230,000 Mexicans displaced by Mexico's drug war

[LostAmerican]

MEXICO CITY — About 230,000 people have been displaced in Mexico because of drug violence, and about half of them may have taken refuge in the United States, according to a new study.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre based this week's report on studies by local researchers, saying that the Mexican government does not compile figures on people who have had to leave their homes because of turf battles between drug gangs.

"Independent surveys put their number at around 230,000," according to the global report's section on Mexico. "An estimated half of those displaced crossed the border into the United States, which would leave about 115,000 people internally displaced, most likely in the States of Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila and Veracruz."

While that number is far below the estimated 3.6 to 5.2 million displaced by decades of drug- and guerrilla-war violence in Colombia, the report suggested that people who had to flee drug violence in Mexico have received little support.

"In Mexico, state and federal authorities did not acknowledge or start to respond to the internal displacement caused by drug cartels," the Geneva-based organization said.

Mexico's Interior Department said it had no immediate comment on the report.

However, government census figures released this month support the idea of an exodus, at least in some areas.

The census, carried out in mid-2010, listed as uninhabited 61 percent of the 3,616 homes in Praxedis G. Guerrero, a border township in the Rio Grande Valley east of Ciudad Juarez. The area has suffered turf battles between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, and people in the town said gunmen have them to leave.



A striking 111,103 of the 488,785 homes in violence-wracked Ciudad Juarez were abandoned, or about 23 percent, and almost one-third of the 160,171 houses in Reynosa were unoccupied. The figure for Mexico as a whole was 14 percent, and many of those, especially in southern states, may belong to migrants who went to the United States seeking work.

Part of the exodus, the IDMC report noted, was because of the indiscriminate nature of the drug violence, which has killed more than 35,000 people since President Felipe Calderon ramped up an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.

Police in the northern city of Monterrey reported Friday that a local television host on a children's variety program was kidnapped and killed by gunmen and his body left on a roadside.

A cousin of host Jose Luis Cerda and a cameraman on his show also were also kidnapped late Thursday and were killed.

Cerda used the stage moniker "The Cat" on the children's program known as "The Club." Police officials said the motives were still under investigation.

Cerda's blindfolded, bound body was found in a vacant lot, then stolen by gunmen as police were cordoning off the area. A spokesman for the state government who was not authorized to give his name said Cerda's body turned up for a second time later Friday beside a main road in the city center and was secured by authorities.

Nuevo Leon public security office says five Guadalupe police officers have been detained and will be investigated for failing to provide adequate security after the initial finding of La Gata's body.

In the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, five dismembered bodies, four of them police officers who were abducted hours earlier, were found just a few blocks from where President Felipe Calderon and Guerrero State Governor Zeferino Torreblanca inaugurated the city's annual Tourism Fair for international tour operators and industry officials.

Calderon has declared 2011 the Year of Tourism as Acapulco is facing record levels of violence from warring cartels, including an attack on a bar that killed 10 last weekend and 27 people killed in one day in January.

Hundreds of soldiers and police stood guard outside the convention center on the main tourism thoroughfare.

The bodies Friday were found inside an abandoned SUV with banners whose contents weren't revealed. Drug gangs often leave messages with their victims.

Report: 230,000 displaced by Mexico's drug war - Health - msnbc.com

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How many Americans had to leave their once beautiful neighborhoods to the invading Mexicans who turn them into Latin American crapholes!

A snake in Mexico is a snake in the US. Not one of these people will become wonderful hard working Americans. This is WAR and it is one that Mexico created to destroy the American way of life.

BTW: 50,000,000 people died in World War II. Did Mexicans give a shit?

 

[editec]

We set up the conditions to make MEXICO the drug source, and then blame MEXICO for what their LIBERTARIAN FREE-MARKET CAPTIALISTS (AKA Drug lords) have done to the place?

That's so stupid it's hilarious!

 

[LostAmerican]

We set up the conditions to make MEXICO the drug source, and then blame MEXICO for what their LIBERTARIAN FREE-MARKET CAPTIALISTS (AKA Drug lords) have done to the place?

That's so stupid it's hilarious!

If I remember correctly, Mexico was a source of a medical narcotic to relieve pain in wounded American soldiers during WW2, one of the many wars Mexico slept through.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Are we trying to find another way to justify acceptance of illegal Mexican aliens here in the U.S.? BE REAL...

 

[editec]

Are we trying to find another way to justify acceptance of illegal Mexican aliens here in the U.S.? BE REAL...

No, I don't think that was the point of this thread.

Our masters don't need reasons to do what they do.

They do what they like and their tools accept it.

 

[waltky]

Entire villages becoming ghost towns...

Hundreds flee drug violence - and their homes - in Mexico
May 26, 2011 : The number of internally displaced people in Mexico pales in comparison to those forced to flee rural areas of Colombia, for example, but the number is growing.

Ghost towns are nothing new in Mexico. Entire villages have long been left empty, as residents with no way to make a living migrate to the US for jobs. But now a force beyond mere economics is causing Mexicans to shutter their windows and flee: drug violence. In the state of Michoacan, residents in villages throughout the “Tierra Caliente” or “Hot land,” where drug traffickers who rule swaths of territory have fled their homes to take refuge in impromptu shelters after gun battles between rival drug gangs erupted this week. “All of the residents of little towns have fled,” says Hugo Rodriguez, who works in the human rights office in Apatzingan, the principal city in this region of Michoacan. “For their own safety, they took their families and temporarily moved into shelters.”

