Beyond The Horizon
How The Mexican Riviera Became A Warzone For The Cartels (7/10/24)
Cartel violence is significantly impacting the Mexican Riviera, a popular tourist destination. The region, particularly the Riviera Maya, has seen a rise in extortion, murder, and other violent crimes perpetrated by drug cartels. Major criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are primarily responsible for these activities, although local gangs also participate.
The cartels' operations include extortion schemes targeting a wide range of businesses, from local street vendors to high-end hotels and restaurants. Extortion prices vary, with individual vendors paying around $10 a day and larger businesses facing demands of up to $4,900. These activities have not only increased despite the pandemic but have also become more pervasive, affecting almost every sector of the local economy.
The violence and extortion have led to a heightened sense of insecurity among both residents and tourists. In high-profile incidents, such as the discovery of four city employees shot dead in Playa del Carmen, the extent of cartel influence and brutality is starkly evident. The Mexican government has responded by deploying additional troops to the region, but the challenge remains significant as many extortion cases go unreported due to fear of reprisals and distrust of authorities.
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to contact me:
bobbycapucci@protonmail.com
Source:
https://apnews.com/article/technology-mexico-media-caribbean-drug-cartels-05525fb65583bcfbcd8d43631f8863ad
Source:
https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/inside-the-bloody-brutal-cartel-wars-taking-over-mexicos-tourist-haven/
Source:
https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-mexico-police-f6ea7798ca3cc171ac13b3a5a6a6c266
- Duration:
- 26m
- Broadcast on:
- 10 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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So having violence occur at these places was not really on the menu, but the United States and Mexico. We have been using a strategy where we decapitate the leader of a cartel in hopes that that will lead to the cartel disbanding or no longer being effective. And it's just not a strategy that works unfortunately. And we see the same thing with terrorism, right? One guy goes next man up. And it is definitely the same way down here in Mexico. But what has happened is since we've employed that strategy, there's really no cohesive force in control of the whole entire thing anymore. You know, you had the Gulf cartel for a long time who ran the whole entire operation. Then after the Gulf, the Gulf cartel, it was pretty much the Sinaloa cartel who was in charge of everything. But now you have a bunch of offshoots, a bunch of splinter groups, as well as, you know, the bigger cartels and they're all vying for power. They're all vying for more money, more sidewalks, and certainly for more plazas. And when I say plazas, what I mean are areas where these cartels control. And those are the areas where they sell their drugs out of, have their home base for whoever the capo is who's running the crew. And these, these plazas are where they conduct their business. And it's like every single plaza in Mexico right now, never mind just the tourist corridor, is at war with each other. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we've decapitated the leadership and we've gotten rid of people like El Chapo. Look, I'm not saying El Chapo is a good guy. He's not. He deserves to sit in a jail cell. But if anyone thinks that getting rid of El Chapo is going to end the Sinaloa cartel, they have not been paying attention. In fact, El Chapo wasn't even the man inside of the Sinaloa cartel. I know that he was portrayed as that, but he was the man out in front in public. He certainly wasn't the guy calling the shots. The real shot caller of the Sinaloa cartel is Ismail El Maya Zambada. And this dude has been the man for quite some time down there. We have a $15 million reward out on old boy's head. And he is a serious, serious man. You know, there's a lot of misconceptions when people are talking about the drug cartels and what's going on down in Mexico. And El Chapo, while he was one of the heads of Sinaloa, he wasn't the man. Okay. You know, they say it was a partnership or whatever, but there's a reason El Chapo was out in the forefront and why El Maya was hanging out in the background. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with El Maya, he was a smuggler. And back in the day, he was just moving a few kilos. Then they started to pick up steam, right? And he was one of the traffickers of Felix Gallardo. And Felix Gallardo, of course, was running the golf cartel, who was in control with everything, basically. But after he got arrested, things really started going south. You know, you had the Tijuana cartel, that was inherited by the Errol Ariano brothers, then you had the Sinaloa cartel. So on top of that, you also had all of the other offshoots that came from this. And that came even before El Chapo was arrested. And that was after the golf cartel was taken down. So we had a game plan or a blueprint on what would occur after you got rid of somebody like Felix Ariano. And then you just go on with the same exact game plan and do the same thing to get rid of El Chapo. And you get the same results, but even worse this time, because it's not like the old days, right? You know, in the old days, you had some of these older mustache Pete's, like El Maya, who were highly respected. Now, you have all kinds of younger