Mexican Drug Cartels Allegedly Plot to Shoot ICE Agents and Texas Rangers

Cartels Apparently Plan to Use AK-47s to Murder US Border Agents



By Jason Ryan
ABC News

U.S. counternarcotics officials recently discovered that Mexican drug cartels discussed plots to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Texas Rangers who patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management disclosed the information during a hearing this morning on how DHS is battling Mexican drug cartels.

A March 2011 law enforcement bulletin "warned that cartels were overheard plotting to kill ICE agents and Texas Rangers guarding the border using AK-47s by shooting at them from across the border," McCaul said.

U.S. officials could not ascertain how credible the threats were but were concerned enough that they alerted agents operating on the border.

The information is believed to have been derived from intercepted communications.

Asked about the bulletin, a DHS official said, "Out of an abundance of caution, we routinely share information that could impact our frontline personnel in order to ensure that they are aware of any and all threats."

Calls to the Texas Rangers were not returned on Thursday.

Last month two U.S. ICE agents were targeted by cartel members in shooting that killed ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata and wounded his partner, Special Agent Victor Avila.

McCaul, who has spoken with Agent Avila about the incident, said today, "Both agents pleaded for their lives in Spanish, identifying themselves as United States federal agents. Members of the Los Zetas cartel responded by firing more than 80 rounds from automatic weapons.

"The shooting of Special Agents Zapata and Avila is a game-changer which alters the landscape of the United States' involvement in Mexico's war against the drug cartels," McCaul added at the hearing. President Obama and other top U.S. law enforcement officials have vowed the full force of the federal government to support local Mexican authorities hunting down Zapata's killers and attempting to bring them to justice.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department and DHS offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the individuals responsible for the shooting.

Today, McCaul introduced legislation to designate the six major Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Such designations are overseen by the State Department under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

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They Want to Kill me Because I Don't Pretend to be Stupid

The Mayor of García, Nuevo León, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, known as El Bronco for his bravery shown against organized crime who have attempted to kill him twice in a month.

"Another person in my case would be at home. Locked in. Scared. I don't have fear, what I have is sadness for everything that is happening to Mexico. We have lost the ability to provide tranquility to the people. I rather be dead that lived than living as dead."

He is sitting in his Jeep. He is a dressed in a yellow guayabera shirt, has graying hair and syrup colored brown eyes. With a frank laugh he jokes that there is no life insurance company that will accept his application for insurance.

On March 29 he survived the second attack. About 20 vehicles with over 40 heavily armed men ambushed his armored Cheyenne classified level seven.

A bodyguard was killed and five wounded, "My bodyguards are the heroes. Besides that truck has saved my life twice, I love her more than my old lady," he says without losing his smile and good humor in an interview with La Jornada.

So far a total of 23 mayors have been assassinated and 126 that are living under threats during the term of this federal government. Security experts have advised him not to leave his home, not to attend official events and keep a low profile:

"Bull shit!" He says as he gets out of the vehicle to attend an public event. "We must work. They think that people will not go to the same places I go because they are afraid that something is going to happen to them. I am a man that is threatened. But look, the people are here. That is what puts tears on my eyes. The affection of the people is what drives me."

After the event five bodyguards, former military officers with long rifles watch him closely. The people piled up around him. A woman kisses him, another one hugs him, and another gives him an image of Christ and says: "You will be under the protective mantle of God. We are many who are praying. May God bless you."

The mayor cannot hold back the tears. He breaks down. Silently trying to wipe the tears running down his cheeks. The women try to comfort him, and gasp as he articulates the first sentence: "I have cried all day." A few minutes go by and he recomposes himself, "God has been very generous to me. He has allowed me to continue here. "

On the sights
They have wanted the PRI politician, Rodríguez Calderón dead since the first day he started his political campaign. The Zetas promised and have not wavered. Four days after taking office, November 4, 2009, they executed his secretary of public security, Brigadier General Juan Arturo Garcia Esparza and his four bodyguards.

García, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Monterrey with 150 thousand residents is infested with Zetas who control the drug business, the collection of quota from businesses and the flow of drugs from Coahuila to Nuevo Leon and eventually to the United States.

