Inside the Case Against General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda – The New York Times

“. . . . . Ebrard told Barr he wanted to see the evidence against Cienfuegos. On Barr’s orders, Robotti and other Eastern District prosecutors hurriedly assembled a file of more than 700 pages of intercepts. They had no illusions that the information would remain secret, and they did not make any mention of the new witnesses they had found, who, officials said, included at least two traffickers who told of face-to-face meetings with Cienfuegos. In a cover letter, Shea emphasized that Cienfuegos “was never a direct investigative target of the Drug Enforcement Administration.” As the intercepts showed, he said, Cienfuegos’s name had surfaced during a routine narcotics investigation.

Ebrard read the dossier over the weekend. Before he had a chance to pick apart the evidence in his next conversation with Barr, the attorney general told him he was ready to drop the case. “I made it clear that I was willing to return Cienfuegos and was taking care of the formalities necessary to do that,” Barr wrote in his memoir. “Personally, I felt that Cienfuegos’s case was not worth scuttling any prospects of broader cooperation with the Mexicans.”

According to two officials briefed on the call, Barr asked the Mexicans not to publicly disparage the D.E.A.’s evidence against Cienfuegos and expressed his hope for the capture of Rafael Caro Quintero. But he did not receive any formal agreement on either point. “He didn’t nail down any commitment from the Mexican side,” one official said. “There were no real conditions imposed on the return.” ” . . . .

DL: So William Barr and Trump set the drug war effort back 30 years, and the next question should be, why.

Mexico Sees Its , Not Renewables – The New York Times

By Oscar Lopez

Aug. 17, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Leer en español

“MEXICO CITY — On a recent scorching afternoon in his home state of Tabasco, the president of Mexico celebrated his government’s latest triumph: a new oil refinery.

Though not yet operational, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hailed the refinery as a centerpiece in his grand campaign to secure Mexico’s energy independence.

“We ignored the sirens’ song, the voices that predicted, in good faith, perhaps, the end of the oil age and the massive arrival of electric cars and renewable energies,” he told the cheering crowd.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT comment:

If the US can get its own house in order, it will be able to put pressure on Mexico to get on the clean energy band wagon, with carbon tax tariffs on dirty goods, goods made with a large carbon footprint. We are all in a pickle. It is not clear at all that we can slow our carbon footprint fast enough to stop cascading events from dozens of existing feedback loops, that can, if allowed to grow, become unstoppable.

David blogs at InconvenientNews.net

Mexico’s Drought: Country Faces a Water Emergency – The New York Times

“Mexico, or large parts of it, is running out of water.

An extreme drought has seen taps run dry across the country, with nearly two-thirds of all municipalities facing a water shortage that is forcing people in some places to line up for hours for government water deliveries.

The lack of water has grown so extreme that irate residents block highways and kidnap municipal workers to demand more supply.

The numbers underlining the crisis are startling: In July, eight of Mexico’s 32 states were experiencing extreme to moderate drought, resulting in 1,546 of the country’s 2,463 municipalities confronting water shortages, according to the National Water Commission.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

“Was blind, but now I see.” from Amazing Grace

“All around the world, the oceans are rising while the coral reefs are slowly dying.

Wake up, my friends, the scientists cry World temperature is rising, and it’s no lie!”

From Talking Climate Change Blues, by David Lindsay Jr

David blogs at InconvenietNews.net

Erik Frederiksen commented 20 minutes ago

Erik Frederiksen

Asheville, NC20m ago

Remember this is what is happening long before feeling the full impacts of a rise in temperature of just 1.2°C due to lags in the system. From a 2012 paper, see the graph below of western North America precipitation from 1900-2100 on p 555 of the paper, it makes the recent western drought look like a rainforest by comparison. We’re edging close to the precipice, in fact we may have already gone over and just don’t know it yet. It depends on our future emissions and the rate and amplitude of amplifying feedbacks like ice and permafrost melt. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2128&context=usdaarsfacpub

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Christopher Landau | The Real Reason for the Border Crisis – The New York Times

By Christopher Landau

Mr. Landau served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021.

April 1, 2021     303

Credit…Matt Black for The New York Times

“Once again, a humanitarian crisis is engulfing our southern border, as tens and potentially hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive from Mexico, Central America and around the world in the hope that the Biden administration will let them in and let them stay.

The new administration has certainly given them — and the human smugglers who profit from their journeys — a basis for such hope: The administration declared that it would stop most deportations (a decision since blocked by a Federal District Court), halted construction of the border wall, announced new “priorities” that sharply limit immigration enforcement, stopped expelling unaccompanied minors under health-related authority invoked during the pandemic and began to phase out the Migrant Protection Protocols that helped prevent abuse of our asylum system and end the last surge of family units across the border.

