BULLETS OVER BAJA: Attack Yields Grave Consequences

[Dive California]

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Never ever take firearms or ammunition of any size into Mexico. It is illegal!

It is illegal for Mexicans to own guns unless they are members of an approved hunting club or an approved target shooting club. ...

sdm

And Drug Cartel members...:bigun2:

 

[Empty V]

Hey Sam, what was it that you said La Bufadora meant? Sneezing goat or something like that. You should be a Mexico historian!

Billy

 

[Sam Miller III]

[QUOTE=Teamcasa;3616568
I happy your and Mrs. Miller had a good vacation and maybe we will meet and dive together in Mexico someday. You still dive don’t you.
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We visit Baja for a number of reasons but often refer to the visit as a "vacation."

I still dive. Seldom locally, but often in selected resort areas around the world. In Baja Mrs Miller and I often breath hold spear fish using wood spear guns of my own design and manufacture for meals and/or sharing with the locals.

FYI it is illegal to spear fish in Mexico using SCUBA with anything but a rubber power for the spear or sling. Yes, I know Gringos often use SCUBA to spear fish. sdm

 

[Sam Miller III]

Dave wake up to the world around you...as some one says on TV "get real"

You dine in the "fabulous restaurants" and the owners flee to the US for saftey...???


Rich Mexicans moving to San Diego for Safety (LA Times-)
- excerpts from article -

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Tijuana's elite flee to San Diego County to escape kidnappings and violence in Mexico
Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 7, 2008
~~ Crime wave leads to an exodus of upper-class residents~~.

The Plascencia family boasts the brand name for fine dining in Tijuana. Their showcase restaurant -- Villa Saverios -- is a foodie destination, its elegant dining room a gathering spot for the city's political and social elite.

But the family's success has also drawn other attention.
Three years ago, gunmen tried to kidnap chef Javier Plascencia's younger brother. A year later they tried again but, in a case of mistaken identity, snatched the wrong man.

Nearly 40 years after they opened their first Tijuana restaurant, the entire extended family -- 18 people, including Javier Plascencia's wife and four children -- moved across the border to a suburb southeast of San Diego.

Such migrations have become increasingly common in metropolitan areas along the U.S.-Mexico border, as the ongoing violence of a brutal drug war has disrupted lives.

The Mexican government has sent more than 3,000 troops into Tijuana in the last 1 1/2 years, and on several occasions soldiers have shot it out with drug cartel gunmen on residential streets.

"San Diego is the only place you can forget the sense of insecurity and fear. There, you can breathe. Psychologically, crossing the border relieves the stress," said Guillermo Alonso Meneses, a professor of cultural studies at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana.

Real estate agents, business owners and victims groups estimate that more than 1,000Tijuana families -- including those of doctors, lawyers, law enforcement officials, Lucha Libre (professional wrestlers) and business owners -- have made this move in recent years as the drug- fueled violence has worsened.

People have arrived in south San Diego County with only the clothes on their back. Kidnapping victims released after lengthy captivities have shown up long-haired and disheveled, sometimes with fresh wounds.

Real estate agents tell of clients with fingers missing, sliced off by kidnappers who sent them to relatives as proof the victims were alive.

The presence of the immigrants, most in the U.S. legally, is unmistakable in the many gated, master-planned communities of eastern Chula Vista, where parking lots for upscale stores and spas are sprinkled with Baja California license plates. "I always say that Eastlake is the city with the highest standard of living in all of Mexico," joked Enrique Hernandez Pulido, a San Diego-based attorney with many Mexican emigre clients.

Kidnappings rampant

Tijuana suffers more kidnappings than almost any other city outside Baghdad, according to a global security firm that handles ransom negotiations south of the border. And a crime wave that started three years ago has only intensified. Most abductions are not reported to authorities, but victim support groups and others estimate the number in the hundreds in the last three to four years.

Experts say the Mexican government's crackdown on drug cartels may have inadvertently intensified the problem. With Tijuana's major organized crime group, the Arellano Felix drug cartel, ravaged by arrests and killings, cartel lieutenants have been turning more and more to kidnappings to supplement their dwindling drug profits.

Heavily armed gunmen, often wearing federal police uniforms, snatch people from shopping centers, restaurants, country clubs. The victims are warehoused in networks of safe houses and often shackled and put in group cages until ransoms are paid.

Many of the kidnapped have been killed, even after large ransoms have been paid. The threat has forced many families that have stayed in Tijuana to employ large security details, bar their doors and windows and retreat behind thick gates or high walls in the Chapultepec Hills.

