The Narco News Bulletin
"The
Name of Our Country is América"
--
Simón Bolívar
Today's
Press Briefing
October 16, 2000
TOTAL
SIMULATION
International
Press Coverage of Events in Latin America Can't Get Anything
Right
False Reports
of the Demise of "Plan Colombia" are Planted by Gore
Campaign: LA Times, NY Times as Rumor Mongers
Bolivia Crisis
Has Only a Temporary Fix; Will Re-explode by Years End
PRI "Wins"
in Tabasco, Mexico, by One Percent? (Fox and US Collaborate in
Covering Up Election Fraud)
Meet Vicente Fox's
"Corruption Czar" -- He's an Expert on Soliciting Narco-Bribes,
reports El Paso Times
Cynicism
and simulation continue to be the watchwords
for US press coverage of events in Our América.
A
nationwide revolt in Bolivia that paralyzed the country for 30
days is declared "over" by the international news media.
In fact, the negotiated "solution" brings new problems
and all the social movements who signed the pact say openly that
they don't expect the Bolivian government to comply. The next
wave of protests and blockades could begin as early as November;
the deadline set by the US Embassy for "zero coca"
plants in the country.
Where
are these rumors coming from? The LA Times and then the
NY Times obediently printed this weekend that "Plan
Colombia" may be cancelled after the November US elections.
But US officials have already signed contracts with the Colombian
government committing the $1.3 billion military invasion package
through next year: thus freezing the US Congress from stopping
the plan.
Mexican
national TV networks declared the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary
Party) as the winner of yesterday's state elections in Tabasco
as soon as the polls closed. By nine a.m. this morning, the actual
vote tally showed 44.13 percent for the PRI and 43.13 percent
for the left-wing PRD (Democratic Revolution Party). Widespread
acts of election fraud, ballot stuffing and the discovery of
a clandestine election computer lab in Tabasco are just a few
of the factors that make clear: The PRD won the popular vote,
but like in Guerrero 1999, election
fraud is still tolerated in Mexico when waged against the Left.
President-elect Vicente Fox, of the PAN (National Action Party),
threw his muscle behind the PRI. The US Embassy smiled: To them,
the Mexican Left must be stopped at all costs, including through
the robbing of elections, democracy be damned.
Meanwhile,
the El Paso Times broke courageously from the imposed party-line
of US press coverage of Vicente Fox. It reported on Sunday that
Fox's "anti-corruption czar", former Chihuahua governor
Francisco Barrios, has been on the narco payroll for years.
Here are the details of these stories,
that Narco News will continue to track as they develop.
Requiem
for "Plan Colombia"?
The
recent report by the US General Accounting
Office on the many failures of Plan Colombia whizzed by the Clinton-Gore
administration like a surface to air missile buzzing the tail
of a Black Hawk helicopter.
The GAO report shook the administration
because it told the truth: the Plan has become a United States
colonial project, rejected even by the European Union, as Narco
News explained on multiple times last July, August and September.
Portugal was the first nation to put the
US in check when, last July, all the left wing and green parties
united to decriminalize drugs in that nation. We
pointed out that this was the first European response to "Plan
Colombia" and struck at the heart of US policy because it
called into question the root cause of the bloodshed in Colombia:
drug prohibition.
In August, Narco News published a translation of a story in
the influential French daily Le Monde that revealed -- at a time when US and Colombian
officials still insisted that Europe would be part of Plan Colombia
-- that European nations were backing away and, indeed, opposing
the military plan.
By September, when, as
reported here, European opposition to Plan Colombia had even
peeled Argentina's government of Fernando De la Rua off of its
commitments to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, thus
opening the way for the Brasilia Summit of South American Presidents
to oppose the military intervention portion (80%) of Plan Colombia.
When The Narco News Bulletin reported
each of these facts, many chose to ignore them. This is situation
normal for us. But we kept plowing forward with our commitment
to get the true facts to the public. Then, last week, the US
General Accounting Office -- the independent investigative agency
of Congress -- issued a report that confirmed everything our
readers have known for months.
