Timeline Mexico (C) 1998-2008
Return to home
1998 Jan 2,
Judge Maria Claudia Campuzano freed 5 suspects who were held in
connection with the Dec 15 murder of John Peter Zarate. The judge
claimed conflicting evidence as grounds for the release.
(SFC, 1/6/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 5, Francisco Labastida
took over as the chief of internal security after Emilio Chuayffet
resigned under pressure from the Chiapas massacre.
(SFC, 1/5/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 7, Chiapas Gov. Julio
Cesar Ruiz Ferro submitted his resignation due to the massacre in
Acteal.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Jan 12, Chiapas state
police opened fire on stone-throwing Indian protestors and 1 woman
was killed and 2 others wounded. The government said the army
arrested 27 state police at the site of the shooting near Ocosingo.
Separately Chiapas state police commander Felipe Vazquez Espinosa
was indicted for helping arm the paramilitary gunmen of the Acteal
massacre.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 24, Former Gen’l.
Jorge Maldonado Vega was arrested for allegedly trying to arrange a
pact between two of the largest drug cartels. Captain Rigoberto
Silva Ortega was also charged.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.B12)
1998 Jan 28, Rubicel Ruiz
Gamboa, a peasant organizer in Ocosingo, was gunned down in an
ambush.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A22)
1998 Jan 28, Federal police in
Guerrero came upon the anti-kidnapping squad of Morelos with the
tortured body of a 17-year-old member of a kidnapping gang. They
suspected that the body was to be dumped and arrested the state
officers that included Armando Martinez Salgado, chief of the squad.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 31, Three Indian
villagers were found hanged in the Chiapas town of Ocosingo. Also
Antonio Gomez Flores, an Ocosingo peasant leader, died when a truck
smashed into his car as he left the funeral of Rubicel Ruiz Gamboa.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A22)
1998 Feb 9, It was reported
that flash floods in Tijuana killed at least 13 people.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A1)
1998 Feb, In Guadalajara Moises
Padilla (33) was kidnapped and tortured with knives. He was left
naked and bleeding with 68 wounds and told to "Stop saying bad
things about the Servant of God." Padilla was a principal witness in
charges against Samuel Joaquin Flores and his evangelical group the
Light of the World."
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1998 Feb 26, The US certified
Mexico as a fully cooperating partner in the war on drugs.
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.A18)
1998 Feb, Rodolfo Montiel and
Bautista Martinez helped form the Organization of Peasant Ecologists
of the Sierra of Petatlan and Coyuca de Catalan to stop logging and
prevent consequent erosion.
(SFC, 6/1/00, p.C4)
1998 Mar 3, Senator Layda
Sansores discovered a government spy center in Campeche. 22 similar
operations throughout the country were indicated by the records
found.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A11)
1998 Mar 5, In Chiapas 46
prison inmates escaped after a labor group of taxi drivers marched
into the Ocosingo jail in a protest demanding the release of some
inmates and the withdrawal of government troops.
(SFC, 3/6/98, p.A13)
1998 Mar 14, The book "Utopia
Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War" by Mexican
scholar Jorge Castaneda was mentioned in connection with the recent
death of Manuel Pineiro, spymaster of Cuba.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.A19)
1998 Mar 20, A new law, the
Nationality Act, went into effect that allowed Mexican-born
Americans and their children to hold Mexican nationality and US
citizenship. The law permitted dual nationality but not dual
citizenship.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 22, In Tijuana the
national independent union, STIMAHCS, representing the workers of
the Han Young auto parts factory, warned the company of a pending
strike if negotiations were not fruitful.
(SFC, 6/2/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 26, A mob in Huejutla
lynched 2 suspected kidnappers after a judge ordered the 2 men freed
on $600 bail. 30 residents were arrested in the lynching.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A14)
1998 Mar 27, Adrian Carrera
Fuentes, former director of the Federal Judicial Police, was
arrested on charges of being on the payroll of the Arellano Felix
drug gang.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 29, Carol Janet
Schlosberg, an American artist, was raped and beaten at Puerto
Escondido. She was tossed into the Pacific and drowned. In 1999
Cirilo Olivera Lopez and Rosendo Marquez Gutierrez were convicted
and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/7/99, p.C2)
1998 Mar, Pres. Zedillo issued
a revised proposal of the 1996 San Andres Larrainzar accord on
autonomy for indigenous people.
(SFC, 5/11/98, p.A8)
1998 Mar, Saudi Arabia,
Venezuela and Mexico began talking to reduce oil output. They
pledged to take 2-3% of the world’s oil production off the market in
what came to be called the Riyadh Pact.
(WSJ, 6/23/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 12, Authorities
expelled 12 foreigners from Chiapas state saying they had engaged in
activity in support of the Zapatista rebels. Two int’l. news
photographers were beaten and police attempted to confiscate their
film as they boarded a plane for Mexico City. The expelled group
reported that they had witnessed a military operation to shut down a
town council in Taniperlas, that was raided the previous day by 750
police and troops.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A10)(SFC, 4/14/98, p.C12)
1998 Apr 19, Octavio Paz (84),
poet and essayist, died of cancer. His work included "The Labyrinth
of Solitude" and the poem "Sun Stone."
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A17)(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A12)
1998 Apr 25, It was reported
that an average of 20 tourists were attacked each day in Mexico
City.
(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A8)
1998 May 5, A forest fire
killed 19 firefighters and left 12 missing.
(WSJ, 5/6/98, p.A1)
1998 May 8, Immigration
authorities put a limit on human rights delegations to Chiapas.
Groups of 10 people would only be allowed to stay 10 days.
(SFC, 5/9/98, p.A12)
1998 May 11, Mexico expelled 40
Italian human-rights activists, labeled as professional
provocateurs, who spent 9 days in Chiapas and banned them from
returning.
(WSJ, 5/12/98, p.A1)
1998 May 13, Impeachment
procedures began for Jorge Carrillo Olea, governor of Morelos state.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.A22)
1998 May 17, Mexico continued
to suffer in its worst drought in 70 years. Some 50 people were
reported to have died fighting fires caused by peasants clearing
their fields.
(SFC, 5/18/98, p.A10)
1998 May 18, The US Customs
Service ended a 3-year sting operation with the indictment of 3
Mexican banks and 107 people on charges of laundering millions of
dollars for drug-smuggling cartels.
(SFC, 5/19/98, p.A1)
1998 May 21, In Cuernavaca,
Mexico, police arrested the wife, son, daughter and daughter-in-law
of kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi Lopez. He was wanted for carrying out
at least 18 bold and brutal kidnappings since 1996.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A24)
1998 May 22, In Tijuana the
workers of the Han Young auto parts factory went on strike. An
attempted strike break and political maneuverings by the company
were unsuccessful and the case was to be put before a judge.
(SFC, 6/2/98, p.A10)
1998 May, The CFC began an
investigation of the entire cement industry and after more than a
year reported no absolute monopolistic behavior. Cement prices in
Mexico were higher than in any other major global market.
(WSJ, 4/21/02, p.A12)
1998 Jun 2, The military leader
of an anti-narcotics investigation was kidnapped and beaten by
henchmen of Ramon Alcides Magana, aka El Metro. At the same time his
office was robbed of evidence linking Yucatan Gov. Mario Villanueva
Madrid to El Metro.
(SFC, 12/14/98, p.C2)
1998 Jun 3, Mexico announced
that it would prosecute US customs officials for breaking numerous
Mexican laws in the undercover Casablanca operation that was
announced May 18.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A3)
1998 Jun 3, Chiapas Gov.
Roberto Albores ordered a thousand police officers and soldiers into
the town of Nicolas Ruiz where 141 people were arrested for
supporting Zapatista rebels.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A10)
1998 Jun 4, Mexico, Saudi
Arabia and Venezuela agreed to cuts in oil production and exports
for the 2nd time this year in order to raise prices.
(WSJ, 6/5/98, p.A2)
1998 Jun 5, In Matamoros
Salvador Gomez, a former policeman and drug cartel leader, was
arrested.
(SFC, 6/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Jun 7, Army troops killed
11 leftist rebels of the EPR near Ayutla in Guerrero state. Another
5 were wounded and 21 were arrested. Erika Zamora Pardo, an EPR
member, later testified that the guerrillas were shot when they
surrendered with their hands up and that 12 were killed. She also
testified that civilians trapped in a schoolhouse also tried to
surrender, but that soldiers threw a fragmentation grenade in their
midst.
(SFC, 6/8/98, p.A10)(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A14)
1998 Jun 8, Catholic Bishop
Samuel Ruiz resigned as chief mediator in peace negotiations with
the Zapatista guerrillas. The committee that he led also resigned
and accused the government of standing in the way of peace.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A12)
1998 Jun 10, In Mexico 9 people
were killed in Chiapas when the army tried to retake control of El
Bosque. 52 people were arrested.
(SFC, 6/11/98, p.A10)
1998 Jun 19, In Mexico the 37th
annual US-Mexico Parliamentary Session opened.
(SFC, 6/22/98, p.A10)
1998 Jun, Adrian Carrera
Fuentes, former director of the Federal Judicial Police, was allowed
to travel to the US to testify. In Houston he told a grand jury that
he had collected nearly $2 million in drug bribes in 1993-1994 and
turned the money over to Mario Ruiz Massieu, who fled Mexico in
1995.
(SFC, 7/15/98, p.A8)
1998 Jul 5, Voters in Mexico
elected governors in 10 states. The PRI won in Chihuahua with
Patricio Martinez Garcia and in Durango. The PRD won in Zacatecas
with Ricardo Monreal.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A8)(SFC, 7/7/98, p.A9)
1998 Jul 7, Mexican courts
ordered the attorney general’s office to rehire more than half the
826 agents dismissed 6 months ago for failed drug tests and alleged
corruption.
(SFC, 7/10/98, p.A16)
1998 Jul 13, In Chiapas a
technical junior high school in Oventic was inaugurated by
Comandante Ezequiel and Peter Brown of the US. Brown was deported 2
weeks later for violating Mexican laws, i.e. building a school on a
tourist visa.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, p.A18)
1998 Jul 23, Three girls
escaped capture by police in Mexico City. They had been held for 4
days and the two youngest were repeatedly raped. Sixteen officers
were later arrested.
(SFC, 7/28/98, p.A8)
1998 Aug 2, Felipe Gonzalez of
the National Action (PAN) led the lections in Aguascalientes.
(SFC, 8/3/98, p.A8)
1998 Aug 3, It was reported
that Mexico’s bill for preventing the collapse of its banking system
in 1995 was up to $65 billion.
(SFC, 8/3/98, p.A1)
1998 Aug 12, Vincente Fox,
governor of Guanajuato, announced plans to run for president in the
year 2000 and to have every one of his state’s 4,500 communities
provided with potable water, sewers, electricity, telephones and
health services within a half hour for everyone.
(SFC, 8/14/98, p.A10)
1998 Aug 18, Near Mexico City
police nabbed Daniel Arizmendi (39) and 9 others. Arizmendi was the
leader of a kidnapping gang that sent the ears of victims to their
families to pressure for ransom.
(SFC, 8/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Aug 22, Elena Garro (b.
1920), novelist, playwright and former wife of Octavio Paz, died at
age 77. Her foremost novel was "Recuerdos del Porvenir"
(Remembrances of the Future).
(SFEC, 8/23/98, p.D4)
1998 Aug 24, Tropical Storm
Charley dropped a foot of rain on South Texas and northern Mexico
and left at least 14 people dead and over 60 missing.
(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A1)
1998 Aug, The Tequila Express
Train began running between Guadalajara and Tequila with a $40 round
trip charge with complementary drinks.
(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A1)
1998 Sep 8, In Mexico a flood
in Chiapas left 25 people dead and Gov. Roberto Albores Guillen
declared a disaster zone along the Pacific Coast. 6 other people
were confirmed dead from flooding in Veracruz and Jalisco.
(SFC, 9/9/98, p.A9)
1998 Sep 11, The death toll in
Chiapas reached over 100 as 20,000 people were forced from their
homes due to the flooding from Tropical Storm Javier. the toll grew
to 162 and 450,000 were left homeless.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A2,C18)(SFC, 9/18/98, p.A13)
1998 Sep 17, In Ensenada,
Mexico, 20 people were shot and 18 were killed by gunmen. The
victims included 8 children. Fermin Castro (38), aka "The Ice Man,"
was the principal target and leader of one of 6 gangs linked to the
Arellano Felix drug cartel. Castro, a native Pai Pai Indian, was
tortured before being shot and was in a coma. In Dec. Tijuana police
arrested Hector Flores Esquivias and Cruz Medina Perez, the wife of
gang leader Marinez Gonzalez. In 2008 US immigration officials in
Los Angeles arrested Jesus Ruben Moncada (33), believed to be one of
the Ensenada gunmen, and turned him over to Mexican authorities.
(WSJ, 9/18/98, p.A1)(SFC, 9/18/98, p.A1)(SFC,
10/17/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/5/98, p.A13)(SFC, 8/25/08, p.A3)
1998 Sep 18, A secret, 269 page
Swiss report asserted that Raul Salinas assumed control of
practically all drug shipments in Mexico in 1988 when his brother
became president.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Sep 28, In central Mexico
heavy rains caused mudslides in Mexico City that left 6 people dead
in the squatter hillsides south of the city.
(SFC, 9/29/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 1, In central Mexico a
flooded irrigation canal killed 12 people when it washed away tin
and cardboard homes along its banks.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.B3)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico the
Indians of San Juan Chamula in Chiapas boycotted the elections in
protest for the jailing of 5 men accused of murder. They were jailed
a year ago during a dispute between Catholic and Protestant
converts.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.a10)(SFC, 10/6/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 4, Hector Teran,
governor of Baja California and leader of the opposition National
Action Party, died at age 67.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 10, Gustavo Petricioli
Iturbe, a former treasury secretary and ambassador to the US, died
at age 70.
(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.D10)
1998 Oct 13, A gas explosion in
Tultepec killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens. The blast was
related to the manufacture of illegal fireworks.
(SFC, 10/14/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 18, The Zapatista
rebels called for talks with the Cocopa group, a multi-party peace
commission set up in 1994.
(SFC, 10/19/98, p.A14)
1998 Oct 20, In Switzerland
officials announced that they seized over $90 million from Raul
Salinas after an investigations revealed that the money was received
for protecting drug shipments. Swiss authorities requested that
Britain seize an additional $23.4 million deposited in England.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 12, A protest was
planned at the Mexican border against plans to put low-level
radioactive waste at Sierra Blanca in Texas, 16 miles from the
border. This appeared to be in violation of the 1983 La Paz Treaty
in which the US and Mexico agreed to reduce pollution within 60
miles of their common frontier.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 22-1998 Nov 9,
Hurricane Mitch was one of the Caribbean's deadliest storms ever
causing at least at least 9,000 deaths in Central America. The storm
hit Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama,
Jamaica, and Costa Rica. Later reports put the death toll in
Honduras to 6,076. In Nicaragua the deaths reached 4,000, in
Guatemala it was157, and in El Salvador it was 222. The storm parked
over Honduras and rain poured for 6 days straight. Aid of $66
mil was ordered from the US, $8 mil from the EU, $11.6 mil from
Spain along with pledges from other countries and private
organizations.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A9)(SFC, 11/6/98, p.A14)(AP,
9/11/04)(www.wunderground.com)
1998 Nov 8, The PRI led
gubernatorial elections in Puebla and Sinaloa but lost in Tlaxcala
Alfonso Sanchez Anaya of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
(SFC, 11/10/98, p.A12)
1998 Nov 11, Carlos Cabal
Peniche (42), accused of making some $700 million in loans from his
banks to companies he owned, was arrested in Melbourne, Australia.
He had vanished in 1994 just days before his Grupo Financiera
Cremi-Union was seized by the government for fraud and
mismanagement.
(SFC, 11/12/98, p.C18)
1998 Nov 18, Frederick McPhail
(27), a graduate student from NYU, was found dead in a car in Mexico
City. In 1999 13 current and former police officers were arrested as
suspects in a gang that robbed and kidnapped tourists. In 2000 6
former police officers received sentences as long as 98 years for
the death of McPhail, whom they robbed and forced to drink a bottle
of alcohol.
(SFC, 2/1/99, p.A7)
1998 Nov 21, It was reported
that hundreds of people had been evacuated from villages near Volcan
de Fuego, which threatened to erupt within days.
(SFC, 11/21/98, p.A6)
1998 Nov 23, In Mexico City
detectives arrested 44 city officers on charges that included,
murder, rape, extortion and abuse of power under orders by Police
Chief Alejandro Gertz Manero, who took office in August.
(SFC, 11/24/98, p.A12)
1998 Dec 14, In Mexico the
Senate approved a new law that ended restrictions limiting foreign
ownership of the nation’s top banks.
(SFC, 12/15/98, p.C2)
1998 Dec 14, In Chiapas 11
former officials were barred from holding public office for 10 years
for failing to stop the Dec 1997 massacre of 45 unarmed Indians.
(SFC, 12/15/98, p.C2)
1998 Dec 16, Philip True (50),
a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, was found dead in a
remote mountain range between Jalisco and Nayarit states in Mexico.
He went hiking the area Nov 29 to photograph and write about the
Huichol Indians and apparently fell into a deep ravine. A coroner’s
report later indicated that he had been strangled and dropped into
the ravine. In 2002 an appeals court overturned the acquittal of 2
Huichol Indians, who were arrested with True’s camera and backpack.
In 2005 Robert Rivard authored “Trail of Feathers: Searching for
Philip True.”
(SFC, 12/18/98, p.D6)(SFC, 5/31/02, p.A22)(SSFC,
12/11/05, p.M2)
1998 Dec 18, Fifty military
officers marched in Mexico City decrying corruption and injustice
and attempted to present Pres. Zedillo a letter calling for reform.
The officers called themselves the Patriotic Command to Raise the
Consciousness of the People.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A11)
1998 Dec 27, In Mexico 2
Huichol Indians, Juan Chivarrer Lopez and Miguel Hernandez de la
Cruz, were arrested for the murder of reporter Philip True.
(SFC, 12/28/98, p.B1)
1998 Aline Hernandez, former
wife of Sergio Andrade, published "To Glory Through Hell," an
account of public accusations of sexual abuse of young starlets
against pop music star Gloria Trevi and her manager Sergio Andrade.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A9)
1998 Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas
won the Mexican Octavio Paz Prize for poetry and essay writing.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.E5)
1998 High lead levels amongst
children living near the Met-Mex Penoles silver refinery at Torreon
were found. Met-Mex dispatched cleaning equipment and set up a
mobile clinic and agreed to put $6.6 million in a trust fund for
cleanup and medical costs. The 5,000-worker plant is the world's
largest producer of refined silver.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.A24)
1999 Jan 6, In Mexico police
chief Alejandro Gertz fired 6 of his top 8 subordinates for failing
to reduce crime and corruption.
(SFC, 1/7/99, p.A10)
1999 Jan 8, In Mexico City 5
dissident army officers of the Patriotic Command to Raise the
People's Consciousness were arrested. They had tried to present
Pres. Zedillo with a letter on Dec. 18 complaining of abuses of
soldiers by army commanders.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A14)(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A11)
1999 Jan 14, Mexican officials
authorized the first extradition of a major drug suspect to the US.
Jesus Amezcua faced federal indictments for methamphetamine
smuggling in California. His brother Adan Amezcua was released from
prison on May 19 after a judge found he had committed no crime.
(SFC, 1/15/99, p.A15)(SFC, 5/20/99, p.A13)
1999 Jan 21, Raul Salinas de
Gortari was convicted and sentenced to 50 years for the 1994
assassination of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu.
(SFC, 1/22/99, p.A10)
1999 Jan 22, Pope John Paul II
began a 5-day pilgrimage to Mexico and St. Louis. He was greeted by
Pres. Zedillo some 2 dozen official sponsors who would help defray
the $2 million costs of the 4-day visit.
(SFC, 1/22/99, p.A1)(SFC, 1/23/99, p.A10)
1999 Jan 25, Abecnego Monje
Ortiz (18) was shot in the back by a DEA agent as he crossed the Rio
Grande in an inner tube with 14 others near Eagle Pass, Texas. In
2001 the DEA agreed to pay Ortiz $1.75 million to help pay medical
costs. The DEA agent was sentenced in 2000 to 15 years in prison.
(SFC, 2/7/01, p.A14)
1999 Jan 27, In Mexico Jorge
Aguirre Meza (39), president of the Sinaloa state bar and a human
rights activist, was shot to death in Novalato.
(SFC, 1/30/99, p.A14)
1999 Feb 1, Hector Alejandro
Galindo, film director, died at age 93. He directed or scripted over
70 films and won at least 8 Ariels, the Mexican equivalent of the
Oscar.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A25)
1999 Feb 2, Gov. Gray Davis on
a visit to Mexico disclosed an agreement to get Mexico's leading
telecommunications firm to relocate its US headquarters from Houston
to San Diego. He negotiated the deal with Telmex chairman Carlos
Slim Helu.
(SFC, 2/3/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 3, Gov. Davis met with
Fernando Canales Clariond, governor of Nuevo Leon, and witnessed a
"Direct Line" meeting between the governor and citizens seeking
direct action.
(SFC, 2/4/99, p.A2)
1999 Feb 4, The Mexican
government revealed a new high-tech strategy against drug
trafficking.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.A12)
1999 Feb 7, The state
governorship election in Baja California Sur elected Leonel Cota of
the PRD to a landslide victory. The PRD lost in Guerrero and clamed
fraud and campaign spending violations.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/09/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 10, In Mexico 4 armed
seized teacher Roberto Mejia Guzman from a classroom at San Pedro
Petlacala and killed him.
(SFC, 2/13/99, p.A18)
1999 Feb 14, Pres. Clinton
traveled to Merida, Mexico, for talks with Pres. Ernesto Zedillo.
(SFC, 2/15/99, p.A8)
1999 Feb 15, President Clinton
continued his whirlwind visit to Mexico, where he conferred with
President Ernesto Zedillo. Clinton and Pres. Zedillo signed several
accords on economic measures and the drug war.
(AP, 2/15/04)(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 17, In Mexico armed
men kidnapped Alvaro Campos, the father of soccer star Jorge Campos,
near Acapulco. Campos was released after 6 days.
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.A15)(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A9)
1999 Feb 22, Governor elections
in Quintana Roo, Mexico, were held to replace Gov. Mario Villanueva,
whose term was scheduled to end Apr 5. Federal authorities wished to
charge the governor with drug money laundering, but he was immune
while holding office. His Swiss bank account was said to hold $73
million. The PRI won the statehouse with just over 43% of the vote.
In Hidalgo the PRI took the governorship with a 50% of the vote.
Joaquin Hendricks won the election in Quintana Roo.
(SFEC, 2/21/99, p.A23)(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A14)(SFC,
4/1/99, p.C2)
1999 Feb 22, From Mexico it was
reported that fisherman found 9 dead gray whales in the Magdalena
Bay.
(SFC, 2/22/99, p.A14)
1999 Feb 26, Mexico was
certified as a US partner in the drug war by Pres. Clinton.
(WSJ, 3/1/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 27, Brazilian poet
Haraldo de Campos (b.1929) won the Mexican Octavio Paz Prize for
poetry and essay writing. His major works include "Chess Game of the
Stars" and "The Education of the Five Senses."
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.E5)
1999 Mar 3, The PRI announced
that it would elect its candidate for year 2000 in a primary instead
of the traditional "dedazo," i.e. presidential appointment.
(SFC, 3/4/99, p.C5)
1999 Mar 10, In Mexico a power
failure at the Penitas hydroelectric plant cause a blackout across
the Yucatan for several hours.
(SFC, 3/11/99, p.A10)
1999 Mar 12, The Mexican
environmental Group of 100 reported a record number of dead gray
whales near the Baha California peninsula. The ESSA salt works, a
Mitsubishi-Mexican partnership, was blamed. Government officials
proposed other reasons.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A14)
1999 Mar 14, The PRD held party
elections, which were later revoked due to vote-rigging and
corruption.
(SFC, 4/3/99, p.A4)
1999 Mar 19, Jaime Sabines
(72), poet and politician, died. He served as a congressman for the
PRI from 1976-1979 and in 1988.
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.A21)
1999 Mar 24, Fernando Hernandez
Leyva was arrested near Cuernavaca for the suspected murders of some
137 people, 6 kidnappings and robberies. He was later sentenced to
30 years in prison for the murder of a former police officer.
(SFC, 8/18/99, p.C2)
1999 Mar 27, Quintana Roo Gov.
Mario Villanueva vanished 9 days before he was to leave office. In
May 2001 he was arrested by Mexican police in Cancun.
(WSJ, 11/28/01, p.A1,8)
1999 Mar 29, Two of the largest
banks agreed to plead guilty to laundering millions of dollars for
the Cali and Juarez drug cartels. Bancomer will pay $9.9 million in
fines while Banca Serfin will pay $4.7 million.
(SFC, 3/30/99, p.F2)
1999 Mar 29, Quintana Roo Gov.
Mario Villanueva failed to appear before anti-drug authorities in
Mexico City and it was suspected that he had gone into hiding.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.C2)(SFC, 2/21/00, p.A14)
1999 Mar, Five Juarez bus
drivers were charged with the murders of some 20 women. They all
confessed but most later retracted their statements saying they were
tortured by police.
(SFC, 2/23/01, p.A17)
1999 Apr 1, Effective on this
day the midday break, siesta, for government was eliminated.
Electricity savings were estimated to be $192 million.
(SFC, 3/17/99, p.C2)
1999 Apr 1, In Chilpancingo,
Guerrero, Rene Juarez was sworn into office as governor while
thousands protested that he won by fraud.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.D2)
1999 Apr 6, Jorge Madrazo,
Attorney Gen'l. of Mexico, called for the arrest of former Gov.
Mario Villanueva and over 100 public officials in Quintana Roo for
narcotics corruption with the Juarez cartel.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A12)
1999 Apr 20, Students at the
National Univ. in Mexico City (UNAM) went on strike to protest a
proposed increase in the cost of education from 2 cents to $200 per
year. The majority of students did not support the strike but
radical students forced the closure of classes and increased their
demands with a call for the return of an 'Automatic promotion" rule
that would give Univ. access regardless of academic performance.
(WSJ, 6/11/99, p.A19)
1999 Apr 23, A truck with 55
passengers plunged into a ravine killing 46 people, 28 of them
children from the hamlet of Chiquixvil in Chiapas.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.A9)
1999 May 2, Rodolfo Montiel, a
peasant leader in a struggle to protect the forests of the southern
Sierra Madre, was arrested, tortured and jailed on trumped-up drug
and weapons charges for his battle against US and local logging
companies. Teodoro Cabrera was also arrested. Pres. Fox ordered the
release of Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera on Nov 8, 2001.
(SFC, 4/6/00, p.A16)(SFC, 11/9/01, p.A20)
1999 May 12, It was reported
that a drought in northern Mexico was entering its 5th year and the
governor of Sonora said that his state had only a 25 day supply of
water.
(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A11)
1999 May 17, The PRI approved
new party rules to select its presidential candidate in primary
elections.
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.A1,11)
1999 May 18, Pres. Zedillo of
Mexico planned a 3-day visit to California.
(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A1)
1999 May 21, The northern
states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango and Sinaloa were
declared disaster areas due to the ongoing drought.
(SFC, 5/22/99, p.A16)
1999 May, Jorge Castenada
published "The Inheritance," an account of how the last 5 Mexican
presidents named their successors.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.A21)
1999 May, Altos Hornos de
Mexico SA (Ahmsa) faced $2.4 billion in debt and filed for
bankruptcy. The large steel maker company was taken private in 1991
by Alonso Ancira and Xavier Autrey. Ahmsa employed 17,000 people and
accounted for almost 30% of the business activity in Coahuila state.
(WSJ, 6/16/99, p.A1)
1999 Jul 1, Mexico planned to
introduce a $15 per person entry fee for travel into the country
beyond the border.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A21)
1999 Jun 7, In Mexico City
Francisco "Paco" Stanley Albaitero (56), a popular TV and radio
personality, was shot to death after leaving a restaurant. A parking
attendant was also killed and 3 people were wounded by unknown
gunmen. Traces of cocaine were later found in Stanley's car. Stanley
was later reported to be in big debt to drug lord Luis Ignacio
Amezcua Contreras, who ordered his murder. Stanley's sidekick, Mario
Rodriguez Bezares, was indicted for the murder along with Contreras
and Paola Durante (23), an aspiring actress.
(SFC, 6/8/99, p.A10)(SFC, 6/9/99, p.C2)(SFEC,
8/29/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 1/22/00, p.A1)
1999 Jun 15, A 6.7 earthquake
killed at least 12 people in Puebla. The death toll rose to 19 and
4,000 people were forced from their homes.
(SFC, 6/16/99, p.A1)(SFC, 6/17/99, p.A12)(SFC,
6/18/99, p.D3)
1999 Jun 29, In Mexico City
armed gunmen stole a $50,000 military payroll and killed an army
colonel and a lieutenant 2 blocks from the residence of Pres.
Zedillo.
(SFC, 6/30/99, p.A9)
1999 Jul 4, In Mexico City
elections for governor were scheduled. Arturo Montiel (55), a PRI
former congressman, faced Jose Luis Duran (38), a PAN mayor of
Naucalpan. PRI candidate Arturo Montiel defeated Jose Luis Duran of
the National Action Party. In Nayarit Antonuio Echeverria, a
coalition candidate, led a victory over the PRI.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A12)(SFC, 7/5/99, p.A8)
1999 Jul 6, It was reported
that Angel Salvador "El Chava" Gomez, leader of the Gulf drug
cartel, was killed execution style.
(SFC, 7/7/99, p.A10)
1999 Jul 16, A judge cut the 50
year prison sentence of Raul Salinas in half and a Swiss court
overturned the seizure of his stashed fortune, though the money
remained frozen pending further investigation.
(SFC, 7/17/99, p.A11)
1999 Aug 27, US prosecutors
detailed a 25-count narcotics and money laundering indictment
against former deputy attorney general Mario Ruiz Massieu.
(SFC, 8/28/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 15, In New Jersey
Mario Ruiz Massieu (48), former Mexican official indicted on drug
charges, committed suicide. He left a suicide note that implicated
Pres. Zedillo in the 1994 killing of his brother and presidential
candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.
(SFC, 9/16/99, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/17/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 22, The FBI hit a big
Mexican drug ring, formerly run by Amado Carillo Fuentes, with 93
arrests in the US and the Dominican Republic.
(WSJ, 9/23/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 25, From Mexico it was
reported that assaults on trucks had increased from 350 in 1993 to
an estimated 40,000 a year.
(SFC, 9/25/99, p.A12)
1999 Sep 26, In Mexico 63
people were killed in a series of explosions in the city of Celaya,
120 miles northwest of Mexico City. Powder from fireworks was
blamed. Three government officials were later arrested for abetting
illegal sales of fireworks and officials seized some 14 tons of
gunpowder. 6 government officials and 7 business owners were later
arrested in connection with the explosion.
(SFC, 9/27/99, p.A16)(SFC, 9/30/99, p.D14)(SFC,
10/13/99, p.A12)
1999 Sep 26, In Coahuila PRI
candidate Enrique Martinez won 60% of the vote and PRI mayors won in
the cities of Saltillo, Torreon, Piedras Negras and Monclova.
(SFC, 9/28/99, p.C16)
1999 Sep 28, Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas stepped down as mayor of Mexico City to launch his 3rd bid
for the presidency.
(SFC, 9/29/99, p.A10)
1999 Sep 29, Rosario Robles was
sworn in as the first female mayor of Mexico City.
(SFC, 9/30/99, p.D14)
1999 Sep 30, A 7.5 slab
earthquake was centered in Oaxaca state and killed 12 people. The
death toll rose to 20 and 3,850 buildings were reported damaged.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A14)(SFC, 10/2/99, p.A12)(SFC,
1/18/01, p.A15)
1999 Oct 5, Flooding from
Tropical Depression No. 11 killed at least 83 people in ten states
including 42 in Puebla after 7 rivers overflowed following heavy
rains. The death toll soon reached at least 342. A large mudslide in
Teziutlan left 72 confirmed dead and 30 people missing. The Catholic
Church expected the toll to reach near 600.
(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A16)(SFC, 10/7/99, p.A15)(SFC,
10/8/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/9/99, p.A10)(SFC, 10/11/99, p.A12)(SFC,
10/12/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 7, The Nahuatl village
of Acalana was buried under a collapsed mountain killing all but 30
people. As many as 200 people had lived there.
(SFC, 10/12/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 18, In Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, an explosion in a candy store that sold illegal fireworks
killed at least 5 people.
(SFC, 10/20/99, p.B3)
1999 Oct 22, Police arrested
Jacobo Silva Nogales (41), aka Comandante Antonio, leader of the
Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People, ERPI.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.B2)
1999 Oct 23, The first monarch
butterflies arrived at sanctuaries in Michoacan in their annual
migration.
(SFC, 11/6/99, p.A24)
1999 Oct 24, In Guadalajara
Victor Castaneda Casas was detained for his alleged role in the
kidnapping of an 18-year-old. He died in the attorney general's
office after receiving 40 blows to the head, 2 broken ribs and a
burst lung. Police denied any torture.
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.B3)
1999 Oct 30, Police reported
that Juan Jose Quintero Payan (57), a Juarez Cartel boss, was
arrested in Guadalajara.
(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A13)
1999 Nov 1, Mexico announced
plans to increase its border deposit for US registered vehicles from
$11 to as much as $800 for new models for travel beyond the 15-mile
border zone.
(SFC, 10/30/99, p.A1)
1999 Nov 7, Francisco
Labastida, the PRI candidate, led the presidential primary elections
far ahead of Roberto Madrazo. Labastida (57) won 272 of the 300
districts.
