Mexico Interior Secretary Blake dies in helicopter crash
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15702285
Quote:
Mr Blake, 45, was appointed interior secretary in July last year, overseeing police forces fighting drug cartels.
"Unfortunately the interior secretary, his [assistants] and the helicopter crew were found dead," government spokeswoman Alejandra Sota said.
The interior secretary is Mexico's senior cabinet position and the top official after the president, with responsibility for domestic affairs and security.
Mexican Cartel Strategic Note No. 8
I'll discuss this here and not at SWJ. http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/mex...egic-note-no-8
This is a pretty brash thesis put forward by the author and by the secondary sources that he cites. The thesis appears to be the title, 230,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Mexico and ‘Narco-Refugee’ Potentials for the United States.
As is the trend these days, Google-ology appears to be the main source for the article as opposed to boots-on-the-ground observation. I would like the author to post his own actual experiences and observations that back up his thesis statement. Same for the authors of the secondary sources. Boots on the ground is what is needed to lend credibility to claims like...
Quote:
...there were up to 116,000 empty homes in Juárez...
...with the implication that these are the abandoned homes of narco-refugees who have fled. I just don't buy that. I'd like to see how that survey was done and just what kind of houses these are, considering that Juarez has thousands of shacks inhabited by squatters that ring the city and that run along the border. These shacks have gone empty and full since the Mexican-American war.
Quote:
In Ciudad Mier...400 people fled to the nearby town of Ciudad Miguel Alemán.
The article is at least a year out of date, or the author intentionally leaves out the latest on Mier. The town has since been repopulated and there is now a military presence. Hinting that sovereign territory has been ceded is irresponsible journalism. See the link for the latest. Or ride down there with me on my next ride into Mexico. http://www.terra.mx/noticias/articulo/1197797/Se+repuebla+Ciudad+Mier+Tamaulipas+por+presencia+m ilitar.htm Nevertheless, the residents stayed in the area. They did not become narco-refugees headed to the US. Anybody who has studied the history of the border below the Nueces Strip would not be surprised by the Cd. Mier incident. The place has been a smuggler's haven since Texas became Texas. Fidel Castro even picked up his weapons there before he set sail back to Cuba from Veracruz on the Granma.
I believe it is irresponsible to raise a false alarm that narco-refugees are in flight to the U.S. The illegal immigration into the U.S. is driven by other factors. There are however, political elements out there that would like to categorize some of this immigration as some type of war displacement issue. Hey! Let's get the UN involved :rolleyes: