Friday, June 08, 2007

Mexico City: New record set -- 21 executed in 24 hours


I think this is a new record. A combination of "explosive devices", 9mm pistols, AK-47's and AR-15's have left 21 dead and 10 wounded throughout Mexico in the past 24 hours.

8 in Guerrero
5 in Chihuahua
3 in México State
2 in Sinaloa
1 in Tlaxcala
2 in Tijuana
21 Total

In addition, 3 police stations were attacked with explosive devices, 2 in Guerrero and one in Tecpan de Galeana, leaving 2 police officers wounded.

Some notes of prurient interest:

In Apizaco, Tlaxcala, a fellow waited for his appointment in attorney Joaquín Suárez García's office, chatting with Suárez García's secretary. When the counselor arrived, they went into his office where seconds later his client left him slumped over his desk, dead.

Of the 21 executed, 4 were taxi drivers. One of them died in a hail of bullets from several masked men wearing body armor and weilding AK-47's. A protest over high taxi fares, perhaps? What's with this, anyway? They've been machine gunning taxi drivers all over the country since the first of the year. The authorities haven't said much, so I'll have to assume that the drug cartels use local taxis to ferry shipments and money from point A to point B. Then they come back to eliminate the drivers -- loose lips sink ships -- or as punishment for inventory losses.

2 died in a possible case of mistaken identity in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua because they had the misfortune to be driving a car, a Dodge Stratus, that looked like an unmarked state police car.

Elsewhere in the border city, gunmen got it right this time when they machine gunned two genuine state policemen.

An auxiliary policeman died at a gasoline station he was guarding when a carload of gunmen drove up, got out, gunned him down, which is what gunmen usually do, then drove away. A protest over the high price of gasoline, perhaps?

Also in Juárez, a guy was executed while standing in line to pay his light bill.

It makes one grateful that one lives in such a peaceful, sleepy little burg like Oaxaca where all we have to worry about are the randomly torched public transportation units, chaos in the streets and spray painted colonial buildings.

I think that's it for the day but the toll could still rise. Reforma was reporting throughout the day yesterday, first that 12 were dead and then later that the sum had increased to 19.



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