The U.S. Embargo of Cuba

51 years later, a paradigm for how not to conduct foreign policy

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 26, 2011

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On the evening of December 31, 1958 the president of Cuba was a swaggering dictator named Fulgencio Batista.  An old friend of Washington and of the American mafia alike, Batista knew the end was near.  Cuban rebels, long his nemesis, were in the outskirts of Havana, and occasional gunfire could be heard in the distance. U.S. political support was quickly evaporating.  Eisenhower administration officials told Batista that it was time to pack his bags.  At a New Year's Eve party, over a champagne toast, he told his cabinet ministers that he was leaving the country in a few hours. At 3:00 a.m. on January 1, 1959, Batista boarded a plane with supporters and flew to the Dominican Republic, under the careful watch of U.S. officials.  With him, crammed into the cargo hold, went cash and art work estimated at $300-$700 million USD, all of it property of the Cuban state.

Update on Veracruz Air Crash

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 25, 2011

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Yesterday The Yucatan Times reported the deaths of two U.S. nationals on Sunday, October 23, killed in a private aircraft accident near Veracruz, Mexico.

This story was carried on the day of the event by several media sources, including CNN-Espanol, Milenio and Notiver, a Veracruz newspaper.  The sources reported that two victims were dead at the scene, Reggie Henkart and Andrea Henkart.  The reports said that the victims were identified based upon credit cards, business cards and personal effects found in their luggage and in the aircraft wreckage.

This evening the Times was advised by a Henkart family friend that the Reggie Henkart on board was in fact Gerald Reggie Henkart, 65, of Novato, California, as we originally reported.  However, Andrea Henkart was not on the flight.  The Times was told in an e-mail that Ms. Henkart is at the family home, “alive and well,” attempting to correct multiple erroneous stories about the event which have occurred in the U.S. and international press.

At this hour The Yucatan Times is unable to determine whether a second person was aboard the plane.  The Times is advised but cannot verify that an explosion on board the aircraft may have occurred immediately prior to its crash.  Andrea Henkart’s name may have been on a passenger manifest, or on other items recovered at the scene.

The Times apologizes to Andrea Henkart for this error. In all other respects our original story remains accurate.

Two Women Executed in Isla de Mujeres

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Hotel San Jorge in Isla de Mujeres

Cancun -- Two young women who allegedly peddled drugs on the Isla de Mujeres tourist strip were found executed in a room of the Hotel San Jorge yesterday (October 20). The women, 26 and 23, were seized by unknown persons on Tuesday. One of them had just been released from jail the day before, after being found guilty of possession of 150 grams of cocaine. She was fined 150,000 pesos (about $11,500 USD), according to court officials. They were known as local drug retailers, say authorities.

The bodies were discovered by hotel workers. Both women had been bound hand and foot, gagged and then had their throats slashed. Police said the murders are plainly an "adjustment of accounts" by organized crime. Isla de Mujeres is home to only about 12,000 permanent residents, and authorities say this is the first case of narcoviolence directly on the island.

Security in Quintana Roo state, on Mexico's famed Gold Coast, has become increasingly compromised in recent weeks. Police say the Los Zetas drug cartel controls crime there.
Previous posts on Quintana Roo violence.

PRI enraged over Felipe Calderón's comments to New York Times

Senator Carolos Jiménez Macías

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 26, 2011

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Mexican president Felipe Calderón suggested in a September 28 interview with the New York Times that a PRI win next year would very likely carry with it a return to "the old days," when some PRI politicians quietly tolerated organized crime, or made informal pacts with drug traffickers, or simply looked the other way.  In a sidebar article published with the interview Calderón was also quoted as saying that the most probable PRI candidate in the 2012 election, Enrique Peña Nieto, would go soft on the drug cartels, and would be disposed to "crawl back into bed with them."

The widely reported comments set off a firestorm of controversy, especially within PRI. Mexican Senator Carolos Jiménez Macías, a PRI powerhouse who speaks for the party, has demanded that Calderón retract the statements and apologize for them.  Jiménez Macías also demanded that Calderón "get his hands entirely out" of the 2012 electoral process.

