Here is the key between Fast and Furious and the Transnational Drug Crime Cartel and the Mexican Military, it began with the total shock at and distrust of the Mexican government caused by the Tlatelolco Massacre. United States covert intervention has only increasingly made everything worse, as did the reduction of the Mexican working people to virtual slaves by the implementation of NAFTA.
When all the facts are assembled, then - Terrorist Banking, OFFSHORE MONEY LAUNDERING, CARROLL FOUNDATION TRUST CASE, Fast And Furious - are all threaded through and through all of this beginning with the CIA, known as La Compania (the Company), many decades ago at the same time as their ODESSA Nazi surreptitious insertion (Ratlines) into Latin America, of their destabilizing everything there they could with the help and direction of the Bush Crime Cartel (2 articles). Also see: Bush Crime Cartel (2 articles). And see: Follow the Gold (2 articles).
See these Labels:
CARROLL FOUNDATION TRUST CASE
CIA
CIA and Pentagon
Fast And Furious
FastAndFurious
HSBC
Mexican Military
OFFSHORE MONEY LAUNDERING
TLATELOLCO MASSACRE
Transnational Drug Crime Cartel
Zetas and Sinaloa cartels
Brutal Mexican Drug Cartel Began as Special Unit Trained by the U.S. to Fight the Zapatistas - Infoshop News
It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country's most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August. The Zetas have a fearsome reputation, but the real surprise comes not in their ruthless use of violence, but in the origins of where they learned the tricks of their bloody trade. Some of the cartel's initial members were elite Mexican troops, trained in the early 1990s by America’s 7th Special Forces Group or "snake eaters" at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, a former US special operations commander has told Al Jazeera.
It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country's most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August.
The Zetas have a fearsome reputation, but the real surprise comes not in their ruthless use of violence, but in the origins of where they learned the tricks of their bloody trade.
Some of the cartel's initial members were elite Mexican troops, trained in the early 1990s by America’s 7th Special Forces Group or "snake eaters" at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, a former US special operations commander has told Al Jazeera.
“They were given map reading courses, communications, standard special forces training, light to heavy weapons, machine guns and automatic weapons,” says Craig Deare, the former special forces commander who is now a professor at the US National Defence University.
"I had some visibility on what was happening, because this [issue] was related to things I was doing in the Pentagon in the 1990s," Deare, who also served as country director in the office of the US Secretary of Defence, says.
The Mexican personnel who received US training and later formed the Zetas came from the Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), which is considered an elite division of the Mexican military.
Their US training was designed to prepare them for counter-insurgency and, ironically, counter-narcotics operations, although Deare says they were not taught the most advanced commando techniques available at Ft. Bragg.
Military forces from around the world train at Ft. Bragg, so there is nothing unique about Mexican operatives learning counter-insurgency tactics at the facility. However, critics say the specific skills learned by the Zetas primed them for careers as contract killers and drug dealers.
“The Zetas definitely have the reputation of being the most dangerous, the most vicious, the most renegade of the cartels,” says Kristen Bricker, a Mexico-based research associate with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
About 29,000 people have died since Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, declared war on the drug cartels in 2006.
Extreme violence
The group has mounted the severed heads of its victims on pikes in urban areas, posted torture and execution videos on the internet, forced poor migrants into prostitution and massacred college students during house parties.
"Other cartels have accused them of not following the 'gentlemen's code' of drug trafficking and causing undue violence," Bricker told Al Jazeera.
"At one time, it was considered bad form to kill pregnant women, but not any more." For safety concerns, Bricker didn’t want to say where she lives in Mexico.
Deare estimates "probably more than 500" GAFE personnel received special forces training. He is unsure exactly how long the programme lasted. The Zetas came to the attention of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office in 1999.
After US training, GAFE operatives defected from the Mexican military to become hired guns, providing security to the Gulf cartel, a well established trafficking organisation, according to Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas program of the International Relations Center.
"They split from the Gulf cartel and formed as a cartel in their own right," Carlsen, based in Mexico City, told Al Jazeera.
