News of the Proceso exposé was offered in translation for an English-speaking audience by BorderlandBeat.com, and the details of the report are, if accurate, a chilling indication of the degree to which “Los Zetas” has infiltrated the various levels of the state in Mexico. In the fifth year of Mexican President Calderon’s "war on drugs," more than 50,000 lives have been lost, yet the government can offer little to demonstrate it is making significant inroads against the cartels. According to the Proceso article:
According to the preliminary investigation … made just last February 8, soldiers of the Sixth Military Zone killed citizens who were denouncing criminals and their bodies disappeared, in addition they would hide from PGR [the Attorney General's Office], shipments of drugs.
The investigation adds that so did the PF [federal police] agents, who also identified, confronted adversaries of "Los Zetas", they placed checkpoints where they guarded shipments. Also, they implemented the payroll of the Federal Support Forces (FFA) that sends the government temporarily to fight the narco.
Meanwhile, other members of the PGR and AFI, with bribes at all levels, were responsible for fining the members of "Los Zetas" with very weak penalties, freeing those who were detained, and reporting to the Zeta leaders all types of denunciations, including anonymous complaints.
As reported by The New American in April 2011, even the Calderon government admits that any victory over the cartels is many years in the future. At that time, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna praised the “substantial” progress that had been made in the war against the cartels since December 2006, but he also admitted, “In about seven years we will begin a downward trend in violence.” In a world in which relatively simple matters such as fuel prices and weather trends are hard to forecast even a few days out with any accuracy, the Secretary’s profound powers of prognostication regarding events near the end of this decade strained credulity at the time. Since that time, the Mexican government has witnessed the arrest of an entire police department — the 32 officers and commanders of the department in the municipality of Ahome — for their connection to the cartels. Now, however, the Proceso exposé would appear to indicate that the alleged corruption in Ahome was far from an isolated circumstance. According to the article, knowledge of the cartel-associated corruption reaches to the highest levels of the Calderon government:
In Coahuila, Lieutenant Colonel Manuel de Jesús Cicero Salazar, who served as head of the Operational State Police and protected "Los Zetas" was recommended by the Secretary of Defense, Guillermo Galván Galván.
The Corruption in the States Attorney General (FGE), which accounts for the previous Attorney General's Office and the Ministry of Public Security Coahuila was known for years by Felipe Calderon, whose government did not act until the second half of February.
The morning of the 15th of that month, on the premises of the FGE feds arrested the commander ministerial Sergio Tobias Salas Tobogán, and the state police Julio César Ruiz Esquivel, "Chicho", who were also responsible for executions and disappearing people.
Hours later, Claudia González López, the sub-delegate of the PGR fell in Saltillo, and was taken to Mexico City. All three, like Cicero, are accused of collaborating with "Los Zetas" and Thursday, [February] 23 were issued formal arrests.
When the New Juarez cartel threatened to assassinate police officers in Ciudad Juarez — the Mexican city of 1.3 million people which touches the border with El Paso, Texas — the city’s entire police force went into hiding under assumed names in hotels throughout the Ciudad Juarez. The claims of the Calderon government that it will assert effective control over the cartels lacks credibility when less than two percent of serious crimes are ever prosecuted in Mexico.
The problem of the Mexican drug cartels has already infiltrated American society. As reported last October by The New American, the cartels are now actively recruiting American-born children to commit crimes in the United States. American minors are already being used for a wide variety of crimes in cities such as San Antonio. A report from Reuters offers some of the horrific details:
Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told Reuters the drug gangs have a chilling name for the young Texans lured into their operations.
"They call them 'the expendables,'" he said.
McCraw said his investigators have evidence six Mexican drug gangs — including the violent Zetas — have "command and control centers" in Texas actively recruiting children for their operations, attracting them with what appears to be "easy money" for doing simple tasks.
"Cartels would pay kids $50 just for them to move a vehicle from one position to another position, which allows the cartel to keep it under surveillance to see if law enforcement has it under surveillance," he said.
"Of course, once you're hooked up with them, there's consequences."
U.S. border security should be a priority at the present time, but it's not. The crisis south of the borderleads to consequences for Americans, and the scandalous findings unearthed in the Proceso story make it clear that the situation is far from improveing in the failed state south of our border.
Photo of Zeta cartel boss Luis Jesus Sarabia, alias "Pepito Sarabia": AP Images
