Mexico News Sept.01

Posted by the Generals on September 4, 2011, 8:04 pm
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Subject: Mexico News DAILY September 01, 2011 LatinNews Daily - 01 September 2011 Monterrey massacre turns political Development: On 31 August the brother of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN)’s mayor of Monterrey, Manuel Jonás Larrazabal, was shown collecting cash from three casinos in Monterrey over the past three months. On 25 August Casino Royale was attacked and torched by gangsters and 52 people were killed. Significance: This revelation, from CCTV tapes, has prompted calls for the mayor of Monterrey, Fernando Larrazabal, to resign or at the very least to get his brother, Manuel Jonás, to testify. The mayor said that people should ask his brother what he was doing, and that his actions have nothing to do with him. This position is a political gift for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which rules the state of Nuevo León, but not Monterrey. Key points: • The videos of Manuel Jonás look compromising. Each time, he arrives at a casino, he goes to a table at the back, sits down and waits for someone to come up with large amounts of cash, which he counts, and then leaves the premises. In each case, Larrazabal is in the casino for less than a minute. He appears to have picked up about M$400,000 (US$32,000) each time. • It is not clear who edited the videos to provide such politically compromising images. The municipality of Monterrey is currently trying to close 12 casinos which are apparently operating without proper licences. • It is still not clear who owns the Casino Royale, which was torched on 25 August. At least two other casino operators have said that in the past couple of weeks, they had been warned to pay protection money or face having their casinos burnt down. Thus, the choice of a replacement makes perfect sense: Juan Carlos Pinzón has been working as Santos’s right-hand man, in various official roles, since the latter served as minister of finance and public credit (2000-2002) during the presidency of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002).

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