OBO Remakes Mexico

 

Or at least, our diplomatic premises there. See the current State Magazine for an article about how my good friends have done a clean sweep of our old and decrepit embassy and consulates there and replaced them with the new stuff. 

 

Un Verdadero Sobrino Vivo de su Tío Sam

The nationality always says "Mexican" on a Border Crossing Card;

As you know by now, if you have any interest at all in the saga of the born-in-Dallas teenager who was held by the Border Patrol and ICE for three weeks while they figured out whose citizen he is really, he was released yesterday although may still be pending some charges.

Here's a typical story, Francisco Erwin Galicia showed officers his Texas ID, but they believed it was fake, in which we learn:

“When he was a child, Galicia's mother, who is not living in the US legally, took out a tourist visa for her son, listing his birthplace as Mexico, so he could cross the border and visit relatives, the AP reported. She was unable to get a US passport for the boy because her name didn't match how she had identified herself on his birth certificate, [his lawyer] Galan said.”

The quote is from Buzzfeed but that story, in pretty much exactly those words, has been in every account I’ve seen of this incident.

The funny thing is that story makes no sense on any level. You can’t ‘take out’ a visa for someone else. Galicia’s mother had to misrepresent facts and commit fraud in order to get her minor child a Border Crossing Card, something the USG issues only to citizens of and residents in Mexico. Moreover, she had to do it with enough expertise to fool a U.S. Consular Officer when she brought her son in for an interview and review of his - fraudulent? - documents proving he was a Mexican citizen and resident.

And there was no reason for her to get a BCC for her son in the first place. The phony name she used on his Texas birth certificate would not have prevented Galicia from getting a U.S. passport, after which he could freely go back and forth across the Mexican border all he liked. A U.S. citizen has no need for a BCC.

So the story as it's been pried loose by ICE is not likely to be the whole truth or the final word. But the one thing that’s absolutely, perfectly, crystal clear in this story is that Galicia’s mother has a piss-poor regard for U.S. law. CBP ought to let the kid go and arrest her.

Design Contract Awarded for New Consulate General Matamoros

The river (creek? puddle?) separates Matamoros, Mexico, from Texas

Well, I'm happy to see that the press release about a new Consulate complex for Matamoros got released after all. Sure enough, U.S. Consulate General Matamoros will get a new office building around the same time that CG Nuevo Laredo does.

The Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) has awarded a contract to Richärd+Bauer of Phoenix, Arizona as the design architect for the new U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, Mexico. Richärd+Bauer will develop the schematic design for the new facility.

The multi-building complex will be situated on an eight-acre site in the central district neighborhood of Jardin, and will include an office building, U.S. Marine Security Guard residence, a support annex, utility building, and facilities for the Consulate community. A design/build construction award for the project, to complete the design and build the facility, is anticipated in fiscal year 2015.

The U.S. has had continuous consular operations in Matamoros since the 1830s. The city itself has a wild history, playing key roles in both the Mexican Revolution (1826) and the Texas Revolution (1836), after which it declared itself an international free trade zone, leading to boom years when it was the only open port serving the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

Matamoros, like Brownsville, is one of the most dangerous towns on the border, and the Consulate regularly sends out warnings about things like on-going gun battles. Check out CG Matamoros' twitter feed and marvel at the pace of gunfire and kidnappings going on just south of the border.

I don't know whether a new Fortress Embassy will help that security environment much, but it couldn't hurt.

New Fortress Consulate (Consulates?) On the Mexican Border

It's all just across that borderline

My good friends at the Office of Overseas Buildings Operations announced yesterday that they have awarded a design / build contract for a new borderline diplomatic facility - I mean, a diplomatic facility to be built on the U.S.-Mexican border - in fact, right smack on the border at U.S. Consulate General Nuevo Laredo:

The Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) announces the design/build construction award for a new U.S. Consulate General in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico to B.L. Harbert, International of Birmingham, Alabama.

The project will provide a new 5.6-acre Consulate campus just south of downtown Nuevo Laredo, on Paseo Colon. The campus will include a Consulate, a U.S. Marine Security Guard residence, a support annex, and facilities for the Consulate community. Ground breaking for the project is expected in early 2015, and completion of the project is anticipated in fiscal year 2017.

The Department sent out a second press release yesterday about yet another contract award, this one for a new Consulate General in Matamoros. However, by today that notice had disappeared from the page of January 2015 press releases. Presumably it was sent prematurely and then recalled (?). Anyway, I do hope the Department was not confused about which Mexican border post is which.

I always find the image of that borderline so haunting. The only song that does it justice is this one, performed here in a very nice Tejano style.



There are a few more verses to the song, but the last bits are rarely performed. The full lyrics are here, including the lines in Spanish ("en la triste oscuridad ...") and this one: "but hope remains when pride is gone, and it keeps you moving on ..." Written by a gringo, by the way.

That song is just plain one of the most moving ones I've ever heard. 

The Narco War in Ciudad Juarez Has A Winner

It looks like the narco war in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, that sub-state conflict on our southern border that has raged on with such excessive violence, and which two years ago reached into the U.S. Consulate staff and their families, has now settled down.

Good news, to be sure, but maybe for a bad reason, as the WaPo reports today - In Mexico’s Murder City, the War Appears Over:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — When this city was among the most murderous in the world, the morgue ran out of room, the corpses stacked to the ceiling in the wheezing walk-in freezers.

Medical examiners, in plastic boots, performed a dozen autopsies a day as families of victims waited outside in numbers sufficient to require a line.

For all this, Mexico has not made much sense of one of the most sensational killing sprees in recent history, which has left 10,500 dead in the streets of Juarez as two powerful drug and crime mafias went to war. In 2010, the peak, there were at least 3,115 aggravated homicides, with many months posting more than 300 deaths, according to the newspaper El Diario.

But the fever seems to have broken.

In July, there were just 48 homicides — 33 by gun, seven by beatings, six by strangulation and two by knife. Of these, 40 are considered by authorities to be related to the drug trade or criminal rivalries.

Authorities attribute the decrease in homicides to their own efforts — patrols by the army, arrests by police, new schools to keep young men out of gangs and in the classroom.

Yet ordinary Mexicans suspect there is another, more credible reason for the decrease in extreme violence: The most-wanted drug lord in the world, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and his Sinaloa cartel have won control of the local drug trade and smuggling routes north.

Put that crown squarely on Guzman's head, because "El Chapo" (Shorty) is by acclamation the biggest drug lord ever. How big is that, exactly? Well, no one on the outside knows exactly, but the New York Times had a very informative essay last June on Cocaine Incorporated that gives you a pretty good idea of how big:

So in a spirit of empirical humility, we shouldn’t accept as gospel the estimate, from the Justice Department, that Colombian and Mexican cartels reap $18 billion to $39 billion from drug sales in the United States each year. (That range alone should give you pause.) Still, even if you take the lowest available numbers, Sinaloa emerges as a titanic player in the global black market. In the sober reckoning of the RAND Corporation, for instance, the gross revenue that all Mexican cartels derive from exporting drugs to the United States amounts to only $6.6 billion. By most estimates, though, Sinaloa has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook.

-- snip --

Even so, the business generates such volumes of currency that there is only so much you can launder or reinvest, which means that money can start to pile up around the house. The most that Martínez ever saw at one time was $30 million, which just sat there, having accumulated in his living room. In 2007, Mexican authorities raided the home of Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese-Mexican businessman who is believed to have supplied meth-precursor chemicals to the cartel, and discovered $206 million, the largest cash seizure in history. And that was the money Zhenli held onto — he was an inveterate gambler, who once blew so much cash in Las Vegas that one of the casinos presented him, in consolation, with a Rolls-Royce. “How much money do you have to lose in the casino for them to give you a Rolls-Royce?” Tony Placido, the D.E.A. intelligence official, asked. (The astonishing answer, in Zhenli’s case, is $72 million at a single casino in a single year.) Placido also pointed out that, as a precursor guy, Zhenli was on the low end of the value chain for meth. It makes you wonder about the net worth of the guy who runs the whole show.

When the Sinaloa cartel got that kind of crazy-big it could afford to mop up its remaining enemies and consolidate control over its market. That consolidation allows it to operate as a true cartel for the first time, and when cartels are cartels, public safety wins:

To anyone conversant with economics, reading stories about the Mexican drug wars has long come with a bit of irony. The drug trafficking organizations are commonly known as cartels, but the horrific violence stems precisely from the fact that they aren't cartels. In a legal competitive marketplace in a country with an effective legal and law enforcement apparatus, firms compete by trying to offer a good value proposition to their customers. In an illegal market, firms can compete by trying to kill one another. And in Mexico, that kind of violent competition has been running amok leading to a massive body count. Insofar as you get true cartels—stable, anti-competitive arrangements—then a lot of the problems associated with the drug market go away. There are no competitors to kill, leading to less violence and fewer risks to bystanders.

The U.S. Government once offered a reward of 5 million Gringo dollars for the capture of Guzman, but I can no longer find that offer online, so it may be that we have withdrawn it out of embarrassment. After all, five million would hardly be enough to motivate anyone who is close enough to Guzman to rat him out. He and his crew probably spill that much money.

All Aboard The Tequila Train!

I don't know what ad man came up with this pitch, but he must have juevos in both hands to even attempt to draw gringo tourists back to Mexico. And especially to Guadalajara, the lovely city that is likely to become the next hotspot in Mexico's drug wars.

The National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, Guadalajara cordially welcomes you to experience our legendary train ride that is our pride and joy: The Tequila Express.

Culture, diversion, entertainment and much more is in store on this magical journey. We invite you to discover it.

Come aboard and immerse yourself in Mexico’s past! Let’s begin!

Will the attractions of tequila and Mariachi music draw tourists back to a region where the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas are battling each other with drive-by shootings, kidnappings, and beheadings? Not to mention the Mexican government's response to the drug wars, which is credibly alleged to include systematic torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

I wish the Guadalajara boosters well, but, as much as I'd like to see the place again, I think I'll plan my next vacation for somewhere north of the border.

Central America, Plan Mexico, and Where's The Drug Czar?

Assistant Secretary William Brownfield, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, is one of the few people in Washington who is working during August. Maybe that's because narco cartels never take a holiday?

For whatever reason, he made some extensive remarks at a Council of the Americas confab last week on the current state of counter narcotics efforts in the Americas.

The gist of his remarks was that in the 1990s our counter narcotics programs succeeded in choking off the major drug trafficking routes that existed on the Atlantic coast, and later we did the same to the Pacific routes that sprang up in the 2000s, so today the dominant trafficking routes to the U.S. come straight up through the middle of Central American and Mexico. Hence, we are re-running the Plan Colombia playbook, only this time we're calling it the Merida Initiative. I think that's a fair summary.

As a result of the efforts in northern South America, in the Caribbean, and in the eastern Pacific, you now see the overwhelming majority of the flow of narcotic products through Central America on its way to the North American market. And, I might add, beginning in the year 2007, you see a squeeze at both ends of the Central American isthmus, not just the efforts of Plan Colombia and its successor plans to the south, but the beginnings of an impact of the efforts to put the squeeze on the routes to the north in Mexico under the Merida initiative.

- snip --

And where are we today? Let's ask ourselves the question: How serious is this threat, that is affecting, and in my opinion, threatening the very core institutions of Central America today?

First, we calculate that more than 95%, let me repeat that figure, more than 95% of all illicit drugs that enter North America from South America have transited Central America. Ninety-five percent.

What impact might that have on the region? Here is a statistic, dates from 2010, the last year that we have full statistics. In 2010, the homicide rate in Honduras was 82 per 100,000 population, in El Salvador, 65, in Guatemala, 41. To put that in some perspective for you, here in the United States, a society not known around the world for its passivism and lack of violence, our homicide rate is somewhat below five. More than 70,000 youth in the seven countries of Central America, and overwhelmingly focused on the northern three of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are calculated to be members of gangs ... The entire population of Central America is about one seventh of the population of the United States of America. If you play the statistical game and say what would this correlate to in the United States, it would mean about a half a million gang members on the streets of the United States cities.

