As the winter holidays crawl near, many news outlets on both sides of the border focus on soft news stories of non-stop shopping, holiday recipes and travel conditions. They deliver ritualistic appeals to help poor people who are largely invisible in the media the remainder of the year.
But in the northern Mexican border state of Coahuila, December provided plenty of hard grist for the journalistic mill. In the days leading up to the Christmas holiday celebrations, Mexican soldiers were gunned down gangland-style, the office of an outspoken bishop was burgled, the Cimari hazardous waste dump went up in flames, the state governor staged a splashy wedding in Franciscan ruins, and even Carlos Salinas de Gortari came to town.
Commotion reigned in Torreon on Tuesday, Dec. 18, when as many as nine gunmen ambushed four Mexican soldiers in a cell-phone store located in the downtown section of the city. Three of the soldiers were killed while a fourth was sent to the hospital with injuries. Almost immediately following the attack, a convey of Mexican troops riding in Hummers, tanks and other vehicles was spotted moving toward the city. The brazen assault was among the worst episodes of violence to strike Coahuila, which has been the scene of a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels on one side and the Gulf Cartel on the other during 2006 and 2007.
Once relished for its cotton, mining and dairy industries, Coahuila is now defined by an economy revolving around migration, maquiladoras and marijuana. Strategically wrapped around routes that lead to the US border, Coahuila’s highways move jeans, dope and people.
As in Ciudad Juarez, violent attacks against women have paralleled the rise of the legal and illegal global export industry. From 1998 to 2006, the bodies of at least seven women were found scattered near the city of Saltillo. Showing signs of bite marks and sexual abuse, the women’s bodies were found naked and wrapped in plastic bags. A U.S. national, William Wade, was once arrested for some of the crimes but later released.
Two Coahuila residents appear on a list of disappeared women issued by the Federal Office of the Attorney General. In June 2003, 17-year-old Adela Jazmin Solis Castaneda vanished in Torreon after leaving for school. A Moncolva resident, Mayela Paola Muzquiz Aguilar, disappeared in Aug. 2004 while going to a corner store near her home. The mother of the 21-year-old woman has since reported receiving strange phone calls with no one speaking on the other end of the line.
As Coahuila was coping with the Torreon slayings, word came Dec. 21 that the offices of Saltillo Bishop Raul Vera were ransacked by two hooded suspects who attacked a secretary before departing. A well-known human rights activist, Vera was apparently on his way to the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas when the assault occurred.
“This is part of the harassment that the father has been suffering, we can’t interpret it any other way,” said priest Pedro Pantoja, coordinator of the Saltillo diocese’s social and migrant program. “They went through files, electronic apparatuses, and no money was missing…”
Bishop Vera has been a prominent advocate for families of coal miners killed in the 2006 Pasta de Conchos disaster as well as for the 14 sex workers gang-raped by soldiers in the Castanos red light district last year. The bishop’s criticisms of Judge Hiradier Huerta, who found only three soldiers guilty of crimes, recently prompted the judge to write the Vatican demanding Vera’s removal. Coahuila Governor Humberto Moreira and other political leaders sharply condemned the attack on Vera’s office.
Not all the recent news coming from Coahuila had a somber streak. Ample coverage was devoted to the Dec. 21 wedding between Governor Moreira and Irma Vanesa Guerrero Martinez in the ruins of the St. Bernard Mission south of the border town of Piedras Negras. Bride Guerrero is a relative of prominent TV Azteca personality Paty Chapoy.
Protected by hundreds of federal police and soldiers, the guest list read like a Who’s Who of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its allies. Enjoying champagne and whiskey, hundreds of invitees danced to the live sounds of Camila, Grupo Pesado, Rondalla de Saltillo, Napoleon, and Celso Pina. Overwhelming the Piedras Negras airport with dozens of private jets, the wedding was an economic boost for area hotels including businesses in the Texas border cities of Eagle Pass and Del Rio.
Well-known PRI politicians topped the list of guests, including Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones, Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza and Mexico state governor Enrique Pena Nieto. El Universal publisher Francisco Ealy Ortiz, Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster and businessman Alfonso Ancira Elizondo attended the festivities. Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari served as a witness for the enamored couple.
In some ways, the Moreira-Guerrero wedding could be viewed as an end-of-the-year celebration for the PRI, which won many local and state elections in 2007. It could also prove to be an early coming out for an eventual Moreira presidential candidacy in 2012.
Perhaps standing out among the wedding guests was Rosario Robles, who once served as mayor of Mexico City for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Robles was a close associate of the enigmatic, Argentine-born businessman Carlos Ahumada, whom supporters of 2006 PRD presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador accused of scheming with Salinas de Gortari, Vicente Fox and others to deny Lopez Obrador Mexico’s presidency. Released from prison earlier this year, Ahumada quickly faded from the limelight but not before making the comment that he had put in his “two cents” to stop AMLO dead in his tracks.
Interviewed by reporters, Robles denied that divisions plague the tribalistic PRD, and she praised Governor Moreira of the ostensibly rival PRI for being a man committed to the poor and social equality. Immersed in his wedding day, Governor Moreira declined to comment on political matters, only saying that his new wife “stole my heart.” The newlyweds asked guests to donate wedding gifts to a bank account set up to aid low-income residents of Piedras Negras. Preliminary reports indicated that at least $200,000 had been rapidly collected for the fund.
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Sources:
-- Zocalo.com.mx, December 22 and 24, 2007.
-- Articles by Hilda Aguilar and Juan Ramon Garza. El Diario de Coahuila, December 22, 2007.
-- Frontenet/Notimex, December 21, 2007.
-- La Jornada, December 19 and 21, 2007. Articles by Leopoldo Ramos. El Universal, December 21, 2007. Articles by Alberto Morales and the Notimex news service.
-- Cimacnoticias.com, December 20 and 21, 2007. Articles by Hypatia Velasco Ramirez and Sofia Noriega. --- La Voz de Nuevo Mexico/Agencia Reforma, December 7, 2007.
-- Proceso/Apro., November 10, 2006 and December 21, 2007. Articles by Arturo Rodriguez Garcia.
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
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