Posts Tagged ‘cartels’
Drug gangs “self-rule” Mexican prisons
SALTILLO, Mexico — The Zetas have the run of the prison in this industrial city 190 miles southwest of Lardeo, Texas, in what is known as autogobierno or self-rule. It dates back decades and forms of it exist in correctional facilities the world over.
But self-rule has become more of a problem in Mexico recently as prison populations swell with suspects detained in the ongoing crackdown on organized crime and the country’s drug cartels seize power behind bars.
The most recent prison report from the National Human Rights Commission shows self-rule on the rise. Drug cartels and their affiliated gangs are among those increasingly seizing control, say prison observers…
Security experts such as Vicente Sánchez, professor at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana, say self-rule exists mostly in state-level facilities. It took hold over the past four decades due to corruption, neglect and underfunding, he says, as prison mafias got involved in everything from peddling drugs to charging for the right to sleep on bunks.
“It’s an expression of the enormous corruption that there is in these kinds of public security fields,” he says.
David Ordaz, investigator at the National Criminal Sciences Institute, of the Attorney General’s Office says the cartels want to maintain their status and replicate power structures formed on the outside. Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, ombudsman for the Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission in Ciudad Juarez, says that wardens have cut deals with prison mafias over the years – mafias now controlled by the cartels.
Self-rule, he says, “Means having total control over an inmate population,” along with “the ability to communicate with the outside without restrictions…”
Los Zetas…now operate stores and charge the inmates to use workshops. They even opened a strip joint that serves shots of whiskey under the Los Zetas brand.
Does anyone think the war on drug gangs will get anywhere when the rest of the corrupt infrastructure of Mexico remains untouched? Time in prison is spent resting up for the return to action.
