A rising political star assassinated by narcos

“The slaying of a rising political star is ascribed to his refusal to have any contact with drug traffickers.” -- LA Times

MEXICO CITY -- Until he was gunned down over the weekend, Salvador Vergara Cruz was a man of some influence with a promising future in his political party. Mayor of an important resort town outside Mexico City, and a close confidant of his state's governor, Vergara apparently felt sufficiently at ease to travel without a specially assigned team of bodyguards despite receiving death threats from purported drug lords.

The 34-year-old Vergara was killed by hooded assassins armed with semiautomatic rifles as he drove with other officials toward his home city of Ixtapan de la Sal on Saturday afternoon.

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The Interamerican Press Association recently came out with a report on the status of press freedom in Mexico. It´s a very dangerous place to work.

Update: The latest issue of the Economist tells why it´s so hard to root out corruption. The highest authorities are involved, just as in the movie Traffic.

The arrest of senior officials shows the government’s resolve in fighting drug traffickers—and that the rot in law enforcement reaches the top

AT LAST the government seemed to be enjoying some success in its battle against the drug gangs. On October 25th Eduardo Arellano Félix, a leader of the Tijuana “cartel”, was arrested, the last of five brothers still at large who had run what was once one of the world’s most powerful trafficking syndicates. Tijuana has been the scene of a vicious battle between drug factions and the security forces, with over 150 murders in the past month alone. Mr Arellano (pictured above) was captured by Mexican officials acting on information from the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the US Marshals Service. It was an example of the kind of co-operation that officials in both countries hope will bring success for the crackdown against the drug gangs launched by Felipe Calderón when he took office as Mexico’s president almost two years ago.

But only two days later came news of more worrying recent arrests, those of two top officials at the attorney-general’s office who were among those supposedly leading the crackdown. Miguel Colorado González was in charge of assigning police to organised-crime investigations; Fernando Rivera Hernández was one of his deputies, in charge of intelligence. Three more junior officials were also indicted, and 30 were fired pending further investigation. According to investigators, the arrested officials had been passing information to the Sinaloa cartel, a more powerful rival to the Tijuana mob. They had received up to $450,000 a month in bribes, in some cases going back several years.

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Drug gangs assassinate police, judges, prosecutors

In Thursday´s papers there was a report of a former mayor of a town being assassinated in his home by two hooded gunmen.
The police commander of the tourist police Puerto Vallarta, much visited by Americans, was assassinated yesterday along with his 9-year-old son.
They were in the family car, shown here, when two men attacked.

Not a day goes by that there aren´t more stories about assassinations of police, judges, prosecutors, army and federal investigators. They´re being killed at a faster rate than U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Update on Sunday, July 27: 15 people were murdered yesterday in four states, including four uniformed police officials, according to El Publico. So far this year, in the drug battleground state of Sinaloa, 67 uniformed officers have been killed.)

The vast majority of these killings are tied to drug gangs, either because these officials were doing their job and enforcing the law or, in a few cases, they might have been allied with the wrong drug gang.
Dozens of journalists have been killed in Mexico as well, often because of stories they had written or were investigating. It´s one of the most dangerous places to work in the world.

Mexicans fear that their rule of law is being undermined by the increasingly powerful drug gangs, who get their money from the U.S. market. We have lots of users with lots of cash.
Today´s El Universal newspaper website has a photo gallery showing ordinary Mexicans buying guns to protect themselves. This flow of money allows for big bribes to be paid to top government officials. It´s like Chicago in the 1930s. The Untouchables were so named because they couldn´t or wouldn´t be bribed and compromised. They were the few.

The other consequence of this flow of drug money into Mexico is that the gangs are extremely well armed, with everything up to and including anti-tank missiles. They get their arms illegally and cheaply from the U.S.

So far, Guadalajara isn´t a drug battleground. Mostly it´s in the north, near the border. But the drug gangs sent the federal government a message recently by assassinating the equivalent of FBI leaders in Mexico City, which is far to the south. The message is that we won´t be intimidated.

President Felipe Calderon has his hands full. And Mexicans can hardly be blamed if they resent that members of the U.S. Congress place the drug problems on Mexico´s doorstep.