poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
The rise of heroin brings violence and fear to Mexico
Teloloapan, Mexico. In this skittish town on Mexico’s heroin highway, civilians with rusty shotguns shake down passing cars for contributions to the public defence. The police were disbanded years ago. The mayor recently got a death threat and fled in the governor’s helicopter.
But it’s when Highway 51 drops down from the rolling hills, and runs west in two lonely lanes across the scorched valley floor, that danger really starts to poison people’s lives.
Drug bosses known as ‘the Tequila Man’ and ‘the Fish’ rule like feudal lords, at war with each other and the vigilante groups that have risen against them. Residents get kidnapped in groups. Tortured corpses are discarded in the valley, left to sear on hot pavement.
The opioid epidemic that has caused so much pain in the United States is also savaging Mexico, contributing to a breakdown of order in rural areas. Heroin is like steroids for drug gangs, pumping money and muscle into their fight to control territory and transportation routes to the US.
Mexico provides more than 90 per cent of America’s heroin, up from less than 10 per cent in 2003, when Colombia was the main supplier. Poppy production has expanded by about 800 per cent in a decade as US demand has soared.
The western state of Guerrero is the centre of this business, producing more than half of Mexico’s opium poppies: the base ingredient for heroin. Guerrero also has become the most violent state in Mexico, with more than 2,200 killings last year.
“These groups have transformed themselves into a super-criminal power,” said Ricardo Mejia Berdeja, the head of the security committee in the Guerrero state congress. “The anchor for organised crime is heroin poppy.”
Guerrero has produced marijuana and poppies for decades. But organised crime used to be more organised, with one main cartel in the state quietly paying off police and officials and moving drugs. The booming heroin business has encouraged the rise of new gun-toting trafficking bands, which in turn has triggered the rise of citizen militias.
Along this 110-mile stretch of Highway 51, in the region known as Tierra Caliente (Hot Lands) below the poppy-carpeted slopes of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains, the social breakdown is plain to see. More than 200 schools have closed periodically in recent months as striking teachers protested rampant criminality. The Mexican army moved into one town this month to wrest control from a civilian militia that was threatening a nearby village.
Cont -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/l...ngs-violence-and-fear-to-mexico-a7766676.html
Teloloapan, Mexico. In this skittish town on Mexico’s heroin highway, civilians with rusty shotguns shake down passing cars for contributions to the public defence. The police were disbanded years ago. The mayor recently got a death threat and fled in the governor’s helicopter.
But it’s when Highway 51 drops down from the rolling hills, and runs west in two lonely lanes across the scorched valley floor, that danger really starts to poison people’s lives.
Drug bosses known as ‘the Tequila Man’ and ‘the Fish’ rule like feudal lords, at war with each other and the vigilante groups that have risen against them. Residents get kidnapped in groups. Tortured corpses are discarded in the valley, left to sear on hot pavement.
The opioid epidemic that has caused so much pain in the United States is also savaging Mexico, contributing to a breakdown of order in rural areas. Heroin is like steroids for drug gangs, pumping money and muscle into their fight to control territory and transportation routes to the US.
Mexico provides more than 90 per cent of America’s heroin, up from less than 10 per cent in 2003, when Colombia was the main supplier. Poppy production has expanded by about 800 per cent in a decade as US demand has soared.
The western state of Guerrero is the centre of this business, producing more than half of Mexico’s opium poppies: the base ingredient for heroin. Guerrero also has become the most violent state in Mexico, with more than 2,200 killings last year.
“These groups have transformed themselves into a super-criminal power,” said Ricardo Mejia Berdeja, the head of the security committee in the Guerrero state congress. “The anchor for organised crime is heroin poppy.”
Guerrero has produced marijuana and poppies for decades. But organised crime used to be more organised, with one main cartel in the state quietly paying off police and officials and moving drugs. The booming heroin business has encouraged the rise of new gun-toting trafficking bands, which in turn has triggered the rise of citizen militias.
Along this 110-mile stretch of Highway 51, in the region known as Tierra Caliente (Hot Lands) below the poppy-carpeted slopes of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains, the social breakdown is plain to see. More than 200 schools have closed periodically in recent months as striking teachers protested rampant criminality. The Mexican army moved into one town this month to wrest control from a civilian militia that was threatening a nearby village.
Cont -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/l...ngs-violence-and-fear-to-mexico-a7766676.html