This afternoon the bullets were once again flying over my city, as Mexican Army soldiers captured the JEFE DE PLAZA of the Zetas in Monterrey Héctor Luna “El Tori” (short for Hector), along with other collaborators in an operation in the city’s northeastern sector. (more…)

Here’s some (graphic) proof that the Zetas are using Maras (a gang better known in America as MS-13) as shock troops in their fight for the plazas of Tamaulipas—not because they are good, but because they are cheap and there’s lots of them in Tabasco and Chiapas, states that still have a strong Zetas presence that hasn’t really been contested like in the north. (more…)

Hey there drug war fans, I got some statistics to throw your way. While you gringos pay attention to the unemployment rate and foreclosure statistics, we here in Mexico track the national kill count—how many people died, who suffered the losses and where the action went down. The latest numbers were just released: they are compiled by the federal government, so they are not 100% accurate. For starters, the body count should be higher. But hey, with over 20,000 dead, the situation looks bad enough to me, whether they fudged the numbers or not. (more…)

How about this eXtra Hot Spring Break update: In Acapulco, the shit just got burning hot  again last week, with more than 30 people killed in less than 12 hours. I’ll do a proper update a little later. In the meantime, you can read a lame BBC write-up of this gorefest and then feast your gringo eyes on a bloody photo essay (capturing recent drug war news from all over Mexico). (more…)

I told you I’d be updating the situation if it got hot, so here I am, because some heavy shit went down yesterday, when the army ran into the Zetas north of Monterrey. I don’t think that any of your newspapers have covered this yet, so here’s the quick skinny:

• The main shoot out took place at 11:30 a.m. in Anahuac, north of Monterrey and about 50 miles from the Texas border. Six SUVs with tinted windows ran into an army convoy and started blasting away, killing two soldiers. The soldiers responded by killing eight of the sicarios (it could be six because on the news, they’re reporting that two of the bodies were rescued by their homeboys). According to eyewitness accounts, the Zetas were heavily armed and were responsible for starting the hostilities, leaning out of their cars and spraying soldiers with AK-47s and R-15s. Two soldiers were badly wounded and were flown to Mexico City to receive medical attention, but one of them died en route. (more…)

So there are these narco-banners being hung up all around the metropolitan areas of San Pedro, Monterrey, Escobedo and San Nicolas. If you don’t read Spanish, here’s a rough translation:

Mr. Felipe Calderon [that's our president]:

With all the respect you deserve, stop helping us. Poison is fought with poison itself.

Attention: The alliance of Mexican cartels united against the “Z” [Zetas] will continue after you RETIRE THE ARMY [pull troops off the street].

(more…)

“Raise your hand if you like weed,” the gang leader asked the raver crowd. But nobody raised a hand or so much as moved. They were too scared. So he repeated his question, this time while firing a quick burst from his R-15 into the air. ”I said who likes fucking weed?!!” Naturally, a lot of hands went up.

MONTERREY, MEXICO— La Letra (what we call the Zetas these days because we’re too terrified to call them by name) is at it again. It’s getting worse than ever, thanks the lower ranks of the cartel business–made up of young, impressionable school dropouts and assorted jobless little motherfuckers. Now, these scumbags are letting their presence be known like never before. In Monterrey, the Zetas have started using them to police the drug use of the general population to make sure that people are consuming the right drugs and buying them from the “right sources.” As in: them. (more…)

OK, so after taking some time off, courtesy of me moving back to the fucking stone age to a house with no internet or cable, I’m going to try and write on a little more regular basis. This time, I’m not going to tell you about narco-trafficking activities in some far-away Mexican city, but something a little more personal and close-to-home for some of my American readers.

So I give you: the immigration rant. (more…)

On December 16th in the town of Cuernavaca, Mexican armed forced cornered and killed Don Arturo Beltran Leyva, the country’s most powerful drug boss and one of the top three capos of the trade. Some people still don’t believe he is dead, some do, but all agree that it’s going to unleash a shitstorm. He’s a mythical figure among his people, but Americans have no idea who he is. So allow me the honor to introduce you to the man and the legend of Don Arturo Beltran Leyva.

