Inside the New National Defense Area

Last week, 250 miles of the Rio Grande River shoreline in Cameron and Hidalgo counties were designated a National Defense Area (NDA). The international Boundary and Water Commission land fronting the river has been transferred to the General Services Administration and is now considered part of Joint Base San Antonio.

U.S. Northern Command will exercise command and control. They have been tasked with installing signage and fencing in the NDA according to Air Force standards, and then to immediately source follow-on security operations. The security force’s mission is to provide enhanced detection and monitoring through stationary positions and mobile patrols, detain and transfer trespassers, and support the installation of temporary barriers and signage.

This map obtained by MyRGV.com illustrates the Rio Grande Valley’s designated National Defense Area, or NDA, which was established by the U.S. Department of Defense last week. Highlighted in red, the area will snake along the curves of the Rio Grande from the mouth of the river in Cameron County to the western edge of Hidalgo County. (Courtesy: U.S. Air Force)

What are the ramifications of the border land being under the jurisdiction of Joint Base San Antonio? The NDA land includes local and State Parks, agricultural fields, and privately owned land, which is accessed daily by local workers and tourists. Trespassing on military property is a federal offense; being caught on an Air Force base with a privately owned firearm is a serious federal offense. The risk-averse military prohibits carrying privately owned firearms onto its bases. They claim their policy is for the safety of people visiting or stationed on them. History proves that claim to be ridiculous, but facts are irrelevant to the discussion.

Demonstrating their uncannily poor timing that has become a feature of the Democrats, the South Texas Alliance of Citizen Coalition of Mayors issued a joint proclamación decrying federal illegal immigrant enforcement operations. They claim enforcement of federal immigration laws is bad for business. I didn’t realize that South Texas construction companies, restaurants, car washes, fast food franchises, and nursing homes depend on illegal migrants’ labor to function.

There are unintended consequences when riverfront land is designated as part of a military base.

The mayors claim they are motivated by the “well-being, safety, and economic stability of our communities.” If that were true, the mayors wouldn’t ignore the sky-high automobile insurance premiums we pay in the Valley to cover illegals who drive without a license or insurance and are prone to hitting other people’s cars, especially when it rains.

There is also the increased tax burden to cover the costs of court hearings, police calls, identity theft investigations, and car accidents involving illegals. And health insurance premiums must consider Emergency Room visits by uninsured illegals, of which thousands are (apparently) loitering here in the RGV.

Relying on undocumented workers for labor has several benefits besides paying low wages. Payroll taxes are eliminated, and OSHA regulations and fines are no longer a threat. Illegals cannot file a civil suit for compensation if injured on the job. The only downside to employing illegal labor would be federal prosecution, which can be ruinously expensive and unpleasant.

The Mayors don’t care about any of that. They’re from the rent-seeking class who view government office as a purely extractive enterprise. Every year, they raise our property tax rates to increase the number of their subordinates in the city government, yet public services never improve.

Economic growth in the RGV is characterized by an unending proliferation of payday loans, pawn shops, fast food franchises, and cheaply constructed apartment complexes. The vibrant service economy offers numerous opportunities for young couples to work two jobs each, enabling them to afford to live here.

Boston Jerry aptly sums up the situation faced by many today.

The South Texas Alliance of Citizen Coalition of Mayors represents a new South Texas archetype; men (and women) who are rotund of body, soft of hand, and thick of skull. They operate devoid of facts; they pronounce things to be so, and that’s the end of it.

There is little chance that large numbers of impoverished Hispanics will smoothly integrate into the local Tex-Mex society. They litter HEB parking lots with abandoned shopping carts, they don’t restack their weights in the gym, and they listen to hideous Spanish accordion music at deafening volumes. On the plus side, they seem to despise Rap music.

The city fathers want to meet and coordinate with the military now that our riverfront is part of a National Defense Area. Given their public denunciation of and refusal to support federal law enforcement efforts, why would federal officials bother talking to them?

Not that the residents of the RGV can pick and choose which local law or ordinance they want to ignore. Local politicians can virtue signal with no cost or repercussions to them, but local citizens who do the same to them will be arrested, fined, and jailed by them.

