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Posts Tagged ‘violence’

Mexico’s Narco Violence Continues: 5 Decapitated Heads Found

6:09 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · crime|Drugs|Latin America|mexico|society · 7 Comments

10 Mar 2009

narcoheads It seems that with each passing day, Mexico’s war on drug lords seems more and more hopeless, and the country is gripped with a seemingly endless chain of violent acts that have already left hundreds dead this year and nearly 6,000 deaths last year. The latest chapter in this bloody story is striking in its violence: this morning, 5 decapitated heads were found in an ice chests on the side of the road in rural Jalisco, Mexico. Mexico City’s La Jornada reports:

Inside styrofoam ice chests 5 male heads were found in the early morning on Tuesday in the town of fueron encontradas la madrugada de este martes cinco cabezas Ixtlahuacán del Río, some 50 kilometers north of Guadalajara, with a “narcomessage”. The macabre discovery coincides with today’s visit to Jalisco by president Felipe Calderón.

Reports we called in around 2:00 a.m. via an anonymous caller to the municipal police, who after corroborating the news alerted the state police and state judicial authorities.

Each head was found in an ice chest with packing tape wrapped around the eyes. The five containers were placed in a line alongside the the highway, very close to entrance into the town.

Heads in ice chests? Can it really get much worse than this? Savage.

Calderón had better act quickly before his country falls further into the hands of these assassins. This is not the Mexico I know and love.

Via / La Jornada

Imaga via El Informador

Drug Related Violence in Mexico Continues

3:08 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Drugs|mexico · 2 Comments

17 Nov 2008

tijuana%20drug%20war.jpg The BBC News is reporting that the drug related violence in Mexico was especially intense this weekend: Eleven were killed, including a young girl:

A teenage girl was among 11 people shot dead in suspected drug-related violence at the weekend in the northern city of Tijuana, authorities in Mexico say.

In one attack, masked gunmen opened fire in a pool hall, killing five people, while the girl, 14, and two men were killed in a shootout in a street.

This violence came shortly after at least one thousand people marched through Tijana demanding and end to the violence. Even worse, this violence comes after the brutal kidnapping/murder of a young boy earlier this month:

Kidnappers grabbed a 5-year-old boy from a gritty Mexico City street market, then killed him by injecting acid into his heart — a new low even for Mexico’s brutal kidnapping gangs.

The boy, Javier Morena, was the oldest son of a poor family that sold fruit at a market in the tough neighborhood of Iztapalapa, proof that the plague of kidnappings for ransom afflicts the working class as well as the wealthy.

So what is Mexican president, Felipe Calderon doing about all this? Congratulating himself on job well done. Of course.

Mexico has made “important achievements” in fighting drugs under the current administration, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said on Sunday.

Some 43 tons of cocaine have been seized in the littorals of the country since his government took office in December 2006, Calderon said at the welcoming ceremony in Acapulco Port for the arrival of School Vessel “Cuauhtemoc” after its international tour.

“The trafficking of that dangerous drug” was controlled, Calderon said.

For some reason, I’m thinking that concentrating on how great it is to find drugs is not quite what most Mexicans are hoping for when little boys are getting their hearts injected with acid. For some reason, I think those people might be hoping for a focus on human life and safety.

You can always count on the Mexican government to be in step with it’s people.

Murdered Bear Covered in Obama Photos

6:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off

21 Oct 2008

Ok, I expected that there would be a certain amount of racism with this presidential election. I live next to an awful lot of libertarians and ‘liberal’ white folks (as in, they don’t see color, which means there’s no reason for affirmative action, race based organizations like NAACP etc) and I know that there are many of them that say quietly to themselves, “Obama is nice and everything, but well, I won’t vote for *that* kind of person.”

Which, of course, means, I won’t vote for a black person.

I have some big ass problems with that kind of logic, but these folks are my neighbors, so I can’t very well go around beating them up. I talk with them, they talk with me, and hopefully somewhere down the line, we’ll come to a truce that we can all live by.

But then I read this story–and I am not sure if we live in the 1950′s or in the year 2008:

Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.

Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head, Tvedt said.

The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.

Signs and whispers are one thing. Murdering a bear with a gunshot to the head and putting pictures of a human being on it is something else all together.

Where is this blessed “America” that the far right is so eager to rub our faces in? Where is the rule of law? Where does the idea come from that if you don’t like a person’s politics, the next best thing is to kill him (or otherwise imply murder through the murder of other beings?).

I hope the FBI/Secret Service has made its way out to North Carolina.

Mexico Continues to Struggle with Violence

1:25 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · mexico · Comments Off

1 Oct 2008

In another attempt to deal with the ever increasing drug related violence in Mexico, Mexican president Felipe Calderon, is campaigning to create a “department to monitor and tackle corruption among Mexican police.”

Should Media Report on Police Brutality

4:50 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · RNC08 · 3 Comments

3 Sep 2008

The back of 17-year-old Keith Smith-Tourville after the police were finished with him.

