U.S. Gun Control Efforts Get Support From Mexico Amid Drug War

Bloomberg, 1/14/2013

U.S. efforts to limit gun purchases are winning approval in Mexico as President Barack Obama considers measures to stem violence that could also restrict weapons access for drug cartels south of the border. Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico’s incoming ambassador to Washington, said last week that there’s a link between the end of the U.S. assault-weapons ban in 2004 and the arming of cartels whose war with the government has left more than 58,000 dead since 2006. The comments echo those from former President Felipe Calderon, who left office last month after a six-year term in which he repeatedly blamed U.S. guns for the surge in Mexican violence. Medina Mora, who served as Calderon’s attorney general and ambassador to the U.K. before being confirmed as President Enrique Pena Nieto’s envoy to Washington last week, said he hopes last month’s school massacre in Connecticut will spur the U.S. to overhaul gun regulations.

Read more…

From Mexican Jail, Top Cop Accused

Wall Street Journal, 11/28/2012

An alleged cartel kingpin accused high-ranking members of President Felipe  Calderón’s government, including the country’s top police official, of taking  bribes from organized crime.

Read more…

Mexico’s President Calderon seeks to change country’s name

BBC News, 11/22/2012

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent a bill to congress to change the official name of the country. The current name, the United States of Mexico, was adopted in 1824 and was intended to emulate its northern neighbour.

President Calderon wants to change it to just Mexico, as the country is known the world over. Mr Calderon, who leaves office on 1 December, said Mexico no longer needed to copy any foreign power.

Read more…

Reforma, 10/23/12

En su quinto encuentro, Enrique Peña Nieto y Felipe Calderón analizaron el
desarrollo de visiones en común en la relación México-Estados
Unidos.

 

Read more…

Mexico’s Pena Nieto optimistic on labor reform bill

Reuters, 9/19/2012

Enrique Peña Nieto

Mexico’s incoming president Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday raised pressure on his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to back a labor reform proposed by the outgoing administration, saying he was optimistic Congress would pass it.

The draft bill put forward this month is viewed as a litmus test of cooperation between the centrist PRI and President Felipe Calderon’s conservatives. The lower house of Congress has 11 more days to either approve or reject it .

The reform aims to soften Mexico’s antiquated labor laws and force its trade unions to become more transparent, which has raised the hackles of the PRI’s powerful union base.

Read more…

Amid drug war, Mexico homicide rate up for fourth straight year

Los Angeles Times, 8/21/2012

A study has found that Mexico’s homicide rate rose for the fourth year in a row in 2011, this time by 5.6% compared with the previous year — a fact that will come as little surprise to Mexicans who continue to be bombarded each morning with the latest stomach-turning details of the country’s drug war.

The new data, released this week by Mexico’s statistics and geography institute, show that 27,199 people were killed in Mexico last year — or 24 homicides per 100,000 people. The rate in 2007 was 8 per 100,000. Last year it was 23 per 100,000.

Read more…

Violence in Mexico: Is a paramilitary force the answer?

Baker Institute Blog, 7/25/2012

President Calderon

One of the many pressing issues that president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto will have to quickly address is the unrelenting violence in most regions of the country. Peña Nieto says that while he will fight organized crime with the same vigor as the outgoing administration of President Felipe Calderón, he believes that Calderón’s use of the military to combat organized crime helped perpetuate the violence in Mexico. “We can’t continue that way,” Peña Nieto said. “So we’re going to follow a strategy focused on three central crimes: murder, kidnapping and extortion. But make no mistake: it’s our duty to finish off the organized crime gangs, including drug traffickers.”

Mexico’s military was initially employed to combat the drug cartels’ growing influence during the tenure of President Vicente Fox shortly after he took office in 2000.

Read more…

Mexico’s climate law to face challenge under new president

Reuters, 7/24/2012

Enrique Peña Nieto

Mexico’s new president is unlikely to implement much of the sweeping climate change law signed in June by outgoing President Felipe Calderon amid inevitable resistance from industry and his party’s focus on accelerating economic growth and ramping-up oil and gas production, policy experts said.

The president-elect will also be under pressure to deliver a campaign goal to increase Mexico’s GDP growth to as much as 6 percent per year, making a focus on environmental issues unrealistic in his first years in office, experts said.

Read more…

 

Unidentified bodies become legion in Mexico, highlighting poor police training, technology

The Washington Post/The Associated Press, 7/23/2012

After police found 49 dismembered bodies strewn on a Mexican highway leading to the Texas border, it took the army just a week to parade an alleged drug trafficker before journalists as the man who purportedly oversaw the body dump.

Yet two months after the grisly discovery in Nuevo Leon state, authorities have not identified a single victim.

Read more…

Google’s Drug War vs. Mexico’s Cartels

The Huffington Post/The Associated Press, 07/18/2012

Google, so far, has won the search engine wars. Now it wants to target international crime, including Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.

Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.’s executive chairman, has taken a keen interest in Mexico, where more than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in 2006. Schmidt recently visited most of Mexico’s most violent cities, Ciudad Juarez, where civic leaders asked if he could help.

Read more…