Marijuana Mexico wants to follow lead of some U.S. States for Personal Consumption

The opposition party governing Mexico City said on Thursday it would propose raising the amount of marijuana residents of the capital can possess to seven times the current limit to help speed up drug liberalization in Mexico.
Since former President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on drug cartels seven years ago, Mexico has been wracked by gang-related violence, and there is growing pressure to explore regulation as a way of tackling the problem.
The leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has led the drive to liberalize Mexico's drug laws, and aims to use the capital, which it has governed since 1997, as starting ground.
Vidal Llerenas, a PRD member of the Mexico City assembly, said the initiative that is due to be presented in the next two weeks would increase the amount of marijuana local residents are allowed for personal consumption to 35 grams from 5 grams.
"The proposal basically ensures that people in possession of a reasonable quantity of marijuana will not be prosecuted," said Llerenas. "What can we do to lower the social costs of drug use? Part of the answer is regulation and part is decriminalization."
In 2009, Mexico made it legal to carry up to 5 grams (0.18 ounce) of marijuana, 500 milligrams (0.018 ounce) of cocaine and tiny amounts of heroin and methamphetamine's.
Cartel violence, however, is still a major problem in Latin America's second biggest economy, claiming the lives of more than 80,000 people over the past seven years.
In September, a group of prominent Mexicans including former ministers, businessmen, artists and Nobel Prize-winning scientist Mario Molina urged the government to decriminalize marijuana in an effort to reduce corruption and lower the income of cartels.
President Enrique Pena Nieto has resisted taking that step, but officials have said that he is closely watching developments elsewhere. Lawmakers have said that Mexico is likely to gradually change tack once a bigger section of the Americas has liberalized drug laws.

Immigration Principles a Fight within a Fight

House Republican leaders plan to outline broad immigration principles, including legalization for the 11 million immigrants living here illegally, to the GOP rank and file as they look to revive long-stalled efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration system.

It's no secret we have millions of people who are here, who are unlawful and we can't deny that, and I think that's something that has to be dealt with

- Mario Diaz-Balart

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other House GOP leaders will measure the willingness of party members to tackle immigration in a midterm election year when they unveil the principles Thursday at the GOP caucus' annual retreat in Cambridge, Md.
"We're going to outline our standards, principles of immigration reform and have a conversation with our members, and once that conversation's over we'll have a better feel for what members have in mind," Boehner told reporters this week.
Boehner faces strong opposition from several conservatives who fear that legislation will lead to citizenship for people who broke U.S. immigration laws, are suspicious of President Barack Obama and his enforcement of any law and are reluctant to give the president a long-sought legislative victory.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, delivered a 30-page package to all 232 House Republicans on Wednesday that offered a point-by-point rebuttal to the expected principles.
Sessions warned of the negative impact of proposed changes in immigration policy on U.S. workers, taxpayers and the rule of law as the House leaders look at legalization for some of the 11 million immigrants living here illegally. Sessions and other opponents argue that legal status and work authorization amounts to amnesty and serves as a path to citizenship.
Responding to Obama's renewed call for immigration legislation and the positive signals from House GOP leaders, Sessions said Republicans "must end the lawlessness — not surrender to it — and they must defend the legitimate interests of millions of struggling American workers."
Separately, several lawmakers were working on legislation dealing with children of parents in the United States illegally and visas for guest workers.
Republicans insist that the party must pass reforms and address the issue of those in the country illegally to be competitive in presidential elections. In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who suggested that immigrants "self-deport," won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
"It's no secret we have millions of people who are here, who are unlawful and we can't deny that, and I think that's something that has to be dealt with," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who has been working on legislation. "But a lot of components have to be dealt with."
The Senate last year passed a comprehensive, bipartisan bill that addressed border security, provided enforcement measures and offered a path to citizenship for those living here illegally. The measure stalled in the GOP-led House, where leaders want to take a more piecemeal approach.
Sessions' analysis said increasing the number of immigrants would hurt an already weak economy, lower wages and increase unemployment. He cited White House adviser Gene Sperling's comment earlier this month that the economy has three people looking for every job opening.
He said the House GOP leaders' plan that's taking shape would grant work permits almost immediately to those here illegally, giving them a chance to compete with unemployed Americans for any job. He said it would lead to a surge in the future flow of unskilled workers and would provide amnesty to a larger number of immigrants in the country illegally, giving them a chance to apply for citizenship through green cards.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Sessions' critique.
Notably, two members of the House leadership, Boehner and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., spoke about dealing with the broken immigration system in their responses to Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday that she spoke to Boehner about the principles but not specific legislation.
"I believe it is a good-faith effort to find common ground, and we look forward to seeing what they are," Pelosi said.
Diaz-Balart expressed cautious optimism, putting the odds of House action on immigration at 30 percent, up from 5 percent earlier.
"There's a consensus that the system is broken and I'm seeing more and more a desire to fix it," he said in an interview. "Speaker Boehner has been very clear, leadership has been very clear. We're going to do it methodically, that we're going to look at it case by case, step by step, we're not going to rush it."

Good or Bad Thing Mexico wants to Train n Supervise Vigilantes

Mexico enlists army of hardened vigilantes to fight drug cartel

After months of tacit co-operation with rural vigilantes trying to drive out a cult-like drug cartel, the Mexican government has moved to permanently solve one of its toughest security problems with a plan to legalize the growing movement and bring it under the army’s control.

