Guillermo Paxton's Blog - Posts Tagged "sinaloa-cartel"
Nogales, Sonora trip
It was my first time to Nogales. The first thing I noticed about this sleepy border town is that there are very few Americans visiting. Not surprising, with all of the drug war press in the media, and any "gringos" that go are immediately accosted by English speaking Mexicans eager to find them drugs and girls.
Trucks cruised the strip with music blaring, corridos that praise the Sinaloa cartel. People from Sinaloa own many a business in Nogales. Many of these businesses have been funded by drug money. Casas de cambio, where dollars and pesos are exchanged, are fundamental for laundering Chapo's money, and there is a ton of it to launder at that.
We stayed at a nice hotel. It had an hydraulic lift in the parking area. Don't all hotels have them? And it is right in front of the border, almost in plain sight of the border patrol.
I was offered every kind of drug five different times by five different people. There is no fear there of cops or rival cartels because the Chapo owns it all.
Trucks cruised the strip with music blaring, corridos that praise the Sinaloa cartel. People from Sinaloa own many a business in Nogales. Many of these businesses have been funded by drug money. Casas de cambio, where dollars and pesos are exchanged, are fundamental for laundering Chapo's money, and there is a ton of it to launder at that.
We stayed at a nice hotel. It had an hydraulic lift in the parking area. Don't all hotels have them? And it is right in front of the border, almost in plain sight of the border patrol.
I was offered every kind of drug five different times by five different people. There is no fear there of cops or rival cartels because the Chapo owns it all.
US/Mexico Governments aided Sinaloa Cartel?
When I lived in Tijuana, in 2006-2007, Calderon came to power and shortly thereafter things changed in Tijuana and all of Baja California. The Mexican Army moved in and in a combined effort with the newest police chief Julian Leyzaola ousted the Arellano-Felix Cartel. But it wasn't done just by them. The United States also pitched in with numerous arrests and extraditions. The end result? The Sinaloa Cartel owns Tijuana.
Leyzaola is from Culiacan, Sinaloa. He was a military officer (Lt. Col.) and when he took office in Tijuana, his "mission" was to clean up corruption and the border violence. He is largely credited with having done just that.
However, the facts are very different than what the government would like for the citizens to believe. All that really occurred in Tijuana is a change of hands of the Tijuana plaza, from the Arellano-Felix to the Sinaloa Cartel. The border violence calmed down there because El Chapo won, hands down, and with the military and later the police force behind him, how was that not going to happen.
Julian Leyzaola even made a statement about how he had "rejected" a bribe from El Chapo. This may be possible. He may not be working directly for El Chapo. He might actually be naive enough to believe that he is in a frontal war on drugs and is working for a government that has rejected the Cartels. But the facts point to a very different conclusion. He was sent to Juarez to do the same thing. The Sinaloa Cartel has had a difficult time ridding the plaza of the Juarez Cartel, and the first thing he did when he arrived was to arrest top dogs in the Juarez Cartel.
Investigative reporter Bill Conroy wrote an article on wiki leaks recently exposing a plan by the Mexican and US governments to side with the Sinaloa Cartel in order to take down the others. The logic behind that was that it would be easier to control and contain. People in Mexico have been saying that Calderon's government had sided with El Chapo for years and has always been dismissed as rumors. But if anyone looks at the number of arrests of other cartels and compares them to the lack of numbers of arrests of the Sinaloa Cartel (which has arguably been the biggest and most powerful in the last few years), one can plainly see that the concentration of forces has been very one sided indeed in favor of El Chapo's organization.
Now the governments are rallying against the Zetas. Suddenly they have become the real enemy while the Sinaloa Cartel sits in the background and remains relatively untouched. The government would have you believe that the level of violence and murder that Mexico is now living is the fault of the Zetas. I can assure you, from someone who witnessed what the Sinaloa Cartel did in Chihuahua (Juarez and the entire state), they are just as violent and dangerous.
There is no better or worse cartel. They all have the same purpose and the same lack of morality. They are all murderers.
Favoring one cartel over another is simply wrong. There is no ends justifying the means. To recognize that eradicating the cartels is an impossible task and instead trying to contain one single cartel makes no sense. The people that make the drug war policy either have another agenda or are using drugs themselves. It is time to stop this madness. Whatever side of the border that you are on, you are touched by the drug war, whether it is economically, morally, or emotionally, and it is detrimental to you. Over 80,000 lives have been lost in Mexico alone since 2006 as a direct result of the drug war violence. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons, training, manpower, and prison. Only a tiny portion of that is spent on rehabilitation or prevention. Police DARE programs' funding is weak at best, and the program shows it. It is far past time to reevaluate the drug policy and shift our funding and thinking to prevent drug use and change strategy, whether it is legalization or otherwise. As long as a demand for illegal drugs exist, people will be ready to supply them, no matter what the risks are.
Leyzaola is from Culiacan, Sinaloa. He was a military officer (Lt. Col.) and when he took office in Tijuana, his "mission" was to clean up corruption and the border violence. He is largely credited with having done just that.
However, the facts are very different than what the government would like for the citizens to believe. All that really occurred in Tijuana is a change of hands of the Tijuana plaza, from the Arellano-Felix to the Sinaloa Cartel. The border violence calmed down there because El Chapo won, hands down, and with the military and later the police force behind him, how was that not going to happen.
