Posted on 05/13/2012 12:10:24 PM PDT by Pinkbell
MONTERREY, Mexico — Forty-nine decapitated and mutilated bodies were found Sunday dumped on a highway connecting the northern Mexican metropolis of Monterrey to the U.S. border in what could be the latest outburst in an escalating war of terror among drug gangs.
Mexico’s organized crime groups often abandon multiple bodies in public places as warnings to their rivals, though Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility that the victims were U.S.-bound migrants.
The bodies of the 43 men and six women were found in the town of San Juan on the non-toll highway to the border city of Reynosa at about 4 a.m. (5 a.m. EDT; 0900 GMT), forcing police and troops to close off the highway. Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news conference that a banner left at the site bore a message with the Zetas drug cartel taking responsibility for the massacre.
Domene said the fact the bodies were found with the heads, hands and feet cut off will make identification difficult. The bodies were being taken to Monterrey for DNA tests.
De la Garza said the victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, a town in Cadereyta municipality, about 105 miles (175 kilometers) west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, or 75 miles (125 kilometers) southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing.
Mexican drug cartels have been waging an increasingly bloody war to control smuggling routes, the local drug market and extortion rackets, including shakedowns of migrants seeking to reach the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You couldn't get me to go to Mexico. I always wonder about people on various game or tv shows who win trips to Mexico. Are bodyguards provided?
Ir drugs were legalized and regulated these cartels would be out of business. The cartels and drug enforcement agencies are united in not wanting that to happen.
Not all of these victims are ‘innocent people’. Many of them are drug traffickers bound for the U.S. and some had drug gang tattoos on their bodies.
I’m with you. Mexico has really deteriorated.
It’s our fault though, you know that right?
And btw, even if these guy were illegal migrants, WHO KILLED THEM?
The heads & hands missing is weird, I mean, if their murders are meant as a warning, don’t you want others to know who they are? And if they’re a bunch of poor schlub illegals, who cares?
Someone here said a while ago that this has very little to do with drugs or even general criminality. It has to do with Mexicans reverting to their ancient cultic behavior of human sacrifice, etc.
That made a lot of sense to me.
I think a serious tourist boycott might be a solution to these problems. I honestly don’t know who in their right mind would go there. We were almost going to go there a few years ago, long story short, we didn’t. Thank goodness!
Possibly the 49 who helped dig a new tunnel under the border?
I’m betting they weren’t killed by the Zetas, they keep their menagerie of lions fed on their victims.
If just pot were legalized, the resulting tax revenues might create a surplus, and the economy would be stimulated with a new, highly popular industry. Then there would be the savings in law enforcement, both in terms of cash costs and human capital. But noooooo. It has to stay illegal because it has to stay illegal because it has to stay illegal.
You're saying these people will stop chopping others to pieces once they realize it's bad for tourism?
Along with trial lawyers, parole officers, drug councilors,etc etc cause they all make good money riding that horse.
Add to that the hundreds (thousands?) of street gangs in the USA that fund themselves through the drug trade.
Scary.
If drugs were legalized where would these subhumans channel their barbaric energies?
No they won’t. They just move on to other crimes, home invasion, kidnapping for ransom, human and arms smuggling, extortion, terrorist smuggling, espionage.
Michelle Obama says its safe in Mexico.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/michelle-obama-mexico-safe-visit-10378381
Some will, but it wouldn't make up for losing hundreds of billions of revenue. Besides they do all that anyway, but they are much better funded.
It can get WORSE than anarchy..
“Michelle Obama says its safe in Mexico.
___
Then I think she should go there with out her massive security detail..
Not a big difference between street thugs or gubmint thugs
I’m so happy that the people from a country that has a culture like this has infiltrated the United States.
Since rabbits are jealous of their ability to reproduce, I’d say the US has about 15-20 years left until it becomes known as northern Mexico.
Please press 687 if by the small chance you happen to speak English.
I think an underground group of 1,000 vigilantes trained in Special Forces would help, along with movies detailing their successes.
And the Administration doesn’t care whether the DOJ and ATF supplied the weaponry.
How can that be? You mean to tell me that Fast and Furious ISN’T working? /heavy sarcasm
Liberals are intent on facilitating Mexico coming to you..
Now let’s not lose our HEADS over this....
Right you are. When Prohibition ended, the mafia did not disappear. It just moved on to other crimes.
That's why it's too simplistic to think that everything would be so much better if drugs were legalized.
Who knows if some other evil would come on the scene if drug dealing were not an issue. Maybe today’s would be evildoers would mostly be too stoned to do any harm.
Quite true that presented with nowhere to go, crime syndicates do not quietly bow out. It would have been better to have left the control of all medications in the purview of doctors, and the likes of the Zetas would never have been seen. However with much effort the Mafia has been pushed down to near nothingness today. It is fortunate that they never got heavily into the drug trade, or it would be a different story.