Disposing of 400 decomposing bodies is a routine task in Mexico.

A glance at the morning news from our southern neighbors reveals more reasons to avoid traveling to or living in Mexico: 400 decomposing corpses stacked inside a nondescript building in Juarez. This is one of the benefits of a closed border. Keeping the desperate poor of the world away from the homicidal psychopath rapists venerated in popular Mexican corridors. Every politician in the nation should support that.

Yesterday, I took a tour of the NDA inside Hidalgo County. I found what I expected, nothing. In the many places that were full of Border Patrol and State Police trucks during the President Auto Pen administration, there were no law enforcement vehicles, no stationary police camera units, and no military personnel.

The portable camera systems that dotted the border are now gone.

It is hard to believe that the Air Force will send security units into the RGV to conduct mounted patrols. How many units like that do they have? What kind of vehicles will they use? I don’t see the utility of additional fencing in the parts of the NDA with which I’m familiar.

There is no reason to patrol or fence in the popular birder’s paradise of Bensten — Rio Grande Valley State Park, or the Anzalduas County Park. Texas law enforcement has been using the Anzalduas Park boat ramp to launch their watercraft, and I’m sure NORTHCOM will use it if they bring watercraft. The military has numerous small boats, but for a security mission, the smallest they will use are Riverine boats, which are usually armed with multiple automatic weapons.

I would love to see NORTHCOM deploy a Riverrine squadron to patrol the Rio Grande River. They look cool and would be fun to watch in the narrow waters. However, there is no reason for them to be here, just as there is little reason for numerous security forces to be working the former IBWC land. There isn’t much for them to do now; the border is closed.

No Kings McAllen Protest

Small, Short, and Friendly

Saturday’s No Kings protest in McAllen was well-organized and peaceful. Hundreds of protestors lined up outside the Federal Courthouse along the Business 83 throughfare, waved a mix of American, Mexican, and Fuck Trump flags. Many homemade signs advocating for keeping federal hands off families made no sense, and the professionally made No Kings Day signs were totally inappropriate, as we Americans celebrate No Kings Day on the 4th of July.

At the height of the protest, there were a few hundred people. I found it boring, and after walking past the assembled protesters on both sides of the street, I headed home. I wasn’t the only one to leave early. It just wasn’t that interesting.

There were shouted obscenities directed at passing traffic about The Bad Orange Man but no cigarette smoking because there were bambinos present, and nobody wanted to set a bad example for them.

I walked through the crowd in my Seatec SPF 50 Patriot hoody, knowing the red, white, and blue motif would identify me as one of the opposition. I encountered the opposite of hostility; everyone was being exceedingly polite to each other. Ever the gentleman, I said excuse me several times as I moved through the crowd, and several women complimented me on the cool hoodie. I don’t think the Patriot shirt does what I thought it does for the IFF (identify friend or foe) equation.

Does this shirt look right-wingish to you?

There were two Antifa Larpers dressed in all black with respirators around their necks, and one deranged-looking old woman wearing a respirator and eye goggles. Nobody else in the crowd was dressed for rioting. The white folks in attendance were mainly sedentary boomers with pot bellies and ponytails. The rest of the crowd was Hispanic, and I’d estimate 70% of them were women.

There were a couple of McAllen police vehicles staged on the periphery, a few uniformed Federal officers staged in the shade behind the courthouse, but no visible police presence in the crowd. As I walked around the corner of Business 83 down Bicentennial Avenue, I ran into a knot of cigarette-smoking men who were furious that the state prosecutes drunk drivers for having a blood alcohol level of .08 when everyone knows you’re not drunk until your BAC is in the .10 to .12 range. They were adamant that the current drunk driving laws are culturally insensitive and not shy about telling anyone in earshot all about it.

This is a look down Bicentennial Ave – the smokers’ corner/DUI protesters were at the end of this line. Note the crazy woman in a respirator and goggles. People dressed like her make me nervous.

