GREG GROSS / Union-Tribune A federal officer stands guard in the cartel's underground, soundproofed shooting range.
Hidden cartel target range is reportedly found in raid
By Greg Gross UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER January 22, 2008
TIJUANA – Days after a wild, deadly shootout between drug cartel gunmen and Mexican police and soldiers, authorities have uncovered what they say is a clandestine training ground for cartel assassins, complete with an underground target range that investigators believe went undetected for months. Heavily armed federal police raided the house Saturday night. They found two armored pickups at the home, along with two other vehicles that had hidden compartments, authorities said.
At ground level, the two-story green-and-white hillside house in the Independencia section of Tijuana included a machine shop for assembling and repairing weapons. Parts of disassembled pistols and rifles lay on the floors.
Below ground was a target range measuring about 50 feet long by 21 feet wide and 8 feet high, its walls and ceiling lined with gray soundproofing material and equipped with a fan to ventilate the gun smoke. Thousands of spent cartridges – perhaps as many as 30,000, authorities said – were collected in bins along one wall.
Bullet-riddled targets lay on the floor.
The discovery came two days after Thursday's firefight between gunmen and police at a house in the La Mesa district of Tijuana where six slain kidnap victims were eventually found.
Mexican authorities uncover what they say is a clandestine training ground located beneath a house believed to belong to the Arellano Felix drug cartel.
The gunbattle came during a particularly bloody period in Tijuana. Earlier last week, three police officers, including two high-ranking commanders, were shot to death. One was attacked in his home, where gunmen also fatally shot his wife and their young daughter.
Some analysts say the federal government's crackdown on organized crime has prompted the gangs to respond violently.
Both the La Mesa house and the training center in Independencia are believed by investigators to have belonged to the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix drug cartel.
Independencia is one of the city's older neighborhoods, sprawling across steep hills and canyons, a working-class place where homeowners build their own add-ons.
A false bathroom hid the entrance to the underground target range, said Agustín Pérez Aguilar, security spokesman for the state of Baja California.
“The shower, the toilet, the sink where you wash your hands, none of it actually worked,” he said.
Although gunmen had been using the place for months, neighbors apparently were none the wiser, Pérez said.
The house, on Avenida Reforma, is across the street from an elementary school.
“Nobody heard anything, never,” Pérez said.
Similar training centers for drug cartel gunmen have been found elsewhere in Mexico, Pérez said, usually in homes rented from legitimate owners.
“They're usually very good tenants,” he said. “They're very quiet and they usually pay very well, never a problem.”
Yesterday, authorities allowed journalists to tour the house. Squads of masked federal police officers in combat boots, bullet-resistant vests and armed with automatic weapons guarded the inside of the house, the outside and both ends of the street as reporters climbed down through a hole in a bathroom floor near the garage into the underground shooting gallery.
Authorities urged residents who suspect similar cartel safe houses in their neighborhoods to call police anonymously.
“We are asking people to denounce suspicious places, suspicious cars,” Pérez said. “If citizens will call us, we can find these places and stop these people.”
A mini-van full of illegals rear-ended a Homeland Security SUV this morning on I-10.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety said the overloaded van was heading west when it was involved in a 3-vehicle chain-reaction crash near the Elliot Road off ramp.
By ISTRA PACHECO January 29, 2008 Associated Press Writer
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Members of the K-Paz de la Sierra band vowed to go ahead with a planned tour despite the murder of their lead singer, Sergio Gomez, who was killed Dec. 2 in the latest in a string of slayings of Mexican musicians.
"Obviously, it is a big loss. Nobody is prepared for something like this, but it is a big motivation to carry on," vocalist Humberto Duran told reporters Monday. "We are not going to stand around with our arms crossed."
With Gomez's brother Juan taking over as the new lead singer, the group expects to go ahead with a planned tour of North and South America and possibly release a new al*** later this year.
His band mates also said they could hold a mass memorial concert for Gomez, who was famous for his up-tempo "Pasito Duranguense" rhythm.
Gomez had reportedly received death threats urging him not to appear in the capital of the western state of Michoacan, a hotbed of the drug trade, where he was tortured and strangled. Police have made no arrests in his killing.
K-Paz de la Sierra's al*** "Conquistando Corazones" ("Conquering Hearts") has been nominated for a Grammy in the best banda al*** category, and the musicians said Gomez's parents should attend the ceremony to accept any award his behalf.
