the Mexican Drug War

Jonman wrote:
Mex wrote:

I don't even know if I should bother updating with every crime, it's something every day.

http://www.narcoviolencia.com/2011/0...

35 dead bodies dumped on the street in front of a popular shopping Mall in Veracruz.

One of my friends was discussing this with a take to the effect "yet another reason to avoid meth and coke", yet she'll happily smoke a bowl of weed.

Am I right in suggesting to her that she's just as much part of the problem as meth-heads? Or am I confusing reality with the TV show Weeds?

I don't think anyone knows for sure, but the stat I've heard is that up to 80% of cartel's drug revenue is from Marihuana, the rest is hard drugs.

But there's the small detail that they're just not drug enterprises now, they span all sorts of criminal activity, from extortion to piracy (copyright) to night-life to casinos to politics/influence trade (not sure how to translate).

If their drug revenue was completely killed right now, they'd probably have enough criminal alternatives to continue "working" for decades.

Mex wrote:

I don't even know if I should bother updating with every crime, it's something every day.

http://www.narcoviolencia.com/2011/0...

35 dead bodies dumped on the street in front of a popular shopping Mall in Veracruz.

Something interesting I heard on the way to work.

Reynaldo Escobar Perez, the attorney general of Veracruz, said 23 of the victims were men and 12 were women. He said most of them were asphyxiated or beaten to death and only one had been shot. Among the dead were one police officer and two teenage boys, 15 and 17 years old. Authorities are still attempting to identify several of the bodies, but Escobar says most of the victims had criminal records.

I found that part particularly interesting.

Most were involved in activities related to organized crime, Escobar said, such as kidnapping, extortion, murder, drug trafficking, among other offenses. The local press speculated that the killings were the work of the Gulf Cartel, but Escobar said it's too early to tell who carried out the shocking act.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/21/140675...

Jonman wrote:
Mex wrote:

I don't even know if I should bother updating with every crime, it's something every day.

http://www.narcoviolencia.com/2011/0...

35 dead bodies dumped on the street in front of a popular shopping Mall in Veracruz.

One of my friends was discussing this with a take to the effect "yet another reason to avoid meth and coke", yet she'll happily smoke a bowl of weed.

Am I right in suggesting to her that she's just as much part of the problem as meth-heads? Or am I confusing reality with the TV show Weeds?

Depends on geography. Tough to say in Seattle. A lot of that's coming from Canada, Humboldt County, etc. But I would guess that you see a non-insubstantial amount coming up from the border on I-5. Anyone more authoritative than my, "Had a lot of drug dealer friends in college but never really smoked" experience?

kazooka wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Mex wrote:

I don't even know if I should bother updating with every crime, it's something every day.

http://www.narcoviolencia.com/2011/0...

35 dead bodies dumped on the street in front of a popular shopping Mall in Veracruz.

One of my friends was discussing this with a take to the effect "yet another reason to avoid meth and coke", yet she'll happily smoke a bowl of weed.

Am I right in suggesting to her that she's just as much part of the problem as meth-heads? Or am I confusing reality with the TV show Weeds?

Depends on geography. Tough to say in Seattle. A lot of that's coming from Canada, Humboldt County, etc. But I would guess that you see a non-insubstantial amount coming up from the border on I-5. Anyone more authoritative than my, "Had a lot of drug dealer friends in college but never really smoked" experience?

I went to college in Oregon and have friends who... um... "partake". And they'll sometimes make references to "Mexican weed". Usually in a condescending way to mean that this didn't come from the lush soil of the USA, but rather from across the border. So I think there are many people who know full well that Mexico sells them their drugs. I also think they don't have a clue that Mexico is basically in the middle of a societal breakdown and full-on freakout. Not sure if that would change their mind, though.

Which, once again, goes back to the whole issue of prohibition.

Edwin wrote:

Something interesting I heard on the way to work.

