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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2006 
Mexico Confronts Ultra-Violence
 Martin Barillas - speroforum.com
| | Taxis traverse the streets of downtown Mexico City. Express kidnappings have become so common in Mexico that taking a street taxi - which thieves often use to capture their victims - is akin to playing Russian roulette. Many end in violence and sometimes death. (Reuters/Tomas Bravo) |
Shooting in the air to distract and terrify the patrons, the men then dropped five human heads on the dance floor at approximately midnight on September 6.
Mexican President-elect, Felipe Calderon, will confront increased drug-related violence just as he will have to allay leftist accusations that he has stolen the recent national election. In his native state of Michoacán, on the Pacific coast just west of Mexico City, heavily armed masked men seized a discothèque in the city of Reagan. Shooting in the air to distract and terrify the patrons, the men then dropped five human heads on the dance floor at approximately midnight on September 6.
According to the BBC, the armed men left behind a note declaring “The family does not kill for money. It does not kill women or innocent people. Those who die are those who must die. Everyone should know that this is divine justice.” The heads’ owners have not yet been identified. No one from the bar is talking, while Mexican authorities theorize that the killings may have something to do with the endemic narco-trafficking in the region. For his part, President-elect Calderón has vowed to stem narco-violence.
Michoacán authorities have found some 13 decapitated victims so far this year; in August alone, there were four decapitated bodies found.
Similarly, when other decapitated bodies are found, missives from the perpetrators are also discovered. In August, the decapitated body of Rubén Dario Mendoza was found in Michoacán at the place where human heads have been dumped in the past. In this case, the perpetrators left the body along with the head. Near his body was found a missive stating “This is what happens when you believe or imagine that my eyes don’t watch you; soon you’ll be here too; greetings from the family…see you later, dudes”. It is believed by the press in Michoacán that "family" refers to one of the narco-trafficking syndicates.
Mendoza had been seized at a hospital, where his wife was receiving treatment, by armed men wearing the black assault uniforms used by federal police forces. Bearing signs of torture, his mutilated and dismembered corpse was found later the next day.
Armed men, wearing federal police uniforms, are also alleged to have erupted into a home in a poor neighborhood in Uruapán, Michoacán, detonating a Molotov cocktail-bomb. They also seized a male resident before fleeing. His whereabouts are as yet undetermined.
In related developments, some thirty-two police officers were arraigned in August in Mexico City on charges of endangering public safety, among others. They have been linked to one to the various drug cartels that ship Colombian cocaine and Mexican marijuana north to the United States and Canada. Awaiting trial, they were consigned to a federal jail. |
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