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on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

If Monterrey falls, Mexico falls

By Robin Emmott Reuters

Mario Ramos thought it was a bad joke when he received an anonymous email at the start of this year demanding $15,000 a month to keep his industrial tubing business operating in Monterrey, Mexico's richest city and a symbol of progress in Latin America.

 
Sitting in his air-conditioned office looking across at sparkling office blocks dotting the mountains on that morning in January, he casually deleted the email as spam.
 
Six days later, the phone rang and a thickset voice demanded the money. Ramos panicked, hung up and drove to his in-laws' house. It was already late and he had little idea what to do. Then, just after midnight, masked gunmen burst onto his premises, set fire to one of his trucks, shot up his office windows and sprayed a nearby wall with the letter "Z" in black paint, the calling card of Mexico's feared Zetas drug cartel.

"They were asking for money I could never afford," said Ramos by telephone from San Antonio, Texas, where he fled with his family the next day. "I should have taken the threat more seriously, but it was such a shock. I couldn't quite believe this could happen in Monterrey."

In just four years, Monterrey, a manufacturing city of 4 million people 140 miles from the Texan border, has gone from being a model for developing economies to a symbol of Mexico's drug war chaos, sucked down into a dark spiral of gangland killings, violent crime and growing lawlessness.

Since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led war on the cartels in late 2006, grenade attacks, beheadings, firefights and drive-by killings have surged.

That has shattered this city's international image as a boomtown where captains of industry built steel, cement and beer giants in the desert in less than a century -- Mexico's version of Dallas or Houston.

By engulfing Monterrey, home to some of Latin America's biggest companies and where annual income per capita is double the Mexican average at $17,000, the violence shows just how serious the security crisis has become in Mexico, the world's seventh-largest oil exporter and a major U.S. trade partner.

Almost 40,000 people have died across the country since late 2006, and in Monterrey, the violence has escalated to a level that questions the government's ability to maintain order and ensure the viability of a region that is at the heart of Mexico's ambitions to become a leading world economy.

CAUTIONARY TALE
Already drug killings have spread to Mexico's second city Guadalajara and while Mexico City has so far escaped serious drug violence, the capital does have a large illegal narcotics market. If the cartels were to declare war on its streets, Monterrey's experience shows that Mexico's long-neglected police and judiciary are not equipped to handle it.

"If we can't deal with the problem in Monterrey, with all the resources and the people we have here, then that is a serious concern for the rest of Mexico," said Javier Astaburuaga, chief financial officer at top Latin American drinks maker FEMSA, which helped to spark the city's industrialization in the early 1900s.

Lorenzo Zambrano, the chief executive of one of the world's largest cement companies Cemex, is equally concerned. "The trend is worrying," said Zambrano, whose grandfather helped found the Monterrey-based company that has become of a symbol of Mexico's global ambitions.

"But we won't let Monterrey fall."
That is what residents want to hear. Calderon has made two high-profile visits since September, swooping in by helicopter to offer his support and sending in more federal police to the city.

But the day-to-day reality is a violence that is out of control. Just over 600 people have died in drug war killings in and around Monterrey so far this year, a sharp escalation from the 620 drug war murders in all of 2010.

The dead include local mayors and an undetermined number of innocent civilians, including a housewife caught in cross-fire while driving through the city, a just-married systems engineer shot dead by soldiers on his way to work and a young design student shot by a gunman in the middle of the afternoon on one of Monterrey's busiest shopping streets.

Almost every resident now has a story of someone they know who spent a horrifying evening face-down on a bedroom floor while gunmen fought battles in the streets outside.

More than a thousand people have disappeared across Nuevo Leon state, of which Monterrey is the capital, since 2007, according to the U.N.-backed human rights group CADHAC, which says they were forcibly recruited by the Gulf and Zetas gangs.

Human Rights Watch has documented more than a dozen forced disappearances over the same period that it says were carried out by soldiers, marines and police working for the cartels.

On the surface, Monterrey, which generates 8 percent of gross domestic product with 4 percent of Mexico's population, is still a city featured in shiny business magazines.

Executives can still touch down at its marble and glass airport terminals and take its sleek highways to posh hotels and business conferences, admiring the impressive vista of Saddle Mountain that dominates the skyline to the south of the city. On Sundays, barbecue smoke and brassy Norteno music emanate from houses across the city.

Known for its private universities, large middle class, modern subway network and 1,800 foreign-run factories, Monterrey was even chosen to host a United Nations conference on development in 2002, attended by some 50 world leaders.

Like the Catalans of Spain, Monterrey residents liked to think of themselves as apart from the rest of their country -- efficient, reliable and led by decent political leaders.
TEQUILA FOR THE NERVES
But turn on the television news, flick through the local newspapers or chance to hear the intermittent sound of gunfire in the city's streets and it quickly becomes clear that there's a battle being waged for Monterrey between the powerful Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas. And they know no bounds.

On New Year's Eve, gunmen hanged a woman from a road bridge. They've dumped severed heads outside kindergartens and killed traffic police as they helped children cross the road. In a matter of minutes, they can shut down large parts of the city by hijacking vehicles at gunpoint to block highways with trucks and buses to allow hitmen to escape the army. Police, once considered Mexico's best, have been infiltrated by both gangs.
On two consecutive days in April, a record 30 people were killed in shootouts, mainly hitmen and police, but also a student who was run down by a fatally wounded police officer trying to escape gunmen.

Jaime Rodriguez, the mayor of Garcia municipality in the Monterrey area, survived two attempts on his life in March, saved only by his armored vehicle. "I couldn't stop shaking," said Rodriguez, speaking days after the second attack and with soldiers now as his bodyguards. "After they tried to kill me the first time, I got home and downed half a bottle of tequila. After the second, I finished it."

Some of the city's jobless have joined the chaos after seeing the impunity that drug gangs enjoy. They are trying their luck at all types of crime, robbing drivers at gunpoint at traffic lights, bursting into restaurants to steal clients' cash and holding up car dealerships, banks and even the offices of a local zoo for as little as $500 a time.

Gunmen stole a record 4,607 vehicles in Nuevo Leon in the first four months of this year, almost double the number stolen in all of 2004 and more than in Mexico City, which has five times the population, the Mexican Insurers Association says.

Kidnapping, almost unheard of before 2007, is now more of a concern to business people in Monterrey than it is in Mexico City, where kidnap-for-ransom has long been a scourge, according to a recent study by consultancy KPMG.

Both the Gulf gang and the Zetas, led by a former elite Mexican soldier who calls himself "The Executioner," want not just the smuggling routes to the United States, but control of Monterrey as a place to live, launder money and prey on private companies for extortion, U.S. and Mexican experts say.

"Monterrey is a strategic point in Mexico for trafficking. It's a kind a crossroads on the northeastern corridor and it is very lucrative territory," said a U.S. official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Mexico City.

The cartels are ferociously well-armed, mainly with weapons from the United States. But, more alarmingly, since late 2009 just prior to the Zetas' breakaway from the Gulf gang, Zeta henchmen have been bringing in weapons -- fully automatic M-16s and military explosives -- from Central America, the ATF says.

