The bodies of nine decapitated men were found in a vacant lot in Tijuana Sunday

[rickf]

TIJUANA, Mexico — The bodies of nine decapitated men were found in a vacant lot in Tijuana Sunday, part of a wave of violence that claimed at least 23 lives over the weekend in this border city plagued by warring traffickers, authorities said.

The heads were discovered in plastic bags near the bodies in a poor neighborhood of Tijuana, across from San Diego, Baja California state police said in a statement. Three police identification cards were also found at the site.

The statement gave no motive for the killings, but they came as Mexico's drug cartels wage a bloody fight for smuggling routes and against government forces, dumping beheaded bodies onto streets, carrying out massacres and even tossing grenades into a crowd of Independence Day revelers — an attack that killed eight people in September.

More than 4,000 people have died so far this year in drug-related violence in Mexico.

Across Tijuana on Sunday, attacks by gunmen killed five people in addition to the nine beheaded bodies.

State police said nine more people were killed in attacks on Saturday. In one, gunmen killed a 4-year-old child in an attack on a grocery store.

Baja California has suffered a rising wave of homicides, which officials blame on a struggle between rival cells of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel.
The Arellano Felix cartel emerged in the 1980s as a drug trafficking powerhouse across the U.S. border from San Diego, but has been weakened in recent years as leaders were killed or captured.

Last month, police arrested Eduardo Arellano Felix, the alleged leader of the cartel. Authorities say his nephew, Luis Fernando Sanchez Arellano, has taken over the cartel's operations and is fighting contenders.

President Felipe Calderon on Sunday vowed his government would never negotiate with drug lords no matter how much the violence escalates.

Since taking office on Dec. 1, 2006, Calderon has sent more than 20,000 soldiers to battle drug trafficking across Mexico, helping to seize of 70 tons of cocaine and 3,700 tons of marijuana, he said.

"We know that the results are far from what society demands, but that's why we'll keep fighting these criminals across the country," Calderon told a meeting on Sunday marking his first two years in office.

[FarrisMotorsports]

Shouldn't this be posted in the whatever-general discussion section???

[cosmo]

Shouldn't this be posted in the whatever-general discussion section???

I agree, racing it's not.

[AzBajaman]

3rd........

[FarrisMotorsports]

These are terrible tragedies...but I'm getting really tired of everyone posting this stuff in the desert section. Any mods want to move this?

[pdailey]

What does this have to do with racing? The Baja 1000 is over.

[nimrod]

It's important to people who go down there to know what's going on. It's a pain to cross in Tecate even though it seems to be MUCH safer.....I am not that much bothered by the extra drive if I know there is good reason....

The go fast haul butt part of me has a hard time driving out to Tecate to go to Ensenada when it's so much faster through TJ....

This kind of info is negative and I'm tired of it but it's a necessary evil for those of us who are going down there to be informed....

Unfortunately the LA Times does a great job of reporting this stuff and even more unfortunately my wife does a really really good job of reading it and immediately letting me know about it.......

Aye Carumba!

Luckily I'm headed to Henderson next week!

My wife really wants to know why Desert racing only seems to happen in places with legal gambling and legal prostitution.......I'm not sure what to tell her except that I really hate losing and rarely gamble and well.......23 years of marriage to her should help iron out the other problem.....

[FarrisMotorsports]

It's important to people who go down there to know what's going on. It's a pain to cross in Tecate even though it seems to be MUCH safer.....I am not that much bothered by the extra drive if I know there is good reason....

The go fast haul butt part of me has a hard time driving out to Tecate to go to Ensenada when it's so much faster through TJ....

This kind of info is negative and I'm tired of it but it's a necessary evil for those of us who are going down there to be informed....

Unfortunately the LA Times does a great job of reporting this stuff and even more unfortunately my wife does a really really good job of reading it and immediately letting me know about it.......

Aye Carumba!

It has it's place...I agree. Just not in this section.

[pdailey]

We get enough of this leading up to the Baja races. It is a broken record at this point, especially the weekend AFTER the Baja 1000.
Just my 2 cents

[chicken lips the ocho]

does rickf get a prize for being the 1 millionth person to start a thread about baja

come on people what do you guys expect the cartels to just roll over and quit? its a necessary step to bring them down

[rickf]

Gentlemen,

I realized immediately after I posted this that it was in the wrong forum and PM'd a mod to move it.

Glad we all had a safe race but 23 dead in a weekend bears mentioning.

[dan200]

Glad we all had a safe race but 23 dead in a weekend bears mentioning.

seconded

[chicken lips the ocho]

Gentlemen,

I realized immediately after I posted this that it was in the wrong forum and PM'd a mod to move it.

