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From the Los Angeles Times

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An armed convoy delivers pensions to people caught behind the siege line as one drug cartel tries to starve out another.

Mexico convoy threads its way through strange drug war in Sonora state MEXICO UNDER SIEGE By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times October 16, 2010 Reporting from Altar, Mexico With an escort of 60 officers with assault rifles, a convoy heads off to deliver pensions to people caught behind the siege line as one drug cartel tries to wait out another in a sinister battle for scores of human and drug trafficking routes into Arizona.

The police chiefs met in the dusty plaza with a federal official clutching a black bag filled with pesos: $40,000 in government pensions for the senior citizens living in the pueblos of the nearby foothills.

A convoy of seven vehicles rumbled into the plaza, the trucks squeezing between taco and T-shirt vendors who gawked at the 60 or so federal and state police officers toting assault rifles.

The crack squad had captured drug cartel kingpins and battled gangs from Baja California to Michoacan. On this day they slipped on their ski masks to escort the police chiefs on a mission of mercy to a lost corner of Mexico.

They would be heading deep into the scrublands of the Sonora Desert where hundreds of cartel gunmen controlled the pueblos and ambushed intruders on hillside roads that have become blood-spattered shooting galleries.

The convoy was outmanned, outgunned and probably didn't even have the element of surprise. Cartel lookouts — they could be anybody: taxi drivers, store owners, fellow cops — had no doubt already tipped off the organized crime groups. Cellphone conversations were routinely intercepted.

"I'm talking here and the mafia is listening," said one commander who, like many police, residents and officials, spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concern. "They already know we're coming."

The convoy turned past the small church and the local newspaper office, its windows blasted out, and ran every red light and stop sign leaving town.

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This is Mexico's hidden drug war.

Ciudad Juarez and other violence-torn urban areas may rack up large body counts and capture headlines and presidential visits. But here in the northern part of the state of Sonora, two of Mexico's strongest drug cartels are waging a battle for scores of human and drug trafficking routes into Arizona that may be just as sinister.

One of the gangs is using a slow, bloodless strategy of patience over confrontation: It's trying to starve out its rivals.

The result is a siege of medieval proportions that has cut off a region about the size of Rhode Island from government services, and severed a lifeline to thousands of ranch hands, storekeepers and retirees. Few dare leaving on the roads, and even fewer brave going in.

"Nobody will guarantee my security," said Juan Alberto Lopez, a consultant who was supposed to drive up into the foothills for meetings with pueblo officials. "They told me they would come down to Altar," he said. "But they haven't shown up."

The war escalated this summer when Beltran-Leyva cartel gunmen took over the string of pueblos and ranch lands stretching 50 miles from Altar to the Arizona border. Their foes in the Sinaloa drug cartel have since surrounded them. They patrol the four main winding roads leading in and out of the hills and block almost all food and gasoline shipments.

There have been massacres and scores of kidnappings, but the war has gone largely unnoticed because of its remoteness, intimidation of journalists and the slow-motion tactics.

"The problem is that one gang is hiding out, very well concealed," said a high-level Sonora state law enforcement official. "And the other group wants to get them out, to restore control over that area."

Caught in the middle are an estimated 5,000 people who every day wake up with questions: Were there any kidnappings overnight? Have the gunmen taken over another ranch? Are there any tortillas in the store?

One grandmother in Saric, grief-stricken over the kidnapping of three sons, said she tried to get help from the mayor, but he hasn't been seen in days.

She's losing hope: "Our town is dying."

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Before heading out on its 40-mile journey into the foothills, the convoy took over all the pumps at a Pemex gasoline station. The officers bought sodas and chips, and stuffed them into their bag lunches; food might be scarce along the way.

The police chiefs shook hands with some of the officers. It wasn't clear whether they were greetings or wishes of good luck.

Few reporters have ventured into the area, and public officials refuse to provide much information, fearing retaliation. Since September, two mayors, a police chief and at least 11 officers have fled, joining hundreds, perhaps thousands, of residents who had abandoned the region because of the tightening siege.

Hungry, encircled gunmen have invaded ranches to slaughter cattle. They roam pueblos in large convoys, kidnapping people and tossing their tortured bodies into the road. Many residents stay indoors when night falls, avoiding contact with the Beltran-Leyva gunmen, and stay off the roads for fear of being stopped at highway checkpoints set up by the Sinaloa gang.

"We're living desperate times here. They're not letting supplies through.... We're down to basics, beans and potatoes," said one longtime female resident of Tubutama, a pueblo perched on a mesa and known for its white-washed mission church and plaza, where locals and visiting Americans on mission tours once sipped drinks and listened to bands on summer nights.

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The two cartels are warring over Mexico's most valuable region for smuggling people into the United States, with an infrastructure of drivers, guides, suppliers and fleabag hotels that has pumped millions of immigrants across the border. Each cartel has allied itself with local gangs with names like the Wild Boars and the Masked Ones.

In the scorching valley south of the foothills, most residents appear to have sided with the Sinaloa group, saying they at least have brought order to the messy business of smuggling drugs and people across the border.

Cartel toll takers monitor the Altar-Sasabe highway leading toward the frontier, making sure each immigrant-loaded van has paid the $100 fee for each. Rogue gangs that preyed on vulnerable immigrants have been chased out by the cartel, say some residents and immigrant safety groups.

Life in the valley follows a relatively secure, if hyper-vigilant, routine. When a pair of reporters walked through the town of Pitiquito a day before the convoy hit the road, a pack of teenagers and men wielding a club and a baseball bat descended on them.

"Whose side are you on? What are you doing here?" one of them asked.

A middle-aged woman walking with her teenage daughter later explained that the town was controlled by a young Sinaloan crime boss greatly respected by residents. Two of his gunmen had joined hundreds that afternoon in a funeral procession for a popular musician killed in an accident. The crime boss probably paid for the funeral, she said.

