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Posts Tagged ‘MEXICO’

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“MAN ON FIRE” REVISITED

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics on May 31, 2013 at 8:21 pm

Yanira Maldonado has been released from a Mexican jail.

She and her husband, Gary, had traveled from Arizona to Mexico to attend a funeral.

They were returning to Arizona when their bus was stopped and searched.  Mexican soldiers claimed they found 12 pounds of marijuana under her seat.

Gary Maldonado believes the soldiers were seeking a bribe in return for letting his wife go free.

But then the Mormon mother of seven got an unusually lucky break.

On May 30, security camera footage in court showed Maldonado and her husband boarding a bus in Mexico–and carrying a purse, two blankets and two bottles of water.

Her defense attorney, Francisco Benitez, argued that the images proved that nothing they were carrying could hold the amount of marijuana that Maldonado was accused of smuggling.

The Mexican soldiers who arrested Maldonado didn’t appear in court. They were scheduled to appear on May 29  but didn’t show.

Yanira Maldonado said she didn’t think that she was directly targeted: “Someone smuggled those in there, and I probably sat in the wrong seat.”

To anyone who has seen “Man on Fire,” the 2004 Denzel Washington movie, the possibility that Maldonado was framed in an extortion attempt does not seem far-fetched.

In fact, it’s an everyday occurrence in Mexico, where corruption permeates every aspect of that country’s “war on drugs.”

In “Man on Fire,” Washington plays Marcus Creasy, a former Special Forces soldier hired to bodyguard Pita Ramos, the precocious nine-year-old daughter of wealthy parents.

But in a shootout with kidnappers, Creasy is gravely wounded and Pita (Dakota Fanning) is snatched.  Believing her murdered, Creasy sets out to avenge the child he has grown to love as his own.

He draws up a Who’s Who list of criminals engaged in serial kidnapping.  And, in doing so, he learns that the biggest criminal gang of all is the Mexican police.

It’s called “La Hermandad” (The Brotherhood).

Creasy snatches a corrupt cop and tortures him (by cutting off several fingers) into giving up the names of some of his top associates.  Then Creasy shoots him in the head and moves on to his next target.

Watching all this activity is the Mexican version of the FBI: The Agencia Federal de Investigacion (AFI).  Its director, Miguel Manzano, plans to use Creasy to unravel the kidnappers’ network.

While Creasy coolly disposes of one kidnapper or corrupt cop after another, Manzano and his agents keep close tabs on the action.  They will let Creasy do the dirty work and move in when the time is right.

After several grisly action sequences–including one where Creasy ambushes police with a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) launcher–Creasy learns the unthinkable: Pita is actually alive.

He kidnaps the brother of the leader of “La Hermandad”–Daniel Sanchez–and offers him a trade: You give me Pita and I’ll give you your brother.

Just as he has brutally traded on the love of others for the lives of their snatched relatives, so, too, must Sanchez now accept such an arrangement.

The trade-off goes down, with Pita rushing into the arms of her overjoyed mother, and with Creasy surrendering himself to members of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion.

Daniel Sánchez is later killed by Miguel Manzano during an AFI raid.

“Man on Fire” is an unrelentingly brutal portrait of a thoroughly corrupt nation.

  • Pita’s Mexican father sets up his own daughter for a bogus kidnapping to cheat the insurance company out of the money it’s prepared to pay for “kidnapping insurance.”
  • His attorney cheats the kidnappers of the ransome money they had demanded, intending to keep this for himself.
  • Two Mexican policemen make up the kidnapping gang that snatches Pita.
  • A member of the Mexican Attorney General’s office–who’s assigned to its anti-kidnapping squad, no less–is in on the plot to seize Pita.
  • Other members of the Mexican police routinely assist kidnapping gangs in return for a portion of the ransom money.
  • Even the Agencia Federal de Investigacion, while portrayed as incorruptable, llows Creasy to eliminate cops and kidnappers as he leads the AFI closer to the head of the criminal network.

One of the few moments of levity–no doubt unintended–in an otherwise humorless movie comes at the start of its end-credits: “A SPECIAL THANKS TO MEXICO CITY, A VERY SPECIAL PLACE.”

“I love Mexico,” Maldonado told reporters after safely arriving in Nogales, Ariz.  “My family is still there. So Mexico… it’s not Mexico’s fault. It’s a few people who you know did this to me,” she said.

Perhaps a more accurate analysis of the conditions prevailing in Mexico was given by William von Raab, the U.S. Commissioner of Customs from 1981 to 1989.

In 1986, testifying before a Senate committee on the extent of narcotics corruption in Mexico, Raab said: “There is an ingrained corruption in the Mexican law-enforcement establishment.

“Corruption is so pervasive, that one has to assume every Mexican official is corrupt unless proven otherwise.”

Raab’s assessment should be required reading for every American planning to vacation “down Mexico way.”

