Mexico: “The High-Tech Lynching of the Teacher’s Pet?”

Garcia Luna, subject of a recent autohagiography by proxy in the New York Times (click image to read)

…in the case file there appear photocopies of some 30 credentials that Martínez Rocha was carrying the moment of his arrest; one identifies him as a member of the PFP police intelligence division, while the other 29, according to investigators, were to be sold off in order to credential Sinaloa cartel employees as police officers. All these credentials are signed by [García Luna deputy] Facundo Rosas.

Then Richie, Richie said:
“Hey man let’s dress up like cops
Think of what we could do!”
But something, something said “you better not”
–Television, “Venus de Milo”

From Proceso No. 1673 (Mexico): García Luna, incriminado.

As part of its coverage of Mexico’s Operación Limpieza — the narcotraffic had infiltrated the upper circles of the government’s anti-organized crime bureaus during the Fox administration, and continued to field agents on the inside during the Calderón administration — the investigative weekly tries to unravel a tangled web of deceit involving Genaro García Luna, head of the SSP, the federal Public Safety Secretariate.

García Luna is a political patronage appointment who just happens to be the son-in-law of SNTE high priestess Elba Ester “The Teacher” Gordillo — sort of a female Mexican Jimmy Hoffa.

Senior government officials have bent over backwards to swear up and down that the man is the very model of a modern top law enforcement officer, even as hordes of his top lieutenants get busted for allegedly taking big old narcobribes.

As Ricardo Ravelo points out, however, there are two protected witnesses who are directly accusing the Teacher’s pet of accepting bribes to protect the drug shipments of a drug cartel.

One of them is a former federal police investigator who has been very loudly making the rounds of the Mexican news media, accusing the Teacher’s pet of deliberately sabotaging Mexican anti-narcotics policy.

This whistelblower was recently arrested, while giving an interview at Televisa’s studios in Chapultepec, and charged with accepting narcobribery himself.

He claims the charges were ginned up after he refused to make a deal with the SSP to stop making accusations against the Teacher’s pet.

Another government witness, however, according to Proceso, states that both propositions are true: that the whistleblower was on the narcopayroll AND that the Teacher’s pet and his chief deputy were on the narcopayroll, too.

Senator Beltrones of the PRI said yesterday that it was vital that the news media not “lynch” the Teacher’s pet.

Very confusing. A plot worthy of Bioy-Casares. File under “fear, uncertainty and doubt” and “oxymoron, Mexican law enforcement as an.” I translate to my notes for future reference.

García Luna, incriminated

RICARDO RAVELO
Proceso (Mexico)
November 2008

One of the former ranking police official arrested recently for alleged ties with the narcotraffic, Javier Herrera Valles, had made accusations in various venues — including the federal presidency – - against the head of the federal Public Security Secretariate (SSP), Genaro García Luna, claiming that he was “simulating combat” against the narcotraffic while secretly working for the Sinaloa cartel.

Now, a man who worked for “El Chapo” Guzmán states, as a protected government witness, that Herrera really did take narco-bribes — as did García Luna and his undersecretary, Facundo Rosas.

“Mexican Drug Czar took $450,000 a Month from the Pacific Cartel”

Ramírez Mandujano: SIEDO's drugged czar?

Acusan a ex zar antidrogas de recibir 450 mil dls del narco: El Universal (Mexico City) reports. A follow-up to

• Mexico: Mafia, Antimafia and Medina Mora’s Mani Pulite
• Mexico: “Felipe, A Spy in the House of Law Enforcement”
• What Ever Happened to Mexico’s “The Man Behind the Meth”?

El procurador general de la República, Eduardo Medina Mora, informó que un integrante del cártel del Pacífico acusó a Noé Ramírez Mandujano, ex fiscal antidrogas, de haber recibido un pago de 450 mil dólares con el compromiso de que recibiría mensualmente la misma cantidad a cambio de proporcionar información reservada.

Mexican attorney general Medina Mora said that a member of the Pacific drug cartel has accused Noé Ramírez Mandujano, formerly Mexico’s top drug enforcement official, of receiving a payment of $450,000 from the cartel, along with a promise that he would receive the same sum every month in exchange for providing confidential information.

El funcionario precisó en conferencia de prensa que la entrega del dinero se realizó poco después de que asumiera su cargo en la PGR.

Medina Mora added that the payment was accepted shortly after the official assumed his post at the federal attorney’s office.

Mexico: “Felipe, A Spy in the House of Law Enforcement”

Alberto Beltrán Leyva in custody, January 2008. Cartel allegedly owned top federal cops for years.

“Every time we had a major case involving a criminal organization from Mexico operating in the United States, there was a significant allegation of corruption involving the Mexican Attorney General’s office, a Mexican state police force, the highway police.” — Thomas A. Constantine, former superintendent of the DEA, interview with the NY Times, November 26, 1999

The spy for the drug cartels went to work as a criminal investigator at the United States Marshal’s Service. His job was to collect information from Mexican authorites about fugitives abroad.

