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Unreality Television

Posted by Spiralise on June 12, 2011 at 11:36am

I was told, take him round the back and deal with him. I mean, there’s no ambiguity in that, is there? Everybody knows what that means. He knew what it meant. He didn’t struggle, didn’t plead. He was meek as a lamb. Hurrying almost, as if he couldn’t wait for it to be over. He was leading me. All I could think about was how tight the cord was on his wrists, that it must really hurt, that his hands were turning white. It was my first day, you know? I wasn’t gonna go making a scene. I mean, this is what we signed up for. Really.

Funny, though, cos I saw him a week later on Al Jazeera. Somebody must have moved him, cos he was face down when I left him. Seeing him on TV helped, actually. Made it more unreal. Anyway, I’d already quit by then.

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"We Bring Fear" -- A Reporter Flees The Biggest Cartel Of All--The Mexican Army.

Posted by SubSickAlien on July 17, 2009 at 1:00am

Bowden, easily one of the best writers when it comes to the Southwest United States and across the border into northern Mexico–has a striking new piece at Mother Jones. The article is written with the immediacy, the detail and the insight Bowden has consistently delivered over the past twenty years. A must read.THERE IS A MAN DRIVING FAST down a dirt road leading to the border. A rooster tail of dust marks his passage. He is very frightened and his 15-year-old son sits beside him in silence. The boy is that way—very bright, yet very quiet. They are unusually close. The father has raised him as a single parent since he was four.The father and son are fleeing to the United States. Back in their hometown of Ascensión, Chihuahua, men with assault rifles are searching for them. These men are soldiers in the Mexican Army and intend to kill the father, and perhaps the son, also. As the man drives toward the border crossing at Antelope Wells, New Mexico, he thinks the soldiers are ransacking his house. No one in the town will have the guts to speak up.The man knows this absolutely.His name is Emilio Gutiérrez Soto and he is a reporter and that is why he is a dead man driving. He recalls how back when Carlos Salinas was president, the Mexican Army came to this same part of northern Chihuahua, beat up a bunch of peasants, tortured prisoners, and terrorized the community under the guise of fighting drug cartels. The peasants never filed any grievances because they knew any complaints would be ignored by their government. Or they would be disappeared. This is the kind of thing the reporter has understood since childhood but does not write and publish. Like the peasants, he knows his place in the system.It is June 16, 2008, and in two days he will have his 45th birthday, should he live that long.The military has again flooded northern Mexico, ever since President Felipe Calderón assumed office in December 2006 with a margin so razor thin that many Mexicans think he is an illegitimate president. One of his first acts was to declare a war on the nation's thriving drug industry, and his favorite tool was to be the Mexican Army, portrayed as less corrupt than the local or national police. Now some 45,000 soldiers, nearly 25 percent of the Army, are marauding all over the country, escalating the mayhem that consumes Mexico. In 2008, more than 6,000 Mexicans died in the drug violence, a larger loss than the United States has endured during the entire Iraq War. Since 2000, two dozen reporters have been officially recorded as murdered, at least seven more have vanished, and an unknown number have fled into the United States. But all numbers in Mexico are slippery, because people have so many ways of disappearing. In 2008, 188 Mexicans—cops, reporters, businesspeople—sought political asylum at US border crossings, more than twice as many as the year before. This is the wave of gore the man rides as he heads north.He has tried to avoid this harsh reality. He has been careful in his work. His publisher has told him it is better to lose a story than to take a big risk. He does not look too closely into things. If someone is murdered, he prints what the police tell him and lets it go at that. If people sell or warehouse drugs in his town, he ignores it. Nor does he inquire about who controls the drug industry in his town or anywhere else.The man driving is terrified of hitting an Army checkpoint. They are random and they are everywhere. The entire Mexican north has become a killing field. In Palomas, a nearby border town of maybe 7,500 souls, more than 40 men have already been executed in the past year, and several more have vanished in kidnappings; a mass grave was discovered in May. Some of these murders are by drug cartels. Some of these murders are by state and federal police. Some of these murders are by the Mexican Army. There are now many ways to die.The high desert is beautiful, a pan of creosote with saucers of grass in moist low spots. Here and there volcanic remnants make black marks on the Earth and there is almost no water. Almost all the rivers flowing from the Sierra Madre vanish in the desert. But it is home, the place he has spent his life.The reporter may die for committing a simple error. He wrote an accurate news story. He did not know that was dangerous because he thought the story was very small and unimportant. He was wrong and that was the beginning of all his trouble.There are two Mexicos.There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic.It does not exist.There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed.The reporter lives in this second Mexico.Until very recently, he liked it just fine. In fact, he loves Mexico and has never thought of leaving. Even though he lives about 20 miles from the border, he has not bothered to cross for almost 10 years.But now, things have changed. He knows about the humanitarian treaties signed by the United States and he thinks given these commitments, he and his boy will be given asylum. He has decided to tell the authorities nothing but the truth. He has failed to realize one little fact: No Mexican reporter has ever been given political asylum.Suddenly, he sees a checkpoint ahead and there is no way to escape it.Men in uniforms pull him over.He discovers to his relief that this checkpoint is run by Mexico's migration agency, and so, maybe, they will not give him up to the Army."Why are you driving so fast?""I am afraid. There are people trying to kill me.""The narcos?""No, the soldiers.""Who are you?"He hands over his press pass."Oh, you are the one, they searched your house.""I have had problems.""Those sons of bitches do whatever they want. Go ahead. Good luck."He roars away. When he stops at the port of entry at Antelope Wells in the bootheel of New Mexico, US customs ask, as they always do, what he is bringing from Mexico.He says, "We bring fear."THE PRIEST GOES to the fiesta to christen a child. The food is lavish, as is the rancho. There are many men of power there, men who have survived the life and now live large and feast on danger. One old man is the boss and he wears a very large gold crucifix encrusted with diamonds and a giant emerald. This gleaming treasure catches the priest's eye. The padre slips out and goes to the federal police and tells them of this convocation of narcotraficantes. He is a very good source for the police because he hears confession from the men in the life and then sells this information. The police hit the fiesta. They find a lot of cocaine and a million in cash. The priest gets the crucifix as his reward. The cops turn over the rest of the loot to the country's chief drug enforcement officer at the time. Later it is revealed that this man, Javier Coello Trejo, enforces the law against some cartels, but not the Gulf cartel, which pays him millions for such discretion.Years later, a long caravan of fine pickup trucks with darkly tinted windows takes up both lanes of the highway leading into Ascensión. There must be 20 or 30 vehicles rumbling into the isolated community of 18,000 in the Chihuahuan desert. The town is surrounded by dying farms, many of them abandoned because of drought and the low prices that came in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Army has seized some of these farms and squats on them. People live off a few bars, some small stores, and the drug industry. At the moment the caravan arrives, the streets are empty and no one looks out a single window. There's a store security videotape of the caravan, but it is impossible to make out any faces behind the glass. Emilio will never know whom this convoy is guarding. He will never ask. Just as the Mexican Army stationed in the town will never record its arrival. Rumors say it is Joaquín "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzmán Loera, leader of the Sinaloa cartel whom Forbes recently named the 701st richest person in the world. But to investigate such matters is a fatal decision.Emilio and I are sitting in the sun somewhere in the United States of America as he tosses out the tales of the priest and the strange caravan of fine pickup trucks. He is hiding now with a man who has family and business interests in northern Chihuahua. If it were known he sheltered Emilio, the man's relatives would be kidnapped and possibly killed, his livelihood jeopardized. As we soak up the sun, Ascensión is in a state of siege. Four women have just vanished and are probably murdered. In October, a parcel containing four heads was delivered to the police station. The director of the bank and his wife have been kidnapped and then returned in bad shape. Also, the bank has just been strafed by machine-gun fire.In Palomas, a town that like Ascensión falls within the gravitational pull of the sprawling border city of Ciudad Juárez, the entire police force recently resigned, forcing the police chief to seek shelter in the United States. The town is dying. Few people cross from America to shop because of the violence. There is a gray cast to the children begging in the streets that suggests malnutrition. Work has fled—the people-smuggling business has moved because of US pressure in the sector and so the town is studded with half-built or abandoned cheap lodgings for migrants heading north. Also there is an array of narcomansions whose occupants have moved on. And there are eyes everywhere. I walk down the dirt streets tailed by pickups with very darkly tinted windows. The biggest restaurant in town for tourists closes every day at 6 p.m.—get home before dark.The Mexican Army is everywhere and can be ill tempered. Last year, I was with a friend who took a photograph of soldiers in Palomas a block from the US port of entry, and they came racing at us with machine guns. In April 2008, one of the generals in command of the state held a press conference. "I know that the media are sometimes afraid of us," he said, "but they should not be afraid. I hope they will trust us." As for reports of deaths at the hands of the military, the general added, "I would like to see the reporters change their articles. Where they say, 'one more murdered person,' they should instead say, 'one less criminal.'" Reporters were also issued a common explanation by Mexico's defense department: Yes, there would almost certainly be a spate of robberies and rapes committed by men in uniform but these were to be explained as the deeds of drug traffickers disguising themselves as soldiers to embarrass the Army. Any questions?EMILIO WAS ONE of eight children born and raised in Nuevo Casas Grandes, a small Chihuahuan city set against the Sierra Madre. His father was a master bricklayer, his mother a housewife. His childhood was poverty. He always wanted to be a writer and worked on the high school paper, a weekly printed on a mimeograph machine.The Army has a post in his town. One day, a very pretty classmate named Rosa Saenz turns up, her hair and skin coated with mud. Her breasts have been sliced with blades and she has been stabbed 50 times. She has been raped, also. Emilio sees her body in the back of a car in front of the police station, a vehicle dragged in as a monument to a quest for the truth. Two of her classmates are blamed for the murder. The police smash the testicles of one. The other flees and when he returns much later, he is kind of crazy. In the end, no one is charged with the crime. But everyone in the town knows the girl was raped and murdered by the Army. And no one in the town says anything about it.Emilio is 13 years old.This is part of basic Mexican schooling: submission. I remember once being in a small town when the then president of Mexico descended like a god with an entourage and massive security. The poor fled into their shanties until it was over. The streets emptied, and when the president did a staged stroll to greet his subjects there was no one standing on the sidewalks except party hacks. Mexican literature is rich with this obliteration of public self and sequestering of private self amid the security of family. The nation's Nobel laureate, Octavio Paz, etched this trait indelibly in The Labyrinth of Solitude.Emilio emerges from high school with average grades but a sharp mind in a country where curiosity can be a fatal trait. He learns photography and when he graduates at 18, he is hired by a small paper to take pictures. Soon he is a reporter.He explains the system in simple terms. Let's say a reporter earns $100 a week. Every Monday, a man comes who represents the police, the government, the political parties, and the drug leaders. He gives each reporter a sum that is three