Daniel Wetta's Blog, page 10

When a friend is murdered, what changes?

I was 60 years old when it happened. Israel, my young friend in Mexico, was only a 26-year-old law student and part-time Volvo salesman. His accidental and unfortunate encounter with the wife of a drug cartel leader in Monterrey cost him an unbearable torture and death. All of us who knew him were a mess. His roommate, scared that he would be next by association, fled town and told no one, even me, where he was relocating. It was during the beginning of the drug wars in Monterrey.

But enough about all that. I want to tell Israel that his life had meaning, and that he brought happiness into the world. I want to tell him that lives changed for the good. There are people who will remember him always, will love him and thank him for his life.

In my younger days, I wrote and never could complete a novel. But Israel’s short life put me on fire. In the last five years I have published two novels that were inspired by Israel, his roommate, and other ordinary people in Monterrey who were forced to muster uncommon courage in the face of barbaric and inhumane acts. I was witness to a civil war, really. I saw the beginnings of organized movements in Mexico against corruption and violence. I wanted people in the United States to know that people just like them not far away were living lives of hell, but they were doing it while still loving and preserving their families and friendships. The Mexicans are affectionate, creative, imaginative, and very funny people who have the perfect language for describing life around them.

So my first two novels, The Z Redemption and Corvette Nightfire, (assisted by my life-long friend and talented educator, Robert Selfe), tell the stories of Israel and his roommate, Enrique, as well as a host of other characters. They are people filled with hopes, dreams, energy, cunning and bravery. In real life, Israel was like this. Israel worked hard but partied with absolute joy of life. He would have been a leader on the national scene, I am certain.

No one heard Israel’s cries of pain except for his brutal tormentors. He knew that no one would come to save him. I wrote my novels so that people in two countries would hear his screams. In The Z Redemption, Israel is a mentor to his best friend, Enrique, the roommate in Monterrey. In real life, Enrique is the one who got to live. So in the two novels (the third is in the works), Enrique lives on with Israel in his heart, still guided by his life-long friend. Enrique becomes one of my favorite heroes of both novels. He matures, fights for a lady (and loses) in Corvette Nightfire, but in the end, he is the one who largely saves the day. Israel would be immensely proud of him.

I can’t speak for all the people who were moved in some way by Israel’s life and murder. I will say what happened to me.

Thanks to Israel, I have published the two novels of the trilogy of international suspense, romance, passion and heroism. With Robert Selfe, I am writing the third. I studied and learned to speak Spanish fluently. I have made many friends in Monterrey who are special in my heart. I research the Mexican portions of the novels with original Spanish sources. Obsessed that details be accurate, I have made several return trips to Monterrey and have gone so far as to time and act out action sequences in the geography of that city. I have learned a lot of Mexican history and much about their political parties and government.

Then there is the work that developed with my father. At 87 years old, he is still painting and expressing himself through art and technology. He has a long lifetime of works in a collection that is largely intact. Every painting has a story, and his cartoons speak for themselves. We decided that it would be good to publish his works and stories in books. Over the past couple years, I have published seven e-book volumes of his works in a series called, El Artista: A Lifetime of Curiosity. We are final-proofing the first printed volume of his art. Its title is An Artist’s Life, New Orleans Framed. It should be available in book stores by the beginning of March, 2015.

In a prior blog, I detailed my on-again, off-again battles with depression and the tools I use to defeat what would rob me of joy in life. I will admit that I was numb after Israel’s death. I returned to be with my family in Virginia a few months later. There were personal and financial problems to confront. It would have been easy to give in to inertia and the emotional paralysis of a disease that is so prevalent in our modern, hyperactive society.

But…I think that Israel claimed ownership of a piece of my life by his death. I suspect that he did this with a good number of people.

When I look through his eyes, I am looking through the eyes of a young man who will remain 26 years old through eternity. He wanted a career, love, a wife, children, fun, parties, loyal friends and justice. That is why he wanted to be a lawyer. He wanted to help his country. He saw bright skies, sunrises from the border of heaven, and the majestic mountains of Monterrey. He had the juice of a young man excited by life.