A number of musicians' killings in recent years have been linked to a wave of organized crime violence terrorizing many parts of Mexico, including singers of so-called "narcocorridos," or drug ballads. Valentin Elizalde was murdered in November 2006 after his song "To My Enemies" became a drug lord's anthem.
But neither Gomez nor other more recent victims were known for narcocorridos; also killed in December was female singer Zayda Pena - who crooned about love and loss, not drugs and guns.
By MARK STEVENSON January 27, 2008 Associated Press Writer
SANTA MARIA QUIEGOLANI, Mexico (AP) -- Women in this Indian village high in the pine-clad mountains of Oaxaca rise each morning at 4 a.m. to gather firewood, grind corn, prepare the day's food, care for the children and clean the house.
But they aren't allowed to vote in local elections, because - the men say - they don't do enough work.
It was here, in a village that has struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for mayor - despite the fact that women aren't allowed to attend town assemblies, much less run for office.
The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn't a "citizen" of the town. "That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women," said Valeriano Lopez, the town's deputy mayor.
Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as "use and customs," which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America.
"For me, it's more like 'abuse and customs,'" Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National Human Rights Commission. "I am demanding that we, the women of the mountains, have the right to decide our lives, to vote and run for office, because the constitution says we have these rights."
Lopez acknowledged that votes for Cruz were nullified, but claims they added up to only 8 ballots of about 100 cast in this largely unpaved village of about 1,500 people.
Cruz says she was winning - and wants the election to be annulled and held again, this time with women voting.
But the male leaders are refusing to budge. "We live differently here, senor, than people in the city. Here, women are dedicated to their homes, and men work the fields," Apolonio Mendoza, the secretary of the all-male town council, told a visiting reporter.
Cruz has received some support from older men, who by village law lose their political rights when they turn 60. Some younger men also say the system must change and give women more rights.
At a recent meeting of several dozen Cruz supporters, most of them voteless, women in traditional gray shawls recalled being turned down for government aid programs because they weren't accompanied by a man.
Martina Cruz Moreno, 19, said that when her widowed mother sought government-provided building materials to improve her dirt-floor, tin-roofed wooden home, village authorities told her, "Go get yourself a husband."
As a woman, Eufrosina Cruz is not only barred from being mayor, but from participating in the "community labor" that qualifies male villagers as "citizens." Those tasks include repairing roads, herding cattle, cleaning streets and raising crops.
"I'd like to see the men here make tortillas, just for one day, and then tell me that's not work," said Cruz, describing the hours-long process of cleaning, soaking, cooking and milling the corn, shaping the flour into flat disks, and collecting the firewood to heat the clay and brick hearths on which most women cook.
During all-important village festivals, women are expected to cook for all the male guests. But instead of joining them at the table, Cruz says, they are relegated to straw mats on the floor. Clothes are washed by hand, and while most homes have some form of running water, it's often only a single spigot.
Cruz decided to escape that life after she saw her 12-year-old sister given to an older man in a marriage arranged by her father. The sister had her first child at 13, and has since borne seven more.
Cruz was 11 and "I didn't even know what a bus was then."
She traveled to the nearest city to enroll in school, live with relatives and support herself through odd jobs, eventually graduating from college with a degree in accounting.
She is single, and in a village culture where most women wear skirts, she wears pants. Because her village has no formal jobs for women, she works as a school director in a nearby town, and returns to Quiegolani most weekends. That, authorities say, disqualified her from running for mayor because she wasn't a full-time resident. But the man who won the race also works outside the town, and there are questions about how much time he actually spends here.
Cruz views the residency issue as a pretext, noting that authorities have also banned female candidates and anybody with a college degree from running. She said she has followed the use and custom rules as much as she was allowed to, carefully fulfilling lower-level duties that function as a means of testing people's devotion to their village. For four years, she "carried the Virgin" in a religious procession through the town, and has helped fund or organize other festivities.
Cruz figured her case for annulling the elections was solid - after all, Mexico's constitution guarantees both men and women the right to vote. She went first to the Oaxaca state electoral council, then to the state congress. After both upheld the election, she took her fight to the commission in Mexico City.
"I am not asking anything for myself. I am asking on behalf of Indian women, so that never again will the laws allow political segregation," Cruz wrote to the commissioners, who may take months to investigate the case, and who could recommend that state authorities protect women's rights to vote or hold office. She says she'll go higher, to federal electoral authorities, if necessary.
