23 Dead in 24 Hours in Escalation of Mexican Violence

[tekisui]

At least 23 people died in the most violent 24 hours in recent years in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, police and officials said Thursday.

The grim toll included nine people slain during a prayer service.

A gang armed with AK-47s sprayed the mass in a drug rehabilitation center with bullets late Wednesday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, killing eight patients and their minister, police said.

At least five people were seriously injured in the shooting, as violence escalated in Mexico's northern border regions, where drug gangs are fighting for territory.

After the shooting, the assassins left the scene and calmly passed a group of security forces, who did nothing to detain them, said a statement from the municipal office of public security, quoting witnesses.

Two people were also killed in a nearby rehabilitation center last weekend.

Meanwhile, 14 others were found dead Thursday in separate incidents in Chihuahua state, eight of them in volatile Ciudad Juarez, including a local police officer and a lawyer executed in his office.

Police found two bodies in a house where drugs were being stored, and four others lay in the street with bullet wounds.

Ciudad Juarez is the battleground in the power struggle between the Sinaloa drug cartel, headed by fugitive Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and the Juarez cartel, led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Since Friday more than 60 people have been assassinated in the town, which has registered 780 homicides so far this year.

more...

[donco6]

1. Guess they don't want any "rehabilitatin'" going on?

Yeeek.

[gateley]

2. "Since Friday more than 60 people have been assassinated in the town..."

This is surreal. Like Mad Max. I can't imagine living like that - those poor people.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. We have had some shootouts in Chula Vista that follow the same pattern

I saw ten years ago when this shit started down there

It will come to the states full force SOON... relatively speaking

That, or we legalize the shit.

And yes, AKs have a nasty, very distinct sound to them

[Selatius]

4. I can imagine the US turning into a Mad Max movie with the way things are going.

If the US economy collapses, people are going to get desperate.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. All bets are off at that point. As is the civil war is STARTING to go hot

so it will be fun... NOT

I am so glad I don't have kids at this stage

[gateley]

5. It won't come the USA -- We have a War on Drugs!

:eyes:

We need to legalize - I'm not sure there's any other rational approach. (She says, as though this country has a rational approach to ANYTHING.)

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I know you meant this in a sarcastic sense

but trust me, that IS the war on drugs... the real deal...

I was lucky I was never hit... but got close a couple times... and for god sakes I was medic in a clearly marked ambulance with ahem, target acquisition devices... (red crosses)

On edit, my ambulances were hit... I mean ME... as in my FLESH

What do you want me to tell you about Traffic and what was changed to protect the guilty?

[gateley]

8. Yeah -I'm being sarcastic.

This country -- if you want something to flourish, just declare a war on it.

I would be sickened and angered to hear your stories. Sometimes it seems like it's just too much to bear -- too much wrong to ever be able to make it right. Overwhelming.

[annm4peace]

9. Guns probably came from U.S.

Saw on a news show that Smugglers are coming up to US to buy AK's made in Las Vegas and smuggling them to Mexico.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Not probably, but DID come from the US

ten years ago... actually longer than that by now

We took a patient to the border

On the US side INS was showing the US Press their latest success story in drug interdiction

On the Mexican side the Army was showing the press their latest weapons interdiction

I turned to one bright reporter and pointed to both... and said, you know they're related

The INS guy chuckled and then said... "neither press wants to connect those dots."

To say that it chilled me is to put it mildly.

[pipoman]

12. AK4 machine guns DO NOT come from the US

Maybe some semi auto hand guns and small caliber rifles, but the claims of machine guns coming from the US are lies. AK47 rifles are not now nor have they ever been made in the US. There is no automatic weapon crime problem in the US, possession of automatic weapons in the US without permits result in 10 years in club fed for each gun. OTOH South America is awash with eastern bloc AK47 rifles which are very cheap. If automatic weapons were coming from the US they would be a crime problem in the US, they aren't.

