THE BORDER REPORT

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THE BORDER REPORT

HERMOSILLO, SONORA - Thinking he was about to die, Hermosillo police officer Jorge Alberto Lizarraga used the blood leaking from his upper chest to write a message.

"Marmolejo policia estatal mató." "Marmolejo, state policeman killed (me)." The hit happened late Tuesday night in Hermosillo; the crime scene now stretches all over the city, its viscuous threads reaching back in time to the siege of Cananea two weeks ago, and beyond. Miraculously, Lizarraga, 28, survived the hit; his bulletproof vest saved him. He was shot twice in the right side of the neck, two more rounds missed. He managed to radio for help, then used his finger to scrawl the bloody message into the dirt on the ground. Meanwhile, State Preventative Police officer Alberto Flores Marmolejo, 29, is being held for questioning. Investigators say both men worked for remnants of the narco-traffickers, Sonora-based Los Numeros. Lizarraga has become Sonora's most literary policeman, penning one note after another, a trail that will lead us I don't know where. After the hit, Lizarraga was taken to a public hospital in downtown Hermosillo. On Thursday, he asked to be transferred to a private hospital. He penned another note, this time an order absolving the hospital of all responsiblity related to his care. Maybe he had good reason for disappearing; an orange Dodge Neon with Tamaulipas license plates and a gray pickup truck with no plates or VIN were found parked at the public hospital late last night. But some time this morning, Lizarraga checked out of the private hospital; he didn't leave a note this time, just disappeared. The official word is that Lizarraga was charged with several counts of abusing his powers; a relative charge in Mexico; I can't tell you how often police officers have pulled me over on trumped-up traffic infractions, asking me for $20 to take care of it. (The best thing to do if you ask me is to call their bluff, the've always backed down. It's best not to perpetuate these things). Now then, I'm told that both Marmolejeo and Lizarraga worked for Antonio Montoya Garcia, a 33-year-old enforcer for Los Numeros. Montoya was a state police officer from 1993 to 1997. Montoya was gunned down late last year, ten bullets, while he visited a cellphone store in Hermosillo. Los Numeros – and I'll get around to making a chart of all these ties – was the narco-family that Francisco Hernandez Garcia, aka El 2000, worked for before betraying the family two years ago and setting out on his own.

THE BORDER REPORT

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords took home some hard lessons about dealing with narco-politics on the Arizona-Sonora border during the Binational Border Security Meeting she hosted in Douglas.

It started pretty well; an upbeat Giffords met with reporters before the meeting saying, ""We're going to start having a dialogue in terms of what we can do to keep our communities safer and reduce the drug violence on both sides of the border." That dialogue never came. Even a Congresswoman can't break through the fog of silence that descends on events like the May 16 siege of Cananea. Nobody knows anything and even fewer see anything. I wasn't totally surprised by the silence but it was a drag to watch; this is the old Mexico here; we're supposed to have moved on from these silences, an open, liberated Mexico, que no? No. "Number three on our agenda is a review of the recent incidents that happened in Cananea and I'd like to defer to our officials in Mexico to talk about what happened, how we could be of help and further details that have not been able to be brought to light." Then 25 of the most awkward seconds I've ever felt in a public meeting passed while the room waited. American law enforcement focused intently on their knuckles. Mexican Consulate in Tucson, Juan Calderón, glanced quickly from right to left to see who would speak up. Ernesto Ajiz, field commander for the Federal Preventative Police in Agua Prieta, stared down at the agenda before him. Naco, Sonora, mayor Jose Lorenzo Villegas stirred in his seat. Giffords tried to call on Agua Prieta mayor Antonio Cuadras to start but he wasn't even there. Another minute passed with nobody saying anything. Finally Lorenzo spoke, saying his city lies 40 minutes away from Cananea but maybe the Cananea mayor might show up later? Agua Prieta PFP commander Ajiz volunteered his position: "I find myself in the same position as the mayor of Naco. We are 80 kilometers from Agua Prieta. We found out about these violent incidences after they occurred. Maybe the state prosecutor's office can offer some detail about what happened." Of course, Sonora Attorney General Abel Murrietta never showed up; Commander Marco Armando Islas of the Agua Prieta Army garrison never showed either. Meanwhile, Luis Carlos Cha Flores, the center of attraction - it was his town that was besieged after all - was more than an hour late. In the end, I would hope Giffords learned a valuable lesson from today's meeting; if you want to know what happens on the border, you don't call people out in public - not if you want a real lesson.