"He's the one on our side" of the war, one woman said. "He is a generous man and protects us. Nobody is even allowed to sell drugs here. Everybody loves him here."

In the sparsely populated foothill towns known as the pueblos de arriba, the towns up above, expressing such sentiments can be lethal.

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The government force began its steady ascent on the two-lane road and passed through the pueblo of Atil, where many residents avoid using telephones, believing the cartels can listen in.

One former resident, a middle-aged woman, said her son was kidnapped and killed this year, and that the family had to flee with a mattress strapped to their pickup truck. Though she's concerned for family members left behind in Atil, she won't call them.

Her son, she said, was slain execution-style and left on the side of the road.

"We haven't taken sides. We're not with one group or the other," said the woman, who asked that her identity and new home not be disclosed. "That's why I don't understand what happened. There are no answers."

The convoy passed Atil without incident, but as the road ascended further, the landscape began revealing signs of neglect and cartel activity. Vegetation and rocks from landslides encroached on the roadway; signs were defaced and gasoline stations abandoned.

Outside the community of Cerro Prieto, the roadway cut through a hilly area where the war's grisliest massacre occurred.

In July, Beltran-Leyva gunmen took positions above the road where 20-foot embankments provided an ideal ambush overlook; a convoy of Sinaloa gunmen approached. As the cars passed, the gang blockaded both ends of the road and opened fire on their boxed-in enemies. Twenty-one Sinaloa cartel members were killed. Based on the thousands of spent bullet casings, police estimate that there were more than 100 attackers.

New patches of black asphalt cover the blood. The convoy's drivers speeded through the embankments, careful not to bunch up their vehicles and leave them vulnerable to a similar ambush.

Attempts to root out the criminals have been frustrated by the rough terrain and guerrilla-style tactics used by the shadowy force, say federal and state agents. The gunmen strike and then rush back into the gullies and hills dotted with towering saguaro cactuses and mesquite patches.

"When we go up after them, there's nobody there. We can't find them," the high-level Sonora law enforcement official said.

The gangs seem to know everything. The federal police, who wear blue uniforms, overhear the chatter of cartel lookouts on their radios, reporting their positions with unsettling exactitude.

"They say, the blues … are heading your way," one federal police officer said.

"We know they're watching us, but we can't see them."

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Turning onto a dirt road, the convoy approached the village of Saric, the deepest point in cartel-held territory.

They planned it so they'd arrive there early, wouldn't be caught after dark in the region considered the hardest-hit by the siege. The day before, people answering phones at the town hall didn't know the whereabouts of Mayor Fidel Lizarraga Celaya, and couldn't say when, or if, their 10 police officers would return.

Dozens of children, women and senior citizens were waiting for the convoy at the town hall. Many of the elderly pushed walkers across dusty streets. Some leaned on their weathered canes or sat in scratched-up wheelchairs. Conspicuously absent were young men. Residents said most had either fled, been killed or joined the cartels.

The federal official toting the black bag strode into the town hall, past the town's lone police car, a battered Nissan with a flat tire whose only apparent purpose was to provide shade for a sleeping, flea-infested dog. As officials began distributing the money — for the first time in four months —citizens gathered outside.

Several elderly women, speaking in hushed tones, said their town was controlled by gunmen who emerge at night and patrol the town in convoys of 20 to 30 vehicles. The gang members, hiding behind masks and tinted windows, stop for any "suspicious activity," such as using a cellphone or carrying food, questioning and in some cases kidnapping residents, they said.

Mail carriers, produce and soda distributors, even ambulances, have stopped going to the town, they said. They pointed to several abandoned homes. A middle-aged grocer looked at the dwindling stock on her shelves, saying two months had passed since her last deliveries. There was no meat or soda, or flour to make tortillas.

The only food supplies were brought in by older, longtime residents who shopped in Altar and were allowed through the cartel checkpoints, apparently trusted by gunmen to not pass along the food to rivals.

The meager supply was distributed among a close-knit circle of older, relatively well-off residents, said one woman. A few pesos could buy some food, toilet paper and medicine, but not much.

"I don't know what the poor people are doing for food," she said.

Seeing the federal police posted around the perimeter of the town hall emboldened the despairing Saric grandmother. She barged into the one-room police station and demanded that the authorities investigate the kidnappings of her sons.

A top police official, speaking privately later, made it clear that no investigation was likely. "I don't arrest any of them. That's how I stay alive."

Back in the town hall, the crowd parted for the arrival of the town's oldest resident. Manuel Aureliano, 100, was wheeled into a cramped office, where he presented his I.D. and was given a stack of 500-peso notes, for a total of about $450.

The great-great-grandfather clutched one 500-peso bill in his hand, kissed it and raised it over his head. Born during the Mexican Revolution, the deaf man celebrated the arrival of the government force like another national triumph, instead of a rare, small victory against the cartels.

"Gracias a Dios!" he yelled. "Viva Mexico!"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sonora-convoy-20101017,0,3666723,print.story

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Exaltacion Divinagracia, 80, visits food pantries and lives with six roommates to make ends meet.

For the elderly, poverty level doesn't cut it UCLA study tells a much different story of what it costs California seniors to get by: twice as much as the federal government's estimate, which is based on 1950s spending patterns. by Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times October 17, 2010 At the age of 80, Exaltacion Divinagracia thought that life would be easier. The petite widow still works part time at a nursery school. To keep the house she rented with her late husband, she has taken six roommates, all over 75. After church on Saturdays and Sundays, she drags a beat-up suitcase from one food pantry to the next in search of enough to eat for the coming week. Divinagracia takes home less than $13,000 a year, including public benefits. But according to the government's income standards, she is not impoverished. To get that designation a single person must live on $10,830 a year or less.

