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Mexico drug cartels buying public support
LA Times ^ | 13 Mar 2009 | Tracy Wilkinson

Posted on 03/15/2009 9:49:12 AM PDT by BGHater

Reporting from Monterrey, Mexico -- The small houses of the Independencia neighborhood climb a hill that rises from the bone-dry Santa Catarina riverbed. Gang graffiti proliferate the higher you go, until they completely cover the cinder-block walls with slogans, threats and declarations.

Young men in baggy pants, sweat shirt hoodies pulled tightly around their faces, populate the desolate street corners, in between vacant lots and shattered wooden stoops.

Look out from the top of the hill and in the distance you see the impressive skyline of Monterrey, the wealthiest city in Mexico, its fancy museums, glistening high-rises, leafy plazas and pristine palaces bathed in sunlight.

Look down, however, to the steep, potted streets of Independencia, one of the city's oldest and poorest barrios, and it's a different picture, one of stray dogs, braying burros and no jobs.

It is here that Mexico's biggest drug traffickers find an easy following of collaborators and pliable disciples.

This is the traffickers' so-called social base: people loyal out of economics more than anything else, people who peddle the drugs and eagerly turn out when the traffickers want to mount street demonstrations against the government and the army.

"There are some bad boys up the road," said a 40-year-old shopkeeper who, like most residents interviewed, would not give her name. "They do drugs at a young age and choose the easy way of life. The police used to come through and sweep them off the corners, but not anymore."

Independencia is distinctive among Monterrey's marginal neighborhoods, community activists say, because it is home to generations of small-time drug dealers, and because it has been penetrated in the last two years by agents of the Gulf cartel, one of Mexico's most notorious and violent trafficking organizations.


(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Mexico
KEYWORDS: cartel; drugs; drugwarconsequences; immigrantmules; immigration; mexico; organizedcrime; thankprohibition; warnextdoor; wod

1 posted on 03/15/2009 9:49:12 AM PDT by BGHater
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To: BGHater

Coming to a neighborhood near you!!!!!!!

Liberal courts, open borders, shamnesty.

Phoenix, Tucson and other border/near border cities will soon see beheadings, gang violence, etc.

And Obama wants to take away our guns, our only effective protection.

Obama is a sickness.


2 posted on 03/15/2009 10:04:15 AM PDT by whitedog57
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To: BGHater

Contrasting Monterrey with Independencia, one of the city’s oldest and poorest barrios, can be said of most major cities, even in the US.

One can find areas in most large metro areas that are old and poor, that attract drugs and dealers, that are not maintained.


3 posted on 03/15/2009 10:06:20 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: BGHater

The failed war on some drugs : still a failure.


4 posted on 03/15/2009 10:08:00 AM PDT by mysterio
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To: whitedog57
Phoenix, Tucson and other border/near border cities will soon see beheadings, gang violence, etc.

will soon see?

Look again. It is already there. Phoenix is #2 in the world for off-the-street kidnappings.

Usually kidnapped individuals are then ransomed back to their families, who pay significant amounts.

Gang violence is encroaching, even in the smaller cities of the US. And many of those gangs are variations of gangs external to the US.
5 posted on 03/15/2009 10:10:12 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: BGHater

the only way to deflate this,

and to drop crime levels in the u.s.,

is to legalize drugs.

but that’s not going to happen because too many government officials both in mechico and the u.s. make money from drugs.

si.


6 posted on 03/15/2009 10:17:27 AM PDT by ken21 (the only thing we have to fear is fdr deja vu.)
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To: whitedog57

Hillarys next trip is going to be to Mexico, so she will get it all worked out.. and we will have nothing to fret over..


7 posted on 03/15/2009 10:28:28 AM PDT by JoanneSD (illegals represented without taxation.. Americans taxed without representation)
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To: whitedog57
Coming to a neighborhood near you!!!!!!!

Possibly a source of Obama's brown shirt, too. There was an article on FR yesterday about proposed bill HR1388, which aims to create a national volunteer . service. I read part of the bill's mindnumbing language. Buried in there are two gems: First that it is the intent of the bill to build this service to at least 250,000 strong by 2011, and second, that at least 50% of the volunteers are targeted to come from disadvantaged youth.

8 posted on 03/15/2009 11:36:11 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine (Is /sarc really necessary?)
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To: BGHater
Mexico drug cartels buying public support

Ah, the fruits of prohibition are finally ripening!

Who's really in charge when the black marketeers make more than the legal ones?

9 posted on 03/15/2009 11:37:29 AM PDT by rawcatslyentist (Glittering prizes, and endless compomises, shatter the illusion of integrity. Yeah!)
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To: BGHater; All

The Terry Anderson Show...

Tonight Terry will rant about the stimulus for illegal aliens..

Agree??? Disagree ????

Call Terry LIVE 9-10 PM PST at (866) 870-57521

LIVE stream at http://krla870.townhall.com/

http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=listenliv

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2207248/posts?page=5#5


10 posted on 03/15/2009 6:45:44 PM PDT by Tennessee Nana
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