"These were legitimate military sales to foreign governments during the 1980s and 90s, and those guns are walking out the back door and finding their way to northern Mexico," the official said. "Not only the guns, but military grade explosives: Claymore mines, C-4 (plastic explosives) as well as grenades."

UNEASE IN THE BOARDROOM
To the alarm of many investors, the violence is undermining economic growth in the region, as some businesses put investment on hold, companies' security costs rise, restaurants shutter, tourists cancel visits, and students are scared off.

Business leaders worry Monterrey is losing investment to Texas, to other parts of Mexico and to the rest of Latin America, while failing to capitalize on the advantages that rising Chinese labor costs bring to a region that already produces about 11 percent of all Mexico's manufactured goods.

"Business people come to me almost every day with horror stories about how they're being extorted, how they've been robbed, how their employees have been abducted, things you just can't imagine," said Guillermo Dillon, the head of Nuevo Leon's industry chamber CAINTRA that counts 5,000 companies as its members. "Of course all this is having an impact on the economy," he said.

Mexico is rebounding strongly from a steep recession in 2009, helped by a bounce in exports to the United States. Investment has also risen and Monterrey, with a skilled workforce and location close to the border, is reaping the benefits.

Nuevo Leon state government forecasts the economy will grow 5 percent this year and expects more than $2 billion in foreign investment this year, similar to 2009, although slightly less than in 2010, when Heineken bought Femsa's brewing division.

Deputy state minister for foreign investment, Andres Franco Abascal, said 12 manufacturers ranging from China to Germany confirmed $498 million in investment in the first quarter of this year.
But if not for the drugs war, things would be even better.

Business leaders including Dillon estimate the violence will shave 1 to 2 percentage points off economic growth this year, holding back the local economy. It grew 6.5 percent last year and 7.2 percent in 2006, prior to the global recession and before the violence took hold.

Having grown at almost double the rate of Mexico as a whole between 2005 and 2007, Monterrey's economy is likely to expand this year at about the same 5 percent pace as the national economy.
Economists also warn that the damage done by the drugs war to the economy could get worse.
"A lot of companies are still in wait-and-see mode, they are still here, still doing business," said Jorge Garza, an economist at the University of Monterrey. "But if security continues to deteriorate and they start pulling out, then we could be looking at a much more serious impact."

The "wait-and-see" mood is pervasive among the 680 assembly-for-export "maquiladora" plants operating in the state. A quarter of those factories have their expansion plans on hold for a second year running, meaning fewer new product lines churning out laptops and car parts, and ultimately fewer jobs being created, said Emilio Cadena, head of an industry group that represents Nuevo Leon's maquiladoras.

"The big question is: how much faster would we be growing if it were not for the violence?" Cadena asked.
Helicopter maker Eurocopter this year ditched plans to invest $550 million in Nuevo Leon to build its second plant in Latin America, instead choosing the central state of Queretaro, which has so far been unscathed by drug violence.

A survey of major businesses operating in the country this year by the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico found that Nuevo Leon is now considered one of the four most dangerous states in Mexico. It used to be considered the safest.

State Governor Rodrigo Medina conceded last year that some foreign investors had been put off by the violence.

"We have to recognize (violence) could have affected the decision-making of the investor ... I've come across some cases (of investors freezing plans to set up in Monterrey)," Medina said in a Reuters interview last October. His aides declined recent requests to elaborate.

ZETAS ON THE ROAD AHEAD
Even if manufacturing is showing some resilience, security costs are growing, while moving goods up to the U.S. border and to neighboring states is getting riskier.

Small and medium-sized companies operating in and around Monterrey are spending 5 percent of cash flow on security, a cost that was negligible just five years ago, while firms selling GPSs, alarms, locks and cameras in Monterrey have seen a 20 percent jump in annual profits in three years, according to Monterrey's commerce, retail and tourism chamber.

"If you look at the figures, companies are still investing, but there's a lot of evidence that the money is being diverted into security, not into research and development," said Rafael Amiel, a Peruvian economist who comes to Monterrey once a year to attend a conference for U.S.-based forecaster IHS Global Insight. "This is money that's going into barbed wire fences, not solar panels and that is going to hurt competitiveness in the long term," he added.

Drug war lawlessness in the neighboring states of Tamaulipas and Coahuila is also weighing on regional business.

One Monterrey-based businessman supplying piping to drinking water plants in Coahuila said it is common to see black-clad, masked Zeta hitmen stopping cars on the highway west out of Monterrey, even with the army patrolling nearby.

"I try to stay calm every time, it is terrifying, but what choice do I have? I can't afford a helicopter," he said, locked in his office, having been robbed at gunpoint by Gulf cartel hitmen who burst in on him last year.
The route from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas and across into Laredo, Texas is a crossing used by 2.5 million trucks every year, or some 40 percent of U.S.-Mexican cross-border trade. It used to be safe at any time but can now only be traveled in daylight hours for fear of attacks by Zeta gunmen.

The Zetas have taken to supplementing their drug smuggling income with robberies of trucks carrying everything from copper pipes to car parts, U.S. and Mexican security officials say.

Many manufacturers here work on a "just-in-time" basis to avoid a build-up in inventories and storage costs, and are increasingly frustrated by the delays in crossing the border.

Tough safety checks by U.S. customs agents and the sheer size of truck trade already mean long waits, so crossing at night had for long been a way of avoiding the bottlenecks.

"Either you have to pay the bad guys something for the right to travel at night and not be robbed, or you go by day and pay extra storage in Nuevo Laredo, which drives up our costs," said one Monterrey-based trucking company owner moving auto parts, who declined to be named due to safety concerns.
"We've got trucks idle waiting for longer at the border and we're spending time and energy on safety logistics, which was never a factor before."

Rising premiums for insurance against robbery of goods can eat up over half of companies' profit margins, truckers say.

CANCEL MY APPOINTMENT
Worse for some is the damage to Monterrey's image. Never a big tourist town, far from any white beaches and lacking the Aztec ruins of central Mexico, the city was building a reputation as a place for Americans to seek medical treatment at a third of the cost of the United States.

With 15 million Americans expected to seek healthcare abroad by 2016, up from 750,000 in 2007, according to consultancy Deloitte, Monterrey was going beyond the cheap dental care Mexican border towns offer Americans, providing operations ranging from gastric bypasses to heart surgery.

Even as recently as early 2010, when drug killings had increased noticeably, Monterrey's private hospital group Christus Muguerza was receiving about 70 foreign patients a week, mainly from the United States, some paying thousands of dollars a time. "Business is practically zero now," said Eduardo Garcia, a doctor who helps oversee medical policy at the University of Monterrey, which is linked to Christus Muguerza.

Four hospital groups including Christus Muguerza invested several million dollars in expanding and modernizing their capacity for so-called medical tourists between 2007 and 2008, while the prestigious Tec University's Zambrano Hellion Medical Center is under construction and is billed as offering "innovative medical care to Mexico and to the world."

One Monterrey-based company, Nurses Now International, was training Mexican nurses in English to better serve visiting U.S. patients, but is now focusing its efforts at hospitals in beach resorts that have been spared the drug violence.

