July 2, 2006
ATTAC Report This Week
Vodka-Tequila: Soviet Agents in Mexican Gangs
(Transcript)
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Hello. I’m your host, Boruch Ellison, and this is “ATTAC Report This Week” for July 2nd, 2006.
Last month, just across the U.S.-Mexico border in the town of Mexicali, an armed unit of drug gangs tried to murder a top Mexican official in broad daylight. The attackers used military assault rifles and grenades, firing hundreds of rounds and injuring bodyguards but failing to hit their target.
That wasn’t a rare assault. Hundreds of paramilitary attacks on public officials, law enforcement, and rival gangs are turning the streets of Mexican cities into war zones. From Tijuana at the northern border to the populous Mexico City further south, syndicated crime has gone from simple drug dealing to assassinations, kidnappings, and murders. Even middle-class residents are resorting to bodyguards and armored vehicles, and law enforcement itself is becoming too intimidated to fight back.
Increasingly, the assaults are becoming high profile terrorism directed at Mexican authorities. During the last nine months in Tijuana alone, criminal militias tried to assassinate a top police official by shooting dozens of rounds at his car; they assaulted a police commander at his own home, killing bodyguards; and they raided the attorney general’s office, murdering one bodyguard and injuring the other using Soviet Russian AK-47 assault rifles.
As drug cartels grow bolder, they are adopting new terrorist tactics such as beheading their victims. In April, a police commander in Acapulco was captured and murdered, his disembodied head left in a public plaza for everyone to see.
On Tuesday, June 20th, three police officers in Rosarito Beach responded to a call — only to be kidnapped. The next morning, authorities found their decapitated bodies in a parking lot; that afternoon, their heads were discovered in a nearby river.
Beheadings have been used for years by the drug gangs in El Salvador, especially by the deadly Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. According to the office of Mexico’s attorney general, the Mara Salvatrucha gang has imported that signature method of assassination into Mexico, where it works closely with local drug cartels.
That says much about the outside forces controlling the Mexican drug underground. Mara Salvatrucha was established by members of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, the umbrella organization of Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups in El Salvador. The FMLN was formed by the Communist Party of El Salvador, and it receives weapons, training, and orders from Soviet Russia through Cuba and Nicaragua, both Communist-occupied nations. The involvement of Mara Salvatrucha in Mexican gangs means the Mexican drug trade is coordinated by the Communist Bloc.
The Mexican cartels also work closely with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the transshipment of cocaine to the United States. The FARC is the armed wing of the Communist Party of Colombia, and it, too, works under tight Soviet Russian and Cuban supervision.
But the Mexican drug mafia even works directly with Soviet Russia. The Mexican attorney general’s office has revealed that in the last few years, swarms of Soviet Russian operatives, including numerous agents of the KGB secret police, have invaded Mexico and seized control of the gangs. This has brought enormous new resources to organized crime locally. A leader of the Juarez cartel, for example, visited Moscow to coordinate activities with the Soviets, who have been providing military aircraft and ships for drug smuggling. Soviet AK-47 assault rifles are showing up among the Mexican gangs such as the Arellano-Felix cartel, now commanded on location by Soviet Russian and Ukrainian agents.
The Soviets, as well as Communists from other parts of Latin America, are injecting the new wave of brutal violence into Mexican gang operations.
This means more than just escalated drug pushing. It also threatens the very existence of Mexican society, and could pave the way for Communist revolution. If America doesn’t act soon, it may face entire Soviet military divisions on its southern border.
Thank you for listening. From all of us at ATTAC Report, good-bye.
(“ATTAC Report This Week” is available at www.ATTACReport.com.)