Party’s Over: Mexico Reaches Critical Boiling Point in midst of Spring Break
I just finished reading a great piece in the New York Times about spring breakers in stumbling into the volatile situation in Mexico. “’Did I just see that?’ asked one of those who glimpsed the federal anti-drug unit going by, a baby-faced girl wearing a ‘party animal’ T-shirt over her bikini.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/world/americas/11cancun.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss)
The article references an email sent from former CIA director, George Tenet, to his college son convincing him to cancel the trip. I hunted down the e-mail here is a clip from his writing:
“What the American public allegedly does not know at this point (according to my friend) is that the drug cartels have offered an ultimatum to Mexican intelligence. Although I do not know the specific terms of this ultimatum, I have heard that if the terms are not met by the end of this week, the drug cartels have threatened to begin targeting young spring-breaking Americans next week with kidnappings and shootings in the 3 biggest hot-spots of Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, and Acapulco (the one destination of the three that is already very unsafe, more so than the others). Some Americans have already been caught in crossfires in Acapulco when they weren’t even being targeted. If drug cartels were to start targeting American spring breakers next week, the situation would become such a clusterfuck…”
A few months ago Newsweek ran a story on Juárez drug war spilling over into the tiny Texas town of El Paso. The area hospital is now outfitted in bullet proof glass and metal security to protect the medical workers when rival gangs come to “finish the job.” The last few week splashed across American headlines and in gory detail on new stands which documented how bad the war between 5 major drug cartels has steeped, a line of tortured bodies lie across a banner, rows heads found in coolers leading up to a city, bodies thrown in barrels of lye (a calling card of sorts for one gang leader). In a photo spread from the LA Time (a B-rate publication) chronicles some of the more gruesome photos of what is happening in areas like Tijuana.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-cancun-drugs2-2009mar02,0,3441309.story)
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