Job Discussion Forums

[Paulie2003]

I just read a rather disturbing article about a mob burning of three suspected troublemakers in Mexico. Apparently they were federal agents sent to scope out a drug ring. The article states that they were "held for a few hours" before being beaten and burned. I know that some people in these parts can be hot-blooded enough to take the law into their own hands but, isn't 'innocent until proven guilty' the much more humane action to take?

[thelmadatter]

I, too, am horrified at such an event. However, I am hesitant to make any judgement of it. Why? Because such a happening is way beyond my scope of experience, coming from a country where cops are relatively well-respected (and I am waiting to be flamed for this statement).

While I know something intellectually about mob mentality and about the frustration of people here in Mexico regarding law enforcement, I dont believe I can understand it well enough to say whether the cops (in general, I doubt these individuals per se are to blame) "had it coming" or not.

I just hope maybe this leads to positive changes and not more violence but it is just a tad scary.

[Guy Courchesne]

I read that the three officers or agents were seen taking photos of children coming out of a school. Two children were recently kidnapped from the same school.

These agents were not in uniform. Taking pictures of children at a place where a tragedy had recently occured. Will someone tell me what country would not have had a similar reaction? This is a fine testament to the strength of the community in Mexico, and the strength of exactly how people in this country know right from wrong.

It could be those 'agents' really were there on some official business. In that case, theri only crime was excessive stupidity. More likely that the community had it right the first time...and took action to protect their children, as I know I would for mine.

[juststeven]

"Innocent until proven guilty" is the greatest fallacy we have in the 'States'. If you are rich and can afford an 'anti-christ' lawyer, you may well walk. But, if you are poor you will sit in a county jail until a public pretender (defender) comes to offer you a plea. You are guilty until you prove yourself innocent! And, don't get me started on the 'Grand Jury' fiasco - what a joke that is.

[richtx1]

San Juan Ixtayopan Pueblo is 139-4-A on my Guia Roji... about as far geographically and culturally as you can possibly get from downtown Mexico City. I've been out that way, but never in this particular Pueblo ... these are rural traditionalist communities slowly being surrounded by suburbia.

For those looking for the "real Mexico", communities like this are part of it. They are part of the time-warp you sometimes find in Latin America, where traditionalism and moderity exist side by side. The traditionalists are a bit lost in the modern world ... and as in other traditional communities in transition, drug abuse, alcoholism and violence are realities.

The victims were federal narcotics cops which -- the reports that an unnamed mother suddenly fingered these guys as kidnappers" (as in the NYTimes report), or as child molesters, makes me think this was a "setup" by narcotics dealers. Parents anywhere in the world will fight for their kids. I lived in a U.S. city where a neighbor of mine was badly beaten before being rescured by the police because he was mistaken for a wanted child molester (the poor guy fit the general description and happened to take his second car -- the same kind the molester was known to drive -- to pick up his kids after school). In the "real Mexico", justice can be kind of rough.

I'd argue it was the media and the conservatives that laid he groundwork for this. Conservatives -- PAN and Televisa, etc. -- have seized on every incident of missing children and schoolyard drug dealers (not acceptable, but the kinds of things that happen in any population this size) to push their political agenda, and undermine the legitimacy of the leftist DF administration. The local government -- meeting parental demands for security -- makes a big show out of school security. School kid now wear badges including not only their photo, but that of the person authorized to pick them up after school. And the teachers-- and school security personnel -- have to check the kids in and out. Picking up one's kids is a tense situation, and people are wary of outsiders -- like federal plainclothes cops hanging around watching the school.

Add that this was a very closed community under threat by outsiders, where even the DF police are "outsiders" ... this was a perfect opportunity for and any narco wanting to get rid of the feds.

I'm certainly not going to justify barbarism, nor claim "well, that's life in the big city"... but it wasn't "mindless savagry" or some dark soul of Mexico on display either. Some of the reports I've read give the subtle sense that Mexicans are savages. Not at all: human beings who feel threatened are savages.

