Awwww… another kitty post for a Friday
Five white Bengal tiger cubs (and one “normal” cub) were born in April at the Guadelajara Zoo and made their public debut this week. The tigers are not albinos, but carry a natural recessive trait for the white coloration.
Mexican zoos are world leaders in breeding rare and endangered species in captivity.
Those criminals were … DISHONEST!
Ever wonder what happened to the infamous “Treasure of Sierra Madre 515” — the loot hidden in the Chinese-owned meth warehouse slash bank vault slash money laundry in Lomas de Chapultepec? A few million pesos, € 201,406 and 204,105,676 yankee dollars were stashed in the house, along with various trucks, firearms, and… natch… meth.
Nuevo Excelsior reports on the whereabouts of the cash. Normally, the Mexican Soldiers and Sailors Bank — Banjército — takes physical custody in asset seizures by the Federal Prosecutor — but this was a larger amount of foreign currency than they could deal with. At least that’s the official explanation.
Besides, Bank of America offered a better interest rate, even though they did charge $1,438,960 just to transfer the cash and count the U.S. currency. The Euros and pesos went to Banjército.
I half suspect that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency — based on the ridiculous claim that some Mexican policemen were trained using DEA materials, therefore the DEA is entitled to a cut of the assets seized (which are supposed to be split evenly among the Federal Court, the Prosecutors’ Office and the Health Department (for drug treatment programs) — STILL wants a cut. The money being transferred to the U.S. based bank gives the U.S. a sneaky way of syphoning off some of it.
Ah well. The interest so far on those Bank of America deposits has been over 1.6 million dollars. And that’s after the bank found something funny about all that cash. Who’d have thought that the criminals would have been stuck with $21,090 in counterfeit dollars?
[http://digg.com/world_news/Why_those_criminals_were_dishonest/blog]
Thelma and Louise and Cheech and Chong…
The ultimate “man bites dog story”…
comes from Silvia Guerrero in El Mañana (Nuevo Laredo). Two women were detained at the Ignacio Zaragoza International Bridge in Matamoros, smuggling 14.4 Kg of marijuana, and turned over to the local prosecutor. Marijuana smuggling at the border? Normally anything under about 200 Kilos isn’t even going to make the papers, but this smuggling operation was a little different… Soledad Alejandra Martines and Ofelia Zavala de Martínez were smuggling the devil’s weed INTO Mexico.
Another nota roja
Daniel Estrada Ortiz wrote this for the El Siglo de Durango . It’s a horrifying story (and maybe an object lesson in the dangers of alcohol), but it’d make a darn good country-western song, or something the late Beto Quintanilla might have turned into a corrida with upbeat music and tragic lyrics.
And, as always, I admit I enjoy the baroque majesty of death that Nota Roja writers wrap around even the stupidest crime.
NUEVO IDEAL, DGO.- In an act of excessive violence, Raúl Soto García killed his friend Fortunato Ávila López, whom he first hit with a hammer, and then drove over several times with a pickup truck.
Excessive consumption of intoxicating beverages had a negative effect on Raúl, who moments before the brutal homicide had shared drinks to manifest his friendship, according to a report by the Procuraduría General de Justicia (PGJ).
Without any other obvious reason beyond the disorienting effects of alchohol, Raúl y Fortunato, 42 y 44 respectively, were converted into enemies to such a degree that after a brief exchange of blows, the first took a hammer into his hands to attack his companion.
The hammer blows were directed at the head of Fortunato, who fell badly injured, but not safisfied with this, his agressor drove his truck over him on several times to make certain that he had died.
The cause of death of Ávila López was a combination of traumatic injuries, which affected the thorax, craneum and abdomon according to the results of the legally-required autopsy.
The violent doings accured Tuesday night in the village of Doctor Castillo del Valle, municipio de Nuevo Ideal, the place of origina of today’s murder victim and his supposed killer.
The presumed homicidist fled after leaving the battered body of his friend, but not without stopping at his house to see his wife, and take some things to his mother’s house, where he stayed outside for a time.
Meanwhile, asked by his woman the reason why he was leaving in such a hurry, he limited himself to responding “Ah, tomorrow you’ll hear the story of why I’m going,” and left without saying where he was headed.
I’ve translated “los efectos desquiciantes del alcohol” as “the disorienting effects of alcohol” but my handy-dandy Diccionario de la Lengua Española gives the meaning as something more like “disequaliberating” or “disordering” — something a little more along the lines of screwing up the order of the universe than just “disorienting”.
