Exit poll: PRI wins big in Mexico state election

July 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

TOLUCA, Mexico: Voters in Mexico’s most populous state chose their next governor Sunday in a widely watched election that is expected to set the tone for next year’s presidential race.

An exit poll showed Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Eruviel Avila winning the state of Mexico election in a landslide. If confirmed, the result would give a major boost to the PRI heading into the July 2012 national election, where it wants to regain the presidency it lost in 2000 after 71 years of uninterrupted rule.

The private poll by Mendoza Blanco y Asociados, carried out for TV Azteca, has Avila with 64 percent support, Alejandro Encinas of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, with 23 percent and Luis Felipe Bravo Mena of President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party with 13 percent.

The poll showed the PRI also winning the governor’s race in Coahuila state with 65 percent support and in Nayarit state with 48 percent. The poll had a margin for error of 4 percentage points.

A PRI victory in all three states is widely expected, with observers closely watching the margin of victory for signs the PRI is gaining or losing momentum headings into national elections.

Avila went into Sunday’s vote with a 30-point lead for the PRI, which has never lost the governorship of Mexico state in more than 80 years.

Mexico state is the country’s most populous, home to 15 million people and the sprawling, impoverished suburbs that ring Mexico City.

This year’s vote in the state is especially crucial because the current PRI governor is the early presidential front-runner. Many will see Sunday’s vote result as a reflection of the popularity of soon-to-be-outgoing Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto and a landslide will boost the telegenic candidate’s chances in 2012 elections.

The other two major parties, trailing in the polls and lacking the coalitions that have defeated the PRI in other states, warned voters that backing the PRI is backing a return to the past, when the “dinosaurs” wielded power through coercion, corruption and intimidation.

Election day had a bumpy start for some: Flooding caused by days of heavy rain forced officials to relocate more than 170 voting booths in two of the state’s largest cities, said Fabiola Bueno, a spokeswoman for the state’s electoral institute.

The relocation has affected more than 47,000 registered voters in Ecatepec and Nezahualcoyotl, just outside Mexico City, Bueno said. Tropical Storm Arlene dumped heavy rains on both cities Thursday, causing a river that carries sewage to overflow into residents’ homes.

Accompanied by his two children, Avila cast his vote in Ecatapec, the most populous city in the state where he served as mayor before becoming a gubernatorial candidate. Aside from the flooding, the candidate said he expected a largely peaceful and trouble-free election day.

“I’m confident that today will be a fiesta for democracy,” he said.

Avila has not commented in recent days on the potential impact the Mexico state election could have on the PRI’s efforts to retake the presidency.

Asked Sunday whether the elections could give the PRI a boost ahead of 2012, Avila responded: “I’ll answer that when this election ends.”

The PAN and PRD tried early on to form a coalition to defeat the PRI, as they did last year to win the PRI stronghold states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa. But the agreement fell apart in Mexico state, and other coalition efforts never got off the ground in Nayarit and Coahuila.

Across Mexico, many voters are weary of the PAN, which after more than a decade in power has failed to make fundamental changes in Mexico apart from a trademark war on organized crime that has seen a spike in violence. Since Calderon took office in late 2006, more than 35,000 people have died in drug violence, according to the government. Other sources put the number at more than 40,000.

And internal fighting in the PRD has left the leftist party in disarray.

The PRI has sprung back in the vacuum.

Euralia Contreras, 66, who voted at the same station as Avila, said that she was sure the PRI would win because it has tackled local problems and helped residents. “I’ve received many benefits from (Avila),” Contreras said, referring to free canned foods the Avila campaign gave her. “The handouts came through. He has fulfilled his promises.”

After mounting one of the most expensive campaigns in Mexico’s history, Avila ran tirelessly as a “democrat,” polling near 60 percent while Encinas’ support has hovered in the mid-to-high 20s in surveys by the newspapers Reforma and El Universal. Those polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The newspaper Reforma reported last month that Avila’s campaign spent nearly 4.4 million pesos a day ($376,000), more than the 3.4 million pesos ($290,000) Calderon spent to win the presidency. The campaign didn’t respond to questions about spending from the AP.

For Fernando Pasillas Villarreal, there are no good candidates.

“I’ll vote, but only to cancel my vote, because I think that although the governor may change, the one who takes his place does not offer substantial improvements, and I still think that the PRI only enriches itself and enriches its friends.”

Even as the opposing parties cry foul and have filed complaints with the national elections tribunal over alleged PRI campaign violations, the elections Sunday and next year appear to be the PRI’s to lose.

In the state capital of Toluca, where initial election results were expected to be announced Sunday evening, people turned out early to vote.

“Although none of the three candidates convinces me … perhaps the only one who really knows Mexico state is from the PRI, Eruviel,” said Leticia Aguilar Hernandez, a 50-year-old secretary.

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Mexico state elections stage battle for presidency

July 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Mexico’s ruling and main opposition parties wrested ground from each other in elections for governors in a dozen states on Sunday, setting the stage for a tough battle for the presidency in 2012.

Initial results showed President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party, known as PAN, with surprise gubernatorial wins in three states controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had been pegged to sweep the vote.