As I walked through the crowd, the signs held aloft and coordinated Viva La Raza chants evoked a vibe of Mexican nationalism and reactionary Hispanic cultural revanchism. It is so weird walking through a crowd of young, attractive Hispanic women just 4 miles from the Mexican border that none of them are stupid enough to cross. Femicide is an enduring, intractable problem in Mexico, and young, attractive Mexican American women know it but never talk about it. The younger generation may not know much about current news or history, but they all know about the four Mexican coeds (and five male teens with them) who went missing last spring and were found dismembered in the truck of a car.

Spring Break vacations are dangerous for Mexican coeds who are subject to abductions, multiple rapes, hideous torture and a brutal death. That happens to seven women every day in Mexico. This woman pictured here was one of the coeds who disappeared last March.

I don’t understand how Americans, regardless of ancestral heritage, support millions of undocumented Hispanics demanding access to and benefits from a State they are hostile toward and have no legal right to enter.

Antifa was in attendance – the guy on the right kept his camera like that until I moved on. I guess I made him nervous.

By 1 p.m., the crowd was reduced to a few women huddled under shade trees waving American flags, and a group of Hispanic women with small children across the street, getting blasted by the sun while waving Mexican flags. Even the cattle in South Texas know to get out of direct sunlight and huddle under any available trees, so I have no idea why those women stayed in the sun, but they looked miserable.

The man walking down the street was one of the organizers who politely asked the participants to stay on the sidewalk. There were no attempts to impede traffic, despite the numerous vehicles that passed, with drivers giving the protesters the finger.

I walked around the area in the late afternoon to find the sidewalks completely free of litter and refuse; the organizers had stayed around to clean up after the crowd dispersed. That’s an impressive end to an unimpressive protest. It is safe to assume that most of the 1400 No Kings protests were peaceful affairs where people on both sides of the issue treated each other respectfully.

As I and hundreds of others have pointed out, these protests were financed by NGOs that have received millions of our tax dollars. Why is this still happening? I thought we had shut down USAID, I thought we were clawing back that money, I felt that Congress would take the hint we delivered with the election of President Trump. I expected them to complement DOGE by addressing the fraud, waste, and abuse. Where the hell is the 20 billion dollars that the autopen running Biden’s failed administration dumped into just eight NGOs?

As is often the case these days, AI-generated memes reveal a truth that the media ignores.

During the Biden era, 10, 20, maybe 30 million (we have no idea how many) desperate, unskilled, illiterate line jumping ingrates came into our country expecting a handout. They got it too from democrats at the state and federal level, and the NGOs they lavishly support with our taxes. How do we rectify this situation? Who is going to be held to account for this invasion of malcontents? How do we get our country back?

Congress isn’t up to the job, as they demonstrated with their pork-laden Big Beautiful Bill. The President can’t do it alone and is being hamstrung by the liberal progressive judiciary. The only administration to successfully deport millions of illegals was the Obama administration and we all know why he could do it without the liberal media going bat shit crazy.

Four hours after the protest ended, there was not a scrap of paper on the ground. No Kings McAllen is hereby officially recognized for being great citizens by this mention in dispatches.

When Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He famously replied, “A republic if you can keep it.” Suppose we allow the 20 to 40 million illegals to stay. In that case, they will be counted by democrats in our 2030 census, allowing the democrats to establish a one-party rule countrywide just like they did in California. We will no longer be a republic but a dysfunctional third world shit hole just like contemporary California. If that happens, the chances of a hot civil war will be nearly 100%.

I cannot imagine living in California today

The Rio Grande Valley remains Trump country. The light turnout at the heavily marketed No Kings protest proved that. The premise behind No Kings, that President Trump is a dictator, was silly, but the people manipulated into protesting by progressive NGOs and Walton family sociopaths were polite, friendly, and picked up after themselves. Let’s hope the spirit of friendliness and tolerance across the political divide holds in our divided nation. I’m sure it will in South Texas because an armed society is a polite society.  