times his actual wage. This is called the sobre, the envelope."Ever since I was a little kid," he continues, "I listened to my parents criticize bad government. We knew it was corrupt.""Corruption at the paper," he explains, "was subtle. The politicians would win over my boss with dinners and bags of money. The reporter on the beat would sometimes get pressure from the boss not to report certain things like the bad habits of politicians, the houses they own, the girlfriends. And it was understood that you never asked hard questions. The narcos also gave out money but I was always afraid of them. They own businesses and horses, buy ads, have parties with celebrities and you cover that, they would pay you to cover that, but you never mentioned their real business."He sees his Mexico as genetically corrupt. A corrupt Aztec ruling class fused with the trash of Spain, the conquistadors. This thesis helps him face the reality around him."In Mexico," he says, "we operate in disguise. There is one face and under that is another mask. Nothing is up-front. The publisher wishes to perpetuate the system. But if it is clear you are taking bribes, you will be fired. You must take it under the table because if you talked about it openly that would affect the image."He is entering a bar one night when he sees a local mayor leaving with some narcotraficantes. The mayor pauses by the street, drops his pants, and pisses in the gutter. Emilio writes up the incident—minus the narcos; he is not an idiot—and puts it in the paper. He is young and he does not understand the rules about propriety.The next day he is called to the mayor's office.The mayor is at a big desk with a check ledger.He says, "How much?"He wants Emilio to publish a story saying his earlier story was a lie.Emilio does not take any money. He realizes later that this is a serious error because he learns that the mayor and the publisher are very close."I quit and take a job in radio before something bad happens."He makes one report on how the drug counselor for the local schools was fired. He wonders on the air if the officials themselves are actually clean. He soon finds out because another local mayor is listening. The mayor has just gotten out of a treatment center in El Paso for cocaine addiction. He storms down to the radio station and offers the owner 10,000 pesos to fire Emilio. The owner obliges.EMILIO MOVES from paper to paper and eventually winds up at the Ascensión bureau of El Diario, a daily based in nearby Juárez. Emilio loves politics and develops Page 1 stories by dutifully interviewing politicians and publishing their inane answers. It is a wink to the readers—much like La Jornada, a left-of-center Mexico City paper that used to publish articles bought and paid for by the Mexican government in italics. Sometimes when a leading drug figure is arrested, usually as a show to placate US agencies, he interviews them also. He is hard driving, at least until his son is born. After that, he becomes cautious because he must think of his son and not give in to the dangers of ambition.Here is what a wise man knows: that certain people—the cartel leaders, the corrupt police, the corrupt military—these things cannot be written about at all. That other people should be mentioned favorably unless they are caught in circumstances so extreme that the news cannot be suppressed. Then, the blow is softened as much as possible. Nor are investigations favored. If someone is murdered, you call the proper authorities and you print exactly what they tell you. But you don't poke around in such matters.This is the reality of Mexican reporting, where a person is inside but outside, where a person knows more than the public but can only say what is known in code and this code had better not be too clear. He has mastered, he thinks, the rules of the game. He is clean; he avoids taking bribes. But he also ignores the fact that other reporters are taking bribes. He is not looking for trouble. When top military officials say if there are any rapes and robberies they will be the fault of narcotraficantes masquerading as soldiers, well, that is the way it will be reported.He will obey those instructions for a very simple reason. For three years, Emilio has been afraid he will be murdered by the Mexican Army. He has, to his horror, committed an error. And nothing he has done in the past three years has made up for this mistake. He has ceased reporting on the Army completely. He has focused on safe things such as fighting the creation of a toxic waste facility in the town. He has apologized to various military officers and endured their tongue-lashings. Still, this cloud hangs over him.He can remember the day he blundered into this dangerous country.I AM SITTING in the Hotel San Francisco in Palomas almost four years to the day from the moment Emilio Gutiérrez Soto destroyed his life. The small restaurant has eight tables; the walls host an explosion of plastic flowers screaming yellow, red, and pink. Carved wooden mallard heads spike out as hat racks for Stetsons. Music floats through the air, Bob Dylan singing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." In the kitchen, short, dark women chop vegetables for salsa. Their movements are very slow and their faces blank. In the lobby are murals of an imaginary Sierra Madre in an imaginary Mexico. A huge buck stands in an alpine meadow, an eagle swoops down on a lake, a caballero in a sequined suit stares with love at a beautiful señorita. Also in the lobby is a large statue of St. Francis and in his hands and at his feet are handwritten messages and offerings left by migrants. Just five blocks away, the poor plunged through the line and headed into El Norte—but none of the notes are very recent. The river of misery has changed course for the moment.The tile floor is the color of flesh. The notes whisper of a people in flight: "Father, help us all who pass as wetbacks. Help us Our Father. Bless us all who think of You, who trust in You. And I ask You to bless and help my mother, my father and me and my brothers and sisters and all of my family. In Your hands we place our good luck to pass ALIVE. Adios Our Father."Another note says: "Please I ask You with all my heart look after and protect my husband that he pass safely. Amen." A Bible lies open and someone has dropped this plea on the page:God bless us and protect us along the wayYonathanManuelTomazYumboGracielaNormaOlindaGuide us on a good road and protect us.As I leave the Hotel San Francisco, Johnny Cash is singing,You can run on for a long timeRun on for a long timeRun on for a long timeSooner or later God'll cut you downSooner or later God'll cut you downIT BEGAN for Emilio on January 28, 2005, when six soldiers came to La Estrella Hotel, a run-down boardinghouse for migrants across the street from the Hotel San Francisco, took food off people's plates, and then robbed the customers of their money and jewelry. Emilio got tipped off and so he phoned the local police chief. He called the Army also but as is their custom they refused to answer any questions. He filed a brief article about the incident, one of three he wrote during that period noting similar actions by the Army in the area.That is how he destroyed his life.Several days later, February 8, 2005, Colonel Filadelfo Martínez Piedra calls Emilio at home, explains that he is "the boss," and orders him to come immediately to the Hotel Miami in downtown Ascensión. The colonel says, "If you don't come, we'll come looking for you at home or wherever you are."So he puts his then-11-year-old son in his truck and goes there. He notices scores of ordinary soldiers around the hotel, and two vans full of elite troops who are bodyguards for the officers. He leaves his son in the truck and walks up to the colonel. It is a very cold night.In his mind, he is thinking, "What the fuck are these cabrones up to?" Soldiers swiftly surround him. The colonel says to another officer, "Look general, the son of a whore who has written all kinds of stupidities has arrived."Then the general, Alfonso García Vega, says, "So you are the son of a whore who is lowering our prestige. You son of a fucking whore, you are denigrating us and my boss. The minister in Mexico is extremely bothered by your fucking lies, idiot."Emilio tries to form words to excuse himself but he cannot. The general is in charge of Chihuahua. He is very short and his uniform is brilliant with gold trim.Emilio is very frightened and he says that he only writes what the officials or the victims tell him.The general says, "No, you have no sources for that information. You made it up. Just how much schooling do you have, asshole?"Emilio lies, and claims two years of communication studies at a university.The general explains that Emilio lacks an education equal to his own.To have a general speak to you is not something to be desired. They can hand out death like a party favor.The general suggests he should write about drug people.Emilio says he does not know any and besides they frighten him."So, you don't know them and you fear them," the general bristles. "You should fear us for we fuck the fucking drug traffickers, you son of a whore. I feel like putting you in the van and taking you to the mountains so you can see how we fuck over the drug traffickers, asshole."The guards surround him, he can see his son in the truck about 15 yards away, and the boy looks very frightened. Then people walking past the hotel greet Emilio and he thinks this is what saves him from a beating.He grovels, apologizes profusely to the general."You've written idiocies three times and there shall be no fourth. You'd better not mention this meeting or you'll be sent to hell, asshole."The colonel tells him he is under surveillance "and should not fuck up."Then, he is dismissed. He gets back in his truck and his son asks what is going on. He says, "They want to kidnap me." He drives aimlessly, and finally calls his boss at the paper who tells him, "This is serious. This is a problem."He decides his only chance at safety is making the threats known. He publishes a third-person account of the incident, and files a complaint with the public safety minister in Nuevo Casas Grandes who warns him, "You better think it over carefully because it is very dangerous getting involved with the military." But he is building a paper record to try to save himself. He files a complaint against General García Vega and Colonel Martínez Piedra and the soldiers with the National Commission of Human Rights. Three months later the state police begin an investigation that goes nowhere. The representative of the human rights commission proposes a conciliatory act between him and the military. The proposed act is never defined and Emilio knows there will be no reconciliation.So Emilio does not write anything unseemly about the Army again; he hears no evil and sees no evil. For example, on February 13, 2008, he notes in an unbylined story that "heavily armed commandos" (Emilio now estimates a convoy of 700 men and 100 vehicles) swept the area from Palomas down to Casas Grandes. In Ascensión they ransack the house of Emilio's friend, a guy who runs a pizza parlor. The friend is given the ley fuga, the traditional game of the military where they let you run and if you can dodge the bullets, you live. His friend is mowed down in the street in front of his home. That night 20 people vanish from the area and only one ever returns, a Chilean engineer who is saved by his embassy. The others simply cease to exist.But then memory can be a very short-term thing here. Within an hour or two of a killing, there is no one left to describe the murder. In a day, it is a dim memory. In a few days, it is beyond recall except when talking in private to the closest friends and family. This loss of memory is not because of cowardice. It is the wisdom that comes with survival. Emilio knows that the Mexican Army is the only force capable of carrying out a coordinated operation of this kind. In the story he mentions "armed commandos" sweeping the area, a term that to savvy readers means Army and to everyone else indicates a cartel action. That is how an honest reporter tries to avoid becoming a dead reporter. He puts it out of his mind.BUT THE ARMY has a long memory. After midnight, on May 5, 2008, Emilio awakens to a loud knocking on the door of his home. Fifty soldiers raid the house. Emilio screams, "Press, the press from El Diario," and a soldier says, "Hands up, asshole. On the ground!"They tell him they are looking for guns and drugs, and separate him from his stunned son. When they leave, the commander advises him, "Behave well and follow our suggestions."On June 14, he steps out of his house and waters his small garden of squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers. He has a pear tree, also an apricot tree, and three rosebushes blooming pink and red. He is going to make his son breakfast, a task he enjoys. It is a Saturday. He notices five guys in a green pickup 70 yards away that look like soldiers and they are watching him. Then, they cruise slowly past him. A while later, they come back but this time in a white vehicle. And they park and watch his house. But there is a store down the block where the soldiers come to buy cocaine and so he thinks just maybe their presence has nothing to do with him.He is entering a place he will only recognize later: denial. After all, he has behaved properly. Local drug people have offered him money not to mention the tiendas selling cocaine. He's told them, "Don't worry. You don't have to pay me. I am not going to write about them." Besides, he knows the Army and