Mexico Violence in the News Again

For reasons I don't fully understand, drug cartel violence is on the rise again in Mexico.  Chihuahua, our neighboring state, is feeling it.  El Norte, an excellent newspaper in Juarez, is closing down its paper edition, apparently concerned about risks to journalists who cover the drug war beat.  Kent Patterson has a fine piece about this today in NM Politics.Net.  For a long time I have placed an online link to El Norte's electronic edition on this site (bottom-right).  It will continue publishing online, so I will leave the link intact.  Two weeks ago Miroslava Breach Velducea, an investigative reporter for La Jornada, was murdered in front of her home in Chihuahua City, about to take her children to school.

NM Corruption in Perspective

Cesar Duarte, former Governor of Chihuahua (2010-2016) is living in El Paso, on the lam, wanted in Mexico for allegedly stealing massive amounts of public funds during his tenure in office.  Both Duarte and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto are said to be unusual in their pattern of kleptomania in that, allegedly, they stole most of their money in the first three years of their tenure rather than in the last three years.  The norm among governors and presidents in Mexico is to steal the money in the last year or two so that, when people catch on, the incumbent is no longer in office and the story is less newsworthy and less likely to lead to unfortunate consequences.  In the case of Pena Nieto and Duarte it is a combination of the huge scale of alleged looting and the brazen-ness of doing so up front that bothers many people who long ago accommodated themselves to the reality of official corruption among Mexico's governors and presidents.  The corruption scandals during the Richardson administration (except for his aggressive fund-raising Richardson himself was never implicated as a beneficiary of the mischief), outrageous by New Mexico standards, pale by comparison with Mexico.

Mañana:  El Estado de la Educación Pública en Nuevo Mexico
In Tomorrow's Post here:  Grading the Martinez Administration in Education