Someone in Sinaloa Mexico Looking for Info on Eazy Riders Sur 13 Gang

• IP Address: 201.144.51.36 — Sinaloa, Mexico      (Uninet S.a. De C.v.) did the following search:
• www.google.com — eazy riders sur 13 gang
• on 27 Jan 23:46:27 note; this is GMT 
• Screen Resolution: 320x240

-Federico Gochoa

Someone in Sinaloa Mexico Looking for Info on Eazy Riders Sur 13 Gang

• IP Address: 201.144.51.36 — Sinaloa, Mexico      (Uninet S.a. De C.v.) did the following search:
• www.google.com — eazy riders sur 13 gang
• on 27 Jan 23:46:27 note; this is GMT 
• Screen Resolution: 320x240

-Federico Gochoa

Street Level Gangs and DTOs May be beginning to use Search Tools to Connect.

There is an emerging web site visit pattern that suggests that street level gangs or DTOs  may be using smart phones and school ISPs to do research on finding and connecting with gangs in other cities.

When this site first went up, visitor traffic was mostly law enforcement, academies and universities doing research, media, various levels of law enforcement and school administration. Though there was some interesting regional level cartel research, street level gang activity seemed to be bragging in chatter in some social media.

in the last 6 months or so, there seems to be some new apparently street level patterns:

• Phones, always used for texting, are now being used for research.
• Some researchers using Public School ISPs are searching in a similar way. 
• Yahoo seems to be used about as much as google
• They seem to be looking for signs, tattoos, and colors that would help them identify gangs
• Frequent misspelling patterns show up in gang related chat rooms. Now similar patterns sometimes appear in search engine queries. This did not happen much in the past.
• Part of the pattern, across the US, is bouncing back and forth between pages frequently
• They sometimes seem to reach out from one city to another.

The most recent example follows: (Note - this comes from a public school ISP not a smart phone)

Someone in Chesterfield County Virginia, Public Schools  looked into Dallas Gangs.

• IP 208.0.239.242  
• 1 Feb 16:51:47 

Did some research into the Four Deuce in South Dallas. They researched their gang colors. They expanded the search looking into  Crips, the 357 Dixon Circles. It is possible this was for a school project, or was done by District level anti gang unit, but the search pattern is similar to emerging smart phone usage.


Here is the Query chain:

• www.google.com — four duece south dallas

1 Feb 16:51:47

• first page read: dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html

• Next  page read: dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html

1 Feb 16:52:25

• Next  page read dfwgangs.blogspot.com/search/label/Dallas/dfwgangs.blogspot.com/search/label/Dallas

1 Feb 16:52:28

• Back to: dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html

dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html

1 Feb 16:52:36

• Next  page read dfwgangs.blogspot.com/search/label/Crips

back to:
dfwgangs.blogspot.com/search/label/Dallas
1 Feb 16:53:06

back to: dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html

dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html
1 Feb 16:53:14

Back to dfwgangs.blogspot.com/search/label/Dallas
www.google.com — four duece south dallas
1 Feb 16:53:15

dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2008/12/some-dallas-sets-and-their-colors.html

New Google Search: www.google.com — 357 dixon circle south dallas#1
1 Feb 16:56:11

Resulting in going back to: dfwgangs.blogspot.com/2009/01/dallas-gangs-raw-intellgince.html


Note that the time delays between page views suggests a manual searcher not a bot, and frequent page flips back and forth.

In Summary, there is an emerging pattern that suggests that street level gangs or DTOs  may be using smart phones to do research on finding and connecting with gangs in other cities.

Sinaloa Cartel Moves its Meth Production to Guatemala

It is evident that meth production has moved south. South of Mexico that is, to Guatemala.

 This week, in the pacific coast port of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican authorities made a seizure of 120 metric tons of aprecursor chemical needed to manufacture meth. It was destined to Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala.

• This brings the total to 675 tons of precursor seized inDecember alone, and every bit of it was being transported to Guatemala. 
•  For their part authorities in Guatemala have seized 7900 barrels of precursors in the year of 2011. That amounts to 1600 tons, out confiscating Mexico's 1200 for the same timeframe. 1600 tons is four times the amount seized in 2010.

