Expanding their ranks often involves forced recruitment, while taking over new territory requires the “annihilation of rival groups”, said Vargas. But simply murdering other gang members is likely to catch the authorities’ attention: instead, cartels bury corpses in unmarked graves, burn them to ash or even dissolve them in vats of acid.
I remember when multiple school busses of students went missing and it turned out the Mexican military thought they were rivals of the local cartel pretending to be students, so they handed the busses over to said cartel. Who immediately murdered everyone on board, then hid the bodies and the vehicles after they realized they fucked up and killed a bunch of innocent students.
The cartels are capital-E Evil to a degree most people can’t conceptualize, and the authorities are hopelessly corrupt and openly assist them.
A lot of the states where violence is surging are controlled by the opposition right wing parties that have always had connections with the cartels. I live in a state where the government is run by right wing PAN; The party endorsed by Trump’s GOP and it is clear to everyone there is a lot of drug money flowing through government and industries.
And this propaganda is perfect to normalize American intervention to take down the rightfully elected social democrat party in power. Funny how that works.
