20 bodies found in mass grave near Palomas (Mexico)

20 bodies found in mass grave near Palomas (Mexico)

www.demingheadlight.com

PALOMAS - The smell of death was overpowering one day after investigators unearthed 20 bodies near a small town across the border from Columbus, N.M.

Investigators removed the bodies, some of them mere skeletal remains, from a ranch about 10 miles away from the Columbus border crossing. They began their excavation about 7 a.m. Sunday. But by 10 a.m. Tuesday, they stopped searching for additional bodies and abandoned the crime scene.

The Mexican Army initially discovered the mass grave site at Rancho El Capricho - a ranch that people can rent for their parties. Since then, Mexico's Attor

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Residents of Palomas were indifferent to the discovery of the mass grave. The town's newly appointed mayor, 27-year-old Miguel Angel Chac-n, said numerous people have disappeared from Palomas within the last year. The town's administration does not have a list of those who have gone missing, he said.

I grew up 15 miles North of Palomas. It was a pleasant little Mexican town where American high school teens could buy beers and tourists could purchase cheap trinkets and souviners.

Things have certainly changed in the last 10 years. The town has gone through mayors and police officers like grass through a goose. There are currently several former town officials living in the US, having been granted assylum following death threats and hit contracts being placed on them by the cartels. Some of the violence has spilled acorss the border into the little New Mexico town of Columbus.

Why, oh why are we continuing to accept the fraud of our millitary being entrenched in the Middle East under the (false) guise of National Security while completely ignoring the fact that our third world southern neighbor is in the middle of a full blown war which seriously threatens our national security? Why haven't US troops been deployed to the entire length of the US/Mexico border or, even better, assistance been offered to the Mexican government to try to restore some peace and return the border towns to safety?

Why is it that a shooting in Afghanistan which kills a half a dozen people in a city is headline news nationwide while stories like this are confined to local regional news and never discussed outside of the border states?

www.demingheadlight.com
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reply to post by burdman30ott6


Wow, very interesting and insightful thread.

Mexico is really disintegrating and this thread really needs to be bumped up.

And yes, I agree with you, logically speaking why the sam heck are we way over in the Middle East when we have our border to the south to protect?

I love warm weather, I mean I really like it hot and I love Mexican food and architecture, so I suggested to my husband and son when we really both retire we could move south, but with the crazy drug wars down there, no way........and I'm learning Spanish to boot.

Something really needs to be done.

And good question, why is this not played up like Iran?

Because there is big money in the drug trade and some of the fingers in the cookie jar are our very own Alphabet Agencies here in the good old USA, that's why

On April 23, two patrol cars were ambushed by armed gunman in downtown Ciudad Juarez. In the ensuing firefight, seven policemen were killed as well as a 17-year old boy who was caught in the crossfire. All of the assailants escaped uninjured fleeing the crime-scene in three SUVs. The bold attack was executed in broad daylight in one of the busiest areas of the city. According to the Associated Press:

"Hours after the attack, a painted message directed to top federal police commanders and claiming responsibility for the attack appeared on a wall in downtown Ciudad Juarez. It was apparently signed by La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez drug cartel. The Juarez cartel has been locked in a bloody turf battle with the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"This will happen to you ... for being with El Chapo Guzman and to all the dirtbags who support him. Sincerely, La Linea," the message read." ("7 Mexican police officers killed in Ciudad Juarez", Olivia Torres, AP)

The massacre in downtown Juarez is just the latest incident in Mexico's bloody drug war. Between 5 to 6 more people will be killed on Saturday, and on every day thereafter with no end in sight. It's a war that cannot be won, but that hasn't stopped the Mexican government from sticking to its basic game-plan.

The experts and politicians disagree about the origins of the violence in Juarez, but no one disputes that 23,000 people have been killed since 2006 in a largely futile military operation initiated by Mexican president Felipe Calderon. Whether the killing is the result of the ongoing turf-war between the rival drug cartels or not, is irrelevant. The present policy is failing and needs to be changed. The militarization of the war on drugs has been a colossal disaster which has accelerated the pace of social disintegration. Mexico is quickly becoming a failed state, and Washington's deeply-flawed Merida Initiative, which provides $1.4 billion in aid to the Calderon administration to intensify military operations, is largely to blame.

