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Mexican mayor with drug cartel links goes missing
Source: Agencies |
November 26, 2010, Friday
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THE mayor and mayor-elect of a southern town disappeared after Mexico's army detained members of the municipal police force and other local officials on suspicion they were working for a drug cartel, authorities said yesterday
Ciro Diaz Sanchez, mayor of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacan, and Pedro Bautista, who was slated to succeed him next month, went missing on Wednesday. That was just days after soldiers rounded up nearly half the town's police force and two city hall officials thought to belong to a gang allied with the Zetas, the cartel that controls much of the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.
The "gang of the bald ones" is believed to have collaborated with the Zetas to move cocaine and marijuana through the region, authorities said.
An official for the prosecutor's office in the state capital of San Cristobal de las Casas said Diaz and Bautista may have been kidnapped by the Zetas or perhaps fled to avoid detention by the army. The official spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his security.
The two - both members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party - went missing ahead of searches of their houses Wednesday, which turned up high-caliber weapons and two stolen cars at Bautista's, the official said.
Nineteen members of the town's 40-strong police force plus the two city hall employees were being held in a jail in San Cristobal de las Casas, the official said.
Other police officers and local officials in neighboring towns were also expected to be detained in the coming days.
Corruption is rampant among Mexico's badly paid and notoriously ineffective municipal police forces - so much so that President Felipe Calderon proposal to abolish them. Under the initiative, presented to lawmakers in October, each of Mexico's 31 states would have just one police department under the command of the governor.
Elsewhere yesterday, banners were hung from pedestrian bridges in several cities in western Mexico complaining that the federal government has ignored an offer by the La Familia cartel to disband if authorities improve security in the gang's home state.
The "narco-banners" appeared in at least five towns and cities in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan, including the colonial capital of Morelia, the state attorney general's office said.
The banners carried the same message: "La Familia Michoacana ... is saddened about the lack of interest from government institutions in our proposal."
Ciro Diaz Sanchez, mayor of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacan, and Pedro Bautista, who was slated to succeed him next month, went missing on Wednesday. That was just days after soldiers rounded up nearly half the town's police force and two city hall officials thought to belong to a gang allied with the Zetas, the cartel that controls much of the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.
The "gang of the bald ones" is believed to have collaborated with the Zetas to move cocaine and marijuana through the region, authorities said.
An official for the prosecutor's office in the state capital of San Cristobal de las Casas said Diaz and Bautista may have been kidnapped by the Zetas or perhaps fled to avoid detention by the army. The official spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his security.
The two - both members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party - went missing ahead of searches of their houses Wednesday, which turned up high-caliber weapons and two stolen cars at Bautista's, the official said.
Nineteen members of the town's 40-strong police force plus the two city hall employees were being held in a jail in San Cristobal de las Casas, the official said.
Other police officers and local officials in neighboring towns were also expected to be detained in the coming days.
Corruption is rampant among Mexico's badly paid and notoriously ineffective municipal police forces - so much so that President Felipe Calderon proposal to abolish them. Under the initiative, presented to lawmakers in October, each of Mexico's 31 states would have just one police department under the command of the governor.
Elsewhere yesterday, banners were hung from pedestrian bridges in several cities in western Mexico complaining that the federal government has ignored an offer by the La Familia cartel to disband if authorities improve security in the gang's home state.
The "narco-banners" appeared in at least five towns and cities in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan, including the colonial capital of Morelia, the state attorney general's office said.
The banners carried the same message: "La Familia Michoacana ... is saddened about the lack of interest from government institutions in our proposal."
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