Mad Mex

[JBeukema]

The gun battles, ambushes, and tactics used by the drug cartels are becoming more sophisticated. Two weeks ago, the Gulf Drug Cartel decided to launch a massive counter attack against Los Zetas. Now with the assistance of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel and the criminal organization known as La Familia Michoacana (both west coast cartels), the Gulf Cartel has joined forces with what’s known as ‘the Federation.’ With the assistance of the Federation, the Gulf Cartel is still battling Los Zetas. In the counter-attack, the Gulf Cartel has moved in several hundred kilometers into Zeta territory in the state of Nuevo Leon, where on a daily basis, hundreds of dead mutilated bodies have been found.
In a recent gun battle near the Texas border, the Gulf Cartel chased Los Zetas out of the now-abandoned city of Mier, forcing them to run to the nearby village of ‘Los Aldamas.’ When the Mexican Military finally arrived, they found out that they were outgunned and outnumbered. There were over one hundred vehicles full of armed men battling each other. The gun battle lasted all night, and the gunmen demonstrated sophisticated night-ops skills. The military finally received re-enforcements and took control of the situation by dawn.
After Los Zetas were chased out and ran across the Nuevo Leon state line, the Mexican military discovered an abandoned Mad-Max-style vehicle, apparently made of cast-iron or a similar thick, bullet-proof metal. The vehicle was only known in ‘Mexican urban legends’ as ‘El Monstruo’ or the monster. It had a gun turret and portals so troops inside can shoot their full auto rifles at rival gangs. The vehicle was capable of transporting a dozen troops, perhaps more.

In the southern state of Jalisco, the military discovered an even bigger armored vehicle

DEADLINE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Mad Mex

 

[waltky]

Teenage Girls Trained As Cartel Hitman...

Mexican teenage girls train as drug cartel killers
6/17/2011 - 'Organized crime has become a job provider for a section of the population who don't have a lot of other options'

Dwarfed by surrounding reporters and with her head bowed to avoid the television cameras, the slender 16-year-old hesitated slightly before she answered the question. "I'm a hitwoman," she said. Maria Celeste Mendoza was among 10 suspected gang members, including four teen girls and two young women, arrested this week by police after a shootout with authorities in central Mexico, one of the growing ranks of young people working for the country's drug cartels. Dressed in combat fatigues and with her face hidden, the girl from the northern border state of Tamaulipas described how she had been trained to use Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons by the Zetas, one of Mexico's most brutal gangs.

In a listless drawl, Mendoza said she was paid 12,000 pesos ($1,000) for two weeks' work, more than three times the national average. Although she said she was trained as a hitwoman, it was unclear if she had killed anyone yet. As is customary in Mexico, she and the other suspects were paraded in front of the media by police after their capture in San Cristobal de la Barranca, near the country's second city, Guadalajara. Rising youth unemployment, easy access to drugs and the quick cash cartels offer recruits are all blamed for felling the delinquency that has cast a shadow over Mexico's future.

Suspected members of the Zeta cartel, among them three female minors and one male minor who were told only to show their backs, are shown to reporters along with confiscated weapons, in Guadalajara on Tuesday.

"Organized crime has become a job provider for a section of the population who don't have a lot of other options," said Victor Clark-Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana on the Mexican border with California. "Since 2000, the age at which people start getting mixed up in organized crime has fallen," he added. "And in the last few years, the age has dropped to about 17 or 18."

Detailed figures on the role of minors in the cartels are scarce, but newspaper Reforma said the number charged with involvement in organized crime jumped to 214 last year from 8 in 2007, citing data from the attorney general's office. The arrest of Mendoza and another 16-year-old girl with her, Isela Sandoval, is part of the trend. Sandoval also said she had been trained as a hitwoman but that she had not killed anyone yet, according to Mexican media reports. Around 40,000 people have died in escalating drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to try to crush the cartels at the end of 2006.

Live fast, die young

See also:

2 men dangled from Mexico bridges in a day
June 16, 2011 — Two dead men have been found hanging by their hands off highway bridges around the northern Mexico city of Monterrey in less than 24 hours, police said Tuesday.