Experts say the standard — which is used nationwide to assess need, determine eligibility for aid and measure the effectiveness of public programs — has little to do with reality, particularly in places like Los Angeles, where housing costs are high.

A recent UCLA study found that most older Californians, those 65 or older, need at least twice the income calculated by the federal government to make ends meet — $21,763 a year on average for a single person renting a one-bedroom apartment, or $30,634 for a couple.

"There is this whole hidden group of adults in need," said Susan Smith, program director at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, which commissioned the research.

In California, Smith said, many more people seek help from food pantries and other services than are officially recognized as living in poverty. An earlier UCLA study found that in 2007, 47% of older Californians — about 1.76 million people — did not make enough to cover basic needs, although just 8% fell below the federal poverty level that year.

"One size does not fit all," said Steven P. Wallace, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and lead author of the two studies. "California's high costs make a single national income standard … totally inadequate for seniors."

Divinagracia's husband, a teacher from the Philippines, was already retired when the couple were offered the opportunity to come to the U.S. and become citizens in the 1990s because he had fought alongside U.S. forces in World War II.

They rented a run-down house in Westlake. But since his death six years ago, Divinagracia has struggled to pay the $1,800-a-month rent. She earns just $215 a month working as a "foster grandparent" and gets the maximum cash aid for elderly and disabled people: $845 a month in Supplemental Security Income.

America "is a nice place for the young," she said. "But for the old, it is no good."

Her home has the cramped feel of student digs. The extra bedrooms are occupied by two widows and a couple who also participated in the naturalization program for World War II veterans from the Philippines. Another veteran and another widow are squeezed into the living room, with a curtain between them for privacy.

Each person's space overflows with bits and pieces collected over a lifetime — part of an old uniform, sheets of scripture, family photographs. None of them takes in enough money to live independently.

In the evenings, the kitchen is so crowded that Esther Neri, 83, prefers to cook fish for her 89-year-old husband, Vance, on a hot plate in their room. She serves the meal on a child-size school desk. The bed is so narrow that they sleep head to toe.

Until a few months ago, they had their own apartment. It came with the job of managing a building. But the building was sold and they were told to leave. They now survive on less than $20,000 a year in Supplemental Security Income and a small pension.

"It's OK for us," Esther Neri said, surveying her new surroundings. "We are already poor."

The government's official poverty measure has been criticized for years because it is based on spending patterns from the 1950s, when about a third of a family's income went toward food.

The official threshold was first calculated using the cost of a nutrition plan described by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the bare minimum needed to survive an emergency. It is adjusted annually for inflation. But it does not take into account changing standards of living, regional cost differences or public benefits and tax credits.

"We don't spend a third of our income on food," said Gerald McIntyre, a directing attorney at the Los Angeles office of the National Senior Citizens Law Center. "If we did, we'd have no place to live."

Advocates for the elderly contend that the federal threshold is a particularly inadequate measure of poverty among those 65 and older because they tend to have more out-of-pocket medical costs, which have increased substantially in recent years. Organizations such as the Insight Center have been lobbying authorities to adopt a measure known as the Elder Economic Security Standard Index.

Developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Boston's Gerontology Institute, working with Wider Opportunities for Women, the elder index is calculated using the latest government data on food, housing, transportation and medical costs.

UCLA researchers adapted the index's methodology to determine what it would cost older Californians to maintain a "basic, dignified standard of living" without receiving public benefits. In every county, they found that the costs far exceeded the federal poverty level.

The costs were greatest for homeowners who were still paying mortgages: $31,735 a year on average for individuals and $40,605 for couples across the state. Individuals who did not owe money on their homes needed about $17,079 a year and couples $25,950 a year.

In Los Angeles, city and county officials said they were already using the elder index to help identify people in need and set program priorities.

"By year 2020, 30% of Los Angeles County, including the city, will be those 60 and older, so we have a huge obligation to plan for that," said Cynthia Banks, director of Los Angeles County Community and Senior Services.

Earlier this year, the federal government announced plans to release its own supplemental poverty measure in the fall of 2011, based on the latest data and methodologies. It will continue to use the official measure to determine eligibility for government programs such as food stamps, which are generally not offered to people earning more than 130% of the poverty level.

However, attempts to incorporate supplemental measures into state and federal law have met resistance from those worried about the cost of social services.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a 2009 bill that would have required the California Department of Aging and local agencies to use the elder index for planning purposes, saying it "would create general fund cost pressures at a time when there is no ability to increase service levels." A subsequent bill did not make it out of the state Senate Appropriations Committee.

"You can't begin to address the problem if you don't understand its scope," said Smith, of the Insight Center.

In the meantime, she said, many older Californians are splitting pills to make them last longer, borrowing money from friends and maxing out their credit cards.

Frances Dudley, 73, of West Adams worked as a substitute preschool teacher and contributed to Social Security for 17 years.

Although her $1,900 monthly income puts her above the elder index poverty level, she says she must "pinch pennies." She cooks just three times a week to cut down on the cost of food and utilities. On other days, she eats leftovers. She owns a car but frequently takes the bus because she cannot afford to buy gas. When it gets hot, she turns on a fan for just one hour to cool her bedroom before going to sleep.

When Divinagracia makes the rounds of nearby food pantries, she meets many elderly people like herself. Although she is proud to be a U.S. citizen, she thinks about returning to the Philippines, where she has children and grandchildren to help her. But she does not know how she would get by without U.S. medical aid; she is diabetic and had a heart attack in December.

"It's very hard," she said, "really."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-elderly-poverty-20101017,0,2123777,print.story

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From the New York Times

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U.S. Had Warnings About Plotter of Mumbai Attack

by JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON

Less than a year before terrorists killed at least 163 people in Mumbai, India, a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David C. Headley, was plotting an attack.

It was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Mr. Headley, a longtime informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration whose roots in Pakistan and the United States allowed him to move easily in both worlds.

