THE BORDER REPORT

Lots going on all over Mexico this past week, first with the significant arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, then the announcement that the Sinaloans had put a hit out on Mexico’s top anti-drug prosecutor, Santiago Vasconcelos. They called him “El Mochomo,” it took me a week to figure out what that name meant. Turns out it’s a desert ant, one that only comes out at night. Somehow, an apt name for a narco-trafficker who rarely made headlines in the ten or so years he’s been running around northern Mexico. No feature stories in national newspapers, no wanted posters or unsealed indictments in the U.S. District courts system. No notoriety or tales of his exploits in the quiet myths that permeate the U.S.-Mexican border. Nothing. Then we’re told that Beltrán had put a hit out on Vasconcelos and suddenly we’re inundated with tales of the Beltrán Leyva brothers. I have a hard time swallowing that theory. Mexico’s security measures have always been notoriously lax, bordering on downright lazy. Who can forget the murder last May of Nemesio Lugo Felix, the head of the National Center for Planning and Analysis to Combat Organized Crime? Lugo, if you’ll recall, was murdered in Mexico City. Two men approached him on a motorcycle and one took him down. Some in the intelligence community say he must have known his killers; they say his window was half-rolled down when the bullets struck him. As usual, we’ll never know. But it stands to reason that if a narco organization as powerful as the Sinaloans wanted to take out someone as high up the chain as Vasconcelos, they would have done so a long time ago. He’s held high posts in the Mexican law enforcement community since Pres. Vicente Fox took office seven years ago. To me, it’s the same as the Drug Enforcement Administration agents working in Mexico. Taking out a DEA agent causes all sorts of conflicts, se les calienta el terreno, as those in the business love to say. Nope, I just don’t buy it. Beltrán Leyva went down because it was his time to go. For whatever backroom politicking deal, someone punched his clock for him and the military moved in to take him out on the streets of Culiacán. But, I’m a journalist and journalists are notoriously pessimistic, especially when we’re working in a place as frenetic as Latin America. A couple of weeks ago, there I was, complaining that the Mexican Feds were busy hacking at the Gulf Cartel and the Arellanos in Tijuana, the whole time leaving the Sinaloans out of it. Then Beltrán Leyva went down and a tremendous movement of troops was sent up to the border states. A little south of me, in Caborca, Sonora, more than 700 soldiers poured in, seizing 25 houses of the local narco-traffickers working for the Beltrán Leyva family. A 50-caliber machine gun was seized, along with numerous AK-47s, pistols, weed and some nice trucks. In Mexico City, I’m told, police seized bulletproof vests emblazoned with FEDA, which Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora assumed stands for Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo Beltrán Leyva (I don’t know what he thinks the D stands for). But, and maybe I’m just a pessimist, what we’re seeing is the creation of a public indictment against some incredibly notorious people. And it all starts to go down right around the seventh anniversary of Joaquín “Shorty” Guzmán’s escape from a Guadalajara prison. Seven years, and the wolves are closing in on him. That’s about the right amount of time for most of these guys. Keep your eyes open; it may be time for the narco from the last sexenio to finally go down.

-- Michel Marizco