A grand word — and perhaps the correct word — to capture the pathos of everyday existence.
Worth reading…
The McAllen Monitor has a series of articles on the impact on the Valley of the “Great Wall of Texas” — you don’t find much support for it there, and even less where I am. The assumption seems to be that this will push illegal border crossers out into rural areas. What are we supposed to do, quadruple our sheriff’s department? The State and Feds dumped a lot of money into law enforcement last year for political reasons (at least our locals got some new pickup trucks) but local sheriffs can’t even hire new deputies, because they don’t know if their county will be able to afford the unemployment insurance payments once the political funds dry up. And here, we depend on some deputies that are part-timers or volunteers… when we don’t depend on the National Park Service or Border Patrol for routine things like accident calls.
And, when you have a serious accident, you have to take an air ambulance to El Paso. So, with more “illegals” coming through the Big Bend National Park, or the desert, we can expect more people in pretty bad shape. Where are they going to be treated? I don’t see the Feds ponying up for any new hospitals or emergency rooms (and, as it is, it’s much, much cheaper to go to Ojinaga for most medical and dental treatment).
Like this is gonna cut off drug dealers (right now, it’s mostly “backpackers” with loads of marijuana) or anything else. Riiiight.
The green dots are immigrant legal services, and the red dots are immigrant detention facilities known to Detention Watch Network.
A person who is arrested can go before a judge. Immigrants who apply for political asylum, overstay a visa or are ARRESTED (not convicted) for any reason can be “detained” .
Happy Fourth of July to the undetained among us.
Help in DF for tourist crime victims
This is a reasonably good step. Not that DF is any more dangerous than any other big city tourist destination, but that it can be frustrating for foreigners to try negotiating the legal system. By the way, the police station on Florencia, just off the Angel (across from the big gay bar) has English-speaking staff. U.S. and Canadian residents can file denunciations through their embassies.
Translation from an article by Angélica Simón in El Universal:
Starting Tuesday, tourists in Mexico City who are victimized by any crime can call on the assistance of any of 32 “citizen agents” who will assist them in filing their denunciatons.
The Federal District Secretariat of Tourism and the Citizen Council of the Public Security and Justice, signed a collaboration agreement that allows the 32 agents to assist in crowd control and in assisting visitors at the Public Prosecutor’s office, to avoid the tourist being victimized twice, both by the criminal and by neglect at the Public Ministry.
In the first stage, “citizen agents” will work the permiter of the Zona Rosa, the Reforma Corridor and the Centro Historico. A toll-free telephone number (01 800 670 9090) has been set up to dispatch citizen agents to the scene of the crime, said and the agents will move until the place where the crime was committed, said Meyer Klip Gervitz of the Citizen Council of the Public Security and Justice .
Secretary of Tourism, Alejandra Barrales, added that the agreement is necessary for security in the Zona Rosa, and admitted that criminals detract from the tourist’s enjoyment of the area.
The Zona Rosa, and the Federal District, are the number one destination for Mexican and foreign tourists. Last year, Barrales said, there were about 200 recorded crimes against tourists in the Zona Rosa, mostly street robberies. This year, there have been 40.
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Who’s in favor of a fence?
Mike Vickers, a veterinarian who lives 10 miles south of Falfurrias, said he purchased 160 acres south of Pharr a few years ago because of its potential for bird watching.
Erecting a fence would disconnect his property from the river, he said.
“It’ll kill the ambiance, it’ll kill the value of my property,” he said. “It’s very scenic property. It just turns my stomach thinking about putting that fence up.”
Vickers, who also is the chairman of the Texas Border Volunteers, said he and fellow volunteers watching the border have seen an increase in people trying to sneak into the country, but a fence is not the answer to curb illegal immigration, he said.
“This is ridiculous, a waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” he said.
What’s particularly galling in all this is that Homeland Security keeps talking about “stakeholders” without defining who has a “stake” in all this… certainly landowners and ranchers like Dr. Vickers, and the folks who stand to profit from this — the realtors selling houses to the new agents (much better paid than the rest of us), the fence builders from companies like Boeing and Halliburton, and maybe the Ramada Inn which will lose the birdwatching tours that come through here… but what about those of us who have to put up with showing I.D. and going through checkpoints in Marfa (well within the United States) just to go shopping, or who drink water, or… you know… what in earlier times were called CITIZENS and RESIDENTS?
