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NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AP) — Mexican soldiers battled gunmen in two cities across the border from Texas on Wednesday, prompting panicked parents to pull children from school and factories to warn workers to stay inside. Assailants in a third city threw a grenade at an army barracks.
The U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo warned American citizens to stay indoors. The statement said there were reports of drug gangs blocking at least one intersection near the consulate in the city across from Laredo, Texas.
The local city government and witnesses reported several more blockades — a new tactic that has emerged in northeastern Mexico, where violence has soared this year amid a split between the Gulf and Zetas drug gangs.
Cartel gunmen frequently use stolen cars and buses to form roadblocks during battles with soldiers. Witnesses in Nuevo Laredo said gunmen forced people from their cars to use the vehicles in the blockades.
Shootouts also erupted in Reynosa, across from McAllen, causing a huge traffic jam in the highway connecting the city with Monterrey and Matamoros.
The local governments of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo warned residents to stay inside through a series of Twitter and Facebook messages.
By the evening, the Nuevo Laredo government said in a Twitter message that the "situation of risk" had ended, and most of the vehicles blocking the roads had been removed.
The city government also said federal authorities reported no fatalities, but it was unclear if anyone was injured. Officials at the press office of the Mexican Defense Department said they had no immediate information on the shootouts.
Witnesses and reporters at the scene said four shootouts erupted in Nuevo Laredo, including one behind a Walmart store near a residential area.
Bullet casings from assault rifles littered the scene, and at least one house and two cars had bullet holes. Apolinar Rodriguez, a resident of the neighborhood, said he thought he heard grenade blasts.
"They are fighting with everything they have," he said.
Parents rushed to schools to pick up their children. Factory managers at one industrial parked closed their gates, ordered their workers not to leave and canceled night shifts...................
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The Associated Press: Gunbattles stir panic in 2 Mexican border cities
Juan Carlos Olivera Acosta was captured around 8:00 p.m. Sunday in Guadalupe, a city in the Monterrey metropolitan area, the secretariat said. An unidentified policewoman and a man identified as Victor Manuel Ramos were arrested along with Olivera Acosta, the secretariat said. Three rifles, a handgun, 19 ammunition clips, 370 rounds of ammunition, a vehicle and four radios were seized from the suspects. Olivera Acosta, who had belonged to Los Zetas for four years, was wanted for murder, extortion, robbery and other crimes. The suspect was also allegedly involved in the failed attempt on Oct. 8 to free five Zetas members arrested by Federal Police officers in Linares, the second-largest city in Nuevo Leon. Several federal officers were wounded when gunmen opened fire on them.
Olivera Acosta was recruited into Los Zetas by former soldier Octavio Almanza Morales, who was arrested by army troops in early 2010 in the Caribbean resort city of Cancun, the Defense Secretariat said. Olivera Acosta was put in charge of the drug cartel's operations in southern Nuevo Leon in August 2010. Nuevo Leon and neighboring Tamaulipas state have been rocked by a wave of violence unleashed by drug traffickers battling for control of smuggling routes into the United States. The violence has intensified in the two border states since the appearance in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, in February 2010 of giant banners heralding an alliance of the Gulf, Sinaloa and La Familia drug cartels against Los Zetas.
Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, known as "El Lazca," deserted from the Mexican army in 1999 and formed Los Zetas with three other soldiers, all members of an elite special operations unit, becoming the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel. After several years on the payroll of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas went into the drug business on their own account and now control several lucrative territories. The cartels arrayed against Los Zetas blame the group's involvement in kidnappings, armed robbery and extortion for discrediting "true drug traffickers" in the eyes of ordinary Mexicans willing to tolerate the illicit trade as long as the gangs stuck to their own unwritten rule against harming innocents.
Read more: Army troops capture a Zetas cartel boss in northern Mexico - Fox News Latino
President Felipe Calderon's militarized struggle against organized crime will leave Mexico a "destroyed, depopulated, irreparably broken nation," Marcos said in an essay, "On Wars," he sent to philosopher Luis Villoro. Though it still calls itself an army, the EZLN has not engaged in military operations since its initial January 1994 uprising in the southern state of Chiapas.
"Thanks to the sponsorship of Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, we need not resort to the geography of the Middle East to critically reflect on war. It is no longer necessary to turn back the calendar to Vietnam, Playa Giron (the Bay of Pigs)...," the essay says. Calderon's war on crime was doomed from the start, according to Marcos, because it was "conceived, not as a solution to a problem of security, but to a problem of legitimacy, and it is destroying the last redoubt left to a nation: the social fabric."