But the risks are high.
To succeed, the government must enforce military discipline and instil respect for human rights and due process among more than 20,000 heavily armed civilians before returning them home to the western state of Michoacan.
In other Latin American countries, similar experiments have created state-backed militias that carried out massive human rights abuses as armed civilians turned to vengeance, or assisted in mass killings. The Mexican army itself has been accused of rights abuses during the more than seven-year war against organized crime that has seen it deployed as a police force in much of the country.
Vigilante leaders met Tuesday with government officials to hash out details of the agreement that would put avocado and lime pickers with AR-15 semi-automatic rifles under army command. The Mexican military has a century-old tradition of mobilizing “rural defence corps” of peasants to fight bandits and uprisings in the countryside.
If the latest experiment works, it will resolve one of the thorniest dilemmas of the barely year-old administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto: how to handle a movement that sprang up outside the law but successfully took on a pseudo-religious drug cartel, the Knights Templar, that Mexican authorities had been unwilling or unable to take on for years.
Over the last year, the vigilantes, many former migrant workers who spent years in the United States, have seized a dozen towns terrorized by extortion, killings and rapes at the hands of the cartel’s gunmen. Members of the Knights Templar have tried to portray themselves as soldiers in a reincarnation of a medieval religious order dedicated to Christianity and the expulsion of abusive police from their communities.
In many instances, Associated Press reporters have witnessed federal forces standing on the sidelines while the “self-defence” forces routed the cartel, and occasionally even aiding them by conducting joint patrols and manning highway checkpoints together.
Mexican experts so far have widely accepted of the government’s late-Monday move, calling it a smart way to maintain the movement’s momentum against the Knights Templar while protecting the government against charges it was ceding the rule of law in the “hot lands” of Michoacan, a rugged Pacific Coast state of rich agricultural land and mountains studded by marijuana fields and methamphetamine labs.
But in other parts of Latin America, the news stirred traumatic memories.
Claudia Samayoa, a human rights activist in Guatemala, said the thousands of deaths attributed to the army-backed Peasant Self Defence Patrols during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war are too fresh to allow for more paramilitary forces in the region.

“The cure is going to be worse than the disease,” said Samayoa. “It would be better not to go down that road, and instead strengthen law enforcement and the justice and public safety systems.”
Margarita Solano, of the U.S. risk-analysis firm Southern Pulse, said Mexico’s vigilantes have awakened memories of her native Colombia’s experience with self-defence forces such as the “Convivir” movement that fought leftistrebels in the 1990s. While the groups were initially welcomed, some were later accused of rights abuses. “I’m finding differences and certain similarities that are frightening,” Solano said.
Mexican authorities are portraying the legalization of the “self-defence” forces as a stop-gap measure: unable to disarm the vigilantes because of the popular support they received after kicking the Knights Templar drug cartel out of much of the state, federal officials will now have to work with them to clean up the rest of the gang — and then convince the vigilantes to demobilize. The government has stressed the plan is temporary, and said vigilantes will have to register their guns.
With self-defence checkpoints on most major roads in Michoacan’s hot lands, and armed vigilantes often drinking beer or smoking marijuana at their posts, there are ample possibilities for abuses.
But many Mexicans are less concerned than outsiders about wrongdoing by the vigilantes-turned-rural forces. They note there are fundamental differences between Michoacan, where relatively prosperous farmers are funding the vigilantes to fight drug cartel extortions, and Guatemala, Colombia and Peru, where poor farmers were pressed by right-wing governments into fighting bitter wars against leftist rebels.
In the rich, flat lands of Michoacan, “there aren’t any leftist guerrillas or poor farmers,” said Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “Here there are well-off farmers fighting criminals.”
Unlike the vigilante movement in the neighbouring Mexico state of Guerrero, where self-defence forces are often anti-government, many of Michoacan’s vigilantes say they just want to get back the rich pasture and lime groves that the Knights Templar stole from them.
“The comparisons with Colombia, Peru or Guatemala are an aberration,” said Benitez. “Right now, the self-defence forces need the respect of the local residents and public opinion, so I think they are not going to commit any crimes now.”

 

Mexico’s Olmec Civilization Before Christ

Mexico’s Olmec Civilization More Expansive than Previously Thought

 A recent study and publication by Mexico’s Museum of National Anthropology (INAH) indicates the Olmec civilization was territorially more expansive than previously thought.

Studies conducted in the per-Colombian archaeological site of ‘La Venta’ indicate that the Olmec civilization existed beyond the Gulf of Mexico, in the states of Veracruz and Tabasco, where it was centered.  Physical evidence from the La Venta site indicate that the Olmec’s, which thrived from 1,200 to 400 BCE, existed well beyond the Gulf of Mexico region into the southern Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca and all the way down into Guatemala. 
The ‘La Venta’ site contains the earliest known pyramid of Mesoamerica known as the “Great Pyramid.”
Archaeologists had found previous evidence that the Olmec influence went as far south as Nicaragua but this is the first time that the territorial expansion has been studied and proven with physical evidence. 
The study was concentrated in the ‘4th Offering of La Venta’ an archaeological site located within ‘La Venta’ discovered in 1955 in Tabasco, containing 16 jade stone carvings of males and 6 jade columns.
Jade was one of the commonly traded goods of the Olmecs and often used in sculptures and paintings.  The jade found in La Venta was also found in Guatemala’s Motagua River and minerals traces in Guerrero and Oaxaca. 
La Venta was the second cultural center of the Olmecs, with San Lorenzo being the first.  While San Lorenzo declined in importance La Venta surged around 900 BCE.  The massive stone heads found throughout the Gulf of Mexico are the most iconic and widely recognized symbols of this ancient civilization. 
The study and its conclusions have been documented in the book: “La ofrenda 4 de La Venta.”

 

Axolotl aka Water Monster or Mexican Walking Fish

Mexico's salamander-like axolotl, the 'water monster,' may have disappeared

Mexico's salamander-like axolotl may have disappeared from its only known natural habitat in Mexico City's few remaining lakes. It's disturbing news for an admittedly ugly creature, which has a slimy tail, plumage-like gills and mouth that curls into an odd smile.
The axolotl is known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish." Its only natural habitat is the Xochimilco network of lakes and canals — the "floating gardens" of earth piled on reed mats that the Aztecs built to grow crops but are now suffering from pollution and urban sprawl.
Biologist Armando Tovar Garza of Mexico's National Autonomous University said Tuesday that the creature "is in serious risk of disappearing" from the wild.
Describing an effort last year by researchers in skiffs to try to net axolotls in the shallow, muddy waters of Xochimilco, Tovar Garza summed up the results as "four months of sampling — zero axolotls."
Some axolotls still survive in aquariums, water tanks and research labs, but experts said those conditions aren't the best, because of interbreeding and other risks.
Growing up to a foot long (30 centimeters), axolotls use four stubby legs to drag themselves along the bottom or thick tails to swim in Xoxhimilco's murky channels while feeding on aquatic insects, small fish and crustaceans. But the surrounding garden-islands have increasingly been converted to illicit shantytowns, with untreated sewage often running off into the water.
The Mexican Academy of Sciences said in a statement that a 1998 survey found an average of 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer, a figure that dropped to 1,000 in a 2003 study, and 100 in a 2008 survey.
Tovar Garza said it is too early to declare the axolotl extinct in its natural habitat. He said that in early February, researchers will begin a three-month search in hopes of finding what may be the last free-roaming axolotl.
The searches "on almost all the canals have to be repeated, because now we are in the cold season, with lower temperatures, and that is when we ought to have more success with the axolotls, because it is when they breed," Tovar Garza said.
Alarmed by the creature's falling numbers in recent years, researchers built axolotl "shelters" in Xochimilco.
Sacks of rocks and reedy plants act as filters around a selected area, and cleaner water is pumped in, to create better conditions. The shelters also were intended to help protect the axolotls from non-native carp and tilapia that were introduced to the lake system years ago and compete with axolotls for food.