the police are both involved, so whom is he going to inform? Instead, he's picked up extra money by writing publicity releases and selling ads for the newspaper.But he knows, "The hardest part of the job is survive on the salary. That is why the sobres exist." It has been years since he completely trusted anyone he works with.He goes inside and makes machaca with eggs for his boy. He tells his son that he is going to his office and that he should keep an eye on the house.He reads the papers at his desk, then goes three blocks to the police station to talk to a drunk the police have arrested, the usual small moments of a small-town newspaper. Outside, the green pickup is back. He leaves his office around noon and stops by a friend's welding shop. This time a white vehicle is trailing him. Now he is worried, so he and his friend go to a bodega, buy some beers, and return to the shop. There is a place nearby where people buy cocaine and he sees a soldier from the green pickup go in there and then come out.Emilio goes home, takes his son to church, and returns to his friend's shop. After a while he goes out to the bodega again and now the white car is back. Upset, he calls his friend, and tells him to come around to the back of the bodega. He escapes and his friend takes him back to his house.After church, his son heads to the plaza with friends. Emilio stays at his friend's and around eight o'clock a woman calls and says, "Emilio, I have to see you right now. Where are you? I can't talk over the phone." She comes over and tells him she is dating a soldier and the military people all talk about how they are going to kill him. She is crying. She says, "Emilio, you have to leave now. They are going to kill you."Emilio and the woman go to collect his son, then flee to a small ranch about six miles west of Ascensión. He is terrified. Later that night a friend takes him to his house. He wears a big straw hat, slips low in the seat. He sneaks into the house and gets vital documents. All day Sunday Emilio tries to think of a way to save his life and comes up with only one answer: flight. No matter where he goes in Mexico he will have to find a job and use his identity cards and the Army will track him down. He now knows they will never forgive his stories from 2005, that he cannot be redeemed.He tells his boy, "We are not going back to our house. The soldiers may kill me and I don't want to leave you alone."Monday morning he drives north very fast. He takes all his legal papers so that he can prove who he is. He expects asylum from the government of the United States.WHAT HE GETS is this: He is immediately jailed, as is his son. They are separated. He is taken to El Paso and placed in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by Deco, Inc. He is deloused, given a blue jumpsuit, and set to work scrubbing floors for a dollar a day. He is denied bond, and no hearing is scheduled. Had he entered the United States illegally and then asked for asylum, he would be eligible for bond. But since he entered legally and asked for asylum at the port of entry he is kept in prison because the Department of Homeland Security declares that Emilio has failed to prove that he "would not pose a danger to the community."He remembers those moments he loved: making his son's breakfast, washing his son's clothes. Now he can do nothing for him. Emilio cries a lot. He remembers all those bribes, all those sobres, he refused for years. He thinks, "If I had taken bribes I wouldn't be here in prison." Instead, he is surrounded by 800 prisoners—Africans, Middle Eastern people, Indians, Russians, and of course Central Americans and Mexicans, swept up in the increasing ICE raids."The Mexicans," he says, "are treated the worst. The staff curses us and calls us rats, narcos, and criminals. The work of the prison is done by the Mexicans and Central Americans. It is ironic—the illegals are arrested for working at real jobs in the US and then they get put in prison and are made to work for nothing."For a month, he cannot speak to his son. He is tormented by the fear that older boys might molest him. The prison officials refuse to tell him anything. Finally, he gets a 10-minute phone call. The boy says he is doing okay. Emilio tells him they will not be able to go back to Mexico. He can sense his son is bitter; he has lost his home, his friends, even his dog. Emilio wants to hug him and kiss him as he did each day at home.The prison is haunted by a Cuban ghost. Twenty years before, it is said, the man hung himself with a bedsheet. And now at night, sometimes all the showers come on, or the toilets are emptied of water. Prisoners say that security cameras see the Cuban in the library in the middle of the night reading. There are sounds of a guitar playing. The ghost is a message that tells Emilio what the prison can do to a man. Emilio's lawyer explains that asylum will be difficult, but allowing himself to be deported back to Mexico will be fatal. The lawyer says, "Maybe the United States does not want you but we know Mexico does not want you. Think of your son."He does. And after a few months, Emilio's son is released to friends in El Paso. He tells his father not to give up. He tells the press, "I really miss him and I miss my home too, but for me, my dad is more important. Because if something happens to him, I think that I would die. Because he is the only person I have and I love him more than anyone in the world."At the end of January 2009, nine days after President Obama is sworn in, Emilio Gutiérrez Soto is suddenly released. When they call him to the office, he assumes he is being shipped to another prison in the American gulag. His lawyer also had no indication of the release. He is reunited with his son.His first hearing is postponed, and it could be again, because the US government loves postponing such hearings in the hope that migrants will give up and go back home. Emilio cannot work because the US government has yet to give him a work permit.But Emilio is a creature of hope. He has faith in the new administration because "the race Obama belongs to has been enslaved. I think he shares this history of discrimination with Latinos. And he will realize the huge human rights abuses in Mexico. There are thousands of people like me here. There are thousands of abandoned homes in Juárez alone. If I am sent back to Mexico, I might live a day or a few years. The Army may kill me immediately or wait for my case to grow cold."In the meantime, Emilio sits in the sun and tries to teach me Mexico as it is today."Mexicans," he explains, "know the Army is a bunch of brutes. But what is going on now is a coup d'etat by the Army. The president is illegitimate. The Army has installed itself. They have become the government. They are installed in all the state governments. They control the municipal police. They are everywhere but the ministry of education—after all, they are too illiterate to run that. The president has his hands tied and he has tied them."But there is another way of looking at the facts on that ground that is un-Mexican with its fetish of a pyramid of power going back to the Aztec emperors, and un-American with our conviction that every place is kind of like our nation only with unsafe water and spicy food. Maybe, the center no longer holds. In the last 10 years, since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juárez cartel and first among equals in the drug world, the industry has fragmented into independent baronies and smaller outlaw bands. Since the collapse of the PRI, the ruling party that lasted more than 70 years, Mexico's civil society has also fragmented, with power leaving the capital and recombining with the narcogangs. The Army, the largest gang, is not attempting to seize the bankrupt and withering state, but grabbing market share in a place whose two largest industries are supplying American drug habits and exporting millions of people. Cartels once imposed constraint of trade. But like soda-pop CEOs, the generals now angle to increase their share of the skyrocketing domestic drug market. And of course, the United States finances this move, via the Mérida Initiative, in the delusion that it is shoring up a republic south of the Rio Grande. We are staring into the future but using old prescription glasses. Murderous cholos on the corner in Juárez and troops marauding and robbing in the disguise of a Mexican drug war may be writing the future while President Obama and President Calderón wander in their bunkers of power, and cling to the fantasies of the ancien régime.CARLOS SPECTOR, Emilio's lawyer, is a man on fire. He is 55, red haired, big, El Paso born, a Mexican American Jew. He has built an immigration practice. His childhood was divided between El Paso and Juárez. In his 20s, he moved to Israel under the Law of Return and lived on a kibbutz. But eventually, the border claimed him. He has been looking for a case like Emilio's for years, a case of a clean Mexican reporter seeking political asylum from the government of the United States. Now he thinks he has it and that he can make American law face the reality of Mexico.To gain political asylum, applicants must prove they have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their political opinion or an "immutable characteristic" such as race, religion, or nationality. When it comes to people fleeing Mexico, the United States has quibbled with claims of immutability, telling Mexican cops running from the cartels that they should just stop being a cop, move to another part of Mexico, become a plumber. But Emilio can't hide from the Army. Those three stories he filed in 2005, the opinions therein, they created an immutable impression on the Army. After that he apologized. He ceased writing anything bad about the Army even when he witnessed them killing people in his town in February 2008. None of this helped. When the Army swept the area again a few months later, they came after him.Spector says, "The concept of revenge is part of the Mexican political system. Emilio has insulted the institution and it has an incredible memory. The only thing worse he could do, he has done also—to leave the country and denounce it from the US side of the border."Almost a month after his release, on February 20, 2009, Emilio held a press conference at the University of Texas-El Paso with Jorge Luis Aguirre, the creator of a website of gossip and news in Juárez who has also fled for his life, and Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, the supervising attorney for the State Committee of Human Rights in Chihuahua. They are forming an organization, Periodistas Mexicanos en Exilio, Mexican Journalists in Exile (PEMEXX—a play on PEMEX, the national oil company). They all say the same thing: that the Mexican Army is terrorizing the nation and killing people out of hand.Aguirre was on his way to the funeral of a reporter murdered in Juárez when he received a call on his cell phone saying he would be next. He promptly fled to El Paso. One reporter at the press conference asks him if he will also apply for asylum, and he answers that he has to think carefully about it since Emilio was jailed for seven months for doing so.And then Spector says, "This is precisely the reason we formed this organization. Jorge's fear is legitimate. This was part of the Bush administration's Guantanamization of the refugee process. By locking people up, especially Mexican asylum applicants, and making them, through a war of attrition, give up their claims. I've represented ten cops seeking asylum and not one of them lasted longer than two months. Emilio lasted seven months. On the basis of he had his son, and he knew he was going to be killed. There was nowhere that he could go."EMILIO GUTIÉRREZ SOTO and his attorney Carlos Spector sit inside the sanctuary of the United States but the violence of Mexico never lets up. On Tuesday, March 3, four Mexican soldiers visit a friend of Carlos' in Juárez and hand him a photograph. He does not yet know it, but at that instant, Carlos moves from knowing Mexico to feeling its breath on the back of his neck. In the photo, Carlos is wearing a blue suit and entering the El Paso County Courthouse. The photograph was taken the previous Thursday.The soldiers say, "Your friend is a criminal and we are looking for him. Tell him to get ahold of us."Outside, more men wait in a Hummer.Carlos gets the call from his friend and falls into his new life. He spent half his childhood living in Juárez. He moves freely and easily in two worlds. And now this seamless web is slashed in half.He must think, he decides. So he drives to one of El Paso's many Starbucks and has a cup of coffee. He looks out the window and notices two Ford Expeditions full of men and then he remembers them behind him in traffic as he drove over. He leaves and in his rearview mirror he sees the men in the Expeditions. He executes a sharp U and suddenly he is behind the Fords. They bolt but not before he sees the Chihuahua license plates.He is learning new facts.His problem is representing Emilio Gutiérrez Soto. And his problem is real.His friend in Juárez flees with his family to a distant part of Mexico.And Carlos can no longer have the life he once enjoyed. He fortifies his house; he starts his car by remote control, standing at a distance."It feels like an out-of-body experience," he says.He has joined his client and they live in a place beyond courts and laws and the illusions of the United States of America.He has become a Mexican, body and soul.Emilio says, "Carlos is now an exile, also."Written by Charles BowdenFrom Mother Jones - July/August 2009 Issue