The PRI beat out rival parties and held onto governorships in the remaining nine states, building a base to launch a likely presidential bid by the party’s rising star, State of Mexico Governor Enrique Pena Nieto.

“This election proves the PRI is the leading political force in the country,” the party’s president, Beatriz Paredes, told a news conference.

Mexico’s divided left joined forces with Calderon’s conservatives in awkward alliances to win in PRI strongholds Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa. The PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years as a semi-dictatorship, has been in the opposition for a decade after losing to the PAN in 2000.

Elections also were held for mayors and local deputies in nearly half of Mexico’s 31 states on Sunday.

Analysts say local issues determining state votes may not translate to a national win for either party in 2012 but the PRI hopes to capitalize on Calderon’s sinking popularity as the economy sputters and drug violence spins out of control.

Staining Calderon’s legacy, more than 26,000 people have been killed during his time in office, mostly traffickers and police but also civilian bystanders.

“I voted for the PRI because Calderon got us into this war where innocent people are paying the price,” said Jorge Lopez, 46, an unemployed builder in a shantytown full of drug dens and brothels in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Tit-for-tat murders to control smuggling routes have turned Ciudad Juarez into one of the world’s most violent cities.

Campaigning was blighted by drug gang intimidation as suspected cartel hitmen murdered two candidates.

It was some of the most blatant evidence of traffickers interfering in politics since Calderon came to power in late 2006 and launched a army-lead drug crackdown that has ended up fueling more violence as cartels splinter and feud over turf.

INVESTORS SPOOKED

Investors sold off Mexico’s peso at the start of the week after Rodolfo Torre, the PRI front-runner for governor in the border state of Tamaulipas, and four aides were killed in an ambush by drug hitmen, Mexico’s highest-profile political murder in 16 years.

Egidio Torre replaced his dead brother as candidate and won after casting his own vote under heavy guard.

A mayoral candidate in Tamaulipas, where the Gulf cartel is battling a gang of former enforcers called the Zetas, was also murdered in a likely drug hit aimed at swaying the vote.

Election day was not free of drug violence. In several states there were reports of irregularities and vote-buying. Long lines formed at polling stations in Tamaulipas after some 40 percent of election volunteers quit fearing attacks.

In Chihuahua state there were at least 19 drug murders on Sunday, including the brother of a PAN mayoral candidate in the isolated town of Batopilas, police said. Four bodies were hung from bridges in Chihuahua’s capital.

Along the U.S-Mexico border cartels rule over semi-lawless swaths of territory employing networks of lookouts, from taxi drivers to taco-stand owners. Journalists there increasingly face threats and business owners pay regular extortion fees.

In many areas, the situation is deteriorating despite more than a $1 billion in anti-drug aid from the United States.

As well as being angry at Calderon, some voters blamed local PRI politicians for not doing more to stop the violence.

“The insecurity we are living in here is because of bad PRI governments. I can’t say anything more because it might cost me my life,” said a 55-year-old businessman in Reynosa, a major manufacturing city in Tamaulipas across from McAllen, Texas.

Mexico grapples with endemic corruption within state-level politics and a number of candidates have been accused by rivals of being on drug cartel payrolls.

Mexican media have reported that the sitting PRI governor of Tamaulipas has a bodyguard wanted by the United States on drug charges, while the left-wing mayor of the resort of Cancun is in jail awaiting trial on charges of laundering drug money.

The PRI’s Hector Murguia was elected mayor of Ciudad Juarez, early results showed, despite accusations from rivals and rights groups that he works for the feared Juarez cartel. This week a severed head was dumped outside his house.

(Additional reporting by Julian Cardona in Ciudad Juarez and Robin Emmott in Monterrey; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Bill Trott)

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Mexico state elections stage battle for presidency

July 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

MEXICO CITY, July 4 (Reuters) – Mexico’s ruling and main opposition parties wrested ground from each other in elections for governors in a dozen states on Sunday, setting the stage for a tough battle for the presidency in 2012.

Initial results showed President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party, known as PAN, with surprise gubernatorial wins in three states controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had been pegged to sweep the vote.

The PRI beat out rival parties and held onto governorships in the remaining nine states, building a base to launch a likely presidential bid by the party’s rising star, State of Mexico Governor Enrique Pena Nieto.

“This election proves the PRI is the leading political force in the country,” the party’s president, Beatriz Paredes, told a news conference.

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Factbox on Mexico’s drug war [ID:nN28272853]

Snap analysis on Monday’s killing [ID:nN28222286]

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Mexico’s divided left joined forces with Calderon’s conservatives in awkward alliances to win in PRI strongholds Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa. The PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years as a semi-dictatorship, has been in the opposition for a decade after losing to the PAN in 2000.

Elections also were held for mayors and local deputies in nearly half of Mexico’s 31 states on Sunday.

Analysts say local issues determining state votes may not translate to a national win for either party in 2012 but the PRI hopes to capitalize on Calderon’s sinking popularity as the economy sputters and drug violence spins out of control.

Staining Calderon’s legacy, more than 26,000 people have been killed during his time in office, mostly traffickers and police but also civilian bystanders.

“I voted for the PRI because Calderon got us into this war where innocent people are paying the price,” said Jorge Lopez, 46, an unemployed builder in a shantytown full of drug dens and brothels in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Tit-for-tat murders to control smuggling routes have turned Ciudad Juarez into one of the world’s most violent cities.

