Mexican Marines Find 72 Bodies in Northern Mexico

MEXICO CITY — Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday.

The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.

"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," The Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor."

Mexican drug cartels often use vacant lots, ranches or mine shafts to dump the bodies of executed rivals or kidnap victims. The Navy did not give details on the victims' identities, who had killed them or whether the bodies had been buried.

The discovery of bodies came about when Marines manning a checkpoint on a highway in northern Tamaulipas state were approached by a wounded man who said he had been attacked by cartel gunmen at a nearby ranch. The man was placed under the protection of federal authorities.

Navy aircraft were dispatched to the scene, and when the gunmen saw them, they opened fire on the marines and tried to flee in a convoy of vehicles.

In the ensuing shootout, one marine and three suspected gunmen were killed. Navy personnel seized 21 assault rifles, shotguns and rifles, and detained a minor.

The youth, who was apparently part of the gang, was handed over to civilian prosecutors.

When marines searched the area, near the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, they found the bodies. It was unclear whether the victims had been killed at the same time or separately, and the Navy did not say when they were found.

The area has been wracked by bloody turf battles between the Gulf drug cartel and their one-time allies, the Zetas drug gang.

In May, authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned mine near Taxco, a colonial-era city south of Mexico City that is popular with international tourists.

In July, investigators found 51 corpses in two days of digging in a field near a trash dump outside the northern city of Monterrey. Many of those found were believed to have been rival traffickers. But cartels often dispose of the bodies of kidnap victims in such dumping grounds.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in violence tied to Mexico's drug war since the offensive began.

Mexican Bullets Shut Down El Paso, Texas

Newsvine.com - Yes, this is another dispatch from the war zone along the Mexican border (where I live in El Paso, right across from Juarez, Mexico–a stone’s throw, or bullet path, away).

This story–from events over the weekend, but still making news today in El Paso–is beyond belief. I thought things were bad when the El Paso City Hall was splattered with bullets from a firefight across the river. But this weekend El Paso police SHUT DOWN part of downtown El Paso because of flying bullets from a gun battle in a house on a hill in Juarez–a gun battle that evidently lasted 30 minutes and illed at least three people in Juarez. No one was–a matter of luck–killed in El Paso, although there are reports that a shattered car window may have been from a bullet. It is evidently estimated (no, they can’t know) that about 50 bullets came over the border into downtown El Paso.

And Obama has the GALL to tell me it is SAFER along the border. The man is a piece of work. I have lived in the El Paso area of the Southwest for approximately 50 years. At NO time, during that entire period, do I remember this kin of thing happening. I think the last time anything close to it happended were in the days of Pancho Villa.

Welcome To Maywood, Mexico

Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.
The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.
How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for “brown power” politics.
Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first “sanctuary” cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegals.
Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.
The City of Maywood started out quite differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.
On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of Maywood’s incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park. Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.
But the early 1970s saw these industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere.
The multi-ethnic Maywood of the post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.
In August 2006, a “Save Our State” anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of protesters—but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The pro-illegal protesters carried signs which read “We are Indigenous ! The ONLY owners of this Continent!” and “Racist Pilgrims Go Home” and “All Europeans are Illegal Here.”
According to newspaper reports at the time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A 70-year-old man was “slashed,” a woman attacked, and cars vandalized. Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post Office.
The illegal population and their sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City Council saw “assimilationist” incumbent Hispanic council members ousted by La Raza supporting radical challengers.
For years, the Maywood City Council authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without licenses had their cars impounded. Illegals in California cannot get drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to suspend the checkpoints.
Cars were still being impounded whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a license. Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an “immigration service center,” coordinated a new campaign against any impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of Maywood today.
Aguirre and a new majority of the council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegals were given overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn’t need a license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of this “progress” in a story entitled “Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads Open Up For Immigrants”.
The Maywood Police Department was restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the “Department of Second Chances.”
Among those hired was a former L.A. Sheriff’s deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving drunk.
Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a “haven for misfit cops.” Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.
Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day.
Maywood is represented in the state Senate by Democrat “One Bill” Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers licenses to illegals. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegals.

Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.
Maywood is the warning of what happens when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic “leaders” and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.
In too many American communities, this sad tale is all too familiar.

Mexican Border Violence Threatens Americans

The killings last month in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez of two U.S. citizens, including an employee at the city's U.S. Consulate, along with the slaying of an Arizona rancher, have fueled concerns among U.S. officials that Americans are becoming fair game for Mexican drug gangs seeking control of smuggling routes into the United States.

For more than two years, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have been warning that the dramatic rise in violence along the southwestern border could eventually target U.S. citizens and spread into this country. The violence posed what the officials called a "serious threat" to law enforcement officers, first responders and residents along the 1,951-mile border.

