Thread: South Padre Island / Precinct One Corruption & Border Wa

The long border between Mexico and the US state of Texas is dotted with dusty little towns, dreaming in the sun. They are towns of pastel adobe walls and shady bowers of bougainvillea - towns out of legend, with names such as El Paso, Juarez, Del Rio, Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros. They line both sides of the Rio Grande (or Rio Bravo), the shimmering river that forms the boundary between Texas and the country to which it once belonged.

There was a time, not too long ago, when life could be very good on 'the border.' The picturesque, little pueblos, that had retained much of their Spanish charm with a soupçon of the American 'Old West', had become a major tourist draw. The constant flow of US tourists along with the new string of maquiladoras (plants built by US companies in Mexican border towns) had infused the once-sleepy villages with new life and a viable source of income. The new prosperity gave rise to a new type of Mexican. Well-educated, sophisticated, upwardly mobile, bilingual and often, dual-national, these people were unique to the Texas-Mexico border.

To all appearances, these 'new' Mexicans had the best of both worlds. Often Texas-born, they opted to live in Mexico due to its lower cost of living. Thus, their advantages of dual citizenship and affluent lifestyle made them the envy of people on both sides of the river. They had no fear of drug-related violence, which they assumed was confined to the lower-income barrios and would never affect their upscale neighborhoods. They were soon to discover how wrong they had been.

A case in point is Juan Garza Mendoza and his wife, Marisol. Juan was born in McAllen, Texas and Marisol, in Reynosa, Mexico. Both are dual citizens. Juan, an entrepreneur, who also owns limited stock in a South Padre Island hotel, clears around $60,000 a year. Marisol, a former legal secretary, gave up her career to be a stay-at-home mom and care for their three children, Juanito, 14, Conchita, 9 and Lupita, 6. Though comfortably middle class, the Garzas decided to move to Matamoros, Mexico. The cheaper cost of living there enabled them to purchase a spacious, custom-built home and maintain a lifestyle they never could have afforded in the United States.

Their enviable life is abruptly interrupted one day when Juanito fails to come home from school. Though Marisol is worried, Juan points out that the kid is only an hour late. Maybe he stopped by a friend's house and forgot to call. The afternoon deepens into evening and the boy still hasn't shown up. Marisol has already called all of the youngster's friends, but no one has seen Juanito. Now Juan is becoming worried, as well. He calls the police, who obtain a description of the boy and promise to search for him, but there is little else they can do.

Finally, after two agonizing weeks, Juan receives a telephone call. The police have discovered a body that they have reason to believe might be the missing child. The clothes match the description, but the face is so badly disfigured, it is unrecognizable. The coroner's examination reveals that the youngster had been savagely beaten before he was finally killed. Dental records give the corpse a name. It is Juanito.

The Garzas are both shocked and devastated, but the Matamoros police have seen countless cases like this. Youngsters experiment with drugs and get in with a rough crowd. Occasionally, they cross the wrong person, or just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and serve as a convenient example. This homicide, like so many others, is most likely drug-related. And the savagery involved points to the dread Gulf Cartel.

The Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico's largest and most dangerous drug rings, is based in Matamoros, in the frontier state of Tamaulipas. The group maintains a presence in 12 Mexican states and operates primarily along the border with Texas, smuggling illicit drugs to major US cities. Notorious for its violence and brutal methods of intimidation, the formidable cartel has become the 'horror of the border.'

Founded in the 1970s by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, a former Mexican bootlegger, the cartel was expanded in the 1980s and '90s when Nepomuceno's nephew, Juan Garcia Abrego, took control. Though Garcia was apprehended in 1996, he was quickly replaced by a series of drug lords until strongman Osiel Cardenas Guillen seized power. Cardenas, who was arrested in 2003, allegedly continued to run the ring from prison, relinquishing control only upon his extradition to the US in 2007. Since that time, the cartel's structure has decentralized, with leadership shared between Cardenas' brother, Antonio Ezequiel and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, a drug lord with close Colombian contacts.

Though Mexican drug rings have existed for decades, the destruction of Colombia's Medellin and Cali cartels in the 1990s cleared the 'playing field,' allowing the Mexican groups to flourish. As the power of the cartels increased, however, so did the turf wars - particularly between Mexico's two most powerful groups, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels. Then in December 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched an all-out war on drugs and the cartels struck back with an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry that shocked the world.

The exact numbers and types of weapons the cartels posses are still unknown, but vast arrays have been confiscated including: AK-47 assault rifles, AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, fragmentation grenades, M4 Carbines with M203 grenade launchers, various .50 caliber rifles, machine guns and light anti-tank rockets. According to reports, 90 percent of all the firearms that could be traced came from the United States. Many of them were purchased legally.

It should be stressed that these arms are the ones that have been confiscated. We can only guess what other 'surprises' the cartels might have in their arsenals. We do know, however, that when a savage group acquires a stockpile of lethal weapons, the outcome is almost always violence. And if the government of the country in which that group operates dares challenge it, the violence skyrockets. That has been the case in Mexico since 2006.

The figures tell the story. On April 19 of this year, CNN reported that over 22,700 people had been killed since the 2006 launch of the Mexican drug war. Moreover, according to an Associated Press report, drug-related violence has soared with 3,365 fatalities casualties in the first three months of 2010. The trend is still going strong.

On May 7, in the border town of Juarez, cartel gunmen burst into a church and opened fire on a wedding ceremony. Ordering the bride and guests to the floor, they kidnapped the groom, along with his brother and uncle. The bodies were found 4 days later in the back of a pickup truck. Then, on May 14, gunmen opened fire on a van outside the same town, killing 6. According to a May 12 article in the Washington Post, 900 people have been killed in drug-related violence this year in the city of Juarez, alone.

