Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one | Hacker News Reader

Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

nytimes.com

330 pointsIfOnlyYouKnew215 comments

Used 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.

As 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.

Legalizing 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.

Wait, insulin is in demand in a way comparable to illicit drugs? Can't it easily be accessed through prescription?

a diabetic training partner of mine told me that black market for the insulin is ridiculously developed

In US, big pharma realized that they can increase their profits a lot by increasing the price of insulin as the patients don;t have much option here. So, insulin is ridiculously expensive, and those on insurance can't afford spare doses in case they break one.

So, with demand, comes supply. Since pharmaceutical companies were the ones who raised prices and used patents laws to curb any legal competition, only illegal competition remains.

One rarely discussed effect of drug legalization is that pharmaceutical companies would start developing recreational drugs. I expect they would create milder versions of current drugs specifically for the recreational market. That market would almost certainly be huge. Because of this, Big Pharma ought to be one of the biggest proponents of drug legalization. Whether the net effect on society would be positive or negative I do not know.

I was referring to hard drugs! Legalize cocaine, duh!

If the drugs become legal who do you think will be making and distributing them in the US? The same cartels and criminal organizations who traffic drugs today.

The end users will have a different experience but selling and trafficking drugs will remain illegal.

Some areas of Brazil suffer from a lot of that too.

Day-to-day violent crime was the #1 reason that I wanted to leave the country.

Me too, which is "funny" when it comes up in conversations, because people assume you left to earn more money, and then you tell them that you actually earned more in Brazil than you do now, but you have the constant fear of random violence.

I also came to the US deciding to leave my country and relatives behind for the exact same reason. Once you have kids your perspective changes and security of your family is much more important than money or work. The crimes you see in my current neighborhood today look like kid's pranks when compared to the real dangers I had to face on a daily basis back in my country.

Left the US(A) in early 2019 for this exact reason (SFBay) after 18 years. Now back in my native Iceland comfortably retiring. And kids no longer need to practice for active shooter situations at school. And I don't worry that a trigger happy cop gets too excited at traffic stop either.

Are there any countries that enjoy a low crime rate that do NOT have a largely homogeneous populations like Iceland and Japan? Not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious.

EDIT Are there any low crime countries with a diverse population that don't employ big brother style surveillance like Singapore?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Honduras at the very least you need more than that, Honduras itself is 87% mestizo

Reading your article

> Because of social stigmas attached, many people denied having African ancestry, and after African descended Caribbean workers arrived in Honduras, an active campaign to denigrate all people of African descent, made persons of mixed race anxious to deny any African ancestry. Hence official statistics quite uniformly under-represent those people who have ancestry in favor of a "two race" solution.

Contrasting your example, Japan and Iceland are near 100% homogeneous.

Canada?

Canada, like the US, is pretty diverse compared to places like Japan and Iceland. Am I missing something?

I think he meant that Canada is a diverse country with low crime. In contrast to how Japan and Iceland have no crime while having homogenous populations.

Thanks for the clarification. According to the data, it's comparable to the US which makes sense since the diversity and even culture are similar.

> comparable to the US

In diversity? Or crime rate?

Both

It's worth mentioning that the violence in Honduras is, in no small part, part of the US State Department's bipartisan foreign policy from which we benefit. Fast fashion, which Americans consume, is enabled by the precarious situations we've foist upon the Hondurans by destabilizing their government, and installing leadership sympathetic to our colonial interests. Your ex-girlfriend's uncle died for my t-shirt.

> Ten years ago, on June 28, 2009, a general trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas arrived with troops at the home of the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and forced him at gunpoint onto a plane bound for Costa Rica. An interim president was appointed by his political opponents who was quickly legitimized by United States. — [The Hill](0)

> There was a 1950s-style coup in Honduras in 2009 backed by the government of the United States, and things appear to have been unremittingly messed up ever since. Let me emphasize this one more time. If Honduras is in shambles, it is not because Hondurans are any less resourceful or fundamentally decent than anyone else, or even because its rulers are any more wretched and callous than our own. It is because the structure of the North American economy has made any other outcome impossible. — [No Wall They Can Build](1)

- 0. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/45046...