Valley of Birds

Of the 914 bird species listed by the American Birding Association, over 500 of them can be found in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Eighteen bird species reach the northern limits of their ranges in the Rio Grande Valley and cannot be found elsewhere in the United States. I’ve listed those birds here, not to brag on them, but because my wife has accused me of never writing posts that are happy and positive. What could be more uplifting than seeing a Plain Chachalaca, White-tipped Dove, Groove-billed Ani, Common Pauraque, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, Harris’s Hawk, Gray Hawk, Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Ringed Kingfisher, Green Kingfisher, Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, Great Kiskadee, Green Jay, Long-billed Thrasher, Clay-colored Thrush, Botteri’s Sparrow, Olive Sparrow, or the ever colorful Altamira Oriole?

Green Jays are beautiful birds, but they hit bird feeders like Navy jets hit carrier decks: fast, loud, and flashy.

The most common bird in my backyard is the large black great-tailed grackle. I spend a lot of time watching the males fluff their feathers and dance around trying to impress female grackles, who ignore them as they eat bugs from my lawn. Male grackles can be annoying; they are loud and urbanized, so they mostly ignore humans while they pester females with their crazy dancing and fights with other males. They must annoy other bird species, as I often see little two-ounce mockingbirds relentlessly attacking the much larger male grackle. I’ve seen mockingbirds wear out feral cats who come too close to their nest, too. There’s a reason why they are the Texas State Bird.

The Great Kiskadee is just as colorful as a Green Jay, but more mellow and musical. It makes you feel calm and peaceful just looking at it, right?

The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival will be in Harlingen this year from the 5th through the 9th of November, and you can’t find a more positive, happy, wholesome family event. Events like this make me proud to be a Valley resident, so never let it be said I don’t write in favorable terms about my home because I just did.

Birding is no longer of interest to me after I discovered the Hawk kettles I mentioned often on the All Marine Radio podcast were turkey vultures who congregate here in the winter—fake hawks who fly around defecating on their legs to cool off. Real Hawks move down the Mississippi Flyway to winter in the tropics, returning up the flyway in the spring. They often form large kettles flying in a circular pattern on warm thermals that lift them several thousand feet so they can glide towards their destination without expending energy. I kept seeing these kettles long after the migratory birds had passed, and often reported to the All Marine Radio fanbase that I was seeing hawk kettles after they should have moved through the area.

My wife heard me talking about hawk kettles on the podcast one evening and told me they were turkey vultures that winter in the RGV and spend the evenings surfing the thermals, much like a bunch of stoners on skateboards. Those nasty fake hawks played me like a rube, fooling me into thinking they were massive real Hawks, so I’m done with the birding. But I’m not done heaping praise on my valley home.

Just last week, ICE and Border Patrol agents spent a few days visiting construction sites on Padre Island and Brownsville to round up illegal migrants. As you can see in the photo below, these are well-paid heavy equipment operators working those sites. The response from the local majority Hispanic population has been muted. Residents of the Valley of the Birds understand why so many illegals are given such high-paying jobs.  It’s not about reducing project payrolls but the employer’s exposure to OSHA fines and lawsuits from injured workers.

Illegal labor reduces employer exposure to OSHA violation fines and injured worker lawsuits.

Suppose an American worker loses some fingers or has a foot shredded on the job site. That accident and the injuries must be reported to OSHA, and you can bet that soon after, one of the ambulance-chasing lawyers with the same digit phone numbers will be suing. If an illegal is badly injured he is shit out of luck, no OSHA protection, no lawyers suing on his behalf, he might get some extra cash to limp back across the border to heal up if he’s lucky.

As is often the case in our current media environment, memes reveal a truth that is evident to everyone not employed in the media.

Mexico has a long history of blaming its problems that it doesn’t export to the United States on the United States. This deeply rooted victim mentality has served the Mexican state well when dealing with fickle American officials from past administrations. Now they have to deal with President Trump and a cabinet full of uber competent Americans who are uninterested in fleecing American taxpayers. President Trump is revoking visas of high-ranking, obviously corrupt Mexican officials; he has closed the border, and he is going to start taxing remittances.