In spite my best intentions, I have wound up liking resident Vivir Latino Troll, EYE OF TEXAS. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s the name. I always did like all caps in a name. Announcing your presence with authority! Anyway, Eye makes an interesting argument in VL’s post on Amy Goodman’s arrest. S/he says:

There were also protesters and incidents at the DNC, but the leftist media chose not to cover it because of the bad image it would have given the squeaky clean Demoncraps. Go figure.

Now, seeing as VL did cover incidents of police brutality at the DNC, and really complicated the very privileged space of the convention to begin with, I know that EYE is not talking about VL. But s/he does point to an intriguing idea. Republicans are positive that the media didn’t report on the violence at the DNC while reporting nonstop on violence at the RNC–and Democrats are fairly certain of the same thing.

My question, should it matter where this violence happens? Why does it matter? Shouldn’t the most important thing be that no citizen, no human being, should ever be treated like the young man above was by the people put in place to protect us? Should media report on the type of brutality that causes the the bruises and scrapes shown in the picture? Does it matter if members of the government are ‘being protected’ from 17-year-old kids by gun wielding cops that like to leave boot prints embedded on skin?

What do you think?

via/The Minnesota Independent

Mexicans March Against Violence

1:40 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism|crime|mexico · Comments Off

2 Sep 2008

It wasn’t just RNC protesters out marching this weekend. Mexicans sick of the constant violence in their country were out en masse as well. Among the protesters were parents and family members of murdered and kidnapped relatives.

Drug cartels are being blamed for the violence, and yet for some reason, 25,000 military and federal officers dispatched throughout the country since Mexican president Calderon took office don’t seem to be helping at all.

I wonder why that is?

Could it have something to do with the fact that many of those military seem more intent on preventing indigenous nations from organizing than they do stopping drug trafficking? Or maybe it’s just that old culture of violence thing–you know, the argument that basically states that you can’t end violence with violence?

Whatever the reason is, Mexican citizens seem to be doing more about the violence than the government is. And there’s sadly, nothing new about that.

via/The Christian Science Monitor

Another musician murdered in Mexico

9:53 am By Maegan La Mala · crime|Drugs|Entertainment|mexico|Music · Comments Off

16 Jan 2008

The wave of violence against grupero musicians in Mexico continues, with a new murder making headlines. The body of Jorge Antonio Sepúlveda Armenta, 20 –a.k.a. El Koquillo de Sinaloa — was found yesterday alongside a highway in rural Sinaloa state. The cause appears to be various gunshot wounds.

Next to Sepúlveda’s body, investigators found a burned truck and several 9 millimeter and machine gun casings. His death marks the 4th murder in the grupera community in little over a month.

Via / 20 Minutos

Image via Univision.com

Mexican army arrests over 100 policemen

6:19 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia|Justice|mexico · Comments Off

16 Apr 2007

In Mexican society, the profession of policeman isn’t the most respected. Like in many other countries, most are suspicious of policemen, who are believed to be corrupt, capable of turning a blind eye to any crime or misdemeanor for a “mordida”. In the state of Nuevo León, in Northern Mexico, the Mexican army has arrested over 100 policemen believed to be linked to organized crime, and involved in the 51 murders that have occurred in the state this year:

Among these murders, most committed with large caliber weapons, are 18 murders of policeman, some of whom are presumed to be linked to organized crime and were victims of acts of vengeance by drug cartels who are fighting for the routes towards the U.S.

Mexico City government official: 1,619 rapes is nothing

7:42 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia|mexico|Women · Comments Off

7 Feb 2007

1,619 rapes per year in Mexico City is apparently not such a big deal for the head of the Woman’s Institute (Instituto de las Mujeres del Distrito Federal), the city government entity that promotes programs for women and supposedly defends their rights. Nothing in comparison, she says (yes, she) to the number of busines robberies there are per year in the Mexican capital. These words were pronounced before an assembly of representatives from the Equality and Gender Commission (Comisión de Equidad y Género).

According to Mexican daily La Jornada, when pressed by a politician from the PRD who emphasized the grave problem of women being raped on the city’s public transportation systems, the head of the Institute, Martha Lucía Micher Camarena, rectified her statement by saying “…even if there were only one (rape) it would warrant our work.” Media then got wind of the statement:

Colombia on list of “forgotten crises”

4:12 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism|Colombia|society · Comments Off

10 Jan 2007

Non-profit organization Doctors without Borders has published a list of what it considers to be the “most forgotten world crises”, according to Spanish daily 20 Minutos. Among them is the violent situation in Colombia:

6. Colombia: To live with fear. Massacres, executions and fear are part of everday life for thousands of Colombians. To date, almost 3 million people have had to flee their homes because of the conflict created by drug traffickers and government forces, paramilitary groups and armed guerrillas.

Among the other forgotten world crises were the 25 years of militia fighting in India, war and natural disaster in Somalia, and increased urban violence in Haiti. The U.S. branch of Doctors Without Borders calls this list the “Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006″.

Via / 20 Minutos

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