Why mexican cartels are so brutal?

I found website with videos with some extreme violence on them, how the cartels shoot or behead people, and i'm feeling very bad that this things happen even today. Why they are so brutal - can't they just shoot the people and that's it. Why is this extreme violece of beheading? If you want the link i'll share it, but I warn you it's extremely violent. They kill even womens.

Hermit Kermit will probably have more info on this but the particularly shocking and excessive brutality in Mexico over the past 5 or 6 years seems to have started with the Zetas. Their whole approach has been to strike fear in the rivals, as well as the Mexican public in general. It started with the beheadings and then just escalated from there, almost like the warring cartels were trying to top each other. Before long, it wasn't just beheadings but people being hung from overpasses, dumped on busy streets, burned in barrels, etc. None of this is exactly new, as it's been seen with other organized crime groups elsewhere, but the sheer scale of it is unprecedented.

It's indeed the scale of it that is unseen. PCC in Brazil, the Philadelphia Black Mafia, Cape Town crime groups,...all regularly burned their rivals in barrels, East End London gangsters chopped off someone's legs with an axe,...viscious stuff done by viscious groups. But nothing has ever come close to the amount of it what's happening in Mexico now. Most say it all started when the government declared war on cartels.

It did, as the cartels were fighting for decreasing territory as they started to feel the heat from the government. Of course, the violence certainly isn't a reason to not declare war on the cartels, as seems to be the implication by some. Calerone was absolutely right to do what he did. And I believe he was also right about the future - the violence will eventually decrease as it did in Italy, Colombia, and Russia.

In one video they beheaded someone with chainsaw. Cosa nostra in America don't do such things I think... but in Italy they were crazy there too.

Is it true sinoala aren't as sick as the others? Ruthless but usually when needed, El Chapo seems to be a real smart guy, not just a thug.

If it was the one I saw, he was the lucky one. It was quick. His buddy got his head cut off slow with a big knife.



Sinaloa and the rest can be just as brutal as the Zetas but they don't seem to use the extreme violence as wantonly. The Zetas seem to take a certain pleasure in it and have no qualms about killing innocent people. For example, the Zetas killed at least 122 people, after they took them off buses, by crushing their skulls with sledgehammers.

Back in 2011, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels dumped 35 dead Zetas on a busy street in Mexico during rush hour. They were bound and gagged and had been tortured.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/35-zetas-executed-in-boca-del-rio.html

Is it true things weren't quite as bad in mexico in 2012 compared to 2011? In terms of homicides

I don't know if the 2012 totals are in but there were 12,284 cartel killings in 2011, compared with 12,658 in 2010 - a difference of 374. That's only about 3%.

Total deaths since December 2006 have surpassed 70,000.

I'm guessing there also could be a lot of mishandling of stats, real figures could be much higher!

Oh definitely. Elsewhere I've seen over 24,000 deaths listed for 2011 and over 18,000 for last year. Some estimates of total deaths since the escalation reach as high as 100,000 so far.

So big number, and this is only in Mexico? Jesus that's hell of a murdering. And yes the video is the one you are talking about, but this is complete insanity. I mean terrorists rarely do such things, like the things mexican cartels do. And still many people want to get involved with the cartels. They kill even womens, interrogate them naked, they are animals. They seem to have absolutely no rules or humanity.

I don't think they would draw a line at anything. What is the motivation for being a footsoldier? Is Mexico that poverty stricken? Living with knowing you could be captured and decapitated or something.

There has been head choppin goin on for thousands of years on Mexican ground.There are crazy numbers on murdered ppl in one day.A lot of arms,legs and heads were rollin through out the centuries.The same is happenin now,so i dont see anything strange on why they are so violent.Roots bloody roots.

Remember when it was those Iraqi guys doing it back in 2003 to Americans? Nick Berg? I was stunned by that, played it on the news (not the actual killing) Was about 14 at the time left a mark on me, couldn't imagine that fear of knowing its about to happen.

I remember those things too it was horrible for me I was young also. But in Mexico they seem to do it all the time over drug and power conflicts, with video tapes on the internet. Now I started reading one book about them - El Narco, some guy who was an executioner said there:

"You learn a lot of forms of torture. To a point you enjoy carrying them out. We laughed at people’s pain—at the way we tortured them. There are many forms of torture. Cutting off arms, decapitating. This is a very strong thing. You decapitate someone and have no feeling, no fear."

They laughed... I don't know what kind of people are these, I can't even watch it on video.

Contrary to popular belief, Mexico winning cartel war
RICARDO AINSLIE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
June 26, 2011


The Mexican government, finally, is gaining the upper hand in a drug war that has turned much of the border region and parts of interior Mexico into war zones. President Felipe Calderón's campaign against the cartels is now three-and-a-half years old and the death toll is nearing 40,000. After a series of visits to Ciudad Juarez, the war's epicenter, and interviews with federal law enforcement and intelligence officials in Mexico City, I see convincing evidence that the government has dramatically weakened the drug cartels, an essential step if the country is to restore peace.