An official in the state told the Associated Press that some 700 had left their homes and slept at a water park in Buenavista Tomatlan this week. Others have moved temporarily into community centers and churches. Local media has reported that up to 2,500 people have fled the various towns in this part of the state in recent days. This mass evacuation comes after one in November, in which hundreds of residents in Ciudad Mier, in northern Mexico, fled for a neighboring town, after the drug group the Zetas issued a letter saying that if any residents remained they would be killed. Some 400 left and have since returned home. Mexico’s drug violence is often compared with that of Colombia, but the four-decade-long battle between leftist guerrillas and the state and more recently with drug traffickers has caused far more displacement, with over three million internally displaced people. Just this week the Colombian Congress paved the way for the return of millions of acres of land and reparations for the displaced (see yesterday's blog post).

In Mexico, some 230,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), based in Norway. Most have left northern Mexico, especially in towns like Ciudad Juarez that have been in the crossfire of drug violence. That city's Municipal Planning Institute has reported that in 2010 up to 116,000 homes were vacant. According to the IDMC, using survey data from Ciudad Juarez, in 2010 alone some 230,000 fled their homes. About half went north to the US, leaving some 115,000 internally displaced people in Mexico. The number of those leaving smaller towns, where security is scant, has not been quantified, but is growing. It is hard to distinguish between those fleeing because of violence and for economic reasons, and many times the evacuation is temporary.

Mr. Rodriguez, for example, says that many of the displaced in Michoacan are already planning to return home as the situation calms down. But, here's some perspective: During the 1990s some 60,000 people were displaced from Chiapas, according to the IDMC, in the wake of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation uprising. That's a quarter of those forced to flee today. It will not be surprising if more towns empty out in the face of drug violence, which has spread throughout the country. This week in the state of Nayarit, in western Mexico, a gun battle between two rival gangs left 29 dead. And in another ongoing case, the man who allegedly ordered the killing of the son of the poet Javier Sicilia, who has been leading peace marches across the country, has been arrested.

Source

 

[waltky]

Vigilantes kill drug gang members?...

21 Bodies Found in Western Mexico
Friday, June 10th, 2011 - Police in western Mexico have discovered the bodies of 21 men.

Officials said Thursday the victims were found in various locations outside the city of Morelia in Michoacan state. Police say the victims appear to be between the ages of 20 and 35 and some showed signs of torture.

Authorities say some of the bodies had warning notes attached. One read “here are the thieves, muggers and rapists, and there are still more to come.” It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the murders.

Michoacan is the home state of Mexican President Felipe Calderon and has been the site of bloody drug-related violence. It is the base of the drug cartel known as La Familia.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug-related violence since Mr. Calderon took office in late 2006 and began cracking down on the nation's cartels.

Source

 

[waltky]

Journalist and family shot dead in Mexico...

Mexico Reporter, His Son and Wife Shot to Death
Monday, June 20, 2011 — A journalist, his wife, and their 21-year-old son were shot to death inside their home in this Gulf coast city Monday, authorities said.

Journalist Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco and his family were shot with a 9 mm handgun, said Veracruz state prosecutor Jorge Yunis. Lopez Velasco wrote a column about politics and crime and was editorial director for the daily newspaper Notiver. His son had been working as a photographer for the same newspaper. Yunis said investigators haven't determined a motive in the killings and no one has been arrested.

Earlier this month, state police in Veracruz found the body of reporter Noel Lopez in a clandestine grave. He had been missing since March. The two reporters are not related. Police said Noel Lopez died of a blow to the head and that soldiers found his body after a man they arrested in the killings of several police officers confessed to killing him and led them to the body.

Noel Lopez worked for the weeklies Horizonte and Noticias de Acayucan and for the daily newspaper La Verdad. Press freedom groups say Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists. More than 60 reporters have been killed in Mexico since 2000, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

Mexico Reporter, His Son and Wife Shot to Death | CNSnews.com

See also:

US-Mexico border: new tourist attraction?
June 21, 2011 - With news of drug violence along the US-Mexico border, most Americans are avoiding it. But one tour beckons, promising an apolitical view that gets past the usual rhetoric.

The US-Mexico border: scary place or misunderstood region? Now you can find out for yourself. A new Arizona bus tour promises to shed light on what life is really like along a stretch of the 2,000-mile international boundary, a flashpoint for heated debate over illegal immigration and national security. “Border Crisis: Fact and Fiction” introduces tour-goers to ranchers, business owners, and others who live and work on both sides of the border. “Take your own fact-finding mission on the US-Mexico border,” a Gray Line Tours advertises. “Don’t let the politicians and news broadcasters become your only source of information.”

The $75 tours, touted as apolitical, aim to get past the rhetoric that revolves around the border by offering twice-a-month trips to Nogales, Ariz., about 60 miles south of Tucson. The tours include a look at the state's busiest port of entry, the border wall, and a water tank placed a few miles away to aid migrants making the illegal trek north through the desert. “So many people with so many agendas want the average person to believe the border is a certain way,” tour guide Bob Feinman says. “Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing. And it’s a pretty controversial thing all the time.” The daylong trip gives people an opportunity to gain enough of an understanding about the border to shape their own views, he says.

Nogales is a high desert town of about 20,000 that lies in the Border Patrol’s 260-mile Tucson sector, the most guarded along the Southwest border. The town also is hub for cross-border commerce. Tour organizers, which include Humane Borders and the Santa Cruz Community Foundation, eventually plan to extend the daylong excursions south of the border into Nogales, Sonora, Mr. Feinman says. The short trip is ideal for those who want to satisfy their curiosity about the much-discussed border region, says Bob Phillips, the foundation’s executive director. He hopes people who take the tour walk away with a picture in their minds that more closely resembles reality. “We certainly think that’s a good thing,” Mr. Phillips says.

Source