Drugs, Murder and Mexico

I'm pretty sure its been mentioned in this very thread before, but the Borderland Beat blog is one place where you can really grasp how horrific this can be, some really harrowing tales and graphic images from time to time.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/09/14/mexico.violence/index.html

A woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. Attackers left her topless, dangling by her feet and hands from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. A bloodied man next to her was hanging by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply the bone was visible.

Signs left near the bodies declared the pair, both apparently in their early 20s, were killed for posting denouncements of drug cartel activities on a social network.

omg

:(

ffs

^

!!!!!

Saw this news. So depressed. Shit like this has undone every high I ever had.

terrifying

the photo is blurred but still just sickening

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/09/15/article-2037772-0DE8B1E500000578-413_468x362.jpg

jesus

my fucking god

http://www.examiner.com/drug-cartel-in-national/cartels-now-extorting-teachers-killing-schoolchildren-mexico

At one time, dead children were usually the unintended victims of armed attacks on the streets of Mexico. However, in recent months, the cartels have been specifically targeting children with alarming frequency in order to send a message of their growing dominance in a country consumed by wholesale violence.

The Child Rights Network (CRN) estimates that 994 people under the age of 18 were murdered in drug-related violence between 2006 and 2010 in Mexico.

Juan Martin Perez, director of CRN in Mexico recently told The Washington Post: “Decapitations and hanging bodies from bridges send a message. Killing children is an extension of this trend.”

also really brutal:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003743/Mexican-drug-cartels-force-kidnap-victims-fight-death-gladiator-style-contests.html

What a nightmare.

jesus

the extreme escalation of violence over what... 10 years? just unbelievable.

I know, wikipedia, but...

The 2011 Tamaulipas massacre was the mass murder of at least 193 people[1] discovered in mass graves on April 6, 2011.[2] These people were kidnapped from passenger buses. Although not confirmed, some newspapers mention that the body count surpassed 500, but that the state government of Tamaulipas supposedly censored and prevented such publications.[3][4] This is the second mass murder of its kind in the state of Tamaulipas since the massacre of the 72 illegal immigrants by the Mexican Los Zetas gang on August 24, 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tamaulipas_massacre

This is so heart-breaking and mind-breaking. It feels like there's no end to it.

cocaine is so awesome!

that the zetas are ex special forces dudes gone bad is like some action movie plot come awfully, horrifyingly to life

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/us-prosecutors-fear-jailbreak-plot-by.html

I used to work right around the corner from this high rise jail and would always see people waiting in line on visitation day. It's the weirdest looking building, and apparently it does not have adequate exercise facilities.

The warden on her decision to give this guy special housing:

Specifically, my decision to house Mr. Zambada in SHU [the Special Houstin Unit at MCC] is based on the broad publicity his case has received, his access to unlimited outside resources, law enforcement’s portrayal of this case as the largest international drug conspiracy case in Chicago’s history, and the perception he is currently a cooperating witness, which places not only his life in great danger, but also that of staff who are directly supervising him.

That article makes me picture like some crazy action movie style breakout with helicopters and stuff.

if anyones up for that its the mexican drug cartels

It sure seems dramatic. The warden's declaration is pretty interesting on its own as an official document that I wouldn't normally have access to -- in case you ever wondered what it's like to be a narco kingpin's son in prison in the US.

...in a triangular high rise prison with no yard in the heart of downtown Chicago

Important disctinction imho.

distinction even

That article makes me picture like some crazy action movie style breakout with helicopters and stuff.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Symbol_helicopter.svg/50px-Symbol_helicopter.svg.pnghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Symbol_helicopter_red.svg/50px-Symbol_helicopter_red.svg.png

wikipedia is the greatest site on the web

otm awesome article

But, tbh, theres a part of me that thinks it would be kinda of awesome to watch one of those unfold over downtown Chicago.