This created a serious crisis for both
the Clinton-Gore administration and the press corps that has
consistently offered false and misleading information about Plan
Colombia to US readers. It also vindicated the news source that
will continue to push the official media into better coverage
simply by telling the truth: The Narco News Bulletin.
And so, suddenly, the LA Times
reported last Friday that Plan Colombia could be cancelled after
the US elections in November. The NY Times followed suit
the next day, publishing the same story. They both mentioned
the GAO report and cited longtime Plan Colombia architects like
Michael Shifter of the Council of Foreign Relations and its Inter-American
Dialogue subsidiary organization, allowing these hypocritical
and complicit interest groups to spread the rumor that the Plan
is in trouble.
Plan Colombia, however, is not going away.
They may change its name or boost some social funding aspects,
but its bottom line -- stopping the social movements of Latin
América -- will continue to be fought at the barrel of
a gun. And Washington is now moving to give more money, more
arms, more control over drug trafficking, to the violent paramilitary
death squads of top narco Carlos Castaño
to do Plan Colombia's dirty work.
So revealing of the dark agendas of Washington
and Wall Street, is this truth that many who chose not to believe
our earlier stories will prefer not to believe what we say here:
the rumors of Plan Colombia's demise are no more than an election
strategy by the White House, the campaign of Vice President Al
Gore (D-Occidental Petroleum) and their stable of reliable "journalistic"
mouthpieces.
Why does the Gore campaign wish to spread
this rumor today? Narco News has learned the answer to that question:
Gore's strategists have picked up in their private polling data
that opposition to Plan Colombia and the US drug war in Latin
America are driving many "Gore voters" to the independent
campaigns of Ralph Nader and Libertarian candidate Harry Browne,
or simply motivating them to stay home and not vote at all. And
in key electoral college states, the Nader vote in particular
threatens to derail a Gore victory.
They want everyone to calm down, to stop
worrying about "the Next Vietnam" or "the New
El Salvador" underway in the Amazon jungle. They want to
imply that a Democratic administration would somehow be less
hawkish, less militarizing in América, than the Republicans
might be. They implied the same with Iraq in 1992; but every
time Clinton's personal escapades caused him a dip in the polls,
the bombs fell on the Middle East again and again and again.
In the next four years, the bombs will start falling in América.
But it's all public relations: a cynical act of simulation not
backed by policy nor their real intentions.
Don't believe the hype. Keep the pressure
on. The prohibitionist empire is on the defensive over its disaster
in Colombia and all América, stumbling, off balance, but
not yet defeated.
Today's reports in Narco News will be
greeted in some quarters as cynically as our previous reports
-- cited above -- were greeted at the times we published them.
And yet each one of those stories has now been confirmed by the
US General Accounting Office and grudgingly reported by the LA
Times and the NY Times, among others.
Our better track record on reporting the
facts of the drug war in Latin America is based on one factor
only: our commitment to report and analyze the truth. It's no
formula nor secret recipe, but rather an old-fashioned commitment
to Authentic Journalism in an age of cynicism and simulation
by what passes as "the press" today.
The same forces of simulation will choose
to ignore our reports today: that the Bolivia crisis is not over
and will deepen within months; that Mexico's president-elect
Vicente Fox is a party to yesterday's electoral fraud in Tabasco;
that his new "anti-corruption czar" is a master at
corruption and yet endorsed by the US Embassy, which likes its
Mexican law enforcement officials to be corrupt enough to be
blackmailed.
The root problem of all of these scandals
does not lie with officials in Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia or elsewhere.
The fuel on all these fires is the US-imposed prohibition on
drugs.
We will keep the pressure on, with the
weight of the facts on our side, until the hypocritical drug
war is defeated in Our América.
From somewhere in a country called América,
Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
Press
Briefing on Bolivia
October 16, 2000
Bulletin From the Andean
Information Network:
Coca
Producers and Bolivian Government Sign Agreement
The
Military Retreats and the Blockades are Lifted
At Midnight October 14th, the government
and the coca growers signed an agreement to lift the blockades
and pull the military forces out of Chapare. The 18 points in
the agreement provided an exit for the crisis that has lasted
a month in Bolivia and more time in Chapare.