- 1. https://crimethinc.com/books/no-wall-they-can-build

Blaming the US for the endless violence in Honduras is typical internet nonsense.

He wrote "in no small part", which is accurate.

Yet the "nonsense" is the one with the cogent argument and citations? Interesting.

Something I find interesting is how we get bombarded all the time about the bad conditions in Venezuela, but we heard very little about, for instance, Honduras and El Salvador.

"[Venezuela] has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. " [1]

Honduras is just not internationally interesting, either militarily or economically (outside of some refugee situation).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela

Various US Army academies and schools are broadly open to members of the military in the United States’ allies. It’s like saying the general when to an American university—that doesn’t imply any American endorsement of his actions.

I'm not willing to accept this argument, School of the Americas (now Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) is not a public-access educational institution. It is purely for the spread of imperialist propaganda around Central and South America.

The US obviously has a self interest in providing training to military members in the Western Hemisphere. That’s why we allow foreign students to come study at any American university. But it’s a conspiracy theory to say that it’s all just a plot to destabilize governments in Central and South America.

It's no conspiracy, it's simply self-interested foreign policy. That "self interest" is very overtly expressed by the Kennedy, Johnson, and Reagan Doctrines exemplified by the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, and the United States providing military support to the contras in Nicaragua.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_doc...

At least in El Salvador, things are getting better.

The Salvadoran president, Najib Bukele, a 39 year old businessman is effectively controlling gang activity. He is a pretty cool guy, and serves his country without collecting his salary.

Gangs in Central America extort people with jobs, so that in the end it's too inconvenient to have a job, and more convenient to be a gangster. If you have a honest job, some random armed guy shows up to collect most of your money.

It's a self-reinforcing phonomenon that kills the economy and turns everyone into gangsters.

> The Salvadoran president, Najib Bukele, a 39 year old businessman is effectively controlling gang activity.

Some say that this is due to... shady deals with gang leaders: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54033444

Bukele is also under fire for attacking freedom of the press: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-06/el-salvad...

Are the accusations credible?

I've heard similar from a Honduran girl who moved to my country. She says she's never going back.

Important 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.”

How brilliant is finance to commodify people's suffering. Surely it helps make the market more efficient?

I 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).

And this also exists with insurance and consultants for dealing with ransomware

The 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.

What alternative would you prefer? Not giving any loan at all for people in such circuimstances? Or give out money for free to anyone who pretends to be in this situation?

I'm not sure how you spin it that the bank or insurance company is the bad guy here. How would you rather it be handled?

Her cousins didn't help setup the kidnapping - that was the boy in the parallel story.

I find this style of storytelling dizzying. As a non-native english user, the interleaving of narrative confuses me. Is it a desired style of journaling?

The narrative in this story did get confusing. But there is a purpose to it: the story of Mrs. Rodríguez took place around 2014-2017, whereas Luciano Garza's was July of this year. It's rare that the news department (i.e. as opposed to the New York Times Magazine) will run a feature closely detailing a years-old event, not without an obvious hook to why the story is being told now. Likewise, Luciano's kidnapping and murder, sadly, wouldn't merit such an indepth feature without an obvious tie to broader events.

Writing about both murders in this article made sense, IMHO, even if the transitions between narratives weren't always completely clear. Part of the reporter's angle was that Mrs. Rodríguez's highly publicized fight impacted how people reacted to Luciano's kidnapping, for better or worse.

Criminalization 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.

> 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.

> 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).

Right, there is a keen difference between organized crime thriving or merely existing. That it would continue to exist misses the point.

There'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.

Or 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.

But if organized crime didn't have the resources to buy off the government, military, and police wholesale the magnitude of the problem would be much smaller.

You serious think that taking away the stream of income that has put trillions of usd in the hands of cartels / organized crime won't have a huge impact?

It will remove 90% of their power. The 10% will still be a force for evil, but then it becomes easier to attack them

Look at it another way. Do you really think an industry reaping trillions of dollars is going to go away without a fight?