Harry Patch Song- apersonal appreciation

Posted by redlotus51 on August 13, 2009 at 1:11am

I know it's been a while since Harry Patch was released... my world moves this slow because of illness. But I wanted to share some personal identification with this song. It is up there with 4 Minute Warning which reminds me of the days I spent under my desk during the Cuban Missile Crisis ( yes, I am a fossil).One of the most moving and beautiful things to come out of 'rock' music ever. Thom's phrasing of Harry's words and the emotion of his singing and Jonny's fantastic score is a landmark!If anyone ever gets a chance to communicate with Jon and Thom tell them my father was in the invasion of Omaha Beach in WWII. He would still wake up screaming 40 years later till the day he died. My Dad too, "saw devils rising out of the Earth" ( I just got so choked up at this line I could not read it to my wife) and he was one of the few from his unit to survive. People being cut down in the water or even before they got off the landing craft.That's why I am anti-war and against the system of aggression and exploitation behind it.For a world without exploitation, oppression and war !

Mexico's War On Drugs

Posted by SubSickAlien on January 6, 2009 at 3:00am

This recent Rolling Stone article opened my eyes to the current drug problem facing Mexico today. Many in the media would lead us to believe that our troops are in Iraq because they need to be fighting the "terrrorists". If you ask me the war we need to be worrying about is the one being fought just south of our border. Read on and judge for yourself...The dead policeman is found propped against a tree off a dirt road on the outskirts of the city. He is dressed like a cartoon version of a Mexican cowboy, wearing a sombrero and wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket. The murder and symbolic mutilation of policía has become almost routine in Culiacán, capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa: Pablo Aispuro Ramírez is one of 90 cops to be killed here this year. There is a note pinned to the body, a warning to anyone who dares to oppose the powerful drug lord who ordered the execution."I'm a cop-cowboy!" the note reads. "Ahoo-ya! There are going to be more soon!"In the United States, the War on Drugs is a political slogan for a policy disaster that has cost taxpayers at least $500 billion over the past 35 years. In Mexico, it is a brutal and bewildering conflict — a multisided civil war that has taken 3,000 lives this year alone and brought the federal government to a state of near-collapse. Narcotics are now one of the largest sectors of the Mexican economy, twice the size of tourism. Most of the country's drug trade involves transporting contraband from other sources — especially cocaine from Colombia — to satisfy the nearly insatiable demand in the U.S. But Mexico's narcotraficante cartels have also gotten into the production side of the industry, manufacturing 80 percent of the crystal meth sold in America, 14 percent of the heroin and most of the marijuana. What Mexico offers the global narcotics industry is proximity to the largest market on earth.Until the Bush administration's crackdown on coca growers in Colombia began driving the drug trade further north, traffic through Mexico was relatively stable, overseen chiefly by the huge cartels based in Sinaloa. Known as "the federation," the traditional families that led Mexico's thriving narcotics business each controlled disparate areas of the U.S. border, much as the Mafia once divided up the boroughs of New York City. Perhaps the most ingenious and hardworking of these Mexican mobsters is Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as "El Chapo," or "Shorty." Chapo, who controls the border towns of Nogales and Mexicali, built massive underground tunnels to smuggle cocaine into Arizona. He concealed tons of cocaine in cans of chili peppers destined for California. He assembled a fleet of boats and trucks and airplanes with hidden compartments to enable them to slip past customs. To the U.S. government, he is one of the most wanted drug dealers in the world, a fugitive with a $5 million reward on his head. In Culiacán, he is more folk hero — part Pablo Escobar, part Robin Hood, part Billy the Kid."We respect him," the owner of a restaurant in the town of Altata tells me. "He grew up poor, planting corn and pot. Then he took trucks with false floors filled with pot to the United States, and speedboats from the coast to California. In Mexico we have a saying: He spread like humidity."For years, Chapo shared the drug trade with other families in the federation. The Beltrán Leyva cartel was in charge of the traffic in Monterrey, and a former federal police officer known as "El Azul" ran Guadalajara. Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the cartel leader called "the Lord of the Skies," worked the border town of Ciudad Juárez, opposite El Paso. At the peak of his power, Fuentes was said to have paid $500 million a year in protection money. It was Fuentes who pioneered the traffic in Colombian coke, and who infamously died during plastic surgery to alter his appearance. (The two doctors alleged to have botched the operation were later found entombed in cement, their arms and legs bound.)Over the past decade, however, that relatively stable structure has erupted into full-scale war — largely as the result of the unintended consequences of U.S. drug policy. When the Drug Enforcement Administration blocked cocaine shipments through the Caribbean during the 1980s, the trade simply migrated to overland routes through Mexico. Likewise, the DEA's success against the Cali and Medellín cartels in Colombia has only emboldened Mexico's narcos, driving the drug traffic ever closer to home. Newcomers on the Gulf Coast eager to break into the industry are challenging the rule of the existing cartels, sparking a bloody battle over territory and supply routes. And the Mexican government — under pressure from the United States to curb the flow of drugs — is waging an all-out campaign to destroy the cartels.Indeed, much of the current bloodshed can be traced to the special forces that Mexico trained to find and arrest drug traffickers, receiving instruction from the U.S. military on tactics, intelligence-gathering, air assault and advanced weaponry. In the late 1990s, one of the new Gulf cartels began recruiting these American-trained soldiers to work as hired guns against the Sinaloan cartels, offering vastly higher wages than the government. Known as "Los Zetas" — the Mexican police's term for a high-ranking official — these mercenaries are now the most violent force in Mexico, moving massive amounts of drugs into the U.S. while murdering journalists and police and politicians who challenge their authority. Led by Heriberto "the Executioner" Lazcano, the Zeta paramilitaries are far more sophisticated in their weaponry and combat skills than the hapless and corruption-addled policía. It is as if the Navy SEALs or an FBI SWAT team went to work for the Russian mob.Through the early part of the decade, the war steadily increased in intensity, but it was only with the inauguration of President Felipe Calderón in December 2006 that true chaos enveloped the nation. A conservative elected by a narrow margin, Calderón has made going after the drug traffickers a central part of his administration. He has deployed more than 40,000 federal soldiers across the country and imprisoned thousands of narcos, from lowly street dealers to drug lords and money launderers. But the result of Calderón's war has been catastrophe. In reply, the traffickers have directly attacked the legitimacy of the government, targeting politicians and senior law-enforcement officials. Ten days after Calderón took office, in what was seen as a message from the cartels, a cousin of his wife was killed and stuffed into the trunk of a car in Mexico City. In May, the chief of the federal police was gunned down in the capital. That same month, a village in the state of Chihuahua was overrun by 70 gunmen; the police chief and two officers were killed, the rest of the force quit in fear. In August, 12 decapitated bodies were left on the outskirts of Mérida on the Gulf Coast, the letter "Z" tattooed on their bodies, the calling card of Los Zetas. On September 15th — during a celebration of Mexican Independence Day — two fragmentation grenades exploded in the square of President Calderón's hometown of Morelia, killing eight civilians and wounding more than 100. The government's war on drugs has sparked a war on the government itself.The war has now spread to America's own border. In three days in August, 43 people were killed in drug-related murders in and around Juárez, just across the river from El Paso. Experts agree that the violence could soon pose a threat to national security in America, with the already porous border turning into a floodgate for Mexican refugees and gangs. "I worry that the country's political class won't truly act until a major figure is assassinated," says Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the Institute of Social Research in Mexico City. "But right now it's not very clear what the 'war' means. No one is sure who is fighting who. It best resembles a circular firing squad."The day I arrive in Culiacán, the front page of the local newspaper reads WORSE THAN IRAQ. Only days before, in broad daylight, a gang of gunmen had pulled up in front of the Mega 2000, an auto shop in the center of the city, and opened fire with high-caliber assault weapons — AK-47s and AR-15s. Within moments, nine were dead. As the assailants fled along Zapata Boulevard, they gunned down two police officers. Panic swept across the city as the streets echoed with the tinny pop-pop-pop of automatic-weapons fire. Businesses rolled down their steel doors, trapping customers inside. On Insurgentes Avenue, the killers opened fire on federal soldiers stationed outside a judiciary building. There was no pursuit and no arrests. It was reported that the gunmen were after a narcotraficante known as "Alligator," but even the simplest facts of the attack — as well as the attackers themselves — disappeared into the fog of war. "There are many versions of events," a local official told reporters. "But no one wants to talk."The front line of the drug war is here in Sinaloa, a small state on the Pacific coast across from the Baja Peninsula. Bordered to the east by the Sierra Madres, a line of remote and impenetrable mountains that stretches to the Arizona border, Sinaloa is part of Mexico's Golden Triangle — bandit country patrolled by sicarios (hit men), corrupt sheriffs and trigger-happy Mexican federales. The capital, Culiacán, is a drug-industry town the way Los Angeles is an entertainment town. Every business is connected, directly or indirectly, with illegal drugs. There are narco discos and narco restaurants. In the upscale malls scattered around town, high-end jewelers sell the gaudy and expensive necklaces favored by narco wives and girlfriends and hookers. Narco chic is Valentino and Moschino pants, ostrich-skin boots, a black belt with a narco nickname engraved in it and a Versace handbag big enough to hold a stash of drugs and the cash needed to pay off police.There are, on average, three drug-related murders a day in Sinaloa. Simply