Hidden Layers
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Helicopter
moments before the accident. |
Most of the information below was obtained from
La
Voz de la Frontera, that first rate, second class,
third world, fifth estate oracle of Mexicali, and from
the internet, everyone's third class, virtual world anchorman.
The 40th Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 had an unrehearsed
addition to its story board this year. Just after three
o'clock on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007, a 'chase' helicopter
(it seems as if one is not a serious contestant without
a rotor-powered satellite above his vehicle) dropped
to a dangerously low altitude to obtain some pulitzer-winning
photos of the entry it was tailing. Unfortunately, as
any movie gunfighter would have done, the pilot did
not keep the sun to his back. And that might be the
reason the main rotor cut through a high tension wire
and sent the helicopter plummeting to the ground.
The desert quickly dismantled the aircraft and scattered
it into a tangle of buckled metal and debris. While
a crowd of spectators drew toward the plume of dust
that rose from the carnage, an invisible effect was
delivered to every home and rancho that swung a copper
umbilicus to the electrical grid downstream from the
accident: a power outage that lasted almost seven hours
and plunged San Felipe into darkness until 10 o'clock
that evening.
Reports from spectators at the incident describe how
a few of the bystander dashed forward to snatch up the
camera from the helicopter wreckage, as well as a cell
phone.
 |
Police
sift through wreckage. |
Paramedics and police arrived to sort through the confusion.
Two injured men were treated and sent to an Ensenada
medical facility. Two bodies were removed to the morgue
were one of them was identified as Francisco Merardo
Leon Hinojosa, aka El Abulón, one of
the top ranking lieutenants of the Arellano-Felix drug
cartel in Tijuana.
The following evening a battery of over fifty men,
armed with AK-47s and AR-15s, miraculously convoyed
along one of Ensenada's major thoroughfares to the Instalaciones
del Servico Medico Forense, apparently without being
seen by any of the federal, state or military law enforcement
agency. They stormed the morgue, absconded with the
body of El Abulón, as well as two hostages and
made their escape.
Part of the group allegedly split off and took the
highway toward Valle de Trinidad, where two police officers
confronted them and were shot to death. Shortly afterward,
police discovered two abandoned vehicles nearby. Inside
they discovered several abandoned uniforms of the Federal
Police, latex gloves, caps, a radio communication device
and several AK-47 shells.
On
Thursday, the Procuraduria General de Justicia announced
the hostages had been found, safe and sound.
The two injured men, helicopter pilot Isaac Sarabia
and copilot Rodolfo Calvillo, are in stable condition,
recovering from their wounds.
It would appear this rather bizarre burlesque of events
is yet another surfacing of the enigmatic theme that
sutures together the exotic fabrics of Mexican culture.
Namely, the ever-present stream, at times almost arterial
in volume, of the drug flow.
The laissez faire attitude of Mexico on the
subject of drugs has a long history. Marijuana, opiates
and cocaine were commonly used throughout the 1800-1900s.
Drug trafficking in Mexico began as a response to U.S.opium
demand. It wasn't until the Shanghai Conference in 1909
for opium control that the United States government
exercised its disposition on drugs. Now, after almost
a hundred years of political pressure directed at its
lenient neighbor to the south, along with a series of
economic reconciliations and mutually effective accords
in exchange for tightening the anti-drug measures in
Mexico, the anti-drug campaign has resulted in a symbolic
increase in the amount of illicit drugs seized in Mexico.
Why symbolic? Well, the international illicit drug
business generates as much as $400 billion in trade
annually. Interdiction efforts intercept 10-15% of the
heroin and 30% of the cocaine. Drug traffickers earn
gross profit margins of up to 300%. At least 75% of
international drug shipments would need to be intercepted
to substantially reduce the profitability of drug trafficking.
Since Mexican drug cartels supply the United States
with 80% of it's cocaine, the problem would indeed appear
to be a localized concern and a soft spot in the Punch
& Judy spectacle of both country's foreign policy.
Mexico points its finger at the extremely high levels
of consumption in the United States (estimated between
20-40% of people over the age of 12). And the US holds
the activities of the big Mexican drug cartels accountable.
US
newspapers cursorily touch upon the subject of domestic
illicit drug problems. Mexican newspapers, however,
with a thirst for the lurid, often publish the activities
of traffickers in lavish detail. It's been said the
most dangerous profession in Mexico is journalism. Although
life itself has a 100% mortality rate, being a journalist
in Mexico would seem to put the process on a fast track.
Yet frequent articles and columns still reveal the heart
that pumps the flow of narcóticos. These
people are well-known to authorities on all levels and
in a country that functions under the Napoleonic code,
where guilt is an integral function of suspicion, it
seems extraordinary that they remain free to conduct
their business in plain sight. But this is nothing new
for many people in Mexico, especially in those regions
where illegal plants had been cultivated for decades
and drug trafficking has become an established industry.
Economic dependencies are so intricately interwoven
with the activity that do anything crippling to its
health would create a domino effect felt throughout
the entire country.
Legitimizing the immense wealth of the drug lords and
capos is the objective of the money laundering
operations that present to the public innumerable businesses
that are fronts for their illicit activities. In many
small border towns 'recruitment' loans are given to
peasants who want to open their own tiendas,
and who are later called upon to repay the debt by acting
as transport agents for drug shipments. Other projects,
operating on a larger scale, only incidentally bring
'progress' to a developing area by promoting and investing
in local land, merchandising real estate and expanding
the local infrastructure.
The veneer of Mexican culture falls away from the lightest
touch of a fingernail to reveal glimpses of a subculture
that wears a long history of political and social dependencies.
Midnight pangas, black helicopters, desert runways,
road blocks, local business benefactors and countless
drug-related industries well up through the tourist
pamphlet depictions of carefree straw-hatted paisanos
in white cotton shirts leading the lifestyle that millions
of Americans covet from their swivel chairs and office
desk.
Is there an ultimate truth to what a culture engenders,
an ultimate observation that takes into account all
the visible and invisible levels? Perhaps not. Maybe
a culture assembles itself according to the precepts
and desires of the person experiencing it. And like
Oedipa Maas in Thomas Pinchon's The Crying of Lot
49, there's instability in the pursuit of its true
nature.
Read about the
Blackout...
