THE BORDER REPORT

You know, it's been about a dozen years since someone publicly tried to form a pact with the Mexican government; the question is did it work then and will it work now?

The leader of La Familia, Servano Goméz La Tuta, supposedly made the call yesterday, in to a Mexican show, Voz y Solucíon de Michoacán to ask for a peace-out with the Mexicans.

It's a little astonishing, whoever made the call; and myself, I doubt it was La Tuta. The caller said his problem isn't with Mexican Pres. Felipe Calderón but with the federal police who keep harassing the families of the cartel members. "Tell them to come for me," instead, the caller said.

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THE BORDER REPORT

The Mexican Senate has put forward a measure that will eliminate the Army's roving of Juárez's streets in light of a nasty spat of rights abuses in that poor city at the hands of soldiers.

Plenty of good and bad here to consider. First of all, what choice did Mexico have? Juárez is the country's largest border city, rendered utterly feral by the exhaustive war between Vicente Carrillo and Joaquín Guzmán Loéra. That conflict has gone on since 2007 and homicide stats from this summer show that there's been no relinquishing of territory by either side. Juárez had an average of seven murders a day in June alone. Clearly an intervention was needed.

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THE BORDER REPORT

As far as border enforcement ideas, it was amongst the most hare-brained; set up web-cams along the Texas border and let citizens log in and report any illegal activity they saw.

It reduced what should have been a serious issue, monitoring a border gone awry, into a perversion of Neighborhood Watch; a fine mess we'd all be in if they'd pointed those damned things north.

And now, like so many other intervention programs by governments that should have had little say anyway, I want to know where the money went.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Leonel Páez Benitez, aka El Gavilan, was killed a little while in Caborca after a gunfight outside the city. That's a good hit, something akin to El Ingeniero or JT being taken out. I'm still making calls but we'll have more information in a while.

Páez has been wanted for quite awhile, at least as far back as 2007 when former Mexican Army Gen. Sergio Aponte put a bounty on his head after his people took down a Mexican Army plane that summer.

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THE BORDER REPORT

The government of Chihuahua seems to find it appropriate to turn its Anglo residents into weapon-toting vigilantes and let them deal with any future kidnappings or murders that come down on the Mormon communities in the state.

The attorney general stepped up to offer training in the polygamist community of LeBaron after a brutal execution earlier this week. Benjamin LeBaron was kidnapped along with a relative, taken from his home under threat of a grenade attack. He was beaten of his family, some reports say the killers attempted to rape his wife; the two bodies were found on a dirt trail outside of town on Monday. In response, his brother Julian says the community's cut a deal with the state.

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