Ladies and gentlemen, Central America in a very real sense is a victim. It is a victim of geography, and it can do nothing about that ... It is a victim in a very real sense of progress elsewhere in the region. Progress in Colombia, under Plan Colombia, where thanks to the heroic efforts of a large number of Colombian citizens, the problems have been squeezed down substantially over the last eleven years, and the progress that we see beginning, I submit, more on that later, in Mexico, with the Mexican government's efforts to retake control of its own communities, its own streets, and its own borders.

-- snip --

If I could use the metaphor of three houses located side-by-side on a street. One house erupts in flames, and the community, alas, due to resource and budgetary issues, has only one fire truck. Where does the fire truck go? It goes to the house that is burning. Well, sure enough, sparks pass over to the third house and it starts to burn as well. The fire truck goes to the third house. It knows perfectly well that the house in between is eventually going to burn, but you’ve only got one fire truck. You're watching that house in the middle, you know that at some point in time you are going to go after it, but you’ve got one truck, and you are going to focus the truck on the house that is actual burning. And it is burning today, ladies and gentlemen, and I suggest to you that what we will talk about for the remainder of this morning is where to put that fire truck, what equipment to put on that truck, how many people we can put on that truck, and how we can get maximum value out of that truck.

-- snip --

We have limited resources to work with. On the 23rd of June, in the city of Guatemala, the Secretary of State committed $290 million from the United States Government to support this effort in the course of this year. Not $2.9 billion, not $29 billion, $290 million ... I do not see the likelihood of a vast infusion of new funds coming from that element of the United States Government that is constitutionally entitled to fund and appropriate the taxpayers' money in the United States in the foreseeable future.

A few questions followed, including this one, which went right to the heart of the narco trafficking problem - the demand by users in the U.S. for drugs that come from South and Central America:

QUESTION: I’m William Steadman. I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer. U.S. domestic demand is certainly a considerable problem which you noted. I’d like to know what is being done, what can be done, and what coordination exists among various U.S. government state and local agencies to deal with domestic demand. Thank you.

Ambassador Brownfield's answer was not so well focused. In fact, he tried to pass the ball to the Drug Czar, who wasn't present to receive it.

[I] got to tell you that you can bet that you could have asked the same question, as you well know, in the year 1965 or 1955, and in many ways, the fundamentals of that question have not changed. I suppose the simple answer to your question is we have not yet solved the problem of demand in the United States of America ... I would suggest to you, for example, that the demand in the United States for cocaine has probably has probably dropped, I would throw out a figure, as much as 50% over the last 10 years ... demand is elastic, both in terms of how much or how little demand there is, and where it is located.

I am not the right one to give you a detailed answer to that question, because, of course, I am the Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, sometimes referred to as the Drug Czar, is that position which for the past roughly 40 years has had the responsibility been linking all of these elements together into a common strategy and a common approach.

If anyone passed that question along to the Drug Czar, I'm not aware of it. By the way, when was the last time anyone saw or heard from the Drug Czar? I think Miami Vice was still on TV the last time he mattered.

Ambassador Brownfield did much the same press conference again today, this time in Ciudad Juarez, Ground Zero in the battle over international narcotics and law enforcement.

Acting ATF Attaché in Mexico: Operation Fast and Furious Was "The Perfect Storm Of Idiocy"

I'm watching the House Oversight Committee grill a panel of current and former ATF agents about Operation Fast and Furious. I believe the hearing will be rebroadcast tonight on C-SPAN.

Chairman Issa and some - not all - of the Committee's members are pressing the witnesses to explain why the ATF sanctioned the illegal purchase of nearly 2,000 firearms by straw buyers in the southwestern U.S., and then stood by as many of those firearms were transferred to Mexican drug trafficking organizations. At least 122 of the weapons were found at Mexican crime scenes or in the possession of drug cartels, and two of them were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent last December. About half of the weapons are still loose.

It's a good, dramatic, hearing because some of the witnesses are there to defend ATF (and themselves), and some are there to blow the whistle on the corporate suits.

The quote of the day was provided by ATF Agent Carlos Canino, acting ATF attache to Mexico:

"I can say with authority 'walking guns' is not a recognized investigative technique," Canino testified. "These guns went to ruthless criminals. ... It infuriates me that people, including my law enforcement, diplomatic and military colleagues, may be killed or injured with these weapons."

Canino said Mexican officials regularly complain about American indifference to Mexican violence and death, a view he does not share. "However, in this particular case, with these specific guns, I am unable to defend this operation."

The former ATF attache to Mexico shared that sentiment.

"I would like to apologize to my former Mexican law enforcement counterparts and to the Mexican people for Operation Fast and Furious," said Darren Gil. "I hope they understand that this was kept secret from most of ATF, including me and my colleagues in Mexico."

The Oversight Committee also released this statement, which focuses on how the ATF kept its own agents who were posted to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico in the dark about F&F.

Findings in a second staff report released by Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley show that ATF officials based in the United States Embassy in Mexico City were increasingly worried about the alarming rate of guns found in violent crimes in Mexico from a single ATF operation based out of the ATF's Phoenix Field Division. Issa is Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Grassley is Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The consequences of arming Mexican drug cartels seem obvious. But even guns turning up at crime scenes in Mexico wasn't enough for Justice Department officials to arrest straw purchasers and shut down their trafficking operations. Tragically, it wasn't until Fast and Furious guns were found at the murder scene of a Border Patrol Agent that Justice officials finally ended this reckless and arrogant effort," said Issa.

"It's incomprehensible that officials at the Justice Department, the ATF and the U.S. attorney's office would keep their counterparts at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City in the dark about Operation Fast and Furious. Keeping key details secret while straw purchasers continued buying weapons for gun traffickers jeopardized our relationship with our southern ally and put lives at risk," Grassley said.

The report released today outlines several important findings, including:

• There was little to no information sharing from the Phoenix Field Division, ATF Headquarters and the Justice Department to their colleagues in Mexico City. Every time Mexico City officials asked about the mysterious investigation, their U.S. based ATF counterparts in Phoenix and Washington, D.C. continued to say they were "working on it" and "everything was under control."

• Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Justice Department, was clearly aware of Operation Fast and Furious and touted the case during a visit to Mexico.

• ATF officials in Mexico City were incredulous that their agency would knowingly allow guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, and they were incensed when they finally began to learn the full scope of Operation Fast and Furious and the investigative techniques used.

