Mexican Fairy Tales: Tweety Bird Killed The ICE Agent & Other Wicked Tales From The Bloody Drug War...Farce Soils A Young Man's Life...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
and NICK RYAN
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - So Tweety Bird killed the ICE Agent. Yes, and the plot was hatched over a bucket of Bohemias at The Three Little Pigs Bar in the Mexican city of San Luis Potosi. That's Tweety in the photo above this story. Actually, his name is Julian Zapata Espinoza and his nickname in Spanish is El Piolin. This is the Zeta gangmember Mexico says killed agent Jaime Jorge Zapata last week as the agent and his partner Victor Avila rolled down a highway on their way to Mexico City.

The Zeta is said to be a leader of the crime organization's San Luis Potosi branch. A raid by the Mexican army on a house near that same city yielded the alleged killer. But is this really the killer? With Mexico, you just never know. This goofy-looking obrero could be tried and sent to prison forever and who'd really know? As always, coy Mexico has trotted out another punk-looking Mexican to take the fall. It's all suspect, because of course we know that Mexican military intelligence is a joke. It's simply too easy to pluck some taco vendor off the streets and declare him the killer. That's no justice for the Zapata family of Brownsville. We suspect they have no freakin' idea who killed their son. So much for easing the grief.

It's all a fairy tale.

They say that truth is the first victim in war, and that appears to be the case with Mexico lately. The government is so crippled that it cannot control the warring drug cartels and is left to merely clean up the aftermath of killing after killing after insane killing. The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon has become the maid of its powerful cartels. The killing of an American? Round up a handful of mercado vendors, rough them up a bit and pose them for the press.

It happened in the days after the killing of jetskier David Hartley last year in the waters of Falcon Lake. Mexico walked two pachucos before the story-hungry press and there went the photographs into all the area newspapers. Weeks later, the two alleged killers were released when Mexico decided it did not have enough evdence to convict them. Who knows what became of those two vatos locos?

There are those who now say Zapata's killing is a disaster on both sides of the border. They note that rolling down Mexican highways has been a crapshoot for years, so why send these two on a long ride from San Luis Potosi to the Mexican capital. From our travels across Mexico for The Houston Post, we know both cities have fine airports. Why chance an encounter with armed thugs fond of blocking roads? Strange decision some ICE supervisor must be wondering about today. Zapata and Avila were assigned to the U.S.Embassy in Mexico City and reportedly were on their way back from a meeting with other U.S. officials in San Luis Potosi. The ill-fated roadblock encounter surfaced and guns were fired. Jaime Zapata was buried this week; Avila survived the attack.

Again, a family grieved. Tears were shed at the passing of a young life. The sun rose and splayed the cemetery as if illuminating a moment that needed illuminating, perhaps wishing to bring the mess of murder out of the dark.

The revenge factor says someone must pay.

The bummer in all this is that the guy Mexico has in custody may not be the killer, and that would only aggravate the open wound. But, then, that's been the silly script Mexico has used over and over and over and over. The criminal Zeta Tweety Bird will face the music, but it likely isn't for this particular crime.

Que lastima...

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