The ever-prescient Joshua Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation diagnoses the dilemma facing the Mexican government when dealing with President Trump succinctly:

Though the Mexican regime does not particularly care about the welfare of its people – having presided over an internal war that has seen the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Mexicans by its own cartel allies and sometimes its own armed forces – it does care for its own position and privileges, and so an economic collapse alarms it in ways that death and cruelty among its own people does not.

When a country develops a permanent victim mentality, it becomes incapable of understanding the history behind its current state of malaise and incompetence.  People with no understanding of their past will have no control over their future. That is why Mexico attempted to combat the endemic violence plaguing the country by suing American gun makers. The Supreme Court dismissed this frivolous lawsuit with a rare unanimous decision last week.

Another meme, nobody in the No Kings organization or the American media understands

Rio Grande Valley history supports the thesis of the recently published The Culture Transplant. The introduction of a handful of Scots-Irish entrepreneurs who accumulated their wealth in the traditional way of my people transformed the valley into an economic powerhouse. They gained power and land by marrying into wealthy Hispanic land grant families. I admit to being the descendant of those handsome rouges with technical educations and good dental hygiene. A few hundred years ago, dental hygiene was of critical importance when romancing comely daughters of the land-owning Hispanic aristocracy.

A book written by an academic that reflects reality, not a progressive narrative? Will wonders ever cease? If you want to live in the thrid world shit hole vote democrat.

Then the newly minted landowners spurred economic growth, transforming the once-tragic soil of the Rio Grande Valley into magic soil. They started with the Steamboat landings in Brownsville and Rio Grande City to stimulate commerce. They established safe, secure, honest banks where their Mexican relatives could stash money, accumulating compound interest rates without fearing periodic Peso devaluations or confiscation by the corrupt Mexican federal government. Anglo engineers figured out how to build a gravity-fed irrigation system, turning the RGV into a farming paradise.

The visuals of the LA riots perfectly represent the magic versus tragic soil theory first propagated by Steve Sailer when addressing the topic of white flight:

So that explains white flight: whites who lived in Compton in 1950, like those white families that included two future Presidents, depleted the Magic Soil, leaving only Tragic Soil for all the blacks who moved in, causing them to shoot each other and make rap songs about it.

I’m not sure how to explain why Compton got less shooty after the Latinos pushed most of the blacks out, but no doubt future advances in Soil Theory will answer that question too.

This is not how to win friends or influence people, unless you’re a democrat, in which case this is just a peaceful protest by hard-working people who deserve never to be held accountable for anything they do

Today’s LA riots don’t look anything like the 1992 LA riots due to the conspicuous absence of black rioters. There are some to be sure, and they seem to have cornered the high-end store looting market, but their numbers are a fraction of what they once were in LA. That has nothing to do with white people, so it is ignored by the legacy media, who despise facts that run counter to their preferred narrative about the evils of Caucasians.

The Mexican Americans in LA are rioting to protest the enforcement of our immigration laws. They are looting, burning cars, assaulting cops, and destroying property while waving the Mexican flag as if there is a reason to be proud of the history of Mexico. Mexican history is a nightmare of callous incompetence, unwarranted arrogance, and total disregard for the people of Mexico. The sole exception to this rule is Mexicans living in the United States; for them, the Mexican government will advocate, insisting that they be able to send remittances untaxed.

There are moments of greatness, compassion, and kindness in Mexico’s history. One of them was the treatment of the five boys captured after the defeat of the 1842 Meir expedition. That expedition was little more than a filibuster operation, and if you don’t know what those were, read The Blood Meridian. The five boys captured by the Mexican army were treated with kindness and affection by Santa Anta and his generals. And not the kind of affection lavished on boys in Afghanistan, I’m talking old-fashioned, appropriate Christian European affection traditionally afforded to children. But I’m saving it for the next time my lovely wife accuses me of not writing positive, uplifting blog posts.

The progressive gringos funding this protest do not understand how hot it is in McAllen in mid-June.