• The five shipments seized in December originated in China then drop shipped in Mexico but headed for Guatemala for production.
•  The Lazaro Cardenas Port is known to be used by the Sinaloa Cartel.

The Knights Templar cartel is based in Lazaro Cardenas, however Los Zetas and Sinaloa cartels are the most active drug cartels in Central America, and reportedly Sinaloa has moved meth production into Guatemala on an industrial scale.


Typically when the ability of production is compromised there is a logistic shift. According to theUN Drug and Crime 2011 Report:

"When controls over precursors were strengthened in theUnited States, manufacture shifted to Mexico, as Mexico has responded withstrong counter-methamphetamine initiatives, manufacturing activities areincreasingly reported from countries in Central and South America."

• Carlos Menocal the Interior Minister of Guatemala stated tothe associated press that the Sinaloa Cartel has establish operations in Guatemala by forming an alliance with a gang led by Juan Alberto Ortiz Lopez,who goes by the moniker “Chamale”. Who was arrested in March but was considered the most important trafficker inGuatemala by the United States.

"What we have found is that Chamale has links to the Sinaloa cartel," Menocal said, “ Those links include coordinating theprocessing or "cooking" of meth”.

• "An analysis byGuatemala's intelligence indicates the laboratories were managed by Mexicans,"Menocal said. "They come to oversee the drug production process; Mexican chemists came to establish the formulas and local people talk about Mexicans who came and went, doing this work."

Guatemala, a poor, ill resourced country will be incapableto be a challenge to powerful cartels such as Sinaloa and Los Zetas. Zetas are said to control 75% of the countrywith regions literally abandoned by the government. It would appear that the only impedimentsthey would encounter are those from each other.

The Rest @ The BorderLand  Beat

A Mother Who Outed Ramon Arellano Felix

Contrary to popular myth, things do disappear off the web....Here is An Old Letter Originally published in 1997, for the record....

-Gochoa.

***************

Mrs. Maria Castaños sent a letter to Ramon Arellano Felix, the bloodiest of the brothers of the Tijuana Cartel, to ask him why he had murder her two sons. This letter was published in the weekly Zeta Tijuana by Blancornelas, the letter infuriated Ramon and led to the attack on the journalist on November 27, 1997.

******************

"From the first moment I heard of the fatal incident of my beloved sons I wanted to yell at him, ask him: Why such cruelty? Why the rage? What did they do wrong? What did they do to you, for you to kill them like that? How serious was it, that you could not forgive them? What led you to allow this?.

Now that you're on the edge of the scaffold, I said to myself: Do not let him go without knowing what my son used to say about him and what I think about.

My beloved son had loyalty. Do you know that word? He had loyalty Not Fear like everyone else around you, who say they will be with you until their deaths and they only looking for a way to stab you in the back like they way they did it to my sons.

I often used to tell him not to greet you. To look for a way of not being your friend, much less to work with you. And he, very confident replied: "Do not believe everything they say about him. He is good, he is righteous. He doesn't like bullies. He has a candle for all those who have fallen in battle. He is a good friend."

Can you believe the innocence or ignorance of my son?

With that candle story you were able to win the heart of my son. How far he was from knowing who you really are, you are a nest of betrayal, full of cowardice, an evil person afraid of loosing power, you're afraid, and you fear reflects on your atrocities.

He also said you gave him an opportunity to work, and he appreciated that you would helped him, and he was grateful.

You, Ramon, you know very well that my son was a victim of the problems and differences he had with Ismael Higuera Guerrero "El Mayel" and that he, my son, wanted to bring out the truth about the robbery. He want it to do it for the Spaniard to know that he was robbed, and my son was not the thief.

Ramon did you know that your brother Benjamin wanted to help my son with this problem, we ask Francisco Medardo León Hinojosa, "El Abulón" to make an appointment for my son to talk to Benjamin.

My son came to finalize the appointment with Benjamin and talk with El Abulón for three days, waiting and sending messages to El Abulón. But he El Abulón never did anything to finalize the appointment.

While Benjamin here in Tijuana. El Varilla was ordered to ignored my son so it will be no chance to fix things between my son and el Mayel.

Ramon: I have been told you laugh about killing my son, why you laugh about? Why not recognize and acknowledge that my son was a man of courage and your team was jealous and afraid because he stood out among them all?, They are nothing but cowards, they are just looking to sell you out now that you have a wanted poster of millions of dollars for you.