Yes, Israel, you infected me. You caused me to look at the world around me with young eyes. I am not afraid of dying, my young friend. I just want more years to get things done. I want to love fully. When I look at midnight, I want to see justice. I did hear you, Israel. You would be surprised how many have heard you.

Muchas gracias, mi buen amigo. Tal vez en el futuro, nos platicamos otra vez. Siempre empezamos otra vez.

Mexico’s ‘Queen of the Pacific’ released from prison – CNN.com

Mexico’s ‘Queen of the Pacific’ released from prison – CNN.com

(CNN)In Mexico’s male-dominated drug trade, her life story became a legend.

Now, after more than seven years behind bars, the woman known as “The Queen of the Pacific” is free. A judge ruled in favor of her appeal last week, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement Saturday.

Sandra Ávila Beltrán’s story is the subject of a best-selling book and a popular ballad.

She was first arrested in Mexico City on September 28, 2007, smiling before cameras as authorities trumpeted her detention.

Later, Ávila made headlines when Mexican authorities said they were investigating a tip that she had received Botox treatments in prison.

Ávila is the niece of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara cartel. She’s also related to drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was released from a Mexican prison in a controversial 2013 decision and now has a $5 million State Department bounty on his head.

Trials on both sides of the border

Mexico’s case against her drew widespread attention as it made its way through the nation’s courts. She was absolved of a money laundering charge in her first trial.

In 2012, authorities extradited her to the United States, where she was accused of conspiring to smuggle cocaine along with Juan Diego Espinosa Ramirez, a Colombian national who was also known as “The Tiger.”

Ávila denied the charges. Authorities never convicted her of any drug-trafficking crimes, but prosecutors have said Ávila was once a key link in the drug trade between Colombia and Mexico. A 2008 U.S. congressional Research Service report described her as “a senior member of the Sinaloa cartel who was instrumental” in building ties with Colombian traffickers.

In 2013, she pleaded guilty in a Florida court to a charge connected to the case, but U.S. prosecutors dropped the cocaine trafficking conspiracy charge.

As part of the plea deal, Avila said she provided “financial assistance for travel, lodging and other expenses” to Espinosa from 2002 to 2004 “with the intention of preventing or hindering his arrest for his drug trafficking crimes.”

Later that year, she was deported back to Mexico. Last year, she was sentenced to five more years in prison and a fine for money laundering.

‘Queen of the Pacific’ deported from U.S. 02:18
PLAY VIDEO

But on Friday, a judge ruled that the conviction was not valid because she’d already been tried for the same crime in Mexico and the United States, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said.

‘Queen of queens’

A popular ballad about Ávila sung by the band Los Tigres del Norte, titled “The Queen of Queens,” describes her 2007 arrest.

“The more beautiful the rose,” one line in the song says, “the sharper the thorns.”

In an interview with Anderson Cooper that aired on “60 Minutes” and CNN in 2009, Ávila denied the charges against her and blamed Mexico’s government for allowing drug trafficking to flourish.

“In Mexico there’s a lot of corruption, a lot. Large shipments of drugs can come into the Mexican ports or airports without the authorities knowing about it. It’s obvious and logical,” she said. “The government has to be involved in everything that is corrupt.”

CNN’s Claudia Dominguez contributed to this report..

A Knock on a Door: Review

Click image to go to Goodreads site.

 

Daniel Wetta‘s review
Dec 15, 2014  
 
5 of 5 stars
Recommended for: People who want to open their hearts.
Read from November 28 to December 15, 2014, read count: 5


I do not read poetry very often. I read A Knock on a Door at least five times. Each time I felt a flint from the wall of my heart fly off.