Top Mexican antimafia cop investigated over bribery of senior SIEDO official and military liaison officers, who allegedly got paid handsome sums to hand over classified intelligence from antinarcotics operations to big-time narcos.

La Jornada (Mexico) reports.

Spy for the drug cartels easily circumvented “tight security controls” in Washington D.C. to land a law enforcement post with a U.S. agency, according to El Universal (Mexico). (Say what, now!?)

It is astonishing, if Google News is any indication, how little the U.S. press cares about the alleged infiltration of the U.S. Marshals Office by a spy for the Mexican marching powder cartels.

The story is taking a back seat in the Mexican press today to passage of a Pemex reform bill by the Mexican Congress.

La Jornada first.

Los funcionarios de la Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO) que fueron detenidos por vender información clasificada a narcotraficantes formaban parte en 2002 de un “grupo especial” de ex militares de elite comandado por José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, entonces titular de esa subprocuraduría.

The SIEDO officials arrested for selling classified information to narcotraffickers were all part of a “special unit” of former elite military men formed in 2002 and commanded by José Santiago Vasconcelos, then head of SIEDO.

En julio pasado, un ex director de Interpol-México aseguró que conoció en 2002 a Miguel Ángel Colorado, cuando era el coordinador general técnico de la fiscalía antinarcóticos, y al capitán Fernando Rivera, quien fungía como director adjunto de Inteligencia de esa instancia dependiente de la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR).

Last July, a former director of Interpol Mexico stated that he met Miguel Ángel Colorado in 2002, when he was the technical director of the antinarcotics office of the Mexican attorney general, as well as Capt. Fernando Rivera, who worked as the military liaison to this office.

“Me comentaron que formaban parte de un grupo especial operativo de la Unidad Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada; que estaban directamente bajo las órdenes de Santiago Vasconcelos, y que sólo a él rendían cuentas”, declaró el pasado 2 de julio en la embajada de México en Estados Unidos el ex funcionario de Interpol, al que se proporcionó el alias de Felipe para proteger su identidad.

“They said they were part of a special operations unit in the organized crime division, that they took orders directly from Santiago Vasconcelos, and answered to no one else,” the former Interpol official, who has been given the alias “Felipe” in order to protect his identity, said on July 2 at the Mexican embassy in the United States.

Brad Will: Federal Case Is Mexican-Divorced From the Evidence

Global Voice Online -- "equal time for nonsense" -- gave prominent play to shady bloggers who claimed the paramilitaries were firing into the air on the day. Take a look at this photo. That pistol is pointed right at YOU.

Reporters Without Borders notes the arrest of three APPO activists in the death of New Yorker Brad Will, a photographer for Indymedia, in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, in 2006.

Mexican federal authorities allege that powder burns were found on Will’s body, suggesting a shot fired at short range, despite autopsy findings published at the time and indicating that the fatal shot was fired from a distance into the front of Will’s body as he faced his assailants.

Televisa and Azteca radio affiliates in the area broadcast disinformation about the incident, claiming that Will was armed and engaged in combat when he was killed, for example.

Photographers standing beside the New Yorker captured the men firing the shots (above), who have now been identified.

Cops moonlighting as political death squads for Governor Ruiz, using informal state terrorism to put down a strike by the dissident Section 22 of the National Teachers Union — which bucked orders by Elba Ester “The Teacher” Gordillo not to strike during the 2006 national election season — did it. Duh.

Reporters Without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the Mexican federal justice ministry’s response to a recent recommendation by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) regarding the October 2006 fatal shooting of US cameraman Brad Will of the Indymedia agency in the southern city of Oaxaca (see 2 October release).

Mexico: “The Teacher Gives a HMMVV Job”

Las Hummer’s [sic] de la Gordillo: Milenio (Mexico) reports on a widely commented incident in which Elba Ester “The Teacher” Gordillo, dictator for life of the SNTE national education union, presented each and every one of her regional section chiefs with a brand new HMMVV at a recent union congress.

(I wonder if the head of Section 22 in Oaxaca got one, too?)

Cuando el mundo entero se encuentra en el filo de la recesión económica y los organismos financieros internacionales lanzan graves advertencias sobre lo que se avecina, la lideresa del Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, Elba Ester Gordillo Morales, en un acto de fanfarronería y prepotencia sin precedentes, ordena la compra de 59 camionetas Hummer, cada una con un valor superior a 500 mil pesos, para regalarlas a los secretarios generales de otras tantas secciones del sindicato, de ‘su sindicato’.