Police say the first was found Monday, and his body was burned. Police said the burned man appeared to have been dead before the gang hung him from the span The second man was found in the nearby town of Guadalupe early Tuesday. Witnesses say he was suspended from the bridge at around 7 a.m., but police found him in the river below because the rope snapped under his weight.

Police could not immediately confirm residents' reports that he had also been shot. Monterrey's overpasses have seen several gang killings this year, often carried out in daylight in view of drivers on busy streets below. Two other men were found dead and a teenage boy shot and hanged by his arms but alive last week in the same spot where the burned man was found Monday.

Read more: 2 men dangled from Mexico bridges in a day - CBS News

 

[waltky]

El Chango caught like a monkey inna cage...

Mexico nabs leader of cult-like La Familia cartel
June 21, 2011, — Federal authorities apprehended the leader of the cult-like, pseudo-Christian La Familia cartel on Tuesday, saying they had dealt a debilitating blow to a major organized crime group that terrorized western Mexico.

Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, alias El Chango, or "The Monkey," was arrested in the central state of Aguascalientes without confrontation or casualties, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire. A state official who was not authorized to speak on the record said Mendez was taken at a federal police checkpoint, but authorities didn't provide more details. "With this arrest, what remained of the command structure of this criminal organization has been destroyed," Poire told a news conference.

With the death of La Familia founder and leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez in December, Poire said Mendez was "the last remaining head of a criminal group responsible for homicides, kidnappings, extortion, corruption and even cowardly attacks on the authorities and civilian population." But the leader of a violent splinter group, known as the Knights Templar, remains at large.

President Felipe Calderon personally lauded the arrest on his Twitter account, calling it a "big blow" to organized crime. The cartel was born in Calderon's home state of Michoacan in 2006, prompting him to deploy thousands of federal police there and warning that La Familia was corrupting local officials, extorting businesses and terrorizing the population. According to the reward statement issued by the Attorney General's Office, college-educated Mendez was "responsible for the transfer and sale of cocaine, marijuana, crystal methamphetamine in various states of Mexico and the United States of America. He is the alleged mastermind of kidnappings and killings, mainly of members of other criminal organizations." The government had offered a $2.5 million reward for his capture.

Laura Sweeney, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment on whether Mendez is sought by the United States, like other drug lords. He had been listed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in February 2010 as a drug trafficker, prohibiting Americans from conducting financial transactions with him and other La Familia cartel members. His work in organized crime predated La Familia's origins. Mendez had been arrested nine years ago in the city of Apatzingan on suspicion of killing gang members. He was let go, said the federal attorney general's office on Tuesday without specifying why.

He then was the chief of a group of hit men that worked for the Gulf cartel before La Familia's birth. He had a security team known as the "Twelve Apostles," the federal attorney general said. La Familia first appeared four years ago when it rolled five severed heads into a Michoacan nightclub, vowing to protect local citizens from rival cartels. La Familia was part of the Gulf Cartel but later became an independent drug-trafficking organization, which ignited a rivalry between the two gangs. Moreno, the leader, set a code of conduct for its members that prohibited the use of hard drugs or dealing them within Mexican territory, even as they gruesomely decapitated foes and sold cocaine and methamphetamine by the ton.

Read more: Mexico nabs leader of cult-like La Familia cartel | Top AP Latin America Stories | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

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La Familia leader sought alliance with ex-rivals
June 22, 2011 — A top Mexican official says the arrested leader of an especially brutal drug cartel had been seeking an alliance with former rivals.

Federal Police anti-narcotics chief Ramon Pequeno says La Familia leader Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas sought an alliance with the Zetas drug cartel as he faced internal fighting and financial problems.

Mendez Vargas worked for the Zetas in the western state of Michoacan before he and other drug traffickers left to form the rival La Familia cartel in 2006. He was arrested Tuesday in the central state of Aguascalientes.

La Familia fractured into two rival drug gangs in December after federal police killed the gang's founder and leader, Nazario Moreno.