groups out there, like CJNG, who is the competing force with Sinaloa right now, the biggest competing force and the most brutal. And you know, things are different. They don't conduct themselves the same way that they used to. And we're going to get to what happened in Cancun. And that's why I wanted to talk about this a little bit before we got there, because Zombada, well, his operation is mainly in Sinaloa and Durango. But he has a big portion of the Pacific coast in Mexico as well, with Cancun, Quintana Ru, Sonora, and Nuevo Leon. And we know that just yesterday, there was a killing at a Hyatt hotel in Cancun, where competing drug gangs had it out. So there's no more sanctity of, well, we're on a resort, or we're in the tourist corridor. That's done. And guys like El Maya, who have been around forever, well, they're still hanging on as boss, but things are changing, right? You know, you have a more technologically advanced cartel, I guess you would say. In fact, you have the cartel who was using online video games to recruit kids to come and be part of their, you know, their operation to be part of the cartel. It is an insane, insane situation that's going on down there, folks. And whereas you used to be able to count on, you know, there being some semblance of sanity, that's not the case anymore. The whole entire place has erupted. Here's a quick headline about the cartels recruiting youth through video games. This is from October 21st of 2021, and it's in the AP news. We're just going to read a little bit of each one of these headlines that I'm going to, I'm going to bring up just to give you an idea of the serious situation. Drug cartels in Mexico are recruiting youth through contacts made on multiplayer online video games, official said Wednesday. Ricardo Meja, Mexico's assistant public safety secretary, said an apparent cartel recruiter had already bought bus tickets for three boys between the ages of 11 and 14. He said the boys met the recruiter in the online game platform Free Fire, also known as Garina Free Fire. The recruiter promised the boys 200 per week to work in northern Mexico as drug cartel lookouts. The boys were found before they could board the bus in the southern state of Oaxaca. Meja said other cartels have operated in a similar way by contacting players through online games and game platform chats, including Call of Duty, Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto 5. And this is definitely a big problem. This is definitely happening. This isn't some kind of like fairytale or BS. And what happens is, especially with groups like CJNG, well, you come and you think, you know, you're just going for be a lookout, but no, you're part of the gang now. You're going to be putting people in barrels of acid. You're going to be lighting people on fire, and you're going to be involved in all sorts of brutality. And what they do is they, you know, they'll kidnap these kids basically. And they'll make them, you know, slave soldiers like you used to see in like, um, during like Rwanda, the kid soldiers, it's the same thing in Mexico right now. And people don't talk about it enough. What's going down there is a, it's a damn shame. And the people of Mexico deserve so much better. I love Mexico so much. When I was younger, I used to go down there so often. And in fact, it's at the point where I wouldn't even think about going down there right now. It's just, it's just too risky. Another headline pulled right articles on the internet right now. October 12th, 2021, a drug cartel sent a severed head to Tijuana's new police chief on his first day. Imagine that your first day of work. You show up and there's a head waiting for you. And when it comes to Tijuana, that's where I spent a lot of my time when I was in Mexico, Tijuana, Rosarito Beach, and Sonata, that whole area. When I was younger, well, you didn't have to be 21, the drink down there. So my ass would go down there from Las Vegas with my friends two, three times a month when we were like, this 17, 18, you know, and we'd go down there all the time and party. And things were legit. Things were cool. Never had any issues. I was more worried about the cops than I ever was about anyone might kidnapping me or anything. If you weren't going down there to look for trouble, you usually weren't finding it. But the cops down there, although roll you, there's no doubt you better bring an extra 20 for those dudes. They got to get paid. But Tijuana was a great place. And then once this cartel war really kicked into gear under a cold Iran, man, shit got real, real fast. Tijuana's new police chief. Imagine Tijuana's new police chief was greeted on his first day on the job with a severed head and a threat from a drug cartel. The head was found decomposing inside of a black plastic bag left in the street beside a message that accused the chief of being a kidnapper who takes orders from the Sinaloa cartel. So this is what I'm talking about. You have the competing factions. You have the Sinaloa cartel, which has forever pretty much been in charge. You know, they've been the top group, but with CJNG and their fracture groups making their move, things are bloody in Tijuana. And there's definitely a battle for supremacy underway. All right, next headline, Chinese money laundering rings in Chicago, New York, cleaning Mexican drug cartel cash. Now, when I talk about dark money, this is all part of it as well. A lot of times I'm focused when we're talking about dark money on human trafficking, but make no mistake, without dark money, without them being able to launder money, there's no way that these