Dollar falls unexpectedly against Mexican peso as U.S. goes over fiscal cliff

Greenbacks move, but in the wrong direction

*Updates below*
Guadalajara -
In difficult economic moments, the world still turns to U.S. dollars - even when those difficult economic moments are playing out on American soil. It may sound illogical, but that's what happens. Parking money in greenbacks is the safe haven sought by many investors until the financial dust settles. That, in turn, pushes the dollar upward. It's welcome news for those who spend dollars (converted into pesos) here.

With no deal likely to be reached today in Washington, the dollar should have risen significantly against the peso. Fortunately for Mexico's government, it owns about 160 billion of the former, as a hedge against volatile currency markets. The Mexican on the street would have definitely felt pain in the days ahead, however. But by day's end what was supposed to happen simply didn't.

Venezuela faces huge homicide rate, 80% committed by firearms, as its president hangs by a thread in Havana

And Mexico remains in solid competition for some of the world's deadliest cities

Guadalajara -
On Sept. 6, 2011, in what was then just MGRR's third report of the almost 900 published to date, the topic was Rampant street crime in Venezuela. It appears things haven't got any better in Caracas.

Venezuela is waiting today for its president to return from Havana, where he is recuperating from the latest of several cancer surgeries in the last 18 months. He's scheduled to be sworn in for another term - his fourth - on Jan. 10. But there's every reason to doubt that he'll make it on time, or indeed that he'll make it back at all. Reports from many news agencies this morning say he has suffered yet another setback, and that his condition is grave (As Venezuelans head to the polls, Hugo Chávez proves all the prophets wrong). Earlier today a Venezuelan doctor told a Colombian radio station that Chávez is in his ultimate days, if not hours, and is far too sick to begin a new term less than two weeks hence.

In the meantime, while the country's vice president and his top ministers fret over the Bolivarian comandante's health, they have something else to worry about - those just published crime stats.

Follow Mexico with MGRR in 2013 - there's more to come

If it's not reported here, you don't need to know it

Guadalajara -
The Mexico Gulf Region Reporter (MGRR) is proud to have brought its readers over 480 articles in 2012. More than 40 a month, far more than one every day.

MGRR covered it all in the year just ending: Mexican domestic politics, and the highly contentious 2012 presidential contest. The horrors of the drug war. U.S.-Mexico relations. Important legal events in Mexico, like the criminal appeal of French national Florence Cassez (watch for developments in that case in the months ahead), abortion and gay marriage. Business, financial and economic news from south of the border. Violence against American citizens in Mérida. Cancún, Playa del Carmen and the deteriorating security along the Riviera Maya in Quintana Roo state. Puerto Vallarta's ugly introduction to the reality of narco violence. Guadalajara and Jalisco state - the new hot spots in the drug war, according to some experts. Cuban affairs the U.S. press never tells you about. Venezuela, the Gulf, in depth news analysis of Mexican events, editorial opinion - and so much more.

Six weeks after murder of American in Mérida, no arrests, no identified suspects, no developments

2012 will end with vicious homicides of two gay U.S. citizens still unresolved in Yucatán capital

*Updated Jan. 10*
Mérida, Yucatán -
More than six weeks after a brutal knifing attack left a long term resident of the city’s American expatriate community dead, no one has been arrested, and local prosecutors have not reported on what progress, if any, they've made in the case.

Neighbors found U.S. citizen Sam Woodruff, 63, originally from Boonville, North Carolina, gravely wounded in his Colonia Itzimina home early on Nov. 12. He had been stabbed at least five times, and died a short time later at a local hospital.

Mexico's drug war, by the numbers

The Secretary of Defense releases some six year stats, and many won't like them

Guadalajara -
Mexico's Secretary of National Defense has reported the following drug war stats for the period Dec. 1, 2006 through Nov. 30, 2012:

Mexico extends time to weed out corrupt local cops

About 130,000 still haven't passed the tests

*Updated Jan. 18*
Guadalajara -
One of the hallmarks of Mexico's National Security Strategy, implemented by former president Felipe Calderón on Dec. 11, 2006, was the substitution of local police forces with federal military units in the war against drug traffickers and organized crime.

Reliance on troops was necessary because internal corruption in police departments, especially at the municipal level, had reached staggering proportions. Thousands were on criminal payrolls. Mexico has 450,000 state and local officers, and now all must pass lie detectors and background checks (Weeding out corruption is daunting task in Mexico - polygraphs await half a million). The project has proceeded much slower than anticipated, but it's critical in a country where an average police salary is $300 dollars a month (Honesty checks for Mexican local, state police proceed at a snail's pace).

