Posted on 09/25/2010 3:18:36 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah
MEXICO CITY -- As if Mexicans needed more evidence that criminal groups are trying to hijack the political life of the nation, it came with a ferocious triple-whammy punch in the past 24 hours.
Assailants shot and seriously wounded the mayor-elect of a town in the border state of Chihuahua on Friday afternoon, less than a day after commandos in Nuevo Leon state executed a sitting mayor, making him the 10th municipal chief slain so far this year.
In Mexico City, a fugitive legislator with drug charges pending against him sneaked into Congress and took his seat, automatically obtaining immunity from prosecution.
Attacks on mayors are quickening, a sign that drug cartels are seeking to intimidate politicians and neutralize them when they interfere with criminal activity.
Gunmen outside a veterinary clinic in Gran Morelos, a town in the high desert west of Chihuahua City, shot and seriously wounded Mayor-elect Ricardo Solis Manriquez, the websites of the Reforma and El Universal newspapers said.
Solis, elected in early July, is to take office on Oct. 9.
Earlier in the day, eulogies poured in for Prisciliano Rodriguez Salinas, a mayor who was slain outside his ranch house in a rural area of Nuevo Leon state.
Four mayors have been killed in the past five weeks alone. The new attacks roiled the political arena, a sign that politicians long complacent toward drug trafficking are feeling heat. Rodriguez, 53, was elected mayor of Doctor Gonzalez, 30 miles northeast of the industrial city of Monterrey, by a coalition headed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the once-dominant force that is now the largest opposition party.
President Felipe Calderon issued a statement Friday morning pledging that his government "will not ease up on criminal groups."
Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said members of an "armed command" had ambushed Rodriguez outside his rural home in Doctor Gonzalez, and shot him with a .223-caliber assault rifle and a 9 mm handgun.
Garza y Garza described the region, which is less than a two-hour drive from the Texas border - as "a conflict zone" due to fierce rivalries between drug cartels.
Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina decried the "cowardly assassination."
"They will not frighten us," Medina said of drug cartels. "We will not yield."
The mayors of cities and towns in regions of Mexico that cartels dominate face pressure to turn a blind eye on criminal activity. Given a choice of "plomo" or "plata" - a lead bullet or a cash payoff - some mayors become virtual allies of the criminal groups.
Mayors also direct 2,022 municipal police departments, and Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna said in early August that drug cartels were paying an estimated $100 million a month in bribes to corrupt municipal police officers.
The assassinations of mayors are becoming not only more frequent, but also more brazen.
On Sept. 8, two gunmen marched into the El Naranjo Town Hall in San Luis Potosi state in broad daylight and murdered Mayor Alexander Lopez Garcia as he presided over a meeting, leaving his body slumped on the floor in a pool of blood.
After the Aug. 16 kidnapping of the mayor of Santiago, a picturesque town outside Monterrey, prosecutors said that members of Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos' own police force had carried out the act. His body turned up two days later.
The 10 mayors assassinated so far this year have governed towns in seven Mexican states: Chihuahua, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas.
In late June, a commando squad gunned down the leading gubernatorial candidate in the border state of Tamaulipas, Rodolfo Torre Cantu. It was the highest-level political assassination since presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was shot dead in 1994.
On Thursday, television networks broke into programming to show legislator Julio Cesar Godoy taking his seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies.
Godoy later held a news conference to declare that his 2009 arrest warrant for allegedly offering protection to one of Mexico's most feared drug gangs, the Familia Michoacana, was an effort by Calderon's ruling National Action Party to persecute his party in Michoacan state. Godoy is a member of the opposition leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party.
"I am not a criminal," Godoy said.
He skirted a federal police cordon that was aiming to capture him outside Congress, thus avoiding arrest and taking his legislative seat, automatically winning immunity from prosecution.
Mexico is dis-intergrating by the day, virtually by the hour and the world says nothing. Millions of it’s citizens are fleeing for their lives, swarming over our borders and the only thing the world says is for us to let them all in regardless of the consequences. FTW. F Mexico too. I’ve never seen a people and a nation so utterly devoid of any shame at itself than Mexico.
I do they know that it wasn't a .223-caliber hunting rifle?
Excuse me? The article implies that there's something to hijack in Mexico, the sewer of North America.
The "political life" of that country has been and always will be nothing but criminal. Corruption and criminality runs rampant with the Meskins. It's part of their "culture".
My politically conservative son-in-law (hispanic) tells me that other hispanic groups absolutely detest the mexicans.
Why, I do not know, but that is what he says, and he is trustworthy.
This is what Arizona is trying to prevent in the U.S. and what does the Obama administration do instead of thanking and getting busy enforcing federal law? Why they work with the criminals to stop Arizona from enforcing federal law!
“My politically conservative son-in-law (hispanic) tells me that other hispanic groups absolutely detest the mexicans.”
That is true. Cubans, Dominicans and South Americans look down on Mexicans as well as some of the Central American states.
Coming to an American border town real soon.
To be fair (and balanced), I have a very good friend who is of Mexican ancestry. But unlike the vast majority of them, he became 100% American through and through.
He never speaks a word Spanish, flies Old Glory from a mast in his yard and has cut all ties with the country of his origin. In short, unlike most of them, he assimilated. He even sneers when we're diving and pass a Mexican restaurant, calling the food [expletive deleted]. Although he kept his Hispanic-sounding last name, he Anglicized his first name (to Gilbert from Gilberto).
He has no use whatsoever for Mexico and most Mexicans (including a good percentage of those here in the USA "with papers"). He's proud to be an American and embraces his country.
I was in the “cultural” section of the local supermarket the other day and saw a pinata shaped like a Mexican mayor. I love that “cultural” stuff.
Here in Floriduh,
We have Hispanics from all over the world.
Funny but there seems to be a sort of caste system, with the Cubans at the bottom.
Very few like them but it is funny to hear someone from say Belize or Guatamala tell how each feels about the others.
NOw then Jacquej, ya needs to quit abusing that poor dog of your fella. The poor thing, being forced against his will to jump in to the water that way. Terrible.
:-)
I grew up in South Florida (Hialeah which is now about 98% hispanic, mostly Cubans). The Cubans did very well for themselves. I hardly would classify them as the bottom.
Sounds like Gilbert is exactly the kind of person we would all welcome with open arms.
“hijack the political life of the nation..”
There is no nation and the zone has always been ruled by tyrants. Nothing new here...move along folks.
lol did mexico really lose the drug war?
“taking his legislative seat, automatically winning immunity from prosecution.” LOL this sounds like any registered Democrat!
Mexico is simply a Hispanic version of Haiti.
Ahhhhh, I see the tutelege from the "Patrick Kennedy's Family Favorites From The School Of Evading arrest for being under the influence" is followed by many cultures.
Quite true..I hear it all the time.
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