The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America

[Wolfmoon]

CATO INSTITUTE 2012

The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America

http://www.scribd.com/doc/103587455/E-Galley-The-Fire-Next-Door-Mexico-s-Drug-Violence-and-the-Danger-to-America

This is a 37-page publication on U.S. and Mexico relations.

There are 10 Chapters written by Ted Galen Carpenter and Forward By Vicente Fox (former President of Mexico)

 

[Saigon]

Perhaps the US should once and for all stop allowing arms to be shipped south?

I know the numbers have been exaggerated in the past, but what Mexiso desperately needs is a severe lack of arms.

Mexico is rapidly becoming a kind of failed state, which is tragic for such a glorious country and great people.

 

[Wolfmoon]

Mexico is becoming Sudan OR Mexico is becoming another Vietnam or both.

In my opinion, legalizing drugs IS NOT the answer unless people want to see America become like Sudan. Or be in another Jungle war like we were in Vietnam only this time in Mexico with the drug cartels using sophisticated and technologically advanced weapons against us. We won’t know whose friend or foe just like Afghanistan is becoming.

The U.S. is in Mexico training their military and police, and then the trained Mexican men jump ship and join up with the Drug Cartels because they can make more money. They use their weapons and uniforms to further advance the drug cartels agenda and the U.S.A. is left paying the bills through the “Merida Initiative.” America is an enabler thanks to the politician’s.

To end the drug war in Mexico, all the United States and Mexico would have to do is join military forces at the Southern border, both in their respective countries and water ways and don’t let the drug cartels pass through.

There would be violent opposition from the drug cartels and gun battles would ensue. The cartels might even try using off shore routes to get their drugs into the United States by shipping them first to Europe or even China and sending them by boat or plane into the U.S. hidden in cargo.

If Mexico and the United States wanted to squash the drug cartels they would drop bombs on the cartel leader’s multimillion dollar estates that stick out like sore thumbs in the Mexican jungles. Just look for the 20,000 square foot white house, ranch property and white horse fences.

Neither country wants to stop the drug cartels because the American politicians are sucking the U.S. taxpayers dry and the Mexican government is getting free money. Why stop a good thing and as long as the American people stay quite on this matter it will be business as usual. So, start screaming America! You snooze you lose!

The U.S. Government is so stupid they can't even buy friends! We can fight World Wars and win but we can't effectively protect our own borders, GIVE-ME-A-BREAK! It's time to throw the Bums out ALL of them!

.

 

[waltky]

Drug violence in the Gulf region...

Blow to Gulf cartel ratchets up violence in Mexico drug war as 16 bodies found
Sun, Sep 16, 2012 - A total of 16 dead bodies were found on Friday in northern Mexico as a war between drug cartels over lucrative delivery routes to the US continued to take its toll. Nine of the dead were found hanging from a bridge in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, a killing spree authorities blamed on drug gang violence.

A Mexican drug cartel claimed responsibility for the murders, a state government official told reporters on condition of anonymity. He did not say which cartel. About 40 percent of Mexican exports sent by land to the US cross through Nuevo Laredo, making it a choice site for drug smugglers. “The nine bodies were hanging from a bridge on Colosio Boulevard,” over the express lane leading to the highway that links Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city, the official said. He said the victims were likely kidnapped from a bar hours earlier.

One of the victims was a “young man, 16 years old” and all the bodies showed evidence of “bullet wounds to the head,” the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The office later revealed that seven more bodies of men aged between 50 and 65 had been found on a road near the town of San Fernando. All of them had tied hands and gunshot wounds, a sign of execution-style killings. The gruesome find was made no far from the site where 72 dead immigrants, allegedly executed by the Zetas drug cartel, were found in 2010.

The chilling display followed Wednesday’s arrest of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, a senior leader of the Gulf cartel. Earlier this month, authorities arrested Mario Cardenas Guillen, another Gulf cartel leader. The Gulf cartel and its former allies, the paramilitary Zetas, have been fighting to control the Nuevo Laredo smuggling routes for at least two years. A third gang, the Sinaloa Federation, has also sought to control the routes. Analysts have predicted a rise in violence as rival gangs try to capitalize on the blows to the Gulf cartel.

