Top two crime cartels wreak havoc in effort to intimidate authorities

mexico city — The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view — some of the victims most likely innocents.

ALEJANDRO ACOSTA/REUTERS Juan Carlos Antonio Mercado, a local leader of the Zetas cartel, was closely guarded this month at police headquarters in Guadalajara, Mexico. Mercado has asserted responsibility for dismembering 18 people.

With the groups no longer limiting themselves to regional skirmishes, the older, established drug-smuggling Sinaloa cartel is now fighting the brash, young paramilitary Zetas crime organization across multiple front lines in Mexico in a desperate battle, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and security analysts on both sides of the border.
As the number of total homicides in Mexico has been slowly dropping, the sensational violence spikes higher, creating an atmosphere of instability that makes Mexicans and American visitors fear travel in wide stretches of country that even Mexican military leaders concede are not completely under state control.
The two gangs and their surrogates continue to quietly kill each other, but they are also staging public massacres in order to terrify civilians, cow authorities and taunt outgoing President Felipe Calderon, who has made his U.S.backed confrontation with the cartels a centerpiece of his administration.
“What was once viewed as extreme is now normal. So these gangs must find new extremes. And the only real limit is their imagination, and you do not want to know what is the limit of psychopaths,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a nonpartisan think tank.
In the past month alone, in what authorities describe as a gruesome version of text messaging, the two criminal groups and their allies deposited 14 headless bodies in front of the city hall in the border community of Nuevo Laredo and hanged nine people, including four women, from a bridge in the same city.
They have left 18 dismembered bodies in vans near Lake Chapala, an area frequented by tourists and U.S. retirees outside Guadalajara. They used a dump truck to unload 49 more corpses, missing not only heads but also feet and hands, outside Monterrey, Mexico’s main industrial city.
To guarantee the widest possible audience, they posted a video of themselves dumping the bodies, plus a banner: “Gulf cartel, Sinaloa cartel, marines and soldiers, nobody can do anything against us or they will lose . . . ”
It was signed with names of Zeta leaders.


— Mexico’s drug war: As Mexico’s drug war rages on, the country remains stricken with a kind of social poverty.

“We’ve had over recent weeks these despicable inhuman acts in different parts of the country that are part of an irrational struggle mainly between two of the existing criminal organizations and their criminal allies,” said Mexico’s interior minister, Alejandro Poire.
Fighting among Mexican crime gangs is nothing new. What is new: the Sinaloa cartel creating alliances with former competitors — the Gulf cartel, the remnants of the Arellano Felix brothers in Tijuana, new elements of Michoacan’s La Familia gang — to beat back the ascendent Zetas and their allies, in what one security analyst compared to a narcoversion of World War III.
‘Psychopathology at work’
Many of the victims have not been identified, and in the case of the 49 decapitated corpses, the heads have not been recovered. It appears likely that the victims were not members of the warring groups but street criminals, addicts, civilians, or migrants passing through on their way to the United States.
“The killings are done to draw a response from the media, from the government, to bring in the military. So these victims, they are not members of the organizations. They are just random guys. All the evidence suggests this,” said Jorge Chabat of the Center for Research and Teaching on Economics, an expert on the drug trade.

“They have never been very careful about who they kill,” Chabat said. “They just kill.”
For the past few months, based on wiretaps, intelligence from informants and arrests, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agents say they have been watching the Zetas make incursions deep into the Sinaloa cartel’s traditional territories — even in Sierra Madre towns such as Badiraguato and Choix, once thought of as impregnable strongholds for Sinaloa’s leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the most-wanted man in Mexico.
The motivation behind the massacres? “These acts show force. They tell the world, the government, their opponents, that ‘I am alive! You have not defeated me. I still am here.’ They show muscle,” said Martin Barron, an expert on security at the National Institute of Criminal Justice.
“Now why have things gone so far? Such brutality? Why cut off the heads, hands and feet? Previously, these organizations settled matters with a bullet in the head. Not anymore,” Barron said. “Now there is a psychopathology at work. Some of these people obviously enjoy this, and they are teaching their surrogates, teenagers, to enjoy it.”
To bolster their defense of regions they control, and to destabilize their opponents, both groups have taken the fight to the other’s territory. Part of this strategy is to “heat up the plaza” — a plaza being a city or town where a criminal group controls corrupt officials and police as well as smuggling routes, a network of safe houses, armories of stashed weapons, and teams dedicated to spying, collecting money and killing.
By heating up a plaza, the warring sides hope to bring in a forceful response by the authorities — sending in the army or marines, who round up local crime cells and put pressure on the dominant group.

April 10, 2012

A forensic worker takes a picture of the scene where the bodies of eight taxi drivers were killed in the Costa Azul neighborhood in Monterrey, Mexico. More than 40,000 people have been killed in rising drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers and federal police to take on organized crime.

