Mexico's Gang Wars Spawn Vigilante Justice

2009 Houston Chronicle

The bodies of four alleged gangsters, stuffed into a parked car near President Felipe Calderon's compound in this capital city, carried a message of divine retribution:

“The wicked are denied their light, and the upraised arm is broken,” proclaimed the biblical passage, Job 38:15. Scrawled with a marker on the backs of three of the bodies, a single word — “Kidnapper.”

The discovery of the dead men two weeks ago suggests to many Mexicans that despairing private citizens or even local officials may be exacting their own raw justice amid the unbridled crime sweeping the country.

Lynching and extra-judicial killings are far from unknown in Mexico, whose justice system often has proved woefully insufficient. Rural and poor urban communities beat or execute accused rapists and thieves. Local power brokers, known as caciques, employ private gunmen to deal with nettlesome opponents or criminals.

But the escalating drug turf wars, which have claimed most of the 14,000 people killed by gangland violence since December 2006, have also wrought more kidnapping, extortion and theft. And some in Mexico are pushing back.

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Mexican Mayor Announces Rival's Death Hours Before Body is Found

Mauricio Fernandez couldn't have been happier.

Here he was, being sworn in again as mayor of one of northern Mexico's most exclusive communities, and he had wonderful news to share: "Black Saldana, who apparently is the one who was asking for my head, was found dead today in Mexico City," he told his cheering supporters Saturday in San Pedro Garza Garcia, near Monterrey.

The problem was that the barefoot, blindfolded corpse of "Black Saldana" — whose real first name is Hector — wasn't found for another 3 1/2 hours, according to Mexico City prosecutors. And he wouldn't be identified for two days.

Now this cartel-plagued nation, usually nonchalant about a spate of kidnappings, extortion and executions, is engrossed with this not-so-straighforward murder that links drug lords and politicians.

The mayor is facing tough questions about the killings: How did he know his nemesis was dead before the authorities apparently did? Does he have associations with the cartel that may have killed the men?

And what exactly did he mean when he said, during his acceptance speech, that he knew Saldana and his associates wanted to hurt him, and that "by fair means or foul, we are not going to accept any kind of kidnapping ... and if not, they will pay for it."

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