The following come from press reports in English and
Spanish:
Police implicated in the Guerrero student deaths say they are "scapegoats"
Milenio: Chilpancingo,
Guerrero, "We are
scapegoats," Rey David Cortes Flores, a policeman with the Ministerial
Investigative Police (PIM), said after the first criminal court (of Guerrero)
granted the State Attorney General's Office (PGJE) an extension of 15 days
detention for him and his partner, Ismael Matadama Salinas.
The head office of the PGJE, Juan Manuel Herrera Campos announced
Sunday he would initiate criminal prosecution against (the two men), as they
are found to be the probable perpetrators of the murder of Alexis Herrera Pino
and Gabriel Echeverria de Jesus, students at the Rural Normal School of
Ayotzinapa.
In the preliminary reading of the case, a document was
released that the Guerrero prosecutor sent to different media in the state,
requesting delivery of photographic and video material to strengthen the case
against the two policemen. The lawyer for the accused, Antonio Nogueda
Carbajal, said the prosecutor does not have sufficient evidence to support his
accusation.
At the end of the hearing, Rey David Cortes Flores addressed
the reporters covering the proceedings and expressed his dissatisfaction with the
performance of the PGJE. "We are scapegoats, both my companion and I. We
owe this to the director of criminal investigations, Nicholas Marciano Peñaloza
Agama, who wants to be state attorney general, with the support of Governor
Ernesto Aguirre. Many friends have told us this," he charged.
He regretted that he was being kept under arrest even though
the state does not have strong evidence to bring to trial and he repeated the
popular maxim: "He who owes nothing, fears nothing." He said there
was a team of investigators from the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR)
that tested them with negative results.
He admitted he pointed his gun at the students but did not
fire; he raised the gun only to scare the students who were hurling rocks and
sticks. "If I shot, it was towards four boys who were 20 meters away and I
did it with my eyes closed," he said.
He regretted that, to date, no member of the Federal
Preventive Police (PFP), has been subpoened, which he said is because they have
the full backing of the federal government. Instead, he said, he and his
companion find themselves totally alone.
"Our attorneys are paid for by our families. We have
requested help from all the government agencies; we are completely alone,"
he said. With red eyes and broken voice, he said that he expected that no one
in the state government will be punished for the death of the normal school
students. "As always, the rope always breaks at the thinnest point, we are
the rope, completely defenseless."
(For new from La
politica es la politica, go here.)
Movement for Peace
with Justice plans caravan to the U.S. capital
CNN Mexico: In
August, Mexican poet Javier Sicilia will lead a new caravan, this time to the
United States, to call for the U.S. Government to put an end to the illegal
arms to Mexico, which “has only left pain and many dead.”
Sicilia announced that the Movement for Peace with Justice
and Dignity (MPJD), which he leads, will prepare a protest in the U.S. capital,
in which he hopes various Mexican and U.S. civil organizations will
participate.
At the event, protestors will ask the U.S. to stop aid to
Mexico earmarked through the Merida Initiative, a plan devised in 2007 by the
George W. Bush Administration to contribute to the fight against organized
crime, since “it’s not working,” said Sicilia.
Will Washington be ready for Javier Sicilia?
The Caravan seeks “to raise awareness within the American,
Mexican, and Central American populations of the pain and suffering that this
violence has caused us,” that has caused more than 47,000 deaths since December
2006, added Sicilia, who did not specify the route.
“The U.S. should take responsibility for the violence that
endures in Mexico, because in a certain way it has contributed to the thousands
of deaths caused by weapons which came to our territory illegally,” he said.
The United States, “the number one consumer of drugs” in the
world, “has a legal industry, that of arms, which is arming the Mexican
criminal,” contended the poet at the end of a press conference presenting
Marcel Sisniega’s latest film based on his novel “A través del silencio”
(Behind the Silence)
According to Sicilia, the wave of violence unleashed in the
country as a result of the dispute between drug cartels for territorial control
and their confrontation with security forces has left around “50,000 dead,
10,000 disappeared, and 120,000 displaced.”
PRI devises new plan
to eliminate corruption in elections
Justice in Mexico:
"Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario
Institucional, PRI) announced on Monday that it has created a plan to reduce
organized crime infiltration in the next elections which will be held on July
1. Political contenders will have to meet certain requirements in order to
qualify to run for a position. The party has proposed having federal
authorities conduct background checks on potential candidates to ensure that
they do not have a record of being associated with any cartels. The national
PRI president Pedro Joaquín Coldwell added that if it turns out that a
candidate is associated with criminal organizations, he will be denied his
right to continue in the race and his illegal doings will be reported to the
proper authorities immediately."
(For analysis from La
politica es la politica, go here).
Guerrero Students: 9
police that shot their guns remain free
Milenio:
"Studies conducted by the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) indicate
that at least nine police officers fired their guns during the confrontation
with the Ayotzinapa normal school students on December 12.
Among the list of names of those officers, from both federal
and state ministerial and preventative police, neither the name of Rey David
Cortes Flores, nor that of Ismael
Matadama Salinas occur. Both were detained yesterday by court order for 15 more
days at the request of the Attorney
General of Guerrero, Juan Manuel Herrera Campos.
The nine listed include a federal policeman who has not been
summoned before authorities. In addition, four state ministerial police are
named who were released from custody by the Guerrero attorney general on
Saturday (for lack of evidence against them). Four state preventative police
are also named.
