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…)

Border Barrier Blues:
Mexican footpaths on the Arizona side of the fence

Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a depressing audit of the US-Mexico border fence we’ve been trying to put up for the past three years. The report caused about 8 hours of pretend outrage and was promptly forgotten. It found that we’d already shoveled $2.4 billion to half-seal 600 miles of the border since 2005 (we still have about 100 to 200 miles to go) and we would need to spend an additional $6.5 billion over the next 20 years just plugging up holes punched in the fencing.

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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…)

This article first appeared in Vice Magazine

It is a sweltering afternoon in May on a patch of empty Arizona desert straddling the US-Mexico border. There is not a soul in sight, no one to mind the cloud of dust Glenn Spencer kicks up as he brings his Hummer to an abrupt stop in front of a green shack the size of an industrial refrigerator. Spencer, cranky and impatient over the telephone, is in good spirits as he describes the inner workings of a sophisticated surveillance post that could be easily mistaken for a weather station. (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…)

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.)

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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 — Kidnapping and Mexico, they go together like beans and rice. There has always been a kidnapping industry in Mexico. It’s not for nothing that we have become the kidnapping capital of the world. Yep, that’s a true, fun fact.

The most basic kidnapping operations are the cells dedicated to kidnapping wealthy individuals or their family members and demanding that people pay a nice fat ransom in exchange. When I was a kid, the country went into a lolla-kidnapping-palooza. In every state you heard about kidnapping gangs, usually colluding with the cops. (more…)

Pancho Montana is an eXiled Special Mexican War on Drugs Correspondent. As a native of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, located in northern Mexico, Mr. Montana lives in Gulf Cartel territory. That means the streets belong to the Zetas, a paramilitary organization trained by the Yankees and hired by the Gulf Cartel to keep things civilized and business booming. His first dispatch is about neighborhood drug stores called “tienditas.” They’re sort of like your local Rite Aid, but they don’t carry any Tylenol.

MONTERREY, MEXICO — In my neighborhood there are two tienditas. Mainly they sell crack and powdered cocaine. A tiendita can be set up in any place. It does not have to be a store, but for the sake of keeping up appearances they usually are. I guess they don’t want the continuous flow of clients and taxis double and triple-parked to raise unnecessary suspicion. (more…)

Today’s Topic: In semi-praise of Down by the River.

Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: As we have ruled earlier, there are few good books. Down by the River by Charles Bowden, a meandering and disorganized collection of facts, soundbites and stories about the opaque world of Mexican drug cartels, barely makes that list. It does so not by virtue of its poetic style and profound obliqueness that reads like something out of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, but by offering up a steady stream of fun Mexican drug trade trivia. Books about drug cartels generally don’t need a master stylist to make them interesting–they need a patient stenographer to put the stories and facts in one place. And Down by the River manages to do exactly that. If you’re into the drug violence erupting in Mexico but are hard up for answers, this book is for you.

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Miss Drug Universe 2008: Laura Elena Zúñiga

On Monday night, Mexican police nabbed Laura Elena Zúñiga Huizar, a 23-year-old babe named “Miss Sinaloa 2008.” Ms. Zúñiga, who also holds the title of “Queen of Latin America 2008,” was traveling in an SUV with seven thugs, a couple of machine guns and $50K in cash. According to English-language news reports, Ms. Zúñiga was caught up in some sort of drug-trafficking operation. But with no drugs and just a pitiful amount of cash, the situation begs the question: What freakin’ drug deal? (more…)