To a growing number Mexicans and Americans, narco traffickers have become iconic outlaws, a new pathway out of poverty, and one step closer to the "American Dream".
Narcocorridos are popular on both sides of the border, with popular music videos, sold-out concerts and CDs sold at Wal-Mart. "We're bloodthirsty, crazy, and we like to kill," they sing. Modern day Robin Hoods? Hardly, but that's how many teens and young adults see them.
“I urge people to reconsider this idea that the cartels and the government are two distinct entities. On the contrary, it’s impossible for an organized crime organization — especially one that’s transnational — to function without employees inside the state at all levels." -- John Gibler, author of To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War
“For Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, there is no music more popular today than narcocorridos. These bloodthirsty and explicit odes to the exploits of narco traffickers and drug lords of Mexico openly glorify violence, narcotics and money. Like gangsta rap in the nineties, “Narco” is a movement threatening to burst into the mainstream.
Featuring powerful footage from the front lines of the drug wars and performances from some of the hottest Narcocorrido artists (including El Komander and Buknas de Culiacan) NARCO CULTURA takes viewers behind the scenes of the most explosive and violent music subculture in America.
It's hard to imagine the way it must feel to live in absolute fear in an increasingly poor and violent neighborhood, yet, at the same time, be able to see, literally, right over the fence--supposedly the safest city in America, El Paso, Texas--what appears to be a safe haven.
“Mr. Peyro put his life on the line for the United States of America time after time. He is directly responsible for approximately 50 criminal convictions of upper echelon cartel members, as well as the removal of huge quantities of drugs from the streets of this country….
There is no question that Americans are some of the most naive people on the planet. In fact, even non-Americans are naive when it comes to the subject of the USA. A little naiveté is a good thing because without it no-one would attempt anything, but too much, and you're a sitting duck.
Perhaps, I'm a bit too naive because I truly believe that most of us do the best we can, given our circumstances, but holding onto the credulous expectation of people doing right, especially of those in power--anywhere in the world, including America--can be very dangerous to one's health. Those in positions of influence have been, according to their own definition, "successful" within the system, so, of course, have an interest in maintaining the status quo at all costs. We give these people decision-making abilities who are growing increasingly remote, as local council power is removed to national government and even to international government.
But when I inform others of what's really going on behind the scenes, of the profit-before-people motivation of our decision/policy-makers, I'm often told that even if what I'm saying is true, there is nothing you or I can do to solve this problem that's plagued mankind for centuries, because the powers that want to continue have all of the wealth and power at their fingertips while the rest of us are just barely getting by. To a point, I agree. However, no-one can convince me that ignorance is bliss as it makes us vulnerable should we be unlucky enough to get caught up in the system. Many veterans can testify to the dangers of ignorance and/or naive and senseless hope based on the unawareness of the fact that all war--including the "war on drugs"--is merely a pursuit to preserve power and wealth, a redistribution schemes to finance the lifestyles of the elites. In other words, blind trust, and/or willful nescience only makes you part of the problem at the very least, and at most, can put you at great risk as you will see from the example below.
Many--unfortunately, not even close to most-- of us are aware of what happens to the enlisted. After putting their lives on the line, for what they're told is our freedom, they suffer grave consequences. If our troops are lucky enough to make it home, they confront another battle: the tangled bureaucratic web of chaos while at the same time, trying to find work in an unstable economy that is very leery of hiring veterans. All of it, to line the already lined pockets of ruling class. Then there are the "veterans" of the equally fraudulent "war on drugs." Not a pretty picture for anyone who gets caught up in it.
Takeformer ICE informant, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro, employed as a "Mexican federal cop who worked for a top lieutenant (Humberto Santillan Tabares) of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes drug organization in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in the early to mid-2000s" who is suing US prosecutors and federal agents as well as several county sheriffs and detention-facility officials (include past and present employees of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Marshals Service and various county sheriffs in Texas and Minnesota and some of the most powerful US prosecutors in Texas) for conspiring to silence him in an effort to cover up their role in the "House of Death" murders in Ciudad Juarez Mexico. Yes, this man trusted the U.S. government enough to risk his life several times over, and for his loyalty and effort, was severely punished. The lawsuit is sealed but Narco News was able to obtain pleadings from the case.
“In affidavits linked here and here,filed in prior litigation related to the House of Death murders, Fielden and former ICE Special Agent in Charge Giovanni Gaudioso, (also named as a defendant in the current case) each contend they did nothing improper in the handling of Ramirez Peyro as an informant and also stress that they had no prior knowledge of any of the murders carried out at the House of Death in Juarez.
Ramirez Peyro oversaw--assuring the house was opened whenever Santillan wanted a murder carried out, as well as being responsible for overseeing the burial of the bodies--the infamous House of Death, the site of multiple gruesome torture/murders. Between August 2003 and January 2004, Peyro "informed his US government handlers about subsequent murders at the House of Death, often in advance of them taking place."
“Both ICE and the US Department of Justice had knowledge of these executions, both through the tapped cell phones and the information provided by [Ramirez Peyro],” the lawsuit alleges. “After each such execution, [Ramirez Peyro] and Raul Benecomo asked for the operation to be terminated and for arrests to be made. However [Ramirez Peyro] was instructed to continue his undercover work.”
In 2004, after the House of Death was exposed, Peyro was put in protective custody. and then placed in an isolation unit at a detention facility in Texas “under the guise of a material witness” for the pending Santillan trial that never took place due to the US Attorneycutting a deal with VCF cell-leader Santillan. But Peyro was not released. Instead, US prosecutors and agents kept him in prison "under threat of deporting his wife and children — who had been given temporary visas to stay in the US and who would have faced certain death at the hands of VCF operatives if sent back to Mexico."
“In May 2005, after Sutton’s plea deal with Santillan was inked, the US government initiated deportation proceedings against Ramirez Peyro — who also faced the prospect of certain torture and murder by VCF assassins upon his return to Mexico.