Reynaldo Escobar Perez, the attorney general of Veracruz, said 23 of the victims were men and 12 were women. He said most of them were asphyxiated or beaten to death and only one had been shot. Among the dead were one police officer and two teenage boys, 15 and 17 years old. Authorities are still attempting to identify several of the bodies, but Escobar says most of the victims had criminal records.

I found that part particularly interesting.

Haha, yeah, I heard that too, but I guess it sounds better in text. When the guy said it, it sounded like an attempt to calm everyone down, as if "Yeah, those 35 bodies on the street are all BAD GUYS, don't worry about it mang".

I dunno... it might be common knowledge that civilians are caught in the crossfire between criminals, that out of all those 40,000+ violent deaths many are criminals, but it doesn't do anything to give you a sense of security, and if a government can't provide at least that, what good is it for?

Every day I hear about people close to me who are already being extorted, threatened, etc. It just sucks, the whole thing. I don't know what's going to happen because it really seems headed towards chaos, with some towns not even having a government now.

edit: What I mean is, it's hard to put yourself on the side of the government, some people on the street actually support the "rebels", although everyone hates the violence. At this point I honestly don't know where the country is headed.

Jonman wrote:

Am I right in suggesting to her that she's just as much part of the problem as meth-heads? Or am I confusing reality with the TV show Weeds?

Nope. The majority of cartel money comes from weed. IIRC it's like 60% of their business.

Yonder wrote:
jowner wrote:
Nomad wrote:
Malor wrote:

Probably they'll use their money and guns to take over the Mexican government completely, and go legit. Right now, they benefit from tough drug laws, so they WANT a weak government that the US spends lots of money and equipment and, ideally, soldiers propping up. Once we're no longer artificially making the product scarce and expensive, they'll need to move into other businesses to maintain their lifestyles, and I suspect they will do so at gunpoint.

One of the few goods things about the hyper-militarization of US policing is that there's no way it would work here, but down in Mexico, once the cartels no longer need that government to maintain the fiction of a winnable drug war, they'll just take it over outright.

Gangsters did many new things when prohibition ended in the states..."going legit" was not even close to the main one.

What were these many new things that were not legit? I can tell you one thing they didn't do was sell booze at ridiculous margins because of laws that cant be enforced. Thats what this is about.

No, but they did sell cocaine at ridiculous margins. I'm not arguing that we should keep up with the war on drugs since the criminals will move on to something worse, I'm saying that if we do something to dry up their current revenue we need to be prepared for these guys to turn to gun-running, human trafficking, or some other violent pursuit and be proactive about it.

Malor pretty much already responded to this and I agree.

Marijuana =/ Cocaine, Gun running or Human Trafficking.

Prohibition does not work when the good is in really high demand and the supply is relatively easy. Last time I checked the demand for human slaves wasn't that high and neither was the ease to supply them.

The only conclusion I can come to is that the U.S really doesn't care about whats going on in Mexico. If they did they would step back and look at the whole situation and come to the conclusion it is fairly similar to alcohol prohibition.

kazooka wrote:
Jonman wrote:

One of my friends was discussing this with a take to the effect "yet another reason to avoid meth and coke", yet she'll happily smoke a bowl of weed.

Am I right in suggesting to her that she's just as much part of the problem as meth-heads? Or am I confusing reality with the TV show Weeds?

Depends on geography. Tough to say in Seattle. A lot of that's coming from Canada, Humboldt County, etc. But I would guess that you see a non-insubstantial amount coming up from the border on I-5. Anyone more authoritative than my, "Had a lot of drug dealer friends in college but never really smoked" experience?

A lot of weed in Seattle comes from local rural places like Seabeck (I think half of the town is grow houses), or over the border from BC. And a little from Alaska. But yeah, there's probably a lot of import that comes up I-5, like Kazooka said. That's why it's important to buy local.

At least, that's what I heard from a guy somewhere. >.>

jowner wrote:

The only conclusion I can come to is that the U.S really doesn't care about whats going on in Mexico. If they did they would step back and look at the whole situation and come to the conclusion it is fairly similar to alcohol prohibition.