Also, this is a prison on top of a skyscraper.

http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-09-20/metro-inmate-highlights-chicagos-connection-mexican-drug-cartels-92217

discussion of chicago's role in mexican drug trade, p essential listening imo

sorry for dbl post from facebook

http://gawker.com/5842370/masked-gunmen-dump-35-bodies-on-busy-street

god my sister told me about that this morning. fucking nuts

a newspaper employee decapitated for a web posting:

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/woman-decapitated-in-mexico-for-web.html

i realize that for some there is little choice since they're terribly addicted, but one would think this sort of thing would indeed put people off the casual, recreational use of drugs coming from this region. i realize this is the more "conservative" argument and drugs in an ideal world would be legal so people who do things like this could run out of money and starve to death, but in the meantime, i dunno man.

this is one where you might not want to look at the pictures. file it under the usual heading of "the drug cartels as terrorists."

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/execution-of-two-chapos.html

good lord

How does it end? The U.S. will neither legalize nor stop buying drugs. How else will the violence stop?

Only way I can see it is if starts really spilling over the border, not just isolated jetski incidents.

When the government starts to leave drug dealers alone to conduct their bajillion dollar business in peace and quiet instead of pretending to wage a "war" on them? I wish I knew the answer to "how does the violence stop".

I also think there has been considerable spillage beyond isolated jetski accidents, but it's not always stuff you can see, not splashy like beheadings or w/e.

Also, don't forget about the profitable prison system.

i realize that for some there is little choice since they're terribly addicted, but one would think this sort of thing would indeed put people off the casual, recreational use of drugs coming from this region. i realize this is the more "conservative" argument and drugs in an ideal world would be legal so people who do things like this could run out of money and starve to death, but in the meantime, i dunno man.

if everyone who paid attention to this kinda news + considered themselves a 'kinda ethical consumer' stopped doing coke, would that be enough to change the market dynamic in any meaningful way? I'm gonna say probably not but I don't know how you'd even attempt to measure something like that.

this is like recycling your bottles or making sure you don't waste electricity or whatever - all things I endorse but I don't pretend like they're really 'making a difference'...real change can only come via national policy. but I mean, if you are someone who bothers to recycle your bottles, turn off the lights etc. and you still do drugs w/o really considering where they come from...well, that seems like a weird way to go through life.

I realize that in the grand history of absolutely sick, despicable awful inhumane evil things humans have done to each other, beheading someone with a chainsaw is maybe only halfway up the list, but goddamn I didn't need to see pictures. jesus.

Anonymous said...
I've seen a lot of things on various blogs, but this may be the worst. The individuals working for the cartels are heartless serial killers. These individuals need to be hunted down and executed on site! Forget giving a trial to people like this, as it would be a waste of time to allow them to breathe another moment on earth. You wouldn't slaughter an animal in this fashion, let alone a human being.

...

Again, I recommend Charles Bowden's Murder City. I didn't click on the pictures. Honestly, splashy violence/news makes the conflict feel more dramatic/vital/urgent, but it doesn't really do much beyond that. Certainly doesn't solve any problems to look at hacked up people.

Yeah, I know about shootings on the U.S. side, just nothing that comes close to the degree of violence in Mexico.

U.S. troops would have to find a "reason" to go in like Panama 1989 or something. Seems weird that there's this huge uncorrupted force amassed on the border doing nothing because the chainsaw executions are happening outside of their jurisdiction.

it seems to me that what we can do personally is choose not to be part of any kind of larger problem, cf what you mentioned iatee. like it's pretty easy for me to not do drugs and remove myself from that clusterfuck and i'm sure there are plenty of other people who have chosen to do the same for similar reasons. it's not enough to actively change things for the better, but i don't even want to bear the most infinitesimal amount of responsibility for that mess. kinda the same reason i stick to fair trade goods as much as possible and ditch things when i find out they're coming from sketchy sources.

i also recommend(ed?) "the daughters of jaurez" by teresa rodriguez, which grimly ties in with the drug war even though the overwhelming number of murders committed against women in juarez during the period depicted may not have to do entirely with drug cartels. it gives a sense of the environment in which those murders were allowed to occur with seemingly little law enforcement intervention and how such violence can be happening today.

The worst part is that you have no idea -- most citizens can't have any idea -- where the tentacles of this vast criminal organization go because it is an underwater monster. It's easy to say that you don't want to have anything to do with it, but harder, perhaps impossible, to truly extract yourself from the possibility of contributing when no one knows exactly where the flow of money begins and ends.

That's part of what makes this so disturbing, for me at least.