[cross-posted from zenpundit.com]
Altars to Santa Muerte, “Saint Death” to the poor and the narcocultos
SWJ has been en fuego the last few days and this is the first of several that I recommend that readers give close attention.
Dr. Robert J. Bunker and Lt. John Sullivan are indicating that the canary in the coal mine phase of Mexico’s narco-insurgency has passed. Mexican society is entering a new and more dangerous period of accelerating cultural devolution. Narco-insurgent violence has shifted from the economically motivated and brutally instrumental of organized crime syndicates everywhere to culturally totemic and ghastly ceremonials out of tribal prehistory:
Extreme Barbarism, a Death Cult, and Holy Warriors in Mexico: Societal Warfare South of the Border? by Dr. Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan
…Our impression is that what is now taking place in Mexico has for some time gone way beyond secular and criminal (economic) activities as defined by traditional organized crime studies.3 In fact, the intensity of change may indeed be increasing. Not only have de facto political elements come to the fore-i.e., when a cartel takes over an entire city or town, they have no choice but to take over political functions formerly administered by the local government- but social (narcocultura) and religious/spiritual (narcocultos) characteristics are now making themselves more pronounced. What we are likely witnessing is Mexican society starting to not only unravel but to go to war with itself. The bonds and relationships that hold that society together are fraying, unraveling, and, in some instances, the polarity is reversing itself with trust being replaced by mistrust and suspicion. Traditional Mexican values and competing criminal value systems are engaged in a brutal contest over the ?hearts, minds, and souls’ of its citizens in a street-by-street, block-by-block, and city-by-city war over the future social and political organization of Mexico. Environmental modification is taking place in some urban centers and rural outposts as deviant norms replace traditional ones and the younger generation fully accepts a criminal value system as their baseline of behavior because they have known no other. The continuing incidents of ever increasing barbarism-some would call this a manifestation of evil even if secularly motivated-and the growing popularity of a death cult are but two examples of this clash of values. Additionally, the early rise of what appears to be cartel holy warriors may now also be taking place. While extreme barbarism, death cults, and possibly now holy warriors found in the Mexican cartel wars are still somewhat the exception rather than the rule, each of these trends is extremely alarming, and will be touched upon in turn.
Read the rest here.
Some of the anecdotes in this article read like the climax scenes of Apocalypse Now in the Cambodian lair of Marlon Brando’s insane Colonel Kurtz or a bloody reverie of Hannibal Lecter. While the scale in Mexico is not yet the same, the mad cruelty equals anything seen in the eastern Congo and seems to surpass everywhere else.
The blowback from the thrice-damnable war on drugs seems to now be literally raising up demons.
Narco-violence seems to have gotten moral orders of magnitude worse in Mexico in less than a year, since January or so – and more chaotic to boot.
As things get worse for the Mexicans, they revert to a time when they ruled the land with an obsidian knife and millions of humans to murder. They seem to say “Well, the Western idea of civilization isn’t working out for us so let’s all return to the days before Columbus came.
I am just waiting for the stories of ritual cannibalism to start leaking out.
In my lifetime the USA has chosen to fight wars it doesn’t want to win, and the “war on drugs” was one of them. Osama’s remark about the strong horse applies here: if the USA can’t win a war on drugs, then drugs, drug dealers, and criminals are respected strong horse.
Europeans came to the New World hoping a make a better Europe. It’s the Aztecs and Hopi who have won: the brutality of the Aztecs, the government of the Incas, the spirituality of the Hopi have triumphed in minds and societies of the European immigrants, who themselves abandoned their own gods and their reason for primitive madness.
Savages, huh? Going off memory here, but I once read about some shrews in Phillpines that needed a dose of taming.
Underneath the starry flag,
Civilize them with the Krag.
Until they fight no more.
Raze it. Then set it up to work properly, with governance installed until they can do it correctly themselves. It worked for Germany and Japan, it will work for Mexico.
I used to go to Mexico frequently and had friends in Ensenada, a port town south of the border 80 miles. For a while, there was talk of Ensenada being developed as a competitor to Los Angeles-Long Beach ports. That talk has quieted down and I haven’t been to Mexico in ten years. I sailed in twenty-some Ensenada races, a sort of cultural event in southern California but haven’t done that in 15 years.
We may be on the road to having a failed state on our southern border.
but, but, according to fred reed, everything in mexico is fine and dandy (and usually better then here).
And Obama thinks foreign policy is about the Middle East.
We “may be on the road” to having a failed state on our southern border? How do we define failed? When the media is so intimidated that they refuse to report the news? When politicians are afraid to run for office? When the police are corrupt, and military weapons end up in the hands of the narcos? When the narcos take over all of the functions normally delegated to the government in entire regions of the country?
We could kill three birds with one stone by controlling our borders: Stop the flow of drugs, money, weapons, and also BTW—illegals. But that is not PC. In the meanwhile if anyone is noticing sanctioned hits by the narcos are occurring on this side of the border, and in the not so distant past intel has reported that elements associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have scouted out entry points into the US. I suppose not until a briefcase nuke goes off in a major city will something be done. Unbelievable.
“It worked for Germany and Japan, it will work for Mexico.”
No it won’t. Germany and Japan were (and are) fundamentally law-abiding societies. Mexico isn’t, and has never been.