Thread: Severed head found in Acapulco marks trend

http://today.reuters.co.uk

Severed head found in Acapulco marks trend
Thu Jun 29, 2006 9:39 PM BST
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A man's severed head dumped on the steps of city hall in the popular tourist resort of Acapulco on Thursday appeared to mark a gruesome upsurge in drug violence ahead of Mexico's presidential elections.

The head of a man aged about 35 was found with a handwritten note outside city offices in an area across town from the tourist strip of hotels and bars.

The note written on an orange card read: "Lazcano, so you carry on sending more of your idiots." It was signed with the letter "Z." It was not clear for whom the note was intended.

The Pacific coast playground, which became popular as an exotic escape for Hollywood stars in the 1950s, is in the middle of a bloody turf war between two cartels fighting for control of the lucrative drug trade.

More than two dozen people have been murdered in the battle this year. Police found the body of a second man dumped elsewhere in the city on Thursday.

Heavily armed enforcers for the Gulf cartel, dubbed the "Zetas," are battling a group known as the "Pelones," or "Baldies," loyal to a drug gang from the western state of Sinaloa.

The killing is the latest amid a surge of gruesome decapitations by warring drug gangs across Mexico, where voters will choose a new president on Sunday.

Last week, police found the severed heads of four men, three of them policemen, left in plastic bags in the gritty border city of Tijuana, south of San Diego, California.

In Acapulco in April, killers left the severed heads of two policemen outside Guerrero state offices, with a note claiming the murders as a reprisal for a police crackdown.

Mexican President Vicente Fox declared an all-out war on drug gangs in January 2005. Since then, more than 1,500 people have been shot, beaten or suffocated to death by the drug gangs.

They aren't very original. They are just brutal and vicious.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/ ... 943156.htm

Posted on Fri, Jun. 30, 2006

Severed heads are thought to be tied to Mexico drug war


By Laurence Iliff

The Dallas Morning News

(MCT)

MEXICO CITY - The red tide of narco killings continued in the resort city of Acapulco, Mexico, this week, with the severed heads of two men discovered Friday, officials said. A day earlier, another head was found on the stairs of City Hall.

All bore messages directed at the Nuevo Laredo-based Zetas, the enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel that operates along the Mexico-Texas border. It is in a vicious turf war with the Sinaloa cartel, named for the central Mexican state where it is based.

The message found with the first decapitated head, discovered in a black plastic bag Thursday, was for Heriberto Lazcano, the reputed leader of the Zetas. It referred to Zeta attacks against the Sinaloa cartel in Acapulco.

"Loscano (sic), keep sending me more of your idiot (soldiers) so they learn some respect," said the message left next to the plastic bag. It ended with the letter "z," pronounced "zeta" in Spanish.

"It's an act of provocation," said Acapulco Mayor Felix Salgado. "I've received death threats, and not just now, but for some time," he told reporters.

In January, Acapulco police killed four suspected Sinaloa cartel members in a shootout at a busy intersection not far from the tourist zone.

The police chief, who participated in the shootout, resigned and disappeared. Two of the other officers in the shootout were found decapitated in April.

Local journalists who cover the drug trade have speculated that the officers may have been working for the Zetas, because local police don't fight drug crime, a federal offense.

The heads found Friday were dumped on the spot of the January shootout, just two miles from the beach, as were the heads of the officers killed in April. In both cases the "learn some respect" message was left nearby.

Jorge Chabat, an investigator at Mexico City's Center for Economic Research and Teaching, said the Acapulco battle is an extension of the nearly two-year-old fight for Nuevo Laredo.

"This wave of violence is going to continue until one of the two cartels fighting over Nuevo Laredo wins," Chabat said.

Acapulco authorities have said no tourists have been hurt as a result of the turf war.

Newmexican wrote

They aren't very original. They are just brutal and vicious.

Agreed--copycat murders of the insurgency in Iraq. It makes me wonder if Al Quada isn't already running drugs into the US while operating in Mexico..any NORMAL President would have the military on the border. But no, we have someone who DOES NOT CARE. If he did, he would see to it that the National Guard on the border would be armed.

Rockfish wrote

It makes me wonder if Al Quada isn't already running drugs into the US while operating in Mexico..

I have thought that for a long time, but don't want to sound like a wild eyed nut case.
Do you remember the Baldwin Park Demonstrations ( tapes from Save Our State). Some of them were wearing those red and white headdresses and some were wearing the skull caps. Then there was the one shouting "Zarqawi, gringo killer yes, yes".
When I look at the la voz de Aztlan site, they are all about their Palestinian brothers and comparing the Israel/ Palestine conflict to that of Mexico and the U.S. We stole their land.
I think the cartels and the middle east terror groups are in bed together and they both want to see the destruction of the U.S. Al Quieda will use anyone to destroy us and the Reconquistas want the to take over the country.
Then there is the money and the drugs. Where do the Mexican cartels get all of these drugs? We know the super labs for meth are in Mexico, but I don't think that all of the cocaine and heroin come from South America . The poppy fields in Afghanistan were not destroyed and Al Quieda is making a comeback there.
We keep asking where these poverty stricken people are coming up with all of this money to get here, the two biggest money making enterprises in the world right now are drugs and human trafficking, Al Quieda has always made their money from drugs and I wouldn't be surprised if they are now making money from human trafficking, from Mexico to the U.S. Mass immigration will dilute our country and economically destroy it using it's own laws and greedy politicians.

http://www.signonsandiego.com

Decapitation victims identified in Acapulco


ASSOCIATED PRESS

4:16 p.m. July 3, 2006

ACAPULCO, Mexico – Mexican officials on Monday said two decapitation victims whose heads were dumped outside a state government office in this Pacific resort city have been identified as a kidnapper and his cousin.
Pablo Soberanis, 42, and his cousin Sergio Patino, also 42, were identified by Soberanis' father at the morgue on Sunday, police said.

The father, Gabina Palacios, said his son had been released from the local prison after serving one year of an 11-year sentence for kidnapping. He did not say when he was released or give any other details, except to say that Soberanis had opened up a carpentry shop near the prison.

The heads were left outside the offices of the Finance Department for the state of Guerrero, which includes Acapulco, on Friday. They were accompanied by a note that read, “One more message, dirtbags, so that you learn to respect.” The note was signed “Z.”

The victims' bodies were found later that day in a vacant lot in Acapulco. The letter “z” was written on both their chests.

The act brought to six the number of severed heads found in Acapulco this year. The decapitations are believed to be the work of drug traffickers.