Josefa Angulo, centre, and Irma Cordova, right, the aunt and mother of Melquisedet Angulo
                       at his funeral hours before they were killed.



Ruth Mclean in Mexico City    12/24/2009 Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Mexicans have become hardened to the brutality of the country’s drugs gangs but the latest mass murder of an entire family has stunned the country. In a revenge attack for the killing last week of the drug kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva, gunmen killed the family of a Mexican Marine who died in the assault.

Several hours after Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova was buried on Tuesday gunmen went to his small family home in Paraiso and shot members of his family while they slept. His mother Irma and sister Yolidabey, 22, died instantly. His aunt Josefa died on the way to hospital and his brother Benito died in hospital. Miraldeyi, his 24-year-old sister, has been injured severely.

Mr Córdova was the only member of the armed forces to die in the operation on December 16, which was hailed as one of the biggest successes of Felipe Calderón’s three-year war on drugs. In a manoeuvre marked by its efficiency elite navy forces surrounded and evacuated Leyva’s luxury hideout in Cuernavaca, a holiday town south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos. In the ensuing gunbattle Leyva, nicknamed the Boss of Bosses, and six of his henchmen were killed.

Mr Córdova was pronounced a hero by President Calderón. He was given a state funeral in which the Secretary of the Navy presented his mother with the flag that covered the coffin. Navy officials accompanied Mr Córdova’s body to his home state.

President Calderón may have inadvertently contributed to the tragedy because he revealed the Marine’s identity — Mexican troops usually wear black ski masks to avoid being recognized and to guard against attack. Revenge of this scale against the family of a dead Marine is unheard of and the Government, which is eager to celebrate the success of the operation, was uncharacteristically open about the event.

Forces in Morelos had been on alert for reprisals but nobody expected an attack on innocent people who were hundreds of miles to the south, in the state of Tabasco. The killing of Mr Córdova’s family marks a new low for the drug cartels and highlights that nobody is beyond their reach.

Four people who are believed to be informants and aides for the Zeta gang — former military commandos who became criminal hitmen — have been arrested over the killings, Rafael Gonzalez, the Tabasco state Attorney-General, said yesterday. The Zetas have been allied with the Beltrán Leyva cartel in recent years.

The Beltrán Leyva cartel also has links with corrupt police in Tabasco and it has been alleged that they were paid to look the other way while hitmen murdered the family.

Two Marines were injured in the gunbattle that killed Leyva. Their identity remains unknown but plans are under way to move them to another hospital to increase their protection.

Despite the attack President Calderón insisted that he would press on with his war against the drugs cartels. “We will not be intimidated by criminals without scruples like those who committed this barbarity,” he said. “Those who act like this deserve the unanimous repudiation of society and they must pay for their crime.”

However, the success of the drug cartels outstrips the success of the Government and the revenge attack highlights the latter’s weakness. The naivety of President Calderón in naming Mr Córdova exemplifies the Government’s underestimation of the cartels, even after deploying 45,000 troops to fight them.

“It’s not even the beginning of the war . . . you’ve made the terrible mistake of messing with THE business,” read a sign that was put up by members of the Beltrán Leyva cartel in Cuernavaca.
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                                                          What Have I Been Saying?
                                                                                           (Thanks For Asking)

                                   

                          From Stein for Congress 2008  posted  June 08, 2008

On a different front, one more casualty of this worsening economy will be the off and on again immigration debate...  If the economy doesn't get better, we Americans naturally will be much more focused on taking care of ourselves.  I'm suggesting to my friends in the Hispanic community not to count on a blanket amnesty if and when there are large Democratic gains in the November elections.

However, maybe there is a path to earning support for amnesty.  Everyone agrees that raising the living standard in Mexico would stop much off the illegal crossing of our border, and help keep families in Mexico intact. But this is unlikely given the ruthlessness of the drug lords in Mexico, and the systemic corruption in the government.

From what I've heard reported, the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, is making an honest attempt at reform.  But when the system is as broken, and as dangerous as it is, it is virtually impossible, I think, to fix solely from within. The fact that the United States is sealing itself off from Mexico, behind a 15 foot wall won’t help Mexico either.  As an afterthought we’ve proposed sending about a billion dollars worth of law enforcement equipment to the Mexican government. (Merida Initiative).   See what the conservative blogs are saying about that!