Two years earlier, in 2005, an American woman who was also married to the 50-year-old Mr. Headley told federal investigators in New York that she believed he was a member of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba created and sponsored by Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency.

Despite those warnings by two of his three wives, Mr. Headley roamed far and wide on Lashkar’s behalf between 2002 and 2009, receiving training in small-caliber weapons and countersurveillance, scouting targets for attacks, and building a network of connections that extended from Chicago to Pakistan’s lawless northwestern frontier.

Then in 2008, it was his handiwork as chief reconnaissance scout that set the stage for Lashkar’s strike against Mumbai, an assault intended to provoke a conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, Pakistan and India.

An examination of Mr. Headley’s movements in the years before the bombing, based on interviews in Washington, Pakistan, India and Morocco, shows that he had overlapping, even baffling, contacts among seemingly disparate groups — Pakistani intelligence, terrorists, and American drug investigators.

Those ties are rekindling concerns that the Mumbai bombings represent another communications breakdown in the fight against terrorism, and are raising the question of whether United States officials were reluctant to dig deeper into Mr. Headley’s movements because he had been an informant for the D.E.A.

More significantly, they may indicate American wariness to pursue evidence that some officials in Pakistan, its major ally in the war against Al Qaeda, were involved in planning an attack that killed six Americans.

The Pakistani government has insisted that its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, a close partner of the C.I.A., did not know of the attack. The United States says it has no evidence to counter this, though officials acknowledge that some current or retired ISI officers probably played some role.

It is unclear what United States officials did with the warnings they had gotten about Mr. Headley, who has pleaded guilty to the crimes and is cooperating with authorities, or whether they saw them as complaints from wives whose motives might be colored by strained relations with their husband.

Federal officials say that the State Department and the F.B.I. investigated the warnings they received about Mr. Headley at the time, but that they could not confirm any connections between him and Lashkar-e-Taiba. D.E.A. officials have said they ended their association with him at the end of 2001, at least two months before Mr. Headley reportedly attended his first terrorist training. But some Indian officials say they suspect that Mr. Headley’s contacts with the American drug agency lasted much longer.

The investigative news organization ProPublica reported the 2005 warning from Mr. Headley’s American former wife on its Web site and in the Saturday issue of The Washington Post. By ProPublica’s account, she told the authorities that Mr. Headley boasted about working as an American informant while he trained with Lashkar.

On Saturday, Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement, “The United States regularly provided threat information to Indian officials in 2008 before the attacks in Mumbai.” He also said, “Had we known about the timing and other specifics related to the Mumbai attacks, we would have immediately shared those details with the government of India.”

Mr. Headley’s American wife was not the only one to come forward. The Moroccan wife described her separate warnings in an interview with The New York Times. Interviews with United States and allied intelligence and security officials illustrate his longstanding connections to American law enforcement and the ISI:

Besides Mr. Headley’s guilty plea in a United States court, seven Pakistani suspects have been charged there. American investigators say a critical figure who has not been charged is Sajid Mir, a Lashkar operative who became close to Mr. Headley as the plans for the Mumbai operation unfolded. The investigators fear he is still working on other plots.

Mr. Headley was known both to Pakistani and American security officials long before his arrest as a terrorist. He went to an elite military high school in Pakistan. After arrests in 1988 and 1997 on drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Headley became such a valued D.E.A. informant that the drug agency sent him back and forth between Pakistan and the United States. In several interviews in her home, Mr. Headley’s Moroccan wife, Faiza Outalha, described the warnings she gave to American officials less than a year before gunmen attacked several popular tourist attractions in Mumbai. She claims she even showed the embassy officials a photo of Mr. Headley and herself in the Taj Mahal Hotel, where they stayed twice in April and May 2007. Hotel records confirm their stay.

Ms. Outalha, 27, said that in two meetings with American officials at the United States Embassy in Islamabad, she told the authorities that her husband had many friends who were known members of Lashkar-e-Taiba. She said she told them that he was passionately anti-Indian, but that he traveled to India all the time for business deals that never seemed to amount to much.

And she said she told them Mr. Headley assumed different identities: as a devout Muslim who went by the name Daood when he was in Pakistan, and as an American playboy named David, when he was in India.

“I told them, he’s either a terrorist, or he’s working for you,” she recalled saying to American officials at the United States Embassy in Islamabad. “Indirectly, they told me to get lost.”

Though there are lots of gaping holes left in Mr. Headley’s public profile, the one thing that is clear is he assumed multiple personas.

He was born in the United States, the son of a Pakistani diplomat and a socialite from Philadelphia’s Main Line. When he was about a year old, his parents took him to Pakistan, where he attended the Hasan Abdal Cadet College, the country’s oldest military boarding school, just outside of Islamabad.

Mr. Headley’s parents divorced. And before he finished high school, he moved to Philadelphia to help his American mother run a bar, called the Khyber Pass. Later he opened a couple of video rental stores.

But at the same time he was involved in a life of crime. Each time he was arrested on drug trafficking charges, he used his roots in the United States and Pakistan to make himself as valuable an asset to law enforcement as he was to the traffickers — one with the looks and passports to move easily across borders, and the charisma to penetrate secretive organizations.

He was married at least three times. For one period he was married to all three wives — Ms. Outalha, who is a medical student half his age; a New York makeup artist; and a conservative Pakistani Muslim — at the same time.

Those relationships, however, caused him trouble. In 2005, his American wife filed domestic abuse charges against Mr. Headley, according to federal investigators in New York, and reported his ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba. The investigators said the tip was passed on to the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Then in December 2007, Ms. Outalha talked her way into the heavily guarded American Embassy in Islamabad. She went back a month later with more information. A senior administration official acknowledged that Ms. Outalha met twice with an assistant regional security officer and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer at the embassy. However, the administration official said Ms. Outalha offered almost no details to give credibility to her warnings.