Campaigning was blighted by drug gang intimidation as suspected cartel hitmen murdered two candidates.

It was some of the most blatant evidence of traffickers interfering in politics since Calderon came to power in late 2006 and launched a army-lead drug crackdown that has ended up fueling more violence as cartels splinter and feud over turf.

INVESTORS SPOOKED

Investors sold off Mexico’s peso at the start of the week after Rodolfo Torre, the PRI front-runner for governor in the border state of Tamaulipas, and four aides were killed in an ambush by drug hitmen, Mexico’s highest-profile political murder in 16 years. [ID:nN28512369]

Egidio Torre replaced his dead brother as candidate and won after casting his own vote under heavy guard.

A mayoral candidate in Tamaulipas, where the Gulf cartel is battling a gang of former enforcers called the Zetas, was also murdered in a likely drug hit aimed at swaying the vote.

Election day was not free of drug violence. In several states there were reports of irregularities and vote-buying. Long lines formed at polling stations in Tamaulipas after some 40 percent of election volunteers quit fearing attacks.

In Chihuahua state there were at least 19 drug murders on Sunday, including the brother of a PAN mayoral candidate in the isolated town of Batopilas, police said. Four bodies were hung from bridges in Chihuahua’s capital.

Along the U.S-Mexico border cartels rule over semi-lawless swaths of territory employing networks of lookouts, from taxi drivers to taco-stand owners. Journalists there increasingly face threats and business owners pay regular extortion fees.

In many areas, the situation is deteriorating despite more than a $1 billion in anti-drug aid from the United States.

As well as being angry at Calderon, some voters blamed local PRI politicians for not doing more to stop the violence.

“The insecurity we are living in here is because of bad PRI governments. I can’t say anything more because it might cost me my life,” said a 55-year-old businessman in Reynosa, a major manufacturing city in Tamaulipas across from McAllen, Texas.

Mexico grapples with endemic corruption within state-level politics and a number of candidates have been accused by rivals of being on drug cartel payrolls.

Mexican media have reported that the sitting PRI governor of Tamaulipas has a bodyguard wanted by the United States on drug charges, while the left-wing mayor of the resort of Cancun is in jail awaiting trial on charges of laundering drug money.

The PRI’s Hector Murguia was elected mayor of Ciudad Juarez, early results showed, despite accusations from rivals and rights groups that he works for the feared Juarez cartel. This week a severed head was dumped outside his house. (Additional reporting by Julian Cardona in Ciudad Juarez and Robin Emmott in Monterrey; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Bill Trott)

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Mexico heroes’ bones paraded

May 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Mexican soldiers on Sunday paraded the bones of the heroes of the country’s Independence War down the capital’s most famous street before scientists begin trying to solve a century-old mystery by identifying the bones.

Science | Mexico

“Thanks to them, Mexico exists,” President Felipe Calderon said at a ceremony involving hundreds of soldiers, a 100-piece military band and watched by thousands of Mexicans.

Army cadets dressed in formal 19th-century style uniforms gingerly carried out the glass urns containing the remains of leaders of the war against Spain from the base of the towering Angel of Independence monument. The bones were then escorted down Paseo de la Reforma, accompanied by dozens of black horses with banded manes.

“They’re the ones who represent independence to the Mexicans,” Elias David Figueroa, 56, who sells handicrafts in Mexico City, said after tossing two white carnations toward the urns as they moved down the avenue. “It makes us proud to see them.”

The remains of 12 fighters — including Miguel Hidalgo, a priest whose “Cry of Dolores” call to arms touched off the independence struggle — had been scattered across the country after the war against Spain ended in 1821. The government ordered the leaders’ bones be reburied in poorly constructed tombs in Mexico City’s giant Metropolitan Cathedral in 1823.

Dug up at the turn of the 20th century after complaints about the state of the tombs, the bones were placed in new urns but many were jumbled together.

Following Mexico’s 1910-20 revolution, the urns were moved to the towering Angel of Independence after revolutionary leaders broke with the Catholic church.

The skulls of Hidalgo and three other major figures in the war are identified but doubts have circulated since the turn of the century about the rest of the remains.

Some historians suspect they may even include those of the last Spanish viceroy of New Spain.

The effort to identify the remains is part of Mexico’s preparations for the bicentennial of its independence from Spain, which will be celebrated later this year.

Specialists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History plan to compare the bones with historical records of the heroes’ heights and injuries so they can determine which bones belong to which hero.

The government plans to exhibit the remains starting in August before returning the bones to the Angel of Independence monument in August 2011.

A dozen protesters jeered Calderon’s speech, calling him a lapdog of Washington and blaming him for Mexico’s troubled economy and mounting drug gang violence, which has killed 23,000 people since he took office in 2006.

“Those are our heroes,” Juan Francisco Vergara, a 23-year-old political science student said angrily. “He’s just trying to look good. It’s the only thing he can do.”