When he arrived at city hall as mayor, Rodríguez Calderón closed more than 250 drug shops, dismissed much of the municipal police that had been infiltrated by criminal organizations and started to investigate drug dealers and others involved: "They want to kill me because I don't pretend to be stupid," he says bluntly without beating around the bush as he climbs back to his vehicle that will take him back to the office. He notes: "The previous administration made a serious mistake, they pretended to play stupid. They turned over the city to the criminals."

On the way back there are military vehicles full of soldiers along the road. The Department of Defense sent more than 200 troops after the attack. They are at traffic lights, at gas stations and in the streets setting up checkpoints: "They ask me if we have militarized the city. Well, I am going to fix it and the military is going to help us. That's it. The people want us to make decisions."

After arriving at his office he recounts the hours after the attack: "I am very sensitive about it. I cried like a crocodile. Oh well. In my whole life I have only cried about five times. Now, in two days I have cried like 150 or 200 times. But one thing is for sure, being sensitive is what makes men and women more efficient."

After the attack, he says, he came home at midnight. The first thing he did was to go see Valentina, his fourth child, a newborn: "I saw her and thought, 'Hijuesumadre!' And if something didn't happened? At that same moment she smiled and opened her eyes. I said to myself, 'I am fucking lucky, that is all I need.' When one crosses the line of death and I have crossed it twice this month, you think, 'Dear God you, are indeed great!' Although they want to kill me, my family will be with me forever. Where do I send her and for what? If they kill me, I will leave you enough so they can sell the property."

- And your wife, what does she say?

"In my house I have a bar where I drink my tequilas. And I found her crying. I held her face and said, "Do not cry, I have not died yet. I'm still alive." She replied, "What will I do if something happens to you?" You're going to be a fucking great woman (chingona) and your going to take care of my daughters and you are going to make them good women someday. I am going to die, someday it's going to happen, sometimes you die when you are little, or big, or old, or stupid."

- What do you want to die of?

"I want to die standing, from the front, with an eye on the future, proud of having done the right things in life."

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Nightclubs Suffer Harassment on Two Sides by Extortionists and then by Police

In less than 24 hours sicarios again did whatever they wanted, spraying clients with gunfire and burning the club Barritas with Molotov cocktails, they have registered five dead and six injured.

"We are born again and God has something prepared for us that managed to survive, because it must have been a hell of a nightmare," recounted one of the employees of the bar "Las Barritas."
Ciudad Juarez.

Editor:

Recently Borderland Beat has been reporting on the massacres in clubs happening in Ciudad Juarez and the potential complicity of the federal police as reported by several witnesses. One of the media news outlets that has been reporting on these "irregularities" has been El Diario. There is obviously something developing with these serious accusations and if true, this would be a huge breach of trust and abuse of power, not to mention the cost of life already suffered and could potentially result.

Ovemex first reported on it and Gerardo did a follow up. We will try to stay on it.

Source: El Diario

After attacks on two nightclubs in which a total of 15 people were killed this last week, owners of these establishments in Ciudad Juarez say they are facing the worst crisis attempting to earn a living caught up between criminals and police.

They explained it has been like this for at least the last two years because they not only have to deal with organized crime that force them to pay them a "quota" for the right to conduct business (derecho de piso) and for supposed protection, but they also have to deal with the systematic harassment from the police, mainly from the federal police, who constantly break in to the clubs during regular business for irregular inspections of staff and clients, who they threaten and at times have committed several abductions "levantones."

"We do not know what to do, or who we should watch for or where to go for safety, because on one hand the sicarios who charge us fees come with their faces open, but the federal police come with their faces covered to make a mess of things" says an owner but only under the condition of anonymity.

The businessman, with more than two decades in the industry, says the situation is even worse when violent crimes occur inside or outside the establishments, because police arrive after the fact, loot the establishments and steal the property from the victims.

While in regards to the police operations he says that police officers burst into the premises accusing them of having links to the criminal group "La Línea", and they use their high-powered rifles to repress the people in the club, who they threaten and beat up, making them lay on the floor who they sometimes undress almost to the point they are nude and at times are touching the women.

"They cause tremendous humiliation to us, our employees and our customers. They are a scourge of society, they steal everything they can, bottles of alcohol, the money, whatever they can find, let alone when there are dead victims who they pick their pockets to steal everything they have, they act with a tremendous greed." he adds.

He says that although some of these activities have been recorded on video security systems installed in the clubs, they prefer not to do or say anything for fear of retaliation and the distrust of all authorities.