 

The author, Christos Kallis, explains what he has done in this book in his Author’s Note at the beginning of the book. Among many insightful comments, he writes that he wants to leave the reader “dismantled and disarmed.” In my case, he succeeded. With each re-reading, I found myself progressively dismantled. It was a dismantling of my logical processes. I had to read the book not with my mind, but with my heart. A Knock on the Door reminded me of the wall I had constructed to protect my emotions.

These poems, like much poetry, do not necessarily make sense immediately, even heart sense, to a reader until he spends time with them, in my opinion. These are poetic expressions personal for the author, but he masterfully pulls the reader in, first with archetypes and universal contradictions, and then he splays him or her with each re-reading until nakedness feels entirely comfortable.

I was grateful for the Author’s Note. It gave me a feeling of being grounded when I might find myself lost in a particular poem. I found that I could read the Author’s Note again, and then the poem would open for me. In some cases, it opened me up.

This is a young author with a big talent. I don’t feel I am qualified to judge poetry, but I do have a sense that Christos Kallis has a life ahead full of potential to make important impacts on people, and that some of this will come from his writing. I look forward to seeing more of his work.

Tagged: Christos Kallis, Goodreads, heart, poetry

The Free Prequel Just for You!

Nightfire! is the short story prequel to the novel, Corvette Nightfire, which is the second volume of The Z Redemption Trilogy. This 9,000 word short story explains the mystery of Día and Luna, the Tarahumara natives who were Corvette’s grandparents. Inhabitants of the Copper Canyon in northern Mexico, Día and Luna, married while teenagers, became seduced and then enslaved by the Mexican drug-cartel men who invaded the mountains of their homeland to grow poppy and marijuana. The Tarahumara natives were famous world-wide for their ability to run for days in the mountains and steep canyons of their lands in Chihuahua, Mexico. The drug cartels forced many of the young Indian men and women to give up their lands and to run their marijuana through the desert and across the border to the United States.

Written in the fast-paced style of the novels of The Z Redemption trilogy, Nightfire! is a stand-alone short story that also provides enriching detail to the second volume in the series (Corvette Nightfire). Día’s plan to escape the drug cartel gets complicated by the birth of his son, Rogelio, in Texas in 1963. Moving and suspenseful, the story describes what Rogelio failed to find out about his parents when, as an adult, he made trips to Mexico to try to find them. It wasn’t until Rogelio’s son, Corvette, made a trip to the Copper Canyon in northern Mexico that the impact on the grandson’s destiny by the actions of Día and Luna began to be understood!

Download your FREE copy from Smashwords in any format for e-Readers, tablets, computers and phones simply by clicking the cover photo here!
Tagged: best selling crime thrillers, Corvette, drug cartels, Mexico, northern Mexico

Secret Report: Mexican Drug Kingpin El Chapo Guzmán Used 747 Jets, Submarines, To Flood U.S. With Drugs

Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, the incarcerated and still powerful head of Mexico’s Cartel of Sinaloa

Secret Report: Mexican Drug Kingpin El Chapo Guzmán Used 747 Jets, Submarines, To Flood U.S. With Drugs.

Forbes Magazine: 11/24/2014 Article by Dolia Estevez. Drawing by Angelica Pettingell

Mexican drug lord Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán used his personal fleet of Boeing 747 jets, speedboats, amphibious vessels submarines, tractor trailers and freight trains to ship tons of illegal drugs from South America to Mexico and then to major U.S. cities, a secret testimony filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago early this month reveals.

The previously sealed statement by Chicago drug-dealing twin brothers Margarito and Pedro Flores gives the first inside look into El Chapo’s extraordinary logistical capabilities and lucrative, well-organized network that adhered to strict operational rules set by Guzmán.

Before he was hunted down by a joint U.S-Mexico law enforcement operation in his home state of Sinaloa in February, Guzmán had successfully avoided being caught for 13 years by paying bribes and having a broad network of corrupt law enforcement officials on his payroll. Guzmán ran the Sinaloa Cartel, a multibillion-dollar criminal organization, which despite his incarceration continues to be the number one supplier of illegal drugs in the U.S.