The surge in narcotics trafficking and drug addiction go hand-in-hand with destructive free trade policies which have fueled their growth. NAFTA, in particular, has triggered a massive migration of people who have been pushed off the land because they couldn't compete with heavily-subsidized agricultural products from the US. Many of these people drifted north to towns like Juarez which became a manufacturing hub in the 1990s. But Juarez's fortunes took a turn for the worse a few years later when competition from the Far East grew fiercer. Now most of the plants and factories have been boarded up and the work has been outsourced to China where subsistence wages are the norm. Naturally, young men have turned to the cartels as the only visible means of employment and upward mobility. That means that free trade has not only had a ruinous effect on the economy, but has also created an inexhaustible pool of recruits for the drug trade.

Washington's Merida Initiative--which provides $1.4 billion in aid to the Calderon administration to intensify military operations--has only made matters worse. The public's demand for jobs, security and social programs, has been answered with check-points, crackdowns and state repression. The response from Washington hasn't been much better. Obama hasn't veered from the policies of the prior administration. He is as committed to a military solution as his predecessor, George W. Bush.

But the need for change is urgent. Mexico is unraveling and, as the oil wells run dry, the prospect of a failed state run by drug kingpins and paramilitaries on US's southern border becomes more and more probable. The drug war is merely a symptom of deeper social problems; widespread political corruption, grinding poverty, soaring unemployment, and the erosion of confidence in public institutions. But these issues are brushed aside, so the government can pursue its one-size-fits-all military strategy without second-guessing or remorse. Meanwhile, the country continues to fall apart.



THE CLASHING CARTELS

The big cartels are engaged in a ferocious battle for the drug corridors around Juarez. The Sinaloa, Gulf and La Familia cartels have formed an alliance against the upstart Los Zetas gang. Critics allege that the Calderon administration has close ties with the Sinaloa cartel and refuses to arrest its members. Here's an excerpt from an Al Jazeera video which points to collusion between Sinaloa and the government.

"The US Treasury identifies at least 20 front companies that are laundering drug money for the Sinaloa cartel...There are allegations that the Mexican government is "favoring" the cartel. According to Diego Enrique Osorno, investigative journalist and author of the "The Sinaloa Cartel":

"There are no important detentions of Sinaloa cartel members. But the government is hunting down adversary groups, new players in the world of drug trafficking."

International Security Expert, Edgardo Buscaglia, says that "of over 50,000 drug related arrests, only a very small percentage have been Sinaloa cartel members, and no cartel leaders. Dating back to 2003, law enforcement data shows objectively that the government has been hitting the weakest organized crime groups in Mexico, but they have not been hitting the main crime group, the Sinaloa Federation, that's responsible for 45% of the drug trade in this country." (Al Jazeera)

There's no way to verify whether the Calderon administration is in bed with the Sinaloa cartel, but Al Jazeera's report is pretty damning. A similar report appeared in the Los Angeles Times which revealed that the government had diverted funds that were earmarked for struggling farmers (who'd been hurt by NAFTA) "to the families of notorious drug traffickers and several senior government officials, including the agriculture minister." Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:

"According to several academic studies, as much as 80% of the money went to just 20% of the registered farmers...Among the most eyebrow-raising recipients were three siblings of billionaire drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, and the brother of Guzman's onetime partner, Arturo Beltran Leyva". ("Mexico farm subsidies are going astray", Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times)

There's no doubt that if the LA Times knows about the circular flow of state money to drug traffickers, than the Obama administration knows too. So why does the administration persist with the same policy and continue to support the people they pretend to be fighting?

In forty years, US drug policy has never changed. The same "hunt them down, bust them, and lock them up" philosophy continues to this day. That's why many critics believe that the drug war is really about control, not eradication. It's a matter of who's in line to rake in the profits; small-time pushers who run their own operations or politically-connected kingfish who have agents in the banks, the intelligence agencies, the military and the government. Currently, in Juarez, the small fries' are getting wiped out while the big-players are getting stronger. In a year or so, the Sinaloa cartel will control the streets, the drug corridors, and the border. The violence will die down and the government will proclaim "victory", but the flow of drugs into the US will increase while the situation for ordinary Mexicans will continue to deteriorate.