Ramon: If my son went to El Tiburón was for two reasons, I think. One because he believed in you and really wanted to fix things with words, the same way just like when el Mayel had asked him to leave and my son did. Another, because knowing you people he preferred to go and save the life of his other companions including his brother, and what a mistake he did because his brother was the first one who got killed. Ask El Lobo if those were the orders he got from El Varilla to killed my other son?.

Ramon what did you order your gunmen to do?

Ramon did you know Manuel the Spaniard and his team were the ones who benefit from this. They never gave anything to the family. They kept everything. Boats, planes, money, goods, all the equipment and the trafficking route that my son created.

You did them a great favor and you destroy my life. You and el Mayel know, that the Spaniard, made the problem big because one time when he was drunk he told my son he had fifty million dollars to fight against you.

My son paid for the rumor the Spaniard created. Ironies of life. Those who served you in a time of need you have killed them in cold blood without them ever having hurt you, your family, or your organization. You made a big mistake killing my son, because he was loyal to you! And the Spaniard, the one who said those things about you is happily working making more millions.

To the family of my son, without a father, without money, without an uncle and father to an empty life. To me, without my children, I'm dead in life, miserable and crying night and day because I once had some adorable children and my children were human beings.

I ask you in good faith and in memory of my son who was a real friend to you, to please ask the Spaniard to return what does not belong to him.

Chava and Arturo, you know who they are, they are the ones who work for the Spaniard here and in United States. Chava also kept a lot of money that used to belong to my son, you Ramon are the only one who can ask for that money. Me, I can't I'm a woman without support. Or is he supposed to keep the money as payment for the killing of my sons?

My son sent word to me eight days after. That you were cruel. After serving you, you abandon him. Such is the human being. Is the phrase that said ( Love your neighbor as yourself ) to difficult for you to follow. "

"You know that the day of the fatal incident my son work came in, it was a very strong investment, and that is the claim I'm asking the Spaniard to pay for, he doesn't wants to talk to me or to give me my son part of the deal.

Even after taking the money for the stolen goods my son should have had some good money left. They don't want to give us nothing. Thats not right, you got your money back and my sons are dead.

Ramon: I'm talking about the person you asked for help, the one who got you out of the city of Tijuana and out of the country, when you had the Cardinal Posadas Ocampo problem. The police, the radio, the press, the television and the Vatican was all over you.


He didn't think about it twice, leaving his family and children knowing the risk of getting arrested or killed if confronted by the enemy. Your goal was to reach Mexico City trough the United States with stops at three or four cities in that country. You asked him to go with you because you felt safe with him, and because he spoke good English and his name was clean. He carried out the dead to buy airline tickets, check into hotels, ordering food in restaurants and he remain next to you, even when this big problem had nothing to do with him. You owed that person some of your freedom and your life. He used to like you as a friend and he always believed in you.

What my son didn't know is that you follow no rules, and you respect no man of courage. They didn't deserve to die, they deserved to live.

Ramon: My conclusion came to this:

First, what did you wanted to know that did you not know already.

Second, you think your group didn't have enough good reasons to do something like that to my son.

Third: Any problems you might have had with my son was not good reason for such cruelty.

Fourth: The kidnapping failed when El Lobo killed his brother and you couldn't ask for ransom money no more and because of that you acted like a savage with my other son.

Fifth: The most powerful reason I consider unforgivable is what you did with them and the raped of a family member, something my son never would have done because he had moral principles and very strong values to respect other human being.

I will finish this latter on today

Sixth: That only a deranged by jealousy and impotence of equal or better than them, we hated both me and my family, my King the greatest he had too much envy and anger, because his father from him The Fool is the example by always putting working, responsible, intelligent, studious. Having been in the best schools for their own merit and not money, or what their parents earned and especially not vicious either. And I think that does not forget, much less forgive that were better than him in every way, and this order gave Wolf: If the brother jump also puts you give because you Ramon did not have anything against the two.

Seventh: That rod only fueled the fire could have Ramon and you fell into their evil against my beloved children.

Eighth: That Rod and his brother, Spanish is combined to keep everything that came precisely at the time of the fatal accident and people like you serving him too, so he leaned on it.

