Police chief killed: Gunmen killed the Mesa de Otay section police chief, his bodyguard and a secretary in Tijuana late Tuesday. District Chief Gerardo Santiago Prado was traveling in a car with police Officer Héctor Javier Inzunza and secretary Nancy Gómez Terán when they were shot.
Security minister: Felipe Calderón, who was sworn in as president Friday, named to his Cabinet a former Jalisco state governor tied to a violent crackdown on protesters. Francisco Ramírez Acuña of Calderón's National Action Party was named interior minister, in charge of domestic security and political affairs.
Oaxaca police released: Authorities released two policemen arrested in the shooting death of U.S. journalist Bradley Roland Will in Oaxaca state, citing a lack of evidence. Abel Zarate and Orlando Aguilar, police officers in the working-class town of Santa Lucia on the outskirts of Oaxaca City, were freed Tuesday, a month after they were arrested, Judge Victoriano Barroso said.
Will, 36, a freelance journalist, was killed Oct. 27 while videotaping a gunbattle between protesters and a group of armed men in Santa Lucia. “The evidence showed the shots were fired from a distance of about a meter,” Barroso said, adding that witnesses said Zarate and Aguilar, who were arrested after news footage showed them firing their weapons during the clash, were about 115 feet away when Will was killed. Barroso said the bullets that killed Will came from a 9 mm pistol, while the officers were carrying .38-caliber revolvers.
Journalist killed: Police said Thursday that they discovered the body of reporter Adolfo Sánchez Guzmán, 32, near Ciudad Mendoza, 75 miles west of Veracruz, not far from where his car was found abandoned Tuesday night. A second man, identified as César Martínez López, a friend of Sánchez Guzmán, also was apparently shot to death. Jaime Pizano, head of investigative police in Ciudad Mendoza, said Martínez López was allegedly linked to the thefts of freight trucks. Sánchez Guzmán worked for the Veracruz affiliate of the Televisa TV network and reported for a radio station and an Internet news site.
Blancornelas mourned: Jesús Blancornelas, the founder of the Tijuana weekly Zeta who died at age 70 on Thanksgiving Day, was mourned last week. Proceso magazine columnist Miguel Angel Granados Chapa wrote: “Death surprised Blancornelas the morning of Nov. 23. Nevertheless, he complied with what he told Proceso in June 2004: 'I am going to die when God wants me to, not when the drug traffickers decide.' ” On Thanksgiving Day 1997, Blancornelas was severely wounded and his bodyguard killed by drug traffickers.
Not all mourned Blancornelas. The Tijuana newspaper El Mexicano, which had strained relations with Blancornelas, did not even publish an obituary, although it did publish large paid condolence ads the day after his death.
Velasco dies: Raúl Velasco, who hosted one of Mexico's most enduring television programs, “Siempre en Domingo,” died Nov. 26 at his home in Acapulco at 73.
Landfill opposed: Residents on both sides of the border are upset about a proposed Mexican hazardous-waste landfill. On Nov. 26, about 1,000 Sonoyta residents protesting the proposed landfill blockaded the main road from Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, a community popular with U.S. tourists.
Immigrant smuggler sentenced: An illegal immigrant smuggler whose overloaded sports utility vehicle crashed in the Santa Fe, N.M., area, killing four Mexican nationals, will spend the next eight years in prison. Israel Muñoz Tello of Michoacan state expressed remorse Wednesday in Albuquerque, N.M., for the loss of life in the Feb. 23 crash.
Compiled from news reports by Foreign Editor David Gaddis Smith: (619) 293-2211; david.smith@uniontrib.com
