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Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
- axtscz 6y agoHere’s the non paywall link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201213081109/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/world/americas/miriam-rodriguez-san-fernando.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201213081109/https://www.nytim...
- unnouinceput 6y agoOr use Bypass Paywalls: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome Works on Firefox too - it's what I use right now to read this article
- baybal2 6y agoShe is a hero. Salute to righteous fighter vanquishing bandits!
- jiofih 6y agoThe US government spends trillions on the military, what stops them from descending with a crapload of police forces into a city like this and putting an end to it?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoInternational law? And, also, just "law". One of the better developments of last few decades is that national borders are, for the most part, no longer subject to violent change. That's due to territory simply losing importance: raw materials are insignificant, economically, compared to the fruits of intellectual labor. Borders have also become much more porous: the conflict in Northern Ireland, for example, lost much of its significance when it became commonplace to commute across the border every day. Then, a once-mighty nation took the lead in establishing what's called the "rule-based international order": You may conquer some territory with your oh-so-mighty territory. But whatcha gonna do with it when nobody is going to reconise it and you can't sell anything produced there in international markets? There's been enough regression in these efforts in recent years. No matter how grating it may be to see criminals getting away, it comes nowhere close to being significant enough to go back to might-is-right.
- voisin 6y agoPetty concepts that have never stopped the US Government before. /s
- tsjq 6y agoLOL !
- warriormonk5 6y agoNorman Angell argued almost the exact same thing as you-- in 1909. Doubled down on this argument in 1933. "The Great Illusion". He was wrong -- both times. :)
- nl 6y agoIt's extremely unclear what you think Angell was arguing for and what you think he was wrong about. "The Great Illusion" argued that economic integration made war unlikely. He was wrong in that he hadn't realized how much people wanted something that went against their interests. But he learned that lesson well: "From the mid-1930s, Angell actively campaigned for collective international opposition to the aggressive policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. He went to the United States in 1940 to lecture in favour of American support for Britain in World War II"[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell
- voisin 6y agoThis really should be made into a movie. It is absolutely astonishing and there are a lot of details I’d be interested in knowing about her campaign.
- ape4 6y agoMini-series!
- cambalache 6y agoYes! Let's use the tragic stories of these persons as a cheap entertainment for Americans
- vsskanth 6y agoSometimes you need engaging entertainment to educate people about the horrors many people face, unfortunately. Narcos from Netflix triggered me to learn about drug cartels and money laundering
- cambalache 6y agoAs a latino I noticed that Narcos increased the stereotyping of the region, not the other way around.
- greesil 6y agoAs a caucasian male, Narcos has made me want to visit Mexico and Colombia and eat yummy food. Reading the New York Times has made me scared of visiting Mexico. Colombia seems okay though.
- jacquesm 6y ago> Colombia seems okay though. Depends highly on where you go, but then again, that probably goes for every country. Even so, if you go make sure you have a local person you can rely on, and it really helps if you speak Spanish.
- tsjq 6y agoPaywall bypass https://archive.is/0q1wL https://archive.is/0q1wL
- Hnrobert42 6y agoWhat can I do as an individual to see less of this stuff happen?
- intricatedetail 6y agoLobby your local gov rep to legalise drug trade. It's main source of funding for these groups and allows them to buy influence. Without that stream of money it will be much harder to corrupt police and politicians.
- lumberjack 6y agoDon't buy drugs off the street or promote their use.
- jgwil2 6y agoTo be clear this depends on the drug. Cocaine and heroin are blood-soaked; cannabis, LSD or psychedelic mushrooms not so much. MDMA is probably somewhere in between.
- throw_m239339 6y agoCartels also deal Cannabis. In Europe, money from Cannabis traffic is then used to set up logistics for bigger operations, like bank heists, prostitution rings, human trafficking and terrorism, and lets not get started about gangs that kill each other and innocent victims when fighting for territory. Illegal Cannabis is as tainted as Cocaine or heroine. That's why it needs to be legalized. Legalization will weaken organized crime.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI'm surprised they are so into human trafficking and bank heists that they do it at a loss and let it eat into their weed money.
- vsskanth 6y agoSupport reps that introduce laws to legalize and regulate hard drugs. Decriminalize addiction. Donate to causes that help addicts and prevent new ones.