As the most recent U.S. ambassador to Mexico, I am not at all surprised by the border surge: It is a reprise of the humanitarian crisis that engulfed the border shortly after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in Mexico in December 2018. His administration also came into office pledging to adopt a more “humane” approach toward migration and wound up unleashing an inhumane situation at the border. It was only after President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on cross-border trade that the Mexican government reversed course, and from then on the two countries cooperated closely to reduce the flows of third-country migrants across Mexico.

But the biggest factor driving such flows has gone largely unaddressed: the willingness and ability of American employers to hire untold millions of unauthorized immigrants. The vast majority of the people are coming here for the same reason people have always come here: to work (or to join their families who are here to work).” . . .

Opinion | The Death Cleaner – The New York Times

Video by Louise Monlaü      Ms. Monlaü is a documentary filmmaker.

“Death is Donovan Tavera’s business. For nearly 20 years, Tavera has been a forensic cleaner in Mexico City, providing families of the deceased with the solace of a clean home. For mourning families, his services become integral to their healing process. The short documentary above, filmed before the pandemic, considers what it means to wash away what’s left after someone dies.”

US to Send Millions of Covid-19 Vaccine Doses to Mexico and Canada – The New York Times

By Natalie Kitroeff, Maria Abi-Habib, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Jim Tankersley

• March 18, 2021Updated 2:03 p.m. ET

“The United States plans to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the White House said Thursday, a notable step into vaccine diplomacy just as the Biden administration is quietly pressing Mexico to curb the stream of migrants coming to the border.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the United States was planning to share 2.5 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and 1.5 million with Canada, adding that it was “not finalized yet, but that is our aim.”

Tens of millions of doses of the vaccine have been sitting in American manufacturing sites. While their use has already been authorized in dozens of countries, including Mexico and Canada, the vaccine has not yet been approved by American regulators. Ms. Psaki said the shipments to Mexico and Canada would be essentially be a loan, with the United States receiving doses of AstraZeneca, or other vaccines, in the future.” . . .

She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One – By Azam Ahmed – The New York Times

By Azam Ahmed

• Dec. 13, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ET

Leer en español

“SAN FERNANDO, Mexico — Miriam Rodríguez clutched a pistol in her purse as she ran past the morning crowds on the bridge to Texas. She stopped every few minutes to catch her breath and study the photo of her next target: the florist.

She had been hunting him for a year, stalking him online, interrogating the criminals he worked with, even befriending unwitting relatives for tips on his whereabouts. Now she finally had one — a widow called to tell her that he was peddling flowers on the border.

Ever since 2014, she had been tracking the people responsible for the kidnapping and murder of her 20-year-old daughter, Karen. Half of them were already in prison, not because the authorities had cracked the case, but because she had pursued them on her own, with a meticulous abandon.

She cut her hair, dyed it and disguised herself as a pollster, a health worker and an election official to get their names and addresses. She invented excuses to meet their families, unsuspecting grandmothers and cousins who gave her details, however small. She wrote everything down and stuffed it into her black computer bag, building her investigation and tracking them down, one by one.”

David Lindsay:  Thank you Azam Ahmed for an excellent piece of journalism and reporting. I hope this story gets turned into a movie, and it stops before the angry mother, Miriam Rodríguez,  is murdered. It should stop with her last successful arrest, and reveal her murder in before the credits.

Opinion | How Mexico’s Drug Cartels Are Profiting From the Pandemic – By Ioan Grillo – The New York Times

By Ioan Grillo

Contributing Opinion Writer

• July 7, 2020

El Chapo sanitizing gel and face masks to be distributed by his daughter Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman’s clothing company, as part of a campaign to help cash-strapped elderly people during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Guadalajara, Mexico.Credit…Fernando Carranza/Reuters

“MEXICO CITY — The CCTV footage taken just after dawn on June 26 shows a dozen armed men crowded in the back of a truck blocking a road in Mexico City’s wealthy Lomas de Chapultepec district. Minutes later, the gunmen fired over 150 rounds at the armored car of the city’s police chief, Omar García Harfuch. Three people died in the attack, including two of his bodyguards; Mr. García Harfuch survived gunshot wounds in the clavicle, shoulder and knee. “Our Nation has to continue confronting cowardly organized crime,” he tweeted from his hospital bed.

The brazen attack has shaken a city easing out of the coronavirus lockdown. Mr. García Harfuch blamed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which the Mexican government has targeted in a joint operation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, freezing thousands of bank accounts linked to the gangsters. Striking near the heart of power could be an attempt to make the Mexican government back off as it reels from the pandemic, which has killed more than 30,000, and a plummeting economy.

There is no shortage of losses to mourn in 2020: loved ones dead from Covid-19, jobs, freedom of movement amid lockdowns. But there are winners: certain tech companies and medical suppliers, and drug cartels. As President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico meets with President Trump this week in Washington, they should be looking at the cross-border issues of drug and gun trafficking.”

