Mexico: descent into chaosMexico's violence intensifies, becomes more gruesome
The war among Mexico’s seven drug cartels — and between the cartels and the Mexican government — is intensifying and becoming more gruesome; as recently as a year or two ago, commandos fighting for the Mexican drug cartels often would rather flee than confront security forces, but an influx of combat weapons — purchased at U.S. gun shops and shows or stolen from Central American munitions stockpiles — and a vast supply of ammunition now enables them to fight, and sometimes outgun, army and federal police units; the war is also becoming more gruesome: the preferred form of cruelty by drug cartel henchmen is to capture enemies and behead them, a once-shocking act that has now become numbingly routine; decapitations emerged alongside another gruesome tactic — dumping the bodies of rivals in vats of acid; cartel goons have moved away from that method, however
Summary executions, kidnappings, torture, and beheadings — we are not talking about al Qaeda, but about Mexican cartels. The cartels have executed more than 10,000 people since January — five times the rate three years ago, before Mexican president Felipe Calderon deployed the Mexican military against the syndicates.
“The cartels don’t have to work like Colombia did for a middle man in Florida or in Texas or anywhere. They have people they know,” Tony Leal, the chief of the Texas Rangers, told Fox News.
Family and friends help the cartels move their product with ease across the porous U.S. border. They even recruit in U.S. prisons.
The Mexican drug business, valued at $40 billion a year, is divided among seven cartels:
- The Arellano Felix Organization, or Tijuana Cartel, is based south of San Diego.
- The Juarez Cartel is situated south of El Paso.
- Their war with the rival Sinaloa cartel has left 2,300 people dead in Juarez this year.
- La Familia is a pseudo-religious cult that operates as a cartel near Mexico City.
- There are also the Zetas, rogue Mexican Special Forces.
- Members of the Zeta once served as the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel in eastern Mexico. Earlier this year, they broke away, creating their own cartel.
- There is also the Beltran Levya, whose American-born kingpin leader is known as “La Barbie,” nicknamed because his blond hair made him look like a Ken doll. He grew up in El Paso, played football in high school, was recruited in a U.S. prison, and was arrested in Mexico in August.
Fox News notes that the cartel leaders are an eclectic group. The head of the Zetas is known simply as the Executioner and uses tigers to scare his victims.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes became head of the Juarez cartel in 1997 after his brother died undergoing plastic surgery.
“Shorty” Guzman, only 5-foot tall, heads the Sinaloa cartel. He made last year’s Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people.
A newly released interrogation video shows a captured drug trafficker saying this week that the head of La Familia is tired and may be seeking a truce with the government and other cartels.
Gulf Cartel head Tony Tormenta, known as Tango Tango to U.S. law enforcement, was assassinated two weeks ago in Tamaulipas, not far