to walk the deserted streets of Culiacán at night is to feel the weight of fear that has descended on the city. The drug cartels have stored caches of weapons in "safe houses" scattered across town, from the poorest barrios to the most upscale neighborhoods, and thousands of federal troops garrisoned in the local baseball stadium patrol the streets day and night. But the soldiers have little or no intelligence about the drug traffickers they have been sent to stop, and the military checkpoints set up around the city have done nothing to stem the violence. A few days before I arrive, assailants killed a man driving a car in front of a mall, then doubled back through traffic to shoot his wife — a pregnant woman — in the head at point-blank range.The killing of civilians marks a turning point in the escalating conflict. "The old kind of narco was generous," says Javier Valdez, one of the few reporters in Mexico to write openly about the drug trade. "He helped people. Before, they didn't kill women or kids. Now they sell fear. Murdering that pregnant woman was sending a message. It says, 'We will stop at nothing.'" So far this year, there have been 800 ejecuciones — execution-style slayings — in Sinaloa alone. There are so many killings that Culiacán's leading tabloid has an entire pull-out section devoted to drug violence, called "The Red Note."The local police have responded to the chaos by looking the other way. Last summer, when a specially formed police squad tried to crack down on the growing number of corner stores retailing narcotics to addicts, the result was a massacre in which six officers were killed. The squad was disbanded. The nearby village of El Pozo was recently besieged by scores of armed men who murdered 11 residents and forced more than 100 to flee town. "The police are afraid," said the widow of one of the victims. "They know who the killers are, but they won't investigate. They never capture those responsible for our deaths."For all the terror, in Culiacán the drug wars also operate as a sort of ongoing soap opera starring the most powerful narcotraficantes. The leading man in this life-and-death drama is El Chapo. "He is the biggest star in the movie," says Valdez. "Chapo is the most admired, with the most money and women and weapons. When Chapo is going to 'clear the road,' which means kill people in his way, he doesn't hesitate. He is cabrón — more than macho, a real motherfucker, but also very intelligent."By any normal measure, Chapo is a killer guilty of horrendous crimes. But in the imagination of Sinaloa, he is like a god from an ancient world: kind, humble, rich, generous, mysterious. Tales of his exploits abound — his fearlessness, his taste in women, his generosity. The area has even given birth to an entire genre of popular songs known as narcocorridos, which glorifies the triumphs and travails of Chapo and his rivals. The music — which draws on old-style German polka and is sometimes punctuated by gunfire — is often performed by musicians dressed like bandits. "The narcos don't care if they die in a shootout, because they know they will get a song written about them," Valdez tells me. "They will literally die for a song."Chapo, now 53, has been involved in the drug trade for decades. As a fugitive, he lives in hiding, seldom seen in public but somehow omnipresent. Short, with dark hair and a sly smile, he is the peasant who has risen to the heights of the underworld through a combination of bravery and cunning and connection to the people of the Sierra Madres. His life is followed breathlessly in the press, his romance with an 18-year-old beauty queen named Emma covered like they are Hollywood stars. In a mountain village outside Culiacán, it is reported, Chapo held a dance for Emma to help her win a local beauty pageant, with 200 men wearing ski masks encircling the town on motorcycles, as Chapo arrived toting an AK-47 across his chest. When he and Emma married last year, it made the cover of Proceso, the leading newsweekly in Mexico, under the headline THE GREAT GANGSTER MARRIED QUEEN EMMA THE FIRST. Chapo "walks free and in love," the paper reported. "He goes to parties, he marries in public, he goes on a honeymoon." A leading narcocorrido outfit, Los Canelos de Durango, performed at the wedding, dressed as Mexican banditos and toting pistols. One of their songs is titled "El Chapo":From foot to head he is shortBut he is the biggest of the big.If you respect him, he'll respect you.If you offend him, it will get worse.If Chapo is the star of the show, his rivals in the Beltrán Leyva cartel are the antagonists. The clan is run by two brothers: Mochomo ("Red Ant") and El Barbas ("the Beard"). In their feud with Chapo, they have joined forces with the Gulf cartels and Los Zetas, moving hundreds of hit men into Culiacán from other territories, dispersed in cells of three or four to avoid attack and to inflict maximum damage. Mochomo is known as an impulsive man, prone to overreaching and a pronounced lack of self-control, even for a drug lord. According to someone close to the cartels, Mochomo and Chapo recently feuded about a huge shipment of drugs being transported through the airport in Mexico City. Mochomo's men apparently didn't treat Chapo's men with sufficient deference — the kind of insult that sparks gunfire in the narcosphere.Last January, when Mochomo was captured, his older brother Barbas wanted to stage a frontal assault on the prison. Barbas has a reputation as a man given to fits of drug-addled rage. "He's diabetic," a former police commander tells me. "When Barbas mixes cocaine and alcohol, he loses the floor" — gets high — "and has paranoid delusions." Chapo refused to take part in the far-fetched scheme, enraging Barbas. If Chapo wouldn't help break Mochomo out of prison, he was betraying his brother narcos — and that meant war.In May, Chapo's 20-year-old son was shot and killed in Culiacán during a drive-up attack by 15 gunmen, one of whom fired a bazooka. Since then, the violence has spiraled out of control. Having been allied for the past decade, the two Sinaloan cartels know everything about each other — who's sitting on caches of arms, which cops are on the payroll, where their hideouts are located. In July, four decapitated bodies from the Sierra Madres were dumped in the center of the city, accompanied by a note addressed to Chapo. "You're next, Chapo, ungrateful traitor," it read. "You're never going to change. Your chickie will be next."Three days later, three more bodies, heads and legs severed, were found in the trunk of a Nissan sedan. Among them was a former police commandante. This was taken to be Chapo's reply. Within hours, another cop was shot and killed in downtown Culiacán, along with a companion and a bystander. Within days, two more men were murdered, their heads cut off and dumped outside a dairy farm owned by another kingpin allied with Chapo — the riposte of Barbas and Mochomo."The reason for the war is that the capos are struggling for the top," a local who knows Chapo tells me. "I saw Chapo and Mochomo at a party together before the fighting began. They were good together. But since Mochomo was arrested, the balance has been broken. Mochomo was getting more power — he was growing the feathers of the bird, we say. He didn't respect Chapo. So Chapo went after him."When I arrive in Culiacán, everyone in the city is waiting for Chapo to take revenge for his son's death. I'm hoping to meet Mexico's most famous outlaw: Despite all the press coverage, no one has ever gotten an interview with him. Through connections, I am introduced to a gomero — an opium farmer — I will call Julio, who knows Chapo. In narco style, Julio wears a gold chain to match his gold teeth. He tells me Chapo is hiding in the mountains outside a town called Tamazula de Victoria. He says he can take me there. Perhaps I can talk to Chapo.As we drive inland from Culiacán, we draw stares from locals. Simply being seen with a gringo attracts attention; if it was known that Julio was leading an American journalist into narco country at the height of the conflict, he would almost certainly be killed. "If we get stopped by the narcos or the police," Julio tells me, "pretend to be a tourist." It doesn't seem to occur to him that the idea of a tourist coming to the Sierra Madres, the scene of one of the most lethal conflicts on the planet, is insane.Julio calls Chapo his padrone — the man who supplies him with the seeds for the poppies he grows. Many times, he says, he has partied with Chapo and his compadres. The men gather in the mountains and slaughter pigs and cattle and drink whiskey and snort coke and dance the night away. "Chapo is chubby and friendly, and he likes to dance to banda music," Julio says. "He drinks Buchanan's whiskey — the good kind. His favorite song is 'Crossing the Hills and Streams.' He uses the song to pick up women. All of the narcos know that they are going to die young. This is why they live so fast. They have to get all their pleasure from life right now. They are all killers. To be a narco, you have to kill. For me, I don't want to kill. Life is beautiful."The highway inland from Culiacán is dotted with large haciendas, sheltered behind 30-foot-high walls built to protect the narcos. Beyond the village of Tamazula, the road turns into a rough dirt track. From here, the mountains become impassable to an outsider, the dense and treacherous terrain obscuring fields of opium. Mexican poppies aren't known for their quality, but the mountains offer a natural hideout for a drug trafficker on the run. Locals talk of opulent residences built into caves, providing secure getaways for drug lords. Chapo has reportedly been hiding here since he broke out of federal prison in 2001 — a feat known as the "golden kilogram," for the amount of gold that legend says he used to bribe his way out. In Sinaloa, however, it is widely believed that the government actually let Chapo go, because he is the only narcotraficante brave enough to stop Los Zetas, the ex-military group that has sided with the cartels. The Zetas often dress as federales and travel in vehicles marked as police cars, making it impossible to identify them as gangsters. Contemptuous of the existing order, they openly recruit members of the police and military by hanging banners in public promising money and benefits."Chapo is up there," Julio tells me as I pull over on the road leading out of Tamazula. "This is where he came when he broke out of prison. He went to hide in the ranch of a capo named Nachito. Chapo is safe here. He supports the people, and the people support him." Julio pauses, reconsidering the reliability of any intelligence involving Chapo. "Unless he is hiding in Guatemala or Salvador," he adds.It is only noon, but Julio is already downing his third Tecate. It is 105 degrees in the shade. On the side of the road, a platoon of soldiers laze shirtless in an airport hangar. The troops are here to inspect every plane landing on the tiny dirt strip for illegal drugs. But even this token effort is useless: Scores of airstrips remain hidden throughout the Sierra Madres, tucked away in valleys and jungle clearings. "The government acts like they are looking for narcos and will tear out crops," Julio scoffs. "But they always give warning of their movements — they don't want to get in a