Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.
Then, they’ll go after everyone on that person’s contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats.
“You can’t go five minutes out of the city, … not even in daylight,” said Ismael Bojórquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. “Why? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone.”
They already are. Thats why they can do whatever the fuck they want.
Not talking about extortion, kidnapping, murder. If an organization can become the dominant political party of an entire country with the stated goal of destroying another country or keeping girls out of school or men must have beards, then why not produce and export drugs.
So a narco state. It hasn’t happened there, because Mexico still has the semblance of a functioning government (despite mayors getting murdered within weeks of getting elected). I don’t think it’s quite there, but it could very much end up there.