Mexico Drones Watching Tourist

TIJUANA, Mexico â?? Just across the border from the USA, police have begun using drones carrying video cameras to patrol residential neighborhoods and watch over parts of the city often visited by Americans.
Tijuana's use of low-altitude unmanned aircraft for law enforcement surveillance, in darkness as well as daylight, appears to far exceed what state and local police agencies have been permitted to experiment with in the USA.
Unburdened by the sort of aviation restrictions and privacy concerns that have slowed domestic U.S. drone use, Tijuana police recently purchased three specially configured commercial drones and are testing their use in flight, said Alejandro Lares, the city's new chief of police.
He said he hopes to put them into full normal operation within weeks.
"How are we going to use them? Basically, it's preventing crime,'' said Lares, 35, who became secretary of public safety in December, a post that puts him in charge of the municipal police force where he had been an officer for eight years.
"What we're doing is implementing technology into our community law enforcement,'' he said in a recent interview. "We don't have any regulations or laws that don't permit us to use them.''
The Mexican drones are far smaller than the large military Predator drones the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency has deployed along the border. The Border Patrol is one of the only agencies aside from the military allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aircraft. A recent report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the Border Patrol flew 687 surveillance missions on behalf of other agencies, some of them police, from 2010 to 2012.
While the United States develops its drone laws, the experiment on its doorstep offers a glimpse of how domestic police could soon use the technology if permitted.
Tijuana's drones are off-the-shelf commercial units produced by 3D Robotics, a company with offices in Tijuana and the USA. They are equipped with video cameras and night-vision capability. The company confirmed the deal but offered few specifics.
"We sell an open source platform that is being used for a variety of innovative applications, but we remain agnostic on how our technology is being used,'' company spokeswoman Sue Rosenstock said.
Small enough to rest on a desktop, the drones have eight propellers and battery capacity allowing them to fly about 20 minutes at a time, Lares said. He said Tijuana police can fly them at altitudes over 1,300 feet â?? well above the 400-foot limit the Federal Aviation Administration has imposed for most U.S. domestic drones.
They can be piloted remotely by officers on the ground and can be programmed to fly in an automated route, he said. They beam live video images to the police command and control center in the Zona Rio section of the city, where staff monitor a giant bank of video screens with images from approximately 600 stationary surveillance cameras located around the city. Police store and keep the drones' digital imagery for possible review as well, he said.
They are used to patrol targeted high-crime areas, such as neighborhoods where burglaries and car thefts are common, and in areas where tourists frequent, such as Avenida Revolucion, the main tourism boulevard in Zona Centro, or downtown Tijuana, he said. Tijuana wants to use drones as a force multiplier for its officers.
"Right now, our No. 1 concern is house burglaries,'' Lares said. "Definitely we're going to use the drones to help us out. Eyes in sky â?? it's like having 20 officers on patrol or more.''
The small drones are relatively inexpensive, meaning cost is not an obstacle even for a force where staffing and salaries are smaller than in the USA. Lares said his force pays about $12,000 for the hardware, spare parts, enhanced batteries and a year's worth of maintenance and repair by the vendor. He has at least four officers assigned to operate the drones.
Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst and privacy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union, said U.S. police need written authorization from the FAA to fly a drone and must follow strict limitations, including flying below 400 feet above ground and operating in daylight only. He said only a few police agencies have pioneered drone use, such as Miami-Dade police, in limited experiments or specific missions.
He said pressure is mounting on both sides of the issue, from privacy advocates who want limits on drone use to police who want them as crime-fighting tools. Since last year, 43 states have considered legislation that would limit drone use, and nine states have enacted laws, Stanley said.
"We're in the very early days of drone deployments, but Congress has ordered the FAA to loosen the rules to make it much easier for police departments and others to fly drones,'' he said.
"There are a lot of privacy issues that can come up,'' he said. "The big concern is that we not find drones being used for pervasive suspicion-less surveillance of everyone all the time.''
Lares said the drones are effective at helping police keep an eye on crime. He said they could even be used to watch police officers if they are suspected of corruption or shaking down citizens.
He said no one has raised objections to his force's use of drones.
"It's going to help me out,'' he said. "Even the bad guys ... they're going to know now there's something in the air that might be watching them.
"It's a big advantage,'' he said. "It may be a small step in community policing, but it's huge for our future.''

CBP Agent Kills Mexican Migrant

Mexico's government says it's "profoundly worried" by the killing of a Mexican migrant who was shot last week by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
The Foreign Relations Department said in a statement Thursday that it has asked for a thorough investigation into the slaying of Gabriel Sanchez Velazquez.
It said Sanchez Velazquez was shot on Jan. 16 near the border city of Douglas, Arizona.
The Mexican government said "it strongly reaffirms that the disproportionate use of lethal force in immigration control tasks is unacceptable."
It added that 20 migrants have been shot to death by U.S. Border Patrol agents since 2010 and it urged the U.S. government to adopt the recommendations of a government-commissioned review to end the use of deadly force.

Mexicali receives highest number of deportees

Mexicali has become Mexico’s city of the deported as U.S. dumps more people there

 

Armed militia group clash with Goverment troops

Mexican soldiers clashed with members of an armed citizen’s militia group. Multiple casualties were reported. Mexico’s government recently amped up its presence in the surrounding state of Michoacan after ongoing conflicts between armed civilians and drug cartel members have escalated. A recent push by the vigilante group to drive members of the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel out of the city of Apatzingan has led to an even more complicated situation. While heavily armed soldiers congregated in the center of Apatzingan, other units operating outside of the city tried to disarm some of the vigilantes. During the operation, some soldiers reportedly fired at members of the civilian group.
Gloria Perez Torres, whose brother, Mario was killed in the clash with Mexican soldiers told reporters, “This is how they plan to protect the community? We don’t want them.”