Calderón has not commented directly on the controversy, but his Secretary of Governmental Affairs did so today.  During a press conference Francisco Blake told reporters that the president had not been accurately quoted by the Times reporters.  Blake said that Calderón had not made his comments against PRI “as an institution,” but rather was referring to things which have already been publicly admitted by some former PRI leaders, most notably Sócrates Rizzo, an ex-mayor of Monterrey and ex-governor of Nuevo Leon state.

PRI leaders said late today that they are not satisfied with the response by Blake, and they plan to debate the matter tomorrow.

Note: Secretary Francisco Blake died tragically on November 11, 2011, when a helicopter carrying him and seven other government officials crashed in heavy fog. It was the second time Calderón has lost a cabinet officer who held this key post. His previous secretary of government was killed in a plane crash while landing in Mexico City three years earlier, almost to the day. Details here: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/11/calderon-top-cabinet-member-killed-in.html.

Mérida Initiative takes off in Maryland

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 18, 2011

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The Mérida Initiative is an agreement between the United States and Mexico which contains provisions for the training and equipping of Mexican police forces, as well as for intelligence gathering and sharing. The name derives from meetings held by former President George Bush and President Calderon in Mérida in 2007.

The U.S. State Department announced October 14 that a group of over 400 Mexican state police officers will begin receiving "professional enhancement" training soon at a Maryland facility. The officers were selected from Mexico's 31 states and federal district. "These participants will be trained (in techniques) useful for confronting the threat presented by drug cartels along the border," said a State Department press release.

Last April U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mexico's Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa held a meeting in Washington to review the Mérida Initiative. They agreed that the primary focus now should be on training state police forces, which are at the forefront of the war against organized crime. The Mexican armed forces are trained internally, and local police departments are much less actively involved in offensives against the drug cartels. Local police in many areas are infiltrated by criminal elements, and state police spend considerable time and resources weeding out corruption in their ranks.

More on the Mérida Initiative: http://mexicogulfreporter-supplement.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-us-ambassador-to-mexico-stands.html

No deals with criminals, says PAN candidate Vázquez Mota

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 18, 2011

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Josefina Vázquez Mota leads the presidential preference polls among all current PAN (National Action Party) pre-candidates. At a campaign appearance today she emphasized that if elected, she'll never consider "any kind of amnesty for, or deal with, organized crime." Her remarks will no doubt continue to fan the flames on that issue. PRI politicians throughout Mexico remained on the offensive today, demanding that president Felipe Calderón retract and apologize for his recent comments during an interview with the New York Times. Calderón inferred that if PRI wins the presidency next year, there will be a return to "business as usual," with the drug cartels permitted to carry on their activities below the radar screen.

Vázquez Mota also said that Mexican armed forces will be withdrawn from their leadership role in the war against the drug cartels as soon as the government is confident that local law enforcement can handle the task.

More on the Vázquez Mota candidacy: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/10/josefina-vazquez-mota-likley-to-be-2012.html.

More shots traded between PAN and PRI

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 17, 2011

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The war of words continued today, as another PAN presidential candidate fired back at PRI leaders who have demanded a retraction and apology by Mexican president Felipe Calderón for comments he made to the New York Times during a September 28 interview, published last weekend.

Ernesto Cordero, a former secretary of Mexico's Hacienda (the country's tax collection and budget analysis agency), said that "it's PRI who owes an apology to all of Mexico." Cordero told a press conference today that there are public statements made by former PRI leaders who have openly acknowledged the party's connection to organized crime as long as 30 years ago, enabling it to become much stronger. He pointed to admissions by Sócrates Rizzo, a former PRI mayor of Monterrey and governor of Nuevo Leon in the 1990s, as well as statements by Miguel de la Madrid, Mexico's PRI president from 1982-1988. Neither man had any immediate comment in response." Those people even knew the drug routes," Cordero quoted Sócrates Rizzo as saying.

The PAN pre-candidate also noted that in many states which are controlled by PRI governments narcoviolence is severe, including Nuevo León, Coahuila, Nayarit, Veracruz and Quintana Roo.

Could "domino theory" apply to Central America?