In Mexico, many local governance rules date to before the Spanish conquest and weren't given national legal recognition until a 2001 Indian rights reform was enacted in the wake of the Zapatista rebel uprising in Chiapas.
The law states that Indian townships may "apply their own normative systems ... as long as they obey the general principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals, human rights, and particularly the dignity and well-being of women."
Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the Indian villages operating under the law don't let women vote, putting human rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported recognition for Indian governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the women's cause.
Cruz now travels alone from one government office to another, always carrying an armful of calla lilies. "This flower grows a lot in the village. Even though we don't water or care for it much, it flowers," she explained. "It is a symbol for us Indian women."
"The congress upheld the vote out of sheer laziness, to avoid stirring up the village or causing a conflict there," said Rep. Perla Woolrich, a Oaxaca state legislator who supported Cruz's cause. "In the past, use and customs represented something positive, but by now it violates people's constitutional rights. Use and customs have to reviewed, and those practices that violate rights have to be thrown out."
Cruz says she isn't against all customs in her village. She prefers its bipartisanship to political party rivalry because it encourages close-knit Indian communities to stick together and underpins their survival.
"There are really beautiful things in use and customs, if they are applied as they should be," she said.
"Up there in the mountains, unfortunately, nobody listens to us," she says. "If nothing is done, we'll go on the same way for another century in Quiegolani."
Embassy official says Mexico issues arrest warrant for missing Marine
By John Rice ASSOCIATED PRESS January 29, 2008
MEXICO CITY – Mexican officials have issued an arrest warrant for a U.S. Marine suspected of killing a pregnant colleague who had accused him of rape, a U.S. Embassy official said Tuesday. A cousin told reporters last week that Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean visited family in the area of Guadalajara, Mexico, this month, but left without saying where he was headed.
The burned remains of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach were found with those of her fetus earlier this month in a fire pit in the back yard of Laurean's house in Jacksonville, N.C., and Laurean, is being sought on an indictment charging first-degree murder. Both were stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Laurean was born in Mexico and fled after leaving a note for his wife in North Carolina saying that Lauterbach cut her own throat and that he had buried her body.
Authorites say she did not commit suicide, and an autopsy found that she died of blunt force trauma to the head. Prosecutors have pledged not to pursue the death penalty if Laurean is found in Mexico, which refuses to send anyone back to the U.S. unless provided assurances they will not face execution.
A U.S. Embassy official, who was not authorized to give a name, said Mexican officials had issued a warrant for Laurean's arrest on a U.S. extradition request. The official did not say when the warrant was issued.
Mary Lauterbach, the mother of the dead Marine, told NBC's “Today” show that the Marine Corps should consider basic procedural changes, “such as a mandatory base move if a person requests it after a rape accusation.”
“We want to change the climate so that any time a woman is attacked and, you know, wants to report it, that she can do so without the fear that the repercussions from reporting it will be far worse than the rape itself,” Lauterbach said.
CNN first reported that Mexico was seeking his arrest.
Juan Antonio Ramos Ramirez told The Associated Press that Laurean, his cousin, walked into his liquor store in a Guadalajara suburb on Jan. 14 or Jan. 15, and chatted for a few minutes. Ramos Ramirez said his cousin never came back.
Lauterbach failed to show up for work in mid-December and her body was found three weeks later.
Lauterbach's family has said she was harrassed at Camp Lejeune, the massive base on the Atlantic coast where she and Laurean served in the same logistics unit as personel clerks. The Marines have said her car was keyed once and that she reported that she had been punched in the face.
The Marines ordered Laurean to stay away from Lauterbach one day after she reported the rape in May, and later issued a protective order to keep them apart. Their regimental commander also assigned Lauterbach to work in a separate building across the base from Laurean, although the Marines said earlier this month that Lauterbach reported that she did not feel threatened by him.
Laurean denied the rape accusation. Naval investigators have said they have no phyiscal evidence or witness accounts to corroborate Lauterbach's claims, but Lauterbach's and Laurean's regimental commander was intent on taking the case to a hearing that could have led to a trial.
Lauterbach's family has complained that the Marines and local officials didn't respond with enough urgency to her disappearance in mid-December. At that time, Mary Lauterbach told sheriff's officials in North Carolina her daughter was a “complusive liar,” a comment she has repeatedly said was a mistake.
“I said, you know, she had problems, you know, with occasional lying,” Lauterbach said on NBC. “And that got – just a piece of that was pulled out. So it was really misstated.”