Julian Leyzaola even made a statement about how he had "rejected" a bribe from El Chapo. This may be possible. He may not be working directly for El Chapo. He might actually be naive enough to believe that he is in a frontal war on drugs and is working for a government that has rejected the Cartels. But the facts point to a very different conclusion. He was sent to Juarez to do the same thing. The Sinaloa Cartel has had a difficult time ridding the plaza of the Juarez Cartel, and the first thing he did when he arrived was to arrest top dogs in the Juarez Cartel.
Investigative reporter Bill Conroy wrote an article on wiki leaks recently exposing a plan by the Mexican and US governments to side with the Sinaloa Cartel in order to take down the others. The logic behind that was that it would be easier to control and contain. People in Mexico have been saying that Calderon's government had sided with El Chapo for years and has always been dismissed as rumors. But if anyone looks at the number of arrests of other cartels and compares them to the lack of numbers of arrests of the Sinaloa Cartel (which has arguably been the biggest and most powerful in the last few years), one can plainly see that the concentration of forces has been very one sided indeed in favor of El Chapo's organization.
Now the governments are rallying against the Zetas. Suddenly they have become the real enemy while the Sinaloa Cartel sits in the background and remains relatively untouched. The government would have you believe that the level of violence and murder that Mexico is now living is the fault of the Zetas. I can assure you, from someone who witnessed what the Sinaloa Cartel did in Chihuahua (Juarez and the entire state), they are just as violent and dangerous.
There is no better or worse cartel. They all have the same purpose and the same lack of morality. They are all murderers.
Favoring one cartel over another is simply wrong. There is no ends justifying the means. To recognize that eradicating the cartels is an impossible task and instead trying to contain one single cartel makes no sense. The people that make the drug war policy either have another agenda or are using drugs themselves. It is time to stop this madness. Whatever side of the border that you are on, you are touched by the drug war, whether it is economically, morally, or emotionally, and it is detrimental to you. Over 80,000 lives have been lost in Mexico alone since 2006 as a direct result of the drug war violence. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons, training, manpower, and prison. Only a tiny portion of that is spent on rehabilitation or prevention. Police DARE programs' funding is weak at best, and the program shows it. It is far past time to reevaluate the drug policy and shift our funding and thinking to prevent drug use and change strategy, whether it is legalization or otherwise. As long as a demand for illegal drugs exist, people will be ready to supply them, no matter what the risks are.
Fast and Furious weapons sold to the Sinaloa Cartel found in Colombia
Unless you were in a cave, you have heard about the Fast and Furious operation, supposedly designed to take down members of the Sinaloa Cartel. These weapons have been confiscated in relation to many executions since, and now are popping up in Colombia as well.
Many people think that Colombia is fairly safe from the drug war violence since it had seen the worst violence in the eighties, but the reality is that the Sinaloa Cartel has been working in said country for a few years now, and the violence has been escalating steadily.
It will be only a matter of time that the violence gets just as bad as in Mexico. It has already started. El Chapo's hunger to dominate the world's drug trading is insatiable. The Zetas have been working slowly towards Colombia, and have nearly taken over all the routes through Guatemala (notice that the US is sending Marines to Guatemala to help rid them of the Zetas).
Once again, all evidence points to a favoring of the Sinaloa Cartel. A botched operation leading to thousands of rounds of ammunition and hundreds of high-calibre weapons being sold and delivered to the Sinaloa Cartel, operations in Mexico and the United States targeting El Chapo's enemies, and very few arrests and seizures all point to the veracity of the Wikileaks information and what most Mexican people already suspected that the US and Mexican governments have assisted the Sinaloa Cartel in its rise to power. Their justification is that it would be easier to contain and eventually take down a single cartel, which in a world of pure numbers might have held water, but in the real world is naive and ignorant.
http://www.diario.com.mx/notas.php?f=...
Many people think that Colombia is fairly safe from the drug war violence since it had seen the worst violence in the eighties, but the reality is that the Sinaloa Cartel has been working in said country for a few years now, and the violence has been escalating steadily.
It will be only a matter of time that the violence gets just as bad as in Mexico. It has already started. El Chapo's hunger to dominate the world's drug trading is insatiable. The Zetas have been working slowly towards Colombia, and have nearly taken over all the routes through Guatemala (notice that the US is sending Marines to Guatemala to help rid them of the Zetas).
Once again, all evidence points to a favoring of the Sinaloa Cartel. A botched operation leading to thousands of rounds of ammunition and hundreds of high-calibre weapons being sold and delivered to the Sinaloa Cartel, operations in Mexico and the United States targeting El Chapo's enemies, and very few arrests and seizures all point to the veracity of the Wikileaks information and what most Mexican people already suspected that the US and Mexican governments have assisted the Sinaloa Cartel in its rise to power. Their justification is that it would be easier to contain and eventually take down a single cartel, which in a world of pure numbers might have held water, but in the real world is naive and ignorant.
http://www.diario.com.mx/notas.php?f=...
Why the violence has subsided in Juarez
The Mexican government did not “clean up” the state of Chihuahua and Juarez like they would have everyone believe. There is no treaty between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez/Zeta alliance. The constant fighting with no real definitive winner led to a kind of stalemate. The result is a divided Juarez, and Chihuahua, parts belonging to one or the other cartel, and occasionally someone crosses the line. The police force is also sharply divided, the Juarez Cartel still largely in control of the traffic police and part of the municipal force, the Sinaloa Cartel owning the Federales and part of the state police. Within Chihuahua there are several smaller municipalities where the territories are still unclear and they continue to have skirmishes between the two cartels. We have yet to see the end to the violence.