You mean like putting a lot of money into opposing legalization efforts? Yeah, I expect that.

Wouldn't they be more likely to just enter the market as legal participants? Cartels kill and do heinous things to their competitors because they can't take them to court and sue them and get an injunction to stop bad behavior.

Agreed this is too simple and common sense for the government to do.

That's not what happened with Prohibition. Crime syndicates providing black-market alcohol didn't just set up as legitimate alcohol vendors, they moved into unrelated markets like controlling labor unions.

Note that labor unions were a legitimate type of enterprise, but organized crime ran them illegitimately anyway. The willingness to break the law is their competitive advantage; it would make no sense to give it up.

I have doubts that it will fix the problem. It's not just drugs that these cartels control--it's kidnapping, avocados, cross-border smuggling, etc.

It's possible the violence might actually increase, actually.

I think it is necessary — even if not sufficient — to end the war on drugs. The only exception I’m willing to make is proper labeling and safe storage conditions. It should ought to remain unlawful to distribute drugs without proper labeling. We will need to come up with labeling standards.

There just isn't nearly as much money in any alternatives. At its root money is required to maintain cartel power.

Sure they aren't going to disappear overnight. But cutting out their most profitable product lines would make a huge dent without a doubt.

We have a real-world example of that from Prohibition so it isn't entirely theoretical.

If there isn’t enough money, it only ends up making gangs more ruthless as they now have to compete for a smaller share of money with other gangs.

They end up extorting even more money from the local populace, and try and extend their fangs into other activities.

I’m not saying that legalizing drugs won’t help at all. But it’s unlikely it will help in places that already have gangs without other actions in addition.

It took a little while, but why did it help so much when we ended prohibition but wouldn't when we end other drugs?

What I'm about to say is a broad generalization, but an important one:

Gangs exist as the most promising form of employment for people without other options. If you destroy the gang's single largest source of revenue, then it reduces their relative attracting as an employer. There are alternative to drugs like human trafficking, arms dealing and the wildlife trade but they have much much smaller markets. Perhaps in the short term violence would increase as gangs try to find a replacment for drugs, but even in the medium term I strongly believe that recruitment would plummet and attrition would rise as the money ran out.

Given that, according to your profile, you're an appellate lawyer, and the more crime there is, the more work there is for lawyers generally (though maybe not for you personally) that seems like an instance of

>“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair ~ 1934

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...

"What a cheap ad hominem" (me, just now)

Searching for their profile on their employers website, and you'll find not a single criminal case. As was to be expected, considering the vast majority of lawsuits are civil law matters.

> Organized crime can make money in other ways.

None of these has the absurd profit spans of drugs, though. You need about ~600-800 US$ worth of raw coca leafs to produce 1kg base cocaine (https://www.businessinsider.com/from-colombia-to-new-york-ci...) - and make ~25-27k US$ once it's on US streets. A vertical cartel that controls everything from the leaves to the sellers can capture all that 41.000% profit margin for themselves!

When the biggest markets US and EU "dry up" for illegal sales of cocaine, the gangs literally don't have anyone any more to extort for money - the population of South America is dirt poor. And also, they can't afford running militia that are more capable than some nations' armies or bribing the utter majority of the political class any more once these tasty US dollars vanish.

Organized crime can make money in other ways, but fundamentally it profits from regulatory and legal arbitrage: the difference between what is in demand and what is legal to supply. Decriminalization directly attacks the fundamentals of that arbitrage, whether it's drugs or prostitution, or more prosaic like fuel taxes or tobacco duty (smuggling both has been a source of funding for IRA in Northern Ireland, historically).

Kidnapping is more of a capital arbitrage situation. I don't think it scales like drugs. For it to be really worthwhile, it relies on people with a lot of capital coming into the area. If you scale up kidnapping, people simply don't come, or invest a lot more in security.

We half-legalized one drug (cannabis) and they pivoted to stealing oil out of pipelines.

...which is a vastly less lucrative business. It's much easier to protect pipelines than to stop two humans exchanging money for drugs in private.

A few more pivots like that, and the cartels will be toothless.