Yeah, life on the border is surreal…
Martha Leticia Hernandez (La Frontera via McAllen Monitor)
McALLEN — A man wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a Reynosa police officer may have crossed into the United States dressed as a clown, Mexican state police said Thursday.
Tamaulipas investigators alerted U.S. authorities Wednesday that the suspect may have crossed the Rio Grande illegally while wearing a costume as a disguise.
Traffic-free Sundays for D.F.
Another traffic change in Mexico City. On Sundays, the main streets in the Centro (including sections of Reforma) are closed to vehicular traffic.
S. Lynne Walker of Copley News Service writes:
On a recent Sunday morning, Ebelio Sánchez caught himself grinning and waving as the city’s residents pedaled by. Sánchez, 46, who has been a Mexico City traffic cop for nearly half his life, is used to seeing people “mad and bothered.”
But on this sunny morning, there was no cacophony of blowing horns, no obscene gestures, no shouted insults from rolled-down car windows.
There were serene smiles, the fluttering of silk ribbons in a little girl’s hair, the soft sound of the wind whooshing through the spokes of spinning bicycle tires.
“You don’t have to be rich or poor to ride a bike,” said Juan Cervantes, a 35-year-old father of two. “This is a way for everybody in the city to go out and have fun.”
Not everybody likes the idea, of course.
“They’re in the way here,” Gerardo Gómez, a 57-year-old fabric store owner, groused as he waited in his neatly pressed suit for a shoeshine on Reforma boulevard. “People . . . want to ride in their cars. I don’t think that is going to change.”
But Martín Gómez, a 45-year-old accountant and member of a bicycle club called Bicitekas, disagreed.
“This will make the city more humane,” he said. “The city is collapsing from so many cars and contamination. A journey of 10,000 miles starts with one step. This is the first step.”
Parallel universes? AMLO in the news
Catherine Bremer, writing for Reuters, says:
The leftist who a year ago was a hair’s breadth from winning Mexico’s presidency was reduced to political artifact on Sunday, drawing a fraction of his old crowds to an anniversary rally.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who insists his razor-thin defeat to Felipe Calderon in the July 2, 2006, election was rigged, has spent most of the past year crisscrossing Mexico to declare himself the “legitimate president.”
While Sunday’s rally attracted tens of thousands of people, numbers were far fewer than the estimated 300,000 who turned out for Lopez Obrador in the run-up to the election in some of the biggest political marches ever seen in Mexico.
However, the Spanish language Associated Press report tells a different story:
CIUDAD DE MEXICO — El candidato izquierdista que perdió por escaso margen las elecciones presidenciales emitió un mensaje de desafío al gobierno ante cientos de miles de seguidores en la plaza principal de México, a fin de reactivar su decaído gobierno de resistencia, un movimiento que amenaza con dividir a la izquierda.
…
El movimiento, que ha obtenido el apoyo de alrededor de una cuarta parte de la población, se mantiene vivo debido a un trasfondo de escepticismo y descontento, aunque eso en muy raras ocasiones es noticia de primera plana.
I tend to think the AP reporter was actually there, since the reporter noted the speech (mostly a rejection of any privatization of Pemex, blaming the U.S. and the Calderón administration for high emigration rates and renewing the call for leftist delegates and senators to reject the administration’s proposals) and caught something you’d think Ms. Bremer might have though worthy of mentioning at least in passing … the threatened downpour poured down.
AMLO’s re-emergence sort of snuck up on the AP… the reporter quotes an admirer who complains that Lopez Obradór has been snubbed by what we’d call the “mainstream media”.
Here’s the Reuters’ photo:
and here’s a screen capture from El Universal (not notably pro-AMLO) which has a video of the speech…
Explain it how you will.
Both Reuters and AP say that Calderón had a 65% approval rating in the last poll that was reported (rather low for a new president… Fox’s was closer to 80% after his first year) and that AMLO’s support has dropped over the last year… but, then again, he hasn’t been much in the news.
A drop from a little over a third in the election to a quarter still means he’s got a significant following… and if the recent northern state elections indicate what I think they do, it’s more that the left is divided than that it’s down and out. AMLO is certain not down… nor out.
Hand over the cheese…
In Laredo our federal authorities are on a search and destroy mission for good, though unpastuerized Mexican cheese. Never mind poisoned toothpaste and cat food (and everything else) from China…
I guess queso fresco, panela, asadero and blanco could conceivably be a threat (legally, you can bring in 5 Kilos for personal consumption, and — like all REAL cheese, it should be refrigerated), but, c’mon… dare I say it… this is cheesy.
mexfiles.net 