Sunday, February 6, 2011

Shoot the jewel of Mexico

The plane of the eight o'clock that covers the route Mexico City-Monterrey crowded. The nine, almost. The occupant of the seat 5-A will account for 5-B is Chilean mining engineer, and that usually travels to Mexico every month to take care of business investment, a multinational based in Switzerland.

Said that a while now, it does so with some concern, he shares with his family, about the situation of violence in the north. Twelve hours later, the engineer looks at his luxury hotel to an armored van to drive to the airport in Monterrey to address the last flight back to Mexico City.

"I went well, but look," he says without looking up from his BlackBerry, "everything that has happened since we saw this morning: 12 narcobloqueos, six meetings a clean shot between the army and the criminals, seven gunmen killed ... My family would be grateful to sleep in the City. " An hour later, at his home in San Pedro Garza Garcia, one of the richest municipalities in Mexico and throughout Latin America, actually a suburb of Monterrey, the famous mayor, Mauricio Fernandez, rushes a tequila and listening to classical music before leaving for a dinner.

He will surrounded by an impressive security service formed, and this is a factor to take into account-by gunmen hired by Alfa, one of its relatives, and not by municipal police. Matter of trust. Even the echo of the shots that killed his chief bodyguard. Why? It is a question that rarely finds answers in Mexico, where 95% of crimes go unpunished.

In the absence of a sentence, a contributor to the mayor offers the final version: "He went in the wrong place at the wrong time." The fact is that Monterrey-La Sultana del Norte, capital of Nuevo León, two hours drive from the Texas border United States-was known until now as the home of major business and financial groups, Femsa, Cemex, Alfa ...-, well as having one of the leading universities in the Republic, TEC de Monterrey.

But a couple of years now has been filled with wrong places, wrong hours of questions unanswered. The major drug trafficking organizations that compete for the square-the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas-star on a daily basis here called narcobloqueos. " A group of gunmen rob three or four buses and they blocked one of the main avenues of the city to prevent the rival cartel, or the Army interrupted one of his criminal actions.

Sometimes they do just to stock up on luxury SUVs, to demonstrate power, to scare ... And faith that they succeed. The official failure to curb such violence took a lot of votes in the ballot box Mauricio Fernandez, also known in Mexico as "the tough mayor." His fame is more recent than his fortune, whose more exuberant show goes by the name The Milarca.

It is a mansion built for decades from Arab handcrafted from Almagro, "under which Miguel de Cervantes wrote." Fernandez speaks openly with the sword of Cortes and poolside, adorned by a Gothic arch of the fourteenth century, from which dominates Monterrey. Immediately upon arrival in office in November 2009, Mauricio Fernandez organized a series of "tough group." Groups of thugs patrolling the town to keep the blood in check.

"To fight crime," he explains, "must-have information." Fernandez came to gather as much information that even announced the death of a famous criminal, the Black Saldaña, a few hours before it appeared murdered. "It appears that Black was walking asking for permission to kill me and now he is dead," said Mauricio Fernandez, who turned against President Felipe Calderon, nothing in favor of political training mate-PAN-make the war your account.

Until the Mexican Navy was openly against it when it was discovered that one of the informants "tough" was a guy nicknamed "El Chico Malo", assassin under the orders of the Beltran Leyva cartel. Mauricio Fernández gives greater importance: "I tell him to fight organized crime requires the availability of information and, obviously, this type of information that is handled by the Sisters of the Cross." Ever since July 2008, Alejandro Junco, president and publisher of the newspaper group Reform, warned publicly about the "intolerable" level of insecurity in Monterrey and announced that, in order not to compromise its editorial integrity, had decided to put her family safe " refugees "in Texas, the diaspora has not only grown.

In addition to the daily bloodletting, a concatenated series of events has alarm bells ringing. March 19, two students from TEC fell under the bullets of the army, which at first tried to make them look like killers. On 20 August, clashes between gunmen of Los Zetas and four private security guards around Femsa American College ended with two guards dead and two others kidnapped.

That freaked the U.S. consulate, and very concerned about the high number of kidnappings. U.S. decided that the young children of their diplomats would have to abandon mandatory Monterrey and be safe in America. To end a horrible year in the history of the city, at dawn on December 31 showed a woman hanging from a bridge under which thousands of citizens have to go through to get to work.

It was the redhead, a kidnapper known that only hours earlier had been taken out of the prison where he was thanks to the complicity of officials. At first it was thought that it had been a rescue. Then it was learned that no. A rival group had kidnapped in order to strangle the view. Who were they? Why? Why? In Monterrey and throughout Mexico are unanswered questions.

Very well explained Arturo Cavazos, Cavazos Edelmiro brother, the mayor of Santiago, a town 30 km from Monterrey, killed this summer: "The terrible blow of death is added to the suspicion of ...". To remain Monterrey La Sultana del Norte is necessary for the engineer's seat 5-A back to sleep quietly in any of its luxury hotels.

Stopping the blood. Answer questions.

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