Mexico's Drug War - Page 51

On August 31 2014 12:54 blade55555 wrote:


That sucks dude, but I am sorry to say I have a feeling even if the drugs were legal these drug cartels would go into something else and it wouldn't stop the violence. These kind of people aren't going to go from killing people to "oh now that drugs are legal I am going to become a good person".

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The alleged leader of the Juarez drug cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, has been arrested in the northern city of Torreon, two Mexican officials said Thursday.

Carrillo Fuentes, 51, heads the cartel founded by his late brother, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and Mexico had offered a reward of 30 million pesos ($2.2 million) for his arrest.

It was the second capture of a major drug lord in as many weeks. Mexican authorities nabbed Hector Beltran Leyva as he ate fish tacos in a seafood restaurant in central Mexico on Oct. 1.

The two officials who revealed the information about Carrillo Fuentes' arrest insisted on speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Carrillo Fuentes, better known as "The Viceroy" or "The General," took over control of the Juarez drug cartel after his brother Amado, nicknamed "The Lord of the Skies," died in 1997 in a botched cosmetic surgery. Amado got his nickname by flying planeloads of drugs into the United States.

Vicente carried on trafficking on a more modest scale, but in a much more violent era for the cartel. Based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Carrillo Fuentes led the gang in a battle for control of the area's trafficking routes with interlopers from the Sinaloa cartel, engaging in a multi-year war that cost at least 8,000 lives. The area is estimated to be the route of passage for as much as 70 percent of the cocaine entering the United States.

On the second story of the municipal palace in Iguala, Mexico, Mayor Jose Luis Abarca occupied the large corner office. His wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, head of the city's family welfare department, occupied the one right next door. From there, residents say, the two ruthlessly ruled over this city of 150,000 in the southern state of Guerrero. A national newspaper dubbed the duo the "imperial couple."

But on Sept. 30, their reign ended. The mayor, with his wife by his side, asked the city council for a leave of absence. Neither has been seen since.

That happened four days after 43 university students disappeared after a confrontation with police in Iguala. Twenty-eight bodies — thought to be some of the missing students — were discovered in a nearby mass grave a week ago. More mass graves were discovered Friday.

The case highlights the corruption and collusion between politicians and drug traffickers in many parts of rural Mexico today.

Residents say Iguala changed under the current Mayor Abarca's tenure.

"Crime has been terrible since Jose Luis Abarca took over," says Claudia Guitierrez, a 20-year-old law student. "Iguala was never like this before."

These days Mexico's new paramilitary gendarmerie patrols Iguala's streets. Twenty-two local cops are under arrest, four are fugitives, and the remainder of the force was relieved of duty.

Authorities say that on Sept. 26, officers shot at three buses of students from a poor, rural teaching college who had come into town soliciting donations. After the shooting, with six people dead, the local cops were seen corralling the surviving students into patrol cars. Reportedly some of the officers confessed to turning the students over to a local drug gang, which later killed them.

For a company that booked $12 million in annual sales importing snacks like chile- and lime-flavored chips from Mexico, Baja Distributors Inc.'s offices were oddly quiet. There were no signs outside. Its small warehouse was almost empty. Phones went unanswered.

Investigators say there was a reason for the anonymity: The business was laundering money from Mexican drug traffickers. Baja Distributors, whose executives denied laundering drug money, brought more than $17 million from Mexico in 18 months.

U.S. front companies for cartels aren't new, but U.S. officials say they took a more prominent role after Mexico capped dollar deposits in cash at $7,000 a month for businesses in 2010, later raised to $14,000. As a result, they say, cartels sought companies to deposit money in American banks and wire it back in pesos under the guise of international trade.

San Diego, the largest American city on Mexico's border, became a magnet for cash coming to the country from Mexico, according to an Associated Press analysis of customs declarations since 2009.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto lifted the restrictions last month, saying the anti-money laundering measure harmed honest businesses. The move sparked concern among some U.S. officials that cartels may go back to walking into Mexican banks to deposit sacks of drug-tainted dollars.

"If one day you have a restriction and the next day that restriction no longer exists, one would think logically that it now becomes easier," said Joseph Burke, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Bulk Cash Smuggling Center.

On October 06 2014 10:13 Wegandi wrote:


Economics would dictate that they'd not have the funding to maintain any semblance of their current strength. There's a reason the dismantling of Prohibition led to the downfalls of folks like Al Capone. If they would have legalized gambling much sooner the problem would have even ended that much quicker. Right now, the Cartel's rely on Government's as their competition eradicating enforcers. Allow people to freely compete, produce, and trade and these folks would be footnotes in history.

On October 13 2014 08:34 Nachtwind wrote:


Still don´t get how our governments don´t see the beauty in this. Tax it, with the tax money build roads, schools, education, invest into prevention, science, and so on...

After some time the investment into prevention and taxing will equal out but will stay on a healthy basis. Win-Win like in any textbook. The people that are taking drugs are taking drugs, they would have done it so or so. But your general society is way more educated, healthy and open minded than before.