Read more: La Familia leader sought alliance with ex-rivals | Top AP Stories | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

 

[Wolfmoon]

And the moral of the story is don't send for any mail order brides from Mexico.

 

[waltky]

Zetas bloodbath...

At least 40 killed in Mexico in 24-hour period
Jul 9,`11 -- Fighting among the Zetas gang and other vicious drug cartels led to the deaths of more than 40 people whose bodies were found in three Mexican cities over a 24-hour span, a government official said Saturday.

At least 20 people were killed and five injured when gunmen opened fire in a bar late Friday in the northern city of Monterrey, where the gang is fighting its former ally, the Gulf Cartel, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire. Eleven bodies shot with high-powered rifles were found earlier Friday, piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the gang is fighting the Knights Templar, Poire said. That is an offshoot of the La Familia gang that has terrorized its home state of Michoacan.

Poire said an additional 10 people were found dead early Saturday in various parts of the northern city of Torreon, where the Zetas are fighting the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. "The violence is a product of this criminal rivalry ... surrounding the intent to control illegal activities in a community, and not the only the earnings that come with it, but also with transporting drugs to the United States," Poire said in a news conference. Poire provided no more details on the killings in Torreon in the border state of Coahuila.

Coahuila state officials said the 10 bodies in Torreon had been mutilated and left in a sports-utility vehicle. Seven of the victims were men and three were women, and all had been killed several days earlier, said Fernando Olivas, a state prosecutor's representative in Torreon. In Monterrey, 16 people died at the Sabino Gordo bar in the worst mass killing in memory in the northern industrial city, where violence has spiked since the Gulf and Zetas broke their alliance early last year. Four others died later at the hospital, said Jorge Domene, security spokesman for the state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located. Domene said at a news conference that six people were wounded, two of them critically.

At least two men emerged from their vehicles and opened fire on the bar with AK-47s and AR-15s, Domene said. Several of the victims were employees of the bar, which has led police to conclude that employees were targeted, he said. Cocaine was being sold at the bar and ziplock bags of drugs were found at the crime scene, Domene said. Other downtown businesses closed earlier than usual after news of the massacre broke.

MORE

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Ten decapitated bodies found in Torreon, Mexico
9 July 2011 - The bodies were found after a night of killings across the region which left at least 40 people dead

The decapitated bodies of three women and seven men have been found in an abandoned lorry in the northern Mexican city of Torreon, police say. One head was found on the windscreen. The others were dumped by the roadside, along with threatening messages. They were found after a night of violence across northern Mexico.

National Security Spokesman Alejandro Poire attributed the beheadings to a battle between two drugs gangs, the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel. Police said the 10 had probably been killed a few days back, as the bodies were showing signs of decomposition. During the previous night at least 40 people were killed in suspected drug-related violence.

Mr Poire said the government was not letting up in its fight against the drug cartels. "The violence won't stop if we stop battling criminals," he said. In January, the government of President Felipe Calderon said more than 34,000 people had been killed in a four-year offensive against drug gangs. The figure is believed to have risen considerably since then.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14095580

 

[waltky]

Cartels slaughters Mexican police officers...

10 Mexican Police Killed in Ambush
July 16, 2011 - Mexican officials say gunmen have killed at least 10 police officers and a civilian in an ambush in the the western state of Sinaloa.

Authorities say Friday's attack happened near the town of Guasave when the officers were returning from a political event in Los Mochis.

The French news agency, AFP, says the officers belonged to a security detail of Sinaloa's public security secretary, Francisco Cordova, who was not traveling with the convoy at the time of the attack.

Sinaloa has been the site of bloody confrontations among leading Mexican drug cartels feuding over lucrative narcotics supply routes leading to the united States.

Drug-related violence has become commonplace in Mexico, with about 37,000 people killed since the government launched an anti-drug crackdown in 2006.

10 Mexican Police Killed in Ambush | Americas | English

 

[shintao]

Now why would the police want to stop the wholesale slaughter of drug cartels? It is exactly what is needed.