Tag: Mexico

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Sinaloa

map SinaloaThe Mexican state of Sinaloa (2.9 million) is too small to qualify as a millisphere but combined with the state of Sonora (also 2.9 million) we have a millisphere stretching from the US border in the north to Guadalajara in the south. I call this millisphere “Sinaloa” because both states are “controlled” by the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Sinaloa’s colonisation by Spain in the 16th century transformed the landscape. Concerned about Cortez and his conquistadors turning Mexico into their own domain King Charles sent his personal bodyguard, Nuno de Guzman, to establish control for the Spanish crown.

On horseback, de Guzman’s forces headed northwest into unclaimed territory, following Indian walking trails from village to village, slaughtering and enslaving and capturing corn supplies. Slaves were used to open the walking trails though the thorny scrub to accommodate a man on a horse and we have the route the highway follows today.

Proving to be truly psychotic in his attempt to outdo Cortez de Guzman was eventually sent back to Spain in chains, leaving behind an almost deserted millisphere. When gold and silver were discovered in the Sierras, Amerindian and African slaves and poor Spaniards were brought in, and their descendants populate the Sinaloa millisphere today.

Last week the former “head” of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin Guzman, aka El Chapo, was convicted in a New York Federal Court on firearms, drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Key witnesses to testify against El Chapo were Jesus Zambada and Vicente Zambada the brother and the son of “El Mayo” Zambada, who now heads the Sinaloa cartel – along with El Chapo’s sons.

El Chapo was born in Mexico’s “Triangulo Dorado” (Golden Triangle), in the mountains between Culiacan, Durango and Chihuahua, some time in the 1950s. Poverty in Mexico and the demand for cannabis in America meant El Chapo was growing marijuana from an early age.

By the 1960s the Sinaloa marijuana farmers had formed a growers’ collective and were developing stronger varieties of cannabis. The potent “sinsemilia” strain (Spanish for “without seed”) was developed in Sinaloa and much of the weed the hippies were smoking north of the border in the 1970s was being supplied by what became the Sinaloa Cartel.

El Chapo’s strength was “freight logistics”, and he had a network of tunnels dug across the US/Mexico border. The Columbians nicknamed him El Rapido for the speed he moved their cocaine into the American market and by the 1990s the Sinaloa cartel was fabulously wealthy – and El Chapo was in jail.

In 2001 he escaped from prison for the first time and he was on the loose somewhere in Sinaloa when my travel companion and I passed through. Mazatlan, where El Chapo was recaptured in 2014, was a laid back, heritage tourist town with a nice beach. Motorhome parks were filled with “snow birds” from as far north as Canada.

Los Mochis, where El Chapo was recaptured, again, in 2018, is where you catch the Chihuahua-Pacific that takes you through the scenic Copper Canyon (deeper and longer that the Grand Canyon).

At Los Mochis we slept in and missed the early “tourist” train. Trundeling northeast towards the Sierras, a bi-plane, trailing a plume of mist, came in low and sprayed our train, and a team of Mexicans picking tomatoes, probably for Los Angeles; vulchers settled on Saroya cacti in the sunset, and it was dark when we entered the canyon.

Since El Chapo’s recapture and extradition to New York, the volume of heroin crossing Mexico’s northern border into the USA has gone up by 40 percent and Fentanyl is up 100 percent. Since de-facto cannabis decriminalisation in many US states, Mexican marijuana exports have dropped by 40 percent.

Sitting in the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Centre, in New York, El Chapo now faces being transferred to the dreaded ADX, in Colorado, where 500 men are kept in permanent solitary confinement.

Fifteen tonnes of Columbian cocaine is worth 39 million in LA, 48 million in Chicago, and 78 million in New York, still the most lucrative market (Guzman trial evidence).

“The day I don’t exist [drugs] are not going to decrease in anyway at all,” Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, Rolling Stone interview, 2017.

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Chilangolandia

It didn’t matter who became the next president of the Nation of Darkness (POTNOD). Nothing will change very fast. Their toxic food, drug and gun culture will remain and the American empire will continue to spend half its annual budget on “defence” i.e. weapons of mass destruction.

Currently the world is fixating on travel restrictions, imposed by the new POTNOD, but crossing a United States border could be an unpleasant experience already, whether it is entering the “homeland” or crossing between states.

In Europe your details will have been processed while you are still in the air and when you land at Schiphol or Frankfurt you just walk straight in, and it’s the same driving from one country to the next. In the EU there will be a sign beside the road as you drive across the border, not a state trooper asking to see your passport yet again as in “the States”.

I remember the first time I entered the United State of America I was presented with the following sentence: Have you ever been arrested or convicted of an offence or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or been arrested or convicted for two or more offences for which the aggregated sentence or confinement was five years or more; or been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?

