Intersections

Un domingo en los Dinamos

(You're not supposed to do this anymore in D.F., but oooooh ... just for old time's sake, like it's the year 2002.)

This is Parque de los Dinamos in southwestern Distrito Federal.

The bottom part where most visitors gather is not much. And like with other big parks on the outskirts of the city, there is a petty and sometimes-violent crime issue at los Dinamos that should be noted.

But anyway, it's the woods, it's the mountains, and in crowded chilangolandia, it's a sigh of relief.

Additionally, the pulques are good.

These are curados of piña con guarana and an apio. Both were excellent.

Mexico captures top Zetas drug lord, in major blow to cartel

** Originally published at World Now:

Mexico's navy has captured "Zeta-50," a top leader of a faction of the recently divided Zetas drug cartel, in an operation in the city of San Luis Potosi, news reports said late Wednesday.

"A person who is presumed to be, and acknowledges being, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, was captured," the navy said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

The capture of Velazquez, also known by the alias "El Taliban," would deal a major blow to the fractious Zetas group and raise new doubts about the future of the criminal power dynamic in Mexico's violent northeast region.

Authorities indicated that they would provide more information Thursday on Velasquez's arrest, as he was being transferred to Mexico City, reports said.

In recent months, analysts say, Velazquez had split with Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, a.k.a. "Zeta-40" -- a division within the Zetas structure that led to more high-impact violence in the area, including the August dumping of 14 bodies on a road in San Luis Potosi.

The split in the Zetas has brought new levels of violence to the previously peaceful state. Trevino Morales is accused, along with his brother Jose Trevino Morales, of laundering drug trafficking profits through horse breeding in the United States.

Velazquez's capture leaves Trevino Morales still at large and an obvious target for Mexico's special marine forces as the term of President Felipe Calderon approaches its end in December. The president has championed the work of the marines in his struggle against organized crime.

In recent weeks, the navy has captured top leaders of the Zetas' chief rival and former employers, the Gulf cartel, in crippling blows to that organization.

*** Updated for print here, with LAT staff.

Marines in Mexico detain 35 Veracruz police officers

** Originally published at World Now:

Mexico's marines on Monday said they detained 35 Veracruz state police officers who were allegedly working for the Zetas drug cartel.

In a short statement, authorities said the police officers were detained Saturday in two groups, 16 at the airport in the city of San Luis Potosi, in a neighboring state of the same name, and 19 in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz.

The marines released the names of the suspected officers but did not offer other details on the arrests or say why they were suspected of working for the Zetas. Four of those arrested were women, the marines said.

Veracruz's government did not have an immediate response to the announcement. 

The state has endured intense drug-related violence and crimes as its crucial port on the Gulf of Mexico becomes disputed turf for the Zetas and their rivals, including the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, and a paramilitary group calling itself the "Zeta-killers." Reporters and photojournalists have been targeted and killed.

The marines are considered a leading elite force against organized crime in Mexico's ongoing drug war.

Marines this month captured suspected Gulf cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, alias "El Coss," in the city of Tampico. In August, a naval officer was involved in a wild shootout that left two U.S. government employees injured on a road south of Mexico City.

The arrested Veracruz police officers were taken to Mexico City for questioning, authorities said.

People standing next to their unauthorized mural portraits

Dobler is a street artist in Taxco, Guerrero, who paints mural portraits of people on their stoops and corners in the middle of the night. His work creates startling visual scenarios when the street-person represented returns to a regular spot and orbits around the mural.

In one instance, Dobler painted an indigenous woman vendor of artesanías. When the woman saw herself represented visually on the wall behind her usual puesto the morning after Dobler struck, she began attempting to wash it off. Passersby tried to stop her, telling her the portrait was beautiful, but the vendedora was adamant. She removed it.

More at La Crónica Biónica.

** See also, "A beach in Veracruz," "First encounter with an Olmec head," and "Tattoo shops in Oaxaca."

Dancing in slow motion *

Dancing + being in love + flying?