(SFC, 11/8/99, p.A1)(SFC, 11/9/99, p.A12)
1999 Nov 9, A TAESA DC-9 jet
exploded in flight near Uruapan and all 18 people onboard were
killed.
(SFC, 11/10/99, p.A14)
1999 Nov 23, Mexico suspended
the operations of Taesa Airline.
(SFC, 11/24/99, p.C5)
1999 Nov 24, Mexico and the EU
agreed on terms for a free trade treaty.
(SFC, 11/25/99, p.A14)
1999 Nov 29, Authorities worked
with a US FBI team to unearth as many as 100 bodies of disappeared
Mexicans and Americans near Ciudad Juarez. Drug traffickers were
believed responsible. By Dec 7 eight bodies were recovered. Nine
bodies were discovered after 3 weeks and initial estimates were
deemed in error. In 2000 Vicente Carillo Fuentes, believed to be in
charge of all drug trafficking in Ciudad Juarez, was charged with
killing 10 people in the area.
(SFC, 11/30/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A16)(SFC,
12/18/99, p.A16)(SFC, 9/15/00, p.A18)
1999 Dec 1, Border deposits of
as much as $800 for US registered cars began.
(SFC, 11/27/99, p.A18)
1999 Dec 2, Pres. Zedillo
suspended the controversial border car-deposit program under angry
opposition.
(SFC, 12/3/99, p.D5)
1999 Dec 10, Masked men with
guns attacked a prison in Chiapas and 44 of 239 inmates fled and a
5-month old child, whose mother was visiting her husband, was
killed.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.C2)
1999 Dec 14, A passenger bus
collided head-on with a gas truck and at least 26 people were killed
near Salvatierra in Guanajuato.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.B3)
1999 Ricardo Salinas Pliego
used Mexico’s TV Azteca to fund cellphone start-up Unefon SA,
despite assuring shareholders that he would not use the company to
fund outside ventures.
(WSJ, 12/8/05, p.A11)
2000 Jan 13, In Brazil Mexican
singer Gloria Trevi was arrested with her manager Sergio Andrade and
Maria Raquenal Portillo on Mexican charges of corrupting Karina
Yapor (17). Trevi became pregnant in May and rape was suspected.
Brasilia federal police chief Paulo Magalhaes was removed from his
post in October.
(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A10)(SFC, 10/18/01, p.C2)
1999 Manuel Gonzales published
"Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States."
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.10)
1999 The documentary film "A
Place Called Chiapas" was directed by Canadian Nettie Wild.
(SFC, 6/10/99, p.E3)
2000 Jan 5, A student takeover
of the El Mexe Rural Teachers College began in Tepatepec, Hidalgo.
(SFC, 2/21/00, p.A10)
2000 Jan 20, It was reported
that the TV soap "The Candidate" used significant political events
of the day as part of its show segments.
(SFC, 1/20/00, p.A12)
2000 Jan-Mar, Some 2,300 head
of cattle died on 92 ranches in Chiapas from rabies due to vampire
bats.
(SFC, 4/5/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 1, In Mexico 171
radical students were arrested in a skirmish with anti-strike
students and security forces at a university-affiliated high school
in Mexico City.
(SFC, 2/4/00, p.D5)
2000 Feb 1, In Chiapas 3
supporters of the Zapatista rebels were killed in an ambush at
Chavajebal. Paramilitary supporters of the government were
suspected.
(SFC, 2/4/00, p.D8)
2000 Feb 6, In Mexico City
police raided the main campus of the university and arrested some
632 striking students including 8 student leaders.
(SFC, 2/7/00, p.A14)(WSJ, 2/7/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 19, People in
Tepatepec, Hidalgo, captured at least 65 policemen after state
police raided the El Mexe Rural Teachers College. The police
were later freed after the release of hundreds of students and
supporters.
(SFC, 2/21/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 21, Nicolas Caletri
(44), kidnapping mastermind, was captured in southern Oaxaca.
(SFC, 2/26/00, p.C1)
2000 Feb 27, In Tijuana
municipal police chief Alfredo de la Torre Marquez (49) was shot to
death by assassins who sprayed his car with over 100 bullets.
(SFC, 2/28/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 8, Police announced
that 6 suspects were arrested for the slaying of a police chief in
Tijuana and 14 other people. The suspects were reported to be acting
as hit men under orders from Vicente Zambada Niebla, the son of a
drug trafficker in Sinaloa.
(SFC, 3/9/00, p.A11)
2000 Mar 8, Juan Manuel Izabal,
a top aide to the attorney general, was found dead from suicide. A
stash of $700,000 was also found.
(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A12)
2000 Mar 12, Police captured
Jesus Labra, leader of the Arellano Felix drug organization at a
soccer game in Tijuana.
(SFC, 3/13/00, p.11)
2000 Mar 15, Gustavo Galvez
Reyes (32), the lawyer for Jesus Labra, was found slain in southern
Mexico City. Labra, a Tijuana businessman and uncle of the Arellano
Felix brothers, was in jail on narcotics charges.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.C1)
2000 Apr 5, Rodolfo Montiel, an
imprisoned peasant leader, was awarded the $125,000 Goldman
Environmental Prize for his efforts to protect the forests of the
Sierra Madre.
(SFC, 4/6/00, p.A16)
2000 Apr 13, In Mexico 7 people
died in a train carrying illegal immigrants from Central America in
a bid to enter the US. 46 people were hospitalized from suffocating
conditions.
(WSJ, 4/14/00, p.A10)
2000 Apr, The population
reached 100 million this year.
(SFC, 4/27/00, p.A10)
2000 Apr, Three Mexican special
agents, probing the Arellano Felix cartel, were found killed along
the Rumorosa Highway between Tijuana and Mexicali. In October 3
former federal police officers were arrested for the killing.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.A12)
2000 May 3, Police arrested
Ismael Higuera Guerrero, a senior member of the Arellano Felix drug
gang, along with his son (15) and 8 others near Ensenada.
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.A15)
2000 May 11, Mexico reached a
free-trade agreement with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
(SFC, 5/12/00, p.D2)
2000 Jun 15, US federal agents
made over 170 arrests in the breakup of a Mexican heroin ring based
in Nayarit state. The US-based ringleader, Oscar Hernandez (35), and
his wife, Maria Lopez (39), were arrested in Panorama City.
Operation Tar Pit began last October in San Diego.
(SFC, 6/16/00, p.A5)
2000 Jun 16, American
expatriates Norris (67) and Nancy (62) Price were found shot to
death in Ajijic near Guadalajara. A land dispute was suspected.
(SFC, 6/17/00, p.A10)
2000 Jun, In the weeks before
the presidential elections Pemex illegally gave $120 million to its
union which in turn turned it over to the PRI to help finance the
campaign. It was later suspected that some or all of the money was
diverted to private pockets.
(WSJ, 2/15/02, p.A17)
2000 Jul 2, In Mexico Vincente
Fox (58) and his national Action Party (PAN) claimed victory over
the ruling PRI. This ended the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s
71-year reign. In 2004 Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon authored
"Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy."
(SFC, 7/3/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/3/00, p.A8)(AP,
7/2/01)(SSFC, 2/14/04, p.M1)
2000 Jul 3, The elections
showed 42.7% for Vincente Fox, 35.8% for Labastida, and 16.5% for
Cardenas.
(SFC, 7/4/00, p.A11)
2000 Jul 4, President-elect
Vincente Fox promised to fight corruption, to restart talks with the
Zapatista rebels, and to strip the Interior Ministry of all
functions but those involving political relations between the
federal and state governments.
(SFC, 7/5/00, p.A4)
2000 Jul 10, In Mexico Augustin
Vasquez Mendoza was arrested in Tehuacan. In 2005 he was extradited
from Mexico to the United States to stand trial for his role in the
murder of DEA Special Agent Richard Fass in Glendale, Arizona, on
June 30, 1994.
(SFC, 7/11/00,
p.A10)(http://crime.about.com/b/a/145527.htm)
2000 Jul 22, Mexican women
staged a one-day strike, more symbolic than massive, over housework.
(SFEC, 7/23/00, p.B16)
2000 Jul 31, Aides of Vincente
Fox announced plans to transform the police and judiciary and to
demilitarize the anti-narcotics programs.
(SFC, 8/1/00, p.A8)
2000 Aug 4, Ildefonso Salido
Ibarra, owner of the El Debate newspaper, was kidnapped in Sinaloa
state. He was released after 4 days.
(SFEC, 11/12/00,
p.A19)(http://tinyurl.com/25oh9b)
2000 Aug 18, Fifteen people
were killed when violence broke out during the inauguration of Mayor
Jesus Tolentino in Chimalhuacan, a suburb of Mexico City and part of
the area known as the misery belt. Tolentino defeated Guadalupe
Buendia a PRI cacique (power broker). Buendia supporters battled
with Antorcha Popular (Popular Torch), widely regarded as a
paramilitary movement. [see Aug 27]
(SFC, 8/19/00, p.A9)(WSJ, 8/28/00, p.A1)(SFEC,
9/3/00, p.A20)
2000 Aug 20, In Chiapas Pablo
Salazar, an ally of Vincente Fox, was elected governor over Sami
David of the PRI 57% to 42%.
(SFC, 8/21/00, p.A8)
2000 Aug 24, Pres. Clinton met
with Pres.-elect Vincente Fox of Mexico. Fox promoted his ideas on
an open border.
(SFC, 8/25/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 27, Guadalupe Buendia,
the defeated PRI mayor of Chimalhuacan known as the "She Wolf," was
arrested for the earlier attack on a rival faction that killed 15
people. She had also reportedly emptied the city treasury. Buendia
was the founder of the Organizacion de Pueblos y Colonias (OPC), an
organization of villages and neighborhoods, and drew support from
thousands of housewives and municipal workers.
(WSJ, 8/28/00, p.A1)(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.A20)
2000 Aug 28, Rodolfo Montiel,
winner of a 2000 Goldman environmental prize for fighting rampant
deforestation, was convicted on drugs and weapons charges and
sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in jail. Human rights groups
allege that he was tortured and that the charges were trumped up.
(SFC, 8/29/00, p.A1)
2000 Aug 31, Retired Gen.
Francisco Hermosillo and Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro
were arrested for collaborating with the Juarez drug cartel.
(SFC, 9/2/00, p.A14)
2000 Sep 1, Pres. Zedillo gave
his last State of the Nation address.
(SFC, 9/2/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 5, Cuco Sanchez,
singer, actor and composer, died at age 79.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.D5)
2000 Oct 6, In Reynosa, Mexico,
a DC932 plane with 83 passengers overran a runway and crashed into a
group of homes and then a canal. 6 people walking along the canal
were killed.
(SFC, 10/7/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 20, In Mexico City a
fire at the Lohobombo salsa club killed at least 19 people.
(SFC, 10/21/00, p.A13)
2000 Oct 22, Manuel Andrade
(PRI) was declared the winner of the governor’s race in Tabasco by
8,000 votes over Raul Ojeda. A federal court overturned the victory.
New elections were held in 2001.
(SFC, 10/24/00, p.A16)(SFC, 8/6/01, p.A8)
2000 Nov, Some 50,000 unionized
sugar-mill workers went on a nation-wide strike. The industry was
antiquated and in deep debt following years of PRI subsidies.
(WSJ, 11/30/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 1, Pres. Vicente Fox
assumed office.
(WSJ, 12/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 2, In Chiapas
Subcommander Marcos announced that he would begin talks with the
government in Mexico City in Feb.
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.A12)
2000 Dec 5, Adolfo Aguilar
Zinser, the new chief of the national security council, vowed to end
illegal wiretapping.
(SFC, 12/6/00, p.C3)
2000 Dec 5, In Mexico City
Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador took office as mayor and vowed to
delegate power and resources down to the 1,352 neighborhood
governments. Obrador appointed women to 9 of his 15 cabinet seats.
(SFC, 12/6/00, p.C3)
2000 Dec 6, Pres. Fox submitted
a tight $142 billion budget.
(SFC, 12/7/00, p.C9)
2000 Dec 15, Pres. Fox planned
to be at border crossings to receive Mexicans returning home for the
holidays. He planned to reduce or eliminate blackmailing and
cheating by border guards.
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.A12)
2000 Dec 17, Thousands were
ordered to evacuate the area around the Popocatepetl volcano due to
the formation of a lava dome.
(WSJ, 12/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 18, Popocatepetl
volcano began spraying hot rock and ashes in its biggest eruption in
1200 years.
(SFC, 12/21/00, p.A22)
2000 Dec 19, In Mexico over
30,000 people were evacuated from the area of the Popocatepetl
volcano as the volcano resumed activity.
(SFC, 12/20/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 22, In Mexico the army
closed a base in Chiapas and continued to pull troops from the
region.
(SFC, 12/23/00, p.A14)
2000 Dec 28, Congress voted to
register millions of 2nd hand vehicles imported illegally in past
years.
(SFC, 12/29/00, p.B3)
2000 Dec 29, Congress approved
a $140 million budget.
(SFC, 12/30/00, p.A10)
2000 Dec 29, A court ruled
that the governor’s race in Tabasco was fatally marred and called
for new elections.
(SFC, 12/30/00, p.A8)
2000 Dec 30, In Chiapas the
head prosecutor freed 17 jailed Zapatista rebels.
(SFC, 12/31/00, p.A18)
2000 Dec 30, The legislature of
Tabasco state amended the state constitution to delay the elections
for 18 months.
(SFC, 12/31/00, p.A18)
2000 Dec 31, Pres. Fox ordered
a 2nd military base closed in Chiapas.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A12)
2000 Dec 31, The outgoing
Tabasco state Congress named Enrique Priego as acting governor.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A12)
2000 Dec, In Oaxaca state
dozens of hooded men dressed in black stormed into the town of
Nazareno de Etla and announced a "New Revolution." They called
themselves the Armed Forces of the People’s Revolution (FARP).
(SFC, 1/5/01, p.A16)
2000 Carlos Fuentes authored
his novel "The Years with Laura Diaz," a chronicle of the 20th
century through the eyes of a Mexican woman.
(SSFC, 12/17/00, BR p.3)
2000 Carlos Salinas, a former
president, authored "Mexico: A Difficult Step Toward Modernity."
Salinas blamed his successor Ernesto Zedillo, for Mexico’s
1995 financial crises.
(SFC, 10/11/00, p.A12)
2000 Imprisoned Gen. Jose
Francisco Gallardo contributed several chapters to the book "Always
Near, Always Far: The Armed Forces in Mexico," which included
proposed military reforms.
(SFC, 9/1/00, p.D3)
2000 The Mexican film “Amores
Perros,” a gritty tale of dogs, crime and violence, was produced.
(Econ, 9/14/13, p.46)
2000 In Mexico Alberto
Patishtan was arrested for the murder of seven policemen, who were
killed in an ambush in Chiapas state. Although he denied committing
the crime, he was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to 60 years in
prison. On Oct 31, 2013, he was released under a pardon by President
Enrique Pena Nieto after the government found evidence the teacher's
rights had been abused.
(Reuters, 10/31/13)
2000 Pernod Ricard SA acquired
the Mexican tequila producer Viuda de Romero.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
2001 Jan 1, In Tabasco
opposition legislators from the leftist Democratic Revolution Party
rejected the interim governor chosen the previous day by the
outgoing legislature with a violent brawl.
(SFC, 1/2/01, p.A10)
2001 Jan 1, In Mexico rebels
soon called for the closure all 7 military bases near rebel
strongholds.
(SFC, 1/2/01, p.A9)
2001 Jan 1, In Acapulco 8 armed
men charged into the home of journalist Jorge Torres Palacios and
killed his father, brother and cousin. Police sought Abel Arizmendi
Flores, the top elected official from the reporter’s village.
(SFC, 1/2/01, p.A9)
2001 Jan 2, In Tabasco
opposition legislators elected a 2nd interim governor, Adan Lopez,
sec.-gen. of the state PRI.
(SFC, 1/3/01, p.A10)
2001 Jan 10, The government
shut down a 3rd military base in Chiapas.
(SFC, 1/11/01, p.A14)
2001 Jan 11, In Tabasco Adan
Augusto Lopez stepped aside as governor and agreed to recognize
rival Enrique Priego.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A18)
2001 Jan 17, Chihuahua Gov.
Patricio Martinez was wounded by a shot from Victoria Loya, a former
police officer.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)
2001 Jan 18, The Supreme Court
ruled 10-1 to allow the extradition to the US of 2 drug traffickers.
(SFC, 1/20/01, p.A10)
2001 Jan 19, Joaquin Guzman
Loera, aka "El Chapo," escaped from the maximum-security prison in
Jalisco state. Leonardo Beltran, the prison director, and 30
officers were detained for possible involvement in the cocaine
trafficker’s escape. 78 people were later implicated.
(SSFC, 1/21/01, p.D4)(SFC, 2/21/01, p.A11)
2001 Jan 30, Rodolfo Morales,
Oaxacan artist, died at age 75.
(SFC, 2/2/01, p.D7)
2001 Feb 2, Mexico agreed to
sell a small amount of power to California.
(SFC, 2/3/01, p.A8)
2001 Feb 3, Mexico followed
Canada and the US in a ban on beef from Brazil due to fears of mad
cow disease.
(WSJ, 2/5/01, p.A17)
2001 Feb 6, A trade tribunal
ordered the US to allow Mexican trucks to cross the border following
a NAFTA arbitration process.
(SFC, 2/7/01, p.A3)
2001 Feb 9, Pres. Fox
inaugurated a $50 million aid plan for Chiapas. Yucatan’s PRI Gov.
Victor Cervera refused to accept a state electoral commission.
(SFC, 2/10/01, p.A10)(WSJ, 2/12/01, p.A18)
2001 Feb 15, Hooded gunmen shot
and killed 12 villagers in the village of Limoncito de Ayala in
Sinaloa state.
(SFC, 2/16/01, p.D2)
2001 Feb 16, Pres. Bush met
with Pres. Fox in Mexico. They announced a joint agenda to expand
trade, protect immigrant rights and reduce drug trafficking.
(SFC, 2/17/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 22, Jose Juarez
Rosales (24) was arrested in Dallas for alleged multiple sexual
assaults and murders in Ciudad Juarez.
(SFC, 2/23/01, p.A17)
2000 Feb 24, Zapatista rebel
leader Subcommander Marcos began a 2,000-mile caravan to Mexico City
to lobby for Indian rights.
(SSFC, 2/25/01, p.A14)
2001 Feb 27, Some 30 protesters
were injured and another 30 arrested near the meeting of the World
Economic Forum in Cancun.
(SFC, 2/28/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb, It was reported that
millions of monarch butterflies had died at a hilltop reserve in
Michoacan. Insecticides were suspected while officials blamed cold
weather.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C6)
2001 Mar 11, Some 100,000
supporters filled the square of Mexico City as the Zapatista rebels
arrived. "We are here to shout for and to demand democracy, liberty
and justice."
(SFC, 3/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 12, The Fox
administration announced its " Plan Puebla-Panama," an effort to
close the economic gap between the north and poorer south.
(SFC, 3/13/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 12, Zapatista rebels
invaded the Naha nature preserve in southern Chiapas, home of
Lacandon Indians, and took over some 250 acres of the 7,500-acre
preserve.
(SFC, 3/13/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 21, Pres. Vicente Fox
arrived in California for his 1st foreign trip as President of
Mexico. He appealed to Gov. Davis to allow Mexicans in California
greater access to doors of opportunity.
(SFC, 3/21/01, p.A1)(SFC, 3/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 22, The Chamber of
Deputies voted to allow Zapatista leaders to speak before an
informal session of Congress.
(SFC, 3/23/01, p.D2)
2001 Mar 28, Zapatistas told
the Mexican legislature that the military phase of their struggle
was over and that political efforts would take precedence.
(SFC, 3/29/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 3, US agents seized
over 7 tons of marijuana from a tractor-trailer at the Tijuana
border. It was believed to be the largest seizure along the
US-Mexican border and was valued at $12.1 million.
(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A4)
2001 Apr 5, Brig. Gen. Ricardo
Martinez was arrested with aides Capt. Pedro Maya and Lt. Javier
Quevedo on drug trafficking charges.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A14)
2001 Apr 19, There was an
execution style slaying of 8 peasants of the Fray Bartolome Alliance
in the Chiapas village of Canalucum. [see Jun 25]
(SFC, 6/26/01, p.C2)
2001 Apr 21, Humberto Iribe
Monroy (26) was arrested as a suspect in the Tijuana slayings of 2
US citizens, a 1998 killing of an American investigator, and the
July murder of the son of singer Beatriz Adriana Flores.
(SFC, 4/23/01, p.A10)
2001 Apr 28, The Congress
approved broad constitutional reforms granting autonomy and other
rights to millions of indigenous people.
(SSFC, 4/29/01, p.A16)
2001 Apr 30, Zapatista rebels
broke off contact with the government due to the watered down Indian
rights legislation.
(SFC, 5/1/01, p.A9)
2001 May 3, Pres. Bush met with
Pres. Fox of Mexico and discussed temporary visas for Mexican
workers and plans for long-range energy development.
(SFC, 5/4/01, p.D3)
2001 May 4, In Putla, Oaxaca,
Fidel Bautista Guerrero (33), a Mixtec Indian, was shot to death. He
had organized Indian farmers to conserve forests. The killers were
pursued to the ranch of timber baron Efrain Cruz Bruno and 8 men
with AK 47s and other rifles were arrested.
(SFC, 7/5/01, p.A10)
2001 May 17, It was reported
that the Mexican government would provide survival kits to citizens
planning to cross into the US illegally.
(SFC, 5/17/01, p.A1)
2001 May 23, In Arizona 12
illegal Mexican immigrants were found dead due to dehydration. 2
more were found dead the next day. In 2002 Jesus Lopez-Ramos, one of
3 smugglers, was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In 2004 Luis
Alberto Urrea authored "The Devil's Highway: A True Story," about
the ill-fated crossing.
(SFC, 5/24/01, p.A3)(SFC, 5/25/01, p.A3)(SFC,
2/23/02, p.A5)(SSFC, 4/11/04, p.M2)
2001 May 27, In gubernatorial
elections in Yucatan Patricio Patron of the National Action Party
led Orlando Paredes of the PRI.
(SFC, 5/28/01, p.B12)
2001 May 29, In Mexico City
Jesus Ignacio Carrola Gutierrez, a former director of the judicial
police, was found slain execution-style with his 2 brothers. Carrola
had resigned in 1997 under pressure of alleged links to drug
traffickers and human rights abuses by police under his command.
(SFC, 5/30/01, p.A12)
2001 May, Mexican police in
Cancun arrested former Quintana Roo Gov. Mario Villanueva, who had
vanished in 1999 just prior to the end of his term.
(WSJ, 11/28/01, p.A1,8)
2001 Jun 12, Alcides Ramon
Magana, former federal police officer and drug kingpin, was arrested
in Villahermosa.
(SFC, 6/14/01, p.C3)
2001 Jun 15, Mexico’s Pres. Fox
launched his Plan Puebla-Panama aimed at helping the poorer south
and the poor countries of Central America. The program was launched
June 15, but by 2007 only $4.5 billion of a projected $50 billion
had been invested. In 2007 Pres. Calderon re-launched the program.
(Econ, 4/14/07,
p.41)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Puebla_Panama)
2001 Jun 22, The US and Mexico
unveiled a new border safety pact with measures to prevent migrants
from crossing at deadly transit points and planned to equip US
agents with nonlethal weapons.
(SFC, 6/23/01, p.A1)
2001 Jun 22, Ron Lavender (75),
an Iowa-born real estate agent, was kidnapped in Acapulco. A ransom
of $2.5 million was demanded. Lavender was released Oct 16 and
refused to file a criminal complaint.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.C2)
2001 Jun 25, In Chiapas some
300 police officers arrested 13 members of the leftist House of the
People. They were suspected to be connected to the Apr 19 slaying of
8 peasants of the Fray Bartolome Alliance.
(SFC, 6/26/01, p.C2)
2001 Jul 2, Mexican President
Vicente Fox married his spokeswoman and long-time love, Martha
Sahagun, a year to the day after his election victory.
(AP, 7/2/02)
2001 Jul 5, The Security
Ministry reported that Mexico’s police solved only 8% of the
nation’s crimes.
(WSJ, 7/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 18, Congress gave
final approval to an Indian rights law that was opposed by many
Indian organizations.
(SFC, 7/20/01, p.A17)
2001 Jul 25, Carlos Pacheco
Beltran was lynched in the Magdalena Petlacalpo neighborhood of
Mexico City after trying to steal from the neighborhood church.
(SFC, 8/1/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 2, Carlos Natividad
Garibay (21), a suspected thief, died of skull injuries In
Guadalajara after being beaten by shopkeepers.
(SFC, 8/4/01, p.A10)
2001 Aug 3, Banamex was
acquired by Citigroup in a $12.5 billion deal.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 5, New governor
elections were held in Tabasco with Manuel Andrade facing Raul
Ojeda. Early results gave the victory to Andrade of the PRI.
(SFC, 8/6/01, p.A8)(SFC, 8/7/01, p.A6)
2001 Aug 8, In Mexico City
branches of Banamex were bombed. Police later arrested 5 alleged
members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP).
(SFC, 8/15/01, p.A7)
2001 Aug 22, Maria A. Caraveo
of Brownsville was found shot to death with her 3 children, aged
9-13, outside Guadalajara. Police searched for Benito Martin Mar,
Caraveo’s husband.
(SFC, 8/24/01, p.D2)
2001 Aug 30, On the Int’l. Day
of the Disappeared relatives of some of the 500 people who
disappeared from 1970 to 2000 filed a criminal complaint against the
last 5 presidents.
(SFC, 8/31/01, p.D6)
2001 Sep 1, Pres. Fox gave his
1st state-of-the-union address. He asked for more time to live up to
promises and appealed to Congress for help.
(SSFC, 9/2/01, p.A12)
2001 Sep 3, The government
announced the expropriation of 27 of 60 privately owned sugar mills
from some $110 million. All were on the brink of bankruptcy.
(SFC, 9/4/01, p.A7)
2001 Sep 4, The US and Mexico
agreed on small measures to improve food safety, enhance law
enforcement and fight money laundering as Pres. Fox came to visit
with Pres. Bush.
(SFC, 9/5/01, p.A3)
2001 Sep 5, Maria de los
Angeles Tames, attorney and daughter of a former senator, was
killed. On Mar 5, 2002, Juan Antonio Dominguez, mayor of Atizapan,
was arrested in connection with the slaying of the city council
member, who had planned to reveal evidence of corruption and drug
trafficking. On Apr 10, 2002 Dominguez and his former chief of staff
Daniel Garcia were charged with masterminding the murder.
(SFC, 3/7/02, p.A7)(WSJ, 4/12/02, p.A1)
2001 Sep 12, In Mexico a
twin-engine LET 410 plane crashed in the Yucatan and all 19 people
aboard were killed. The 16 passengers were all Seattle-area tourists
on a Holland America cruise.
(SFC, 9/13/01, p.C3)(SFC, 9/14/01, p.A32)
2001 Oct 19, Digna Ochoa (38),
a prominent human rights lawyer, was found shot to death in Mexico
City. She was shot once in the left leg and again in the head. In
2003 a prosecutor said her death was a probable suicide.
(SSFC, 10/21/01, p.A22)(AP, 7/19/03)
2001 Oct 22, The government
selected a site in the lake Texcoco area for a new $2.3 billion
airport for Mexico City. The decision had been deferred since 1968.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.A13)
2001 Oct 30, Felipe Santander
(68), playwright, died in Ocotepec. His work included "El
Extensionista."
(SFC, 11/1/01, p.A23)
2001 Oct, Mexico's Supreme
Court ruled that life in prison, or any term without guaranteed
parole, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the
constitution.
(SSFC, 8/10/03, p.A1)
2001 Nov 6, Authorities in
Ciudad Juarez found the bodies of 3 young women. 5 more bodies were
found the next day. Mexican authorities later built a somber
memorial of concrete benches, a circular water fountain also made of
concrete and a cement plaque with the names of the eight victims.
The families of three of the women appealed in 2003 for the court,
which is a body of the Organization of American States, to take up
the case. On Nov 7, 2011, Mexico's government publicly apologized
for failing to prevent the killings of the three women and for the
negligence of officials in investigating the crimes.
(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A19)(AP, 11/7/11)
2001 Nov 11, Lazaro Cardena of
the leftist PRD won 42% of the votes for governor in Michoacan state
vs. 37% Alfredo Anaya of the PRI.
(SFC, 11/13/01, p.A14)
2001 Nov 27, The Nat’l. Human
Rights Commission issued a 3,000 page report that acknowledged at
least 275 leftists disappeared while in government hands during the
1970s. The names of 74 officials implicated in the forced
disappearances were not made public.
(SFC, 11/28/01, p.A4)
2001 Dec 3, Gov. Davis of
California met with Pres. Fox and Mexican legislators in Mexico City
to discuss economic solutions on mutual interests.
(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 3, Juan Jose Arreola
(83), nationalist author, died. His work included "La Feria" (1962).
(SFC, 12/5/01, p.A23)
2001 Jorge Emilio Gonzalez took
over leadership of Mexico’s Green Party from his father.
(WSJ, 7/8/04, p.A10)
2002 Jan 3, Juan Garcia
Esquivel, pianist and composer, died at age 83. He turned out 10
albums in the US from 1957-1963.
(SFC, 1/10/02, p.A16)
2002 Jan 6, It was reported
that Mexico had a national service program that required
participation by all university graduates and that medical students
were required to work in disadvantaged communities for one year
before being licensed.
(SSFC, 1/6/02, p.A3)
2002 Jan 12, Amparo Montes
(Amparo Meza Cruz), boleros singer, died in Mexico City. She was
77-81 years old.
(SFC, 1/14/02, p.B5)
2002 Jan 12-13, A rain storm
was followed by a freeze and as many as 270 million monarch
butterflies were killed at the Rosario and Sierra Chincua colonies
in Michoacan state.
(SFC, 2/12/02, p.A4)(SFC, 2/18/02, p.A3)
2002 Jan 18, Feliz Alonso
Fernandez Garcia, editor of the weekly Nueva Opcion magazine, was
shot and killed after filing a report that linked former mayor Raul
Rodriguez Barrera and drug traffickers.
(SFC, 1/24/02, p.A8)
2002 Jan 19, Federal officials
froze the bank accounts 9 current and former executive of Petroleos
Mexicano in a $120 million corruption scheme tied to the PRI.
(SFC, 1/22/02, p.A8)
2002 Feb 3, In Cuba Fidel
Castro met with Pres. Fox of Mexico.
(SFC, 2/4/02, p.A4)
2002 Feb 4, In Havana Pres. Fox
of Mexico met with 7 prominent dissidents.
(SFC, 2/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Feb 10, Sinaloa state
police reportedly shot and killed drug boss Ramon Felix Arellano
(37).
(SFC, 2/23/02, p.A12)
2002 Feb 24, In Mexico City the
PRI held its 1st ever open election for party leadership.
(SFC, 2/25/02, p.A7)
2002 Mar 4, The PRI named
Roberto Madrazo, former gov. of Tabasco, as its new leader.
(WSJ, 3/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 8, In Mexico Ines
Fernandez and Valentina Rosendo, two indigenous Me'phaa women from
the state of Guerrero, reported that they had been raped and
tortured by members of the Mexican Army. Since then, they have been
subject to a constant stream of threats to keep them from speaking
about the incidents. On Dec 15, 2011, Interior Secretary Alejandro
Poire offered what he called "the most sincere of apologies" to
Valentina Rosendo.
(http://tinyurl.com/7bdvlyk)(AP, 12/16/11)
2002 Mar 9, In Pueblo police
arrested Benjamin Arellano Felix, head of the Tijuana drug cartel.
(SSFC, 3/10/02, p.A14)
2002 Mar 13, Manuel Herrera
Barraza, a senior member of the Arellano Felix gang, was arrested.
(SFC, 3/15/02, p.A12)
2002 Mar 21, A UN meeting on
poverty, despair and violence opened in Mexico City.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A13)
2002 Mar 22, Pres. Bush
addressed the UN meeting in Monterey, Mexico, and called on wealthy
nations to link foreign aid to economic reform.
(SFC, 3/23/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 24, Rosario Robles,
former mayor of Mexico City, was declared head of the Democratic
Revolution Party.
(SFC, 3/25/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 8, Pres. Fox and the
Maquila and Export Industry Council signed an agreement to improve
working conditions for female factory workers.
(SFC, 4/9/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 9, In Mexico the
Senate voted 71-41 to deny Pres. Fox permission to travel to the US
and Canada next week. They wanted him to spend more time on domestic
concerns.
(SFC, 4/10/02, p.A14)
2002 Apr 10, In Mexico 41 state
and city police from Tijuana and Tecate were arrested in Baja on
charges of corruption and smuggling during a meeting at the state
police academy.
(SFC, 4/11/02, p.A10)(SFC, 4/12/02, p.A9)
2002 May 6, Jose Luis Nieto
(56) raced his pickup into a crowd of toddlers in Ecatepec, near
Mexico City, and killed 2 children aged 2 and 3. A daily school
ceremony had blocked access to his house.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A12)
2002 May 10, Masked gunmen
killed 11 people at a Mother’s Day party in Santiago de la Ajoya, 40
miles north of Mazatlan.
(SSFC, 5/12/02, p.A11)
2002 May 10, A truck with 8
tons of sodium cyanide was hijacked in central Mexico. The truck was
later found but 76 drums of the chemical were missing. Most of the
drums were found dumped near the village of Honey following an
18-day search. All the drums were later recovered.
(SFC, 5/28/02, p.A7)(SFC, 5/30/02, p.A8)(SFC,
5/31/02, p.A11)
2002 May 13, Two police
officers were killed in a shootout with suspected ERP rebels at a
water treatment plant in Buena Vista de Cuellar, Guerrero state.
