South of the border, drug cartels and gangs are revisiting the ancient Mayan art of beheading. It is likely that the recent uptick in Mexican beheadings is largely the work of Los Zetas, a brutal Mexican drug cartel that thrives on terrorizing, kidnapping, torturing, maiming and decapitating its victims.
George W. Grayson, an expert on Mexican drug gangs, maintains that, “While the beheadings and dismemberments are used to punish those who oppose or betray them, to establish turf, to terrorize the citizenry against testifying against them and to press political leaders to collaborate, random killings also have become the gang’s trademark — used by the Zetas, to demonstrate that no one is beyond their reach, that they can kidnap, torture and kill anyone they choose.”
In Mexico, no one is safe, be they men, women or children, young or old. Heads have been found severed from bodies and lined up on the street, arranged on car hoods and even rolled like bowling balls onto dance floors. As a warning to anyone who dares defy the power or the plans of Mexico’s most powerful cartel, headless torsos are hung from bridges, buried in mass graves and tossed like fertilizer bags into the backs of pickup trucks.
Contrary to the claims of the Obama administration, the violence is not just south of the border. Seeping into the U.S. are gunrunners, gang members and drug cartels that bring with them the type of horrific murder and mayhem occurring just miles south of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Yet despite random civilian shootings and ranchers being gunned down on private property, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano continues to maintain that the border is “safer than ever.” Because of the administration’s apathetic attitude, Mexican cartels capable of military-style force are waging a war without opposition, fully aware that President Obama’s inaction makes it easier for them to enter the U.S.
According to Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), the “Gulf and the Sinaloa drug trafficking organizations — including, presumably, the Zetas Organization — could together muster an army of some 100,000 guns.”
Thus far, the only thing standing in the way of paramilitary groups using those guns to fully infiltrate the American border is the DEA, ICE and U.S. border agents, and the relatively meager 1,200 national guardsmen that President Obama sent — under duress — as reinforcements.
Drug cartels that collect skulls in Mexico and wreak havoc armed with illegal guns from the United States are now emboldened enough to bully DEA agents and continue to target brave men like the late ICE agent Jamie Zapata and U.S. border agent Brian Terry. Only this time, in an attempt to intimidate their foes, Los Zetas and company pledge to up the ante from shooting to beheading.
As Napolitano reassures Americans about border safety, Los Zetas are planning to prove her wrong. Those who continue to buy the “safer than ever” line and believe such barbaric atrocities will never visit American cities are obviously unaware of what happened to Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy, a man accused of stealing drugs who was found bludgeoned to death and beheaded in an apartment complex in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.
Thus far, it has taken two dead agents murdered with American guns to reveal the utter recklessness of the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” fiasco. What remains to be seen is how many headless American torsos it will take to convince a president more concerned with placating illegals than protecting U.S. citizens that what is happening on the border is an all-out war.
Jeannie DeAngelis is first a wife, mother, and grandmother. A staunch conservative, Jeannie is a frequent contributor at American Thinker, Renew America and BIG Hollywood. She blogs at Jeannie-ology.