If there's a single track that I will take with me from the year Twenty Twelve, for capturing that sense of hope-iness that comes with someone's embrace, it's this.

"Dancing in Slow Motion," by friends Teengirl Fantasy, features vocals from the venerable Shannon Funchess. And don't you think she sings with the grace of a chamana from space? There are a variety of great remixes, such as a noteworthy mix Brenmar. But the original has that beautiful pause at 2:39 ... and then it catches you, safe.

* More Shannon Funchess: "Shallow Tears," leading Light Asylum. I'm listening to this for the first time, and it's pretty damn good, too. Related: Twin Shadow. Most links above are local.

Five arrested amid false rumors of attacks in Mexico City

** Originally published at World Now:

Five people are under arrest for allegedly driving through low-income neighborhoods in eastern Mexico City warning residents of pending attacks, part of what police called a string of false rumors that have sown fear across the city's east side since Wednesday.

Authorities said five people, four men and a woman, were arrested Thursday evening in the Agricola Oriental neighborhood of the Iztacalco borough.

They allegedly were warning residents through a megaphone to close their shops and stay indoors because a political group known as Antorcha Campesina was heading there to commit crimes, authorities said.

At least one of the people detained told authorities that they were being paid 400 pesos each, or about $31, to spread the warnings, Mexico City Atty. Gen. Jesus Rodriguez said in a radio interview, but the source of the payments was not yet known.

"The cyber branch of this agency is searching for the origin" of the rumors, Rodriguez said.

The incident recalled the 2011 case of the so-called Twitter Terrorists in the state of Veracruz. In that case, two people were arrested and faced charges of terrorism for spreading rumors of attacks on a school in the Veracruz port, but those charges were later dropped.

On Friday, news video showed closed shops, schools and markets across the eastern region of Mexico City encompassing the boroughs of Iztacalco and Iztapalapa, and the suburb of Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl in the state of Mexico, where the rumors started.

Authorities said the source of the panic might have been a confrontation between groups of rival bicycle taxi drivers that left one person dead Wednesday in the neighboring suburb of Chicoloapan.

Law enforcement agencies repeatedly affirmed Thursday and Friday that no systematic attacks were occurring in the area. And yet, on social-networking sites, rumors continued to flow of violence at the hands of the Antorcha group or the cartel known as La Familia Michoacana, which operates in the area.

The void of verified information led conspiracy-minded Mexicans to speculate about possible local political interests at play after Mexico's July 1 general election.

Antorcha Campesina is a known arm of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. In Chicoloapan, one report said, the group might be seeking to muscle away business from bicycle cabbies backed by the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, which also governs Iztacalco and Iztapalapa.

Again, confirmation was elusive. A representative of Antorcha Campesina denied the allegations to the newspaper El Economista, calling the group "serious" and not "a criminal organization."

The rumors rattled Mexico City, which has been largely spared of the violence and fear attributed to organized crime in many other regions of the country. The five arrested Thursday were held for "disturbing the peace," as defined by Mexico City's civil code.

"The delicate part is, who was paying them, why and with what interests," said Pablo Fuentes, a spokesman at the legal counsel ministry of City Hall. "There must be more at play, and we have to corroborate that."

RELATED:

In Mexico, harsh charges over Twitter

Facts also fall victim in Mexico 'social media' killings

Surge in violence in Mexico's drug war? Figures are inconclusive

Reputed sister of Mexican rebel leader joins new president's team

** Originally published at World Now:

A politician identified in Mexican news reports as the sister of Subcomandante Marcos, the long-time public face of the major armed indigenous rebel group in southeastern Mexico, has been named to the transition team of President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto.

The footnote to Tuesday's major political story in Mexico sparked a flurry of head-scratching over the often-stupefying nature of the webs of blood and politics in Mexican society.

How could "Marcos," the famous masked rebel, equally enigmatic and charismatic, be related to someone now in the inner circle of the man who will lead the once-authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, back to power in Mexico?

