Posted on 11/13/2008 7:50:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
The agencies in charge of Mexico’s drug war have high-ranking officials who protect the cartels
By Ricardo Ravelo, Proceso
Translation from the original Spanish and notes by Kristin Bricker
The animosity between the heads of Federal Attorney General’s Office and the Public Security Ministry don’t just immobilize the federal government and make its crusade against drug traffickers and organized crime futile. It also shows that both institutions are so porous that the gangsters have already positioned themselves in them. The infiltration is of such magnitude that even Eduardo Medina Mora and Genaro Garcia Luna have become suspect.
The disagreements between the heads of the Public Security Ministry (SSP in its Spanish initials) and the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) keep Felipe Calderon’s government practically submerged in a lack of credibility and without an effective strategy in its fight against organized crime.
In the almost two years that Calderon has been in office, the leaking of information, the alleged protection of drug traffickers, the power struggles, and the vices in both agencies have been exacerbated, which impedes the success of the crusade against the drug cartels.
Combined with that, within the past couple of days in multiple states, narcobanners appeared in which the head of the SSP, Genaro Garcia Luna, and multiple agents from that ministry are referred to as protectors of the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.
After the capture of Jesus “El Rey” Zambada Garcia, his son Jesus Zambada, and other Sinaloa cartel members, two of Garcia Luna’s colleagues, Victor Gerardo Garay Cadena and Luis Cardenas Palominos, the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) internal commissioner and the intelligence coordinator of the SSP, respectively, were interrogated by agents from the Assistant Attorney General’s Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO) for allegedly protecting the Sinaloa cartel’s hitmen.
On October 30, three days after the interrogation, when all indications were that they would be detained, Garcia Luna “strongly pressured” the PGR so that they would be freed, according to a source inside the PGR. Likewise, federal police, particularly from the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), accuse Garcia Luna of being in collusion with the Sinaloa cartel since the last administration, when he served as director of the AFI. On October 31 Garay Cadena resigned from his position.
And for the same reasons—protecting the Sinaloa cartel hitmen and the messages on the narcobanners—about 70 federal agents, many from the PFP’s Special Operations Group, which operated under Garay Cadena’s orders, were subpoenaed to make statements to the SIEDO.
Commissioner Javier Herrera Valle, the ex-commissioner of the PFP who was recently fired from the SSP, says that Garcia Luna has become an untouchable official, despite his dark past and the signs that link him to drug trafficking.
“Garcia Luna, at least according to what Juan de Dios Castro Lozano (the PGR’s assistant attorney general for human rights) tells me, is President Calderon’s spoiled official. I think that’s why he can’t be touched,” says Herrera Valle.
This reporter asked Herrera, “Do you think Garcia Luna is the spoiled man in the Cabinet, or are there dark complicities that unite him with the president?”
“I don’t know what to think or say anymore. I haven’t received responses to my letters in which I denounce corruption. But I don’t doubt that Garcia Luna is untouchable, and that is very dangerous for the country.”
Immovable
The signs that Garcia Luna is allegedly in league with the Sinaloa cartel aren’t new. According to information from the PGR, his alleged relationships with narcos date back to 2005 and he hasn’t even been investigated for that.
The criminal investigation PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/106/2005 against the Beltran Leyva brothers’ cell—when they maintained a solid alliance with the Sinaloa cartel and controlled Guerrero state—contains revelations that implicate the head of the SSP in the alleged protection of this criminal group.
It has to do with transcriptions of telephone calls, emails sent by people who identify themselves as members of the Gulf cartel—in 2005 there was a serious fight between Los Zetas and the Beltran Leyva family for control of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo, two important narco turfs—in which they report that Garcia Luna was receiving million-peso payments from the Beltran Leyvas.
SNIP
Ping
There IS no separate mexucan government from the cartels..
Thank goodness there’s no corruption HERE associated with drugs !
/sarcasm
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