So for risking his life and helping the U.S. government, Peyro was severely punished instead of rewarded, spending six years in prison, mostly in isolation. Why? In an effort to cover up the complicity of the government in the House of Death murders.
From Ramirez Peyro’s legal pleadings:
“ … Sutton, Gaudioso, Fielden, Leachman, Durbin [and other defendants] entered into a conspiracy to cover up the fact that they not only knew about the murders [at the House of Death in Juarez], but were listening in on devices provided to [Ramirez Peyro] by Defendants for that purpose, and to cover up the fact that they had instructed [Ramirez Peyro] to continue his work with full knowledge that he had been assigned to maintain the "House of Death" where executions on behalf of the Juarez Cartel [the VCF] were occurring.
…Fielden, Sutton, Gaudioso, Leachman and Durbin decided that if [Ramirez Peyro] was allowed to testify truthfully at the Santillan trial, that they would be implicated in the murders and that ICE … had knowledge, both before and after the fact, that individuals were being executed and buried by the Juarez Cartel at the "House of Death."
… Sutton, Gaudioso, Fielden, Leachman and Durbin hatched a conspiracy to cover up the House of Death murders.
… Sutton, Gaudioso, Fielden, Leachman and Durbin conspired to enter [into] a plea deal with Santillan so his matter did not go to trial.
During the five years after the Santillan plea deal, Ramirez Peyro was kept imprisoned by US officials while facing deportation proceedings. Ultimately, Ramirez Peyro prevailed, and was released from prison in April 2010 after securing a temporary deferral of removal under United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) due to the credible threat to his life should he be deported to Mexico.
[Ramirez Peyro] was moved from one county detention facility to another, including Wilson County Jail in Floresville, Texas; Midland County Central Detention Center in Midland, Texas; Washington County Jail in Stillwater, Minnesota; and Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minnesota [and ultimately the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in New York], and each of which he was sequestered in SHUs [Special Housing Units].
[Ramirez Peyro] … at each of the county detention facilities, was held in total isolation from other prisoners, deprived of his family, friends, and the outside world under conditions far more stringent than necessary.
… Said conditions did not affect any legitimate purpose of ensuring his testimony or protecting [Ramirez Peyro] from potential assassins or serve any other legitimate purpose.
… During the period [Ramirez Peyro] was confined in said county facilities, he had no access to a phone, no access to television or newspapers, was deprived of access to soap and other elementary means of sanitation, was housed in a tiny cell sometimes up to 23 hours a day, with a floor contaminated by feces and urine, and his hands and ankles were chained and shackled to his waist any time he was outside his cell.
… Each time that [Ramirez Peyro], who had no charges, criminal or otherwise, filed or pending against him, was transferred from one facility to another, his feet were shackled together, his hands were shackled to his waist, he was accompanied by at least 10 federal agents, was moved in the middle of the night, with lights and sirens on the vehicle he was transported in, and with escort vehicles closing traffic. If he traveled by airplane, it was on a private plane owned by the US government.
According to Mexico's government, from 2006-2012, 26,121 peopledisappeared in Mexico, with the missing including police officers, bricklayers, housewives, lawyers, students, businessmen and more than 1,200 children under age 11. Not only are authorities failing to investigate the missing, they are often directly involved in the disappearances, so families continue to suffer the anguish of not knowing what happened to a loved one.
“Human Rights Watch has documented nearly 250 such “disappearances” that have occurred since 2007. In more than 140 of these cases, evidence suggests that these were enforced disappearances—meaning that state agents participated directly in the crime, or indirectly through support or acquiescence. These crimes were committed by members of every security force involved in public security operations, sometimes acting in conjunction with organized crime. In the remaining cases, we were not able to determine based on available evidence whether state actors participated in the crime, though they may have.
In nearly all of these cases, authorities failed to promptly and thoroughly search for the victims or investigate the cases. Prosecutors rarely carried out basic investigative steps crucial to finding missing persons, too often opting instead to blame the victims and, reflecting the low priority they place on solving such crimes, telling families to conduct the searches on their own. When prosecutors did investigate, their efforts were undermined by
delays, errors, and omissions. Searches and investigations were further hindered by structural problems such as overly narrow laws and the lack of critical tools like a national database of the disappeared.
The inept or altogether absent efforts of authorities to find people who are taken add to the suffering of victims’ families, for whom not knowing what happened to their loved ones is a source of perpetual anguish. Many relatives put aside everything else in their lives to search for the missing, a quest they feel they cannot abandon until they learn the truth. Making matters worse, victims’ families may lose access to basic social services and
benefits—such as healthcare and childcare—tied to the victim’s employment, forcing them to fight costly and emotionally-draining battles to restore the benefits.
The Mexican people are truly at the mercy of these cartels and their government.
COAHUILA STATE, Mexico — The federal government says 26,000 people have been reported missing across Mexico since 2006, and yet just two states have a local prosecutor's office dedicated to the investigation of such cases.
Even there, those who have disappeared are rarely found. Some have been caught up in the drug trade; others forcibly recruited to work for the gangs. Cases of mistaken identity are also common, and some are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Across the country, very few cases are properly investigated, and reports of the involvement of authorities are frequent.
The following is an excerptfrom Anabel Hernández's new book Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers
“My introduction to the life of Joaquín Guzmán Loera began at 6:30 in the morning of June 11, 2005. That is when I boarded a bus that would take me and photographer Ernesto Ramírez to Guadalupe y Calvo, a small, storm-prone municipality in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, deep in the “golden triangle” spanned by the towering Sierra Madre Occidental. It was the start of a five day voyage to the land of drug kingpins: Ismael El Mayo Zambada, Eduardo Quintero Payán, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, a.k.a. El Azul—and Joaquín El Chapo (Shorty) Guzmán, the man Forbes magazine has called “the biggest drug lord of all time” (and in their latest ranking, the fifty-fifth most powerful person in the world). I still have the notebook in which I recorded the journey. It was one that was to change forever my view of the drug trade, which is today the backbone of organized crime in Mexico.
