THE BORDER REPORT

I'm not sure what to make of the latest Mexican Army incursion reports over on the Texas border. According to this story, the incident occurred Monday afternoon when U.S. Border Patrol agents called for back-up because a group of armed Mexican Army troops had crossed into Texas, 50 miles east of El Paso.

I think I can safely deduce that Mexican Army patrols regularly escort drug loads into the U.S., there's been enough anecdotal evidence of this occurring on the Arizona border that I don't find it preposterous to believe it happens in Texas. But as far as waving machine guns at U.S. Border Patrol agents, well, I have a hard time with this.

The territory where this was reported is along the Juaréz Cartel's slice of border. The Carrillo Fuentes family running this area has been trafficking drugs through the Ciudád Juárez region for more than 20 years. An old mob family like this one will have an infrastructure established, stash houses, bought-off officials and the like. A Cannonball Run like this one just doesn't seem rational to me.

The public relations fiasco alone would cause serious repercussions for President Felipe Calderón's administration, particularly because he's been so heavy-handed in the use of the Army since he took office earlier this year.

Last year, Judicial Watch, a non-profit organization, released a Border Patrol Field Intelligence Center report showing that there'd been 226 reported Mexican Military incursions into the U.S. between 1996 and 2005.

Of course, Army deserters offer an entirely different plotting point in the nasty, nasty little secret of Mexico's national security.

María Idalia Gómez, a trusted colleague and deadly reporter in Mexico City, wrote an article a few months ago looking at this particular problem.

Using Mexican public records laws, she found that the Mexican Army reported 16,000 desertions during Pres. Vicente Fox's administration. Of those desertions, 5,105 came specifically from the military's commissions to the Federal Preventative Police and the Mexican Federal Attorney General's Office – Fox's best strategy in the "Drug War."

The 16,000 represent about eight percent of the military taking their weapons training and discipline somewhere else, Gómez found.

You can read Gómez's article in Spanish here.

A new initiative in the Military Code is being pushed through this week. Under the new regulations, army deserters would face eight years in prison during peace time, and during "campaigns," 14 years. The price for taking weapons – a still unaccounted for problem with Army deserters that may explain this reported incursion – 16 years in peacetime.

Like Chapito's capture or the gunning down of Lazcano, both big rumors last week, maybe the Hudspeth County incident happened and maybe it did not.

This border can be somewhat ... magical ... at times.

-- Michael Marizco