There is still uncertainty among the people
of the Tropic, who don't know if the 18 points of the agreement
will be complied with by the government. It's that in the conflicts
between the coca growers and government in recent years, the
agreements were almost never kept....
It's important that we ask the international
community to monitor that these agreements are kept and that
human rights are respected...
Kathryn Ledebur
Raul Olivera P.
Red Andina de Información
From the daily Los Tiempos, Cochabamba,
Bolivia
Monday, October 16, 2000:
Evo Doubts Compliance with Goal of "Zero
Coca" by November
La Paz / Los Tiempos.- Now resting in
his house in the city of Cochabamba, after traveling by the unblockaded
highway, the leader of Chapare, Evo Morales, placed the government
plan of "zero coca" by November in doubt and says he
doesn't take seriously the government warning to imrpison peasants
who replant their crops.
Just as he said before signing the agreements,
Morales still campaigns for permission to plant a cato of coca
per family, predicting that the Tropic of Cochabamba will live
below permanent violence and that the United States is pulling
the political and strategic strings to take definitive military
posession of the region.
From
Interview with Evo Morales:
Los
Tiempos (LT): The government announced that the peasants who
plant new coca, protected by Law 1008, will be put on trial and
eventually in prison.
Evo Morales (EM):
The government officials should be the ones in prison for not
obeying Law 1008. According to the law, the coca should have
been eliminated by 1996, but the government has not paid the
required compensation to individuals for not growing it.
The law not only speaks of just compensation
and insurance -- which the government has never complied with
-- but it is applied by forced eradication without paying the
damages required by the law.
The government is the first to not comply
with the law and yet it threatens to place the peasants in jail...
LT:
In a press statement,
you said that the United States want to put itself in charge
of Chapare. What is the basis for that statement?
EM:
The US manages Chapare politically, militarily and through the
police. On the theme of coca, a congressman, a minister, a governor
who were consulted agreed to allow one cato of coca per family,
but the United States said no.
The policies of alternative development
are managed by USAID and the governor and other authorities in
Bolivia are not in charge.
To fly in this region, helicopters need
to seek permission from the US. In the airport of Chimoré
during the blockade, civil airplanes were not allowed to enter.
Before they were not permitted without the permission of the
US and everything passes for the US Embassy.
But behind all these things is, for example,
that the multinational oil companies of the US seek military
domination of the Chapare region and the three military bases
that they were going to put there to convert into a US military
base.
According to its geopolitical strategies,
after the US withdrew from the Panamá Canal, they had
three regions targetted for military bases: Manta, Ecuador; Guabayaré,
Colombia and Chapare, Bolivia....
El Mallku
Proposes an Alliance between Coca Growers and other Peasant Farmers
La Paz / ANF.- The executive secretary
of peasant farmers of Bolivia, Felipe Quispe, proposed a united
front between the organization of farm workers (CSUTBC) and the
six federations of coca producers in Cochabamba to strengthen
a movement whose final objective will be the defense of coca
leaf in this country...
"All this is simply for a cato of
coca," affirmed Quispe, saying that the theme of coca eradication
in Chapare can be "fought on future ocassions because if
we unite we can win."
"At this moment, Evo Morales has
to do what we did last April, when we took a step back. In October,
we will advance," said El Mallku.
Today's
Briefing on Mexico
October 16, 2000
Election Stolen
in Narco-State of Tabasco
Vicente Fox, US
Embassy, Accomplices
Left Wing PRD
Won Sunday's Vote: Official Tally Says it Lost to PRI "by
One Percent"
Mexico's president-elect Vicente Fox, who takes office
on December 1st, and widely hailed in the US media as an "opposition
leader" to the 71-year rule of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary
Party), showed his true colors this week; the green, white and
colorado of the PRI.
