News Summary for September 1st, 2010

Barbie was arrested… Alive…
++ The Federal Police presented alleged drug lord Edgar Valdez Villarreal, or “La Barbie,” who was arrested Monday in Salazar, Lerma. In the State of Mexico, with another six suspected accomplices, four men and two women.

++ Speaking at a news conference, the head of the police Anti-drugs Division, Ramón Pequeño, said that “La Barbie” headed a criminal organization that moved a ton of cocaine every month operating in the State of Mexico as well as Morelos, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo and the Federal District. Pequeño said that in Monday’s shootout near the Perisur shopping mall in southern Mexico City, federal police shot dead Aarón Jines Becerril, a hired gunman who was a bodyguard to Valdez Villarreal. Also One of Barbie´s associates was also arrested in Colombia yesterday…

++ In an interview granted to Grupo Imagen, President Felipe Calderón admitted that even though it is not what he would wish violence would in the short run continue in some parts of Mexico.

++ The United States congratulated the Mexican government on the capture of Edgar Valdez Villarreal… The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency said that Valdez Villarreal’s arrest shows that none of the “violent leaders” of the Mexican drug cartels are beyond the reach of law.

++ The government and the National Human Rights Commission created a
comprehensive strategy to prevent and fight migrant kidnappings… The plan
includes five action lines, among them dismantling people trafficking networks using intelligence available on them and stricter railroad vigilance.

++ An armed commando set fire to the Castillo del Mar bar in Cancún, Quintana Roo… Six women and two men were killed.

++ The PRD caucus in the Chamber of Deputies demanded the resignation of
Communications and Transportation Secretary Juan Molinar Horcasitas, because of the country’s failed aviation policy.

++ The Supreme Court began considering a decision from the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission finding the Mexican state to blame for the forced disappearance of Rosendo Radilla Pacheco, a political activist in the 1970s. The current government has argued that it cannot be blamed for something that happened so many years ago, since “Mexico today is not what it was then.”