shootout."Tamazula boasts a new school and condo developments, signs of the prosperity brought by narcotics. In the middle of the village, on a hill overlooking the valley, a mansion stands behind large black steel gates. The house belongs to one of Chapo's allies, Julio says, and the narcos stay there when they come down from the mountains, looking for the comforts of civilization. Those comforts are considerable: In one narco residence in Mexico City, the police seized $205 million — in cash. Here, at the foot of the hill, an army outpost sits directly under the gaze of the narco mansion — the kind of contradiction common in the Sierra Madres, where the fortunes of the law and outlaws are inextricably entwined.Julio ducks into a tiny office to collect the monthly subsidy he receives from the government for not growing illegal drugs — despite the fact he grows opium and pot. He has five acres of poppy, a crop he hopes will yield 10 kilograms of heroin, which he can sell for $20,000. "Chapo came to my village in a helicopter and gave out money to plant marijuana," Julio says. "He did this for the whole town. If I wanted to start a business of some kind in the city, he would provide me the money to start. He uses his money for his people, to help us progress."On the outskirts of town, however, Julio suddenly decides that we should turn around. It is unsafe to go any further, he insists. Chapo's men will kidnap us or kill us. Or we will be intercepted by gatilleros — triggermen — from the Beltrán Leyva cartel. Or Zetas. Or bandits."If you want to find Chapo, you should look near the village of La Tuna," he tells me. "I know people who can take you there."The next day, while I wait for Julio to set up the trip, I drive with my translator, Sara, to the beaches of Sinaloa, about an hour from Culiacán. Developers are hoping, bizarrely, to turn the coast here into the next Acapulco. When we stop at a restaurant, the owner boasts that Chapo visits the area often. "Chapo swims at the beach," the man says. "We protect him and make sure it is quiet for him. Here Chapo is adored. He falls in love easily. He has eyes for the women. Like with Emma, his new wife. It was love at first sight."The problem, the man says, is not Chapo, but those who emulate him. As more drugs pass through Mexico, the rate of addiction has skyrocketed, further fueling the violence. "The worse thing is the young people who try to imitate the narcos. It used to be only Americans took drugs. But now kids are stoned. For 200 pesos, a girl will fuck. The boys are copycats, and they get killed in the street. Not Chapo. Not any asshole can be Chapo. You have to be clever. As a leader, he's like Pancho Villa.""Do you know where Chapo is?" I ask.The man turns to Sara and speaks rapid-fire Spanish. They begin to argue. I ask what the disagreement is about. The man grows angrier. "Why does he come and ask questions about Chapo?" he demands.Sara explains that I am a journalist."How do you know he's not DEA or Interpol?" the man asks. "Or even the CIA?" He demands that I leave at once.That night, I drive with Sara to meet Julio again, hoping to connect with his friend who has offered to take me up into the mountains to meet Chapo. According to Julio, the man is a sheriff who is "with" Chapo. After Mexico's ruling political party, the PRI, lost its grip on power in 2000, the drug cartels have scrambled to ensure their control by bribing corrupt cops and politicians. "It used to be expensive but clear who the drug traffickers had to pay off," says Astorga, the sociologist who studies the drug trade. "Now it's cheaper but more fractured. It's not always clear who is in charge."It is dark as we pull up to the compound where Julio has told me to meet him — a classic narco fortress with high walls and a massive steel door. Pulling onto the dirt track next to the gates, we are suddenly blinded by lights. Two Humvees filled with Mexican soldiers, weapons trained on us, flash their high beams. They are followed by two pickup trucks filled with federales, who pull up in a cloud of dust. Sara and I are ordered out of the car at gunpoint."Who are you?" an officer demands."What are you doing here?" says another, brandishing his gun.Another SUV full of federales arrives. Looking for drugs or weapons, they order us to open the trunk. The air bristles with the holy trinity of war: fear, violence and stupidity. It is hot and humid, and everyone is sweating heavily. Sara fast-talks the soldiers, explaining that I am a journalist, not a drug dealer. She is careful not to mention that we are here to see Julio — a fact that could get him in serious trouble.Finally, after I show them my identification, the soldiers relent. As we drive away, Sara explains why the standoff terrified her. "You never know who you're dealing with in Culiacán," she says. "You never know what their motives are. But what was very dangerous was not the soldiers but the narcos. They could see us with the army and decide to throw some bullets at us. This could easily happen."The next day, back in Culiacán, I meet with a former senior commandante from the area. The officer, who insists that his name not be used, held very high-level positions in Mexican law enforcement and was trained in intelligence-gathering in the United States. We meet at a restaurant downtown called California. The officer — call him Edgar — sits at a table by the window, his back to the street. He is in his 30s, cleanshaven, with a precise military bearing and eyes that quietly surveil the room.For years, Edgar was the rarest of breeds in the drug trade: an effective and incorruptible investigator. Rewarded for his honesty, he was promoted to a top job in recent months. On his first day in the position, one of the officers under his command brought him an offer from the Beltrán Leyva cartel. Edgar would work for the cartel, he was told. In return, he would be provided money and protection. Edgar said no, as diplomatically as possible, telling his officer he wanted to stay neutral in the war.The next day, a leading defense attorney came to see Edgar. He had a message from Chapo. If Edgar agreed to be "with" Chapo, he would be paid handsomely. Chapo would also provide Edgar with a steady stream of criminals to "capture," so he could appear to be doing his job. The perversity of the situation — the narco offering protection to the law — wasn't lost on Edgar. Nor was the implicit threat. Edgar told the lawyer he didn't want to take sides, but the lawyer said that wasn't good enough. If "something happened" — if Chapo were attacked or captured, or a large shipment of drugs was seized — the drug lord would have to assume that Edgar had sided with his enemies.After reporting what happened to senior politicians, Edgar was offered an even higher position in the government. He talks in a quiet voice, stopping occasionally to look around the restaurant. He is convinced he could be killed at any moment, like the three police commanders who have been forced to seek asylum in America this year. The narcos have sources inside every aspect of government, he says: Chapo controls the local police, while the Gulf cartels and the Zetas have allies in the army.Given such widespread corruption, the commandante does not believe the legend that Chapo miraculously "escaped" from federal prison. Only a few basic facts are known about Chapo's incarceration. Arrested in 1993 on drug trafficking and homicide charges, the drug lord was held in Grande Puente, a maximum-security prison in Guadalajara, for eight years. He was under 23-hour-a-day lockdown, in a facility with 157 electronic gates and constant video surveillance, trapped in a cell behind concrete walls surrounded by a maze of wires and fences patrolled by armed guards and attack dogs.But Chapo had a plush suite in the prison, complete with a personal chef, plenty of Buchanan's whiskey and an endless supply of Viagra. He also had a girlfriend, an attractive ex-cop coke addict named Zulema. By 2001, faced with the prospect of extradition to the United States, Chapo was growing despondent. After he slept with Zulema, he would fall into long brooding silences. "I knew that if he escaped, they might kill him," she later told a reporter. "He knew what he was going to face. It's all your life running. It's all your life hiding. It's all your life desperate. I knew that there were many voices in his silence."At the time, President Vicente Fox had just been elected, ending decades of rule by the PRI. The Gulf cartels and the Zetas were inflicting unprecedented violence along the border to seize control of supply routes from Chapo and the Sinaloan-run cartels. The government was unable to contain the crisis. The new groups acquired enough weapons and intelligence to rival the Mexican armed forces; the Sinaloan cartels were cowed by the megaviolent Zetas.Then came the miracle. With Chapo's extradition to America only days away, suddenly, magically, deus ex machina, the bars and doors and gates of Grande Puente swung open, and the kingpin was spirited out — in a laundry van, say some, brazenly walking out the front door, say others. The feat became the latest and most audacious act in Chapo's long history of eluding the authorities. But what if his magic trick was arranged by the government? What if Chapo was set free to fight the Zetas and the other violent cartels — in the streets, to the death? What if Chapo is an unofficial instrument of government policy? This view is commonly held by political and law-enforcement elites in Mexico. The academic Luis Astorga is careful to refer to Chapo's "escape," using his hands to indicate quotation marks."Chapo is protected by the narcos and the people in the mountains," Edgar says. "But he's also protected at the federal level. The prison doors didn't just open by magic. Chapo was released by the government. They let him go so he could fight the other narcos and the Zetas. There are severe limits on how the government can fight. It is difficult for the police to raid a house, because of human and legal rights. But not for Chapo. He is very powerful. Very brave. He's not afraid of the Zetas or anyone."The notion of using one narco to counter other, more dangerous narcos makes perfect sense to Edgar. The strategy was born of necessity, he says. Chapo comes from a long line of Sinaloan cartels. He doesn't reject the state entirely or want to rule the country himself. He was in prison so prosecutors could make a deal with him, in the way informants are flipped during investigations of organized crime."Today Chapo moves from state to state, from country to country, without a problem," Edgar says. "Many people know where he is. You can't do this without federal protection. Chapo can deal his drugs and do his business, but he must respect certain limits. No women or children should be killed. Don't kidnap. Don't steal. Chapo respects the government."As we talk, the ex-commandante grows increasingly uneasy. His back is to the window; he can't see the Hummers and Escalades with tinted windows passing by outside. He asks to switch tables. Since his promotion, the only way it is possible for him to move around Culiacán is with an armed escort. But his security detail has been taken away, and he fears for his life. We shift to a table in the middle of the restaurant."Most people in Culiacán are only