In Mexico, a new level of savagery is unearthed

In Mexico, a new level of savagery is unearthed

Nick Miroff and William Booth
April 24, 2011

SAN FERNANDO, MEXICO - At the largest mass grave site ever found in Mexico, where 177 bodies have been pulled from deep pits, authorities have recovered few bullet casings and little evidence that the dead were killed with a gun.

Instead, most died of blunt force trauma to the head, and a sledge hammer found at the crime scene is believed to have been used in the executions, said Mexican investigators and state officials. As many as 122 of the victims were passengers dragged off buses at drug cartel roadblocks on the major highway to the United States.

The sadistic murders of hundreds of civilians at isolated ranches 90 minutes south of the Texas border mark a new level of barbarity in Mexico's four-year U.S.-backed drug war. As forensic teams and Mexican marines dig through deeper and darker layers here, the buried secrets in San Fernando are challenging President Felipe Calderon's claims that his government is winning and in control of its cities and roads.

More than 35,000 people have been killed, and thousands more have simply disappeared, since Calderon sent the military to battle Mexican organized crime with $1.6 billion in U.S. support. U.S. officials in Mexico worry that criminal gangs are taking over sections of the vital border region not by overwhelming firepower but sheer terror.

On Thursday, cartel gunmen sacked the city of Miguel Aleman, across the river from Roma, Texas, tossing grenades and burning down three car dealerships, an auto parts outlet, furniture store and gas station. Three buses were strafed with gunfire Saturday in separate attacks, wounding three.

The U.S. State Department issued new warnings Friday advising Americans to defer nonessential travel to the entire border state of Tamaulipas and large swaths of Mexico because of the threat of armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping and murder by organized crime.

Nothing to identify them

In the red dirt tombs of San Fernando, almost all of the bodies were stripped of identification -- no licenses, bus ticket stubs, or photographs of loved ones, making the job of notifying next of kin especially difficult, local and state officials said.

Officials in Tamaulipas say they have found 34 grave sites scattered in a wide arc around this farming town of 60,000, where marines have established a military camp for patrols.

Evidence suggests the dead include Mexicans and Central American migrants traveling to the United States to work. But only a few of the exhumed bodies have been identified.

Authorities have arrested 76 suspects, including local Zeta boss Martin "El Kilo" Estrada, a menacing figure covered in tattoos who authorities charged as the mastermind.

Motives for the mass killings remain a matter of speculation. "Perhaps we are seeing in the graves the results of several different confrontations and crimes committed over many months," said Morelos Canseco Gomez, the lieutenant governor of Tamaulipas.

Canseco said authorities are still looking for an entire bus loaded with passengers that vanished on the border in March.

'Everything he had'

The families of the missing did not receive ransom demands, investigators say, and so the victims appear not to have been killed for large sums of money, only what they might have had on them. Officials say it is possible some victims were snatched to serve as forced recruits for the Zetas crime organization, according to five bus passengers abducted but later rescued. The savage method of execution is also unexplained, with shuddering investigators left guessing at the deranged mental state of the killers.

"People began to disappear," said Ramon Ruiz, an apprentice priest in San Fernando. "First it was people with money, then it was anyone. They kidnapped a local farmer's son and demanded $10,000, and when he gave them $5,000 -- everything he had -- they sent him half of his son."

What I find ironic is that this receives a lot of coverage, whereas the ongoing gang warfare in the US, that costs thousands of lives every year gets little to no coverage.

BubbleBliss wrote:
What I find ironic is that this receives a lot of coverage, whereas the ongoing gang warfare in the US, that costs thousands of lives every year gets little to no coverage.

Where in the US do gangs blockade roads, drag civilians off buses by the hundreds, kill them with sledgehammers and dump them in mass graves?

What gangs in the US control entire cities, entire swaths of the country?

Which gangs in the US have required a military response, which was ineffective?

We have nothing even approaching this magnitude of violence and terror. As the title indicates, this is a "new level of savagery." I don't know if it would be much of an exaggeration to compare our southern neighbor to Somalia at this point.

1) There are parts in the inner cities where the cops don't patrol. Most gangs have lookouts scouting the entrances into their territory in order to avoid surprise visits by rival gangs or other unwanted visitors. They may not blockade the road, but if the scout declares you as dangerous, the outcome will be the same as if they had blockaded the road.
While they may not drag civilians off by the hundreds, these gangs have dragged civilians off in many cases in order to receive ransom money or just rob the individual of their belongings.

2) That's an easy question to answer: All major cities, especially NY, LA and Chicago have severe gang problems where gangs to in fact rule entire neighborhoods. Then there are other forms of organized crime such as the Italian, Russian, Albanian, Jewish, etc. Mafia or the drug cartels that also rule neighborhoods and small towns all over the US.

3) Well, considering that there have been numerous "wars" on problems caused by gangs, such as the "war on drugs", "war on gangs", etc. you could say that while none of these have been met with military force, the police and FBI are pretty helpless to do anything against the gang problem in the US. And also, in any other country where gang warfare claimed more victims than the conflict in Northern Ireland and post-traumatic stress levels among children were higher in one of the biggest cities than in Baghdad, there may have already been a military style intervention.

While it may not be directly comparable, I still find it fascinating that the media would rather cover an area that's not even part of the United States instead of areas all over the United States.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since Calderon sent in the army to fight the drug gangs in 2006. Do you have U.S. gang death tolls handy for the last 5 years?

1) In other words, none.

2a) NY, LA and Chicago are not entirely controlled by gangs.
2b) These small towns that are entirely controlled by gangs, do they have names?
2c) What about states that are entirely controlled by gangs?
2d) What was the last US state that the State Dept. advised people not to travel though?

3) In other words, none.

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Yes, the US has its share of gang problems.

No, there is no equivalency between our gang problems and Mexico's, none whatsoever.

The media does report on gang violence in the US:

http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=gang+violence

The authors of this article are not "the media." The fact that they wrote about gang violence in Mexico does not mean that "the media" as a whole, with all its numerous outlets, does not cover gang violence in the US, or even that these particular authors have not written about gang violence in the US on other occasions.

I will add that I am not aware of any gang violence in the US that approaches the sheer visceral horror of the violence in this story--and for that reason, it is probably more new$worthy.

I hate to be cynical, but the myriad gangland shootings all over the country make for rather pedestrian news. It's like the violence in Iraq--after the 900th car bombing in a month (or whatever), it just makes for boring and depressing reading. Whereas this is a different kind of violence with a sheer visceral horror that the aggregate total of gangland shootings throughout the US cannot approach.

Rest assured, if anything like this were ever discovered in the US it would be plastered in huge letters all over every paper in the country.

Never said it was entirely like the war in Mexico, but considering that the US is a lot more developed than Mexico, the gang warfare in the US is significant.
I do understand the fact that after the 900th shooting, people do not care about it as much anymore. But that will be the same with this war in Mexico. Dead bodies are found in the border cities every morning now, which used to make the news but doesn't anymore.

BubbleBliss wrote:
Never said it was entirely like the war in Mexico, but considering that the US is a lot more developed than Mexico, the gang warfare in the US is significant.
I do understand the fact that after the 900th shooting, people do not care about it as much anymore. But that will be the same with this war in Mexico. Dead bodies are found in the border cities every morning now, which used to make the news but doesn't anymore.

It matters to those in the border states. I lived in one for many years. When that violence spills over into US states, it alarms many.

Yeah, but the violence is already in US states. Not to the degree we see in Mexico, but it's still there.
You could compare this to Miami in the 80s and 90s while the cocaine wars between Colombians and Cubans was going on there.