But isn't aren't drugs de-facto legal in Mexico anyway? The cartels are thought to control the police, judges and politicians enough that they do not fear the rule of law much. If drugs were legalized in Mexico, wouldn't the cartels do what cartels do anyway and prevent everyone else from producing?

Or do you mean make it legal at the destination - the US?

They should be legal everywhere, but legalizing in the US will have the most impact.

Sugar and opioids are also legal, legality doesn't solve everything, it's also up to the consumers and the regulator to work on better ways to consume those products.

You would need to regulate doses, make sure it's not coupled with other substances to reduce ill effects on consumers, which isn't easy. It's obviously better than letting cartels thrive, of course, but legalizing drugs isn't a silver bullet, it's also a lot of work.

Remember how prohibition went into action: women were tired of their drunk husbands.

It would be interesting to hear if they are actively lobbying against legalisation. Perhaps someone here knows?

And in the meantime, we should all do our part by refusing to use illegal drugs, because that directly funds the violence.

But somehow this opportunity for personal action is never brought up.

The issue is deeper. War on drugs has created many little cartels, many of them don't make much money off of transporting drugs to USA. These local criminal gangs are there to extort money from businesses, kidnapping, selling drugs locally.

When PRI was in power, politicians and plaza bosses had mutual understanding: "you can transport drugs, but don't mess with locals who have no connection with drugs". Whenever USA tries to get rid of a kingpin, it will create more splinter factions, whose only way to fund themselves by kidnapping, ransoms, extortions, etc.

The solution is to use the Rico law to prosecute everyone involved all at once as a gang instead of one person at a time. It worked successfully on the 5 mob families of New York.

This 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.

Mini-series!

Yes! Let's use the tragic stories of these persons as a cheap entertainment for Americans

Sometimes 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

As a latino I noticed that Narcos increased the stereotyping of the region, not the other way around.

As 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.

> 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.

Mexico City is absolutely swarming in federales, tourist areas seem pretty safe from major crime (though maybe not pickpockets).

I'd say it's one of the safer mayor citiew I've been, given that you stay in the touristy parts. Centro histórico, La Condesa, Roma, Polanco and similar. Worst thing that happened to me there was when me and some friends were wasted and cops tried to shake us down, but we told them to fuck off and they did.

Why Americans? I think the whole world would enjoy it.

Could be some story-rights paid out.

There is a similar story. Not from San Fernando, but from Juarez. Similar in the sense that is the mother who wants justice.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13206564/

Sorta related, this is a good film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_(2015_film)

Also, one of the subplots in the excellent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_(film) is in Mexico.

Babel is by Mexican directors and writers. See the previous two in the triptych too.

Denzel Washington's Man on Fire is in the same arena of films (obviously action-sensationalized, however still good for what it is):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Fire_(2004_film)

Really? I consider it one of the three worst films I've seen: just a celebration of excessive violence and gratuitous avoidance of due process/checks and balances, made to seem defensible only because of unrealistic movie-protagonist ultracompetence. It's a worse case of Tom Clancy syndrome than the man himself ever did.

Sicario? Did we watch the same film? I mean sure, that's the content they are dealing with-- gratuitous violence and murder is entrenched in that world and they told a story in that world. As far as film-making and story-telling goes, Sicario will probably always be a top 50 if not top 20 film for me. Also encourage anyone to check out Villeneuve's older less known movies (most of course know Arrival and Blade Runner 2049), such as Prisoners, Enemy and Incendies-- all fantastic movies.

Might have meant Babel which is part of a trilogy?

As 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.

Is 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.

How do you know they were safer than my neighborhood in Tijuana? Where were they?

I 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?

Eh, don't bother, some people like the person you replied to just enjoy staying in a hotspot, and it makes no sense.

As someone who is "hispanic" it amazes me that someone would do such a thing when they are constantly in danger, and there are safer places to live, but medical and other cheap entertainment in MX is probably the reason why.

If he has spent two years in Tijuana and hasn't heard of the places you mentioned, or done any true traveling, well, yeah.

They're content. That's what they want. That's all they want.

