Why Has AMLO Accused USAID of a “Coup Against Mexico”?
"Four killed in attack on Mexico top cop "Att: ForReal, The truth is Mexico’s new president will be neither socialist nor savior "Five Takeaways From Mexico’s Election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador"" - "Donald Trump’s Central America strategy is both cruel and incompetent [...] Stray bullets The US’s lax gun laws, particularly in border states, feed the very violence that migrants head northward to escape. Many critics have singled out the 2004 expiration of the US’s assault weapons ban, arguing that the subsequent resurgence in assault weapons sales has contributed to the grisly massacres and cartel brutality that spiked in Mexico and Central America over the past decade. P -Some 2,000 illegal firearms cross the border into Mexico daily, and in recent years Mexican cartels .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/the-american-gun-glut-is-a-problem-for-the-entire-world.html .. have linked up with Central American criminal outfits to import US-made firearms and to push cocaine up the isthmus and across the US border. But of course, firearms manufacturers in the US are hardly keen to see assault weapons banned again, and Trump is on their side. His recently renewed embrace of the gun lobby .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/04/trump-nra-convention-dallas-gun-control .. sent a strong message to the governments of the region that as far as eliminating violence goes, the US is an unreliable partner." - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=141933076"
Mexico’s president has ramped up attacks on civil society groups.
By Ann Deslandes, a freelance writer and researcher based in Mexico City.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks during the daily briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on May 28. Hector Vivas/Getty Images
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is apparently not so sure.
U.S. organizations like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation have long had funding agreements with civil society organizations in Mexico—a feature of bilateral relations for some 60 years. Major civil society efforts in Mexico promoting press freedom, access to justice, government transparency, corporate responsibility, and freedom from gender-based violence are supported in part or in whole by such funding initiatives. And they have been for some time.
Longstanding as these partnerships may be, López Obrador has recently taken to railing against foreign sources of funding for civil society organizations, claiming Mexico’s sovereignty is at risk. The president’s long-running accusations that various foreign agencies are attempting to undermine his government culminated in a diplomatic note sent in May to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. Speaking at a press conference, López Obrador blamed .. https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-sends-us-diplomatic-note-over-usaid/ .. the U.S. government for “an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty.” ---- López Obrador has recently taken to railing against foreign sources of funding for civil society organizations, claiming Mexico’s sovereignty is at risk. ---- The alleged “act of interventionism” is USAID’s provision of funds to the nonprofit organization Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI). In 2018, MCCI received a three-year grant of $2.3 million through the agency’s designated funds to support anti-corruption activities in Mexico. López Obrador also criticized Article 19, a nongovernmental organization that defends freedom of expression .. https://www.animalpolitico.com/2021/03/amlo-acusa-articulo-19-financiada-empresas-extrajeras-movimiento-conservador/ .. and whose work had been cited by the U.S. State Department in its annual human rights report.
Beyond an attempt to score political points by going on the offensive against the United States, the features of López Obrador’s discourse—state-sponsored repression of independent journalism and widespread misinformation campaigns—nullify his claim to protect the country from destabilization by outside forces.
In the case of MCCI, the diplomatic note sent on May 6 was ostensibly triggered .. https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/amlo-se-investigara-financiamiento-de-mexicanos-contra-la-corrupcion .. by an article in Contralínea magazine, which reported MCCI is partly funded through USAID and the NED. The article also explained MCCI was led from 2019 to 2020 by Claudio X González Guajardo, a businessperson from a political family who also heads a coalition of organizations known as Sí por México,which strongly opposes López Obrador.
López Obrador’s note stated “members of [MCCI], such as Claudio X. González, have been explicit in their political militancy against the Mexican government.” The note asked .. https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2021/05/07/version-estenografica-de-la-conferencia-de-prensa-matutina-del-presidente-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-525/ .. the embassy to confirm whether it has been supporting MCCI and, if so, requested it “consider suspending” the funds in the spirit of mutual respect and nonintervention. At his daily morning press conference on May 7, López Obrador said the United States is “promoting a coup” by providing funds to MCCI. “That is why we are asking for clarification. No foreign government can give money to political groups in another country.” (In a statement .. https://twitter.com/MXvsCORRUPCION/status/1390324861004877824 .. published on Twitter, MCCI said “we strongly reject the use of concepts such as meddling, interventionism or coup-plotting, which have been used … to disqualify our work.”)