At a time when the entire world finds itself in the bread lines of economic recession and international financial bodies are issuing grave warnings about what comes next, the leader of the national educational workers union (SNTE), Elba Ester Gordillo Morales, in an unprecedented act of arrogance and self-promotion, ordered the purchase of 59 HMMVVs, each worth more than 500,000 pesos, as a present for the general secretaries of all the other sections of the union, of “her union.”

500,000 pesos at this point would only be about $38,000 dollars. I think Hummers cost more than that.

The Houston Chron — your non-Miamian, ORVEX-free gateway to Latin America — and quite a few other English-language papers picked up the story as well.

More notes on The Teacher:

• Mexico: OECD Pesters Elba Esther
• Mexico: New Book of Esther Features The Teacher
• “Calderón is Gordillo’s Poodle”
• The Master and Margarita: A Mexican Mala Educación?

Proceso (Mexico) has this analysis of the “HMMVV Jobs For Patronage Votes” affair:

MÉXICO, D.F., 15 de octubre (apro).- Frente al escándalo de las 59 Hummer que Elba Esther Gordillo regaló a sus huestes, una de las cosas que más ha llamado la atención es el silencio del gobierno de Felipe Calderón y del PAN, lo que viene a corroborar la alianza electoral que han firmado rumbo a las elecciones de 2009 y que mantendrán a cualquier costo.

In the midst of the scandal of the 59 Hummers that The Teacher gave her hosts, one of things that most calls attention is the silence of the Calderón government and of PAN, a fact that tends to corroborate the political alliance they have forged with her for the 2009 elections, and which they plan to hold onto at any cost.

Gordillo allegedly played a major role in defrauding the 2006 national elections (which were, without a doubt, crookeder than the hind leg of an arthritic pit bull. The company hired without competitive bidding to count the votes belonged to one of the candidate’s brother-in-law, for Christ’s sake. And so on. Flagrant and grotesque.).

Chiapas Narcs Seize Two Tons of Powdered Milk, Bag Two Zetas

El U: Revolutionary redesign looks awfully familar Click to zoom and note “minute by minute” page element.

Corrige Ministerio de Justicia; no era cocaína, sino lactosa: “The Chiapas Ministry of Justice corrects itself; lactose, not cocaine, was apprehended.”

The report is from El Universal (Mexico), whose new Web site design (above) looks uncannily like the redesign of the Estado de São Paulo, El País, and a number of other Romance-language dailies we read on a regular basis.

Mexican federales falling all over themselves in earnest shows of efficiency in order to earn the praise of drug-warriors north of the border is not an unprecedented occurrence. See

• Mexico: “Show of Efficiency Generates Phony Numbers in Marching Powder Bust”

A 10 días de que el Ministerio de Justicia del Estado (MJE) informó del decomiso de dos toneladas de cocaína, que presuntamente iban destinadas al cártel de Sinaloa y a la organización del narcotraficante ” El Mayo-Zambada”, la dependencia admitió este jueves que se equivocó y que el cargamento asegurado es de lactosa.

Ten day after the state ministry of justice announced the seizure of two tons of cocaine, supposedly destined for the Sinaloa cartel and the criminal organization of “El Mayo-Zambada,” the agency now admits that it was mistaken, and that the shipment seized consisted of lactose.

Powdered milk.

El Ministerio indicó en un comunicado que, de acuerdo al informe proporcionado por la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), las aproximadamente dos toneladas de polvo blanco, aseguradas en una casa de seguridad de una colonia popular, “resultó ser de lactosa”.

The ministry said in a statement that according to information from the attorney general’s office (PGR), the approximately two tons of white powder seized in a safe house in a poor neighborhood “turned out to be lactose.”

Mexico: Did Big Tech Dig Undermine Calderón’s Tax Man?

Miguel Badillo is a Mexican investigative journalist and author of “ISOSA: Fraud on the Nation”

Oficio de Papel (Mexico): Miguel Badillo analyzes the resignation of Mexico’s top tax collector, wondering whether or not it has to do with the ISOSA case and the failed enterprise integration Big Dig that Oracle was hired to do for the Mexican Hacienda (Treasury).

On which see also:

• Badillo: “Oracle’s Mexican Tax Big Dig Sinks Deeper?”
• Mexico: Oracle is Ambiguous in Wolfowitz-Funded Tax-Tech Big Dig!
• Mexican Tax Man: Bad Business Logic Behind Miscounted Beans
• Mexico: ISOSA Probed by Mexican Congress
• Badillo: Oracle-Powered Mexican Tax Machine Bogs Down
• Badillo: Peoplesoft and the Iron Auditor

I note it because I am in the habit of noting stories about tech audits of Big Digs. I have actually worked on a few. It is an interesting, though nerdy, subject.

