"The boss of Cancun's tourist police and the head of police in the state of Quintana Roo, where the resort is located, were arrested for allegedly having ties to drug traffickers, the Mexican Justice Department said Thursday. The arrests of the two police chiefs, along with two other police officers, were carried out Wednesday by federal agents specialized in organized crime, with military backing. 'We have been able to establish that the suspects have ties with and provided support for the organizations commanded by the Beltran Leyva brothers and for members of the Gulf Cartel or Los Zetas who are active in the state of Quintana Roo,' the Mexican Justice Department said. Salvador Rocha Vargas, head of security in Quintana Roo, and Alejandro Betancourt Perez, chief of Cancun's tourist police, were being charged with promoting organized crime and promoting drug trafficking. They were set to be sent to prison in the northwestern Mexican state of Nayarit to await trial. In February, retired general Mauro Tello Quinones - an advisor to the mayor of Cancun on strategies against organized crime - was tortured and killed. Los Zetas' local boss in Cancun was arrested for having ordered the murder, and Cancun's public security boss Francisco Gerardo Velasco Delgado was also arrested in connection with the crime."
In the early summer three bodies were found in a car near my house (I had walked my dog down that street 24 hours before the bodies were found). The MataZetas (Zeta Killers) took credit and then posted several videos on YouTube. One of the vids was of these three murder victims before they were killed; they were shown with guns to their heads giving forced confessions and naming names. The word-for-word transcript of this video appeared in local papers and it was fascinating, and scary. The people who've just been busted were named in that video, along with several others, some of whom work or worked at the Cancun airport. Some of those who worked at the airport have since quit their jobs, reports are that these guys are very scared. It appears that an investigation was launched after the forced confessions were made public, these recent arrests appear to stem from that. I've heard the rumor that the Mata Zetas are actually elements of the government, who knows. One thing is clear, as long as there's big money in moving immigrants and drugs to the US, and as long as Mexico barely pays a living wage to its public officials, the mafia's business will be more lucrative than the job of insuring public safety. Imho public safety is a joke in Mexico.
