The Mexican military is trying to dismantle an extensive network of radio antennas built and operated by the notorious Zeta drug cartel. But the authorities haven’t had much luck shutting Radio Zeta down. Not only is much of the equipment super-easy to replace. But the cartel has also apparently found some unwilling — and alarming — assistance by kidnapping and enslaving technicians to help build it.

At least 36 engineers and technicians have been kidnapped in the past four years, according to a report from Mexican news site Animal Politico, with an English translation published by organized-crime monitoring group InSight. Worse, none of the engineers have been held for ransom — they’ve just disappeared. Among them include at least one IBM employee and several communications technicians from a firm owned by Mexico’s largest construction company. “The fact that skilled workers have been disappearing in these areas is no accident,” Felipe Gonzalez, head of Mexico’s Senate Security Committee, told the website.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

TxDOT photo.

Ignore its proximity to the border, and the Texas fracking boom is like many others around America. Trucks hauling construction supplies barrel down country highways. Boom towns, sprawling networks of new private roads and hundreds of drilling sites have popped up. But the boom for Texas tea — oil and gas, that is — has inadvertently torn a giant hole in the Border Patrol’s defenses.

According to a report from the Houston Chronicle, drug traffickers are using the state’s Eagle Ford Shale to move drugs. Cartels have stolen trucks belonging to energy companies, and have bribed truck drivers and contractors who have flooded the area for work. The cartels may also be cloning vehicles to resemble company trucks. This is while new roads sprouting along the oil and gas fields have inadvertently opened new routes around the Border Patrol’s highway checkpoints.

“[Traffickers] are using those roads to transport drugs, guns, ammo, you name it,” Albert DeLeon, chief deputy for the Dimmit County sheriff’s office, told Chronicle reporter Dane Schiller.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

The logo for Sabritas, a Mexican snack chip subsidiary of PepsiCo, which saw dozens of vehicles and five warehouses burned by a drug cartel this month. Photo: chrizar/Flickr

This post was first published on Tuesday. Sorry for the delay.

Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don’t pay, and you can be threatened — or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multi-national corporation.

That corporation would PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo’s Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks — which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market — were burned. The good news: no one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas’ smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.

“What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,” Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. “The authorities have to take forceful action.”

Read the rest at Danger Room.

A U.S. Army National Guardsman at his post along the U.S.-Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona. DoD photo.

This summer, Mexicans will go to the polls to choose their country’s next commander-in-chief. But the new president will also have to deal with ominous developments in the drug war and the fact that few Mexicans believe the government’s strategy is working. He or she will also have to negotiate with the U.S. on the scope — and responsibilities — of America’s role in fighting the cartels.

The reason is stunning. More than half of Mexicans (52 percent) want an increased U.S. role in the drug war, and 28 percent want the U.S. military to intervene on Mexican soil, according to polling conducted by The Dallas Morning News, Mexico’s El Universal and Texas Spanish newspaper Al Día. Only 21 percent of Mexicans say the government’s strategy is working, though 64 percent think the military should continue “leading the fight” against the cartels. Ending the drug war through striking a deal with the gangsters is as popular as the current strategy: Only 21 percent think it’s a good idea.

“That tells you that Mexicans are really, really tired of this drug war, and they would rather see an end sooner than wait years fighting this by themselves,” Jorge Buendía, president of polling firm Buendía & Laredo, told The Dallas Morning News. Buendía added that because many Mexicans blame the U.S. in part for the drug war (with plenty of justification), many are becoming “more pragmatic and tolerant about alternatives.”

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Wikimedia photo.

A DEA sting operation targeting a cell of would-be cartel assassins ended in a violent warehouse showdown over the weekend. Among their ranks: one active-duty Army soldier, and one former G.I.

According to a criminal complaint released yesterday in federal court (.pdf), the showdown occured around 12:30 p.m. Saturday as armed federal agents closed in on the group, who had just arrived at a warehouse in the border city of Laredo, Texas; traveling from Colorado Springs and the nearby Fort Carson military base. They believed they were meeting with members of the Zetas — in reality, undercover DEA agents. The assumed plan: Receive instructions before raiding a ranch holding 20 kilos of stolen cartel cocaine, and then killing the (phony) cocaine thief.

During the bust, Jerome Corley of South Carolina was killed by the agents, and three others, including Corley’s 29-year-old cousin, a former Army officer, were arrested.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Gen. Charles Jacoby. NORAD photo.

Mexico’s “decapitation” strategy of capturing or killing high-value drug cartel leaders with the help of U.S. advisers has a certain merit to it. After all, cartel bosses are seriously bad dudes who corrupt, bribe, kidnap and kill their way to power across swathes of territory across our border.

The problem, according to the chief of U.S. military forces in North America, is that the strategy isn’t working.

“The decapitation strategy — they’ve been successful at that. Twenty-two out of the top 37 trafficking figures that the Mexican government has gone after have been taken off the board,” Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of U.S. Northern Command, said during testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Then, a caveat: “But it has not had an appreciable effect — an appreciable, positive effect.”

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Photo via Theo Spark.

Don’t accuse Texas of being gun-shy. This morning, the Lone Star State commissioned the second out of six armored gunboats now being sent to the Rio Grande to fight Mexico’s drug traffickers.

According to press reports, the Texas Department of Public Safety — state police who also oversee the Texas Rangers — is spending a total of $3.5 million to outfit six high-speed vessels with machine guns and armor plating. The boats, like the one commissioned in Austin this morning and named after fallen State Trooper David Irvine Rucker, are expected to begin operations this month (photos here). It’s all part of a plan to patrol the river, lakes and the ship channel along the Gulf of Mexico to watch for drug smugglers and pirates.

