Archive for the 'Mexican Cartels' Category

Small Wars Journal:

Tunnels are dark and often wet, hot, and humid. They can contain tight spaces, low overhead clearances, and present a range of explosive and toxic environmental challenges. All of these impediments are enhanced by poor visibility, darkness, impeded sight lines, and amplified noise (echoes) facilitating sensory decrements that inhibit maneuver, engagement, and situational awareness. Tunnels also degrade intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance complicating tactical and operational decision-making. In addition to tactical challenges found in all confined space operations, illicit taps bring an additional explosion hazard both within the tunnel and in proximate inhabited spaces.

It reminds me of the tunnel in Sicario, except not as well-constructed.

I think I’ve said this before, but this poses not just a tactical challenge to anyone, regardless of persuasion, but a challenge to life as well.

This is a confined space.  It has the following hazards (not an all-inclusive list): civil engineering (collapse of roofing or siding), access to breathable oxygen, lighting, noise, concentration of various bacteriological hazards (such as legionella), temperature, humidity, submergence during rain from flash flooding, concentration of explosive gases, concentration of explosive dusts, etc., etc.

Stay out of confined spaces.  They mean death to you.  I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t go spelunking.

Via WiscoDave, Iotwreport.com:

Americans in border towns in New Mexico are leery of reporting crimes and suspicious activities by illegal immigrants because they fear they will be retaliated against by drug cartels, according to a  Washington Examiner report.

Seven residents who live within 30 to 50 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border told the paper that calling local or federal law enforcement for help after discovering they have been victims of illegal immigrant crime could lead to “nasty consequences.”

One cattle rancher from Hidalgo County told the Examiner he calls in every crime, but not without punishment from the cartels.

“I turned in 700 pounds [of marijuana] up here … I called it in [to Border Patrol]. They went and got it. That night, they [smugglers] came back. They … broke off all the floats off my troughs — chopped ’em up, drained all of it,” he said.

Brave rancher.  But most people won’t be that brave, nor do they have the wherewithal to engage in battle with the cartel(s).

Here is the step-by-step process for the destruction of a country and culture.

[1] Corrupt enough powerful people with money and power – money for powerful corporations like Monsanto, or Archer Daniels Midland, who want immigrant workers, or even for smaller entities like local roofing and siding companies, and power for the democrats who want voters.

[2] Convince enough idiot voters that the immigrants just “come for love” and appeal to compassion.

[3] Underfund border security, and in any event, make it nearly impossible for them to perform their mission.

[4] Get enough lawyers involved that no one could ever successfully craft rules for the use of force or rules of engagement (RUF/ROE) for the border that would make the international community happy.

[5] Never, ever, send the military to the border under arming orders.  Let them do things like paperwork (and maybe string some wire) for looks and theater.

[6] Corrupt the churches so they teach that Jesus was a Bohemian, pacifist, flowerchild beatnik, and you will be too if you want to be a Christian.  No real Christian can be a warrior, at least not unless recognized by the state.

[7] Weaken the armed forces so that if they ever do deploy to the border, they won’t be fit to serve in any meaningful capacity anyway.

[8] Make sure that the police and judiciary are essentially one and the same, on the same side as it were, and make sure that the public is scared of ever taking any kind of action they deem illegal or vigilante.  Make the cost too high for them to bear to defend themselves or their property.

[9] Allow the criminal elements of the hordes to roam freely and perpetrate their desires at will.  This is advantageous for the controllers, as it keeps the fearful people in check and without recourse.  They cannot turn to each other, cannot turn to the state, and cannot turn to the criminals.  And they won’t act for themselves.

[10] Make the promise of provision of “free” health care for everyone who crosses the border, illegal or not.  This “free” health care hides the real cost of illegal immigration, but it’s advantageous to the corporations, so it must come to pass.

[11] Finally, invade the schools from elementary to college with socialists who do not believe in liberty, and this will ensure a vast supply of idiots as future voters, thus creating power in perpetuity.  These voters will never allow turning this death spiral around.