Prosecutors believe Lauterbach was killed Dec. 14. Marine officials have said they attempted to find her after she failed to report to work on Dec. 17, but had evidence – including a note left for her roommate in which she said she was tired of the Marine Corps lifestyle – that led them to believe she left on her own.
Emma Lozano (right)addresses the problems she sees in immigration policy as Nanciann Gatta listens. Lozano, a community activist and Gatta, superintendent of Niles Township schools, were panelists at an immigration symposium at the Loyola University School of Law Tuesday.
As election looms, immigration issue back front and center
Medill Reports - Chicago, Northwestern University A publication of the Medill School. by Rob Runyan Jan 29, 2008
With Super Tuesday less than a week away, voters are thinking hard about the candidates and the issues. A daylong immigration symposium hosted by Loyola University's law school Tuesday encouraged them to make immigration reform a top consideration when they cast their ballots.
It's a touchy issue, one that some candidates have been reluctant to take a stand on. But Tuesday's panelists called for action from citizens to help fix what they called a broken system. Most speakers in the morning session favored solutions short of mass deportation.
Keynote speaker Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based American Immigration Lawyers Association, began by asking the audience “Is there anyone in this room who believes our immigration system is not broken?” The silence that followed set the mood for the panelists' subsequent remarks.
Speaker after speaker, sometimes in fiery and emotional words, related their experiences while working toward immigration reform.
“[Immigration law] is about following the law [simply] because it’s the law,” said Emma Lozano, a Chicago-based community activist. “The laws are broken, and they’re extremely unfair.”
Lozano, president of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a grass-roots community group which has assisted Elvira Arellano and more recently Flor Crisotomo in fighting deportation, said these two women illustrate the larger problem.
“Elvira Arellano stood in a church for an entire year," Lozano said. "With no money whatsoever, she was able to battle, almost one on one, the billions of dollars spent on a campaign of hate to demonize the Mexican in particular, and the Latino in general."
Both Lozano and City Clerk Miguel del Valle said the onus is on citizens to effect immigration reform through voting and writing letters to Congress.
Del Valle recalled a recent march in Chicago to get out the Latino vote. The rallying cry was “Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos (Today we march, tomorrow we vote.)"
“We got the marchamos part right,” Del Valle said, conceding that the voting portion was not as successful.
Del Valle is backing his former Illinois State Senate colleague, Barack Obama, in the presidential election, partly because of a vote Obama made in the Illinois Senate for an immigration reform bill. Though the bill was narrowly defeated, del Valle emphasized the importance of local elections in future reform.
Carpentersville was a major focus when the panelists' talk turned to local immigration issues. Village President William Sarto was a member of one panel, and the northwest suburb became an example of the dangers of low Latino voter turnout.
Though Carpentersville's population is about 40 percent Hispanic, three village trustees favoring anti-immigration ordinances have been elected, said Sarto.
“[Immigration opposition] has slowed progress in our town," he said. "It has divided our community."
Immigration reform should not be left to local governments, Sarto said. But in the absence of federal involvement, municipalities have begun to take charge.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: explora,
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A deported Mexican migrant who holed up in a Chicago church to fight for immigrants' rights rallied support Tuesday for another woman now seeking refuge in the same building.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Elvira Arellano said 28-year-old Flor Crisostomo's situation showed the need for U.S. immigration reform.
«She has three kids who depend on her and what she sends from the U.S.,» Arellano said. Crisostomo took refuge in the Adalberto United Methodist Church after the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered her to leave the United States by Monday. The single mother paid a smuggler to sneak her into the U.S. in 2000 and has sent money to her children in her hometown of Iguala in southern Guerrero state.
Arellano, who sought sanctuary for a year, was deported to Mexico in August when she left the church to visit Los Angeles. She lives in a small town in western Mexico with her son, a U.S. citizen, and writes columns for U.S. newspapers. Her son is going to school and trying to adapt to life in Mexico, but «he really wants to return to the U.S.,» she said. She said she hoped the immigrant community in the U.S. would rally around Crisostomo's case as they did hers.
«Undocumented immigrants are living there in the darkness, fearing deportation and being separated from their families,» she said. Arellano and Crisostomo became friends and fellow activists after Crisostomo was arrested during a 2006 raid on IFCO Systems, a manufacturer of crates and pallets in Chicago.
When Arellano took refuge in the church, Crisostomo brought food and took Arellano's clothes to be washed. When Crisostomo followed in Arellano's footsteps and told reporters Monday that she wasn't leaving the building, Arellano called her from Mexico to urge her friend to stay strong.
