Mexico News Oct.3

Posted by the Generals on October 30, 2011, 7:03 pm
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Subject: Mexico News October 03, 2011 LatinNews Daily Briefing - 03 October 2011 Mexico, soldiers arrested & intervention promised Development: On 2 October two Mexican soldiers were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping a 13 year-old girl and simultaneously, Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas and a leading contender for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination, floated the idea of sending US troops to fight gangsters in Mexico. Significance: The arrest of the soldiers underlines the complexity of the security situation in Mexico and how difficult US intervention could be. The soldiers were arrested in Ciudad Juárez, a violent border city that in the past week saw, at least, two families gunned down by gangsters outside their houses. Perry’s threat to intervene demonstrates that Mexico’s security situation will be at the top of the agenda in both the US and the Mexican 2012 presidential campaign. Key points: • Members of an elite state security force, the Grupo Antisecuestros de Chihuahua, arrested the soldiers and freed the girl, who had been kidnapped on 30 September. The arrests are deeply embarrassing for the army, whose commander (and the country’s defence minister), General Guillermo Galván Galván, has a long standing feud with the public security minister, Genaro García Luna, over the government’s security strategy. • It appears that the soldiers were holding the girl for ransom. • On 22 September, 10 officers from García Luna’s Policía Federal were arrested and accused of extortion. • Perry said that the US and Mexican governments should work together against the drug gangs and that such an alliance could require US military forces to work with the Mexican military “to kill the drug gangs and keep them away from our borders”. • Although the drug gangs are active and violent along Mexico’s side of the border, the US border cities are some of the safest in the US. • Perry reiterated his support for Texas state legislation, which allows the children of illegal migrants to attend US universities for the same fees paid by US citizens. This stance is opposed by the vociferous anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party. Perry argues that as the only Republican contender from a border state, he understands what needs to be done to curb illegal immigration.

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