“The texture of the meeting was that her husband was involved with bad people, and they were planning jihad,” the official said. “But she gave no details about who was involved, or what they planned to target.”

Given that she had been jilted, Ms. Outalha acknowledged she may not have been composed. “I wanted him in Guantánamo,” she said. More than that, however, Ms. Outalha says, she went to the American authorities looking for answers to questions about Mr. Headley’s real identity. In public he criticized the United States for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But at night he loved watching “Seinfeld” and Jay Leno.

Sipping tea in a cafe overlooking a plaza in Morocco, Ms. Outalha said that in hindsight, she is convinced that he is both men. She claims to be puzzled that American officials did not heed her warning.

“I told them anything I could to get their attention,” she said of the American authorities at the embassy in Islamabad. “It was as if I was shouting, ‘This guy was a terrorist! You have to do something.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17headley.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL OPINIONS

In Mexico, Scenes From Life in a Drug War

by PEDRO ÁNGEL PALOU, FEDERICO CAMPBELL, ÉLMER MENDOZA and RICARDO ELIZONDO ELIZONDO

Incidences of drug-related violence in Mexico and on the border continue to make news. We tend to hear about the crimes that touch American lives — like the reported killing of a man riding a Jet Ski on the Rio Grande. What we don’t hear as much about is how drugs and violence shape the everyday lives of Mexicans.

So here are dispatches from four writers on how drug trafficking has changed their parts of the country. They were translated by Kristina Cordero from the Spanish.

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The Walls of Puebla

OPINION

by PEDRO ÁNGEL PALOU

Puebla, Mexico

HOW has life in Mexico changed under the rising tide of drug violence? It’s difficult to say; it is what it is. It goes on. For long stretches of time, it is easy to forget about the violence. But then reality breaks through, and it becomes once again impossible to ignore.

All my life I have lived in Puebla, a city of more than one million inhabitants about 70 miles southeast of Mexico’s sprawling capital. Puebla has a reputation for being a moderately safe place to live (considering the general standard in the country today). Mexico City residents, called chilangos, have been moving here for years — particularly since so many were driven from the capital by the earthquake of 1985, which destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed thousands of people.

The famous have retreated here, too. At one time, Puebla was reported to be home to Mexico’s most-wanted man, the billionaire drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who has still not been apprehended. Other prominent traffickers have followed. Puebla is perceived as a place that is largely free from violence — which, surely, must be as attractive to a drug lord as it is to me — but it is known for being free from the authorities’ scrutiny as well.

There is lots of speculation about “agreements” between governors and certain cartels. The government turns a blind eye, and the cartel guarantees a level of peace. Many people believe these pacts to be the reason that states like Puebla are relatively “safe” while Mexico’s civil war rages around them.

Recently, though, the delicate balance has been threatened, as the authorities have started to crack down on traffickers. Last month, Sergio Villarreal Barragan, another important drug lord, was arrested in one of the city’s most posh residential neighborhoods. The government may have been emboldened by the results of the summer’s elections, which ended decades of rule in Puebla by the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party).

But the sad thing is, nobody has much faith in the new coalition government. I met a taxi driver here whose children had moved to New York City: one of them works as a cook at a fancy restaurant in the Flatiron neighborhood and the other one cleans bathrooms near Penn Station. He hasn’t seen them in six years. We got to talking about the elections, and I asked him if he thought the new governor might change things.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve always thought it was inevitable that politicians are thieves. But even so — they could still leave something behind, right? Do some good work just the same.”

It wasn’t an earthquake or drug violence that drove his children from home. Puebla expelled them because it couldn’t offer them any opportunities. Worst of all, they went to New York illegally. So now, they can never leave.

We too, in a sense, are trapped in Puebla. In my neighborhood, where the roads are still unpaved, we live behind high walls and electrified or barbed-wire fences. A friend of mine, an artist, lives in one of the city’s fanciest neighborhoods, behind an immense wall. Last weekend he was unable to enter or leave; the great drawback of the wall is that it has only one entrance. In this case, the opening had been blocked by the Naval Department for an operation of some sort. For the first time, my friend felt that he was living in a prison.

And no matter the lengths we go to preserve our tranquillity, violence infringes. Not long ago, robbers broke into the house across the street from mine. Luckily, my neighbor had a machete. He chased the intruders out, after hacking one of them in the arm.

That morning, his garage floor was still covered in blood. I asked him what they had taken.

“All sorts of things,” he said. “Tools, the television set, some things from the kitchen.”

“Do you think they’ll come back?”

“That’s the worst part of it. I can’t sleep in this house anymore, thinking that at any moment they might come back, with me and my daughters inside. Thank God nothing happened to us!”

I couldn’t help but think of something the chief of security said about the recent wave of arrests of drug traffickers in Puebla. “Puebla is a safe state to live in, and that is why they come here,” he said. We dream of happy endings, but sometimes I’m afraid that everything that could possibly happen in Puebla has already happened.

Pedro Ángel is a novelist.

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Tijuana Reclaimed

by FEDERICO CAMPBELL

Tijuana, Mexico

THERE are two Tijuanas: that of the locals, and that of the rest. The true Tijuana belongs only to the oldest families, the grandparents and great-grandparents of Tijuana. The view from outside, on the other hand, tends to come into focus through fantasy, stereotype and cliché.

But the outside world helped create Tijuana.

In the 19th century, Tijuana resembled the set of an old Western — a few houses, some wooden corrals, mud-caked roads and a customs hut to register the passage of caravans heading to the port at Ensenada.

The city came into its own only in the 1920s, thanks to Prohibition and laws outlawing gambling in the United States. Americans exported the vices they had banned at home to the new city emerging on this side of the border, which soon became a nerve center for the production of alcohol, from brandy to Mexicali beer.