Mexican security analyst Eduardo Guerrero told me, “Apatzingan is where the Caballeros Templarios are entrenched. If the government let the [vigilantes] enter there probably would have been a very violent reaction. The Caballeros would have probably massacred a lot of them.”
The L.A. Times reported “The armed peasant groups emerged last year to fight off the cartel, which had metastasized throughout the southwestern state, coordinating the lucrative methamphetamine trade and extortion rackets and wielding significant control over the major container port of Lazaro Cardenas. Until recently, the self-defense groups had been largely tolerated, if not encouraged, by President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, which had allowed them to staff some roadblocks alongside federal police and soldiers.”
Unlike Canada’s Batman or the super-hero style vigilantes that have emerged in some cities in the U.S., Mexico’s self defense forces enjoy a degree of legal recognition for the role they play in their communities. As is well-publicized by the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups in the U.S., the U.S. constitution provides citizens with the right “a well regulated militia” and also states that “being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Mexico’s constitution is even more explicit.
Mexico’s constitution directly explains, “the nation is multicultural” and is “originally based on indigenous peoples.” The constitution states that groups that preserve at least part of their pre-colonial traditions can “recognize their own authorities in accordance with their own usos y custumbres.” Subject to the other tenets of the constitution and the protection of individual rights, indigenous communities are granted the authority to “apply their own normative systems in the regulation and resolution of internal conflicts.”
In the 1970s, changes to Article 10 of Mexico’s constitution, which once guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms, as well as the passage of new federal firearms control laws, made it virtually impossible for private citizens to purchase and carry guns. While the constitution protects the right for citizens to store non-military guns within their homes, a total absence of private gun stores and a ban on private gun stores have more or less erased the legal consumer market for firearms. Article 9 of Mexico’s federal firearm law bans private ownership of pistols with a caliber over nine millimeters. Like the constitution itself, the firearms regulations grant special privileges to rural residents and traditional lifestyles. The law states that “ejidatarios, community members and farmworkers in the countryside, outside of urban zones” can own pistols, .22 caliber rifles, and all shotguns other than those with military-style short-length barrels.
While Mexico’s Federal Firearms Laws place serious restrictions on the right to carry arms, there is an exception for “police institutions” that “comply with federal and local legal frameworks.” In all cases, the permission to carry a weapon can be revoked if the carrier “makes bad use of the weapons.”
So, while Mexico’s constitution does provide indigenous communities with the right to self-regulate their own police and judiciary systems, the armed groups in Michoacan appear to have taken on a different sort of profile. Unlike the poorly armed citizen police I met with in August in the town of Xaltianguis near the Pacific resort city Acapulco, (see here for article and photos) the so-called “self defense” forces in Michoacan ride around in pickup trucks wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying modern, military grade weapons.
What this means is that the security dynamic in Michoacan is only getting more complicated.  Guerrero told me, “I think the auto-defensas are out of the government’s control and will keep trying to advance. [The government] is going to supervise the auto-defensas and try to limit their territorial expansion, but they can’t disarm the auto-defensas because then the Caballeros Templarios would come back to the towns they’ve been pushed out of and kill the unarmed militia members.”
The Associated Press reported “After initially arresting the vigilantes months ago, the federal government appeared to be working with them recently. The army and Federal Police have provided helicopter cover and road patrols while the self-defense groups attacked the cartel, but never intervened in the battles.”
Now, the government appears to have shifted its stance again.
“The federal government has been erratic,” Guerrero told me.
So far Mexico’s government has focused on the need for enforcing laws that ban citizens from owning military style weapons. Although Mexico’s tough gun laws prevent companies  such as Smith & Wesson (which earns 9 percent of its revenue in Latin America) and Sturm Ruger from directly selling weapons in Mexico, for years such military grade weapons have been sold under the loose rules permitted in U.S. border states and smuggled south of the border to Mexico.
Mexico’s Interior Minister and top security policy architect Osorio Chong has called on Michoacan’s vigilante groups go back to their homes. He also warned there would be “no tolerance” for anyone found in possession of illegal military-grade weapons. He also suggested that militia members should consider joining official police forces — or report crimes a toll-free tip line.
In a radio interview self-defense group leader Hipolito Mora vowed to “continue in our struggle,” and said the groups have no plans to hand over their weapons. “It’s easy to say [we should disarm], because they’ve never lived through the hell that we’ve lived through,” Mora said.
At an event on January 13 in Morelia, Michoacán’s capital city, Chong said that the federal government would take control of the Tierra Caliente region of the sate.

“Rest assured that we will contain the violence in Michoacán,” he said.
Esteban Barragán, a professor at the Center for Rural Studies at the College of Michoacán explained, “The complexity of the problem lies in the fact that no one knows who is involved in the conflict anymore.”
“Who is a genuine vigilante, and who is a member of the Knights Templar cartel or who is just taking advantage of the chaotic situation for a personal vendetta?” he asked.
“Tierra Caliente has become a no man’s land full of personal vendettas, serial kidnappings, forced disappearances, and murders that come and go unnoticed, every day,” Mr. Barragán said.
As they move out of their home communities and go on the offensive, the armed citizen groups are also stepping outside of the bounds of the statutes of Mexico’s constitution that have been used to provide self defense forces with a veneer of legitimacy over the past year.
So far, however, they are still being left with room to operate.
Vigilante group spokesman Estanislao Beltran said “We don’t have confidence in the government,” he said. “We’ve asked for help for years and have received the same.”
So far President Peña Nieto has made his economic agenda his top public priority and has distanced himself from Mexico’s security problems. As the conflict continues to evolve in Michoacan a clear security strategy for the state will be essential.