I don´t get it.

On October 13 2014 08:41 Hryul wrote:

you do realize there are downsides to legalizing i.e. heroin, right? and afaik the US government is on the way of legalizing weed, they just don't admit it.

On October 13 2014 09:05 JumboJohnson wrote:
Kind of an old article but here. Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal

On October 13 2014 08:41 Hryul wrote:

you do realize there are downsides to legalizing i.e. heroin, right? and afaik the US government is on the way of legalizing weed, they just don't admit it.

On October 13 2014 20:36 misirlou wrote:

As a portuguese I like to know that at least our government did something right before anyone else. There's still plenty to be done, like legalization (not a crime != legal) and taxing, but the effects of the decriminalization are really visible.

On October 13 2014 22:17 Kickboxer wrote:
The single bad thing about legalizing everything would be companies producing hyper-marketed and chemically treated drugs in order to sell them to kids and get people brand addicted, but that, like most problems of our time, is the issue of unscrupulous and profit-before-everything business practices rather than the issue of legalization.

Mass kidnappings and the discovery of mass graves in the Mexican State of Guerrero, a prime tourist destination on the Pacific coast, forced the U.S. Department of State to update its Mexico Travel Warning. The new warning, issued on October 10, calls on Americans to “defer non-essential travel to all parts” of Guerrero, except for the cities of Acapulco, Zihuatanejo, Ixtapa, Taxco and the caves at Grutas de Cacahuamilpa, where visitors area advised to “exercise caution.”

The State Department does not say what prompted the update from its previous advisory issued August 15, just two months ago. But it is a good guess that it was caused by hightened security concerns for Americans tourists in Guerrero, a preferred place for tourists that is rapidly becoming ungovernable. According to the Mexican government, Guerrero was the most violent state in 2013, with 2,087 homicides and 207 reported cases of kidnapping.

The State Department warning asks Americans to avoid traveling on highways, except for one toll road, to be used only during daylight hours. When traveling to the beach resort of Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa, the State Department recommends flying. It also recommends limiting lodging to Acapulco’s “hotel zone” and to remain within the tourists areas.

On a less alarming note, the Travel Warning says that here is no evidence that organized criminal groups have targeted U.S. visitors. Resort areas and tourist destinations in Mexico “generally do not see the levels of drug-related violence and crime” that exist in other regions.

Nearly 70 kidnappings of U.S. citizens were reported to the U.S. Embassy and consulates in Mexico between January and June of 2014, not a very high number given that millions of Americans visit Mexico every year.

Police in southern Mexico have shot and wounded a German student while on the hunt for a gang, in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. The shooting happened in the crime-plagued Guerrero state.

The 25-year-old German student was shot on Sunday while traveling in a van through Chilpancingo, capital of the state of Guerrero. He was one of a group of students in the van on their way back from the seaport of Acapulco.

State prosecutors said the van ignored a checkpoint set up by state police, following clashes with a gang. Police tried to stop the van, believing it to be suspicious, and opened fire after hearing what sounded like a shot or detonation. The students, fearing they could be kidnapped, kept driving.

"(The van) didn't stop, and some agents used their firearms, because a noise similar to a gunshot was immediately heard," the Guerrero state government said in a statement.

A spokesperson told a press conference that officers shot at the bottom of the van, trying to make it stop. Between 15-20 officers are undergoing questioning and their weapons are being tested.

On October 14 2014 00:02 Hryul wrote:

Well but what your country did was decriminalizing drugs for the end users. it's still illegal to trade (large quantities of) drugs or import them.

and I don't need to highlight downsides, because

but i find the naivety of your "business critics" rather disturbing. because when alexander the great conquered the middle east there were no bad people around. naaah.
also the baker selling you bread isn't doing it because he likes you but rather because he puts his profit before everything. else he would give it away for free.

furthermore: highly addictive drugs and driving are always a problem.

i just felt that you made it sound like "allow free drug trade and all will be good". it's just not as simple as that.

On October 14 2014 07:46 Nachtwind wrote:


Neither side in this theoretical environment can be true. You´re saying driving will be a problem than again you can´t proof that there would be a increase in either quantity or quality of what we have now versus a situation where drugs would be given out by the government, regulated and observed and with rules bound to consumers but legal and informed.

But my opinion is, as someone who don´t even consume drugs (pity that i even feel the need to underline that) that even a full released regulated drug selling by the government, observed by health care can´t be worse for the society as a whole as we have now.

I won´t say it won´t have negative effects. I though say those effects are "less" meaning full and more manageable than we what have now.

On October 15 2014 00:09 Hryul wrote:

well then we can agree to disagree. We can't know the effects of drugs sold by "the government" (which would more likely be other coorporations), because this is still quite different from the measures of portugal.
it all depends if drug use would in- or decrease.
the problem with highly addictive drugs like H would be that you can't try it and then decide if you want to continue taking it. because, well, highly addictive.