"The best we can do for the sake of our businesses and our people, is only to be a witness, shut up and try to ask politely that the police not be so abusive, because I do not trust any authority, or any police force and not even the military, because no one follows up with these irregularities, no one resolves anything, some pull, yell and they watch one group, while others watch the other," he says.

This issue was also confirmed by other retailers in the same business, who said that after dealing with organized crime and police authorities, that they don't trust anyone.

"Right now the sad thing is that there is no single authority we trust, either as businessmen or as citizens, we cannot trust in any police department at any level of government, not even on the government administrators, or the politicians, no one will solve these problems because all of them work for their own purposes," he says.

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Federal Police accused of complicity in Juarez bar murders

Ten minutes before gunmen attacked the "El Castillo" sports bar in Ciudad Juarez this past Thursday night, Federal Police (PF) officers warned the owner to close his business or suffer extreme consequences. “Les iban hacer un desmadre” is what the witnesses heard who gave statements to the Mexican media on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

After the time elapsed, a group of armed men entered the establishment firing indiscriminately and murdering 10 of the remaining clientele and employees.

At least one witness stated that the time between the exit of the Federal Police and the attack was as little as three minutes.

Witnesses also stated that Federal Police agents also set up a perimeter around the crime scene while the attack was still in progress.

Several online forum comments published on news sites and citizen’s forums stated that the murders at the “El Castillo” and the Molotov cocktail attack that resulted in 5 deaths at the “Las Barritas” bar and grill Friday evening were perpetrated by Artistas Asesinos gangsters, who are affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel, in an operation to close “narcotiendas” where La Linea drug dealers sold drugs to locals.

The Federal Police, who nevertheless were the first authorities to arrive at the crime scene after the attack, are also accused of looting the belongings of the dead victims and bar items such as flat screen televisions. “They took the phones and money from the dead, they took the cars that were parked outside, they stole the televisions that belonged to the bar,” said one of the witnesses who requested anonymity.

Interviews with witnesses who were at the scene established that a Federal Police unit arrived at the bar at 9:00pm to conduct a weapons and controlled substance check but found nothing irregular and minutes later left the scene, located at the intersection of Ramon Rayon and Benito Juárez in the Zaragoza neighborhood.

Before leaving, said the witnesses, the officer who apparently was leading the unit issued the threat, telling the manager to close the bar or “les iban a hacer un desmadre”.

After the attackers arrived and began firing, several witnesses who escaped the bar ran from the scene and said they encountered several units of the Federal Police in the immediate area allegedly manning vehicle checkpoints.

"If local police heard the shooting and rushed to the scene, how is it that the federales who were there didn’t hear anything. They acted dumb and only reacted after the thugs finished and left,” said a resident of the area who said he was extremely frightened by what happened.

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Narco Corrido singer Gerardo Ortiz sets the record straight, new interview

 In his first interview after surviving an attack in Colima which resulted in the death of his cousin and driver and led to rumors of his kidnapping, Gerardo Ortiz states that, despite the tragic outcome, he does not believe this attack or the prior attack on concertgoers after a show in Mazatlan on March 9, which left 6 dead and more than 20 wounded, had anything to do with him.

"I don't think the attack in Mazatlan was against me, and I don't think the second attack was against me either, I feel like I was just in a place where I shouldn't of been", said the 22 year old singer, a native of Pasadena, California who now is said to reside in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

Visibly nervous, the singer of "Ni hoy ni mañana" narrated the moments of horror he experienced moments during the attack in Colima, which still remain fresh in his mind.

"There was gunfire, because they were killed by gunshots, so there was gunfire, but in that moment there was chaos, confusion. At the first shot I hit the floor, that was my first reaction, drop to the floor. What happened? Bang, bang, bang. We wrecked, flew around and fell. The first thing I heard was my team shouting Gerardo! Gerardo! I got out of the truck, splattered with blood"

Rumors emerged after the attack that drug lords, who have unleashed a wave of assassinations against narcocorrido singers in Mexico, were behind one, if not both attacks on Ortiz. De Andrades, the interviewer, asked the singer if he had ever worked for a drug trafficker.

"I haven't come across any. Look, I ....Nobody pays me to do my music, I think it was something I was born with. I sing to those who want to hear my music, that's all", responded Ortiz. "I haven't had any parties or sang for any private audiences in quite some time."

