Lance Mountain

This made me smile today:

Update: Video of LM rocking a backyard pool - better than ever at 45! - removed. Wish you could've seen it, it was a beaut.

Courtesy of All Hail the Black Market

El Más Loco

I've been following the story of the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia, for the past six months or so. It reads like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, only it's real, and as fascinating as any movie that has ever tackled the subject. From it's messianic leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco (The Craziest One) who carries a bible and a book of his own quotes, to their brutal methods which include beheading their enemies and leaving cryptic messages stating that the dead received divine justice. It's like reading a script you wished you'd written.

From today's story in the NYT:

'The group first gained attention in 2006 when more than a dozen masked gunmen burst into a nightclub in Uruapan and tossed five heads of drug dealers on the dance floor, with the message: “The family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.'

Apparently La Familia started out as a vigilante organization dedicated to ridding Mexico of the scourge of drugs and dealers, only to emerge as its most prominent and brutal cartel itself a few years later.

Six months ago President Phillipe Calderon moved 10,000 federal troops into the bordertown of Juárez to bolster overwhelmed and corrupted local authorities. Spitting distance from El Paso, Texas, Juárez has become ground zero for a turf war between La Familia and rival cartels over the lucrative trafficing routes into the US. But with 326 murders in the month of August, (in a city of 1.4 million people) the effort has proven a failure.

US Justice Department raids in 38 cities across 19 states yesterday and today netted 303 people, $32 million in American currency, 2,700 pounds of methamphetamine, 4,400 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana and 29 pounds of heroin, not to mention a bevy of arms and ammunition.

But El Más Loco and his top liutenants remain at large.