I'm probably wrong, but you'd be the only thing that would get me out of doubt.

Ramon: I could tell which were the last words of my King?. I pray to God that saved him from the ignominy of which was being, abused physically and verbally. Is not that miracles do not exist?. How King implore me to you and your people and God, because Ramon, so cruel in you and your people, but you people just take orders and nobody has the courage to say that you do not agree with your methods.

Ramon: What cowardice committed with my Kings. We recognize that hurt were better than you and they could go far.

Ramon: I was scared and come to respect and recognition. Why are you that you were gay fellows who hurt them?

Ramon: You should make your memories, saying the reasons that led you to do much villainy. What was your ideal?. What was your reason?. What was the injustice that fought so viciously?. Why?. I'll tell you one thing. Have no value because you have always done your misdeeds covered in represent the state judicial authority and supported by them, you've always lying defenseless people. Do you think that's being brave?.

Ramon: Why not donate your brain for study by scientists and a brain that stores know cruelty when you had everything in life, parents, brothers, wives, children, money, power to kill in cold blood, having uncontrollable instincts .

Do you know Ramon? I remember when Tijuana was being overrun by Cholos and was stabbed to death in the colonies or city centers. You already worked here. They had been friends with court and you said you let them clean up the city of such people, that's how you get started and when you kill people for nothing, the court did not stop or you just named and that was in full revolution and I think there began to grow as a murderer untouchable.

Under the pretext of cleaning the city of Tijuana and the satisfaction of the authority, the difference was that the State Judicial stopped the cholos themselves murderers and you just never stopped, not because you had Arriagada, but for friendship brought with them, because at the beginning you never Amager. What?. If you do not let work the disappeared. Asked permission to kill a member of the organization and gave it if you did, if not, no.

I say to the sociologist Luis Astorga university researcher that there is no "black hole" in the arrival of the Tijuana Arellano here because there are many people alive who can tell you how it worked and who were the lords and masters, but by the amounts and not bringing bloodthirsty, and the arrangements that have always existed in the Federal Judiciary or the Federal Security then. In addition, Secret Service, which is then passed to the Judiciary and State, wonders why Tijuana, Tijuana because it was always the goal. Geographically it was the nearest border and San Luis Rio Colorado was a break, Mexicali and Tijuana, the end.

Now with the navigation can be Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, San Felipe, Ensenada and Tijuana by land.

Look Ramon, if the mother of the Wolf was deployed to the cynicism of demanding human rights when your child is a coward hired murderer and now even giving interviews to the media.

Alexander did not hesitate to say that his family believed in his integrity, when it belonged to the band's most bloody and is the brother of a multiasesino. What cynicism family.

I do not say that my beloved children themselves were victims of envy, injustice, cowardice of you and they do, my children, were men, not wimps. If not, let them ask the same Mayel, to you, Rod, at the same Jaws and The Wolf will qualify for the best as human beings and these, my kings, they were boss of bosses and lord of lords . Right, Spanish? At his young age.

I leave you with your reflection. You took the greatest thing that life had given me and left some children without a father as a father would be as much for them because it was, and I left her sad heart forever.

I tell you later. You have to pay for your mistakes in life. You do not deserve to die yet. That death is not your money or your punishment. May you live many more years and you know the pain of losing children, not parents, those do not hurt either.

Grieving mother.
M. Brown.

P. S. For me you can send me kill the time that you want, which I'm dead. Glad you gave my life in order to tell me the truth of the facts and that the name of my beloved children stay in the memory clean of my grandchildren. "

In 1997, Ramon Arellano ordered the execution of the daughter of Mary Brown, husband and newborn baby who was with her, the reason a letter his mother sent ZETA, where he claimed to have killed and fraud to two of his sons.

La Familia Michoacana Active in Austin, TX

The two men were returning to the small, one-story house in Northeast Austin from Alabama. Hidden in the back of their SUV was $110,000 in carefully wrapped bundles, money authorities said came from cocaine sales.

But responding to an informant's tip, federal drug agents found the men in the parking lot of a bar in Baton Rouge, La., where they searched the truck. As the officers pulled out the cash, the men grew terrified.

"I wish you would put me in jail," one of them said, according to a criminal complaint. "They are going to kill me over this missing money."