Here's a clip from an article in the Independent by veteran journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy:

"The outlawing and criminalizing of drugs and consequent surge in prices has produced a bonanza for producers everywhere, from Kabul to Bogota, but, at the Mexican border, where an estimated $39,000m in narcotics enter the rich US market every year, a veritable tsunami of cash has been created. The narcotraficantes, or drug dealers, can buy the murder of many, and the loyalty of nearly everyone. They can acquire whatever weapons they need from the free market in firearms north of the border and bring them into Mexico with appropriate payment to any official who holds his hand out." ("The US-Mexico border: where the drugs war has soaked the ground blood red", Hugh O'Shaughnessy The Independent)

It's no coincidence that Kabul and Bogota are the the de facto capitals of the drug universe. US political support is strong in both places, as is the involvement of US intelligence agencies. But does that suggest that the CIA is at work in Mexico, too? Or, to put it differently: Why is the US supporting a client that appears to be allied to the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico? That's the question.

THE CHECKERED HISTORY OF THE CIA

In August 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb released the first installment of Dark Alliance in the San Jose Mercury exposing the CIA's involvement in the drug trade. The article blew the lid off the murky dealings of the agency's covert operations. Webb's words are as riveting today as they were when they first appeared 14 years ago:

"For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of coc aine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.

This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's coc aine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack'' capital of the world. The coc aine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America

and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.

It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the union of a U.S.-backed army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the Uzi-toting "gangstas'' of Compton and South-Central Los Angeles." ("America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war", Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News)

Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn has also done extensive research on the CIA/drug connection. Here's an excerpt from an article titled "The Government's Dirty Little Secrets", which ran in the Los Angeles Times.

"CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz finally conceded to a U.S. congressional committee that the agency had worked with drug traffickers and had obtained a waiver from the Justice Department in 1982 (the beginning of the Contra funding crisis) allowing it not to report drug trafficking by agency contractors. Was the lethal arsenal deployed at Roodeplaat assembled with the advice from the CIA and other U.S. agencies? There were certainly close contacts over the years. It was a CIA tip that led the South African secret police to arrest Nelson Mandela." (The Government's Dirty Little Secrets, Los Angeles Times, commentary, 1998)

The drug war is the mask behind which the real policy is concealed. The United States is using all the implements in its national security toolbox to integrate Mexico into a North America Uberstate, a hemispheric free trade zone that removes sovereign obstacles to corporate looting and guarantees rich rewards for defense contractors. As Ross notes, all of the usual suspects are involved, including the FBI and CIA. That means the killing in Juarez will continue until Washington's objectives are achieved.

Rest of article & source: www.globalresearch.ca...

Mexico has been very lawless for decades and this situation is getting really scary.

Watch the third video, Alex Jones (who is pretty hairy himself) says these guys along the border are pretty scary.

I feel sorry for the law abiding citizens down around there, it must be hellish to have to live day by day with this lawlessness.

Now, pay particular attention to the last five minutes of the third video. It explains why this is being allowed to happen............

Am I the only person who is aware of the history of Columbus, New Mexico? March 9th 1916?

On March 9th 1916, Mexican bandit leader/revolutionary Pancho Villa led 400 of his bandits on an attack on the town. 10 American civilians were killed before US Army soldiers, US Customs inspectors, and local law enforcement chased Villa's raiders back across the border. About 100 raiders and 8 US Army soldiers were killed in the fighting.

It's amazing how history repeats itself. Im convinced that with the state of our border security, and Mexico's rising instability and violence that we will see a repeat of Villa's raid by the 100th anniversary (March 9th 2016). It's only a matter of time before the cartels directly target Americans and US soil. Hell, they already threaten Americans to let them cross their property with their drug/illegal immigrant smuggling routes.

reply to post by ChrisF231


...and New Mexico named a state park after the guy...
The irony of 1916 vs today isn't lost on the locals, either. Villa's legacy is often brought up in discussion by the folks who live down there today, including my parents (who I really wish would move already.)