In May, nine bodies, including four women, were found hanging from a Nuevo Laredo bridge. The bodies were discovered hours after 14 decapitated bodies were found near the mayor’s office. Authorities attributed the killings to drug gang warfare. Approximately 60,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed Mexico’s military to fight the gangs.

Blow to Gulf cartel ratchets up violence in Mexico drug war as 16 bodies found - Taipei Times

See also:

Recent increase in homicides in Haiti linked to gang wars
Sun, Sep 16, 2012 - HOT SUMMER:A report by the UN showed that July had been the month with the most murders in two years, a rise contrasted by a decline in kidnappings

The bulk of recent homicides in Haiti’s capital are tied to gang warfare, a UN official visiting the Caribbean nation said on Friday. In an interview with reporters, Ivan Simonovic of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said he learned this from meetings with Haitian police officials and Haitian Justice Minister Jean Renel Sanon. “They were saying: ‘Wait and see, autumn will be quieter,’” Simonovic said. “They didn’t seem to be worried very much. Their explanation was focused on gang wars.”

A recent report by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti said July was the most violent month since the January 2010 earthquake when UN personnel and police recorded 134 murders, compared with an average of 99 murders per month from March to July. There were only 75 during the same period last year.

The same study noted that the spike in homicides coincided with a decline in kidnappings. The number of kidnappings dropped to 10 a month from March to July this year, compared to 14 during the same period the previous year. While the homicide rate in Port-au-Prince is lower than that of other Caribbean cities, crime has recently become a major issue. The UN set up a peacekeeping force in Haiti in 2004 following the overthrow of then-Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Recent increase in homicides in Haiti linked to gang wars - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

Zetas musclin' in on Mexican gas production...

Zetas gang threatens Mexico’s shale gas near border
September 26, 2012 - — The brutal Zetas gang poses one of the most daunting challenges to the development of Mexico’s abundant shale gas reserves near the Texas border.

The gas fields extend from the booming Eagle Ford play of South Texas deep into the ranch and coal country stretching inland from this violent border city. This is Zetas country, among the most fearsome of Mexico’s criminal badlands. U.S. and Mexican energy companies long have been besieged by the gangsters here – their workers assaulted, extorted or murdered – despite a heavy military and federal police presence. Now, with feuding Zetas factions bloodying one another and fending off outside rivals, what has been a bad situation threatens to get much worse.

Northern Mexico’s gas production has suffered for years as gangland threats or attacks have kept workers from servicing the wellheads, pipelines and drilling rigs in the Burgos Basin, the territory between the Rio Grande and the city of Monterrey, which now provides up to 20 percent of Mexico’s natural gas. “Petroleos Mexicanos has problems with security … principally in Burgos,” Guillermo Dominguez, a senior member of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, told the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. And now the surging Zetas bloodletting pits the gang’s top bosses – Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Angel Treviño – against Ivan Velazquez, a former underling known as “El Taliban.” From his base in the western state of Zaca*tecas, Velazquez reportedly has allied with the remnants of other gangs to launch a challenge for control of Coahuila state, which holds most of the shale gas reserves.

Challenge to control

Banners recently hung by both Zetas factions have accused one another of treason and other transgressions that will be avenged with death. Fighting has rattled Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas stronghold that also is the busiest land port for U.S.-Mexico trade, killing scores this month alone. Still more banners appeared in Nuevo Laredo Tuesday, reputedly written by beleaguered civilians, promising all the gangster factions further bloody vengeance. “Zetas are pretty much in control, but they have been challenged,” said a U.S. official in Mexico who monitors the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You have all these groups fighting one another, shifting alliances and internal fights … It’s a wilderness of mirrors.” The Zetas’ spats with rivals already have turned Coahuila’s other large cities – Torreon in the west, Monclova in the center and Saltillo in the east – into fierce gangland battlegrounds. State officials are blaming the Sept. 17 escape of 131 prisoners from a Piedras Negras prison on the Zetas seeking to replenish their ranks for new battles.

