Mexico's Drug War - Page 37

On March 20 2010 05:44 gmonty wrote:
Is the general media black out in Mexico (at least, that is how I perceive it) a deliberate attempt at calming the population, or just to evade showing the failures of government measures to curb cartel influence in the country? Woah, this turned out to be a long one.

Twelve Mexican police have died in a mountain highway ambush hours after the severed heads of 10 people were dumped in a small town in a key illegal drug growing region.

Gunmen opened fire on Sunday evening on a police convoy, killing 12 officers and wounding 11 more, said Arturo Martinez, spokesman for the Guerrero state government said on Monday.

The ambush took place on a rural highway near the town of Teloloapan, located in southern Mexico between the beach resort of Acapulco and Mexico City.

Earlier Sunday, the severed heads of 10 people were lined along a street outside a slaughterhouse in the center of Teloloapan.

The region has been long used by drug gangs to grow marijuana. Surrounding Guerrero state has seen a spike in violence since last year as several major gangs battle over trafficking routes.

The La Familia cartel and its offshoot, Los Caballeros Templarios (The Knights Templar), are among the gangs fighting for territory in the region. The heads had been left with a message threatening the La Familia gang, local media reported.

More than 50,000 people, including more than 2,500 police and soldiers, have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led crackdown on the cartels after taking office five years ago.

A retired general who was convicted and later cleared of aiding one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords has been shot and killed in Mexico City, authorities have said.

Former Brigadier General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro was attacked while at a car repair garage in the Anahuac neighbourhood and died at a hospital on Friday, Mexico City Attorney General Jesus Rodriguez Almeida said.

Witnesses told police that Acosta had just arrived at the garage to drop off a car when a lone gunman approached him and shot him three times in the head, Rodriguez said.

The assailant used a 9mm handgun and got away on a waiting motorcycle driven by an accomplice, the attorney general said.

The former soldier had survived a 2010 attack in the Mexico City neighbourhood of La Roma where gunmen shot him in the abdomen.

Acosta was incarcerated in 2000 on charges of protecting Amado Carillo Fuentes, a leader of the Juarez drug cartel who had died three years earlier after botched plastic surgery.

But in 2007 a panel of judges overturned Acosta's drug-trafficking conviction and ordered him released, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove the alleged links to Carillo Fuentes.

In 2002, Acosta was accused of homicide in the disappearance of leftist activists and revolutionaries during the government's "dirty war" against dissent during the 1970s and 1980s.

A judge determined Acosta was not responsible for the disappearances and the charges were dismissed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government said Thursday that 68,000 guns recovered by Mexican authorities in the past five years have been traced back to the United States.

The flood of tens of thousands of weapons underscores complaints from Mexico that the U.S. is responsible for arming the drug cartels plaguing its southern neighbor. Six years of violence between warring cartels have killed more than 47,000 people in Mexico.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released its latest data covering 2007 through 2011. According to ATF, many of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to ATF for tracing were recovered at the scenes of cartel shootings while others were seized in raids on illegal arms caches. All the recovered weapons were suspected of being used in crimes in Mexico.

At an April 2 North American summit in Washington, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the U.S. government has not done enough to stop the flow of assault weapons and other guns from the U.S. to Mexico.

On February 10 2012 22:45 DarkShadowz wrote:
Legalizing drugs is not a good idea. There is a very good reason for them to be illegal in the first place. But maybe you pro legalization thinks that opium for example had a positive effect on China.

I have worked for an organization that informs kids about the dangers of drugs. I have seen plenty of people ruining their lives and their loved ones because of drugs. You are NOT yourself when you take them. You might find it fun and dandy in the beginning but eventually they will start taking over your life. That is a fact. Either you get out in time or you will get fucked over.

To everyone taking drugs here. YOU are responsible for the murder of thousands of people, and the suffering of millions wich is the consequense of the drug cartells hindering the development of countries. Not to mention the enviromental problems they cause. You can't hide from that fact, saying it's bad won't stop any of that. It's like shooting people with a gun and complaining that they should ban weapons because they are bad. If you live in a democracy and want drugs to be legal the way you go about it is to try and start an opinion about it, you don't take drugs as a protest. That's bad for the democracy, but maybe you don't belive in that system what do I know.

Drugs are mainly produced in weak countries. Like afghanistan produced like 80% of the worlds opium. People in central and south america produce cocaine because they can't survive if they don't. The situation isn't easy but making it legal would bring so much suffering long term I would never support it. I know I'm a bit aggressive when it comes to drugs but I have seen and talked with drug addicts, and that certainly isn't fun.