Perhaps hardest of all for city leaders to stomach is the exodus of some 2,500 students, some 20 percent of the student body, studying at the Tec University, considered one of Latin America's top schools for engineering and business and at the heart of Monterrey's industrial success. According to the university's former rector Rafael Rangel, undergraduates started packing their bags last year after two students were shot dead accidentally by soldiers who mistook them for hitmen in a firefight outside the campus.

The Tec's fame as Mexico's answer to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology means that more than half its students are from other Mexican cities or from abroad, and while many have transferred to other Tec campuses within Mexico, Monterrey is losing talented youngsters.

"Yes (the insecurity) has hit the institution, it's hit us more than the economic crisis," Rangel said at an event to mark his retirement in late April.

That has forced the university to lay off about 300 staff, also having a knock-on effect on the hundreds of shops and rental agencies that depend on the student population.

Professors consulted by Reuters say there are also concerns that student numbers could fall by another 10 percent at the start of the new academic year in August. The university declined to comment.
Some residents, who are known as "regiomontanos" for the mountainous region they live in, have already seen enough, sparking concerns of a brain drain.

Wealthy small and medium-sized business owners are taking their money and ideas north of the border to set up shop in Texas. With anything upward of $100,000 to invest in a U.S.-based business, Mexicans can obtain a fast-track U.S. investor visa for themselves and their families.

Demand at the U.S. consulate in Monterrey for the "E" visas is surging: the number of investor visas issued by the consulate almost doubled to 390 between July 2010 and the end of March this year, compared to the prior nine-month period.

Those who haven't already left can't deny they are worried. "I'm thinking 'I'm OK, nothing's happened to me,' but if it does, I know I'll have to consider it," said a businessman with a mid-sized food exporting business who declined to be named for security reasons.

In the meantime, he has switched his SUV for a low profile sedan and he stays out of the limelight, avoiding the local paparazzi that rely on the business elite to fill local gossip rags. "I definitely don't want my photo in the society pages these days," he said.

THE CRAZY GUYS
Many who knew Monterrey as one of Latin America's safest cities wonder how things got so bad so fast.
Part of the answer lies in the drugged up eyes of 18-year-old gang member Alan, who spends his days bored and jobless wandering the city streets, and his nights getting high on glue and marijuana with his friends on the dirty concrete stairways of his parents' apartment block.

With his arms elaborately tattooed with the name of his gang, "Los Vatos Locos" (The Crazy Guys), Alan is part of Monterrey's rarely mentioned underclass that the Gulf and Zetas cartels have seized on to recruit dealers, smugglers and hitmen to fuel their bitter war.

Though drug violence is more associated with the infamous border towns of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Monterrey has also seen a surge in gangs over the past decade after neglecting its poorer citizens, who see little future other than joining the cartels.

"School bored me. Now's there no work," Alan said, his face partly hidden under a tilted baseball cap.
Alan is not a hitman, but he soon could be.

On the street corners of Monterrey's poorest barrios and the region's neglected rural towns, the cartels recruit dropouts like Alan, often as young as 12 or 13, to sell drugs or diversify into other crimes like carjacking and burglaries, paying handsomely with "gifts" such as SUVs, cash or drugs.

That is a lifestyle that Monterrey's urban poor can only dream of on the factory wages paying $350 a month.
But the gifts come with strings attached.

If anyone decides they want out, they have to pay back the gifts -- an impossible task. So they keep going.
They are pushed into worse crimes until the street corner gangster becomes a fully-fledged cartel henchman, willing to torture a rival gang member, throw grenades at civilians or open fire in a crowded street.

"You get pushed into it because there's no work and you dropped out," said 26-year-old former gang member and addict Sergio Alvino, who sold crack for about $10 a hit for the cartels before finding a way out with the help of a Catholic shelter. "It is the perfect preparation for a career with the cartels, even if it is likely to be a short one," he said.

Monterrey's politicians and captains of industry are only now waking up to the reality that the city has huge pockets of poverty and about a third of all Nuevo Leon's residents live on $5.25 a day or less. Poor families barely get by on about $600 a month.

Despite a steady fall in the number of poor in Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas between 1970 and 2000 as Mexico benefited from an oil and manufacturing boom, poverty on the border today is as high as it was a decade ago, according to government data. With a median age of roughly 27 years, Mexico should be at a huge advantage as developed nations struggle with aging populations. Over the last decade, Mexico's rate of jobless young has doubled to about 10 percent, according to a United Nations study.

Being poor does not make you a criminal, and certainly not a hitman. "But without a job, without your self esteem, you are easy prey for the cartels," said Catholic mother superior Guillermina Burciaga, who has worked for more than a decade with street gangs in Monterrey, seeking to help many leave drugs and the gangs behind.

Jaime Rodriguez, the mayor of Garcia municipality in Monterrey who survived two attempts on his life, is even more candid. "Ask yourself who is doing all this killing. It is our young people. We have failed our young," he said.

NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN
More chillingly, when the cartels find they can't entice youngsters into the gangs with money, they abduct them and force them into the business, the CADHAC human rights group and U.S. anti-drug officials say.
CADHAC has logged 36 cases of forced disappearances in Nuevo Leon since 2007 but says the real figure is more than 1,000, as few victims' families come forward out of fear and state officials don't take them seriously.

"The crime of forced disappearances doesn't exist in the penal code and the government is in denial. The few parents who come forward are met by ridicule from authorities," said Carlos Trevino, a lawyer for CADHAC.

"The prosecutor's office says to the mothers: 'I'm sure your son's just out partying, he'll be home soon," he added. The state attorney general's office denied such accusations and said many cases are under investigation. But many law-abiding Monterrey residents have fallen into the habit of assuming that anyone who goes missing is a criminal, inhibiting proper investigation. "People want to be rid of this situation, so you see a lot of comments in chat rooms such as: 'kill them all' or 'that's one less bad guy,' but that is no way to deal with the problem," said CADHAC investigator Maria del Mar Alvarez.

Victims' families interviewed by CADHAC reported two cases of mass kidnappings of 40 to 50 young Mexicans during raids on working class districts in Monterrey in July 2010 and a string of individual cases over the past four years, often of men aged between 18 and 20 years old.

"I don't let my boys play on the street at night anymore because they are kidnapping the youngsters," housewife Berta Luna said in a poor area of the Guadalupe municipality in Monterrey. CADHAC believes the youngsters are taken to other states within Mexico to work as hitmen, to smuggle drugs or to pack marijuana in safe houses.

SOMETHING ROTTEN
For Monterrey, the biggest lesson of the drugs war is that, despite its entrepreneurial flare, it faces the same institutional crisis as the rest of the country. The drug war has ripped the skin off the illusion that it is different.
Its municipal and state police services have been infiltrated. Officials acknowledge its justice system fails to resolve most crimes. Its youngsters are caught up in the country's dysfunctional education system. Huge inequalities between rich and poor have created a festering underclass that is cannon fodder for the cartels.
If Monterrey could make even a little headway on these challenges, it could lead Mexico once again.
The signs that it is about to do so are mixed.