Most of the road to Guadalupe y Calvo runs through a dreamlike landscape of serried pinewoods. The sky was that intense blue you can sense in a black-and-white photograph by Manuel Álvarez Bravo. At 10:50 in the morning we arrived at the town of Rio Verde, where they hang meat on the line like washed socks. Unfortunately it’s no longer just beef, but also the bodies of victims from the “war on drugs.”
The winding road began to climb as steeply as a big dipper. The driver was an old hand. He threw the bus round the bends entrusting our fates to Pope John Paul II, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and St. Juan Diego, whose pictures were stuck on the windscreen. At one stop a newspaper vendor called Federico Chávez got on. The youngster exchanged greetings with almost all of the passengers; we were the only outsiders. Before we left Mexico City, Iván Noé Licón, a Chihuahua education official, had warned me on the phone to be discreet about our identity. “People are cagey with strangers, because they think they’re police,” he told me. So when some of the travelers took Ernesto for a priest, we didn’t say anything. It seems teachers and priests are the only outsiders who are greeted without suspicion in those parts.
After eight hours, we finally reached our destination: the municipal capital of Guadalupe y Calvo. From there we planned to tour the surrounding villages—although that is a manner of speaking, because on the bumpy tracks that link these hamlets it takes five or six hours to get anywhere. We met up with Chava, a local official who would be our guide and friend in this world we knew so little of. It was impossible not to be moved by the majestic beauty of the place, and the tragedy of its inhabitants. They were five unforgettable days.
As a journalist I had come to investigate the story of child exploitation in the area, where minors are put often to work by their parents on the poppy and marijuana harvests. These are kids who become criminals without even realizing it. Many, from the age of seven upwards, die of poisoning by the pesticides used on the plantations. Those who survive into adolescence are already carrying AK-47s, or “goat’s horns” as these weapons are popularly known.
We entered this mountain world along its narrow dirt tracks and cattle trails, learning of its customs, dreams, and legends, as well as its poverty. We visited remote places like Baborigame, Dolores, El Saucito de Araujo, and Mesa del Frijol, where more than 80 percent of the population grow drug crops. In these communities, long forgotten by federal or state social programs, you nonetheless see four-wheel-drive Cadillac Escalades, satellite dishes, and men with walkie-talkies and a pistol in their belt.
Here I met Father Martín, a Peruvian priest with a dark, glossy complexion, an extraordinary sense of humor and a great heart, who had chosen to stay in Guadalupe y Calvo rather than accept a transfer to the safety of El Paso, Texas. He carried out his pastoral work with matchless energy, even if his sermons against the wrong kind of seeds fell on deaf ears. Talking to him helped me to understand the human dimension of the problem, as opposed to the perspective of military and police operations.
People have been doing this for decades. They don’t know any other way of life, and no one has shown them an alternative. No doubt in these humid ravines you could grow guava, papaya, or other fruits, but the lack of decent roads makes it impossible to transport such produce. To make matters worse, residents say some places here, like Baborigame, didn’t get electricity until 2001. Many illegal plantations have been supported by the Mexican and US governments. But the authorities don’t understand that being nurtured here are not just drug crops, but future drug traffickers. Kids don’t want to be firemen or doctors when they grow up; they want to become drug barons. That’s the only measure of success they know.
Stories abound of El Chapo roaming the streets of Guadalupe y Calvo, flanked by bodyguards dressed in black. People have embraced the myth of the generous godfather figure, the sponsor of baptisms, first communions, and weddings.
I climbed to the top of Mohinora, in the south of the Tarahumara range. At 3,307 meters, it’s the highest peak in Chihuahua. Below, in season, you can see the green valley flooded with red poppies. Its beauty is enough to make you cry—and so are the consequences of this trade. I had gone to research a story about child labor, but I came back with much more: the knowledge of a way of life which for these people is as necessary as the blood that runs in their veins—and that now increasingly runs in the streets.
At the end of 2005, the lawyer Eduardo Sahagún called me at the Mexico City offices of La Revista, the magazine of El Universal, the newspaper where I was working. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in the story of a client of his, Luis Francisco Fernández Ruiz, the former assistant warden of the Puente Grande maximum security prison, in the state of Jalisco. Fernández wanted to talk to me about his case. He was being tried along with sixty-seven other public employees who had been working at Puente Grande’s Federal Center for Social Rehabilitation Number 2 on the night of January 19, 2001, the night El Chapo Guzmán went missing from the prison. They were all accused of taking bribes and facilitating El Chapo’s escape. Fernández had already spent nearly five years in jail, and he still hadn’t been sentenced. “The state prosecutor’s office has always refused an on-the-spot inspection and a reconstruction of the escape, to establish how El Chapo got away and who was responsible,” the lawyertoldme.All I’d heard about the affair were the Hollywoodesque stories circulating afterwards, of how the drug baron had fled in a laundry cart. This improbable version of events was repeated so often in the domestic and international media that it had become an unquestionable truth; the same thing happened with many other stories of Mexico’s drug trade.
I finally met Fernández in the visiting rooms of Mexico City’s Reclusorio Oriente detention center. It was a short encounter, during which he expounded his innocence. The former assistant warden of Puente Grande told me of his dealings with the drug baron, and gave me his impressions of the man: “He was introverted, with a serious, withdrawn manner, not at all overbearing or rude, and he was intelligent, very intelligent.” There was no admiration in Fernández’s words, but a certain respect for the drug trafficker, who was in his custody from 1999 until the day he was sprung from Puente Grande.
“After the alarm was raised following the escape, the Federal Police took control of the prison, we were all shut into the hall, and armed personnel in balaclavas moved in,” recalled Fernández. Two years later this fact would prove crucial.
Soon after I published my interview with Luis Fernández in La Revista, he won his appeal and was released. Today there is almost no one still behind bars for what the authorities call “El Chapo’s escape.” Even the warden of the maximum security prison, Leonardo Beltrán Santana, whose path I crossed a couple of times in the VIP dormitory of the Reclusorio Oriente, was freed in 2010.
