Realities Behind Mexico’s Military Maneuvers
Dec 12th, 2006 | By Michel Marizco | Category: General News, Immigration, Organized Crime, Politics
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THE BORDER REPORT
Mexico President Felipe Calderón is taking much of the same hard line in the drug war as his predecessor but unfortunately, he's having about the same results. By Saturday, newspapers in the state of Michoacán were announcing the deployment of several thousand soldiers brought in to tame the warring Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Federation. El Universal newspaper automatically questioned the move in its editorial today saying that muscular reactions are great, but need some cerebral backing. And meanwhile, and I'm starting to believe this is the norm, not the exception, the real drama plays out in the shadows of the circus show. A federal judge quietly released Jaime Javier Figueroa Soto, the last of the great druglords to live in the U.S. I guess that's not totally true, it's well-known among agents that El Mayo Zambada's kids attend high school in Phoenix, this despite a $5 million reward on his head. So how clandestine can he possibly be? But Jaime was a little different, a little more brazen, in the end, a little more stupid. The DEA finally caught up to him after receiving reports of a man carrying a large pistol running around Speedway Boulevard in red jockey shorts. There were many who believed he simply was not going to stay in the state prison for very long in spite of the murder charges brought up against him. Shortly after he was deported to Hermosillo from SuperMax in Florence, Colo., Jaime had 15 pairs of exotic cowboy boots handmade for him and brought up to his condo in Hillo. At the time, I thought he was simply relieved to be back in his native Sonora and anxious to return to his picudo boots. I guess he was getting ready to go though. At any rate, even as Calderón generates headlines with military maneuvers, the show does indeed go on.
