In January the state's public security secretary, Horacio Schroeder, deployed a force of 350 police officers in a sweep that embraced the towns along the railway line from the Guatemalan border to Arriaga, next to the boundary with Oaxaca. The gangs often board trains on this line and `steam' through them, robbing the northward-bound migrants. All too often, those who offer resistance are thrown off the moving train. In the hub city of Tapachula police reported the location of 15 safe houses used by the mareros and the arrest of nine reputed local leaders of the two biggest maras, Salvatrucha and `la 18' [SSR-03-05].
Rights activists in Chiapas argue that the anti-mara drive is little more than `cover' for a crackdown on illegal immigrants, in line with Mexico's policy of acting as the `outer perimeter' for the US, where migrants and potential terrorists can be stopped long before they reach the US border.
Across the border in Guatemala, President Oscar Berger has decided to join the antigang efforts of his Honduran and Salvadorean peers — after he, like Honduran President Ricardo Maduro earlier, received death threats from local maras.
KIDNAPPING | Veracruz passes `pioneering' law. The legislature of the eastern coastal state of Veracruz has approved a new anti-kidnapping law which has been greeted by the federal chief prosecutor, Rafael Macedo, as `pioneering'. Not only does it increase the penalty for kidnapping, to 50 years' imprisonment, but it also provides for a temporary embargo on the assets of the victim and immediate relatives, in the hope that this will prevent the payment of ransom and thus eliminate the incentive for kidnapping.
The legislation, introduced by Miguel Alemán (PRI), was passed on a wave of public indignation at the much-publicised kidnappings of Jorge Alberto Pavón, son of a federal congressman of the PRI, and of federal congressman Mario Zepahua (also of the PRI). It was not unopposed: many legislators argued that, far from dissuading kidnappers, the new law would only further discourage the reporting of abductions. It is believed that half or more of the kidnappings taking place in Mexico go unreported. Last year, reported kidnappings countrywide totalled 422.
AIRPORT SECURITY | Debate over US involvement. The stationing of US personnel to oversee the screening of passengers at Mexico city airport during the end-2003 security scare provoked an angry response from Mexican opposition parties. Both the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) have accused the government of breaching the law and the constitution. In mid-January three ministers — Santiago Creel (interior), Pedro Cerisola (communications & transport) and Alejandro Gertz (public security) — were summoned to congress for a grilling. They denied the charges and stated that the government would continue to cooperate with the US in the antiterrorist effort. One congressman, Pablo Gómez, went beyond the legal objections to urge the government to study the security methods adopted by other countries, like Israel, which in his view would reveal that Mexico's approach was `not in the least efficacious'.
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