South Of The Border - And North Of It, Too

I haven't posted anything in a while about the violence in Mexico. Not because there hasn't been any, but because it's become so routine that I don't really notice it anymore. However, a couple of recent news items have reminded me of just how pervasive, senseless, and brutal it is.

The first story is about the U.S. State Department issuing a travel advisory recommending that Americans avoid travel to all or parts of certain Mexican states, including those that border the U.S.

The advisory issued Wednesday says U.S. citizens have been victims of drug violence, including killings, kidnappings and carjackings.

As the saying went in my youth, "No shit, Sherlock."

In typical government wishy-washy fashion, however, it excludes once-popular tourist destinations in an attempt to placate the Mexican government and the tourist industry.

The advisory seems to take pains not to make even violence-plagued tourist destinations off limits.

It recommends against nonessential travel in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, home to Mexico's most powerful cartel of the same name, and one of Mexico's most violent states. But the state warning excludes the tourist destination of Mazatlan. It advises visitors there to exercise caution at night and in the morning, even though the statement also says "incidents of violence are occurring more frequently in tourist areas" in Mazatlan.

So at night or in the morning you are supposed to huddle in your barricaded hotel room, scurry out when the sun is high in the sky, and then retreat again behind locked doors. Sounds like a great vacation to me.

A better indicator of the situation is the action taken by several large cruise lines. They have forbidden their ships to visit Mazatlan. But of course, Hillary's State Department knows better.

Who ya gonna believe? Those know-nothing cruise lines, or our government...?

While the advisory warns against travel in most parts of southern Guerrero state, it doesn't include the resort city of Acapulco, even though Acapulco has seen a significant spike in violence from warring cartels.

In Acapulco, it's mayhem by the beach

This city of dazzling hotels and sunlit beaches rose to fame as a playground of Hollywood stars. Today, Acapulco has now earned a very different reputation-for gangland decapitations, kidnappings and extortion.

As Mexico's drug war grinds on, killings in Acapulco have almost tripled this year to nearly 900, making the Pacific resort one of the most violent cities in the world and the second-deadliest in the country.

So horrifying was the death toll that the government, which declared 2011 to be Mexico's "year of tourism," has simply stopped publishing a count.

Only the border city of Ciudad Juarez is more violent.

Juarez is not a violent city. It's a friggin' war zone. I don't have the time or inclination to chronicle what's going on in Juarez, but here's a couple of links that you can check out if you're so inclined. (Link 1; Link 2)

It should be no surprise that cartel violence has followed their drug products north across the border. The second recent story is about a law enforcement investigation that has exposed the inner workings of at least one cartel - the Zetas.

The story reports on a trial here in Laredo that dominated the local news for a while. It got some exposure in San Antonio (about 200 miles north of here) and a few other Texas cities, but didn't make much of a splash elsewhere. The mainstream press was too busy breathlessly reporting on trashing the various republican presidential candidates to worry about a foreign drug cartel dispatching illegal aliens into the U.S. to commit a wide variety of felonies.

The Zetas criminal organization evolved and expanded between 2001 to 2008, going from hired guns to a sprawling drug syndicate with tentacles reaching into the U.S. — and trained hit men to protect the gang's interest here.

The history and inner workings of the cartel were laid out by federal prosecutors over five days of testimony this month in a Laredo courtroom. Former cartel traffickers testified about the Zetas' smuggling operations and hit men told jurors how they killed for its leaders — slaying their enemies with bullets in the U.S. and kidnapping rivals in Mexico and slaughtering them while bound.

“I think it exposed what was not as well known then as it is now, just how much they had infiltrated into the United States, not only operating these local cell groups for enforcement, but also transportation to Dallas and Chicago and throughout the United States,” said Jesus Guillen, a Laredo attorney who prosecuted several of the sicarios (hit men) in state court. “I think it surprised quite a few people just how expansive the cartel operations are within the United States.”

“We were taken to a ranch,” (former Zetas hit man Wenceslao Tovar Jr.) testified. “When we got there, I saw (Miguel “El 40” Treviño Morales, the Zetas second in command) there and he was executing three people. He was cutting their heads off.”

In the biggest revelation of the trial, Tovar testified he attended training camps where Zetas recruits were required to kill bound men with machetes and sledgehammers. One of those camps was near the northern Mexican city of San Fernando, where authorities last year uncovered mass graves containing 200 bodies.

The murder training camps were the most sensational revelation of the trial. They reflect the inhumanly brutal mindset of the cartels.

A Zetas hit man on Wednesday offered a peek into the slaughter that took place in the small Mexican town of San Fernando, where the remains of 200 bodies were unearthed last year, testifying how new cartel recruits were trained to kill there.

“They would show new recruits how to kill,” testified Wenceslao Tovar, 26, an admitted Zetas sicario, or hit man. “They would give them a machete. If not, they'd give them a sledge hammer and they'd tell them to kill the people they had tied up.”

Those who successfully completed the training were treated to a party that included a raffle with winners getting watches, vehicles and cash, Tovar said.

The most telling insight from the trial was "recruits were forced to prove their mettle by slaughtering bound men." If the thought of what those bound men (and women) went through doesn't repulse you, then you have neither imagination nor empathy.

My closing thought:

I don't care what you smoke, snort, swallow, inject, or inhale. That's between you and your body. I also don't believe the government has any right to interfere with what you choose to do, as long as your actions don't interfere with or harm anyone else.

But as long as drugs are illegal, and as long the cartels supply goods and services to meet the demands of drug users, then if you use illegal drugs you are culpable for the cartel's actions and the consequences of those actions.

If you disagree with that statement there are at least 200 ghosts from the murder training camps who would like to have a word with you...