Posts Tagged violence
Mexico asks for ban of “Call of Juarez: The Cartel”
(for more information about “Call of Juarez: The Cartel” read our previous article Controversial video game exploits the violence in the border)
“Call of Juarez: The Cartel” has already angered officials in Mexico.
Chihuahua state legislators said Sunday they have asked federal authorities to ban the video game, “Call of Juarez: The Cartel,” which is based on drug cartel operations in Ciudad Juarez. Ricardo Boone Salmon, a congressman for Chihuahua state, where Juarez is located, said the state legislature unanimously approved a request this week asking the federal Interior Department to ban the game. ”It is true there is a serious crime situation, which we are not trying to hide,” Boone Salmon said. “But we also should not expose children to this kind of scenarios so that they are going to grow up with this kind of image and lack of values.”
State congress leader Enrique Serrano said the main concern was the potential effect on children in Ciudad Juarez, some of whom have already been taught to “duck and cover” if shots are heard outside their schools. ”Children wind up being easily involved in criminal acts over time, because among other things, during their childhood not enough care has been taken about what they see on television and playing video games,” Serrano said. “They believe so much blood and death is normal.”
It is not the first time city officials have been angered by references to Juarez’s problems. In 2010, the New York-based MAC cosmetics company abandoned Mexican sales of a makeup collection that raised hackles because it featured pallid, ghostly hues said to be inspired by deaths of women in the city. The collection of cosmetics used names like “Juarez,” “Bordertown,” “Ghost Town.” More than 100 women were abused and murdered before their bodies were dumped in Ciudad Juarez’s desert between 1993 and 2003.
Read more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/20/AR2011022002285.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/02/21/call.of.juarez/
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/22/mexico-moves-to-ban-call-of-juarez-the-cartel/
Turf War Waged Over Troops: Departments Square Off About Soldiers at Border
Posted by sandiegotbi in Infrastructure, Security on July 1, 2009
WASHINGTON – A proposal to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to counter drug trafficking has triggered a bureaucratic standoff between the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security over the military’s role in domestic affairs, officials in both departments said.
The debate has engaged a pair of powerful personalities – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Robert Gates – in what their subordinates describe as a turf fight over who should direct and pay for the use of troops to assist in the fight against Mexican cartels.
At issue is a proposal to send 1,500 additional troops to the border to analyze intelligence and provide air support and technical assistance to border agencies. The governors of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico made the request in January, drawing support from Napolitano but prompting objections from the Pentagon, where officials argue that it could lead to a permanent, expanded mission for the military.
President Barack Obama has signaled that he is open to the idea, asking Congress for $250 million to deploy the National Guard while also saying he was “not interested in militarizing the border.” The issue, which has been stalled before a National Security Council committee, will be decided by the president.
Neither Napolitano nor Gates has made the disagreement personal, although some of their aides have privately expressed exasperation at what one called an interagency “food fight.”
“It should not be that we always rely on the Department of Defense to fulfill some need,” said Gen. Victor Renuart Jr., head of the U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for defending the continental United States.
Border law enforcement agencies should have adequate funds to do their job, Renuart said. If the Guard is tapped, it should be for capabilities “that do not exist elsewhere in government,” he said. “When we send the National Guard, they go with specific missions, with specific purposes. And we put some duration on that so there is an end state.”
Homeland Security officials and governors counter that there is a legitimate need for troops to back up border agencies against the most serious threat to the Southwest and that a deployment would not represent a new military mission. Under a 1989 law, the National Guard already assigns 577 soldiers to help states with anti-drug programs that “can easily expand,” the four governors wrote Congress in April.
Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona prompted President George W. Bush to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border in 2006, has supported the governors.
The debate goes to the heart of the military’s role, which has expanded since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, with an increasing commitment of troops and resources to homeland defense, particularly to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe. The deployment of new troops to the border would represent a mission the military has not traditionally embraced.
“What we’re seeing here is a move toward reframing where defense begins and ends,” said Bert Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership.
The fight is largely over money. For the past two years, Pentagon budget officials have tried to slash funding for state drug-fighting operations, citing the financial strain of waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And military officials say governors could pay for their own Guard units. But governors contend that securing the border is a federal responsibility and that Washington should cover the cost.
Washington Post: “Mexico At War” Journey Across the Border w/ Fox & Booth
Posted by sandiegotbi in Economy, Health, Security on July 1, 2009
WASHIGNTON POST MEXICO BLOG: Features articles, photos and video content.
Economist: Taking on the Narcos, and their American Guns
Posted by sandiegotbi in Security on June 30, 2009
Apr 2nd 2009 | EL PASO AND MEXICO CITY
Senior American officials are trooping to Mexico with assurances of support in its drug war. Will warm words be backed up by action?
ARIZONA’S attorney-general, Terry Goddard, says he started to worry about American guns ending up in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers two years ago. That was after a meeting in Cuernavaca with Mexico’s attorney-general, Eduardo Medina Mora, who urged him and several of his counterparts from other American states to enforce the law banning the export of assault weapons that can be legally bought north of the border. Keen to help, Mr Goddard spent months building a case alleging that George Iknadosian, the owner of a Phoenix gun shop, had knowingly sold some 700 assault weapons to “straw men” working for the narcos. It could have been a landmark case. Mr Iknadosian pleaded not guilty, and last month a state judge threw out all the charges against him on a point of law. Prosecutors blamed a clash between federal and state law on arms smuggling.