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MEXICO: A FAILED NATION-STATE

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics on May 29, 2013 at 5:27 pm

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 THREE (END)

In History on March 8, 2013 at 12:03 am

On the night before the final Mexican assault, one man escaped the Alamo to testify to the defenders’ courage.

Or so goes the most famous story of the 13-day siege.

He was Louis Rose, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars and the dreadful 1812 retreat from Moscow.  Unwilling to die in a hopeless battle, he slipped over a wall and sneaked through Mexican siege lines.

At Grimes County, he found shelter at the homestead of Abraham and Mary Ann Zuber.

Their son, William, later claimed that his parents told him of Rose’s visit–and his story of Travis’ “line in the sand” speech.  In 1873, he published the tale in the Texas Almanac.

But many historians believe it is a fabrication.  The story comes to us third-hand–from Rose to the Zubers to their son.  And it was published 37 years after the Alamo fell.

After a 12-day siege, Santa Anna decided to overwhelm the Alamo.

Some of his officers objected.  They wanted to wait for bigger siege cannon to arrive–to knock down the Alamo’s three-feet-thick adobe walls.  Without shelter, the defenders would be forced to surrender.

But Santa Anna insisted on an all-out assault: “Without blood and tears, there is no glory.”

The first assault came at about 5 a.m. on March 6, 1836.

The fort’s riflemen–aided by 14 cannons–repulsed it.  And the second assault as well.

But the third assault proved unstoppable.

The Alamo covered three acres, and held at most 250 defenders–against 2,000 Mexican soldiers.  When the Mexicans reached the fort, they mounted scaling ladders and poured over the walls.

Travis was one of the first defenders to fall–shot through the forehead after firing a shotgun into the Mexican soldiery below.

Death of William Barrett Travis (waving sword)

Mexicans broke into the room where the ailing Bowie lay. In Three Roads to the Alamo, historian William C. Davis writes that Bowie may have been unconscious or delirious.  Mistaking him for a coward, the soldiers bayoneted him and blew out his brains.

But some accounts claim that Bowie died fighting–shooting two Mexicans with pistols, then plunging his famous knife into a third before being bayoneted.  Nearly every Alamo movie depicts Bowie’s death this way.

Jim Bowie’s death

As the Mexicans poured into the fort, at least 60 Texans tried to escape over the walls into the surrounding prairie.  But they were quickly dispatched by lance-bearing Mexican calvary.

The death of David Crockett remains highly controversial.

Baby boomers usually opt for the Walt Disney version: Davy swinging Old Betsey as Mexicans surround him.  Almost every Alamo movie depicts him fighting to the death.

David Crockett’s death

But Mexican Colonel Jose Enrique de la Pena claimed Crockett was one of seven Texans who surrendered or were captured and brought before Santa Anna after the battle.  Santa Anna ordered their immediate execution, and they were hacked to death with sabers.

Only the 2004 remake of The Alamo has dared to depict this version.

Although this version is now accepted by most historians, some still believe the de la Pena diary from which it comes is a forgery.

An hour after the battle erupted, it was over.

That afternoon, Santa Anna ordered the bodies of the slain defenders stacked and burned in three pyres.

Contrary to popular belief, some of the garrison survived:

  • Joe, a black slave who had belonged to William B. Travis, the Alamo’s commander;
  • Susannah Dickinson, the wife of a lieutenant killed in the Alamo, and her baby, Angelina;
  • Several Mexican women and their children.

Also contrary to legend, the bravery of the Alamo defenders did not buy time for Texas to raise an army against Santa Anna. This didn’t happen until after the battle.

But their sacrifice proved crucial in securing Texas’ independence:

  • The Alamo’s destruction warned those Texans who had not supported the revolution that they had no choice: They must win, die or flee their homes to the safety of the United States.
  • It stirred increasing numbers of Americans to enter Texas and enlist in Sam Houston’s growing army.
  • Santa Anna’s army was greatly weakened, losing 600 killed and wounded–a casualty rate of 33%.
  • The nearly two-week siege bought time for the Texas convention to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declare independence from Mexico.

On April 21, 1836, Santa Anna made a crucial mistake: During his army’s afternoon siesta, he failed to post sentries around his camp. That afternoon, Sam Houston’s 900-man army struck the 1,400-man Mexican force at San Jacinto.

In 18 minutes, the Texans–shouting “Remember the Alamo!”–killed about 700 Mexican soldiers and wounded 200 others.  The next day, a Texas patrol captured Santa Anna.

Resisting angry demands to hang the Mexican dictator, Houston forced Santa Anna to surrender control of Texas in return for his life.

The victory at San Jacinto won the independence of Texas.  But the 13-day siege and fall of the Alamo remains the most famous and celebrated part of that conflict.

Like Thermopylae, the battle of the Alamo proved both a defeat–and a victory.