Issa and Grassley are leading a congressional inquiry into the ill-advised strategy known as Operation Fast and Furious.

A copy of the report can be found here.

A quote in the report suggests that the ATF deliberately kept information away from not only its own Attaché in Mexico, but the U.S. Ambassador as well:

According to [former ATF Attaché in Mexico Darren] Gil, ATF leadership withheld information from him and other ATF agents in Mexico because of a fear that they would brief the Government of Mexico on the investigation and would jeopardize Operation Fast and Furious:

-- snip --

"Myself, my deputy, my staff, we were all frustrated. We didn’t understand it. We understand the concept to keep secret investigations, that if you leak something potentially that it could get corrupt the case or get somebody ... unfortunately get somebody hurt or killed. We understand that, but as I said, one of my screaming matches was over this issue that, okay, you don’t want us to -- okay, if you tell me I’m not going to release anything to the Government of Mexico then I won’t release it, but let me know."

"When you tell me, well, we don’t want to let you know because we’re afraid you'll notify the ambassador or ultimately somehow the Government of Mexico is going to find out, yes, that irritates me."

I'll bet former Attaché Gil isn't the only one who is irritated by that.

U.S. Ambassador To Mexico Resigns His Post

It was not entirely unexpected. Here's the press release:

Press Statement
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
March 19, 2011

It is with great regret that I announce that Ambassador Pascual has asked President Obama and me to accept his resignation as our ambassador to Mexico.

For the past year and a half, Ambassador Pascual has been an architect and advocate for the U.S.-Mexico relationship, effectively advancing the policies of the United States on behalf of the President and this Administration. He has collaborated tirelessly with his Mexican counterparts to lay the foundation for a cross-border renewable energy market, to open negotiations on the management of oil and gas reserves that span U.S. and Mexican territory, and to build a new border strategy to advance trade while staunching illicit flows. Carlos has also engaged U.S. and Mexican business to build markets that have helped make Mexico the number two destination of U.S. exports.

Ambassador Pascual worked with the Mexican government to integrate human rights into our respective policies and engagement; he also partnered to enhance the human and cultural connections that underpin the friendship between the people of Mexico and the United States. Carlos partnered with his counterparts to reach beyond the Merida Initiative’s initial focus on disrupting cartels to building institutions for the rule of law in Mexico and engaging Mexican civil society in advancing their security. These ties, grown and strengthened throughout his tenure, will serve both our nations for decades.

Within the U.S. Government, Carlos embraced a “whole of government” approach to addressing one of our most important bilateral relationships, winning the respect and cooperation of our foreign service, military and law enforcement agencies. The President and I are particularly grateful to Carlos for his efforts to sustain the morale and security of American personnel after tragic shootings in Mexico that killed four people from our extended family in the past year.

Carlos has relayed his decision to return to Washington based upon his personal desire to ensure the strong relationship between our two countries and to avert issues raised by President Calderon that could distract from the important business of advancing our bilateral interests. It is with great reluctance that President Obama and I have acceded to Carlos’s request. Prior to returning to assuming his new responsibilities at the State Department, the President and I have asked Carlos to stay in Mexico to help us organize an orderly transition.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Another Wiki-Casualty?

Mexico's President Calderon was in Washington yesterday for a one-day visit. The WaPo reports that he pronounced himself highly offended by our embassy's frank assessments of his government's continued shortcomings in its muddled, but nevertheless laudatory, war against the drug cartels, and he threatens to take out his resentments on the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Thursday that the release of State Department cables criticizing Mexico's anti-drug fight had caused "severe damage" to its relationship with the United States and suggested that tensions had risen so dramatically that he could no longer work with the American ambassador in his country.

Calderon's comments were the strongest to date on the secret cables distributed by WikiLeaks, which have threatened to disrupt what both sides have hailed as increasingly close cooperation against Mexico's violent drug gangs.

The Mexican president, at the start of a one-day visit to Washington, suggested that the release of the cables had caused turmoil on his national security team. He took aim at one U.S. cable that said that Mexican military officials had "risk-averse habits."

"It's difficult if suddenly you are seeing the courage of the army [questioned]. For instance, they have lost probably 300 soldiers ... and suddenly somebody in the American embassy, they [say] the Mexican soldiers aren't brave enough," Calderon told Washington Post reporters and editors.

"Or you decide to play the game that they are not coordinated enough, and suddenly start to bring information to one agency and not to the other and try to get them to compete."

Calderon's remark appeared to be a reference to a cable signed by Ambassador Carlos Pascual that described how the Mexican navy captured a major trafficker after U.S. officials gave them information that the Mexican army had not acted upon.

"We have an expression in Mexico, which says, 'Don't help me, compadre,'" Calderon said sarcastically, using the Spanish word for a close friend.

Asked whether he could continue to work with the U.S. ambassador, the Mexican leader said, "That is a question that maybe I will talk [about] with President Obama." The two leaders were scheduled to meet at midday.

Pressed on whether he had lost confidence in Pascual, Calderon paused and then said, "It's difficult to build and it's easy to lose."

-- snip --

If Pascual was recalled, he would be the most prominent U.S. casualty of the WikiLeaks scandal. Only one American ambassador has had to leave the country where he was based because of the cables - Ambassador Gene Cretz, who took an extended break from Libya before the anti-government demonstrations erupted there.

Read the whole thing here - Calderon: WikiLeaks caused severe damage to U.S.-Mexico relations.

Calderon had already aired his resentments more extensively in an interview with El Universal, the Mexico City daily paper:

As officials from both countries vow to jointly avenge the murder of a U.S. federal agent, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accused senior American diplomats of damaging the cross-border relationship with criticism of Mexico's public security forces.

In a wide-ranging interview published Tuesday in El Universal, one of Mexico City's leading newspapers, Calderon charged that U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual's "ignorance has translated into a distortion of what is happening in Mexico" that has caused "an impact and an irritation in our own team."

Calderon was reacting to a barrage of analytic cables - some signed by Pascual, others by senior embassy officials - that discuss the perceived shortcomings of Mexico's intelligence services, the conduct of its army in Calderon's anti-crime campaign and the inability of its security forces to work well with one another.

The U.S. Embassy offered no immediate reaction to the interview.

