Twelve Sicarios Brought Down in Zacatecas and Some Border States' 2012 Statistics

Zacatecas- Elements of the 97 Battalion of the Mexican Army managed to bring down in a confrontation that began in the community of El Fuerte and ended up in the community of Francisco Garcia, 12 alleged members of organized crime.

In a military report, it was reported that the incident took place around 14:30 hours on Wednesday in the city limits of Rio Grande, 94 kilometers from the city of Zacatecas.

Also, they explained that the alleged gunmen traveling in a dirt road two kilometers from the federal highway 45, on board of several trucks, when attacked with heavy weapons to the military convoy. 

Besides the chaotic reduction, they achieved the ensuring of vehicles, ammunition, firearms, AK-47 and AR-15, as well as satellite radio equipment.

In 2012 there were three thousand executions in Coahuila, Tamaulipas and NL

Saltillo  -  Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas closed 2012 with about three thousand homicides related to organized crime and a similar number missing.

This region became the country's most violent. To cite an example, Torreón, Coahuila, replaced Ciudad Juarez as the most bloody of Mexico.  

The insecurity of the northeast poses a challenge to the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who proposed a 50 percent reduction in violent crime during their first year of administration.

Peña Nieto divided the country into five regions as part of its strategy to fight organized crime, these points will create 15 units of the new National Gendarmerie specialized to combat kidnapping, extortion and murder.

Statistics from the PGR of Coahuila says that in 2012 there were 1,123 intentional homicides which occurred statewide. This figure does not account for the month of December, as the latest current count ended with  November.

The region consists of the municipalities of Torreón, Matamoros and San Pedro de las Colonias that accounted for over a thousand of these homicides, nine percent more than last year

La Laguna is disputed by the Sinaloa cartel and "Los Zetas", and in the past two years the "drug war" provoked massacres in bars, taverns, drug rehabilitation centers and prisons.

The violence in Coahuila is compounded when considering more than 1, 400 are missing and recorded with the Deputy for Research of Missing People.

In these statistics, add dozens of people who disappeared during the first three months of 2011 in the municipalities of Allende and Nava, which are investigated by the Attorney General of Coahuila.

In Nuevo Leon, the figures of Attorney General of Nuevo Leon show that in 2011,  2003 intentional homicides were committed and up until November of  2012, homicides totaled 1,700 

Since 2010, Nuevo Leon, the most industrialized state in northern Mexico, has been the scene of the largest massacres in recent years: the 52 victims of Casino Royale, which occurred in August 2011.

In addition, 22 people died after an attack in the Bar Sabino Gordo, 44 prisoners were massacred in the Apodaca prison and 49 dismembered bodies were abandoned in the town of Cadereyta.

Conservative figures of missing persons in the last three years total more than a thousand. Currently the Office of Nuevo Leon investigates about 240 cases involving forced kidnapping where transit police participated against organized crime.

In Tamaulipas, where organized crime imposes its law, figures-of-the prosecution aren't credible, they say that until September 2012  only 787 violent crimes occurred.

In addition, there were 236 illegal kidnapping sand 88 kidnappings reported to the Attorney General of the State.

The makeup of missing figures contrast with those reported to the Attorney General's Office (PGR), where Tamaulipas recorded the largest number of persons deprived of their liberty in Mexico.

The PGR statistics had more than 400 cases of disappearances, of 1,020 reported before to that office in the last year. 

Unlike other northern states of the country, local media in Tamaulipas will not publish the violence and insecurity that prevails in the state. 

Just recently, dozens of families organized themselves to use the social media tools offered by new technologies to spread news of missing people who were deprived of their liberty by the organized crime groups that dominate the state: the Gulf cartel and the Zetas.They created the Facebook page "Hope for Tamaulipas" Esperanza por Tamaulipas where they have exposed 117 cases of missing persons, mostly between 2010 and 2012.

Families are also organizing to demand that the Army and the Navy remain in the streets of Tamaulipas. Others propose arm themselves to defend against organized crime.

In December, the "drug war" did not stop and it did increase: In the last days of the year ended with six people hung from a Coahuila bridge, the discovery that Los Zetas had buried four women in a narcofosas with four more waiting, and a Torreon gunmen attacked the Oasis Rehabilitation center, killing one person and injuring three.

In Monterrey, organized crime members broke into a celebration of a Quinceanera, killed the godfather of the quinceañera and wounded eleven guests. Hours later, gunmen with assault rifles gunned down six young men, killing two and leaving four seriously wounded in Tierra y Libertad neighborhood.

Nuevo Leon authorities assume credit for the reduction of "executions" in 2012 without talking about the increase in extortion and kidnapping. 

In Tamaulipas two trucks were abandoned with dismembered bodies: one in Ciudad Mante, with five bodies, and one in Soto la Marina, with eight bodies. Furthermore, in Nuevo Laredo  in a Wal Mart parking a vehicle, they located an abandoned vehicle with a number of corpses.  The number was not specified by the State Attorney, but eyewitnesses claim to have counted many more than 8 bodies.

La Silla Rota, Proceso