In May 2006, at the Nikko Hotel in Mexico City, I met a DEA agent who confirmed my growing conviction that Joaquín Guzmán and the drug trade were essential to understanding a key aspect of corruption in Mexico, perhaps the most important aspect of all: the one that involves top government figures putting prices on the country’s millions of inhabitants, as if they were head of cattle.
According to this agent, DEA informers infiltrated into the organization of drug lord Ignacio Coronel Villarreal had told him that El Chapo Guzmán left Puente Grande penitentiary after paying a multimillion-dollar bribe to the family of President Vicente Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN). And that the deal included systematic protection by the federal government of him and his group, the all-powerful Pacific cartel. Fox is now a leading advocate for the legalization of not only the consumption, but also the production, distribution, and sale of every class of drug.
***
I read avidly the thousands of pages of evidence in the case of “El Chapo’s escape.” Through the dozens of statements given by cooks, laundry workers, inmates, detention officers, and prison police commanders that make up the proceedings of penal case 16/2001, I learned of Guzmán’s passion for painting landscapes, how much he missed his mother, his “romantic” side, his brutality as a rapist, his need for Viagra, his taste for candy and volleyball, but above all his infinite capacity to corrupt everyone and everything in his path. Similarly, hundreds of sheets of official documents allowed me to confirm that in 2001 El Chapo did not escape from Puente Grande in that famous laundry cart: instead, high-ranking officials took him out, disguised as a policeman.
I also obtained recently declassified CIA and DEA documents on the Iran-Contra affair—something nobody seems to remember anymore—which is what turned Mexican drug traffickers from humble marijuana and poppy farmers into sophisticated international dealers in cocaine and synthetic drugs. I retrieved files eliminated from the archives of the federal prosecutor’s office, referring to the businessmen who, in the early 1990s, sheltered in their hangars the planes of El Chapo, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and Héctor El Güero Palma. Today, these eminent entrepreneurs are the owners of hotel chains, hospitals, and newspapers. I found a different account of the air crash that killed the former interior secretary, Juan Camilo Mouriño, on November 4, 2008, which suggests that the crash was not an accident but an act of revenge by drug barons for agreements not kept.
In similar fashion, I discovered the identity of the businessmen who appear as the owners of a company supposedly run by Ismael El Mayo Zambada, which operates out of a hangar in Mexico City International Airport and transports drugs and money, with both the knowledge and consent of the Communications and Transport Secretariat and the airport administration.
The story of how Joaquín Guzmán Loera became a great drug baron, the king of betrayal and bribery, and the boss of top Federal Police commanders, is intimately linked to a process of decay in Mexico where two factors are constant: corruption, and an unbridled ambition for money and power.
Semi-illiterate peasants like El Príncipe, Don Neto, El Azul, El Mayo, and El Chapo would not have got far without the collusion of businessmen, politicians, and policemen, and all those who exercise everyday power from behind a false halo of legality. We see their faces all the time, not in the mug shots of most wanted felons put out by the Attorney General’s Office, but in the front page stories, business sections, and society columns of the main papers. All these are the true godfathers of Narcoland, the true lords of the drug world.
Often the protection given to drug barons continues until they commit a major blunder, are ratted out by others anxious to take their place, or simply cease to be useful for business. Now there also exists the option of voluntary retirement, like that taken by Nacho Coronel or Edgar Valdez, La Barbie. There will always be substitute candidates for support to continue the criminal enterprise. Many have seen their time come in this way: Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Joaquín Guzmán Loera alone will quit when he feels like it, not when the authorities choose. Some say he is already preparing his exit.
The current war on drugs, launched by the government of Felipe Calderón, is just as fake as that undertaken by the administration of Vicente Fox. In both cases, the “strategy” has been limited to protecting the Sinaloa cartel. The continuity of such protection has been underwritten by the shady police chief and Calderón’s secretary of public security, Genaro García Luna, and his team of collaborators: the previously unpublished documents presented here are irrefutable proof of this. García Luna is the man who aimed to become, with Calderón’s support, the single head of all the country’s police forces. He has even stated, with complete impunity, that there is no option but to let El Chapo operate freely and “bring to heel” the other criminal organizations, since it would be easier for the government to negotiate with just one cartel, rather than five. The bloody results of war between opposing cartels we know only too well.
Currently, all the old rules governing relations between the drug barons and the centers of economic and political power have broken down. The drug traffickers impose their own law. The businessmen who launder their money are their partners, while local and federal officials are viewed as employees to be paid off in advance, for example by financing their political campaigns. The culture of terror encouraged by the federal government itself, as well as by the criminal gangs through their grotesque violence, produces a paralyzing fear at all levels of society. [...] They have tried to convince us that the drug barons and their cronies are immovable and untouchable. [But] as citizens or as journalists, we must never allow the state and the authorities to give up on their duty to provide security, and simply hand the country over to an outlaw network made up of drug traffickers, businessmen, and politicians, allowing them to impose on all Mexicans their intolerable law of “silver or lead.” Pay up or die.
Below are a few photos of an attack on a family (June, 2010), who was traveling on the Casas Grandes Highway (the interstate highway that connects the state of Chihuahua to the West coast of Mexico) by award winning photographer Javier Manzano
As Manzano pulled up to the scene both of the rear side windows of the vehicle had been shot in. Inside the car, a 3-year old girl was holding the hand of her fatally wounded mother, and standing outside the car, the girl’s 4-year old brother, stained with the blood of his parents looked toward the highway. The assailants took the children’s father. It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive and the mother died en route to the hospital. Soon after, the decapitated body and head of the children’s father was found 20 kilometers down the road.
4-year old boy stares off into the highway as soldiers stand guard next to the
vehicle where the boy and his family were driving a few minutes earlier.
3-year old girl holds the hand of her mother as they wait for the ambulance.
The mother died en-route to the hospital
The 4-year old boy and 3-year old girl look on as the ambulance takes their mother away.
