Crime gangs target infrastructure projects
Topic: Crime gangs target infrastructure projects
By David Cox
A commentary about Mexico’s criminal cultural which is to “tax” through graft every phase of society. Construction companies are our target here.
One of the ways that Mexico has become very distinctive is the mexican ingenuity in taking what is not yours. In this cultural where one person gets something he doesn’t deserve by extorting it from another, simple activities like a construction company building a building or making a road comes under attack of these people.
The cancer here is the mentality behind the drug cartels. Instead of doing legitimate hard work, they seek to steal and take or cause by their craft others to lose their money to the cartels.
In this article, it makes mention of anywhere from 4% to up to 20% of a project’s final price has to be given to these extortioners in order to just do simple construction work. These cartels have no power or influence if they do not demand fear, and the only way they can demand fear and get immediately what they want is by showing people how serious they are.
Because of this, many times even innocent by-standers end up dead just so that the cartels can prove their point, they are serious duds. What they do is take some people somewhere and kill them brutally, and then claim responsibility for it.
In Cuernavaca some years back, the government came down hard on a cartel, and they fought back by grabbing teenagers from different places in the city and hanging them by the neck from foot bridges over roads (these bridges are common in Mexico). They would write a warning not to mess with (cartel’s name) and then would hang that around their necks.
In another case in the north of the country the government took a hard stance against a cartel in Jalisco (I think it was there) and the cartel decided to make a statement. So they made blockades at all the main roads into the city by stopping public buses and turning them over or sideways in the roadway and setting them afire. Then when the police responded with police helicopters, they had snipers that shot the helicopters and policemen were killed in the helicopter crashes. All to say, “We are powerful! Don’t mess with us!”
Coyotes and Illegal Immigration Cartel Style
You need to really understand the mindset of the cartels. These are wicked, criminal people who are not bound to drugs as their only or principle way of gaining income. A typical illegal will pay upwards of $10,000 US dollars to be smuggled into the US these days. So what do they do? They see this money and want to take over the entire thing. So they go to the US side, study all the Immigration officials, follow them home, give them $30,000 or $40,000 dollars in cash. Over the next few weeks that same person (the coyote is what they call him) will show up at the border when that official is sitting examining US passports and Green cards. When they see their key person, they are to let the next 40 people go through no matter what ID they have.
The coyote will then go back and forth across the border several times during the day every day. When he sees his guy sitting on the examination of IDs, he grabs his people and they all go to the border. They all get through.
You say, “How do poor Mexicans with no money come up with so much money?” They don’t. They go across on credit. When they ask a coyote to take them across, he puts them in a secret safe house and they are blindfolded and taken there. They stay there for several days to weeks. During that time the coyote brings them a meal a day, and gets all their family information from them, including where they grew up, names and addresses of all their kin.
Then the coyote gives that information to the cartel boss who has people all over the country. They research this information to make sure it is true. When it is, then they give the coyote the go ahead to take the person across. When the illegal gets into the US, it is very easy for him to disappear into the dark, and nobody every knows where he is. But usually he is sending money back to his family, so he talks with them shortly after getting money the first time. If he doesn’t start sending the $10,000 back to the coyote, then his family starts getting threats, and it doesn’t take long after some nieces or nephews get kidnapped and come back with missing fingers or toes that the word gets to their family member in the US, “PAY THESE GUYS!”
As we watch this happen, this is what happens when we have unrealistic immigration policies. First of all, there should be a lot more legal immigration from the Mexico into the US to work. The older programs that allowed Mexicans to work 6 months and then had to cross back into Mexico and report to a US embassy in Mexico every month or two after returning works. By doing this, you steal the thunder from the drug cartels. People won’t go illegally if legally they can do so.
Secondly if they come to work legally, they will pay taxes, something that the underground illegal culture doesn’t do now. Also by paying taxes, they can also pay some kind of temporary health insurance for migrant workers to keep them off the government welfare roles. Being a green card migrant worker also allows the US to deny them welfare, food stamps, etc. It also can allow the US to not allow them to have any children born in the US to be automatic US citizens.
This is the problem, when you shut out most every legitimate Mexican from entering the US to work, then you create an under culture that is ripe for the cartels to take over.