The Zetas' alleged current leaders, Heriberto Lazcano, known as Z-3 and Miguel Trevino, or Z-40, were first recruited by Osiel Cardenas, the now-jailed leader of the Gulf cartel. The name "Zetas" originates from the radio code "Z" used by top military commanders in Mexico.
But unlike Zorro, the Mexican outlaw hero who also used the "Z" alias, Los Zetas steal from everyone, not just the rich. And they certainly don’t give much back to the poor, except the corpses of their relatives. "They are just known for being a different kind of human being," says Bricker.
Frequent defections
The number of initial defectors from GAFE is thought to be somewhere between 30 and 200, but "the exact number is unclear", says Deare. However, the possibility of defections should not have come as a surprise to US trainers.
The Mexican state "does not pay soldiers enough" Deare says. "I am not saying they [the government] have to pay as much as the cartels, but they [security forces] must be paid decently if they aren’t going to be susceptible to corruption."
The GAFE’s desertion rate of an estimated 25 per cent is high, even by the low standards of Mexico’s security forces. Between 2000 and 2005 more than 1,300 of the elite troops defected, La Journada newspaper reported.
The Zetas decided forming their own cartel was more profitable than working for the military or even other drug gangs [Reuters]
"The US really needs to examine their vetting procedures and manuals to see why so many people who they train do so many terrible things when they go back home," Bricker said.
But just blaming Uncle Sam for the rise of the Zetas and increasing drug violence is too simplistic, says Bricker.
"It wasn't just US training. The GAFE were also trained by the Kaibiles of Guatemala, a notoriously brutal special operations force from that country’s dirty war in the 1980s," said Bricker.
And even without special training for cartels, there is little trust that Mexican security forces can deal with the drug trade.
In May 2006, "La Barbie" a leader of the rival Sinaloa cartel, took out a full page advert in a Mexico City daily newspaper, to allege that Mexican police were protecting the Zetas.
For their part, the Zetas have long complained that the Sinaloa cartel enjoys police protection.
Despite debacles surrounding the Zetas and increasing violence, Deare - who physically resembles the tough but fair minded under-secretary of defence played by Harrison Ford in the fictional drug war thriller Patriot Games - thinks Mexico needs more, not less, US involvement.
America has pledged some $1.3bn to assist Mexico in the drug war through the 2007 Merida initiative, but much of that cash hasn’t been spent because it has been stalled in Congress, Deare says.
Alterior motives
Other analysts are critical of the initiative because it allows the US to "meddle" in Mexico’s affairs and has not garnered the desired results.
"For citizens here, Merida causes two great concerns: it raises questions of national sovereignty and there is a lot of fear that under the cover of the drug war there will be increasing attacks on grassroots movements," says Carlsen.
GAFE, for example, was established in 1994 to fight Zapatista rebels in southern Mexico, La Journada reported.
The Zapatistas, a poorly armed primarily indigenous militia, rose up against the Mexican government on January 1, 1994, the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect between the US, Canada and Mexico.
The Zapatistas called NAFTA a "death sentence", in part, because the agreement would allow subsidised US crops to enter the Mexican market, pushing small farmers off the land.
After battling the insurgency, GAFE gained additional training and support from the US to fight the drug trade, a business which arguably benefited more than any other from NAFTA. Relaxed borders increased trade flows in many goods, illegal drugs in particular, and rural displacement swelled the ranks of unemployed young men eager to make quick cash by any means necessary.
Valued between $19bn and $40bn dollars on a yearly basis – exact figures aren’t available for obvious reasons- the drug trade has massive power as a corrupting influence.
And despite 50,000 Mexican troops fighting the cartels, despite the mangled bodies and US assurances of support, Bricker speaks for all three analysts from divergent political outlooks when she states: "No one has been able to present any evidence that the Mexican government is winning this war."
And, if winning the war on drugs is the goal, training the most violent cartel probably isn't a great start.