Michoacan state of Mexico vigilante vs. Government Shooting

Mexican soldiers and federal police kept a tense standoff with vigilantes Tuesday after a new government campaign to stop violence in western Michoacan state turned deadly.
There were widely varying reports of casualties. Associated Press journalists saw the bodies of two men reportedly killed in a clash that began late Monday between soldiers and townspeople in Antunez and spoke with the family of a third man that said he also died in the incident. No women or children died, contrary to reports by the spokesman for one of "self-defense" groups that have sprung up over the past year to challenge a drug cartel.
The clash occurred as the government sent more troops to the so-called Tierra Caliente, where the vigilantes have been fighting the Knights Templar cartel. The government on Monday had called on the self-defense groups to disarm.
Federal and state officials met late Tuesday with leaders of vigilante groups but failed to reach a disarmament agreement.
"We have to be discreet with our weapons and not move up and down the highways with them," Hipolito Mora, a lime grower who leads the self-defense group in La Ruana, said when asked about laying down their weapons.
Earlier in the day, members of self-defense groups blocked roads leading into towns under their control, and federal police manned their own roadblocks outside. One federal officer who was not authorized to speak to the press said they had no orders to disarm anyone, or to try to take vigilante-held towns.
The Attorney General's Office said it could not confirm a number of dead. The Interior Ministry said it had no information about reports from people in Antunez that soldiers arriving in the town Monday night fired on an unarmed crowd.
"This is how they plan to protect the community? We don't want them," said Gloria Perez Torres, grieving over the body of her brother, Mario, 50, who was killed in the clash.
In the city of Apatzingan, hundreds of federal police offices traveling in pickup trucks with machines guns mounted on the top, armored vehicles and buses massed in the city square as residents watched.
"The federal police have been here for years, but they don't do anything," said a man sitting on a bench at the plaza who identified himself only as Ivan.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope, who formerly worked for Mexico's intelligence agency, called the government's strategy in Michoacan a "disaster."
After initially arresting the vigilantes months ago, the federal government under Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong appeared to be working with them recently. The army and Federal Police have provided helicopter cover and road patrols while the self-defense groups attacked the cartel, but never intervened in the battles.
"Last week they were protecting the vigilantes," said Hope, director of security policy at the Mexican Competitiveness Institute. "Secretary Osorio practically said they were useful ... now they're going to put them down with firepower and bloodshed?"
The government doesn't agree with that assessment, said an official with the Interior Ministry who was not authorized to speak to the press by name. "It's a strategy that's being adjusted, modified based on the demands of what is happening on the ground," the official said.
Osorio Chong announced the new strategy Monday following a weekend of firefights as the vigilantes extended their control to the communities of Antunez, Paracuaro and Nueva Italia. Burning trucks and buses blocked highways. Two bodies were found hanging from a bridge.
The deadly confrontation in Antunez started late Monday after townspeople were called to meet a convoy of soldiers, who they were told were coming to disarm the self-defense group. Witnesses said the civilian group did not carry guns, but as they blocked the military convoy, some soldiers fired into the crowd.
"The army is made of people without values or ethics," self-defense group spokesman Estanislao Beltran said. "The military has no reason to shoot the people."
Beltran said the confrontation was with about 60-80 soldiers. There were at least as many civilians, according to witnesses.
The vigilantes have surrounded Apatzingan, a Knights Templar stronghold and the hub of the rich farming region that is a major producer of limes, avocados and mangos. Rumors circulate that some self-defense groups have been infiltrated by the New Generation cartel, which they vehemently deny.
Self-defense group leaders said they coordinated the highway blockades in the 17 municipalities they now control to stop soldiers and federal police from entering their towns.
Felipe Diaz, a leader of vigilantes in Coalcoman, said close to 1,000 men, women and children helped block the main highway until soldiers and dozens of federal police in four buses and 15 pickup trucks left the area.
"We're still providing security to our people," Diaz said. "We're talking to them, telling them everything is OK, everything is calm."

Tyson Institutional Use Chicken 33,000 pounds

Tyson Foods is recalling nearly 34,000 pounds of mechanically separated chicken products that may be contaminated with a strain of salmonella.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday in a news release the product was not sold in retail stores. It was produced on Oct. 11 and shipped nationwide for institutional use.

The chicken has been linked to illnesses in a Tennessee correctional facility, where seven people got sick and two were hospitalized.

Food containing Salmonella can cause salmonellae, one of the most common bacterial food-borne illnesses. The most common symptoms are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within 12 to 72 hours after eating the contaminated product.

The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days. Most people recover without treatment.

Three Decapitated Veracruz, Mexico

Veracruz, Mexico -

The decapitated heads of three suspected members of the Zetas drug cartel were found on the trunk of a car in eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, authorities said on Thursday.

With them authorities found a note in which another cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generacion, apparently claimed responsibility.

The grisly discovery came in the state capital, the port city also called Veracruz, said a police official.

The note said: “This is going to happen to any filthy Z that goes around kidnapping and robbing innocent people,” according to the police official.

The heads, with signs of torture, were found Wednesday night after police were advised by local people.

In late December five people were found decapitated in the western state of Michoacan, also along with a note from the Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartel, which is fighting for control of the state with rival drug gangs called the Knights Templar and La Familia Michoacana.

Veracruz is one of the Mexican states hardest hit by drug-related violence by cartels such as the Zetas, which resorts to abductions and extortion, as well as robbery and trafficking of undocumented migrants trying to reach the United States.

Also in December the remains of three women and four men were found in several clandestine graves on a beach in Veracruz. The state lies on the Gulf of Mexico and boasts Mexico's biggest commercial port.

In September of 2011, members of Jalisco Nueva Generacion claimed responsibility for the killing of 35 people. The bodies were found inside trucks parked outside a shopping mall in Boca del Río, a tourist area of Veracruz. 

Mexicali Expo promotes Baja tourism attractions

People in the Yuma area may already know what there is to see and do in Los Algodones.
They may not know what Mexicali or San Felipe, Baja Calif., has to offer.

They can find out Jan. 19 at the Mexicali Expo, an event slated for 12:15 to 3 p.m. at the Yuma Civic & Convention Center, 1440 W. Desert Hill Drive.

The expo will feature music and folkloric dances presentations by performing artists from Mexicali's House of Culture and a rodeo demonstration by members of the Cachanilla Charros Association from Algodones.

Representatives from the Mexicali Tourism and Convention Committee and Baja California's hospitality industry will be on hand to answer questions about tourism attractions in Mexicali and San Felipe and about medical services available in Mexicali and Algodones.

The tourism committee comes to Yuma annually to stage the expo.

"This is a very important event for us," said Patricia Hernandez, the committee's promotions and information manager. "It's a chance to promote the attraction of the city, both in tourism and in medical tourism.

