It’s a fatal pattern in Mexico.
It happened in Iguala in Guerrero state along the Pacific Coast, where a crooked mayor allegedly ordered police to round up 43 student teachers in late September. They vanished, and authorities now say the police turned them over to gang members who killed and burned them. Street protests over the killings have rocked Mexico, hurting its international image.
Another case happened far more quietly here along the border with Texas.
The killings, which drew scant attention in U.S. media when they occurred in October, reveal how easily autocratic mayors can create abusive paramilitary units that seem to answer to no one. Are the units fighting organized crime? Or are they criminals themselves, using badges to combat rival groups?
Those questions swirl in Matamoros, a Mexican city of half a million people across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, that’s home to scores of assembly plants. It’s also a hub of the offshore oil industry that’s set to grow rapidly.
For the last 15 months, the mayor of Matamoros has been Leticia Salazar Vázquez. At 37, she’s an up-and-coming face in Mexican politics. A lawyer who exudes an easy manner, she has braces on her teeth and wears her long dark hair tucked behind each ear, like a schoolgirl, or with a headband.
But Salazar has a core of steel.
She surrounded herself with heavily armed guards, some of whom wore hoods, as she led raids to shut bars, lap-dance joints and brothels that many citizens believed were operated by the Gulf Cartel, a gang that a decade ago was among the two most powerful criminal groups in Mexico. The cartel’s historic stronghold remains the northeast corner of Mexico.
In early September, on her first anniversary as mayor, Salazar donned a black beret and uniform and introduced a new tactical security unit, Grupo Hercules. The city police force had been disbanded years earlier, because of criminal infiltration, and state and federal police and soldiers had assumed most security functions.
“We are all Hercules, because each one of us from our trench must defend the city,” Salazar said at the Sept. 7 ceremony without explaining the unit’s mission.
Almost as soon as commandos, their faces smeared with black grease, began patrols aboard Grupo Hercules vehicles, business owners were complaining.
“There’s a great feeling of fear of the paramilitary unit dubbed Hercules among the members of our business group,” Enrique Mena Sainz, the head of 3,500 businesses in Matamoros under the umbrella of the National Chamber of Commerce, Service and Tourism, wrote in a letter Oct. 30 to President Enrique Peña Nieto.
In early September, on her first anniversary as mayor, Salazar donned a black beret and uniform and introduced a new tactical security unit, Grupo Hercules. The city police force had been disbanded years earlier, because of criminal infiltration, and state and federal police and soldiers had assumed most security functions.
“We are all Hercules, because each one of us from our trench must defend the city,” Salazar said at the Sept. 7 ceremony without explaining the unit’s mission.
Almost as soon as commandos, their faces smeared with black grease, began patrols aboard Grupo Hercules vehicles, business owners were complaining.
“There’s a great feeling of fear of the paramilitary unit dubbed Hercules among the members of our business group,” Enrique Mena Sainz, the head of 3,500 businesses in Matamoros under the umbrella of the National Chamber of Commerce, Service and Tourism, wrote in a letter Oct. 30 to President Enrique Peña Nieto.
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http://www.idahostatesman.com/2014/12/19/3550636/rogue-mexican-police-units-leave.html
1 comment:
I HAVE BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG THAT SALAZAR KNOWS MORE THAT WHAT SHE'S SAYING...TO THE PUBLIC!!! JUST ANOTHER CORRUPTED POLITICAN...'LA REYNA DEL SUR'!!!!
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