This Saturday, McAllen, along with hundreds of other cities, will experience the joy of No Kings protests. The social media announcements for this protest stress that they are “volunteer organized” which is absolute bullshit. No Kings receives millions of dollars in grant monies from all the usual suspects, meaning you, the taxpayer, are funding the riots and destruction of your cities. They are receiving additional funding from Christy Walton, the heir to the Walmart fortune. Like all the Walmart Waltons, she is an imperious psychopath who gleefully destroyed the independent hardware, clothes stores, sporting goods dealers, pharmacies (the list is endless) across the United States. Mexico, too, for that matter, where their supercenters are called Wally Martinez

Your tax money is hard at work thanks to democratic criminality. This Screenshot is from the Data Republican X account.

The McAllen protest is scheduled from 10:00 am to noon, and the weather forecast is for bright sunshine and 99-degree temperatures, which far exceeds the tolerances of most local citizens. The closest businesses to the planned protest site are rooftop nightclubs, but there are no Roof Koreans around here, so they are, in theory, vulnerable.

There are several rooftop bars and nightclubs with names like Santa Diabla tucked behind the Federal Courthouse. They open after 9:00 pm and often featured Mexican bands singing narco corridos, before Mexico made corridos ballads illegal. Then the narcos started killing the bands off for refusing to sing them. Now we’re stuck with the Mexican folk bands who still have visas, and they always have accordion players. If there is a musical instrument more obnoxious than an accordion, I have thankfully never heard it.

I expect American flag-waving counter protesters will outnumber the No Kings crowd just like they did when President Trump visited McAllen during his first term. But it’s going to be a scorcher this Saturday, so there may not be many people braving the heat, leaving only the paid agitators to stir up a riot. LA has Roof Koreans, Mexico has Roof Dogs*, if Saturday’s protesters try to riot, they will be introduced to a new phenomenon: Roof Mexicans. We’ll have to wait to see how this plays out.

*Do not look at the roof dogs link if you love dogs – it will upset and red pill you into supporting mass deportations.

Desperate Times on the Southern Border

Last week, in an act that combined desperation and stupidity with ingenuity and hard work, a Narco group built a raft to float a pickup truck across the Rio Grande River near Brownsville. The raft was constructed of blue 55-gallon drums and plywood, and it got the truck safely across. Upon reaching our side of the river, the pickup sped off through an open gate in the border wall. The driver then noticed Border Patrol and State Police trucks waiting for him on the levee once he cleared the wall, so he turned around and drove right back into the river.

You have to give these dope smugglers an A for effort, but an F for planning

Several Mexican nationals then swam to the truck to recover some of the bundles of drugs; the rest floated downstream and were retrieved by the Border Patrol. The large bundles contained marijuana, which raises questions. Thanks to American ingenuity, weed in the form of delta eight and delta 10 THC is (for the time being) legal in Texas. Delta 9 is the high-inducing tetrahydrocannabinol found in legalized weed, but Deltas 8 and 10 will get the job done, especially in smokable concentrates, vapes, or ingested via gummies, drinks, or brownies.

Potent THC hemp derivatives blindsided Texas lawmakers, who claim they legalized hemp for industrial purposes, not psychoactive gummies, so this September, the multimillion-dollar industry built on hemp buds is scheduled for eradication. I’ve gone from supporting THC products as a safe alternative to alcohol to acknowledging that THC is an addictive drug that robs one’s vitality and drive while being difficult to quit. The only safe alternative to alcohol is not drinking alcohol. Still, I’m not sure closing the hemp weed loophole is the best idea because it will encourage Mexicans to build flimsy rafts and float pick-up trucks across the Rio Grande River. The Rio Grande is polluted enough, so adding trucks and whatever was in the blue plastic drums to the water is Eso no es bueno. For readers who do not live in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), I’m obliged to inform you that it is never correct to say “no bueno.”

