Though Washington Post reporter William Booth can barely keep the sneering contempt for the Mexican Mormons out of his report his piece is one of the best reports on the conflict between Mexico’s drug cartels and the religious sect that just wants to farm in peace. Mexico’s government has given the sect permission to form a rural police force and arm themselves, which just shows how out of control Mexico is.
Booth, like many here, miss the point about the Cartel’s power grab. Legalization of drugs here will do nothing to put this genie back in the bottle. Otherwise this report, and the included video, give you a sense of how hopeless the situation is down there:
In the past three months, American Mormon communities in Mexico have been sucked into a dust devil of violence sweeping the borderlands. Their relative wealth has made them targets: Their telephones ring with threats of extortion. Their children and elders are taken by kidnappers. They have been drawn into the government’s war with the drug cartels.
This month, a leader of their colony was abducted by heavily armed men dressed as police, then beaten and shot dead 10 minutes from town. Benjamin LeBaron, 31, whom everyone called Benji, had dared to denounce the criminals, while refusing to pay a $1 million ransom demanded by kidnappers who had grabbed his teenage brother from a family ranch in May.
Amid the blood and mesquite at the site of his last breath, Benjamin LeBaron’s killers posted a sign that read: “This is for the leaders of LeBaron who didn’t believe and who still don’t believe.”
[…]
“All we want to do is live in peace. We want nothing to do with the drug cartels. They can’t be stopped. What we want is just to protect ourselves from being kidnapped and killed,” said Marco LeBaron, a college student who came home for the funeral of his brother, the slain anti-crime activist. Marco LeBaron is one of 70 Mormons who have volunteered to join a rural police force to protect the town. The Mexican government has given them permission to arm themselves.
For a taste of how the gangs operate, this section describes a home invasion. Not for the squeamish:
Early on July 7, four trucks loaded with men passed through a highway tollbooth, where they were recorded on videotape outside Galeana, where Benjamin LeBaron lived in a sprawling, new stucco home with his wife and five young children. Two trucks stopped at the cemetery outside town and waited. Two pickup trucks filled with 15 to 20 heavily armed men, wearing helmets, bulletproof vests and blue uniforms, came for LeBaron.
They smashed in his home’s windows and shouted for him to open the door, as his terrified children cried inside, according to an account given by his brothers. LeBaron’s brother-in-law Luis Widmar, 29, who lived across the street, heard the commotion and ran to his aid. Both men were beaten by the gunmen, who threatened to rape LeBaron’s wife in front of her children unless the men revealed where LeBaron kept his arsenal of weapons.
“But he didn’t have any, because I promise you, if he did, he would have used them to protect his family,” Julian LeBaron said.
LeBaron and Widmar were shot in the head outside town. A banner was hung beside their bodies that blamed them for the arrest of 25 gunmen who were seized in June after terrorizing the town of Nicolas Bravo, where they burned down buildings and extorted from business owners. According to Mexican law enforcement officials, the gunmen are members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which is fighting the Juarez cartel for billion-dollar cocaine-smuggling routes into El Paso.
After the men killed LeBaron and Widmar, a video camera captured their departure at the highway tollbooth — the make, model and year of their vehicles and the license numbers, according to family members. There have been no arrests.
h/t N.T.A.