Mexican farm leader killed with 14 others on ranch

[Joanne98]

Source: Reuters


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen killed fifteen people on an isolated ranch in northern Mexico, including a prominent farmworker leader, in the latest grisly attack in an area overrun by drug gangs, local police said on Friday.

Margarito Montes, a well-known organizer of agricultural laborers, was among the bodies found riddled with bullets in trucks in the town of Hornos in southern Sonora, a state bordering the United States, a police spokesman said.

The cause of the crime was unknown but the killings had many of the hallmarks of hits by drug cartels, who often use automatic weapons to murder people in groups to send a message to rivals.

More than 15,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led assault on cartels soon after taking office in 2006.

Local farmers are often caught up in drug violence, paid or coerced to grow marijuana and opium poppies for powerful traffickers, often in northern states were cartels control large swaths of territory.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE59U0C620091031

---

This should have been titled "Mexico's selfish, greedy, mass murdering, right-wing elite assassinates union organizer and tries to make it look like the drug cartels did it."

[niyad]

1. that was what I was thinking

[the other one]

8. +1

[subsuelo]

2. I would also include "with U.S. support" in your title

[Joanne98]

3. Yep!

[New Dawn]

13. Bingo.

[WriteDown]

4. I heard it was agents of Coke Zero aided by the Illuminati...

:eyes:

[Nostradammit]

9. Always with the diversion, eh WriteDown?

Never let a chance to bolster right-wing opinion
or muddy the waters of inquiry pass you by, hmmm?

[WriteDown]

11. Everything else is a diversion. Coke Zero has pulled the wool over...

your eyes.

[AlphaCentauri]

5. Drug cartels are members of the right win

It would be imposible to find a real leftist managing a drug cartel

[JonQ]

6. I don't think the theory that cartels did it is all that unlikely

that is sort of their MO.

And now that mexico is finally starting to address the drug cartels I expect things to get worse before they get better. It's a necessary move, but it will naturally lead to an increase in violence for some time.

Of course legalizing drugs and growing them here would end it all with a few months and end up with many a former drug dealer looking for low paying manual labor jobs to feed themselves. In addition to saving the US billions and raising still more in tax revenue all the while creating jobs that won't be outsourced.

But that would be a sane approach to the problem.

[NashVegas]

14. I Don't Think They're (Dealers) Going to Go Back to Picking Corn & Cactus

[wordpix]

15. nothing wrong with picking flower buds, tho

:-)

[Pharlo]

7. My first thought was a government

hit job as well. However, if Sr. Montes is an activist, it's possible he was trying to assist, or organize, some farmers against the drug cartels too. Either way, someone wanted him out of the way for trying to help the farmers. The one cover story I will not buy is that Sr. Montes was 'collateral damage'. Someone was after him, and the other fourteen were added for emphasis - to prove a point.

[roody]

10. Mexico now is one of the biggest clients of School of the Americas.

Biggest as in the most numbers.

[nosmokes]

12. Can we all agree the war on drugs is pointless NOW?

FFS,we've been *fighting* this insanity for how many decades now? And what do we have to show for it? Prisons stockpiled w/ young men in the prime of their lives and the accompanying toll that takes on Society at every level.

[Peace Patriot]

16. The US 'war on drugs' creates mayhem in which the right can go back to the death squad 'solution'

for dealing with leftists. It's happening on a massive scale in Colombia--a country with one of the worst human rights record on earth, much of the carnage being labor leaders--and which the US lards with $6 BILLION in military aid, and now--just signed in secret in Colombia--seven new US military bases (more billions). It's happening in Peru where US "war on drugs" military aid is being used to slaughter indigenous farmers protesting the rape of the Amazon by multinational corporations. Wherever the failed, corrupt US "war on drugs" goes, death squads develop and leftists die. And the drug trade just keeps thriving.

I think the Pentagon is planning an oil war in South America. The "war on drugs" is also being used for this purpose--to establish or secure the military bases and other capacities needed for restoring global corporate predator control of the oil reserves in Venezuela and Ecuador, in particular, both adjacent to Colombia (and possibly also Cuba and Brazil). Honduras has a major US military base, is a major recipient of "war on drugs" booty, and has a long history of being used as a US "lily pad" country for aggression against neighboring leftist revolutions and governments. Honduras is adjacent to three Central American countries that recently elected leftist governments--Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala--and is a key US military air and naval access point to the Caribbean, where (last summer) the Bushwhacks reconstituted the US 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II). This is what the Honduran rightwing military coup is mostly about. The ousted president, Mel Zelaya, proposed converting the US air base to a commercial airport. If Zelaya (who has an approval rating of 67%) is restored to his rightful office (deal with the Junta brokered by the US this week), his powers will be severely limited and he has only two months left of his term--insufficient time to do anything, let alone oust the US military from its base. The Honduran Constitution, written by Reagan's henchmen in the 1980s, limits the president to ONE (4 year) term, to prevent any president from achieving the power to challenge the "ten families" oligarchy that runs the country and their "School of the Americas" trained military.

Securing Honduras for US corporate interests but most of all for US war profiteers is, in my opinion, part of an an oil war plan that Rumsfeld left on the desk and that seems to be proceeding of its own volition. It takes a lot of oil to run the US war machine. Iran got put "off the table," so where are they going to get it?

US taxpayers have been colossally suckered by the "war on drugs." In truth it is a war on the poor, a war on the left and a war for stealing resources.

[SpiralHawk]

17. Thanks for your anyalysis, Peace Pat

Eye opening.

[Selatius]

18. In a war zone, it's very easy to eliminate an enemy and then blame the general violence.

You just have to make it look like some other guy did it.