In Nogales, Mexico, a judge is deciding whether to free an Arizona woman–accused of drug smuggling–from a Mexican jail.
On May 22, Mexican soldiers arrested Yanira Maldonado–mother of seven–as she and her husband, Gary, were returning to Arizona after attending a family funeral in Mexico.
During a search of their bus at a military checkpoint in the northwestern state of Sonora, soldiers asked everyone to get off.
At first, Gary Maldonado was told that marijuana had been found under his seat and found himself arrested. After his father contacted the U.S. Consulate in Hermosillo, authorities said they were mistaken and released Gary.
Then they charged his wife, claiming they had found 12 pounds of marijuana under her bus seat.
Gary Maldonado said he believes Mexican soldiers at the checkpoint wanted a bribe.
It’s entirely likely that this is the case.
Anyone who reads Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, will certainly think so.
Written by Investigative Reporter Charles Bowden and published in 2010, Murder City provides a terrifying–and almost lethally depressing–view of what happens when a city–and a country–disintegrates.
Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Notorious as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad or Mogadishu.
It’s so overwhelmed with the violence of drug trafficking that its leading citizens—police, politicians, even the drug lords—find it safer to live in El Paso.
Hundreds of millions of narco-dollars flow into Juárez each week, and the violence and corruption that follow yield 200 to 300 murders each year.
Among the casualties of that violence:
- A reporter–who has dared to expose cartel-corrupted members of the Mexican Army–is forced to flee to the United States with his young son.
- A beautiful woman who became the mistress of one drug cartel leader is gang-raped by members of a rival cartel.
- A teenage killer for the cartels is now being hunted for having run afoul of his murderous bosses.
This is a city–and a country–where virtually no one is safe.
- Mexican police pay big bribes to be assigned to narcotics enforcement squads. The reason: Not to suppress the rampant drug trafficking but to enrich themselves by seizing and selling those narcotics.
- Residents awaken at dawn to find bodies of the drug cartels’ latest victims dumped on streets–their hands, feet and mouths bound with silver and gray duct tape.
- Mexican policewomen are often snatched off the streets and raped–by members of the Mexican Army.
- Honest policemen–and even police chiefs–are routinely gunned down by cartel members.
If there is any one story in Murder City that symbolizes the total corruption of a society awash with drugs and the profits they produce, it is this:
A Mexican priest serves as confessor to drug lords. They, in turn, believe their confessions to be safe, as they are supposed to be heard only by the priest and God.
But one of the drug lords wears a large gold crucifix, which the priest secretly covets.
So he turns from drug lord confessor to police informer–and the Mexican police raid the next drug lord gathering and confiscate a large quantity of narcotics.
The police don’t intend to turn in the seized narcotics. Instead, they will sell these for their own profit.
And as a reward for his cooperation, the priest is given the large gold crucifix–which he blesses and consecrates to his God.
Who, exactly, is behind all these killings?
And why?
And who, if anyone, is in charge of Juárez–or Mexico?
Bowden states it is difficult to answer such questions because the Mexican press has been thoroughly corrupted by drug cartel monies or terrorized by drug cartel hit squads. Reporters have been murdered–by the cartels and the army–for writing anything about killings, the army or the cartels.
The world of Murder City is a nightmarish one:
- Members of drug cartels live like kings.
- Their bribes and violence have corrupted all branches of the Mexican government, military and police forces.
- Ordinary Mexicans live in grinding poverty, thanks to American factories paying starvation wages
When you leave its pages, you are grateful that you can safely put its evil behind you–unlike the residents of Juarez who remain trapped in its web.
Meanwhile, there is a lesson in this book–and in the case of Yanira Maldonado–for anyone with common sense to learn: Stay out of Mexico.
During the 1980s, when Americans were being routinely kidnapped in Beirut, still others–as if bent on suicide–were getting passpords to travel to Lebanon.
For residents of this failed nation-state called Mexico, it’s too late. Such endemic corruption can never be fought successfully.
But for Americans who do not live there, the message should be clear: “Keep out. Enter at your own risk.”
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REMEMBERING THE ALAMO: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In History, Social commentary on March 6, 2013 at 12:36 amJohn Wayne fought and died there–cinematically.