Glad we all had a safe race but 23 dead in a weekend bears mentioning.

ok it was the racing section that bother me, i dont need to read it to know somebodys getting killed in tijuana, as a matter of fact im willing to bet that atleast one hitman is planning another killing as i type this

[Vtr_Racing]

Click your heels 3 times. Its done.....It wont happen again.....
Now reality...This was from the San Diego Trib.....I think this may hit closer to home then you all realize.
Agreed, no need for this to be in the racing section.
Informational purposes only. Be safe when you go down there everybody.

Cops found decapitated; tot, teen among victims
By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

December 1, 2008



AFN
Public safety workers at the scene.
The decapitated bodies of three police officers were found alongside six other beheaded corpses yesterday in a weekend of violence in which 34 people were slain in different sections of Tijuana.
The victims included a 4-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy, killed by gunmen Saturday night together with two adults by a grocery store in eastern Tijuana. Several hours later, the 18-year-old nephew of Baja California's tourism secretary was found shot to death inside a vehicle a few miles east of downtown.

The deaths bring to more than 360 the number killed since late September, when the violence between rival drug gangs first began to soar in a turf battle targeting each other and law enforcement officials. The total dead so far this year is more than 740, compared with 337 for all of 2007.

The nine decapitated corpses were discovered about noon in an eastern section of the city. They were found beneath a power line that runs through a neighborhood of modest houses and small businesses. The officers'identification cards had been left with the bodies, said a spokeswoman for the Baja California Attorney General's Office.

The three police officers had been assigned to high-crime districts in eastern Tijuana and Otay Mesa, the Tijuana police department said. The Baja California Attorney General's Office identified them as Rudy Galeana Guillén, Esaul RNos Montiel and Jesús Alberto Lara Ruiz.



Advertisement It was unclear whether the officers were among a group of more than 400 officers in those districts and two others temporarily taken off their beats so they can receive training and undergo extensive background checks.
A fourth officer, Alan Bernal Estrada, was slain Saturday at a used auto-parts business, the Attorney General's Office said.

The slayings have come as many officers in the 2,200-member department have been under suspicion of having links to drug traffickers. Some 200 officers have been dropped from the force since Mayor Jorge Ramos took office a year ago. An additional 20 officers – many of them high-ranking commanders – are currently being held for questioning by organized crime investigators in Mexico City.

“It is a very difficult situation,” Alberto Capella Ibarra, Tijuana's secretary of public safety, said in a radio interview yesterday morning on Radio Hispana 1470-AM. The violence, he said, “is the consequence of . . . so many years of impunity, so many years of breakdowns of institutions, so many years that we allowed this to grow.”

President Felipe Calderón's campaign against drug cartels has ignited a violent reaction across Mexico as the weakened groups battle each other and take on law enforcement agencies. The large border cities of Ciudad Juarez and more recently, Tijuana, have been among the hardest-hit areas.

“The easiest thing for the federal government would have been closing our eyes to reality,” Calderón said yesterday in Mexico City. “We did not do so, deciding to confront it, with all of its consequences.”

Even with the rise in violence, this weekend's carnage was unusually high for Tijuana. The state reported 34 dead in 14 incidents Saturday and yesterday. Eleven victims had been identified, and seven had criminal records, according to a statement from the Attorney General's Office.

One of the most vicious incidents involved the deaths of four people, including the 4-and 13-year-old boys, at a grocery Saturday night in eastern Tijuana. The 13-year-old was found in the back seat of Volkswagen Jetta outside the store, and the 4-year-old was in the arms of an injured woman seated at the entrance, municipal police said.

An incident early yesterday involved the nephew of tourism secretary Oscar Escobedo and Mario Escobedo, president of the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce. The Attorney General's Office said that Angel Escobedo JNmenez, 18, was found shot to death inside a vehicle, several miles southeast of downtown.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com

[BGRANT]

Not living in SD anymore I don't see what is on the local SD news channels. Do they have coverage of these murders? If there were 34 murders in one weekend in Canada, or most any other country, it would be all over the national news. Mumbai had a ton of coverage and I think it pales in comparison as to what is going on right in our own back yard. I have heard that the cartels are recruiting gang members from SD as hitmen? This is realy startingto hit close to home and I think it is only a matter of time before these cartels are braisen enough to commit these crimes in the U.S. I think the dealers posing as cops in Vegas to kidnap that boy a couple of months ago is just the begining.
Just my .02

[JENN]

The new Secretary at work came up to me today and says "Wow you really weren't joking about the drug cartles in Mex"... I said "yeah?" .. Kinda confused as to what she was getting at..

Her boyfriend's PARENTS truck was stolen in AZ and used for drug running. It was located by the US Border Patrol and damaged pretty bad due to being torn apart in search of drugs. Truck went missing last Wednesday and was recovered Saturday.