evidence of "social cleansing" ... CISEN

[molly]

Two versions of the same article in El Universal today, with different
headlines. CISEN is the Mexican internal security organization. I
don't want to trust this one to the google translator, so am sending
on in the original. I checked google news and it doesn't look like
any US wire or other English-language source has picked it up yet.
I'll post a summary as soon as I can. molly

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/716971.html
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/181270.html

Senate perceives 'societal cleansing' not narco war
In September, the Senate formally requested detailed reports from
Cisen regarding the existence of criminal groups that it called 'death
squads' because the Senate points to them as responsible for 28,000
murders

Ven "limpia social", no narcoguerra
En septiembre, el Senado solicitó formalmente al Cisen informes
detallados sobre la existencia de grupos criminales, a quienes llamó
“escuadrones de la muerte”, porque los señala como responsables de 28
mil asesinatos

The other article begins:
PARAMILITARY FOOTPRINTS
The state permits the existence of death squads, according to
Legislators

LAS HUELLAS DE LOS PARAMILITARES
El Estado permite la existencia de escuadrones de la muerte:
legisladores

Lunes 18 de octubre de 2010 Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez | El Universal

La mañana del martes 12 de octubre 11 policías de Sinaloa fueron
atacados a tiros mientras patrullaban por una carretera a las afueras
de Culiacán.

Ocho murieron y tres resultaron heridos. Al día siguiente, en
Chihuahua, el jefe de custodios de la penitenciaría local y sus cinco
escoltas fueron asesinados minutos después de concluir labores.

Ninguna autoridad ha relacionado un hecho con el otro, pero el único
vínculo probable encamina por vez primera a uno de los poderes del
Estado a reconocer lo que hasta hoy ha negado el gobierno federal: la
participación de grupos paramilitares en la guerra contra el narco.

En septiembre, el Senado solicitó formalmente al Centro de
Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (Cisen) informes detallados sobre
la existencia de estos grupos, a quienes llamó “escuadrones de la
muerte”, porque los señala como responsables de un gran porcentaje de
los 28 mil asesinatos oficialmente reconocidos en esta guerra, así
como de miles de desapariciones forzadas.

“Estos grupos actúan al margen de la ley con complicidad,
reconocimiento o tolerancia del Estado mexicano”, sostiene Ricardo
Monreal Ávila, coordinador del Grupo Parlamentario del Partido del
Trabajo (PT) y uno de los principales promotores de la solicitud de
informes al Cisen. Considera que miles de soldados y oficiales
desertores del Ejército y policías despedidos por corruptos conforman
estos grupos. Se trata, dice el senador, “de paramilitares
adiestrados”.

Hace un año, Mauricio Fernández, alcalde de San Pedro Garza García,
sacudió al país cuando dio a conocer en su toma de posesión el
asesinato de Héctor Saldaña Perales, El Negro, presunto
narcotraficante y extorsionador que asolaba a empresarios locales. Lo
extraordinario es que se anticipó a la identificación oficial que
haría horas más tarde la Procuraduría del Distrito Federal, donde fue
hallado el cuerpo. En ese mismo discurso el munícipe anunció la
formación de un “grupo rudo”, coordinado por su gobierno, para
enfrentar criminales de altos vuelos como Saldaña.

De acuerdo con Monreal Ávila, que gobernó Zacatecas entre 1998 y 2004,
el episodio resume la realidad del país.

“Ese alcalde no es el único (en emplear paramilitares). Los
gobernadores tienen grupos de exterminio, grupos de ‘limpieza’ que
adiestran y seleccionan como grupos de élite, y que actúan fuera de la
ley. Hasta ahora el Senado está reconociendo su existencia y estamos a
la espera de la información oficial. Sería kafkiano que digan que no
existen”.

El creciente número de asesinatos, secuestros y extorsiones ha llevado
igualmente a empresarios a contratar este tipo de grupos, reitera
Monreal.

El senador asegura tener informes de que ello ocurre en ciudades
industrializadas de Jalisco, Nuevo León, Coahuila y Tamaulipas. Lo que
vuelve más sangriento el panorama es que “la delincuencia organizada o
parte de ella es protegida” por las autoridades. Sus informes los
reservará hasta obtener la versión del gobierno federal, pero no
explica el motivo de su decisión.

Antes que los senadores recurrieran al Cisen, organismos civiles de
Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas,
Michoacán y Guerrero documentaron por años operaciones de grupos
paramilitares.