The cables, some classified secret, have been published by the website WikiLeaks, with still more appearing this week. Until Tuesday, Mexican officials have responded to the cables with shrugs and condemnations of WikiLeaks rather than the diplomats.

Not any more.

"They have done a lot of damage with the stories they tell and that, in truth, they distort," Calderon said of the cables in the interview.

Read the original, Spanish language, interview here.

By the way, I notice that President Calderon offered a derogatory assessment of his own in that interview. He used an idiomatic expression to compare U.S. government agencies to the comically confused characters in a Cuban popular song:

“They themselves are like ‘Borondongo’…, Barnabas hit the CIA and the DEA or ICE, really not coordinated, even compete with each other …”.

"Borondongo" is a catchy tune, one that was covered by Celia Cruz, in which a character named Fuchilanga casts a voodoo spell on a village idiot named Burundanga, causing his feet to swell, after which a friend of Burundanga named Bernabé (Baranabas) hits Fuchilanga, and Borondongo, a friend of Fuchilanga, hits Bernabé, and so on. The word is a slang term for a hopelessly confused mess.

That might be a pretty fair analogy to the usual state of interagency cooperation, frankly, but it is still an insult and we are as entitled to be offended by it as Calderon is by our embassy's reporting cables. More entitled, since our cables are carefully substantiated by actual facts.

Speaking of which, if you are feeling bold enough to view those WikiLeaks cables that caused all this ruckus, I've placed a link to them below the warning.

CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION!

NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

View them [link redacted, due to somewhat exaggerated official concern], if you dare, but only on a personal computer, and then immediately forget what you saw.

What Sort of Diplomat Doesn't Carry A Gun? The Sort in Mexico.

Some news media, especially those in Pakistan and the UK, have asked regarding Raymond Davis: "what sort of diplomat carries a gun?"

To which the answer seems to be: the sort who doesn't want to be helpless if he is ambushed while driving through a lawless land.

Mexico's Drug Wars "Surpassing Usual, Proper, Or Specified Limits"

If you follow the news from Mexico you are probably numb from the unrelenting tragedy of the drug wars, in which more than 30,000 people have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on the narco cartels four years ago this month.

H/T to Blog del Narco for reporting on a commonplace administrative matter in one Mexican city that cut through the fog of statistics and made me wince.

Due to the excess of deaths ("debido al exceso de muertes") that occurred in recent months in Sinaloa, the city many drug kingpins call home, the health department has run out of death certificates and is giving families of the dead copies of the certificates rather than originals.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Webster's definition of EXCESS:

(1) the state or an instance of surpassing usual, proper, or specified limits; superfluity; the amount or degree by which one thing or quantity exceeds another

(2) undue or immoderate indulgence; intemperance; also, an act or instance of intemperance

Yesterday in Matamoros, Afghanistan

H/T to the Brownsville Herald for this report from the edge of the war zone - that is, from the northern side of the Mexican frontier, from which they could hear the rifle fire and grenades during a day-long series of firefights in Matamoros yesterday.

Notice that the battle was as much between competing drug cartels as it was against them and Mexican government forces. The cartels blocked streets to keep military vehicles out while they went toe-to-toe with each other, even calling in reinforcements from nearby Reynosa.

Gunfire and roadblocks were reported Wednesday evening in Matamoros as armed gunmen with the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas organization clashed with the Mexican military in a three-way confrontation, sources stated.

One of the international bridges to Brownsville was closed.

Tractor-trailers were used to block off various avenues in Matamoros, including Lauro Villar, Avenida Solidaridad, Avenida del Nino and other main thoroughfares, in an effort to keep military vehicles from getting through, according to a Mexican law enforcement official who asked not to be named for security reasons.

A source with the Mexican military who asked not to be named said authorities closed off Los Tomates-Veterans International Bridge in response to the violence.

Mexican Marines, army troops and federal police officers were deployed throughout the city as they responded to the various firefights, the source said.

Military helicopters were seen flying over the city as they provided air support to troops on the ground.

According to a source with firsthand knowledge of criminal activity in Matamoros, the violence began when members of the Zetas were seen trying to enter Matamoros and Gulf Cartel members went to confront them. Mexican authorities reportedly arrived shortly afterward.

The source said that several Gulf Cartel strike teams from Reynosa, including teams known as Los Zeros, Los M’s and Los Lobos, were sent to Matamoros to reinforce the Gulf Cartel.

Some sources have said that the Zetas are trying to take advantage of a perceived power vacuum in the Gulf Cartel since the recent death of Ezekiel "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen, one of the leaders of the cartel.

Wednesday’s violence in Matamoros reportedly began on Avenida del Nino and moved to Lauro Villar, one of the city’s main streets. From there it spread to other areas.

Reports Wednesday evening were that a prominent member of the Gulf Cartel was either captured or killed, but that could not be confirmed.

Residents in some areas of Brownsville said they heard grenade explosions and gunfire from across the border.

A resident of Matamoros who goes to work at 8:30 p.m. said employees of the company where she is employed were called and told not to report for work.

It was not known how many people were killed or injured in the violence.

On Monday, authorities had announced the capture of five men after an intense firefight on the outskirts of Matamoros. In that encounter, four police officers were injured, according to an official press release.

On Wednesday, it was announced that a series of military operations last weekend resulted in the capture of 12 men, reportedly members of the Gulf Cartel or the Zetas, and the seizure of arms and cash.

Some of the fighting centered around Plaza Fiesta, a part of town where, I believe, many U.S. and local Consulate employees live. It never ceases to amaze me that there is a full fledged, but mostly unrecognized, war going on within earshot of the United States.

The Afghanization of Mexico Continues

A Mexican narco group employed a carbomb - pardon me, I mean a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, or VBIED, to use the clumsy phrase that all the experts prefer - in a complex attack on police in Ciudad Juárez last night. It wasn't much of a bomb, at least not by Middle Eastern standards, but it was a very big escalation in the war the narco groups are conducting against state authorities in Mexico. The use of explosives, and, even more ominously, the use of guerrilla warfare tactics (shooting a police officer in order to draw in response forces who were then attacked with the VBIED), marks a further militarization of the conflict.

At some point, a crime wave is no longer merely crime but war, and our neighbor to the south has passed that point.