(Editing by Robert Campbell and Bill Trott)

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Mexico heroes’ bones paraded, taken for study

May 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

* Scientists will try to match bones to names

* Leaders’ bones to go on display later

By Leslie Josephs

MEXICO CITY, May 30 (Reuters) – Mexican soldiers on Sunday paraded the bones of the heroes of the country’s Independence War down the capital’s most famous street before scientists begin trying to solve a century-old mystery by identifying the bones.

“Thanks to them, Mexico exists,” President Felipe Calderon said at a ceremony involving hundreds of soldiers, a 100-piece military band and watched by thousands of Mexicans.

Army cadets dressed in formal 19th-century style uniforms gingerly carried out the glass urns containing the remains of leaders of the war against Spain from the base of the towering Angel of Independence monument. The bones were then escorted down Paseo de la Reforma, accompanied by dozens of black horses with banded manes.

“They’re the ones who represent independence to the Mexicans,” Elias David Figueroa, 56, who sells handicrafts in Mexico City, said after tossing two white carnations toward the urns as they moved down the avenue. “It makes us proud to see them.”

The remains of 12 fighters — including Miguel Hidalgo, a priest whose “Cry of Dolores” call to arms touched off the independence struggle — had been scattered across the country after the war against Spain ended in 1821. The government ordered the leaders’ bones be reburied in poorly constructed tombs in Mexico City’s giant Metropolitan Cathedral in 1823.

Dug up at the turn of the 20th century after complaints about the state of the tombs, the bones were placed in new urns but many were jumbled together.

Following Mexico’s 1910-20 revolution, the urns were moved to the towering Angel of Independence after revolutionary leaders broke with the Catholic church.

The skulls of Hidalgo and three other major figures in the war are identified but doubts have circulated since the turn of the century about the rest of the remains.

Some historians suspect they may even include those of the last Spanish viceroy of New Spain.

The effort to identify the remains is part of Mexico’s preparations for the bicentennial of its independence from Spain, which will be celebrated later this year.

Specialists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History plan to compare the bones with historical records of the heroes’ heights and injuries so they can determine which bones belong to which hero.

The government plans to exhibit the remains starting in August before returning the bones to the Angel of Independence monument in August 2011.

A dozen protesters jeered Calderon’s speech, calling him a lapdog of Washington and blaming him for Mexico’s troubled economy and mounting drug gang violence, which has killed 23,000 people since he took office in 2006.

“Those are our heroes,” Juan Francisco Vergara, a 23-year-old political science student said angrily. “He’s just trying to look good. It’s the only thing he can do.” (Editing by Robert Campbell and Bill Trott)

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Obama to send troops, bolster border security

May 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

President Barack Obama will seek $500 million for security and send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, an administration official said on Tuesday after demands from both Republicans and Democrats for more federal resources along the frontier.

The announcement comes as the Democratic president seeks Republican support for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration laws, and rallies opposition to a tough new immigration law in Arizona that has caused tension in U.S. relations with Mexico.

The troops will provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, intelligence analysis, immediate support to counternarcotics enforcement and training capacity until the Customs and Border Patrol agency can recruit and train more border officers and agents, the official said.

The funds will be used to enhance technology at the border and share information and support between law enforcement agencies as they target illegal trafficking in people, drugs, weapons and money.

Illegal immigration across the border with Mexico has been in intense focus since Arizona last month passed the new law to drive 460,000 illegal immigrants out of the desert state, which straddles one of the principal corridors for human and drug smugglers heading up from Mexico.

It was a central issue last week during a state visit to Washington by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who said the law discriminated against foreign-born workers.

Arizona’s two U.S. senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, and Governor Jan Brewer, all Republicans, have all asked Obama for more federal border support. McCain and Kyl have asked for 3,000 National Guard troops.

There are currently 344 U.S. National Guard troops working along the border.

SPARRING WITH REPUBLICANS

U.S. officials are also concerned drug-related violence will cross the border from Mexico, where some 23,000 people have been killed since Calderon took office in late 2006 as drug gangs fought turf wars and battled federal agents.

Obama met with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. He pushed them to support an immigration overhaul, which he said he wants passed this year, but did not bring up the National Guard plan, participants in the meeting said.

Kyl said it was not a good idea for Democrats to “try to hold hostage the security of the border in order to get comprehensive immigration reform passed.”

“Ironically, securing the border will make it easier, not more difficult, to later on get comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said after the meeting.

McCain, when asked for his message to Obama on immigration, said they had not agreed. “He didn’t agree. … We had an extended conversation. We didn’t agree.”

Arizona’s attorney general, Terry Goddard, a Democrat running to replace Brewer as governor, said he was pleased with Obama’s announcement. “I have been calling for these actions for more than a year, and I’m pleased the administration is listening,” he said.

Republican senators offered amendments to a spending bill on Tuesday to try to get more funding for border security.

Obama’s predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, sent National Guard troops to the border under Operation Jump Start in June 2006 to support the border patrol while they recruited more agents.

That operation ended in 2008, before the November presidential election that brought Obama to the White House.

(Additional report by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix and Steve Holland in Washington, editing by Todd Eastham)

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Drug gangs kill nine in Honduras as violence grows

April 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

TEGUCIGALPA, April 11 (Reuters) – Suspected drug hitmen killed nine people in Tegucigalpa in one of the deadliest attacks in Honduras since Mexican drug kingpins escalated their war over smuggling routes, police said on Sunday.

