Explorations in Policing, Faith and Life (With a hint of humor, product reviews, news and whatever catches my attention)
Showing posts with label Sinaloa Cartel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sinaloa Cartel. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Mexican Drug Cartels-making insane decisions.






Mexican authorities have found 59 bodies on a remote ranch in the La Joya farming village.  This occurred in the same area where they had found 72 bodies less than a year ago.

The news link from Yahoo


The story

At least 59 bodies found on Mexico ranch

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AFP) – At least 59 bodies have been found on a ranch in Mexico's northern state of Tamaulipas, on the US border, authorities said Wednesday, warning that the grim toll could rise.

The Tamaulipas state prosecutor's office said 11 people had been arrested and another five kidnapping victims had been set free in the same operation on Wednesday.

Police and military staff learned March 25 that several buses had disappeared in the area, leading to their investigation which turned up a grisly find: eight mass graves in the La Joya farming village, in the town of San Fernando, the prosecutor's office said.

"With our work that is under way, we are trying to establish if the remains are those of the people who went missing on the buses," the prosecutor's statement said.

Authorities said they feared the number of dead would rise as the remains had only been counted in three of eight mass graves. A military patrol located the mass grave, the source added.

The gruesome find was in the same town of San Fernando where 72 migrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and Brazil were killed in August 2010 for refusing to work for drug traffickers.

Meanwhile thousands of outraged citizens took to the streets of 38 Mexican cities on Wednesday, venting anger over widespread violence linked to the country's illegal drug trade.

The protest marches were organized following the murder of a well-known author's son along with four close friends and two others on March 28.

Javier Sicilia, a poet and columnist for the daily La Jornada and the weekly Proceso -- two of the country's leading publications -- called for the protests following the killing of his son Juan Francisco, 24, near Cuernavaca, 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Mexico City.

Seven major drug gangs are operating in Mexico whose bloody clashes have left over 34,600 people dead since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon's government launched a military crackdown that has so far failed to stem the violence.

Authorities said Saturday that 20 people were killed in under 24 hours in Mexico's most violent city, Ciudad Juarez, which borders the US state of Texas.

Ciudad Juarez is considered the most violent city in Mexico, with more than 3,100 homicides in 2010. Most of the violence is blamed on drug cartels who fight for control of lucrative drug routes into the United States.

Just on Monday the United States boosted security at its consulate in Mexico's drug war-rocked northern city of Monterrey, where it built a second protective ring wall.

Two other US consulates on the Mexican side of the shared border were temporarily closed last year. Security concerns forced the office in Ciudad Juarez to close for several days, while another in Nuevo Laredo was closed after an explosive device attack.
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__My thoughts______________________________________

One of the core principles in illicit drug investigations is to approach the enterprise as a business entity and not as a criminal conspiracy.  You either attack the supply line or the financial line.  It is simple logistics, they have to move product in through a distribution network to their retail outlets and take out their profits, after paying the bills, usually through a different network.  They have personnel and raw material costs, banking/financing costs etc.  You attack one side or the other and work your way back.  It is a logical though criminal system.  The violence that a criminal enterprise generates can even be viewed in two ways:  one as an internal ( but extremely draconian) self correcting/disciplinary function or a method to gain market dominance.

However these mass killings do not make any business sense and I am having trouble placing them into prospective.  I understand that violence can streamline and prevent governmental/law enforcement interference by keeping information under control and increasing local populations participation in the criminal enterprise and decreasing its participation with law enforcement.   Further it can create a political climate that is conducive to their criminal activities, but that is usually achieved through different levels and types of corruption (See Chicago, New Orleans).  But the caveat to the use of violence to achieve financial ends is that once a certain threshold is reached and maintained the citizenry will rise up and fight back (See Columbia 1990's).

The cartels control almost all aspects of local Mexican governmental bodies.  They have almost total "buy-in" from the peasant class.  The terror they generate from killing criminal participants within and without their cartels is almost total for the population and sapped the majority of the will to combat illicit drug sales and distribution.  These mass killing gain the cartels almost nothing, in fact it is starting to raise resistance.  They do not make sense from a money making prospective.  It even allows further enticement for the American's to demand  and President Calderon to allow, American military cross boarder sorties against the cartels.

So what is this?  I can think of only three possibilities.  1st, there is an enforcer for a cartel that really is a serial killer that found his/her ultimate dream job.  2nd, it is another voodoo drug cult like the one where they discovered (04-11-1989) had murdered the 12 American college students in the Mexican city of Matamoros or 3rd some of the cartels have become terrorist groups that have both broad political and and financial goals ( example: al qaeda selling heroin).

I am waiting and watching for the answer.

1 Kings 18:4
While Jezebel was killing off the LORD’s prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water.)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla

The Mexican Cartel Drug Wars rarely touch the Midwest where I live, in any significant way other than their products are consumed and injected on our streets and byways.   However, when I ran across an article about jesus vicente zambada niebla being in federal custody in our local paper I thought it was cool but not earth shattering till I did some research. He really popped up.  I have a rule, in hard news the more outlets propagate a story the more significant it becomes in my mind.  Here is a list and a couple lines from that day from the different news sources that I encountered, starting from Chicago where he ended up and then pulling out.  30 is a big fish for a change.