By Edward V. Byrne The Yucatan Times
October 18, 2011

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The domino theory was popular in the 1950s and 1960s when many in the West, especially in the Untied States, feared a worldwide communist takeover. The theory held that if one nation fell, its neighbors would soon follow. The phrase was coined when then president Dwight Eisenhower, referring to Asia, told an April 1954 press conference:

"Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the 'falling domino' principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences."

Could such a thing happen in Central America -- with the threat this time being drug traffickers instead of communists? Some say it's a very real possibility.

A meeting of Latin American foreign ministers convened today in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, to focus on the issue. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa Cantellano said that organized crime presents the single greatest threat to governments in the region today. Drug traffickers and others seek to destabilize the area, and "to destroy democracy itself," she argued.

Espinosa Cantellano said that in the face of this threat, countries must work together to preserve their mutually dependent security. She urged her counterparts from several nations to “reject absolutely” any and all destabilizing forces, and to aggressively confront transnational organized crime.

The countries participating in the conference are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belice, Panamá, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and México.

Obesity presents severe risk to Mexico: 70% of population overweight

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 18, 2011

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Mexico, like many other developed and developing nations, has a major health battle on its hands. Simply put, most people here are overweight. A combination of too many calories and too little exercise places millions of Mexicans at serious health risk, concludes a recent study of the nation’s population.

A 2010 study of obesity commissioned by the Mexican government concluded that 70% of the country’s population is overweight. Some four million children suffer from clinical obesity, which is defined as a BMI (body mass index) of over 30.

According to the federal study, Yucatán state has Mexico's highest obesity rate among children age 5 to 11, and the fifth highest among adolescents 12 to 19. In the younger group 36.3% of children are overweight, and in the latter group 38.9%. The study was reported October 3 by El Diario de la Yucatán, a major Mérida daily.

The problem is aggravated by poverty. The limited incomes on which many families must subsist interferes with maintenance of a healthy diet, and promotes the consumption of fast food and junk food, says Mauricio Hernández, undersecretary of Mexico’s agency for disease prevention. Those foods are generally cheaper and are readily available on the street, he noted.

“There is a huge imbalance between calories consumed and calories burnt through exercise,” said Hernández. “It’s very easy to take them in, but much harder to burn them.”

Jaime Zabludovsky, president of the Mexican Council for Consumable Products, said that “today, Mexicans live longer, they’ve moved (from the countryside) to the cities, and they eat more. Today people have access to (prepared) foods that they didn’t have access to in earlier times.”

Roberto Marmolejo, editor of Balance magazine, says that the problem is also one of lack of education about how to select healthy foods, as well as the importance of regular exercise.

In 2010 Mexico passed an anti-obesity law which was particularly aimed at young people. It prohibits the sale of foods with very low nutritional value, particularly ones high in fats, salt and sugar.

The World Health Organization says that Mexico’s battle with obesity could cost the country $15 billion USD over the next decade, in the form of treatment for diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.

© MGR 2011-2014. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.

Back to the "Good Old Days" in Mexico

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 16, 2011

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The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 70 years, until the presidential election of 2000, when it lost to former president Vicente Fox.  PRI lost again in 2006, to Mexico's current PAN (National Action Party) president Felipe Calderón.  PRI is determined to recapture the presidency next year, and many political observers here agree: it has an excellent chance of doing so.

The centerpiece of PRI's 2012 campaign strategy is (or will be) its opposition to Calderón's five year old war against the drug cartels, which it says has been a dismal failure and a disastrous mistake.  Today a PRI senate leader, Carolos Jiménez Macías, upped the ante by accusing U.S. and Mexican authorities of having entirely fabricated an Iranian plot to kill one or more foreign ambassadors in Washington, D.C.  The plot was broken up by the FBI on September 29, with the arrest of one of the two Iranian ringleaders in New York, but the Justice Department did not disclose details until earlier this week.  One of those details was that the arrested Iranian had traveled several times to Mexico to deal with a drug cartel sicario (hit man), who was supposed to carry out the murder(s).  The hit man was actually a DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) undercover operative.  There is abundant evidence to back the claims, including a $100,000 USD wire transfer by the Iranian to the presumed Mexican assassin.

