Making sense

Crimes, when first reported, don’t always make sense. I started out to write on the Eiler murder in Oaxaca (a twenty-year old dance teacher’s murder that was being used as – I think unconscionably — for political purposes), but I can’t think straight.

I’m tired. It happens. I haven’t NOT written at least one new post a day since at least April. I find myself writing more about politics and current events than about history and culture and havent’ had the time to work on other projects like I should. And, though this isn’t a “personal blog” I have a personal life and sometimes that has to take priority. Like admitting to myself that I just need a day off.

I posted the “Fraude Mexico 2006” videos to run this week, fully intending to comment on each one as they were scheduled to appear. But, I just couldn’t work yesterday, and will have to catch them up later. All I was able to do last night was this short piece (I’ll schedule it to post at 9:30 on Thursday) and come back to things later.

Here, in Mazatlan, an attempted payroll robbery at one of the new condo construction projects went south…. with army chases down the beach, shootings, etc.  Of course, the retirees and foreigners who live up that way were freaked, but the baddies were caught, and… once it got weirder, the robbery made sense.  And actually showed that things are getting better, not worse.

The payroll robbers were out-of-town hitmen (which nicely clears up the not very mysterious discovery of a couple headless corpses in a stolen SUV down by my local supermarket) who’d been operating out of a nice, quiet home in a gringo-heavy neighborhood while doing their various torturing, beheadings, and other dirty deeds.  Now that should freak out the gringos, but it demonstrates what I’ve thought for some time… that the gringo ghetto-dwellers don’t have anything to do with their Mexican neighbors, and — unlike people in a normal Mexican neighborhood — don’t notice the neighbors to begin with.  And,  of course, gangsters are looking to improve their economic status in ways that legitimate workers can’t:  of course they want to live in the upscale areas.  I used to figure the safest place in any town to live was next to the local mafia boss…. though these guys weren’t ‘da boss’ and they tended to bring their work home with them.

Anyway… and this is very interesting… these guys turned to robbing payrolls for the simple reason that they hadn’t received their paychecks.  Did Lehman Brothers cut off credit to the cartels?  Or, is the “surge” in the war on (some) drugs working?  Either way, it’s a good thing when eight hitmen go to the slammer, a few crimes get resolved and there’s every indication that the cartels are having financial problems.