MEXICO: Zetas Narco Confesses To Killing 72 Migrants In Tamaulipas.

BBC

Army officials say Zeta Abraham Barrios Caporal/aka "Erasmo", has confessed to help killing 72 migrants in Tamaulipas last year.

Barrios Caporal told them he and others Zetas narco members killed the migrants because they may have belonged to another narco gang.

MEXICO: Army Raids Narco Tank Factory In Cd. Camargo, Tamaulipas.

AFP

    An army patrol in Ciudad Camargo, Tamaulipas stumbled upon a warehouse where armor-plated "tanks" were being outfitted.
    Two air conditioned trucks were covered in one inch steel plates that could resist the soldiers weapons...with protected portholes for snipers.
   Two gunmen were killed in the warehouse firefight.
   Also 23 big-rig trucks were parked...waiting to be armored.

MEXICO: 15 May UPDATE: Tragic Record Set As Durango Narcofosas Total Reaches...218.

AP/M.HERALD/

     Police in Durango have unearthed 8 ...17...more bodies...making the total there now 188...196...218...the largest discovery yet of corpses...and surpassing the 183 bodies recently found in Tamaulipas.
     "Never have such massive killing fields been found in such a short time in Mexico - or anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, for that matter. The victims were lost to violence that only seems to intensify in a nation where prosecutors treat evidence shoddily and rarely bring mass murderers to justice. Most of the victims are likely to remain unidentified."
   AND:   "The fact that we're seeing all kinds of people turn up in mass graves underscores the need for Mexico to create a national database for people who have disappeared," said a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
       No such database now exists.

MEXICO: "Genocide" In Tamaulipas Horrifies Nation; Is It A "Failed State"?

LATIMES/ T. Wilkinson
2 screen read combined

   The recent discovery of 177 bodies from unmarked graves in San Fernando, Tamaulipas has horrified the public.
   Some commentators are calling the murders: "our Auschwitz" and a "Mexican genocide."
   Apparently the murders had been going on for months "...and no one, not the bus companies, nor the police, nor the officials in charge, acted to stop it."
   Officials believe most of the victims were bus passengers, who were tortured and slaughtered.
   Women were raped before being killed...and some were burned alive.
   "If Tamaulipas is not a failed state, or a narco-state, it sure looks like one," political analyst Alfonso Zarate said. "The institutional powers are incapable of upholding the law."

MEXICO: How Could Calderon Have Allowed San Fernando Massacres To Happen...Twice?

AP/ A. GOMEZ LICON and K. CORCORAN
3 screen read...combined

AP:      "How could bodies pile up again in a place just 90 miles from the U.S. border where 72 migrants were slaughtered eight months ago, then the worst mass murder of innocents in Mexico's fight against organized crime?
     And how could these new horrors emerge only five months after state and federal authorities announced with much fanfare that they were mounting a coordinated offensive to take Tamaulipas back from the hands of warring drug cartels?"
AND:     "Tamaulipas presents a complex situation that even federal forces can't handle. Generations of mistrust complicate the federal effort, as well as links between local officials and organized crime dating back to the 1920s Prohibition era in the U.S., when the border state became a popular smuggling route for liquor.
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     I recall human rights watchers for years asking how hundreds...perhaps thousands... of young women...could be killed or just "disappear" during the 90's...in another part of Mexico...the area that is today...the most dangerous city in the world...Cd. Juarez.

MEXICO: San Fernando Body Count Now 145; 16 Police Arrested.

LATIMES/ T.WILKINSON

    Sixteen San Fernando, Tamaulipas police have been arrested for allegedly protecting the narcos suspected in the slayings and clandestine burials of 145.
  Also there are new revelations about missing bus passengers.
  Apparently, NONE of the bus companies whose passengers were kidnapped...ever informed authorities.
  Also, the REFORMA newspaper reported that there are 400 unclaimed suitcases at bus depots in the destination city of Matamoros.
   Many of the victims are thought to be Mexicans taken from buses that traveled to the border.

MEXICO: 13 April UPDATE: 32 More Bodies Found; New Total Of 120 Discovered In San Fernando, Tamaulipas...A Deserted "City of Death"...From Narco Violence.

WSJ/ N. Casey/

"Almost eight months ago, residents in the rural Mexican county of San Fernando received startling news: The bodies of 72 immigrants traveling to the U.S. had been discovered on a secluded ranch after the group had been lined up, blindfolded and shot dead.
   Now, the sense of horror has returned. Last week, officials said they had discovered mass graves on another secluded ranch there. Some 88 dead have been unearthed so far as forensics teams continue to dig for others.
    That history has repeated itself in San Fernando may be no surprise. It fits the profile of a lawless county:  Fewer than 60,000 people live in an expanse of hundreds of square miles..."

FOR NEW BBC coverage on San Fernando:
    Residents only found out about the massacres by chance.
   "It starts to smell bad because there is a funeral house close to where we walk every day,"said  one citizen.

