_____________________________________
The article below comes from AM Radio KURV - 710 here on the border. It speaks the truth about an occurrence and also leaves much on the table from which one can construct other good conclusions.
The most recent leader of the Gulf Cartel, who was arrested in the Rio Grande Valley three months ago, has pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Juan Francisco Saenz Tamez signed off on the plea agreement Tuesday in Beaumont federal court — admitting to trafficking tons of marijuana and cocaine into the U-S, and hiding the illegal profits. Federal drug investigators, who’d been tracking Saenz Tamez, were able to nab him, peacefully, at the Academy Sports and Outdoors store in Edinburg October 9th. Investigators say the 23-year-old Saenz Tamez had taken over the leadership of the fractured Gulf Cartel just a few months before his arrest. He is named in a more than year-old U-S indictment linking him to a large-scale international drug smuggling and trafficking operation.
This individual really is (was) the Numero Uno for a couple of months....perhaps a bit more....rising up from the ranks quickly due to the losses being suffered by the Gulf syndicate. Those losses began to become catastrophic during 2012 and 2013 due to confrontations with the Mexican Army and the Naval Infantry, along with almost continuous skirmishing with an equally diminishing ZETA group.
As we have pointed out on several occasions in this publication, one of the reasons the Central American hordes came pouring up through Tamaulipas and into South Texas at the McAllen last year was because they could move through with little or no need for a "coyote". The people who had been handling a large minority of illegal aliens from Central America 2 t0 4 years before had been the Gulf Cartel.
We would like the OROG to consider the age of the "leader" of the Gulf organisation. He was probably being allowed to cross back and forth from Mexico to Texas by various authorities on both sides of the Rio, all the while being monitored. Saenz-Tamez's hubris bespeaks of his stupidity, inexperience, self-indulgence and any number of other tactical and strategic failures.
But, as El Gringo Viejo has been pointing out for the past several months...perhaps a year now...the steady degradation of the old cartel structures by the Mexican Military does have a positive effect upon the culture and the civilisation. A person of Saenz-Tamez's age would have been found as a neighbourhood co-ordinator in Matamoros or Tampico. Even then, he would have been closely supervised. All the "old men" (28 - 45 years of age) are dead, horribly wounded, or in prison in the Texas or Mexico. Fewer young men are coming into "the business" to replace them. It is still not time to lessen the pressure, however.
One other sign of the times? As I drove back up last Sunday, about 30 miles south of Reynosa, there was a convoy of very high-end RVs and motorhomes heading south, probably to the Emerald Coast of central Vera Cruz or to a Guadalajara - Ajijic - Jojotepec winter stay. Possibly, they could have been doing a "grand excursion" staying in ten or twelve different places before returning to the States in early March. It was looking more like the old days, in that this convoy had about 40 units, all of them upper-middle to high-end.
We'll leave this all with you. To-morrow we go up to the Austin area to help marry off our son on Friday. We'll try to bring some pictures and tales of the adventure.
El Gringo Viejo
________________________________________