VERACRUZ, Mexico — Authorities in the Mexican state of Veracruz say the body of a journalist with the national newsmagazine Proceso has been found dead inside her home.

The Veracruz Attorney General's Office has released a statement saying Regina Martinez's body was found in the bathroom of her house in Xalapa, Veracruz, and that authorities believe she was murdered.

The statement said that the journalist's body showed signs of "blows to the head and body" and initial evidence suggested she died of asphyxiation.

Martinez was the Xalapa correspondent for Proceso, one of Mexico's oldest and most respected investigative newsmagazines, and often covered drug trafficking in her stories.

A total of 23 bodies have been found hanging from a bridge or dismembered in ice boxes and garbage bags in northeastern Mexico, in an escalation of brutal violence involving rival drug gangs on the US border.

Bodies of five men and four women were found on Friday hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas state just across the border from the Texas city of Laredo.

Police could not confirm who was responsible for the murders but a message seen with the bodies indicated it may have been an attack by the Zetas cartel against the rival Gulf cartel.

Hours later, police found the dismembered corpses of 14 people in garbage bags and ice boxes dumped near the police station of Nuevo Laredo, police investigators said.

They said the second massacre could have been an act of revenge for the earlier killings.

Mexican authorities have found the dismembered bodies of at least 49 people stuffed into bags and dumped on a highway near the northern industrial city of Monterrey in what appeared to be part of a string of brutal drug gang killings, local media reported.

The bodies were found in the early hours of Sunday, sparking a large deployment of local, state and military officials to the scene, daily Excelsior reported on its website.

"We are still in the process of counting the bodies, but there are at least 37 that we have tallied so far," a spokesperson for the state of Nuevo Leon, the home state of Monterrey, told the AFP news agency.

The bodies were found on an isolated stretch of the highway 180km from the US border.

The report follows a string of atrocities, including 18 people who were found decapitated and dismembered near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara, on Wednesday.

Just a few days earlier, there were 23 killings in the city of Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas state which borders the United States, comprising nine people found hanging from a bridge and 14 others that had been decapitated.

Mexico's former deputy defense minister and a top army general are being questioned for suspected links to organized crime.

Mexican soldiers on Tuesday detained retired general Tomas Angeles Dauahare and general Roberto Dawe Gonzalez and turned them over to the country's organized crime unit, military and government officials said.

This is the highest-level scandal to hit the military in the five-year-old drug war initiated by President Felipe Calderon.

More than 50,000 people have died in drug-related violence since then.

Angeles was assistant defence minister from 2006-2008 and helped lead the government's crackdown on drug cartels after soldiers were deployed to the streets in late 2006.

Gonzalez, still an active duty general, led an elite army unit in the western state of Colima and local media said he previously held posts in the violent states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua.

An official at the attorney general's office, said the generals would be held for several days to give testimony and then could be called in front of a judge.

On May 17 2012 09:29 Goozen wrote:
What alot of people who do drugs in the US and Canada do not realize is they are actively funding these groups every time they buy drugs, even weed. i do not want this to cause the whole legalize and then it will stop thing as its not relevant to this topic, its just something all these "peace and love" types should keep in mind. And not just Mexican cartels who get money from drugs even bigger terror groups like Al qaeda and Hezbollah get funding this way.

On May 17 2012 09:44 Warillions wrote:


stop talking out your ass. i buy weed from a friend that grows it. how does that contribute to mexico's problem at all? your blaming weed for the problems. and its not the weed, its the fact that its illegal. make tobacco illegal and watch the drug cartels get rich from it. you narrow minded twit

On May 17 2012 09:54 Goozen wrote:

Did you notice where i said "alot" and not all?
Also the reason im not talking about the legality is because im talking about the status quo. If you didnt know where it came from would you buy it is the question? im fine with people fighting to legalize it, but the question is in the interim do they do they do drugs? and if so from where?

Ill change the post to make it clear that im not talking about all drug users. but the fact remains that this is their major source of revenue (and not just weed, never did i say only weed. its alot more form harder drugs) so even if you are a "responsible" consumer alot of people are not.

On May 17 2012 09:29 Goozen wrote:
What alot of people who do drugs in the US and Canada do not realize is that...

On May 17 2012 09:54 Goozen wrote:

Did you notice where i said "alot" and not all?
Also the reason im not talking about the legality is because im talking about the status quo. If you didnt know where it came from would you buy it is the question? im fine with people fighting to legalize it, but the question is in the interim do they do they do drugs? and if so from where?

Ill change the post to make it clear that im not talking about all drug users. but the fact remains that this is their major source of revenue (and not just weed, never did i say only weed. its alot more form harder drugs) so even if you are a "responsible" consumer alot of people are not.