City Malaise, Cured by a Cloud Forest? – By Wei Tchou – The New York Times

By Wei Tchou

Ms. Tchou is working on a book about her family and the cultural history of ferns.

• Nov. 30, 2019
• • 24

“I liked Oaxaca as soon as I learned to say its name, all those airy vowels, each subsequent “a” a little fuller in my mouth. Last year, I was in the throes of a deep depression. But reading “Oaxaca Journal,” Oliver Sacks’s account of traveling that Mexican state to study its flora with the New York Fern Society, made me feel dreamy and brave. A flash of wanderlust, my fascination with the fern (which began when I failed at keeping one alive in my tiny Brooklyn studio) and a physical urge to escape the brutal careerism of New York all nudged me into opening my laptop, taking a chance on my savings and booking a one-way ticket to the region.

At the time I flew out, I didn’t know very much about southern Mexico or botany, just that after reading the journal, I wanted to experience the quasi-spiritual journey Dr. Sacks had reported: “Tree ferns, climbing ferns, filmy ferns, shoestring ferns, they are all here, in unparalleled diversity.” Endless gullies of serene maidenhair ferns and giant 15-foot horsetails, long streams filled with Kelly green hornworts — all tucked within the elevated cloud forests of the region, whose shrouds of mist seemed to hold the very healing power of natural wonder that Dr. Sacks, a neurologist and naturalist, loved to praise. At the time he wrote the journal there were 690 species in the state alone.

López Obrador- an Atypical Leftist- Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide – The New York Times

By Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas
July 1, 2018
MEXICO CITY — Riding a wave of populist anger fueled by rampant corruption and violence, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico on Sunday, in a landslide victory that upended the nation’s political establishment and handed him a sweeping mandate to reshape the country.

Mr. López Obrador’s victory puts a leftist leader at the helm of Latin America’s second-largest economy for the first time in decades, a prospect that has filled millions of Mexicans with hope — and the nation’s elites with trepidation.

The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them.

via López Obrador, an Atypical Leftist, Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide – The New York Times

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | Pending Approval at NYT Comments.

Congratulations to Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, for winning the presidency of Mexico. Good luck. This writer was shaken to the core by two depressing but excellent articles in the NYT on Sunday, July 1: “Tracking a Package: the perils and price of Migrant Smuggling”, which told the story of Christopher Cruz who went $12,000 in debt and nearly died getting smuggled into the US, and “Mexican Voting Near, Assassins Thin the Ballot”, which reported that 136 politicians had been assassinated since last fall, for running against the wrong cartel or gang.

I still believe that we have to legalize all the addictive drugs that are popular, to cut down their price, and the huge profits, over $50 Billion per year in just the US, that go to cartels and drug gangs. Legalization worked to disarm the gangs in the US after the end of prohibition, and will work again, though the drug cartels and gangs are more diversified now, and my solution will only slow them down, not stop them from killing and terrorizing for profit. Countries that adopt this idea will have to have serious investment in supports for drug addicts. There will be less easy money to corrupt police, judiciary, and politicians, and legalization might give governments a fighting chance.

Several famous economists from both right and left have written that legalization is the only way to cut these cartels and gangs down to size, including Milton Friedman and Herbert Stein.

All the economists I interviewed at the Univ. of WA in 1990, where I received my MBA, agreed, though they didn’t want to be quoted, since the idea was so unpopular.

David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion, Historical Fiction of Eighteenth-century Vietnam,” and blogs on Drug Wars, and the Environment, at TheTaysonRebellion.com & InconvenientNewsWorldwide.wordpress.com

xxx

Here is the top comment at NYT that I endorsed enthusiastically.

Dannie Otto

Hiroshima, Japan3h ago

How can the NYTimes write a 5,000 word profile of Obrador and not once mention that he was a highly successful mayor of Mexico City who left office with an 80% approval rating?

Meanwhile, you take every opportunity to falsely link him with former Venezuela strongman Hugo Chavez. You slur Obrador with an implied linkage, but don’t show any connection at all to Chavez or any other U.N. Democratic strong men.

Responsible journalists would have examined his real history as a politician, including decades within the PRI. He broke with the PRI over entrenched PRI corruption.

Obrador is not a novice politician who burst on the scene as a surprise candidate wielding slogans. He has a track record you could have analyzed as a guide to how he might govern as president.

I am not an expert on Obrador or Mexican politics, but I have read a bit. So far, the most concerning tidbit I have learned is that he hired Rudolph Giuliani to advise Mexico City police. I will grant him a pass on that because at the time Giuliani had not yet sank into the demented demagogue who is a plague on American public life today.

We expect better from the NYTimes.

Dannie Otto

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