Why did the weed smugglers go to all that trouble when the market for shitty Mexican weed is so depressed? Granted, the border appears unguarded because illegal crossings are now rare, but the Border Patrol isn’t stupid. They watch the open gates in the wall and have a Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems (TARS) and Ground-Based Operational Surveillance Systems (GBOSS), both of which can see a long way. The federales claim the TARS is used for detecting aircraft, but I watched a contractor using one at Combat Outpost Lonestar in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan to smoke check a few miscreants. He had observed three dudes planning an IED on the road leading to Tora Bora and summoned a soldier from the fire direction center, who dropped some 155mm artillery on them. The TARS system can see plenty on the ground, just like the smaller GBOSS.

Tethered Aerostat Radar System Site Lajas, Puerto Rico. Photographer: Donna Burton

Even when the border looks empty, there are plenty of eyes watching it, and they don’t miss much.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were a constant menace for me in Afghanistan, and they have now made an appearance in the RGV. Last February, a local rancher, Antonio Céspedes Saldierna, was killed by an IED on the Mexican side of the border near Brownsville. Mr. Saldierna, like many RGV ranchers, has property on both sides of the border and was traveling to his Mexican Hacienda when he hit the IED. His son, Ramiro Céspedes, an army vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was injured in the blast. An IED that kills the driver but not his son or wife, who were in the truck with him, isn’t much of an IED. I assume the Gulf Cartel has yet to tap into terrorist expertise from Afghanistan or Iraq. Mexico imports tons of calcium ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which is easily converted into a powerful homemade explosive.

Ammonium nitrate IEDs with simple, easily fabricated pressure plates. These were recovered in Nimroz Province, Afghanistan. It is only a matter of time before these are deployed in Mexico and the United States.

In a recent interview on Chuck Holton’s Hot Zone podcast, Mexican Journalist Oscar Ramirez claimed that the Arellano-Félix Cartel in Tijuana has already imported Taliban from Afghanistan to train them on tunnel digging and IED construction. It’s just a matter of time before we start seeing the boom in Mexico and on this side of the border. It’s more effective than throwing children into the Rio Grande River (a routine occurrence during the FJB administration) to distract American law enforcement so they can complete their nefarious missions.

Our side of the border is like a ghost town, while Mexico is filling with ghosts. Last Tuesday, Ximena Guzmán, the personal secretary to the mayor of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, and José Muñoz, a municipal advisor, were shot and killed in the Moderna neighborhood of Mexico City. It has been five years since there was a high-profile assassination in Mexico City. That shootout was triggered when sicarios from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) ambushed the chief of police.

Murders on busy streets in broad daylight are depressingly common south of the border—photograph by Teun Voeten from his book Drug War in Mexico.

This hit indirectly targeted La Presidencia, Claudia Sheinbaum. It’s a safe bet that one of the Sinaloa cartels carried it out, targeting associates of allies of President Sheinbaum because they are afraid to target her directly. It is an undeniable fact (according to my Blanco Brujos neighbor, who knows things) that she’s a powerful Negros Brujos. I, too, am afraid of her after she flooded out the RGV in a 3-hour supernaturally powerful rainstorm.

The following day, protestors from Reynosa closed the international bridge connecting their city to Pharr, Texas. They were protesting the disappearance of five musicians from the Grupo Fugitivo band, who may or may not have been writing and performing narco corridos. Corridos are ballads that portray powerful Narcos as Robin Hood-like figures. Singing Narco corridos songs in Mexico is now illegal. Not singing Narco corridos in Mexico is deadly. A few days after the protests, the bodies of the five men were found outside Reynosa.

Luis R. Conriquez, a 28-year-old Sonoran singer with hundreds of millions of views on YouTube 

I’ve been told the mark of a true gentleman is one who can play the accordion—and doesn’t. I’m not a fan of regional Mexican folk music, but those guys have it hard. President Trump, probably acting under a spell cast by Mexico’s chief Curandero, President Sheinbaum, won’t give corridor bands visas so they can’t rake in the big bucks playing venues in San Antonio, Houston, or Robstown. If they play their original ballads in Mexico, they’ll get arrested. If they don’t play them, they’ll be disappeared. It’s not like they can turn themselves into American law enforcement, confess to playing the accordion, and request asylum.