According to court documents, the money was destined for an Austin resident the couriers had reason to fear: Jose Procoro Lorenzo-Rodriguez, who authorities say is a local leader for Mexico's brutal La Familia cartel.

The raids that followed revealed that La Familia, a quasi-religious, hyper-violent group born five years ago in the mountains of Michoacán, used Austin as a base of operation to funnel large quantities of cocaine, marijuana and especially methamphetamine to places such as Atlanta and Kansas.

But in addition to providing a glimpse of the cartel's operations in Austin — at least four autonomous cells stretching from Round Rock to South Austin — the investigation revealed a crucial clue:

The men at the top of the Austin organization hailed from the same small Mexican town.

For more than three decades, the remote, desperately poor city of Luvianos, along with other neighboring towns in the mountains of central Mexico, has sent the majority of its northbound migrants to Austin, where they have worked as landscapers, opened restaurants and built a thriving community. One corner of Northeast Austin has been dubbed "Little Luvianos" by residents.

But Luvianos is also a prize coveted by Mexican cartels. Traffickers from the northern border — first the Gulf Cartel and later the Zetas — controlled the town until 2009, when La Familia won the region in a violent war.

Officials emphasize that the vast majority of Luvianos immigrants are law-abiding residents without cartel ties. But increasingly, authorities add, the cartel members who prey on Mexicans in Luvianos have begun to find their way to Central Texas.

"It's not surprising that (cartel members) are migrating to Austin as well," said Francisco Cruz Jimenez, a Mexican journalist who chronicled the recent history of Luvianos in his 2010 book "Narco-Land." "It's very natural that they look for communities where they have paisanos because they can go unnoticed."

Yet it's a development that local officials have been slow to acknowledge. Only last year Travis County joined the long-standing High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, which coordinates and funds joint law enforcement efforts against organized crime groups. Other large Texas cities have been members for years.

As law enforcement agencies work to catch up, the Luvianos connection could hold important answers for officials trying to understand how and why La Familia set up shop in Austin. A thousand miles away, the sometimes bloody, often tragic history of Luvianos has become intertwined with Austin's future.

'A problem in Austin'

In 2008, more than 125 cities — including Des Moines, Iowa, and Dayton, Ohio — reported the presence of specific Mexican trafficking organizations in an annual Justice Department report. Austin was not one of the cities. That year, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas all reported that cartels dominated local drug distribution networks.

Since then, Austin officials have learned that as many as four cartels operate inside the city. Law enforcement agencies have arrested human smugglers connected to the Zetas, targeted local prison gang members connected with the Gulf cartel and conducted numerous raids on La Familia members. The Drug Enforcement Administration says members of the Beltrán-Leyva cartel also operate within Austin.

Local drug agents now say that though Austin has long been home to cartels and cartel-affiliated traffickers, better intelligence sharing among agencies and increased cartel activity have brought the problem to the surface.

"We've been a little slow to recognize" the cartels' local growth, said Michael Lauderdale, the head of the city's Public Safety Commission. "We're starting to feel the consequences of that benign neglect."




The July raids, part of a larger nationwide sweep that resulted in more than 1,000 arrests, confirmed the trend.

"If they busted four cells, you have a problem in Austin," said Phil Jordan, a retired federal agent and former director of the Department of Justice's El Paso Intelligence Center, which tracks drug trafficking networks along the border.

The cartel presence in Austin has sparked concerns about the possibility of increased organized crime violence, already experienced in small doses by cities such as Dallas.

Drug war experts predict that bloody outbreaks of violence in Austin are unlikely because it's bad for cartel business.

Jordan said any future cartel violence in Austin is likely to be isolated and targeted against rivals. "It won't be a shootout at the OK Corral," he said. "They try to do it in the quietest way possible. They don't want to create a hysteria."

Yet Austin already has a history of Luvianos-related drug violence. In 1992, a Luvianos man was fatally shot and dumped in the Colorado River. Prosecutors charged three men from Luvianos in the killing.

"These men came charging into (the dead man's home) with guns blazing," Travis County Detective Mark Sawa said at the time. "We believe they were looking for some marijuana that was just smuggled in."

A 2009 Austin murder also bears the marks of a cartel killing. Officials say the suspect is from the Luvianos area.