(SFC, 5/14/02, p.A13)
2002 May 24, In Mexico Pres.
Fox announced that all of Mexico’s waters are a preserve for whales
and off-limits to whale hunting.
(SFC, 5/25/02, p.A13)
2002 May 26, In Veracruz police
arrested Jesus Albino Quintero Meraz along with 6 associates and a
federal police officer for cocaine trafficking.
(SFC, 5/28/02, p.A9)
2002 May 31, In southern Mexico
gunmen ambushed a truckload of people and killed 26 in Agua Fria.
The dead were all from Santiago Xochiltepec and were victims of a
land dispute. 16 suspects were later arrested.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A12)(SFC, 6/3/02, p.A3)
2002 Jun 9, A farmer and his
two grown children were hacked to death with machetes by their
relatives in a family dispute over a plot of land in southern Oaxaca
state.
(AP, 6/9/02)
2002 Jun 10, President Vicente
Fox signed Mexico's first freedom of information law on Monday,
exposing the government and its records to greater public scrutiny.
(AP, 6/10/02)
2002 Jun 19, President Vicente
Fox is releasing nearly 80 million secret intelligence files
collected over decades, vowing that Mexico's government will never
again use spying and violence against its critics.
(AP, 6/19/02)
2002 Jun 28, In Mexico City
gunmen with assault rifles tried to hold up an armored car, killing
three guards and wounding two others, but getting no money.
(AP, 6/28/02)
2002 Jul 3, In western Mexico 5
people returning from a political rally, among them a 101-year-old
man, were ambushed and shot to death.
(AP, 7/3/02)
2002 Jul 3, Brazil and Mexico
signed a trade agreement that reduced import duties on some 800
products.
(WSJ, 7/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Jul 5, In Mexico Katy
Jurado (78), the actress who played a sultry wildcat in some of the
top American films of the 1950s and gained an Academy Award
nomination, died.
(AP, 7/5/02)
2002 Jul 12, In Mexico farmers
desperate to keep their land from being seized for a new Mexico City
airport threatened to kill about a dozen hostages and spark
uprisings across the country.
(AP, 7/12/02)
2002 Jul 14, Mexican state
officials freed 10 prisoners in hopes of winning freedom for
hostages held by farmers protesting construction of a new Mexico
City airport.
(AP, 7/15/02)
2002 Jul 15, In Mexico farmers
ended their protest of a proposed new airport for Mexico City and
released 19 hostages after the government promised to reconsider
construction terms.
(SFC, 7/16/02, p.A5)
2002 Jul 26, Jose Juan Palafox,
a regional director of Mexico's main intelligence agency was slain
in the border city of Tijuana, the 11th person killed this week in
what authorities say is an escalating drug war.
(AP, 7/27/02)
2002 Jul 30, Pope John Paul II
began a three-day visit to Mexico to canonize Juan Diego, the first
Indian saint. He arrived from Guatemala to a greeting by President
Vicente Fox and tens of thousands of people lining Mexico City's
streets.
(AP, 7/30/02)
2002 Jul 31, Pope John Paul II
canonized Juan Diego, an Indian peasant to whom church tradition
says the Virgin Mary appeared 500 years ago, in a ceremony in Mexico
that drew more than 1 million believers into the streets.
(AP, 8/1/02)
2002 Jul 31, In Mexico 6 masked
gunmen kidnapped a federal congressman from a town in the Pacific
coast state of Guerrero.
(AP, 8/1/02)
2002 Aug 1, In Mexico the
government decided to yield to protests by machete-wielding farmers
and radicals and cancelled plans to build a new international
airport on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City.
(AP, 8/2/02)
2002 Aug 6, In western Mexico
the brakes apparently failed on a 26-year-old bus before it plowed
through a highway toll booth and slammed into a concrete wall,
killing at least 33 people, 10 of them children, headed for a
re-enactment of the Last Supper. About 20 people were injured.
(AP, 8/6/02)
2002 Aug 10, In northwestern
Mexico a bus crashed through a railing and into a shallow river near
Hermosillo, killing 16 passengers and injuring two dozen others.
(AP, 8/12/02)
2002 Aug 14, Mexican President
Vicente Fox angrily canceled a scheduled meeting with President Bush
hours after Texas executed a Mexican national for killing a Dallas
police officer despite pleas from the Mexican leadership. Javier
Suarez Medina, a Mexican national, was never told he could contact
the Mexican consulate for help after his 1988 arrest, a violation of
the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations.
(AP, 8/14/03)(AP, 8/15/02)
2002 Aug 14, Texas Gov. Rick
Perry denied a reprieve for Javier Suarez Medina and authorities in
Huntsville gave Suarez a lethal injection as he sang the hymn
"Amazing Grace."
(AP, 8/15/02)
2002 Aug 15, Heavy rains caused
the San Luis Potosi and Los Dolores dams to burst, sending a wave of
floodwaters roaring over villages in central Mexico, where
authorities said at least eight people were killed and six others
were missing and feared dead.
(AP, 8/16/02)
2002 Aug 15, A train in
Tlaxcala, Mexico, struck and killed six young people (13-25) as they
were walking along railroad tracks during a religious procession.
(AP, 8/15/02)
2002 Aug 17, In Mexico 8 men
and a woman were lined up against a wall and gunned down with
assault rifles and pistols at a ranch in the western state of
Michoacan in what reports said may have been a drug-related
massacre.
(AP, 8/18/02)
2002 Aug 31, It was reported
that Mexican police had arrested Juan Heriberto Carrillo Olivas, a
Mexican citizen, headed a gang in El Paso, Texas, that used a fleet
of tractor-trailers to transport cocaine to other U.S. cities.
(AP, 8/31/02)
2002 Sep 6, Mexico said it was
withdrawing from the 1947 Inter-American Reciprocal Defense Treaty
designed to protect the Americas against communism, a year after
President Vicente Fox called the agreement obsolete.
(AP, 9/6/02)
2002 Sep 10, Radical farmers in
San Salvador, Mexico, have declared this town outside Mexico City to
be autonomous, two months after they forced the government to
abandon plans for a new airport.
(AP, 9/11/02)
2002 Sep 23, Hurricane Isidore
left two dead and 300,000 homeless in Mexico’s Yucatan and moved
toward the U.S. Gulf coast.
(AP, 9/24/02)
2002 Sep 26, In Mexico Martha
Sahagun de Fox launched a conference of first ladies of the Americas
with a promise to forge creative answers to the problem of child
poverty.
(AP, 9/26/02)
2002 Sep 27, A Mexican military
court charged three army officers (Gen. Francisco Quiros Hermosillo,
Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro and Maj. Francisco
Barquin) with homicide in the killings of 143 leftist
activists and revolutionaries, the first prosecution of soldiers for
crimes committed during the so-called "dirty war" of the 1970s.
(AP, 9/27/02)(SFC, 9/28/02, p.A6)
2002 Oct 14, In New Mexico VP
Cheney met with representatives of Bajagua, a start-up waste
processing firm targeting waste water in Tijuana, Mexico. Waste from
Tijuana flowed into San Diego County and its Tijuana River estuary.
Bajagua spent $585,000 in lobbying efforts from 2001-2006. Estimates
of costs to the US ranged from $580-780 million. A 1999
environmental impact statement called the Bajagua plan not feasible.
(WSJ, 1/27/07, p.A15)
2002 Oct 15, Former New York
City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will be paid $4.3 million plus expenses
for a one-year contract to advise Mexico City's mayor on reducing
crime.
(AP, 10/15/02)
2002 Oct 19, In Mexico Manuel
Alvarez Bravo (100), a photographer whose remarkable 80-year
portfolio contained everything from mystical portraits of a bygone
era to the striking realism of murdered laborers, died.
(AP, 10/20/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Mexico
officials said 25 people were arrested who had infiltrated the army,
police and attorney general’s office on behalf of drug kingpins.
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A11)
2002 Oct 25, Hurricane Kenna
hit Mexico’s Pacific coast and over 150 people were injured in the
states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa. 3 people were later reported
killed. Damages were estimated in tens of millions.
(SFC, 10/26/02, p.A7)(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.A20)
2002 Nov 16, In Mexico
unidentified assailants killed a family of five, including two
children aged 8 and 14 and two of the family's servants, by slitting
their throats or shooting them.
(AP, 11/17/02)
2002 Nov 22, In Mexico City
thousands of teachers marched to protest the deaths and
disappearances of some 152 teachers over the last 10 years.
(SFC, 11/23/02, p.A10)
2002 Nov 26, About 2,000
members of Mexico's former ruling party seized government buildings
in two Guerrero state towns, claiming fraud in the recent election
of the towns' mayors.
(AP, 11/27/02)
2002 Nov, Pres. Bush approved
the annual US entry of some 30,000 Mexican trucks beyond the current
20-mile border zone. On Jan 16, 2003, a federal appeals court halted
the plan for environmental reviews.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.A5)
2002 Dec 5, In Mexico City an
angry mob beat to death two of three youths who allegedly tried to
rob a taxi driver.
(AP, 12/6/02)
2002 Dec 11, Bank of America
agreed to pay $1.6 billion for a 25% stake in Grupo Financiero
Santander Serfin, one of Mexico’s largest banks.
(WSJ, 12/12/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 31, Mexico City's only
English-language newspaper, The News, shut down along with its
sister Spanish-language publication, Novedades, after more than 50
years in operation.
(AP, 12/31/02)
2002 Dec 31, In Mexico illegal
fireworks stands ignited in the port city of Veracruz as revelers
thronged a marketplace to buy New Year's supplies. The blaze quickly
engulfed an entire city block and killed at least 28 people.
(AP, 1/1/03)
2002 Dec, Gunmen hired by
Ricardo Salinas Pliego, owner of TV Azteca, took control of a small
UHF TV station in Mexico City.
(WSJ, 2/27/04, p.A1)
2002 Carlos Fuentes published
his novel “La silla del aguila,” in Mexico. In 2006 an English
translation by Kristina Cordero was published as “The Eagle’s
Throne.”
(SSFC, 5/27/06, p.M1)
2002 Mexico ended its visa
requirement for Brazilians as both countries liberalized their trade
regimes. Illegal immigration of Brazilians to the US via Mexico
quickly increased.
(WSJ, 1/24/05, p.A16)
2003 Jan 6, In Mexico a bus
with failing brakes swerved off a mountain highway and into a deep
ravine in Zacatecas state, killing 18 people and injuring 23.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 15, Former New York
City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ended a two-day visit to Mexico's
capital, declaring that fighting government corruption will be
crucial in lowering crime.
(AP, 1/15/03)
2003 Jan 19, Alfredo Zalce
(b.1908), Mexican revolutionary artist, died.
(www.zalce.com/)
2003 Jan 21, A 7.6-7.8
earthquake ripped through western and central Mexico, killing at
least 29 people and leaving 10,000 homeless.
(SFC, 1/23/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/21/04)
2003 Jan 21, Mexico appealed to
the World Court to stop the execution of 51 of its citizens in the
United States.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 28, In Mexico, gunmen
in San Juan Chamula ambushed police trying to arrest murder
suspects, sparking a gunbattle that left 5 people dead.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 31, In Mexico City
tens of thousands of farmers clogged main streets, demanding greater
protection against U.S. imports and seeking more government aid.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Feb 5, The World Court
ruled that the United States must temporarily stay the execution of
three Mexican citizens on U.S. death rows.
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 10, Mexican army
troops seized 2.2 tons of cocaine from a plane that landed in
northern Mexico after it reported mechanical problems. The three men
onboard were arrested.
(AP, 2/11/03)
2003 Feb 13, Thailand officials
arrested SF financier Thomas Frank White at the request of the
Mexican government for the rape of a teenage boy. In 2004 White was
indicted in SF on 2 counts of sex tourism.
(SSFC, 9/11/05, p.A2)
2003 Feb 14, Popocatepetl
volcano southeast of Mexico City erupted but caused no significant
damage.
(AP, 2/14/03)
2003 Feb 16, In Mexico’s
central Mexico state voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum in
support of executing kidnappers, armed robbers and murderers.
(AP, 2/17/03)
2003 Feb 17, In Mexico
the bodies of 3 women were found in the desert outside of Ciudad
Juarez, the latest victims in a string of killings in the border
city.
(AP, 2/18/03)
2003 Feb 25, In Mexico a
court upheld the conviction of an Egyptian man, Abdel Latif
Sharif, for one of the first in a series of murders of women in the
border city of Ciudad Juarez, but lowered the man’s prison sentence
to 20 years.
(AP, 2/26/03)
2003 Mar 10, Two
helicopters from Mexico’s Attorney General’s office were shot down
near Tlapa, Guerrero, in the nation’s western mountains during an
anti-narcotics operation, killing all 5 officials on board.
(AP, 3/11/03)
2003 Mar 14, In Matamoros,
Mexico, police arrested drug lord Osiel Cardenas Guillen (35), aka
"El Loco."
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 24, Mexico City police
chief Marcelo Ebrard said that Leoluca Orlando, former mayor of
Palermo, Italy, will be hired to combat crime. His work will
complement Rudolph Giuliani's who hired on for $4.3 million.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 24, In Texas a fire in
a sugar-cane field killed 5 illegal Mexican immigrants hiding there.
(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, Mexican federal
agents killed 2 suspected drug runners in a shootout near the Texas
border.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 29, In Mexico a small
government plane crashed in the mountains of southern Mexico,
killing all five people aboard. Passengers included Porfirio Encino
Hernandez, state sec. for Indian affairs; his son and brother;
Berenice Lopez, the daughter of former Gov. Javier Lopez; and pilot
Guadalupe Gil.
(AP, 4/1/03)
2003 Apr 2, In Mexico 9 people
were found tortured and killed near the border city of Nuevo Laredo
in apparent drug-related violence.
(AP, 4/2/03)
2003 Apr 4, Mexican police over
the last 2 days arrested 9 members of the powerful Juarez Cartel
during raids across the country.
(AP, 4/4/03)
2003 Apr 4, Adalberto Martinez
(87), song and dance actor, died. He appeared in over 100 Mexican
films and TV series from 1947-2000.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.A23)
2003 Apr 7, Mexico said it
would prepay $3.84 billion in the last outstanding Brady par bonds.
They originally totaled $34 billion.
(WSJ, 4/9/03, p.A10)
2003 Apr 9, Abraham Zabludovsky
(78), Polish-born Mexican architect, died. His projects included the
Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City.
(SFC, 4/11/03, p.A28)
2003 Apr 12, Mexican army
troops manning a roadblock near the Arizona border seized a truck
packed with more than four tons of marijuana.
(AP, 4/13/03)
2003 Apr 21, In Uruapan,
western Mexico, gunmen disguised as police killed six members of a
family in a suspected drug gang dispute.
(AP, 4/21/03)
2003 May 21, The Mexican
Justice Department said that 258 women had been killed since 1993 in
Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 5/22/03)
2003 Jun 6, In Balastrera,
Mexico, a landslide followed by the blast of a ruptured gas pipeline
hit a truck-stop town between Mexico City and Veracruz. 15 people
were missing from the area.
(AP, 6/6/03)
2003 Jun 12, The first-ever
Mexican freedom of information law took effect, designed to expose
the government and its once guarded records and secrets to greater
public scrutiny.
(AP, 6/12/03)
2003 Jun 18, Andrew Luster, a
convicted rapist who is heir to the Max Factor fortune, was arrested
after 5 months on the run. He was picked up by Mexican police in
Puerto Vallarta as he scuffled with bounty hunters who had trailed
him from California.
(AP, 6/18/03)
2003 Jul 4, In Mexico gunmen in
Las Choapas, Veracruz, killed a man believed to be a migrant
trafficker and then fatally shot four bystanders, including a
12-year-old boy, apparently to avoid leaving witnesses.
(AP, 7/5/03)
2003 Jul 6, Mexican voters
issued a severe judgment on Pres. Vicente Fox's first three years in
office, electing another divided Congress in which his party will
have fewer seats and increasing the power of the former ruling party
and the leftist opposition.
(AP, 7/7/03)
2003 Jul 17, A US company
launched Mexican sales of microchips that can be implanted under a
person's skin and used to confirm health history and identity.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 17, In Mexico a
landslide triggered by heavy rains in the southern state of Oaxaca
swept away two houses and killed nine people, including five
children.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 30, The last
Volkswagen Beetle was produced in Puebla, Mexico. The first Beetles
had arrived in 1956. Mexico had begun producing its own version of
the Beetle in 1964.
(WSJ, 7/31/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A10)
2003 Aug 1, Mexican soldiers
used a bazooka to return fire against cars believed to be carrying
drug traffickers during a wild pre-dawn battle, killing three
suspects.
(AP, 8/1/03)
2003 Aug 4, Mexico's federal
government dispatched some 650 federal agents to Tijuana in the
latest attempt to curb smuggling and corruption in the rough border
city.
(AP, 8/4/03)
2003 Aug 15, Mexican troops
arrested one of the country's most-wanted drug-traffic suspects,
Armando Valencia, along with seven top figures in his ring in
Tlajomulco near Guadalajara.
(AP, 8/16/03)
2003 Aug 24, Hurricane
Ignacio sideswiped the southern tip of the Baja California
peninsula.
(AP, 8/24/08)
2003 Aug 29, In central Mexico
a truck carrying sulphuric acid collided head-on with a
sport-utility vehicle on a mountain road, killing five people and
forcing dozens of people to hospitals after they inhaled the fumes.
(AP, 8/30/03)
2003 Sep 3, It was reported
that Lake Chapala in Jalisco state had lost some 80% of its water
over the last 10 years due to heavy development in central Mexico
and agricultural diversion of water from the Rio Lerma.
(WSJ, 9/3/03, p.B1)
2003 Sep 10, In Cancun, Mexico,
the WTO began its fifth ministerial meeting, with trade ministers
from 146 countries expected to attend a five-day gathering to thrash
out many problems surrounding the latest "round" of trade
liberalization talks.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 10, In Puebla, Mexico,
a clandestine fireworks factory exploded, killing at least six
people and injuring 12 others.
(AP, 9/10/03)
2003 Sep 14, In Cancun, Mexico,
the WTO talks collapsed when delegates from Africa, the Caribbean
and Asia walked out accusing wealthy nations of failing to offer
sufficient compromises on agriculture and other issues.
(SFC, 9/15/03, p.A3)(AP, 9/14/08)
2003 Sep, British scientists
found 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, shattering
theories that mankind arrived in the Americas tens of thousands of
years later from Asia. The footprints were found in an abandoned
quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano and were subsequently
studied and dated by a multinational team of scientists.
(AFP, 7/5/05)
2003 Oct 10, It was reported
that members of an elite Mexican army unit have deserted and formed
a drug gang, using their military training to launch a violent
battle for control of Nuevo Laredo. An estimated 31 of 350 members
of the Special Air Mobile Force Group, posted to the border state of
Tamaulipas in the 1990s, had deserted and joined the drug turf war.
(AP, 10/10/03)
2003 Oct 20, Pres. Bush met
with Mexico's Pres. Vicente Fox in Thailand and asked him to set
aside disputes over immigration and Iraq.
(AP, 10/20/03)
2003 Oct 24, In Mexico Mariano
Diaz Mendez, a Pentecostal pastor of Indian descent, was shot twice
inside the car in a roadside ditch in San Juan Chamula, a majority
Catholic township just outside San Cristobal.
(AP, 10/25/03)
2003 Oct 27, The southern
California fires crossed into Mexico. The death toll climbed to 15
and damages were estimated to top $500 million.
(SFC, 10/28/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 28, In Mexico City
high-level officials of the Organization of American States ended
two day of talks with a new security agenda.
(AP, 10/29/03)
2003 Oct 29, A Mexican
electoral court annulled the results of the July 6 elections for the
governorship of the southern state of Colima after concluding that
the outgoing governor interfered in the race.
(AP, 10/30/03)
2003 Nov 4, In Arizona Mexican
President Vicente Fox stressed the importance of continuing a
dialogue on immigration issues with the United States as he started
a tour of 3 border states.
(AP, 11/5/03)
2003 Nov 5, Mexican President
Vicente Fox asked New Mexico state leaders for better treatment of
illegal immigrants from his country.
(AP, 11/5/03)
2003 Nov 7, The defending
champion US baseball team failed to qualify for the 2004 Athens
Olympics, losing to Mexico 2-1 in the quarterfinals of a qualifying
tournament in Panama City, Panama.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2003 Nov 11, Mexican diplomat
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser (1949-2005), gave a speech to students at
Mexico City's Ibero-American University, in which he claimed that
the political and intellectual class of the United States sees
Mexico as "a country whose position is that of a back yard" (patio
trasero) and that Washington was only interested in "a relationship
of convenience and subordination" and "a weekend fling" (un noviazgo
de fin de semana). President Fox requested his resignation on 18
November.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Aguilar_Z%C3%Adnser)
2003 Nov 12, Imelda Ortiz
Abdala, a former Mexican consul to Lebanon, was arrested on charges
of helping a smuggling ring move Arab migrants into the United
States from Mexico. Federal agents over the previous 2 days arrested
alleged ring leader Salim Boughader Mucharrafille along with alleged
collaborators Melissa Ataja Valdez and Orlando Alfaro, in Tijuana.
Ortiz Abdala was released in Feb 2005 after Foreign Relations
Department officials testified that she acted properly and was never
in a position to authorize visas on her own, according to Mexican
court documents.
(AP, 11/13/03)(AP, 7/15/05)
2003 Nov 17, Mexico dismissed
UN Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar following his comments that the US
regards Mexico as a 2nd-class country.
(SFC, 11/19/03, p.A17)
2003 Nov 25, Sales of Mexican
green onions plunged after a hepatitis outbreak in the US was traced
to northwestern Mexico, forcing farmers in this valley to defend the
safety of their produce and find ways to stay afloat financially.
(AP, 11/25/03)
2003 Nov 27, Mexican government
prosecutors said that they've uncovered a document showing that
soldiers tortured suspected rebel prisoners during the 1970s,
sometimes forcing them to drink gasoline and then setting them
afire.
(AP, 11/27/03)
2003 Nov 27, In Mexico City
union members, left-wing activists and farmers by the thousand
marched to the central plaza in a major display of opposition to the
president's plans to raise taxes on food and medicine and sell
state-owned assets.
(AP, 11/27/03)
2003 Nov, Mexico broke a
decades-old tradition of rejecting U.S. aid workers and decided to
grant permission for the first group of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers
ever to work there.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2003 Dec 1, In Mexico Isidro
Galeana (65), a former state judicials police commander, was
declared a fugitive after a judge ordered his arrest on suspicion of
kidnapping alleged leftists during the Mexican government's campaign
against radical activists in 1974.
(AP, 12/2/03)
2003 Dec 5, A bus plunged into
a valley in the northern Mexico state of Zacatecas, killing 15
people and injuring 15 others.
(AP, 12/6/03)
2003 Dec 9, In southern Mexico
Salvatrucha gang members attacked illegal immigrants from Central
America on a train, killing three people and wounding four in the
latest in a series of violent incidents in the region. The Mara
Salvatrucha spanned Central America. It was named for its Salvadoran
founders, who claimed to be as wise as trout.
(AP, 12/10/03)(Econ, 5/22/04, p.31)
2003 Dec 12, Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao arrived in Mexico in a bid to extend a string of recent
diplomatic and economic successes in North America. In 2002 China
shipped $6.3 billion in goods to Mexico, undercutting many local
goods.
(SFC, 12/4/03, p.A22)(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 13, Chinese Premier
Web Jiabao sought to assure Mexican leaders that their country's
economy is not threatened by China's lower wages and cheaper goods,
saying the two nations are partners, not rivals.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 27, Juan Garcia Ponce
(71), a renowned Mexican art critic, translator and prize-winning
novelist, died. Ponce was born in Merida, the capital of Yucatan
state, on Sept. 22, 1932. The author of at least 50 books, Ponce
wrote novels, plays, screenplays and essays and was considered a
master of erotic literature.
(AP, 12/28/03)(SFC, 12/29/03, p.A12)
2003 The Mexican housing
industry built some 450,000 new homes, many of them near the town of
Tecamac, north-east of Mexico City.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.33)
2003 Ricardo Salinas Pliego
beat administrative insider-trading charges in Mexico on procedural
grounds. Later he and a partner set up a shell company to buy Unefon
debt for pennies and then resold the debt to Unefon, which they
controlled, for the full price. The move netted them $109 million
each at Unefon’s expense.
(WSJ, 12/8/05, p.A11)
2003 Mexico passed legislation
calling for native languages to be recognized as official languages
of the state along with Spanish. Mexico also created a National
Institute of Indigenous Languages, which began mapping where
different indigenous languages were spoken.
(WSJ, 2/24/06, p.A8)
2004 Jan 3, Isidro Galeana
(65), a former state police commander and the first former
government official to face arrest for his role in Mexico's "dirty
war" of the 1960s and 1970s, died of a heart attack.
(AP, 1/4/04)
2004 Jan 5, In Mexico heavily
armed men in military and police-style uniforms raided the western
prison at Apatzingan in Michoacan state and freed 25 inmates.
(AP, 1/6/04)
2004 Jan 12, A 2-day meeting
began for leaders of the 34 members of the Organization of American
States opened in Monterrey, Mexico.
(AP, 1/12/04)
2004 Jan 13, In Mexico the
34-nation Summit of the Americas ended. The United States reached
out to its neighbors on free trade and battling corruption,
smoothing tense relations with Latin American leaders.
(AP, 1/13/04)(SFC, 1/14/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 20, In Mexico gunmen
ambushed and shot to death two federal agents and an army captain as
they drove along a Mexico City expressway.
(AP, 1/21/04)
2004 Jan 27, Mexican Army
troops arrested Javier Torres Felix, an alleged leader of one of the
largest drug trafficking organizations in western Mexico.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Jan 27, Mexican
authorities in Ciudad Juarez said at least 11 bodies were found at a
house that had been occupied by alleged drug lord Humberto Santillan
Tabares.
(ST, 1/28/04, p.A8)
2004 Jan, La Gloria English
School opened on Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Maggie and Tom Washa of
Wisconsin opened the school to help the local Mayan children.
(SSFC, 9/25/05, E5)
2004 Feb 1, In Tepeyac, Mexico,
a fight broke out between two families at an illegal cockfighting
den, and seven people were killed.
(AP, 2/3/04)
2004 Feb 6, In Mexico deputy
ministers from 34 nations in the Americas failed to reach agreement
on a framework for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, stymied by
differences on the contentious issue of U.S. farm subsidies.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2004 Feb 11, The bodies of 2
Americans, Francisco A. Antonielli (33) and James F. Bowtte (43),
were discovered in a parking garage at the airport in Tijuana,
Mexico, the apparent victims of a drug-related gunbattle.
(AP, 2/11/04)
2004 Feb 17, Jose Lopez
Portillo (83), former Mexican president (1976-1982) who governed
through an oil-driven boom to a debt-induced bust, died of
complications from pneumonia.
(AP, 2/18/04)
2004 Mar 5, Pres. Bush welcomed
Mexican Pres. Fox to his Texas ranch for a 2-day visit.
(SFC, 3/06/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 5, Mexican Air Force
pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over
southern Campeche state. The video was publicly aired May10.
(AP, 5/11/04)
2004 Mar 6, It was reported
that 4 compromising videos have been released showing Mexican
political party leaders and public servants accepting briefcases
full of cash, gambling at the high rollers' table in Las Vegas and
offering to procure business contracts for millions of dollars.
(AP, 3/6/04)
2004 Mar 16, It was announced
that Carlos Slim, owner of Mexico’s Telmex, planned to buy a
controlling interest in Brazil’s biggest long distance operator,
Embratel.
(Econ, 3/20/04, p.64)
2004 Mar 19, A Mexican police
raid led to the arrests of 42 immigration agents and other
government employees accused of running a network that smuggled
migrants into the US.
(AP, 3/23/04)(SFC, 3/24/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 27, Adan Sanchez (19),
Mexican-American singer, died in a car crash in Sinaloa, Mexico. He
was the son of narco-ballad singer Chalino Sanchez, murdered in
1992.
(WSJ, 4/9/04, p.B1)
2004 Mar 29, In Mexico Pres.
Fox unveiled a sweeping revision of the legal system.
(WSJ, 3/30/04, p.A16)
2004 Mar 30, Cuba arrested
Carlos Ahumada, a Mexican businessman, wanted in Mexico for his role
in a graft scandal involving Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Ahumada was soon deported to Mexico.
(WSJ, 4/29/04, p.A14)
2004 Mar 31, The International
Court of Justice ruled that the United States violated the rights of
51 Mexicans on death row and ordered their cases be reviewed.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2004 Mar, A biology professor
said the monarch butterfly population wintering in Morelia, Mexico,
was down 75%. Logging had severely impacted the area.
(SFC, 2/24/05, p.A10)
2004 Apr 5, A flash flood swept
through two border communities in northern Mexico, flooding rivers,
washing away houses and killing 15 people. Dozens more were reported
missing.
(AP, 4/5/04)
2004 Apr 10, In Mexico a gas
explosion leveled two buildings, killed at least six people and
injured more than a dozen others in the border town of Nuevo
Progreso.
(AP, 4/11/04)
2004 Apr 12, In Mexico Morelos
state Gov. Sergio Estrada ordered the firing of all 552 state police
officers following charges that commanders provided protection to
drug traffickers.
(SFC, 4/13/04, p.A2)
2004 Apr 15, In western Mexico,
an explosion tore through a small fireworks store in Tonala, killing
seven people including a small child.
(AP, 4/16/04)
2004 Apr 21, Otto Herrera (39),
a Guatemalan man described by U.S. authorities as Central America's
most-wanted drug smuggler, was captured by Mexican agents at Mexico
City's Juarez Int'l. Airport. Mexico made the arrest at the request
of U.S. authorities who had offered a $5 million reward for his
capture.
(AP, 4/22/04)
2004 May 2, In Mexico a small
plane carrying federal anti-narcotics agents crashed, killing all
seven people on board.
(AP, 5/4/04)
2004 May 5, Mexico celebrated
the 142nd anniversary of its victory over French forces.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2004 May 6, A Mexican court
sentenced eight drug-gang members to 40 years each in prison for
their roles in the 1993 shooting of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas
Ocampo and 6 others at a Guadalajara airport.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2004 May 10, In Matamoros,
Mexico, drug outlaw Alberto Guerrero, his bodyguard and 3 teenage
girls were killed by a spray of bullets outside the Wild West dance
hall. Ex-army commandos turned traffickers, known as Zetas, were
responsible.
(SFC, 6/22/04, p.D3)
2004 May 22, Bombs exploded
outside three banks in Jiutepec, central Mexico, heavily damaging
them but causing no injuries. A note near the bombing sites signed
by a group calling itself the Comando Jaramillista Morelense 23 de
Mayo — in tribute to the peasant leader Ruben Jaramillo, who was
murdered along with his family by state forces on May 23, 1962.
(AP, 5/23/04)
2004 May 27, Cuba and Mexico
agreed to return their respective ambassadors following a dispute
earlier this month.
(WSJ, 5/28/04, p.A1)
2004 May 31, Felipe Calderon,
Mexico's energy secretary resigned, a day after President Vicente
Fox criticized him for an early jump into the 2006 presidential
races.
(AP, 5/31/04)
2004 May, A small poll of
Mexicans ranked Mexico’s Congress as the worst government
institution. Lawmakers met for only 2 days a weeks and 21 weeks a
year. The average deputy earned $146,000 plus benefits. 200 of 500
lower house deputies were picked by party leaders.
(WSJ, 7/8/04, p.A10)
2004 Jun 7, Russian President
Vladimir Putin flew to Mexico for talks with his Pres. Fox, who has
said he hoped to increase military cooperation with Moscow. Putin,
the 1st Russian head-of-state to visit Mexico, said the two major
oil producing nations should share knowledge on oil exploration and
the energy sector.
(AP, 6/7/04)
2004 Jun 7, The US Supreme
court ordered US highways to be opened to long-haul Mexican trucks,
rejecting objections by labor and environmental groups.
(SFC, 6/8/04, A1)
2004 Jun 16, Jose Fernando
Jimenez Lecona, Mexico City police official, was shot to death
outside his home. Lecona, head of a high-risk crimes unit, was
investigating a string of brazen kidnappings.
(SFC, 6/18/04, p.A3)
2004 Jun 22, Francisco Ortiz
Franco, Mexican newspaper, editor was shot to death in Tijuana.
(AP, 6/22/05)
2004 Jun 27, Hundreds of
thousands of Mexicans wearing white staged a silent march through
the heart of their nation's capital to protest kidnappings, violent
crimes and the failures of law enforcement to curb them.
(AP, 6/27/04)
2004 Jul 5, Pres. Fox named
Emilio Goicoechea Luna, a business chamber leader and senator, as
the new chief of staff, and Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela, a presidential
analyst, as media relations chief. The 2 positions were held by
Alfonso Durazo who resigned saying that the first lady's political
ambitions are out of control and Fox is acting like the autocrats he
replaced.
(AP, 7/6/04)
2004 Jul 5, Voters in
Zacatecas, Mexico, elected Amalia Garcia (PRD), the country's first
female governor since the end of one-party dominance. Pres. Fox's
National Action Party lost badly in Chihuahua and Durango. It
finished a distant third in Zacatecas,
(AP, 7/5/04)
2004 Jul 18, Mexico and Cuba
said they will reinstate ambassadors in each other's countries at
the end of the month.
(AP, 7/18/04)
2004 Jul 25, Carmen Gutierrez,
a doctor who won Mexico's Woman of the Year award (1997), was found
dead in a canal on the outskirts of Mexico City. She was kidnapped
Jul 22.
(AP, 7/29/04)
2004 Jul, The ship Mary Nour,
filled with Russian cement, was denied permission to unload its
cargo in Mexican ports under pressure from Cemex SA.
