Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:10 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
McALLEN — There had been a week of testimony about million-dollar drug transfers outside supermarkets and taquerias not far from the staid federal courtroom, of "accidents" that resulted in fears of execution, of stash houses amid the Rio Grande Valley's middle-class subdivisions.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jesse Salazar eyeballed the jury Tuesday. He asked them to put the pieces together and convict the barrel-chested, gruff-looking accused drug kingpin sitting at the defense table.
Carlos Landin Martinez was said to be running part of the Gulf Cartel even as he served as a Reynosa, Mexico, police commander. He fell into U.S. government hands when he was spotted buying a watermelon at a local H-E-B.
"We all know that underneath our lives and underneath our communities, with our proximity to Mexico ... we all know that something else is going on," Salazar said.
The jury saw it his way and Wednesday convicted Martinez on nine counts of drug trafficking, conspiracy and money laundering over cartel activities from 2005 to 2007.
For years, Rio Grande Valley residents have known about that "something else going on" but most looked the other way. The solution for many has been to just stay on this side of the narrow Rio Grande, where they get a sense of protection from superior law enforcement and a powerful federal justice system.
For those who still visit Mexico, there's been the unwritten understanding that the thugs only target their own. In recent years their main battleground had been 150 miles upriver in Nuevo Laredo
But a new rash of violence just across the river began in November and took the lives of a politician, bystanders, Mexican federal bodyguards, police officers and entertainers.
Juan Antonio Guajardo, a businessman and former mayor of Río Bravo, was gunned down in that city's downtown with five others in broad daylight. He had just lost a re-election bid on a platform of cleaning the city of corruption. The Mexican Army deployed troops there.
Days later in Matamoros, Mexican singer Zayda Pena was killed in a hospital room where she was being treated for wounds sustained in an ambush. She was at least the fourth popular performer in Mexico to die in a gangland slaying in a year, presumably because lyrics touched on the exploits of drug lords.
On Jan. 7 in Rio Bravo, Mexican soldiers engaged in a highway shootout that killed three suspected gangland gunmen and left five policemen and five soldiers wounded. Blood and bullet casings littered the streets.
An assault on roving Army patrols in Reynosa led to a shootout a day later in which two federal officers were killed. Witnesses said the attack included a grenade explosion and began from an SUV with Texas plates.
The army arrested 10 men for alleged roles in the Jan. 7 attack, including three U.S. residents, one from the Valley and two from Detroit.
Valley law enforcement agencies were on edge. Police in Hidalgo, the city directly across from Reynosa, deployed a SWAT team to the international bridge.
The nine-member police department in Progreso, across the river from the Mexican tourist town of Nuevo Progreso, told reporters they weren't trained or equipped to fight drug cartels. They said they were buying bullet-proof vests and hoped to buy high-powered rifles.
On Jan. 10, local police and sheriffs' deputies converged at the Rio Grande Valley headquarters of the Border Patrol.
"We gathered all the local, state, and federal agencies just to communicate all the intelligence we had, offer our resources," said Customs and Border Protection spokesman Oscar Saldana. "We're the largest federal agency in the area. We're here for whomever needs us."
Jurors in the Landin Martinez trial got a detailed look at their own region's use as a staging ground for narcotics destined for cities throughout the East Coast. Drugs from southern Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America are funneled through "plazas" such as Reynosa, with leaders like Landin Martinez coordinating a network of safe houses, smugglers, and mules who carry drugs north and sacks of money south.
Mexican cities are generally defenseless against drug crime because even the police are involved and those who don't cooperate with the criminals are threatened.
As testimony in the trial drew to a close, Mexican President Felipe Calderón was deploying thousands of additional troops to five border cities, occupying police stations and stripping local officers of guns and vehicles for an apparent shakedown.
By Friday afternoon, all but two of the 1,600 city officers were cleared for a return to duty and were expected to get their guns back by today.
J. Patrick O'Burke, deputy commander of narcotics service for the Texas Department of Public Safety, last March told a state legislative committee of the breadth and the strength of the border drug trade. He called narcoterrorism "the greatest threat to the state of Texas."
After defeats in the 1970s and 1980s in Florida, he said, Columbian drug traffickers began relying on Mexican pathways to bring drugs to the United States.
Interdiction statistics show Webb and Hidalgo counties are "by far the hottest-moving corridor along the Southwest border," he said. "It's difficult to imagine the coordination and surveillance that these people have along the border."
The busiest Nextel phone tower in the United States is in McAllen, O'Burke said, and the crime networks on both sides of the border in some cases date back generations and include people from all walks of life.
Gatekeepers control swaths of territory and work deals with numerous smaller operators who act as lookouts or push drugs through.
"Part of the operation of the gatekeeper is to corrupt," O'Burke said.
Some local law enforcement officials say they need help from both the state and the nation.
Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas said his sheriff's department was stepping up its presence with two substations and had meetings scheduled next month with state Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw.
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, last week met with President Calderón to discuss a $1.4 billion aid package that could start with $500 million for equipment and training in a supplemental spending bill this spring. He said no cash would be sent.
"When we speak of the security it is important not just for Mexico but for everyone here," he said.
The money is not a lot when one considers that business between the United States and Mexico amounts to $1 billion per day, he said.
"We help other countries much more and with Mexico we have a 2,000-mile border," he said.
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lbrezosky@express-news.net
This is happening in every city in America.
Valle ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
We can give Meeeheeeeco $1.4 billion in ‘crime aide’, by the US, but we can’t fund and finish the fence?? WTF????
When will government at all levels stop trying to prevent them from having effective weapons and organize in effective militias and defund those who prevent these activities and thus undermine the war effort?
Build the damn fence.
All could be brought to an abrupt halt in the US by putting drug dealers, makers, pushers up against a wall and shot. Jailing this vermin will do nothing but encourage from within more drug deals etc. A short trial, name should do it and the out the door to The Wall.
There comes a point folks when the talking and trying is done and the only solution is the above....
It must be extremely demoralizing and frustrating to be in law enforcement these days. South of the border, cops risk death and decapitation, on this side they face the wrath of Sutton and Jorge.
As long as there is a lucrative market for the drugs in the US there will be those who assume the risk of bringing drugs into the US for the substantial reward.
The politics of contraband.
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