The "problem of legitimacy" refers to the circumstances of Calderon's accession to the presidency, which followed months of protests after he narrowly won a July 2006 election marred by allegations of fraud. The United States, as the "principal provider" of weapons to both the Mexican security forces and the cartels, is the only winner in the drug war, Marcos said. Even as Washington supplies the Mexican military and police, the cartels acquire many of their weapons - notably assault rifles - from gun shops in U.S. border states.
Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/ne...drug-war-zapatista-leader-says/#ixzz1EA4fmMJu
Napolitano spoke at the Bridge of The Americas border crossing, after a meeting with the mayors of the border towns of El Paso, Nogales, Ariz., and Yuma, Ariz. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin also were present. Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security will deploy 250 more border agents and expects to have 300 more under their next budget if it's approved. She stated that Homeland Security is investing "millions of dollars in the side of commerce and trade" to improve infrastructure and technology along the border.
However, she added that there is a need to correct wrong impressions about the border region. Napolitano said border towns are safe for travel, trade and commerce. She noted that the total value of imports crossing the Southwest border was up 22 percent in fiscal year 2010, she said. "There is a perception that the border is worse now than it ever has been. That is wrong. The border is better now than it ever has been," she said.
The perception that the violence in Mexico has spilled over to bordering U.S. cities is "wrong again," Napolitano said. Violent crime rates have remained flat or decreased in border communities in the Southwest, she said. However, she recognized that "there is much to do with (their) colleagues in Mexico in respect to the drug cartels" that are largely responsible for the unprecedented wave of violence in that country. El Paso Mayor John Cook said his city has been ranked the safest city in the country of its size, despite being across the border from Ciudad Juarez, which is at the center of Mexico's drug cartel violence. "The lie about border cities being dangerous has been told so many times that people are starting to believe it, but we as border communities have to speak out," Cook said.
Napolitano cited a reduction of 36 percent in the number of illegal immigrant detentions, a key number to estimate the total of illegal border crossings, and the increase in trade as reasons to believe the situation along the border has improved. "Numbers are in the right direction and dramatically so," she said. Still, she stressed that she didn't come to El Paso "to run a victory lap" and that there "is much work to do."
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The immigrants heard the engine slow as the pilot steered through breakers. Twelve hours earlier, they had shoved off from a beach near Ensenada. Now, they were bobbing off Red Beach at Camp Pendleton. Out in the darkness, California beckoned. "Jump out!" barked the pilot. The 17 immigrants climbed over the side of the rickety boat, stumbling and splashing their way through the surf where U.S. Marines usually charge ashore in armored vehicles during amphibious assault exercises. "I couldn't run because I had been sitting in the boat for so long," said Maribel Ruiz. "But the pilot kept yelling, 'Run! Run! Run!' It was terrible."
Ruiz, a 40-year-old mother of two, ended up face down on the sand as U.S. Border Patrol agents lighted the beach with high-powered beams and corralled her and the other Mexican illegal immigrants. The pilot turned the boat around and sped off toward Mexico. Similar scenes are playing out with increasing frequency along the Southern California coast as smugglers launch more immigrant and drug-filled vessels than ever before toward the state — about one every three days on average. Vessels still land at San Diego-area beaches but are also traveling as far north as Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. Drug smugglers venturing even farther have been caught on Catalina Island and Santa Rosa Island, off the Santa Barbara coast.
Last year, 867 illegal immigrants and smugglers were arrested at sea or along the California coast, more than double the number in 2009. Border authorities have had to redeploy agents from the land border to the coast, where they scan the ocean with night-vision goggles and give chase across dunes instead of fields. "I used to think that the [border] was the fence....All of a sudden this has become the front line in our efforts," said U.S. Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Steve McPartland at the San Clemente station, speaking to boaters and residents at Dana Point Harbor.
Immigrants have stumbled ashore in the shadow of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. In Del Mar, two smugglers ran their marijuana-laden boat onto a dog beach across from multimillion-dollar homes. At least eight immigrants ran up the bluffs to East Coast Highway after their boat beached at Crystal Cove near Newport Beach. Sixteen people aboard a broken-down boat were rescued about 70 miles offshore in October after being spotted by the amphibious assault ship Boxer. Smugglers piloting overcrowded boats have led U.S. authorities on high-speed pursuits, and in at least one case U.S. agents shot out an engine to stop a fleeing pilot who had just dropped off a load of immigrants.