USAID programs in the last few years have been dedicated to “[supporting] Mexican efforts to address key challenges to improving citizen security” to “help communities resist the effects of crime and violence” and to “protect citizen’s rights.” With a new presidential administration in Washington, there will inevitably be discussion about the allocation of USAID funds. Several days after López Obrador’s note, Mexican media reported that Bruce Abrams, USAID’s mission director in Mexico, said in a cross-agency meeting organized by the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs that “a civil organization that is against the government or against the private sector is not the answer for Mexico’s long term” and said the agency is “reevaluating its priorities” as a new cross-border relationship takes hold under U.S. President Joe Biden. It’s unclear whether he was referring to any specific organization or initiative. USAID has been contacted for comment.
For its part, Article 19 found that .. https://www.article19.org/resources/mexico-ten-months-on-and-amlo-government-continues-to-sideline-the-notimex-case/ , in 2020, there were coordinated attacks by public functionaries on social media against former employees of the state-funded news agency Notimex and against current employees who were then on strike. The staff’s union and many journalists covering the issue claimed some employees had been unfairly fired or harassed by López Obrador’s appointed management. Article 19 has criticized López Obrador for refusing to condemn the attacks and for supporting Sanjuana Martínez, the agency’s director who is against the union. Article 19 researchers also alleged the editor in chief influenced the work of the news agency, writing .. https://www.article19.org/resources/mexico-ten-months-on-and-amlo-government-continues-to-sideline-the-notimex-case/ .. “Martínez undermined Notimex’s editorial independence, ordering journalists to avoid reporting on particular topics, including on public institutions and Mexican officials.”
López Obrador’s hostility has had consequences. The impacts of the president’s March comments on Article 19 and on freedom of expression are grave, said Paula Saucedo, a protection and defense officer at Article 19. A growing percentage of the incidents of aggression against journalists documented by the organization “are perpetrated by individuals in society—people coming up randomly to reporters on the street and saying, ‘why are you against my president, why are you against the development of the country?’”
Like most civil society organizations in Mexico, Article 19 has funding relationships .. https://articulo19.org/sobre-a19/financiamientos/ .. with numerous international organizations, including USAID, the Ford Foundation, Heinrich Böll Foundation, and Google, along with several other foreign governments, such as Ireland, Britain, and the Netherlands. Inti Cordera, executive director of the international documentary film festival DOCSMX, said such arrangements are simply pragmatic. “We found NED because we were looking for funding and they had funding,” Cordera said. “We found there was a correspondence with our values, which are also to promote democracy.” There’s no other particular agenda involved in the relationship between NED and DOCSMX, he added. - López Obrador’s rhetoric against foreign funding sources for civil society organizations in Mexico also begs the question of where money for these efforts might otherwise come from. - López Obrador’s rhetoric against foreign funding sources for civil society organizations in Mexico also begs the question of where money for these efforts might otherwise come from. Within the first year of his administration, López Obrador cut funding to social programs, leaving thousands of civil society organizations scrambling to resource their work in the health, women’s rights, human rights, Indigenous advocacy, social welfare, science, and culture fields—indeed, causing many to seek funding from outside of Mexico .. https://www.proceso.com.mx/reportajes/2019/3/1/las-osc-se-defienden-ante-amlo-no-todas-somos-corruptas-221016.html .. to continue to stay operational.
“There has definitely been a departure from providing public resources for this work, even though there is a tacit promise to the Mexican people in the constitution to develop culture,” Cordera said, adding that ideally civil society would have more funding from within Mexico. Cordera also sees room for building a “donor culture,” in which crowdfunding and dollar-for-dollar fundraising (where the government matches donations from private citizens) become more common. As a sector that promotes democracy and transparency and campaigns for social justice, “civil society is the Mexican government’s biggest ally” by supporting the population where the state does not or cannot.
López Obrador may not see it that way. But civil society organizations in Mexico remain undaunted by the president’s criticisms. “We are not going to stop because the president is doing what he’s doing,” Saucedo said. “On the contrary—we will continue to do our job to defend freedom of expression and the right to information.”
Ann Deslandes is a freelance writer and researcher based in Mexico City. Twitter: @Ann_dLandes
Where do Mexican drug cartels get their guns? Often, the United States
"Four killed in attack on Mexico top cop "Att: ForReal, The truth is Mexico’s new president will be neither socialist nor savior "Five Takeaways From Mexico’s Election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador"""
Beth Warren Louisville Courier Journal Aug. 25, 2021
Jose Rafael Vasquez tried to smuggle guns from the U.S. to Mexico, but was arrested as part of Homeland Security's Operation Without a Trace.
A Washington man drove to a U.S. border crossing last year in his teal Ford pickup truck loaded with a hidden arsenal .. https://bit.ly/3DhiHHb .. bound for a Mexican cartel war zone.