Cronología del exterminio

A comienzos de la década de 1990, el abogado Miguel Ángel García Leyva
y otros ciudadanos constituyeron en Sinaloa el Frente Contra la
Impunidad. Durante 10 años reunieron evidencia sobre la actividad de
“escuadrones de la muerte, causantes de miles de secuestros y
homicidios en la entidad”. Eran grupos conformados por policías o
militares.

“La participación de estos escuadrones es pública no sólo en Sinaloa,
sino en todo el país”, declara. “Operan vistiendo uniformes,
patrullas, armamento, identificaciones y claves igualitos a los de las
fuerzas del Estado”.

En 2001, García cambió su residencia a Baja California. Allí consolidó
la Asociación Esperanza con familiares de personas desaparecidas. En
nueve años la agrupación lleva los casos de mil 800 víctimas, cuatro
veces más de lo admitido por la procuraduría estatal. Todos ellos,
asegura, secuestrados por paramilitares.



“En Baja California se han bautizado estos grupos de exterminio como
comandos negros, cuya presencia ha sido notable sobre todo desde
mediados de 2005 a la fecha. Y hay elementos para concluir que muchas
de sus acciones han sido selectivas para asesinar gente, no sólo para
desaparecer. Hay desapariciones políticas, desapariciones en la
impunidad, producto de toda esta guerra fratricida, equivocada”,
refiere García.

A la fecha, ninguna denuncia del organismo ha prosperado en
tribunales. La razón de ello, sostiene el abogado, es la corrupción.
“No podemos hablar sólo de grupos de sicarios, de pistoleros o de
acciones del narcotráfico; esto implica la participación del Estado”.

Para confirmarlo, cita una investigación que realizaron entre mayo de
2008 y mayo de 2010, sobre las carreteras del noroeste mexicano.

Tomaron video, fotografía y levantaron reportes de retenes de policías
y militares en Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora y Baja California. “Los
resultados nos dejaron atónitos: la mayor parte de los retenes son, no
sólo puntos de extorsión, sino puntos para localizar y ubicar gente
para desaparecer, asesinar o actuar en contra de ellas”, señala
García.

Las cifras negras

Operaciones de exterminio sobran en cada una de esas entidades, pero
muy pocas salen a luz pública.

En agosto, cita otro ejemplo, un grupo armado irrumpió en El Sásabe,
un ejido fronterizo al norte de Sonora convertido en el principal
cruce de indocumentados hacia Estados Unidos, y masacró a 40 personas.
“El silencio es terrible. Nadie cuenta lo que realmente ocurre y si se
revelaran las cifras negras veríamos que no van 28 mil muertos como
dice el gobierno, sino más de 40 mil”.

Casos de exterminio han sido igualmente documentados a través del
tiempo en otros estados, como Chihuahua.

Entre noviembre de 1995 y febrero de 1996, la Procuraduría estatal
recibió denuncias por la desaparición de 375 personas. Testigos de
varios de esos secuestros dijeron haber visto operar a sujetos que se
identificaron como policías federales. En uno de los casos, la hermana
de dos de las víctimas, Armando y Francisco Rayos Jáquez, obtuvo la
matrícula de uno de los vehículos empleados por los secuestradores.
Correspondía a la unidad asignada al entonces delegado de la PGR,
Arturo Chávez Chávez, actual procurador General de la República.

Los restos de nueve de esas víctimas fueron desenterrados en diciembre
de 1999 de un rancho a las afueras de Ciudad Juárez, conocido como La
Campana. Del resto no volvió a saberse nada.

La Asociación Amigos y Familiares de Desaparecidos lleva expediente de
180 de los casos. Sólo 37 terminaron en investigación judicial.

“Lo que puedo decirle es que en cada uno de ellos, de acuerdo con lo
dicho por el fiscal federal a cargo de las investigaciones, Enrique
Cocina Martínez, estuvieron involucrados policías estatales y
federales”, dice Jaime Hervella, presidente de esa organización. “No
sé si haya grupos de exterminio en la ciudad, no tengo elementos para
sostenerlo. Pero le puedo decir que ya no se molestan en llevárselos:
hoy los matan y los tiran”.

En 2007 fueron asesinadas poco más de 300 personas en Ciudad Juárez,
de acuerdo con datos de la Procuraduría estatal. Pero entre 2008 y lo
que va de 2010, la cifra se disparó hasta alcanzar casi los 7 mil
homicidios. De ese total, más de la mitad fueron pandilleros y
delincuentes menores, lo que no deja dudas a organizaciones civiles,
como el Frente Nacional Contra la Represión, de que más que una guerra
entre cárteles, lo que rige es una “limpieza social”.

En Nuevo Laredo y Reynosa prácticas similares han sido empleadas desde
comienzos de la década, dice Raymundo Ramos, director del Centro de
Derechos Humanos de Nuevo Laredo.

Pandilleros de ambas ciudades se tornaron en amenaza grave para la
sociedad y el gobierno se valió de grupos armados para exterminarlos,
según informes recogidos por Ramos.

“Los pandilleros atacaban por igual a policías que a la sociedad
civil, disputaban territorios a balazos, violaban mujeres, allanaban
escuelas y universidades, asaltaban comercios e incluso bancos. (…)
Luego, cuando los narcotraficantes subieron de nivel, lo primero que
hicieron fue precisamente someter a los pandilleros y utilizarlos como
sus informantes, corredores y sicarios, hasta hacer de ellos una red
delincuencial desechable”.

Con ello vino un segundo corte de asesinatos en meses recientes: “Los
reportes que tenemos son que la mayoría de los delincuentes muertos en
enfrentamientos o atentados entre grupos del crimen organizado o en
contra de autoridades federales son jóvenes, que no llegan a los 20
años. Aquí en Nuevo Laredo tenemos cuando menos 15 denuncias de
jóvenes en contra de militares por torturas, violación, asesinato
extrajudicial y desaparición forzada”.

Corrupción e impunidad

Lo que se libra en el país no es una guerra contra la delincuencia
organizada, sino un exterminio, sostiene a su vez Mercedes Murillo
Monge, presidenta del Frente Cívico Sinaloense.

“Es difícil probar quién promueve estos grupos de la muerte. De hecho,
no se puede. Nadie sabe porque no investigan. La corrupción es enorme
y la impunidad absoluta. Lo que nosotros como frente podemos decir es
que en esta supuesta guerra han muerto muchos inocentes asesinados por
las autoridades”, dice.

Lo que registra Murillo en Sinaloa es lo mismo que hacen otros
organismos ciudadanos de Chihuahua, Tamaulipas o Baja California: un
incremento notable en el número de asesinatos y desapariciones
forzadas a partir del inicio de operaciones anticrimen.

En el marco de esta “guerra”, dice Rosario Ibarra de Piedra,
presidenta de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Senado, “se están
llevando a ninis, que más bien es la gente que parte del gobierno
considera prescindibles; no los necesita, entonces esos que se mueran,
al cabo para qué los queremos si son como un estorbo para una cierta
élite”.

Ibarra, quien durante 35 años ha denunciado la existencia de grupos de
exterminio financiados por el gobierno, cita la masacre de julio en un
Quinta de Torreón, “una fiesta lésbico-gay” y los restos de 51
personas exhumados de una fosa clandestina en el municipio de Juárez,
Nuevo León, “todos tatuados”, para respaldar la teoría de una limpieza
social.

“En estos momentos no podemos aventurarnos a decir que hay un
adiestramiento o tolerancia por parte del Ejército, que tiene
conocimiento de esos escuadrones de la muerte, todavía no llegamos a
ese nivel”, aclara el senador Ricardo Monreal. Lo que sí, es que “a
cuatro años de distancia comienzan a darnos la razón voces del Estado,
incluso de la jerarquía militar, de que era equivocada la estrategia”.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/716971.html
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/181270.html

[molly]

Folks---Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I have made a
translation of the article published Monday in EL UNIVERSAL, the same
story with two separate headlines. The original article was posted on
Monday. The English translation is below. So far, I've not seen any
reference to this in any English-language news source. molly

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/vi_716971.html

“Social cleansing,” not drug war...

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/181270.html
Paramilitary footprints: the State permits the existence of death
squads: legislators say

Investigation: Due to massive numbers of executions, the Senate of the
Republic asks CISEN for reports on the existence of death squads.

Lunes 18 de octubre de 2010 Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez/ Enviado | El
Universal

Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez
El Universal

Monday October 18, 2010

In September, the Senate formally requested detailed reports from

CISEN (Center for Investigation and National Security) on the
existence of criminal groups that they termed "death squads," because
they are implicated as those responsible for 28,000 killings.

On the morning of Tuesday October 12 (2010), eleven police in Sinaloa
were shot while patrolling a road on the outskirts of Culiacán. Eight
were killed and three wounded. The next day, in Chihuahua, the chief
custodians of the local prison and five bodyguards were killed minutes
after finishing their work shifts.

No authority has linked incidents, however, the only probable
connection has come to light for the first time: that one branch of
the state has acknowledged what so far the federal government has
denied: the involvement of paramilitary groups in the drug war.

