Thursday, November 24, 2011

LA RAZA TERRORISM - 20 BODIES FOUND IN GUADALAJARA



Posted: 24 Nov 2011 08:59 AM PST
On many levels, the discovery of 23 bodies in three vehicles in central Guadalajara a few hours ago is noteworthy. Guadalajara, Mexico’s No. 2 city, has been largely on the margins of the narco-violence roiling the country. But no longer.
Several specialized web sites focusing on drug violence, most notably Southern Pulse, have been saying that Guadalajara is a new battleground in the drug war. They were right.
At the moment of writing this, the placard left in one of the vehicles with the bodies has not been made public. The vehicles were found near the iconic Millennium Arches that are to Guadalajara what the Gateway Arch is to St. Louis.
A consensus is that Los Zetas have allied with remnants of the Milenio crime group (with deep roots in the area) to make a move into Jalisco state that surrounds Guadalajara. This is a move into territory hither-to controlled by what is generally considered Mexico’s most powerful crime group, the Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the Cartel of the Pacific.
Southern Pulse noted that alliance in late September and concluded: “A major criminal offensive for the city could surface in early November, developing into a protracted battled for the city that will last though the end of the year, and possibly well into 2012.”
Some 10,000 police were deployed around Guadalajara for the Panamerican Games that brought athletes from around the hemisphere. And that delayed open warfare. The police are gone – and now body dumps are here.
Sadly, the mass killing occurred just two days before the inauguration of the 25th Guadalajara International Book Fair, the largest Spanish-language literary event in the hemisphere. The book fair will take place in Expo Guadalajara, the exhibition center on the same Avenida Mariano Otero where the Millennium Arches are. 
Posted: 24 Nov 2011 08:59 AM PST
On many levels, the discovery of 23 bodies in three vehicles in central Guadalajara a few hours ago is noteworthy. Guadalajara, Mexico’s No. 2 city, has been largely on the margins of the narco-violence roiling the country. But no longer.
Several specialized web sites focusing on drug violence, most notably Southern Pulse, have been saying that Guadalajara is a new battleground in the drug war. They were right.
At the moment of writing this, the placard left in one of the vehicles with the bodies has not been made public. The vehicles were found near the iconic Millennium Arches that are to Guadalajara what the Gateway Arch is to St. Louis.
A consensus is that Los Zetas have allied with remnants of the Milenio crime group (with deep roots in the area) to make a move into Jalisco state that surrounds Guadalajara. This is a move into territory hither-to controlled by what is generally considered Mexico’s most powerful crime group, the Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the Cartel of the Pacific.
Southern Pulse noted that alliance in late September and concluded: “A major criminal offensive for the city could surface in early November, developing into a protracted battled for the city that will last though the end of the year, and possibly well into 2012.”
Some 10,000 police were deployed around Guadalajara for the Panamerican Games that brought athletes from around the hemisphere. And that delayed open warfare. The police are gone – and now body dumps are here.
Sadly, the mass killing occurred just two days before the inauguration of the 25th Guadalajara International Book Fair, the largest Spanish-language literary event in the hemisphere. The book fair will take place in Expo Guadalajara, the exhibition center on the same Avenida Mariano Otero where the Millennium Arches are. 
osted:
On many levels, the discovery of 23 bodies in three vehicles in central Guadalajara a few hours ago is noteworthy. Guadalajara, Mexico’s No. 2 city, has been largely on the margins of the narco-violence roiling the country. But no longer.
Several specialized web sites focusing on drug violence, most notably Southern Pulse, have been saying that Guadalajara is a new battleground in the drug war. They were right.
At the moment of writing this, the placard left in one of the vehicles with the bodies has not been made public. The vehicles were found near the iconic Millennium Arches that are to Guadalajara what the Gateway Arch is to St. Louis.
A consensus is the exhibition center on the same Avenida Mariano Otero where the Millennium Arches are.

*


More Than 20 Bodies Found in Guadalajara, Mexico, Official Says
24 Nov 2011 08:59 AM PST
Published November 24, 2011 | FoxNews.com
The bound and gagged bodies of 23 men were found before dawn Thursday in the heart of Guadalajara, a sign that full-scale war between drug cartels may have come to the picturesque western city that hosted last month's Pan American Games.
The state prosecutor's office said the men were found in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned near the Milennium Arches, one of the most recognizable landmarks in Mexico's second-largest city.
Best known as the home of mariachi music and tequila, Guadalajara also sits on the main highway running from the methamphetamine-producing state of Michoacan north toward the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa. In recent months, security officials and analysts have worried that the city could become a target for the Zetas drug cartel, which has been using paramilitary-style tactics and headline-grabbing atrocities in a national push to grab territory from older organized crime groups.
"These acts of barbarism show how the war between cartels, and crime, is getting more brutal," Guadalajara's mayor, Jorge Aristoteles Sandoval, told reporters.
A message was found with the bodies in one of the vehicles, said Luis Carlos Najera, public security secretary for the state of Jalisco. He provided no details, but Mexican cartels frequently leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims as a way of sowing fear and taking credit for their actions.
The 23 bodies were found about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the Expo Guadalajara events center, the site of both Pan Am Games events and the Guadalajara International Book Fair, which opens Saturday and describes itself as the world's most important Spanish-language book fair. The fair's website said it was expecting more than 600,000 visitors from around the world.
Crime in this colonial city of some 1.5 million people was historically dominated by the powerful Sinaloa cartel, but the group's tight grip was shattered by the death of its regional commander, Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, in a shootout with federal police in July 2010.
Guadalajara's murder rate then soared as factions of the cartel known as the New Generation and the Resistance battled to control Coronel's territory and assets. Street battles have left hundreds dead in the city and surrounding areas.
Killing slowed to a trickle during the Oct. 15-30 Pan American Games, which brought a massive influx of police and soldiers. Law-enforcement officials and analysts said they were nonetheless concerned that a Zetas onslaught could be imminent.
Thursday's slaying bears the hallmarks of the Zetas, perhaps working in concert with the Resistance, said Samuel Logan, director of Southern Pulse, a risk-analysis firm specializing in Latin American organized crime.
If the Zetas turn out to be responsible, the Guadalajara attack may be part of a sustained offensive against Sinaloa, he said.
On Wednesday, 17 bodies were found burned in two pickup trucks in a strikingly similar attack in Sinaloa, the home state of the eponymous cartel. Twelve of the bodies were in the back of one truck, some of them handcuffed and wearing bulletproof vests.
"I think the location is significant, that points in the direction of the Zetas," Logan said, although he cautioned that another cartel may well turn out to be have been responsible. "Maybe the Zetas pushing into Guadalajara creates the next major battlefront ... If it was the Zetas, they're going to continue pushing."
Responding to a reporter's question, Najera told the Televisa television network that he believed the recent calm in Guadalajara was the result of an increase in security and not because drug cartels had struck a truce with each other during the games.
He declined to comment on the possible motives for the slayings, saying only that investigators had "various hypotheses."

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