First, Fox's PAN (National
Action Party) broke its agreement to unify the opposition in
Tabasco's October 15 gubernatorial election if it had lagged
in the polls, in order to defeat the PRI regime of governor Roberto
Madrazo. In fact, by last week it was clear that Fox's PAN did
not have a chance, and was far behind the PRI and the left wing
PRD (Democratic Revolution Party) in all polls, with the PRD
surging. The PAN reneged on its publicly stated agreement because
Fox had made a deal with Madrazo to deny victory to the Mexican
Left, which, despite constant NY Times references to its
electoral death, won the popular vote in Tabasco yesterday.
Official results as of
9 a.m. this morning had the PRI with 44.13% and the PRD with
43.13% -- a difference of exactly one percent. Fox's PAN trailed
far behind with less than 10 percent and other small parties
with even less.
What happened in Tabasco
was a textbook case of election fraud -- the kind that the US
media has repeatedly claimed no longer exists in Mexico: ballot
stuffing, stealing and purchasing of voter credentials, vote
buying, disappearance of known opposition voters from the voting
lists, and this time with no serious international observer effort
by the US Embassy or international non governmental organizations
as was at least simulated in the July 2nd national elections
won by Fox.
A PRI "victory"
in Tabasco does two things for Fox: It guarantees that outgoing
Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo will now take the helm of the
national PRI organization. Madrazo is part of the faction of
ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Fox signaled that
he wants Madrazo in the opposition seat because he can be negotiated
with easily. Indeed, the Tabasco results were negotiated between
Fox and Madrazo before a single vote was cast in Sunday's election.
To offer a quick and clear
evidence of why the "one percent" victory of the PRI
in Tabasco yesterday is as hollow and fraudulent as the "one
percent" victory of the PRI in the state of Guerrero in
1999, Narco News publishes a translated excerpt of the story
by Jaime Avilés in Sunday's La Jornada. It is the eyewitness
account of Saturday's discovery of a clandestine computer operations
center by the PRI, its vote-tampering technology, and the presence
of thousands of blank ballots for stuffing the ballot boxes.
From the daily La Jornada,
Mexico City
Sunday, October 15, 2000:
PRD
Leaders Shot At In Headquarters of Cyber-Voterobbers
By Jaime Avilés
"Imbecile, you want
to make me deaf?" shouted Carlos Imaz when the pistol shot
five centimeters from his ear.
"If you are going
to shoot, shoot at my body you animal," Armando Quintero
then shouted, while a third bullet whizzed by his feet. With
a 9 mm pistol in his right hand, Manuel Zendejas Carmona, computer
systems advisor for the state of Tabasco, stopped shooting, surprised
by the bold response of those in group of Congressmen, national
and state PRD leaders who tried to enter the headquarters of
the cibernetic vote-stealers of Roberto Madrazo.
In other words, today
at 11 a.m., the major leagues of the PRD and dozens of reporters
from all media outlets arrived at the offices of the Cocoweb.com
company in Villahermosa, Tabasco, where they found a parabolic
antenna, a complex computer system, boxes full of indelible ink
(exclusive property of the government, used on the thumbs of
voters to assure they don't vote twice), a complete copy of the
voters list of the entire state, mountains of official election
documents, ballot boxes, ballots and other materials used in
the electoral process, a Powermate ProGem 2000 electric generator,
two closed-circuit cameras, and two autos of the treasurer of
the state of Tabasco, apparently stolen, because their license
plates did not match the numbers on the windshield.
But we return to the beginning:
When the "racoon hunters" (a popular term anti-fraud
activists) broke into the first floor of the building at 136
Carmen Buendía Street in Villahermosa, the PRI official
Zendejas -- a tall and big man with white hair and starched shirt
-- exited to confront the visitors and tried to push them back,
while he shouted to the high heavens: "Close Everything!
Close Everything!"...
He soon asked for a pistol
from a security guard. The guard entered and gave him the weapon.
Zendejas loaded the cartridges and aimed the gun at federal Senator
Jesús Ortega....
...And that's when two
news photographers entered.
...Chocoweb.com had been
used as a "mirror site" for the computers of the state
election institute... and although Zendejas shot a weapon that
legally may only be used by the Armed Forces, and that he attacked
a group of federal legislators, the state prosecutor did not
arrest him nor conduct a Harrison Test of whether he fired the
gun, nor seal the building to conduct the proper negotiations.
Nothing, they simply left it alone because in Tabasco there is
no law nor anyone to enforce it... This is Tabasco 2000, only
a few hours before the election.
Fox's
"Anti-Corruption Czar"
From the daily El Paso
Times, El Paso, Texas
Sunday, October 15, 2000
CARTEL
PAID OFF PAN OFFICIAL, WARRANT SAYS
By Diana Washington Valdez
A professional jeweler
who later was killed alleged that ex-
Chihuahua Gov. Francisco Barrio Terrazas of the National Action
Party received payoffs from the former leader of the Juarez drug
cartel, according to a Mexican arrest warrant.
Luis Reza, a member of
Barrio's staff in Mexico City, said Barrio
was unavailable for comment.
Barrio, who still maintains
a house in Juarez, was governor from
1993 to 1998.
Mexican President-elect
Vicente Fox is considering him for a
possible Cabinet-level post that will crack down on corruption.
Barrio was the first Panista
to be elected Chihuahua governor.
In the arrest warrant,
Tomas Colsa McGregor told Mexican
attorney general officials in a sworn statement on March 25,
1997,
that "besides being told by people in the center of drug-trafficking,
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who has relations with and who is given
protection by the governors of Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche,
Sonora and Chihuahua. ...
"Amado told him (Colsa)
that this last Panista governor of the last
name of Barrios (sic), had abused by asking Amado Carrillo for
large quantities of money, which had (Carrillo) bothered because
(Chihuahua's governor) was always asking him for money."
In a prepared statement,
Fox's press secretary, Martha Sahagun,
said, "Mr. Barrio is a person of untouchable honorability."
She said
that Barrio's career path is well known and that he and all of
Fox's
top advisers were honorable people. Sahagun did not comment on
the specific allegations.
The arrest warrant did
not contain further details about the
allegations against Barrio.
The warrant is related
to Mexican drug cartels and is known as the
maxi proceso because it is more than 2,000 pages and involves
many suspects. It was sent by the Mexican government to the U.S.
district court of El Paso for an extradition proceeding.
Ricardo Gonzalez Baños,
assistant to Jose Larrieta, who's in
charge of the Mexican attorney general's drug investigations,
said
Larrieta could not comment on the allegations against Barrio.
Carlos Becerril, spokesman
for the Mexican attorney general's
office in Mexico City, said that except for Quintana Roo's ex-
governor, none of the other former governors mentioned in the
arrest warrant, including Barrio, face federal charges.
Mexican authorities said
the arrest warrant represents an open
investigation, and that is why the allegations against Barrio
remain
in the document.
Barrio is now on a national
panel that advises Fox on anti-
corruption policies. Another panel member is Federico Reyes-
Heroles, brother of Mexico's ambassador to the United States,
Jesus Reyes-Heroles.
Nongovernmental organizations
criticized Barrio's administration,
which they said failed to curb unprecedented violence in Juarez,
including hundreds of "narco executions," more than
200
disappearances and the deaths of nearly 200 women.
Barrio also was elected
Juarez mayor in 1983, some believe on the
strength of his reputation for honesty. Before he was elected
mayor, he fought against electoral fraud.
In 1998, he was presented
the keys to the city of El Paso and the
Paso Del Norte Award.
Cartel Insiders Slain
Colsa's statement is part
of a 2,433-page Mexican indictment dated
Feb. 19, 1999, issued by the criminal district judge of the federal
district in Mexico City. It cites as its basis a preliminary
investigation
by the federal attorney general (PGR/UEDO No. 157/98), which
includes Colsa's statement.
Authorities said Colsa,
a fine-jewelry expert with a Ph.D., was
kidnapped, tortured and killed July 5, 1997, in Mexico City.
