Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on April 09, 2008.
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2008 > April > 09
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Drug traffickers dressing up as soldiers?
The Mexican military issued a troubling warning yesterday, saying it expected narcos in Ciudad Juarez to begin dressing up as soldiers, raiding homes and businesses and committing human rights violations as part of a campaign to disparage the Mexican Army.
Juarez, which is passing through one of the most violent stages in a pretty violent history, has recently been the scene of anti-military protests at its international bridge. Protesters, who the military argues are planted by the drug cartels, accuse soldiers of human rights abuses and call for their removal from the city. Juarez has suffered through more than 200 executions this year and renewed fighting between rival cartels over the city’s border crossing points. As in other parts of Mexico, the Mexican military has been sent in to confront the narcos.
Some analysts theorize the violence is the result of crackdowns on other parts of the border, like Nuevo Laredo, squeezing cartels, much as U.S. Border Patrol carckdowns squeeze illegal immigration to new areas of the border. So bad have things gotten in Juarez that U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza has called for another travel advisory for the region.
Although it’s unclear whether the Juarez protesters are human rights activists or paid puppets, what is clear is that the Mexican military has been involved in several questionable episodes over the last year. Last June, five people were killed by soldiers at a Sinaloa checkpoint, resulting in the arrest of 19 soldiers. And this week, Mexico’s Human Rights commission concluded that a deadly shootout with supposed narcos in the Sinaloan town of Badiraguato (the hometown of top cartel leader “El Chapo” Guzman) was a fabrication invented by soldiers. The commission found that the shootout was in fact the “execution” of four civilians, committed by soldiers who later invented a story of a gun battle at a checkpoint.
The questions swirling around the Mexican military are important north of the border as well, as the U.S. debates a $1.4 billion drug-fighting aid package (which seems to have gotten seriously bogged down/forgotten in this election year) to Mexico that would see significant amounts going to the Mexican military.