In Mexico, if you call someone “Don,” it means you respect him to the extreme, and even fear him. You’d be more than justified in using the title when referring to the “jefe de jefes” of the Mexican drug trade. Don Arturo Beltra Levya was without exaggeration the most powerful boss in the country. He had more power than Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the drug cartel boss who was listed as Fobes’ #701 richest man of 2009. In Mexico, you won’t hear anyone referring to him as “Don Joaquin.” (more…)

Quick dispatch with some groundbreaking news: Mexican marines shot it out with Arturo Beltran Leyva and his bodyguards in some luxury mall/department store in Cuernavaca, about 50 miles south of Mexico city. Unreal. The shootout—caught on tape—happened in the middle of the night on the streets of the city. This episode has the possibility of bringing a lot of violence, with the reacomodos (what we call when the bloody realignment of power happens) and all fights for control of the plazas. (more…)

MONTERREY, MEXICO — Another day, another shootout. Forget about the tropical storm that hit the Pacific just now, it’s raining bullets in this biatch.

It seems that every day there is another firefight in this or that part of the city, and frankly I’m getting sick of it. Every day, a copy of a copy of a copy. It’s tiring, exhausting—that’s what the drug war is beginning to feel like. A drag, kinda like the Iraq war for you gringos. (more…)

To compliment today’s article by Matt Harvey exposing the media bullshit behind New York’s supposed heroin epidemic, here are a couple of drug-related stories we published in the past year or so that you might have missed.

1. Pancho Montana’s maiden dispatch from deep inside Mexico’s drug war about neighborhood drug stores called “tienditas.” They’re sort of like your local Rite Aid, but they don’t carry any Tylenol. (more…)

Hello there! Hola to the few who still check out this column to learn about crazy antics of America’s favorite suppliers. Yeah, I know I haven’t been updating you for a while on account that I’m getting lazy (weed ain’t exactly speed, neither is Rohypnol). And I don’t have much of an excuse since I’m unemployed and have a lot of free time on my hands, time which I spend doing everything but writing…

To be completely honest, I kinda lost interest in the whole Drug War. It became like watching a re-run of a sitcom you kinda like. Watch it long enough and you’ll start hating it little by little, because it always more of the same plot and punch lines: A big gunfight in Guerrero, another decapitation in Chihuahua, the biggest drug lab ever busted in Michoacan (and then a few days later an even bigger one is busted) or the detention of a “big” capo in Tijuana. Same ol’, same ol’. (more…)

Ok, so it’s been a while since the last update to this column. It is not that I’ve been THAT busy, I’ve just been a victim of my own laziness (I suspect it’s related to my pill and smoke habit certainly, not that I’m complaining). And since I no longer have a job, I’ve been having to go back to find old ways of making money in order to pay for my fucking Nextel bill and my other assorted expenses.

And to be honest there wasn’t really much to write about. The drug war, at least here in Monterrey, has been losing wind for a while. All the high profile detentions deflated it like a balloon of heroin that popped in some poor mule’s stomach. (more…)

I’d pork these fine swine flu mamacitas, the pandemic be damned

MONTERREY, MEXICO — I’ve been meaning to do a dispatch on the Swine Flu ever since the “epidemic” broke out, but I have been too busy working and scoring some good shit to smoke in my free time. The drought is on this time of year, and almost all the goddamn weed in the city is dry, dusty and tastes like shit. There is nothing worse for a true pothead than to have to smoke shitty weed.

As far as the Swine Flu goes, people will look back and remember the pandemic as a random memory, a wacky story for the grandchildren. Maybe you’ll see street vendors selling “I went to Mexico and all I got was influenza” t-shirts to drunken college students in Cancun. Pretty funny, but it ain’t true. I don’t know a single person who got the flu. In fact, I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone that got the flu. That’s pandemic for you. (more…)