The assassins almost always leave “narcomantas,” neatly printed manifestoes full of expletives and obscure rants that claim authorship for the killing.
Sometimes the manifestoes are accurate; other times they are designed to confuse. In the case of the 49 mutilated bodies left last week outside Monterrey, the Zetas first asserted responsibility, then denied it in other banners hung across the state, then finally claimed the killings, perhaps reluctantly, when Mexican military forces arrested Daniel Elizondo, alias “The Madman,” a leader of the local Zetas cell.
Elizondo told authorities that he had been ordered by the Zeta leadership to dump the bodies in the center of Cadereyta, an industrial town on the outskirts of Monterrey, but that he became frightened and put them on the highway leading outside of town.
Lack of public trials
There is no way to know whether Elizondo’s confession was true or made under duress. Those arrested for massacres are never tried in open court, the records are almost impossible to obtain, and most are never put before a judge but sent to jail and eventually released. Mexico’s prosecution rate for homicides is low.
U.S. law enforcement and Mexican analysts say the outbreak of war is not designed to directly influence the July 1 presidential election.
But front-runner Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which hopes to return to power after 12 years, has stressed that he is more interested in lowering violence than in fighting drug trafficking.

This would put Peña Nieto squarely against the Zetas, who specialize more in carjacking, kidnapping, extortion and smuggling migrants than in smuggling cocaine and marijuana.

Timeline: Mexico's drug war

Five years after it began, the U.S.-backed drug war rages on.