(WSJ, 12/14/04, p.A12)
2004 Aug 1, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz
(b.1958) was elected governor of Oaxaca, Mexico, by a narrow 2%
margin. Defeated candidate Gabino Cue, nominated by an alliance
mainly of Convergencia and the Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD), repeatedly alleged electoral fraud.
(http://tinyurl.com/jnpk8)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.48)
2004 Aug 8, In San Juan
Chamula, Mexico, hundreds of enraged residents of this impoverished
Indian community locked the mayor and three other municipal
officials in jail, claiming they embezzled funds from public works
projects.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 22, Gilberto Higuera
Guerrero, alleged leader of the powerful Arellano Felix drug gang,
was arrested before dawn at a house in the border city of Mexicali.
(AP, 8/23/04)
2004 Aug 29, Mexico City's
leftist Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led more than 150,000
demonstrators in a march to protest efforts to impeach him.
(AP, 8/30/04)
2004 Aug 30, Mexico’s state oil
company said it believes that vast untapped oil reserves lie in the
deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
(WSJ, 8/31/04, p.A10)
2004 Aug 31, In Mexico suspects
beat to death Francisco Arratia Saldierna (55), a newspaper
columnist and dumped his body outside the offices of the Red Cross
in the border city of Matamoros.
(AP, 8/31/04)
2004 Sep 1, Capping a day of
angry street protests and a strike by some 200,000 health care
workers, President Vicente Fox spent much of his state-of-the-nation
speech urging Mexicans to not give up on democracy, saying its
"inherent problems are not cause for discouragement.
(AP, 9/1/04)
2004 Sep 17, Mexico and Japan
signed a free trade agreement that Mexicans hope will ease their
reliance on the United States while encouraging Japan to build more
factories there. PM Junichiro Koizumi wrapped up a four-day Latin
American trip then headed for New York to pitch for a permanent
Japanese seat on the UN Security Council.
(AP, 9/17/04)
2004 Oct 13, A Mexican judge
found bus driver Victor Garcia Uribe, guilty of eight slayings,
giving prosecutors their second conviction in the decade-long series
of murders of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 10/13/04)
2004 Oct 21, Four gunmen
abducted three U.S. citizens on a rural highway in southern Mexico,
shot and killed two of them and left the third, a pregnant woman,
bound and gagged. Her testimony led to arrests the next day of
Isidro Diaz Pineda, Reynaldo Hernandez Ramirez, Francisco Velazquez
Paredes and David Gaona Mondragon, all of Tierra Caliente.
(AP, 10/23/04)
2004 Oct 29, Mexican police and
federal agents alleged Zetas leader Rogelio Gonzalez Pizana, alias
"El Kelin," a top drug hit man during a fierce shootout in the
border city of Matamoros. Scores of suspected assassins and drug
smugglers used hand grenades and assault rifles to fire back at
authorities.
(AP, 10/30/04)
2004 Nov 7, In central Mexico
gunmen, identified as local police officers, opened fire on a group
of revelers returning from a weekend dance, killing 7 people,
including 2 children.
(AP, 11/9/04)
2004 Nov 12, Mexico and a US
environmental group agreed on a plan to protect 370,000 acres of
tropical forest on the Yucatan Peninsula. Officials said it was the
largest conservation project in the country's history.
(AP, 11/12/04)
2004 Nov 15, Mexico's former
ruling party, trying to fight its way back to the presidency,
overwhelmingly won two gubernatorial elections and held razor-thin
leads in two other races.
(AP, 11/16/04)
2004 Nov 23, In Mexico City a
mob angry about recent child abductions cornered plainclothes
federal agents taking photos of students at a school and burned the
officers alive, mistaking the agents for kidnappers.
(AP, 11/24/04)
2004 Nov 25, In Mexico the
bodies of 9 people, including three federal agents, were discovered
at two sites outside Cancun, and police are blaming the killings on
a drug turf war.
(AP, 11/26/04)
2004 Nov 25, Mexican federal
investigators said that two Mexico City police and 27 other people
face homicide charges in the horrific vigilante killings of two
federal agents this week.
(AP, 11/26/04)
2004 Nov 28, In Mexico gunmen
killed Gregorio Rodriguez, a newspaper photographer, as he and his
family ate in a restaurant the state of Sinaloa, the home turf of
nearly all of Mexico's top drug bosses.
(AP, 11/29/04)
2004 Dec 2, Interior Secretary
Santiago Creel announced authorities had arrested 224 street gang
members during a weeklong sweep across Mexico.
(AP, 12/3/04)
2004 Dec 5, Authorities outside
Mexico City found the body of Enrique Salinas (51), the former Pres.
Salinas’ brother, with a bag tied around his head. 2 federal police
officers were arrested in 2005 for trying to extort money Salinas
prior to his murder.
(AP, 7/15/05)
2004 Dec 6, President Vicente
Fox fired Mexico City's police chief for allegedly bungling the
response to a mob attack that killed two federal police officers.
(AP, 12/6/04)(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.A1)(SFC, 7/15/05,
p.A3)
2004 Dec 19, It was reported
that Pres. Vicente Fox’s administration had failed thus far to
dent corruption inside Mexico’s 445 prisons and jails.
(SSFC, 12/19/04, p.A21)
2004 Dec 22, In Mexico an
explosion at a pumping station near Santiago Tuxtla caused a burst
of high pressure that ruptured the oil line 70 miles away in
Nanchital. 210,000 gallons of oil flowed into the Coatzacoalcos
River, creating a 10-mile-long slick extending into the gulf.
(AP, 12/24/04)
2004 Dec 23, Mexico's
state-owned oil monopoly will be fined as much as $200,000 and could
face criminal charges for spilling 5,000 barrels of crude into a
river leading to the Gulf of Mexico a day earlier.
(AP, 12/23/04)
2004 Dec, The Mexican
government began distributing a comic-book guide that warns would-be
migrants about the perils of crossing illegally into the US and
offers tips to stay safe.
(AP, 1/5/05)
2004 Jorge Hank (48) was
elected major of Tijuana. His father was a former mayor of Mexico
City and Jorge himself had amassed an estimated $1 billion fortune
through hundreds of casinos and betting parlors throughout Latin
America.
(SSFC, 8/5/07, p.A15)
2004 Development began of the
new Film Colony on the edge of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico’s 1st
privately financed film studio complex.
(Econ, 1/10/04, p.31)
2004 Mexico’s population grew
almost 1.1 million in 2004 to 105,909,000.
(SFC, 12/29/04, p.A3)
2004 Earl Shorris authored “The
Life and Times of Mexico,” a collective biography of the country’s
people.
(SSFC, 12/12/04, p.E6)
2005 Jan 1, Mexico was forecast
for 3.1% annual GDP growth with a population at 106.2 million and
GDP per head at $6,300.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.92)
2005 Jan 6, President Vicente
Fox announced that all Mexican children with cancer will receive
free treatment as long as they need it.
(AP, 1/6/05)
2005 Jan 6, In Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico, 10 alleged gang members were convicted in the killings of 12
women, some of the hundreds who have been found slain there in
recent years. The Los Toltecas members were arrested in 1999, after
the reputed leader of their group, Jesus Manuel Guardado, alias "El
Tolteca," was identified by a 14-year-old girl as the man who
sexually assaulted and tried to kill her.
(AP, 1/7/05)
2005 Jan 11, Mudslides in
Tijuana, Mexico, killed 3 children and damaged 140 homes.
(SFC, 1/13/05, p.A3)
2005 Jan 14, Over 750 Mexican
federal police and soldiers seized control over the nation's
top-security prison amid reports of a planned escape, possible
murder plots and a jailhouse alliance between two reputed drug
trafficking kingpins.
(AP, 1/14/05)(SFC, 1/15/05, p.A3)
2005 Jan 20, In Mexico 6 prison
workers were shot to death and left outside their lockup in
Matamoros, following a federal crackdown against drug gangs at
lockups across the nation.
(AP, 1/20/05)
2005 Jan 22, Consuelo Velazquez
(84), whose song "Besame Mucho" became a standard in many languages
and styles of music, died in Mexico City.
(AP, 1/25/05)
2005 Jan 24, China's vice
president expressed a strong desire to increase economic and
diplomatic cooperation with Mexico while meeting with Mexican
lawmakers.
(AP, 1/24/05)
2005 Feb 5, In Mexico
assailants staged 3 nearly simultaneous guerrilla-style attacks in
Acapulco, killing 3 police officers and a teenage boy a day before a
tense gubernatorial election.
(AP, 2/6/05)
2005 Feb 6, Mexico's main
leftist party, the Democratic Revolution Party, ended 76 years of
rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the
Pacific coast state of Guerrero. Democratic Revolution held on to
the governorship of Baja California Sur, while the PRI held on to
Quintana Roo, the site of Cancun.
(AP, 2/7/05)
2005 Feb 15, In Mexico the
bodies of 12 men killed by hitmen believed linked to drug gangs were
found in the northern state of Sinaloa, in what appears to be one of
the deadliest one-day tolls in violent drug battles in recent years.
(AP, 2/15/05)
2005 Feb 17, Two US Border
Patrol agents in Texas stopped a van carrying 743 pounds of
marijuana and shot Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, an admitted Mexican drug
smuggler, as he fled back across the Rio Grande. In 2006 agents
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years in
prison for offenses that included violating the smuggler’s civil
rights and failure to report the shooting to superiors. In 2007
Latino gang members beat Ignacio Ramos at the Yazoo City Federal
Correctional Complex in Mississippi. Both agents were freed in 2009
following a commute of their sentences by outgoing Pres. George
Bush.
(SFC, 10/20/06, p.A6)(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.A11)(SFC,
2/18/09, p.A6)
2005 Feb 23, Mexico’s high
court blocked prosecution of ex-President Echeverria for “dirty war”
crimes in the 1970s ruling that the statute of limitations has run
out.
(WSJ, 2/24/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 24, In western Mexico
an executive jet crashed, killing the governor of Colima state and
all five other people aboard.
(AP, 2/24/05)
2005 Feb 28, Mexican
prosecutors charged 27 state, federal and local police in Cancun
with running a drug ring or aiding in the murder of their fellow
officers, busting one of Mexico's largest police-protection rackets
and solving the mystery behind the killing of three federal agents
in November.
(AP, 3/1/05)
2005 Mar 9, In southern Mexico
a federal government helicopter searching for gunmen protecting drug
plantations crashed into a mountain, killing all nine soldiers and
two pilots onboard.
(AP, 3/10/05)
2005 Mar 13, Vigilantes in
Oaxaca, Mexico, killed a state police officer setting him on fire in
revenge for the shooting of a taxi driver in a barroom brawl.
(AP, 3/13/05)
2005 Mar 23, Pres. Bush, Pres.
Fox, and PM Paul Martin at a one-day summit in Texas signed a deal
that provides for sweeping co-operation between Canada, Mexico and
the US on security, economic and health issues. There was no sign of
progress on touchy trade disputes. They agreed to boost border
security and forge common approaches on everything from cargo
inspection to maritime and aviation safety.
(AP, 3/24/05)
2005 Apr 5, Guadalupe Garcia
Escamilla (39), radio reporter, was wounded in the chest, abdomen,
legs and arms during an attack in the Mexican border city of Nuevo
Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. She died from her wounds April
16.
(AP, 4/17/05)
2005 Apr 7, Mexico City's
leftist mayor formally declared his intention to run for president
next year even as Congress was to decide whether he should face
criminal charges for allegedly disobeying a court order in a
land-use case.
(AP, 4/8/05)
2005 Apr 8, Lawmakers stripped
Mexico City's mayor of immunity from prosecution, clearing the way
for criminal charges. The shaky legal case against Lopez Obrador
alleges that in 2001, the city government failed for 11 months to
obey a court order to vacate contested land that it had expropriated
for the purpose of building a road.
(AP, 4/8/05)
2005 Apr 8, Raul Gibb Guerrero,
director of La Opinion of Poza Rica newspaper, was shot to death in
an apparent ambush by drug hit men, the 2nd attack on Mexican
journalists in a week.
(AP, 4/9/05)
2005 Apr 14, In Mexico 3
would-be casino developers were killed outside a popular Monterrey
restaurant. The murders delayed a congressional vote to amend a
gambling ban and sparked calls for stricter controls on the few
places Mexicans are allowed to place bets.
(AP, 5/1/05)
2005 Apr 18, The annual Goldman
Environmental Prizes were awarded in San Francisco. Recipients
included Isidro Baldenegro (39) of Mexico for his efforts on land
rights and forest protection for the Tarahumara Indians
(SFC, 4/18/05, p.B2)
2005 Apr 20, Mexican
prosecutors charged Mexico City's popular leftist mayor with abuse
of authority in a case that could knock him out of the 2006
presidential race.
(AP, 4/21/05)(WSJ, 4/21/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 24, Hundreds of
thousands of demonstrators thronged Mexico City's central square and
surrounding streets to protest the federal prosecution of the
capital city mayor, a leading contender for president in 2006.
(AP, 4/25/05)
2005 May 4, Mexico's government
cleared the capital's mayor of wrongdoing, conceding defeat in a
nasty political fight that ousted an attorney general and raised
criticisms that President Vicente Fox was trying to block his top
rival from running for president.
(AP, 5/5/05)
2005 May 9, Leftist Mexico City
Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that he will resign on
July 31 to run for president.
(AP, 5/9/05)
2005 May 13, Pres. Fox praised
the dedication of Mexicans working in the US, saying they're willing
to take jobs that "even blacks" won't do. Pres. Fox apologized for
his comments a few days later saying he regretted any hurt feelings
his statements may have caused.
(AP, 5/17/05)(SFC, 5/17/05, p.A3)
2005 May 16, Mexican President
Vicente Fox regretted any hurt feelings for saying that Mexicans in
the United States were doing the work that even blacks wouldn't.
(AP, 5/16/06)
2005 May 24, In Mexico Eduardo
Villalobos, the director of a state prison in the border city of
Mexicali, was shot to death in an ambush outside his home.
(AP, 5/24/05)
2005 Jun 3, Oscar Espinosa
Villarreal, former Mexico City mayor (1994-1998) and tourism
secretary, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for
embezzling government funds and ordered to pay more than $26 million
in reparations.
(AP, 6/4/05)
2005 Jun 5, Adolfo Aguilar
Zinser (b.1949), Mexican scholar and diplomat, died.
(Econ, 6/18/05,
p.83)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Aguilar_Z%C3%Adnser)
2005 Jun 8, In Mexico Alejandro
Dominguez took office as police chief of Nuevo Laredo, saying he
wasn't afraid of anything. Nine hours later, he was ambushed and
killed by gunmen who fired some three dozen times.
(AP, 6/9/05)
2005 Jun 10, In Mexico lawyers
for the brother of a former Mexican president sought his release on
bail after an appeals court threw out his 27-year murder sentence.
(AP, 6/10/05)
2005 Jun 11, In Mexico a plain
clothes federal officer, sent to investigate the killing of the
police chief of Nuevo Laredo, was shot and killed a local policeman.
In response the government announced new program dubbed “Safe
Mexico” to curb drug related violence and corruption.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.34)
2005 Jun 14, Raul Salinas, the
brother of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was
released on bail after 10 years in prison on charges he masterminded
the 1994 killing of a political rival.
(AP, 6/14/05)
2005 Jun 15, Mexico's Supreme
Court ruled that former Mexican President Luis Echeverria can be
charged with genocide for his alleged involvement in the 1971
massacre of student protesters.
(AP, 6/15/05)
2005 Jun 19, Mexico City
introduced metrobus, a new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.
(SSFC, 8/7/05, p.A11)
2005 Jun 21, Nuevo Laredo Mayor
Daniel Pena said that 150 police officers will be fired after
failing a screening process that included background checks and drug
testing. Former Mexican soldiers, turned into drug hit men (Zetas),
have taken the border city to the brink of anarchy, infiltrating
local police and threatening anyone who gets in their way.
(AP, 6/21/05)
2005 Jun 22, Consuelo Velazquez
(b.1916), Mexican pianist and composer, died. Her music included
Besame Mucho, first recorded in 1941 by Emilio Tuero. It was the
romantic vision of a chaste, convent-educated teenager growing up in
1930s Mexico, and was inspired by the sight of a smooching couple in
the street.
(www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/jan/26/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1)
2005 Jun 26, In Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, 44 kidnap victims were freed in a series of raids by
soldiers and federal agents. Deputy Attorney General Gilberto
Higuera said those rescued were apparently "involved in criminal
activities and were not victims of kidnappings" for ransom.
(AP, 6/27/05)
2005 Jun 28, Lawmakers
overwhelming approved a law allowing millions of Mexicans living
abroad to vote by mail in next year's presidential election.
(AP, 6/28/05)
2005 Jun 28, Mexico's Zapatista
rebels suggested they would seek to open a political front with
workers, farmers and students, a decision the government interpreted
as a move toward joining mainstream politics and away from armed
struggle.
(AP, 6/28/05)
2005 Jun 29, Mexico released a
series of five stamps depicting a child character from a comic book
started in the 1940s that is still published in Mexico. The stamps
depicted an exaggerated black cartoon character known as Memin
Pinguin.
(AP, 6/30/05)
2005 Jun 30, Pres. Fox
signed a bill allowing millions of Mexicans living abroad to vote by
mail in next year's presidential election.
(AP, 7/1/05)
2005 Jun 30, In Honduras
Central American leaders agreed to create a regional special forces
unit to fight drug trafficking, gang violence and terrorism within
their borders. The 2-day regional meeting included the presidents of
Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico,
Nicaragua, and Panama.
(AP, 6/30/05)
2005 Jul 3, In Mexico State the
former ruling party (PRI) added momentum for the upcoming
presidential race with a crushing victory.
(AP, 7/4/05)
2005 Jul 6, In Mexico Omar
Pimentel (37), Nuevo Laredo's new police chief, survived his 1st day
on the job with 3 bodyguards shadowing his every move, but one of
his police officers was killed and 2 other policemen badly wounded
by shots fired from a truck at their private car.
(AP, 7/7/05)
2005 Jul 6, In Acapulco,
Mexico, gunmen fired a spray of bullets at Jose Ruben Robles
Catalan, a former Guerrero state official as he entered a hotel
lobby with his 6-year-old grandson, killing him and his chauffeur.
(AP, 7/6/05)
2005 Jul 8, In rural
southeastern Mexico a series of explosions at a natural gas pipeline
killed two people and set fire to houses, cars and cattle near
Cunduacan.
(AP, 7/10/05)
2005 Jul 11, Hugo Alberto
Wallace (36), a divorced entrepreneur, was kidnapped as he left a
movie theater in Mexico City. In 2007 Brenda Quevedo was arrested in
Louisville, Kentucky, after Maria Isabel Miranda, the mother of
Wallace, received a tip and tracked her down. Frustrated with
investigators' lack of progress in her son's 2005 kidnapping,
Miranda launched her own investigation, tracking down five suspects.
In 2009 Quevedo was extradited to Mexico.
(www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/world/americas/04kidnapping.html)(AP,
9/26/09)
2005 Jul 18, Hurricane Emily
slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as a powerful Category 4
storm.
(AP, 7/18/05)
2005 Jul 20, In Mexico more
than 1,000 people marched through the streets of the colonial
capital of southern Oaxaca state to demand that picketers disband a
blockade that has trapped journalists inside a newspaper building
for about a month.
(AP, 7/21/05)
2005 Jul 20, Hurricane Emily
slammed into northeastern Mexico with 125 mph winds.
(AP, 7/20/05)
2005 Jul 22, Mexican
authorities raided a kidnapping ring that filmed its victims being
held inside a cage and beaten. An abducted businessman was freed and
five people were arrested. The gang operated in Mexico City and
outlying areas in Puebla and Mexico State.
(AP, 7/23/05)
2005 Jul 31, In southern Mexico
former soldier Oscar Flores (35) killed his wife, infant nephew and
a police officer in a vicious rampage that left 10 people dead
before being wounded by police and killed by an angry crowd.
(AP, 8/1/05)
2005 Aug 1, In Tonala, Mexico,
assailants threw grenades into a crowded cockfighting ring before
dawn, killing four people and wounding 25 others.
(AP, 8/2/05)
2005 Aug 6, Leonardo Rodriguez
Alcaine (b.1919), Mexican trade union leader and a long-serving
legislator of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, died. He
presided over the Workers' Confederation of Mexico (CTM) from July
21, 1997 until his death.
(Econ, 11/12/05,
p.39)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Alcaine)
2005 Aug 12, A Mexican judge
issued an arrest warrant for Gen. Francisco Quiros, accused of
ordering the disappearance of leftist folk singer Rosendo Radilla on
Aug 25, 1974. Quiros was already in prison serving a drug sentence.
(AP, 8/12/05)
2005 Aug 12, New regulations in
Tijuana, Mexico, called for the city to issue electronic cards to
replace pink, pocket-size health history books given to Tijuana's
4,700 registered prostitutes. The new standards were modeled after
those in the Mexican cities of Monterrey and Acapulco.
(AP, 9/16/05)
2005 Aug 12, Peter Hommerson, a
fugitive charged with killing a wealthy Illinois couple on Jan 23,
1996, was captured at a Mexican resort after tourists recognized him
from a crime watch television program.
(AP, 8/12/05)
2005 Aug 25, In central Mexico
a rain-swollen river overflowed its banks and flooded the town of
Aguililla, leaving five people dead and five others missing.
(AP, 8/26/05)
2005 Aug, Judi Werthein (38),
Argentine-born artist, introduced special shoes at Insite, an art
exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana, designed to help migrants cross
the US-Mexico border. The “Brinco” sneakers were equipped with a
compass, flashlight and other special features.
(SFC, 11/18/05, p.A2)
2005 Sep 1, President Vicente
Fox, in his last state-of-the-nation address, urged citizens to stay
committed to Mexico's newfound democracy and to remind them that
they are in charge of the nation's future.
(AP, 9/2/05)
2005 Sep 3, In Tlacotepec,
Mexico, 75 miles north of Acapulco, fireworks stored at a building
that also illicitly sold gasoline exploded, killing seven people and
injuring four.
(AP, 9/3/05)
2005 Sep 8, A Mexican army
convoy began crossing into the US to bring aid to victims of
Hurricane Katrina.
(AP, 9/8/05)
2005 Sep 8, El Salvador said
that “Operation International” simultaneous raids this week in El
Salvador, the US, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico netted 660
dangerous gang members.
(AP, 9/9/05)
2005 Sep 10, In Mexico 7
Guatemala men were caught near the Guatemalan border with six
large-caliber rifles and 1,600 rounds of ammunition. They faced
charges of weapons trafficking.
(AP, 9/30/05)
2005 Sep 11, Mexico's ruling
National Action Party gave former Energy Secretary Felipe Calderon a
surprise victory in the first round of its three-part presidential
primary.
(AP, 9/11/05)
2005 Sep 12, In Mexico Chinese
President Hu Jintao promised Mexican leaders that he would crack
down on the millions of dollars worth of Chinese contraband entering
their nation, goods that undermine Mexican businesses ranging from
sandal makers to religious icon sellers.
(AP, 9/12/05)
2005 Sep 15, A fire engulfed
Mexico's most famous fireworks market, setting off a chain of
explosions in Tultepec, a town northeast of the nation's capital.
The fire destroyed hundreds of open-air stands just ahead of
Independence Day celebrations.
(AP, 9/15/05)
2005 Sep 16, The Volcano of
Fire in western Mexico blasted ash and gas three miles high, with an
explosion that was heard in villages 10 miles from the crater.
(AP, 9/16/05)
2005 Sep 19, In Mexico a
special federal prosecutor sought the arrest of ex-President Luis
Echeverria and other former officials for their alleged involvement
in the massacre of student protesters in 1968.
(AP, 9/19/05)
2005 Sep 21, A cabinet minister
who helped lead Mexico's anti-drug fight, his deputy and seven
others died in a helicopter crash in the mountains west of Mexico
City. The helicopter, carrying Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin
Huerta, Federal Preventive Police Chief Tomas Valencia, five other
passengers and a crew of two, had taken off from a military parade
ground in Mexico City.
(AP, 9/22/05)
2005 Sep 26-2005 Sep 27,
Intense rains throughout southern Mexico and parts of Central
America caused rivers to overflow, killing at least 3 people and
forcing thousands to flee their homes.
(AP, 9/28/05)
2005 Sep, In Mexico Bishop
Ramon Godinez declared that drug traffickers often donate to the
church. He argued that the money is "purified" once it passes
through parish doors.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 1, The outer bands of
Hurricane Otis lashed the coast of western Mexico as the storm
crawled toward the Baja California peninsula, forcing hundreds of
families to evacuate their homes and flooding roads in Cabo San
Lucas.
(AP, 10/2/05)
2005 Oct 2, Felipe Calderon,
Mexico's former energy secretary, appeared headed toward another
victory in the 2nd round of the ruling National Action Party's
3-part presidential primary.
(AP, 10/2/05)
2005 Oct 4, Hurricane Stan
slammed into Mexico’s Gulf coast.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 5, Hurricane Stan
knocked down trees, ripped roofs off homes and washed out bridges in
southeastern Mexico, but it was the storms it helped spawn that were
far more destructive, killing more than 65 people in Central
America. Officials in El Salvador said 49 people had been killed,
mostly due to two days of mudslides sparked by rains. 9 people died
in Nicaragua, including six migrants believed to be Ecuadorians
killed in a boat accident. Four deaths were reported in Honduras,
three in Guatemala and one in Costa Rica.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 6-2005 Oct 8, In
Guatemala rescue workers searched for victims of a mudslide near
Lake Atitlan, a volcano-ringed lake popular with tourists. Panabaj
and Tzanchaz were entombed by a mudflow half a mile wide. The death
toll in the region from flooding sparked by Hurricane Stan soon
climbed to 617 with 42 dead in Mexico, 72 dead in El Salvador and 11
dead in Nicaragua.
(SFC, 10/7/05, p.A3)(AP, 10/9/05)(Econ, 10/15/05,
p.43)
2005 Oct 11, It was reported
that a serial killer, dubbed the "Mataviejitas," or "Little Old Lady
Killer," was stalking Mexico City. The killer was said to wear
women's clothes and strangled and battered old ladies in their
homes.
(AP, 10/11/05)
2005 Oct 21, Hurricane Wilma
slammed into the island of Cozumel, starting a long, grinding march
across Mexico's resort-studded coastline. Wilma flooded streets,
knocked out power and stranded thousands of tourists in sweltering
shelters. Hurricane Wilma tore into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula,
after killing 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica.
(AP, 10/21/05)(AP, 10/22/06)
2005 Oct 22, Hurricane Wilma
crawled over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, keeping some 30,000
tourists huddled in hotels and shelters amid shrieking winds and
shattering glass.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 23, Mexico's ruling
party chose Felipe Calderon, the nation's former energy secretary,
as its candidate for presidential elections next July.
(AP, 10/23/05)
2005 Oct 23, Hurricane Wilma
drifted northward away from Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula where the
storm left 8 people dead. In 2006 insurers put the damage from Wilma
at $3 billion, the largest insured losses in Mexican history.
(AP, 10/23/05)(Econ, 10/29/05, p.38)(AP,
10/19/06)
2005 Oct 24, Luis Velasquez
(51), A Roman Catholic parish priest was found shot to death in his
car with his hands cuffed in the rough border city of Tijuana, in
what police said appeared to be an organized-crime killing.
(AP, 10/24/05)
2005 Oct 27, The Mexican
government announced that former "bracero" guest workers, who
labored in the United States between the 1942 and 1964, will get a
one-time payment of about $3,500. The aging workers, who have
protested for years, described the payment as insulting and said it
should be at least $9,175.
(AP, 10/27/05)(SFC, 10/28/05, p.A22)
2005 Oct 28, Mexico became the
100th country to ratify the treaty founding the world's first
permanent war crimes tribunal, which the United States has opposed.
(AP, 10/28/05)
2005 Nov 4, In Argentina
Mexico’s Pres. Vicente Fox said that a majority of nations in the
Western Hemisphere will consider moving forward with negotiations to
create a huge new free trade zone without the participation of
dissenting countries like Venezuela.
(AP, 11/4/05)
2005 Nov 9, Mexico reported
that consumer prices fell to a record low in October and that
inflation was rapidly approaching the central bank’s target of 3%.
(WSJ, 11/10/05, p.A15)
2005 Nov 10, Mexican
prosecutors announced they have filed kidnapping and organize crime
charges against seven police officers accused of protecting hit men
working for the feared Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 11, Mexican agents
arrested Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, a former medical student, who
seized control of the remnants of the Juarez cartel.
(AP, 11/21/05)
2005 Nov 14, Mexico said it
will sever diplomatic ties with Venezuela if Pres. Chavez doesn't
apologize for warning Mexican leader Vicente Fox: "Don't mess with
me." Mexico and Venezuela called their ambassadors home in a sharp
dispute between presidents Hugo Chavez and Vicente Fox over the
latter's relations with Washington.
(AP, 11/14/05)(AP, 11/15/05)
2005 Nov 15, In northwest
Mexico a tanker truck hauling toxic ammonium chloride slammed into a
passenger bus, killing 38 people as both vehicles plunged down an
embankment.
(AP, 11/16/05)
2005 Nov 16, Mexico’s Supreme
Court ruled that rape within marriage is a crime.
(SFC, 11/17/05, p.A12)
2005 Nov 17, Mexico's Supreme
Court voted 11-1 that the Pascual Cooperative, a bottler
specializing in Mexico's traditional fruit-flavored and fruit-based
soft drinks, did not rate protection as a public interest.
(AP, 11/18/05)
2005 Nov 20, The Vatican
beatified 13 Mexicans who died during a Roman Catholic uprising in
the late 1920s that was crushed by the Mexican government.
(AP, 11/20/05)
2005 Nov 28, Mexico changed its
constitution to allow state and local police to pursue drug
traffickers, removing a major stumbling block in anti-drug efforts
that had long been the exclusive realm of federal officers.
(AP, 11/28/05)
2005 Nov 29, Mexico's Supreme
Court ruled that suspects facing life in prison can be extradited,
overturning a 4-year-old ban that had prevented many of the
country's most notorious criminals from being sent to the United
States.
(AP, 11/29/05)
2005 Nov 29, CINTRA sold
Mexicana airlines and its subsidiary, Click Mexicana, to the Mexican
hotel chain Grupo Posadas for USD$165.5 million.
(Econ, 8/14/10,
p.53)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexicana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n)
2005 Nov 30, Mexican officials
said that they are investigating a homemade DVD purporting to show
four drug hitmen for the Gulf Cartel being beaten and interrogated,
then one of them being shot in the head.
(AP, 12/01/05)
2005 Dec 1, The Mexican
Attorney General's office said 11 federal agents were charged with
kidnapping for picking up four alleged drug hit men and possibly
helping kill them.
(AP, 12/02/05)
2005 Dec 2, The Mexico City
government said 5 federal agents arrested in connection with the
videotaped torture and killing of drug hitmen have been released
from prison for lack of evidence.
(AP, 12/03/05)
2005 Dec 10, Mexican police
raided a house outside Mexico City, capturing two alleged kidnappers
and rescuing three people, including an 8-year-old girl, who had
been held for more than two months. Police detained Israel Vallarta,
a Mexican, and Marie Louise Cassez Florence, a Frenchwoman. The two
allegedly belonged to a gang called "The Zodiac," tied to at least
10 kidnappings and one murder. Florence Cassez was later sentenced
to 60 years in prison for 3 kidnappings. In 2010 Florence Cassez
released a book about her case. It describes a series of
inconsistencies in the case that she says weren't taken into
account.
(AP, 12/10/05)(AP, 3/10/09)(AP, 9/23/10)
2005 Dec 14, Officials said
Mexico and the US broke up a counterfeiting ring that printed an
estimated $5 million in fake $100 bills in Mexico and sold them
across the border.
(AP, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 14, Carlos Delgadillo
Martinez died after losing his grip on an inner tube while trying to
cross the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas. In 2011 jurors acquitted
helicopter pilot James Peters (41) of lying about his role in
Delgadillo’s death.
(SFC, 9/3/11, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/3nzc2z7)
2005 Dec 15, A Mexican judge
committed 8 relatives to the psychiatric ward of a prison for the
ritualistic slayings of two young family members that shocked Mexico
with their brutality. Officials said the parents, grandparents and
aunts of a 7-month-old and 13-year-old hacked a baby to death and
fatally stoned a teenager earlier this month after they became
convinced the girls were demons or possessed by the devil.
(AP, 12/16/05)
2005 Dec 17, The Mexican
government slammed the US Congress for approving an immigration bill
that would tighten border controls and make it harder for
undocumented immigrants to get jobs.
(AP, 12/17/05)
2005 Dec 17, In Mexico 6 people
were stabbed or battered to death during a prison gang fight in
Ciudad Juarez, across the US border from El Paso, Texas.
(AP, 12/17/05)
2005 Dec 20, The Mexican
government, angered by a U.S. proposal to extend a wall along the
border to keep out migrants, pledged to block the plan and organize
an international campaign against it.
(AP, 12/21/05)
2005 Dec 29, Seven policemen in
the southern Mexican state of Chiapas were detained on suspicion of
stealing relief packages intended for hurricane victims.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2005 Dec 31, Guillermo Martinez
(18) died in a Tijuana hospital one day after he was shot by a US
Border Patrol agent near a metal wall separating that city from San
Diego. On Jan 2 Mexico opened an investigation into the killing
saying he was shot while sneaking into California, using the death
to draw attention to a contentious US anti-immigration measure. In
2008 the US Dept. of Justice cleared the Border Patrol agent of any
wrongdoing.
(AP, 1/3/06)(SFC, 2/16/08, p.A4)
2005 Dec, Mexico’s attorney
general’s office released a report that said 1,493 of 7,000 federal
agents had been investigated for possible wrongdoing and that 457
had been indicted.