[seanie]

[Guy Courchesne]

I think during the 'riot' if we call it that, you're not likely to find someone who is going to ask for police ID. We're talking about people protecting their children here.

We have to remember that it is widely believed by Mexicans that people in authority are often responsible for kidnappings...so even if the cops identify themselves as cops, that simply makes matters worse.

This story about being on a counter-narcotics operation...could be true or could be the convenient excuse. Again, very few people trust the cops, anywhere in this country.

One telling point that might not make it out to you all in the provinces...the current twist to this affair is the question as to why the commander of the officers who were killed hasn't gone to pay respects to the officers' families. To you and I that doesn't sound like much, but apparently this is such a common tradition that the lack of the visit has raised not only suspicions but hackles as well.

Again, I think the community had these officers pegged for exactly who they really are and caught them in the act. Imagine how many children were saved.

Normally, I'm not one to argue that ends justify means. Quite the opposite actually. But there are some things that we, as animals in mother nature's world, will react to you just as mother nature's mother bears, and lions, and pigeons, and snakes, etc do. Don't mess with the kids.

[Paulie2003]

I don't think this is the first - nor will it be the last - time this type of personal revenge 'justice' will be meeted out. I'm certain that I once saw a similar treatment of a couple of guys accused of robbery - firey end and all. There certainly appears to be a 'riddle' of sorts in this case, but there are so many ways to 'deal' with drug dealers, child abusers...etc. that can be handled in far more humanitarian venues. I believe a large part of this problem stems from police corruption (which was cited) and lack of popular trust. QUESTION: If this was a government operation, didn't the 'powers that be' have some sort of inkling into what might occur?

[moonraven]

This is a very complicated and sensitive issue here in Mexico, and although I am in 100% favor of free speech, I feel that folks who don't know anything about the situation (by their own admission) and then proceed to smear their US opinion template all over it should strongly consider restraining that impulse.

I live in one of those little villages (and have for about 12 years)--one that has a reputation for hauling out the machete first and asking questions later--even in regard to folks from very neighboring communities. Here the cops in general--be they state, federal, judiciales, preventivos, whatever brand--are perceived by these communities--especially those in which the folks are almost entirely indigenas or mestizos--to be extortionists, thieves, kidnappers, and murderers. And that's pretty much a valid perception.

Here in the state of Morelos, the governor who has provided a paradise for kidnappers and drug-traffickers as well as organized crime in general is still hanging on--because he's of the President's party--although he was voted out by the congress a month ago! His state police chief and prosecutor have been in the slammer since last March or so. The previous governor, who was run out on a rail for the same criminal activity, regularly publishes op-ed pieces insisting that what he was booted out for was small frijoles compared to the current guy.

Entire police forces are routinely fired for taking drugs, being on the take or involved with organized crime. Then some of them are hired back because nobody else wants their job....And the others go to another state and are hired.

In short, the police here are seen as organized rapists and pillagers--violators of the human rights of the citizens of these small communities. Crimes routinely go undenounced because justice is not on the menu of the Ministerio P�blico, and any contact with the police is more likely to make one a target of a crime than to produce any other result.

The case in point has received a lot of media coverage--and, interestingly, the outrage that it has sparked has not really surfaced from the basis of the barbarity of the act(s), but because those guys were supposedly innocent--innocent of the crime of kidnapping, that is.

In a country where there is a marked absence of "estado de derecho" (loosely interpreted to mean law and order), where more than 600,000 people marched in Mexico City last June to protest the lack of public safety and received absolutely no meaningful response from the federal government, where the government is not only indifferent, but also projects a preditory posture in regard to its citizens, frankly I am surprised that their are not more incidents of this type. I think the blame--in the bigger picture--rests with the government.

The problem is that the president of the country is so busy filling his pockets--read providing an ethical model--that he couldn't care less about a tragedy like what happened in that pueblito. The folks who live there will have to work their way through what happened the best they can. Theirs is one of the kinds of 15 minutes of fame....