A country, which has been known to engage in assassination and torture and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands civilians in some military adventure abroad, was asking me if I had committed a moral turpitude! Tempting as it was to ask the border person what a turpitude was and whether Uncle Sam had the blood of innocent people on his hands, I thought it was safer to just tick the no box.

I once discovered that if you want to experience bad tempered American border guards at their rudest try crossing from Mexico, at night and without a visa (coming from a visa waiver country New Zealanders don’t need a visa). And then there is the lengthy process of standing on two yellow footprints and looking at a camera, as a machine, a good deal more intelligent than its operator, computerises your iris, finger and thumbprints.

Unfortunately if you place a string on a globe east from Auckland to Heath Row in London it will pass directly over LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) which most travellers to and from Europe use as their half way transit hub.

There are Air New Zealand flights direct to San Diego and Houston (for those wanting to travel on to Cuba, Mexico and Central America) and one to Vancouver, which means it is possible fly east around the north of the USA.

Mexico City International Airport (MEX) would be a convenient transit hub for both the Caribbean and Central America or onwards to Europe but as yet there are no direct flights from NZ to MEX for travellers who want to avoid the Nation of Darkness

MEX is Latin America’s second busiest airport and air traffic there “exceeds current capacity.” A new international airport will be completed next year and with the capability to move 120 million passengers per year it has the potential to become the busiest airport in the world.

A media spokesperson said Air New Zealand was not considering a direct flight to Mexico City anytime soon.

Given the choice of stopping over in LAX or MEX I would recommend the later. It helps if you can speak a little Spanish but the art galleries and museums, the street life and music, the food and the Hispanic style are well worth the journey. By distancing itself from the drug wars Mexico City is a safe city, of sorts.

The United States of Mexico is a federation of 31 states and one federal district. In the heart of Mexico City is the old “Districto Federal,” population 8.9 million, which has last year been given the status of a state and is now known as the “State of the Valley of Mexico.”

Greater Mexico City has an urban population of over 21 million and counting the surrounding municipalities Mexico City is the centre of a “megalopolis” of 34 million (2015) the sheer scale making it one of the largest economies of any “global city.”

Mexicans refer to Mexico City as “Chilangolandia” – a chilango being a loud, arrogant, ill-mannered, loutish person.

Now that the chilango gringo POTNOD north of the border has scrapped the TPP the Mexican government has initiated direct trade talks with the New Zealand government. What an economic opportunity. New Zealand prime minister Bill English should tell Mexican president Enrique: the first thing we need is a direct flight to MEX as soon as the new international airport is operational in 2018.

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Juarez/El Paso

Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton reality television show

Two American elections ago during their primaries, when Barak Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the candidacy of the Democrat Party, we found ourselves in El Paso USA. That night we had crossed from Juarez on the Mexican side. George Bush had recently given the Mexican government US 1.4 billion dollars worth of weaponry to fight the ‘war on drugs’, much of which ending up in the wrong hands. When we passed through, we were blissfully unaware that the Juarez police were holed up in their police stations, too frightened to come out, as two cartels battled for possession of the ‘plaza.’

‘Safe’ in the USA, I was outside our hotel winding down with a cigarette and met a fellow smoker sheltering from a bitter winter wind. He was attending a political meeting around the corner and invited me along. In a bar, a rally of Ron Paul libertarians supported their candidate, running against John McCain for the Republican nomination. They were an interesting bunch of outsiders: small businessmen, blacks, Navahos, gays and intellectuals for the unfettered right. A city councillor engaged me in conversation. “How does the rest of world see America?” she asked. “As a nation or individuals?” I asked. “As a country, how do you see the United States?” “Well for me,” I replied, “an arrogant bully.” “Can you give me an example?” she continued. “Good question,” I told her, “ in a motel in Chihuahua last night I watched CNN; ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ CNN said, referring to George Bush’s recent trip to Israel, the following item reported his next stop, Saudi Arabia, where he gave them US ten billion dollars worth of military equipment, well,” I concluded, “blessed indeed are the peacemakers, and cursed are the arms dealers.” There was a sharp intake of breath from the councillor – but she had asked.

Barak Obama went on to win the presidency and CNN opined about how far civil rights in their country had come when a black man could be installed in the oval office and there was hope that Obama could disentangle America from the war in the Middle East. By the end of Obama’s two terms, American police have become militarised with surplus equipment from the Middle East and blacks are getting increasingly vocal about being shot down in the street.

Meanwhile the Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton reality television show, currently beaming out of the USA on the global infotainment channels, shows us that life does indeed mimic art. A veteran reality TV star, Trump understands the value of shock for increasing ratings.

Just as ‘America needs a black president,’ was part of Obama’s appeal, now ‘America needs a woman president,’ is part of Clinton’s pitch. Should a woman become the next American president, expect CNN to celebrate gender equality at the highest levels of power – as the daughters of the’ Third Wave’ feminists aspire to be Kardasians, and their granddaughters star in their own porn movies. Either way expect America to continue spending half of its annual budget on ‘defence.’