'Narco town'

Stroll through the small, bustling main plaza in Luvianos and you're likely to hear residents sprinkle their conversations with references to nightclubs on Riverside Drive and taquerias on Cameron Road. Immigration to Austin began in the 1970s, according to local residents, driven by deep poverty and a lack of opportunity in the rural, mountainous region. Since those first migrants landed in Austin to work in construction and open restaurants, money sent home from Austin has helped keep the Luvianos economy afloat, paying for quinceañeras, weddings and retirements.

The municipality of 25,000 is part of a region called the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Lands, which straddles the borders of Michoacán, Guerrero and the state of Mexico. The location inside an inhospitable and hard-to-access region of central Mexico has made it attractive to Mexican crime groups. The region has a light police presence: As recently as 2010, only 40 officers patrolled the hundreds of tiny pueblos in the municipality belonging to Luvianos, according to author Cruz.

And crucial to the cartels, the region around Luvianos is crisscrossed with unmapped backroads that lead to the largest port on Mexico's Pacific coast, providing access to ships offloading Chinese precursor chemicals used in the production of methamphetamine.

According to Cruz, the region today produces Mexico's highest quality marijuana and is home to the nation's most productive methamphetamine laboratories. "It was very natural that Luvianos turned into a narco town," Cruz said.

Cruz said the region was initially controlled by cartels from northern Mexico, whose leaders built luxurious homes in the hardscrabble town and paid for road paving to allow better access for their expensive vehicles and the heavy trucks ferrying drug loads.

Soon after La Familia formed in neighboring Michoacán in 2006, its leaders set their sights on Luvianos, which they considered their natural zone of influence, according to Cruz. What followed was a brutal war between La Familia and the Zetas, which reached its height in the summer of 2009, with daily gunbattles and dozens of killings, according to local reports. La Familia emerged triumphant and has since dominated the region, according to Mexican law enforcement.

The cartels have terrorized residents, enforcing nighttime curfews and beating civilians found outside their homes when convoys transport drugs or precursor chemicals.

"They controlled Luvianos," Cruz said. "You have an army of poor people who have either been immigrating or scratching out an existence in the fields. Then came the cartels, who arrived with money, and they hooked the local population, using them as transporters, a workforce for the labs and assassins."

Local Luvianos gangsters have also begun to rise through the ranks. According to the Mexican attorney general's office, La Familia's leader in Luvianos is a man named Pablo Jaimes, who gained notoriety after gunning down three police officers in the nearby city of Tejupilco in 2008 . Mexican authorities are hunting for the man.

At the beginning of September, seven La Familia gunman were killed in a firefight with police in Luvianos. Last week, Mexican police arrested one of the original founders of La Familia just outside the town, which police described as a haven for cartel leaders as they fight a splinter group, the Knights Templar .

A stronghold for La Familia

After making the trip north, most immigrants from Luvianos and its surrounding towns have landed in a small area of Northeast Austin near Reagan High School, filling a string of moderately priced apartment complexes.

Several restaurants and businesses have been started by Luvianos natives, and three days a week residents can board a bus at a record store on Cameron Road for a direct trip to Tejupilco, a regional capital next to Luvianos. In the middle of the neighborhood, residents walk past an idyllic mural of Luvianos, complete with the quaint gazebo that dominates its central square and the emerald Nanchititlan mountains that ring the city.

For longtime Austin residents from Luvianos, the appearance of La Familia in the city is a painful reminder. "Many people come to live here because they have fear" of La Familia, said one Luvianos-born business owner who has been here since 1985. The man did not want his name used because he feared retaliation against his family in Mexico. "Here, people aren't so scared because there have not been threats. And if the government hears about (cartel members) they grab them up."

Greg Thrash, who was named the resident agent in charge of the Austin DEA office three years ago, said decades of immigration from Luvianos to Austin have made it easier for La Familia to set up shop locally. "Austin is a stronghold for La Familia; we know that," said Thrash, who led the effort to bring Austin into the federal drug trafficking program. "I believe it's generational and familial. They will deal with those they feel comfortable with. That's why you see the presence in certain parts (of the United States), because of family."

