Daniel Wetta's Blog, page 14
February 23, 2014
February 17, 2014
February 10, 2014
February 5, 2014
Zetas Training US Gang Members in Mexico
Zetas Training US Gang Members in Mexico: Witness – InSight Crime | Organized Crime in the Americas.
Members of the Texas-born Barrio Azteca gang are receiving training from Mexico’s Zetas, according to the testimony of a former gang member, a sign the group is evolving and deepening its role in organized crime beyond the border region.
Former Barrio Azteca member Jesus Ernesto Chavez Castillo — who is serving as a witness in the Texas trial of the gang’s ex-leader in exchange for protection in prison — said the Zetas are training members of the gang for assassinations, attacks, extortion and protection, reported Informador.
Barrio Azteca sent two teams to the city of Torreon, in Coahuila state, to be trained in more efficient methods, according to Chavez Castillo. As part of the training, they were required to extort local businesses and pay off local and federal police.
Chavez Castillo’s testimony also detailed the group’s past role in the cartel war for control of Ciudad Juarez, in which they served as hired assassins for the Juarez Cartel.
Alleged former Barrio Azteca leader Arturo Gallegos is currently standing trial for the 2010 murder of three US Consulate employees in Ciudad Juarez.
InSight Crime Analysis
Barrio Azteca emerged in the El Paso, Texas prison system in the 1980s, and later expanded throughout Texas and into Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, according to the FBI’s 2011 gang threat assessment.
It’s operations also expanded across the border and the gang become a major player in the Juarez criminal landscape. It is now thought to have around 5,000 members operating in that area alone, while this latest report indicates it is expanding operations deeper into Mexico.
During the war for control of Ciudad Juarez, Barrio Azteca emerged as a key source of manpower for the Juarez Cartel in its fight against the Sinaloa Cartel. While the Juarez Cartel lost the battle, it appears Barrio Azteca used the experience it gained during that time to become a stronger force in the region.
As InSight Crime has noted previously, Barrio Azteca has in recent years moved towards consolidating its control on drug trafficking routes through Juarez and also engages in criminal activities including human smuggling and weapons trafficking in the border region.
SEE ALSO: Juarez After the War
Barrio Azteca was listed as one of the biggest security threats in the latest Texas Gang Threat Assessment, due in part to its size and its cross-border alliances with major Mexican criminal organizations. If the gang is indeed forming ties with the Zetas — another enemy of the Sinaloa Cartel — and becoming better trained, this would be another worrying sign of the group’s professionalization and evolution.
Zetas Training US Gang Members in Mexico: Witness – InSight Crime | Organized Crime in the Americas
Zetas Training US Gang Members in Mexico: Witness – InSight Crime | Organized Crime in the Americas.
Members of the Texas-born Barrio Azteca gang are receiving training from Mexico’s Zetas, according to the testimony of a former gang member, a sign the group is evolving and deepening its role in organized crime beyond the border region.
Former Barrio Azteca member Jesus Ernesto Chavez Castillo — who is serving as a witness in the Texas trial of the gang’s ex-leader in exchange for protection in prison — said the Zetas are training members of the gang for assassinations, attacks, extortion and protection, reported Informador.
Barrio Azteca sent two teams to the city of Torreon, in Coahuila state, to be trained in more efficient methods, according to Chavez Castillo. As part of the training, they were required to extort local businesses and pay off local and federal police.
Chavez Castillo’s testimony also detailed the group’s past role in the cartel war for control of Ciudad Juarez, in which they served as hired assassins for the Juarez Cartel.
Alleged former Barrio Azteca leader Arturo Gallegos is currently standing trial for the 2010 murder of three US Consulate employees in Ciudad Juarez.
InSight Crime Analysis
Barrio Azteca emerged in the El Paso, Texas prison system in the 1980s, and later expanded throughout Texas and into Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, according to the FBI’s 2011 gang threat assessment.
It’s operations also expanded across the border and the gang become a major player in the Juarez criminal landscape. It is now thought to have around 5,000 members operating in that area alone, while this latest report indicates it is expanding operations deeper into Mexico.
During the war for control of Ciudad Juarez, Barrio Azteca emerged as a key source of manpower for the Juarez Cartel in its fight against the Sinaloa Cartel. While the Juarez Cartel lost the battle, it appears Barrio Azteca used the experience it gained during that time to become a stronger force in the region.
As InSight Crime has noted previously, Barrio Azteca has in recent years moved towards consolidating its control on drug trafficking routes through Juarez and also engages in criminal activities including human smuggling and weapons trafficking in the border region.