According to the 20-page partially-redacted testimony by the brothers, key witnesses in the $1 billion drug conspiracy to bring narcotics to Chicago and other cities, Guzmán had “multiple 747 aircrafts” with all the seats removed that he used to transport cocaine from Central and South America to Mexico disguised as humanitarian aid.

“Chapo would arrange to have shipment of clothing sent to Central America as part of a humanitarian aid project. Once the planes landed in Central America, the clothing was offloaded and up to 13 tons of cocaine was loaded onto the plane for the return to Mexico,” the document says.

The planes landed in Mexico City’s International Airport where the cocaine was unloaded and driven out with the help of corrupt Mexican authorities described in the statement as El Chapo’s “contacts.”

The brothers have been in witness protection for more than five years in what has been called the most significant drug case in Chicago’s history. Their collaboration with prosecutors has so far resulted in charges against 13 defendants, including Guzmán himself.

Their testimony, dated June 4 2009, was unsealed in advance of this week’s sentencing of Alfredo Vásquez-Hernández, whom prosecutors allege was a lifelong friend of Guzmán, his international logistics chief, and the godfather to his son, Alfredillo. On Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge in Chicago Ruben Castillo sentenced Vásquez-Hernández to 22 years in prison. Vásquez-Hernández–who was extradited to face charges in 2012–was the Flores’ main contact in the Sinaloa Cartel. Known as “Alfredo Compadre,” he made arrangement for transporting both cocaine and cocaine proceeds.

The brothers admitted they used Chicago as a distribution hub for shipping Guzmán’s drugs to 30 wholesale customers in New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Los Angeles and Vancouver. They said their network expanded over a decade and at its peak sold up to two tons of cocaine a month in Chicago alone.

“On behalf of Chapo… Alfredo (Vásquez-Hernández) … was involved in the transportation of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico in submarines and ‘submergibles,’ or semi-submersible vessels… and facilitated the transportation of cocaine in rail cars,” they testified.

By 2007 they were moving almost all of the cocaine that was distributed in “semi-trucks and trailers with trap compartments in the roof.” The brothers said they invested in the submarines with Vásquez-Hernández, and paid him $600,000 to set up a furniture company that they used as a front for importing drugs into Chicago in the walls of rail cars and trucks.

Signed by Pedro Flores on behalf of both brothers, the testimony says that Vázquez-Hernández also handled the logistics of transporting large shipments of bulk currency from drug proceeds, including the transportation of payments made to El Chapo by his customers and payments made by El Chapo to his sources of supply.

For the first time since 2009, Mexican drug lord Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán is out of Forbes’ list of The World’s Most Powerful People. He is currently in a high-security prison near Mexico City. Despite multiple indictments against him in the U.S., the Mexican government says there are no plans to extradite him.

Tagged: Cartel of Sinaloa, drug cartels, drug trafficking, El Chapo Guzman, Mexico

Daniel Wetta Publishing Features 87 y.o. Artist Dan Wetta’s Seven Volumes of Art!

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eighty-seven-old lifetime artist, Dan Wetta, a career accountant who lived a different life through his art, shares his dreams and unique vision of the world in his seven-volume series, El Artista: A Lifetime of Curiosity.  Originally from New Orleans, the artist spent high school and community college years in St. Joseph’s Seminary in rural Louisiana in the 1940s. He continued college education at night while married and raising a family in Richmond, Virginia. Over the years, the artist took art classes and private lessons and exhibited his work in many public showings, including exhibiting in The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His works, in oil, acrylics, pen, pencil, crayon, watercolor, doodles and cartoons, encompass a vast variety of themes, laced with humor, satire, spirituality, and immense respect for life. Some of these volumes illustrate the artist’s reflections on the conflict between science and religious teachings, and,notably, the history of the Jews as recorded in the Old Testament. Some emphasize his humorous characterization of animal life, such as lions, tigers, and cows, while others colorfully express mystical emotions of birds. 

