THE BORDER REPORT

Justice Department officials in Arizona are now saying the tally of the dead in northern Sonora is 21, and possibly included in those, Raúl "El Negro" Sabori Cisneros. Meanwhile, a source within CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency, and a cartel familymember I talk to in Tucson are both reporting at least another ten dead in Altar, Sonora. The hospital in Caborca, the closest hospital to the area, is filled with wounded. My guy in Tucson says an additional 40 people were wounded, enough that the wounded in Altar are being taken to houses to recover, there's simply no room for them in Caborca. A clarification, and perhaps some of you can help the rest of us with this. My guy here says that the fight isn't with the Zetas, that El Gilo and Mr. Ice Cream Man, Felix Paleteros, are their own drug syndicate in Tubutama and the Altar/Sasabe/Caborca boys answer to the Sinaloa Federation. Is that the breakdown I need to be looking at? If the high number of dead is true, it's curious. Tubutama, Sonora, is a small town nestled in the hills between Nogales and Sasabe, just south of the U.S. Mexico border. If you were looking at a map of Arizona, it'd be south of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The Sinaloans and the Zetas have engaged in a battle in this area for some time, now. The Zetas are stranded in the hills; the Sinaloans are not allowing resources to enter the area. Last week, in fact, the public safety director, Gerardo González Méndez, and the town treasurer, Sergio Vázquez Díaz, were gunned down outside of Nogales. A law enforcement source in Nogales tells me the two were driving back toward Tubutama with a drum of gasoline (there is no gas station in those hills between Nogales and Sasabe). His belief was that the Sinaloans had killed the two men for helping the Zetas. I was in Altar and Caborca the past few days on assignment and saw convoys of Mexican Army deuce-and-a-halfs surrounding the highways in to Tubutama. An official at the local garrison in Sasabe recommended I not travel towards Tubutama because of the frenetic violence that has grasped the region. The Sinaloans have a three-truck checkpoint sitting at the Sasabe-Saríc highway crossing. While all this is going on, of course, there's the question of the weekend's Fourth of July festivities in Puerto Peñasco. Now, Peñasco sits a good two hours from Tubutama, and no, nobody's targeting Americans who don't deserve it, so there's no reason to make this about traveling Phoenicians. What I'm trying to ascertain is whether the twenty murders actually happened in Tubutama last night or whether it's merely a panicked chisme coming out of Hermosillo. On a side note, frankly, I find the situation a little pitiful. Cells from two "powerful" cartels are fighting over gasoline. If the most powerful cartel in the Western Hemisphere can't roust a group of thugs sitting in a mountain town, the question must be asked, is anyone wielding influence south of the line? It all falls in line with what some readers have noted: that last week's killing of the musico, Sergio Vega, was an accident because he was driving the same color Cadillac as El 18. Again, poor intel. The cartel wars are deteriorating to the level of stray dogs fighting over a chicken bone. **UPDATE – Guess it ain't no chisme anymore. Gracias, comadre, por el tip. Te la pago con un seis de Tecate bien heladas la proxima vez que nos veamos.

THE BORDER REPORT

While I recognize that elected officials aren't always the sharpest knife in the drawer, I take absolute exception to this elected idiot up in Wisconsin who supports a boycott against Arizona on the grounds that Arizona does not border Mexico and therefore faces no illegal immigration issues. Years ago, I used to cover the board of supervisors meetings up in Flagstaff, Ariz., the representative for the Navajo reservation slice of the county used to fall asleep before the meetings even began. A colleague and I begged the editors to let us write a story about the snoozing supervisor but he felt that was too mean-spirited and told us to let it go. I had thought I'd seen the worst of ineptitude with that woman. And then someone sent me this. "If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this.  But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border," she says. Hunh.

THE BORDER REPORT

Sergio Vega composed some of my favorite narco-corridos in the genre. He had a great timing for crudeness and a strong sense of irony, especially in songs like "El Impostor de Malverde," the tale of an American CIA agent who took the place of Jesús Malverde in the Culiacán shrine only to end up dead in Colonia Las Quintas.

Last Saturday, Vega was summarily executed driving his red Cadillac to a party in Sinaloa where he was scheduled to perform. The gunmen, and this has the flavor of the old Sinaloa Cartel, killed him in front of one of his own promotional posters.

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THE BORDER REPORT

So I received this email from Google late last night. Apparently they have a blanket policy against gore on Web sites. While Google has the right to dictate whom they wish to advertise with, I guess I have a few rights, too, starting with the right to tell an advertiser to piss off. To my way of thinking, intent must be considered before considering photos as pornographic. So I'll continue posting photos of whom and what I please and Google can keep their (low-end) few hundred dollars a year. Hello, While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://borderreporter.com/2008/09/decapitations-whats-next/. Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website. As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with violent or disturbing content, including sites with gory text or images. As a result, we have disabled ad serving to the site. Your AdSense account remains active. However, we strongly suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-2pp-en) to ensure that all of your remaining pages are in compliance. Please note that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

THE BORDER REPORT

A high-level official in the U.S. Border Patrol was removed from his position after carrying on an affair with a subordinate's wife. The official, one of the highest-ranking agents working along the Southwest border is apparently facing reassignment elsewhere. Infidelity doesn't seem to be a punishable offense in the Homeland Security Department but lying to investigators who ask you about it, apparently is. Naming the guy would be no fun, so let's just leave it at that. Messy, messy, messy but that's how we like it here.