   The state of Tamaulipas is the size of the Czech Republic and virtually paralyzed by violence.
   "Neither the regional nor federal government have control over the territory of Tamaulipas," says  D.F. security analyst Alberto Islas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13061452

MEXICO: 11 April UPDATE: New Body Count Is 88! 16 More Bodies Found In Tamaulipas Mass Graves; Narcos Converting Ordinary Criminals Into Assassins.

AP/M.HERALD/ No Link Change/ New Details ONLY

   Police report that a suspect in the kidnapping and murder of  bus passengers has led them to more clandestine graves thatcontained 16 corpses...bringing the total of bodies...so far...to 88.
  Police say one corpse may belong to a missing U.S. citizen believed to have been on one of the buses.

   Earlier 13 bodies were found in 2 graves, aka "narcofosas clandestinas", in San Fernando county, Tamaulipas state, not far from where 72 central american migrants were discovered murdered on 24 August 2010.

   Police stumbled upon the first graves with 59 bodies during an investigation of a 25 March abduction of bus passengers.
  Seventeen passengers on an Omnibus de Mexico bus headed for the USA disappeared while in northern Mexico.

  The grave sites are about 80 miles from the Brownsville, Texas border.
   The police will continue the search for more graves.

AND:     Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna says that narco gangs are recruiting common criminals and rapidly promoting them to hit men. The narcos now concentrate on employing on low-level lawbreakers like street drug dealers and robbers. A new recruit can now become a hit man in a month, instead of 15 years.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/06/2154203/official-mexican-cartels-hiring.html

MEXICO: 1ST UPDATE: Investigators Bodies Possibly Found; 3 Suspected Migrant Murderers Delivered...Dead.

AP/ UPDATE: 08 Sept/     Police believe they have found the bodies of 2 men tasked with investigating the Tamaulipas migrant murders. Documents found on the bodies matched those of the missing officials. This brazen discovery came after the chief suspects, Los Zetas, apparently delivered 3 remaining suspects wanted in the murders of 72 Central American migrants to police...DEAD. Their bodies were found by the side of a road in northern Mexico after an anonymous caller told police where to find them. Seven massacre suspects were identified. Only one is still alive, caught in a raid on 24 August at the kill site. Three other suspects died in a shootout at the scene.

MEXICO: 2ND UPDATE: 2 Bombs Explode In C. Victoria Where Slain Migrants Are Guarded.

LINK CHANGE /WSJ / DAVID LUHNOW/ 27 AUG/  
   Two car bombs exploded outside a TV station and a police offices in Ciudad Victoria where officials are investigating the brutal murders of 72 migrants from Central and South America. The bodies of 58 men and 14 women were found after a gun battle in Tamaulipas with suspected drug terrorists that left one marine and three suspects dead. Migrants are increasingly targeted by drug gangs for ransom. Officials say the area is controlled by Los Zetas, which has branched into kidnapping migrants. Photos show bodies lying along the walls of an abandoned warehouse, some blindfolded with their hands tied behind their back. Marines are protecting the funeral home where the bodies were taken after being discovered bound, blindfolded and slumped against a wall.

MEXICO: Assassination Of Leading Political Candidate Shocks Nation.

AP/ MIAMI HERALD/     In a nation besieged daily by news of brutal violence, the report that Rodolfo Torre Cantu, 46, the leading gubernatorial candidate in the U.S. border state of Tamaulipas was assassinated a week before an election, along with at least four of his staff on a rural highways, has Mexico reeling. President Felipe Calderon immediately went on TV  to condemn the brazen attack. “This was an act not only against a candidate of a political party but against democratic institutions, and it requires a united and firm response from all those who work for democracy,” he declared. Torre, a PRI candidate, was leading in recent polls by 20%. Torre's murder is the highest-profile case of political violence since 1994, when a presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated. “What organized crime wants is that we stay in our houses, that we are afraid, and they are saying, ‘We want to control the country,’” said Xóchitl Gálvez, a candidate for governor in Hidalgo State. She urged voters to vote to show that the people, not criminals, still rule. Officials said elections would be held as scheduled.

MEXICO: Calderon's PAN Party Faces Gale Force Headwinds In Yucatan.

LATIMES/     Recent polls predict a near-sweep in the Yucatan and elsewhere for the PRI, President Calderon's opposition, as voters in about half the states pick state and local officeholders. PAN leaders said they were even having trouble recruiting candidates in Tamaulipas, a PRI stronghold, because of violence. In the Yucatan, voters choose 106 mayors and 25 state legislators,where the prize is the mayor's seat in Merida, the capital. If PAN loses Merida, it will be a serious blow," said pollster Jorge Buendia.

MEXICO: 8 Journalists Kidnapped In Reynosa; One Dead, 5 Still Missing.

AP/ MIAMI HERALD/    Eight journalists have been kidnapped in the state of Tamaulipas during the past two weeks. Only three of the journalists abducted between Feb. 18 and March 3 in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, have reappeared: Two were released alive and one was found dead with signs of torture. Five are still missing. The intimidation by drug gangs has been so heavy that most Mexican news media did not even report on the Reynosa kidnappings.