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…)

While news out of Mexico is being totally dominated by the Swine Flu scare—anything is better than the constant Drug War news, right?—I’m gonna go about a month back in time to tell you about the some of the high profile arrests that have been taking place.

Today I’ll tell you about the capture of Hector Huerta Rios, a.k.a. “La Burra” or “El Junior.” He is (now was) one of the 37 most wanted narcos in Mexico. (more…)

Here’s an entertaining/instructional cellphone video that shows one of the Zetas’ more preferred torture methods in action. It is called the tablazo. I wrote about it a few months back:

It comes from the word “tabla,” or “board.” The kidnappers usually have this specially crafted wooden board, a two-by-four with a handle for grip and holes drilled into the main body for less wind resistance. They drop your trousers, bend you over and hit you continuously with the wooden board till your ass turns to purple mush and you are left looking like some diseased red-assed baboon. (The cops here like to use the tablazo, too.)

(more…)

MONTERREY, MEXICO — I woke up the other day and started the morning off just like I do every normal day: by sitting on a bench in my front yard, reading the newspaper and toking. There’s a saying in Mexico that goes: “Un churro al dia es la llave de la alegria,” which roughly translates to: “one joint per day is the key to happiness.” It’s supposed to rhyme and all that, but the poetry got lost in the translation.

Well, I was doing that when, suddenly, one of my friends calls me on my NexTel and says: “Hey, you heard who they caught?” and before I could guess that it was the son of “El Mayo” Zambada in Mexico City, he blurts out: “They grabbed El Canicon cabron!” (more…)

It’s getting hot here in Monterrey, and if you’ve been reading my column lately, you know I’m not talking about the weather.

Remember about the surge of military presence in the state I wrote about? Well I got to witness it first-hand and it’s not pretty. It’s one thing to see Army convoys driving around town, but it’s a whole other, much scarier, thing to see them on foot patrol right in your neighborhood, making rounds past your house, questioning your neighbors. (more…)

I saw that the US government posted an “extreme warning” travel advisory about Mexico last week and wanted to weigh in on the bullshit.

If you’re traveling to Culiacan or Acapulco, or any major Mexican city for that matter, you have to expect to see some fireworks. It’s like watching a volcano eruption in one of those yuppie-eco-tourism-shit-vacation-type trips some of you drug-taking progressives in America like to take. So when you see it you can’t help but stare in awe. (more…)

This is a video of shootout that happened a few days ago (the same day the international bridge into America was blocked in Reynosa), that Yasha Levine sent along, asking me to decipher what the hell is going on. Well, let me tell you that this is some great stuff. I hadn’t seen this particular video myself until he sent it along, but I definitely did hear about the gun battle it captured so beautifully. How could I not? Up to 10 people were killed in shootout that lasted something like three hours. (more…)

MONTERREY, MEXICO — I was in the middle of writing about a badass Colombian drug trafficker who’s taking over huge swaths of Mexico when convoy of green Army trucks fully packed with G3-carrying soldiers rolled through my hometown of Monterrey — and stopped. If there’s one firearm that can intimidate a narco, it’s gotta be a powerful long-round rifle like the G3. There was not doubt about it, the soldiers were hunting druggers. (more…)