The head of 32-year-old Mario Alberto Iglesias, the father to the two young children
and husband of Maria de Jesus was located on the 70km marker of the same highway in
which the initial attack was reported.
Many people think that genocide means the complete extermination of a race or people. The Genocide Convention, however, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, defines genocide as not only “killing members of the group,” but also, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.” Hence, from the results we've seen--only the tip of the iceberg--it can be ascertained that the "War on Drugs" is an international effort to destroy what the global power elites deem as "undesirable" elements. If the poor person--usually of color--is not murdered, he's sent to prison on possession charges, therefore, ruined...his ability to make a living from that point on rendered practically impossible.
The American War on Drugs, as well as the Mexican War on Drugs, and all other wars-on-drugs have been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color--according to the justice department, white people are 5 times more likely to be found with drugs but black are 10 times more likely to go to jail-- even though people of all colors and economic status use and sell illegal drugs. Rather than eradicating drugs, the narco-economy has grown so powerful that human lives are often considered the price of doing business.
Nevertheless, we're led to believe that the evils that haunt the oppressed in America, and everywhere else, are the fault of the oppressed. Nothing can be further from the truth. If you dig deep enough--beyond the commercial media--you will find hard evidence that shows the governments of the U.S. and Europe, through various agencies, like that of intelligence agencies, no doubt, provide direct and indirect support for the drug cartels, not to mention other oppressive mechanisms (prison industrial complex).
But the government(s) certainly put on a good show in an effort to act as if they're not part of this huge criminal enterprise. For instance, today, the US is supposedly outraged over the release, "from prison of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and vowed to continue efforts to bring to justice the man who ordered the killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent." However, the US government’s complicity in Caro Quintero’s narco-trafficking business, and, even in the Camarena’s gruesome murder, is ignored.
In 1985, Mexico’s intelligence service, the Federal Security Directorate, or DFS in its Spanish initials and the CIA were not only working in unison according to Charles Bowden who wrote the book, Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family , but were in league with Mexico’s narco-traffickers. The DFS was disbanded in 1985, and integrated into Mexico’s version of the CIA, called CISEN (Spanish initials). CISEN still works in unison with US agencies and officials, including the CIA.
“Camarena brushes off Jordan’s alarm by noting that DFS is trained by the CIA and is functionally a unit in their mysterious work. And he says they are also functionally “the eyes and ears of the cartels.”
“In March of 1983, Plumlee contacted my Denver Senate Office and met with Mr. Bill Holen of my Senate Staff. During the initial meeting, Mr. Plumlee raised certain allegations concerning U.S. foreign and military policy toward Nicaragua and the use of covert activities by U.S. Intelligence agencies.
… Mr. Plumlee also stated that Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador were providing U.S. military personnel access to secret landing field and various staging areas scattered throughout Central America.
He specifically cited the Mexican government’s direct knowledge of illegal arms shipments and narcotic smuggling activities that were taking place out of a civilian ranch in the Veracruz area which were under the control and sponsorship of Rafael Caro-Quintero and the Luis Jorge Ochoa branch of the Medellin Escobar Cartel.
… Mr. Plumlee raised several issues including that covert U.S. intelligence agencies were directly involved in the smuggling and distribution of drugs to raise funds for covert military operations against the government of Nicaragua. …
More recently, just last year HSBC Bank was caught red-handed launderingbillions of dollars for multiple Mexican drug cartels. What happened? Eric Holder declined to prosecute. In fact, HSBC was let off the hook entirely until someone in the media caught wind of the story. In the end, HSBC settled for what amounted to a minor fine. Wachovia Bank, now Wells Fargo, is another recent example of an institution caught red handed laundering untold millions of drug profits. Once again, the tip of the iceberg because most of these illustrious institutions do not get caught.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” as tens of thousands of Mexicans were killed in an exponentially violent drug war.
In a nutshell, no jail time for these organized criminals at the top of the food chain who brought down the world economy, only, secret bailouts, which Wells Fargo received, $159 Billion, in 2010, revealed when the Fed was partially audited and that was one of the smaller bailouts. If that doesn't tell you whose side the government's on, nothing will.
Visit the narcosphere. It reports real information about the drug wars.
Links:
Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951), pp xi-xiii, 3-10.
“Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted representatives in place as a means to guarantee continued success,” the Border Patrol agents wrote.
Smuggling and Trafficking Routes Into and Through Texas
At the end of 2012, the reported number of Mexican citizens violently murdered was estimated much higher than the mainstream media stated, the real death rate is between 120,000 - 130,000. However, in truth, the Mexican government doesn't really know, so it could be twice that number. To be sure, it's not less as governments, if anything, under report such statistics for the simple reason it does not reflect well.
“Mexican cartels continue to use gangs in Texas as they smuggle drugs, people, weapons, and cash across the border. [...]
Gangs’ Relationships with Mexican Cartels
(U) One of the most serious issues facing Texas is the fact that many gangs have developed relationships with Mexican cartels. Gangs working with the Mexican cartels are involved in a level of crime that affects the entire state. Their criminal activity is no longer just a problem for a specific city or region. In certain instances, these gangs are contracted to commit assassinations, kidnapping, and assaults in Texas and Mexico on behalf of the cartels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 47,515 killed in the last 5 years alone from Mexican drug cartel violence, and they are expanding into U.S. cities at an alarming rate, yet, there is no alarm. Gosh, the Mexican drug cartels shot the White House, shattering one of its windowswith an AK47, leaving a nice little note telling President Obama, “Aquí está uno de los nuestros, no la suya necesitan.” That is, “Here’s one of ours, we don’t need yours,” yet, all the alarm bells toll for "so-called" terrorists clear across the world.
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Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico.
Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year.
A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man's hands and feet were reportedly missing, too.
"It would lead me to believe the message wanted to be sent. This is one of the ways they do it in Mexico, Colombia and other places," says Jordan.
Jordan says the cartels are getting bolder in carrying out their beheadings across the border. He says we only used to see these crimes in Mexico.