Such ties were evident during the July Austin bust, which netted about three dozen suspects who face a range of charges in federal court, including conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Among them were three men in Alabama who also were from the Luvianos region and received drug shipments from Austin, according to drug task force agents there. In 2009, local agents arrested four people with ties to the cartel as part of another nationwide bust.

According to the DEA, La Familia has operated at least four cells in Austin, each independent and unaware of what orders the others were receiving from cartel bosses in Luvianos. "It was very compartmentalized," Thrash said. The operation was also lucrative, according to Thrash, who said millions of dollars were moved through Austin stash houses. According to a sprawling, 44-suspect indictment, members of the group made several wire transfers to Luvianos.

A DEA chart outlining the structure of the organization identified four men arrested in the recent roundups as cell leaders: Lorenzo-Rodriguez, Jose Luis Jaimes Jr., Alexandro Benitez-Osorio and Jesus Sanchez-Loza. All four have pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to launder money and to distribute controlled substances. They are being held without bail at area jails.

Lawyers for the four either refused to talk on the record or did not respond to requests for comment. One lawyer said the charges against the group were overblown.

The group smuggled drugs in both traditional and innovative ways, Thrash said. In addition to using private vehicles to cross the border in Laredo, he said, the group used FedEx to ship methamphetamine to Austin — on at least one occasion inside a children's book.

Agents seized 30 kilograms of liquid methamphetamine in mini Heineken kegs, a troubling trend for drug agents because liquid drugs can be more difficult to detect than powders or pills.

The ringleaders of the four Austin cells drove inconspicuous vehicles and apparently spent little money locally. "All the money goes back to Mexico," Thrash said. Several members of the group were family men, living with their young children and wives. And Jaimes included his wife in drug trafficking trips, according to pretrial testimony.

In Colony Park, neighbors said they often saw numerous cars parked in front of the house on Bryonwood Drive, where one of those named as a cell leader, Lorenzo-Rodriguez, lived.

"They didn't talk to nobody," said a 55-year-old neighbor who lives a block from the 1,100-square-foot house, which has an appraised value of about $69,000 and is owned by a California man, according to county records. The man, after learning his neighbor was suspected of being a cartel member, said he didn't want his name used for fear of retaliation. "It surprised me when they got raided."

According to court documents, the threat of violence hung over the organization.

After the May Baton Rouge bust in which agents found the $110,000 destined for Austin, police let the men continue to Austin with a receipt for the forfeited money.

One of the men, Mark Rew, went to Lorenzo-Rodriguez's home and presented him with the paperwork. According to court documents, Rew was held captive throughout the day, both at the Colony Park home and at the nearby apartment of one of Lorenzo-Rodriguez's associates.

As dusk began to fall, Rew was brought back to the Colony Park home, where agents believed Lorenzo-Rodriguez was threatening him with a gun, according to court documents. Agents burst into the house, where they arrested the men and found cocaine, $8,000 in cash and a 9 mm pistol. Rew told agents he thought he was about to be killed over the seized money.

Street gangs a danger

Local officials and experts say large-scale cartel violence in Austin is unlikely. "It's a concern, but you have to go back to what they are using folks here for," Thrash said. "It's to move cocaine, methamphetamine to end cities." Cartels operating in the U.S. generally have avoided the kind of spectacular violence that marks their operations in Mexico. "They don't want to stir up U.S. law enforcement if they don't have to," said Ricardo Ainslie, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas who has studied drug violence along the border.

Sylvia Longmire, an independent drug war consultant for law enforcement agencies and author of "Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars," said there is an important reason for the disparities in violence in the U.S. and Mexico: Much of the violence in Mexico is driven by the brutal competition for a limited number of highly coveted border entry points. Cartels, she added, will fight ceaselessly for border cities such as Juárez and Nuevo Laredo because once they control them, they can guarantee the flow of merchandise .

"Once they are here, the hard part's over and it's a complete shift in strategy and in the operators," Longmire said. "Cartels are not in the business of fighting over a corner. They let the street gangs do that."

That's what worries Lauderdale, of the city's Public Safety Commission. "What I think is the major threat in Austin is that they would use street gangs in the same way they do with the Barrio Azteca gang in El Paso and Juárez," he said, referring to a violent street gang responsible for many of the killings in Juárez in recent years.