When Conriquez announced he would no longer sing Narco Corridos or corridos belicos (warlike ballads – a term he invented), his fans in Texcoco rioted, ran him and his band out of town, smashed their drum set and amplifiers, but didn’t trash his accordions. Can you believe that?

There are over 124,000 Mexicans listed as disappeared by Mexican authorities. Seven women go missing every day in Mexico. The usual fate for these poor souls is rape, torture, and a gruesome death. Protests and vigils by the family and friends of the missing are a near-daily occurrence, as is the discovery of mass graves, illegal crematoriums, or acid bath operations. There are thousands of heartbreaking stories about mothers dedicating their lives to organizations like Madres Buscadoras (searching mothers).

Cecilia Flores, a member of the “Searching Mothers of Sonora and Jalisco” group. Photo from Israel Fuguemann of NPR

The earliest known madre buscadora is Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, whose son Jesús Piedra Ibarra was forcibly disappeared in 1974. These women lead teams of volunteers on searches throughout Mexico for mass graves, and they stage protests at government offices or popular border crossings. They garner their share of sympathetic international press, but this has been going on for over 50 years and it is obvious the powerful elites of Mexico don’t give a damn about them or their missing children.

The last known photo of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar, which went viral and was featured on the front page of many Mexican newspapers after she was kidnapped in April 2022.

The elites might give a damn now because Marco Rubio has quietly put them in a very uncomfortable position that will cost them the one thing they care about: money.

Our Department of State is revoking the US visas of Mexican politicians, police, and military officers linked to the Narco cartels and/or fuel theft rings. I have never seen our State Department working for the interests of the American people, or the Mexican people, for that matter. They have always pursued their own progressive globalist agenda, but now their agenda seems to be President Trump’s agenda, and President Trump is putting the American people first.

The most common drug war trope from Mexico is that America’s thirst for drugs fuels the drug war. That is nonsense. What Americans have is lots of money to pay exorbitant rates for drugs. Countries like Mexico don’t have people with much disposable income but they still have plenty of junkies who pay fire sale prices for the same poison that is smuggled into el norte. photograph by Teun Voeten

He is also lending a hand to La Presidencia, Sheinbaum, by placing pressure on bad actors. Not having an American Visa is, for the wealthy elites of Mexico, a serious problem. Being on an American revoked visa list negatively impacts banking and investment, hurts business relationships, and international credibility. I am not implying that every rich Mexican national has amassed their wealth illegally; that would be rude. There must be a way to accumulate millions of dollars in Mexico legally. . . I guess, but check out the names that have been published in the press:

  • Marina del Pilar Ávila, Baja California governor
  • Américo Villarreal, Tamaulipas governor
  • Rubén Rocha Moya, Sinaloa governor
  • Alfonso Durazo, Sonora governor
  • Samuel García, Nuevo León governor
  • Layda Sansores, Campeche governor
  • Mario Delgado, federal Education Secretary
  • Ricardo Monreal and Adán Augusto López, Morena power players
  • Several mayors from Tamaulipas and Chihuahua
  • At least four high-ranking generals

According to the Gringo Gazette Alberto Granados, the mayor of Matamoros, had his visa revoked while attempting to cross into Brownsville. He denied it. But the story didn’t go away.

The Mexican elite can find other countries to bank their wealth, educate their children, and purchase vacation properties. But the modern, enjoyable, safe, and investment-friendly places like Dubai or Singapore are off-limits to them. Those countries, mui eso no es bueno, the drug business. If they’re on the State Department shit list I doubt many European tax havens would welcome them either.

Will putting the soft power screws to the monied elites change anything in Mexico? Who knows, but the cartels are losing tons of money and the head Negros Brujos is keeping the pressure on them. Mexican Marines have been raiding “mega drug labs” in Sinaloa for months now, seizing tons of methamphetamine. Fentanyl seizures are plummeting at the border, although it is unclear why. Illegal border crossings are down 94%, and it is very clear why. The big question is how long the cartels will continue to lose money before they start getting dangerously desperate and resort to powerful IEDs for leverage in Mexico and revenge in the USA.

Verified by MonsterInsights