The boats have drawn comparison to Vietnam-era Patrol Fast Craft boats, or Swift Boats. But they’re a bit smaller, with a length of 34 feet in comparison to the Swift Boat’s 50. Swift Boats were also armed with high-explosive mortars, which will not be on board the gunboats. Still, they’re pretty menacing. The gunboats will reportedly carry an arsenal of six mounted machine guns apiece. The Rio Grande is also narrow and not very deep, hence the small size and ability to operate in as little as two feet of water, according to Dallas TV news station WFAA.

“Cartel operatives have fired at law enforcement officers while they were attempting to interdict drug loads on the Rio Grande River. When our officers come under fire from these weapons, we want to afford them every opportunity to return home safely from each patrol mission,” Tom Vinger, assistant chief of public affairs for the department, told the San Angelo Standard-Times.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

AP photo.

Three years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the war on drugs “had not worked” — and admitted that the American appetite for narcotics “fuels the drug trade.” But now Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would like to take that all back. It’s full steam ahead for the drug war.

“‘Is the drug war a failure and are we going to change our strategy?’ I would not agree with the premise that the drug war is a failure,” Napolitano said Monday after a meeting with Alejandro Poire, Mexico’s interior minister and top drug warrior. “I would say however that it is a continuing effort, to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs,” she added.

Few U.S. officials will object to defending the drug war on its merits, and Napolitano’s statement does not necessarily prelude joint responsibility for drug trafficking — a key part of the administration’s post-2008 shift in tone. Napolitano also called for working “bi-nationally, but in a regional way.” What’s remarkable, though, is the abrupt shift backwards at a time when Mexico and Central America are increasingly swamped by violent and militarized cartels.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Photo via Flickr user gynti_46.

On the surface, the drug war across the border boils down to a conflict between Mexico’s military and rival groups of cartels. This is true, but it leaves out Mexico’s other conflict — one fought against civilians through kidnapping, extortion and assassination. Little wonder that those who can afford it are now fueling a boom in professional bodyguards and guns-for-hire, many of them based in the United States.

And the boom is not just limited to jobs in Mexico — it’s happening on both sides of the border. It involves private security firms employed by both Mexican and U.S. citizens traveling from one country to the other, to border regions, or fueled by Mexican citizens relocating to the U.S. to escape the violence. The jobs given to the bodyguards involve protecting their clients against violent cartel threats and abductions, and helping negotiate kidnapping cases.

There are also serious risks. Some companies won’t work in Mexico proper because of the danger, while others do so — quietly.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Two years ago, Antonio Pena Arguelles was handling millions in drug money and working as the intermediary between the violent Zetas cartel and senior Mexican politicians. On Tuesday, U.S. authorities seized him at his suburban San Antonio home, where Pena was allegedly hiding from his former employers. What brought him there, however, involves a story of betrayal, deceit and the assassination of a Mexican political candidate by unknown gunmen that would lead the Zetas to want to kill him.

According to court documents obtained by the San Antonio Express-News, Pena began his criminal career largely on the U.S. side of the border: receiving drug money from Texas border cities and wiring the funds between banks in Mexico, Texas and California. He is believed to have built up a small fortune: millions in a Swiss bank account and millions more tied up in ranch properties in Mexico. One ranch Pena owned near the border city of Nuevo Laredo allegedly acted as a conduit for moving drugs, allowing the Zetas to bypass federal police officers encamped nearby.

From the ranch, Pena’s contacts branched out to allegedly include a sitting Mexican governor and the former mayor of Nuevo Laredo. He was the “go-between” between the narco underground and the professional class, and navigated “circles with politicans and business leaders.” In 2008, Pena allegedly met up with Yarrington Ruvalcaba, a former governor (now under investigation by Mexican authorities) to discuss a “financial dispute” with the Zetas’ second-in-command.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

For three consecutive years, since 2008, the city has recorded the highest murder rate in the world, rising to the level of 271.89 per 100,000 inhabitants during 2010. The decrease during 2011 has led to a “triumphalist” discourse on the part of the authorities and business leaders who are proclaiming a substantial reduction in violence in Juarez.

However, Mayor Hector Murguia was sent a clear indication of the obvious when, on Wednesday January 4, several “narco-banners” were displayed around the city with the anonymous message: “It is not because you have lowered the murder rate, rather it is that there are no longer so many people to kill … how many of us were here four years ago and how many inhabitants remain today?”

Enrique Elizondo Flores. Nuevo Leon State Investigations Agency photo.

In a cartel known for its bloodlust, he might be the biggest killer of all.

Enrique Aurelio Elizondo Flores, variously called “El Arabe” (“The Arab”) or “The Raven,” has confessed to heading a cell of assassins responsible for the deaths of at least 75 people, according to the state investigative agency of Nuevo Leon and reports which appeared first in the Mexican media. If the body count is accurate, it might place Elizondo as one of the most horrifically efficient murderers of all time. But this isn’t just a random serial killer. Elizondo is a member of the notorious Los Zetas cartel.

According to media reports, Elizondo and his crew of gunmen pulled passengers from buses traveling to the Texas border and the Nuevo Leon towns of Cerralvo, Paras, Agualeguas and General Trevino. They were likely hunting for members of the rival Cartel de Golfo, or Gulf Cartel. Or indiscriminately killing anyone who fit the profile of a suspected enemy. Elizondo was known, it seems, “for torturing, maiming and then killing his victims,” said Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene. Elizondo is also reported to be responsible for the deaths of six cops and “a married couple, and their child.”

Read the rest at Danger Room.