And thus you have a recipe for utter disaster for a nation.  It’s almost as if it were happening before our very eyes, yes?

Falko Ernst writing for International Crisis Group:

Grillo is here to kill.

Why? He can’t express a reason beyond that he’s been given a name and a face. Maybe he doesn’t need to explain any further than that. Maybe he just needs to be able to take orders from the cerro, the hills overlooking Tierra Caliente, the Hot Land, as this Michoacán region is known. Up on the cerro, the crime lords decide life and death for the people below.

Philosophy aside, Grillo kills because he’s paid for it, micha antes, micha después, half before, half after. It’s a performance bonus to complement the base salary of a sicario, or hitman, which is close to nothing.

[ … ]

On the Saturday before he goes to the park, Grillo is given a name and handed a photo showing a face, as usual. Then he spends the night in a safe house, a non-descript shanty on the outskirts of town, one in a warren of grey brick dwellings, unpainted and unfinished. Here, in the domain of the economically crushed, he’s right at home.

Inside, there’s just a bare, stained mattress with no sheets. The next day, he putters around until early evening, staring at the no-paint, no-plaster walls, wasting time on Facebook, uploading a post honouring his santita, his little saint, a death dispenser’s spiritual partner of choice. La Santa Muerte. The Holy Death.

[ … ]

Grillo’s got the face’s photo, but he needs confirmation. So he says the face’s name, when he’s just a few arm’s lengths away. The man turns around, and that seals his fate. Grillo delivers the death sentence with two shots to the face – always two shots. He’s got to be sure.

The face goes down, and Grillo leans over it. It’s part of what he does, his custom. He reenacts it for me later in the dimly lit, dusty track on the way up to his barrio, his neighbourhood in his birthplace of Apatzingán – a town known as La A in local narco-parlance – where we sit by the iron cross erected for another of his victims, struck down in exactly the same way.

There’s no life coming back to this one.

[ … ]

Grillo has a reputation in this part of town. And even if he didn’t, most folks wouldn’t want his type around. The crystal meth has gotten the better of him, his eyes beginning to retreat into his skull, his naturally dark skin fading to an ashen grey, paper-thin, precariously suspended over protruding cheekbones, threatening to rupture at any moment.

[ … ]

“Anywhere else in the world, psychopaths are a problem. But here, they’re an asset”, an adviser to the group tells me. Grillo is valuable to them – a psychopath perhaps, but a useful one.

Not to worry, I’m certain that there are no warlords or killers in any of the good folk coming across the border on a daily basis.  As Jeb Bush said, “they come for love.”  And I’m certain that there are no war refugees in the crowds either.

As I foretold, the troops at the border aren’t armed because they aren’t under arming orders and do not have border security as their mission.  But even if they did, they should never use weapons and the borders should be flung wide open.  If you don’t think so, you’re a hater and a racist.  As I’m sure you’ve been told many times.

Recall I said this?

To point to Roman Catholicism and claim that Hispanics will vote GOP because of socially conservative viewpoints misses the bigger picture of the state of Catholicism in South and Central America.  It is a synthesis, or a hybrid mixture, of Catholicism, superstition, Marxism, and in some cases evil “patron saints” for the cartel criminals.”

Or perhaps you don’t.  Read it again.  And perhaps you recall this?

Father José Antonio Fortea, a leading Mexican exorcist, who once ordered the mass exorcism of the whole country, has warned of an increase in satanic ritual killings.

Brace yourself, and read this very carefully.

Edgar is a young man of twenty-six years, and he is doing a ten-year sentence for illegal possession of firearms and kidnapping. He says he has killed nearly sixty people working as a sicario for the Juárez Cartel, but since there is no proof—he is not sharing the details—he cannot be convicted for these murders.