Smuggling surge
The theft of the body believed to belong to Zetas founding member Heriberto Lazcano adds a bizarre and embarrassing twist to one of the most significant victories in Mexico's militarized battle with organized crime, two months before the man who sharply expanded it, President Felipe Calderon, leaves office. Officials said that, with the body missing, the remaining evidence of Lazcano's fall consists of three fingerprints and a few photos of the army special forces deserter whose brutal paramilitary tactics helped define the devastating six-year war among Mexico's drug gangs and authorities.
Calderon said in a speech Tuesday that the evidence clearly indicated that Lazcano had been killed, and he praised the marines' action, though the president stopped short of an unqualified declaration that the Zetas' leader was dead. Coahuila state Attorney General Homero Ramos said two men were killed outside a baseball game in the town of Progreso Sunday in a gunfight with Mexican marines, the force that has carried most of the recent high-profile operations against drug lords. Many of those operations were launched in cooperation with U.S. officials, who see the marines as more trustworthy and competent than other military and law-enforcement agencies.
Ramos and the Mexican navy said the fingerprints of one man matched the records of Lazcano. Early Monday morning, Ramos said, a group of armed men raided the funeral home where the bodies were kept, and forced the funeral director to drive the hearse with the corpses to another location. He did not offer details. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in an emailed statement that, "We have seen reports of the possible death of Heriberto Lazcano. We are awaiting confirmation of those reports."
Lazcano, who is also known as "El Verdugo" (the Executioner), was credited with bringing military tactics and training to the enforcement arm of the once-powerful Gulf Cartel, then splitting from his former bosses and turning the Zetas into one of the country's two most potent cartels, with a penchant for headline-grabbing atrocities and control of territory stretching along the U.S. border and at least as far south as Guatemala. The Zetas have carried out some of Mexico's bloodiest massacres, biggest jail breaks and fiercest attacks on authorities.
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The Mexican navy says a team of marines had no idea that they had killed the leader of the country's most-feared drug cartel in a gunfight that erupted when they tried to search a group of suspicious men outside a baseball stadium.
Rear Admiral Jose Luis Vergara is the chief navy spokesman and he said in radio and television interviews Wednesday that Heriberto Lazcano's body was left at a funeral home after Sunday's gunfight because marines believed he was just a common criminal and didn't suspect that had just taken down the leader of the Zetas cartel.
Vergara said authorities only realized they had killed a significant figure when armed men stole the body from the funeral home. Fingerprint testing confirmed the dead man was Lazcano.
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The U.S. had independently verified the identity of Zeta founder and leader Heriberto Lazcano, killed in a shootout Sunday in a northern Mexican town, before his body was stolen at about 1 a.m. Monday, according to a U.S. law enforcement official who was not authorized to speak to the press about the case. The information throws into question the Mexican navy's insistence that marines thought they had killed a common criminal and that was why they left his body unguarded at the funeral home where gunmen hijacked a hearse in the middle of night. Rear Admiral Jose Luis Vergara, the navy's chief spokesman, said last week that the identity wasn't confirmed through Mexico's fingerprint database until after the body was gone.
The theft of the body was an embarrassing twist on one of President Felipe Calderon's biggest drug-war victories, the killing of perhaps the top capo to fall so far in Calderon's focused attack on cartel leadership. Twenty-five of the 37 most-wanted drug traffickers from a list issued in 2009 have now been caught or killed. "We had it confirmed before he was stolen," the U.S. official told the AP. U.S. authorities didn't provide details on how they knew, only that they had confirmed evidence. They didn't say whether they believed the Mexican navy also knew Lazcano's identity soon after it carried out the operation that killed Lazcano and his driver. Mexican navy officials and the attorney-general's office declined to comment on Saturday.
Mexican forces often work from intelligence provided by U.S. law enforcement, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, on the location and movements of top drug lords. Both Mexican and U.S. officials said the navy came upon Lazcano by accident before Sunday's attack. Lazcano, who was born in 1974, according to the U.S., or 1975, according to Mexican officials, was one of the most-wanted drug traffickers in Mexico and the U.S. and hunted for years by both governments. He was a former member of the army special forces who went on to lead a band of assassins he originally called "The Company" for the Gulf Cartel, which dominated drug trafficking through Mexico's northeastern border with Texas for years. They later became known as the Zetas, named for the radio code given to high officers. The two groups split in 2010, leading to an unprecedented escalation in drug violence in Mexico's northeastern corridor.