September 2006	At a police roadblock operation in Zacapu, West of the state capital, an officer gives IDs back to two men who were questioned. (The Washington Post) Drug syndicate leaves severed heads at a disco club A new drug syndicate calling itself La Familia tosses a bag filled with severed heads onto the dance floor of a disco club in Uruapan, Michoacan state. A Mexican Cartel's Swift and Grisly Climb
December 2006	President Felipe Calderon, center, reviews troops with Minister of Defense Guillermo Galvan, left, and Minister of the Navy Mariano Saynez, right, at Campo Marte in Mexico City on Dec.1, 2006. (Gregory Bull/AP) Calderon deploys troops Within days of taking office, Mexico president Felipe Calderon sends 6,500 Mexican troops to battle drug traffickers in Michoacan, his home state, marking a major escalation of the government's campaign against the cartels. Today, 50,000 troops patrol Mexico's streets and highways.
October 2007	Mexico's Secretary of Public Safety Genaro Garcia Luna, center, speaks with U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual, third right, during the delivery ceremony of three US made helicopters to the Mexican government in Mexico City, on Nov. 24, 2010. (Alxandre Meneghini/AP) U.S. announced security aid package Calderon and President George W. Bush announce the Merida Initiative, a $1.6 billion security aid package including Black Hawk helicopters, police training and intelligence sharing for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Bush Seeking Aid for Mexico In Drug Fight
December 2008	Relatives weep as an injured man is taken away by paramedics after unknown gunmen opened fire killing at least one person in the northen border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Nov. 25, 2008. (AP) Ciudad Juarez sees increase in murder The border town of Ciudad Juarez ends the year with 1,600 homicides, up from 307 the previous year, as Sinaloa drug cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman invades the city in a bid to muscle aside the long-dominant Juarez cartel. Since 2008, more than 10,000 people have died in Juarez, making the city one of themost murderous places on Earth.
January 2009	Municipal police officer Luis Giovanni Sanchez Bustos, a member of a Special Operations Group, patrols the neighborhood of Mesa de Otay in Tijujuana in the early hours of the morning. (Sarah L. Voisin) Cartels target TV journalist Gunmen hurl a grenade at the offices of broadcaster Televisa in Monterrey, as cartels increasingly target journalists in an attempt to manipulate coverage of the violence or silence the media entirely. In Nuevo Laredo, drug cartels dictate media coverage
December 2009	Photo of drug boss Arturo Beltran Leyva. (File photo) Mexican drug boss killed in shootout Aided by U.S. intelligence, Mexican troops kill powerful drug boss Arturo Beltran Leyva in a shootout in Cuernavaca, notching a major victory for the Calderon government. But his cartel fragments into smaller, rival groups, fueling more violence. Mexican drug lord killed in gunfight with federal forces
January 2010	Unidentified friends and relatives of those killed during an attack on a birthday party mourn during a funeral service in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Oct. 24, 2010. (Raymundo Ruiz/AP) Gunmen attack birthday party In the Villas de Salvarcar neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez, gunmen attack a birthday party packed with high school students, killing 16 and drawing new attention to the growing death toll of civilians seemingly unconnected to the drug trade.Calderon travels to Juarez to announce an ambitious social spending plan, an acknowledgment that military might alone can't quell the violence.
July 2010	A police officer runs as a firefighter sprays a police truck with water after an attack on police patrol trucks that killed two officers in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on July 15, 2010. (AP) Sophisticated car bomb explodes in Cuidad Juarez Experts reveal that a car bomb that exploded near the U.S. border in Ciudad Juarez was a sophisticated device never before seen in Mexico, triggered by cellphone after police and medical workers were lured to the scene. Ciudad Juarez car bomb shows new sophistication in Mexican drug cartels' tactics
August 2010	Susana Conoz cries next to the coffin of her relative Jose Yovanny Bocel, at an Air Force base in Guatemala City on March 21, 2012. (Rodrigo Abd/AP) 72 migrants murdered at ranch Gunmen from the Zetas cartel abduct and murder 72 migrants at a ranch near the town of San Fernando, an hour south of the Texas border. The massacre draws new attention to the the horrors facing U.S.-bound migrants, mostly from Central America, who are increasingly preyed upon by criminal gangs as they attempt to cross Mexico. Drug gang massacred 72 migrants in northern Mexico
November 2010	Forensic police investigators carry one of four victims of a shootout at a jewelry store in Monterrey, Mexico. (Monica Rueda/AP) Monterrey becomes new front in drug war The business and industrial center of Mexico, Monterrey, becomes new front in Calderon's U.S.-backed drug war, its future clouded by lawlessness. One top executive said, "If Monterrey is lost, all is lost." Drug war intrudes on Monterrey, a booming metropolis
January 2011	A guard stands on the watch tower of the Aquiles Serdan city jail on the outskirts of Chihuahua, on January 17, 2011. (Reuters) Inmates escape Nuevo Laredo prison More than 150 inmates escape from a state prison in Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Texas, the largest prison break in Mexican history. The escape exposes the inability of the Mexican prison system to accommodate all the new inmates, as well as the fact that many facilities are controlled by the cartels. Mexican prisons failing to keep drug traffickers on the inside
Febuary 2011	U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent Jaime Zapata was shot and killed in the line of duty after he was attacked by unknown assailants while driving between Monterrey and Mexico City. (Courtesy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) U.S. agent killed in Mexico ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata and his partner Victor Avila are attacked by Zeta gunmen while driving along Mexico's Highway 57 in an armored Chevy Suburban with diplomatic license plates. Zapata is killed in the ambush, making him the first U.S.agent to die in the line of duty in Mexico since 1985. Armored SUV could not protect U.S. agents in Mexico
April 2011	Morgue employees take a body, found in a mass grave, from a refrigerated truck into the local morgue in Matamoros, northern Mexico. (Alexandre Meneghini/AP) Dozens of mass graves found Mexican investigators pull 193 bodies from dozens of mass graves around the town of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state, where gangsters from the Zetas drug cartel had been abducting passengers from buses and taking them to remote ranches to be robbed, raped and executed. Mass graves in Mexico reveal new levels of savagery
May 2011	A police officer escorts suspect Jose Godoy Artola, right, from Guatemala, upon his arrival to an air force base in Guatemala City. (Moises Castillo/AP) Zeta gunmen massacre 27 in Guatemala Zeta gunmen massacre 27 people at a jungle ranch in northern Guatemala, as the cartels push deeper into Central America in the competition for new smuggling routes. Governments in the region, following Mexico's lead, send their military forces against the traffickers, backed by growing amounts of U.S. aid. In southern Mexico, a neglected frontier
August 2011	Investigators walk through debris of the charred Casino Royale after a deadly arson assault, in Monterrey, Mexico on Aug. 26, 2011. (Arnulfo Franco/AP) 52 dead after arson attack at casino An arson attack at the Casino Royale in Monterrey leaves 52 dead in one of the worst mass killings of ordinary Mexicans in the five-year-old campaign against organized crime.
September 2011	Mexican army soldiers patrol near the site where state prosecutors will gather for a convention in the Gulf port city of Veracruz, Mexico on Sept. 21, 2011. (Felix Marquez/AP) 35 bodies dumped in Mexican city A gang dumps 35 bodies at a busy intersection in the tourist zone in the coastal city of Veracruz. Authorities try to calm the public by saying that most of the dead were criminals who were killed by a warring drug cartel. Gang dumped bodies at a busy intersection
January 2012	Police finds severed heads in Torreon Mexican police in the northern city of Torreon find the severed heads of five people killed in a suspected outbreak of drug gang violence. After 5 years, Mexico’s drug war still rages
March 2012	Policemen ambushed and killed Gunmen in Teloloapan, Guerrero ambush and kill 12 policemen who were investigating the beheadings of 10 people. At least nine other agents are injured during the incident. Mexican policemen killed after beheadings
May 2012	Police finds bodies hanging from a bridge, torsos by highway Police find the bodies of nine people hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas. The same day, police also find the dismembered bodies of 14 people in garbage bags, dumped near the Nuevo Laredo police station. Later in the month, dozens of mutilated bodies are found dumped by a highway near Monterrey. Corpses found in Nuevo Laredo 49 torsos found along Mexican highway

SOURCE: The Washington Post; BBC News. GRAPHIC: Bill Booth and Anup Kaphle - The Washington Post. Published May 09, 2012.

alance

5/15/2012 10:36 AM EDT

The real timeline goes back to June 17, 1971, when Richard (I'm not a crook) Nixon declared the War on Drugs. Nixon made perfectly clear that he wanted a report which supported his views and 'tough on crime' policies, no matter what the facts might be. This is why he ignored the Shafer Commission's report, calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. Nixon was a menace to humanity.

It was not the five severed heads rolled onto the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra (Sun and Shade) night club in Uruapan, Michoacan in 2006.