one or two steps away from the cartels, through a brother or a cousin," Edgar continues. "It is very common for police and prosecutors to eat with narcos, to go to their weddings. Chapo could be arrested if they want to. We in law enforcement don't have good coordination. It's all fucked up. The disorganization is huge. People don't follow orders. They don't speak to each other. Intelligence isn't working. But the priority right now is the Beltrán Leyva cartel. The police would rather get Mochomo than Chapo. Mochomo is crazy. He kills a lot of people. The same is true for his brother, Barbas.""Where do you think Chapo is?" I ask."In the mountains," says Edgar. "He's very protected there." He pauses. "Unless he's in Costa Rica.""Do you think I could get an interview with Chapo?" I ask."There is a $5 million reward out for Chapo," Edgar says. "They will think you are DEA."Searching for more leads to Chapo's whereabouts, I stop by Las Palmas, a steakhouse in Culiacán. Last November, according to Valdez, the restaurant was taken over by dozens of Chapo's armed guards, the doors barred and all cellphones confiscated. "We're going to have my boss here," a guard announced. "Don't worry — nothing is going to happen to you. And don't worry about the bill. He is going to pay for everything." Chapo entered with a group of 20 men, said good evening to the crowd, then retired to a private room.When I visit Las Palmas, I find a brightly lit place with a vaguely gangster air. An ancient waiter in a white shirt and a black vest says the story about Chapo is bullshit. He had told the police the same thing: Chapo didn't have dinner here. But then the waiter can't help himself — he needs me to know the truth. "If Chapo was going to eat a steak — if he was looking for the best steak in town — he would certainly come here," he says with a conspiratorial smile.The next morning, Julio calls. He has been trying to convince a friend to take me to another area in the Sierra Madres where Chapo is said to be hiding, but the man refused. "Not for a million pesos," he told Julio. "For no amount of money." Julio has another contact who is already up in the mountains. This man is "with" Chapo, not as a narco but as a gaucho, tending to Chapo's horses. It is agreed that Julio's friend will meet me at the edge of a town in the foothills, at a gas station. I rent a Jeep and head out with Sara. But when we reach the gas station, Julio's friend doesn't turn up. We call his cellphone. The cowboy is furious. Rumors have been traveling around Chapo's circles about me. He wants to know whose "people" I am "with."Sara explains that I am a reporter, but he doesn't believe her. He says I have to be "with" someone — an assassin sent by Barbas, a gringo hired by the Zetas, an undercover DEA agent. "This happened before," the man says. "A man who said he was a journalist went into the Sierras. He never came back. You can come. But no one will speak to you. Not about Chapo. And you might not get out."At the gas station, a local man agrees to guide me to the village of Santiago de los Caballeros, which translates as Saint of the Knights. The village is the heart of narco territory, the equivalent of Corleone for the Sicilian Mafia. A few miles along the road, we turn onto a ragged side track. The route cuts through deep jungle, across riverbeds and up mud-sloped rises. The man asks why I want to go into the mountains. As I reply, his face goes pale. Four people were massacred recently, he says. Soldiers get drunk and high and paranoid and start firing at the slightest provocation — or for no reason at all.We drive through some of the most rugged and isolated terrain in the world, high atop jagged outcrops where the clouds literally meet the earth. Below the path is a plunge of thousands of feet. The road is muddy and slippery, and there is no guardrail. After two hours of white-knuckled driving — during which we cover perhaps 10 miles — we reach the village. Three dozen houses are scattered in the valley, modest homes with gardens and clothes drying on laundry strings. A tiny airstrip for narco planes is tucked into the brush, visible only by the small red markers strung across the treetops to guide pilots. On a hilltop, in a graveyard, stands a cluster of huge, ornate mausoleums the drug traffickers have built for themselves while they're still alive. It was in these mountains that the United States introduced narcotics to Mexico, setting off the chain of events that would result in the creation of the cartels and culture in Sinaloa. During the Second World War, the American government encouraged farmers in Sinaloa to plant fields of poppy to provide morphine for wounded soldiers. As so often happens, one war has led to another.At the lone restaurant, a small gathering of men eyes us suspiciously. The driver refuses to let me get out of the vehicle. "The law doesn't work out here," he says. "It's dangerous to ask questions of these people. We don't know who they are. We must go now." This is as close as I will manage to get to Chapo and his base of operations — an airstrip in the mountains used for smuggling drugs, a graveyard filled with self-erected monuments to the narcos and their reign.Back in Culiacán, the front page of the newspaper features a street-by-street diagram of the recent beheadings and assassinations: EL MAPA DE LA MUERTE. The killings also continue apace across the nation, in border cities and resort towns and industrial centers. In the first week of October alone, at least 49 people are murdered in Tijuana. Every sign in Mexico points to a war that is only just beginning. "The confrontation is escalating," says Astorga, the sociologist. "The narcos are threatening governors, the military, mayors. Eventually the state will find a way to prevail. In the end, war is not good for business."But here in Culiacán, the defeat of the narcos doesn't appear likely anytime soon. The local leaders I meet talk about long-term solutions. Twenty-five-year plans are standard — the political euphemism for "never." "The federal government is overwhelmed, and so is the state government," a leading politician says. "If here the police feel unsafe, how are the citizens going to feel?"Of all the perversities of American drug policy, none is greater than the fact that the metaphorical War on Drugs has inflicted an actual war on some of the hemisphere's poorest people. The Bush administration's answer to the chaos in Mexico is something called the Mérida Initiative, which was signed into law this summer. The plan will provide $1.6 billion to the Mexican government, much of it for high-caliber weapons, night-vision goggles and air support — the kind of resources that the super-rich drug cartels already have in abundance. "We've had the same policy on drugs since the Nixon administration," says David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. "We ask other countries to fight the war for us. The same thing happened in Colombia. We try to export the problem by asking other countries to not sell us the goods we want to buy. Thousands are dying every year in Mexico for our war."In the end, the chaos in Mexico is the direct result of America's misguided War on Drugs — the Latin American version of blowback. Every effort to counter the cartels only serves to empower them. Cracking down on cocaine use in the United States has encouraged the Mexicans to produce more heroin and crystal meth, at the same time as they fight over the shrinking coke market. Killing the heads of the Mexican cartels has sparked a civil war, as lower-level rivals fight to replace the fallen leaders. Yet some DEA officers I speak to, who refuse to be named, ache for an even more aggressive war on drugs, the kind of force used in Iraq, with a full-frontal assault in the Sierra Madres by the United States military. Others favor supplying more aid to Mexico, as the Bush administration is doing with the Mérida Initiative. "The initiative is a step in the right direction," says Pamela Starr, the author of a recent report on Mexico for the Council on Foreign Relations. "It is designed to build Mexican law enforcement, and it is focused on the police and the judiciary."But if the past is any guide, the Mérida Initiative will prove to be yet another strategic miscalculation, increasing the very violence it seeks to curb. The result could be a failed state in Mexico on the scale of Afghanistan — a lawless society ruled by drug lords. "The violence threatens the government's ability to govern effectively," says Starr. "It threatens the oil supply. It makes Mexico a potential transit point for terrorists. The worst thing in the world that could happen to the United States is to have an unstable country on its southern border."In fact, there are already signs that the violence in Mexico is moving into the United States. In major cities like Los Angeles and Dallas, Mexican street gangs are turning up in growing numbers, as the cartels increase their reach across the border. In June, two vehicles filled with Mexican narcos disguised as U.S. policemen staged an attack in Phoenix, unloading 100 rounds of high-caliber ammunition into a dope dealer who had angered their boss. Three of the hit men were apprehended after fleeing into an alley, but the rest of the assailants escaped.The surest way to curb the violence is the one the U.S. government refuses to consider. "There is no national conversation about legalization, and we need to start doing that," says David Shirk of the Trans-Border Institute. "From the Mexican point of view, decriminalization would rob organized crime of the monopoly it now has in the black market. The monopoly is what gives the drug traffickers enormous resources. They can challenge and compromise the state in extremely dangerous ways. They use profits we're creating to undermine our efforts to fight them."In Culiacán, no one wants to discuss the decriminalization of drugs. They know that any move to legalize narcotics would devastate the local economy, even as it freed the city from the death grip of narco culture. The "war" on drugs being waged by the United States keeps the town prosperous, and residents at all levels of society have a stake in protecting Chapo and the cartels from foreign interference. When I get back to New York, my translator calls to say that my reporting has continued to cause a stir in Chapo's world. Julio and his friends are now certain that I was a DEA agent gathering intelligence on Chapo and the Sinaloan cartels. The accusation isn't nonsensical: The same month I was there, U.S. forces helped free hostages held by the rebel group FARC in the jungles of Colombia by having soldiers pose as journalists.Sara says that Julio has been threatening her, insisting that they talk face to face. Terrified that he might kill her, she agrees to meet — but only in a public place. At a restaurant, she shows him links to articles I've written. Julio angrily tells her that he is being threatened for talking to me. He is worried that he could be shot by Chapo's men."If someone has to go 'into the floor,' it will be you, not me," Julio tells her — narco shorthand for getting killed."It's so stupid," Sara says to me. "But in this war, people die for stupid reasons."Written by: Guy Lawson[From Issue 1065 — November 13, 2008]Click here for video commentary by Guy Lawson