Edgar was born in Juárez, but his mother separated early from his father and when Edgar was two, they moved to Kansas City. His mother was involved in dealing large quantities of cocaine, which the young Edgar discovers. When she runs into trouble, she has to flee back to Juárez. Edgar, at that age around eleven, is shocked by the poverty and filth of Juárez. His mother starts to work as a hairdresser but they cannot afford the rather comfortable lifestyle they had before. Edgar is a good student at school, but he starts to hang out with ‘bad people’ and gang members. He starts to deal weed and is caught when he is thirteen years old. A juvenile offender, he was still convicted to six months, but managed to pay his way out. At age fourteen, he hangs out with friends and gets into a fight. He hits one of his attackers with a big stone and the boy actually bleeds to death. This is Edgar’s first kill. He says he did not mean to kill the person and runs away from the scene of the fight, feeling afraid, guilty, and nervous at the same time. This unintentional murder will haunt him for half a year. His second murder is a drive by shooting he carries out with a gang. He does not know if his bullets actually killed someone during that drive-by, but there were deaths.

Being in a gang selling drugs, he goes down a slippery slope. He learns shooting from his stepfather, who is a private detective. At one point, he starts to work for the Juárez Cartel as a sicario. He is not too specific as to how he started to work for a cartel. But he says the cartel seeks people out, and it is not people who seek the cartels out. He sees killing strictly as work. He receives orders and he carries them out. Saying no is simply not possible. Still, he does not shift moral responsibility onto the boss, it is still him who carried out the orders, who pulled the trigger. Edgar manages to separate work from private business. ‘I love persons, I kill persons.’ ‘No tiene que estar mezclado. el amor a mi familia es muy diferente a lo que hago’, Don’t mix things. The love for my family is very different from my work.’ He realizes he kills people who have a mother or a wife, even more since he has children himself. Still, he does what he has to do, ‘it is either them or you’.

He talks with professional pride about his work. ‘I do it quickly.’ He does not like to waste many bullets. A few in the body and a final shot in the head. Sometimes they work with teams of two or three people. Edgar says he once stopped an ambulance to finish his victim that had not died. He mentions bystanders and witnesses, in that they are too shocked to absorb what they see or they are too scared to testify. Still, he has an honor code; he never kills women and children. He says other cartels do this, like Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Edgar believes God exists, but says it is not his god. Satan is his God, and he prays to Santa Muerte. Ever since Santa Muerte appeared to him in a dream and gave lifesaving advice, he worships her. Edgar also has a bruja, or a witch, that functions as his personal spiritual adviser. Before a hit, he prays to Santa Muerte that all goes well. ‘I actually sacrifice people for my Santa Muerte. The thing is that I kill for ordering, but I talk to her and say, hey, I go to a job. Just make me hit, I am gonna give you that life, it is for you.’

Santa Muerte actually whispers to him to carry out killings. Edgar is honest and admits he actually enjoys killing. ‘I feel powerful. My god always tell me to do it. I don’t know why, but I could hear, “hey, hey, do it, do it.” I am not crazy, ‘cause I know I ain’t crazy. I still could count I still could eat. I still could sleep’. Edgar admits he has developed an addiction to killing. ‘It gives me a feeling of power. But that moment last only for the moment. There were days that he felt ‘I need to kill somebody. I feel that I need it.’ At the prison, there is an Adictos Anonymous group that handles all sorts of addictions, including addiction to killing.

But be of good cheer.  I’m certain that we’re vetting the good, hard working folks coming across the border so that the masses don’t include people like this, and I’m certain that there is no corruption of border patrol or local LEOs with money or intimidation.

Or perhaps that’s not the case and you should be prepared for this.  You be the judge.

Via David Codrea, we learn that Mexican cops have found 166 bodies in a cartel killing field.  Perhaps some of those cartel killers are in this video.  Perhaps with out globalist masters in charge, you’ll get the chance to meet some of them face to face.

Do you think it doesn’t matter that we’re bringing in Mexican cartels and their killers to America?  Do you think law and order America will be able to get these warlords under control?

Breitbart notes one recent gun battle in the streets of Rio Bravo.

