Reading an article in the Atlantic on the Mexican drug war I learned that in 2011 Michoacan, the state I visited and traveled all around, had about 2600 murders. There was a nightclub incident in a small-ish city I went to in which the attackers rolled 5 heads across the floor. Ha ha!
Fun fact: a raid on Narcos in Mexico City took place at a mansion with artifical stalagtites and real lions, tigers and jaguars. Then the federal police who arrested them proceeded to party it up with prostitues and cocaine. You can't make this stuff up. This is absurd but I am not laughing at the larger situation. If the Sinaloa cartel fighting ever spread from Culiacan to Mazatlan (it has flared up there in the past) my mom is screwed.
Wow, there are a lot of Davis shows coming up, specifically Fine Steps and G. Green on Monday and Trashies/Screature on Thursday. The Singles are also playing the Eagle that same night. Decisions, decisions.
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Thanks for posting that article. I've spent more time around places like Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey. Which when I was there, people were more worried about unrest and rioting over the PRI winning the elections again for the mayorship of Mexico City and then the 2000 presidential election. Like they had a curfew and no selling alcohol rule after 11p rule for the first time ever. Now when you hear about those cities in the news, it's about the Zetas and the amount of carnage that's happened there. Like the lunchtime massacre at one of the casinos in Monterrey or the corpses that have been hung from the bridge into Nuevo Laredo. Or even the murder of the mayor of Santiago, which is this sweet little mountain town outside of Monterrey that's like Grass Valley/Nevada City. It's really heartbreaking and awful thinking about what this has done to these communities.
I thought maybe the new president would help but it doesn't look like he is
Just read an amazing novel called The Power of the Dog, by Don Winslow. It is all about the war on drugs, how the Mexican Govt is as frantic about guns coming into Mexico as the US is (superficially) about drugs getting into the US. Lot of history about the role of the Vatican in the drug war too.
Thanks for the article.
Ed
From my superficial following of the news, it appears that the jury's out on Nieto so far. But the blowback against Calderon taking on the cartels is why the PRI got voted back into the presidency. I did see something the other day about Vicente Fox just spoke at some event in WA state about the businesses that are starting there after pot being legalized would help take away power from the cartels. That novel sounds interesting.
I saw that about Fox, too. It's unfortunate that they won't speak up while they're in office. Yeah, my mom's take on the return of PRI is that the people voted for the return of high up corruption, which is how it was running for like 70 years with minimal violence. Sadly, I think it's the best they can hope for, although supposedly there's a growing middle class so we'll see. You can certainly see it in Mazatlan, which means more cars and more traffic and pollution, which sucks.
Ed, I wanna borrow that book.
I found The Power of the Dog at the library. Winslow also wrote a book called Savages, which was made into a film, which had nothing in common with the book except the names of the main characters and location. Totally worth reading. Probably find it in fiction, but his titles end up in Mystery too.
Ed
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