You are "hispanic"? WTH does that mean in quotation marks?? And how does that make you an expert on where it is safe?

I moved here because it was close to the border and most of the horror stories I heard were farther into Mexico. Also this way I could still visit my father before he passed away and still easily cross to buy things in the US or get US mail etc.

I live in Playas de Tijuana. People here told me it was safe. So far I have not seen any danger.

I have heard of other towns and locations in Mexico and South America.

How TF would you know how much traveling I have done?

Why do you say I am constantly in danger? Where do you think I should live and why?

I put myself out here looking for information and of course I got what I deserved which was just for people to spit in my eye.

I haven't really researched anything else thoroughly in South America. I was more thinking of trying to find some place reasonable in the US.

Honestly I am not sure all of those little towns in Mexico you mentioned are really safe.

The issue is Tijuana has the name recognition for the bad reputation. So really people only see that.

There are many places in the US where you can live quite comfortably for $2000 a month.

Such as?

Check out the Midwest, e.g. Oklahoma City.

Check out Craigslist 'housing' section. Oklahoma City as suggested by other commenter has 1 brs for under $600, but I'm sure there are places in California or elsewhere at least as cheap. If you're willing to share a place, you could even find cheaper places, or more desirable areas

https://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

https://archive.is/Kd8wh

Thank you!

She is a hero. Salute to righteous fighter vanquishing bandits!

She was a hero. Some escaped from a prison and put 13 bullets through her. It’s in the article.

Heroes never die

Amazing 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.

Well, 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.

That'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.

Also reasonable people check out when people are running around livid because of false information.

> 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.

This seems like you are restating the same thing I said as if it is contradicting it.

Here in the US the media effectively controls who people vote for, and the DNC/RNC is quick to "aggressively interject itself" if that tactic fails; so it seems to me that democracy as we know it is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The media stopping opining about politics would not change that, even though it will never happen.

You're being downvoted, because it's an uncomfortable truth that challenges people's beliefs that they, themselves, are not falling for the media manipulation, but you're correct.

>> For a functioning democracy, everyone must do politics, even if it's unpleasant.

I've been voting and voicing my displeasure regularly for the last year at my governor and elected officials, down the to the local ones, and nothing has changed. Actually that's not true, the majority of the decisions made have changed quite a bit and have further ruined my small business and my children's education.

Can't imagine how much worse it would get if I didn't waste hundreds of hours writing to my officials while they feed my concerns into a shredder.

Try to motivate people you know to pressure the officials. By the way, not sure about US, but I've seen that often you actually need very little votes to register a motion/discussion/voting/etc for expelling an official from their office. Whether that motion is satisfied or not -- official should be stressed about it immediately.

What matters the most is how many people you can motivate to do something, and that is democracy.

72% of the people voted for the official in question. (1MM+)

Sorry, man, I'm gonna just not do politics. There's literally no point.

I found the pointed reference to 'Born Again Christianity' political, and in line with NYT political philosophy.

The NYT will go to great lengths to point out alignment with right-side politics in such matters. Left-side alignments seem not to get much mention, at least as far as I can tell.

As a subscriber to the New York Times, that's exactly the opposite of what I've observed. A frequent criticism, in fact, has been interviewees not being identified as GOP political agents.

In the context of the sentence (contrasting the banality of the roles the murders tried to take with the crime) it didn't seem political at all:

"In three years, Mrs. Rodríguez captured nearly every living member of the crew that had abducted her daughter for ransom, a rogues’ gallery of criminals who tried to start new lives — as a born-again Christian, a taxi driver, a car salesman, a babysitter."

Evangelicalism in Mexico is a considerably different topic than in the US as well.

She had to go through this ordeal because the Mexican government is broken. That’s politics.

Did anyone read to the end? Some of the people she put into prison for kidnapping and murdering her daughter were part of a prison escape and then murdered her.

The other victim in this story was kidnapped like her daughter and like her daughter was found dead. Furthermore, they later found out that it was relatives who planned the kidnapping and murder of the other victim in the story.

This story is about a systemic failure of policing leading to people being regularly victimized, which seems pretty political to me.