Miguel Diaz Calderon never made it out of Texas. U.S. Customs agents searched his vehicle at the Eagle Pass crossing and found 43 shotguns, rifles and pistols. They also discovered more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition hidden in an ice chest in the gas tank and inside the spare tire, court records show.
Diaz is part of what cartel members call the “Hormiga,” Spanish for “ant,” referring to an ant trail of reliably flowing weapons transported from the southern U.S. to Mexico, said Jaeson Jones, who tracks cartel trends and previously managed the daily operations of the Texas Rangers' Border Security Operations Center.
The Mexican government estimates that more than half a million guns are smuggled from the U.S. each year, arming Mexico's deadly cartel wars. Officials in Mexico — which has just one gun store and issues fewer than 50 gun permits a year — blame lax U.S. gun laws and the prevalence of gun shops in America for the bulk of weapons that allow cartels to flourish. Earlier this month, the Mexican government sued U.S. gun manufacturers in federal court, accusing them of fueling the violence.
Diaz is one of 360 suspects arrested so far during Operation Without a Trace .. https://www.ice.gov/features/without-a-trace , an ongoing crackdown launched nearly two years ago by Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to intercept illegal guns, said Joseph Lestrange, division chief of Homeland Security's Transnational Organized Crime.
These agencies team with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives????? to investigate the financing, transportation, and communications methods of smuggling networks.
Agents launched 534 investigations, seized $29 million and intercepted more than 1,200 guns, 4,700 magazines for semi-automatic and automatic weapons and 700,000 rounds of ammunition headed to Mexico, Lestrange told The Courier Journal this month.
"The majority of weapons we've seized since we started this operation have been in the corridor by Laredo, Texas — from Laredo to El Paso," he said.
Diaz, who lived in Union Gap, a three-hour drive from Seattle, tried to cross the border northwest of Laredo on International Bridge 2 on May 5, 2020. The bridge connects Eagle Pass, Texas, to the Northern Mexico city of Piedras Negras in the state of Coahuila.
After his arrest, Diaz told agents with Homeland Security Investigations he was paid $5,000 upfront to smuggle "fierros," Spanish for "iron," which he understood to be guns, across the border.
He expected to be paid an additional $5,000 once the guns were delivered to Michoacán, Mexico, according to court records. He claimed he didn't know the names of the gun buyers or their cartel affiliations.
In Michoacán, the global powerhouse Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG, has been engaged in a long and deadly battle with Sinaloa and other rival cartels.
"It's hard to pinpoint exactly where we think a particular load (of guns) we seized was going," Lestrange said. Some suspects won't talk after their arrests and others admit smuggling guns but claim they don't know the names of the buyers or the cartel involved.
"But we also know most of the violence the Mexican government is concerned about against police and against institutions is coming from CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel" run by the notorious kingpin "El Chapo," Lestrange said.
Members of the violent CJNG cartel based in Jalisco, Mexico.
If Diaz had sneaked his arsenal past U.S. Customs officials, he would have had to pay a "piso," or fee, to members of the Cártel del Noreste, or CDN, which dominates this area of northern Mexico, Jones said.
Even though CDN is a rival of CJNG, its members accept payments to allow drugs or guns to pass through their territory.
After paying the piso and traveling through Coahuila, Diaz still would have faced a 14-hour drive south to Michoacán.
The state, about a five-hour drive west of Mexico City, is known for its production of avocados. It is also the native land of ruthless Mexican cartel boss Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, a top U.S. target with a $10 million reward for information on his whereabouts.
Meanwhile, the Mexican government blames prominent U.S. gun manufacturers for the influx of cartel weapons in its lawsuit against them in federal court in Boston.
"Almost all guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico — 70% to 90% of them — were trafficked from the U.S.," the Mexican government claims in its complaint.
An estimated 20 attorneys, many based in Texas, are expected to unite to represent Mexico, including six companies they blame for the bulk of recovered crime guns there: Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock and Ruger.
Officers found all of those brands, except Century Arms, in the shipments smuggled by Diaz, court records show.
The Mexican government claims that more than 68% of illegal guns smuggled across the border are made by those companies, along with Barrett and Witmer Public Safety Group, which acquired Interstate Arms.
"As a result of the continued use and possession of many of these guns, residents of Mexico will continue to be killed and injured by these guns, and the public will continue to fear for their health, safety, and welfare," American attorneys wrote in the suit on behalf of Mexico.
Mexico suffered more than 40,000 fatal shootings in 2018, according to public briefings by Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. Of the guns used in crimes in Mexico and traced back to the United States, about 41% came from Texas, he said.
An estimated 19% came from California, 15% from Arizona and 25% from other states.