From the El Paso Times report, Police killed in Juárez blast:

An explosive blasted Mexican federal police and rescuers when it detonated as they went to the aid of a wounded police officer in Juárez on Thursday night.

Authorities said it had not been determined if the blast was caused by a grenade or a car bomb, but the attack appeared to follow the tactics of terrorists in the Middle East.

Late Thursday night, federal police said a federal police officer, a municipal police officer and a rescue worker were killed.

The attack occurred about 8 p.m. near the intersection of Bolivia and 16 de Septiembre streets in downtown Juárez. First, a municipal police officer was shot and killed, and when federal police arrived to the scene there was an explosion, an official said, citing initial information.

Seven to 10 people were injured, including a cameraman for Channel 5.

Footage from Channel 26-KINT (cable Channel 2) showed a street covered in debris. Something appeared to be in flames. A uniformed police officer lay dead and a man sat on the street bleeding heavily and holding his head.

Late Thursday night, police said the blast was in retaliation for the arrest of a cartel leader.

Graffiti later appeared on a wall stating, "What happend on 16 (de Septiembre avenue) will keep happening to all the authorities who keep supporting El Chapo. Sincerely - the Juarez cartel. We still have car bombs."

The use of explosives, including the possibility of a car bomb, would be an escalation in a drug war that has bloodied Juárez for more than two years. The use of car bombs by narco-traffickers is not unprecedented since they had been used in Colombia by drug cartels in that nation.

Federal police earlier this year replaced Mexican army soldiers patrolling the city. Patrols are regularly done in groups of at least two vehicles, with several officers in each armed with assault rifles.

-- snip --

There were eight homicides Wednesday in Juárez. More than 1,500 people have been slain in Juárez this year, and more than 5,700 people have died since 2008.

The Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels have been fighting over lucrative smuggling corridors into the United States. It is not uncommon for drug traffickers to target police claiming they are working for rival groups.

Those numbers are staggering. More than 1,500 people killed in Ciudad Juárez this year?? Are there any cities in Afghanistan that have had that many killed this year? Or in the past ten years? I think not.

The only silver lining in this cloud is the small and primitive nature of the VBIED. In the post-blast videos I've seen there was almost no damage done to the structures surrounding the site of the bomb, even though some of them were only a few feet away. Here's a tip: you can get a sense of the size and efficiency of a bomb blast by looking at the damage it did to surrounding objects, and in particular, from the transition zones where one type of damage ends and a lesser type begins. For example, if you see windows shattered and blown out of their frames for 100 feet in all directions around the site of the blast, but windows more than 100 feet away are only cracked and retained in the frames, then there was a transition zone at 100 feet that can be a useful clue to assessing the size of the blast.

In this case, the blast appears to have been puny. There is no structural damage evident in the masonry buildings a few feet away from the blast, metal shutters on stores are intact, no street signs are blown away or even bent, windows are shattered but I see one part of a storefront glazing still hanging on to its frame. Bits of the vehicle that carried the bomb are scattered around the street and those were no doubt dangerous shrapnel, however, I saw no indication of fragmentation added to enhance the anti-personnel effect of the bomb, such as nails or ball bearings embedded in the walls of surrounding buildings.

I would guess that this means the narcos lack the expertise with explosives that has been acquired by more established Mexican insurgent groups such as the Popular Revolutionary Army (see this) and so they face a long learning curve before their VBIEDs can become a major threat.


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Update: A Mexican Army spokesman has given a statement to the press with some more information:

The blast tore through an intersection in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas, late on Thursday in what the security ministry said was retaliation for the arrest of a drug cartel boss.

"There were 10 kilos (22-pounds) of explosives, activated from a distance by a cell phone," Enrique Torres, spokesman for the army in Ciudad Juarez, told Reuters.

The cell phone makes sense, since there is no indication of a suicide bomber, but I don't believe the estimated size of the bomb. Check out the photo below. Those overhead street lights would not still be intact and working after a 22-pound bomb blast from below.

[ Download ]

[ Download ]

Every War Needs a Soundtrack

In a comment I received to a post on the drug-fueled insurgency that is going on in Mexico (here) there was a link to a song I'd never heard before - The Free Mexican Air Force. The commenter rightly pointed out that every war needs a soundtrack.

I like the reasoning, especially because the song is from the point of view of the Gringo stoner, who is a necessary but often-overlooked party to the conflict. One nickname for weed is "chronic," and that's how the Mexican drug war is shaping up, as well.

Here are the lyrics:

In the Morenos Mountains campesinos are planting their fields
While the ghost of Zapata rides a horse that can still outrun the wheel
There, free in the sky high above, nearly clear out of sight
It's the Free Mexican Air Force flyin' tonight

In the City of Angels, a cowboy is cooling his heels
Remembering that God gave us herbs and the fruits of the fields
But a criminal law that makes outlaws of those seeking light
Made the Free Mexican Air Force -- Mescalito riding his white horse --
Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight!
Flying so high - yi - hiyeeeee! ...

How strange that an innocent herb causes money to burn
They'll jail you or kill you for making those rich fat cats squirm
They're the fools who make rules with no difference between wrong or right
That's why the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight

Uncle Sam in his misery put a nix on the fields of Guerrero
Sayin', "Shoot down all gringos and wetbacks who dare wear sombreros!"
Either run for your life, surrender, or stand up and fight --
Or join the Free Mexican Air Force -- Mescalito riding his white horse --
Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flying tonight!
Flying so high - yi - hiyeeeee! ...

(instrumental bridge)

It is not marijuana destroying the minds of the young
But confusion continued for power and greed in all forms
Well, the borders of evil will fall to the smugglers of light!
We're the Free Mexican Air Force and we're flyin' tonight!

In San Antonio, they tell me that power and money are one
They can buy us or sell you to keep you afraid, on the run
But no one can stop us! My vision is clearly in sight!
And the Free Mexican Air Force -- Mescalito riding his white horse --
Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight!
Flying so high - yi - hiyeeeee! ...

Some were smoking colitas while other were loading their guns
Blowing smoke from their six-shooters, spinning their barrels for fun
Contrabandistas, banditos alike --
We're the Free Mexican Air Force and we're flyin' tonight!

