Nicaragua divided over death of revolutionary leader

Tomás Borge was the last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN).

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, center right, and first lady Rosario Murillo, center left, attend the funeral of the late Tomás Borge in Managua, Nicaragua, Wednesday, May 2.
(Arnulfo Franco/AP)

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By Tim Rogers, Correspondent
posted May 3, 2012 at 5:19 pm EDT

MANAGUA, Nicaragua

The firebrand revolutionary and last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN), Comandante Tomás Borge, died this week, reopening old divisions from the tumultuous decade of revolutionary rule and counterrevolutionary war in the 1980s.

To his supporters, Mr. Borge was a stalwart revolutionary who fought bravely and endured months of imprisonment and torture to help overthrow the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979. He was both loved and feared by many Nicaraguans for his role in the insurrection in the 1970s and in the subsequent revolutionary government of the ’80s, when he served as the iron-fisted minister of the interior dressed in Cuban-made, olive drab military uniforms. Critics claim Borge quickly went from victim to oppressor, repeating the torture and attrocities of the dictatorship he helped overthrew.

The Sandinista Revolution became a cold war proxy and the United States boosted the Contras to fight the FSLN.

As Sandinistas remember Borge’s life, they are calling him a “man of exemplary courage and principle,” “an example for the youth,” a “great revolutionary,” and even “a prophet of God.” Supporters remember him as a sensible and rational man who was both dedicated to the revolution, but humble enough to recognize the mistakes it made in the 1980s.

“We were victims of arrogance,” he told me in 2005, as we sat in his office amid walls covered in photos of Borge posing with a virtual “who’s who” list of US-identified bogymen: Fidel Castro, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, and Yassir Arafat, to name a few. Borge also kept a photograph of Sandinista namesake Gen. Augusto Sandino posing with his father, a revolutionary from the 1930s.

Borge told me the next Sandinista government, which returned to power in 2007, would implement “more realistic” policies and not repeat the mistakes of land confiscations, nationalizations, or mandatory military service. And so far, despite a couple of notable stumbles, the Sandinista government of today has clearly set a different tack than it did in the 1980s.

Review – Drug Traffickers are restructured into 28 Cartels-ZETA

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 | Borderland Beat Reporter Chivis

From Zeta Weekly and  posted on BB Forum by Havana
Written by: Rosario Castro Mosso and Enrique Mendoza Hernández
Translated from Spanish

Traffickers are restructured

At the end of Vicente Fox’s term, Mexico had seven cartels, while President Felipe Calderon recognizes only 11 criminal organizations in 2011. Leaders of thugs converted into little bosses , divided and struggled for criminal control in the 32 states of Mexico. It is known, they are killing and denouncing one another. As are armed wings, are dedicated to all crimes: the movement of drugs, domestic sales in Mexican municipalities, kidnapping, extortion and trafficking in persons, without that the big mafias can not control them.
The federal government constant hits on the drug cartels have caused reorganization, admitted in May 2008 by the President of the Republic, Felipe Calderón.
Indeed, since December 2006, each time you stop a capo comes three or even 10 more trying to replace him. This multiplying effect has generated cell operation, usually as assassins, whose ambition and betrayal, end up converting into little “cartelitos” fighting for territorial control and expansion of drug trafficking.
Of the seven drug cartels operating in Mexico with the arrival of the Calderon administration in 2006, pruning has brought forth a multiplication by 400 percent. Currently governments are coordinated fighting at least 28 criminal groups.
Besides the large cartels, recognized by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), as the Arellano Felix, Colima, the Juarez, Sinaloa, the Gulf, the Millennium and Pedro Diaz Parada.
Now authorities and society must confront not only drug trafficking but the kidnapping of people, extortion of businesses, and murders committed by these cells empowered by thugs:
Los Zetas
Los Matazetas
Cartel del Acapulco
Gente Nueva
Cartel del Pacifico Sur
Cartel de Acapulco
Cartel de Guadalajara
Cartel del Centro Narco
Cartel de Jalisco Nuevo Generation
Cartel del Milenio
La Familia Michoacana
Los Caballeros Templarios
The Pelones
Los Gueros
La Barredora
Los Aztecas
La Linea
In Baja California, Three are Los Teos and independent groups of Guadalajara and Los Aboytes in the State of Mexico and the Anthrax in Sinaloa, and a number of criminal groups that the PGR announced in 2011, are on the verge of annihilation.  The truth is that of the 28 of the registered groups of drug traffickers ZETA , noticed during his “Message to mark the fifth year in office,” on December 8 in Monterrey, Calderon only recognized 11 cartels: Gulf, Zetas, La Familia, Pacific, New Generation Jalisco Cartel, La Resistencia, Beltrán Leyva, Arellano Felix Juarez, Knights Templar and La Barbie.

Mexican Navy Takes Over Traffic Police in Top Port City

Image via Wikipedia

Authorities say the Mexican Navy has taken over traffic policing duties in the port city of Veracruz, which has been plagued by drug cartel violence.
Veracruz state Gov. Javier Duarte said in a statement Monday that two rear admirals are now the directors of traffic police in the neighboring cities of Veracruz and Boca del Rio.
The move is part of an effort to root out corruption from law enforcement and start from zero in the city of Veracruz.
In December, the police departments in both cities were disbanded and taken over by the Navy. Authorities said the departments had been infiltrated by the Zetas drug cartel. In Mexico traffic police are separate from other police departments.