DRUG CARTELS- GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS

By G. Romero Wendorf

Violent Mexican drug cartels. Beheadings, torture, murder, rape, kidnappings, human trafficking and other assorted mayhem. There’s good news and bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?

Okay, the bad. Get that out of the way first. The drug cartels are here in the RGV. Like you didn’t know that already. How many top cartel members have already been arrested on this side of the river? More than a few. How many bodies dropped by the side of Valley roadways? Too many to count.

Now the good news. They’re not just here. They’re all over the country. Except for, according to the map that accompanies this story: Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota.

(See accompanying map to this story.)

Why aren’t they located in those states? I don’t know. And I don’t want to ask.

But why is this good news? Mexican drug cartels spread out across most of the U.S.?

Because Valley tourist promoters and business interests can point to this map when outsiders exhibit concern over personal safety if they travel here, and say, look, it’s bad no matter where you go. The bad guys have set up shop there too.

Well, okay, except for Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota. But give them time, especially now that “Chapo” Guzman is once again free, courtesy of the Mexican government, who knows where his Sinaloa Cartel might end up. Yellowstone Park in Wyoming for all we know.

“Yogi, can you pass the meth?”

The map accompanying this story was part of the DEA’s Intel Report released last month titled: United States: Areas of Influenceof Major Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations.

From the Report’s Overview:

“Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) pose the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group is currently positioned to challenge them. These Mexican poly-drug organizations traffic heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana throughout the United States, using established transportation routes and distribution networds. They control drug trafficking across the Southwest Border and are moving to expand their share, particularly in the heroin and methamphetamine markets.”

It’s not right to make a joke out of the Mexican drug cartels, because if you’ve seen some of the violent videos they’ve happily posted online, there’s nothing funny about them. They make Al Capone look tame as the sicarios (assassins) crank up the chain saws.

But the fact of the matter is, the RGV’s getting all the bad press lately from the national media about how the border area isn’t safe, mainly due to the drug-related violence, when it’s clear from the DEA report that these Mexican cartels have now taken root across the entire U.S. continent, save those six states previously mentioned toward the top of this story.

In fact, the murder rates in places like Chicago and Houston are far higher than they are, say, in McAllen.

The difference, of course, is in places like Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros and Ciudad Juarez, where gun battles seem to take place almost daily, with a couple of hand grenades thrown in for good measure and dead bodies littering the streets. And because of the Valley’s close proximity to those cities, we get lumped into the mix of murder and mayhem. As if there is no river running through us.

From the DEA Report, marked Background:

“These maps reflect data from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Consolidated Priority Organization Target  program (CPOT) to depict the areas of influence in the United States for major Mexican cartels. A review of the DEA information on Mexican CPOTs as of May 2015, identified the following cartels that operate cells in the US: the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, Knights Templar, Beltran-Leyva, Jalisco New Generation, Los Zetas and Las Moicas.”

Just another example that border security really shouldn’t be of concern. They’ve already crossed over.