drug operations could do what they do. You ask any of these dudes who are big time pushers, big time traffickers, the problem's not getting the drugs into America. The problem is getting the money out. And you have a very symbiotic relationship between a lot of Chinese nationals and a lot of cartel members when it comes to importing chemicals into Mexico or being involved in money laundering campaigns. A little bit from the headline. I mean, a little bit from the article. A Chinese money launderer was about to pick up Mexican drug cartels cash in Chicago. Federal authorities say, when his plans suddenly changed. Yeah, I think that would be a bit of a plan changer, huh? Shell up. Think you're a, you know, meeting a money courier and in reality, it's a cop. Probably not the best day ever. But guess what? Play stupid games and you win stupid prizes. Let's see what next. Oh, here's one for you from just today, in fact, Mexico announces record seizure of pure fentanyl. Yo, this fentanyl shit is bad news, folks. So what they're doing now is they're pressing the fentanyl into pills and they're putting them on the street as these little blue pills called Roxies. And that's actually fentanyl. So anyone out there who parties or whatever, my advice would be be very careful because it's not like the old days where you're showing up and your boy has some, you know, prescription pills or some shit. You're getting straight fentanyl at this point. Mexico has announced the largest record seizure of pure fentanyl in the country's history. Police announced Thursday that five drug traffickers were arrested and 260 pounds of fentanyl were confiscated on October 28th, the Associated Press reported. The Mexican army said a lab was found in the city of Quilicon with it and storage of chemical spanning five different buildings. The seizure of pure fentanyl is considered the largest in history. The Mexican Defense Department said according to the AP, I mean, have some fentanyl, will you? Holy shit. And you know what the scary part about that is, folks? That's just what they found, how much out there didn't they find, how much made its way across the border. So again, when I'm talking about this fentanyl, it's scary shit. It ain't like, you know, for those of you who are Gen X like I am out there, it ain't like when we were growing up, when I was going to like parties in the, you know, late 90s, early 2000s, when going to like raves and shit like that, you could be relatively sure if you were doing some drugs or whatever that you know, you're not getting anything like fentanyl. Nowadays, zero chance I would be putting anything in my body that I purchased off the street. It's just way too risky. But these, these blues, these rocks, ease, they're a plague on the streets. It is taken over the American Southwest. No doubt about that. No doubt about that. We all have somewhere we're trying to get to. As the largest energy producer in Colorado, Chevron is working to responsibly meet rising energy demand. So everyone can get to where they want to be. You've arrived. That's energy and progress. Visit chevron.com/tankless. So I'd, you know, be very careful when it comes to that kind of thing, folks. Those rocks, these are out there. They're very prevalent and they are very dangerous. People are dropping dead like flies from these things. Next headline. This is from the New York Post and it's from May 30th, 2021. Mexican cartel now targeting cops at their homes. Now, think about that for a minute. Think about how brazen you would have to be to do that. In America, it would never happen. But here you got, according to the article, Mexican drug cartel members have recently taken to targeting police officers in their homes, then torturing and killing the import. The Jalisco cartel, CJNG, has vowed to wipe out members of an elite law enforcement force known as the tactical group in the central Mexican state of Guan Owato, the Associated Press reported Sunday. The cartel even had a banner printed up and hung from a building in the city that declared, "If you want war, you'll get a war. We have already shown you that we know where you are. We are coming for you." For each member of our firm, CJNG, that you arrest, we are going to kill two of your tacticals. Whether they are at their homes, in their patrol vehicles, the message continued referring to the cartel by its Spanish initials. You guys see what's going on here? You pay an attention yet? And you would think that this would be more in the legacy media. This isn't in some far-flung province in Afghanistan. This is right on America's doorstep. And we play a big partner, folks. The war on drugs needs to end. Prohibition needs to end. If we ended that, right? I'm sure there would be some growing pains. We'd have to figure some things out. I'm not naive, but it's much better than what we're doing now. The absolute misery and loss of life that surrounds the war on drugs. You want to talk about a pandemic? That's a pandemic, folks. A big-time pandemic. And it's affecting every single one of our communities. So I don't understand why more people aren't up in arms about this. Because it is just, it's crazy to think that this can go on, and that this is happening so close to home, and nobody has anything to say about it for the most part. And believe me, this is not going to be stopped by creating a wall, okay? That was never going to be the answer, it's ridiculous. Of course, having a wall for security reasons, I'm totally fine with it. But don't pitch me bullshit, all right? Don't pitch me nonsense. The real reason and the real problem with