BRIEF NOTES FROM MEXICO

Toys and murders rule the day

Here are just a couple of brief notes about events occurring to our neighbor to the south.

Mexicans celebrate the Christmas holidays for about two weeks. The last day, January 6, is known as Día de Los Reyes (Kings Day) to honor the Three Wise Men denoting when they brought gifts to Jesus Christ. Gifts are traditionally exchanged on Kings Day.

Rubén Oseguera Cervantes aka El Mencho, a former Jalisco state police officer, is the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). A video has surfaced showing El Mencho’s armed men distributing toys on January 6 to a long line of small children from the city of Nueva Italia in the state of Michoacán. The children can be heard chanting ‘Tio Mencho’ (Uncle Mencho).

That was the good news … or was it? Now for some bad news.

77 people have been murdered in Tijuana during the first two weeks of 2018. In 2017, TJ recorded 1,744 murders.

Compare that to Chicago where 650 people were killed in 2017. Baltimore had 343 murders,, Detroit 267 murders and Houston 269 murders in 2017. That’s a combined total of 1,686 murders in 2017 for the American cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and Houston.

The bad news for TJ is that it had 58 more murders in 2017 than the combined total murders committed in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and Houston.

So it’s murders every day in TJ and toys given to children by El Mencho on Kings Day that rule the day down Mexico way.