LOS MOCHIS, SINALOA - Three children and two women were killed after the driver of the car they were in tried to rush past a Mexican Army checkpoint in northern Sinaloa this morning. The driver apparently raced through a checkpoint where 20 soldiers were stationed. He ignored orders to pull over. The driver, father to the seven and two-year olds in the car, was shot in the arm. A four-year old was also in the car. Sources tell Reforma newspaper that guns and narcotics were found in the car; but Culiacán newspapers Noroeste and El Debate focus their coverage on the "massacre." Sources tell El Debate that the soldiers were intoxicated. The shooting happened near Badiraguato, home turf of Sinaloa crime boss Joaquín "Shorty" Guzmán. Few recent Mexican presidents have relied so heavily on the military to take on the druglords as Felipe Calderón. Shortly after he took office, he instilled pay raises for privates of 46 percent and promised 10,000 soldiers to help local police. Some analysts have applauded his determination; others see it as a heavy-handed approach that won't staunch the turf wars being waged throughout the country. The response from the bosses was to strike back at the military. In the past month, narco-traffickers broke the rules, targeting soldiers throughout the country. In one attack, five soldiers died last May. On May 1, a navy base commander was shot at more than 70 times. Somehow they missed him. His bodyguard died. In Sonora, Gov. Eduardo Bours and Senate leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones have both said the presence of more troops is not the answer. Bours has said that intelligence operatives are needed. This is not going to bode well for the president. Whether the car was loaded with dope and guns or no, the public relations scandal of the dead children and women (one was an elementary school teacher) will probably cause a public demand to temper the use of the troops. The Mexican Army is traditionally secretive yet respected. But respect borders fear. And you don't want a citizenry afraid of its law enforcement in a democracy.

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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.