(SFC, 12/28/05, p.A9)
2005 Dec, In Mexico Lydia
Cacho, a journalist who wrote a book about pedophilia in Cancun, was
arrested and charged with libel. Titled "The Demons of Eden," the
book linked Jean Succar Kuri to a prominent businessman in the
central state of Puebla. Cacho was freed on bail and Kuri was
extradited from the US in 2006 to face charges in Mexico.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2005 The US SEC filed civil
fraud charges against Ricardo Salinas Pliego and 2 other top
executives at TV Azteca for allegedly failing to disclose their
involvement in Unefon under a provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley
law. Salinas pulled his companies from the NYSE.
(WSJ, 12/8/05, p.A11)
2005 Mexico counted 1,600
murders this year linked to organized crime.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.45)
2006 Jan 1, Subcomandante
Marcos (b.1957), identified by the Mexican government as Rafael
Guillen, began a tour of 31 Mexican states under the name “Delegate
Zero.” The leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebels, wearing a ski mask
to protect his identity, railed against the government and free
trade to kick off a six-month tour of Mexico aimed at reshaping the
nation's politics.
(WSJ, 1/5/06, p.A12)(AP, 1/2/06)
2006 Jan 6, Comandante Ramona
(47), a leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebel movement and an advocate
for women's rights, died after a decade-long struggle with a kidney
disease.
(AP, 1/6/06)
2006 Jan 9, Diplomats from
Mexico and Central America demanded guest worker programs and the
legalization of undocumented migrants in the United States, while
criticizing a US proposal for tougher border enforcement.
(AP, 1/10/06)
2006 Jan 11, Felipe Calderon,
ruling-party presidential hopeful, registered his campaign with
election officials, saying he understands the problems facing common
Mexicans and will stem the flow of migrants who head north in search
of higher-paying jobs.
(AP, 1/12/06)
2006 Jan 13, Raul Anguiano
(b.1915), Mexican painter, sculptor and muralist, died in Mexico
City.
(SFC, 1/17/06, p.B5)
2006 Jan 23, Raul Osiel
Marroquin was arrested in Mexico City. On Jan 26 he described
killing four gay men. His arrest was the 1st confirmation of a
serial killer targeting homosexuals.
(AP, 1/26/06)
2006 Jan 24, A Mexican
government commission said it will distribute at least 70,000 maps
showing highways, rescue beacons and water tanks in the Arizona
desert to curb the death toll among illegal border crossers.
(AP, 1/24/06)
2006 Jan 24, At least 10 men in
Mexican military-style uniforms crossed the Rio Grande into the
United States on a marijuana-smuggling foray, leading to an armed
confrontation with Texas law officers near Neely's Crossing, Texas.
The three sport utility vehicles made a quick U-turn and headed
south toward the border, a few miles away.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2006 Jan 25, Juana Barraza (48)
was arrested while fleeing from a home where an elderly woman was
slain. She was suspected to be the serial murderer known as the
"Mataviejitas," or "Little Old Lady Killer." Barraza's fingerprints
matched those left at the scene of 10 other murders, plus at the
scene of an attempted murder.
(AP, 1/26/06)
2006 Jan 25, US authorities
discovered what they say is the largest and most sophisticated
tunnel under their border with Mexico, one that was used by drug
trafficking gangs. The tunnel began near Tijuana’s airport and ended
2,400 feet away in a warehouse on the US side of the border. The
find included 2 tons of marijuana.
(AFP, 1/27/06)(SFC, 1/27/06, p.B14)
2006 Jan 26, Mexico said it
will suspend its plan to distribute maps to migrants wanting to
cross the US border illegally. An official said the decision was
made because the maps would show anti-immigrant groups where
migrants likely would gather.
(AP, 1/26/06)
2006 Jan 27, Angel Hidalgo
Espinosa, the leader of a farmers' group in Mexico's southern
Chiapas state, was convicted in the 2001 slayings of 8 peasants and
sentenced to 37 years in prison.
(AP, 1/27/06)
2006 Jan 27, In Mexico
authorities got into a shootout with drug traffickers in Acapulco
and at least 4 people were killed.
(SFC, 1/28/06, p.A6)
2006 Jan 29, The Mexican
government said the US Border Patrol in New Mexico arrested
Francisco Javier Gutierrez, a Mexican immigration official, who was
allegedly trying to help a group of undocumented migrants sneak into
the US.
(AP, 1/30/06)
2006 Feb 2, Mexican authorities
captured Oscar Arriola Marquez, leader of the Arriola Marquez
cartel, wanted in the US on cocaine trafficking and money laundering
charges, and ranked among the world's most-wanted fugitives.
(AP, 2/3/06)
2006 Feb 4, A three-day energy
meeting in Mexico City wrapped up after moving to a Mexican-owned
hotel. It was the first private-sector oil summit between Cuba and
the US. The meeting between Cuban officials and US energy executives
was moved to another hotel after the Hotel Maria Isabel Sheraton
asked the Cubans to leave. On Feb 6 Mexico launched an investigation
into whether the US government pressured the American-owned hotel
into expelling Cuban guests.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Feb 7, The owner of a
Mexican newspaper in Nuevo Laredo said there will be no more
investigative coverage of drug gangs, a day after the paper's
offices were sprayed with bullets and a reporter hospitalized with
five gunshots.
(AP, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 13, In Monterrey,
Mexico, 2 police chiefs, Hector Ayala and Javier Garcia, were shot
and killed within hours of each other in a violence-plagued region
near the US where drug smugglers have been battling for control of
key routes across the border.
(AP, 2/14/06)
2006 Feb 14, In Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, armed men forced their way into a hospital and killed a
teenager under treatment for an earlier attempt on his life.
(SFC, 2/18/06, p.A10)
2006 Feb 15, In central Mexico
a bus careened off a windy highway and into a ravine in the Sierra
Gorda mountains, killing 23 people and injuring 14.
(AP, 2/16/06)
2006 Feb 19, A gas explosion in
a northern Mexico coal mine trapped 65 miners some 600 feet below
ground with a limited supply of oxygen. In 2007 a judge ordered the
arrest of 5 mine managers and inspectors on charges of negligent
homicide in the deaths of the miners.
(AP, 2/19/06)(WSJ, 2/21/06, p.A1)(AP, 3/20/07)
2006 Feb 21, In Cancun, Mexico,
Domenico Ianiero, 59, and his wife, Annunziata, 55, of Woodbridge,
Ont., were found in their hotel rooms at the all-inclusive five-star
resort on the Mayan Riviera in the early morning. Their throats had
been slashed. The crime apparently took place after a rehearsal
dinner ahead of a wedding in which the Lily, one of the Ianieros'
twin girls, was to be married at the resort. Prosecutors in Cancun
said two Canadian women were suspected in the killing and had fled
to Canada.
(CP, 2/22/06)
2006 Feb 25, In Mexico mining
officials said there was little hope of finding any of miners alive
from the Feb 19 gas explosion at the Industrial Minera Mexico mine
near San Juan Sabinas.
(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.A3)
2006 Feb 28, Mexico City
officials moved to shut down a US-owned hotel that angered many
Mexicans when it kicked out a Cuban delegation under pressure from
Washington. The Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel would be closed because
it was in violation of building codes. The hotel could reopen when
it had corrected the violations and paid a $15,000 fine. The threat
of closure was dropped the next day.
(AP, 3/1/06)(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Feb 28, Some 4,000 Mexican
miners struck copper mines owned by the operator of the coal mine
where 65 men died in an explosion last week.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Mar 6, In Mexico Diego
Santoy (21) was captured at a police roadblock in the southern state
of Oaxaca, four days after he allegedly stabbed his ex-girlfriend,
Erika Pena, 18, strangled her 3-year-old sister and stabbed to death
her 7-year-old brother.
(AP, 3/8/06)
2006 Mar 7, More than 20,000
union workers marched in downtown Mexico City, accusing the
government of meddling in the affairs of the national miners union
by seeking to oust its leader.
(AP, 3/7/06)
2006 Mar 7, In Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, heavily armed assailants killed a state police chief and an
officer and wounded two more officers in a brazen midmorning ambush.
(AP, 3/7/06)
2006 Mar 10, An anchorman for a
Mexican radio station was shot to death by gunmen waiting for him in
the bushes in front of his house in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.
(AP, 3/10/06)
2006 Mar 13, Mexico’s attorney
general said he will close a special prosecutor's office dedicated
to investigating atrocities committed by the government during its
two-decade campaign to weed out suspected guerrillas and leftists.
(AP, 3/13/06)
2006 Mar 14, Mexico announced a
new deepwater oil discovery that could exceed the declining reserves
at the giant offshore Cantarell field.
(WSJ, 3/14/06, p.A11)
2006 Mar 16, The 4th World
Water Forum opened in Mexico City.
(AP, 3/16/06)
2006 Mar 16, In Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, 4 plainclothes federal police agents were killed after an
unknown number of gunmen sprayed the unmarked pickup truck they were
riding in with more than 30 bullets. The slayings came a day after
600 new members of the Federal Preventative Police arrived in Nuevo
Laredo as part of extra-security efforts.
(AP, 3/16/06)
2006 Mar 17, A bus carrying
dozens of teenagers on a school field trip toppled off a bridge on
the outskirts of Mexico's capital, killing 7 people and injuring at
least 28.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 22, In Mexico Omar
Pimentel (38), the police chief of the border city of Nuevo Laredo,
resigned. He said he was tired from the stress of working in a city
dominated by drug cartels fighting a bloody turf war.
(AP, 3/24/06)
2006 Mar 24, The Mexican
government said a US-owned hotel that expelled Cuban guests under
pressure from the Treasury Department must pay $112,000 in fines for
violating Mexican commerce law.
(AP, 3/24/06)
2006 Mar 26, In Mexico the
bodies of six men, blindfolded, handcuffed and shot to death, were
found packed inside a pickup truck on the side of a highway leading
to the Texas border.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 27, The US Senate
Judiciary Committee approved a proposal to legalize undocumented
migrants and provide temporary work visas. Mexicans cheered the
approval and credited huge marches of migrants across the US as the
decisive factor behind the vote.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 28, A Mexican judge
ordered an Argentine journalist to remove references to one of the
first lady's sons in a book that claims he benefited financially
from his family's political connections. The book "Cronicas
Malditas," or roughly "Accursed Chronicles" (2005), alleged that two
of Sahagun's three sons, principally Manuel Bribiesca, had used
their connections to get preferential treatment on federal
government work contracts during the administration of President
Vicente Fox, which began in December 2000.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 30, Pres. Bush arrived
in Cancun, Mexico, for 2 days of North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) talks with Canadian PM Stephen Harper and Mexico’s Pres.
Fox.
(Reuters, 3/30/06)(WSJ, 3/30/06, p.A1)
2006 Mar 30, Mexico’s Congress
passed legislation dubbed the Televisa Law” confirming the country’s
longstanding TV duopoly. President Vicente Fox officially signed off
on controversial reforms to the country’s Federal Radio and
Television law on April 11. In 2007 the legislation faced court
actions.
(http://cbrayton.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/mexico-the-birth-of-the-televisa-law/)
2006 Mar 31, President Bush,
closing a three-nation NAFTA summit, defended requiring secure
documents from border-crossing Canadians and pushed Mexico to
prevent more of its people from illegally entering America.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Apr 3, Dozens of Mexican
newspapers, frustrated by fruitless police probes of slain and
missing journalists, simultaneously published the first in a series
of reports on the cases.
(AP, 4/3/06)
2006 Apr 6, In Mexico hundreds
of machete-wielding farmers opposed to a hydroelectric dam project
briefly seized a pumping plant, cutting off much of the water supply
to Acapulco just days before tourists flock to the Pacific resort
for their Easter vacations.
(AP, 4/6/06)
2006 Apr 7, The US Court of
International Law ruled that US Customs violated a provision of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in applying a law known
as the Byrd amendment to antidumping and countervailing duties on
goods from Canada and Mexico.
(Reuters, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 10, Mexican soldiers
seized 128 suitcases packed with 5.6 metric tons of cocaine worth
more than $100 million from a commercial plane arriving from
Venezuela. Smugglers had purchased the DC-9 plane with laundered
funds transferred through US banks Wachovia Corp. and Bank of
America. In 2010 court papers said a gang under Walid Makled
operated the DC-9 and flew the cocaine from Simon Bolivar
International to Campeche, Mexico. Makled was arrested Aug 19, 2010
in Colombia in the border city of Cucuta. In Nov 2010 Colombia
denied an extradition request for Makled by the US, saying that the
suspect will be sent back to face charges in his home country.
(AP, 4/12/06)(SFC, 6/30/10, p.D1)(AP, 11/17/10)
2006 Apr 12, Two people were
killed in a grenade attack on a restaurant and a shop owner was
gunned down as violence shook towns on Mexico's resort-studded
Pacific coast.
(AP, 4/13/06)
2006 Apr 16, The Rev. Cesar
Torres (42) killed Veronica Andrade Salinas (22), who was pregnant,
at his parish on Mexico City's eastern outskirts. He used a kitchen
knife to cut off her head and hack her body to pieces, which he
packed the pieces into plastic bags and dumped near a cemetery in
Chimalhuacan. The couple had an 18-month-old daughter. Torres
admitted to the murder on April 19.
(AP, 4/19/06)
2006 Apr 17, In Mexico an
overcrowded bus speeding home from a religious festival veered off a
highway emergency ramp and crashed through a metal barrier, plunging
more than 650 feet into a ravine near Maltrata, a town about 125
miles east of the capital. 58 people were killed. There were 2
survivors.
(AP, 4/19/06)
2006 Apr 19, The Mexican
Congress enacted a law that allows journalists to protect the
confidentiality of their sources.
(SFC, 4/20/06, p.A3)
2006 Apr 20, In Mexico a
violent confrontation between 800 federal and state police agents
and more than 500 striking steelworkers left two workers dead and
dozens of workers and police agents injured at the Siderurgica
Lazaro Cardenas-Las Truchas, SA (Sicartsa) steel plant in the port
city of Lazaro Cardenas in the state of Michoacan. The decapitated
heads of two police officials were found dumped in front of a
government building in Acapulco.
(http://ww4report.com/node/1879)(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 26, A Mexican boycott
urged people to shun all products from U.S. businesses on May 1, a
sort of "Day Without Americans," timed to coincide with the "Day
Without Immigrants" boycott planned by activists north of the
border.
(AP, 4/26/06)
2006 Apr 26, In southern Mexico
a speeding truck loaded with Guatemalan migrants en route to the
United States collided head-on with another truck, killing 10
migrants and injuring 16.
(AP, 4/27/06)
2006 Apr 28, Mexican lawmakers
approved a bill that would allow people to possess small amounts of
cocaine, heroin, even ecstasy for their personal use.
(AP, 4/29/06)
2006 Apr 28, Mexican police in
Tijuana found the body of a US citizen kidnapped nearly 3 weeks
earlier. They said he had been beaten, strangled, stripped naked and
stashed in the trunk of a car. George Kwok Choi Chu, a seafood
wholesaler, worked in Tijuana but lived across the border in San
Diego.
(AP, 4/29/06)
2006 May 1, A day-long protest
dubbed "A Day Without Gringos" drew thousands of Mexicans into the
streets and kept many away from US-owned supermarkets and fast-food
restaurants to support rallies in the United States demanding
immigration reform.
(AP, 5/1/06)
2006 May 3, Mexican President
Vicente Fox refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill, hours
after US officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism."
(AP, 5/3/06)
2006 May 3, In Mexico one
person was killed as machete-wielding protesters near Mexico City
clashed with police, blocking highways, throwing molotov cocktails
and briefly seizing six officers. The residents attacked police
after several of their companions were arrested in the nearby town
of Texcoco.
(AP, 5/4/06)
2006 May 4, Just before dawn
hundreds of law enforcement officials fired tear gas and crashed
through human barricades to take control of San Salvador Atenco, a
rebellious town outside Mexico City, hours after protesters released
six badly beaten police hostages.
(AP, 5/4/06)
2006 May 9, Mexican lawmakers
handed federal investigators a box of evidence that they claim shows
that two of President Vicente Fox's stepsons were involved in fraud
and illicit enrichment through real estate deals.
(AP, 5/9/06)
2006 May 14, Mexican President
Vicente Fox telephoned President Bush to express his concern about
the border between the two nations, a day before Bush's planned Oval
Office speech on immigration.
(AP, 5/14/07)
2006 May 15, Pres. Bush
endorsed a guest worker program and a program for citizenship for
many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. He also called
for the development of a tamper-proof ID card for workers and
pledged to send the National Guard to tighten security along the US
border with Mexico.
(SFC, 5/16/06, p.A1)
2006 May 19, The Vatican said
it had asked Rev. Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the
conservative order Legionaries of Christ (1941), to renounce
celebrating public Masses and live a life of "prayer and repentance"
following its investigation into allegations he sexually abused
seminarians.
(AP, 5/19/06)
2006 May 23, Mexico’s Pres. Fox
began a five-day trip to the US in Utah before moving on to
Washington state and California. Immigration was the major focus of
Fox's trip as the US Senate considered legislation to strengthen
border security
(AP, 5/23/06)
2006 May 23, In Mexico 3 men
were shot to death in two different attacks in the border city of
Nuevo Laredo, bringing to at least 115 the number of people slain by
violence this year.
(AP, 5/24/06)
2006 May 25, Mexican President
Vicente Fox addressed the California legislature. He praised a US
Senate which had just approved sweeping immigration reforms as a
"monumental step forward" in the relationship between his country
and the United States.
(AP, 5/26/06)
2006 Jun 1, California Gov.
Schwarzenegger reluctantly reached an agreement with the federal
government to deploy 1,000 members of the California National Guard
along the US-Mexico border.
(SFC, 6/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Jun 5, Mexico proposed
creating an environmental reserve (the Rio Bravo del Norte proposal)
about 30 feet wide and 600 miles long on the Texas border, a "green
wall" to protect the Rio Grande from the roads and staging areas
that smugglers use to ferry drugs and migrants across the frontier.
(AP, 6/5/06)
2006 Jun 8, The US offered a
reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of
Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, a reputed Mexican drug cartel
chieftain, whose group allegedly smuggles tons of cocaine and
marijuana north each year.
(AP, 6/9/06)
2006 Jun 14, In Mexico some
3000 elements of the state ministerial police, preventive police and
Oaxaca state firemen began to violently remove a sit-in of 70,000
workers from Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers
(SNTE) with tear gas, smoke grenades, stun grenades and firearms.
Thus far there have been 13 reported arrests, 4 injuries, 5 bullet
wounds, and between 6 and 9 deaths, as well as a break-in to the
Teachers' Union building and the destruction of the installations of
Radio Plantón (a free/non-licensed community radio station that has
been a point of reference for social movements in Oaxaca).
(www.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/840911.shtml)
2006 Jun 17, Mexican
authorities in Guadalajara arrested Pedro Castorena, the leader of a
far-flung ring that allegedly made and distributed forged
immigration and identification documents in the US. Castorena was
indicted in Denver last July on charges of conspiracy, fraud, misuse
of visas and money laundering.
(AP, 6/19/06)
2006 Jun 23, In Mexico Enrique
Rueda Pacheco, the leader of about 70,000 striking teachers in
southern Oaxaca state, said they won't interfere with the July 2
presidential election, and promised to meet with a civic commission
to try to resolve their pay demands. The monthlong strike has left
1.3 million children in grade and high schools in Oaxaca without
classes.
(AP, 6/23/06)
2006 Jun 26, In Mexico
assailants armed with automatic rifles shot and killed a top
policeman and his bodyguard as they drove home in the resort city of
Cancun.
(AP, 6/27/06)
2006 Jun 28, Gunmen shot and
killed Ignacio Perales Gomez, a prominent Mexico City police
investigator, outside his home. Perales was a lead investigator in
several of the city's notable cases including that of jailed
businessman Carlos Ahumada, a Mexico City construction mogul linked
to a bribery scandal that rocked the country in 2004.
(AP, 6/29/06)
2006 Jun 29, Mexican police
found a human head by the main entrance to Acapulco’s City Hall, the
fourth such grisly discovery this year.
(AP, 6/30/06)
2006 Jun 30, Former Mexican
President Luis Echeverria was placed under house arrest on genocide
charges stemming from a 1968 student massacre, an unprecedented move
coming just two days before the country elects a new president.
Authorities found two more human heads in front of a government
office in Acapulco, accompanied with threatening messages linked to
the drug trade.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 2, Mexico held
presidential elections. Felipe Calderon (43) calling himself “the
candidate of jobs,” faced Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: “For
everyone’s good, the poor first.” Lopez Villanueva, head of the
Francisco Villa Popular Front, arranged to have 10,000 members as
poll watchers for Lopez Obrador. A tight race delayed the results to
July 5. The per capita GDP was $10,000. Oil production was 3.35
million barrels per day. On July 6 Calderon was named the winner by
234,000 votes. The final outcome rested with the electoral court,
Trife, and its decision was due by September 6.
(Econ, 6/10/06, p.36)(WSJ, 6/28/06, p.A1)(Econ,
7/15/06, p.35)(AP, 7/7/07)
2006 Jul 3, Two bitter rivals
declared themselves Mexico's next president, sparking fears of
violence. Electoral officials said they wouldn't name a winner until
a vote-by-vote hand count.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 4, Lopez Obrador,
Mexico’s leftist presidential candidate, called for a recount of
election results that showed him trailing his conservative rival by
1 percentage point.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 5, Mexico’s recount of
election results put Lopez Obrador ahead of Louis Calderon with 83%
of the votes tallied.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 6, Felipe Calderon won
the official count in Mexico's disputed presidential race, a
come-from-behind victory for the stiff technocrat. But his leftist
rival refused to concede and said he'd fight the results in court.
Calderon won 35.9% of the vote against Obrador’s 35.3%.
(AP, 7/7/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
2006 Jul 8, Leftist
presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged his
supporters to take to the streets, claiming the governing party
stole his victory in Mexico's extremely narrow elections. Obrador
called on a huge crowd of supporters to keep peacefully protesting
as he goes to court to challenge what he called his fraudulent
electoral defeat.
(AP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, A Mexican federal
judge threw out genocide charges against former President Luis
Echeverria, ruling that a 30-year statute of limitations had run
out.
(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, In western Mexico 4
children, who won an airplane ride for good grades at school, were
killed along with the pilot when the small aircraft crashed near
Tepic.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Mexico a man
was shot to death in front of Acapulco's City Hall and a naval
officer was abducted, the latest violence in this resort city hit by
a wave of drug-related crime. The 2 men slain were later identified
as military officers responsible for the mayor's security.
(AP, 7/11/06)(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, Tens of thousands
of supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador headed to Mexico City, leaving mountain towns and sprawling
industrial cities to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 15, US authorities
extradited Jean Succar Kuri, a Mexican businessman with alleged ties
to associates of a powerful state governor, to face charges in
Mexico of child pornography, statutory rape and corruption of
minors.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, In Mexico City
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led hundreds of thousands of marchers
demanding a full recount of in the disputed election.
(SFC, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 21, In Oaxaca, Mexico,
protests initiated by striking teachers continued. Protest leaders
said their fight is not with the tourists but with Gov. Ulises Ruiz,
whom they accuse of rigging the state election in 2004 and using
force to repress dissent.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 24, Gunmen raided a
pharmaceutical laboratory in Mexico City, killing four guards and
stealing about a ton of ephedrine, a key ingredient in making
methamphetamine.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Mexico
supporters of the country’s leftist presidential candidate paralyzed
the Mexico City’s financial district and said they won’t leave until
the top electoral court rules on their demands for a recount in the
disputed race.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Mexican police
found the body of a woman on a dirt road in the border city of
Ciudad Juarez. Abigail Rodriguez (29), who apparently had been
killed by a blow to the head and thrown out of a moving car, was the
14th woman found dead in Juarez so far this year.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 2, In Oaxaca, Mexico,
about 500 women banging spoons against pots and pans seized a
state-run television station and broadcast a homemade video that
showed police kicking protesters out of Oaxaca's main square last
month. In southern Monte Orden village heavy rains caused a
mountainside to give way, burying 2 homes and killing 11 people, 4
of them children.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Production at
Cantarell, Mexico’s biggest oil field, was reported to be declining.
The site accounted for about 60% of Mexico’s oil. A third of
Mexico’s federal budget depended on oil sales.
(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 3, In Mexico Mrs.
Alberta Alcantara Juan and Mrs. Teresa Gonzalez Cornelio were
arrested (along with Jacinta Francisco Marcial) for events that
supposedly occurred on March 26, 2006 when Federal Investigation
Agents attempted to confiscate local merchants’ goods and damaged
some of them. In 2010 Mexico's Supreme Court overturned kidnapping
convictions and ordered the release of the two Otomi Indian market
vendors whose case received international attention. Marcial was
freed last year.
(http://tinyurl.com/373f25t)(AP, 4/28/10)
2006 Aug 4, In Mexico's
southernmost Chiapas state a 7-year-old boy and his father died,
bringing to 10 the number of people killed after eating poisonous
mushrooms. Officials said recent genetic mutations have made some
mushrooms, consumed for years in Indian communities, newly
poisonous.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 5, Mexico's top
electoral court rejected a full recount in the disputed presidential
election, ordering a 9% partial count instead, angering leftist
protesters camped in the capital demanding a new vote-by-vote tally
over their fraud allegations.
(AP, 8/5/06)(WSJ, 8/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 9, In Mexico the body
of Enrique Perea Quintanilla (50), publisher of the magazine Dos
Caras, Una Verdad (Two Faces, One Truth) was found on a dirt road
about 10 miles from Chihuahua City. Authorities said that organized
crime was likely behind the killing.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Mexico leftist
activists blockaded bank headquarters and called for a march on the
offices of federal prosecutors, as officials recounted some of the
ballots from the disputed presidential election.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 12, A passenger bus
skidded off a highway in central Mexico and rolled down a 320-foot
slope, killing 13 people and injuring a dozen others.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Mexico a
recount confirmed Calderon as the next president. Lopez Obrador
vowed to mount new legal challenges.
(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 14, US authorities
arrested Tijuana drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix (38)
aboard a boat off Mexico's Pacific coast. Mexican analysts doubted
the significance of Arellano Felix's arrest as the gang has
effectively lost much of its influence over the years. In 2007 Felix
pleaded guilty to federal crimes that carried a mandatory life
sentence. He agreed to forfeit $50 million and the yacht on which he
was captured.
(AP, 8/17/06)(SFC, 9/18/07, p.A3)
2006 Aug 15, US officials
arrested Edgar Alvarez Cruz on immigration violations in Denver. He
was suspected of participating in the rapes and killings of at least
10 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where more than 100
young women have been killed since 1993.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 19, Mexican
prosecutors announced that they have charged two policemen with
protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang. Mexican police
said they had broken up a vote-buying scheme in Chiapas on the eve
of state elections.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Mexico’s
Chiapas state Juan Sabines, of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution
Party (PRD), held a razor-thin lead over Jose Antonio Aguilar
Bodegas, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who also is
backed by President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. Oaxaca sank
further into chaos as protesters armed with machetes, pipes and
clubs seized 12 private radio stations, cut off highways, and
blockaded bus terminals and newspaper offices.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 23, Assailants threw
grenades at the offices of a newspaper in the resort city of Cancun
in the latest in a series of attacks on news outlets across Mexico.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 27, Mexican electoral
officials said Juan Sabines, a leftist candidate, won the governor's
race in Mexico's volatile southernmost state of Chiapas, edging out
Jose Antonio Aguilar, backed by President Vicente Fox's party by
about 6,300 votes.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 28, Mexico’s top
electoral court announced that a partial recount found no widespread
evidence of fraud.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 29, Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador, Mexico's leftist presidential candidate, rejected a
court decision upholding his rival's slim lead in the disputed July
2 race and called on his supporters not to recognize a government
led by Felipe Calderon.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 30, Hurricane John
lashed tourist resorts with heavy winds and rain as the dangerous
Category 4 storm marched up Mexico's Pacific coast.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2006 Aug 31, Hurricane John
pummeled Mexico's resort-studded Pacific Coast with wind and rain.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Mexico City riot
police, steel barriers, and water cannons surrounded Mexico's
Congress as protesters vowed to stop President Vicente Fox from
delivering his final state-of-the-nation address. Mexican lawmakers,
protesting conservative Felipe Calderon's victory in the July 2
presidential election, stormed the congressional stage and refused
to yield, making Fox the first president in modern Mexican history
not to deliver his annual address to Congress. Fox handed in a
written copy of his report and delivered it over television.
(AP, 9/1/06)(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 5, The president of
Mexico's top electoral court recommended that the full tribunal
uphold the slim lead of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon.
Marcelo Garza, the top police investigator for Nuevo Leon, a
northern Mexican state that borders Texas, was shot to death by a
lone gunman outside an art gallery.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Mexico’s newly
declared President-elect Felipe Calderon began building his
government and his supporters called on backers of leftist Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador to end weeks of national protests over the
disputed July 2 election. Gunmen barged into a bar in central Mexico
and tossed five human heads on the dance floor. An avalanche left 10
villagers dead in northern Mexico.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, In Mexico a
landslide buried buses and cars on a highway in the central state of
Puebla and killed at least four travelers.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 8, In Mexico a small
plane crash near Ensenada on the US-Mexico border killed three
American medical volunteers.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Mexico gunmen
ambushed and killed Enrique Barrera, police chief of the town of
Linares in the border state of Nuevo Leon, in the latest slaying of
a law officer in a region ravaged by a war between drug gangs.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 15, Mexico’s President
Vicente Fox backed down from a confrontation with thousands of
leftist sympathizers of Manuel Lopez Obrador, moving the annual
Independence Day celebration away from Mexico City's main square to
avoid protesters. Fox decided to move the ceremony to the central
town of Dolores Hidalgo, where Miguel Hidalgo made the first call
for independence from Spain in 1810. Supporters of leftist Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador ended the street protest that clogged the heart
of the capital for nearly seven weeks, but they vowed to find other
ways to resist the incoming conservative president.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 16, In Mexico hundreds
of thousands of supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
elected him the leader of a "parallel government" opposed to
President-elect Felipe Calderon's administration. Mexico extradited
accused drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix to the US,
making him the first major Mexican drug lord to be sent north to
face trial on drug charges. He later pleaded guilty to federal
charges of selling cocaine in a San Diego motel. Hurricane Lane, a
Category 3 storm, battered Mazatlan.
(SFC, 9/18/06, p.A7)(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 18, The 184-nation IMF
approved reforms to increase the voice of China, South Korea,
Turkey, and Mexico to reflect their growing economic sway.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D2)
2006 Sep 19, A group of sexual
abuse survivors filed a lawsuit against Mexican Cardinal Norberto
Rivera, claiming he hid evidence to protect a priest accused of
molesting boys. A lawyer for the Chicago-based Survivors Network of
Those Abused by Priests filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior
Court. Rivera, now Mexico's top-ranking cardinal, helped cover up
abuse by the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar involving 50 boys when Aguilar
served as a parish priest in central Puebla state in 1987. Rivera
was bishop of Tehuacan in Puebla state at the time.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Mexico the
governor of Oaxaca state warned 70,000 striking teachers that they
would be replaced and lose their pay unless they immediately
returned to work.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 28, Mexico’s
President-elect Felipe Calderon asked Congress to get tougher on
criminals, create a universal health care system and generate jobs
so millions of Mexicans do not have to migrate to the US to find
work. Calderon also called for reducing the gap between rich and
poor and called for a return to life sentences for hardened
criminals, including violent kidnappers.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Mexico a judge
and four jail guards were killed in separate attacks in the Pacific
resort city of Acapulco.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Oct 5, In Oaxaca, Mexico,
a teacher was hacked to death. A colleague claimed the man was
killed for opposing a teachers' strike. Jaime Rene Calva Aragon was
on his way to a meeting when he was killed by two assailants
wielding hefty ice picks.
(AP, 10/6/06)
2006 Oct 14, In Mexico at least
one man opened fire on protesters manning a roadblock in Oaxaca
paralyzed by months of conflict, killing one demonstrator and
wounding another.
(AP, 10/15/06)
2006 Oct 15, Mexican
authorities arrested a soldier accused of opening fire on a street
barricade in Oaxaca, killing one demonstrator and wounding another.
Elections in Mexico’s Tabasco state showed Andres Rafael Granier of
the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) defeating Democratic
Revolution candidate Cesar Raul Ojeda by 10 points. The next day the
PRD accused its rivals of fraud.
(AP, 10/15/06)(AP, 10/16/06)
2006 Oct 17, In central Mexico
an explosion in an area packed with small fireworks factories
Capulhuac, 20 miles west of Mexico City, left four people dead and a
man with severe burns. In western Mexico 14 people were killed when
a passenger bus crashed into the back of a tractor trailer. A spark
touched off an explosion aboard a gasoline tanker ship at Pemex's
Pajarito marine terminal in the city of Coatzacoalcos, killing eight
people and injuring nine others.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 18, Mexican police
discovered two human heads in a backpack in the Pacific state of
Guerrero, the latest decapitation victims in a continuing wave of
violence.
(AP, 10/19/06)
2006 Oct 19, Mexico's Senate
ruled there was no reason to oust Oaxaca's embattled state governor,
eliminating the last formal legal recourse for thousands of
protesters who for months have demanded the resignation of Gov.
Ulises Ruiz. Jorge Bustos, a commander with the defunct Federal
Security Directorate, was arrested in Mexico City in connection with
the 1974 disappearance of six alleged guerrilla members. Bustos had
arrested six members of the Brigada Lacandona, a 1970s guerrilla
faction, who disappeared after Hidalgo state authorities turned them
over to the federal intelligence agency.
