As if the Mexicans didn’t have enough problems, Hugo Chavez is financing the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario,
Venezuela’s Chavez backing leftist guerrillas in Mexico
A leftist guerrilla movement responsible for many kidnappings and attacks inside Mexico is secretly receiving funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, U.S. and Mexican intelligence officials told The Washington Examiner.
The group, called the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), is “a terrorist organization bent on destabilizing Mexico. … Splinters of the group are also adding to the problem,” said a Mexican official who requested anonymity. The group, which announced its existence in 1996, claimed responsibility for the 2007 bombings of the Mexican government’s Pemex oil pipelines, along with several other bombing attempts of a bank and Sears department stores in cities throughout Mexico.
“Chavez has been funding groups like these in Mexico and throughout Latin America,” said a U.S. official with knowledge of the group and its operations. “These groups are nothing more than terrorist organizations and members have connected to other narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, creating a very dangerous matrix.”
Funding from drug cartels and leftist governments like the one in Caracas has enabled the group to mount a significant threat to Mexico and to become a concern for the United States, officials said.
A U.S. military official who has worked in the region said Chavez is using the EPR and other leftist organizations as proxies in an ideological struggle with the United States. One goal is the destabilization of the Mexican government.
“EPR has members that are former Cuban agents, Colombians, as well as others with an agenda to see a shift to the left in Mexico,” the official said.
The EPR may be behind the Fernandez de Cevallos kidnapping,
Members of EPR, in conjunction with narco-traffickers, are suspected of organizing the recent kidnapping of President Felipe Calderone’s close friend and former leader of Mexico’s National Action Party, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, Mexican and U.S. officials told The Examiner
Imagine now a Communist narco-state bordering the US. Can you now understand why a secure border is a matter of national security?