Machine gunfire and rolling battles along the main avenues of this city spread terror among townspeople who tried to hide inside homes and businesses. Stray bullets went through the walls of some houses.

The violence took place on Friday morning when Mexican soldiers and cartel gunmen clashed along the streets of this city. Rio Bravo is immediately south of Donna, Texas, and has an international bridge connecting both cities.

Is this something you want to see in your neighborhood?  How about what the Mexican security forces have to do to combat these warlords?  How about the use of helicopters and miniguns against cartel bosses?

SputnikNews.com:

Father José Antonio Fortea, a leading Mexican exorcist, who once ordered the mass exorcism of the whole country, has warned of an increase in satanic ritual killings.

Hey, I have an idea.  Let’s throw open the borders and let them all come here.  We can give them free medical care, SNAP checks, welfare, and the right to vote.  That will fix everything.  In the mean time, we can hire them all to paint and roof houses and work at Mexican restaurants.

Breitbart:

Babeu was on a helicopter tour of Mexican drug cartel scout locations in caves in the side of mountains throughout the desert about 70 miles inside the U.S. border. Essentially, that means U.S. sovereignty is gone for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of square miles throughout the American southwest.

Babeu was leading the helicopter tour with Dr. Ben Carson, a GOP presidential candidate, after briefing Carson on everything happening at the border.

Among other things that Babeu showed Carson and Breitbart News on this helicopter tour were how this far inside the border on high ground there are scores of scout sites where cartel operatives serve as lookouts for smugglers bringing drugs, people and other contraband into the country.

“If they can operate up to this degree, 70 miles north of the border, in law enforcement we call that a clue,” Babeu said in a brief exclusive interview outside the helicopter after landing back at the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. The lack of United States sovereignty this deep into the country is highly concerning to Carson, who told Breitbart News that this shouldn’t be happening.

“We should stop them at the border,” Carson said. “They shouldn’t be 70 miles inside the border. We should stop them at the border. As the sheriff indicated, if we were to take like 6,000 troops and put them at the border, you wouldn’t have those people coming inside the border.”

Seriously?  You mean actually stick troops on the border and give them robust rules of engagement where they shoot at bad guys?  Gosh, I wish I had thought of that!

Crisis Group:

“Mexico cannot go on like this”, President Enrique Peña Nieto said on 27 November, addressing the country from the National Assembly. Most Mexicans would agree, yet Mexico remains embroiled in a political crisis over the disappearance of 43 students, apparently at the hands of police and local thugs and assisted by city officials, in the southwestern state of Guerrero. Protests, sometimes destructive, continue, while on this issue the government seems paralyzed: Peña Nieto’s security and justice reform package is stuck in Congress and his approval ratings have sunk to record lows.

The popular outrage reflects not only Mexicans’ exhaustion with criminal violence but also their deep distrust of a political class widely associated with corruption. So far the government seems unable to turn the tide of public opinion and undertake the institutional reforms needed to combat violence in a country where powerful criminal groups still dominate many areas.

Few would have predicted such a crisis earlier this year. In August, Peña Nieto celebrated passage of legislation to implement a comprehensive energy reform, ending the state-run oil company’s 76-year monopoly and opening the sector to private, including foreign, investment. The energy measures were the culmination of a sweeping package of new laws and constitutional amendments designed to make Mexico more competitive through fiscal and financial reforms, new education policies and an end to monopolies in telecommunications.

Then, on 26 September, several busloads of students from the rural teachers’ college of Ayotzinapa were attacked in the city of Iguala by municipal police, allegedly acting on orders of the mayor. According to witnesses interviewed by federal prosecutors, police turned the students over to members of a criminal gang known as “Guerreros Unidos”, who killed them and then incinerated the bodies in a local dump.