High in the hills we are harvesting sweet sensimillia
Yeah, the law wants it all 'cause they know that the wild weed can free ya
And freedom for us is a prison for the rulers of might!
That's why the Free Mexican Air Force -- Mescalito riding his white horse --
Yeah, the Free Texican Air Force is flyin' tonight!
Flyin' so high- yi- yee...
Flyin' tonight!

The Insurgency is Raging Out of Control

Have you been paying attention to the war in Afghanistan? The situation is hopeless. Military forces have been chasing insurgents around the mountains and high deserts for years, but to little effect. The police are outmatched and intimidated, and so corrupt that they would be a net loss even if they were effective. Elected officials are worse than the police. Rival gangs fight each other as well as the state forces. Drugs flow across the border to neighboring states and weapons flow back in. Peasants are caught in the middle and have no hope for a better future.

Since December 2006, when the President called the armed forces into the fight against drug trafficking organizations, an estimated 23,000 troops and civilians have been killed, over 5,000 of them so far in 2010. The increasing militarization of the drug war has failed to stem the flow of drugs, despite $1.4 billion spent by the U.S. on training, equipment and intelligence.

All of the following incidents occurred there in the last month.

-- Gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire on the motorcade of a political candidate as he headed to a campaign event. This incident followed the shooting deaths of a mayoral candidate and of a political activist during a get-out-the-vote effort. Explosives were also thrown at two separate campaign offices. The central government offered to provide candidates for elective office with ballistic-resistant vehicles and bodyguards in the future.

-- Between last Thursday night and Friday morning, attacks between rival drug trafficking organizations left 85 people dead in places across the country, making it the bloodiest 24-hour period in the President's term of office.

-- In a single incident on Thursday, a showdown between rival drug and migrant-trafficking gangs resulted in a gunfight that left 21 people dead.

-- At least two dozen assailants raided a medical clinic in a provincial capitol city, rousting the patients and ordering them to lie face down, then executing 19 people and wounding at least 4 others. The authorities recovered 184 ejected rifle casings.

-- The bullet-riddled bodies of 18 men and 2 women were found Friday in five different parts of a major city. Authorities suspect a drug-related motive.

-- On June 29, gunmen killed 15 national police officers Monday in separate attacks, marking one of the bloodiest days for security forces since the government stepped up its fight with drug cartels.

-- On June 30, a large force of unidentified attackers stopped a police motorcade on a major highway, disarmed the police officers, executed a prisoner the police were transporting, then drove off with all the police weapons and gear they had seized.

-- Small arms fire from a gun fight in a border city struck the main government building in a city all the way on the other side of the border.

-- A drug trafficking organization has threatened local police officers in a small town, saying they will be targeted for retribution if they conduct drug busts. The police chief told reporters that the threats stemmed from an incident approximately two weeks ago, when off-duty officers surprised marijuana smugglers while riding horseback in an unincorporated border area outside the town.

-- The national army reported that nine insurgents and three of its soldiers have been killed in clashes in a remote border area, and that an army patrol in another border area came under fire with three soldiers and eight insurgents killed.

-- Police reported that last Sunday gunmen invaded the home of the mayor of a border city located in the no-man's land of the country's violent drug war, and killed him.

-- That border city, once a manufacturing center, has become the bloodiest front in the President's war against drug traffickers, with more than 5,500 people killed there since 2008. In 2010, there were 1,300 murders, including some 200 in June. (This is in a city with a population of 1.5 million. For comparison, New York City, with a population of some 8.5 million, had 471 murders in 2009.) The President has staked his political future on reining in the drug killings and has sent 8,000 soldiers and federal police to the area to try to restore order. Despite that security presence, people are abandoning their homes and politicians have been too intimidated to campaign for the upcoming elections.

-- Last week, in another border region, eight "narco-camps" were raided by the national army. Over the next few days, twelve men were killed in apparent retaliation in various incidents. Among the dead were six charred bodies and two decapitated bodies of provincial officials.

-- According to the Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy Magazine, the country has risen two places (meaning that it has gotten even worse) in the index of failed states.

All of that and much more occurred in Afghanistan in just the last month. Where does President Karzai go to surrender? Because it's over.

Oops! Did I say Afghanistan? I meant Mexico. All of that happened in Mexico, our neighbor to the south, where American tourists go to play and expats go to retire.

So never mind.



Links are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

South of the Border, Down Mérida Way

The recent attack on our consulate employees and their families still casts a pall over the very subject of U.S.-Mexico relations. However, today the SecState is visiting our neighbor to the south for a meeting of the U.S.-Mexico High Level Consultative Group, and the State Department's Office of the Spokesman has been sending out a stream of press releases in support of the visit.

Here they are:

Secretary Clinton: Travel to Mexico, March 23, 2010

United States-Mexico Security Partnership: Progress and Impact

United States-Mexico Partnership: Anti-Arms Trafficking and Anti-Money Laundering

United States-Mexico Partnership: A New Border Vision

I just hope that, somewhere amid all the hundreds of millions of dollars in training and equipping, technical assistance, and professionalization of Mexican law enforcement agencies that make up the Mérida Initiative, there will be a little bit of justice for these three people.

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Update (7:40 PM): Two nameless Senior Administration Officials, who were evidently aboard the plane that was taking SecState Hillary Clinton to Mexico City, took time out from their busy schedules to give the press a background briefing. Note: Senior Administration Official Two refers to "Mexican DTOs" in his or her remarks, which I assume are Drug Trafficking Organizations.

FBI: Ciudad Juarez Attackers Might Have Been "Confused"

The Associated Press is reporting tonight on the FBI's working theory about the dual attacks that killed three people connected to U.S. Consulate Ciudad Juarez. The FBI speculates the attackers might have been looking for two other white vehicles that were leaving another kid's party in Juarez that same Saturday afternoon. And, therefore, our employees weren't targeted due to their employment and this wasn't an attack on U.S. government interests.

That's an awfully big stretch of speculation that reaches a comforting conclusion.

From the AP story (FBI: No evidence Mexico hit men targeted Americans):

Confused hit men may have gone to the wrong party, the FBI said Tuesday as it cast doubt on fears that the slaying of three people with ties to the U.S. consulate shows that Mexican drug cartels have launched an offensive against U.S. government employees.