«Only by fighting is it possible to know what you can accomplish,» Arellano said.
(See related article with photo posted by Explora 01/27/08, 8:07 p.m.)
Illegal immigrant vows to stand ground HUMBOLDT PARK | Holed up in same church where Arellano held out
AIDING AND ABETTING ILLEGAL ALIENS IS A FELONY:
Any person who . . . encourages or induces an alien to . . . reside . . . knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such . . . residence is . . . in violation of law, shall be punished as provided . . . for each alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs . . . fined under title 18 . . . imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."
Fake Store front Churches such as Aldaberto in Chicago that is notorious for harboring illegal aliens who have been ordered deported from America better take heed.
Section 274 felonies under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, INA 274A(a)(1)(A):
[B]A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he:
* assists an alien s/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or
* encourages that alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or
* knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.
Penalties upon conviction include criminal fines, imprisonment, and forfeiture of vehicles and real property used to commit the crime. Anyone employing or contracting with an illegal alien without verifying his or her work authorization status is guilty of a misdemeanor. Aliens and employers violating immigration laws are subject to arrest, detention, and seizure of their vehicles or property. In addition, individuals or entities who engage in racketeering enterprises that commit (or conspire to commit) immigration-related felonies are subject to private civil suits for treble damages and injunctive relief.
THE FAKE CHURCH KNOWN AS ALDABERTO BETTER BEWARE!
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Beverly,
Originally posted by Beverly: January 29th, 2008 @ 12:49pm by Jayme West/KTAR
A mini-van full of illegals rear-ended a Homeland Security SUV this morning on I-10.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety said the overloaded van was heading west when it was involved in a 3-vehicle chain-reaction crash near the Elliot Road off ramp.
Would you mind not using so much bold highlighting? I think Sam has requested this of you a couple of times. There's other people that have told me they have a hard time with it affecting their eyes making it eye straining when they read it so they've skipped it.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to post the date and time of the article you want to bring to attention again instead of duplicating and informing that it's a 'duplicate?'
It would be more considerate to post the link' to your other articles you've posted in other threads.
I used the date and time and notice how you immediately posted stating yours is a 'duplicate'. How funny!
It would save all this quoting and taking up space especially since it appears you might be modifying articles to cross-post.
Just a friendly request.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: explora,
I'm sure it's the usual suspects that gang up and whine about me every chance they get with you and to you. That being said, I always post the DATE AND THE LINK TO MY ARTICLES and if the time is available I post that as well.
However, you posted DIRECTLY beneath the ARTICLE and then proceeded to DUPLICATE it a few posts down. I'm sure you realized it was a duplicate because it has theboldedtext that you and your cyber buddies PM each other about so you can all be on the same page when lodging a complaint against me to SAM .
Just a friendly request:
If you have read an article previously posted, (which you obviously did because you posted directly below the article in question) don't duplicate what you are aware has already been posted it will save bandwidth and that unnecessary eye strain your friends complain about.
Just a Friendly Suggestion:
FYI: those pictures that you post that over extend/distorts the natural margins, are quite irritating and unnecessarily forces readers to scroll from left to right just to read them.
If you use standard American width 8-1/2 x 11 they won't distort the width of the thread.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Beverly,
Originally posted by Beverly: January 29th, 2008 @ 12:49pm by Jayme West/KTAR
A mini-van full of illegals rear-ended a Homeland Security SUV this morning on I-10.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety said the overloaded van was heading west when it was involved in a 3-vehicle chain-reaction crash near the Elliot Road off ramp.
Beverly, there is no way of asking you anything is there? Whatever or whoever asks you to kindly refrain from doing something or if you could kindly change the way you post to make it easier for others to read, you think you are just above everyone, sticking your nose up in the air. There is no gang against you, you obviously have a an issue when someone says something negative towards your posts, you get very defensive and do whatever annoys anyone even the more. You are obviously an attention seeker and the only way you can get yourself heard is being a nuisance of yourself. If you want to be heard and get your points or interest across to others, you should do it in a proper manner and listen to those who have given you advice about your postings. We don't say it just to annoy you or gang up on you, we are saying it because it is hard to read etc Sam has asked you too, and he is definitely not in anyone's gang.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- God Bless America - God Bless Immigrants - God Bless Poor Misguided Souls Too Mr S.U.
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