These days, the drug war's spiraling violence keeps people away from Tijuana's restaurant row on Sanchez Taboada Boulevard. About half of the businesses on Avenida Revolucion, the city's downtown tourist district, have been shuttered.

Fleeing in fear

Some people must take flight suddenly.

One prominent attorney, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, drove from his office directly to the border with a police escort after being notified that kidnappers planned to kill him for speaking out against the crime wave.

He and his family slept on air mattresses and sofa beds in a San Ysidro apartment for weeks until he closed escrow on a home in Eastlake. He shut down his office in a Tijuana high-rise and now works from his American home.

"I had to change cities, houses, countries, offices," he said. "It's a life of constant fear."

In the rolling hills of Eastlake -- only five miles from Mexico up California 125, the new South Bay Expressway toll road -- most of the gated mansions in the $2-million-to-$3-million range have been sold to Tijuana refugees, say real estate agents. Maids cross the border daily to work for families that have recently come north -- both in Eastlake's mansions and in its lower-priced neighborhoods of large tract homes with red-tile roofs.

Many continue to run their factories or businesses there from a distance, from nondescript office parks in Otay Mesa or Chula Vista. They monitor their employees via closed-circuit camera systems and shuttle messengers back and forth across the border with paperwork and cash.

"They're running scared. They're having to do clever things to not be seen crossing the border. They go in different clothes. They go in different cars," said Father John P. Dolan, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Chula Vista. Dolan said six families in his parish have fallen victim to kidnappings in the last year.

Still, any return to Tijuana is risky. About 30 people from the Chula Vista area who travel back and forth across the border have been kidnapped in the last 1 1/2 years while conducting business or visiting relatives in the Tijuana area, according to the FBI. Some have been killed....

etc...etc...etc

The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse are riding in Tijuana.

 

[Sam Miller III]

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One would assume that building homes is is a major portion of your life.

Your avitar " Team Casa" apparently refers to a group that is a "Team" that has something to do with "Casa" which is Spanish for house. I recall the Mexican phrase "Mi Casa su Casa" which of course translated is "My house is your house." or "My home is your home"

Is there another hidden meaning? Perhaps you can explain and expand on the term "Team Casa?"

And "recent visits?" do not understand your use of the term "recent" since you have indicated in several posts a long term relationship with TJ...

Inquiring minds want to know...
sdm

 

[divinman]

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One would assume that building homes is is a major portion of your life.

Your avitar " Team Casa" apparently refers to a group that is a "Team" that has something to do with "Casa" which is Spanish for house. I recall the Mexican phrase "Mi Casa su Casa" which of course translated is "My house is your house." or "My home is your home"

Is there another hidden meaning? Perhaps you can explain and expand on the term "Team Casa?"

And "recent visits?" do not understand your use of the term "recent" since you have indicated in several posts a long term relationship with TJ...

Inquiring minds want to know...
sdm

 

[Teamcasa]

Sam, DAGS teamcasa.

 

[Empty V]

If names mean so much is there a some kind of relationship with Sam and I Am Sam (2001), inquiring minds would like to know.

Billy

 

[Sam Miller III]

The final frontier! The beautiful Peninsula that is endless, silent and waiting to caress your face or kick your behind.

The continuing saga of Team Casa to seek-out and contact Mexico life through the exploration of the vastness her land and attempt to go where no man or woman has gone before-- in Tijuna.

El Vigía.net = NOTICIAS =

"Pierde BC 10 millones de turistas"
Ensenada, B. C. - Alrededor de 10 millones de turistas estadounidenses dejaron de visitar Baja California durante el periodo 2007-2008 en comparaciуn al 2006-2007, pero no fue por la inseguridad que se registra en la entidad.....

Translation:

10 Million Baja Tourists Lost

Ensenada, B. C. -- About 10 million fewer American tourists visited Baja California during the period 2007-2008 as compared to 2006-2007, but it was not due to the lack of security in Baja,....

Per the Mexican press

But our leader Dave keeps on visiting ...were 10 MILLION American tourist fear to go

 

[Codyjp]

Sam, yet again, you have failed to make a worthwhile point. What is it already? Do you have a personal vendetta against Dave for wanting to risk his tail to help those less fortunate? Or is it just that you feel compelled to post every single negative news article against Mexico? You could just keep a scrap book for yourself if you wanted. You may want to thank Dave for all he does, if he didn't provide housing for those people they just might jump the boarder and move in next to you.

By this time anybody with ears, eyes and and a heartbeat has been made well aware of the dangers of travel to Baja by every facet of the news media, but we certainly don't need a constant reminder. I wonder if the lack of tourists is because of a few pessimistic Americans preaching the terror and turmoil of Baja in order to scare the 10 million missing people.