THE BORDER REPORT

Q: I've never thought of Cananea as a cartel-infested city. What can ordinary people on both sides of the border do to promote a free press and protect the messengers? Shooting the messenger seems to be a new cartel hobby in Mexico these days. The Committee to Protect Journalists says the only place in the world with more reporter homicides is Iraq. In some instances, these reporters aren't being killed because they were working on deep investigations; they were simply reporting on the day's events. Essentially, cops reporters are the ones being targeted. In some cases, and it's a very uncomfortable truth Mexicans don't like to talk about, reporters get involved with drug cartels, particularly in the turf wars. One side gets blamed for the other's misdeeds, this type of thing. Those reporters are paid off; the Mexicans call that "chayote." I think one way for Americans to get involved in promoting a free press in Mexico is supporting the Mexican media. Now, that's problematic on many levels because you don't know whose version of the truth you're buying (sometimes I think the same can be said of the U.S. media). I hear that El Imparcial is having trouble selling newspapers in Sierra Vista because major grocery stores refuse to carry the paper. That's a bad move; instead of more information coming to us, we're getting less. Q: What exactly did Pedro Emigdio Cordova Herrera do in Ciudad Obregon? Isn't a bit of a drive from Hermosillo to Obregón. Pedro Emigdio Cordova Herrera was a state police commander in Ciudad Obregón. He was the official in charge of ordering arrest and search warrants for the State Investigative Police. According to federal sources in Hermosillo, he was the godfather to Raul Enriquez Parra, the leader of the drug-trafficking gang, Los Numeros aka Los Güeritos. Los Numeros controlled drug trafficking into Arizona through Sonoyta-Lukeville, the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, ambos Nogales and ambos Naco. The downfall of Los Numeros started with Raul. He was beaten with a hammer and tossed from an airplane onto his own ranch in Navojoa. (Interesting sidenote: his body was found wrapped in a blanket designed like an American flag). Since then, the entire group has been targeted. Cordova was shot in the back last fall but survived. This time the killers didn't miss; they shot him in the face. He was found outside his wife's home in Hermosillo. Presumably, he was visiting his family. Q: Where were the cars licensed, Sonora, Chihuahua, Baja? Since they came from the West, Caborca, does that mean they a Pacific and the Cananea area is out of Juarez? I always thought the guys running drugs around the Caborca area up to Sasabe were their own gang of thugs. The cars of the Cananea gunmen had license plates from all the northern Mexico states, including Baja California, Chihuahua, Sonora and Tamaulipas. The Mexican government has changed the version of events now, saying that some of the killers were already waiting in Cananea, with others coming in from Caborca and still others from Hermosillo. Caborca and the Sasabe area is controlled by the Quintero Paez family, with threads back to the Caro Quintero family. Rafael Caro Quintero was one of the masterminds behind the kidnapping of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985. The inter-relationships behind the families are extensive. The Quinteros and the Enriquez share numerous blood relations. Q: Where do these gangs get their federal clothing and gear? They were driving around the city with at least one car with police lights, wearing probably federal army fatigues and setting up checkpoints. Does this mean that some of these guys are rogue military, the digs are stolen, or a little bit of both? Sorry if this is a simple question, but I don't know much about the background of these drug gangs. In late February, there was a shootout between state police and a convoy rolling through Magdalena de Kino. Some of the gunmen managed to escape, others were arrested. In their vehicles, police found 300 official uniforms, including 50 AFI (Mexican FBI) outfits, 50 Federal Preventative Police outfits, and 100 military uniforms, among others. I imagine uniform manufacturers are as prone to bribery and threats as anyone else in Mexico. It's become standard fare for the Gulf Cartel in particular to use uniforms and vehicles with official insignia. In the Arizpe hunt, several of the gunmen were found to be former Grupo Anfibio de Fuerzas Especiales, Mexican Army Special Forces. The GANFES were trained by the U.S. at Fort Benning, Georgia. Some deserted to the Gulf Cartel as far back as 1997 under President Ernesto Zedillo. Q: Any thoughts on why they would kidnap civilians? Seems a little out of character. And kind of strange if it truly was retaliation hit. There wasn't much reason I can think of beyond sexual assault on the 14 and 16-year-old girls who were kidnapped in Cananea. But one man who was kidnapped was co-owner of El Oasis Motel in Cananea along with one of the dead police officers. El Oasis is a cheap flophouse used to stash pollos before they are smuggled into Arizona. Q: Is Sonora on the verge of becoming a war state? I guess you could say it's already there, but is all out warfare imminent? What concerns me more isn't all-out war but a supplanting of power. The Sinaloan conglomerate of the Beltrán Leyva family and Chapo Guzmán was fully in control of Sonora narco-trafficking through the first part of this decade. That seems to be changing and those types of changes don't come quietly. If the Gulf Cartel keeps trying to move into Sonora we're going to see more attacks like Cananea. This was no an isolated incident and I think Mexican and American law enforcement will commit a horrendous mistake if they treat it as one. Q: Does the Gray Ranch (in the western boot heel of NM) ever figure into any of this?  For the last 30 plus years I've either had personal odd happenings associated with the Gray Ranch or heard from good sources they use their air field to run drugs. They also seem to be protected by the local NM law enforcement ( Sheriff, Game and Fish and Border Patrol). I've never been to Gray Ranch but geographically it's in the territory of the Juárez Cartel, specifically, in the region controlled by the Paredes Machado family from Agua Prieta. I always find it amusing that corruption among U.S. authorities is rarely mentioned in all this. Q: Have you ever heard that FICO ( the Pecan growers) is associated with money laundering or trafficking out of Sonora. I have not, though haulers get busted carrying dopeloads north from nearly every agricultural company along the border. Q: Why did Arizona not put up permanent Immigration check points like they have in New Mexico? In 1999, the Border Patrol was prohibited from placing permanent checkpoints in Tucson Sector after Congressman Jim Kolbe applied pressure. Kolbe felt permanent checkpoints simply resulted in illegal traffic circumventing one area for another. Q: What happened to the Tacho brother who got arrested for having marijuana in his gas tank and how is his family? Are their other Tacho family members, and if so do they have cartel associations?
Roberto Tacho was police chief in Naco, Sonora, until his February arrest for carrying 59 pounds of marijuana. He, quite literally, threw himself into the hands of the Americans, trying to escape the same death sentence his brother suffered in Agua Prieta. He is in segregated custody in Arizona, awaiting a hearing. His family was in the car with him but was deported back to Naco. As far as I know, they are still alive. I do not know if any other Tachos are involved in the life. Q: What do the mules/backpackers do after they deliver their loads, go back to Mexico or what? Most do return to Mexico, usually along a circular route like Sasabe to Tucson, then back down Interstate 19 to Nogales and over to Altar for example. In spite of arguments to the contrary from Justice Department, I don't believe most backpackers carry dope into the country in exchange for being smuggled in. There are always exceptions of course but drug trafficking usually dictates where people smuggling can take place. For example, in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, migrant traffic has dropped off while drug mules increased this year, says refuge chief Roger DiRosa. Q: Do either of these cartels traffic in prostitutes? I doubt there's a direct involvement but the money launderers and their affiliates in the U.S. are certainly involved. Q: Do any of the Cartels own property in the USA, and if so where? One of the most interesting details from State Department is who's getting the visas to come into the U.S. To get a visa, you need to prove financial stability in Mexico and narco-traffickers can prove their money-laundering operations in Mexico are legitimate businesses. The best example is Ismael Zambada, wanted in the U.S. on a $5 million bounty. His kids attend school in Phoenix. Q: Who is dealing Crystal Meth out of Sonora/Chihuahua, anyone? Jaime Herrera, a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Federation, is the name that most frequently pops up for meth production in Mexico. Chemists in Sonora and Sinaloa are now able to produce pounds of the stuff for shipment to the U.S. But the operations seem to be scattered throughout the country. Last March, the third-largest pseudoephredrine importer in Mexico was implicated in a 19-ton pseudo-seizure in Mexico. Q: Who runs the mines now in Cananea now, if international, what nationalities? Grupo Mexico, under the billionaire family of Jorge Larrea, runs the mines in Cananea. Q: What is the final count of the dead? Did they capture any of the gunmen alive?  What has happened to them? Twenty-four people died in Cananea and Arizpe. That includes 16 gunmen, five police officers and three civilians.