Monterrey's business elite appears determined to help. Both Cemex's Zambrano and FEMSA's Astaburuaga say they are taking a central role to support the state government by putting resources into social programs to help youngsters, backing campaigns that urge citizens to denounce more crimes and putting some of their executives into government.

The number two official in the state government, Javier Trevino, is a long-time Cemex man who joined the newly-elected administration in late 2009.

Jorge Domene, security spokesman for Nuevo Leon, reels off a list of achievements, including progress on firing hundreds of police officers suspected of working for the cartels over the past year, rolling police checkpoints across Monterrey, more collaboration with the military, and efforts to modernize the police with military personnel.

In the San Pedro Garza Garcia municipality, part of Monterrey and the richest in Mexico, Mayor Mauricio Fernandez, himself a wealthy businessman, is investing $65 million in security equipment, more modern police buildings and 2,000 cameras to monitor every street corner in the area.

But Nuevo Leon's efforts to reform its justice system have slipped badly after being the first state to introduce U.S.-style oral trials in 2004, making little progress adopting open court hearings where prosecutors and defense attorneys present their cases before a panel of judges.

A plan to build a new high security prison in Nuevo Leon has stalled and the CAINTRA business chamber feels the state government is slipping behind on flushing out corrupt cops.

Twelve of Nuevo Leon's rural towns are without any local police as cops have quit after brutal drug gang attacks.

U.S. officials admit privately that Monterrey's best hope is to contain the violence and get it off the front pages.

And there is still a lot of denial.

"Is there a problem? Yes there is, but it is a problem between the cartels, not against society," said Mayor Fernandez in his office, adorned with paintings, in San Pedro.

Unlike in Mexico City, wealthier residents seem reluctant to protest against the government, seeing it as vulgar.

"That's for a different class of people, no?" said Lorena, a young mother who declined to give her last name, struggling to explain why there is not more public outrage in Monterrey.

Many of the Monterrey diaspora admit they would like to go home. They are strangers in Texas, they miss friends. The enchiladas north of the border are terrible, they say.

But many, like businessman Ramos, say they are too afraid to return. "I don't see much progress. They've got to do something about the Zetas. They are the ones robbing Monterrey of its future."

46 comments:

  1. Texcoco Mex said.

    Mexico need to change his laws selling drugs is one thing.

    Kidnapping, extortion, and murder should give criminals capital punishment.

    Fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, and theft should give criminals a long time behind bars.

    Many of this things are affecting Mexico's economy and is pushing investors to invest some where else.

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  2. these snobby monterrey citizens that are whealthy better get open their eyes to the situation, it seems like they go around acting like their sh*t doesn't stink.

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  3. Dear, Robin, 'reporter' for Reuters, YOUR WRITING STINKS to high heaven!

    'Many of the Monterrey diaspora admit they would like to go home. They are strangers in Texas, they miss friends. The enchiladas north of the border are terrible, they say.'

    I've got relatives living in Houston who are now back in Monterrey and it had nothing to do with the poor quality of enchiladas in Texas. And the following is not the situation they face in Monterrey either...

    'Almost every resident now has a story of someone they know who spent a horrifying evening face-down on a bedroom floor while gunmen fought battles in the streets outside.'

    Why do news services like Reuters make this sort of sensationalistic reporting up? Why are they on a campaign to support the US militarization of Mexico?

    PS... Lest anybody think that I don't have a clue about what I am writing here, my wife and kid set out on the bus just today for summer time in Monterrey, where they will spend 2 months in this horrible gangland, or at least that is how Reporter Robin is. What do I fear for them? I worry that the temperature will once again get up to 106- 108 for several days running. That's one of the real reasons Monterrey has trouble attracting tourism. It's too damn hot there!

    Yes, I realize that BB thinks of itself as a crime blog , with it being Borderland Police 'beat' and what all???? BUt Reuters, too, beating the drums of more war? This was a sad excuse at reporting, Reporter Robin. You should be ashamed of yourself.

    Medellin, Colombia is doing fine, and so is Monterrey. Let's hope that the PRI, PAN, and US government do not succeed in turning the country into a death squadsville like they have done with Colombia. It'll be no helps to Reuters and their little "robin' though if this doesn't occur.

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  4. Well put Ardent. If these people actually traveled to Monterrey they would see that a lot of this is hype. Yes, there are shootings and people are killed but that also happens in any "big" city. You just have to be vigilant of your surroundings.

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  5. En San Antonio el barrio de Sonterra ahora le apodaron "Sonterrey"

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  6. is the photo at the top on the road to Saltillo?

    i disagree that Monterrey is doing ok...last night on the phone i was talking to a friend in Monterrey..

    they said espera..eschucha...balacera..

    i could hear the shooting..and also some one threw a grenade...i could hear the sound though the phone...this is in a nice middle class barrio a few blocks from el centro de Monterrey proper...

    this is not everything is ok...

    also i am told that Felix U Gomz and Pablo de la Garza..is not safe at all... especially at night because of the narcos...

    I am going there in a couple of weeks ...so then I can say first hand...

    the last time i was there i thought it was gonna be my last days twice just before I left...

    i have seen Monterrey when it was ok...and when it was not ok...i don't think it is OK now

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  7. Yes, the birds are chirping, the sky is blue, the tacos are crisp, the people are friendly, all is Good in Mexico. C`mon down, do not be afraid. All the pictures you`ve seen are all fakes. Those crazy gringos keep acting like their is a war going on over here. Their crazy. It`s fine. I wish they would quit telling these tales of people who "do not wish to be identified for fear", for they are just old, silly viejo`s and vieja`s who don`t know nothing. Even your good Presidente Obama says that Mexico is safer than ever. Just be vigilante like you would if you were in say, Dallas Texas or something. You know,don`t go out at night, wear raggedy clothes, don`t have any money in your pockets, go buy a beat up car to drive, don`t walk down the street alone, don`t look anyone in the eye, you know, common things you do everyday in America. Now come on down. Viva Mexico!

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  8. Ardent:

    Robin has not made a sensationalistic report,... all he is saying it's true,.. we all have at least one person who has been involved in some sort of gunfight, has been rob, or knows someone who has join a gang....
    I live in Monterrey, and it's terrible that we have to get used to all of this and all because of the goverment can't deal with the huge problem...

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  9. ardent we must travel in different circles...your family must live in San Pedro ..or over in San Jeronimo...cause where i go ..it isn't too safe ..

    have you ever actually seen fresh blood on the sidewalk/streets.. in Monterrey..i have ..a block away from where i stay...

    i mean really from the way you talk ..we know two different Citys

    i am not gonna say you are wrong...about where you go ..but you are wrong about where i go

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  10. Robin, I lived in Monterrey for 10 years and spend about a month every year in the city due to business and family. The reports here are true. It has been very sad to watch the decline of the city since 2006. I have a lot of friends and family in Monterrey and unlike your network they all have stories of shootings, extortion, kidnappings, etc. I will not send my family to Monterrey at this point in time. I think your read of the situation is clouded in the past. I wish your family safe travels. P.S. My last trip to Monterrey will probably be this summer. I really am not looking forward to the trip. Oh Robin, Monterrey is mentioned on this site sometimes daily and at the very least several times a week. Do you not follow the articles? Let's all pray this war ends soon!

