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ORGANIZED CRIME
MEXICO VIOLENCE
Newest kingpin quickly caught
Killed in ambush
Fast fall of drug king shows Gulf Cartel’s decline
Tamaulipas security chief, wife shot in their car By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
A regional coordinator for public safety in Tamaulipas, with headquarters in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, has been gunned down along with his wife, Mexican authorities said late Monday.
Suspected gunmen investigating the inciallegedly opened fire dent. Saturday on Gen. RiNiño and his wife cardo César Niño Vilwere gunned down larreal and his wife in while inside their 2002 the Vallecillo municiTsuru Nissan. They pality in Nuevo Leon. were traveling on the NIÑO His wife was not identiold Nuevo Laredofied. The attorney gen- VILLARREAL Monterrey highway, eral’s office in Nuevo Leon is otherwise known as Carrete-
ra Libre, when gunmen opened fired near kilometer marker 127, according to authorities. They said the bodies and vehicle were not discovered until Sunday by passers-by, who notified authorities in
See KILLED PAGE 12A
By DANE SCHILLER HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Federal agents and South Texas police recently chased down the alleged new head of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel so quickly that his young, mustachioed face never even made it to a wanted poster. Few people in law enforcement circles had heard of Juan Saenz Tamez until his capture was announced by prosecutors. The arrest of the 23-year-old Saenz showed just how far one of Mexico’s longestrunning crime groups has fallen, and how splintered operations have become, for a syndicate that pushes tons of cocaine and other drugs into Texas. The former lookout is believed to have taken charge of the fractured drug cartel, which considers Houston its territory, just four months ago and quickly ascended to the role once held by legendary, charismatic underworld bosses commanding legions of supporters. “We have seen a shift in the command structure of the Gulf Cartel,” said Joseph Arabit, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Houston Division, which includes a territory from here to the border. “The times of having a more experienced and dominant leader in place for 10 to 15 years have given way to a more fluid leadership arrangement that is now represented by a new generation of cartel members.” Those younger leaders, Arabit said, don’t have the experience and maturity to lead the group and, just as critical, avoid capture. His predecessors inspired borderland folk songs as they did billions of dollars in business and evaded authorities on both sides of the border. The cartel, which began in the 1970s in the northern Mexican city of Matamoros, has been battered by years of infighting and battles with its rivals and with government security forces. The result, experts say, is an organization splintered into factions with no supreme commander. Authorities said while the cartel has been damaged, it remains a major player and is moving massive amounts of cocaine. The arrest is the result of an investigation that began four years ago as the DEA probed a group of Houston-based dealers, said Malcolm Bales, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. “They started looking at drug dealers from South Park, and this is where it took them,” Bales said. “They just sort of methodically worked their way through the
DISNEY MOVIES
DISNEY PRINCESSES
Photo by Disney/Matt Stroshane | AP
Disney characters Anna, left, and her sister Elsa, right, from the animated film “Frozen,” are seen with a young fan at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The trend in recent Disney movies is that the princess no longer needs a prince to experience true love.
Recent princesses no longer need a prince By SANDY COHEN ASSOCIATED PRESS
L
OS ANGELES — A Disney princess no longer needs a prince to experience true love. Sisterhood saves the day in “Frozen.” Motherly love breaks an
evil spell in “Maleficent.” A little girl’s love of her own life is a focus of Pixar’s next film, “Inside Out.” Where romance was once the goal of the cinematic princess (think “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”), Disney — long a key purveyor of princess ideology — is shifting its lens to-
ward independent female protagonists defined by broader criteria than how they relate to men. Filmmakers, inspired by their daughters, hope the shift might change some real-life perspectives, too. “All these Disney heroines, the
See PRINCESSES
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See SAENZ TAMEZ PAGE 10A
MISSING COLLEGE STUDENTS
Mayor, wife linked to 43 missing students By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — The hunt for a fugitive ex-mayor and his wife accused of running their Mexican town as a narcofiefdom and ordering an attack that killed six people and left 43 college students missing ended Tuesday in a roughand-tumble neighborhood of Mexico City where they were hiding. Mexico’s most-wanted couple, Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, were arrested in a predawn raid in Iztapalapa, a working-class neighborhood of the capital, Federal Police officials confirmed on Twitter. It was a far fall from their reign of wealth and power as the first couple of Iguala, a town in southern Guerrero state where the students from a teachers’ college went missing Sept. 26, allegedly at the hands of police and a drug cartel.
Photo by Alejandrino Gonzalez/file | AP
The mayor of the city of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, right, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa were detained by federal police Tuesday. They are accused of ordering the Sept. 26 attacks on teachers’ college students that left six dead and 43 still missing.
Even as they were hauled off to the Attorney General’s organized crime unit to give their statements, the capture did nothing to answer the biggest mystery: Where are the students? Their disappearance, and the failure to make progress in the case, has ignited protests across the country and broadsided President Enrique Peña Nieto’s efforts to paint violence in Mexico as a thing of the past. “News like this just makes you angrier,” said Mario Cesar Gonzalez, whose son, Cesar Manuel Gonzalez, is among the missing students. “I wish they would put the same intelligence services and effort into finding the students. The ineptitude is staggering.” Authorities have uncovered mass graves and the remains of 38 people, but none has been identified as the missing
See STUDENTS
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