"Because of our proximity to the Imperial Valley, we receive a lot of visitors from El Centro and Calexico, but we want to offer this opportunity for Yuma residents to get to know us."

The expo is free and open to the public. For more information about the event, call the Yuma Civic & Convention Center, 373-5040, or the Yuma Visitors Bureau, 376-0100.

Yuma Civic Center  

1440 West Desert Hills Drive   Yuma, AZ 85365 928) 373-5040  yumaciviccenter.com   Off      S. Av. "A" between 32nd and 40th.     ‎

Border is Safer 2014, CBP Not perfect, but doinbg a good job.

Although the federal government has poured billions of dollars worth of personnel, infrastructure and technology into the U.S/Mexico border over the last decade, the question that always still seems to be asked is, how secure is it?
The answer, according to officials at the Yuma Sector Border Patrol, is that the line between between Mexico and the U.S. is now more secure than it’s ever been in the past.
   The 126-mile-long Yuma Sector stretches from between the Yuma-Pima County line in Arizona and the Imperial Sand Dunes in California and includes three stations, which are located in Yuma, Wellton and Blythe, Calif.

Agent Enrique Zarate of the Yuma Sector Public Affairs Office explained that every mile of the Yuma Sector's border with Mexico has some type of fencing, man-made or natural barriers, sensor technology, or is routinely patrolled. Also, since 2004 the number of agents assigned to the sector has tripled, increasing from 330 to more than 900.

In fiscal year 2005, apprehensions of illegal entrants for the Yuma Sector was at an all-time high of 138,438. By fiscal year 2012, however, the last year official figures were available, apprehensions of illegal entrants for the Yuma sector had plummeted to 6,500.

"The numbers are pretty low, but it's still not anywhere close to being zero," Zarate said. "For the Border Patrol, securing our borders means first having the visibility to see what is happening on our borders, and second, having the capacity to respond to what we see."

As for drug seizures, in fiscal year 2005, Yuma Sector agents seized 36,385 pounds of marijuana and 0.13 pounds of cocaine. By comparison, in fiscal year 2012, a total of 31,692 pounds of marijuana and 437 pounds of cocaine were seized in the Yuma Sector. Figures for other types of drugs were not immediately available.

Zarate added that while the personnel and infrastructure has helped tremendously in the great success the Yuma Sector has had in securing its stretch of the border, it would not have been possible without the tremendous partnerships it has with other federal, state, local, tribal and Mexican law enforcement agencies.

While the 2012 apprehension figure represented a slight increase over the 5,833 arrests that were reported in 2011, Zarate cautioned about using the number as sole indicator for border security, saying not all of the arrests occurred along the border.

"We have people enter our country illegally and attempt to abscond from us. Although we apprehend most of the people who enter illegally, we don’t apprehend everyone," Zarate said. "This is one of the reasons we have checkpoints, which are part of our defense in depth strategy. "

According to Zarate, while the Yuma Sector has had an unprecedented level of control over its operational area the past several years, it would be unrealistic to assume that agents are preventing every illegal border crossing attempt. He added that there may be several other reasons that could also explain why the number of illegal entrant apprehensions has dropped off so sharply.

Agent effectiveness is likely the main reason, Zarate said, but added that other factors could include a weak U.S. economy that has fewer jobs to offer, tougher new immigration laws, violence along the border caused by drug cartels and the area's dangerous terrain and harsh environment.

"I'm sure all those probably play a factor into an individual's decision to try to attempt to enter the country illegally, but it is hard for us to quantify," Zarate said. "We interview everybody we apprehend, but most of the questions we ask are in reference to their illegal entry, not necessarily as to why they chose to do so."

"Sometimes we do ask, but even then it is kind of difficult to determine whether they are stating the truth or not. Then of course, we don't interview those individuals who got to the border and decided not to attempt to cross," he noted.

Also, what is true in the Yuma Sector isn't necessarily true in other sectors. While other sectors have higher apprehension figures, Zarate explained that most other sectors have longer stretches of the border to patrol, which means more apprehensions. Yuma is also more remote, and not near any major population centers, which may make it a less-than-desirable potential crossing point.

"It is hard to quantify how many people have been deterred from trying to enter illegally by our presence along the border. There are a lot of people who approach the border seeking to enter illegally, but see agents and chose not to try," Zarate said. "Other times they will just look for another area where they think it will be easier to try and enter. There are also people who say they can't make past the Border Patrol and decide to not even try."

The unprecedented level of border security has also allowed Yuma Sector agents to assist Tucson Sector agents in patrolling an area known as "The Seam," which is in the vicinity of the Yuma-Pima County line.

Zarate said the Yuma Sector, however, faces many challenges on a daily basis in its attempts to keep the border safe, especially from well-funded transnational criminal organizations that have gone through tremendous efforts over the years to smuggle drugs and people into the country.

For example, there have been drug tunnels built in the San Luis area, an ultra-light aircraft has flown over the border and dropped off bundles of drugs in a field, and in certain areas pneumatic-powered cannons have been used to launch narcotics over the fence to then be picked up by drug smugglers already in the country.

While vehicles still attempt to park at the border to be loaded up with drugs, there have also been instances where vehicles have driven up to the border and attempted to get weapons and cash back south in to Mexico.

Other examples include trucks, Jeeps, all-terrain vehicles and utility vehicles loaded with drugs trying to cross fences and other barriers by using large metal ramps and people and horses being used to carry drugs through the desert.

At checkpoints, agents have seen vehicles with hidden compartments and other types of modifications used to conceal illegal drugs.

"The men and women of the United States Border Patrol are aware of these threats and remain vigilant in their duty to secure our nation’s borders," Zarate said.

Close to the border, U.S. Border Patrol agents have been assaulted with large rocks and have even been shot at. Zarate said these violent acts cause the agency great concern and that agents are consistently training to ensure that no harm comes to the public they serve, themselves or those individuals they have in custody.

Budget cuts are another challenge the Yuma Sector constantly faces Zarate said. He said every year the agency's budget gets cut, causing them to attempt to do more with less.

"We will do everything in our power to ensure budget cuts do not affect the high level of security Yuma Sector has been able to attain," Zarate said.