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  11. My last post should have been direct to Ardent, not Robin

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  12. once again ardent has been shown to be a fraud, or an idiota, or both

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  13. The problem with Monterrey, as the rest of Mexico, is that one half of the police forces are rotten and corrupt. One half of the bad guys are cops!!!! Not too difficult to figure it out.

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  14. First, I never said that Monterrey is 'OK', or Tamaulipas for that matter either. The situation is not 'OK' at this time and moment. I, too, have relatives that have had some near misses and some that were hit (one was disappeared and he was a dad with kids. He was not a close relative but still somebody whose life should have had value). One relative was a near miss from a bullet that broke her windshield. One has had property occupied by cartel people. These were people in small town Tamaulipas Border Lands though.

    However, it is pure bullshit to come up with trash like Robin's... 'Almost every resident (of Monterrey) now has a story of someone they know who spent a horrifying evening face-down on a bedroom floor while gunmen fought battles in the streets outside.'

    There are around 5 million people in the combined Monterrey-Saltillo area, and contrary to this bs Reporter Robin's baloney, the overwhelming majority of these residents in this metro area are not making nose dives to the floor during daily gun battles. Far from that. Most have not listened to a Beirut style fire fight going on in the background of their cities at all. The rumors do fly though!

    And NO, Brito, my wife's family lives squarely inside the Monterrey area, and not in the richie Rich areas either. They live in small town Border area Tamaulipas also. I pretty much hear about the action there. Plus, now my immediate family is down for one of our twice a year visits there to RegioLandia.

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  15. Sorry Ardent and the Anonymous comment below yours....I just don't buy the comment that stuff happens in big cities everywhere.

    I live here in Monterrey, and have lived here for more than a decade. While the reporter sensationalizes a little for effect, what is said is absolutely 100% true.

    In fact, I really don't know anyone who has not had a family member or friend or someone close kidnapped (even express kidnappings).

    There is nothing quite like the daily occurrence of roadblocks and SUV loads of men with AK-47s or AR-15s pulling up next to you at a light.

    Any many of my friends or coworkers have family that have fled to the US and miss home. When you children are kidnapped and released, fleeing is a logical choice.

    I would NEVER put my wife and child on a bus down to Mty. Too many Zeta blockades.

    You can pretend things are fine all you want, but those of us who live it every day think differently.

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  16. One can only hope that the millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of Mexicans who've fled their country (for political, economic and/or safety reasons) for the U.S., listen to Ardent and his head-in-the-sand, unrealistic, Utopian view of Mexico and return to their beloved homeland.

    And if you are a victim of a crime in Dallas or most American cities.

    1)The criminal is most likely an illegal alien, legal resident or a gang-banging anchor baby.

    2)You can trust the police to assist you, search for the criminal, arrest the criminal, prosecute and punish the criminal instead of ignoring you or threatening you or extorting you, like in most Mexican cities.

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  17. @June 1, 2011 4:48 PM

    "It has been very sad to watch the decline of the city since 2006."

    Don't you mean 2009-2010? The violence started hitting around 09-10 when the Zetas and Gulf splinter, Mtty has been safe around 2006 all the way until 09 when things started hitting the fan.

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  18. 'Sorry Ardent and the Anonymous comment below yours....I just don't buy the comment that stuff happens in big cities everywhere.... I would NEVER put my wife and child on a bus down to Mty. Too many Zeta blockades.'

    I don't PUT them on a bus, they put themselves on the bus to visit relatives in Monterrey but will stay out of much more dangerous areas inside Tamaulipas where other family members reside. Couldn't stop them if I wanted to!

    You know, I visited Colombia with my kid several years back and its dangerous, too. Went also to Nicaragua and Panama, all very very dangerous if you don't use some common horse sense.

    Went to Houston, Chicago, Milwaukee, St Louis,and LA several years back before, too. Some neighborhoods in those places are not that nice. Had to handle it because you can't just stop living because of 'dangers' that often are more exaggerated in gringo heads more than not.

    You say all this mierda, Anony regio....

    'I live here in Monterrey, and have lived here for more than a decade. While the reporter sensationalizes a little for effect, what is said is absolutely 100% true.'

    No it's not. You are not living in Baghdad, so stop acting as if Monterrey is that. Where on earth did you live before Monterrey? GatedLandia?

    'In fact, I really don't know anyone who has not had a family member or friend or someone close kidnapped (even express kidnappings).'

    Bull shit! All the folk I know in Monterrey are doing fine except for the poverty there. It has been Border Tamaulipas areas where the real problems have mostly been. So don't act as if Monterrey has become Ciudad Juarez. It has not become that at all!

    'There is nothing quite like the daily occurrence of roadblocks and SUV loads of men with AK-47s or AR-15s pulling up next to you at a light.'

    Get used to it, Regios! Much of Latin America has had a heavy military presence for centuries now. With the US wanting to make Mexico more like that, it is the new trend for you. So what? Did you think that only Guate or Salvador, Colombia or Peru, Nica or Panama would get hit this way by US imperialism? Cops and military troops with heavy artillery everywhere in LA? What else is new? Monterrey, too? Well your Mexico is a US occupied territory, Regios. That's what many of you more monied types there wanted, is it not? You got it! Feel safer?

    'Any many of my friends or coworkers have family that have fled to the US and miss home. When you children are kidnapped and released, fleeing is a logical choice.'

    OH spare the BB USA Right Wingers this crap! I've got family returning from Houston to Monterrey because of the increased witch hunt against undocumented Mexican workers in the US led by that Obomber liar guy. They miss Houston, not Monterrey! Why, God only knows why....?????, Anonymous 8:22. Has something to do with dollar bills, I do believe....

    Monterrey and Mexico as a whole are not melting down into Miguel Aleman, Nuevo Laredo, and Ciudad Juarez yet. So stop the hysteria already! You few regios who cry online here at BB alongside with the US Right Wingers are a real trip! Holding your Mexican flags and tickets for San Antonio together in your hands! Regio babies, you make the folk in Chiapas, Chihuahua, Guerrero, and Oaxaca laugh at you. You certainly are not that codo with your hysterias.

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  19. once again uhrny,,,your perceptions are skewed

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  20. sez t'ardent

    "Colombia is doing fine, and so is Monterrey"

    later recanted

    what is it gonna be ..monterrey is fine or not urhny

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  21. ATTN ARDENT:

    after reading what you wrote i have reached a conclusion. you have no f#^*king idea what you are talking about!!!!! i am an american married to a mexican national. i have lived in mexico for 4 years, DO NOT TELL ME IT IS NOT AS WRITTEN. i have sinced moved my family from mexico due to the voilence (including the granade attacks and 90 min gun battle outside the house and 2 of my sister-in-laws friends who were shot 2 weeks later) you just fucking infuriate me with this pure shite you are writing. educate yourself before you open your mouth.