"They don't have any borders," says Jordan.
More than 600 miles from the border, a 19-year-old human trafficking victim was found beheaded in Oklahoma. Carina Saunders was stuffed into a bag and left in a grocery store parking lot.
"People know if they get on the wrong side of the fence, they'll be dealt with," says Jordan.
The police chief in the area says two men running the trafficking ring killed Saunders to send a message to the other victims. Jordan says the cartels' calling card is all over this case. Trafficking and smuggling are their top moneymakers. Revenge is the price of doing business.
"Definitely a cartel hit," says Jordan.
Investigators in Chandler, Ariz., say cartel operatives came from Mexico to kill 38-year-old Martin Alejandro Cota Monroy. His beheaded body was found in his apartment.
"One is too many; two is too many. Three should send an alarm," says Jordan.
He says investigators were too late to stop the killings three times in the last 12 months. Jordan says agents are trying to develop more informants to get to the cartels before they can commit the crimes. He says the cartels will only specifically target their victims and aren't interested in random beheadings.
Within the last few days, more than a dozen Mexicans were brutally murdered by the drug cartels, and dozens more in this month alone. The bodies of seven men were found in plastic chairs placed along the side of a street in the drug-plagued Mexican state of Michoacan, while another seven people, including three federal agents, were killed in neighboring Guerrero.
What's so disturbing about the above photo aside from the brutal murder of seven individuals, is the effort and time it must've taken to arrange these bodies in such a public place, not to mention, the ritualistic aspect that almost always seems to accompany cartel slaughter. In other words, this picture exemplifies the carte blanche of the drug cartels who have also infiltrated, at the very least, 1,286 cities, according to a DOJ report last year. Oh, and the dead men's crimes: supposedly begging and washing car windscreens at traffic lights, all victims of the Knights Templar.
While the Mexican army and police forces are equipped with weapons circa 1980's, the drug cartels are armed with state-of-the art brand new weapons. This flow of weapons into cartel hands is unprecedented, even though guns have been banned in Mexico for decades. And despite the reported confiscation of weapons from the drug cartels in raids, the never-ending supply continues to proliferate.
Now, we already know that up to 90% of cartel's weapons come from the U.S. The question is why is the U.S. government, not only doing nothing to stem the supply, but, is instead encouraging this ongoing and escalating atrocity by issuing cutbacks in Border Patrol agent positions (with an astounding lack of coverage at the border)? Oh, and let's not forget the release of hundreds, perhaps thousands (according to ICE whistle-blowers) of criminal and violent illegal aliens from prison. Why? Because, there's no room since the prisons are filled to the brim with non-violent U.S. citizens!
“Thank you Secretary Napolitano. Thank you for endangering us. Thank you for cutting our pay 40% to prove a political point. Thank you for making our job even more meaningless. Thank you for releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens that we risked our lives to arrest and put in jail. Thank you for all your lies about how “secure” the border is so that you can prop up another amnesty program. Thank you for cutting off our uniform allowances. Your support is really breathtaking. We just don’t know how much more we can handle."
Meanwhile, law-abiding Mexican citizens can't buy firearms--or even, publications about firearms--without risking the full force of Mexican "law".
You see, it's only the little guys that the big guys go after with a vengeance Case in point is the prosecutors in Aaron Swartz’ case, led by US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who "piled multiple criminal counts on Swartz that collectively could have locked him up for a quarter century," they "chose not to pursue prosecution of another far more serious alleged corporate computer crime," "drone code piracy" "sophisticated, analytical software program, known as Geospatial, that was developed IISI" that was flawed, therefore potentially effecting the lives of many, unlike Swart's "crime", which would've assisted the many.
Since the Nixon presidency, the U.S. government has poured almost a trillion dollars into the “war on drugs,” and what has it produced? More drugs. More inner-city violence, and the largest prison population in the world. Since Mexico's former President Felipe Calderon initiated a large scale "war on drugs" in 2006 funded by millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in U.S. aid, the death toll in Mexico is believed to have reached at least 60,000, possibly even $80,000, with more than 26,000 people missing. As the murder rate has dramatically increased, with Ciudad Juárez on the northern border recognised, not too long ago, pinpointed as the most dangerous city on the planet, the supply of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine from Mexico continues to increase.
So, without doing much research, it's easy to answer questions such as these when it comes to the "war on drugs," Although, to be sure, research will most definitely support the answers we can see right in front of our eyes: escalated race and class warfare--in effect, a new Jim Crow; mass incarceration of American citizens (1100% increase for drug law violations); unimaginable violence, especially in Mexico; more drugs than ever before; wealthier than wealthy banksters, politicians, CEOs, multinational corporations, etc.; unprecedented wealth and power, and the list goes on and on.
In other words:
Cui bono?Who benefits? Why, the capstone elite, of course. No, I'm not talking Illuminati, I'm just referring to those few special people who reside at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid.
Cui patitur?Who suffers? The people who reside at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid.
Another question you might want to ask yourself is, which kills more people? Marijuana? War on drugs? To my knowledge, pure marijuana has never killed anyone, while the war on drugs is responsible for millions of deaths. In fact, marijuana has numerous health benefits, but that's another story.
Let's take a look at Mexico for a clear cut example. Not only who gets what, that's fairly obvious; but are the results of this "war on drugs"-- that just so happens to coincide with neo-liberal "reform"--purely an accident, making the "war on drugs" a complete failure? Or, was/is the "war on drugs" really quite successful when you dig a little deeper and discover the true motive/agenda? Remember, Mexico's war on drugs is using the same model used in Columbia: Plan Columbia.
Warning: If you believe everything is a coincidence, and that the predator ruling class, no matter what political party they attach themselves, are mostly benevolent creatures, who are only looking out for our best interest, there is no need to read any further.