This is the first in a two part series examining the issues behind Mexico's drug violence. Follow Chris Arsenault On Twitter: @AJEchris
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/...09775.html
______________________________________________________________
How Mexico's Guerrilla Army Stayed Clear of Organized Crime
When all the facts are assembled, then - Terrorist Banking, OFFSHORE MONEY LAUNDERING, CARROLL FOUNDATION TRUST CASE, Fast And Furious - are all threaded through and through all of this beginning with the CIA, known as La Compania (the Company), many decades ago at the same time as their ODESSA Nazi surreptitious insertion (Ratlines) into Latin America, of their destabilizing everything there they could with the help and direction of the Bush Crime Cartel (2 articles). Also see: Bush Crime Cartel (2 articles). And see: Follow the Gold (2 articles).
See these Labels:
CARROLL FOUNDATION TRUST CASE
CIA
CIA and Pentagon
Fast And Furious
FastAndFurious
HSBC
Mexican Military
OFFSHORE MONEY LAUNDERING
TLATELOLCO MASSACRE
Transnational Drug Crime Cartel
Zetas and Sinaloa cartels
Brutal Mexican Drug Cartel Began as Special Unit Trained by the U.S. to Fight the Zapatistas - Infoshop News
Welcome to Infoshop News
Monday, July 23 2012 @ 05:03 AM UTC
Monday, July 23 2012 @ 05:03 AM UTC
Brutal Mexican Drug Cartel Began as Special Unit Trained by the U.S. to Fight the Zapatistas
Saturday, October 23 2010 @ 10:00 AM UTC
Contributed by: Anonymous
Views: 1,737
It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country's most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August. The Zetas have a fearsome reputation, but the real surprise comes not in their ruthless use of violence, but in the origins of where they learned the tricks of their bloody trade. Some of the cartel's initial members were elite Mexican troops, trained in the early 1990s by America’s 7th Special Forces Group or "snake eaters" at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, a former US special operations commander has told Al Jazeera.
It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country's most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August.
The Zetas have a fearsome reputation, but the real surprise comes not in their ruthless use of violence, but in the origins of where they learned the tricks of their bloody trade.
Some of the cartel's initial members were elite Mexican troops, trained in the early 1990s by America’s 7th Special Forces Group or "snake eaters" at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, a former US special operations commander has told Al Jazeera.
“They were given map reading courses, communications, standard special forces training, light to heavy weapons, machine guns and automatic weapons,” says Craig Deare, the former special forces commander who is now a professor at the US National Defence University.
"I had some visibility on what was happening, because this [issue] was related to things I was doing in the Pentagon in the 1990s," Deare, who also served as country director in the office of the US Secretary of Defence, says.
The Mexican personnel who received US training and later formed the Zetas came from the Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), which is considered an elite division of the Mexican military.
Their US training was designed to prepare them for counter-insurgency and, ironically, counter-narcotics operations, although Deare says they were not taught the most advanced commando techniques available at Ft. Bragg.
Military forces from around the world train at Ft. Bragg, so there is nothing unique about Mexican operatives learning counter-insurgency tactics at the facility. However, critics say the specific skills learned by the Zetas primed them for careers as contract killers and drug dealers.
“The Zetas definitely have the reputation of being the most dangerous, the most vicious, the most renegade of the cartels,” says Kristen Bricker, a Mexico-based research associate with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
About 29,000 people have died since Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, declared war on the drug cartels in 2006.
Extreme violence
The group has mounted the severed heads of its victims on pikes in urban areas, posted torture and execution videos on the internet, forced poor migrants into prostitution and massacred college students during house parties.
"Other cartels have accused them of not following the 'gentlemen's code' of drug trafficking and causing undue violence," Bricker told Al Jazeera.
"At one time, it was considered bad form to kill pregnant women, but not any more." For safety concerns, Bricker didn’t want to say where she lives in Mexico.
Deare estimates "probably more than 500" GAFE personnel received special forces training. He is unsure exactly how long the programme lasted. The Zetas came to the attention of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office in 1999.
After US training, GAFE operatives defected from the Mexican military to become hired guns, providing security to the Gulf cartel, a well established trafficking organisation, according to Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas program of the International Relations Center.
"They split from the Gulf cartel and formed as a cartel in their own right," Carlsen, based in Mexico City, told Al Jazeera.