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  22. He`s as educated as he can get. Liberals can only see through rose-colored glasses. That`s why I said the birds are chirping , the sky is blue and all is well in Mexico. My question is what exactly is "the increased witch hunt against undocumented Mexican workers in the US led by that Obomber liar guy"? What part of being here undocumented (ILEGALLY) don`t you get? You park your car Illegally , ii get`s towed away. You speed Illegally, you get a ticket, go too fast, you go to jail. Those are called consequences. You live here ILLEGALLY, you get deported. That`s called a consequence. If you don`t like the laws, by all means run for the house or senate and push for a bill to reform them, but if not SHUT THE F UP!!! You act is if a person is in favor of laws they have no compassion. I work road construction down in the south near the border. I`ve come across so many dying of thirst people and gave them all the water we had in our cooler for the day, so they could quench their thirst. compassion. I held the hand of a woman (illegal) who was dying due to a car wreck and the head injuries she sustained until the ambulance got their, although it was too late. I cried for hours after that. It`s called compassion. I have give my lunch too many illegals that haven`t eaten in a day or two who were starving and just wanted to be picked up by the border patrol to get back to some shelter. compassion. Is it a big deal? No. But too act as if Rebuplicans wanting to enforce our countries Immigration laws makes people lacking of compassion is a full fledged LIE. I dislike your views Ardent, but if you were in a bind, a serious bind and I was the only person their, I would help you, no matter your status in this country or any other. Compassion first, then enforce the law. The two can and do go together.

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  23. The people that believe this type of reporting is skewed and/or hype are either ignorant or don't want to believe the truth. They are ignorant because they are isolated or believe that crime is rempant everywehere; thus, Monterrey is just as bad as any other major city. They are also ingnorant because they believe they US wants to militarize Latin America. I spent 20+ years in federal law enforcemnt, and at least 10 in Mexico and Colombia. Yes, the crime in Mexico, specifically Monterrrey, Tijuana, Ciudad Juares and areas in Michoacan are much worse than ever before. There are no drug traffickers blocking the streets in LA, NY or even Medellin. There are no rampant kidnapings going on in these cities either. And, NO, the US has enough problems throughout the world (read the newspapers); thus, we do not want to militarize any cities with high-crime problems! The statistics tell the story, and if people don't want to believe them, then they can be categorized as just a group of "PENDEJOS"!!

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  24. T'ardent AKA ardent y uhrny 1

    sez:

    "Get used to it, Regios!"

    "Regio babies, you make the folk in Chiapas, Chihuahua, Guerrero, and Oaxaca laugh at you"

    "Well your Mexico is a US occupied territory, Regios. That's what many of you more monied types there wanted, is it not? You got it! Feel safer?"

    you are insane ...it sounds like you are gloating over the deterioration of Monterrey specifically and Mexico and all of latin America in general

    like the MILLIONS of innocent people should suffer ..just so you can get some sort of vicarious revenge on the US government..

    the more you yap..the more your true colors show

    you really are a sick, sick puppy aren't you ...

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  25. for ardent

    if any of my people in Monterrey are harmed while you think they deserve it i will be seeing you you piece of shit

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  26. you are a closet racist ardent

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  27. As usual ard can't make a coherent point. He makes so many u-turns he forgets what he said and then he can't get out of his own way.

    He's pretty sad. He has something to say and he has personal knowledge but it's mostly buried in anger. I couldn't sit home while my family went to Mty against my wishes. That's tough. I'd phone 'em every 5 mins.

    Some really good posters on this topic. I'm impressed.

    @3:20 pm you're great! ...the birds are chirping...the tacos are crisp...

    fucking hilarious - more.

    1:17

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  28. Once again, BB Friends. If you say something like,.....'Ardent is a closet racist' it is a personal flame and nothing more. If you say... Ardent is a closet racist, and here is the reason I believe that.... then perhaps you will also be doing more than just personally flaming me and actually presenting some rational arguments to support and put your own thoughts and opinions forward????

    See how that works, Anonymous 9:03? It's the difference between throwing a flame and expressing a rational opinion.

    And Anonymous 8:47, personally threatening to harm people expressing an opinion contrary to yours is how a thug acts. Are you a thug?

    And, Brito. The situation in Monterrey is not ideal, but I'm not going to go along with these supposed Regio posters who want to act like they are living in Beirut during the Israeli invasion, or Baghdad under US occupation. They are not. And they are not even living in Juarez or Oaxaca in battle, for that matter. If people want to come at me with a baseball bat for saying that, that pretty much shows where their heads are really at.

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  29. Flippin Liberal`s, if you say red, it`s blue, if you say blue, it`s red. Wonder why 95% of people on here DIS-Agree with Ardent and 5% Agree? Of course, with a liberal, it`s always the Majority is wrong and I~m right, and all else be damned!! The basic question I have ernie/ardent, at this point, with the killings, the torture, the rapes, the plundering the pillaging, does it really matter who`s fault it is who caused the majority of it to start? Shouldn`t your concern be How do we STOP this madness? All you do when given a scenario is point out that the US is just as corrupt. Well, at least they have the sense to hide theirs. sheesh. It ain`t about you, it`s about a whole dang country!!!

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  30. Ernie...Ardent...E1

    Hola! Well Ernie, still at it I see. Dang don't cha get tired of being beat up? Actually you have some good points but the problem with those good points is you blow those out of has reporter Robin does. First of all I was really offended that she put the enchilada statment in there. I don't believe anyone said that while speaking of something so critical. SHe does seem "simple" or is it he?

    Ern, I think I remember you spending some time in Mty in Dec...or I think you did, I know Briiiiito did also. But I am telling you IT IS a lot worse now. People I know that blew off the warning a few mos ago as just so much hype, now do not travel there in the same frequency as before and travel in a far more cautious manner, e.g. fly in instead of driving.

    I posted this story on forum, and Ovemex just posted that Mty outkilled juarez in numbers in May can't recall the numbers but it is a notable difference. Check it out we have a forum chit chat going.

    And though I may think you are many things, being a racist is not one of them.

    As always My Dos Centavos...

    Saludos...."B" The Right Winger Wonder

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  31. If you don;'t even know what previous governments' policies might have done to aggravate a problem, and DON'T EVEN WANT TO KNOW, then you are just willfully being blind.

    'The basic question I have ernie/ardent, at this point, with the killings, the torture, the rapes, the plundering the pillaging, does it really matter who`s fault it is who caused the majority of it to start? Shouldn`t your concern be How do we STOP this madness?'

    Yes, it does matter! This willful desire to be ignorant and ahistorical is truly maddeningly and chilling about the US Conservative crowd. YOu guys just want to go leap frogging from one militaristic stupidity to the next and never be held accountable for anything. Even your low income typical food stamp welfare cheat has more accountability and integrity than this!