His death
came the day after Amado Carrillo died following plastic surgery,
also in Mexico City.
Irma Lizzette Ibarra,
a former Miss Jalisco and the cartel's "public
relations" manager, is also mentioned in the arrest warrant
as a
suspected cartel member. She was murdered in 1997.
Jose A. Andrade Bojorges,
Amado Carrillo's lawyer, included an
excerpt of the arrest warrant with the allegations about Barrio
and
others in his 1999 book, "The Secret History of Drug Trafficking."
Andrade was reported missing
in May 1999, said Socorro
Martinez, a spokeswoman for publisher Oceano. She said
Andrade's family feared he was kidnapped and killed.
Corruption Allegations
The arrest warrant links
Mexican Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo to
Carrillo. Gutierrez, Mexico's ex-drug czar, was convicted in
1997
of helping the Juarez drug cartel.
The arrest warrant alleges
that Carrillo provided Gutierrez money,
vehicles, a cell phone, and an apartment for the general's alleged
mistress.
Other witnesses besides
Colsa told authorities that the cartel gave
money and other goods to Mexican federal police, Mexican federal
highway police and other Mexican army soldiers to protect drug
shipments.
The arrest warrant alleged
that Carrillo's people gave officials with
the federal attorney generals' office throughout Mexico up to
$50,000 each as protection money. Payoffs to certain people were
$500,000 or more.
According to the arrest
warrant, the cartel arranged to have
sympathetic police commanders appointed in key cities like Juarez.
The Juarez commander Carrillo had in mind was not identified
in the
document.
Becerril said that Attorney
General Jorge Madrazo is aware of
corruption allegations against Mexican federal security forces
and
that his staff has worked hard to address the problem.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes,
Amado's brother and alleged new leader
of the Juarez drug cartel, and Eduardo Gonzalez Quirarte,
Amado's alleged right-hand man, are mentioned in the arrest
warrant.
Two years ago, U.S. federal
officials seized Gonzalez's house and
truck center in East El Paso and houses belonging to him in Clint
and San Elizario. Gonzalez is wanted by U.S. and Mexican
authorities on charges of drug smuggling.
Last month, U.S. officials
indicted Vicente Carrillo on charges that
he allegedly ordered the murders of 10 people in Juarez, including
four El Pasoans.
Voluminous Document
Although many people know
of the arrest warrant through news
media accounts, few outside law enforcement and defense
lawyers have seen it.
The document was entered
into evidence during Lucio Cano's
extradition hearing Sept. 21 in El Paso's federal court.
Mexican authorities accused
Cano, a Juarez lawyer who lives in El
Paso, of drug-trafficking and money laundering. He denied the
allegations.
Although Cano is mentioned
in the arrest warrant, no one accused
him of specific wrongdoing. U.S. District Judge Richard Mesa
ruled
there was no proof to substantiate extradition and ordered Cano
released.
The Mexican attorney general's
office sent the maxi proceso and
other documents to El Paso federal prosecutors first through
the
U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and then through the State
Department in Washington, D.C.
Cano's Mexican lawyer,
Patricio O'Farrill, said "there are several
versions of the maxi proceso."
The 28-pound bundle required
special handling. It was strapped
together with a red ribbon that was not to be untied and had
an
official seal that was not to be broken.
The El Paso federal courthouse
staff was instructed to return it to
the State Department after Cano's release.
Other allegations in the
arrest warrant were that Amado Carrillo
had a crush on Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi, a Chihuahua native
accused of corrupting minors. Trevi, who has denied the
allegations, is in a Brazilian jail awaiting extradition to Mexico.
The document also said
that Carrillo brought his terminally ill father
to El Paso for treatment, and that his father died in El Paso.
It said that the drug
lord had ties to a Juarez hospital, and that he
was a neighbor of other drug kingpins in Juarez, who also died
in
the power struggle to control the cartel.
It also said the cartel
kept several accounts in El Paso banks.
More
Reports As They Come In
Recent
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This
is your war. This is your war on drugs. Any questions?
Fighting the Battle
Against Simulation and Media Cynicism