The Zetas' alleged current leaders, Heriberto Lazcano, known as Z-3 and Miguel Trevino, or Z-40, were first recruited by Osiel Cardenas, the now-jailed leader of the Gulf cartel. The name "Zetas" originates from the radio code "Z" used by top military commanders in Mexico.
But unlike Zorro, the Mexican outlaw hero who also used the "Z" alias, Los Zetas steal from everyone, not just the rich. And they certainly don’t give much back to the poor, except the corpses of their relatives. "They are just known for being a different kind of human being," says Bricker.
Frequent defections
The number of initial defectors from GAFE is thought to be somewhere between 30 and 200, but "the exact number is unclear", says Deare. However, the possibility of defections should not have come as a surprise to US trainers.
The Mexican state "does not pay soldiers enough" Deare says. "I am not saying they [the government] have to pay as much as the cartels, but they [security forces] must be paid decently if they aren’t going to be susceptible to corruption."
The GAFE’s desertion rate of an estimated 25 per cent is high, even by the low standards of Mexico’s security forces. Between 2000 and 2005 more than 1,300 of the elite troops defected, La Journada newspaper reported.
The Zetas decided forming their own cartel was more profitable than working for the military or even other drug gangs [Reuters]
"The US really needs to examine their vetting procedures and manuals to see why so many people who they train do so many terrible things when they go back home," Bricker said.
But just blaming Uncle Sam for the rise of the Zetas and increasing drug violence is too simplistic, says Bricker.
"It wasn't just US training. The GAFE were also trained by the Kaibiles of Guatemala, a notoriously brutal special operations force from that country’s dirty war in the 1980s," said Bricker.
And even without special training for cartels, there is little trust that Mexican security forces can deal with the drug trade.
In May 2006, "La Barbie" a leader of the rival Sinaloa cartel, took out a full page advert in a Mexico City daily newspaper, to allege that Mexican police were protecting the Zetas.
For their part, the Zetas have long complained that the Sinaloa cartel enjoys police protection.
Despite debacles surrounding the Zetas and increasing violence, Deare - who physically resembles the tough but fair minded under-secretary of defence played by Harrison Ford in the fictional drug war thriller Patriot Games - thinks Mexico needs more, not less, US involvement.
America has pledged some $1.3bn to assist Mexico in the drug war through the 2007 Merida initiative, but much of that cash hasn’t been spent because it has been stalled in Congress, Deare says.
Alterior motives
Other analysts are critical of the initiative because it allows the US to "meddle" in Mexico’s affairs and has not garnered the desired results.
"For citizens here, Merida causes two great concerns: it raises questions of national sovereignty and there is a lot of fear that under the cover of the drug war there will be increasing attacks on grassroots movements," says Carlsen.
GAFE, for example, was established in 1994 to fight Zapatista rebels in southern Mexico, La Journada reported.
The Zapatistas, a poorly armed primarily indigenous militia, rose up against the Mexican government on January 1, 1994, the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect between the US, Canada and Mexico.
The Zapatistas called NAFTA a "death sentence", in part, because the agreement would allow subsidised US crops to enter the Mexican market, pushing small farmers off the land.
After battling the insurgency, GAFE gained additional training and support from the US to fight the drug trade, a business which arguably benefited more than any other from NAFTA. Relaxed borders increased trade flows in many goods, illegal drugs in particular, and rural displacement swelled the ranks of unemployed young men eager to make quick cash by any means necessary.
Valued between $19bn and $40bn dollars on a yearly basis – exact figures aren’t available for obvious reasons- the drug trade has massive power as a corrupting influence.
And despite 50,000 Mexican troops fighting the cartels, despite the mangled bodies and US assurances of support, Bricker speaks for all three analysts from divergent political outlooks when she states: "No one has been able to present any evidence that the Mexican government is winning this war."
And, if winning the war on drugs is the goal, training the most violent cartel probably isn't a great start.
This is the first in a two part series examining the issues behind Mexico's drug violence. Follow Chris Arsenault On Twitter: @AJEchris
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/...09775.html
______________________________________________________________
How Mexico's Guerrilla Army Stayed Clear of Organized Crime
Monday, 09 January 2012 12:41
How Mexico's Guerrilla Army Stayed Clear of Organized Crime
Written by Geoffrey RamseyMexico's Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) is distinct from most other rebels organizations in Latin America, having remained within a democratic framework without getting involved in organized crime to secure funding.