Capital from the American underworld was largely responsible. American investors like Carl Withington opened saloons and broke ground for the construction of casinos like the Foreign Club, the Montecarlo and the Agua Caliente, which was built alongside the hot springs of the same name. And American tourists paid for the prostitutes, the boxing clubs and the opium.

Of course, the particular vices changed a bit during the 20th century, but the city kept on playing the same role for its northern neighbor. That is, until the 1990s, when everything began to change. This pressure started building from the south — drugs (and the violence and law of the jungle that come with them) were heading north and Tijuana was the last stop before the border. The Arellano brothers had moved here from Sinaloa in the ’80s, and other traffickers and assassins followed. It was like a tide shifting. Instead of an influx of visitors from the north, we had these smugglers from the south. And the tourists were scared away.

It had a devastating effect on Tijuana’s economy. The murders, kidnappings and decapitations reached a peak in 2008. Americans stopped coming, and those Tijuana families who could afford it moved to California, to San Diego or Bonita, to sleep in peace. Even local politicians and officials bought or rented houses elsewhere. Stores closed. Bars were boarded up.

But now Tijuana is recovering. The violence has begun to subside, thanks to the local police and the Mexican military, as well as the capture last January of Teodoro García Simental, an infamous drug lord known as El Teo. Avenida Revolución, dead for the past three years, is showing signs of life. On Friday and Saturday nights it is packed with young people. Caesar’s, a symbolic old restaurant and hotel (where the famous salad was invented), just reopened, and one block over, rock and blues bands play at the music hall.

No, the tourists haven’t returned. It’s the locals, the people of Tijuana — who kept to themselves during the worst of the violence — reclaiming their territory.

“We have to change our image,” said Jaime Cháidez, a local journalist. “We can’t rely on tourism anymore. The city still stands, as noble as ever. It is surviving, growing, picking itself up.”

And for perhaps the first time in more than a century, the Tijuanans are driving that growth. In a sense, then, it is the very violence that plagues Mexico that has returned Tijuana to the people who live here.

A few days ago, a statue of Rubén Vizcaíno Valencia, a writer, teacher and promoter of Mexican culture, was unveiled. He is the first Tijuana native to be honored in this way, and there he stands, presiding over one of the hallways of the Centro Cultural Tijuana.

Federico Campbell is the author of the short story collection “Tijuana: Stories on the Border.”

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Ground Zero in Sinaloa

OPINION

by ÉLMER MENDOZA

Culiacán, Mexico

FOUR years ago Mexico invented a civil war: the government decided to confront the seven major drug cartels. The army was sent into the streets, mountains and country paths. Even the navy was on alert.

Here in Sinaloa, the western state where the modern drug trade began, poorly armed and ill-outfitted federal and state police were the first to fall. Around 50 of them, killed by the cartels. Those who survived took to the streets in protest, demanding better weapons and bulletproof vests. In Culiacán, the state capital, students are always staging protest marches; it was strange to see the police do the same. You could smell the fear and uncertainty in the air.

At first people believed that it would soon blow over. But weeks went by and the gunfire continued to claim victims. Across Mexico in 2009, an average of 23 people died in drug-related violence every day, and on many of those days Sinaloa was the prime contributor to that statistic. Military patrols and federal policemen prowled the cities looking to uncover troves of weapons. They went door to door in Culiacán. It took them five minutes to inspect my house. “It’s full of books,” the sergeant remarked, a bewildered look on his face.

I don’t know if they did the same in the neighborhoods where the drug lords actually live. The soldiers didn’t look that tough, nor did the police. But still, it was unsettling to see them close up and with such troubled looks on their faces. Ever since the student uprisings of 1968 and the resulting repression of the 1970s, soldiers are seen as threats, even in Sinaloa, where they are trying to protect us.

The Mexican drug industry was established in the 1940s by a group of Sinaloans and Americans trafficking in heroin. It is part of our culture: we know all the legends, folk songs and movies about the drug world, including its patron saint, Jesús Malverde, a Robin Hood-like bandit who was hanged in 1909.

There are days when we feel deeply ashamed that the trade is at the heart of Sinaloa’s identity, and wish our history were different. Our ancestors were fearless and proud people, and it is their memory that gives us the will to try to control our own fear and the sobs of the widows and mothers who have lost loved ones.

It was reported that not long ago, a group of high-ranking government officials from Mexico City paid a visit to Ciudad Juárez, a city in Chihuahua State on the Texas border where people are too scared to go out at night. A troop of Niños Exploradores, akin to Boy Scouts, was trotted out to greet the dignitaries. Warm smiles abounded among the government representatives. The boys’ faces were dead serious.

When the boys were asked to perform their salute, their commander shouted, “How do the children play in Ciudad Juárez?” The boys hit the ground. When asked, “How do the children play in Tijuana?” again the scouts hit the ground. When asked about the children of the border city of Matamoros, yet again, they were on the ground. The visitors looked eager to disappear.

In Sinaloa, at least things haven’t gotten that bad. People live well and our children play other games. At night we go out for dinner, we go for evening strolls down our beaches and our roads as if to say: this is our land, we will not let go of it. But it doesn’t always work.

Sinaloa is a place with a strong work ethic: people tell me, for example, that I write like a farmer, from dawn. Our greatest worry is that, in our fear, we will lose our grip on the code of work and responsibility that guided our forefathers and helped them convert our unpromising salt flats and desert into agricultural bounty.

Élmer Mendoza is a novelist.

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Monterrey’s Habit

OPINION

by RICARDO ELIZONDO ELIZONDO

Monterrey, Mexico

INVISIBLE paths to the United States, it seems, have always passed through Monterrey. People and their merchandise come and go via paved roads and dusty lanes, but also through the famous little walkways, somewhere between manicured and overgrown, that are hidden among the thickets of underbrush.