(AP, 10/19/06)(AP, 10/20/06)
2006 Oct 20, In Mexico radical
protesters and teachers, who have taken over the city of Oaxaca,
appeared to be parting ways after the teachers' leaders agreed to
end a strike and return to work.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Mexico’s
Michoacan state, the home state of President-elect Felipe Calderon,
420 homicides were reported for this year, including 19 police
chiefs and commanders. Juan Antonio Magana, the state's attorney
general, said well over half the killings were drug-related.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 26, Teachers in the
southern Mexican state of Oaxaca voted to end a five-month-old
strike, allowing 1.3 million children to return to classes and
potentially taking the sting out of anti-government protests
besieging this historic city.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Oct 26, President Bush
signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the
U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to give Republican candidates a
pre-election platform for asserting they're tough on illegal
immigration.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Oct 27, In Oaxaca, Mexico,
Bradley Roland Will (36), a US journalist and two Mexican men were
shot to death. The clashes occurred as leftist protesters barricaded
streets as part of a five-month-old campaign to oust the governor.
In 2008 two supporters of a protest movement in southern Mexico were
arrested for the fatal shooting of the US journalist. Officials said
Juan Manuel Martinez, was the gunman, and Octavio Perez was an
accomplice who helped cover up the crime. Eight other alleged
accomplices were still sought. In 2010 Juan Martinez Moreno was
cleared by a federal court.
(AP, 10/28/06)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.48)(AP,
10/18/08)(AP, 2/17/10)
2006 Oct 28, Mexico’s President
Vicente Fox announced he was sending federal police into the
violence-wracked southern state capital of Oaxaca after a US
journalist and two Mexican men were shot to death. The bodies of 3
state police officers, one of whom had been decapitated, were found
in a sport utility vehicle abandoned outside the resort city of
Acapulco.
(AP, 10/28/06)(AP, 10/28/06)
2006 Oct 29, In Mexico federal
forces stormed Oaxaca and pushed protesters and striking teachers
out of the city center they had occupied for five months, leaving
the colonial city resembling a battleground, with riot police and
burned vehicles lining the streets. At least one demonstrator was
killed.
(AP, 10/30/06)
2006 Oct 30, The Mexican
government authorized the extradition of ex-Guatemalan President
Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) to face embezzlement charges in his
country.
(AP, 10/31/06)
2006 Oct 31, In Mexico youths
roamed the streets of Oaxaca tossing gasoline bombs, hijacking
vehicles and vowing to keep fighting for the state governor's
ouster. Congress urged the governor to resign and leftist leaders
urged national support for the movement.
(AP, 10/31/06)
2006 Nov 2, In Mexico,
protesters besieging Oaxaca City forced federal police to retreat
from the gates of the state university after six hours of pitched
fighting and the rector's call for an end to the government
"attack."
(AP, 11/3/06)
2006 Nov 3, In Mexico Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador, who refused to accept an election tribunal's
decision that his opponent narrowly won the presidential election,
named his "resistance" government Cabinet.
(AP, 11/3/06)
2006 Nov 6, In Mexico City
simultaneous explosions hit the Federal Electoral Tribunal, a bank
branch and the headquarters of the former ruling party early in the
day. Authorities deactivated a homemade explosive device at a second
bank branch.
(AP, 11/6/06)
2006 Nov 7, More than 15,000
white-clad supporters of Oaxaca's embattled governor marched through
Oaxaca in their biggest show of strength in a six-month conflict
that has left at least nine people dead.
(AP, 11/7/06)
2006 Nov 9, Mexico City's
assembly passed legislation to legally recognize gay civil unions in
the capital, the first such vote by a legislative body in the
history of the conservative country.
(AP, 11/9/06)
2006 Nov 10, In Mexico Misael
Tamayo Hernandez, editor of El Despertar de la Costa, was found dead
in a hotel room in Zihuatanejo, a day after running stories about
organized crime and corruption in the city government. Hector
Gaxiola, a district police chief in the border city of Tijuana, was
shot and killed a day after surviving another attempt on his life.
His brother was found next to him. Both had been shot dozens of
times.
(AP, 11/11/06)
2006 Nov 14, Second-grader Saul
Arellano, a US citizen, appeared in Mexico's 500-member Chamber of
Deputies to plead for help in lobbying Washington to stop the
deportation of his mother, an illegal immigrant who has taken refuge
in a Chicago church. His efforts paid off with a resolution calling
on the US Congress to suspend the deportation of Elvira Arellano
(31) and any other illegal immigrant parents of US citizens. US
officials said there is no right to sanctuary in a church under US
law, and nothing to prevent them from arresting Elvira Arellano, who
has lived at the church since Aug. 15, the day she was supposed to
surrender for deportation.
(AP, 11/14/06)
2006 Nov 15, Aides to former
leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he
will seek contributions from ordinary Mexicans to support a
parallel, "legitimate" administration he declared after losing the
July 2 elections to President-elect Felipe Calderon by a razor-thin
margin.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 16, Jose Manuel Nava
(53), a former general manager of one of Mexico's oldest newspapers,
was found slain in his apartment in the capital, officials said, a
week after he went public with his book criticizing the federal
government, the business community and newspaper employees.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 18, The Mexican
government released a long-awaited report that for the first time
officially blamed "the highest command levels" of three former
presidencies for the massacres, tortures and slayings of hundreds of
leftists from the 1960s to the 1980s. In Michoacan state at least
three of 10 lawyers being held hostage by inmates were killed after
police raided the Mil Cumbres prison in Morelia to try to rescue
them.
(AP, 11/18/06)
2006 Nov 19, In Mexico a public
defender died of his injuries after being shot by inmates who took a
group of lawyers hostage near the central Mexican city of Morelia,
bringing the death toll in the incident to five.
(AP, 11/20/06)
2006 Nov 19, Mexican Gen.
Francisco Quiros, imprisoned for drug trafficking and implicated in
the disappearance of leftists during Mexico's "dirty war," died from
cancer. In 2005 a judge ordered Quiros arrested for the 1974
kidnapping of singer Rosendo Radilla, who disappeared after being
seized by soldiers at a roadblock.
(AP, 11/20/06)
2006 Nov 20, Mexico’s defeated
presidential candidate Lopez Obrador planned to be sworn in as the
country's "legitimate president" as Mexico celebrated its 1910
revolution.
(AP, 11/20/06)
2006 Nov 21, Roberto Marcos
Garcia (50), chief reporter for the weekly Testimonio crime magazine
in Mexico’s port city of Veracruz, was toppled from his motorcycle
and run over by unidentified assailants who then shot him at close
range.
(AP, 11/21/06)(SSFC, 12/10/06, p.A21)
2006 Nov 22, In Mexico a
violent Mexican drug gang took out a rare, half-page ad in
newspapers in which they claimed to be anti-crime vigilantes who
wanted to stop kidnapping, robbery and the sale of methamphetamine
in the western state of Michoacan.
(AP, 11/23/06)
2006 Nov 23, In Mexico Police
chief Baltazar Gomez and Osvaldo Rodriguez, both of the Monterrey
suburb of Santa Catarina, were killed just after midnight by a
gunman who followed them inside a convenience store where they had
gone after attending a funeral. Crusading journalist Jesus
Blancornelas, who relentlessly investigated drug cartels and
government corruption despite an attempt on his life and the killing
of colleagues, died of a chronic illness in Tijuana.
(AP, 11/23/06)
2006 Nov 25, In Mexico singer
Valentin Elizalde (27) was ambushed and gunned down along with his
manager and driver following a performance in Reynosa. His ballads
included narco-corridos, which honored the exploits of drug dealers.
(SSFC, 11/26/06, p.A19)
2006 Nov 26, In Mexico bands of
youths rampaged through downtown Oaxaca, torching buildings and cars
hours after federal police used tear gas to drive off a violent mob
of leftists in the latest spasm of protests against the state
governor. 30 to 40 armed men entered the La Barranca hunting ranch
near the US border and kidnapped five men including 3 Texans.
Librado Pina Jr. (49), owns the popular deer-hunting ranch near
Hidalgo, was released on Dec 18. His son and 2 others had been
released earlier. There was no word on the ranch's Mexican cook,
Marco Ortiz.
(AP, 11/26/06)(AP, 11/29/06)(AP, 12/18/06)
2006 Nov 26, Raul Velasco (73),
who hosted one of Mexico's most popular and enduring television
programs, "Siempre en Domingo," died at his home in Acapulco.
(AP, 11/26/06)
2006 Nov 28, In Mexico gunmen
attacked a police car in the border city of Tijuana, killing Gerardo
Santiago Prado, the police chief of Mesa de Otay, his bodyguard and
a secretary.
(AP, 11/30/06)
2006 Nov 29, A Mexican court
reinstated an arrest warrant for former President Luis Echeverria,
just four months after a federal judge had dismissed the same
charges of genocide in connection with a 1968 student massacre.
(AP, 11/29/06)
2006 Nov 30, Mexican police
found the bullet-ridden bodies of two men, including a missing
journalist, just days after the body of another slain reporter was
found in the area. Police discovered the body of reporter Adolfo
Sanchez Guzman (32) near Ciudad Mendoza, 75 miles west of Veracruz,
not far from where his car was found abandoned on Nov 28. Police on
Dec 1 arrested Juan Carlos Palestino (30) and Julian Rosas Palestino
(34) after witnesses said the two brothers had been looking for
Martinez. The brothers had accused Martinez of stealing their truck.
(AP, 12/1/06)(AP, 12/5/06)
2006 Nov, In Mexico credit card
interest rates averaged over 30% despite efforts by Guillermo Ortiz,
head of the Central Bank, to get banks to lower their costs. 80% of
the country’s banking assets were foreign owned.
(Econ, 11/25/06, p.76)
2006 Dec 1, Felipe Calderon
took the oath of office as Mexico's president amid jeers and
whistles, in a chaotic ceremony before congress preceded by a brawl
between lawmakers still divided over the nation's tight presidential
election.
(AP, 12/1/06)
2006 Dec 2, Mexico's new
president pledged to substantially raise the wages of the armed
forces, calling them a crucial weapon against heavily armed drug
gangs terrorizing the nation.
(AP, 12/2/06)
2006 Dec 3, Mexico’s newly
sworn-in president Felipe Calderon decreed a 10% pay cut for himself
and his cabinet members, echoing a central campaign promise of the
leftist rival he beat by a razor-thin margin.
(AP, 12/3/06)
2006 Dec 5, Mexico’s Pres.
Calderon, under pressure to promote the social programs his leftist
rival championed, presented an austere budget that increases
spending for social programs to help the country's poorest. Mexican
police arrested Flavio Sosa, the symbolic leader of a six-month-long
protest movement that took over southern Oaxaca city, hours after he
gave a news conference saying he had come to the capital to start
talks with the government.
(AP, 12/5/06)
2006 Dec 6, Mexico’s President
Felipe Calderon announced a program to help Mexico's 100 poorest
communities, responding to leftist critics who accuse the
conservative leader of wanting to help only the rich.
(AP, 12/7/06)
2006 Dec 8, In Mexico more than
100 prisoners escaped from a state penitentiary a few miles from
Cancun's resort zone after hundreds of inmates overpowered guards
with knives and bats. Police quickly recaptured most of the men, but
there were still 17 at large. More than 250 federal police agents
surrounded the offices of the Oaxaca state police force and seized
its weapons to determine whether any were used in shootings during
six months of demonstrations in Oaxaca City. Assailants shot dead an
Indian activist in Mexico's conflict-ridden state of Oaxaca. The
bullet-ridden corpse of Raul Marcial Perez was found on a road near
the Mixtec Indian community of Agua Fria about 120 miles north of
Oaxaca City.
(AP, 12/9/06)(AP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 10, Leonel Cota,
president of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Mexico's largest
leftist party, led thousands of protesters in a march to the center
Oaxaca, demanding the resignation of the state governor and the
withdrawal of thousands of federal police.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 12, Mexico's new
president launched his first major offensive against drug gangs,
sending more than 6,500 federal forces to Michoacan, his
violence-plagued home state, to crack down on turf wars that have
left hundreds dead in a wave of execution-style killings and
beheadings. The body of Luis Felipe Zavala, cousin of Mexico's first
lady Margarita Zavala, was found in his minivan in the city of
Naucalpan in Mexico State.
(AP, 12/12/06)(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 13, A group of about
300 Mazahua Indians briefly seized a water treatment plant on Mexico
City's western outskirts and temporarily cut off one of the main
sources of water for the metropolis of 18 million people. The
protest was motivated by demands for more government development
aid. The government teamed up with doctors, academics and a US-based
drug company to announce a campaign to reduce the number of smokers
in Mexico by more than 10 percent in three years.
(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 15, In Mexico Elias
Valencia, a suspected head of the Valencia cartel, was arrested
along with four other people at a mountain ranch near the town of
Aguililla in Michoacan state.
(AP, 12/17/06)
2006 Dec 16, In Mexico hundreds
of federal police officers packed up their tents and marched out of
Oaxaca’s central square, ending their seven-week occupation to put
down a lengthy protest by leftists that had left nine people dead. A
Mexican air force plane crashed into the sea near the resort city of
Acapulco and rescue teams were searching for its four crew members.
(AP, 12/16/06)
2006 Dec 19, Officials said
thousands of soldiers sent to seize control of one of Mexico's top
drug-producing regions have discovered widespread cultivation of a
hybrid marijuana plant that is easy to grow and difficult to kill.
(AP, 12/19/06)
2006 Dec 28, In central Mexico
a passenger bus collided with a freight train, killing 22 people.
(AP, 12/28/06)
2006 Mexico’s Transportation
and Communications Secretary Luis Tellez alleged in a recorded
conversation that former President Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) stole
from a secret government fund. The contents of the conversation were
made public in February, 2009. Tellez resigned 2 weeks later
following threats that other recordings would be revealed.
(SFC, 3/4/09, p.A2)
2006 In Mexico some Zetas,
former military special-forces members, broke away from their Gulf
cartel associations to form the La Familia organized crime group. La
Familia was formed when the gang, then known as "The Business,"
broke off from the Gulf cartel and declared its independence by
rolling the severed heads into a disco in the mountain city of
Uruapan.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.34)(AP, 12/11/10)
2006 Mexico, the world’s
largest Spanish-speaking country, counted a population of some 106
million people. An estimated 500,000 Mexicans left the country each
year in search of better opportunities.
(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.3,16)
2006 Mexico counted 2,200
murders this year linked to organized crime. Reporters Without
Borders later counted 9 journalists killed this year in Mexico along
with 3 missing.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.45)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.47)
2006-2010 Mexico seized some 55,000 assault
weapons, most of which were bought legally in the United States.
(Econ, 10/16/10, p.16)
2006-2011 In Mexico over 47,000 people were killed
by violence associated with organized crime related to the drug
trade.
(Econ, 6/27/15, p.73)
2007 Jan 2, Mexico said it is
sending some 3,300 soldiers and federal police officers to fight
drug gangs in the crime-plagued border city of Tijuana, which has
become a major smuggling route for cocaine and methamphetamine
entering the United States.
(AP, 1/3/07)
2007 Jan 4, Jorge Bajos
Valverde, a Mexican state legislator, was gunned down in the center
of Acapulco on his way to an interview at a radio and TV station.
(AP, 1/5/07)
2007 Jan 5, Mexican officials
in Michoacan state said they had found nine bodies in a shallow
grave in the city of Uruapan.
(AP, 1/6/07)
2007 Jan 6, Mexican federal and
state police manned checkpoints within Tijuana’s city limits as
local police suspended their patrols because soldiers sent to crack
down on drug gangs and corruption seized most of their guns on
suspicion they aided traffickers.
(AP, 1/6/07)
2007 Jan 9, In Mexico Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has refused to accept his slim loss to
President Felipe Calderon in July's election, launched a weekly TV
show mocking the government's battle against crime and unemployment
and promising to promote a law targeting Mexico's monopolies.
(AP, 1/10/07)
2007 Jan 12, Francisco Javier
Dominguez-Rivera (22) of Puebla, Mexico, was killed in a
confrontation with the unidentified agent north of the US-Mexico
border in Arizona between Bisbee and Douglas. On Jan 16 the Mexican
government sent a diplomatic note to the United States protesting
the fatal shooting.
(AP, 1/16/07)
2007 Jan 13, It was reported
that swarms of locusts had descended on the Mexican state of Yucatan
and threatened over 12,000 acres of vegetation.
(SFC, 1/13/07, p.B8)
2007 Jan 14, Gunmen burst into
the home of Jaime Meraz Martinez, a political leader in the northern
Mexican state of Durango, and fatally shot him, two family members
and an employee.
(AP, 1/15/07)
2007 Jan 15, President Felipe
Calderon launched a program to create jobs for young Mexicans and
curb the flow of millions of migrants to the United States.
(AP, 1/15/07)
2007 Jan 16, Pedro Diaz Parada,
a drug cartel leader, was arrested in the southern state of Oaxaca
and taken to Mexico City. This was the first major drug arrest under
the administration of President Felipe Calderon.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 18, President Felipe
Calderon signed an accord with businesses to curb soaring tortilla
prices and protect Mexico's poor from speculative sellers and a
surge in the cost of corn driven by the US ethanol industry.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 18, Truck driver
Albano Ramirez Santos tried to commit suicide by throwing himself
onto the tracks of the Mexico City subway and was later beaten to
death by police. Santos was reportedly despondent over the theft of
his truck.
(AP, 1/21/07)
2007 Jan 19, Mexico extradited
four major drug traffickers to the US, including Osiel Cardenas,
head of the so-called Gulf Cartel. President Felipe Calderon
announced that 7,600 soldiers have massed in the Pacific coast state
of Guerrero to go after drug gangs that have committed beheadings
and other violence in the resort city of Acapulco in recent months.
(AP, 1/19/07)(AP, 1/20/07)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.p33)
2007 Jan 20, In Mexico Rodolfo
Rincon (54), who worked for the newspaper Tabasco Hoy, was last seen
after he reported on local drug dealers. In 2010 Mexican authorities
said he was killed by a drug cartel's hit men who dissolved his body
in acid.
(AP, 3/1/10)
2007 Jan 24, In southern Mexico
a bus plunged into a ravine in remote mountains, killing at least 29
people.
(AP, 1/25/07)
2007 Jan 26, Six federal police
officers involved in President Felipe Calderon's anti-drug operation
were being investigated for extortion after they were videotaped
taking money from a driver in the border city of Tijuana.
(AP, 1/27/07)
2007 Jan 27, Police in Tijuana,
Mexico, got their guns back three weeks after they were forced to
turn over weapons to federal authorities because of allegations they
were colluding with drug traffickers.
(AP, 1/27/07)
2007 Jan 31, In Mexico City
some 75,000 unionists, farmers and leftists marched to protest price
increases in basic foodstuffs like tortillas, a direct challenge to
the new president's market-oriented economic policies blamed by some
for widening the gulf between rich and poor.
(AP, 2/1/07)
2007 Jan 31, In Mexico a
lesbian couple registered what officials called Mexico's first gay
civil union in the northern city of Saltillo.
(AP, 1/31/07)
2007 Feb 1, Mexico’s President
Felipe Calderon praised a new law that obligates federal and local
authorities to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women,
and he promised a "relentless" fight against gender-related
abuse.
(AP, 2/1/07)
2007 Feb 3, In Mexico thousands
of protesters marched in Oaxaca to demand the resignation of the
state governor. A man's chopped up body was discovered in Acapulco
dumped in plastic garbage bags.
(AP, 2/3/07)(Reuters, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 6, In Mexico more than
a dozen armed assailants staged and videotaped simultaneous attacks
against two offices of the state attorney general in Acapulco,
killing five agents and two secretaries.
(AP, 2/6/07)
2007 Feb 14, Mexican
immigration agents allegedly locked 10 Guatemalan and two Salvadoran
migrants in a trailer after they refused to pay a bribe against of
$110 each. In late 2008 the country's National Human Rights
Commission called for a government investigation.
(AP, 12/31/08)
2007 Feb 15, Assailants shot
dead four police officers in the western Mexican city of
Aguascalientes, the latest in a wave of slayings of law enforcement
officers across Mexico.
(AP, 2/15/07)
2007 Feb 18, Officials said the
Mexican government will expand its anti-drug raids to two states
across the border from Texas, deploying more than 3,000 soldiers,
sailors and federal police.
(AP, 2/19/07)
2007 Feb 19, Mexican President
Felipe Calderon announced that soldiers waging an offensive against
drug traffickers will get a pay hike of 45 percent this year in a
bid to insulate them from corruption. This coincided with a decision
to lower his own pay by 10% and abolish pensions for Mexican
presidents.
(AP, 2/19/07)(SSFC, 7/8/07, p.A7)
2007 Feb 22, The Bush
administration announced its plan to have US inspectors oversee
Mexican trucking companies that carry cargo across the border.
Mexico responded to the US announcement by saying it will allow
trucks from 100 US companies to travel across the border. The news
that Mexican trucks will be allowed to haul freight deeper into the
US drew an angry reaction the next day from labor leaders, safety
advocates and members of Congress.
(AP, 2/23/07)
2007 Feb 26, Four Mexican
soldiers were arrested and accused of raping and murdering a
73-year-old woman a day earlier in a case that outraged Indian
groups in Soledad Atzompa in Veracruz state. In May a special
prosecutor found no evidence that soldiers beat and raped Ernestina
Ascensio Rosario. An autopsy on Ascensio's body showed that she died
of acute anemia from internal bleeding in her digestive tract.
(AP, 3/1/07)(AP, 5/1/07)
2007 Feb 27, Mexico's Supreme
Court ruled that the armed forces cannot kick out HIV-positive
members because doing so is discriminatory and unconstitutional.
Mexico's head of migration pledged to improve the agency's detention
centers in response to criticism that Mexico fails to give Central
American immigrants the same respect it demands for its own citizens
in the United States.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 27, CompUSA said it
will close 126 retail stores by the end of May. The restructure
would leave 103 stores and include a $440 million cash infusion from
parent company US Commercial Corp., a holding company in Mexico City
controlled by Carlos Slim.
(SFC, 2/28/07, p.C3)
2007 Feb, Marcelo Ebrard,
Mexico City’s newly elected mayor, sent 600 police on a raid to
evict residents from 73 apartments in a building in Tepito, said to
be a drug-dealing center. Raids there and nearby netted 2 kilos of
cocaine, 30 tons of DVDs and 90 kilos of marijuana.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.34)
2007 Feb, Mexican customs agent
Jorge Santillan seized a truck crossing from Brownsville, Texas, to
Matamoros, Mexico, carrying a grenade launcher and 17 grenades along
with 18 rifles and 17 pistols. Days later, the agent was shot to
death with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
(AP, 8/15/07)
2007 Mar 3, In southern Mexico
gunmen killed two members of Mexico's former ruling party in the
mountain city of Tlapa in Guerrero state.
(AP, 3/3/07)
2007 Mar 6, In Mexico gunmen
wounded Gen. Francisco Fernandez, the top security official in the
Gulf coast state of Tabasco, and killed his driver.
(AP, 3/7/07)
2007 Mar 9, President Felipe
Calderon proposed sweeping reforms to Mexico's justice system,
including US-style trials and a unified criminal code. Mexican
federal police detained 81 Chinese immigrants and 22 immigration
agents after the Chinese were discovered hiding in the Cancun
airport terminal, possibly with the protection of Mexican
immigration officers.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Mar 10, In northern Mexico
8 people were killed and 11 were injured when a bus slammed into a
tractor trailer carrying aluminum beams.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Mar 13, In Mexico Pres.
Bush met with Pres. Felipe Calderon in Merida. Bush sought to soothe
strained ties by promising to prod Congress to overhaul tough US
immigration policies, but Mexican President Felipe Calderon
criticized US plans for a 700-mile border fence. Hundreds of
demonstrators marched to the US Embassy in Mexico City, attacking
riot police with concrete blocks, metal bars and tearing down
barricades to protest Bush's visit.
(AP, 3/14/07)(AP, 3/13/08)
2007 Mar 15, Mexican Federal
agents seized the cash, eight luxury vehicles, seven weapons and a
machine to make pills during a raid at a house in Lomas de
Chapultepec. The attorney general later said the $206 million in
cash seized was connected to one of the hemisphere's largest
networks for trafficking pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in
methamphetamines. The ring had been operating since 2004 and was run
by a native of China who had gained Mexican citizenship. A recount
put the cashed seized to over $207 million.
(AP, 3/17/07)(AP, 3/22/07)
2007 Mar 16, In Mexico an
economist and a journalist became the first couple united under
Mexico City's new gay civil union law.
(AP, 3/16/07)
2007 Mar 17, Hundreds of
Mexican federal police and soldiers surrounded the headquarters of
Tabasco's state police and arrested top current and former
commanders in a raid apparently linked to an assassination attempt
against the state's public safety secretary. Mireya Lopez Portillo,
the daughter of a retired Mexican general, and her husband, a
television network executive, were shot to death while traveling in
a sport utility vehicle in Mexico City. This raised fears the army
is being targeted for attacks because of its broadening role in law
enforcement.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 17, The Arenitas waste
water treatment plant, that Mexican officials say will help prevent
pollution of US waterways, was inaugurated in the city of Mexicali,
across the border from Calexico, Calif.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 26, An American border
inspector was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for taking
cash and cars from smugglers, allowing them to shuttle illegal
immigrants from Mexico into the United States.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 27, Police in Mexico
City kicked off a campaign to exchange guns for computers and other
gifts in an attempt to reduce firearm deaths. Two bodies were found
wrapped in plastic bags and sheets behind a television station in
Mexico's port city of Veracruz, apparent victims of drug-related
violence.
(AP, 3/27/07)(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 29, In northern Mexico
gunmen killed two police officers and six other people in less than
48 hours, the latest victims in a wave of drug-related violence.
(AP, 3/30/07)
2007 Mar 30, A video
purportedly showing the beheading of a drug cartel hit man appeared
on video-sharing Web site YouTube, and its makers called on Mexicans
to kill more members of the gang.
(AP, 4/1/07)
2007 Apr 1, In Monterrey,
Mexico, a tractor-trailer lost its brakes and killed nine people as
it plowed through a residential area. The driver of a
tractor-trailer was charged with homicide after testing positive for
drugs.
(AP, 4/2/07)(AP, 4/5/07)
2007 Apr 6, Amado Ramirez, the
Acapulco correspondent for Mexico's top television news network, was
shot to death.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 11, A Mexican court
ordered the reinstatement of ousted mineworkers union leader
Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, more than a year after the government turned
him out of office based on complaints of corruption.
(AP, 4/11/07)
2007 Apr 12, Mexican President
Felipe Calderon signed a law eliminating prison sentences for libel
or defamation, drawing praise from media watchdog groups.
(AP, 4/12/07)
2007 Apr 14, In Mexico a
speeding bus crashed into a tractor-trailer outside the border city
of Ciudad Juarez, killing 28 people and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 4/15/07)(AP, 4/15/07)
2007 Apr 15, A 14-year-old
matador who left Spain to escape his home country's ban on young
bullfighters was nearly gored to death in a Mexican City ring, his
lung punctured by a 900-pound bull.
(AP, 4/16/07)
2007 Apr 16, Police found 17
bodies stuffed in cars or dumped on streets in garbage bags across
Mexico in the latest wave of violence apparently triggered by
warring drug gangs.
(AP, 4/17/07)
2007 Apr 16, Nicaraguan police
announced the arrest of more than two dozen local members of
Mexico's powerful Sinaloa drug cartel but said they were still
seeking the group's leader.
(AP, 4/16/07)
2007 Apr 18, Mexican police and
soldiers battled gunmen at a hospital in Tijuana in violence that
left at least three people dead before the authorities subdued the
attackers. Authorities said next day that the gunmen were hit men
for the city's Arellano Felix drug cartel.
(AP, 4/18/07)(AP, 4/19/07)
2007 Apr 21, In Mexico a
Durango state police commander was kidnapped and killed and two
other officers were shot dead in a gun battle with his abductors.
(AP, 4/22/07)
2007 Apr 22, Marcos Leyes
Perez, the son of the US consul in southern Oaxaca state, was
stabbed during an apparent mugging.
(AP, 4/23/07)
2007 Apr 23, Eleazar Medina
Rojas, described as a key member of the powerful Gulf drug cartel,
was arrested in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, along with his
father, four other cartel members and four women. Authorities
reported the killing of Jorge Gonzalez, police chief of Cardenas, in
the southern Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Mexican police found the
body of Saul Noe Martinez Ortega (36), a newspaper editor abducted
last week in the border city of Agua Prieta. He had been dead at
least six days and was found in neighboring Chihuahua state.
(AP, 4/23/07)
2007 Apr 24, Mexico City
lawmakers voted to legalize abortion during the first three months
of pregnancy, a landmark decision likely to heighten church-state
tensions in the Roman Catholic nation and lead to a bitter court
battle.
(AP, 4/25/07)
2007 Apr 26, A new measure
legalizing abortions in Mexico City was published into law, allowing
doctors to almost immediately begin terminating pregnancies in their
first trimester.
(AP, 4/26/07)
2007 Apr 30, US and Mexican law
enforcement officials said Mexican druglords are taking over the
business of smuggling migrants into the United States, using them as
human decoys to divert authorities from billions of dollars in
cocaine shipments across the same border.
(AP, 4/30/07)
2007 Apr, Mexico’s
CompartamosBanco went public as a lender to the poor. It was created
in 1990 as a non-Governmental Organization (NGO). ACCION Int’l., a
charity that has helped to spread microfinance since the 1970s, was
an early investor and banked $140 million in the IPO, while
retaining a 9% stake. ACCION had received funding from USAID.
(Econ, 5/17/08, p.93)(http://tinyurl.com/46esnp)
2007 May 1, In Mexico 5
soldiers, including a colonel, and a suspected drug cartel enforcer
were killed in a shootout in the western state of Michoacan, which
has been plagued by drug violence and is the target of a
military-led anti-drug offensive.
(AP, 5/2/07)
2007 May 6, More than 18,000
people stripped down and bared it all in Mexico City's vast main
square for US photographer Spencer Tunick's biggest nude shoot yet.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 7, In western Mexico 4
purported drug smugglers were killed in a shootout with soldiers in
Apatzingan, Michoacan state, the second deadly clash in a week
between traffickers and troops in the same remote, mountainous
region.
(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 9, In Mexico gunmen
opened fire on a naval commander in the Pacific resort city of
Ixtapa and killed his bodyguard. Suspected drug traffickers attacked
a military checkpoint in the Pacific resort of Huatulco. One
attacker was killed.
(AP, 5/10/07)
2007 May 12, In Mexico a
severed head accompanied by a note of defiance from organized crime
gangs and two hand grenades was found outside a military barracks in
Veracruz state.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 14, In Mexico City
gunmen fatally shot Jose Nemesio Lugo, Mexico’s new federal
narcotics intelligence chief, as he was on his way to work at the
Attorney General's Office.
(AP, 5/14/07)(SFC, 5/25/07, p.A1)
2007 May 15, A top Mexican
anti-drug official said the US must do more to stop weapons from
being smuggled into the hands of drug traffickers who are using them
to kill Mexican soldiers and police.
(AP, 5/15/07)
2007 May 16, In Mexico over 40
armed men abducted and killed 4 police officers south of the Arizona
border.
(SFC, 5/17/07, p.A3)
2007 May 16, Thomas Frank
White, a US businessman, was convicted of raping a teenage boy and
sentenced to more than 7 years in jail in Mexico. White, who founded
the brokerage firm Thomas White & Co. in 1978, was arrested in
Thailand in 2003 at the behest of Mexican officials and later
extradited.
(AP, 5/16/07)
2007 May 17, Mexican police
chased the remnants of a criminal assault force through the
mountains of Sonora near the Arizona border after kidnappings and
gunbattles that left at least 22 people dead.
(AP, 5/17/07)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.45)
2007 May 19, Assailants shot
dead a police commander in a wealthy Monterrey suburb, the latest in
a wave of killings of law enforcement officials across Mexico.
(AP, 5/19/07)
2007 May 23, In western Mexico
a tractor-trailer loaded with sand smashed into a toll booth and
rebounded into other vehicles, setting off a blaze that killed 10
people.
(AP, 5/24/07)
2007 May 25, In Mexico 2
members of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), a Marxist guerrilla
group, disappeared. A week later the group blamed the government and
called for their safe return and warned of dire consequences. In
July the group began blowing up natural gas pipelines. Attacks took
place on July 6,10 and Sep 10.
(WSJ, 11/14/07, p.A1)
2007 May 27, In southern Mexico
assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles shot dead six family
members, including three children, as they ambushed a minivan on a
country road.
(AP, 5/27/07)
2007 May 28, In Mexico City
Riyo Mori, a 20-year-old dancer from Japan who hopes to someday open
an international dance school, was crowned Miss Universe 2007.
(AP, 5/28/07)
2007 May 31, Mexico's Televisa
network, known around the world for its soap operas, said it plans
to expand in China, following the lead of taco chains and other
Mexican businesses looking for a slice of the Asian nation's market.
(AP, 5/31/07)
2007 Jun 1, Mexican soldiers
fired on a family traveling to a funeral when they failed to stop
after being ordered to do so at the checkpoint near the village of
La Joya. 19 Mexican soldiers were sent to a military prison June 4
for the shooting that killed two women and three children. In 2011
the commanding officer received a 40-year sentence in a court
martial and another officer received 38 years. A judge gave 12
enlisted soldiers 16-year sentences.
(AP, 6/5/07)(AP, 11/3/11)
2007 Jun 3, In southern Mexico
tons of bananas collapsed the false floor of a tractor-trailer
smuggling migrants, killing 6 people hidden inside a secret
compartment and wounding a dozen others.
(AP, 6/4/07)
2007 Jun 11, Mexican police and
soldiers arrested three men during an operation to fight illegal
logging in a mountain region south of Mexico City where
environmentalist Aldo Zamora (21) was killed on May 15.