The numbers bear out those concerns, according to the State Department: 79 U.S. citizens were killed last year in Mexico, up from 35 in 2007. In Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, 23 Americans were killed in 2009, compared with two in 2007.

In response, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Sen. John McCain, both Republicans, have called on the Department of Homeland Security to deploy the National Guard along the Arizona border. Mrs. Brewer said the rising violence showed the "abject failure of the U.S. Congress and President Obama to adequately provide public safety along our national border with Mexico."

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona Democrat, whose district includes the area where rancher Robert Krentz was killed, said if the slaying was connected to smugglers or drug cartels, the federal government should consider all options, including sending more Border Patrol agents to the area and deploying the National Guard.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a Republican who is seeking Mr. McCain's senatorial seat, joined in the call for National Guard troops to be stationed along the border.

Mr. Hayworth said the federal government should "act now and step up its efforts to secure our borders."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also has put into play a "spillover violence contingency plan" to address attacks on American citizens in Mexico. The plan increases border surveillance; intelligence sharing; and ground, air and maritime patrols.

A day before the March 13 Juarez killings, Mr. Perry unsuccessfully sought help from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to use unmanned Predator drone aircraft and 1,000 additional soldiers for missions on the Mexican border. He said there was a disparity in the amount of federal resources allotted to Texas for border security.

The White House said Mr. Obama was "deeply saddened and outraged" by the killings and had pledged to "continue to work with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his government to break the power of the drug-trafficking organizations that operate in Mexico and far too often target and kill the innocent."
The latest victims were Lesley Enriquez, 25, who worked at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, and her husband, Arthur Redelf, 30, both U.S. citizens. They were killed March 13 when Mexican drug gang members fired shots at their sport utility vehicle as they left a birthday party.

Mr. Redelf was a 10-year veteran of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. Ms. Enriquez was four months pregnant with their second child. The couple's 7-month-old daughter was found unharmed in the back seat.

That same day, Jorge Alberto Salcido, 37, a Mexican citizen whose wife also was an employee at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, was killed when cartel members shot at his car at a separate location, also wounding his two young children. They had attended the same birthday party.

Mr. Krentz, 58, a longtime Douglas, Ariz., rancher, was killed Saturday. He was found by a Cochise County Sheriff's Department helicopter, slumped over his Polaris all-terrain vehicle on his 34,000-acre ranch. His dog also was shot and was critically wounded. The animal was euthanized on Sunday.

Arizona authorities said they think Mr. Krentz was shot by an illegal immigrant. Police dogs followed the tracks of the suspected killer back into Mexico, about 20 miles south. Authorities think the shooter was either a drug cartel scout or a member of a known gang of border thieves that has terrorized the area's remote ranches.

The Krentz ranch sits in an area that has become a lucrative smuggling route for Mexican drug cartels.

"It's a big deal. It's something that could be a turning point here," said Cochise County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Carol Capas. "People in the area are on heightened alert. They're grief-stricken, saddened, and they're extremely angry."

Two years ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless and had begun targeting rivals and federal, state and local police. ICE said the violence had risen dramatically as part of "an unprecedented surge."

Last year, the Justice Department identified more than 200 U.S. cities in which Mexican drug cartels "maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors" - up from 100 three years earlier.

The department's National Drug Intelligence Center, in its 2010 drug threat assessment report, described the cartels as "the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States." It said Mexican gangs had established operations in every area of the United States and were expanding into more rural and suburban areas.
The report noted that adding to the violence were assaults against U.S. law enforcement officers assigned to posts along the southwestern border. It said assaults against Border Patrol agents increased 46 percent from 752 incidents in fiscal 2007 to 1,097 incidents in fiscal 2008 - including the January 2008 killing of an agent by the automobile of a fleeing drug suspect and the fatal shooting of another agent in July 2009.

Although no arrests have been made in the Krentz killing, there has been an arrest in the Ciudad Juarez killings. The Mexican military detained a member of the Barrio Azteca gang, which works for the infamous Gulf drug cartel on both sides of the border. The suspect was identified as Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, 42, a resident of both Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.

Barrio Azteca is a U.S. prison gang that later found its roots in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the Ciudad Juarez killings; the Department of Homeland Security did not return messages seeking comment.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington condemned the killings but did not respond to a follow-up request for comment about whether the Americans had been targeted intentionally. In a statement, it said the Mexican government would "work closely" with its U.S. counterparts "to track down those responsible for these killings so justice can be served."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration would not comment specifically on the case but said "the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success that our very courageous Mexican counterparts have had in attacking those drug-trafficking organizations."