Gunmen chased two white SUVs from the birthday party of a consulate employee's child on Saturday and opened fire as horrified relatives screamed. The two near-simultaneous attacks left three adults dead and at least two children wounded.

The working theory, described to the AP by FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons, drives home just how dangerous Ciudad Juarez has become — and just how vulnerable those who live and work there can be, despite the Mexican government's claims that most victims are drug smugglers.

According to the line of investigation, the assailants — believed to be aligned with the Juarez drug cartel — may have been ordered to attack a white SUV leaving a party and mistakenly went to the "Barquito de Papel," which puts on children's parties and whose name means "Paper Boat."

"We don't have any information that these folks were directly targeted because of their employment by the U.S. government or their U.S. citizenship," Simmons said by phone from El Paso, just across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez.

Well, Special Agent Simmons also 'doesn't have any information' that the killers were just confused, does she?

The article goes on to quote a private analyst who doubts the cartels would have the huevos to attack U.S. government employees, because that would provoke a heightened response from both the U.S. and Mexican governments.

But why wouldn't the narcos be willing to strike directly at U.S. interest targets, especially soft ones? Aren't the narcos facing an "existential threat" from the U.S.-supported Mexican federal government's narcotics control campaign, as is stated on page 14 of the State Department's 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report that was released to Congress two weeks ago?

"We believe that the Mexican government's efforts are having a real impact. For the first time, trafficking organizations are facing an existential threat from the state, which they cannot win by bribery or intimidation."

The Mexican drug cartels are fighting for their survival at this point. Given enough provocation, such as news stories about the escalating levels of U.S. support for Mexico's campaign against them (see, for example, this WaPo report from February 24: U.S. to embed agents in Mexican law enforcement units battling cartels in Juarez), I think they certainly would strike at U.S. employees. What would they have to lose?

UK Warns Mexico Against Using Scam Bomb Detector

A few months ago the British government took action against a corporation that has been selling a notorious scam bomb detector known variously as the GT 200, the ADE 651, the Sniffex and the MOLE. Now the British are attempting to warn the Mexican government against using the ridiculous devices, which their military and police forces have purchased by the hundreds at the price of $20,000 each.

Good luck to the Brits. The U.S. government has so far been unable to convince the Iraqi government to stop using the thousands of GT 200s it purchased for $85 million. Evidently, the snake oil used to sell these things is particularly long-lasting and the victim doesn't come to his senses for years, if ever.

For their $20K, the Mexicans get nothing but an empty plastic box connected to an antenna and programmed with a deck of ordinary plastic cards. Really. That's all. See here and here for U.S. government test reports that document the bald-faced fraud that is the GT 200, ADE 651, et al.

From today's New York Times:

The British government has notified Mexico that a handheld device widely used by the Mexican military and police to search for drugs and explosives may be ineffective, British officials said. [TSB note: "may" be ineffective? That's British understatement. There's no maybe about it.]

Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat has spent more than $10 million to purchase hundreds of the detectors, similar to the “magic wands” in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, for its antidrug fight. Although critics have called them nothing more than divining rods, Mexican defense officials praise the devices as a critical part of their efforts to combat drug traffickers. At the military’s National Drug Museum, one of the devices is on display, with a plaque that describes its success in finding hidden caches of drugs.

-- snip --

As of April 20, 2009, the army had purchased 521 of the GT 200 detectors for just over $20,000 apiece, for a total cost of more than $10 million, according to Mexican government documents. Police agencies across Mexico have made additional purchases, records show.

“We’ve had success with it,” Capt. Jesús Héctor Larios Salazar, an officer with the Mexican Army’s antidrug unit in Culiacán, said recently. “It works with molecules. It functions with the energy of the body.”

Molecules? That quote must be a translation error. I think Captain Larios meant to say it works with magic, and it functions with the energy supplied by a body of money. Captain, please open your eyes. The only ones who have ever had any success with the GT 200 are the gringos who sold them to you.

U.S. Consulate Employee Killed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

photo from el Diario







Correction, March 15:

The news media have often referred to the female victim of Saturday's attack as a U.S. citizen, however, she was - and, unless she was naturalized, remained at the time of her murder - a Mexican/Canadian citizen. Mexican news media is reporting today that she was born in 1974 in the state of Chihuahua and is the daughter of prominent Mexican businessman Manuel Jorge Enriquez Savignac and a Canadian mother. She was employed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez since 2001, and resided in El Paso, Texas.

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Update at 8 PM, March 14:

The State Department just released Hillary's Clinton's Statement on the Murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

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The news media is reporting that an employee of U.S. Consulate Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was killed late Saturday, along with her U.S. citizen husband. The couple were shot by multiple gunmen while in their private vehicle and stopped at the El Paso International Bridge, the main border crossing point into El Paso, Texas. A child, reported to be under one year old, was unharmed in the back seat of the vehicle.

At roughly the the same time the U.S. couple were killed, a Mexican citizen who is married to a Mexican employee of the Consulate was shot to death at a separate location.

Some U.S. news outlets are reporting the names of the two U.S. citizen victims, but I've seen no official identification yet. Neither have I seen any official information concerning in what capacity the U.S. victim was employed at the Consulate.

According to the ABC News story today:

The U.S. State Department has authorized employees working in six Mexican border cities to move their families out of those areas because of security concerns.

The unprecedented move comes as authorities in Mexico investigate the murders of 3 people connected to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez.

Gunmen killed the victims late Saturday afternoon. In a brief statement Sunday morning National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer confirmed the murders.

"The President is deeply saddened and outraged by the news of the brutal murders of three people associated with the United States Consulate General in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, including a U.S. citizen employee, her U.S. citizen husband, and the husband of a Mexican citizen employee."

Local Mexican news outlets added some details today (report in Spanish), and the New York Times is adding more in a report dated March 15.

The State Department issued a new travel warning for Mexico today.

It's easy to speculate that the shootings were attacks by narcotics traffickers on U.S. interests, and the circumstances - multiple gunmen in broad daylight, and near-simultaneous attacks on related targets - supports that assumption. However, early reports are notorious for being wrong, and I'll wait for more information before drawing any conclusions about this sad incident.