Anonymous takes on Mexican drug cartel

According to the YouTube video below, a major Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas have kidnapped some Anon members from a protest. Anonymous released a video proclaiming war against the cartel, and offering up some rather serious threats, including releasing the names of corrupt cops, taxi drivers, and journalists that the cartel has on the books.

While my first thought was “Holy shit, this is awesome… virtual gang vs physical gang”… I thought about it more and realised that this is pretty much a one sided fight.

Los Zetas are the second most powerful cartel in Mexico, and considered by the DEA to be the most dangerous/violent group in all of Mexico. They’re a group of ex special forces who broke off from the military when they realised they are more powerful than the cartels, and went on to assassinate, bribe, and deal their way up to being one of the most powerful cartels in existence. These guys DON’T fuck around. While anonymous may be able to offer up some names of corrupt officials, journalists, etc… the sheer amount of money and power that Los Zetas has, implies that they’re not going to have any trouble bribing and killing their way out of it.

Replacement officials and journalists are easy to bribe, and exposed corrupt cops are easy to kill before they get to trial.

People on the internet are arguing (as they do) that if Anon divulges the names/addresses of these Zetas-funded people, that the enemies of Los Zetas will do the dirty work and take advantage of this information, to kill them all. Quite possibly, but I highly doubt that Anon has any information on any cartel members themselves, or anyone even remotely close to the cartel members. These people have billions of dollars, and their entire lives are spent protecting their own people from every assortment of 3-letter-abbreviation agencies. While some corrupt cops might end up dead out of all this, Los Zetas have the power (and money) to retaliate in a way Anon could never imagine. Do Anon seriously think that with billions of dollars spare, Los Zetas can’t hire a few hackers of their own and track down a few Anon members? Use their ties into the US to grab the family members? Torture and kill them? Or just rock up to an Anon protest and open fire?

Lastly, the mexican drug cartels base their entire lives on respect, honor (among themselves) and being macho. They’re not going to come out and go “Oh, we’re so sorry guys, please don’t attack us… here are your friends back!”… no, this threat from Anon has pretty much guaranteed that the hostages will now be tortured, killed, and dumped in a public place (Link is very very NSFW! But very relevant. This is what Los Zetas do when you piss them off), so the whole world can see that they’re not afraid of some internet nerds.

So… my first thought was “Holy shit, this is awesome…”, but now it’s “Daaaamn. Anon just fucked up”.

Full transcript of the video:

“Anonymous from Veracruz, Mexico, and the world, we want you to know that a member has been kidnapped when he was doing Paperstorm in our city.

We demand his release. We want the army and the navy to know that we are fed up of the criminal group Zetas, who have concentrated on kidnapping, stealing and blackmailing in different ways. One of them is charging every honest and hardworking citizen of Veracruz who busts their rears working day after day to feed their families.

We are fed up of journalists and newspapers of Xalapa, Córdoba and Orizaba because they are constantly crapping on honest authorities like the army and the navy.

We are fed up with taxi drivers, commanders and “police-zetas” officers of Xalapa, Córdoba, Orizaba, Nogales, Río Blanco and Camerinos… who are chickens and have made themselves the most loyal servants of these (expletive).

For the time being, we won’t post photos or the names … of the taxi drivers, the journalists or the newspapers nor of the police officers, but if needed, we will publish them including their addresses, to see if by doing so the government will arrest them.

We can’t defend ourselves with a weapon, but if we can do this with their cars, houses, bars, brothels and everything else in their possession … It won’t be difficult. We all know who they are and where they are.
(Images with sound of explosions)

You made a huge mistake by taking one of us. Release him. And if anything happens to him, you (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5th .

Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are a legion. We don’t forgive. We don’t forget. Expect us.”