I think this is the case. In the US, news about massacres in Mexico is on page 12 with Bangladeshi bus crashes. There's not a lot of acknowledgement that this is relatively close to home.

And then if something actually happens in the US it becomes about the border fence and illegals. I'm not sure what would be required to wake up the US citizenry aside from a full-scale border war.

DSGamer wrote:

And then if something actually happens in the US it becomes about the border fence and illegals. I'm not sure what would be required to wake up the US citizenry aside from a full-scale border war.

In my opinion that's the point it will need to reach to have any impact on the general populace here.

clover wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

And then if something actually happens in the US it becomes about the border fence and illegals. I'm not sure what would be required to wake up the US citizenry aside from a full-scale border war.

In my opinion that's the point it will need to reach to have any impact on the general populace here.

Honestly I think that if at this point the idea of illegal immigrants as possible refugees hasn't occurred to them I don't think they will care unless the fighting crosses into this side of the border. And oh my goodness will the shock and outrage on the news for the next week be amazingly strong.

If I remember right there's already been a bunch of americans who live on the border affected by this, including some US officials...

But a lot of border towns have reported that anyone who could flee to the US, already did, not sure why that wasn't more of a big deal.

Like I remember news about some mayor of a northern mexican town who lived in the US and only came to Mexico when it was absolutely necessary to "govern" (ie collect a paycheck or sign something).

http://gizmodo.com/5844328/this-woman-had-a-live-fragmentation-grenade-stuck-inside-her-face

Read that URL. It's pretty much everything you need to know. Long story short, someone shot her in the face with a grenade, type unknown, and it didn't detonate. While the story doesn't explicitly mention drug trafficking connections, I'm not sure how anyone could put an argument together that it's unrelated.

Family of 4 killed today in a neighborhood about 20 minutes from my home.

Nothing out of the ordinary, but I noticed it because it so casually mentioned a 3 year old girl being one of the victims. Like a few seconds mentioning the names, that was it.

I compared it to the last time I heard about a child being involved, when a 10 year old girl was injured in a random shooting, which caused quite a bit of outrage in the state and various articles.

But that was last year...

Be safe, Mex.

We'd sponsor you for citizenship, but we know you'd just nail all our girlfriends and wives...

OG_slinger wrote:

Be safe, Mex.

We'd sponsor you for citizenship, but we know you'd just nail all our girlfriends and wives...

Mathematically, he probably already has.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Be safe, Mex.

We'd sponsor you for citizenship, but we know you'd just nail all our girlfriends and wives...

Mathematically, he probably already has.

Thank god it wasn't sexually. They'd never come back.

clover wrote:

I think this is the case. In the US, news about massacres in Mexico is on page 12 with Bangladeshi bus crashes. There's not a lot of acknowledgement that this is relatively close to home.

I know several people who are still taking or planning on taking vacations to Mexico. When I asked them whether they were worried about the violence they just looked at me like I'd asked if they wanted tobassco sauce on their ice cream. The only woman I ran across who had heard anything about the violence just said "Oh, we're not going to be going to those parts of the country." So apparently as long as the executions and mass murders don't affect an American's ability to drink a Pina Colada on the beach in some resort area, then it's not our problem. But god help you if you're some random guy in the mountains of Pakistan who tweets an anti-American slogan every now and again. For that we'll send out our military and spend trillions to blow you up. As they say in fake Russia, "Priorities, we don't has them."

Kehama wrote:

I know several people who are still taking or planning on taking vacations to Mexico. When I asked them whether they were worried about the violence they just looked at me like I'd asked if they wanted tobassco sauce on their ice cream. The only woman I ran across who had heard anything about the violence just said "Oh, we're not going to be going to those parts of the country." So apparently as long as the executions and mass murders don't affect an American's ability to drink a Pina Colada on the beach in some resort area, then it's not our problem.