[benEzra]

13. Not real ones. The drug cartels are using REAL ones, the automatic kind.

Not to mention the ex-Warsaw-Pact RPG-7's they're shooting each other with.

Actual automatic AK-47's are as tightly controlled in the USA as 105mm howitzers, tanks, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers. You can't get them at your local gun store.

Are some U.S. made handguns, and even a few non-automatic civilian rifles, ending up south of the border? Sure. But the automatic weapons and rocket launchers are leftovers from the US-Soviet proxy wars in Central America, not the U.S. civilian firearms market.

[intheflow]

11. I'll bet this would have a lot more recs if people realized how close this is to the US border.

Hard to tell from the OP title.


This is the logical outcome of the War on Drugs.

[benEzra]

14. A good read on the roots of Mexico's decent into narco-anarchy, and why it's our fault:

A good read on the roots of Mexico's decent into narco-anarchy, and why it's our fault:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/billmcclellan/story/643247EDB3F578C28625744C001AB995?OpenDocument

Corporations or cartels? A choice of ink over blood
By Bill McClellan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/18/2008

One week after Edgar Millan Gomez was killed in Mexico City, Anheuser-Busch announced it was giving up the right to import Grolsch, a Dutch beer. "The time is right to end our importation," said David A. Peacock, vice president of marketing for Anheuser-Busch. Analysts said the announcement was no surprise. In February, London-based SABMiller, the parent of Miller Brewing, bought the Dutch brewery that makes Grolsch. So it made no sense for Anheuser-Busch to use its considerable muscle to import a beer that is now owned by its chief rival.

Perhaps you're wondering what that has to do with the death of Millan Gomez. He was Mexico's federal police chief, and he was gunned down outside of his home by assassins who are assumed to have been working for a drug cartel. The cartels have been targeting government officials because the government has been trying to crack down on the cartels. The government is making this effort because the violence between the cartels has gotten out of hand. Authorities estimate more than 2,500 people have been killed in the last year as the cartels have battled over the control of the cocaine traffic from South America to the U.S. In other words, importation and exportation rights.

There was a time when we had cartels fighting over the booze trade. Perhaps the most famous booze cartel leader was Al Capone. In 1929, some members of his cartel killed seven members of a cartel headed by Bugs Moran. That incident became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The dispute that led to the massacre had to do with importation rights from Detroit. The Capone cartel had the rights to whiskey from Detroit, but the Moran cartel had been hijacking some shipments. Largely because of incidents like that, the feds made a real effort to stamp out the booze cartels. But they couldn't. There was too much demand. People liked to drink. Call it a weakness, if you want, but as long as people wanted to buy booze, somebody was going to provide it. For a long time, it was guys like Capone and Moran. Eventually, law-abiding people got tired of the killing and the bribery. Prohibition was ended. In essence, we traded Al Capone for August Busch. So now, when there is a conflict about importation rights, we have an announcement from a vice president of marketing.

...

Because these drugs are flowing through Mexico, that country runs the risk of becoming a narco-state. The illicit drug trade creates such immense profits that public officials can be bought or assassinated. Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. Millan Gomez was the 10th federal police official to be murdered in the past two months. The week before he was killed, Roberto Velasco Bravo was killed. He was the head of the organized crime division in the public security ministry. Local police officials are being targeted, too. Earlier this year, the commander of public safety for Juarez was murdered, and before him, the police chief of Tecate was murdered. On and on it goes. It is always clear who gets the lead. It is not so clear who gets the silver.

(Continued at link)

And FWIW, the ex-Warsaw-Pact military hardware the cartels are using in these conflicts do NOT come from the USA. But with the $40 BILLION in tax-free annual income we are providing the cartels via Prohibition, they can buy pretty much whatever the hell they want on the international arms market. That is more than the annual defense budgets of many countries.

[INDIA]

15. uhhh...can we build that border fence a little faster please?

:scared: