Los Zeta boss in Playa del Carmen behind hotel owner's murder; extortion was the motive, police say

"El Condón," Zeta boss of the plaza in Riviera Maya tourist town, is alleged culprit in slaying

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo --
On June 15, prominent Playa del Carmen businessman Juan Manuel Díaz Moguel, 48, was kidnapped from his hotel about 3:30 p.m. He was found dead on a quiet side street several hours later, the victim of a single gunshot wound to the head. Authorities said his execution was almost surely the result of refusing to pay the obligatory derecho de piso, or "floor charge," assessed against virtually every business owner in town. They were apparently right.

Yesterday police charged the local Zeta boss of the plaza in Playa del Carmen, who, like all Mexican gangsters, goes by an alias. His is El Condón - the condom (spelled Kondon in his tattoo). Here is MGRR's earlier story on the case: Riviera Maya hotel owner refuses to pay the "rent," so extortionists execute him.

Mexican economy grew at more than double the U.S. rate in second quarter of 2012, reports Hacienda

Mexico's GDP growing much faster than its neighbor to the north, and national debt is far less

Mexico's federal tax collection and budget preparation agency said yesterday that the nation's economy grew by four percent in the second quarter, computed on an annualized basis. The Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público reported Monday (July 30) that it was the country's 10th consecutive quarter of economic growth.

First quarter economic expansion was 4.6%, compared to the same reporting period in 2011. Annualized growth through June 30, 2012 was 4.3%. Based on those indices, experts anticipate that Mexico's GDP (Producto Interno Bruto) will grow about four percent in the present year. That figure is considerably better than the nation's central bank, Banixco, predicted in December 2011.

HSBC to pay $2 billion for laundering Mexican drug profits

Dirty Cayman cash sent north to U.S. bank accounts, while HSBC execs looked away

*Updated Mar. 18, 2013*
British multinational banking and financial services giant HSBC expects to pay up to $2 billion in fines and costs for failing to maintain adequate internal controls to prevent wide-scale money laundering, its president has announced.

Earlier this month, a U.S. Senate report condemned the "pervasively contaminated culture" at the bank. The report said that in one year, between 2007 and 2008, HSBC Mexico moved $7 billion to U.S. financial institutions.

Mexico's Soriana grocery chain targeted by bombers

A harbinger of coming urban unrest?

*Video clip added*
No, this man is not an obscure Mexican politician. He is Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (1890-1986), a Russian diplomat and Soviet minister of foreign affairs during the long reign of Joseph Stalin. He supposedly disliked the term intensely, but homemade incendiary devices known as Molotov cocktails (typically just a bottle or can filled with gasoline) were named after him during World War II. They've been popular with insurrectionists and terrorists ever since.

Today Mexico's largest grocery chain, Soriana, which has 600 stores nationwide, got a taste of the famous cocktail. In Guadalupe, part of the Monterrey metropolitan area in northern Nuevo León state, three men in a car tossed the bombs into a neighborhood store about 7:00 a.m. today. No one was injured, but damage was extensive.

Yucatán has well-educated labor force, but offers one of Mexico's worst job markets

News Analysis -
Penurious local employers understand the cost of everything, but the value of nothing

Mérida, Yucatán -
It's no secret here, with anybody. If you came to Mérida, or to Yucatán state, looking for a sustainable wage, you most definitely came to the wrong place. If you came here thinking that a good education or skilled training would open doors, you erred. Pick yourself up and head down to the ADO terminal for the next bus out of town.

I don't own a car here, but I virtually never take taxis. I like to walk, and if I choose not to, bus service everywhere is excellent and cheap (six pesos, even if you board just to cat-nap on the air conditioned units, which some people do). But one rainy night months ago I splurged (45 pesos) to take a cab for the 12 ride from downtown to my home. One too many Sols made the prospect of a wet evening stroll daunting.

I engaged the driver in friendly chit-chat the moment I sat down next to him. "Desde cuando eres taxista?," I casually asked him. "How long have you been a cab driver?" "Oh, I'm not a taxi driver," he replied confidently. "I'm a lawyer." "Really," I said, not quite sure how to respond. "So am I, what a coincidence." The fact is, I shouldn't have been surprised in the slightest.

Grenade attack in Monterrey casino leaves guests unharmed, but terrified

Second gaming center targeted in less than a year

Monterrey, Nuevo León --
A grenade tossed into a busy gaming casino in this commercial metropolis less than two hours south of the U.S. border left patrons uninjured but terrified this afternoon, news services have reported.

The attack was launched against the Casino Revolución about 3:30 p.m. One source reported that the grenade failed to explode. Another said that it detonated, but that no one was hurt.

Aeroméxico places huge order with Boeing

Eleven billion in new aircraft will renovate carrier's aging fleet

Grupo Aeroméxico, corporate owner of the nation's flag carrier and premier airline, yesterday announced that it has placed an $11 billion (USD) order with U.S. aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing. The order is for 100 new jets, consisting of 90 737-8s and 10 787 Dreamliners, which are just coming off the assembly line. Boeing delivered the first 787s to a Japanese carrier in October 2011.

No sign of journalist who vanished in Q.R. after reporting threats, being followed

Cancún, Quintana Roo --
Oscar Díaz Peniche, 72, failed to show up for a regular Tuesday morning breakfast in Cancún with an old friend and colleague. The last time anyone heard from him was the evening before, Monday, July 16.

Peniche had managed papers in Quintana Roo and Campeche, and had also worked in radio. A native of Yucatán, he was retired but remained active.

Dengue Fever roars on in Yucatán and all of Mexico, rising almost 300% since 2011

Almost 1,700 state cases diagnosed, nearly half of them the most serious variety

A major intersection in one of Mérida's most well-maintained and heavily traversed areas, along the historic Paseo de Montejo, shows what most streets look like after just an hour or two of rain. This pedestrian crosswalk over a busy underpass was opened less than a year ago, but it was almost inaccessible when the photo was taken (April 17, 2012). Standing water provides ideal conditions for the mosquitoes which carry Dengue. Hundreds of city streets have no modern storm sewers.

PRI urges chemical castration for rapists

Sobering rape statistics from south of the border

Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) representatives in Mexico's lower legislative chamber, the federal House of Deputies, are proposing optional chemical castration for convicted rapists in this country.

Under the measure, which is still being studied, an offender could cut his sentence in half by advising the court that he wanted to submit to the treatment. Rape carries a 5-15 year sentence in Mexico, which the deputies want to increase to 10-30 years as part of the same bill.

PRI president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto has not publicly commented on the plan.

U.S. Immigration boss pleads to child porn

*Update Jan. 29, 2013*
Miami -
The former top cop in south Florida for the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has entered a guilty plea to possession of child pornography. Anthony Mangione, 51, was placed under investigation and suspended in April 2011 after internet service provider AOL alerted officials to suspicious activity on his account. MGRR reported on this case Sept. 27, 2011, the day he was arrested in his office in the federal courthouse here. Federal ICE chief in Miami arrested on child porn charges.

Enrique Peña Nieto's biggest challenges will be economy and environment, not drug cartels

MGRR News Analysis: The global economy -
El Universal columnist says that it's more about poverty than drug-running

*Updated Dec. 27*
Mérida, Yucatán -
When he walks into Los Pinos, Mexico's White House, on Saturday, Dec. 1, president Enrique Peña Nieto probably will be thinking less about the vicious Los Zetas drug cartel and more about rock-hard farmland in Kansas. Such was the suggestion yesterday (July 22) of columnist Jorge Zepeda Patterson, writing in Mexico City's prestigious El Universal. His editorial, La crisis que viene ("The coming crisis") will leave the reader with sobering thoughts about the immediate future of the Mexican state and its 112 million citizens.

YoSoy 132 "infiltrated," López Obrador is "crazy and violent" says Mexican politician

Conduct "bordering on the criminal"

Mérida, Yucatán -
The comments were made by Diego Fernández de Cevallos, a prominent National Action Party (PAN) politician who is frequently in the headlines. He was the PAN presidential candidate in 1994, and once served as president of the Mexican Senate.

Cevallos said that the leftist candidate's election complaints are "not honorable; they're serving to generate hate. He wants just to be handed the presidency, like a gift to which he's entitled. López Obrador is not helping the poor. He's not helping the Left. He's not helping Mexico. He's only helping to create a climate of violence, fear and hate." It borders on the "criminal," Cevallos added.

It's time for America to reconsider its gun laws, Calderón tells U.S. Congress

Mexican president tweets his sympathy, but with an urgent plea to U.S. lawmakers

Mexico's president sent condolences to the U.S., and particularly to those in Aurora, Colorado touched by last week's theater shooting. He also said that American gun laws are wrong and pose a threat to everyone -- a familiar refrain during his nearly concluded six year presidency: "Dear friends in the United States - please, no more assault weapons to Mexico." And:
U.S. guns play key role in Mexico's raging drug war, says Calderón.

July 24 - Colorado gun sales rise after mass shooting
July 25 - Requests in U.S. for permits to carry concealed weapons skyrocket

Mexico facing greater political crisis this year than in 2006, says commentator

"Right now the most important thing is that the radicalism of Plan Atenco be deactivated so that it doesn't turn Mexico into a powder keg. The rebellions of last year's Arab Spring are still fresh in our minds.""

"Peña Nieto didn't win; Mexico woke up"

Mérida, Yucatán --
Jose Santiago Healy is a Mexican national columnist whose editorials may be found with some regularity in several newspapers, including Diario de Yucatán. Healy lives in and writes from the U.S. (Chula Vista, California).

Healy's an unabashed supporter of the National Action Party (PAN), which is one reason his periodic pieces are carried in the Diario. That being said, he wrote an interesting one in today's edition, entitled "The Left pulls out the machetes." He suggests that a lot of trouble is ahead over the next several months, including the prospect of street violence.