- thrower 6y agohttps://archive.is/0q1wL https://archive.is/0q1wL
- spicyramen 6y agoI have doubts Legalization will help to reduce crimes and violence. Let's start by saying that marihuana is just one of the products that cartels sold and represents a miniscule part of the earnings since the 80s. Cartels not only sell marihuana, cocaine and pills, they control human trafficking, prostitution, oil robberies, kidnapping, etc. Removal of local police won't help nor legalization. (Remember marihuana is not even legal in Mexico) I believe a full Mexico army intervention and UN blue helmets as monitors is required to bring back peace
- nickles 6y ago> Let's start by saying that marihuana is just one of the products that cartels sold and represents a miniscule part of the earnings since the 80s. As of a 2007 report, it was estimated that marijuana contributed up to 60% of cartel revenues [0]. > According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, drug proceeds in Mexico in 2005 ranged from... $3.9 billion to $14.3 billion for marijuana... Mexican drug traffickers also grow marijuana in the United States; therefore, the amount of proceeds returned to Mexico is likely greater than the reported estimates. > Adding up the midpoints for each range, the total would be roughly $15.5 billion, though we note there’s a wide disparity in the marijuana estimates. This portion has likely decreased substantially with increasing legalization of marijuana in the US, but it was not minuscule by any standard. The drop in revenue has pushed cartels to other income stream (e.g. avocado protection rackets) [1]. > Cartels not only sell marihuana, cocaine and pills, they control human trafficking, prostitution, oil robberies, kidnapping, etc. I think of cartels as companies whose product is criminal activity. Drug prohibitions make it possible to overcome the initial hurdle needed to build such an organization, but once established it will seek to diversify revenues and adapt to changing markets by offering new services. While legalization of drugs would likely cut cartel revenues, it would not entirely eliminate them. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexica... [1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-20/mexico-cartel-violence-avocados https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-20/mexico...
- spicyramen 6y ago
- xwdv 6y agoCouldn’t read the article but did she kill them off one by one?
- tehwebguy 6y agoNo, she turned them in which is probably why she is dead now. Eventually some of them broke out of prison and executed her in the street.
- xwdv 6y agoGod damn, no good deed goes unpunished. Lesson learned.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bigyikes 6y agoHeartbreakingly, the family learned that lesson as well: > Luis obsessed over who they were. But even he had learned the lesson his mother’s murder had been meant to impart: only push so far for justice. “I won’t make the same mistakes as my mom,” he said.
- linuxftw 6y agoMost likely the entire story was fiction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ur-whale 6y agohttps://archive.is/0q1wL https://archive.is/0q1wL
- frellus 6y agoAmazing story, and real journalism. If only the news spent more time uncovering the truth instead of opining about politics. I'm so sick of politics.
- deepsun 6y agoWell, a bit of advice from eastern european dictatures -- the more people try to refrain from politics, the worse politics screws up their lives. So I ended up respecting politised people, regardless of their views. For a functioning democracy, everyone must do politics, even if it's unpleasant.
- pydry 6y agoThat's probably partly why certain entities try to make it so toxic. People are more controllable when they're rabid and when they're inert.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoAlso reasonable people check out when people are running around livid because of false information.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Also reasonable people check out when people are running around livid because of false information. The comment you are responding to both recognizes that and is telling you that that is a fact that is deliberately being manipulated by and to the advantage of the people promoting false information. A major part of the goal of extreme political propaganda, nearly as important as mobilizing unreasonable people, is getting reasonable people exhausted with the political system so that they check out.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoThis seems like you are restating the same thing I said as if it is contradicting it.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/Kd8wh https://archive.is/Kd8wh
- donpott 6y agoThank you!
- Mustache 6y agoI've been trying to think of ideas of how they could help themselves. The only thing I can think of is to use technology - camera's everywhere, body cams and tracking devices on vehicles and people. I know they aren't wealthy, but the town could put cameras on the streets like the do in London. I'm just brainstorming here... Such a sad situation they are in.
- unnouinceput 6y agoI like idealistic people. Please, never change. Me, on the other hand, as a citizen of a very corrupt corrupt country in which the specter of communism still linger heavily, I wonder how many officials would either "malfunction" cameras when cartel members would be caught on video OR would actively help cartel members organize their kidnappings.
- linuxftw 6y agoHappens in countries perceived to be less corrupt as well. Consider the 'missing' video of Jeffrey Epstein's suicide.
- stickfigure 6y agoThis is conspiracy theory nonsense. Consider what percentage of video cameras in public spaces function at all.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIt’s 2020. Cheap, long lasting cameras are ubiquitous and easily available. A 40 year old CCTV camera in a subway station might be likely to not work, but I don’t see why that’s comparable to a camera for one of the highest profile prisoners in recent years. For $100, they could have even had 2 cameras for redundancy and no excuse.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y agoCriminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.
- rayiner 6y ago> Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do. This is magical thinking. Organized crime can make money in other ways. This story is about kidnapping, for example. Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade.
- jmcgough 6y ago> Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade. Organized crime will likely never truly go away, but it has flourished because of the war on drugs (just as it did in America during the prohibition era).
- bigbubba 6y agoRight, there is a keen difference between organized crime thriving or merely existing. That it would continue to exist misses the point.
- Aerroon 6y agoThere's also a difference in the way organized crime manifests itself. Kidnapping schemes can't really exist for organized crime in the developed countries. The state security forces would stomp them out too quickly.
- Ekaros 6y agoOr if they do, they focus on high value targets. And those high value targets in a free market should be able to pay for their own protection.