Masked men with automatic weapons opened fire in the street in a poor area of the Honduran capital on Saturday night and then burst into two houses, killing seven men and two women, police said. Several bodies lay in the street, oozing blood, police said.

“These deaths were provoked by territorial disputes between drug traffickers,” Tegucigalpa’s police chief Mario Chamorro told reporters.

Since last year, drug violence has been rising in Honduras, a key transit route for Colombian cocaine heading to the United States, as powerful Mexican cartels fight over smuggling corridors through Mexico and Central America.

Some 1,600 people died in drug violence in Honduras in 2009. Honduran authorities say Mexico’s top trafficker, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, is trying to crush rivals from the ruthless Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico who are also fighting for control in Central America.

Guzman is believed to own several properties in Honduras and recently spent time on vacation at a Honduran beach resort popular with U.S. and European tourists, according to police and the Honduran government.

Drug violence is raging across Mexico. Almost 20,000 people have died in the fight among cartels and with Mexican security forces since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led crackdown on drug gangs in late 2006.

The escalating violence is scaring off tourists and causing worries in the United States, which is giving anti-drug aid, equipment and police training to Mexico and Central American countries.

Some investors have frozen investment in Mexican factories in cities on the U.S. border, especially in Ciudad Juarez, the most deadly flash point in the drug war.

(Editing by Will Dunham)

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Explosives tossed at US embassy in Mexico

April 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Assailants hurled an explosive device at a United States consulate in a northern Mexico border city, damaging windows but causing no injuries, the consulate said on Saturday.

The device was thrown over a wall surrounding the consulate in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, on Friday night (local time).

The consulate said in a statement it would be closed indefinitely.

It was the latest attack on US consulates and consulate staff in Mexico.

Suspected drug hitmen killed three people linked to the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez last month, provoking outrage from US president Barack Obama and putting new pressure on Mexico to stop the growing violence.

Gunmen also threw a grenade at the US consulate in Monterrey in 2008.

Drug violence is raging across Mexico and almost 20,000 people have died in the fight among cartels and with Mexican security forces since president Felipe Calderon launched his army-led crackdown on drug gangs in late 2006.

Nuevo Laredo and the surrounding state of Tamaulipas have seen a surge in drug-related violence since the start of the year as the Gulf cartel fights its former armed wing, the Zetas, for smuggling routes into the United States.

The violence is scaring off tourists and worries Washington, which is giving anti-drug aid, equipment and police training to Mexico.

Some investors have frozen investment in factories in cities on the US border, especially in Ciudad Juarez, the most deadly spot in the drug war.

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Hitmen kill 10 youths in Mexico’s drug-hit north

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Suspected drug hitmen killed a carload of children and teenagers in northern Mexico in the latest of a rash of attacks on minors that have angered the public as drug gang violence spins out of control.

Ten youngsters aged from eight to 21 died on Sunday when gunmen opened fire and lobbed explosives at their pick-up truck after it sped through an improvised roadblock on an isolated highway in Durango state, in Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” drug-producing region, the attorney general’s office in Durango said.

Mexico’s drug cartels are growing ever more brazen, and a spate of brutal attacks in recent weeks, including the murder of two Americans, are worrying Mexicans along with tourists, foreign investors and the United States, which sent a high-level delegation to Mexico City last week.

Mexican soldiers on Monday captured a suspect linked to the fatal shooting this month of an American employee of the U.S. consulate in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, her U.S. husband and the Mexican husband of a fellow consulate worker.

Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont said on Monday the rampant violence only showed the importance of keeping up the pressure with the government’s army-led assault on drug traffickers. He waved off the idea of backing down.

“If some people think that events like those of the weekend where criminals slay youngsters in this cowardly way, if faced with these events Mexico is going to back off, they are mistaken,” Gomez Mont told a news conference.

Nearly 19,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and deployed tens of thousands of troops to drug hot spots across the country, sparking new turf wars between rival cartels.

But the conservative president’s anti-drugs strategy has been criticized following several brutal attacks on youths in the violent region along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In January, suspected drug cartel gunmen burst into a high school birthday party in the border city of Ciudad Juarez and killed 15 people, mostly minors, sparking angry protests from relatives and other city residents sick of daily violence.

Several of Sunday’s victims were related.

Gomez Mont said drug violence in Durango state was being driven by a violent turf war between the local Sinaloa alliance and the Zetas, the former armed wing of the rival Gulf cartel that is now trying to run its own smuggling operation.

Criminal gangs are known to sometimes set up military-style roadblocks to snag targets, and the northern business city of Monterrey was hit this month by a series of road barricades erected by armed men believed to be linked to drug gangs.

(Writing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Cynthia Osterman)

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U.S. lobbies a hurdle in Mexico drug war – Calderon

March 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Powerful groups in the United States appear to be blocking efforts to stem the flow of assault weapons fueling Mexico’s drug war, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Calderon, who has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and police to fight drug cartels, told Fareed Zakaria’s “GPS” program on CNN that there was resistance in Washington to Mexico’s demands that sales of such weapons be stopped.

“They (U.S. officials) say that they are facing strong opposition and there is powerful lobbies in the Congress in order to change that situation,” Calderon said in a pre-taped interview in Mexico City.