So did Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Fess Parker, Sterling Hayden, Jason Patrick, Billy Bob Thornton and Patrick Wilson.
Today–March 6, 2013–marks the 177th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, a crumbling former Spanish mission in the heart of San Antonio, Texas.
The combatants: 180 to 250 Texans (or “Texians,” as many of them preferred to be called) vs. 2,000 Mexican soldiers.
On the Texan side three names predominate: David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis. “The Holy Trinity,” as some historians ironically refer to them.
Crockett, at 49, was the most famous man in the Alamo. He had been a bear hunter, Indian fighter and Congressman. Rare among the men of his time, he sympathized with the Indian tribes he had helped subdue in the War of 1812.
He believed Congress should honor the treaties made with the former hostiles and opposed President Andrew Jackson’s effort to move the tribes further West.
Largely because of this, his constituents turned him out of office in November, 1835. He told them they could go to hell; he would go to Texas.
James Bowie, at 40, had been a slave trader with pirate Jean Lafitte and a land swindler. His greatest claim to fame lay in his fame as a knife-fighter.
This grew out of his participating in an 1827 duel on a sandbar in Natchez, Mississippi. Bowie was acting as a second to one of the duelists who had arranged the event.
After the two duelists exchanged pistol shots without injury, they called it a draw. But those who had come as their seconds had scores to settle among themselves–and decided to do so. A bloody melee erupted.
Bowie was shot in the hip and then impaled on a sword cane wielded by Major Norris Wright, a longtime enemy. Drawing a large butcher knife he wore at his belt, he gutted Wright, who died instantly.
The brawl became famous as the Sandbar Fight, and cemented Bowie’s reputation across the South as a deadly knife fighter.
William Barret Travis had been an attorney and militia member. Burdened by debts and pursued by creditors, he fled Alabama in 1831 to start over in Texas. Behind him he left a wife, son, and unborn daughter.
From the first, Travis burned to free Texas from Mexico and see it become a part of the United States.
In January, 1836, he was sent by the American provisional governor of Texas to San Antonio, to fortify the Alamo. He arrived there with a small party of regular soldiers and the title of lieutenant colonel in the state militia.
On the Mexican side, only one name matters: Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, president (i.e., absolute dictator) of Mexico. After backing first one general and would-be “president” after another, Santa Anna maneuvered himself into the office in 1833.
Texas was then legally a part of Mexico. Stephen F. Austin, “the father of Texas,” had received a grant from Spain–which ruled Mexico until 1821–to bring in 300 American families to settle there. The Spaniards wanted to establish a buffer between themselves and warring Indian tribes like the Comanches.
These immigrations continued after Mexico threw off Spanish rule and obtained its independence.
But as Americans kept flooding into Texas, the character of its population changed, alarming its Mexican rulers.
The new arrivals did not see themselves as Mexican citizens but as transplanted Americans. They were largely Protestant, as opposed to the Catholic Mexicans. And many of them not only owned slaves but demanded the expansion of slavery–a practice illegal under Mexican law.
In October, 1835, fighting erupted between settlers and Mexican soldiers. In November, Mexican forces took shelter in the Alamo, which had been built in 1718 as a mission to convert Indians to Christianity. Since then it had been used as a fort–by Spanish and then Mexican troops.
Texans lay siege to the Alamo from October 16 to December 10, 1835. With his men exhausted, and facing certain defeat, General Perfecto de Cos, Santa Anna’s brother-in-law, surrendered. He gave his word to leave Texas and never take up arms again against its settlers.
Texans rejoiced. They believed they had won their “war” against Mexico.
But others knew better. One was Bowie. Another was Sam Houston, a former Indian fighter, Congressman and protégé of Andrew Jackson.
Still another was Santa Anna, who styled himself “The Napoleon of the West.” In January, 1836, he set out from Mexico City at the head of an army totaling about 7,000.
He planned the 18th century version of a blitzkrieg, intending to arrive in Texas and take its “rebellious foreigners” by surprise.
His forced march proved costly in lives, but met his objective. He arrived in San Aotonio with several hundred soldiers on February 23, 1836.
The siege of the Alamo–the most famous event in Texas history–was about to begin.
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