I was about to post that this was old news which I swore I'd seen a couple years back. Lo & behold, turns out it's a whole new attempt at nabbing the exact same son of the exact same cartel boss as before. Well, I sincerely wish the Mexican authorities better luck this time - seems they're gonna need it, last time President AMLO bent the knee and let the target go after within like less than 24 hours, and the Sinaloans eventually got around to murdering all the cops involved who they could identify anyway.
Border Report is an OK place to start, I think. Wikipedia will give you sterile enough descriptions of their activity, hierarchies and atrocities. But I'll be blunt, you could unironically use gore sites for the purpose of studying the cartels if you've the stomach. They're legendarily sadistic motherfuckers doing their damndest to make the Aztecs proud and ISIS look like a bunch of fluffy kittens, and they looooove uploading videos of their extracurricular activities to the Internet as well. Worst I can recall was the 'Funky Town' vid from around 2016-ish where they got around to (very slowly, of course) offing someone they had already flayed & mutilated while playing the titular song in the background. I remember because it became a macabre Internet sensation for a few months.
Suffice to say I didn't care to pursue further cartel torture/execution videos after checking to see if that one was as bad as I'd heard, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the various cartels are still pumping more of those out every day and that they get worse each time, it's just one of many ways in which they're constantly trying to one-up each other.
Los Zetas, the cartel founded by deserting special forces mentioned upthread, had a reputation for kidnapping unfortunate randos (usually illegals trying to get to the US border or street kids) and forcing them into gladiatorial death matches, then recruiting the survivors. However to my understanding they've declined since the 2010s and the Sinaloa Cartel (also the cartel El Chapo led & which his son belongs to) has replaced them as Mexico's #1 cartel, a position which they definitely didn't get to by being a bunch of saints. Now the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, formerly enforcers for Sinaloa in their war to topple the Zetas, has wasted no time in turning against the latter after becoming the #2 cartel (conveniently there's also a power struggle brewing between El Chapo's sons and the family of El Mayo, El Chapo's former lieutenant who has taken over since his arrest) and their war is sure to produce a crapload more Funky Town-tier material.
Their names don't really matter though, they're basically all equally psychotic gangs of demons in human skin and as you can see, they also all pack enough firepower to contend with the Mexican government (and possibly topple it, but why bother - they've already got a lot of Mexican politicians, possibly AMLO himself even, in their pockets too, and it'd attract unwanted heat from their big northern neighbor & the rest of the planet for obvious reasons).
If I had to guess? They still serve some purpose yet for the American elite and the institutions under their thrall, most certainly & obviously including the CIA. Could be as simple as being their primary drug dealers, could be as complicated as helping to fuel the migrant crisis on purpose or some other nefarious conspiracy/conspiracies. They found Noriega useful for decades long before he even took the Panamanian presidency for himself, after all.Yet we are actively helping the Columbian government in fighting the drugs there. Why not on Mexico which is closer?
I don't doubt it's a big factor at all, who on earth wants to be neighbors with a cartel sicario who'd boil you and your entire family alive if his boss told him to or he just feels like it while on a coke binge?Just how much of a factor do you think that Latin American gang brutality is in spurring northward migration from Latin America towards the US?
To be honest, I wonder why exactly Latin American countries are so homicidal and dysfunctional with their huge amounts of homicides, drugs, and cartels whereas US Hispanics experience much less of these problems on a proportional basis. Selection effects? The effects of Anglo-Saxon institutions? Something else?
If I had to guess? They still serve some purpose yet for the American elite and the institutions under their thrall, most certainly & obviously including the CIA. Could be as simple as being their primary drug dealers, could be as complicated as helping to fuel the migrant crisis on purpose or some other nefarious conspiracy/conspiracies. They found Noriega useful for decades long before he even took the Panamanian presidency for himself, after all.
I don't doubt it's a big factor at all, who on earth wants to be neighbors with a cartel sicario who'd boil you and your entire family alive if his boss told him to or he just feels like it while on a coke binge?
in all honesty I think the CIA has done more damage to the us then any forgin government ever could.
I don't doubt it's a big factor at all, who on earth wants to be neighbors with a cartel sicario who'd boil you and your entire family alive if his boss told him to or he just feels like it while on a coke binge?
They're also useful for intelligence gathering. Maybe they should have focused more on that instead of on regime change during the Cold War.
Yeah, seems like life in the US would be paradise for Latin Americans, even for those who live in relatively well-to-do LatAm countries. I always joke that in California you get a good taste of Latin America with much less of the homicides that LatAm is notorious for!
The NYPD has a better and more competent intel network than the CIA, they just don't have the funding/slush funds, State Dept, and DoD backing the CIA has.for gathering inteligence?
Um the CIA has a long history of fucking up inteligence work, in pretty major ways too.
DoD doesn't back the CIA.The NYPD has a better and more competent intel network than the CIA, they just don't have the funding/slush funds, State Dept, and DoD backing the CIA has.
It'd also send a message to any other people who may be 'wannabe-successors' to El Chapo or other cartel heads.If the police that arrested the son are smart they would take a look at what happened to the last people who arrested him when he got free. Putting a bullet in him might save those cops a lot of grief
because the government in mexico is very corrupt and they have been heavily infiltrated by the cartels to the point where if we send them guns they end up in the hands of the cartels as often as not. this doesn't get solved without a purge.Yeah, I am not sure why the Mexican government is bothering with arrests. Classify the cartels as terrorists, declare martial law, and wipe out this plague.
Yeah, I am not sure why the Mexican government is bothering with arrests. Classify the cartels as terrorists, declare martial law, and wipe out this plague.
This is pretty much it, and we can be fairly sure that the corruption covering their asses extends to the US government as well (though probably - hopefully - less extreme). I mean c'mon, on the surface it seems like justifying a war against the cartels should be a slam dunk: these guys are psychopathic Aztec wannabees who revel in violence which would turn veteran gore aficionados' stomachs, they're part of the 'supply chain' of the effort to poison Americans with fentanyl, they're also basically Satanists worshiping a demonic inversion of the Virgin Mary by way of grisly human sacrifices (and note the date on this FBI article, they've already moved to carrying out such sacrifices on American soil...as of a full decade ago!), they're packing enough heat to challenge national militaries & police forces, and they're right next door to the US. If they didn't exist IRL and you made them up as a villain in a story you'd be accused of making the bad guys too cartoonishly evil to be believable even if your critics didn't start bashing you with the 'racism' bat.because the government in mexico is very corrupt and they have been heavily infiltrated by the cartels to the point where if we send them guns they end up in the hands of the cartels as often as not. this doesn't get solved without a purge.
It isn't an invasion if we are asked to help fight the cartels.It's impossible to effectively go after the cartels on a "military scale" within the United States, and the United States doesn't want to fucking invade Mexico because that is very likely to cause large portions of the Mexican public to side with the cartels because they're being invaded.
Imagine Mexico electing leadership that would allow it, and the cartels allowing such leadership to live long enough to get elected.It isn't an invasion if we are asked to help fight the cartels.
it would have to be something he held close to his chest till he got elected. he would then need his family and himself under guard that isn't from mexico.Imagine Mexico electing leadership that would allow it, and the cartels allowing such leadership to live long enough to get elected.
It isn't an invasion if we are asked to help fight the cartels.
Why? Thr UN won't do shit and they know itIf the Mexican government was going to ask for external help, they'd ask for a U.N. peacekeeping mission long before they welcomed any 'direct' intervention by the United States.