The insecurity in Mexico’s gas fields contrasts sharply with the drilling and production frenzy seizing the ranchlands just north of the border. Oil field pickups and semi-trailer fuel tankers choke Highway 83, the once-desolate ranch-country highway that cuts northwest from Laredo though the lower reaches of the Eagle Ford. Some 6,000 drilling permits have been issued for Eagle Ford shale in Texas, and 550 wells are producing there. By comparison, Pemex so far has drilled five exploratory shale gas wells, but hopes to drill 170 more in the next four years. The company plans to spend $200 million on exploration in the short term. Those first exploratory wells have been drilled to the west of Nuevo Laredo and below the border at Piedras Negras, ranch and coal country that remains relatively violence free for now. But that tranquility may owe more to the now-threatened dominance of the Zetas bosses than to rule of law. “They are in control,” said a U.S. official. “They are pretty much just doing their thing.”

Workers disappearing

At least eight Pemex and contract employees vanished in May 2010 near a gas facility near Falcon Lake, territory under the Zetas’ firm control. Last March, two men working for a Mexican company doing contract work for Houston-based Halliburton disappeared outside Piedras Negras. Halliburton spokeswoman Tara Mullee-Agard said employees get regular security briefings, but the company declined to comment on the contractors’ disappearance. “Many companies that were active in the areas have stopped until Pemex or the government can provide security,” said an employee of one Reynosa-based company. “In places where there have been incidents we don’t operate anymore. When darkness falls, we stop wherever we are.

Source

 

[Duped]

Legalize drugs; stop the violence, keep the money here - remember prohibition.

 

[waltky]

Musicians murdered near Monterrey, Mexico...

8 bodies found in Mexico where band went missing
Jan 28,`13 -- At least eight bodies were pulled from a well in northern Mexico on Sunday near the site where 20 people went missing late last week, including members of a Colombian-style band, according to a state forensic official.

The Nuevo Leon State Investigative Agency was still working late into the night at the well in a vacant lot in the town of Mina near the northern city of Monterrey, and the body count could rise, said the official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. The official could not confirm whether the bodies belonged to 16 members of Kombo Kolombia and their crew, who were reported missing early Friday after playing a private show in a bar late Thursday in the next town, Hidalgo. Authorities had been searching for two days when they came upon the well Sunday afternoon.

People living near the bar in Hidalgo municipality north of Monterrey reported hearing gunshots about 4 a.m. Friday, following by the sound of vehicles speeding away, said a source with the state agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by the news media. The officials added that gunfire is common in the area, and said investigators found spent bullets nearby. Relatives filed an official report about their missing loved ones on Friday, after they lost cellular telephone contact with them following the Thursday night performance. When family members went to the bar to investigate, they found the band members' vehicles still parked outside.

For three years, Kombo Kolombia has played a Colombian style of music known as vallenato, which is popular in Nuevo Leon state. Most of the group's musicians were from the area, and have held large concerts in addition to bar performances. Nuevo Leon state officials said one of those missing is a Colombian citizen with Mexican residency. Members of other musical bands, usually groups that performed "narcocorridos" celebrating the exploits of drug traffickers, have been killed in Mexico in recent years. But Kombo Kolombia did not play that type of music and its lyrics did not deal with violence or drug trafficking.

Source

See also:

Mexican church sparks debate on forgiving killers
Jan 28,`13 - -- An order of Roman Catholic priests in Mexico has produced a video urging relatives of drug cartel victims to adopt a Christ-like forgiveness by pardoning even the killers, hitting a sensitive nerve in a country that has suffered an estimated 70,000 estimated drug gang killings or more.