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  32. @ 7:36 AM

    What part of human compassion don't you get?
    Why do you suppose Mx Migrants and Central AMerican Migrants go through hell to get to the US? Does that matter to you? It SHOULD, because if your sole agenda is to keep " those" people out then you must determine why they come in the first place and come to a logical reasonable place before constructing a plan of action. No fence, no law, no gun, nothing will keep desperate humans from attempting to go where they know they can raise their families out of abject poverty. pLEASE VIEW THESE VIDEOS to understand why. The first one has a guy in a blue shirt that is a bit cocky at first..until he gives the message to citizens of the US. Open your heart, this is not about a " car" being towed these are human beings, and we need to think differently about them and the undocumented issue. I am republican. pretty centered, I believe in rule of law BUT I believe in human compassion. The trip from CA to US for migrants is now the most dangerous journeys in the world. If you know this and view the videos and still feel as you do, then you are hopeless, and racist. They do not want to live in the US, they would like to make money to send back home to build a little ranch, home or business, but that is their home they want to return as soon as possible.

    You have offered no real thoughts on solutions. not surprising. But How about Guest WOrker Program as we once had? also called the Bracero Program. I read a 150 page report on it and it was very successful, the few problems it had could be solved in a revised structure. It has already been tested, so its the best type of plan. We know what works and what does not. The workers, pay taxes, are accounted for and are repsonsible people as they know their chances of returning if they are not is nil. The program only stopped because it was on a time schedule. I can not remember how many years but that is why it stopped.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOBCw-VkHKY

    http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/4890/Invisible-Victims--Migrants-on-the-Move-in-Mexico

    My Dos Centavos

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  33. k onda Buela

    decided to come over for a visit..jajaj

    i follow your posts on the forum

    yeah and i am going back to Monterrey in a couple of weeks...not good

    i almost wish it would just go ahead and go all to hell already so mebbe our pinche gobierno would loosen up on visas or refugee status..i got people there who i would like to get out ..while they are still livin..

    when you are talking on the phone ..and you hear the gunfire in the background ..poppoppopopop...it is chilling

    i don't think the authorities have a clue as to how to stop it

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  34. If my wife thought for a second that Brito's idea of what Monterrey is like were in any way real, there is no way in the world she would be visiting family down there this summer. Fortunately, Brito is totally clueless about the real Monterrey situation and is just winging it with all his tall tales of him supposedly hearing gun fire while talking on the phone to people in that city.

    I talk to people on the phone who live in Monterrey, too, and it is not like that at all. I have to ask myself if Brito really even believes what he blabs about most of the time? If he does, he needs to reevaluate his informal med use some.

    'when you are talking on the phone ..and you hear the gunfire in the background ..poppoppopopop...it is chilling'

    Oh Brother!

    '.i got people there who i would like to get out ..while they are still livin..'

    You would think that Brito was talking about Eastern Libya or some such other place! He's totally acting silly. The 4,000,000 people in Monterrey are not all dodging bullets for dear life and Brito's chismes are just nonsense.

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  35. Honestly.

    Monterrey is pretty bad, been living 6 years on this occasion and lived also around 5 years in the 90s.

    It did start to decline in 2006, but got real bad last year and it's getting a bit worse day after day, I've had many friends in a shootout in every shape in form, while on the street including during the daytime while walking an avenue, to a shootout while you're home having dinner or tucked in your bed.

    I've been in a shootout midday on a Cuauhtemoc avenue, hearing shootings every two days a bit far away and I live in a safe place, the worse ones were when school I attend to south of Mty ended and I was about to go home and another one just as I was having a nice night with some friends at a discreet nightclub just a block away.

    I've had a gun on my head once because I told a zeta it's illegal to smoke indoors and it was my job to tell him off, almost carjacked and literally seeing a narcobloqueo half an hour later while I was fleeing back home the day the municipal president of santiago got jacked.

    I can't even leave town happily to visit my family in my car because the highways are dangerous, neither using a bus since this year is a bit worse than the last, I'm taking a plane now. It's not even safe to consider walking downtown at nights and I used to love to do that.

    But the thing that ticks me off is that during the daytime, there are many many police checkpoints that don't really check for anything and alot of police and army convoys rushing somewhere and as soon as it's 7pm there isn't a single officer or soldier in sight.

    The one time I saw soldiers at night was when I was dropping some friends home and the soldiers were one block away and signaled me to stop, so I did after all of us getting out of the car and cooperating and not even questioning anything one of the soldiers hit a friend and slapped me out of the blue, because we suspected that they were terrified and freaked out, that was last saturday.

    I understand we're not in this huge all out war like a real war zone or Cd. Juarez, and think we're straight up hysterical but honestly, I feel safer being in Reynosa, Saltillo and even Monclova than here right now, what we're living right now is no insignificant or small matter, and even as it is dangerous as it is we have to do our lives and we won't let fear paralyze us while turning us into hermits in the process.

    If you think we're crying wolf then come here for a month or two and see for yourself.

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  36. @ T'ardent

    i don't blame your wife for going to Monterrey no matter how dangerous it is

    she probably prefers to risk her life just to get away from your annoying ass for a while

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  37. Anonymous 6:48, I am 2 years away from being able to draw Social Security, so I will be living 'down there' soon. Definitely not in Monterrey though since I hate the climate there and it is relatively expensive, too, compared to the rest of Mexico.

    I'm just not that in love with Mexico in fact, and might retire elsewhere outside of the US? I haven't yet decided, and might just do some traveling again first of all.

    'The whole thing I do not understand about Ardent/Ernest is why, if you think Mexcio is a superior country to the corrupt USofA, why aren`t you living down their?'

    Who's really making all these comparisons? I'm not, so it must be you, Anonymous....

    And how can one compare Mexico much to the US, or Mexico to Nicaragua say? Or to Colombia? Each country has its own unique advantages and disadvantages depending on things like whether one has family, a fixed income, or a profession they are trying to work in? OK... I'll make a comparison... Colombia has great music, Mexico has great food, and the US has ???? an extensive military and policing apparatus. None of them have that great a medical system.

    And once again, I don't send my family anywhere. My wife is from Monterrey and she visits there still twice a year. If I had more money I might go with her but Monterrey is just not that great a spot and it would be with her family and staying at that too small house in summer. Too damn hot!

    Once again... Monterrey is not the safest spot on the planet right now, but it is not war zone central either. However, it does seem to be giving a few of the BB posters severe panic attacks, as it has made bar hopping at night riskier. Boo-hoo-hoo. I feel for you people. I hope that eh security situation for clubbers gets better there soon. I really do!

    Now enough of this.... I single handedly cannot be the one to stop the latest Regio entertainment, which is the interchange of horror tales gossip. Especially not here on Borderland Beat.

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  38. So the only thing the US has to offer is a military? No entertainment, No music, No family vacation spots, No beaches on Cali or Fla? So your wife has money, but you don`t? A real tight knit family their. I won`t judge. I still don`t understand what is wrong with military and police. Why is keeping your law-abiding citizens a bad thing? Dont` give me the "they mess with innocents" crap either. If you don`t screw up, you won`t be seeing the police or the military. Furthermore, other countries have militaries as well, remember the "Coalition forces"? Too be honest, maybe you haven`t spoken the words Mexico is Better than the USA, but your innuendos, and insuations say it loud and clear. Realistically, every country is better than the USA in your eyes. That`s fine, so my point is, if it is so damn bad, why the flip are you still in the USA, waiting for your retirement check instead of getting too another country and make a living their???? AHH, now comes the hard part, taint` quite so easy to make the kind of living your used to in those other (better) countries now is it? So, you`ll "suffer" through life in the US till your old enough to retire, collect your pension, then move out of the sorry country that your made your livelihood from and that has a system in place to pay you back social security. Ardent, you may be alot of things, I don`t know. You may have views that are good, may have views I don`t agree with. I personally don`t know you so I can`t judge, but from your words, attitude and dialect, all I can tell is that you are definitely a HYPOCRITE. Without question and whether you`ll admit it or look into the mirror and see it, you are 100% hypocritical when you`ll stay in a country that you seem to despise, just too make a buck. I guess that would also make you a prostitute as well, now wouldn`t it? I`m done with this guy.........next!