... "The
presence of lead, barium and antimony, elements from the firing of cartridges,
when shots are fired with a firearm, were found on nine policemen"
according to the preliminary investigation by the PGR, carried out under the
leadership of the federal prosecutor, Abelard Camacho Reyes, head of the team
on the case.
The survey, conducted by the Laboratory of Forensic
Chemistry of the PGR, indicated that samples taken from the hands of the
remaining individuals (108 more), "did not identify the presence of
elements from the firing of the cartridges when shots are fired with a
firearm."
Border Patrol to
toughen policy
The Associated Press:
"The U.S. Border Patrol is moving to halt a revolving-door policy of
sending migrants back to Mexico without any punishment. The agency this month
is overhauling its approach on migrants caught illegally crossing the
1,954-mile border that the United States shares with Mexico.
... The Border Patrol now feels it has enough of a handle to
begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches,.... The
"Consequence Delivery System" — a key part of the Border Patrol's new
national strategy to be announced within weeks — relies largely on tools that
have been rolled out over the last decade on parts of the border and expanded.
It divides border crossers into seven categories, ranging from first-time
offenders to people with criminal records."
Young U.S. Citizens
in Mexico Up Early to Learn in the U.S.
NYTimes.com:
"In the raging debate over immigration, almost all sides have come to
agree on tougher enforcement at the border. But nearly unnoticed, frustration
is focusing locally on border-crossers who are not illegal immigrants but young
American citizens, whose families have returned to Mexico yet want their
children to attend American schools.
Called “transfronterizos,” these students migrate between
two cultures, two languages and two nations every day, straining the resources
of public school districts and sparking debate among educators and sociologists
over whether it is in American interests that they be taught in the United
States."
U.S. gun industry
appeals new rifle reporting rules
chicagotribune.com:
"The gun industry on Monday appealed a U.S. judge's decision to uphold new
Obama administration regulations requiring gun dealers in four states bordering
Mexico to report the sales of multiple semi-automatic rifles.
Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia ruled on Friday the reporting requirements ordered by the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) last year were
sufficiently narrowly tailored. Because the reporting demand "was limited
to only certain sales of certain guns in certain states, ATF did not exceed its
authority," she wrote in a 21-page ruling."
Author Carlos Fuentes
sees Mexico as trapped between big problems and mediocre candidates
CNN Mexico:
"Mexicans find themselves trapped between their grave problems and
“mediocre candidates” for the presidency of their country, asserted writer
Carlos Fuentes this Monday.
“What alarms me most this year (…) is that I see the
problems here and the candidates over there,” said Fuentes in an interview with
journalist Carmen Aristegui, on CNN en Español. “A large discrepancy between
the country’s challenges and the candidates that we have,” he said.
Fuentes, winner of the Cervantes and Prince of Asturias
Awards for Literature, declared that the nation needs “intelligent political
media” in order to escape the “extremely grave internal and international
situation” in which it finds itself almost six months away from the elections
which will renew the presidency, governorships of 15 states, and the Congress.
“We are stuck with a terrible disproportion between the
problems of the country and candidates who appear to me to be fairly mediocre,”
he contended. Fuentes considered the violence derived from the fight against
organized crime to be the main problem for Mexico and the current government of
President Felipe Calderón.
“I believe that, in this sexenio, (six-year presidential
term) a grave error was committed, which was immediate and, perhaps, had the
purpose of legitimizing the (2006 presidential) election, which was so hotly
contested. . . . I am under the impression that we have lost this war,”
continued Fuentes.
Among other problems, Fuentes referred to infrastructure,
education, and healthcare as issues in which “we’ve been left behind,” and that
needed the attention of those who aspired to the presidency.
Fuentes reiterated his proposal to legalize drugs as an
alternative form of combating narcotrafficking, of which he accused the United
States as being responsible and of doing too little to eradicate it.
The author of La
region más transparente and Terra
Nostra dismissed the possibility of a victory for the National Action Party
(PAN) in the presidential election next July due to the discontent it caused
over 12 years of governance.
“It seems to me that no one wants to reelect the PAN. I
sense that there is a feeling of exhaustion with the PAN governments and their
style,” said Fuentes, who believes the party of President Calderón has no
popular support, only opposition. “I don’t believe that one can give a PAN
candidacy a second chance,” he said.
Regarding the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), whose candidate leads the latest polls, Fuentes believed that they
offered a candidate of “very small character” in comparison with the “enormous”
problems and challenges of the country.
Enrique Peña Nieto, ex-governor of the central state of
México and the candidate of the PRI “is not prepared to be president” claimed
Fuentes, who reiterated his condemnation of Peña Nieto’s “public demonstration
of ignorance,” after his failure to mention his three favorite books during the
the most recent Guadalajara International Book Festival.
“The only possibility of renewal, despite the candidate
himself, is with López Obrador and a left which, hopefully, will achieve a
degree of unity which it hasn’t yet achieved,” said Fuentes of the candidate
for the coalition of leftist parties.
However, everything depends on who will support López
Obrador in his quest for the presidency, said Fuentes. “If some of the best
minds in Mexico associate themselves with him, there is hope,” he added,
referring to people like the ex-rector of UNAM, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, or the
current head of government of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, whom López Obrador
not long ago considered for the position of Ministry of the Interior, which is
charged with domestic policymaking.
“We have a poor and quite uneven presidential race, over
against a country with gigantic problems, as many internally as
internationally,” contended Fuentes. “Everyone is being tested, because the
country is being tested, because the problems are so large,” he added."
Twitter: @TimothyEWilson
Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com
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