Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.
Then, they’ll go after everyone on that person’s contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats.
“You can’t go five minutes out of the city, … not even in daylight,” said Ismael Bojórquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. “Why? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone.”
Looking for this info in actual mexican newspapers. Can’t find something that isn’t US newspaper articles.
It’s complicated:
Threats against journalists and their sources have increased exponentially since the latest round of factional fighting broke out after two Sinaloa drug capos — one from each faction — flew to the United States and were arrested there.
. . .
Journalists have reported being stopped by gunmen on roadways outside Culiacan and told they couldn’t cover the continuing gunbattles happening on the outskirts of the city on an almost daily basis.
The fear is well founded; in 2022, one of El Debate’s columnists, Luis Enrique Ramírez, was abducted and killed in Culiacan. His beaten body was found wrapped in plastic on a dirt road outside the city.
Do they also kill me if I type a duress password instead of unlocking it?
Decoy phone, loaded with group chats with their mums
Believe it or not, straight to death.
Depends on the angle. You might be able to have their mother saying how much she loves and misses her son.
Then you get a golden ticket, the gang dissolves, and we have world peace
This is terrible and disgusting. These cartels have gotten progressively worse over the years, at what point does this shit stop. Another nightmare created by the “War on Drugs.”
it will stop whenever we stop demonizing people for wanting a temporary escape from this shitty fucking world.
The obvious issue is the US making the drugs illegal. Legalize it and pay for legal imports from a regulated industry, and the cartels loose power
Unfortunately I don’t think it will. These fucks have already moved into different “markets” than drugs, they’ll continue regardless.
thanks, war on drugs
Not nice. Why don’t the cartels legitimately enter government and change the system from the inside.
They already are. Thats why they can do whatever the fuck they want.
Not talking about extortion, kidnapping, murder. If an organization can become the dominant political party of an entire country with the stated goal of destroying another country or keeping girls out of school or men must have beards, then why not produce and export drugs.
So a narco state. It hasn’t happened there, because Mexico still has the semblance of a functioning government (despite mayors getting murdered within weeks of getting elected). I don’t think it’s quite there, but it could very much end up there.
It might seem like a leap, but if you consider my country is run by a minority of people who extract the maximum amount of wealth solely for themselves, possibly destroying the habitability of the planet for all mankind. They police the entire planet to stamp out terrorism and communists which are mostly just people who want to extract wealth more equitably. How can the few go against the wishes and benefit of the many. They get them fighting each other. Convince people that destroying yourself or at least your productivity is far worse a sin than enabling slavery, genocide, and an apocalyptic future.
for the same reason that the electoral college will never be abolished; there’s money to be made by keeping the status quo.
So they can legitimately murder you for opposing them
You can’t be serious…
Because they make more money as they are.