(AP, 6/11/07)
2007 Jun 14, Abel Diaz Lucas,
also known as Jorge Guevara-Perez, was arrested in El Paso, Texas.
The next day he was handed to Mexican authorities, who had been
trying to find Diaz for five years. They accused him of running a
central Mexico gang notorious for cutting off the fingers and ears
of their victims and sending them to their families to demand ransom
money.
(AP, 6/15/07)
2007 Jun 15, In Mexico the
government of Oaxaca apologized for the first time for a police raid
on protesters last year that led to the country's worst political
unrest in years.
(AP, 6/15/07)
2007 Jun 19, Antonio Aguilar
(88), Mexican mariachi singer and actor, died. He recorded more than
150 albums and began his acting career during Mexico's "Golden Era"
of cinema. He appeared in 167 films, including "The Undefeated"
starring John Wayne.
(AP, 6/20/07)
2007 Jun 21, Mario Villanueva,
the former Mexican governor of Quintana Roo, was freed after six
years behind bars and immediately re-arrested on a US extradition
request in which he is accused of helping smuggle 200 tons of
cocaine into the United States.
(AP, 6/21/07)
2007 Jun 25, Mexico temporarily
removed all 284 of its top federal police officers from their jobs
and is forcing them to undergo psychological reviews to prove they
will not be corrupted in the fight against drug trafficking.
(AP, 6/25/07)
2007 Jul 4, In Mexico heavy
rains triggered the landslide on a remote winding road near the town
of Eloxochitlan in the state of Puebla. As many as 60 passengers
were thought to be buried in a bus on the rural road. 32 bodies were
recovered.
(AP, 7/5/07)(AP, 7/6/07)
2007 Jul 4, Mexico’s financial
website Sentido Comun reported that telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu
(67) has overtaken Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the richest
person on the planet.
(AFP, 7/4/07)
2007 Jul 5, Mine workers across
Mexico waged a 24-hour strike, hoping to achieve better safety
standards and to improve collective labor's footing in the industry.
(AP, 7/6/07)
2007 Jul 5, In Mexico a small
cargo jet failed to take off in Culiacan and barreled onto an
adjacent highway, killing at least 9 people, including two soldiers
assigned to the Mexican president's security detail.
(AP, 7/6/07)
2007 Jul 7, A global poll
picked the Great Wall of China, Rome's Colosseum, India's Taj Mahal,
Peru’s Macchu Picchu, Jordan’s Petra, Brazil's Statue of Christ
Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid as the new seven wonders
of the world. The campaign to name the new wonders was launched in
1999 by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber.
(AP, 7/8/07)
2007 Jul 10, Mexico's
government called a series of gas pipeline explosions a threat to
the nation's democratic institutions and vowed to step up security
after a guerrilla group claimed responsibility for the blasts.
(AP, 7/11/07)
2007 Jul 11, In western Mexico
Honda, Hershey's and other multinational companies temporarily shut
down their factories after rebels attacked a key natural gas
pipeline.
(AP, 7/12/07)
2007 Jul 12, News reports said
Mexico’s Pres. Felipe Calderon has dispatched a new 5,000- strong
elite military unit to guard strategic sites, including oil
refineries and dams in the wake of recent guerrilla attacks on
pipelines operated by Pemex.
(SFC, 7/13/07, p.A10)
2007 Jul 13, Roman Robles-Cota
(32), a police chief in the northern Mexican town of Sonoyta pleaded
guilty to charges that he bribed a US Border Patrol agent in 2005 in
an effort to help a smuggling operation.
(AP, 7/13/07)
2007 Jul 16, In Mexico police
fired tear gas to prevent hundreds of leftist protesters from
reaching the venue of an international folk festival in Oaxaca, in
the worst outbreak of violence in the troubled Mexican city since
November.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 23, Zhenli Ye Gon was
arrested in a Maryland restaurant, four months after police
discovered $207 million at his Mexico City mansion in what US
officials have called the world's biggest seizure of drug cash.
Mexican officials had 60 days to file their legal arguments for Ye
Gon's extradition. Ye Gon has claimed that $150 million of the money
belonged to Mexico's ruling party, and that he was forced to store
it for party officials in his mansion under threat of death during
the 2006 presidential race. Ye Gon later told US prosecutors he had
sold tons of a chemical used to make methamphetamine on the black
market.
(AP, 7/24/07)(AP, 10/23/09)
2007 Jul 30, The body of Luis
Lazaro Lara Morejon, a Cuban-American who was under investigation in
a migrant smuggling case, was found riddled with bullets along a
road outside Cancun, Mexico.
(AP, 7/31/07)
2007 Jul 30, The Mexican Miners
and Metalworkers Union (SNTMMRM) struck Grupo Mexico to demand wage
increases and improved safety conditions. Striking workers occupied
the Cananea copper mine in the northern state of Sonora and
continued into 2010.
(Econ, 4/24/10,
p.59)(www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1819816120100218)
2007 Jul 31, In Mexico the
bodies of Josue Hernandez (32) and Anibal Sanchez (30), both agents
with Mexico's Federal Agency of Investigation, were found in
Guerrero state, where they were gathering intelligence on drug
traffickers. The agents had taken part in a raid that discovered
$205 million in cash in a Mexico City mansion.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2007 Aug 5, Jose Guadalupe
Osuna (51) of Mexico’s National Action Party won the elections for
governor in Baha California. He defeated PRI candidate Jorge Hank, a
former mayor of Tijuana and self-proclaimed billionaire with links
to organized crime.
(SFC, 8/7/07, p.A9)
2007 Aug 18, Hurricane Dean
barreled across the eastern Caribbean and took aim at Hispaniola,
Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, with forecasters saying it
could turn into a monster Category 5 storm within 72 hours. Dean
claimed at least six lives as it began sweeping past the Dominican
Republic and Haiti.
(AP, 8/18/07)
2007 Aug 19, Elvira Arellano
(32), an illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a
year to avoid being separated from her American-born son, was
deported from the US to Mexico, where she vowed to continue her
campaign to change US immigration laws.
(AP, 8/21/07)(AP, 8/19/08)
2007 Aug 20, Tens of thousands
of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan Riviera as Hurricane Dean
roared toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
(AP, 8/20/08)
2007 Aug 21, Hurricane Dean
slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico as a roaring Category 5
hurricane, the most intense Atlantic storm to make landfall in two
decades. Dean made landfall after killing 13 people in the
Caribbean.
(AP, 8/22/07)
2007 Aug 22, Hurricane Dean
closed in on the Mexican mainland, battering oil platforms on the
Bay of Campeche. Dean was downgraded to a tropical storm as it
drenched central Mexico.
(AP, 8/22/07)(WSJ, 8/23/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 23, The remnants of
Hurricane Dean dumped heavy rain across central Mexico, drenching
mudslide-prone mountains as it pushed its way inland after slamming
into the nation's Gulf Coast as a Category 2 storm. Thousands of
Mayan Indians lost homes as Hurricane Dean blew through the Yucatan
peninsula, but their real wealth was the trees, now scattered and
broken in the storm's wake. Village after village is carpeted with
fallen mangoes, oranges, guanabanas and mameys that will never be
harvested. Across Mexico at least 10 people died from the storm.
(AP, 8/23/07)(WSJ, 8/24/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 31, The World Trade
Organization opened a formal investigation into allegations by the
US and Mexico that China is providing illegal subsidies for a range
of industries.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 1, In Mexico Tropical
Storm Henriette dumped heavy rains on Acapulco, flooding streets and
prompting officials to close more than 1,000 schools, while Tropical
Storm Felix formed in the Caribbean.
(AP, 9/1/07)
2007 Sep 5, Hurricane Henriette
threatened Mexico's mainland after punishing the Los Cabos resorts.
(AP, 9/5/07)
2007 Sep 6, Martin Villegas,
Mexican boot maker to world leaders, including President Bush and
Vicente Fox, was arrested in Colorado along with two other Mexican
nationals and two US residents following a three-year undercover
operation by US Fish and Wildlife Service agents. The five allegedly
made 25 illegal shipments of banned skins into the US since 2005.
(AP, 9/22/07)
2007 Sep 9, In northern Mexico
a truck carrying 25 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up after colliding
with another vehicle, killing at least 37 people, including three
reporters who came to the scene near Sacramento.
(AP, 9/10/07)(Econ, 9/15/07, p.40)
2007 Sep 10, Several explosions
in Veracruz state, believed to be the work of saboteurs, ripped
apart natural gas pipelines for Mexico's state oil monopoly. The
explosions forced the evacuation of some 12,000 people. The
so-called People's Revolutionary Army (EPR) claimed responsibility.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2007 Sep 10, In central Mexico
a bus carrying worshippers on a pilgrimage to a famous shrine
plunged into a valley, killing nine passengers and leaving 38
injured.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2007 Sep 11, Mexican President
Felipe Calderon visited India's technology hub of Bangalore to get a
feel for the success of its outsourcing companies, and to encourage
them to invest more in Mexico.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2007 Sep 15, In western Mexico
a bus carrying tourists including passengers of a flight from
Phoenix crashed, killing at least 17 people.
(AP, 9/16/07)
2007 Sep 28, In Mexico City
more than 30 federal agents arrested Avila Beltran (46), who
allegedly spent more than a decade working her way to the top
echelons of Mexico's male-dominated drug trade.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Sep 28, Hurricane Lorenzo
crashed into Mexico's Gulf coast before dawn, ripping apart shacks,
uprooting trees and sending billboards flying through the air. At
least 5 people died.
(AP, 9/28/07)(AP, 9/29/07)
2007 Oct 8, Police in Mexico
City arrested Jose Luis Calva, an aspiring horror novelist, after
discovering his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the
refrigerator and bones in a cereal box. Police had come to Calva's
apartment to investigate the disappearance of his girlfriend,
Alejandra Galeana, a 30-year-old pharmacy clerk and single mother.
(AP, 10/11/07)
2007 Oct 12, In Mexico more
than 1,000 police officers in riot gear blocked street vendors from
setting up stands selling knockoff purses and pirated DVDs, clearing
Mexico City's clogged historic center for the first time in more
than a decade.
(AP, 10/13/07)
2007 Oct 18, Teenage pop star
Belinda (18), who starred in the Disney Channel's "Cheetah Girls 2,"
won the video of the year award at the MTV Video Music Awards Latin
America in Mexico City. The native of Madrid, Spain, who grew up in
Mexico, also won best solo artist.
(AP, 10/19/07)
2007 Oct 16, A boat from
Guatemala with over 20 migrants capsized. Mexican authorities by the
end of the week recovered the bodies of 15 migrants. The vessel was
believed to be carrying more than 20 people. There were 2 survivors.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 22, The US announced
the Merida Initiative. It was signed into law on June 30, 2008. It
is a security cooperation between the United States and the
government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the
aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking, transnational
crime and money laundering. The assistance includes training,
equipment and intelligence.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9rida_Initiative)
2007 Oct 22,
Pres. Bush asked Congress for $196.4 billion for the Iraq war.
This included $500 million to help Mexico fight drug traffickers as
Mexico and the US announced plans for a $1.4 billion aid package to
fight drug trafficking and other organized crime south of the
border.
(SFC, 10/23/07, p.A7)(WSJ, 10/23/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 23, At least 21 oil
workers were killed when a drilling rig hit an oil platform in
stormy weather, spilling gas and oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Pemex
said the workers who died included four Pemex employees, seven
employees of the subcontractor company that operated the rig, at
least one rescue boat crew member, and six others who worked for
other companies. On Dec 16 Pemex announced that the well was finally
capped. Roughly 420 barrels of oil per day had spilled from the
damaged platform since the accident.
(AP, 10/25/07)(AP, 12/16/07)
2007 Oct, Mexican officials
seized 23.5 tons of cocaine this month, the largest seizure ever
reported in Mexico. A US report, commissioned by Sen. Lugar, later
estimated that 530-710 tons of cocaine crossed annually into the US.
(Econ, 2/2/08, p.45)
2007 Nov 2, Rescuers in boats
and helicopters worked to evacuate people stranded by a flood the
president called "one of the worst natural disasters" to hit Mexico.
A week of heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, leaving 70 percent
of the Gulf state of Tabasco underwater. Gov. Andres Granier
estimated the damage at $5 billion. The death toll reached to about
25.
(AP, 11/2/07)(Econ, 11/10/07, p.45)
2007 Nov 4, In Mexico a
landslide hit a rain-swollen river, triggering what officials called
a "mini-tsunami" that wiped San Juan Grijalva, in Chiapas near the
Tabasco border, off the map. 15 bodies were later recovered with 9
left missing. The floods killed at least 8 others in Tabasco and
elsewhere in Chiapas.
(AP, 11/6/07)(AP, 11/13/07)(AP, 11/21/07)
2007 Nov 14, A broad electoral
reform that infuriated Mexico's broadcast industry by barring
political parties from buying radio and television advertisements
took effect.
(AP, 11/13/07)
2007 Dec 2, In Mexico Sergio
Gomez, lead performer for the top-selling group K-Paz de la Sierra,
was abducted, tortured and strangled to death. His body was found
the next day. A day earlier Zayda Pena of the group Zayda and the
Guilty Ones was killed execution-style at the hospital where she was
recovering from neck surgery for a shooting on Nov 30, in which 2
other people were killed. Fears rose that singers, whether
they have any links to drug cartels or not, get routinely "adopted"
by drug gangs, which post Internet videos showing their members
torturing and executing rivals to soundtracks of popular tunes.
(AP, 12/5/07)(SFC, 12/5/07, p.E3)
2007 Dec 4, In Mexico gunmen
shot and killed a deputy police chief inside his house in the border
city of Tecate.
(AP, 12/4/07)
2007 Dec 5, Mexican police
conducted the biggest anti-logging raid in the nation's history at
clandestine sawmills that cut timber on a threatened nature reserve
where Monarch butterflies nest in the winter. Authorities in the
Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said that they plan to exhume
the remains of more than 4,000 unidentified people buried in common
graves and take DNA samples in an attempt to identify them.
(AP, 12/5/07)(AP, 12/7/07)
2007 Dec 6, In southern Mexico
Jose Luis Aquino (33), a trumpet player, was found dead with his
hands and feet bound and a nylon bag over his head, in what
authorities said was apparently the country's third murder of a
musician in less than a week.
(AP, 12/7/07)
2007 Former Mexican Pres. Fox
authored his ghost-written memoir “Revolution of Hope.” It was
published in English prior to a Spanish version.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.42)
2007 Sam Quinines authored
“Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican
Migration.”
(SSFC, 4/22/07, p.M1)
2007 Gregory Rodriguez authored
“Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and
the Future of Race in America.”
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.102)
2007 Alberto Nava, a California
cave diver, and two Mexican dive budies discovered a human skeleton
in a deep underwater cave in Mexico’s Yucatan jungle. In 2014
scientists said the skeleton was that of a young girl who probably
fell into the cave over 12,000 years ago. DNA evidence linked her to
modern native Americans.
(SFC, 5/16/14, p.D8)
2008 Jan 1, In Mexico import
tariffs on maize, beans, sugar and milk were eliminated.
(Econ, 1/26/08, p.38)
2008 Jan 7, A shootout between
Mexican authorities and suspected criminals just across the border
from Texas left three people dead and eight injured.
(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 8, In Mexico 3 US
residents and seven others linked to the powerful Gulf drug cartel
were arrested following a deadly shootout in Rio Bravo just across
the border from Texas. In a second shootout, two federal agents were
killed and three more injured when they clashed with a group of
suspects in the nearby city of Reynosa.
(AP, 1/9/08)
2008 Jan 10, In Mexico gunmen
shot dead two federal agents and a civilian in the central state of
Michoacan.
(AP, 1/11/08)
2008 Jan 11, In central Mexico
a helicopter carrying volunteers on a mission to distribute toys to
needy children crashed, killing eight people, including a government
official.
(AP, 1/12/08)
2008 Jan 14, In Mexico Tijuana
District Commander Jose de Jesus Arias Rico and his assistant Elbert
Escobedo Marquez were riddled with bullets as they traveled in a
private vehicle after finishing their shift. A car chase and
shootout between Tijuana municipal police and at least two people
who allegedly tried to rob an armored car after it made a cash
pickup at a bank. One suspect was killed and another was wounded.
(AP, 1/15/08)
2008 Jan 15, In Mexico before
dawn Margarito Saldana, Tijuana district commander, was shot dead
while he slept in his home.
(AP, 1/15/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Mexico
officials found six bodies inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took
refuge during a shootout with soldiers and police.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 19, In southern
California a Hummer, suspected of carrying drugs and heading to
Mexico, cut through a campground and hit and killed Luis Aguilar
(32), a US Border Patrol, as he threw a spike strip in front of the
vehicle. On Jan 23 Jesus Navarro Montes (22) was arrested in the
northern state of Sonora for hitting Aguilar. On April 12, 2011,
Navarro was found guilty of drug charges and second degree murder
for killing Aguilar. On July 1 Navarro was sentenced to life in
prison and was given an additional 80 years in prison on drug
charges.
(SFC, 1/21/08, p.A3)(AP, 1/23/08)(Reuters,
4/13/11)(SFC, 7/2/11, p.A5)
2008 Jan 21, Mexico's army
captured Alfredo Beltran Leyva, a top lieutenant of the Sinaloa
cartel. He allegedly commanded squads of hit men and organized drug
shipments north.
(AP, 1/21/08)
2008 Jan 22, In Mexico 11
alleged hit men for a powerful drug cartel were captured at two
Mexico City mansions stocked with grenades and automatic weapons, a
day after Mexican authorities reported nabbing one of the cartel's
reputed leaders.
(AP, 1/22/08)
2008 Jan 29, In Mexico City
Elvira Arellano, a deported Mexican migrant who holed up in a
Chicago church to fight for immigrants' rights, rallied support for
Flor Crisostomo (28), another woman now seeking refuge in the same
building. Four Mexican military officers and one soldier, were
turned over to prosecutors for alleged links to Alfredo Beltran
Leyva, but their cases weren't made public until Oct 31.
(AP, 1/30/08)(AP, 10/31/08)
2008 Jan 30, Fr. Marcial Maciel
Degollado (b.1920), Mexican Roman Catholic priest who founded the
Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement (1941), died in
Texas.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/world/americas/01maciel.html)
2008 Jan 31, In Mexico tens of
thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown Mexico City to
protest recent trade openings that removed the last tariff
protections for ancestral Mexican crops like corn and beans.
(AP, 1/31/08)
2008 Feb 7, Mexican soldiers
seized nearly 10 tons of marijuana, a machine gun, scores of assault
rifles and three grenades in a raid just across the border from
Texas.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 15, In Mexico City a
bomb exploded near the police headquarters killing one man. A singer
and two members of his staff were tortured and killed just south of
the California border, apparently the latest victims in a string of
slayings of Mexican musicians. The border killings were not reported
until Feb 20.
(WSJ, 2/16/08, p.A1)(AP, 2/20/08)
2008 Feb 26, Mexican lawmakers
approved judicial reform that would introduce public, oral trials
and guarantee the presumption of innocence, even as lawmakers
deleted a proposal to allow police to search homes without a
warrant. Mexico's Senate approved a law that would ban smoking in
workplaces, public buildings and public transportation across the
country, allowing it in private businesses only if special,
ventilated smoking areas are set up. Investigators found parts from
at least 8 bodies in a series of backyard pits at a house in Ciudad
Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. In March the body
count increased to 36.
(AP, 2/27/08)(AP, 2/26/08)(AP, 3/3/08)(AP,
3/16/08)
2008 Mar 7, Mexican soldiers
seized assault rifles, grenades, marijuana and bulletproof vests
bearing police insignia after a brief shootout in the border city of
Tijuana. Police commander Ricardo Rodriguez was shot dead in a city
plaza by gunmen who opened fire with assault rifles from a moving
car. Six gunmen were also killed in the shootout.
(AP, 3/7/08)(SFC, 3/10/08, p.A3)
2008 Mar 10, In Mexico a
researcher said satellite photographs show illegal loggers have
clear-cut large swathes of trees in the heart of a monarch butterfly
reserve, threatening the insects' habitat. The images show illegal
loggers chopped 1,100 acres of trees since 2004 in the core of a
wooded park in Michoacan state.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Mar 10, In central Mexico
a sports utility vehicle fell into a canal, killing nine small
children but leaving their teacher unharmed.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Mar 11, Mexico's federal
attorney general's office announced an investigation into
allegations of corruption against Interior Secretary Juan Camilo
Mourino, a confidant of the president who holds the government's
second highest profile job.
(AP, 3/12/08)
2008 Mar 13, Cuba and Mexico
declared their once-chilly relations fully restored, and Cuba's
foreign minister said he will soon deliver a formal invitation for
Mexico's president to visit the island.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2008 Mar 13, In central Mexico
6 people were shot and killed inside a private law office in
Guadalajara.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2008 Mar 25, In eastern
Guatemala at least nine people were killed and seven wounded in a
shootout that is likely tied to drug traffickers. Guatemalan drug
boss Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon was summoned by Mexican traffickers
for what he was told was business. Instead, dozens of attackers
ambushed his entourage with grenades and assault rifles, killing
Leon and 10 others in a brazen demonstration of power.
(AP, 3/25/08)(AP, 7/21/09)
2008 Mar 26, In Mexico a
confrontation in Sinaloa state left four civilians and two soldiers
dead. A military judge later issued an arrest warrant for 5 soldiers
considered as suspects.
(AP, 4/5/08)
2008 Mar 27, The Mexican
government said it has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal
police to curb soaring violence in a border state across from Texas
and New Mexico.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 31, In Mexico Juana
Barraza (50), a former female wrestler who terrorized Mexico City as
the "Little Old Lady Killer," was sentenced to 759 years in jail for
killing 16 elderly women.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Apr 4, In Mexico two
soldiers deserted and were later killed during a gunbattle with
police in the state of Nuevo Leon. 3 state police officers and a
civilian also died in the violence. The Mexican army said soldiers
looking for drug traffickers found $6 million in cash inside a truck
near the US border and arrested five men at the scene. The daily El
Universal reported that five soldiers had been arrested for passing
information to the Sinaloa alliance of Pacific Coast smugglers.
(AP, 4/5/08)(Reuters, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 6, In southern Mexico
a truck carrying Central American migrants in a hidden compartment
plunged into a reservoir, killing at least eight people. Most of the
migrants were believed to be from Guatemala.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 8, In Mexico Pres.
Calderon said he would ease some bureaucratic barriers, and allow
Pemex to pay outside contractors a "bonus," not a percentage cut,
for oil found in deep-water reserves.
(AP, 4/9/08)
2008 Apr 10, Leftist lawmakers
took over both chambers of Mexico's Congress to protest President
Felipe Calderon's energy reform bill, which would make it easier for
the state oil company to seek outside help to develop oil fields.
(AP, 4/11/08)
2008 Apr 10, In Mexico police,
working with FBI agents in the small town of Tacambaro, arrested
Cpl. Cesar Laurean (21). He is charged with first-degree murder in
the December, 2007, death at Camp Lejeune, NC, of Marine Lance Cpl.
Maria Lauterbach, who had accused him of rape.
(AP, 4/11/08)
2008 Apr 13, The winners of
this year’s Goldman Awards were reported to be: Feliciano dos Santos
(43) of Mozambique, the director of Estamos, an environmental group
promoting sanitation, sustainable development and reforestation;
Marina Rikhvanova (46), founder of Baikal Environmental Wave, which
forced the rerouting of an oil pipeline in the Baikal basin; Pablo
Fajardo (35) and Luis Yanza (48) of Ecuador, co-founders of the
Amazon Defense Front, which accused Texaco (now Chevron) of dumping
oil and wastewater into local streams; Rosa Hilda Ramos (63) of
Puerto Rico, head of a movement to protect the Las Cicharillas
Marsh; Ignace Schops (43) of Belgium, head of a movement to
establish Belgium’s 1st and only national park; Jesus Leon (42) of
Mexico, co-founder of the Center for Integral Small Farmer
Development of the Mixtec (CEDICAM).
(SSFC, 4/13/08, p.A4)
2008 Apr 15, In Mexico gunmen
held up a family of US tourists in Baha and made off with their
small plane from a hotel airstrip in Mulege.
(AP, 4/15/08)
2008 Apr 17, Chief Juan Muniz,
the Mexican police chief of the border city of Reynosa, was arrested
for allegedly protecting members of the Gulf drug cartel.
(AP, 4/17/08)
2008 Apr 18, In western Mexico
a military helicopter crashed, killing 11 soldiers and seriously
injuring another.
(AP, 4/19/08)
2008 Apr 22, In New Orleans
Pres. Bush ended a 2-day meeting with PM Harper of Canada and Pres.
Calderon of Mexico as all three defended NAFTA. Bush denied the US
is in recession calling the current economic situation a slowdown.
(SFC, 4/23/08, p.A3)(WSJ, 4/23/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 23, Officials said the
US is scrapping a $20 million virtual fence, developed by Boeing
Corp., on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system failed to
adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings.
(SFC, 4/24/08, p.A7)
2008 Apr 26, In Mexico running
gunbattles between suspected drug traffickers broke out on the
streets of the border city of Tijuana, killing 13 people and
wounding nine.
(AP, 4/26/08)
2008 Apr 29, Migrant rights
activists applauded a vote by Mexico's Congress to remove
long-standing criminal penalties for undocumented migrants found in
the country. President Felipe Calderon's office declined to say
whether he would sign the popular measure into law.
(AP, 4/29/08)
2008 May 1, Roberto Velasco,
head of Mexico’s federal police organized crime division, was
murdered. Police later said the murder was likely ordered by Arturo
Beltran Leyva, a capo in the Sinaloa drug cartel.
(Econ, 5/17/08, p.45)
2008 May 5, In southern Mexico
a prominent cattle rancher hid from gunmen who killed two of his
sons and kidnapped his daughter in weekend attacks that left 17
people dead.
(AP, 5/5/08)
2008 May 7, In Mexico a leftist
rebel group (EPR) linked to a series of oil pipeline blasts on
rejected an offer from Mexico's government to hold talks. The
People's Revolutionary Army dismissed a proposal by President Felipe
Calderon because it said the offer showed no willingness to solve
crimes allegedly committed by current and past administrations
against its members.
(AP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 8, Edgar Millan Gomez
(42), Mexico's acting federal police chief, was shot dead outside
his Mexico City apartment complex, as drug traffickers increasingly
lashed back at a nationwide crackdown on organized crime. Bodyguards
at the scene arrested Alejandro Ramirez (34). Edgar Guzman, the son
of Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin Guzman, was shot dead in Culiacan,
Sinaloa state. Also killed in the attack was Arturo Meza Cazares,
the son of Blanca Margarita Cazares, whom the US has identified as a
key money launderer for the cartel. Police later said Millan’s
murder was likely ordered by Arturo Beltran Leyva, a capo in the
Sinaloa drug cartel.
(AP, 5/9/08)(SFC, 5/9/08,
p.A16)(http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/xarticle/ajc8708.htm)(Econ,
5/17/08, p.45)
2008 May 10, Juan Antonio Roman
Garcia, the No. 2 police officer in a Mexican border city across
from Texas, was shot dead, the latest high-ranking official killed
in an onslaught of attacks blamed on gangs resisting a crackdown.
Gunman sprayed Garcia's car with bullets outside his home in Ciudad
Juarez.
(AP, 5/11/08)
2008 May 12, Mexican
authorities said a police officer and four other people, with
suspected ties to a powerful drug cartel, have been arrested in the
May 8 assassination of Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting federal police
chief.
(AP, 5/13/08)
2008 May 13, In Mexico more
than 2,700 soldiers and federal agents were sent to Sinaloa state as
part of a crackdown on drug-related violence.
(AP, 5/15/08)
2008 May 14, In Mexico 2 police
officers were shot and killed in Torreon, Coahuila state, when they
tried to stop gunmen from kidnapping a family. Assailants opened
fire and threw grenades at a police station in Guamuchil in the
northern state of Sinaloa.
(AP, 5/14/08)
2008 May 15, In Mexico Pres.
Calderon held a signing ceremony for an agreement with Elba Esther
Gordillo, head of the national teacher’s union, to promote the
“Alliance for Educational Quality, an effort to improve teacher
quality.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.55)
2008 May 18, An American woman
(28) was among four people found dead in the Mexican beach town of
Playas de Rosarito, near border with California.
(AP, 5/20/08)
2008 May 19, In Mexico the
military took over the town of Zirandaro near Texas after all 20 of
its police officers were either killed, run out of town or quit.
(AP, 5/23/08)
2008 May 20, In Mexico’s
Durango state two rival groups opened fire at each other with
pistols and assault rifles on a highway, killing eight people.
Officials said the Mexican military took over the police department
of Villa Ahumada this week because all 20 officers on the force have
either been killed, run out of town or quit. The body of Victor
Enrique Payan, 2nd in command of police in Morelos, was found with a
second, unidentified Morelos state police officer in the trunk of a
car south of Mexico City.
(AP, 5/20/08)(AP, 5/22/08)
2008 May 23, Mexico's attorney
general said homicides related to organized crime jumped 47 percent
in 2008, in a rare confirmation of how bad violence has become.
(AP, 5/23/08)
2008 May 23, Mexican federal
officials said they plan to clean up Acapulco's bay, where an
estimated 400 gallons (1,700 liters) of sewage spews into the
Pacific ocean every second.
(AP, 5/23/08)
2008 May 27, In Mexico 7
federal police and a suspected hit man were killed in a shootout as
authorities surrounded a suspected drug safe house in Culiacan, home
to the Sinaloa drug cartel.
(AP, 5/27/08)
2008 May 31, Tropical Storm
Arthur the first named storm of the 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season,
kicked up surf when it made landfall at the Belize-Mexico border and
headed west.
(AP, 6/1/08)
2008 Jun 1, In western Mexico
Marcelo Ibarra, the mayor of Villa Madero, was forced from his car
and shot dead. Officials believed the killing was an attempted
robbery, although they haven't ruled out other motives.
(AP, 6/3/08)
2008 Jun 3, In Mexico Claudio
Conti (53) was reportedly kidnapped along Zicatela beach in Puerto
Escondido, where he operated the Da Claudio restaurant and a hotel.
On Feb 28, 2009, Mexican police said they had captured four men
suspected of kidnapping the Italian businessman, and that one of the
men told police the victim had been ordered killed, though it was
not clear if the slaying was carried out.
(AP, 3/1/09)
2008 Jun 4, A Mexican court
sentenced Mario Villanueva, a former Quintana Roo state governor
(1993-1996), to 36 years in prison for fomenting drug trafficking,
overturning an earlier ruling that had imposed six years on lesser
charges. A husband and wife, both state police officers, were shot
dead while leaving their home in Ciudad Juarez, the border city
where drug gangs have stepped up attacks against security forces.
(AP, 6/5/08)(AP, 6/4/08)
2008 Jun 9, A note threatening
a Mexican journalist was found outside the office of a newspaper in
southern Mexico, two days after someone left a severed head there.
The letter was directed at Juan Padilla, editor of El Correo de
Tabasco, which recently carried reports about migrant smuggling and
kidnapping in the area.
(AP, 6/10/08)
2008 Jun 11, In southern Mexico
armed men hijacked a bus carrying 33 Cubans and four Central
American migrants detained after forcing immigration agents away at
gunpoint. The seized Cubans and Central Americans were being taken
to an immigration processing center in the nearby city of Tapachula
when the attack occurred. Mexican immigration agents are normally
unarmed on such assignments.
(AP, 6/13/08)
2008 Jun 15, In Sonora, Mexico,
one state police officer and two federal agents were killed in a
running battle with dozens of gunmen that lasted several hours. One
of the gunmen was wounded.
(AP, 6/17/08)
2008 Jun 17, Mexico’s Pres.
Felipe Calderon signed a constitutional amendment that threw open
the doors to its judicial system, allowing US-style public trials
and creating a presumption of innocence.
(AP, 6/18/08)(WSJ, 6/18/08, p.A8)
2008 Jun 18, Food manufacturers
promised Mexico's government that they would freeze prices on more
than 150 food products to help families cope with rising costs.
(AP, 6/19/08)
2008 Jun 20, Panicked youths
rushed for the exits during a police raid on a Mexico City
nightclub, leaving 12 people dead in the crush of bodies. The dead
included 3 underage teens and 3 police officers. Prosecutors later
charged the police commander who led a botched raid with 12 counts
of homicide.
(AP, 6/21/08)(SSFC, 6/22/08, p.A11)(AP, 6/25/08)
2008 Jun 21, Mexican soldiers
captured at least 10 suspected members of a Tijuana-based drug
cartel in a raid on a child's baptism party in Tijuana. A total of
61 people were arrested in the sweep, including the band hired to
play the party and three city police officers.
(AP, 6/23/08)
2008 Jun 25, In Mexico state
police spokesman Cesar Ramirez said 20 people have been killed in
less than three days in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Guerrero
state authorities agreed to pay 490,000 pesos (US$48,000) in
compensation to 14 indigenous Mexican men coerced into having
vasectomies. The men said that state health workers showed up in the
southern village of El Camalote in 1998 and demanded that men with
more than four children must have vasectomies.
(AP, 6/25/08)(AP, 6/27/08)
2008 Jun 26, In Mexico gunmen
killed Igor Labastida, a top federal police official, and his
bodyguard as they ate lunch in Mexico City.
(AP, 6/27/08)
2008 Jun 27, In Piedras Negras,
Mexico, Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, attended a tree
planting ceremony for the first of 400,000 trees which will form a
"green wall" in protest of the fence the US is building along the
border with Mexico.
(AP, 6/28/08)
2008 Jun 30, The US signed into
law the Merida Initiative announced last Oct 22. The security
cooperation between the United States and the government of Mexico
gives Mexico $139 million a year to fight gangs, strengthen the rule
of law and improve border security.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9rida_Initiative)(Econ, 1/28/17,
p.31)
2008 Jul 1, In Mexico videos
showing Leon police practicing torture techniques on a fellow
officer and dragging another through vomit at the instruction of a
US adviser created an uproar, which has struggled to eliminate
torture in law enforcement.
