THE BORDER REPORT

Photo courtesy – Vanguardia

Culiacán, Sinaloa – Go back to those high-profile assassinations last week in Mexico City; then wander over to Culiacán for a moment and take a look at this guy above, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva. Are we watching assassins? Or political theatre?

My thought is, both.

The Mexican government tells El Universal this morning that the Sinaloans murdered Edgar Millán, the highest ranking officer to be murdered in a year. The assassins, they say, carried a hit-list with the names of five top officials. The note was crafted by the Beltrán Leyva brothers and Shorty Guzmán, federal security officials tell the newspaper.

Would the Sinaloans order a list of executions, then have the hired killers write the names down and carry it around with them?

If so, then the gunmen of the most powerful cartel in the Western Hemisphere are clownish amateurs who watched Traffic once too many times.

Millán's murder was an inside job, officials said yesterday, and the way the hit went down was messy. Millán's killer lay in wait with two handguns, only one had a silencer. He shot Millán eight times, then wounded the first cop on scene. Then he gave up.

Something doesn't add up, and I don't yet know what it is. Or rather, it's there, but complicated, and, possibly, completely wrong. But what the hell, you read this far, go with me a little further.

Go back to last January when Alfredo Beltrán Leyva was arrested in Culiacán. Alfredo is a violent, borderline psychotic. Yet, he was arrested without a single shot being fired. El Debate newspaper noted later that Mexican Army soldiers and Culiacán cops hung around his house, waving casually to each other as they passed by, for years before he went down. Then he's arrested, quietly, calmly. A cache of weapons in his car went untouched.

Same goes for his cousin, Sandra Avíla Beltrán, the Queen of the Pacific. News reports dating back ten years have her being arrested, then released, then spotted, then left alone, since the late 1990s. Hell, she was even picked up at an Arizona port of entry carrying $1.3 million in cash and released again.

So let me wonder out loud here.

Recall last winter that Pres. Felipe Calderón was being criticized for only ham-stringing the Gulf Cartel. By all accounts, he'd left the Sinaloans alone. The Culiacán weekly, Rio Doce, found that the military's presence in that city left town, nearly from one night to the next.

Was Alfredo Beltrán told to surrender? Was there a deal between the Sinaloans and the Mexican government that the Americans aren't seeing? Yesterday, State Department nearly applauded Millán's murder as a sign of success in Mexico's drug war. The smugglers are growing frustrated, yadda, yadda ...

What are the Americans missing?

Because, let's say Alfredo Beltrán was a gift from the Sinaloans, a peace offering of sorts. Maybe Sandra, too.

Let me stretch this swing out even wider; recall that Guzmán's other son, Ivan Archivaldo had all charges dismissed against him last April. He'd been held on money-laundering charges in Guadalajara when a judge tossed the case out. Last November, before the Sinaloa Federation blow-out, a second federal judge recused himself from a murder trial where Ivan was being charged with the killing of a Canadian national outside a club. Those charges have also disappeared.

And let's say, the Mexican government went ahead and ran down the Sinaloans anyway in spite of any promises made. And that agitated Arturo Beltrán Leyva who is nowhere to be found while the Sinaloans and the Juárez Cartel do each other with rocket launchers.

Did someone burn the Sinaloans? Is that what's leading to these murders in Mexico City? Or are they merely being blamed for the murders, the perfect defendant, capable of carrying out the hits and completely indefensible?

Why? Is it the U.S. aid?

The Americans are pushing hard for that $1.5 billion Merida Initiative. Thomas Shannon, Asst. Sec. for Western Hemisphere Affairs is already talking about it as if it were a done deal. State's asking for an additional $150 million in emergency supplemental aid on top of Merida.

Yesterday, the U.S. State Department sent another very public message to Congress, saying, "We urge the U.S. Congress to fully fund the President’s Merida Initiative, a program designed to help Mexico and Central American countries fight organized crime and drug- trafficking."

So, continuing with my speculation, and, really, that's all this is, did the Mexican government shred an agreement with the Sinaloans and now are waging a public relations campaign against them, casting the Sinaloans in really bad lighting?

Maybe not; maybe that's just too damned weird. But many questions have gone unanswered and sometimes, that's kind of an answer in itself.

-- Michel Marizco