Lazcano was personally responsible for hundreds of murders, according to the Mexican government, and led an organization responsible for some of the country's most shocking atrocities and mass killings. Those include the deaths of 52 casino gamblers and workers in an extortion fire last year in the northern city of Monterrey and the slaughter of 72 migrants in the border state of Tamaulipas in 2010. There was a $5 million reward for him in the U.S. and $2.5 million in Mexico. The Mexican navy didn't announce publicly until last Monday night, more than 24 hours after the shootout, that it believed it had killed Lazcano. They admitted the body had been stolen only after it leaked out in the local press on Tuesday.
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Cancun, a major tourist destination on Mexico's Caribbean coast, has largely escaped the drug-related violence that has racked Acapulco, a faded tourist hot spot on the Pacific coast. Last month, six Spanish women were raped by hooded gunmen who forced their way into the Acapulco beach house the women had rented.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to reduce the violence that soared after his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, launched an assault on drug cartels. More than 70,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2007.
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The blast was set off when a firework malfunctioned and landed on the truck, igniting the fireworks it carried, officials said. Seventy people were burned or had other injuries, and at least 45 were taken to hospitals, authorities in the neighboring states of Tlaxcala and Puebla said. "They were in a procession, they were shooting off rockets and it exploded and fell onto the other ones," said Jose Mateo Morales, director of the Tlaxcala state civil protection department. "It was very serious."
Human remains and burned clothes were spread around a 100-yard (100-meter) radius, including on rooftops, a photographer at the scene said. The victims were marching in an annual procession in honor of Jesus Christ, the patron saint of Jesus Tepactepec, a village of about 1,000 people, Mateo Morales said. At least one child was among the victims, Tlaxcala Gov. Mariano Gonzalez said.
Helicopters, dozens of ambulances and soldiers from the area's military base rushed to the village, about 70 miles east of Mexico City. Tlaxcala Bishop Francisco Moreno said he toured the scene of the blast and went to hospitals to visit the wounded. "I blessed all who died and said a prayer for them," the bishop said in his Twitter account.
Fireworks are a typical feature of Mexican holidays and religious celebrations but they often are manufactured, stored and transported under unsafe conditions, and the country sees periodic fatal explosions. Jesus Tepactepec is known for its handicrafts manufacturing, including baskets and wood figures, and its annual religious celebration draws artisans from nearby towns who come to sell their wares.
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I'd assume they have some mental health tests that would try to weed out people like you.They should call me for border patrol.......Id go down there for a week to do target practice with my Rossi R92. They wouldnt even have to pay me......just shell out for my air fare.
Hundreds of mourners gathered Sunday for a mass funeral for the first 13 victims of the blast, which occurred on Friday in Jesus Tepactepec, a village of about 1,000 people 70 miles (112 kilometers) east of Mexico City.
Men carry a coffin during a funeral procession in the town of Jesus Tepactepec, Mexico, Sunday, March 17, 2013. A mass funeral was held for 13 of the 16 victims of a gruesome fireworks explosion during a religious procession on Friday. A total of about 154 were injured when a rocket malfunctioned and landed on the truck, igniting the fireworks it carried.
The 13 wooden coffins were carried through the streets of the village to a local gymnasium for a Mass attended by Tlaxcala Bishop Francisco Moreno Barron, and the governor of the central state of Tlaxcala, where the village is located. The bishop noted that fireworks form an important part of traditional religious celebrations in the area, but need improved safeguards. "I appeal to the conscience of the people of Tlaxcala, to reflect and take measures to guarantee the responsible and orderly use of fireworks," Moreno Barron said, according to a statement by the state government.
The statement said 17 people in total were killed and 80 remain hospitalized in Tlaxcala, the neighboring state of Puebla and Mexico City; about 70 others injured in the blast were treated and released. The massive blast occurred after a rocket malfunctioned and landed on a truck, igniting the fireworks it carried. Some of the victims may have also been carrying bundles of fireworks. Residents told local media about finding bits of human remains blown into their yards, trees and patios by the blast. The victims were marching in an annual procession in honor of Jesus Christ, the patron of Jesus Tepactepec.
Death toll in Mexico fireworks blast rises to 17 | UTSanDiego.com
They should call me for border patrol.......Id go down there for a week to do target practice with my Rossi R92. They wouldnt even have to pay me......just shell out for my air fare.
