Mexican cartels worse than ISIS: Massacre victims’ kin
Residents urge Mexico to accept the American government’s offer to help destroy the gang
Bavispe, Nov. 8: Angry kin of nine American citizens massacred in a suspected gangland ambush in northern Mexico urged the government to accept US help to destroy drug cartels that one grieving relative described as being “as bad or worse than ISIS.”
Funerals of the three mothers and six children began to be held in Mexico after the government said they were caught in the crossfire of a territorial feud between the Juarez Cartel and its rival the
Sinaloa Cartel. The victims belonged to three families of dual USMexican citizenship born to breakaway Mormon communities founded in the north of Mexico several decades ago, and mourners came from thousands of miles to pay their last respects.
Sadness and anger gripped grieving relatives, and some urged Mexico’s leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to accept US President Donald Trump’s offer to help crush the gangs.
“I really believe that the cartels in Mexico have moved to another level of barbarity, they are as bad or worse than ISIS. ISIS have an ideology,” said Rosa LeBaron, 65, whose cousins, nieces and nephews died in the attacks. “These sicarios (hitmen), why are they doing it? Out of greed and pure evil.”
She said Mexico needed to overcome pride, and accept outside help from a neighbouring country or international coalition, like the United Nations, to stamp out the cartels. “This is so beyond comprehension, we’re living like we’re in Afghanistan, 100 miles from the US border,” said LeBaron.
More than 2,50,000 Mexicans have been killed in the mounting violence that has gripped the country since 2007, many of them victims of drug related violence.
“They have to wipe these bad men out of Mexico just like the coalition that goes into Syria and these places.”
Julian LeBaron, another relative of the victims and a local activist, said he would welcome outside assistance to find the killers, adding that he didn’t think Mexico’s government was capable of stopping violence and impunity.
President Lopez Obrador said he believed that Mexico could resolve its security problems without foreign “intervention,” but he has opened the door to FBI cooperation provided the country’s national sovereignty is not violated.