Increasingly, Mexico has a hidden drug problem — but it’s not entirely the kind that you’d think. And the traffic won’t stop until it’s exposed.

As early as the 1940s, the local newspapers were reporting on captured smugglers. Those going north to the United States transported humans (generally seasonal farm workers) and substances for attaining those “artificial paradises” that so fascinated the French poètes maudits of the late 19th century. The other group, those going south, could bring almost anything they fancied into the country — you could bring a building into Mexico, people joked, as long as it fit under the bridge. And they knew, though they talked about it only in hushed tones, that quite a bit of money was being made.

I grew up thinking that “sardos,” the lowest-ranking members of the army, were the only Mexicans who smoked marijuana. But by the 1960s, the hippie generation had popularized pot, and during my university years several of my classmates smoked. As for harder drugs, few of us knew anything more than what we saw in the movies; only in the 1970s did we become aware of psychotropic pills that “drove you crazy.”

Around then, popular music, always a reliable witness, began to recount the stories of people transporting drugs beyond the Rio Grande. With each decade, the songs got more and more explicit. “Camelia la Tejana,” one of the most emblematic, is about a woman whose car tires were “filled with the evil weed.” It ends with a shooting death. But soon, lyricists stopped killing off their antiheroes. Drug trafficking became an adventure story, or a comedy: in one famous song, smugglers disguised as nuns traded “white powder” they swore was just powdered milk.

Still, we didn’t think of drugs as our problem. In Monterrey over the years we sang about them, sure, we even smoked them — but we kept insisting they were only passing through, north to the Americans. We saw the construction going on in Monterrey, the new fortunes, and we knew the phrase “money laundering,” but we looked the other way.

After 9/11, the drug industry became harder to ignore. From then, day in and day out, the news media reported on the border: on interceptions of huge marijuana and cocaine shipments, dozens of deaths caused by warring gangs and stories of coercion and corruption among government authorities and policemen.

And still the habit grew, among the young and not-so-young, though it was always denied, never admitted. In certain neighborhoods here, it was said, absolutely anything could be gotten.

We have come face to face with the violence associated with the business, we acknowledge it. But we don’t acknowledge our own drug problems. If those secret paths from south to north passed through some other country, some other state, perhaps Monterrey wouldn’t have the drug traffic it has today. But people here also buy and consume these paradise-inducing substances.

By ignoring this, we only put off learning the magnitude of our own addiction. There can be no solution until we come to terms with the truth. And after that, who knows?

Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo is a novelist and historian.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opinion/17mexico-intro.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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1 billion hungry on World Food Day

TEHRAN (Press TV) -- The United Nations has called for a united front against hunger on World Food Day, with nearly one billion people suffering from food shortages worldwide.

“We are continually reminded that the world's food systems are not working in ways that ensure food security for the most vulnerable members of our societies,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his message for World Food Day, which is Saturday, October 16.

“When people are hungry, they cannot break the crippling chains of poverty, and are vulnerable to infectious diseases,” the UN secretary general noted.

“When children are hungry, they cannot grow, learn and develop,” Ban added.

On October 11, a new global hunger index released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) showed that one billion people face hunger this year.

The 2010 Global Hunger Index showed there was alarming hunger in 25 out of the 122 countries surveyed.

“The present dramatic situation has come about because instead of tackling the structural causes of food insecurity, the world neglected agriculture in development policies, resulting in an under-investment in this sector, in particular in developing countries,” said Kanayo F. Nwanze, the Nigerian vice president of IFAD, a United Nations agency and an international financial institution, whose mandate is to help rural poor people pull themselves out of poverty.

He added that there is too much hunger in the world, even though there are abundant global food supplies, better economic prospects, and lower food prices, a Press TV correspondent reported on Friday.

The number of the world's hungry has dipped slightly from its record high last year. Still, every six seconds a child dies of starvation.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=228687

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Zahra Baker attends a Starkey Hearing Foundation event at Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 10. Zahra, and nearly 100 other hearing impaired people from the Carolinas, was fitted that day with hearing aids. In addition to her hearing problems, Zahra lost a leg to bone cancer.

Missing girl's case highlights DSS issues Search for Hickory girl renews questions about child protection system. By Fred Clasen-Kelly and Lisa Hammersly Friends and family worried that 10-year-old Zahra Baker was in danger. They saw bruises and a black eye. They questioned her parents. And they reported suspected abuse to the Department of Social Services. Now, police believe the missing Hickory girl whose story has captured worldwide attention is dead. They are investigating her disappearance as a homicide and last week jailed her stepmother, who they say admitted writing a phony ransom note. As the search for the girl entered its second week Saturday, people are left asking: Why didn't someone protect Zahra? And the case raises fresh questions about North Carolina's long-troubled child protection system. DSS officials in Caldwell and Catawba counties, where the Bakers most recently lived, say state law prohibits them from talking about any involvement they might have had with Zahra or her family. It's not clear how any abuse allegations might have been handled. But the state's own reviews show it's not uncommon for children to die in North Carolina under suspicious circumstances while their families are under DSS supervision or had recent contact with social workers. At least 137 children died during a recent five-year period in cases where abuse or neglect were suspected to have contributed - even though DSS had contact with their families within 12 months before they died, the Observer found. That's up from 119 deaths during the prior five years. And it comes at a time when child deaths overall in the state are at a record low. Most of the 137 died from illnesses or accidents, but at least 26 became victims of homicide, usually committed by relatives or caregivers. More than a decade ago, state officials began to pass reforms that were supposed to prevent such cases. They hired more social workers, lowered recommended caseloads and adopted a less confrontational approach with most families, which is designed to build cooperation.

The head of the N.C. Division of Social Services, Sherry Bradsher, said the changes have vastly improved the child protection system.

Instances of abuse recurring within six months in families under supervision has declined from about 7 percent in 2004 to about 5 percent in 2009.

