THE BORDER REPORT

“Pssst. Attention, citizens. If you see men in Mexican military uniforms violating your bodies, homes, or rights, it wasn’t us; okay? It was the narcos.”

That’s the message the military is putting out to the citizens of Ciudad Juárez this morning.

So much for Pres. Felipe Calderón’s military tactics against the narcos. The lines have blurred and in this new war, everyone’s at fault. Meanwhile, the military is trying to wage a media campaign against the narcos themselves, threatening the citizens of Ciudad Juárez, who, they say, are about to be murdered and raped by the warring traffickers.

A report from the country’s Human Rights Commission released today, the agency found that the Mexican military killed four unarmed men in the mountains of Badiraguato, Sinaloa. The men were traveling in a Hummer when the soldiers stopped them and opened fire. Then, the same soldiers executed two other soldiers, El Universal reports this morning.

There was no checkpoint set up at the murder spot, the commission says, and there were no shots fired from inside. Initially, the soldiers said they’d been attacked and were simply returning fire.

That’s the second time soldiers in the Mexican Army have murdered civilians. Last summer, they opened up on a family in Sinaloa, killing all five people, including three children.

This morning, Reforma slapped a story on its front page that reads:

“La Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena) advirtió ayer que integrantes del Cártel de Juárez, vestidos como militares, planean realizar violaciones tumultuarias durante supuestos cateos, acción con la que buscan desprestigiar a las Fuerzas”

The public notice, basically says that the Juárez Cartel, dressed as Mexican military, plan to unleash “tumultuous violations” in order to discredit the military.

The federal government’s losing control of its most powerful public security force, the cops are not to be trusted, and the narcos? Well, at some point, public attention is going to turn away from the military aggressors. There’s an old belief about the drug lords, they usually only kill each other. The same can no longer be said of the military.

– Michel Marizco