Every volume has explanations and history of  the art work within. The artist provides colorful anecdotes and recollections of times and events long past, yet he himself has lived a resilient life, adapting to the sweeping technological and sociological changes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Click on any of the thumbnail book covers to go to the Smashwords site where you can read synopses of each of the books and download samples. These e-books are in .epub format for viewing on most electronic readers, including the Nook, and Apple and Sony devices. For those with Amazon’s Kindle, click the following link to see the same: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dan+wetta

The artist is making available for acquisition,by a gallery or private collector,the entire collection of his original art and cartoons, his work of a lifetime, in one complete set. Almost all are illustrated in this series of volumes, El Artista: A Lifetime of Curiosity. For further information, contact (son) Daniel Wetta at cursillo86@gmail.com.

Volume 4

Volume 5

Volume 6

Volume 7

Tagged: acrylic paintings, art collections, art museums, artist, bible art, cartoons, humor, museums, satire

Smashwords: Ebook Publishing Gets More Difficult from Here – Here’s How to Succeed

Long an admirer of Mark Coker, the CEO of Smashwords, I urge those of you interested in the future of authorship, publishing, and literary agency to read these point-on observations and recommendations from Mark’s Smashwords blog!

Smashwords: Ebook Publishing Gets More Difficult from Here – Here’s How to Succeed.

A drug cartel guide to laundering millions — Fusion

Can anyone explain who are the worst criminals? The big banking systems or the drug cartels or organized crime? If the fines to the banks are in the BILLIONS of dollars and their stock goes up after the news is released that the banks are complicit in money laundering, what does this say about the big investors in those banks? Obviously, they are happy that the systems are in place to hide their money! The basic problem here is that much of this money is covered in blood and heartbreak. Most people do not want to think about that at all.

A drug cartel guide to laundering millions — Fusion.

Tagged: banks, criminal charges against banks, drug cartels, money laundering

Excerpts from Reviews of The Z Redemption!

danielwetta:

More and more people are discovering the first novel in The Z Redemption trilogy! See the exciting story of Ana, David, and Enrique before they met Corvette Nightfire!

Originally posted on Daniel Wetta:

“….a tense international thriller in the best sense of the word. In his debut novel, the Author has made his mark and, if he continues writing the rest of the Trilogy in this manner, could well be on the way to standing up there in the ranks next to masters such as Eric Van Lustbader and Christopher Reich.” – Cate Agosta, Cate’s Book Nut Hut, http://www.catesbooknuthut.wordpress.com/2013/6

“Daniel Wetta’s thriller, The Z Redemption, is a novel with sweep, perspective, and heart. He has captured modern Mexico in all of its glory and heartbreak and created a work that throbs with action….Wetta’s debut novel is a triumph!” – Nancy Stancill, Author, Saving Texas, publisher Black Rose Writing (Amazon review)

“A well-crafted novel that is as action packed as it is heartbreaking, The ZRedemption is a fast paced, edgy tale that hits the ground running and never lets up….A fascinating…

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Excerpts From Reviews of “Corvette Nightfire!”

danielwetta:

More reviews! More excitement about the character you will love, Corvette Nightfire!

Originally posted on Daniel Wetta:

“”Corvette Nightfire’ quickly establishes that this book is as likely to break your heart as it is to send it racing…A fabulous read, ‘Corvette Nightfire’ is high stakes and fast paced all around and the reader is all the better for having taken the ride!”  (Paige Mitchell, Goodreads reviewer).

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/918650971?book_show_action=false&page=1

“To say this is a fast-paced thriller would be an understatement, it’s a book that grabs you from the very first paragraph, buckles you into the passenger seat and doesn’t let you out until the ride is over.  Not only is this a great story, it is full of interesting details surrounding the Mexican culture, which the Authors manage to integrate into the plot seamlessly.  Tightly written and right on track every step of the way, this is a book that will leave you breathless to the very end.”  (Cate Agosta, Reviewer and Blogger, Cate’s Book Nut Hut…

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