It does seem to be spread unevenly. My sister and her husband live in Villahermosa and, thankfully, don't seem to be much affected at this point... I don't hear so much out of their part of the country or from the peninsula. I don't know whether there's some kind of agreement not to openly f*ck with the oil and idiot-spring-break-tourist dollars, or if things just haven't marched eastward due to other factors.

Don't know that I'd repeat that Yucatan road tour we did a couple years ago, though. Campeche had soldiers even back then, and I imagine checkpoints would be all the more tense now.

I think there's got to be some sort of agreement about not messing with tourists, because I know businesses in Cancun and other tourist spots that are being extorted (paying for "protection"). But if you step out of the typical party spots, you'd probably not be safe.

OG_slinger wrote:

Be safe, Mex.

We'd sponsor you for citizenship, but we know you'd just nail all our girlfriends and wives...

Haaa, thanks, I guess? I actually have an awesome life here, except for, you know, the beheadings and kidnappings.

I can't find the article in english, but apparently it's confirmed that there's at least 461 narco cells operating in the Texas area, controlling 17 counties:

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/...

They've been recruiting teens for a while, just like in Mexico, and they're spreading into the central and southeast area of the USA.
It says the important part is Houston because it's the highway to the rest of America or something.

It was just a matter of time, but the US can still act on this, either legalizing or with serious cooperation with Mexico.

edit: And right now, another helicopter patrol above my house. Last time they were patrolling regularly, they were hunting an important cartel dude who lived like 10 minutes from my house :/

Legalize pot NOW America!

For those of us who enjoy the merits of smoking I encourage you to know where your stash is coming from. For years now I have made sure that I support local business. I live in a state where there is medicinal laws in place so I know that I am supporting, quite literally, mom and pop operations.

Mexican weed is of poor quality and cheap which make it right up the alley of teens and college-aged Americans who are too self absorbed to care where anything they buy comes from.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Legalize pot NOW America!

For those of us who enjoy the merits of smoking I encourage you to know where your stash is coming from. For years now I have made sure that I support local business. I live in a state where there is medicinal laws in place so I know that I am supporting, quite literally, mom and pop operations.

Mexican weed is of poor quality and cheap which make it right up the alley of teens and college-aged Americans who are too self absorbed to care where anything they buy comes from.

Ramen to that.

clover wrote:
TheArtOfScience wrote:

Legalize pot NOW America!

For those of us who enjoy the merits of smoking I encourage you to know where your stash is coming from. For years now I have made sure that I support local business. I live in a state where there is medicinal laws in place so I know that I am supporting, quite literally, mom and pop operations.

Mexican weed is of poor quality and cheap which make it right up the alley of teens and college-aged Americans who are too self absorbed to care where anything they buy comes from.

Ramen to that.

I was wondering what you meant the first time.

His noodly appendage gave me the munchies.

For those of you comparing this to Prohibiton, remember that it took four years after the audacious st valentine's day massacre to repeal pohibition. Capone and his counterparts nationwide were celebrities, and that was while they were raining down murder and wood alcohol on US soil.

It's going to take a lot more than a few dead mexican children for America to pay attention. The most likely cause - an attack on a group of pretty, white, teenage, American girls - sounds like it's being actively avoided by the cartels.

The government seems pretty set on ignoring this as much as possible. I doubt even your scenario would move them from this stance, Seth.

After all, we have a lot of people left to bomb the sh*t out of overseas. We can't afford to worry about our own neighborhood.

Gallup Poll: record-high 50% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana use; 1969 survey showed 12% of Americans favored it...

Seth wrote:

It's going to take a lot more than a few dead mexican children for America to pay attention. The most likely cause - an attack on a group of pretty, white, teenage, American girls - sounds like it's being actively avoided by the cartels.

Which shows both the depressing image the drug cartels have of American culture, and how accurate it is.

Well this was unexpected.

I wonder what would happen if the details of the entire Zeta operation would be revealed.