How did you know this? You can thank the Media

[Tosh Plumlee]

Yes, Tosh and David, that is the raison d'etre of this forum. Thank you Tosh and to your comrades too. Be safe. Much more to do.

We're doing. The following should be of interest. Its really touch and go down here.. Its like a war zone. Reminds me of El Salvador in the 70's and 80's.

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Juárez refuses to lie down and die

By Adam Thomson in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Published: March 13 2009 18:29 | Last updated: March 13 2009 18:29


There is no curfew yet in Ciudad Juárez, a bleak and sprawling border city in Mexico’s northern desert but the atmosphere is distinctly reminiscent of martial law.
Masked federal police man roadblocks on the main streets. At the border crossings, soldiers with automatic rifles search cars entering from El Paso, Texas.


The heavy military presence is the latest response of the administration of Felipe Calderón, the president, to a rise in drug-related violence that has turned Juárez into just about the most dangerous place on Earth. Last month, more civilians were murdered in the city of 1.6m people than in Baghdad.

The centre-right government has in recent weeks sent 5,000 soldiers to Juárez to back up a force of 2,000. It has also dispatched an extra 1,800 federal police to complement at least 500 in place. “We’ve come for as long as it takes,” says General Pedro Gutiérrez, who heads the federal police operation.
In perhaps the clearest sign of concern, control of the local commerce, prison services and police ministries has been handed to the military. It is the first time since at least the revolution of 1910 that the army has had so much power.
Jaime Torres, spokesman for the city government, says: “There was corruption in these institutions and we needed to guarantee the security of our citizens.”
In better times, Juárez was associated with thriving factories that made electrical components for big US carmakers and, more recently, flat-screen television sets.
Today, the dusty outpost is associated with drugs and death. Recent violence, thought to stem from a battle between the incumbent Juárez cartel and its Sinaloa rival for the domestic drugs market and a vital smuggling corridor into the US, claimed 1,640 lives last year alone. That is 0.1 per cent of the city’s population and a quarter of all drugs-related deaths in Mexico in 2008.
“They [the cartels] are killing us,” says an employee of a seafood restaurant in Juárez who preferred not to give his name for fear of reprisal. “This is a city of the dead.”
He has seen the death throes first hand. On a late January evening two customised pick-up trucks bristling with gunmen drew up outside the shabby restaurant and emptied their magazines into five people. “We’ve been trying to get the business on its feet again but it’s been hard,” he says.
Other businesses have suffered. Retailers say the cartels have started to demand protection money – probably, authorities say, to supplement lost income as anti-drugs efforts and inter-cartel bloodshed take their toll.
Fear has spread among foreign-owned manufacturing plants. Alvaro Navarro, Juarez’s economic development minister, says his department has had to offer companies “panic buttons” in each factory with a promise to respond within five minutes. “We’ve installed hundreds,” he says.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that most people have welcomed the security presence. In The Future, a neighbourhood of shoddy, single-storey houses and flea-infested dogs, José Reynaldo says he feels safer now that Juárez has been militarised.
“They drive by every half an hour or so,” says Mr Reynaldo, a mechanic. “It’s a reassuring sight.”
At the city morgue, the workload is the lightest in months. Héctor Hawley, the assistant director, says he might frame a report for March 6 that reads: “The shift passed without incident.”
There are even signs the measures are translating into drug seizures. In a raid tinged with moments from a Keystone Kops script, police used a battering ram on a door only to discover it was unlocked and opened the other way and then confiscated 700kg of marijuana.
In spite of the relative calm in Ciudad Juárez, many people say it is only a matter of time before the cartels return. “They’re biding their time,” says Pedro Torres, deputy editor of El Diario, the city’s leading newspaper. “The power of the narcos and their ability to bribe is very strong.”



Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

note: AP received sections this story as it was developing on March 08, 09, as well as CBS and CNN.

P.S ... Going back over the border tonight... something is in the works.. Border Patrol is on HIGH ALERT!