Well, a lot of feel-good "one person fought the system/the mob/etc" stories are effectively political by giving the impression the way to deal with these huge problem is individual initiative.

And indeed, a lot of purely repression based solutions to different social ills lean heavily on the "heroes can fight the bad guys" trope. This reinforces the "drug war", which is in many ways the source of the orgy of murder this woman confronted and this isn't going to be solved by more heroics of her sort.

There's a reason that we don't have quite this level of random violence in the US -- even in areas where drug traffic is high. Our politics have a lot to do with it. Ignore it at your peril.

What can I do as an individual to see less of this stuff happen?

Lobby 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.

Don't buy drugs off the street or promote their use.

To 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.

Cartels 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.

I'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.

Support reps that introduce laws to legalize and regulate hard drugs. Decriminalize addiction. Donate to causes that help addicts and prevent new ones.

Don’t use drugs

Promote real solutions https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/28/archives/italy-confiscati...

I'm not sure about you specifically, but these are financially motivated crimes, and generally reducing poverty dramatically reduces crime.

Beg your politicians to support open borders, so that the individuals who live in these countries have the freedom to leave them.

This is going to backfire spectacularly. There is no filter which can isolate the good from the bad. If you let the flood gates open the scum will come in too.

That just imports the problem at a faster rate. Even Merkel realizes she turned a migrant challenge into a migrant crisis with open borders.

It also spreads the nonsense that there’s nowhere safe in Mexico. I skimmed the article and saw she lived in Tamaulipas. No reason that moving to the US should come before moving to a safer state in Mexico like where I live or where any expat chooses to spend their time.

Don't open your eyes?

Move to a community that is on the edge (not hopelessly gone like in the article, but low income). Take a few youth as projects and start working with them, improving their lives. Donate to existing youth groups.

In our community, all crime has dropped tremendously since we started, and many youths now have purpose to their lives that will (hopefully) keep them from ever joining such groups.

And, importantly, don't forget your own kids. Keep an eye on their friends when growing up, make sure you spend the time to keep a good relationship with them.

If everyone in Central America consciously worked to raise their kids to be better people, and each also took two or three less fortunate kids as projects, it would show. (I am sure plenty do, but we need more working to improve the world!)

I'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.

I 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.

Happens in countries perceived to be less corrupt as well. Consider the 'missing' video of Jeffrey Epstein's suicide.

This is conspiracy theory nonsense. Consider what percentage of video cameras in public spaces function at all.

It’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.

Prisons are not much of a target for tech upgrades. Here’s a 2018 study from california on “what happens if we put surveillance cameras in the prison?” to give you an idea of the baseline. https://ucicorrections.seweb.uci.edu/files/2018/05/High-Dese...

Then someone needs to be held responsible for this. Somebody is in charge of all of that and should face the consequences of their failure to fulfill their duties.

So are you and the other person in agreement that it's conspiracy theory nonsense then?

It reads to me like they're saying the conspiracy theory is valid, unless someone is held accountable for the CCTV failure.

Sure, it's a conspiracy of taxpayers to avoid the massive investment that would be required to bring all that technology back into working order - across public infrastructure everywhere throughout the country.

What percentage of BART cameras do you think work? Based on the number of high-profile incidents without footage, I'd guess <25%. I would not be surprised to learn the answer is 0%.

Consider yourself held responsible and allocate yourself the consequences you see fit.

No, you misunderstand. Somebody is in charge of that prison/jail. A person died under their watch. The equipment supposed to record how it happened malfunctioned right at that time. This should be unacceptable. The person directly responsible for the facility should bear at least some consequences for failure to do their duty. If they don't have enough funding to make sure that things like this don't happen then there should be an extensive paper trail of them asking for more funding for this. If not, then it sounds like it's not a problem they care about.

For me it's not a question of whether it's a conspiracy or not. For me it's a question about society. Not only can we not protect a very high profile individual from harm in a cell (self-inflicted or not), we can't even make sure that the cameras in the cell work. What chance do we have that prisons in general can protect prisoners from harm? And if we can't protect prisoners from harm then they'll do it themselves. That's how you get a gang culture. You also make sure that many criminals never even get a real chance at reforming, because they'll have to protect themselves in prison with the limited means at their disposal instead of learning to become a better person.