While Carlo Slim Helu, world's richest man according to Forbes, takes in $27 million per day--yes, that's per day--half of all Mexican citizens barely take in $2 per day. In fact, it's so bad in Mexico-- innocent people are kidnapped, tortured and brutally murdered, then displayed for public consumption by viscous rivaling drug cartels on a daily basis--right now that many of its citizens have two choices: sneak into America, or work for what's turned Mexico into the the horrific war zone that it is: the drug cartels. The cartels have gained so much power, they could be considered a de facto and/or "parallel government." After all, in too many areas throughout Mexico, the heavily armed cartels are implementing their own brand of law and order.
As for defending oneself in this living hell, it's almost impossible because legally owning a gun is nearly impossible, and most of law enforcement/military/government are corrupt, or indistinguishable from the cartels, leaving Mexican citizens to live their daily lives like pop-up figures in a shooting gallery.
Now if Mexico were solely responsible for this unimaginable tragedy, one could argue, "it's their problem...let them deal with it," and tough immigration laws might make sense. However, not only are most of the drugs sold to Americans, and not only is America providing 90% of the estimated 15 million illegal assault weapons--an arsenal of highly sophisticated weaponry-- the U.S. participated in setting up the conditions that would facilitate the drug cartels' slaughter of Mexican citizens...from the very beginning--and conditions we continue to facilitate
While Mexico most certainly took part, the Clinton administration, and other western imperial powers pushed NAFTA, which accelerated the neo-liberal "reforms" widening the already huge wealth gap in Mexico, pauperizing the working class, and pushing the already poverty-stricken Mexicans into even deeper poverty. Of course, this ensured that the drug cartels would have a vast population from which to recruit foot soldiers
Moreover, Clinton refused to allow the subject of narco-trafficking, in relation to NAFTA, into public debate, even though, for example, the DEA, voiced its concerns that by improving infrastructure (road/rail system, removal of tariffs for goods going northwards), for the increased trade from Mexico into the U.S. would make it that much easier for drug traffickers.
Clinton can't say he didn't know of the consequences NAFTA would create for the Mexican people because he had already created and implemented Operation Gatekeeper, aimed at halting illegal immigration at the United States–Mexico border. He knew NAFTA would not only impoverish Mexicans, but it could be said the U.S. government was well aware of the war-zone it would create. In fact, it could be said that is exactly what they wanted.
Crazy? Not so much. There is no doubt that preparing Mexico and laying the foundation for NAFTA were in the works a long time ago. In the 1980s, as Mexico was coerced to implement a more neo-liberal approach toward politics and government, abandoning the social arena, and creating, more or less, a social vacuum that the cartels were/are more than happy to fill, that is, along with the brutal violence.
“From 1980 to 1991, Mexico received thirteen structural adjustment loans from the World Bank, more than any other country. It also signed six agreements with the IMF, all of which brought increased pressure to liberalize trade and investment.”-- Tom Barry, Zapata’s Revenge.
NAFTA reshaped Mexico's land ownership laws, slashed tarrifs on U.S. imports, and allowed subsidized U.S. corn to flood the country, devastating Mexico's agricultural sector. Ironically, lured by the promise of work, border towns like Ciudad Juarez, now murder capital of the world, attracted many of the Mexicans who could no longer find work after NAFTA was implemented. The factories located there that provided cheap labor (equivalent of approximately $5/day) to foreign manufacturers offered employment, albeit, at slave wages.
The violence the drug cartels and the Mexican government have created is a bonus as it controls workers and displaces communities from territories of interest, that is, with valuable resources, to transnational corporate expansion. Corporatized conflict or disaster capitalism, where people are the collateral damage to keep capital moving through the feudal system.
"This notion of “security” calls up the Colombia model: paramilitarization in the service of capital. This model includes the formation of paramilitary death squads, the displacement of civilian populations, and an increase in violence. In the commercial sector, it is workers, small businesses and a sector of the local elite who are hit hardest by drug war policies.
Consider the links between the drug war and struggles around areas with natural resources:
• Residents of Ciudad Mier, a small community in Tamaulipas, left en masse because of paramilitary violence. The town sits on top of Mexico’s largest gas field, as does a large portion of the violence-ridden state.
• In the Juárez Valley, considered the most dangerous place in Mexico, killings and threats have forced many to leave, just as a new border crossing between the U.S. and Mexico is being constructed.
• In Santa Maria Ostula, a small Indigenous Nahuatl community in coastal Mexico, at least 28 people have been killed (and four others disappeared) by paramilitary and state violence since 2009. Their territory is in a mineral rich and strategically located area.
• In the Sierra Madre mountain range in northern Mexico, Canadian mining companies operate in areas where even government officials fear to enter because of the presence of armed narcotraffickers.
• In Petén, Guatemala, government officials militarized the area and declared a state of emergency because of the presence of Zetas that lasted eight months, ending in early 2012. Recent announcements indicate that a new oil rush is taking place in the same region.
The "war on drugs" is not about drugs; rather, it's a smokescreen. It "may be better understood as being about increased social and territorial control over lands and people, in the interest of capitalist expansion."
“In this context, the current offensive follows the neo-liberal manual on indigenous territories. It is about sowing terror with a baseline of murders and disappearances until families abandon their lands…”--columnist and indigenous rights activist Gloria Munoz Ramirez
An estimated 70,000 people have died in drug related violence since former Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on the country’s drug cartels in 2006. Up until recently, the violence seems to be contained in Mexico, but that may be changing according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office to Congress, entitled "Southwest Border Security,." The report claims that it's virtually impossible to get valid numbers on stateside drug war violence and crime.
"FBI officials cautioned that drug cartel related crimes, such as kidnappings and home invasions, are highly underreported and are not captured in national crime statistics.
For example, law enforcement officials with whom we spoke stated that individuals who may have been assaulted or robbed in the course of drug trafficking and other illicit activities are hesitant to report their involvement to the police
"Law enforcement agencies have few efforts to track spillover crime. No common federal government definition of such crime exists, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) components, including those with a definition, either do not collect data to track spillover crime, or do not maintain such data that can be readily retrieved and analyzed.