The 10-minute video entitled "Brother Narco," presented this week, tells the story of Miri, a 13-year-old girl who cowers in her bedroom as a gunman and his gang kill her parents one night. The killer in a black cowboy hat later bursts with his henchmen into the church where her parents' funeral is being held. The gunmen carry a funeral wreath for the couple, and the killer lays a hand on the coffin, and then turns to leave. Miri walks up to him in the church and hugs him. "My uncles and aunts told me .... that when I grow up, I have to do the same thing to your children," Miri says to him, speaking of revenge. Instead, she decides to forgive him, reasoning, "Maybe somebody did the same thing to your parents, or maybe they never hugged you."

The killer is shown returning the embrace, but it is unclear what he does next. The scriptwriter of the short film, Pauline Father Omar Sotelo, said he won't reveal if the killer ever repents of his crime. Sotelo says his group is already in pre-production for the second of a planned 12 short features, filmed in high-definition video, which will be distributed on the Internet and on social networks. Sotelo acknowledged that such a scene might be improbable in real life, but insisted that "as mystical and utopic as it may seem, this project comes out of real-life stories."

He told of one woman he met who decided to forgive her sons' killer. "She said "I don't want to see anyone else's children killed. That is why I pardoned my son's killer'," Sotelo recalled. Anti-crime crusader Isabel Miranda de Wallace had a different view: "I don't think people can forgive if they don't even know what happened to the victims, if justice hasn't been done." Miranda de Wallace led a decade-long fight to bring to justice the gang that kidnapped and killed her son. But they haven't been sentenced yet, and they delayed so long in telling where they left her son's body that the lot was built over by the time authorities could search it.

She said even getting answers is hard in a country where drug gangs have routinely dissolved the bodies of their victims in chemicals or dumped them in unmarked mass graves. "There are a lot of people who cannot even mourn, because we haven't found the bodies of our relatives, " she said, "so how are you going to go through the process of loss and reach forgiveness if you can't even get justice?"

MORE

 

[waltky]

Drug gang let one live to lead police to bodies...

Surviving band member leads police to bodies
Jan 28,`13 -- The Colombian-style music group was playing at a ranch in northern Mexico when at least 10 gunmen entered the warehouse where the private party was being held and forced them and several crew members into waiting vehicles, a survivor of the attack told authorities.

Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said the survivor, a member of the Kombo Kolombia band, told police the 18 were blindfolded and driven on dirt roads until they stopped. He then heard the assailants ask fellow band members if they belonged to a drug cartel, shots were fired and the bodies were dumped into a well. Domene said the survivor, who is being protected by soldiers, was able to reach a nearby ranch and get help. He wouldn't give details on how the man was able to escape. The man later led authorities to the well where searchers found several bodies, Domene said.

Domene said four bodies first pulled from the well on Sunday have been identified by their relatives, including a Colombian citizen who played the keyboard. Three of them were wearing matching T-shirt with the name of the band. "The search will continue ... to see how many more bodies may be hidden there," he said. By Monday afternoon, searchers had pulled 12 bodies from the well along a dirt road in the town of Mina, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) from Laredo, Texas, Domene said. The bodies recovered showed signs of torture, said a forensic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the case. It was hard to determine how many more bodies were submersed in the water, he said.

Authorities initially said 16 members of the band Kombo Kolombia and four crew members were reported missing early Friday after playing at a private party attended by about 50 people and held at a ranch called La Carreta, or The Wagon, in the town of Hidalgo north of Monterrey. But Domene said Monday 18 band members had gone missing. He didn't say how many were crew members and how many were musicians. The party guests are being questioned and police have yet to determine a motive in the killings, Domene said. Nuevo Leon state, on the border with Texas, has been the scene of a turf battle between members of the Gulf drug cartel and the Zetas drug gang. The Zetas were hit men for the Gulf cartel until they split in 2010, unleashing their bloody war.

MORE

 

[mdainvegas]

Move our troops out of Europe and the Mid East and station them on the border.
Take those 20,000 Marines that Obama is going to get rid of and let them serve as border agents.

 

[WillowTree]

Move our troops out of Europe and the Mid East and station them on the border.
Take those 20,000 Marines that Obama is going to get rid of and let them serve as border agents.

didn't you hear his speech today? he's preety much sure the borders have been secured under his most expert leadership, he wants to move right on into amnesty pronto.