No one sent for Yul Brenner, Richard Widmark, Steve McQueen or Horst Buchholz?

Everyone’s read about the Cananea shootout, which seems to have been scripted by John Ford (yeah, I know.. The Magnificent Seven was made by John Sturgis, but you get the point).

According to English-language media reports, about fifty banditos (called “narcos” in our updated westerns) rode into town, preceded to spread death and destruction (killing four local policemen) and then… in rode the calvary (mobilized now) at which time the banditos rode out of town on stolen horses!

It was that last detail that made me a little dubious, initially, but that sounds about what happened.

None of it is funny, of course, but what hasn’t made it into the papers (or, only in passing in the U.S.) is that the Mexicans are … once again… questioning where the narcos are obtaining their weapons and trucks. AR-45s are mentioned in several reports. Maybe they bought them off the internet? A report in El Universal on the “Slaughter at Cananea” (look for that title to show up on a direct-to-video movie within a few months) quotes hostage who identified himself only as “Juan” mentioned the banditos driving around with turret mounted guns.

Sort of like these… which come with the kit for making your own gun turrets, for a low, low $6800 (by the way, the manufacturer is moving to my town of Alpine Texas (not on the web, but reported in the Marfa, Texas Big Bend Sentinel, March 08, 2007.

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Several of the American press reports (and most of the other English-speaking ones) noted that Cananae has a bloody past, the site of… in their words… “a town that helped spark the 1910 Mexican Revolution when U.S. forces crossed the border to help put down a miners’ strike” which is a very nice way of saying the Phelps Dodge Copper Company hired goons and hit men — and brought in the Arizona National Guard — to put down the 1906 strike.

Also, so far not making the foreign press is that six high ranking police commanders were unceremoniously sacked today, or that there have been several less spectacular narco-executions in the last day or so.

We’re more worried about scaring off the tourists, than about stopping the gun running:

Nogales [Arizona] officials want to see measures taken to ensure that the violence plaguing northern Sonora in the past 60 days does not migrate across the border.
…

Acting City Manager and former Police Chief John E. Kissinger is concerned about the “psychological effects” and the potential spillover into the United States, he said.

“It may not be specifically the violence that spills over, but the harmful effects that this could bring upon tourism, international trade, and commerce.