"We have implemented so many reforms that are working," Bradsher said. "Workers feel better. Feedback from parents is better than it's ever been."

But state reports and interviews show long-standing problems persist.

Expert reviews of the child deaths found mistakes had been made by social workers and were often linked to inexperience and heavy caseloads. In more than half of the 137 deaths, social workers weren't thorough in evaluating a family or didn't follow state guidelines, the Observer found. In one child death in Rowan County, a state report shows, the case was given to a social work intern.

And case workers often have difficulty getting child protective service records for families who have lived outside their county. In cases such as Zahra's, whose family moved between counties, social workers may have limited information to assess a child's safety.

Tom Vitaglione said Zahra's disappearance should sound alarms about child protection in the state. He co-chairs the N.C. Child Fatality Taskforce, which recommends child safety improvements to the General Assembly.

"I am not comfortable with where things are," Vitaglione said. "I don't think DSS is comfortable either."

Troubling signs

Zahra's wide smile and story of overcoming adversity have drawn attention to her disappearance, reported Oct. 9. Family and acquaintances describe her as a polite child, courageous while coping with bone cancer, and memorable for her Australian accent.

At age 5, she lost her left leg below the knee to bone cancer, a condition that also left her hearing-impaired.

She moved to the United States last year with her father, Adam Baker, after he started an online romance with his wife-to-be, Elisa Baker of North Carolina.

Trouble soon began.

At a vigil for Zahra last week, family friend Lindsay Parker told the crowd that family members had reported suspected abuse of Zahra to the Department of Social Services on three occasions.

"They tried," Parker said of the family members. "They really tried."

Libby Brown, a spokeswoman for the Caldwell County Schools, told the Observer that staff had visited the girl's home and sought help for Zahra from an "outside partner" because staff was concerned. But she wouldn't elaborate, citing confidentiality laws.

Zahra attended the district's Granite Falls Elementary and Hudson Elementary, where she completed fourth grade in the spring.

Bobby Green said he lived next door to the Bakers for about a year in the Caldwell County town of Hudson, about 70 miles northwest of Charlotte.

Green, 27, who has two 8-year-old daughters, said Zahra often came over to play. He and his fiancée, Kayla Rotenberry, 23, said Elisa Baker would leave Zahra locked alone in the house for hours.

In the spring, Zahra came over for an Easter egg hunt. The girls searched the yard looking for red, yellow, and white eggs.

Rotenberry and Green said they noticed bruises on Zahra. But when they asked the girl about it she wouldn't say anything. When they asked her parents what happened, Green said: "It was always, Zahra fell down. Zahra fell out of bed. It was always, Zahra had done something."

Elisa Baker's attorney, Scott Reilly, wouldn't discuss specific allegations but said generally some people have "embellished, exaggerated or made up" stories of abuse.

He confirmed that DSS had received and investigated reports of child abuse against his client, but said social workers found the accusations "unsubstantiated."

Hasty investigations

Whenever a child dies in North Carolina and abuse or neglect is suspected to have played a role, the state convenes a review team to figure out what went wrong.

The team of DSS officials, police and other professionals review case files and recommend improvements in a public report that aims to prevent future deaths.

The Observer analyzed reports of the 137 child deaths between 2003 and 2008, which included asphyxiation, illnesses, drowning, shootings, car accidents and physical abuse.

Social workers were most often cited for errors, but so were law enforcement and others. Here are some findings from the newspaper's study:

In 71 deaths, reviewers said social workers were not thorough in their investigation of abuse or neglect allegations, or in resolving them. Sometimes they looked too narrowly at a single problem instead of all issues surrounding the child's welfare. In the 2007 death of a Mecklenburg baby, who accidentally suffocated while sleeping with someone on a couch, social workers were criticized for failing to assess risk, properly review prior child protective records and maintain sufficient contact with the family.

In at least 51 deaths - more than one-third - social workers weren't told about additional incidents of suspected abuse in those families. State law requires any resident who suspects child abuse or neglect to report it to DSS. Among those who did not, one report found, were Winston-Salem police, who didn't notify DSS about numerous domestic violence calls to the home where a 5-year-old died of an Oxycodone overdose.

Forty reports said social workers or others had trouble getting previous child welfare records, usually from outside their counties or states. A Richmond County case involving a child who died of physical abuse suggested that county social workers got limited information from the state's central registry of child services cases, but not enough detail and background. And social workers didn't follow up with the family's previous county DSS to learn more.

Twenty-seven reports found DSS was too thinly staffed and that caseworkers carried loads far beyond what the state recommended - which meant they didn't have enough time to spend with each family. In a 2006 Stanly County death, the social worker was new and carrying 25 cases; the state standard was 12.

In Caldwell and Catawba counties, where the Bakers lived, some social workers were carrying twice as many cases in recent years as the state recommended. The problem was highlighted in reviews of child deaths that occurred in those counties in 2006 and 2007. Current caseloads weren't available last week as DSS officials declined requests for interviews.

'In the Stone Age'

DSS leaders say reform efforts during the last decade have made kids safer.

They've bolstered training for social workers and adopted a holistic approach that aims to get more cooperation from families under scrutiny for abuse or neglect.

When children are not in imminent danger, the family-friendly initiative pushes social workers to offer services to help parents overcome problems such as substance abuse, unemployment and a lack of parenting skills.

Bradsher, the state DSS director, said the approach has helped protect children and kept families intact.

But child advocates counter that social workers continue to struggle with high caseloads and low budgets.

They note that North Carolina spends about $43 per capita on child protection, less than all but eight states, according a 2009 study by Every Child Matters, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Brett Loftis, who heads Charlotte's Council for Children's Rights, said children lack a strong constituency in politics.

Caseworkers simply do not have enough resources, Loftis said. "We are in the Stone Age as far as children go."

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/10/17/1767517/missing-girls-case-highlights.html

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