49 more that won’t come here....
I can see a day where pot is legal in this country, but I don’t envision the legalization of harder drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin. The cartels will simply shift their focus to the remaining illegal drugs.
The cartels would be eliminated as a supplier. Instead, it could be grown and cured domestically, and distributed to bars and smoke shops, the same as liquor (also formerly illegal) and tobacco. Taxes would be collected, and the domestically grown and distributed product could be regulated to keep it out of the hands of minors.
The international drug problem would not “magically disappear,” but pot would no longer be a part of it. And that would also make it easier to deal with the harder substances, such as meth, crack, coke, heroine and ecstacy, because the DEA, FBI and related agencies would no longer have to run around after pot traffickers. The illicit growers, smugglers and tax evading distributors could be handled by the ATF, which also handles the same enforcement problems for alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
The new industry would be an economic stimulant, and generate tax revenues. Law enforcement costs would be reduced. Perhaps even demand for the harder substances would be reduced, because pot would be available and legal, just as rot gut liquor became less in demand after Prohibition ended and consumers could finally buy beer.
Yep.
“and then the cartels, which have billions upon billions and their own armies go to war directly with the US Gov’t. You don’t think that the cartels will be willing to double their overhead to make the same yearly money, undercutting the “legal” trade? The cartels’ import channels are already set and far cheaper to operate than anything the US Gov’t could provide.”
They wouldn’t go to war over pot, not while they still have their illegal trade in meth, coke, heroine, etc. If they would, then the very least thing we have to worry about is whether pot is legal, and the US government should go to war immediately with the cartels just because they are a threat.
The cartels’ import channels are cheaper than the US-provided import channels, but who’s talking about importing? It can be grown domestically. Indoor growing can produce a higher-quality product than outdoor growing, but vast tracts of farmland are available for the latter, tracts that are currently devoted to government-subsidized tobacco crops. This is a cash crop that pays for itself without the need for a federal subsidy. At present, the inflating expense in growing pot domestically is in evading law enforcement. Once that is eliminated, there is only the ordinary cost of cultivation. Private industry is more efficient than anything the federal government can provide, and the cartels are living proof of that. Take away pot, and the cartels still exist, but they no longer have pot. If legalization works there, perhaps hashish and law-concentration opiates can be added.
Nothing really.
So why cure cancer, if you can’t eliminate death? It solves one thing: Pot trafficking, and that portion of the violence, corruption and death caused by it. It also eliminates a portion of the demand for the hard drugs, just as legalizing liquor eliminated a portion of the demand for wood alcohol and moonshine. Moonshine still is made and sold, but it’s a marginal industry now. There are no magic solutions. There are policies that mitigate problems, and policies that exacerbate them.
Then dealing with them is a separate problem, and pot is an unnecessary distraction to dealing with a larger problem.
There you go, making sense and all that.
All drugs were decriminalized in Mexico over a year ago.
The violence hasn’t subsided.
Decriminalization and legalization merely reduce the justification for law enforcement to intervene in criminal behavior.
You mean, the US government has neither the courage nor the resources to keep the cartels from attacking Americans on their own soil? Why not just surrender, then. TR would hide his head in shame.
Allow me to point out that it is still illegal here. Legalize it here and good old fashioned American competition takes care of things.
About 5 years ago the cartels already announced their intentions of taking over all pharmaceutical corporations.
They are similar to organized crime from the 30s in La Cosa Nostra. After they developed the cities, migrating to building Las Vegas, then into corporate Amercia Entertainment Industry, they simply corrupt other avenues.
Unlike the US flavor of mafia, the cartels have a more Latino impression of politics. They don’t believe so much in God given inalienable rights, as much as they believe in El Heffe and the subservience to his power. They remain obedient to their interpretation of power, then when they believe they are seated with such authority, demand allegiance to their whims, becoming very incensed when those less powerful happen to act in any fashion they had not anticipated others would respond to their whims.
If the cartels are so super-duper powerful, that their threat of attacking American farmers for daring to grow a legal crop is sufficient to deter you, then you are no longer a super power. If the cartels are such a threat, you should be aggressively going after them, not forbidding the cultivation of canabas for fear they might cross the border. If Mexico is so helpless before the cartels, it is no longer a law enforcement problem, but a military one. If it were up to me, I’d legalize pot and DARE the cartels to cross the border. Not in spite of the threat, but BECAUSE of it.
Wow. If it were to be a policy such as that established by you, and my family was killed in the resulting crossfire, I would come after you and not the cartels.
It’s reckless thinking like that which has thrown Mexico back to the Aztec times, except now they also have Islamic terrorism training to boot.
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