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  39. Anyone trying to downplay the shootouts and comparing them to any big city in the US is an idiot. Comparing them is like comparing the colors black and white. When shootouts do occur in the US, gernades and fully automatic weapons arent present, as well as corrupt cops that cover the crime scenes or just drive by to avoid the crimescenes because in the US the police are actually able to do their jobs. In Mexico on the other hand the military has to get involved because the people that cause the shootouts have the local police on their payroll.

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  40. No, I don't believe what you attribute to me as believing, Anonymous.

    'Too be honest, maybe you haven`t spoken the words Mexico is Better than the USA, but your innuendos, and insuations say it loud and clear. Realistically, every country is better than the USA in your eyes.'

    My beef with US society as a whole is not that I think that we are worse than others as a society, but that we allow our corporate government to run the entire world, and not just our own USA. We allow them to do that by allowing them to overfunding a gigantic military and policing apparatus, that we then allow them to use it all around the planet against other societies and other peoples and against their wills. And there is a lot of things wrong with that!

    So stop being so defensive about the US, Anonymous, and start listening to the perhaps quite legitimate complaints that other people have about our country. Making up a pov for others that in fact they do not even have is not being very honest about your own beliefs.

    'That`s fine, so my point is, if it is so damn bad, why the flip are you still in the USA, waiting for your retirement check instead of getting too another country and make a living their????'

    Well do you mind? I am born and raised in the US and have worked all my life here. I am also licensed in this country in my line of work, and with my age, it cannot simply be done once more in somebody else's country. What is all this resentment here, Anonymous, I feel in you, simply because I express a pov contrary to supporting our government in their militaristic political policies?

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  41. Ardent said...
    No, I don't believe what you attribute to me as believing, Anonymous.

    'Too be honest, maybe you haven`t spoken the words Mexico is Better than the USA, but your innuendos, and insuations say it loud and clear. Realistically, every country is better than the USA in your eyes.'

    My beef with US society as a whole is not that I think that we are worse than others as a society, but that we allow our corporate government to run the entire world, and not just our own USA. We allow them to do that by allowing them to overfunding a gigantic military and policing apparatus, that we then allow them to use it all around the planet against other

    Sorry Ardent, but we mo longer have any USA Corperate entity's except the Democrat aka Socialist Party, they were absorbed by International corporations, mostly China over 15 years ago.

    Your take on Conservative War policies is pretty funny, considering only 2 wars in US History were ever pursued by the Conservatives and they were led by a fake Conservative named Bush, whom BTW never did a Conservative thing in his entire 2 terms in office and you can not name a conservative thing he did, either.

    No I'm afraid every single War ever started in US History was started by Liberal policies, even the KKK was and still is mostly under the control of the Democratic party.

    You can complain about right wingers all you wish, but right wingers From Stalin to Pol Pot murdered over 8 billion people, and I'm sure your proud of your Socialist party's accomplishments.

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  42. Only a completely confused by the modern world, USA Today Far Right Winger would call Stalin and Pol Pot 'Right Wingers' and then label the American Big Business funded Democratic Party as 'Socialists' ! And then you insinuate that the Klanners of yesterday were all somehow 'liberals'! I'm kind of flabberghasted here now....

    Hey, Anonymous. I realized when I wrote my preceding reply to you, that Obama and Merkel of Germany were doing the same thing you did with me. You were angry because I would not leave the country I live in, and Barack and Angela were in the news demanding that Moammar Khadafy leave Libya, the country that he is from!

    Now Barack is from the US, and Merkel is German. Pretty ridiculous their demands that a Libyan leave Libya in my book. Do they speak Arabic? Do they know Libya in the least? So where do they get off on making demands for Khadafy to leave his own country? And where do you get the right to tell me I should leave the US, where I have lived all my life, for Mexico?

    Back to this thread... If Monterrey falls then Mexico doesn't necessary fall also. Not that Monterrey is about to 'fall'. If DF falls, then that would be another story altogether. Monterrey is an important city in Mexico, but the regios and their fans oftentimes seem to lose all perspective and begin to think themselves to be way all too much.

    Family is their now. I will let all BB know if, like Brito, I hear gunshots in the background when I talk to them next on the phone? You know how that 'falling' city in that reportedly failed country, Mexico, is reported to be! Bad......

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  43. Mexico HAS ALREADY FALLEN! The Sinaloa Drug Cartel ALREADY Controls Politicians and Govenours, they are in Chapos pocket.

    We are now witnessing a NARCO INSURGENCEY. Its as siple as that.

    This is Mexicos Vietnam.

    Each person who does not inform or turn Mayo Zambada or Chapo in are PAID in excess of OVER what ever they are wanted for ($5 million)

    The bigger problem in Mexico is that there is NO Middle class. You have the small Extemely wealthy and the much Larger Extreme poor.

    Mexico needs to look at itself as a Nation and see how it can create Jobs, competative liveable wages, stop relying on US Dollar remittences.

    The true Key to solving MX problem is EDUCATION! and cleaning up Corruption!

    How many Public Librarys do you see in Monterrey or in Mexico in general?????

    NADA!

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  44. Hi, all those on the 'If Beirut falls, then so does Lebanon thread'.

    Just got through talking to Monterey and heard no gunshots in the background there to back to me in God Bless the USA land. Of course since I only talked for 10 minutes, if I had stayed on the line for perhaps 72 hours straight, I might have actually heard artillery firing in the background... It's a dangerous world out there outside our gated lands.

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  45. Well, in every situation everywhere, SOMEONE has to be in charge. So, since EVERY country seems to turn to the good ole USA, I imagine that`s why we keep answering the calls. It isn`t because we just love to go on thrill kills you dumass. Your retarded if you really think that. Sadly but truly though, the Great Depression was ended because of a thing called War. What`s a country to do when it`s leadership is so inept and self-serving that it cannot sustain itself?

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  46. The below has to be the most pathetic apologetics for US militarism I have ever read...

    'Well, in every situation everywhere, SOMEONE has to be in charge. So, since EVERY country seems to turn to the good ole USA, I imagine that`s why we keep answering the calls. It isn`t because we just love to go on thrill kills you dumass.'

    Who the hell 'turns to the good ole USA'? What crap. 99.99999999% of Mexico's Mexicans didn't ask the US government to ever get involved in their country's affairs! The US government just did though. That's how imperialism actually operates. ( I can imagine Hitler explaining to the German shit kickers about how Good Ol Deautschland is always being called on to help out????? Jeez!)

    ReplyDelete

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