Corruption in the Mexican Government

This is hardly news to anyone who follows the situation in Mexico but I'm re-posting it here simply for the sake of context with my other contributions to the digital record.

Context

Edgar (La Barbie) Valdez Villarreal

Edgar (La Barbie) Valdez Villarreal (DOB 11 August 1973 - in Laredo, Texas) rose through the ranks of the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) and became head of one faction of that cartel after it split following the death of Arturo Beltran Leyva in 2009. La Barbie was a particularly vicious and bloodthirsty narco, specializing in torture and decapitation on video tape. The Mexican Federal Police arrested him near Mexico City on August 30, 2010 and he faces charges in both Mexico and the United States.

On 27 November 2012, Erendira Joselyn Guerra Gutierrez, a lawyer representing Edgar Valdez Villarreal, submitted a letter to Reforma signed by his client. The letter was included in the 28 November edition of the paper and was translated as follows:

Principal Content

First of all, I want to make it clear that I did not agree to become a protected witness. Furthermore, I categorically deny the statements made by the arresting officers regarding the manner in which I was actually arrested. The truth regarding what really happened is as follows:

My arrest was the result of a political persecution carried out by Felipe Calderon Hinojosa. He began harassing me after I refused to participate in an arrangement he was making with multiple organized crime groups. He (President Calderon) conducted a series of meetings with organized crime group operators to discuss the agreement. After this, he (President Calderon) and Juan Camilo Mouriño ordered General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro to hold meetings with two La Familia Michoacana leaders, Heriberto Lazcano, Miguel Angel Treviño, aka El Z-40, Arturo Beltran Leyva, aka El Barbas, and El Chapo Guzman.

General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro,
bag man for Presidente Filipe Calderon Hinojosa

Calderon wanted to form a truce with Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, Vicente, Mayo, El Chapo, and myself. I refused to be part of the truce because I did not want to be connected to any other cartel. For this reason, he (Calderon) began pursuing me. He ordered police to raid several of my properties without a legal search warrant during which time they stole cash, jewelry, and vehicles from me.

Genero Garcia Luna

I attest that I paid bribes to the following individuals: 

- Genaro Garcia Luna, Head of the SSP (Secretary of Public Security) since 2002 

- Armando Espinosa de Benito, Regional Chief of Investigation for the Federal Police

- Luis Cardenas Palomino, Regional Chief of Investigation for the Federal Police 

- Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, Commissioner of the Federal Protective Police

- Fracisco Javier Garza Palacios, Secretary of Public Security for Colombia

- Igor Labastida Calderon, Commander, Agency for Federal Investigation (PGR)

- Facundo Rosas Rosas, Commissioner of the Federal Police

- Ramon Eduardo Pequeño Garcia, Chief of the Anti Drug Division of the Federal Police

- Gerardo Garay Cadena, Chief of the Federal Protective Police

I know that police were ordered to kill me, not arrest me. My arrest was carried out at the residence reported by media sources (an area known as La Cañada de Alferez in the Salazar village of Lerma, Mexico State). Police stated that no shots were fired during my arrest but that is a lie. The police officer that transported me that day encouraged me to run so that he could shoot me. In that manner, authorities could say that I attacked them and that they had to shoot in self-defense. This is how they killed Aron Arturo Gines Becerril; officers shot him in the back after he fled from them near the Perisu shopping center.

Genaro Garcia Luna still holds his position despite the fact that he has been accused of criminal activity before the American government, during discussions regarding the Merida Initiative, and through statements made by Mateo, a protected witness (Sergio Villarreal).

Federal police do not report seizures during arrests of items including drugs, vehicles, etc. On the contrary, SEDENA and SEMAR personnel are a bit more honest, they carry out arrests and report seizures.

I am guilty of my crimes, but they, the government officials that I mention here, are also part of the organized crime structure in this country. 

Signed, Edgar Valdez Villarreal

Commentary

It's really no secret that President Calderon shook down the cartels for money shortly after his election. The only people who seem to deny the fact is the leadership of the United States Government, who would rather look the other way where heads of state are involved.

It's also no secret that President elect (President as of 5 days ago) Enrique Pena Nieto had similar meetings between his election and his installation as President of Mexico. The United States Government is reluctant to accept even PHOTOS of these meetings because to do so would undermine their diplomatic efforts with the new Mexican President. It's traditional for Mexican Presidents to conduct these high level meetings to arrange for taxes to be paid by the cartels to the government for the personal enrichment of its leadership. Thus the commonly held statement - you enter the Mexican Presidency as a millionaire and leave a billionaire.

CIA Case Officers Attacked - 14 Charged in Mexico

For those of you who don't read La Jornada, I refer you to their article on November 10.

En Tres Marías, los federales intentaron asesinar a los funcionarios de EU: PGR

After more than two months of investigation, on November 9, Mexico's federal Attorney General's Office (Procuraduría General de la República) confirmed that it was formally charging 14 federal police agents for an August 24 attack on a US embassy armored Toyota Land Cruiser on a road near the Tres Marías community, south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos.

The PGR Agents claimed that they mistook the Toyota Land Cruiser with diplomatic license plates containing two Central Intelligence Agency annuitants, working actively for the CIA and a Mexican Naval Captain assigned to Fuerza de Infantería de Marina ( Naval Infantry) for members of a gang that perpetrated a local kidnapping. It is a stretch to believe that the PGR Agents could think that, but that was their story before they were "interrogated". Interrogation in Mexico is not the tender experience that most Americans can relate to (as portrayed both on television and in real life).

