Nuevo Laredo: Martial Law as Media Stunt in the Failed War on Drugs
June 14, 2005
Gary Webb - Presente
Please Distribute Widely
"We are not in the era of Al Capone and Prohibition.”
- Slain Police Chief Alejandro Domínguez Cuello, prior to his death
It’s a wet dream for Commercial Media journalists: The new police chief of the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo took
office last Wednesday. Nine hours later he was gunned down. US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza quickly issued a press
release harping a song of I-told-you-so: ““A few weeks ago, I asked the State Department to re-issue a public
announcement about the on-going violence in the border region.”
By Saturday, Mexican President Vicente Fox sent in a convoy of federal police who, on an access road to a country club
near the city, ended up in a shootout with local police. Newspaper editorialists salivated: “Until Mexico takes
aggressive measures to fight crime and combat the violence that has spilled into the streets, the country will remain
unsafe for residents and tourists,” lectures one such boilerplate text in the San Antonio Express-News, which in a
careless turn of the pen declares “the country” – an entire nation, not just the border city – unsafe.
But as a US Customs agent admitted yesterday in a rare moment of candor, none of this grand show of force is going to
make anybody any safer.
Read the parts of the story that the Commercial Media won't tell you...
From somewhere in a country called América,
Al Giordano
Correspondent
The Narco News Bulletin