U.S. officials praised Mexico's cooperation and assistance in busting up the plot, and some Calderón officials took a bow earlier this week when the story broke.  DEA officials said recently that the Calderón anti-cartel offensive launched in 2006 has had a very measurable impact on disrupting the flow of drugs north into the United States.  President Obama called Calderón last week to thank him for Mexico’s cooperation and assistance, both in the Iranian matter and the drug war as well.  Those kinds of things seem to infuriate some politicians here – most of whom wave the tricolor of PRI.

"Let's see if over time it doesn't appear that the Americans (set up) the whole 'plot,'" said PRI political boss Jiménez Macías, who chairs the Mexican Senate's Asian-Pacific Foreign Affairs Committee. He claimed the entire episode was “another” U.S. attempt to intervene in Mexico's internal affairs.

Meanwhile, a group of rabid anti-Calderóns and anti-PANistas filed a criminal complaint against him this week, with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.  For those of you not up on your Eastern European history, that’s the same tribunal which arrested and tried dozens of Slavic military and political leaders for rape and genocide committed during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.  Those modern day Nazis were convicted of war crimes, and now some of Calderón’s opponents want him charged with exactly the same, for daring to take on the drug cartels.  Not all of the legal complainants  – referred to as “professors and intellectuals” in their media releases – are PRIstas, but many are, or are supporters sub silentio.

In a wide ranging interview with the New York Times published this weekend, president Calderón said that there are some in PRI who would prefer to return to the "old days," by "making a deal" with organized crime forces.  That's a very charitable understatement.  During decades of PRI control, nothing was done to curb the growing influence of drug traffickers.   Felipe Calderón is the first president in the history of Mexico to launch a full scale offensive against domestic criminals - the drug cartels – which now plainly represent a veritable international threat, on the same level or worse than many terrorist groups. 

The question is, will Calderón’s bold and courageous offensive go up in smoke when a new president takes office in December 2012?

© Edward V. Byrne 2011. This article may be cited or quoted with proper attribution to the author but otherwise not reproduced in whole or in part without express permission.

Texas School Children Recruited by Mexico´s Drug Cartels

 Says Texas Dept. of Public Safety

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Mexican drug cartels actively recruit U.S. secondary school students to work with them and support their trafficking operations on both sides of the border, says the Texas Dept. of Public Safety. In a warning to parents of adolescents, officials said they have been aware of the problem since 2009, but several recent events involving students have heightened their concern.
DPS says that drug traffickers employ youngsters to carry drugs across border bridges connecting Mexico with Texas. Because the kids speak both Spanish and English, and live in the area, "they are naturals for the work". They blend in well, and their young age makes them less likely to be suspected by law enforcement agents.

24 Hours of Violence in Acapulco, Veracruz Leaves 17 Dead

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Despite the fact that both of these coastal resort cities have heavy concentrations of federal and state law enforcement authorities, violence and executions continue. Eleven bodies were found in different locations of Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, and six in Veracruz and its environs. The separate incidents occurred from Thursday night through Friday (October 13-14).
In September, Veracruz experienced an unprecedented surge of violence, with over 80 execution victims being dumped by drug gangs, some in public locations and in broad daylight. Authorities attribute those events to a

Federal Court Awards $9.3 billion Judgment Against al-Qaida for 9/11 Attacks

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In 2003, a group of insurance companies which had been required to satisfy property and casualty claims arising out of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks filed a civil indemnification action in a New York federal court against al-Qaida. The shadowy international organization of course never responded to the lawsuit, and a default judgment was entered against it in 2006.
In recent months a damage hearing was held on the claim, and today a magistrate recommended that judgment be entered against al-Qaida for $9.3 billion USD. The magistrate found the actual damages to be $3.1 billion, but at the plaintiffs' request he tripled them, as allowed by federal law. The magistrate's ruling now goes to a U.S. district judge, who likely will approve it as a matter of course.
Unless assets traceable to al-Qaida are discovered, the judgment will be worth no more than the paper on which it's printed. But civil judgments in the United States never expire, provided they are periodically renewed.