Officials from the San Diego office of the California Highway Patrol stated that in 2012 their field office began tracking how often they respond to calls from CBP’s Office of Field Operations to investigate incidents at the port of entry.
However, the officials noted that the data could not be a measure for spillover crime because the incident may not always result in a crime or an arrest and may not be related to cartel activity or involve Mexican nationals.
The US shares nearly 2,000 miles of border with Mexico, a country that has witnessed over 100,000 drug-related murders in the last six years alone. The "war on drugs" continues to fuel this violence, and it is America's silence on the matter that allows cartel activity to cross the border into at least 1,300 of our cities. To be sure, drug cartels are now a dangerous presence on the U.S. side of the border.
Despite our political leaders constant reminders of the dangers lurking around every corner from terrorists in countries--Iran, China, Pakistan-- half a world away, they never mention the very real danger that is literally in our own backyard. American citizens--especially in rural areas-- along the border from California to Texas are experiencing a slow but steady rise in drug-related violence and intimidation.
The obvious answer is to legalize drugs and de-fund the cartels, thereby reducing their enormous power, however, that will never happen, because it will also de-fund our ruling class.
The 2008 global financial collapse exposed our parasitic financial "casino" system that hugely profits off the backs of we, the people for the exclusive benefit of global elite/international banksters. However, many still do not realize the criminal nature of the entire financial system. People fail to realize that the grisly drug- and gang-related violence in Mexico responsible for the death of at least 50,-60,000 Mexicans is allowed to occur simply because it lines the already lined pockets of the wealthiest people in the world. People fail to realize that being poor, or unemployed, is a crime in and of itself. The recent resurgence of debtor's prison (legal in one-third states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin) for the victimsof these elitist perpetrators, who, despite their heinously criminal behavior, continue to enjoy record breaking profits of their crimes, gives full expression to the Orwellian society we now inhabit.
This ACLU report presents the results of a yearlong investigation into modern-day "debtors' prisons," and shows that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford. The report details how across the country, in the face of mounting budget deficits, states are more aggressively going after poor people who have already served their criminal sentences. These modern-day debtors' prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.
So, between theLIBOR scandal and the HSBC scandal, the political class has its hands full keeping Pandora's box from fully opening to reveal its, uglier than anyone can possibly imagine, contents. They do this by transforming Pandora's box into an easily resolved "problem" that occurs in a sealed vacuum, of course, never revealing that this "problem" is deeply entrenched in the system.
In the case of laundering billions in drug cartel money by HSBC, the HSBC compliance boss quits during US Senate subcommittee. Part two, here. Problem resolved, or so the American public believes. In other words, the ruling class exposes only a very small tip of a giant systemic iceberg, making you believe that the problem is being resolved. Meanwhile, the money laundering of billions, perhaps, even trillions, continues without missing a beat.
In the book, World Banking World Fraud: Using Your Identity, author and former employee of HSBC, John Cruz exposes how major banks launder large sums of money through their bank and avoid detection. He learned of massive fraud and money laundering at the highest levels.
Read more...
The gruesome discovery of nearly 50 headless, footless, and handless corpses were found outside Monterrey, Mexico, producing the latest casualties in a brutal war between the country's top two drug cartels: the Zetas, who claimed responsibility for these headless corpses, and who were trained by the US Special Forces for the so-called “War on Drugs”, and the Sinaloas
Mexican drug cartels have diversified into money laundering, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in illegal migrants.
Below are some of the worst attacks since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and declared war on powerful drug cartels. About 50,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since then.
* Sept 15, 2008 - Suspected members of the Zetas drug gang tossed grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence day in the western city of Morelia, killing eight people and wounding more than 100.
* Jan 31, 2010 - Suspected cartel assailants killed 13 high school students and two adults at a party in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas.
* March 13 - Hitmen killed three people linked to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez in March, provoking "outrage" from U.S. President Barack Obama.
* June 28 - Suspected cartel gunmen shot and killed a popular gubernatorial candidate in the northern state of Tamaulipas in the worst cartel attack on a politician to date. Rodolfo Torre, 46, and four aides from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, were ambushed on their way to a campaign event for the July 4 state election.
* July 18 - Gunmen burst into a birthday party in the northern city of Torreon, using automatic weapons to kill 17 party-goers and wound 18 others.
* July 24 - Police unearthed 51 bodies in a grave outside Mexico's business capital, Monterrey, in northern Mexico over several days. Some corpses were burned beyond recognition.
* Aug 25 - Marines found the bodies of 58 men and 14 women at a ranch near the Gulf of Mexico in Tamaulipas state, 90 miles (150 km) from the Texas border, after a firefight with drug hitmen in which three gunmen and a marine died.
* April, 2011 - Officials unearthed the first of what turned out to be more than 450 bodies buried in mass graves in the northern states of Durango and Tamaulipas.
* Aug 20 - Five headless bodies were found in Acapulco, taking the number of people killed in the popular Pacific resort to at least 25 in that one week.
* Aug 25 - Masked gunmen torch a casino in Monterrey, killing 52 people, most of them women. The attack takes less than three minutes.
* Sept 20 - Thirty-five bodies are found abandoned in two trucks on an underpass in the eastern Gulf city of Veracruz, which had been largely untouched by the violence.
* Oct 6 - Mexican security forces find 32 bodies at several locations around Veracruz, just two days after the government unveiled a plan to bolster security in Veracruz state.
* Nov 24 - More than 20 bodies are found in cars in Mexico's second city, Guadalajara, a day after the burned bodies of 16 people are found in the home state of the country's powerful drug lord, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
* Feb 19, 2012 - A fight between rival gangs at a prison just outside Monterrey in northern Mexico leaves 44 dead.
* May 4 - The bodies of nine people were found hanging from a bridge and 14 others found dismembered in the city of Nuevo Laredo, just across the U.S. border from Laredo in Texas.
* May 13 - Eighteen people who were found decapitated and dismembered near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara.
