Mexican drug cartels escalate level of cruelty Captives often forced into gladitorial combat, trafficker claims
BY DANE SCHILLER Houston Chronicle Published 12:51 a.m., Sunday, June 12, 2011 The elderly are killed. Young women raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiator-like fights to groom fresh assassins. In an interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push $5 to $10 million a month worth of cocaine into the United States. Law-enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative, but not a fugitive from pending charges. He offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem -- a mafioso who mingles with crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government. If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity. Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an Ancient Roman-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?" "They cut guys to pieces," he said. The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said. In the vicinity of the Mexican city of San Fernando nearly 200 bodies were unearthed from pits and authorities said most appeared to have died from blunt force trauma to the head. Many are believed to have been dragged off buses traveling through Mexico, but little has been said about the circumstances of their deaths. The trafficker said those who survive are taken captive, and eventually given suicide missions, such as riding into a town controlled by rivals and shooting up the place. The trafficker said he did not see the clashes, but his fellow criminals have boasted to him of their exploits. Former and current federal law-enforcement officers in the U.S. said that while they knew Mexican bus passengers had been targeted for violence, they'd never before heard of forcing passengers into death matches. But given the level of violence in Mexico -- nearly 40,000 killed in gangland warfare over the last several years -- they didn't find it tough to believe. Borderland Beat, a blog specializing in drug cartels, reported an account in April of bus passengers brutalized by Zeta thugs and taunted into fighting. "The stuff you would not think possible a few years ago is now commonplace," said Peter Hanna, a retired FBI agent who built his career focusing on Mexico's cartels. "It used to be you'd find dead bodies in drums with acid, now there are beheadings." Still, he said, killing people this way would be time consuming and inefficient: "It would be more for amusement ... I don't see it as intimidation or a successful way to recruit people." Hidden behind designer sunglasses and a whisper of a beard, the trafficker interviewed by a Houston Chronicle reporter talked at a restaurant's back table. He carried silver shopping bags from a trip to Nordstrom, but was anything but a typical wealthy Mexican on a Texas shopping trip. As a condition of the interview, he asked that he only be referred to as Juan. He has been a drug trafficker in northern Mexico for over a decade, he said, but had grown tired of gangsters running roughshod over each other and innocent civilians. Juan, who has worked with the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, the two major drug organizations that control territory along the South Texas-Mexico border, said when he's back home, he sleeps with a semi-automatic rifle by his bed and a handgun under his pillow. "It is like the Wild West. You can carry a gun and you are Superman," he said of gangsters and killing at will. "Like everybody says, it is out of control now. We have to put a stop to it." A recent U.S. Senate report contends the Zetas are the most violent of Mexico's cartels. Its members are believed to be responsible for the recent killing of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was shot on a Mexican highway. Just Thursday, authorities in Mexico said they arrested members of the Zetas and seized 201 automatic weapons, 600 camouflage uniforms and 30,000 bullets. "I am not defending the Sinaloa or the Gulf Cartel," Juan said of the Zetas' main rivals. "I earn more money with the Zetas, but I know the (crap) they do," he said. "They brag about it." With the recent killing of the ICE agent and perhaps other attacks, the Zetas also are breaking the golden rule for Mexican traffickers: Don't kill Americans, he said. It brings too much heat. Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was the chief of international operations, said Mexican gangsters used to understand that violence should be used sparingly. "They love brutality," Vigil said of the Zetas. "They do not care whether you are a police officer, a trafficker or an innocent bystander. "The drug-trafficking organizations are eventually going to have to deal with the Zetas." Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Mexican-drug-cartels-escalate-level- of-cruelty-1420470.php#ixzz1P7ZSbpVe ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Having become accustomed to living off the dole of remittances sent to them by Mexican nationals working in America, the Mexican ruling class will do whatever it takes to subvert and agitate against any movement in the United States that wishes to shut down illegal immigration." -- Father Patrick Bascio [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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