In September, the Senate formally asked the Center for Investigation
and National Security (CISEN) to provide detailed reports on the
existence of these groups, which they termed "death squads" because
they are indicated as bearing the responsibility for a large
percentage of the 28,000 murders officially recognized in this war, as
well as thousands of forced disappearances.

"These groups operate outside the law with the complicity, recognition
and/or tolerance of the Mexican state," said Ricardo Monreal Avila,
coordinator of the Parliamentary Group of the Labor Party (Partido
del Trabajo, PT) and one of the promoters of the request for the
CISEN reports. Considering the fact that these groups are composed of
thousands of soldiers and officers who have deserted from the army, as
well as many police who have been fired for being corrupt, the senator
added that these groups are composed of “well-trained paramilitaries."

A year ago, Mauricio Fernandez, Mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia,
shocked the country when he revealed at his inauguration the murder of
Hector Saldaña Perales, a.k.a. “El Negro,” an alleged extortionist and
drug dealer who was harrassing local entrepreneurs. The extraordinary
thing is that the mayor’s anouncement anticipated the official
identification of the victim that would be made hours later by the
Attorney General in the Federal District where the body was found. In
the same speech the mayor announced the formation of a "tough
group,” (un grupo rudo) coordinated by his government to confront high-
level criminals such as Saldaña.

According to Monreal Avila, who governed Zacatecas between 1998 and
2004, the episode sums up the reality of the country.

"This mayor is not the only one (to employ paramilitaries). Governors
have extermination groups, groups dedicated to “cleansing” that train
and select elite teams who acti outside the law. Only now, the Senate
is recognizing their existence and we are waiting for official
information. It would be Kafkaesque if they were to say that these
groups do not exist.”
The growing number of murders, kidnappings and extortion has also led
employers/empresarios to recruit such groups, reiterates Monreal.

The senator claims to have reports that this occurs in industrialized
cities in Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas. What makes the
picture even more bloody is that "organized crime or certain segmanets
of organized crime are protected" by the authorities. Their reports
will be reserved until the release of the federal government's
official version comes out, but he did not explain the reason for his
decision.

Before the senators went to CISEN for these reports, civil
organizations in Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua,
Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Michoacan and Guerrero have been documenting
paramilitary operations for years.

Chronology of extermination

In the early 1990's, the lawyer Miguel Ángel García Leyva and other
citizens formed in Sinaloa Front Against Impunity. For 10 years, they
gathered evidence on the activities of "death squads, causing
thousands of kidnappings and killings in the state." These groups were
made up of police or military personnel.

"The participation of these squads is known publicly not only in
Sinaloa, but throughout the country," he says. "They operate dressed
in official uniforms, driving patrol cars, and with weapons, badges
and keys just like the forces of the state."

In 2001, Garcia changed his residence to Baja California. There he
helped to form the Esperanza Association with the families of
disappeared persons. In nine years the group worked on the cases of
8,000 victims, four times more than those acknowledged by the state
attorney. All of them, he says, were abducted by paramilitaries.

"In Baja California these extermination squads have been named “black
commandos” and their presence has been noted especially since mid-2005
to date. And there is evidence to conclude that many of their actions
have been to kill people, not just to disappear them. There are
political disappearances as well as those of impunity, all of them
resulting from this war that is fratricidal and mistaken," said
García.

To date, no charge against the organization has been successful in
court. The reason, says the lawyer, is corruption. "We cannot just
talk about groups of thugs, gunmen, sicarios and drug trafficking
activities; these accusations imply the full participation of the
state."

To confirm this, he cites an investigation conducted between May 2008
and May 2010 along the highways in northwestern Mexico. They produced
video, photographs and written reports on police and military
checkpoints in Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California. "The
results astounded us: most of the checkpoints are not only points of
extortion, but places to identify and locate people to disappear,
assassinate or commit other acts against them," says Garcia.

Black Numbers/Las Cifras Negras

There are many extermination operations occurring in these states, but
very few come to public light.

He cites another example. In August, a group invaded the town of El
Sasabe—an ejido near the border in northern Sonora that has become a
main illegal crossing point into the United States—and massacred 40
people. "The silence is terrible. No account is given of what actually
happens and if it were possible to reveal these “black operations” we
would see that there are not 28,000 dead as the government says, but
rather, but more than 40,000."

Cases of extermination have also been documented over time in other
states such as Chihuahua.

