid itself of the terror on its streets. You don't meet terror with terror or you will have an Iraq or Afghanistan that becomes an Iran.
So how does justice win in a battle of terror? Swift, efficient retalliation against those who commit the crimes of murder first of all. I've been asking "Where are the helicopters when these road blocks and assinations take place? Didn't the US give them some? Don't they have military planes and paratroopers? What is the billions from the Merida Initiative being used for??? We need to demand an answer from both governments--its our money they are spending.
Why are we fighting this battle with sticks and stones? You don't have to become a murderer to exact justice against those who commit murder. But you have to believe in justice--and get it!
"You don't meet terror with terror or you will have an Iraq or Afghanistan that becomes an Iran"
ReplyDeleteI think that is precisely the reason why you can't take this war to the point of having government sanctioned death squads in Mexico. Despite the public sentiment expressed on BB, it would just lead to an expansion of human rights abuses.
If a person deserves death, it should be decided by a judge and jury.
How did they do it in Columbia and Chile?
ReplyDeleteIs there a different successful model?
In Colombia? Google los Pepes. We need a Mexican version of los Pepes in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Chile is an appropriate comparison for the situation in Mexico. The socialist government of Salvadore Allende was overthrown in 1972 by U.K. backed Gen. Augusto Pinochet who ruled the country through a military junta for 16 years and committed several atrocities and human rights abuses until constitutional reforms forced him out of the office of the presidency.
ReplyDeleteColumbia responded to the Medellin cartels choke hold on the country by aligning itself with right-wing paramilitary groups and the Cali cartel to eliminate Pablo Escobar. It is suspected former President Cesar Gaviria turned a blind eye to cocaine trafficking by his allies in these groups.
@ Smurf
ReplyDelete"I think that is precisely the reason why you can't take this war to the point of having government sanctioned death squads in Mexico."
Allow me to disagree. The war in Algeria was won by the French military, who acted many times like death squads. They were embedded in the bled, knew what and who was going on and they got the insurrection leaders, one by one. France left Algeria for very valid political reasons later. In Af-Pak, the talibs are now starting negotiation with Karzai, this is because US drone attacks and CIA controlled Afghan death squads. Targeted kills do work. But in both cases human rights are a casualty.
But you have to ask yourself: no medicine is safe, and when administering it you may have two outcomes. You can be curing your patient's lethal illness or having the patient dying of the medicine's side effects. What do you choose as the patient's physician? I'm curious.
Funny how none of the sicarios are saying where they are getting their guns from. Nor are they saying who the financial backers of the cartel leaders are. I would have guessed that if this was a real war against drug trafficking, that we'd have already seen by now big rich investors being brought to justice and yet we haven't. Surely none of us believe that these cartel leaders are at the very top.
ReplyDeleteThe mexican government keeps hiding the fact that many if not most of these guns are being passed by or stolen from their own military caches. What is going on? Is this really a war?
There is something very fishy going on when these cartels keep getting their shipments across the mexican borders without being detected. Have you noticed how we never hear of anybody being arrested trying to bring in a ton of flake into mexico by way of airplane, boat, vehicle, etc.? No shoot-outs, no arrests, no confiscations, nada.
Another thing that has us scratching our heads is why not apply more pressure on these organizations? Why not send in the tanks, helicopters, and special forces to do patrols throughout regions of major conflicts like Juarez, Reynosa, Matamoros, Monterrey, etc. Why display so much military prowress at the bicentennial parade if they're not going to use it?
This would of course mean Martial Law, something I would never like to see in my own country but at times feel could be necessary to quell the situation in old mex. The problem is if none of the questions above can be answered by the authorities sincerely, then why would or how could the people trust the government implement soldiers at every street corner or have door-to-door searches?
All of these things would work but it seems the government is not doing the basic things that could easily stop or slow what is happening.
Yes, as we all know, there is also the matter of social and economic inequality which plagues the country since time imemorial. We see all the rich families vacationing in south texas, bringing their bull-shit arrogant attitude to our region.
What's funny and ridiculous is how they load up on cheesy Wal-Mart crap and believe they're all that because they filled up two grocery carts. They have the gall to demand they be served by the convenient store clerk and have their food cooked in the microwave.
This is the type of scum that has gotten used to being treated like royalty in mexico...they are known as los nacionales. There's nothing national about them. They are the principle families who've robbed the citizens of their freedom from day one with their scams and injustices. These are the families who are running for their lives because it is they who have the most to loose: money stolen from the common citizen.
These vermin can easily get an apartment or home here in the U.S. with a visitor's or working permit. We are now seeing whole blocks being filled up by these cowards right next to ours. This is the filth we are now going to have to live with. We don't want them here! Now that they've ruined and ransacked their own country they're coming here to ruin ours as well!
So Mexico cannot, so to speak, go to the textbook and review which option to apply. And there is no existing model other than an extremely heavy hand. Hell of a pickle.
ReplyDeleteThese people are virulent, there is no vaccine, they must be excised from the healthy body or it will be consumed.
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@ Matanzas
ReplyDeleteFrom your statement I believe we can both agree that death squads, government sanctioned or otherwise, result in a breach of human rights. That said, your analogy of the dying patient and a cure that could potentially be lethal; which to chose? is spot on. However, I would counter-argue: Isn't the code of the physician to above all, do no harm?
I'm not being idealistic, in the real world tough men (and women) must make tough decisions that can result in casualties. but as Nietchze once said "Careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one" and this is true of the situations in Mex and the ones you've mentioned.
My argument is simply that if the Mex government wants to execute people IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, they should change the constitution to reflect that decision instead of leaving it up to a few loose cannons they have working for them in the army. Lets have a civil process of criminal trials, if someone deserves the death penalty, let him have his day in court. Justice behind a truck at the end of a rifle is the same as no justice at all, which is what I believe a few of the folks that comment on BB want.
Trust me, the idea isn't as good as it sounds on paper or on a blog.
The death penalty and for that matter the history of punishment as Foucault put it so concisely, is not an apparatus set up by the people but by those who have had and continue to hold all the power, and as we all know, those in power in both the U.S. and in mexico are part of a vast system of courruption, so big in fact that it has gone international, and one whose status can only be strengthened by enacting a law that gives them the right to put to death anyone they deem a threat to their 'way of life'.
ReplyDelete