- ilaksh 6y agoAs someone who has been living in Mexico for a couple of years now to save money, these types of stories terrify me. I am seriously thinking of moving back to the United States. The only problem is that I cannot really afford to live there. I have some unresolved health issues and for many years have been working exclusively online because I could not handle commuting. But for me it has not been easy to find high-paying programming jobs online. There are just many more low-paying contracts and often I run out of money before I find a high-paying one which seems like it will have a workload that's manageable for me. So now so I have something which is totally fine in a way in that it's about $2000 per month (to handle all of the programming and servers for an automated cryptocurrency trading system that seems to be going nowhere but has been a steady income for several years) and I have Thursday and Friday to work on my deep learning classes. And I can easily manage to get by in Tijuana on that much. But this kidnapping thing is terrifying. Maybe Rosarito will be safer than Tijuana? I mean my neighborhood here in Playas _seems_ very safe. I would have to move to a ghetto or something in the US. Which I would not really quite be able to afford.
- hellonoko 6y agoIs there a reason you are living in Tijuana and not... anywhere else in Mexico? I did a 5 month road trip through Mexico and there are so many cheap beautiful safe spots to live.
- ilaksh 6y agoHow do you know they were safer than my neighborhood in Tijuana? Where were they?
- hellonoko 6y agoI suppose I can't say that I know with absolutely certainty that they were safer, but we would talk with locals and got a general feel for what places are more or less safe. One explanation was that the cartel members have families too and keep the cities their families live in free or more free of that sort of trouble. I would look into place like San Miguel De Allende, Valladolid, Puerto Escondito, Puerta Vallarta and the small villages north of it, Todos Santos, Oaxaca, San Cristobal De Las Casa. Guanajuato. Have you looked into Costa Rica and Panama?
- TrackerFF 6y agoUsed to date a girl from Honduras (Tegucigalpa), and heard some real horror stories about the day-to-day crime. One day a gang knocked on her parents door (they owned an apartment) and pretty much gave them a 2-day notice to get out. They packed their stuff, and left. Their senior neighbor did not - she ended up getting killed. Apparently gangs like that just seize apartments, and use them for criminal activities (prostitution, drugs, kidnappings, torture/executions, etc.). Her parents eventually managed to get to the US, but her uncle died on the way - victim of some kidnapping scheme, where gangs/cartels snatch up immigrants on the way, and blackmail their families in the target countries. Suffice to say, we never visited Honduras - but it's pretty surreal to know that this is the everyday stuff a lot of people go through, in Central America. One day everything is normal, the next day you're a refugee, just like that - and there's no justice in sight, because that would mean getting yourself or your family killed.
- 3131s 6y agoAs someone who is from the US but lives in a poor country, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to take the already dire situations of place like this and then add in 2-3x the drug trafficking violence compared to the US. Legalizing most recreational drugs around the world is absolutely imperative! If it is not done sooner than later then the largest drug trafficking organizations will be so entrenched that it may become impossible. Many lives would be saved if these drugs could be purchased in consistent doses with standardized labeling and packaging.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoLegalizing recreational drugs may help, but it won't solve the problem; hard drugs are still a thing, the cocaine trade is booming (read an article that the amount of cocaine intercepted in the Rotterdam port has gone up 10x in the past three years, and that's just the stuff they catch; wouldn't be surprised if that represents only 10% of what comes in. The article mentioned that the interception doesn't seem to have any effect on the 'street price'). If for example the US manages to somehow curb the drug crisis, they'll find other buyers easily. Or switch to other products in demand, like insulin.
- ogou 6y agoImportant to note that her own cousins helped set up the kidnapping and there is no drug transaction or service mentioned. Was done purely for money. Also, this isn’t a story about just one event. A much broader story is laid out. A quick search shows ~1300 confirmed kidnappings per year with 70000 reported missing. A kidnapping ending in death may just get reported as a murder. These numbers indicate a systemic problem. So much that it is a consumer industry now: “To pay the first ransom, Mrs. Rodríguez’s family took out a loan from a bank that offered lines of credit for such payments.”
- pietrovismara 6y agoHow brilliant is finance to commodify people's suffering. Surely it helps make the market more efficient?
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI recall reading an article on HN the other day which revealed there's even an insurance policy against ransom kidnappings, and that there are companies specializing in dealing with them - particularly, in business settings, they'd pay off the kidnappers and then bill your company for "consulting" (this is so that your company doesn't look like it's supporting organized crime by paying ransom).
- Maven911 6y agoAnd this also exists with insurance and consultants for dealing with ransomware
- matthewdgreen 6y agoThe difference is that ransomware gangs often come through with the decryption keys, while these two examples make it seem like it is common for kidnapping gangs to just keep the ransom and bury the hostage in a shallow grave. Ignoring the enormous moral issues, I wonder what the business incentives are here.
- 6y ago
- nicolas_t 6y agoYou would think that any organized gang would make sure to return kidnapped people safely so as to increase the likelyhood of getting the ransom... I wonder if the reason it doesn't happen is because the gangs doing the kidnapping are too fragmented and not centrally controlled?
- aeortiz 6y agoThey're not particularly bright...except the ones higher up the hierarchy.
- teslaberry 6y agothe way to control a country that is already problematic is to simply support violent crime and gang activity in that country. that is a huge part of what we call 'guerilla' warfare and proxy war. all military outfits need money and drugs and selling slaves or anything else illegal is the best way to finance already illegal operations using military level of violence. violence begets violence.