Between November 1995 and February 1996, the State Attorney General
received complaints about the disappearances of 375 people. Witnesses
of several of these abductions said that they saw subjects involved in
the actions who identified themselves as federal police. In one case,
the sister of two of the victims, and Armando and Francisco Rayos
Jaquez, obtained the registration of one of the vehicles used by the
kidnappers. This registration document belonged to the official
vehicle assigned to the delegate of the Attorney General’s office at
the time—Arturo Chavez Chavez—the same person who is now the Attorney
General of the Republic.

The remains of nine of those victims were unearthed in December 1999
on a ranch on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, known as La Campana. Of
the rest, no information ever came to light. The Association of
Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared has records of 180 of these
cases. Only 37 of them ever resulted in a judicial inquiry.

Jaime Hervella, president of that organization, said, "What I can tell
you is that according to the statement by the federal prosecutor in
charge of the investigation, Enrique Cocina Martinez, state and
federal police were involved in each of these cases. I do not know if
there are death squads in the city. I do not have evidence to prove
that statement. But I can say that now, they do not even bother to
abduct them and take them away. Now, they just kill them and throw
them into the street."

In 2007, according to data from the State Attorney General, a little
more than 300 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez. But between 2008
and so far in 2010, the figure has reached nearly seven thousand
homicides. Of that total, more than half were members of street gangs
and juvenile offenders, which leaves no doubt according to civil
organizations such as the National Front Against Repression, that what
is going on is something other than a war between drug cartels. What
is actually taking place is a "social cleansing."

In Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, similar practices have been used since
the beginning of the decade, said Raymundo Ramos, director of the
Center for Human Rights of Nuevo Laredo.

Gang members from both cities became a serious threat to society and
the government made use of armed groups to exterminate them, according
to reports gathered by Ramos.

"The gangsters attacked police as well as civil society, staged
gunfights over territory, raped women, raided schools and
universities, robbed businesses and even banks. (...) Then, when the
narco-trafficking rose to a higher level, the first thing they did was
to subdue/take over control of the gangs and use them as their
informants, couriers and hired killers/sicarios. The (narcotrafficking
organizations) have made (the street gangs) into a disposable criminal
network."

What followed was a second round of killings in recent months: "The
reports we have are that the majority of criminals killed in clashes
or attacks with organized crime groups or against federal authorities
are young, kids who have not even reached 20. Here in Nuevo Laredo
have at least 15 reports from young people against the military of
torture, rape, extrajudicial killing and forced disappearance.”

Corruption and impunity

What is being waged in the country is not a war against organized
crime, but an extermination, says Mercedes Murillo Monge, president of
the Sinaloan Civic Front.

"It is difficult to prove who promotes these death squads. In fact, it
is impossible. No one knows because no one investigates. The
corruption is huge, the impunity is absolute. What we as a united
front can say is that in this so-called war, very many innocent people
have been assassinated by the authorities," she said.

What Murillo has found out about the cases in Sinaloa is similar to
what other citizens’ organizations have discovered in Chihuahua,
Tamaulipas and Baja California: that there is a notable increase in
the number of murders and disappearances since the beginning of the
government’s anti-crime operations.

In the framework of this "war," said Rosario Ibarra de Piedra,
president of the Human Rights Commission of the Senate, "it is mostly
“ninis” (the slang term for ‘ni trabajan, ni estudian’/young people
who neither work nor go to school and so are susceptible to street
gangs) who are being abducted and taken away, that is, these people
that the government has deemed expendable. They are people no one
wants or needs and so they might as well die. What do we want with
them, especially when they are seen as trouble, as obstacles to the
needs and desires of certain elites.”

Ibarra, who for 35 years has denounced the existence of death squads
financed by the government, cites two cases to support the theory of
social cleansing. First, a massacre in July at the Quinta de Torreón
at "a gay and lesbian party." Then, the remains of 51 people that were
exhumed from a clandestine grave in the Municipality of Juarez, Nuevo
León. Those bodies were "all covered with tattoos."

"Right now we cannot venture to say that there is training or
tolerance on the part of the Army, or that they have knowledge of such
death squads. We have not yet reached the point where we can say
that,” says Sen. Ricardo Monreal. But what is certain is that "four
years after this began and after four years of justification by the
spokesmen of the government and the military hierarchy, what we can
certainly say is that this strategy was very wrong.”

On Oct 18, 2:01 pm, molly <mollymol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Two versions of the same article in El Universal today, with different
> headlines. CISEN is the Mexican internal security organization. I
> don't want to trust this one to the google translator, so am sending
> on in the original.  I checked google news and it doesn't look like
> any US wire or other English-language source has picked it up yet.
> I'll post a summary as soon as I can.  molly
>

> http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/716971.htmlhttp://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/181270.html