“A record 69 people were murdered across Mexico on Saturday, making it the deadliest day since President Felipe Calderon took office just over three years ago,” the Latin American Herald Tribune reported on Wednesday, January 13, citing Mexico’s El Universal newspaper. The previous daily death toll record was 57 murders on Aug. 17, 2009.
"The country resembled a grim, statistical dart board Saturday as law enforcement and media reported the deaths from various regions, including 26 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, 13 in and around Mexico City and 10 in the northern city of Chihuahua," the Associated Press reported.
The Latin American Herald Tribune article on the latest Mexican crime carnage noted:
El Universal, which keeps a running tally of the murders in the country, reported Sunday that 283 people have been killed so far this year in Mexico…. Last year, according to El Universal, was the deadliest in Mexico in the past decade, with 7,724 people killed in violent incidents attributed to organized crime groups.
The spiraling vortex of violence is being driven by ongoing turf battles among Mexico’s competing drug cartels, which seem to be vying with one another to establish ever more gruesome displays of public assassination and torture. Decapitation, dismemberment, defacement, mutilation, hanging, burning – the ultra-violent methods keep evolving, as the cartels escalate their campaigns of terror and intimidation.
The recent murder-mutilation of 36-yearold Hugo Hernandez is an horrific illustration of the descent into barbarism on our border. Hernandez was kidnapped in the state of Sonora on January 2 and taken to the neighboring state of Sinaloa, apparently by rival cartel members. His body, cut into seven pieces, began showing up in separate locations. The last was his face, which had been sliced off and stitched to a football. The grisly "trophy" was delivered to the city hall of the town of Los Mochis in Sinaloa.
This followed closely on the heels of the high-profile mass-murder of the family of Mexican Marine hero Melquisedet Angulo Cordova. Cordova had been killed in the December 17 gun battle in Cuernavaca that also took the life of Arturo Beltran Leyva, known as the Mexican cartels’ "Boss of Bosses." The young Marine was given a hero’s burial with full military honors for sacrificing his life in the fight to bring down Mexico’s most wanted criminal. Hours later, his home was invaded and his family gunned down. Among the dead: his mother, brother, sister, and an aunt.
A report one year ago on worldwide security threats by the U.S. Joint Forces Command warned of the potential for Mexico to descend into chaos, with serious security implications for the United States. The Command’s "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report said that in Mexico "the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."
The report continued: "Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The current round of violence in Mexico is certain to reignite the campaigns for more state and federal gun controls here in the United States. As we reported last May ("Mexican Violence, Gun Controls"), the escalating violence south of our border caused a flurry of citations of false statistics from the politicians and media organs attempting to link Mexico’s woes to the availability of guns in the United States. Senator Dianne Feinstein claimed that "ninety percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States." President Obama and others repeated that bogus 90-percent claim, and it is now being trotted out again to build support to curtail sales at gun shows and further restrict firearms availability.
As The New American pointed out, the facts show almost the exact opposite of what the gun restriction/gun confiscation advocates are claiming. Such as, that more than 80 percent of the guns confiscated at crime scenes in Mexico do not come from the United States. And that most of Mexico’s street warfare is being fought with automatic weapons that are not available from U.S. gun shops/gun shows, but are coming from Central and South America and from deserters from the Mexican military.
Photo: AP Images
Related articles:
Mexican Violence, Gun Controls