Although the threat of terrorism is a major concern, Zarate explained that he could not disclose if the Yuma Sector has ever apprehended anyone with ties to terrorism, but that every illegal entrant taken into custody is thoroughly screened through various national databases.

"The Border Patrol has policies and procedures in place to process people who have been identified as terrorists or having terrorist ties," Zarate said.

Six Gunmen talk way into Mexican Prison, Nine killed in Gun Battle. Started the year off with ?????

A group of armed men posing as public servants talked their way into a prison in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero early Friday and unleashed a bloody attack on inmates and guards, according to the state prosecutor’s office. At least nine people were killed in the assault and the ensuing shootout with prison guards. Report was updated to say the Six were in Police Uniform.

The attack occurred in the city of Iguala, about halfway between Mexico City and the Pacific Coast resorts of Acapulco. It came less than two months after Mexico’s national human rights commission issued a report that detailed the wretched state of the country’s penal system, noting that 65 of the nation’s 101 most crowded prisons are effectively under inmate control.

In a statement Friday, state prosecutors said they were not ruling out the involvement of prison officials in the raid, either “by omission or participation.”

Mexican prison authorities have a well-established history of colluding with criminals. Members of the country’s powerful drug cartels, meanwhile, have a long tradition of masquerading as law enforcement officials while doing some of their bloodiest business.

According to the prosecutor’s statement, six armed men entered the prison on the pretense that they were public servants there to deliver an inmate. Once inside, the men first attacked a group of prisoners and then engaged in a shootout with prison guards in a security tower. Four prisoners were killed, as well as five of the assailants. The sixth was hospitalized with gunshot wounds, along with an injured guard.

State and federal authorities, including members of the Mexican Army, eventually re-established control of the prison. The news service Milenio reported Friday that an inmate had been killed in a brawl at the prison three days earlier.

The administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to reform the country’s penal system. Reform was also a goal of Pena Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who served from 2006 to 2012.

The U.S. government poured millions of dollars into the prison reform effort, along with programs to modernize the court system and purge dirty cops from police forces.

The human rights commission’s annual report on the state of prisons, issued in November, underscored the challenge, noting that 261 inmates escaped from Mexican prisons in 2012, and 154 were killed in riots, fights and other acts of violence.

Deportees in Mexicali, Baja California

Angeles sin Fronteras, a group formed to assist people deported from the United States, has created five shelters to help migrants, who often end up penniless on the streets of Mexican border cities.

The newest shelter was opened in Mexicali, the capital of the northwestern state of Baja California, where the group rented an abandoned hotel to serve as a refuge for the rising number of poor deportees in the area.

The 50-room building, known as “El Cinco” (Number Five), is being used by Angeles sin Fronteras to temporarily house 60 people.

One of those living at the shelter is Pablo Hernandez, a 26-year-old who lives in a room lit by a candle and furnished with a piece of cardboard and a blanket.

Hernandez, who lived in the United States from the age of 2 until he was deported a year ago, has found shelter at the building in Mexicali’s red light district.

“I don’t know how I ended up here, how I fell into drug use,” Hernandez, whose relatives live in Texas, told Efe. “I just want another chance to return to my familiy.”

Mexicali, like many other border cities in Mexico, has experienced a surge in the number of deportees who have arrived from the United States.

Many of these people lived in the United States for most of their lives and end up on the streets in Mexico, often becoming depressed and using drugs to deal with the fact that they have nowhere to go.

El Cinco does not have electricity, running water or bathrooms, and the building’s residents live off money earned from washing cars or handouts.

“We have to help them so they can develop. They have great potential and we want to show that not all of them are criminals and they can contribute something to society,” Angeles sin Fronteras member Sergio Tamai told Efe.

Mexico Approves an Increase to the Minimum Wage for 2014 for Geographic Zones "A" and "B"

On December 18, 2013, the Council of Representatives of Mexico’s National Minimum Wage Commission approved a general 3.9% increase in the minimum wage for geographic Zones "A" and "B."  The wage increase will be effective January 1, 2014.

For Zone A, the 3.9% wage increase will raise the minimum wage to $67.29 Mexican pesos (approximately $5.18 USD) per day.  The geographical areas covered under Zone A include Mexico City (Federal District) and its metropolitan area; the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur; the cities of Acapulco, Guerrero, Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Guadalajara, Jalisco and its suburbs, Monterrey, Nuevo León and its metropolitan area, Hermosillo, Sonora, Matamoros and Reynosa, Tamaulipas and Coatzacoalcos, and Veracruz.

For Zone B, the 3.9% wage increase will raise the minimum wage to $63.77 Mexican pesos (approximately $4.91 USD) per day.  The most important federal localities covered under Zone B are as follows: Aguascalientes, Campeche, Coahuila, Colima, Chiapas, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Yucatán and Zacatecas.  Zone B also covers specific municipalities within the states of Chihuahua, Guerrero, Jalisco, Estado de México, Nuevo León, Sonora, Tamaulipas and Veracruz, not included within Zone A.

A complete list of the minimum wage levels for Mexico that will take effect on January 1, 2014, is published on the governmental agency's website "Comisión Nacional de los Salarios Mínimos" (http://www.conasami.gob.mx/t_sal_mini_prof.html). 

Employers are advised to review their payroll practices and implement any necessary changes to comply with this wage adjustment.

Mexico same sex marriages

Legal but little Action

In Mexico, only civil marriages are recognized by the law, and all its proceedings fall under local state legislation.^[1] Same-sex marriages are legally performed in Mexico City and in the state of Quintana Roo but explicitly banned in the state of Yucatán^[2] (although the prohibition is limited to its performance within state boundaries, not its recognition, and it is still being challenged in the Mexican courts).^[3] In addition, same-sex couples have been able to marry in individual cases in Chihuahua, Colima, State of Mexico, Yucatán, and Oaxaca. Same-sex civil unions are legally performed in Mexico City and in the states of Coahuila, Colima.^[2] and Jalisco.^[4] Since August 2010, same-sex marriages performed within Mexico are recognized by the 31 states without exception, and fundamental spousal rights (such as alimony payments, inheritance rights, and the coverage of spouses by the federal social security system) also apply to same-sex couples across the country.^[5]

In late November 2009, the leading party at the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (ALDF), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), announced that it is fine-tuning an amendment to the Civil Code to legalize same-sex marriage in Mexico City, a project endorsed by the local Head of Government Marcelo Ebrard but strongly opposed by the second largest political force in the country, the right-of-center National Action Party (PAN) and the Roman Catholic Church. The bill found support from over 600 non-governmental organizations, including the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) and Amnesty International (AI). On December 21, 2009, Mexico City became the first Latin American jurisdiction to legalize same-sex marriage. The law became effective on March 4, 2010.^[6]

On August 5, 2010, the Supreme Court voted 8-2 to uphold the constitutionality of Mexico City's same-sex marriage law.^[7] The Court later ruled on August 10, 2010, that Mexico City marriages are valid throughout the entire country.^[8]

On November 28, 2011, the first two same-sex marriages occurred in Quintana Roo after discovering that Quintana Roo's Civil Code did not explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage,^[9] but these marriages were later annulled by the governor of Quintana Roo in April 2012.^[10] In May 2012, the Secretary of State of Quintana Roo reversed the annulments and allowed for future same-sex marriages to be performed in the state.