The two CIA Case Officers were wounded in the incident by spawl and bullet proof glass flaking as bullets repeatedly struck it.According to La Jornada, The PGR charged that the 14 Mexican police agents "tried to take the lives" of the three men in the embassy vehicle. Investigators determined that the agents were driving private cars and were in civilian clothes when they attacked the embassy's van, which was surrounded by the agents' vehicles. Investigators said that the Armored Toyota Land Cruiser was hit with 152 bullets.

The PGR's formal charges didn't mention possible links to organized crime, but PGR sources indicated they believed three of the agents had ties to the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel. The 14 agents are being held in maximum-security prisons in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and in Puente Grande, Jalisco.

Much of this investigation could have been shortcut if the CIA had listened to knowledgable sources close to the Beltran Leyva Organization with whom they were in constant contact. Sadly, they didn't use the assets available to them and their "investigation" was prolonged and their findings in the end are skewed without a first-hand account from the person who ordered the attack and paid the PGR officers through cut-outs. The real question is whether or not the CIA cares whether its findings are correct or not. One can only presume that they don't. While I'm not going into further detail on this, read the tea leaves and decide for yourselves.

CIA had a personnel turnover in Mexico right before the attack. One can speculate that the people with the skill to follow through with these inquiries had left the country.

And taking it one step further, having not pursued this, how can they know when it's going to happen again?

Beltran Leyva Organization

As I discussed in the previous blog post (Renovatio), organizational names tend to come and go in Mexico.  For example, the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) still call themselves by that name, with some pride. The US Government refers to it as Cártel del Pacífico Sur, the South Pacific Cartel. As far as I know, only the USGOV uses that name.

Wikipedia has this to say about the The South Pacific Cartel (Spanish: Cártel del Pacífico Sur), is a Mexican organized crime group composed of the remnants of the Beltran-Leyva Cartel. It is based in the Mexican state of Morelos. (Wikipedia)

The source cited by Wikipedia is misleading: The BLO have very little presence in Morelos, though you could say that at one point in time, they had a greater presence there. The BLO still retains a presence in Cuernavaca, Morelos and still has political stroke there. 

Today Hector Beltran Leyva makes his home in Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit (The Mexican State of Nayarit) and he oversees another cell in Northern Sinaloa (Guassave and Batamote) that is managed by Chuy Gonzales. Yes, it's true that Fausto Isidro Meza used to be the boss but he was displaced from that roll about a month ago. Today the combined strength in Sinaloa is no more than 600 fighters, down from several times that number six months ago.

Courtesy: STRATFOR - Circa July 2012

Though the bulk of the map above portrays wildly inaccurate information, the general territory (orange) that they lay out for the BLO is generally well done. 

Nicholas Ivie murder and the Beltran Leyva Cartel

The Beltrán-Leyva Cartel (Beltrán Leyva Organization or BLO -  Cártel de los Beltrán Leyva was a Mexican drug cartel founded by Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo and Hector Beltrán Leyva brothers. The cartel found its origin with the demise of Amado Carillo Fuentes (El Rey de Ciello). From time to time they have been allied to and opposed to most of the other drug syndicates in Mexico. 

On August 11, 2011, the Mexican Government declared the cartel to be disbanded and extinct, except that it's not. (Wikipedia) As of the penning of this blog, the BLO has been pushed back in Sinaloa to a sparse turf in Mexico including the Gussave and Batamote corridor in the valley along the highway 15 corridor and into the mountains east of there in the region referred to as "Mexico's Golden Triangle" where the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua meet.

They also control turf in Nayarit State and in the area surrounding Cuernavaca. Their distribution network in the United States is intact. They control various sections along the US/Mexico Border including a portion of the narcotics traffic that crosses at the San Luis Colorado/Yuma area and about 75% of the turf between Nogales and Agua Prieto. It's in that turf area that Agent Nicholas Ivie was murdered this week. And there it was there, in that area that Fausto Isidro Meza Flores also known as Chapo Isidro traveled to pick up a supply of money that was transported south, across the US/Mexico Border.

One of the best photos of Chapo Isidro available. He has
more gray hair now and is heavier.

Chapo Isidro has been pressed hard of late. There were two attacks by the Mexican Army at his home in Batamote and at Camp Wilson over the past three months wherein they tried to take him and only succeeded in killing his bodyguards. Today the Mexican Federal Police raided his home near Gussave and took members of his family into custody.

He traveled up to the border across from the Bisbee, Arizona Corridor because he needed to replenish his war chest. There's been a big war in Mexico and he needed more cash to pay his small army of about 300 fighters.

Drug dealers transit the Bisbee, Arizona Corridor because the US Border Patrol is prohibited by policy for policing that area with vehicles. They do their work on horseback or on foot. Terrorists or narcotraffickers have a pass to move through this area. A bill passed the House of Representatives on June 19, stipulates that federal land management agencies may not prohibit enforcement efforts to “prevent all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband through the international land borders of the United States.” The Senate has not acted and the bill rests, collecting dust on Sen. Harry Reid's desk.

On October 2, 2012 in the early morning hours, Ivie, along with two other agents, responded to a border sensor about five miles into Arizona. Ivie was shot to death and one of the other agents was wounded.

Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie was responding to members of a drug cartel that officially doesn't exist anymore in a portion of the US/Mexico Border area that the US Government wouldn't allow them to use automobiles to patrol, when he was killed by friendly fire.

Out of the more than 20 million acres of Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service land along the southern border, 4.3 million acres are classified as wilderness areas.

The Center for Biological Diversity has been one of the organizations charging that greater access for the Border Patrol on federal lands would harm the environment.

“Organ Pipe and Cabeza Prieta lie adjacent to each other along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and have been significantly hurt by off-road vehicle use in recent years — much of the damage has been the result of Border Patrol vehicles riding roughshod over wilderness areas,” (PJ Media)