Because of its status as a major theater for proxy conflicts during the Cold War, Latin America has a long history of leftist insurgencies. Over the past two decades, however, these left wing groups largely abandoned armed struggle as a means of gaining power, turning instead to peaceful electoral politics. In some countries they have been immensely successful. Indeed, the current ruling parties of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil and Uruguay can all trace their roots -- at least in part -- back to guerrilla insurgencies of the 1970s and 80s.
Nevertheless, a handful of guerrilla movements persist in the region. The most well-known examples are in Colombia, which is home to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and (FARC) and the National Army of Liberation (ELN). In Peru, two factions of the Shining Path still carry out deadly attacks on security forces, though the group is not the threat that it was at its peak in the early 1990s.
These three are generally cited as the most relevant insurgent groups in Latin America, and they have worked hard to maintain this status. All three have adopted illicit means of obtaining funding, including drug trafficking, bank robbery, kidnapping and extortion.
In this context, the high profile of Mexico’s largely indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation is incongruous. Although much of the organization’s social and political work is supported by international and domestic NGOs, the full nature of its funding is unclear. What is clear is that despite rising up in arms against in the southern state of Chiapas in 1994 and having since declared sizable parts of southern Mexico autonomous from the government, the EZLN has largely managed to refrain from criminal activity to support itself.
When criminal allegations have been leveled against them, such as when the group was suspected of carrying out the kidnapping of Mexican politician Diego Fernandez de Cevallos last year, the Zapatistas havevehemently denied them, and a congressional commission even acknowledged that the kidnapping didn’t fit the Zapatistas’ profile.
Their eschewal of crime is due largely to the fact that the EZLN is not a traditional guerrilla army. After their initial uprising in 1994, and the resulting San Andres peace accords in 1996, the group has largely refrained from illegal activity. Instead, they have become more of a grassroots social movement, establishing EZLN-affiliated autonomous communities in Chiapas and attempting to link far left community organizations throughout the country under the banner of a nationwide movement called the "Other Campaign."
Indeed, the Zapatista’s most public spokesperson, alias “Subcomandante Marcos,” has actively denounced armed groups which have attempted to ally themselves with the EZLN. Through well-publicized letters and communiques, he has castigated groups like the FARC and Spain’s ETA for killing civilians. Marcos has voiced aversion to armed struggle inside Mexico’s borders as well, distancing the EZLN from the small, Guerrero-based People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR), which is known for carrying out attacks on security forces and bombings of infrastructure targets in southern Mexico.
The fact that the EZLN refrains from armed and criminal activity likely has as much to do with self-preservation as it does with the group’s ideology. Since the 1994 uprising, the Mexican government has drastically increased its military presence in Chiapas. According to a 2004 study by the Center for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research (CAPISE), there are at least 91 military bases in the state, many of which are located near Zapatista communities.
In more recent years, the military presence has increased even more in response to President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on drug trafficking organizations. The Sinaloa Cartel and Zetas are deepening their activities in neighboring Guatemala, a trend which Mexico is fighting by increasing the number of military checkpoints along the southern border (with mixed success).
Considering the high level of militarization of armed forces in the Zapatistas’ main area of influence, their cessation of military activity is not surprising. If they were to attempt another uprising, it would doubtlessly end in a devastating defeat.
The disincentive for the EZLN to mix itself up in criminal activity is just as strong. The Calderon administration’s security strategy has given the government a powerful policy narrative to justify dismantling drug traffickers’ community control. If provoked, the state could easily turn it against the Zapatistas.
By turning away from armed struggle, the group has also been afforded a certain amount of political legitimacy. Unlike their guerrilla cousins in Colombia and Peru, the Zapatistas have widespread support both from the Mexican left and on the global stage, where they are known as a spearhead of the anti-globalization movement. It should also be noted that the Zapatistas eschew conventional politics with the same ferocity. Ever since their inception they have rejected the notion of joining the Mexican political system, which they view as hopelessly corrupt.
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