1.  Son of Mexican drug kingpin pleads not guilty in US court

(AFP) – 2 days ago

CHICAGO — A leading Mexican drug figure suspected of plotting attacks on government buildings in the United States and Mexico pleaded not guilty in a US court Tuesday to trafficking charges.

Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla is the son of one of Mexico's top drug lords, Sinaloa cartel chief Ismael "el Mayo" Zambada-Garcia, and led its operations, logistics and security, Mexican officials said following his March arrest.

Shackled at the ankles and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Zambada-Niebla stood quietly with his hands clasped behind his back as his lawyer entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf and an interpreter translated the brief proceedings.


2.  Mexico to Chicago: Cartel leader extradited (Chicago Examiner)

In what has been heralded as a significant step forward in the war on drugs, a high ranking member of the Sinaloan drug cartel has been extradited to Chicago from Mexico. Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla is described as a second generation cartel leader that was responsible for the import of over $50,000,000.00 worth of Cocaine into the United States with Chicago being the hub of the operation.


3. Alleged Sinaloa drug cartel leader denies Chicago charges (Chicago Sun Times)

A man described by authorities as a high-ranking leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel pleaded not guilty today in federal court in Chicago to wide-spread drug conspiracy charges that accuse him and others of bringing massive amounts of cocaine and heroin in to Chicago.


4. Alleged Mexican cartel figure pleads not guilty (The Washington Post)

By MIKE ROBINSONThe Associated Press
Tuesday, February 23, 2010; 3:51 PM
CHICAGO -- A man accused of being one of the leaders of a powerful Mexican drug cartel pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he conspired to import and sell large amounts of cocaine and heroin in the United States.


5. Mexico: Alleged "narco-junior" Vicente Zambada extradited to the U.S. (Los Angeles Times)

Vicente Zambada, son of one of Mexico's top drug kingpins and allegedly a major operator in his own right, was extradited Thursday to the United States, where he will stand trial on federal trafficking charges, authorities in both countries said.

Zambada, 34, was flown to Chicago and will be arraigned on Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo.


Ok you get the idea


2 Kings 15:9
He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, as his fathers had done. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

More Cartel Violence

Non-serial killer, sensation /gruesome homicide is used primarily as warning, punishment and to build fear. The murders is Mexico are getting more and more ghastly because a simple multiple homicide does not garnish the attention desired by the cartel in question. Thus over time they get more brutal, more torturous and more macabre in order to rise about the other piles of rotting bodies. Here is another example from a growing and troubling trend. A sign of the future for America if we ever let the cartels truly set up their power base on our soil.


Mexico man's face skinned and stitched onto a soccer ball in Sinaloa in threat to Juarez drug cartel
By Soraya Roberts

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, January 9th 2010, 5:54 PM

In a new incident of grisly drug war violence, a man's face was skinned and stitched onto a soccer ball as a threat to members of Mexico's Juarez drug cartel.

The unknown assailants cut up the body of Hugo Hernandez into seven pieces and left him on a street in the northern city of Los Mochis, a spokesman for Sinaloa prosecutors, Martin Robles, told the Associated Press.

Hernandez's torso was found in a plastic container in a separate location from another box that contained his arms, legs and skull. The macabre soccer ball was discovered a plastic bag near Los Mochis' City Hall in Sinaloa.

The gruesome discovery included a note, which read, "Happy New Year, because this will be your last."

Hernandez, 26, was kidnapped from Sonora on Jan. 2 and taken to the neigboring state of Sinaloa. The motive for his abduction remains unclear but Sonora is known for its marijuana farms, Robles said.

Sinaloa state is the hometown of the bosses from four of the six major drug cartels in Mexico.

While tortures and beheadings have become a familiar sight since President Felipe Calderon started his crackdown on drugs three years ago, Hernandez's murder was particularly grisly.
More than 15,000 people have been killed in the drug war, many of them in the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. At least 17 journalists have been killed since 1992 after reporting on the local drug community, which has spurred some of the country's newspapers to stop covering violence to avoid more deaths.

Members of the cartels often torture and mutilate their victims in order to intimidate the people who threaten them.

With News Wire Services.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Drug War

I am often asked if I think that law enforcement ever has any meaningful successes when dealing with the distribution and sale of illicit narcotics.  I usually say we have a limited affect, primarily due to the copious amounts of drugs coming in and the huge profits being made.


I need to reevaluate this position.  We are having a profound effect when viewed with the drug war going on in Mexico.  Mexico is in danger of becoming a failed state due to the cartel's (Los Zetas, Gulf, Sinaloa Cartel) influences in all aspects of Mexican life.  While we are not stopping drug violence nor stemming the flow of drugs into this country or the currency from the sales from flowing out, what we are doing is keeping the drug organizations from becoming the single biggest bastion of power in American society.  It’s a nice starting point.


Case in point 
At Arturo Beltrán Leyva (ABL) grave a head just showed up to make a point.  Since severed heads are becoming the norm they decided to engage in some Feng shui and balance the floral arrangement by placing one in his ear.  Don't ever forget it really is a war.