In a stunning front-page editorial the principal Juarez, Mexico newspaper El Diario has called for a truce with the ultra violent Juarez and Sinaloa Mexican drug cartels in wake of the murder of an El Diario photographer and severe wounding of a colleague in Juarez on Thursday of last week.
Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco, 21, and co-worker Carlos Sanchez were ambushed in a gangland style “hit” in the parking lot of a busy market area on Thursday, September 16, Mexico’s Bicentennial celebration day. Orozco had recently ascended from intern to full time employee of the newspaper and he and Sanchez were going to lunch at a market close to the newspaper’s offices. The second victim was hospitalized in serious condition.
In a front page editorial, El Diario clearly asks the cartels ” Qué Quieren de Nosotros?” or “What Do Want From Us?”
The editorial plainly states what has been obvious to many outside observers — the government of Mexico and its law enforcement entities are losing the drug war to the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels. This is a translation of part of the editorial in Sunday’s El Diario, in which it lays out its new position for reporting on the drug war; I’ve added some text missing from the Spanish version in parentheses to ease readability.
From “El Diario” published Sept.19, 2010 –
Lords of the different organizations that are fighting (for) the square of Ciudad Juarez, (i.e. control of the drug trade in Juarez) the loss of two reporters of this publishing house in less than two years represents an irreparable breakdown for all of us who work here and, in particular, for their families.
Therefore, as information workers (we) want (you) to explain to us what (you) want from us, what (you) intend (us) to publish or fail to publish, (or to know) what to expect. You are, at present, the de facto authorities in this city, because the legally instituted controls could not do anything to prevent our colleagues (from) continue to fall, although we have repeatedly demanded (these protections, as promised by the Mexican government).
That is why, faced with this indisputable fact, we write to you to ask, because at least we want is another one of our colleagues again be the victim of his (the cartel’s) shots.”
This is the second time in a week an El Diario editorial proffered what many of us living here on the U.S./border Mexican had already suspected, that although local Mexican law enforcement, the Mexican Army and the Mexican Federal police have a large presence in Juarez and other Mexican “hotspots” of violence, the government of Mexico has essentially lost control of the situation and cannot control the violence or stop the cartel wars currently raging in Mexico.
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Comparisons of Mexico to the near failed state status of 1990’s, Columbia, are more and more common. In the earlier editorial, El Diario bristled at the suggestion by a Mexican federal education official that the news outlets themselves were somehow responsible for the “terrorism” and the implication that the media had somehow brought the violence on itself.
It is commonly known that Mexican governmental officials are being bribed by a practice known in Mexico as “plata o plomo” which translates to “silver or lead.” This means that the cartels, awash in U.S. cash, buy the cooperation of Mexican (and increasingly some American) governmental officials by giving these officials the impossible choice of taking bribes, the silver, or being gunned down: the lead.
This type of corruption has long been endemic in Mexican government. Cocaine from South America and marijuana, ecstasy and now even methamphetamines from Mexico flow through the major drug corridors around the Juarez/El Paso area and west to Arizona. The illegal drugs that once entered the country through the ports of Miami and the West Coast now come overland through the U.S./Mexico border, as was recently illustrated by Sheriff Larry Dever in his Big Journalism piece and by the testimony of many other courageous citizens and U.S. law enforcement personnel.
As the Mexican drug cartels tighten their grip on Mexico and branch out into protection rackets and smuggling of humans in addition to illegal drugs, the cartels have sought to muzzle the Mexican media. With El Diario‘s decision to step back, the cartels have achieved another win in this effort. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York City-based watchdog group, estimates that 22 journalists have been killed in Mexico during the last two years as many media outlets in Mexico have stopped reporting on the drug cartel violence that engulfs the country.
The threat to American is clear and present. We share over two thousand miles of common border often delineated by little more than a weak fence or the shallow trickle of river that the Rio Grande becomes in some areas of the border, areas which are easily forded by a pickup truck. Unless something is done, the future for Americans and their national sovreigntyare frightening.
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