Knockout Game is a Crime

A pedestrian is walking along the street when someone runs up to him or her. Before the pedestrian realizes what is happening, he or she is struck. Hard.

Whether the action is called a "sucker punch," a "jumping" or an example of the "Knockout Game," a proposed New Jersey law would net the assailant a minimum one-year prison term.

"We need to send a message that one strike, and you will be out and in jail," said Assemblyman Ronald Dancer, the bill's co-sponsor.

The bill was introduced earlier this month. It faces long odds of being adopted before the new Legislature convenes on Jan. 14.

Prosecutors in Monmouth and Ocean counties have not received any reports of "Knockout Game" incidents, where people go up to pedestrians on the street and try to knock them off their feet with one blow, spokesmen for both offices said. Robbery is not the motive.

"We're not treating this any differently than anything else we are vigilant for," said Asbury Park Police Capt. Marshawn Love, who declined to specify how officers will try to prevent "Knockout Game" incidents from occurring. "Rest assured that we're trying to be proactive with how we deal with crimes."

Keansburg Deputy Police Chief Michael Pigott questions how officers would be able to prevent a person from sneaking up on a pedestrian and hitting them suddenly.

"What's there to do?" Pigott said. "Thankfully, we haven't had anything like that in town. It's really sickening."

New Jersey State Police are in communication with local departments about the issue, said Lt. Stephen Jones, who declined to say whether there is any specific directive from above for how to deal with it. Currently, the state does not have a specific reporting category for such an incident, he said.

It may be difficult for authorities to discern whether someone struck by someone else on the street is the victim of a fight, of a random assault, of an attempted robbery, or of the "Knockout Game," Jones said.

"This is a cowardly act," Jones said. "We're hoping members of the public recognize the severity of it."

A 46-year-old homeless man died Sept. 10 in Hoboken after he was apparently randomly attacked on the street. Three teens have been charged with his murder.

In Houston on Thursday, Conrad Barrett, a 27-year-old white man, was arrested on federal hate crimes charges after he shot a video of himself striking a 78-year-old black man and saying "knockout" afterward.

Steven Dranoff, a psychologist who heads a consulting firm that specializes in bullying and in violence prevention, said he believes that many of those who go out looking to strike a random person likely have misperceptions of their own peers' motivations for participating in the act.

"These are people with high levels of narcissism and violence and low levels of empathy," said Dranoff, who believes society needs to improve how individuals handle conflicts and their own issues if things like the "Knockout Game" are to end.

"Attacks like this are not new," Jones said. "People in groups have been attacking lone pedestrians for as long as anyone can remember."

Back in the early 1700s, newspaper stories circulated of groups of young people who called themselves "Mohocks" roaming the streets of London, punching random pedestrians.

During the late 1980s, media reports also abounded of young people in New York forming groups and going "wilding," or causing general mayhem.

These days, with the proliferation of cell phone cameras, videos of street fights can be found on various websites online. Some videos round up the "highlights" of various street brawls, where one of the participants is knocked to the ground.

In 2011, a 17-year-old Lake Como boy and Taylor C. Giresi, of Belmar, posted to the internet a video of their attack on a homeless man in Wall. Giresi, who was 20 at the time, received a three-year prison sentence for his role in the attack. The teen spent more than 60 days in a youth detention facility and was sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence and a year on probation.

"We live in a world where violence is the norm, where it is often an accepted way of dealing with a conflict," Dranoff said. "We need to spend time teaching more people about empathy."

Before that happens, Dancer wants those convicted of trying to or causing a person to lose consciousness because of a single physical strike to serve a mandatory minimum of a third to a half of a three- to five-year prison sentence before they are eligible for parole.

Third-degree aggravated assault normally does not lead to imprisonment, said Dancer, who believes it would be up to the courts or a jury to decide whether someone is guilty of simply getting into a fight with someone else or of engaging in the "Knockout Game."

Dancer said he is unaware of any "Knockout Game" incidents in his district. He acknowledges that with only a few days left in the current session, the bill's prospects of being considered are very low. Dancer intends to reintroduce the bill once the new session begins, in 2014.

"This is not a game," Dancer said. "People who are thinking of doing this need to know that the penalties will soon become more severe."

Fare increase in Mexico City Not liked

A move by Mexico City's mayor to raise fares for the city's run-down, but essential, subway system by 66 percent has sparked a protest movement.

"A recent increase in subway fares in Mexico City has touched off a protest movement of civil disobedience — with infuriated young commuters jumping over turnstiles to make their point — and has ignited a new round of political trouble for the capital's besieged mayor," report Tracy Wilkinson and Cecilia Sanchez. 
Though the price hike for the heavily subsidized system only increases fares to 5 pesos (or the equivalent of 40 cents), commuters are angry about the lack of public consultation and unclear plans for how the increased revenues will improve the run-down system. Furthermore, write Wilkinson and Sanchez, "The furor makes it clear just how close to the economic edge many Mexican families find themselves. Nearly half the workforce is employed in the precarious informal economy, and even for wage earners formally employed, the pay is low."
Last June, proposed bus fare increases sparked mass demonstrations in Brazil's largest cities.  
"I want to tell [Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel] Mancera," said commuter Mariana Escalona, a 22-year-old engineering student, "that when the subway stations are clean, when there are more trains, when the vendors are gone, when there is more security, more protection for women riders and when there is good service, then I will be happy to pay 5 pesos."