This is just one example of how hard it will be for the United States to implement its promise to collaborate with Mexico in quelling drug-related violence. But Mexican officials are pleased that at least the promise has been made. During a two-day visit last month, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, admitted that America’s “insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade” and that “our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians” in Mexico.
Her visit was the clearest sign that the American administration has woken up to what is at stake in the battle unleashed by Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, against the drug “cartels”, in which 10,000 people have died since December 2006. She was to be followed on April 2nd by Janet Napolitano, the secretary for homeland security, and Eric Holder, the attorney-general. Barack Obama himself will drop in for talks with Mr Calderón before both attend the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad on April 17th.
“They finally started paying attention,” says Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador in Washington. That is partly because some Americans fear the violence is starting to spread northward, although such worries look exaggerated (see article). But it is also in part owing to a war of words that has raged across the border in recent weeks.
This began with a report in November from the United States Joint Forces Command bracketing Mexico and Pakistan as the two countries most at risk of becoming “failed states”. Dennis Blair, the new director of national intelligence, then told a Senate committee that the corruption and violence of the drug cartels was hindering the Mexican government from controlling part of its territory. Having largely ignored Mexico’s fight against the drug gangs for the past two years, American television has suddenly latched on to it, in sensationalist terms. Spurred on by his own media, Mr Calderón, by instinct an American ally, responded by accusing American officials of corrupt complicity in the drug trade.
So Mrs Clinton’s comments were welcomed in Mexico. As to whether the words will lead to practical co-operation, Mexican officials say they are getting more help with intelligence on the drug gangs from their American counterparts. But Mrs Clinton’s promise of Black Hawk helicopters for the Mexican police was undercut by Congress’s pruning of funding for the Mérida Initiative, a plan under which Mexico was to receive $1.4 billion in aid over three years. American officials now say they will seek to reverse the cut. But more than aid, Mexico wants the Americans to crack down on drug consumption, as well as the movement of guns and money southward. That is where the big difficulties lie.
The Obama administration promises to send several hundred more agents to the border, both from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The idea is that they will search southbound traffic and railcars. Mr Calderón wants the Americans to tip off their Mexican counterparts about gun trafficking, and to curb gun sales. Mrs Clinton said she favours the reinstatement of a federal ban on selling semi-automatic “assault weapons” such as AK-47s. Mexican police claim that since the ban lapsed in 2004, the cartels have become much more powerfully armed: of 30,000 guns they have seized since December 2006, 15,000 are assault weapons, nearly all bought at the 7,500 or so gun shops on the American side of the border.
But the gun lobby opposes the ban. John Barrasso, a Republican senator from Wyoming, said in El Paso this week that violence in Mexico is an argument for more assault weapons, not fewer: “Why would you disarm someone when they potentially could get caught in the crossfire?” He continued: “The United States will not surrender our second-amendment rights for Mexico’s border problem.”
Facing so many other battles, Mr Obama would surely prefer not to be drawn into this one. Mr Sarukhan says that merely enforcing existing gun laws would be a big help. For Mexico, too, there are dangers in framing its relations with the United States purely around security. Trade, economic integration and immigration are equally vital. For now, however, the drug war has captured the headlines in both countries, leaving the politicians with no choice but to respond.
Economist: Fear of Violence
Posted by sandiegotbi in Security, Sustainability on June 30, 2009
Apr 2nd 2009 | EL PASO
But still pretty safe—on the northern side
IS MEXICO’S drug war moving north? In Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix, officials are alarmed by a spike in kidnappings for ransom and “other Latin American-style violence”. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, wants the federal government to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops and six helicopters in his state. A spokeswoman for the governor said that the request, which the administration is considering, is to prevent the situation worsening.
But many mayors along the border say that troops are not needed, at least not yet. They dismiss such talk as alarmist. “The sky is falling? Well, here comes more funding,” says Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass. He says that his town, on a rugged stretch of the Texas border, is fine. He crosses the border to Piedras Negras daily, even though his sister in Los Angeles called and warned him not to go to Mexico.
On March 30th the United States’ Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on border violence at the campus of the University of Texas in El Paso. Jaime Esparza, the El Paso district attorney, said that he had not seen an increase in violence and nor had his colleagues in other Texan border cities.
El Paso’s Mexican sister city, Ciudad Juárez, is a different matter. With 2,000 killings since January 2008 it has become notorious (though the violence has abated since Mexico’s government sent 8,000 troops last month). El Paso itself had only 19 murders during the same period. Local leaders point out that their city is one of the safest in the United States, with a far lower crime rate than Washington, DC, the nation’s capital.
Downtown Ciudad Juárez has a forlorn air. The red-light district, a few blocks from one of the international bridges, was knocked down a few years ago and the area has not been redeveloped. Along the main pedestrianised street many shops are shuttered, windows are broken and pavements are crumbling. Heavily armed troops are stationed throughout the town.
El Pasoans say they feel safe at home, but nowadays make fewer trips across the border. Trini Lopez, the mayor of the suburb of Socorro, says that people have disappeared from his town and later been found dead in Mexico. For the time being, he is advising people to stay safe by staying in Socorro.