I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am

Posted by Marine on January 12, 2009 at 1:13pm

uncomfortable with all I am reading. The worst is I have no idea whether it is true or untrue. Pick up your favourite language :)Français English EspañolI won't say anything about what's happening. My view is way too violent and would hurt many people here. 2009 will be my year of tongue-biting, tongue-chewing or tongue-chopping. However I am uncomfortable with all I am reading.

Should anyone care...

Posted by Marine on September 4, 2008 at 12:58pm

We French people don't necessarily have the same opinion than our MPs... Hopefully...So... Social crisis shows up its nose, and instead of speaking of the subjects that matter, we get a bunch of useless people crap, and....a MP upset about this :

The Dutch text says Even from Afghanistan, the French bring medals.For those outside France, there's been a huge media coverage of the killing of ten French soldiers in Afghanistan, see this is the biggest loss we've had since the 1980's, it has to be overfed on tv, bla bla bla. I mean, right, OK. Ten elite army people were killed. They knew why they were there. The people killed in Haumont after the storm didn't get as much covergae... What am I asking here, press cover over deaths ? Oooh, I must be tired. I just feel bad for the instrumentalisation of people's death to justify the presence of French soldiers (under the NATO name of course, we said NO to that war, remember ????) and that's sick.btw, this is made by a guy called Zak.I find this caricature hilarious and very clever. Why sue the paper that published it ? Because, for once, the joke's on us ? We're the best when it comes to criticize other countries' reactions towards freedom of speech and suchlike (remember the Muhammad cartoons ?) but we are so easily offended...Stupid politicians.

war (6)

Unreality Television

"We Bring Fear" -- A Reporter Flees The Biggest Cartel Of All--The Mexican Army.

Harry Patch Song- apersonal appreciation

Mexico's War On Drugs

I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am uncomfortable I am

Should anyone care...

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