the drugs coming into America all started with NAFTA. You know how many trucks come and go each day across the border at those border crossings, Tijuana, down in Mexico, I mean, down in Texas? Come on. And all you have to do is listen to the narco traffickers themselves, they'll tell you what it is. All right, so we get to the conclusion of basically what I wanted to talk about today. And that is the shooting that just occurred yesterday in um, Cancun. Now, there is a stretch of paradise basically, which has white sandy beaches of Cancun, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum. And now with the battle for power there, well, those aren't so great anymore. And in fact, this hotel where these dudes got killed, I actually stayed at this place before at the Hyatt Ziva, it is a beautiful place, but that doesn't matter anymore in Mexico, folks. These guys, they will come up from the ocean on some jet skis, they'll show up on the beach, and they'll just open fire. There is no thought about repercussions or anything like that, because it is a lawless state at this point. Um, so about 15 men rocked up in ski masks at the Azul beach resort, and they assassinated two men. So the murder rates obviously spiraled out of control. The Mexican government, well, they're taken charge and the, uh, the 11 police forces that are down there in Quintin Arru, they're helpless. But here's the thing, they've tried having the military come in before, and that didn't work either. So what is the answer, folks? Is the answer more violence? Is the answer more military action? Definitely the place for it, there's no doubt. I, again, I don't have all of the answers, but what I will tell you is this, what we are doing is not working. You have down here, you have, uh, uh, the CJNG there with hundreds of bodies that have been found dumped in drainage canals buried in fields and patios in yards of people's homes, according to the article. So it is insane to think that Cancun, such a beautiful place is overrun with this kind of violence. And again, it all goes back to the policies that have been put on the books by the United States and the Mexican governments. There's a morgue in Guadalajara in the capital state of Jalisco that even ran out of space and started moving rotting bodies around in refrigerated trucks. Are you really? And it was so bad that the neighbors complained about the smell. This is in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It's just mind boggling to me that this is occurring like this. The cartel gunman ambushed and killed 14 state police officers last year down there. And, uh, the, uh, the CJ, CJNG, well, they run around like paramilitaries. They're wearing camouflage. They come around in convoys, dozens of pickup trucks, and they just get to do their business, however they want to do it. And nobody can stop them. Who's going to? Who's going to step up and stop them? The military? They can't do that. They don't know what they're doing. I mean, how many of the military members even want to be engaged in that? So what happened down in Tijuana, I mean, excuse me, what happened down in Cancun is not an, and I'm not, you know, uh, something that is once in a million or, you know, something that never occurs. It is something that happens more often than we even think about at this point. You know, we can't live in the past where the tourist corridor was protected by the cartels themselves, and we could go there and be safe with our families, our girlfriends, our wives, whatever it is, because that's not the case, not anymore. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't go there. What I'm saying is keep your head on a swivel if you do, because it's not like, you know, the paradise of yesteryear, you know, there's no songs about Acapoco anymore. Do yourself a favor and just hop onto YouTube and type in cartel violence in Acapoco, and look at what it has done to tourism down there. And really at the end of the day, who suffers the most? The citizens of Mexico, the citizens of the United States, the working class, us. And when I say working class, remember, folks, I'm not talking about, you know, just the working poor. I'm talking about all of us that aren't in the big club. We're all in the working class, even those of you out there who might not think you are, unless you have these billions of dollars and you're rolling around and millions of dollars with these clowns. Well, they look at you the way they look at everybody else. So where are the ones who foot the bill? Where are the ones who have family members dropping dead in the streets from overdoses? Meanwhile, while all of these people and all of these so-called elites continue to play their game of thrones. And I for one have had them. We will definitely continue to talk about this issue. And it's an issue that is very important because look at the pandemic, the epidemic of people dropping dead in our streets. We need to correct this. We need to fix it. And if that means we have to think out of the box to do it, then we need to do that because the old way of doing things is no longer working. Times change, life changes, and the world certainly changes around us. And either we change with it or we get left behind. If you'd like to contact me, you can do that at bobbykapucci@protonmail.com. That's B-O, B-B-Y, C-A-P-U-C-C-I at protonmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter at B-O, B-B-Y, underscore, C-A-P-U-C-C-I. The links that we discussed are in the description box. All right, folks, I hope you all have a great Friday and I will be back later with a little bit