Further south along the Rio Grande, in Reynosa, a city official and a mayoral candidate for the town of Valle Hermosa were gunned down on May 13 in separate drug-related shootings and according to a South Texas news source, a lethal gang, called the 'Zetas,' who were once allies of the Gulf Cartel, are presently preparing for an assault on Reynosa.

One of the reasons for the recent surge in violence is a turf war between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. However, despite their differences, both groups attack federal agents whenever they are dispatched to the area in an attempt to stem the violence.

Undoubtedly, President Calderon and the Mexican government have taken on a herculean task in their war on drugs. The war has taken a heavy toll on the Mexican military. The army, which numbers 100,000, is both overworked and overextended with 96,000 soldiers on constant duty.

The hopelessness of the situation has caused some to call the conflict "Mexico's Iraq." According to the country's officials, one of the main stumbling blocks the Mexican government is facing in the war is the continued high consumption of illegal drugs in the United States.

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano agrees. While enroute to Mexico City last March for a meeting on the Mexican conflict, she admitted that the US shares the blame for the enormity of the drug violence problem and added that Washington needs to continue focusing on the "drug demand reduction issue."

Mexican President Calderon maintains that American consumption isn't the only thing the US has done to exacerbate the problem. He says that since the cartels obtain most of their weapons from the United States, stopping over-the-border arms trafficking is a critical step in winning the war on drugs. He also said in a CNN interview in March of this year that US officials have admitted that there are powerful Washington lobbies opposing such a move. Thus, it appears there is little end in sight to Mexico's war on drugs. It has indeed become the country's quagmire.

http://presstv.ir/classic/detail.aspx?i ... id=3510304

A perfect case study to my point is when accusations arose against the South Padre Island Police Department involving the protection of illegal drug and gambling activity;

Instead of any real internal investigation, the chief opted for the easy way out, and took early retirement; Officer Richard Hernandez left the SPI police department, was hired by the Constable's office as a deputy, to essential cover the same beat he was accused of protecting drug dealers in Precinct One:

But the "angry citizens" demanded something be done AND THE SOUTH PADRE ISLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT GOT TO SPEND MORE TAX PAYERS' MONEY ON A DRUG DOG UNIT to make it seem like they are doing something about illegal drugs, in reality, when they have had opportunities to enforce drug and gambling laws they chose not to.

Pour another cup of tea South Padre Island--we have much to discuss.

Text WIKI to 25383 to donate $10.
Msg & Data Rates May Apply
Accountability

Accountability is a concept in ethics and governance with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility,[1] answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit and private (corporate) worlds. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounta ... ected=true


As a term related to governance, accountability has been difficult to define.[2][3] It is frequently described as an account-giving relationship between individuals, e.g. "A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct".[4], Accountability can not exist without proper accounting practices, in other words absence of accounting means absence of accountability.

Livestock ports in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo will remain closed indefinitely as a security team seeks safer inspection areas for the U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarians.

The U.S. State Department is assessing the quarantine pens located in northern Tamaulipas to determine whether they can be reopened with new security measures or must be relocated to safer spots elsewhere, said Lyndsay Cole, a USDA spokeswoman in Fort Collins, Colo. The pens used by veterinarians to inspect cattle before the livestock are exported to the United States were closed in late March after the USDA employees were confronted and detained by gunmen on a highway in Nuevo Laredo.

About 17,000 head of cattle have been diverted to other ports of entry — mainly at Eagle Pass — in the past month while the security concerns at the facilities are addressed.

But the closure of the livestock inspection ports is a “concrete exampleâ€

At what point do the crooked politicians feel responsible for the culture of criminality they perpetuate for money?

In my opinion, South Padre Island is like the Mayberry of a future America, where illegal drugs have replaced the traditional cash crops; where the entire local economy is founded on the success or failure of those at the top of this island society; no matter how immoral or corrupt, not unlike the cotton plantation societies of old, where the evil instition of slavery was accepted and even justified as an economic necessity, for the survival of the society.

How is this much different from South Padre Island realtors accepting suitcases full of cash on a Sunday afternoon from a Mexican National?

Someone is selling these foreigners properties and businesses, and NO ONE is questioning who they are and what they are doing in our country.

Witchita, do you know when you spend your tourist dollars on South Padre Island, the odds are your money is going into the pockets of a Middle Easterner or a Mexican National, and the real bite in the ass is they often hire other foreigners--see for yourselves.

Maybe Witchita you plan a family reunion with the Minutemen and SPI Tea Party--and make a vacation out of it on our beautiful sandy beaches.

(Might get lucky and find a 100 pound bail of marijuana to take back North!)

I place the dead of the innocents at your feet, as well as the damage to my country's economy and overall security of our nation: accountability.

The unemployment problems on this Island could be solved instantly, just like the Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance to force the police to shut down the illegal gambling: Pass another ordinance to shut down businesses who hire illegals.

What could possibly be the difference?

Force the police to uphold the law.

(They'll have to do it with illegal drugs too!).



But wait, the cops are too busy patrolling the beaches for girls--the scandles from that precinct is unbelivable.

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 12:01 pmÂ*Â* Â*Post subject:
I can't imagine what it would take to get it introduced/passed in NY.
I can't even go into a store anymore where people speak English!
I can't afford to buy school lunch for MY kids, but I have to buy it for theirs.
Honestly, I just want to be able to get a job. Everywhere requires you to speak Spanish. Isn't that discrimination?!
_________________
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver...
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-196989-days ... sc-25.html





Reminds me of when I went to the Bank of America to wire money to pay a bill--the bank teller did not speak English; they had to get a different teller to help me.

WTF?

Say a prayer for the Gulf Shrimpers and Fishermen--prepare to either eat Asian farm raised shrimp or pay a small fortune for Gulf Shrimp.