Mexico Fires 121 Immigration Agents for Corruption and Narco Ties

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times
October 15, 2011

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INM Office in Chetumal, Quintana Roo

Mexico's National Institute for Migration (INM) is responsible for processing and keeping tabs on tens of thousands of tourists, visitors, immigrants and undocumented persons who pass through the country every year, including many from war torn areas in Central America, where drug traffickers are locked in vicious conflict with civil authorities.
From time to time allegations surface that some INM personnel are on the payrolls of drug cartels, or are taking bribes, or are tolerating the abuse of poor migrants passing through the country on their way to the U.S. In recent months there have been several highly publicized cases of migrants who were kidnapped by traffickers and extorted for cash, or pressed into service as "drug mules" for the cartels, and forced to carry narcotics across the border. Hundreds of those migrants were later executed and buried in remote graves. Their remains are still being discovered.  Here in Merida, in 2009, a high ranking INM official was fired after he was linked to a local prostitution ring which smuggled in women from neighboring countries, including Cuba. His job was to get them falsified visas and work documents. He narrowly escaped criminal prosecution, but was barred from government employment for 15 years.

Today (Oct. 14) INM announced the summary firing of 121 of its employees, in the states of Chiapas, Sonora, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo, Veracruz and the Federal District, all of which have heavy migrant or transient populations. The government said they were suspected of corruption or ties to organized crime, but gave no other details.

Ladies in White Founder Dies in Havana From Dengue Fever

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The Ladies in White ("Las Damas de Blanco") of Havana is a loose knit organization started almost a decade ago by a group of women protesting the detention of 75 men arrested during a wave of political repression in 2003. They have frequently clashed with Cuban authorities over the years, and at times have been roughed up on the streets by Castro regime agents and sympathizers. The group was originally composed of immediate family members of the 75 detainees, but eventually morphed into a much broader organization, espousing the political and civil rights of every Cuban, and demanding the release of all political prisoners. Because of their nonviolent resistance, they have proved themselves a formidable adversary -- and a major headache -- for the Old Men of Havana.
Yesterday (Oct. 14) one of their founders, 63 year old Laura Pollan, died after a week long battle with Dengue fever. Dengue is a tropical, mosquito born illness which afflicts much of the world, including the Yucatán, where there have been a number of deaths in recent weeks.  Most people experience milder forms of Dengue, and statistically very few actually succumb to the illnes. Pollan died in a Havana hospital, where she was admitted after developing severe respiratory problems.
Pollan's husband, one of the original 75, was just released in February.

Calderón Strategy Against Drug Cartels Having Positive Impact in U.S., says DEA

By Edward V. Byrne for The Yucatan Times

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The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says that moving drugs into the U.S. has became more challenging for Mexico’s cartels since president Felipe Calderon took office in 2006.

"Our intelligence information, which includes intercepted communications between traffickers, corroborates the fact that president Calderon’s efforts have made it more difficult to supply the U.S. market with drugs," said Rodney G. Benson, DEA’s intelligence director, in testimony and a report presented to a House of Representatives committee on October 4. The report was released today.

From January 2007 to March 2011, the price of a gram of cocaine rose 87.2%, from an average of $101 dollars to an average of $189 dollars, according to the DEA. The agency attributes the increase to disruption of shipments north. "This is a positive impact without parallel," said Benson.

The DEA report said that "the battle against organized crime launched by Calderon is a heroic effort which has left the cartels wounded and vulnerable, but also more dangerous, (since they are) acting out of true desperation."

DEA claims that the cartels now supply drugs worldwide, including to Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as to the United States.

Benson argued against those who urge consideration of legalizing drugs in order to reduce violence. "History indicates that once traffickers leave the drug trade, they simply gravitate to other forms of crime," he told legislators.

Mexicans Pour Out Emotions at National Town Hall: The Dialog for Peace

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Mexicans from all regions of the country and all walks of life gathered today at a national forum on how best to deal with the endless cycle of drug violence which is racking the nation. The so-called Dialog for Peace was held in Mexico City’s historic Chapultepec Castle. President Felipe Calderón, accompanied by his wife, presided over the often emotional gathering, accompanied by various government officials and cabinet members.
Many family members of victims of narcoviolence appeared and delivered statements, often imploring Calderón’s government to change its strategy, or to abandon altogether the offensive against the drug cartels. Some accused the president of having turned Mexico into a police state, and of violating the country’s