The Mexican leader added that solving the cross-border gun trafficking problem was critical to his bid to crack down on the drug-related violence that has killed 4,600 people in the past two years.

Mexico says 90 percent of the weapons used by drug gangs are bought in the United States, often legally. Mexican officials also want to see the U.S. Congress reinstate a ban on the sale of assault weapons that expired in 2004.

U.S. gun rights groups generally oppose such a restriction.

The United States is already deeply involved in Mexico’s struggle with drug gangs and has pledged some $1.4 billion over three years in a thus-far unsuccessful effort to crush cartels who ship $40 billion worth of illegal drugs north each year.

But concerns the violence in Mexico is escalating — two U.S. citizens were shot to death this month in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez — has led top U.S. officials to pledge more assistance.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-level delegation to Mexico City last week for talks, underscoring the Obama administration’s concerns about the drug violence south of the border.

Washington has started to increase searches of southbound vehicles on its border with Mexico for guns and money heading to Mexican cartels.

(Writing by Paul Simao, Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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U.S. lobbies a hurdle in Mexico drug war: Calderon

March 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Powerful groups in the United States appear to be blocking efforts to stem the flow of assault weapons fueling Mexico’s drug war, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

World | Mexico

Calderon, who has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and police to fight drug cartels, told Fareed Zakaria’s “GPS” program on CNN that there was resistance in Washington to Mexico’s demands that sales of such weapons be stopped.

“They (U.S. officials) say that they are facing strong opposition and there is powerful lobbies in the Congress in order to change that situation,” Calderon said in a pre-taped interview in Mexico City.

The Mexican leader added that solving the cross-border gun trafficking problem was critical to his bid to crack down on the drug-related violence that has killed 4,600 people in the past two years.

Mexico says 90 percent of the weapons used by drug gangs are bought in the United States, often legally. Mexican officials also want to see the U.S. Congress reinstate a ban on the sale of assault weapons that expired in 2004.

U.S. gun rights groups generally oppose such a restriction.

The United States is already deeply involved in Mexico’s struggle with drug gangs and has pledged some $1.4 billion over three years in a thus-far unsuccessful effort to crush cartels who ship $40 billion worth of illegal drugs north each year.

But concerns the violence in Mexico is escalating — two U.S. citizens were shot to death this month in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez — has led top U.S. officials to pledge more assistance.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-level delegation to Mexico City last week for talks, underscoring the Obama administration’s concerns about the drug violence south of the border.

Washington has started to increase searches of southbound vehicles on its border with Mexico for guns and money heading to Mexican cartels.

(Writing by Paul Simao, Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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FBI probes consular slayings in Mexico

March 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Faced with a brazen challenge from drug cartels, US FBI agents have joined a Mexican probe into attacks on US consular staff and their families that left three dead in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, officials say.

Mexican authorities blame the drive-by murders of an American employee of the US consulate, her husband and the husband of a Mexican consular employee on “the Aztecas,” a gang linked to the powerful Juarez drug cartel.

But investigators say it is still unclear why they were singled out by hit teams who ambushed the two family groups just minutes apart on Saturday after they left a birthday party in Ciudad Juarez.

“It could be a mistaken identity, it could be that they were targeted; we don’t know at this point,” said special agent Andrea Simmons, a spokesperson for the FBI’s El Paso, Texas, office just across the border from Ciudad Juarez.

She says seven or eight FBI agents have joined the investigation, along with agents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

An official with Mexico’s Chihuahua state prosecutors’ office has also confirmed that “various FBI agents are in Ciudad Juarez to help in the investigation”.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley says the Ciudad Juarez consulate, one of the largest such US facilities in the world, will remain closed as it undergoes a security review.

The city’s mayor has told reporters that security had recently been beefed up at the consulate following a bomb threat.

“We will, as the secretary and president pledged, work tirelessly with Mexican authorities to bring the killers… to justice,” Mr Crowley said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who is travelling to the troubled northern city for the third time in two months, reaffirmed Mexico’s “commitments to solve these crimes”.

The victims have been identified as Lesley Enriquez, an American working at the Juarez consulate; her American husband, Arthur Redelfs and Jorge Alberto Sarcido, the Mexican husband of another consular employee.

Ms Enriquez and her husband were killed in a hail of bullets as they were driving back to the US side of the border with their one-year-old daughter in the back seat, officials said. The baby survived unharmed.

In a separate attack, gunmen opened fire on Mr Sarcido’s car, killing him and wounding his two children, ages four and seven. His wife, a Mexican employee of the consulate, was following in a second car and escaped injury, a US official said.

- AFP

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Gay marriages begin after Mexico law change

March 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Five same-sex couples were married today in Mexico City after a recent change to the city’s laws.

They are the first to have legally recognised same-sex weddings anywhere in Latin America.

The judge who witnessed four of the five marriages, Hegel Cortes, called it “an historic day”.

But the move has many opponents.

The Mexican law and the resulting marriages have ignited a storm of protest.

The Catholic Church is staunchly opposed. So is the federal government, including president Felipe Calderon.

The attorney general has filed an appeal to stop the marriages, but Mexico’s federal courts rarely interfere in cases involving lower jurisdictions.