Ortiz, who just launched his new CD titled "Morir y Existir"(Die and Exist), said his recent violent experiences influenced his decision in choosing the title. He also stated that, more than fear, he feels the pain of having lost both his cousin and chauffeur.

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Poet whose son was slain decries Mexico's "rotten" heart

EFE

The heart of violence-wracked Mexico "is rotten," poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was found murdered earlier this week in the central state of Morelos, said Friday.

Mexico's "political parties are not contributing at all," he told MVS radio. "We are living through a national emergency and no one is really working in earnest."
Juan Francisco Sicilia was among seven people whose bodies were discovered Monday found inside an automobile parked near a hotel in Temixco, Morelos.

The victims, who bore signs of torture, died from strangulation, the state Attorney General's Office said.

Javier Sicilia said Friday that he was abroad when he learned of his son's murder and received a telephone condolence call from Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
"He spoke to me, he was very upset and he told me that he personally was going to press for the (investigation) to be taken all the way," the poet said of his conversation with Calderon.

The elder Sicilia, who writes articles and commentary for the respected newsweekly Proceso, told MVS that Mexicans are fed up with the rampant violence.
"We are tired, very hurt. Every boy who is dying is becoming the son of each human being in this nation," he said.

Mayhem blamed on conflict among rival drug cartels and between gangsters and the security forces has claimed some 35,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006, when the newly inaugurated Calderon put the armed forces in the vanguard of battling the drug trade.

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How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored.

A soldier guards marijuana that is being incinerated in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AP

BY:ED VULLIAMY
The Observer

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade," he said. "There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, just as Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25bn in taxpayers' money. Wachovia's prosecutors were clear, however, that there was no suggestion Wells Fargo had behaved improperly; it had co-operated fully with the investigation. Mexico is the US's third largest international trading partner and Wachovia was understandably interested in this volume of legitimate trade.

José Luis Marmolejo, who prosecuted those running one of the casas de cambio at the Mexican end, said: "Wachovia handled all the transfers. They never reported any as suspicious."

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Mexican military arrests leader of Sinaloa cartel in Mexicali

BY SANDRA DIBBLE
Sign on San Diego

A former Baja California state agent accused of heading the Sinaloa cartel’s operations in Mexicali has been detained along with nine other suspected cartel members, the Mexican military announced Friday in the state capital.

Gen. Alfonso Duarte Múgica, commander of Mexico’s Second Military Region, said that Jesús Raúl Ochóa Zazueta had been detained during an operation led by members of the 23rd Motorized Calvary Regiment.

Ochóa was a former member of the Baja California ministerial police who was dropped from the force in 2009. He and three other agents were accused of extorting neighborhood drug dealers in Mexicali.

Besides Ochoa, the detainees included six other men and three females, including one minor, Duarte said.

The operation, which took place in five separate locations, also led to the seizure of more than 223 kilos of cocaine and 116 kilos of marijuana, along with $13,100 in U.S. currency and 10,000 Mexican pesos, the military reported.

Also seized were nine vehicles, along with ammunition and numerous weapons, including 29 rifles, five grenade launchers, 34 40-mm grenades, seven defensive grenades, and 21,404 rounds of ammunition, according to the military.







Photos: AFN Tijuana

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A Juarez Man is Caught Trying to Smuggle Ammunition and AK-47 Magazines

Source: El Diario

A Juárez man that was attempting to smuggle a large shipment of magazines and ammunition for assault rifles was arrested by agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the international Mexican/US bridge known as the Lerdo Bridge last Tuesday March 29.

The seizure was made at around 1655 hours while CBP officers and U.S. Border Patrol conducted searches from north to south in the international crossing.

Agents alerted on a 1999 Chevrolet Express conversion van and the vehicle was flagged down for a more thorough inspection. The driver indicated that he had nothing to say when questioned by an officer.

The vehicle was taken to a screening area in which they conducted a full search. CBP officers found 148 magazines for AK-47, an M4 magazine and 6,000 rounds of ammunition hidden in the upper front compartment of the vehicle.

The driver, Jose Guadalupe Hernandez Loya, 38, was turned over to special agents of Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) who will process the driver and contraband.

Hernandez Loya is a Mexican citizen residing in Juarez. He is currently been detained in the jail of El Paso County without bail.

