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Hi,
I coulda sworn that it turned out there were only a few bodies, maybe up to
something like, and I'm guessing here as I'm not sure, 9 perhaps. That's
all. The first numbers were apparently normal prohibitionist scare tactics,
a "look at those bad evil drug-types" kinda thing....
ahh yes, here it is- http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1370/a06.html,
Or this one is even better perhaps- Number of Bodies Overstated-
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1376/a02.html
I unfortunately picked up the original press stories and ran with those
numbers myself-
Mexico Mayhem- http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id230/pg1/
but in the list of links that follows my essay, you can find both the
original articles, and the subsequent unraveling of those original stories,
as well as lots of links to related stuff on US-Mexico efforts in the War on
Drugs.
Peace,
Preston
----- Original Message -----
From: "Saba" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 2:11 AM
Subject: [CTRL] Billions in drugs moved via tunnel
billions of drugs moved in a tunnel? Well they did find 500 pounds of
marijuana that I could grow in my backyard free if I so chose. And
people are murdered over 500 pounds of marijuana and cocaine?
Know many poor people that can afford this expensive habit? Now all
this over drugs I can understand, but did anybody ever bother to find
out about the over 100 bodies found on a farm in the USA along this
Mexican/USA border and to whom they belonged? Guess they were of
little "value" - life is cheap.
Oh they do give mention of these poor guys who dug these tunnels some of
whom were murdered - anybody know to whom these bodies belonged at one
time?
Saba
MSNBC
Billions in drugs moved via tunnel
Lucrative drug-smuggling mechanism discoveredU.S. federal agents show a
tunnel discovered leading across the border with Mexico. Not only was it
used for smuggling, they say, but may also have been rented out by drug
lords. NBC's George Lewis reports.By Kevin Sullivan
THE WASHINGTON POST
TIERRA DEL SOL, Calif., Feb. 28 -
Down the dust-blown driveway, past a chain-link fence and the Keep
Out sign, past the beefy Rottweiler and the tire swing, in a closet
under the staircase in a little two-story bungalow, Mexico's most
violent drug lords kept a secret at Johnson's pig farm.
'It's one of the most significant finds ever along the
southwestern border.'
- ERROL J. CHAVEZ
special agent WHEN U.S. DRUG AGENTS busted into the
closet on Wednesday, they found a large safe. They opened it and found
nothing. Then they spotted the false floor. And when they pried it up,
they found the entrance to a 1,200-foot tunnel - complete with electric
lights, ventilation ducts and wooden walls - that ended in a fireplace
in a house just beyond the metal wall that separates the United States
from Mexico.
Investigators are calling the tunnel in this remote
section of rocky border scrubland, 70 miles east of San Diego near a
small town called Tecate, one of most lucrative drug-smuggling
mechanisms ever discovered along the U.S.-Mexico frontier.
"It's one of the most significant finds ever along the
southwestern border," said Errol J. Chavez, special agent in charge of
the San Diego office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "They
used this tunnel to smuggle billions of dollars worth of cocaine,
marijuana and other drugs into the United States for several years."
Chavez, speaking to reporters in San Diego, said
investigators believe the tunnel was built at least two or three years
ago by the notorious Tijuana cartel, headed by several brothers in the
Arellano Felix family. He said the Arellano Felixes moved tons of drugs
in carts that rolled on railroad-style tracks through the tunnel, which
is about 20 feet below ground.
. Village's rage rattles an army . Political old guard persists
. Unfamiliar turf: Saving the environment The drugs
were then likely loaded into pickups and other small trucks, which were
used to deliver the drugs to Los Angeles and beyond.
Chavez said investigators have learned that the Arellano
Felixes charged other smuggling rings a fee to use the tunnel. He said
that the tunnel seems to have been used exclusively for drugs and that
there was no evidence that illegal immigrants were also moved through
it.
The tunnel, which is four feet square, offers further
evidence of the difficulty of sealing the 2,000-mile border despite
efforts to cut off drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Since Sept.
11, border security has been sharply increased and drug seizures are way
up. But Vincent E. Bond, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service in San
Diego, said the tunnel shows that when one route is closed to smugglers,
they find a new one.
The discovery came just days before a visit to Mexico by
Tom Ridge, the U.S. director of homeland security, who will discuss
border security with top Mexican officials.
A HISTORY OF TUNNELS
Tunnels are nothing new along the border. Several have
been discovered since 1990. The largest one, found in 1993, stretched
about 1,452 feet under the border at Tijuana, Mexico. That tunnel was
never used because it was discovered just before it was completed.
Chavez said it belonged to drug lord Joaquin Guzman, known as "El
Chapo," who tried to keep the tunnel secret by murdering the workers who
dug it.
The discovery of the tunnel here, which Chavez said would
be destroyed, is another in a series of blows for the Arellano Felixes.
U.S. officials recently froze many of the Felixes' known
assets in the United States and banned U.S. citizens from spending money
at hotels, pharmacies and other Mexican businesses controlled by the
cartel. Then, earlier this month, Mexican police may have killed Ramon
Arellano Felix, the cartel's most ruthless enforcer and a figure on the
FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. U.S. forensic scientists are trying to
determine if a man killed Feb. 10 in the Mexican resort city of Mazatlan
was him.
Advertisement
No arrests have been made on the U.S. side in the tunnel
case. Chavez said investigators from the DEA and the U.S. Customs
Service, which assisted in Wednesday's raid, are seeking several
suspects, including a man who leased the house and was living there.
Mexican police said they have detained for questioning
two people who were found in the house at the Mexican end of the tunnel
during the raid.
DRUGS IN THE TUNNEL
Chavez also said that about 550 pounds of freshly packed
marijuana was found in the tunnel, suggesting that it had been in use
until very recently. Here in Tierra del Sol, DEA officers continued to
patrol the pig farm, where two small houses sit amid signs of normal
life, including several dogs and picnic tables, an old slide and swing
set, and rusting trucks.
A small caretaker's house had few furnishings beyond a
couple of floral-print couches and a television. Just beyond the other
small, barn-style bungalow sat Mexico, behind an eight-foot green metal
fence that was erected in 1995 as part of a stepped-up security program
known as Operation Gatekeeper.
In the 1980s, the property was owned by Elbert Lushen
Johnson until it was seized by federal authorities because of
drug-smuggling activity and sold at auction. Chavez said Johnson is
serving time in prison after being convicted of cocaine smuggling in
Arkansas in 2000.
The property's current owners, Belinda and Raul Alvarado,
bought the house in 1995. Chavez said they have been questioned by the
DEA. He said authorities do not know the name of the man who leased the
house from the Alvarados, who is being sought for questioning. Chavez
said officials are unsure whether the Alvarados were aware of illegal
activity on their property. They have not been charged with any crime.
"Everybody around here knows that you don't go down
there, or the old man who lives there will come after you with his
shotgun," said a woman who said she has lived nearby for 10 years.
She declined to give her name, saying that many of her
neighbors were involved in drug smuggling and that her life "wouldn't be
worth a plugged nickel" if her name appeared in a newspaper. She said
the man living in the house has been there since last year. She said she
stopped in last fall to inquire about renting the property, but the man,
a Mexican in his fifties, came out with his shotgun and told her to
leave.
The woman said that this secluded section of the border,
about eight miles from the nearest main road, is used by Mexicans
sneaking into the United States illegally. She said they sometimes
travel in pickups or larger flatbed trucks, which she said she suspects
are used mainly for drugs.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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