Some of the reasons so many guns come from Texas: people can cross the border on land or by the Rio Grande River, and "in places like Houston and San Antonio, there’s a gun store on every corner,” said Will Glaspy, formerly in charge of DEA's Houston Division.
Cartels seek out military-grade weapons, he said: "The bigger the better."
Mexican military forces confiscated 71 armor-piercing 50-caliber guns in the year ending January 2020, according to the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Mexico.
That included rifles manufactured in Tennessee and Arkansas capable of downing aircraft or ripping through armored police cars and tanks.
CJNG members posted a video that went viral on social media in July 2020 showing off their arsenal of tanks and .50-caliber guns. DEA agents say the cartel was trying to instill fear in its enemies and woo new members.
The majority of U.S. states allow citizens to buy .50-caliber weapons, something Mexico reserves for its military.
Orchestrating straw purchases
Cartels often use drug profits to pay Americans to buy weapons for them at retail stores and gun shows, called straw purchases. The cartels then use their members or contract with associates to serve as "consolidators."
Those associates arrange the purchase of several guns — keeping them at stash houses or handing them off to transporters in gas station parking lots or other neutral locations, Lestrange said.
A Dallas man claimed he didn't know assault rifles, pistols and ammunition were hidden in his silver SUV as he attempted to cross into Mexico from Laredo, Texas.
A jury didn't believe him, convicting Jose Rafael Vasquez last month of attempting to smuggle goods out of the country. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents contend Vasquez told them he was headed to the city of Matehuala, a seven-hour drive south of Laredo, Texas, in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí.
There, members of the Gulf Cartel and CJNG have formed a partnership, Jones said.
Homeland Security Investigations officials display high-powered rifles seized en route to Mexican cartels during a recent news conference in Laredo, Texas -- a smuggling hot spot.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers with an Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement Team were screening traffic headed out of Laredo on the Lincoln-Juarez Bridge in October when they noticed a bundle under the carriage of Vasquez's SUV, secured with black ties.
Investigators found several guns inside the packages, as well as in a secret compartment in the paneling.
Officers found three rifles, eight pistols, several magazines and more than 4,700 rounds, including a bag of bullets under Vasquez's seat and more ammunition wrapped in tape and plastic and tucked inside a hidden compartment between the exterior and interior paneling.
Diaz, who pleaded guilty, and Vasquez are awaiting sentencing. They could each face up to 10 years in prison.
Diaz's attorney, Gregory Torres, declined comment. Vasquez's attorney, Silverio Martinez, said he plans to lobby for leniency, even probation, arguing this is his client's first arrest.
Vasquez was born in Mexico but raised his family in Dallas, where he ran a moving company with his three adult sons. He sometimes loaned his SUV to his employees and his relatives and argues that one of them could have hidden the guns, Martinez said.
"He never saw those guns," his attorney told The Courier Journal.
Operation Without a Trace works in sync with efforts by ATF, which targets straw purchasers, and the DEA, whose agents piece together conspiracy cases by identifying drug networks and their links to specific cartels.
Homeland Security teamed with the ATF to launch a confidential tip line asking for help from the public, displaying the number on about 200 billboards near the border, asking for information on illegal guns bound for Mexico.
U.S. agents also are helping train Mexican police on investigative techniques and evidence collection and improving intelligence sharing, Lestrange said.
"We've got agents and we've got trained criminal investigators from the host government in Mexico working investigations in Mexico," he said. "And they're sending leads up to us to connect the dots."
Reporter Karol Suárez contributed to this story.
Follow reporter Beth Warren on Twitter: @BethWarrenCJ
Tearex, The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal "...What is weird, is you don't see it as problematic to run guns to the Mexican cartels to advance gun control initiatives in American. Or problematic to use the IRS to go after political opponents. Or to use the FBI/CIA to try and entrap political opponents. On, and on,and on. P - All that of yours is simply more misrepresentation and lie. [...] Some call it the “parade of ants”; others the “river of iron.” The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking within the U.S., so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. For six years, due to Beltway politics, the bureau has gone without permanent leadership, neutered in its fight for funding and authority. The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the ATF’s congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one. P - Voth, 39, was a good choice for a Sisyphean task. Strapping and sandy-haired, the former Marine is cool-headed and punctilious to a fault. In 2009 the ATF named him outstanding law-enforcement employee of the year for dismantling two violent street gangs in Minneapolis. He was the “hardest working federal agent I’ve come across,” says John Biederman, a sergeant with the Minneapolis Police Department. But as Voth left to become the group supervisor of Phoenix Group VII, a friend warned him: “You’re destined to fail.” [...] Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn. P - Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time. P - How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It’s a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson’s anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general’s report is submitted.) P - “Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false,” says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa’s committee. Much more - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153115765
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