Neither this testimony nor the arrest of more than 80 suspects, including 44 police officers, has quelled demands for justice and the students’ return. Skepticism about the government’s version of events is high; leaked documents allegedly from government sources, published in the magazine Proceso, suggest federal and state police were alerted in real time about the students’ movements and their clashes with local police, but did nothing to stop the bloodshed. “It was the State” – a blanket indictment of all government institutions – has become a protest slogan and social media meme.

Remember folks, these are the hordes that are flooding across the border out of an act of love (and for all of you Rand Paul advocates, he thinks just like his father does on immigration). The Hispanics and Latinos don’t believe in your God-give rights to bear arms, but hey, the Chamber of Commerce will be happy and Monsanto and Archer-Daniels-Midland will have some new field workers.

From Fox News:

The Obama administration is moving to shut down nine Border Patrol stations across four states, triggering a backlash from local law enforcement, members of Congress and Border Patrol agents themselves.

Critics of the move warn the closures will undercut efforts to intercept drug and human traffickers in well-traveled corridors north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Though the affected stations are scattered throughout northern and central Texas, and three other states, the coverage areas still see plenty of illegal immigrant activity — one soon-to-be-shuttered station in Amarillo, Texas, is right in the middle of the I-40 corridor; another in Riverside, Calif., is outside Los Angeles.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it’s closing the stations in order to reassign agents to high-priority areas closer to the border.

“These deactivations are consistent with the strategic goal of securing America’s borders, and our objective of increasing and sustaining the certainty of arrest of those trying to enter our country illegally,” CBP spokesman Bill Brooks said in a statement. “By redeploying and reallocating resources at or near the border, CBP will maximize the effectiveness of its enforcement mandate and align our investments with our mission.”

The last paragraph has all of the right keywords, but I told you what this is really all about Changes in Mexican Border Strategy.  This aligns personnel with the objective of increasing transcontinental and cross-border traffic.  It’s all part of a larger nation and state level plan to make the border less significant, make it easier to cross, and raise cross-border shipments of goods and products, especially with Mexican truck drivers.

Mark Krikorian passed on a revelation that alone should have cost this administration the upcoming election.  In the initial fight with drug cartels fighters, Brian Terry and his team shot beanbags rather than bullets.  But the situation is really even worse than that.

First it was confirmed that Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and his elite tactical unit initially fired bean bags at heavily armed dope smugglers. Now comes news that a Border Patrol training video is instructing agents that, when confronted by a shooter. they should “run away” and “hide”. Only as a last resort, if they are cornered, should agents get “aggressive” and “throw things” at the perps. Throw things? Really; here’s the site of the largest local of the Border Patrol agents’ union describing the training they’re required to undergo. The site reports that the suits in D.C. have “offered to revise and clarify this training” — sure, only because it was exposed. It’s debatable whether Bill Clinton actually loathed the military, but this administration certainly loathes the Border Patrol.

This is sad but not surprising.  It dovetails with the overall administration policy for the border, that is, the last three administrations.  As I have observed, “The National Guard is bored, has little to do other than watch, isn’t under arming orders, and has sagging morale, while the administration is using the lack of security on the border as an opportunity to make political hay on so-called “assault weapons,” and study groups are more concerned about militarization of the border than they are border security.  Don’t look for a secure Southern border in this generation unless something catastrophic happens to the U.S. homeland.  By then it will be too late.”

Securing the border would look so different than what we currently have that it would be indiscernible to the average American, and we aren’t prepared to implement what’s necessary.  The border would have to come before trade and trucking deliveries, all traffic would be fully searched, the U.S. Marines would have to patrol the border, under arming orders, outside of the constraints of the Supreme Court ruling in Tennessee versus Garner, men with weapons would be shot by Scout snipers before they ever became a threat, and e-verify would be implemented on a national level.

Again, don’t look for this unless something catastrophic occurs, such as Hezbollah fighters crossing the border and perpetrating acts of terror.  Right now, trade and cheap labor on the backs of the American taxpayer are far too important to prevent “alignment of our assets with our strategic goals.”  Expect more border station closings and a more diminished Border Patrol.