Mexican narcos silence the Colombian press, after reporting their penetration of Colombia

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat TYGus  From ElNorteno and Universal

Mexican cartels have penetrated Colombia allied with FARC

Mexican drug trafficking mafias launched a series of threats from August to November 2019 to Colombian journalists who had to go into exile or are hidden in their country after denouncing that Mexican cartels penetrated Colombia — allied to dissidents from the former guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - to get involved in increasing coca leaf production for international cocaine trafficking.

Of at least five Colombian reporters who received intimidation messages, two migrated abroad and three remain in the country at risk to their safety, confirmed the (non-state) Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP), in Bogotá.

“The intimidation against the reporters has been the product of the coverage of the problem of illicit cultivation [of coca leaf] in Cauca and the complaints they have made about the presence of Mexican cartels, allied with the dissidence” of the former guerrilla FARC in that department (state) of the southwest, he said.

The communicators recorded the presence of Mexican cartels in places between the departments of Valle del Cauca and Cauca, he said, identifying journalists such as Miguel Ángel Palta, Fransuá Martínez, Eduardo Manzano, Arlex Piedrahita and Alexánder Cárdenas.

“There are much crueler and more direct logics of violence against journalists, because of the relationship between drug traffickers and creating an atmosphere of silence,” said Colombian journalist Jona-than Bock, director in charge of FLIP, assuring that there is also Mexican drug traffickers in the southern department of Nariño, bordering Ecuador.

“There is a clear strategy to intimidate and scare journalists so that they will not cover what happens in those areas. That is what is being replicated in those places,” he added in an interview with EL UNIVERSAL. In a chain of events attributed in some cases to the incursion of armed Mexican drug traffickers, the (state) Colombian Ombudsman added 462 social leaders and human rights defenders killed from January 1, 2016 to February 28, 2019.

The Ombudsman activated an "early warning" in more than 400 municipalities of that country in the elections last October 27 to elect regional authorities, by the Mexican mafia nexus with illegal Colombian armed fronts to buy, with electoral financing, silence and complicity with drug trafficking to Central America, Mexico and the United States.

In adducing the danger of electoral purity, the Ombudsman, Carlos Negret, confirmed that men with “Mexican accent” penetrated the most conflictive corners for voting and called to define the consultation with ideas “and not because of the pressure of the criminals".

More nationals

The Foreign Ministry and the Prosecutor General of Colombia warned, in January 2017, of a sudden increase since 2014 of the arrival in that country of Mexican drug traffickers, especially the Sinaloa and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) cartels, to increase crops of coca leaf, cocaine raw material, and control production, processing, transport, distribution and marketing of the drug.

In documents of which this newspaper has a copy, both institutions warned of Mexicans who changed their travel dynamics to Colombia and went to areas of illicit crops that are “not touristy”.

The number of income of Mexicans to Colombian soil rose from 114 thousand 804, in 2014; to 152 thousand 123, in 2015; to 163 thousand 686, in 2016; with 175 thousand 997, in 2017; 186 thousand 152, in 2018, and from January to October 2019, 166 thousand 432 were registered, according to Migración Colombia. The daily average increased from 314 in 2014; to 510, in 2018, and 547, in 10 months of 2019.

The Directorate of Anti-narcotics of the National Police of Colombia admitted to this newspaper that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one with the most narcoactivity in areas of southwestern Colombia bordering the north and north-west of Ecuador. The (non-state) Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) denounced at the end of last July that the cartel threatened to kill authorities, indigenous leaders and peasant communities in the southwest for complicating international drug trafficking by promoting a forced and voluntary eradication of illicit crops.

By intimidating members of the indigenous guard, a security apparatus of 10 communities, the cartel warned that, if it insists on its policies, it will “slaughter them like animals,” revealed the CRIC.

The Sinaloa Cartel established itself in coca-producing and cocaine-producing areas in Colombia and strengthened ties with the Colombian communist guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and with FARC dissidents, according to the Council.

Official reports from Colombia showed that the Mexican cartels were frequent buyers of cocaine from the FARC, which in 2017 mutilated the political party and rose in arms from 1964 until in November 2016 it signed a peace pact with the Colombian government to which they refused to join dissident blocks that continued in narcoactivity.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry reported that, as of June 30, 2019, Colombia added 143 Mexicans imprisoned for drug trafficking and organized crime, and was only surpassed by Peru, with 235.