Mexico Suspects Cartel in Pepsi Subsidiary Attacks

PepsiCo subsidiary Sabritas has been attacked in the Mexican states of Michoacan and Guanajuato. The attacks are among the first against a transnational company in Mexico’s drug war. The suspect detained is a lieutenant from the Knights Templar drug cartel. 

The Associated Press: MEXICO CITY -- A drug cartel lieutenant has been detained in a series of firebombing attacks on Mexican potato-chip company Sabritas, a subsidiary of U.S. food giant PepsiCo. Businessmen and experts said Monday the attacks were the first coordinated targeting of a multinational company in Mexico's 5 1/2-year-long drug war.

Five Sabritas warehouses and vehicle lots were attacked Friday and Saturday in the Mexican states of Michoacan and Guanajuato. Witnesses in one case described armed, masked men who tossed firebombs and torched dozens of the company's distribution trucks and some warehouses. 

Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico's Business Coordinating Council, said Monday that it was "an isolated case" of the kind of extortion that gangs have previously practiced with small and medium-sized businesses. He called on authorities to act immediately to prevent the practice from spreading. Read more. 

Drug Probe Targets Mexican Army

WSJ.com: MEXICO CITY—The arrest of a former deputy defense minister and three other retired and active high-ranking Mexican army officers on suspicion of having been in the pay of a drug cartel is shaping up as the biggest scandal to hit the army in years.

Last week, a judge issued preliminary detention orders for three generals and a lieutenant colonel. The move allows prosecutors from the organized-crime division of the Attorney General's Office to question the men for up to 40 days before formal charges would need to be filed.

Officials haven't said why the men are being held. But according to the men's relatives, a person familiar with the legal proceedings and media accounts citing unnamed sources in the Attorney General's Office, the four are being questioned over allegations they were in the pay of one of Mexico's leading organized crime groups, the Beltran Leyva cartel. Read more. 

Lopez Obrador tries again in Mexico

Washington Post: MEXICO CITY — When Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost the presidential election by a sliver of a percent in July 2006, he cried fraud. His supporters took to the streets, and the most fervent blocked the capital city’s major boulevard for weeks.

After the protests, there were more protests.

Lopez Obrador donned the presidential sash, declared himself the legitimate leader of Mexico and called on Mexicans not to recognize the victor, Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party.

Many of Lopez Obrador’s voters have never forgiven him for the spectacle.

Now the former mayor of Mexico City is back for a second run, this time as the less confrontational Democratic Revolutionary Party candidate who calls for a “loving republic” as he seeks to repackage himself as the wise uncle that Mexico needs to take itself into the 21st century. Read more. 

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Says US Drug War Aid Package Failed His City

Fox News Latino: CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO - Hector Murguía, the outspoken mayor of this border city besieged by a five-year drug war, says the Merida Initiative, the $1.4 billion U.S. aid package intended to support Mexico's war on drugs, has failed to make an impact at the local level.  

"We don't see any benefit of Merida," Murguía said from his third floor office, two blocks from the U.S. border with El Paso, Texas, one of the safest cities in the U.S. 

The Merida Initiative, signed by Congress in 2008, stipulated that no money would be sent directly to Mexico, coming instead in the form of training and equipment.

The package also calls for Mexico to enact judicial reform, strengthen government institutions, respect human rights and the rule of law -- reforms that many argue have yet to occur. 

"The U.S. is the biggest consumer of drugs and their aid package is not enough for us to do what they expect us to do, yet the American media is so critical of Juárez,” said a frustrated Murguía. “These people need to be more responsible and not criticize what they don’t know.” Read more

Mexico’s two major crime cartels now at war

Washington Post: MEXICO CITY — The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view — some of the victims most likely innocents.

With the groups no longer limiting themselves to regional skirmishes, the older, established drug-smuggling Sinaloa cartel is now fighting the brash, young paramilitary Zetas crime organization across multiple front lines in Mexico in a desperate battle, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and security analysts on both sides of the border.

As the number of total homicides in Mexico has been slowly dropping, the sensational violence spikes higher, creating an atmosphere of instability that makes Mexicans and American visitors fear travel in wide stretches of country that even Mexican military leaders concede are not completely under state control. Read more

Mexico political party suspends former official in drug-money scandal

latimes.com: MEXICO CITY -- The political party expected to win Mexico's upcoming presidential election sought Wednesday to distance itself from a former high-ranking official embroiled in a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scandal.

Tomas Yarrington, a former governor of the border state of Tamaulipas from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has been accused in U.S. federal court papers of receiving millions of dollars from drug gangs. He allegedly used the money to buy property in Mexico and Texas.

U.S. prosecutors Tuesday filed two civil forfeiture cases that are aimed at confiscation of some of the properties.

Yarrington has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing. His attorney, Joel Androphy, told Mexico's Milenio TV on Wednesday that he suspected other defendants, attempting to save themselves, had pointed fingers at Yarrington.

But the PRI, in the middle of an election campaign that probably will return it to presidential power after more than a decade, apparently decided enough was enough. Though the accusations have circulated for months, the party Wednesday issued a statement (link in Spanish) saying Yarrington would have to face authorities and clear up the charges. Until then, his party membership was suspended. Read more

Thousands of students protest media coverage of Mexico’s presidential election

Students marched against biased news coverage of the Mexican elections on Wednesday, May 23, for the second time in a week. Thousands protested the television giant Televisa, which they accused of coddling and promoting the leading candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto. University students, sparked by the mobilization of students at the elite private university Iberoamerican, have become the most vocal and demanding sector of the citizenry in the run-up to the July 1 elections.

The Associated Press [excerpt]: The students say Mexico's largest television channel, Televisa, was particularly biased in its coverage of the rally and the campaign in general. Many finished the march at Televisa's studios, where Peña Nieto was appearing on a live interview show. 

Local media reported smaller, simultaneous marches in at least a half-dozen other cities around Mexico. Read more