Public Intelligence

A man in military fatigues lies dead next a truck on a road after a gunbattle between rival drug gangs near the town of Ruiz, in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, Wednesday May 25, 2011. The Mexican army said they found 29 bodies wearing fake military uniforms heaped across the roadway and inside bullet-riddled vehicles. (AP Photo/Nayaritenlinea.mx)

Narco gangster reveals the underworld (Houston Chronicle):

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.

In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.

Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges.

…

Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, “Who is going to be the next hit man?”

“They cut guys to pieces,” he said.

The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said.

In the vicinity of the Mexican city of San Fernando, nearly 200 bodies were unearthed from pits, and authorities said most appeared to have died of blunt force head trauma.

Official: Mexican cartels use money, sex to bribe U.S. border agents (CNN):

Mexican drug cartels have used cash and sexual favors as tools to corrupt U.S. border and customs agents, an inspector general investigation has found.

In exchange, agents allow contraband or unauthorized immigrants through inspection lanes, protect or escort traffickers or leak sensitive information, said Charles Edwards, acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.

Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, Edwards cited the Zetas drug cartel as one of the leaders “involved increasingly in systematic corruption.”

He did not elaborate on how non-cash methods of corruption, like sexual favors, have been used to corrupt agents.

Female assassins a growing part of drug cartels (Brownsville Herald):

They are known as “Las Barbies,” “Las Tinkerbells” and “Las Reinas.” But the images they evoke in the criminal underworld in Mexico are far from those of innocent dolls, bells and queens.

According to intelligence reports, the terms are used by drug-trafficking organizations for “mujeres sicarias” — hit women.

Then there are the “Radieras” and the “Halconeras.” They act as lookouts, manning radios at strategic points on the roads and who, like hawks, watch the activity of Mexico’s federal police, military and marines in order to alert the cartels.

The participation of women in cartels for kidnapping, extortion and murder is seen by some as females taking a wider role in general.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, assistant professor of government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, described it as “a phenomenon in which women are really gaining spaces in different types of activities, not only productive or related to economic development.”