Yes, American prisons are as bad as this makes them look. Possibly worse. The UK refused to extradite one guy because they said there was too high a risk that he'd kill himself in prison here. Prison rape and assault are common - at least 20% of male prisoners report being assaulted, often by staff. And it's been like this for decades, all over the country, because a significant percentage of people really believe that prison is meant to be some kind of dystopic hellhole.

Jails and prisons are where American society throws people away. There aren't working video cameras, competent guards, effective suicide watches. That's not where Americans choose to place their attention

The argument that Jeffery Epstein was murdered hinges on jails and prisons to be something they are not

That worked really well for police misconduct this Summer. It's all on film, because they know they'll get away with it.

I think the issue is structural. It's an economic situation primarily.

I've pondered on this and wonder if religion could be the answer. I say this as an atheist. But churches, typically already established well in these areas, could have the community structure combines with good social values and zeal/commitment, even fanaticism to see through what would likely be tough time initially to cleaning up areas.

Something along the lines of a Knights Templar where segment of a community devote themselves to the protection of people in the area. It might even give youth an alternative to avoid gangs as while jobs are scarce they can join a 'higher order' so have an alternative that provides purpose and a raise in self-status.

Note: I know nothing about these areas or problems really so approach this mental exercise from a position of ignorance and Hollywood.

To quote a speech I heard in college: "It frustrates me to no end that, as a species, the religious are more fit. Their communities are more structured, and have less crime and violence. Their families larger, more nuclear and more supportive of each other. Their members are more relaxed, and have more purpose to their lives.

Evolution would state that, eventually, only the religious will survive. If there is a God, He is laughing."

Nonetheless, I don't think that would help here - the society has passed critical mass of crime, the incentives are for everyone to be criminal, and religion itself would be subverted for its use.

Religious communities may not be more fit. It depends on what measure you look at: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf

Fit from an evolutionary standpoint, i.e. (especially now) only the religious are having replacement levels of children.

https://archive.is/0q1wL

You 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?

They're not particularly bright...except the ones higher up the hierarchy.

Couldn’t read the article but did she kill them off one by one?

No, 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.

God damn, no good deed goes unpunished. Lesson learned.

Heartbreakingly, 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.

I 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

> 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-mexica...

[1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-20/mexico...

Ok, you are not accounting that war against drugs started in 2007 specifically under Felipe Calderón so that report is outdated. The activities that I mentioned specifically oil robberies started after it and that generates way more than marihuana. There is an ongoing case from Pemex against few companies in Houston buying stolen oil. You should look it up

> Ok, you are not accounting that war against drugs started in 2007 specifically under Felipe Calderón so that report is outdated

Alternative sources all appear to be contemporary to that report. I’m happy to consider other data, but I’m hesitant to give Calderón’s policies the benefit of the doubt, given the dramatic increase in cartel violence [0] under his tenure and his solicitation of bribes from cartels while in office [1].

> The activities that I mentioned specifically oil robberies started after it and that generates way more than marihuana

Oil theft in Mexico cost Pemex $1.5bln in 2016 [2]. Assuming cartel revenues from marijuana have fallen 50% since 2007, oil theft revenues would still need to grow 3x to rival those from marijuana.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/americas/mexico-dru...

[1] https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/chapos-lawyer-claims-cartel...

[2] https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/mexico-state-oil-com...

We actually have evidence for this with eg Portugal (where most studies find a decrease in violent crime) and the US, particularly California where we, for the first time, decriminalized the supply chain. There also, there was a fall in crime [1].

Despite the fact that cartels may continue to control human trafficking, etc, it cannot hurt to take away large chunks of their profits.

[1] https://blog.oup.com/2019/07/how-medical-marijuana-hurts-mex...

https://archive.is/0q1wL

The 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?

International 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.

Norman 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. :)

It'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

My only point is that I see similar echoes of that argument from the comment I replied to, and I firmly disagree with that stance.