The strategy of "disarticulating" the cartels has been largely successful. The command-and-control structure of the cartels has been decimated and the cartels are severely fractured. Twenty-one of the 37 individuals on Mexico's most wanted list have either been apprehended or killed. Of the five original cartels, two of them, the Juarez Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel, are mere shadows of their once powerful selves. The Gulf Cartel has split into two warring factions. Last week, Mexican federal police captured Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas (better known as El Chango, or The Monkey), the leader of La Familia, one of the country's most powerful criminal gangs. La Familia's brutality against its rivals led Calderón to launch his crackdown on organized crime. The Sinaloa Cartel, under the leadership of the mythic "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, has always operated more as a federation of closely allied organizations with Guzmán as the figurehead. The Beltrán Leyva organization broke off from "El Chapo" in 2008 and has been at war with him ever since. Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, a powerful leader within the Sinaloa Cartel, was killed last year and his successor, Martin Beltran Coronel, has been arrested. And there is evidence of ruptures between groups in Durango, the heart of Guzmán's territory. The cartels have been eviscerated by a combination of federal operations and internecine conflict.

A factor making it increasingly difficult for the cartels to operate is that they are being hunted by a variety of Mexican military and law enforcement agencies. The Mexican army and marines operate independently. The Mexican federal police force has quintupled in size to 33,000 officers (and U.S. sources describe their cooperation with American law enforcement as unprecedented). Finally, there is the smaller Agencia Federal de Investigación. Each of these entities is pursuing the cartels, sometimes collaboratively, sometimes independently, and each has taken down important cartel capos.

Another important variable is that it has also become much more difficult and costly for cartels to ensure control and protection. Prior to 2000, in PRI-controlled, pre-democracy Mexico, what was decreed at the top levels of government was enforced all the way down to the poorest municipalities. That made corruption efficient. Well-placed bribes at the top controlled everything up and down the line.

Today's playing field is much more complex, given that there are so many actors. For example, even though the Beltrán Leyva cartel was paying the head of the organized crime unit in the Mexican Attorney General's Office $450,000 a month to provide information about investigations and operations, Mexican army special forces arrested Alfredo Beltrán Leyva in January 2008. His brother, Arturo Beltrán Leyva was subsequently killed in December 2009 by the Mexican marines. There are simply too many players tracking down the cartels and the latter can't pay everyone off. Mexico's fledgling democratization has also increased the cartels' cost of doing business. Once a country where a single party controlled everything, today Mexico's three most influential political parties control governorships and municipalities, making it more cumbersome and expensive for the cartels to control local and regional institutions.

Together, the decimation of the cartels, the strengthening of federal law enforcement institutions, and Mexico's increasing democratization bode well for Mexico's future. However, for the present, taking down cartel operatives and unprecedented seizures of cash, weapons and drugs have had no appreciable impact on the one metric that matters most to the Mexican public: the level of violence. The vast majority of deaths are due to gang-on-gang disputes related to the local retail drug business. This violence is more akin to the Bloods and the Crips killing one another off in the streets of South Central than it is a cartel war per se. The fracturing of the cartels has also resulted in a proliferation of criminal bands engaging in ordinary street crime, including the lucrative kidnapping and extortion business. This crime is taking an enormous toll on citizens, which is why Calderón's popularity is sagging, notwithstanding his government's success against the cartels.

Today, Mexico is actually fighting two different wars: the war against the cartels, which is under the purview of federal authorities, and an explosion of ordinary street crime, much of which is under the purview of state and local police forces. The Mexican government is clearly winning the cartel war; it is local crime that has become the country's biggest challenge. Even as it succeeds in dismantling national and transnational drug trafficking networks, Mexico will continue to have a significant crime problem until state and local law enforcement are strengthened, judicial reforms are implemented and the social conditions that are breeding grounds for criminality improve.

Ainslie teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and is author of the forthcoming "The Savior of Juarez: Mexico at the Time of the Great Drug War" (University of Texas Press). He has spent the last two years exploring the impact of the violence on Ciudad Juarez, as well as interviewing Mexican policymakers, including several current and former members of President Felipe Calderón's security cabinet. Last year, Ainslie was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on Mexico's war against the drug cartels.

http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/art...tel-2080187.php

upper hand, lol...yeah right...

I'm calling bs on that article ivy. Not on your credibility but the Mexican government. When these killings and drug flows stop, then I'll believe that they are gaining ground against these animals.

Well, they'll never fully stop. But I think Mexico will eventually follow the same pattern Italy, Colombia, and Russia did. The violence hits a certain peak and then eventually subsides. There are still plenty of organized crime murders in these countries, of course, but not the levels previously seen.

My concern is that we may see a decrease in murders because the new Mexican government will take a much softer approach to the cartels. Basically undoing all the work the Calderone government did. Sure, things will be more peaceful but it will be a hollow peace, as the cartels will get breathing room to re-entrench themselves.