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REMEMBERING THE ALAMO: PART TWO (OF THREE)

In History on March 7, 2013 at 12:00 am

Americans “remember the Alamo”–but usually for the wrong reasons.

Some historians believe the battle should have never been fought. The Alamo was not Thermopylae–a narrow mountain pass blocking the Persian march into ancient Greece.  Santa Anna could have simply bypassed it.

In fact, several of Santa Anna’s generals urged the Mexican dictator to do just that–leave a small guard to hold down the fort’s defenders and wipe out the undefended, widely-separated Texas settlements.

But pride held Santa Anna fast to the Alamo.  His brother-in-law, General Perfecto de Cos, had been forced to surrender the old mission to revolting Texans in December, 1835.  Santa Anna meant to redeem the fort–and his family honor–by force.

In almost every movie made about the Alamo, its two co-commanders, James Bowie and William Barret Travis, are portrayed as on the verge of all-out war–with each other.

James Bowie

William B. Travis

In John Wayn’e heavily fictionalized 1960 film, The Alamo, Bowie and Travis agree to fight a duel as soon as they’ve whipped the Mexicans besieging them.

In fact, the frictions between the two lasted only a short while.  Just before the siege, some of Bowie’s volunteers–a far larger group than the regular soldiers commanded by Travis–got drunk.  Travis ordered them jailed–and Bowie ordered his men to release them. Bowie then went on a roaring drunk.

The next day, a sober Bowie apologized to Travis and agreed they should share command.  This proved a wise decision, for just as the siege started, Bowie was felled by worsening illness–typhoid-pneumonia or tuberculosis.

In Wayne’s film, Bowie repeatedly leaves the Alamo to ambush unsuspecting Mexicans.  In reality, he stayed bed-ridden and lay close to death throughout the 13-day siege.

Most people believe the Texans intended to make a suicidal stand. Not true.  From the first day of the siege–February 23–almost to the last–March 6, 1836–messengers rode out of the Alamo seeking help.

The defenders believed that if they could cram enough men into the three-acre former mission, they could hold Santa Anna at bay.

It’s widely believed that no reinforcements reached the Alamo.  Not so.

On March 1, thirty-two men from Gonzalez–the only ones to answer Travis’ call–sneaked through the Mexican lines to enter the Alamo.

Meanwhile, the largest Texan force lay at Fort Defiance in Goliad, 85 miles away.  This consisted of 500 men commanded by James Walker Fannin, a West Point dropout.

Fannin was better-suited for the role of Hamlet than military commander. Upon receiving a plea of help from Travis, he set out in a half-hearted attempt to reach the mission.  But when a supply wagon broke down, he returned to Fort Defiance and sat out the rest of the siege.

After the Alamo fell, Fannin dithered in Fort Defiance until it was too late.  Fleeing before the advancing Mexicans, his army was encircled on the open prairie and forced to surrender.  On March 27, 1836, Fannin’s entire force was massacred.

After it became obvious that the Alamo would not be sufficiently reinforced, the Texans still refused to evacuate.  “I’ll die before I run” might have been their official motto.

The Alamo garrison was fully prepared to confront the Mexican army.  False.

When the Mexicans suddenly arrived in San Antonio on the morning of February 23, 1836, they caught the Texans completely by surprise. The previous night, they had been celebrating the birthday of George Washington.

The Texans rushed headlong into the Alamo, hauling all the supplies they could hastily scrounge.

Santa Anna sent a courier under a flag of truce to the Alamo, demanding unconditional surrender.  In effect, the Texans were being given the choice of later execution.

Travis replied with a shot from the fort’s biggest cannon, the 18-pounder.

Santa Anna ordered the hoisting of a blood-red flag and the opening of an artillery salvo.  The siege of the Alamo was on.

Many Americans believe that San Houston, who was elected general of the non-existent army of Texas, desperately tried to relieve the siege. Not so.

Sam Houston

At Washington-on-the-Brazos, 150 miles east of San Antonio, the Texans convened a convention to form a new government. When news reached the delegates that Travis desperately needed reinforcements, many of them wanted to rush to his defense.

But Houston and others declared they must first declare Texas’ independence.  On March 2, 1836, they did just that.  Houston spent a good deal of the time drunk.

Did Travis draw a line?

Easily the most famous Alamo story is that of “the line in the sand.” On the night of March 5–just prior to the final assault–there was a lull in the near-constant Mexican bombardment.

Travis assembled his men and gave them a choice: They could surrender and hope that Santa Anna would be merciful. They could try to escape. Or they could stay and fight.

With his sword, Travis drew a line in the dirt and invited those who would stay to cross over to him. The entire garrison did–except for two men.

One of these was bed-ridden James Bowie. He asked that his his sick-bed be carried over to Travis.

The other was a veteran of the Napoleonic wars–Louis Rose.

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REMEMBERING THE ALAMO: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In History, Social commentary on March 6, 2013 at 12:36 am

John 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.