(AP, 7/2/08)
2008 Jul 2, In Mexico 4
decapitated bodies were found on a street in Culiacan, blocks away
from their severed heads. Four gunmen were killed hours later, after
opening fire on federal police patrolling Culiacan, a center for the
powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. Under attack, police shot back at the
home where the gunmen were holed up, killing the four assailants and
capturing two others.
(AP, 7/3/08)
2008 Jul 6, In northern Mexico
a plane carrying a load of auto parts crashed s it was trying to
land, killing the pilot and severely injuring the co-pilot.
(AP, 7/6/08)
2008 Jul 7, Mexican police
found six charred bodies on a Tijuana street following a bloody
weekend that left 14 people dead.
(AP, 7/7/08)
2008 Jul 8, The Mexican
government said UNESCO has added a Monarch butterfly reserve in
southern Mexico to its list of World Heritage sites.
(AP, 7/8/08)
2008 Jul 10, In northern
Mexico, 6 bullet-ridden bodies were found inside the auto body shop
in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, and three more bodies
were found on the street just outside the business. A police
investigator was found shot to death in his truck near Culiacan's
police headquarters.
(AP, 7/10/08)
2008 Jul 13, In Mexico gunmen
opened fire on four cars on a busy street in Guamuchil, killing
eight people. Among the victims were a girl (11), two 17-year-old
boys and two women aged 18 and 19. On July 16 Mexico's government
offered a reward of nearly US$100,000 for information leading to the
capture of the gunmen.
(AP, 7/14/08)(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 14, In Mexico
commander Gerardo Valdes, the head of kidnapping and organized crime
investigations in the border state of Coahuila, was seized by at
least six men when he was driving in Saltillo. An unidentified man
called police and said that Valdes had been grabbed by the Juarez
Cartel.
(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, Mexico's navy
seized a homemade submarine carrying a drug shipment off the Pacific
coast and arrested its four-man crew.
(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 18, Mexico's president
replaced a 1791 time capsule discovered atop Mexico City's cathedral
with a new one containing messages from golf star Lorena Ochoa,
novelist Carlos Fuentes and a boy genius.
(AP, 7/19/08)
2008 Jul 21, The US FDA issued
an advisory for consumers to avoid eating uncooked jalapeno peppers
after it found a jalapeno grown in Mexico in a Texas border town
warehouse that tested positive with the same strain of salmonella
that was earlier associated with tomatoes.
(SFC, 7/22/08, p.A10)
2008 Jul 22, In Mexico a
measure took effect eliminating jail times for illegal immigrants
caught in Mexico.
(AP, 7/22/08)
2008 Jul 22, Dolly was upgraded
to hurricane status as it headed toward the US-Mexican border.
(WSJ, 7/23/08, p.A1)
2008 Jul 23, Hurricane Dolly
toppled trees and sent billboards flying in the Mexican city of
Matamoros, and authorities south of the US border warned of possible
flooding. Dolly also hit south Texas, but by evening it had weakened
to a tropical storm.
(AP, 7/24/08)(SFC, 7/24/08, p.A3)
2008 Jul 24, In Mexico state
prison chief Salvador Barreno was shot and killed as he drove in
Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. His bodyguard was also
killed. 3 other men died in a separate shooting minutes later.
(AP, 7/25/08)
2008 Jul 27, Mexico City
residents voted against the president's proposal to give private
companies a bigger role in the country's state-run oil industry in a
nonbinding referendum.
(AP, 7/28/08)
2008 Jul 29, In Mexico a family
of six was found dead in their home in western Jalisco state,
allegedly targeted by kidnappers aided by corrupt cops. Four
victims, including two children, were shot in the head. A teenage
boy's throat was slashed. His mother was asphyxiated with a plastic
bag.
(AP, 8/21/08)
2008 Jul 30, Mexican police
captured Ever Villafane Martinez, a Colombian cartel operative who
represented Colombia's Norte del Valle drug cartel in dealings with
Mexico's Beltran Leyva gang. He had escaped from a Colombian prison
in 2001 and was wanted on drug charges in the US.
(AP, 8/1/08)
2008 Jul 30, US federal health
officials said the salmonella strain linked to a nationwide outbreak
has been found in irrigation water and in a sample from a batch of
serrano peppers at a Mexican farm in Nuevo Leon. Mexico's
Agriculture Department rejected the FDA's conclusion saying "The
farm unit in question ended its harvest more than a month ago, so
the sample they say they have lacks scientific validity" because the
sample "was taken recently from a tank holding rain water that was
not used in production."
(AP, 7/31/08)
2008 Aug 1, The body of
Fernando Marti, the 14-year-old son of a prominent businessman, was
found in the trunk of a car in Mexico City. He had been kidnapped in
June. The kidnap and murder prompted a wave of anti-crime protests
across the nation. In September police detained five suspects
including Sergio Ortiz, a former agent of a now-disbanded city
detective force, who led the "Flower Gang" responsible for
kidnapping Marti in June. In July, 2009, Jose Montiel (34) and Noe
Robles (31) were arrested for the kidnapping. They were believed to
be members of a Mexico City gang responsible for at least 23
abductions.
(AP, 9/8/08)(AP, 7/18/09)
2008 Aug 4, A shootout between
Mexican police and smugglers driving a truck carrying illegal
immigrants left 2 people dead near Agua Dulce.
(AP, 8/4/08)
2008 Aug 5, Texas executed Jose
Medellin (33) for the 1993 rape and killing of two teenage girls in
Houston. Mexico protested the execution, which took place despite a
world court ruling for a new hearing, and expressed concern for the
rights of other Mexicans detained in the US. On Jan 19, 2009, the
International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that the US defied
its order when authorities in Texas last year executed a Mexican
convicted of rape and murder.
(AP, 8/6/08)(AP, 1/19/09)
2008 Aug 11, In Acapulco,
Mexico, gunmen traveling in a sport utility vehicle fired at a
hardware store killing a girl (14) and a man (35).
(AP,
8/12/08)(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,402108,00.html)
2008 Aug 13, In Mexico a
spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said 6 federal agents
have been arrested on suspicion of passing information to a group of
powerful drug lords.
(AP, 8/14/08)
2008 Aug 16, In Mexico gunmen
killed 13 people at a family party in the border state of Chihuahua.
(AP, 8/17/08)
2008 Aug 18, Mexican soldiers
rescued 25 Central Americans kidnapped in the Gulf coast state of
Veracruz. One man was arrested in the raid in Tierra Blanca.
(AP, 8/19/08)
2008 Aug 18, Mexico’s Cemex SAB
rejected Venezuela’s bid for the company’s assets in Venezuela. At
midnight oil workers and Venezuelan soldiers occupied Cemex
facilities around the country.
(WSJ, 8/19/08, p.A10)
2008 Aug 21, In Mexico Pres.
Calderon, congressional leaders, all state governors and a bevy of
others signed a “National Agreement for Security.”
(Econ, 9/6/08, p.44)
2008 Aug 22, Mexican police
captured a man believed to be Ruben Rios Estrada, a key gunman for
the Arellano-Felix cocaine cartel, at the Caliente racetrack casino
in Tijuana after a chase through the city streets. Another suspected
gang member also was arrested. The bullet-riddled body of Jesus
Blanco Cano (40) was found at a ranch near Villa Ahumada in
Chihuahua state. He had just been on the job for one day as police
chief of Villa Ahumada.
(AP, 8/23/08)(SFC, 8/23/08, p.A3)
2008 Aug 26, In Mexico 3
decapitated bodies were found in an empty lot on the eastern
outskirts of Tijuana. The bodies had messages written on their backs
in permanent marker saying they worked for "the weakened
'engineer,'" a nickname for Francisco Sanchez Arellano, a top
lieutenant in Tijuana's powerful Arellano Felix drug cartel. A day
earlier 2 bodies were found in Tijuana, one with the head placed on
the upper back.
(AP, 8/27/08)(SFC, 8/27/08, p.A11)
2008 Aug 27, In Mexico a
38-year-old man from Oregon was arrested in San Jose del Cabo
following a fight at an apartment complex. He died in jail hours
later. On Aug 31 six Mexican officers placed under house
arrest on suspicion of homicide.
(AP, 9/2/08)
2008 Aug 28, Mexico's Supreme
Court upheld the capital's abortion law, setting a precedent for the
rest of the country that could inspire other Latin American cities.
Twelve decapitated bodies bearing signs of torture were found in
eastern Mexico and authorities were still looking for the heads. 11
of the bodies were found in a suburb of Merida, a 12th in Buctzotz,
70 km to the northeast.
(AFP, 8/29/08)
2008 Aug 30, Hundreds of
thousands of frustrated Mexicans, many carrying pictures of
kidnapped loved ones, marched across the country to demand
government action against a relentless tide of killings, abductions
and shootouts. Hours before the protests, the severed heads of two
women were found near the attorney general's offices in the city of
Durango.
(AP, 8/31/08)(AP, 9/1/08)
2008 Aug 30, Gilberto Rincon
Gallardo (69), a former socialist presidential candidate who gained
respect in Mexico for defending the rights of the disabled, gays and
other marginalized groups, died in Mexico City.
(AP, 8/31/08)
2008 Aug 31, Mexico’s President
Felipe Calderon promised to adopt several proposals from civic
groups who led more than 100,000 Mexicans in marches against daily
kidnappings and killings.
(AP, 9/1/08)
2008 Sep 5, In Mexico two 18th
century paintings, "The Adoration of the Three Kings" and "The Birth
of the Virgin," were stolen from the Santa Matilde church in
Pachuca, the capital of central Hidalgo state. In February, 2010,
they were found in an art gallery in Tlaquepaque, a town near the
city of Guadalajara, where they were on sale for $35,000.
(AP, 2/26/10)
2008 Sep 10, A regulatory
filing revealed that Carlos Slim, Mexican businessman, and his
family had purchased a 6.4% stake in the New York Times.
(Econ, 9/20/08, p.78)
2008 Sep 12, Mexican police
found the bodies of 24 men with their hands bound and shot to death
execution-style outside the capital. On Nov 27 prosecutors charged a
municipal police commander and an alleged drug cartel member with
homicide in the September massacre.
(AP, 9/13/08)(AP, 11/28/08)
2008 Sep 14, Mexico's military
seized US$26.2 million in cash believed to belong to members of the
Sinaloa drug cartel. This was the 2nd biggest seizure since March
2007, when police seized US$207 million linked to a trafficking ring
for pseudoephedrine.
(AP, 9/18/08)
2008 Sep 15, Mexican police and
soldiers quelled a riot at a Tijuana prison that left 4 inmates dead
and at least 31 prisoners and officials injured.
(AP, 9/16/08)(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 15, In Oaxaca, Mexico,
Omar Yoguez Singu (32) allegedly had consensual sex with Marcella
Grace Eiler (20) of Eugene, Oregon. He then killed her with a
machete after an argument. Her badly decomposed body was found Sep
24 in a shack 80 miles south of Oaxaca City. Friends of Singu beat
him up after he confessed to the crime and on Sep 24 turned him over
to police.
(AP, 9/28/08)
2008 Sep 16, In Mexico
explosions at an Independence Day celebration killed 7 people and
injured 101 in the city of Morelia. Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy said
organized crime was responsible.
(AP, 9/16/08)
2008 Sep 17, A second riot in
three days at an infamous Tijuana prison left close to 2 dozen
people dead and 12 injured. 2 American inmates were among the dead.
Inmates at La Mesa prison rioted again because they have not been
given food or water since Sep 14, when a separate riot led to the
deaths of at least three inmates.
(AP, 9/18/08)(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 20, It was reported
that Mexican officers and prison guards in Michoacan state can now
get special deals on houses and financing through a pilot program
designed to keep them out of the pockets of organized crime.
(AP, 9/20/08)
2008 Sep 23, Mexico said it
plans to search 10 percent of all vehicles entering the country from
the United States in an effort to curb arms smuggling.
(AP, 9/24/08)
2008 Sep 25, Mexican federal
prosecutors in Apatzingan, a drug stronghold in the western state of
Michoacan, arrested three drug gang members accused of throwing
grenades into crowds of Independence Day revelers. They belonged to
a group of infamous Gulf Cartel hit men known as the Zetas.
(AP, 9/27/08)
2008 Sep 25, In southeastern
Mexico storms flooded hundreds of people out of their homes and
caused the death of a woman and 4 children whose car plunged into a
swollen irrigation ditch in Nanchital, Veracruz state.
(AP, 9/26/08)
2008 Sep 29, In Mexico the
bodies of 11 men and one woman, some with their tongues cut out,
were found dumped in an empty lot next to a Tijuana elementary
school, an hour before children were scheduled to arrive. A message
nearby, written on a white piece of cardboard, read: "This is going
to happen to all of those who are with 'The Engineer' for being
blabbermouths." Minutes later four other bodies were found in
another empty lot in Tijuana. Two other bodies were discovered the
day before in a lot next to a factory.
(AP, 9/30/08)
2008 Sep 30, In Mexico 20
heavily armed men in Sinaloa state stole five small planes that the
army had seized in anti-drug operations. Officials on Oct 3 said the
planes were found on a ranch in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa,
a hotbed of drug trafficking.
(AP, 10/1/08)(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Sep 30, In Mexico Ramiro
Guillen Tapia (65), leader of a farmers' group seeking government
mediation in a dispute over 620 acres (250 hectares) of land in the
Gulf coast state of Veracruz, set himself on fire. Tapia died the
next day with third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.
(AP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 3, Mexican police
clashed with hundreds of villagers who seized the entrance to a
Mayan archaeological site and six protesters were killed. Hundreds
of villagers had occupied the entrance to the Chinkultic ruins for
nearly a month, saying they were protesting excessive entrance fees
and a lack of investment in the area. 2 men were found shot to death
in Tijuana in the same empty lot near the elementary school where
the 12 bodies were found on sep 29.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Mexico gunmen
killed Salvador Vegara, the mayor of Ixtapan de la Sal, a resort
town southwest of Mexico City. Vegara was in a car with two other
people when the gunmen opened fire from another vehicle. The bodies
of 5 men were found asphyxiated in a car in the eastern part of
Tijuana. The men were beaten and had their hands bound. The bodies
of two beheaded men were found wrapped in blankets on a road
elsewhere in the city. The heads were in black plastic bags nearby.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 5, In southern Mexico
5 state police officers were arrested in connection with a deadly
raid to dislodge protesters from a Mayan archaeological site.
Mexican authorities seized 7 million pills of pseudoephedrine, the
main ingredient used to make methamphetamine, at the Guadalajara
airport. More than 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of the pills were
found packed in 24 boxes on a shipment from Calcutta, India. Three
separate shipments of more than a ton each were confiscated last
month at Mexico City's airport. Those also originated in Calcutta.
(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 7, Mexico extradited
former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) to face
corruption charges, and the ex-leader told a judge there is no
evidence to support the allegations against him.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, In Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas, gunmen killed police
commander Rodolfo Barragan (38) in a hail of bullets at a hotel
parking lot.
(AP, 10/9/08)
2008 Oct 7, Tropical Storm
Marco roared ashore on Mexico's Gulf coast with near-hurricane force
winds, prompting a shutdown of some oil platforms and forcing the
evacuation of some 3,000 people.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 8, President Felipe
Calderon unveiled plans for 53 billion pesos ($4.4 billion) in
emergency spending on roads, schools, hospitals and an oil refinery
next year to help Mexico combat the world financial crisis. Mexican
authorities said that 16 people were killed over the last 24 hours
in Baha California across the US border from California. State
officials blamed warring cells of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel for
the killings and other homicides plaguing the area in recent weeks.
5 state police officers were killed in the western state of Jalisco
by grenade-lobbing gunmen who fired more than 800 bullets in the
attack.
(AP, 10/9/08)
2008 Oct 9, In northern Mexico
gunmen opened fire in a bar in Chihuahua, killing 11 people. The
body of Miguel Angel Villagomez, editor of La Noticia newspaper in
the western state of Michoacan, was found shot dead on the side of a
highway in neighboring Guerrero state.
(AP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 10, Mexico's central
bank auctioned foreign reserves in 3 auctions in an increasingly
aggressive bid to push the peso stronger. In all, the bank sold off
$6.4 billion.
(AP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 10, In Mexico
authorities in Tijuana reported that a total of 91 people had been
killed in a wave of gangland homicides since Sept. 26.
(AP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 11, In Mexico gunmen
killed six young men at a family party in the gang-plagued border
city of Ciudad Juarez. In Tijuana federal police arrested seven
reputed members of a cell of the Arellano Felix drug cartel,
including a city police officer.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 11, Hurricane Norbert
hit Mexico as a Category 1 storm and left 4 people dead in the Baha
peninsula and Sonora state.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.B6)
2008 Oct 12, An angry crowd in
central Mexico attacked police and helped nearly three dozen illegal
Central American immigrants escape from custody after hearing that
officers had allegedly sold the migrants to human smugglers in the
farming town of Rafael Lara Grajales, Puebla state. Federal police
managed to round up 21 migrants.
(AP, 10/14/08)(SSFC, 10/26/08, p.A23)
2008 Oct 16, In Mexico six
people were lined up and gunned down outside a business in the
border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, In Mexico 334
police officers were ousted in ciudad Juarez after they failed
psychological, background and other checks as part of a clean-up
campaign meant to root out officers who are corrupt or cooperating
with drug traffickers. The border city sent police recruiters across
the country as it tries to replace nearly half a police force gutted
by firings and retirements.
(AP, 10/18/08)
2008 Oct 17, The UN added
Japan, Austria, Turkey, Mexico and Uganda as members to the 10
non-permanent seats of the Security Council, replacing Belgium,
Indonesia, Italy, Panama and South Africa.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 18, Mexican federal
authorities raided a “narco-mansion” in Mexico City and arrested 15
alleged traffickers during the middle of a party. A mini menagerie
was also found at the site that included 2 African lions, 2 white
tigers and 2 black panthers.
(www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/21/mexico-wildlife)
2008 Oct 20, Mexico agreed to
deport Cubans who sneak illegally through Mexican territory to reach
the US, a step toward cutting off an increasingly violent and
heavily used human trafficking route. 21 prisoners died in a fight
between inmates at a prison across the border from McAllen, Texas.
Police said two soldiers and a security guard were found stabbed to
death at a housing construction site in the village of Las
Margaritas, northern Mexico. The body of a federal policeman was
found riddled with gunshot wounds in Tijuana.
(AP, 10/20/08)
2008 Oct 21, Police in northern
Mexico reported receiving an ice chest packed with four human heads.
The chest arrived at the Ascencion police station in Chihuahua state
was marked "vaccines," but wasn't claimed for a week. Jesus Zambada
was among 16 members of the Sinaloa drug cartel arrested after a
shootout in Mexico City. Zambada is the brother of Ismael Zambada,
who allegedly heads the Sinaloa cartel along with one of Mexico's
most wanted men, Joaquin Guzman.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 22, In Ciudad Juarez,
across the border from El Paso, Texas, four men were shot inside a
go-cart rental at the Xtreme amusement park. Elsewhere in the city,
a used car salesman was shot to death while driving down a main
boulevard hours after leading hundreds of other business owners in a
protest against kidnappings and extortion. In Tijuana a 1-year-old
boy was killed when the car he was riding in crashed as the driver
tried to flee a gunbattle. In northern Mexico 10 gunmen were killed
in running battles with state police in the city of Nogales. Outside
the northeastern city of Monterrey, a soldier, the director of a
security firm and third man were found stabbed to death alongside a
highway.
(AP, 10/23/08)
2008 Oct 23, In Mexico 2 people
were found dead in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego,
California, including a badly burned corpse left in a trash bin.
(AP, 10/23/08)
2008 Oct 24, In central Mexico
2 human heads were found with threatening messages. 2 adults were
killed when assailants riddled their pickup truck with bullets on a
Tijuana street. A 1-year-old girl riding with them was hit by
multiple rounds from an assault rifle and was hospitalized in
critical condition. Police also found nine people shot to death in
Playas de Rosarito, just south of Tijuana.
(AP, 10/24/08)
2008 Oct 25, In Mexico soldiers
and federal police arrested Eduardo Arellano Felix (52), a reputed
leader of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, after a shootout
in the border city across from San Diego.
(AP, 10/26/08)
2008 Oct 26, In Mexico City
kidnappers grabbed Javier Morena (5), the son of poor fruit sellers,
with the intent to ask for a $23,000 ransom. The boy was killed with
an injection of acid and buried outside the city. 5 suspects in the
kidnapping were later arrested and confessed to the killing.
(SFC, 11/4/08, p.11)
2008 Oct 27, Mexican
prosecutors said a major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican
attorney general's office and may have paid a spy inside the US
Embassy for details of DEA operations. 5 officials of the attorney
general’s organized crime unit were arrested on allegations they
served as informants for the Beltran-Leyva Cartel.
(AP, 10/27/08)(SFC, 10/28/08, p.A11)
2008 Oct 27, A US officials
announced that Francisco Celaya Carrilo, a Mexican immigration
officer, had been caught in Arizona with 170 pounds of marijuana.
(SFC, 10/28/08, p.A11)
2008 Oct 28, Mexico's Congress
passed a watered-down energy industry reform that enables private
contractors to participate in the state-owned oil business but won't
likely draw enough investment to reverse declining production.
(AP, 10/29/08)
2008 Oct 31, In Mexico police
arrested Antonio Galarza, the reputed leader of the violent Gulf
drug cartel for the border city of Reynosa, in the northern city of
Monterrey on suspicion of weapons violations and organized crime.
(AP, 11/2/08)
2008 Nov 1, The top officer of
Mexico's federal police force quit amid allegations that drug gangs
have infiltrated senior levels of crime-fighting agencies. Acting
federal police Commissioner Gerardo Garay said he was stepping aside
"to place myself at the orders of legal judicial authorities to
clear up any accusation against me."
(AP, 11/1/08)
2008 Nov 2, Mexican prosecutors
said 11 policemen have been shot to death near Mexico City in a
three-day string of drug-gang attacks. In Tijuana, across the border
from San Diego, California, police found two decapitated bodies
wrapped in blankets in a vacant lot.
(AP, 11/2/08)
2008 Nov 4, One of Mexico's top
pointmen in the war against drug trafficking died when a government
jet crashed into a Mexico City street, setting fire to dozens of
vehicles. The loss of Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, former
anti-drug prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos and six others
thinned the ranks of Mexico's already embattled leadership. 9 people
on the plane were killed as well as 5 people on the ground. A 15th
victim died 2 weeks later. A 16th victim died in On Dec 11. Three
alleged hitmen suspected in the killing of a top border-state police
official died in a gunbattle with police in Nogales. They were
suspected of having helped kill Sonora state police chief Juan
Manuel Pavon on Nov 2. One Sonora state police officer died in the
shootout. A suspect in Pavon's killing was taken into custody.
(AP, 11/5/08)(AP, 11/6/08)(AP, 11/18/08)(AP,
12/11/08)
2008 Nov 6, Mexican authorities
detained Rodolfo de la Guardia Garcia, the No. 2 official in the
Federal Agency of Investigation from 2003-2005, suspected of aiding
drug traffickers, and Jaime Gonzalez Duran, alleged founder of a
vicious gang of drug-cartel hit men. A cache of 540 rifles, 165
grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of TNT were
seized at a house in the city of Reynosa, across the border from
McAllen, Texas. This was the largest seizure of drug-cartel weapons
in Mexico's history. In the northeast, police mistakenly opened fire
on a family of six, seriously wounding a teenage girl. In the west,
inmates rioted, killing six. And police in Tijuana found three more
bodies accompanied by messages that appeared to be from drug
traffickers.
(AP, 11/8/08)
2008 Nov 10, Mexico’s President
Felipe Calderon chose Fernando Gomez-Mont as the new Secretary of
the Interior. 7 people were found dead in a string of gruesome
attacks in the border city of Juarez. Police there chased a truck
that opened fire on a state vehicle, causing a car crash that killed
a bystander and injured four others. In northwestern Mexico 27
farmworkers who were kidnapped by dozens of heavily armed men
wearing military-style uniforms. Local news media reported that a
drug gang may have kidnapped the men to make them work growing
marijuana.
(AP, 11/11/08)
2008 Nov 11, In Mexico 21
police were arrested in the northern border city of Tijuana on
suspicion of working with criminal gangs. The body of a 28-year-old
man was dumped in an empty lot in the beach resort of Rosarito,
outside Tijuana.
(AP, 11/11/08)
2008 Nov 13, In Mexico Armando
Rodriguez, a crime reporter in the border city of Juarez, was
killed, adding to dozens of journalist deaths in a country where
newspapers are so fearful, many refuse to cover drug violence. With
his death, 24 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, at
least seven of them in direct reprisal for their reports on crime,
and seven others have disappeared since 2005.
(AP, 11/13/08)
2008 Nov 13, Mexico City Health
Secretary Armando Ahued said that the government will start handing
out doses of one or two Viagra, Levitra or Cialis pills on Dec. 1.
(AP, 11/13/08)
2008 Nov 14, In Mexico 2
bullet-ridden bodies were found at the foot of a monument in Ciudad
Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, one of them partially stuffed
into a large pot. Four scuba divers died while performing
maintenance in an aqueduct that supplies Mexico City.
(AP, 11/14/08)(AP, 11/16/08)
2008 Nov 15, In Mexico more
than 1,500 demonstrators marched through the violence-plagued border
city of Tijuana to protest the current of killings and kidnappings.
Two people were shot to death at a Tijuana taco restaurant. 4 men
and a woman were shot to death at a pool hall. A girl (14) and two
men were shot down in a Tijuana street just before midnight.
(AP, 11/15/08)(AP, 11/16/08)
2008 Nov 17, A Mexican
newspaper's offices were damaged by two grenades in the
violence-plagued city of Culiacan in northwestern Mexico.
(AP, 11/18/08)
2008 Nov 21, In Mexico Attorney
General Eduardo Medina Mora told reporters that Noe Ramirez,
Mexico’s former drug czar, accepted $450,000 from drug traffickers,
and that cartel leaders offered to pay him monthly for alerting them
to planned police operations. In 2013 the case against Ramirez was
dropped due to lack of evidence. In Tijuana 3 gunmen burst into the
Bar Utopia, a bar popular with university students and opened fire.
2 men and a woman died instantly and 3 others died the next day.
(AP, 11/21/08)(AP, 11/22/08)(AP, 4/24/13)
2008 Nov 25, In Mexico 7 bodies
were dumped before dawn at a school soccer field in the border city
of Juarez.
(AP, 11/26/08)
2008 Nov 27, A sport utility
vehicle carrying 8 people from Texas plunged off an unfinished
bridge into a river in northern Mexico, causing the death of three
adults and four children.
(AP, 11/28/08)
2008 Nov 28, In Mexico at least
12 masked gunmen opened fire inside a restaurant in the northern
border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing eight.
(AP, 11/29/08)
2008 Nov 30, Mexico’s President
Felipe Calderon pledged to clean up corruption within his
administration and vowed that his government would never negotiate
with drug lords. The bodies of 9 decapitated men were found in a
vacant lot in Tijuana, part of a wave of violence that claimed at
least 23 lives over the weekend in this border city plagued by
warring traffickers.
(AP, 11/30/08)
2008 Nov 30, In Guatemala
Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers, arguing about a horse race
in the rural border town of Santa Ana Huista, began a series of
gunbattles in which 17 people died.
(AP, 12/1/08)
2008 Dec 1, In Mexico Tijuana's
anti-corruption police chief was fired and replaced with an army
officer, following three days of violence that left 37 people dead
in this border city plagued by warring drug gangs. In southern
Mexico Fabian Ramirez shot his 50-year-old mother in the back
Monday, wounding her. He then allegedly killed three police officers
who arrived at the scene, including Iguala's police chief. Police
captured Ramirez, but four armed men broke into the jail and took
him away by force. The next day Ramirez was found beheaded.
(AP, 12/1/08)(AP, 12/2/08)
2008 Dec 3, The US government
released the first part of a $400 million aid package to support
Mexico's police and soldiers in their fight against drug cartels.
Jesus Martin Huerta, the No. 2 federal prosecutor in the border city
of Ciudad Juarez, was shot dead.
(AP, 12/4/08)
2008 Dec 5, Gerardo Garay,
Mexico's former acting federal police chief, was accused of
collaborating with a notorious cartel and stealing money from a
mansion during a raid to bust a drug trafficking ring. Victor
Serrano (24), a hit team chief, was wounded and 3 alleged gang
members died in a shootout in Mexicali. 14 others were arrested.
(AP, 12/5/08)(AP, 12/8/08)
2008 Dec 6, Mexican soldiers
found at least eight bodies buried in a shallow grave in Michoacan
state.
(AP, 12/8/08)
2008 Dec 7, In Mexico 10
suspected drug traffickers and a soldier were killed in gunbattles
in southern Guerrero state. 6 people were killed when assailants
opened fire inside a pool hall in Ciudad Juarez, across the border
from El Paso, Texas.
(AP, 12/8/08)
2008 Dec 7, A Mexican
government Learjet plunged into Atlangatepec lake in central Mexico,
killing two pilots in the second deadly crash in a month involving a
federally owned plane.
(AP, 12/8/08)
2008 Dec 8, Victor Hugo Moneda,
a senior Mexico City police commander, was slain in a drive-by
shooting outside his home. He had overseen raids in the capital's
gang-filled Tepito neighborhood.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, Mexico's Congress
voted to broaden police powers, allowing law enforcement agencies to
use undercover agents and taped conversations as evidence in a bid
to help them fight increasingly bloody drug cartels. In the Gulf
coast state of Tabasco, soldiers detained 11 police officers from
four towns for questioning on suspicion of aiding the Gulf drug
cartel. In the northern city of Tijuana four bodies were found.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 10, In Mexico a
shootout between rival gangs killed 10 people in Sinaloa state, home
of the powerful cartel of the same name. US security consultant
Felix Batista was kidnapped in Saltillo, Coahuila state, while there
to offer advice on how to confront abductions for ransom. He claimed
to have helped resolve nearly 100 kidnap and ransom cases.
(AP, 12/11/08)(AP, 12/15/08)
2008 Dec 11, Esther Chavez, a
women's rights activist, was named the winner of Mexico's National
Human Rights Award. She first drew attention to the slayings of
young women in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in the
early 1990s.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, Mexican soldiers
shot to death Silvia Arzate (35), a pregnant woman, after she
reportedly failed to stop at a highway checkpoint in the northern
state of Chihuahua.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 14, In Mexico gunmen
staged four attacks on police within a half-hour period, killing
four officers in Ciudad Juarez, the border city overrun by
drug violence.
(AP, 12/15/08)
2008 Dec 19, In Mexico 3 gunmen
were killed following a shootout with army troops in the southern
state of Guerrero.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Dec 19, In northern Mexico
a small plane carrying government officials and television reporters
crashed in northern Mexico and all five people on board are in
serious condition. The plane was carrying state water commission
chief Rafael Reyes, his assistant and two TV Azteca reporters. They
were hospitalized along with the pilot.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Dec 21, Mexican
Authorities found the decapitated bodies of 12 men in the southern
state of Guerrero, and some of the victims have been identified as
soldiers.
(AP, 12/21/08)
2008 Dec 22, Laura Zuniga (23),
a reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of
Sinaloa, was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled
guns and ammunition. Soldiers found a large stash of weapons,
including two AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine
magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in US currency.
(AP, 12/24/08)
2008 Dec 23, Mexican
authorities in southern Chiapas state said 8 bodies were found
stuffed in plastic garbage bags and dumped on a rural road near the
Guatemalan border in an area plagued by drug violence.
(AP, 12/24/08)
2008 Dec 24, Mexican soldiers
arrested the deputy police chief in the resort town of Zihuatanejo
and six other officers who were allegedly protecting drug cartel
members at a cock fight. Soldiers also seized 59 packets of cocaine,
40 bags of marijuana and 20 assault rifles.
(AP, 12/25/08)
2008 Dec 24, Mexico began
blocking imports of meat from at least 30 US meat processing plants
due to a new US law that required food retailers to label or display
the country of origin for meat, produce and certain kinds of nuts.
The law, effective as of Sep 30, was part of the 2008 Farm Bill.
(WSJ, 12/27/08, p.A7)
2008 Dec 25, In Mexico, at
least four people were killed in a gun battle between suspected drug
traffickers in a remote mountain area of Sinaloa.
(AP, 12/27/08)
2008 Dec 26, In Mexico a gang
of about 20 men armed with assault rifles robbed a train in the
western state of Michoacan and carted off some of its freight. Dr.
Laura Avila. Avila was found dead in the rural health clinic she was
staffing in Jalisco state. Police soon arrested Ricardo Garcia
Barajas (25), a farm worker, who allegedly hacked the doctor to
death with a machete for refusing to treat his son.
(AP, 12/27/08)(AP, 1/2/09)
2008 Dec 28, In Mexico 7 people
were killed in a series of shootings in the border city of Tijuana
over the last 2 days.
(AP, 12/28/08)
2008 Dec 31, Mexico sent 10
alleged drug smugglers to the United States, capping an already
record year for extraditions between the two countries. 2 Canadian
tourists were hospitalized with gunshot wounds after assailants
opened fire at a nightclub in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas.
(AP, 1/1/09)
2008 Gabriel Zaid, Mexican
writer, authored “The Secret of Fame: The Literary Encounter in an
Age of Distraction.”
(SFC, 5/14/08, p.E5)
2008 In Mexico drug related
violence this year left 6,268 people dead. The killings were
concentrated in just 3 states, and most of those in 3 cities: Ciudad
Juarez in Chihuahua, Tijuana in Baja California, and Culiacan in
Sinaloa.
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.30, 31)
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2003