What if???? What if our undocumented aliens, plus the huge block of Americans citizens with Mexican ancestry did not send any money back home, for many months, and the families back home, in kind of civil disobedience supported this type of boycott.  They would be gladly accepting this sacrifice in a unified declaration that the violent Drug Lords (and government corruption) are completely unacceptable, and that they demand a better future now... Perhaps then these thugs would flee like the proverbial rats on the sinking ship that they are, and go elsewhere, or just retire with their treasure?  It is after all what we hope the citizens of Iraq do to the insurgents. Turn them in. And it is in fact what they are beginning to do.

If American tourists followed up that boycott, with a boycott of their own, I think Felipe Calderon while publicly complaining- will privately- see this as an opportunity to go after governmental corruption, as well as ruthlessly pursue the drug traffickers.  Now I'm not talking about a boycott of Mexican made goods; and tourists, from other countries will make up for the lost Americans boycotting Cancun etc. What I'm suggesting is an uplifting, grassroots, non-government sponsored effort by citizens of two neighboring countries sharing a 1500 mile border.

It doesn't have to be a pipe dream.  You know before there was an earth-day, someone thought up that idea and was probably laughed at. If Spanish talk radio got behind this, and this modest third party candidacy served as a lightning rod, it is possible.  If all of talk radio, and television news shows got behind it, it would definitely happen, and then we might even be seeing peaceful protests in the streets here and in Mexico.  Bye, bye drug gangsters. Maybe?  But who has a better idea?  People might say the drug cartels won't go quietly, well there have been 6000 killings on the Mexican side of the border this year fighting the problem the traditional way. ..



  Che Guevara?    Danger on the horizon?  No, not yet, but nice people are susceptible when cornered.  All this trouble in Arizona doesn't help. Hugo Chavez concurs. Picture taken by me two days from the border in 2008.
              
   Picture of me relaxing with a good book while visiting Mexico, also in 2008, I"ll title "IRONY"

                                                               
                                                 Purchased in Mexico, at a used book store for 10 pesos.  Only book for sale                                                                   in English besides a few technical manuals.


Here's the "Irony"   The 1950's book premise bears many similarities to my inside knowledge of everyday-lousy circumstances in Mexico (or South East Asia) and both were/are ripe for trouble, and both populations are peaceful and religious.  One country is on our border,hehe....geee maybe we ought to listen to Stein.....

......Wikipedia:   The Ugly American is the title of a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The novel became a bestseller, it was influential at the time, and it is still in print. The book is a quasi-roman à clef; that is, it presents, in a fictionalized guise, the experience of Americans in Southeast Asia (that is, Vietnam) and allegedly portrays several real people, most of whose names have been changed.

The novel, taking place in a fictional nation called Sarkhan (an imaginary country in Southeast Asia that somewhat resembles Burma or Thailand, but which is meant to allude to Vietnam) as its setting and includes several real people, most of whose names have been changed. The book describes the United States's losing struggle against Communism - what was later to be called the battle for hearts and minds in Southeast Asia, because of innate arrogance and the failure to understand the local culture. The title is actually a double entendre, referring both to the physically-unattractive hero, Homer Atkins, and to the ugly behavior of the American government employees.

In the novel, a Burmese journalist says "For some reason, the [American] people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious." Ultimately, the phrase "ugly Americans" comes to be applied to Americans behaving in this manner, while the positive contributions of the Homer Atkins character are forgotten.

But despite the dual meaning, the "ugly American" of the book title fundamentally does refer to the plain-looking engineer Atkins, who lives with the local people, who comes to understand their needs, and who offers genuinely-useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump. It is argued in the book that the Communists are successful because they practice tactics similar to those of Atkins.

According to an article published in Newsweek magazine in May 1959, the "real" "Ugly American" was identified as an ICA technician named Otto Hunerwadel, who served in Burma from 1949 until his death in 1952.

Another of the book's heroes, Colonel Hillandale, appears to have been modeled on the real-life U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Edward Lansdale, an expert in counter-guerrilla operations.