Indeed, Austin police say they've observed a 14 percent jump in youth gang activity in the past year. "I think we're just on the starting edge of this kind of stuff," Lauderdale said.

Cartel violence is not unknown in Texas, especially in Dallas, where a series of shootouts have rattled local officials. In May, a Michoacán man was found guilty of the machine gun slaying of a Familia member, who was killed while he rode in a black Hummer in a Dallas neighborhood.

Austin also might have been the scene of a cartel-related execution two years ago. Police say that in December 2009, a man from a small town near Luvianos walked up to a taco trailer in South Austin and shot a 43-year-old worker, who was preparing food alongside his wife, after ordering some food.

A fingerprint the man left on a bottle of orange soda led police to Jose Rodriguez, who was later arrested in Illinois. Rodriguez, who is awaiting trial in Travis County on murder charges, used several aliases, according to police, including Pablo Jaimes, the name of La Familia's Luvianos leader and the hitman wanted for killing three police officers in 2008. Though Rodriguez was merely borrowing the name, investigators are looking into whether one of the arrested cell leaders in Austin is related to Jaimes.

It is unclear what effect the recent arrests have had on La Familia's organization in Austin.

"If you keep whacking at the organizations, you will weaken, dilute them," Thrash said.

But driving cartels out of Austin entirely is another question. The arrests "have had little or no impact on those organizations and their ability to bring drugs across the border," Longmire said. "These guys are so replaceable."

By Jeremy Schwartz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


The Rest @ The Borderland Beat

Mexican Marines Engage Zetas in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, in day long Battle

A five hour long shootout between members of Los Zetas and Mexican Marines on Friday in the community of San José de Lourdes, Zacatecas left a toll of 15 gunmen dead and 17 arrested. San Jose de Lourdes, a community of 5,000 inhabitants, is located in the municipality of Fresnillo, where Los Zetas have created one of several strongholds in Mexico’s central altiplano, or high plains.

The Naval ministry (Semar) reported that the shooting began when a unit of Marines conducting operations in San José de Lourdes was attacked by a large group of gunmen from a safe house.

The shooting wounded six Marines, who were all reported out of danger.

The fighting began at 6:00am and as of 7:00pm Marines were still conducting house to house searches in search of more suspects in San Jose. Residents of the community reported a large amount of explosions from grenades and heavy weapons during the fighting.

Between 8:00am and 11:00am gunmen hijacked buses, large trucks and passenger vehicles and used them for “narcobloqueos”, or blockades, on the main roadways in and out of Fresnillo to obstruct vehicular traffic and limit the movement of authorities.

Shooting was reported in the afternoon in the important religious center and pilgrimage site of Platero, also in the municipality of Fresnillo, where the church of the Santo Niño de Atocha is located.

Units of Federal Police and Army troops reinforced the Marines, manning checkpoints and searching the central bus station and hotels throughout the municipality.

According to the statement from the Naval Ministry a large number of arms and ammunition and several vehicles were also confiscated during the operation.

Initially the fighting in San Jose de Lourdes was reported as a street to street battle that began when a Marine patrol intercepted a large convoy carrying over 250 Zetas, but this version of events was later denied by Zacatecas’ State Attorney General, Arturo Nahle Garcia.

In his statement Nahle Garcia explained that the number of 250 pertained to the number of armed Zetas believed to reside in the municipality of Fresnillo.

The Attorney General revealed that Los Zetas have a headquarters in Fresnillo and use the city as a center of operations. He stated that the criminal group is also present in other parts of the state.

“Without a doubt, Fresnillo is important to them (Los Zetas), they set up camp here 5 or 6 years ago and it is only recently that we have begun to fight them with the help of federal forces. It seems that previously their presence was tolerated.”

One of the Zetas killed in the battle with state police in La Lobera, Jalisco this past June 14, where the 6 young female Zetas recruits were captured, was a mid level Zeta commander based in Fresnillo.

“Comandante Ardilla”, Heriberto Centeno Madrid, led a cell of approximately 50 sicarios  (assassins)that operated out of Fresnillo and was considered one of the most dangerous men in Zacatecas at the time of his death.

It is not known if intelligence gathered at La Lobera and from the interrogation of the Zetas captured there led to the location of the safehouses attacked by the Marines in San Jose de Lourdes.

The Rest @ Borderland Beat