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A Mexican Tough Guy
In the suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia, which claims to be the richest neighborhood in Latin America, Mayor Mauricio Fernandez says Monterrey has a very close and complicated relationship with the U.S. For years Monterrey's proximity to the U.S. border helped the city boom, but now with the drug trade, this has become a huge liability.Fernandez's answer to the problem at least for his suburb was to try to drive all the criminals out of town. He formed a gang intelligence unit. He hired what he says is a network or more than 2,000 informants and put out the word that he won't tolerate drug violence inside San Pedro. And he created what he calls a "group of tough guys." "Their job was to intimidate or convince the organized crime that they couldn't be here. So I'd say, well, if we catch you, we let you know that you're not welcome, and if we catch you again [at your own] risk. And they happen to leave," Fernandez says. On the day he was sworn into office in November, Fernandez announced with glee that a notorious local gangster, "Black Saldana," was dead. But police didn't find Saldana's body until almost four hours later, hundreds of miles away in Mexico City. "Everybody thought that I'd killed him. But it wasn't true. I didn't kill anyone," Fernandez says. Fernandez says Saldana's murder on his first day in office just happened to be a coincidence. But he does add that extortion in San Pedro dropped off dramatically after Saldana's demise. While extortion may have gone down in San Pedro, drug violence across the rest of Monterrey has increased dramatically in recent months. Business leaders say high-profile murders, kidnappings and other gang activity are stifling foreign investment and hurting Monterrey just as it's poised to pull out of the global recession. Mayor Mauricio Fernández Garza has a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue, and a Mexican MBA, and is connected to one of the top Mexican families that own Mexico. He is of the center-right PAN party, and does not sound like somebody to mess with. Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-07-27 |
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