We got a small taste of how isolated nations are when this pandemic kicked off. It's amazing it didn't degrade further.

If you didn't know, that was attempted quite a number of times.

The US government can't secure its own prisons where it has full control, what make you believe it would do better in a Mexican city?

The US does do better, empirically. I am certainly not endorsing GP’s position, but your false equivalence is a distraction.

It really doesnt, especially when controlled by income the US does a worst job.

I'd rather live in an American city then in a Mexican city. Granted, I'd pick a European city over both (albeit that's country dependant, Southern Europe city life is getting considerably worse)

And as a European I'd pick a Japanese city any day. So I guess the grass is always greener somewhere else :)

Controlled by income? I will pick Mexico every single time. At 800 USD/month you can live a middle class life in plenty of very nice and safe places in Mexico. Try that in America.

That's not what "controlling for income" means. So let's make this clear, you would rather make $843/month (median) in Mexico vs $3714/month (median) in America?

Citation for that?

The US does better in a US city obviously, but I was speaking about a Mexican city: different economic conditions, different culture etc.

What makes you think the US government has any motivation to do anything like this?

The US has spent money trying to train police in other countries. Unfortunately, the main motivation has been stopping the drug trade, so most of that training has been militaristic.

You saw how that worked in Iraq. The US can't even provide security without murdering bystanders in its own cities.

You're fighting cancer. Sure, the US can break all laws and go do a 100% clean sweep of that city, but the area around it will still be contaminated. US will have to leave eventually and this will open the door to new criminals who will simply see it as "free real estate."

If people themselves (the immune system, if you wish) don't make an effort like this woman did, no intervention will help them, Earthly or Divine alike.

At best the US can bunker up and make an effort to contain them.

Close to a trillion have been spent on Afghanistan for almost a decade. That much effort was needed to throw off an easily identifiable terrorist state. How will Afghanistan last until it collapses again? Because it's only a matter of time.

> How will Afghanistan last until it collapses again?

the US has already struck a deal with the taliban, and the afghan government is formally negotiating with them right now. so probably not long...

If it ends then how cops will be making money on the side (e.g. declaring half of the actual drug bust and pocketing the rest or getting protection payments from gangs)

The blood and memory of people who have already paid for that arrogance in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, hopefully.

Public opinion.

Sovereignty of Mexico state. Imagine this was reversed.

I believe we live in a narco-state where government works for the cartels. This does not exclude US authorities, search for Garcia Luna and ties with DEA operatives/israel companies

> The 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?

“Military” and “police forces” are different things.

But, in either case, doing so would both start a war with and further destabilize Mexico. There's a reason the US usually does this to countries far from its own borders, separated by oceans, or both, so that the blowback when popular support collapses and the ongoing cost in blood and treasure becomes intolerable is born by people that are remote from the US (in both the target country and it's neighbors.)

Aside from those pragmatic concerns, the same considerations also have a moral dimension, though that's less consistently reflected in policy decisions.

US police aren't even well liked in America. What makes you think they'd be welcomed in Mexico?

The US helped out with putting El Chapo in jail in the US. In Mexico every time they locked him up he'd got out again. Seems a similar problem in the story - you find the killers and they just break out of jail and come for you. Maybe the US could expand its prison for Mexicans service? If they imprisoned fewer Americans there'd be loads of room.

The US can't let their prison cells go to mexican citizens when they are needed for hard working americans with families.

That strategy did not work for Afghanistan.

Building the wall will inhibit smugglers. We'll see if it reduces the cartels income.

What the USA should not do (again) is "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

Of course the wall is going to reduce cartel income. It's your fantasy world, and you can make it happen!

Building a wall will have nearly no impact on smugglers. The portion of material that comes on foot over the wall is a vanishing fraction. It's primarily a way for coyotes to extract a bit more extra value.

They are friends with the Sinaloa cartel guys.

Here’s the non paywall link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201213081109/https://www.nytim...

Or use Bypass Paywalls: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

Works on Firefox too - it's what I use right now to read this article

Paywall bypass https://archive.is/0q1wL

Reply on news.ycombinator.com