How do you feel about this? ››
beef boy @ May 30, 2012 9:08 PM
Quote
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Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest-growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don’t pay, and you can be threatened — or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.
That corporation would be PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo’s Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks — which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market — were burned. The good news: No one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas’ smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.
“What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,” Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. “The authorities have to take forceful action.”
What’s already generalized is kidnapping, carjacking and extortion of private citizens. Corporations are simply too large, too complex, and it’s not easy — from a cartel’s perspective — to determine who within a corporation should be threatened in an extortion attempt. (Sabritas dominates the Mexican snack food market with about 75 percent market share.) If you’re looking to coerce the manager who is writing the checks, you might as well try to threaten a computer database. Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Pemex, has been subject to attacks on its oil pipelines. But this is due to theft, not extortion. Maquiladora factories — the duty-free workshops that sprawl along the U.S.-Mexico border — have largely been spared. So why did the cartel attack PepsiCo?
Again, it’s probably an extortion attempt. But another explanation involves rumors originating in the western states of Michoacán and Guanajuato — where the arson attacks occurred – that allege some of the company’s 14,500 delivery trucks are used by the federal security services for undercover intelligence operations. PepsiCo even issued a denial: “We repeat that in accordance with our code of conduct, all of our operations are carried out in the current regulatory framework and our vehicles and facilities are used exclusively to carry our products to our customer and clients,” read a company statement.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of the story: the perpetrators. A smaller splinter group of the western La Familia cartel, the Knights Templar have emerged only recently as a self-styled Christian military order. Before the March visit to Mexico by Pope Benedict XVI, the cartel pledged to cease fighting for the duration of the pontiff’s visit. The cartel has also sought to boost its appeal to the public through populist rhetoric, and has claimed it convinced Michoacan meat and tortilla vendors to lower their prices under “no pressure, no blackmail, much less charging fees.”
Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official for CISEN (Mexico’s equivalent to the CIA), suggested to the AP that the Knights Templar “have to be more aggressive in their use of extortion and alternative sources [of income] than practically any other cartel, except the Zetas,” he said.
Knights Templar propaganda likewise paints them as a muscle-bound medieval knights. Who are now at war with Cheetos — and Pepsi. Read that again. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
im retarded as well and forgot its not block quote since like 2001.
cbrickhouse @ May 30, 2012 9:19 PM
i think theat full strength military action is needed but i don't see it happening.i also think drugs should be legalized so these fucking assholes have less to make money from.
Tim E. Husk @ May 30, 2012 9:27 PM
Originally posted by: cbrickhouse
military action.
Absolutely. This is more of a case for state warfare - against organized and consistently violent pseudo-armies - than the 'war on terrorism' (not that terrorist organizations aren't also violent, but the Mexican situation is different in scale, consistency, and operations mostly within a single state.)
Tim E. Husk @ May 30, 2012 9:28 PM
I should also state that I mean a case for Mexico to declare war, not the U.S.
beef boy @ May 30, 2012 9:29 PM
Originally posted by: cbrickhouse
i think theat full strength military action is needed but i don't see it happening.
i also think drugs should be legalized so these fucking assholes have less to make money from.
the cartels won't stop until mexico is completely in their hands. and it's not as simple as one cartel taking over. while it is kind of "sticking it to the man" for things like the signing of NAFTA, these cartels do no good for the community (or proven, tangible good). I think direct military intervention could solve the issue, however that could be a horrible war.
the cartels controlling mexico would be one thousand times as dangerous to national security as any islamic jihadist organization.
beef boy @ May 30, 2012 9:31 PM
Originally posted by: barbarossa
I should also state that I mean a case for Mexico to declare war, not the U.S.
Dickscraper @ May 31, 2012 1:42 PM
I forget which (Nicaragua?), but a couple Central American countries' governments just opened up talks for legalizing drugs. So that's a step in the right direction, I guess.
cbrickhouse @ May 31, 2012 1:45 PM
at this point the cartels are already more powerful than the government forces, otherwise shit would already be taken care of. send in the navy seals. all of them.
beef boy @ May 31, 2012 1:48 PM
this has importance to our daily lives in so many ways. - Cartels are now willing to attack multi-national corporations, and for whatever reason they choose to attack that is a disturbing sign that they have no fear in doing such. To me, that is foreboding.
- If the cartels are attacking these corporations, how long before these corporations hire mercenaries to fight/protect assets for them in impoverished nations like this where those corporations have their plants.
- Even though no one should glorify people like the men involved in these cartels; how long before this is an epidemic of sorts for multi-national corporations and we start seeing other groups/outfits like this use this tactic in other parts of the developing world where corporate plants exist. (notably indonesia)
- What does it mean for the future of America's "war on immigration" if the government it should be working with to curtail the perceived "problem" could possibly be usurped by a cartel with unlimited funds that are the result, mostly, of our national drug problem?
to me, this article is more than some christian drug dealers smashing trucks of sabritas (which by the way make you poo liquid.)