Mercedes del Carmen Guillen Vicente, identified also by the first name Paloma, will serve as coordinator of the legislative agenda of the PRI transition team, Peña Nieto announced. She was present Tuesday during the transition announcement.

Until last week, Guillen served as a federal legislator in the lower Chamber of Deputies of Mexico's Congress as a member of the PRI.

She is also identified in numerous reports as a sibling to Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente, the man Mexico's government has long claimed is the face behind the ski mask and smoking pipe of Subcomandante Marcos. He is officially the public spokesman of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN in Spanish.

Marcos has never admitted he is Rafael Guillen, but he hasn't denied it either. By most accounts, he has been estranged from his family since he shed his identity and joined the Mayan rebels in the state of Chiapas in time for their unprecedented uprising on New Year's Day 1994.

His sister, meanwhile, is described as media-shy and has also not publicly acknowledged the blood relationship to Subcomandante Marcos.

"It is not confirmed," said Jorge Suarez, Paloma Guillen's former secretary at the Chamber of Deputies, when reached by The Times on Tuesday. "I wouldn't dare make that assertion."

Subcomandante Marcos has been largely absent from public view in recent years. Differing rumors have swirled for months in Mexico over the state of his health. On Tuesday, the EZLN's websites were noticeably off-line.

Laura Castellanos, a journalist who interviewed Marcos for her 2008 book "Corte de Caja," said the rebel leader made only a cheeky reference to Rafael Sebastian Guillen when she spoke with him face-to-face.

(The matter was further complicated on Tuesday when a major drug cartel figure with the same surname, Mario Cardenas Guillen, was captured by Mexico's marines. "Guillen" is a common last name in the state of Tamaulipas, where all three of these figures are from. There was no known relation.)

The fact is, journalist Castellanos added, many families in Mexico have seemingly contradictory ideological wings or factions. And similar ideological break-ups.

"In that context, it's understood," Castellanos said. "Go to any barrio on a Sunday for a family reunion, and it will be the argument at the table." 

* Photo: Mercedes del Carmen Guillen Vicente. Credit: EnriquePenaNieto.com

Mexico tycoons widen U.S. sports reach with Padres, Chivas USA deals

** Originally published at World Now:

A cousin of the world's richest man, Carlos Slim, has become a part owner of the San Diego Padres, and a married couple who are Mexican millionaires have taken control of Chivas USA, a Major League Soccer team.

The deals, announced in separate reports Wednesday, widen the reach of Mexico's hyper-wealthy in the high-stakes world of professional sports in Southern California.

Alfredo Harp Helu, a billionaire banker and Slim's cousin, appeared Wednesday on a list of eight new part-owners of slightly less than half of San Diego's Major League Baseball team.

The sale was reported to be worth $800 million during negotiations, but details on the final purchase price paid by members of the team's new minority group of owners were not revealed. Harp's wealth is estimated at $1 billion.

From its Carson-based clubhouse, meanwhile, Chivas USA announced that Jorge Vergara and Angelica Fuentes, the founder and chief executive, respectively, of the Omnilife nutritional supplements company have acquired the second half of the squad's ownership from partners, becoming full owners.

Vergara and Fuentes are already owners of the original Chivas in Guadalajara, the popular First Division team in Mexico's second largest city. The details of the Chivas USA deal were not released.

It's been a good week for Fuentes, one of Mexico's wealthiest women. On Tuesday she was named a chief patron of the newly renovated Rufino Tamayo Museum, which accompanied a minor controversy in Mexico's art world.

Fuentes' name appears prominently in a renovated gallery inside the museum, along with a gallery named in honor of billionaire Carlos Hank Rhon, brother of the scandal-ridden former mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Hank Rhon. Critics bemoaned the presence of the Hank Rhon name inside the museum as a symbol of the increasing privatization of public art institutions in Mexico.

* Photo: Chivas USA fans gather for opening day at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., in 2005. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times