[Guy Courchesne]

Well put.

I would like to see more marches such as we had for security last month...constant pressure right up to the presential elections, so that no one in power forgets what's most important in the minds of many. Law and order.

Do we really have to hire Guilliani to clean things up around here?

Or shall we subcontract out policing to that angry mob in the burbs?

[thelmadatter]

Guiliani *snort* That amazed me when I read about it. OK, yes, he did the near-impossible in NY by cleaning it up - A LOT. I take nothing away from him in that regard. But he suceeded because of two things 1) NY was ready for the change and Guiliani understands NY. (I say this as a native of the NY metro area).

But Mexico is not NY and I cannot imagine what Guiliani could possibly do. I can't imagine him having whatever it takes to get things changed, no matter what his status might be from being the mayor of NY and 9/11. I think whatever the solution is, it will have to come from within Mexico itself.

Im sorry, I dont buy the idea that the whole thing is due to "parents protecting their children" It may have well started out that way but once those guys were beaten up and surrounding by hundreds of angry people, there was no longer any danger of kidnapping to any child. Two and a half hours is a long time to hold people before you kill them, esp. in such a brutal way. Besides, CNN reports today that the ones who set the two alight were "drunken youths." If this is true, I seriously doubt they were scared parents.

I still hope that something good can come of it eventually. Maybe if the cops and the politicians realize that their safety and lives depend on a more just system, maybe changes can actually happen.

[Guy Courchesne]

2.5 hours is a long time...what I'm referring to here is the initial reaction of people. Remember, this was a mob, angry about so much more than just the kids. Mobs are rarely reasonable, but the spark that started it all was clearly avoidable, if this really is a case of undercover narco officers.

I'll allow for the possibility that these officers really were conducting official business and that it could be that in the riotous mob, some drunken hoodlums took an opportuntiy to beat and burn a couple of cops, but that still doesn't address the main issue of police corrpution and the public's lack of confidence, even fear, in and of them. No surprise that people take justice into their own hands when the state fails or even murders/kidnaps/robs its own people. Police corruption is one extreme. Vigilante justice is another.

[thelmadatter]

I agree with you there, Guy.

[Paulie2003]

Unless we had been in the unfortunate situation of actually being there (which fortunately most of the world did not) then we have to rely primarily upon reports of people who were. This brings us back to the earlier days in USAmerica when people (especially African Americans)were singled out for this warped type of injustice. I would suppose that it will occur to some of us that those who perpetrated this horrendous act were more likely to have been criminals themselves and thus obviously all the more brazen in their attempt to 'finger point' and thus lead a mob mentality...we should have more info on that soon as the authorities are
picking them out and up now. Anyway, I appreciate MY RIGHT to express my personal views on the situation and certainly feel no obligation to live in or even near Mexico to do so! The are stranger events happening all over the world, after all!!

You're right there, buddy!!!!

[moonraven]

In typical fashion, the response on the part of the "authorities" the day after the lynching incident was to:

1) send 1,000 cops to the village. Without search warrants, they stormed the houses and went through folks' personal effects. A lot of folks turned off the lights in their houses, hoping that they wouldn't be bothered.

2) arrest 33 "suspects" on the basis of photos printed out from a video that was made during the incident. No arrest warrants, of course.

3) threaten to arrest anyone who tried to leave his/her house and go out in the street to see what was going on.

Now, does anyone wonder why these villagers fear and loathe the cops, and why they take "justice" into their own hands?

The response on the part of the command of the Polic�a Federal Preventiva (to which the lynched cops belonged)--according to 200 of their co-workers was the following:

"There was sufficient personnel available to have arrived at the site in a maximum time of one hour. However, we were told not to make any moves until we were ordered to. They let us take off at 9:30 p.m., when two of our co-workers had already died." (translation by the poster from today's La Jornada)

For those of you who feel it's your right to comment on incidents when you know nothing about the context in which they take place--why do you have such a need to a) be metiches and b) make fools of yourselves? To get attention, I would venture.