"Travel Advisory" Reveals U.S. Media Campaign vs. Mexico

What is really going on? Why is the Mexican government sending troops to occupy its high security prisons?

I reply:

Mexico's prison system is (like that of the U.S.) overcrowded and rife with corruption. In both countries, it is easier to procure illegal drugs inside the walls than outside. And both countries' prisons are overcrowded precisely because of the war on drugs, which swamps law enforcement to the point where the governments can't deal with real crime: that is predatory, and violent, crime.

One famous narco-trafficker, a couple years ago, by the name of Chapo Guzman, just "walked out of" one of Mexico's three "maximum security" prisons. He went free, after reportedly bribing guards to look the other way.

More recently, another prisoner, reported to be close to another famous narco-trafficker, was killed inside the prison. Stories in the Mexican press revealed that the prisons were cesspools of violence and crime: nothing new there. Prisons in both countries are. But the press attention made it a political issue.

So Mexico City Governor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called on the national government to put the Armed Forces in charge of the prisons. At first the Fox administration balked at the suggestion, terming it ridiculous, but tried its own crackdown at the prisons. Then some reputed narcos or organized criminals dressed up in police uniforms outside the prison and set up a "road block" that appeared to be searching cars. When the guards arrived at work, they killed them. It was violence between criminals and law enforcement agents; typical drug war fare. Been happening for years... but... A few more sensational press stories later, the government did an about-face and sends in the military.

Not that many expect the military (comprised of soldiers even more underpaid than prison guards) will be able to get a grip on the situation. An overcrowded prison is an overcrowded prison. But the problem is not new anyway. What is new is that the media makes a big deal about it. And this, too, gives Washington and lazy U.S. reporters more "evidence" to wave that the drug war in Mexico is supposedly boiling out of control.

In any case, nobody has suggested that a single disappeared gringo was last seen in one of those prisons.

Here's a translation of today's column by veteran Mexican journalist Carlos Ramírez, the most widely read columnist in the country, published in 28 daily newspapers across the Republic this morning....

Traveler’s Advisory, Because of NYT and WP Stories

But It Was Based on False and Manipulated Information

By Carlos Ramírez

After the U.S. State Department announced a traveler’s advisory and a letter from Ambassador Tony Garza to Mexican authorities, North American journalists Al Giordano and Bill Conroy at www.narconews.com published a journalistic report on Wednesday that reveals that the information about U.S. citizens being kidnapped along the border of Tamaulipas had been distorted by the U.S. press.

The report by Giordano and Conroy turns out to be extraordinarily timely because it proves that Washington’s complaints were based on false journalistic reports published in the major North American press, above all in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Correspondents Ginger Thompson of the Times and Mary Jordan of the Post last week published articles about kidnappings of U.S. citizens presumably conducted by the narco.

But the information by the two correspondents was manipulated. As such, the traveler’s advisory of the State Department was based on information that did not correspond to reality. The U.S. citizens that have disappeared along the border don’t fit the pattern of kidnappings. In fact, report Giordano and Conry, the narcos don’t dedicate themselves to kidnapping people. One fact is most relevant: A kidnapping should result in a ransom demand. And the families of the disappeared persons have not received any such ransom note for months.

What’s interesting about the Giordano and Conroy investigation is that it proves the falsehoods of the reports by Thompson and Jordan. The two Narco News journalists investigated the same facts that the NYT and WP correspondents reported. And they were found wanting. They even spoke with Pablo Cisneros, the father of Brenda Y. Cisneros, who disappeared last September. But the grieving father says, “we told them our story,” but, “they decided to print a different one.”

The thesis of the reports by the Times and Post correspondents was that narco-trafficking gangs were responsible for kidnappings of U.S. citizens who crossed the border. They concluded that the kidnapped people were related to the narco. However, their articles did not offer facts to prove such a relation.

The investigation by Giordano and Conroy revealed that the two correspondents from New York and Washington traveled on practically the same day to Laredo and interviewed the same people to come to the same conclusings. They even committed the same professional mistake of mixing up two different stories in the same text: one about the narco and one about kidnappings. And they took interpretative liberty to link both sets of facts without presenting concrete evidence.

The missing piece to prove the theory about kidnappings is found in the matter of ransom notes. But in the cases reported by the correspondents, the families haven’t received any ransom demand. The missing persons simply disappeared. But upon seeing them included in a newspaper report about the narco, the missing persons were presented as if they were involved in narco-trafficking, which upsets the families. The report by Thompson says, clearly, “One U.S. official said that while some of the missing appear to have been innocent victims, more were probably involved with drug traffickers.”

Pablo Cisneros, the father of the missing young woman, was indignant in response to the conclusions by the Times and Post correspondents. “It’s not true,” he said.

Giordano and Conroy discovered the primary source of the reports by Thompson and Jordan: the U.S. Consul in Nuevo Laredo, Michael Yoder. However, Yoder’s capacity for analysis is placed in doubt when he declares that the group known as Los Zetas (“The Z’s”) was the presumed narco-kidnapper. Yoder said that Los Zetas also dedicate themselves to kidnapping to obtain cash as ransom. However, Los Zetas are a paramilitary group in the service of (narco-trafficker) Osiel Cardenas and their job has never been kidnapping. They’re hit-men, no less. And for the millionaire pay that they receive from drugs they don’t involve themselves in kidnappings for a few thousand dollars.

Giordano and Conroy’s investigation came to a logical conclusion: the nargo gangs can’t dedicate themselves to kidnapping because they would then draw the attention of the authorities over lesser matters like abductions and harm the millionaire work of trafficking drugs. “It doesn’t make sense” that the narcos kidnap thus affecting drug commerce, a former DEA agent told them. Little things affect large profits, added an official of the Department of Homeland Security.

The probable reason at the core of what hid behind the reports of Thompson and Jorden was that of a U.S. strategy to pressure Mexico. This leads to the perception that the New York Times and the Washington Post were used – consciously or unconsciously – as part of diplomatic pressures from the White House. A former Customs official told Giordano and Conroy that U.S. agencies theorized that the narco-kidnapping stories would obligate Mexican authorities to increase border security forces with the support of the U.S.

This is not the first time that the New York Times has manipulated information about drug trafficking in Mexico to help the interests and pressures of the U.S. government. Before the 2000 elections, the correspondent Sam Dillon published reports that also had manipulated information and which were refuted. Without journalistic proof, Dillon excluded key texts from his proposal to win a Pulitzer. He also hid information about the narco in the Yucatan because it involved the banker Roberto Hernandez.

The worst thing, however, is that the shallow texts by Thompson and Jordan were used by the State Department to pressure Mexico with a traveler’s advisory. And the major press of the U.S. was manipulated on behalf of a diplomatic maneuver against Mexico based on doubtful and even inexistent facts.

www.indicador-politico.com.mx

cramirez@lacrisis.com.mx

What, did Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan google herself, poke around the NarcoSphere, and decide she could work a corrupt prisons angle into the media campaign against Mexico?

Richard, could you give us anything from that article?  The Washington Post is down.  Do Jordan and Sullivan somehow manage to work the travel advisory into their story?  Do prison deaths get mentioned in the same sentence, to create the perception of connection?