Lewsiville, TX Police Heads up

Some New Tags showed up last week in Central Lewisville, TX, North East of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

MS-13 and Southside tags Locos tagged a single Street in North Lewisville.

-Gochoa

Extradition of Minors Cotributes to Gang Activities

The week of 29 June 2009 saw two very interesting developments in Mexico, with the continuation of a third very important economic indicator.First, remittances from the United States to Mexico continue to drop.

In the first six months of 2009, we have seen remittances drop by 19.9%, compared to the first half of 2008. This decline represents some US$1.9 billion dollars.A new vigilante group has emerged.

The “Mata Zetas” is one of the latest of the so-called splinter groups we’ve seen surface. At the end of June, when police discovered three bodies in Cancun, they also discovered a note that read: “We are the new group, Mata Zetas, and we are against kidnapping and extortion and we are going to fight against them in all of the state for a cleaner Mexico."

Just a few days later, police arrested eleven members of a separate splinter group known as “La Contra”. Mexican authorities suspect this group has formed to fill gaps opened by arrested members of the Los Zetas and La Familia.

• Analysis:After petroleum exports, remittances make up the largest source of foreign currency in Mexico. And from January to April, total remittances added up to US$7.3 million. This number continues to drop as a direct function of the economy.

Indirect effects, however, may be seen in Mexico, where individuals who relied on these remittances have little option but to turn to organized crime to pay the bills.Consider three converging realities.

• Last year, 17,772 minors were deported from the United States to Mexico. It is likely that many of them landed in a crime-controlled municipality.
• Between 60 and 65% percent of all Mexican municipalities suffer from organized crime infiltration. This adds up to about 1,500 cities.
• Finally, there are a reported 980 zones of impunity across the country. Also called “criminal enclaves” the political leadership is either directly involved in organized crime, or is somehow compromised. We’re not surprised by the presence of La Contra and Mata Zetas. We expect more such groups to surface before the end of the year.

The Rest @ Samuel Logan and Security in Latin America

MS-13 Watch: Providing Services to Other Criminals

This author, who has a long history of journalism in South and Central America as well as other places recently wrote this status of interational gangs, especialmented de La Mara, MS-13

-Gochoa


Tuesday July 7, 2009
How Gangs Threaten Us All

For those interested in exploring one of the greatest internal and transnational threats to the United States, there is a new book out today by Samuel Logan, This is For the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang.

The book traces the history of Brenda Paz, a young Honduran who joins MS-13 and eventually becomes the most effective police witness against the organization, before she was killed. But besides the individual story, the book shows just how powerful and ruthless the MS-13 has become. Given that it now has chapters in thousands of cities across the United States, and maintains its transnational structure through the clan structure in Central America, the gang (or mara in Spanish) presents a significant challenge.

But it is not just a local law enforcement issue. It is truly a transnational threat that can destroy countries. Yesterday I heard Carlos Castresana Fernandez, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Comision Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala-CICIG) discuss the serious problems of the organized criminal networks operating out of Guatemala.

He noted how the already-disturbing situation in Guatemala had gotten dramatically worse in the past three years and Mexican and Colombian cartel operatives, particularly Los Zetas, moved in and took control of local criminal operations.

The cartels were aided and abetted in their takeover efforts by the local gangs, primarily MS-13. On Guatemala’s northern border with Mexico, Castresana Fernandez said, the organized criminal groups and gangs are the only authority, in the face of the complete absence of the
state. “Maras plus organized crime has proven deadly,” he said.

That is the reality on the ground in much of Central America. The gangs are increasingly moving from local criminal operations, coordinated with their partner gangs in the United States, to move illicit products like stolen cars, methamphetamine and weapons, into the muscle for the drug cartels.

The consequences, as Castresana Fernandez noted, is that already weak and corrupt police forces and militaries are simply overwhelmed or bought, allowing the gangs to grow in power both in their home countries and in this country. The richer they become the bigger threat they become, both here and south of our border.

The book offers an inside look at how the gangs operate at granular level. For those of us who spent time with the gangs (I did for a Washington Post series in 1998), it is a harrowing and accurate description of the amazing and disturbing world that gang members inhabit. It also places the development of the gangs and the recruitment of gang members in its proper context of displacement, social dislocation and family separation that has helped define the Central American immigrant narrative.

I am not one who worries a great deal about the use of Hezbollah or other terrorist groups of gang-controlled pipelines to enter the United States. With embassies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua etc. all willing to issue valid travel documents to them, it is hard to see why they would bother with the riskier and more vulnerable method of moving over the land border clandestinely.

But it is clear that these gangs and cartels are, in their own right, becoming increasingly strong transnational threats, and that they offer other services to Hezbollah and other groups that would be useful-drug trafficking routes, protection of the pipelines they use etc. To understand why the gangs are a threat, this book is a good place to start

-by Doug Farah

The Rest @ Douglas Farah