SEE ALSO: Juarez After the War
Barrio Azteca was listed as one of the biggest security threats in the latest Texas Gang Threat Assessment, due in part to its size and its cross-border alliances with major Mexican criminal organizations. If the gang is indeed forming ties with the Zetas — another enemy of the Sinaloa Cartel — and becoming better trained, this would be another worrying sign of the group’s professionalization and evolution.
January 27, 2014
He’s Coming…Corvette Nightfire!
Originally I hoped to have my second novel published by Christmas, 2013. The characters, however, had different ideas. They involved one another in intrigues, romance, and mysteries so intricately entwined that I let go of the deadline in order to tell their story in the way that they told it to me: breathlessly, passionately, and with complete commitment to the truth. In particular, Enrique Santos, Valentina Garza, Raúl Jesús Espinoza, and Corvette Nightfire bared their souls to close examination and judgement of their actions. They told me what happened as fast as I could type it. Now I am completing the final chapter for them. None of them will settle down until you have heard their story and will speak to them about how you feel about what they did.
I and Robert Selfe, the editor of the novel who has described the poker of Corvette Nightfire in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas as the novel arrives at its climax, are committed to completing the final editing of the book by the end of February. I will then handle the formatting, pre-marketing, and pre-publication tasks for the goal of having the novel in electronic form, at least, by the first of April. I have selected a graphic artist to work with us on the cover. If not by April, then certainly soon after, I hope to have both The Z Redemption and Corvette Nightfire available in print editions on Amazon.com.
Like The Z Redemption, the novel Corvette Nightfire will be available on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple, Kobo and other leading book sellers. Please watch my blog and website http://www.danielwetta.com for news, videos, articles, and other updates regarding the world in which the characters of the novels live. Oh yes, there are music, culture, opinion, and the occasional book review there too.
See you soon in Las Vegas, Monterrey, Mexico, and Bridgetown, Barbados!
November 15, 2013
Why Mexico’s meth country is totally tweaking out
Imagine, for example, if California was run by organized crime and vigilantes, and the federal government had to send in troops to try to re-conquer the state!
Why Mexico’s meth country is totally tweaking out | GlobalPost.
Why Mexico’s meth country is totally tweaking out | GlobalPost
Imagine, for example, if California was run by organized crime and vigilantes, and the federal government had to send in troops to try to re-conquer the state!
Why Mexico’s meth country is totally tweaking out | GlobalPost.
November 5, 2013
Mexican Cartels Become Web Savvy By Using Social Media For PR, Selfies | Fox News Latino
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Mexican Cartels Become Web Savvy By Using Social Media For PR, Selfies | Fox News Latino.
Only a few years ago, drug dealers were using pagers and pay phones to avoid detection from authorities in the illicit business. Now, with the advent of social media, many web-savvy Mexican narcos have joined the likes of Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber by using Twitter, Facebook and other online tools to run PR campaigns, post selfies, brag about their wealth and even target rivals.
Like any burgeoning business, Mexico’s drug cartels are using the web to conduct very successful public relations campaigns that put those of their counterparts in Colombia and Myanmar in the 1980s to shame.
“They advertise their activities, they conduct public relations initiatives, and they have basically turned themselves into their own media company,” Antoine Nouvet from the SecDev Foundation, a Canadian research organization, told Vice Magazine. “Colombia’s cartel groups or drug traffickers in Myanmar in the 1990s were very sophisticated at public relations, but they didn’t have this massive broadcasting platform.”
YouTube has become the place for the cartels to show that they aren’t as bad as people thought they were…or at least that’s what they want you to think.
A video posted on the website after Hurricane Ingrid wrecked havoc on the country’s northeastern coast shows members of the Gulf cartel handing out aid to storm victims. The YouTube clip has garnered almost half a million views.
But these cartel members aren’t just posting evidence of their good deeds – they are also following in the footsteps of Instagram icons like Kim Kardashian by posting “selfies.”
One alleged cartel member, who identifies himself as “Broly,” lists his job as a member of the Knights Templar cartel and is notorious for photos of his high performance 4 by 4, his gang of weapon-toting colleagues, and a slew of him just him pouting and holding firearms.
#OMG
Cartels also employ technology analysts who help track the public sentiment and also track down rivals or people who have wronged the group.
Despite encryption codes and other high-tech blockers, cartel members were allegedly able to use reverse hacking to figure out the identity of one of people behind El Blog de Narco, a popular site in Mexico that reports on cartel violence. He has not been seen or heard from since.
“It takes some technological savvy to find out who’s behind them and then to track them down and kill them in real space,” Nouvet told Vice.
Much like their well-publicized beheadings and hanging dead bodies from bridges, cartels have used the web to publicize their more gruesome tactic.
Last month, a video allegedly from the ultra-violent Zetas cartel was posted on Facebook that showed the gory 40-second beheading of a young woman, causing international uproar when the social media site refused to take it down.
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