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"A rampant war just south of our border"

Gary Martin
San Antonio Express-News

WASHINGTON — Graphic surveillance videos of Mexican drug cartels were shown to House lawmakers Thursday, while their counterparts in the Senate were given an account of an all-out assault on the Southwest border — attacks that range from gangs using boats and tunnels to a catapult used to hurl duffel bags of marijuana into the U.S.

The vivid testimony and images were presented at separate congressional hearings convened to review border security and aid to Mexico that would help combat cartels striking out against the military and law enforcement.

“There are few threats as deadly and menacing than that posed by drug gangs, particularly Mexican drug gangs, operating near our border,” said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on intergovernmental affairs.

Lawmakers on the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations were privately shown videotapes of Los Zetas and Gulf cartel members carrying out attacks in Camargo, Tamaulipas and Juárez.

In one tape, cartel members use grenade launchers and assault rifles with military precision to take over a roadside checkpoint in Camargo, across the border from Rio Grande City. The heavily armed men take prisoner three people who were later killed and beheaded, a congressional source said, to send a message the cartel wanted a cut of the fees collected at the checkpoint.

The San Antonio Express-News was given access to some of the tapes by congressional sources who sought anonymity.

In another tape, Los Zetas members in marked cars travel through security checkpoints without stopping as local officials look away to avoid a confrontation.

A deadly car bombing in Juárez, across from El Paso, also was caught on tape — a scene eerily reminiscent of cities currently under siege in the Middle East.

All of the attacks occurred last year.

Meanwhile in the Senate, lawmakers were shown pictures of an elaborate catapult used to hurl bags of marijuana over the border fence into Arizona. Cartels also use speed boats on Rio Grande reservoirs to ferry loads and outrun U.S. law enforcement, said Donna Bucella, U.S. Customs and Border Protection assistant commissioner.

“The limited crossing distance in many areas means that these high-speed vessels can cross in a matter of seconds,” Bucella said.

Both chambers are crafting spending bills for border security next year. They also are considering expanding the three-year, $1.4 billion Merída Initiative designed to help the Mexican military battle the cartels. It's due to expire this year.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat whose district lies across the Rio Grande from Mexican cities that have become battlegrounds, said increased activity has underscored the need for more aid. The cartels, he said, are “well-trained, well-armed.”

“They are pretty violent,” Cuellar said.

Drug-related violence in Mexico has risen significantly since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched his crackdown on the cartels.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, with 3,000 slain in Juárez last year alone, making it the most deadly Mexican city in the drug war, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The violence has prompted concern among U.S. policymakers that it may spill onto American soil.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin and chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations, filed a bill to designate cartels as terrorist organizations, subjecting them to stiffer criminal penalties. There is no companion legislation in the Senate, but McCaul, who agreed to let lawmakers view the surveillance footage, said the measure is more than symbolic.

“It is time for the United States to take decisive steps to end a rampant war that is just south of our border,” he said. “The solution goes well beyond securing our borders.”

David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, told the House panel the U.S. and Mexico must do a better job of cooperating.

“Mexico," he said, “is in the midst of a worsening security crisis.”





Sources:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/A-rampant-war-just-south-of-our-border-1317466.php#ixzz1IKJFWpyn

The House Committee on Homeland Security-text of witness testimony.
http://homeland.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-hearing-%E2%80%9C-us-homeland-security-role-mexican-war-against-drug-cartels%E2%80%9D

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Why It's Obvious We Are Losing The War On Drugs

By: Ed Dolan
Business Insider

Last week The New York Times reported that the drug cartels, after shaking the political and economic structures of Colombia and Mexico to their foundations, are moving into Central America. Just one more sign, as if we needed it, that the United States is losing its endless war on drugs.

No one who has ever taken Econ 101, or read the works of Friedrich Hayek, should be the least bit surprised. The drug cartels are strong because the US strategy in the drug wars makes them strong. Here's why.

First, what we learn from Econ 101. The key concept is price elasticity of demand—the percentage change in quantity demanded associated with a one percent increase in the price of a product. If a one percent price increase reduces the quantity people buy by more than one percent, demand is said to be elastic. If the quantity sold falls less than one percent, demand is said to be inelastic. Elasticity, in turn, determines what happens to the seller's total revenue when the price changes.