Homosexuality remains anathema throughout most of Latin America.

While one gay couple was married in Argentina last year, that marriage was quickly struck down by the courts.

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Leaders of G-5 countries meet in Italy

July 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

L’Aquila (Italy), July 9 (ANI): Leaders of the Group of Five emerging countries — Brazil, India, China, Mexico and South Africa — met on the sidelines of G-8 Summit on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe met in the talian town of L’Aquila.

China was represented by its State Councilor, Dai Bingguo, as President Hu Jintao return home to deal with unrest in western Xinjiang province.

The G-5 leaders discussed the global economy, climate change and world aid.

Earlier, G-8 leaders met in L’Aquila and discussed the State of the global economy, which is struggling to overcome its worst recession. By Naveen Kapoor (ANI)

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Drug cartel leader held in Mexico

May 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Mexico City, May 24 (EFE) A senior leader of a dreaded drug cartel of Mexico has been arrested in the northeastern city of Ciudad Victoria, authorities have said.

Nelson Garcia Lozano, the Gulf drug gang’s head of operations in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas province, was held following a gun exchange between his men and troops Saturday, the national defence secretariat said.

Three police officers protecting the drug gang leader were also arrested.

Two armoured vehicles and huge cache of arms and amunitions have also been recovered from them, the secretariat said in a statement.

Separately, security officials also arrested four kidnappers and freed a 37-year-old man who had been held hostage since May 16 at Lazaro Cardenas port, in Michoacan.

So far this month, 28 people suspected of involvement in kidnapping have been arrested and two of their victims released in Mexico.

Kidnapping is a serious problem in Mexico, with people from all classes of society targeted either to quickly drain their savings account – a crime known as ‘express’ kidnappings – or to extract ransom payments from relatives.

According to experts, the nation’s well organised, heavily armed drug cartels have even turned more regularly to kidnapping as a source of revenue due to the disruption of their operations by Mexican security forces.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of army soldiers and federal police to a dozen states to crack down on the cartels, whose internal power struggles and battles over drug routes have left more than 12,000 dead nationwide since 2006.

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WHO sounds world alarm over Mexico, US, swine flu outbreak

May 3, 2009 By 1 Comment

Mexico City/Geneva – A spreading lethal virus that has claimed 68 lives in Mexico and infected at least 11 people in the United States prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to send out a global alarm Saturday.

WHO officials raised the possibility of an emerging pandemic even as countries in the region, including Nicaragua, Colombia and Brazil, tightened airport controls over people and goods arriving from Mexico.

Mexico City has closed schools, museums and other public gathering places and the Mexican Army has been distributing face masks to the population. President Felipe Calderon authorized the secretary of health to isolate patients, inspect travellers and enter houses to fight the epidemic.

Football games were held in empty stadiums. Long lines formed outside drug stores.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization Saturday declared the outbreaks a “public health emergency of international concern,” a legal step that sent the alert worldwide.

But the emergency committee in Geneva left the alert status at its earlier 3 – denoting none, or very limited, human-to-human transmission – on its scale of 1 to 6. The alert status 4 would indicate evidence of an increase in human-to-human infection.

On Saturday, the New York City public health commissioner Thomas Frieden raised the spectre of a wider epidemic spreading from person to person after at least 75 students at a high school in the Queens fell ill.

Preliminary tests on mouth and nose swabs indicated the “likely” presence of swine flu in eight of nine students, a finding that needed to be confirmed by the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Results were expected Sunday. There was concern it was spreading “from person to person,” he said in broadcast remarks.

The news of cases in New York and two more in Kansas was “amplifying and reinforcing the concern we have that the spread of this virus … could potentially be a pandemic virus,” Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, told CNN.

Swine flu normally is spread from animal to human, and the emergence of a human-to-human strain could mean the influenza could gain virulence quickly.

Experts were puzzled by the pattern that in Mexico, it was affecting mainly young adults and causing serious respiratory disease including pneumonia, while its effects in the US appeared milder and aimed at younger victims.

Health officials said it is possible that US residents have developed some immunities through exposure to past waves of flu.

The numbers of infections have been growing since mid-March, WHO said.

Earlier Saturday, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib confirmed a figure of 62 dead in Mexico, with outbreaks in three separate locations. Mexican officials later raised the death toll to 68. Another 854 cases of pneumonia possibly connected to the influenza have been reported, WHO said.

Of the Mexican cases, 18 deaths had been confirmed by a laboratory in Canada as swine influenza A/H1N1, WHO said. Twelve were “genetically identical” to the viruses that have infected six people in California.

In the United States, all 11 confirmed cases to date have recovered from the illness, Dr Richard Besser, acting head of the CDC, told CNN. He identified seven confirmed cases in California, two in Texas and two in Kansas. Another case is suspected in Texas, and eight or nine in New York.

In the small town of Cibolo, Texas, outside San Antonio, state officials closed for a week Steele High School, where the state’s two confirmed and one suspected victims attended classes, the San Antonio Express-News newspaper reported online.

WHO was in constant contact with health authorities in the United States, Mexico, and countries in the Latin American region in monitoring the situation, officials said.