Mexico-Microsoft’s Enciclomedia “revolution in e-ducation” and the Hildebrando117 affair are other “make a run for the border” cases I have been following:

• Mexico: What the Education Committee Resolved to Say About the Enciclomedia Program
• Did Harvard Really Declare the Enciclomedia Program Useless?
• Mexico: “Enciclomedia Audit Awards No Plaudits”
• Mexico: “Enciclomedia Runs No Risk of Being Discontinued”
• Mexico: Hildebrando117 Journo Summarily Ratfinked For Refusal to Cede Editorial Independence
• Hildebrando117 Reloaded: Remembering the Aristegui Demonstration
• “PAN’s Dirty Hands”: More Hildebrando Data Brokerage-Jokerage?

June 16, 2008
Translation C. Brayton
[excerpt]

Oracle: a lucrative deal

It has not all been crystaline transparency at the Mexican federal tax authority (SAT) during the administration of the man who is principally responsible for squeezing taxpayers for what they owe, because there are many taxpayers, principally big taxpayers, who still do not pay what they owe. Suspicions have emerged during his five years at the helm of SAT, according to critics of this federal bureaucrat who shies away from the press, that provided the motive for his firing.

Among the cases that raise doubts about Zubiría Maqueo was the audit commissioned by the SAT from KPMG, and paid for by the “private” firm ISOSA (a corrupt enterprise created on the orders of Fox Treasury secretary Francisco Gil Díaz) – in which it was revealed that the Integrated Solution Platform, developed by Oracle, does not work, despite which the SAT signed contracts on the systems worth in excess of 50 million pesos.

Rio: “Army Troops Take Part in Narcoexecutions”

Army Unit in Deadly Alliance With Drug Gang, is the headline in today’s O Globo.

A follow-up to

• Rio: The Army Charges Up Providência Hill; Residents Charge “Abuses”

Whether the military should play a role in public security in Rio de Janeiro has been a long-running controversy. Proponents pointed to the “success” of the Brazilian-led UN peace-keeping mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH. See, for example,

• “Haiti is a Laboratory For Rio”: Estadão

Others, including veterans of the Mexican and Colombian drug wars, have warned that militarization of efforts to suppress the drug trade tends to lead to the same result observed with civilian police forces: They are easily neutralized by corruption and infiltration.

Mexico’s Zetas, for example, are recruited from former elite paratroopers. The drug cartels just plain pay better. Much better.

This seems like a potential case in point. We have seen investigations here indicating that arms and ammo fall off the back of army loading docks, that ex-soldiers provide advanced sniper training and rifles to criminals, that soldiers and ex-soldiers are involved in both drug gangs and militias, and so on and so forth.

Overnight, a Brazilian court ordered the temporary arrest, for 30 days, of 11 Army troops accused of the murder of three young men detained on Saturday, in the Morro da Providência, downtown Rio de Janeiro. Seven privates, three sergeants and an officer allegedly “sold” the young men to drug traffickers from the Morro da Mineira, in Catumbi, which belongs to a rival faction. The bodies were discovered yesterday afternoon at the Gramacho garbage dump , in Caxias, shot a number of times. After six hours of questioning at the Eastern Military Command, some of the soldiers confessed to having handed over the victims to the traffickers. The Army will open an IPM, an internal disciplilnary proceeding. Providência residents demonstrated in front of the barracks of Army units. The arrest warrant was requested by police commander Ricardo Dominguez, of the 4th Police District (Downtown), who is investigating the case.

On recent developments at the Morro da Mineira, see also

• NMM(-TV)SNBCNNBS: Brazil’s TV Record Rio Covers “The Mineira War”
• Rio de Janeiro: Did Military Police Free Mineira Marauder?
• “No One Dead is Innocent”: Virgina Tech and Catumbi

A scandalous and terrifying bangue-bangue between cops and criminals in Catumbi, a strategic point in the downtown commute, last year ended in (1) a major media perp walk of a major drug gang leader, followed by (2) the quiet release of said major perp on the orders of an officer in one of the police units engaged in the three-way combat that day.

Whatever happened to that case?

… Seven privates, three sergeants, and an officer are accused of having “sold” three young men detained in the Morro da Providencia on Saturday night to a rival drug gang in the Morro da Mineira. The bodies of Wellington Gonzaga de Costa, 19 , Marcos Paulo da Silva Correia, 17, and David Wilson Florêncio, 24, where found yesterday afternoon at the Gramacho garbage dump in Caxias by state judicial police. During questioning, some of the soldiers confessed to having taken the young men to Mineira, a shantytown controlled by a rival drug gang.

The three young men were approached by soldiers as they arrived at a dance being held in Américo Brum Square, at the top of Providência hill. From there, they were taken to an army barracks in Santo Cristo, from where they were taken to the Morro da Mineira. The Caxias medical examiner noted that the youngest victim was executed with two gunshots and the others with nearly 20 gun shots each. Most of the bullets were fired into the face.