If the percentage change in quantity is greater than the percentage change in price, demand is elastic, and revenue goes up when the price falls. (For example, suppose you can sell 100 widgets at $1 apiece and 120 when you cut the price to $.90. Your revenue goes up from $100 to $108.) If the percentage change in quantity is less than the percentage change in price, demand is inelastic, and revenue goes up when the price rises. (Suppose you can sell 100 gadgets at $1 and that you still sell 90 if you raise the price to $1.20. This time it is a price increase, not a decrease, that will increase your revenue.)

What is the elasticity of demand for illegal drugs? Intuition suggests that demand should be inelastic. If cocaine, heroin, and the rest are addictive, people who use them will not find it easy to kick the habit just because the price goes up a bit.

Econometric studies of the question are hampered by the fact that drug lords don't post accurate price and revenue data on their web sites, but such research as has been done tends to confirm the hypothesis of inelastic demand. For example, one survey of the literature found that a 1% increase in the price of cocaine would tend to reduce consumption by only 0.51 to 0.73 percent, solidly in the inelastic range.

This gives us our first clue as to why the war on drugs isn't going so well. The main strategy is interdiction of supply. To the extent interdiction succeeds in reducing supply, it drives up the market price. With inelastic demand, a higher price means more revenue for the drug cartels.

Note that more revenue for the drug cartels does not necessarily mean more profit, because interdiction efforts also raise suppliers' expenses. However, from a public policy point of view, it is the expenses that do the damage, not the profits. If drug lords just earned profits, they would probably spend them harmlessly on fancy cars and villas. It is not so harmless to see their expenses rise.

Those consist largely of salaries paid to thugs who guard shipments and shoot anyone in the way, bribes to officials on both sides of the border, and pay and equipment for more thugs who are assigned to inter-gang warfare, with innocent victims caught in the crossfire. With inelastic demand, a higher price for drugs means more revenue available to finance all of those things. To the extent that is the case, the interdiction strategy on which the war against drugs is based is self-defeating.

The inelastic-demand model of the war on drugs cannot be the whole story, however. In its simple form, it cannot explain the paradox that while drug violence is on the rise, the prices of cocaine and heroin have been falling steadily for decades. How can that be?

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Mexico’s Drug Lords Fall, But War Goes On

By William Booth and Nick Miroff
The Washington Post

Aided by technology and intelligence from the United States, including overflights by drone aircraft and sophisticated software to eavesdrop on cellphone calls, Mexican forces have hit the La Familia drug cartel harder than any other criminal organization in Mexico.

Now, for the first time, Mexican officials are declaring that a major cartel is on the brink of collapse.

Yet, the reality in the hot farmlands and mountain hamlets in the western state of Michoacán feels very different.

Locals say little has changed. Their state still resembles an occupied zone. Three municipal police chiefs have been executed in Michoacán this year, the most recent three weeks ago. Military units and gunmen engaged in a firefight at an isolated village Tuesday night, leaving four dead. The naked, tortured bodies of four people were found on a roadside Wednesday.

With 18 months left in his six-year term, President Felipe Calderón is desperate to show his U.S.-backed strategy of sending thousands of soldiers and police against the traffickers is working and that his government can calm the storm of gruesome violence that has left more than 35,000 dead and threatens the nation's stability.

2-day battle
In December, when Mexican and U.S. agents heard on wiretaps that La Familia's bosses and hundreds of followers were gathering to party at a ranch south of this farm town, authorities gave the order: capture or kill.
What followed was the most aggressive assault seen in four years of Mexico's drug war. Over two full days, 800 federal agents in helicopters and armored vehicles battled cartel gunmen through citrus groves and along rural roads, as residents barricaded themselves indoors.

In the end, government forces said they had shot dead La Familia's founder, Nazario Moreno González, a messianic folk hero known as "El Mas Loco" (the Craziest One) who had become the largest supplier of methamphetamine to the United States.

A month after the December raids, banners hung from highway overpasses announcing the cartel was disbanding.
It was a lie. La Familia is still very much here.

At the fire station in Apatzingán, where La Familia was born, supervisor David Olivera described how he still must call ahead to ask cartel representatives for permission to send ambulances to gather the sick.

Olivera also is managing editor of a newspaper, La Voz de Michoacán, and said reporters cannot cross the river to cartel-controlled towns without a military escort.