Mexico pays enormous price for domestic insecurity

Businesses estimate drug war has cost them $14 billion dollars in lost revenues in last 24 months

*Updated Dec. 12, 2014*
Guadalajara -
Mexico's retail, service and tourist sectors lost a whopping 64.7 billion pesos in 2012 due to the nation's continued domestic insecurity, and a still raging drug war which shows no sign of abating. At today's exchange rate of 13 pesos to the dollar, that represents just under $5 billion U.S. dollars.

The data was contained in a year end report published this week by the Confederación de Cámaras Nacionales de Comercio, Servicios y Turismo (Concanaco-Servytur). The president of the trade group was quoted in today's electronic edition of SinEmbargo, a reliable Spanish language news service.

Local police resign or desert posts in Jalisco, Michoacán

Many officers go AWOL, terrified that they'll be the next victims

A two officer foot patrol was attacked in Juárez the morning of Jan. 10, 2012 by a machine gun wielding hit team. One died instantly, and the other was gravely wounded. Local police, known as "preventivos," often are targets in Mexico's drug war.

Guadalajara -
In the wake of multiple organized crime attacks which wracked the central Pacific coast states of Jalisco and Michoacán last weekend (Christmas Eve Narco Violence), local police are tendering resignations or simply abandoning their posts in droves.

Two cartels unite to declare war on Los Zetas in Cancún, foreshadowing a "bloodbath" in Riviera Maya, says press

A harbinger of continued violence in 2013, in one of Mexico's premier tourist destinations

*Updated Aug. 22, 2013*
Cancún, Quintana Roo -
Two powerful organized crime organizations operating along Mexico's lush Caribbean coast, Los Pelones and the Gulf Cartel, have entered into a strategic alliance to take on Los Zetas - perhaps the country's most vicious drug cartel. A regional reporter calls the situation in the tourist popular Riviera Maya a "brewing bloodbath," likely to affect both this city and Playa del Carmen just minutes south.

Cancún Int'l. Airport a "lawless gateway" for drug exports

An Aeroflot jet prepares to depart Cancún for a nonstop flight to Moscow. Like many aircraft departing the famous resort city, the cargo hold might contain more than just luggage.

*Updated Apr. 11, 2013*
Cancún, Quintana Roo -
Drug seizures at this bustling gateway to the Yucatán peninsula have become an almost daily event, a local newspaper reported today. Por Esto said that in December alone some 40 kilos of cocaine were seized, with a street value of half a million dollars or more, depending on how many times the white powder is "cut" to prepare it for the waiting retail market.

But the seizures represent only a small fraction of the drugs which get through undetected every day.

Death toll in Jalisco-Michoacán violence rises to 28, with four police officers decapitated south of Guadalajara

Fourteen police officers murdered in two state region in 36 hours, and 10 others injured

*Updated Jan. 6*
Guadalajara -
The death toll in weekend violence which struck Mexico's central Pacific coast has risen to at least 28, authorities in the adjoining states reported today. Preventivos, or local police officers, accounted for almost half the victims.

A Christmas card from Mexico, 2012

"Pobre Mexico, tan lejos de Dios . . . Poor Mexico, so far from God" - Attributed to Porfirio Díaz, president of the Republic from 1884-1911

Christmas Eve narco violence wracks Jalisco and Michoacán states, leaving seven police officers dead

Holiday week brings no respite from bloody attacks, some of them targeting public authorities

Guadalajara -
Thirteen people have died in the past 24 hours in a series of gun battles between government security forces and marauding hit squads in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Michoacán. Seven were police officers. Another seven persons were injured, including five policemen.

Press reports this afternoon said that a total of 20 persons have been killed in the two states since early Sunday morning. Some appeared to be execution victims caught up in local inter-gang rivalries.

Mexico's new PRI government seeks huge increase in domestic security budget, as six year drug war rolls on

Almost $520 million dollars sought for fiscal 2013, 47% more than in final Calderón budget

Guadalajara -
Just three weeks in to his six year term, aides to president Enrique Peña Nieto have announced that he'll ask the country's House of Deputies for a 2013 crime fighting budget of over 6.71 billion pesos - almost $520 million dollars.

With a little help from his friends, Jon Hammar released

MGR's view -
"Oh I get by with a little help from my friends" (The Beatles 1967)

Guadalajara -
Former Marine Lance Cpl. Jon Hammar has been released from a Mexican jail. He was arrested last August for violating the country's strict laws against firearms possession, but a herculean effort by U.S. politicians and media sources turned the tide in his favor and persuaded officials in this county to free him on Friday.

CNN reported late last night that Hammar "languished for more than four months in a Mexican prison on a questionable gun charge." In fact there was nothing at all questionable about the charge. Hammar broke Mexican law, plain and simple. The penalty was draconian, to be sure, but so are many U.S. criminal sentences.