Headless in Houston

Originally posted at DC Caller

South of the Border, drug cartels and gangs are revisiting the ancient Mayan art of beheading. It is likely the recent uptick in Mexican beheadings is largely the work of Los Zetas, a brutal drug cartel, founded by “31 elite army counter-narcotics commandos who defected to work as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.”  This particular cartel thrives on terrorizing, kidnapping, torturing, maiming and decapitating victims. The Zetas are so dedicated to the effort that in just four years 35,000 drug-related murders have taken place in Mexico, and many of the victims were found headless.

George W. Grayson, professor and expert on Mexican drug gangs, maintains:

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 contained outside the southern border. Seeping into the US are gunrunners, gang members, and drug cartels bringing with them the type of horrific murder and mayhem occurring just miles outside the borders of Texas, California and Arizona.

Yet despite random civilian shootings and ranchers being gunned down on private property, Obama Administration representative and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano continues to maintain that the border is presently “safer than ever.” Because of the administration’s apathetic attitude, Mexican cartels capable of ferocious military-style force are waging a war without opposition, fully aware that President Obama’s inaction aids their ability to gain access through US borders.

According to Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), 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 US Border agents, and the relatively meager 1,200 National Guardsmen President Obama sent – under duress – as reinforcements.

In an effort to terrorize that American stronghold into submission, in a school 220 miles from the border a brazen message was sent to the “Gringo” DEA agents, warning: “We know where you are and we know who you are and where you go. We are going to chop off your (expletive) heads.”

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 US Border agent Brian Terry.  Only this time, in an attempt to intimidate their foe, Los Zetas and company pledge to up the ante from shooting to beheading.

Threatening law enforcement, mutilating, killing, and dismembering the bodyguards of Mexican officials are common occurrences in Mexico. Also common is anonymously kidnapping random people off buses in Mexico, beheading them, and discarding mutilated bodies and heads along highways as a message to those who dare defy drug cartels like Los Zetas, “but it is rarer for them to threaten US law enforcement.”

As Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano reassures Americans about border safety, Los Zetas hone their machetes while harboring intentions 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 US citizens that what is happening on the border is an all-out war.