The drug rings "are acting like caged animals because they are caged," said DEA spokesman Rusty Payne. "They have lost roots, and they have lost control. The Mexican government has gone after them, and this is the reaction from drug organizations that are in disarray."

On March 14, the State Department issued its strongest travel warning to date for U.S. citizens planning on traveling to Mexico. The department also approved the departure of the dependents of U.S. personnel from consulates in the northern Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterey and Matamoros.

It warned that the cartels are using automatic weapons and grenades, that "large firefights" have taken place in towns and cities across Mexico and that public shootouts have taken place during daylight hours in shopping centers and other public venues.

The department said drug criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, that travelers on major highways have been targeted for robbery and violence and that others have been caught in incidents of gunfire between criminals and Mexican law enforcement.

"While most crime victims are Mexican citizens, the uncertain security situation poses serious risks for U.S. citizens as well," it said.

Since January 2008, nearly 5,000 homicides have been committed in Ciudad Juarez alone, making it one of the most violent cities in the world. The bodies of some of those killed have been dumped in schoolyards and other public venues. Many of the victims were ambushed. Others were killed with grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.

Still others have been decapitated, their bodies hung from bridges - along with banners with warning messages from the cartels.

Mr. Calderon declared war against the Mexican cartels in 2006 and has committed more than 40,000 Mexican soldiers to the fight, although the violence continues to escalate. To date, the cartels in Mexico have killed more than 17,000 people.

At the core of the drug fight are the Sinaloa and Gulf drug cartels, along with Los Zetas, a group led by former Mexican military officers. They seek to control long-established smuggling corridors into this country, over which billions of dollars in illicit narcotics travel annually.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Mexico City this month as part of a delegation to underscore concern over Mexico's drug violence.

"These appalling assaults on members of our own State Department family are, sadly, part of a growing tragedy besetting many communities in Mexico," Mrs. Clinton said.

MEXICO SWINE FLU 103 DEAD " A WORLD PANDEMIC"

The Department Of Homeland Security is not testing airplane travelers from Mexico for the Swine Flu Virus. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says 'right now we don't think the facts warrant more active testing and screening of passenger coming from Mexico. The President of Mexico Felipe Calderon has assumed new powers to isolate people affected with the deadly swine flu that health officials say has killed up to 103 people and and likely sickened 1,600 people in the country of Mexico since April 13. The streets of Mexico stood empty on Sunday and they expect the same thing on Monday because, there was no one attended Church on Sunday in a predominately Roman Catholic Country. They had a soccer game in Mexico City the Capital of Mexico and no one attended the soccer game it was virtually a empty stadium other than security. The Mexican Government is handing out surgical mask to stem the passing of the Swine Flu disease to there fellow Mexican citizens. The Swine Flu has Spread beyond the borders and with over 40 confirmed cases in the United states and suspected cases in Canada, France, New Zealand and Spain. The United States has declared a Public health emergency providing easier access to testing and medications and enhanced surveillance along the Mexican border. The World Health Organization has asked all countries around the world to step up reporting and surveillance of the disease, as airports around he world were screening travelers for flu like symptoms. The Department Of Homeland Security is planning to close schools if the outbreak reaches a critical level. The Department is planning to release some of its stockpiles of "Anti-Flu Drugs" TamiFlu and Relenza to States all around the country.

MEXICO SWINE FLU STATE OF EMERGENCY

In a article by the Bloomberg News by Thomas Black the man who greeted President Obama at Mexico's Anthropology Museums in Mexico City by Felipe Solis a Distinguished Archaeologist died the following day with symptoms similar to the Swine flu., Roforma Newspaper reported in Mexico. The newspaper did not confirm that Solis had the swine flu. The Mexican government is distributing masks to prevent the spread of the disease across the country of Mexico. There is no vaccine for the new strain of Swine flu. There are close to 1,300 new cases of swine flu in Mexico and 82 reported deaths of this new Strain of Swine Flu. There are several reported cases in the United States in California, New York, Texas, and Kansas. It is estimated that there are 11 confirmed cases of the swine flu in the United States. The Center Of Disease Control says that it is probably too late to control a outbreak. Therefore, is a possible outbreak a New York City School where 100 students are being tested for swine flu. The leading Health Officials in New York City say the 8 students probably have the swine flu and they giving them the proper medication. There has also, been patients in California and Texas with mild forms of the swine flu. The swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by Type A influenza viruses. Outbreaks of Swine Flu regularly happen in pigs. Human beings rarely get Swine flu but human infections can and do happen. The symptoms of Swine Flu is similar to the regular flu including fever, cough, soar throat, body aches, headaches, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported vomiting and diarrhea associated with the Swine Flu. Finally, the White House is monitoring the situation and following all the cases of Swine Flu in America.