The Numbers are way higher the stats are usually confirmed deaths.What about when the cartel dumps people in massive grave sites.

or much lower. I can't find the article right now but you have to take the drug war stats with a bucket of salt especially in Mexico were most of the crime is not reported worse yet solved. Mexico has seen worse years; in the 90s Mexico's murder per capita was higher that it is now.

False, the cartels had wars before in the 90s and even before that it's just that the crackdown on the cartels accelerated the violence. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Mexican cartels were much smaller tight knit drug trafficking groups that controlled the drug chains, drug hubs etc. throughout whole Mexico but just entrenching themselves in a few cities areas of the countries. The reason it got so bad is because in around early 2000s the cartels decided to rapidly expand in presence and membership creating small armies to say. Every cartel was creating so or of mini armies, recruiting at first police and military but now they mainly recruit common criminals or street gangs. They started to go on war with each other for control of the drug trafficking chains in around 2003 , Sianlao being the aggressor trying to push out the Gulf Cartel in Nuevo Laredo and later in Tijuana and Juarez. But to keep this short, the reason there is much violence related to organized in Mexico more than before is that the cartel's rapid expansion meant they weren't well established. The drug war between the cartels ended in 2010 and it was the worst year in Mexico related to violence between organized crime groups. The reason the violence still lingers is that neither of the main gangs have established hegemony within their territory or borders. Also the splintering of the cartels mainly (Sinaloa and BLO) has created splinter groups and street gangs that aren't well established and are fighting for hegemony.

The worst year in violence related to organized crime in Mexico was 2010. Again take the drug war homicides stats with a huge bucket of salt, it not accurate at all. You have to keep in mind that in Mexico most murders aren't solved and not all of the drug war murder victims are related to the fight among the cartels. The war between the cartels ended in 2010 and also being the worst year.

Many of the people being killed are not cartel members per say but criminals or normal people that are hired by the cartels and also again take the drug war homicides or victims with a bath of salt. The reason some decide to kill is to become more recognized and get higher or integrate more into the structure resulting in getting paid. But it's not always it's not uncommon when the cartels use these people as cannon fodder or point of the spear.

Actually Sinaloa is the most aggressive cartels of them all, El Chapo went into Juarez and wiped almost everyone associated with the Amado Carillo family in Juarez and Sinaloa too. All of these cartels are just opportunistic thugs and nothing more.

Not to defend Los Zetas or anything but the people they killed were people that were recently hired by the Gulf Cartel to kill and terrorize the Gulf Cartel's main headquarters Matamoros and Reynosa. Also the people Sinaloa killed were just retail drug dealers and lookouts working for Los Zetas but not Zetas themselves.

i can t understand why there are so many kidnapped guys. How s it possible?

Theres still a small amount of Aztec in these guys!

Unfortunely, kidnapping for ransom has always become a lucrative criminal racket in Mexico for decades but it used to be run by kidnapping for ransom rings or gangs in southern Mexican states but Mexico city is notorious for having really sophisticated kidnapping for ransom gangs. It wasn't until the late 1990s and early 2000s, where the Los Zetas instigated into going into the kidnapping for ransom rackets which broke the "code" the drug traffickers have kept for decades. For decades the drug traffickers in Mexico had moral rules and a drug trafficking code per say of not harming the public in any way. This meant no extortion, no kidnapping per ransom and no killing of the rivals family. Even to this day, kidnapping per ransom and extortion have a lot of stigma attached to it among drug traffickers they use the words "extortionist" and "kidnapper" as to slander their rivals. That's why you see in body dumps with a note card saying "For being an extortionist and kidnapper" even though the guy might most probably be a lookout or retail drug dealer. You guys seem to paint all of the drug trafficking organizations with one brush but there is a huge difference between how the Los Zetas, Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa operates. I am not saying they are good guys or anything.

Pretty significant amount of Aztec to be exact! 80% or more of Mexico's population is Mestizo. The other 20% is mostly white/pure Spaniard and they still make up the elite upper class of Mexico.
And we all know how crazy those Aztecs were

I was not meaning about kidnapping for ransom. I talk about the guys of the videos, kidnapped and then killed in brutal ways in front of a cam.How do they get caught? Maybe they are disarmed. Normally if u see an enemy u shoot to him or run away and if u try to run away u probably get a couple of shots.

They have paid eyes and ears everywhere which are called "halcones" or falcons, their main job is to be lookouts and pass intel to the "central" about positions and routines of security forces, suspicious activity, rivals etc. Then they dispatch the "estacas" or cartel soldiers in SUVs armed with aks and locate the vehicle, position or house of the alleged rival or suspicion. The cartel soldiers sometimes work in cullision with the municipal police to do these types of operations by having the police block the streets, turning a blind eye or just simply the cartels use cloned police uniforms, ID , vehicles etc. Here is a video of a common kidnapping of an alleged lookout for a rival cartel.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=213_1355056920