In addition to authorizing his health minister to isolate cases and carry out inspections at airports, Mexico’s President Calderon gave the minister the power to restrict activities and ban large gatherings of people in any one place, including stadiums.

Restaurant business had declined 40 per cent in Mexico City. The Catholic church did not cancel Sunday services, but urged believers to protect themselves if they came to church.

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos has stressed that Mexico has enough medication to combat the virus. He warned against self-medication, saying the anti-virals should only be used for people who are infected.

“We have fully identified the type of virus, and we have anti- viral drugs,” he said.

Who’s Strategic Health Operations Centre was now involved in the efforts in Mexico and the region.

Health officials were urging people to wash hands frequently, stay home if they are sick and avoid public gatherings.

The CDC’s Besser said the current wave of illness was an “outbreak,” not an epidemic, and that the CDC was aggressively investigating to find out why the influenza was having such a different effect in Mexico and the US. (dpa)

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WHO: swine flu deaths in Mexico reach 62

May 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Mexico City/Geneva – The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva said Saturday that the number of deaths from swine influenza in Mexico had reached 62. WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib gave the figure, while saying that the organisation’s Strategic Health Operations Centre was now involved in the efforts in the region.

The WHO was in constant contact with health authorities in the United States, Mexico, and countries in the Latin American region in monitoring the situation, she said.

On Friday, Mexican authorities had confirmed the deaths of 20 people due to swine influenza over the past three weeks, while a further 48 deaths were suspected from the disease.

Amid other actions, Mexico City closed its schools and President Felipe Calderon cancelled a visit to the northern city of Ciudad Juarez.

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos said that the WHO was sending experts, technical support and medicine to Mexico, to assist the authorities in controlling what the minister defined as a “controlled epidemic.”

However, he stressed that Mexico has enough medication to combat the virus.

“We have fully identified the type of virus, and we have anti- viral drugs,” he said.

Cordova Villalobos said the virus is transmitted from one human to another, and noted that there were 1,004 cases of infections across the country.

On Mexico’s northern border, the US states of California and Texas have reported eight cases of swine flu since March, but no deaths as of yet, the US Centers for Disease Control said Friday. Villalobos said. (dpa)

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China develops instant diagnostic method for swine flu

May 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

New Delhi, May 1 (ANI): In a bid to curb swine flu outbreak, China has developed a diagnostic tool for quick detection.

According to Minister of Health Chen Zhu, the nation has developed an effective method, which features a testing chemical reagent, for instant diagnosis of H1N1 influenza, reports China Daily.

It will be used at the centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) offices at all levels.

The WHO has also raised the official alert level to phase 5, one notch below a full-fledged global pandemic.

In response to the heightened alert, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has asked people to stay home for a five-day partial shutdown of the country, where 176 people have been killed by the epidemic.

Chen also revealed that China has asked the WHO, and some disease-hit countries including the United States, for the virus strain of the variant H1N1, which is crucial in the ongoing research for a vaccine.

Li Dexin, a senior official at China’s CDC, said that the WHO might provide the virus strain by mid-May.

“Once we get the H1N1 virus strain, it’s possible to produce the vaccine in three months,” Li said.

Yang Weizhong, deputy director of China’s CDC, said that although the time to avoid global outbreak has passed the best the government can do is to delay the spread of the virus.

This would provide more time for the research and production of vaccines. (ANI)

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1ST LEAD: Obama in Mexico for brief visit

April 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Mexico City – US President Barack Obama arrived in Mexico Thursday for an overnight visit to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

“Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies,” Calderon said as he welcomed Obama, quoting the late US president John F Kennedy.

Discussions are set to focus on drug trafficking and crime, as the death toll in Mexico’s drug wars has soared to more than 7,000 since January 2008.

Obama praised Mexico for having “so courageously taken on the drug cartels,” and stressed his government’s commitment to stopping the flow of guns and cash that come into Mexico from the United States.

The US government has conceded in recent weeks that the two countries share responsibility on this issue, as drugs flow north and weapons flow south.

While Calderon hailed “the opportunity of a new era of trust,” Obama said that “Mexico is not just a regional leader but also a global leader.”

“It’s critical that we join together around issues that cannot be solved by any one nation,” Obama said.

He recalled that about 33 per cent of people in Chicago, his home city, are of Mexican heritage.

The delegations from the two countries were set to meet later, prior to a private meeting between their two leaders.

This is the first visit to Mexico City by a US president since then-president Bill Clinton in 1997.

From Mexico, Obama is to fly Friday to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas. (dpa)

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Obama lands in Mexico for brief visit

April 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Mexico City – US President Barack Obama arrived in Mexico Thursday for an overnight visit to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa welcomed Obama at Mexico City’s international airport. Obama immediately helicoptered to the presidential residence Los Pinosto to join Calderon.

Regular activity was suspended for 35 minutes at the airport around the landing of Air Force One.

This is the first visit to Mexico City by a US president since then-president Bill Clinton in 1997.

Discussions are set to focus on drug trafficking and violent crime, as the death toll in Mexico’s drug wars has soared to more than 7,000 since January 2008.

The United States government has conceded in recent weeks that the two countries share responsibility in the issue, with drugs flowing north and weapons flowing south.

From Mexico, Obama is to fly Friday to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas. (dpa)

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