Infotheque Network

Mexico police chief Marisol Valles Garcia loses job. A 20-year-old Mexican woman who gained worldwide attention when she took over as police chief last year in a town plagued by drug-related violence has been sacked for abandoning her post. Marisol Valles Garcia was hailed as Mexico's bravest woman in October when she became head of public security in the border town of Praxedis G Guerrero. Last week she was reported to have fled to the US after getting death threats. This has not been confirmed, and her whereabouts are not clear.
Local officials said Ms Valles had asked for time off work to care for her sick baby, but had not returned on Monday as expected. The mayor of Praxedis said attempts to contact her had been unsuccessful, and he would take over direct control of the police force.

Local human rights activists told that Ms Valles and her family had fled to the US after receiving threats. The criminology student attracted headlines around the world in October when she took on the job of head of public security in Praxedis after other possible candidates were reportedly too scared to apply.

At the time, she told the BBC she was accepting the role despite the risks involved because she felt Mexican citizens had a responsibility to try to improve security.
Praxedis is in the Juarez Valley in the northern state of Chihuahua, a battleground for drugs cartels fighting over lucrative smuggling routes across the US border.
Local police and officials in the region have been frequent targets for attack.
The town is close to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent city, where more than 3,000 people were killed in drug-related violence in 2010 alone.
Credits: BBC

College student named police chief in Mexico; no one else applied. A town near drug cartel capital Juarez, Mexico, had just one applicant for police chief after a spate of killings of public officials in drug-related violence.
So now the new chief in Guadalupe, a town of 10,000 residents near the Texas border, is 20-year-old college criminology major Marisol Valles García.
Public officials have increasingly become the targets of assassination as Mexican cartels try to tighten their grasp on the country. Just this year, 11 Mexican mayors have been slain, including the former mayor of Guadalupe, who was killed in June. In the small town, "police officers and security agents have been killed, some of them beheaded," according to the AFP.
Valles tells a local paper that she took the job to help the town's people become less fearful. "Afraid? Everyone is afraid and it's very natural. What motivates me here is
that the project [to make the community safer] is very good and can do a lot for my town. I know that we are going to change and remove this," she said.

One Mexican criminology professor told the Arizona Republic that getting elected to public office in Mexico "is like winning a tiger in a raffle."

"Before, it used to be an attractive job, living on the public payroll," said Dante Haro of the University of Guadalajara. "Now being a town mayor is very difficult, not just because of the economic problems but also this issue of obedience to organized crime."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that Mexico is "looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago," when drug lords had a chokehold on many public officials.

A young Guadalupe citizen complained to Valles, "We are spending a great part of our lives locked up inside our homes," according to a Spanish-language paper. Valles responded that she wants to encourage more events for young people in the town.

The whole report can be found here...
Image credits: NorteDigital.mx