According to Calderón's security officials, the death of the Craziest One and the killing or arrest of top crime bosses of other cartels in the past year is proof they are winning the drug war. Their evidence: 20 of the 37 most-wanted drug lords in Mexico are dead or behind bars.

But the list was assembled in April 2009, an eternity in the abbreviated lives of drug traffickers. New leaders move in quickly.

With few options and less time, Calderón's government has emphasized a strategy of killing or capturing cartel bosses. But it has been slow to fulfill earlier promises to reform the judicial system, clean up state and local police, pursue money launderers, build better prisons and find ways to redirect poor and poorly educated young people away from a life of crime.

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UN wants Mexico To Withdraw Army From War Against Drug Cartels

A United Nations report calls on the Mexican government to consider withdrawing the military from the streets amid a spike in human rights complaints.

By Nacha Cattan,

CSM Correspondent

Marking one of the strongest statements yet against Mexican President Felipe Calderón's heavy-handed tactics in fighting the drug war, a United Nations report has called on the government to consider withdrawing the military from the streets.

The recommendation follows a spike in abuse claims since the Army was first deployed four years ago to fight drug traffickers, said the preliminary report by a UN human rights office working group. The group said the military and other government forces have become involved in an increasing number of disappearance cases that can no longer only be attributed to organized crime.

“The military is not trained to do public security tasks but to confront armed forces,” which explains the growing number of violations, said Ariel Dulitzky, a member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

IN PICTURES: Mexico's drug war

Human rights groups have been raising alarms for years about the Army's role in the drug war, reporting a rising number of cases of rape, torture, disappearance, and arbitrary shooting. But the UN's call for Mexican troops to return to their barracks begs the question of whether police are prepared to take on the powerful cartels and whether Mexico is doing enough to equip them for that task.

“Withdrawing the Army at this point will not resolve all of the human rights problems,” says Jorge Chabat, a national security expert in Mexico City. “It may be a desirable solution, but it isn’t viable,” he says, recommending stronger oversight, prosecution of abuses, and use-of-force protocols for the Army.

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15 people, including 10 year old boy, killed in Ciudad Juarez

AFP
PHOTO:El Diario

Fifteen people, including a 10-year-old child, died in two separate armed attacks in Mexico's most violent city of Ciudad Juarez, local officials said Friday.

Nine men and one woman died in a shootout in a busy bar near a border post with the United States overnight Thursday, according to a spokesman for the attorney general's office of Chihuahua state, where Juarez lies.

Witnesses said 16 armed masked men entered "El Castillo" bar, near an international bridge which links the city to El Paso, Texas, and fired indiscriminately.

Early Friday, a group of men armed with assault weapons attacked a nearby food stall where four men and a 10-year-old child were eating, killing them all, said a local police office who requested anonymity.

Ciudad Juarez, with 1.2 million inhabitants, is Mexico's most violent city and registered more than 3,100 killings last year alone.

Drug gangs, particularly linked to the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, are blamed for much of the violence in battles for control of lucrative drug trafficking routes into the United States.

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Grenade hurled at office of Mexican newspaper

EFE
Photo: Grupo Reforma

No one was hurt when an assailant in a passing vehicle hurled a grenade at a bureau of El Norte newspaper in the northern Mexican metropolis of Monterrey.

"The grenade detonated in a window box located 3 meters (10 feet) from the main door of the installation, causing damage only to two windows," the daily said on its Web page.

Soldiers and police moved quickly to cordon off the area after the blast, El Norte said, noting that Thursday night's attack was the third on the same bureau since last September.

Neither of the two earlier assaults caused any casualties.

Conflict among rival cartels and between criminals and the security forces have claimed some 35,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006, when newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon militarized the struggle against the drug trade.

Until last year, however, drug-war mayhem was comparatively rare in Greater Monterrey, home to more than 4 million people and the headquarters of many of Mexico's leading corporations.

The city and the surrounding state of Nuevo Leon are now a main battleground in a vicious turf batter between the Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels.

The cartels often target media outlets and individual journalists, and routinely resort to threats and bribery to influence press coverage of their activities.
Nine reporters were killed last year in Mexico and four went missing, while 64 journalists filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission, Mexico's equivalent of an ombudsman's office, over attacks and aggressions.

The commission says 66 journalists have been slain in Mexico since 2000 and the vast majority of those murders remain unsolved.

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