School of terror - Training camp drug cartel and terrorism tactical schools

Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, CJNG, the new generation of criminal organization which is dedicated to international activities as international drug traffick, terrorism, weapon traffick, and following the Mexican Cartels, kidnap, murdering, robbery and other criminal activities.

This organization makes front to Los Zetas, that's why they are known as Los Matazetas and it's being the criminal order that grows faster in Mexico, and the second bigger, losing only by their ex alied, Sinaloa Cartel.

The high capability of the organization is that they make a frontlike direct combat with Mexican Armed Forces and they use advanced special forces tactics, that promotes harsh scenarios to the public forces fight against.

Why they have so good numbers against the forces? CJNG opened the sources to new business activities, following the Private Military Companies model, to promote school training camps and special operations tactical training to civilian, ex military and local people, under the contract, they recruit people and follow a paradigm of promote tactical training, but following some particular technics.

For exemple, Malhama Tactical promotes tactical training for terrorists, following some precepts that it's not a military training, but a criminal training, promoting ideologies, brainwash and fearless actions to achieve some goals.

According to news, CJNG promotes training for hitmen, murdering, no guilty, fearleess psychological training, assassination, survivalism and tactical training to fight public forces. With surgical shooting, knife stabbing, vital points, ambush enemies, not to be a gossiper, long range and pistol training and killing. According to one ex member “You see how they kill people, taste human flesh, you live in terror,” he says.

This new model of criminal activity can promote financial and working capital to the corporation, not only a group, but a corporation that needs money to re-invest in criminal operations, new recruitments, propaganda and weapons, to promote a growing organization with solid basis.

Focused is on ex military high skilled personal, with good training, that can also exchange some expertise with new recruits, hierarchicaly formed by criminal activities based on skilled training, capabilities, physical capacities, guerrilla skills and activities, that goes from silent murdering to direct combat. 

And as a PMC, interested pay to learn special tactics, but how to be a criminal, terrorist, murderer, etc. This is the global economy wheel moving... interesting fact that Adam Smith once told about how market can re-invent itself!

Outsource of terrorism and recruitment by social media and promote tactical training is a new model of next proxy warfare and conflicts in small zones, which local geography can be explored and used for survivalism, permaculture and geographical influence on particulars. The tax cover from locals and form of new alied militias is a business model that are exploring competitive advantages and joint ventures/outsources for the groups.

Criminal activities are updating the operative scenarios and use new business strategies to maintain their influences in drug/illegal wepaon market.

The School of Terror: Inside a Jalisco Cartel Training Camp in Mexico

https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/training-grounds-mexico-jalisco-cartel/

On the first day of training to become a hitman for the Jalisco Cartel New Generation, Francisco learned that the only way to escape from the camp was to leave “in a body bag.” In three months he’d learn much more: how to handle short and long weapons, ambush enemies, respect the rules, not be a gossiper and how to kill.

“You see how they kill people, taste human flesh, you live in terror,” he says.

Francisco — the name he has given to protect his identity — told Telemundo that he spent three months in a Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) training camp. His testimony, the only one to date, could not be corroborated by other witnesses, but his story coincides with the tactics described by former Mexican and US security agents. He says he had to endure physical and psychological resistance tests, as well as loyalty tests.

During the interview, Francisco asks to check the video camera to make sure that he is really being visited by a team of reporters. He checks his cell phone every 15 minutes. His hands and feet shake every time he recalls the crudest moments of his past. He only allows us to say that he is 34 years old, has a son, and that in a previous life he worked in a cookie factory.

*This article was originally published by Sin Embargo via Telemundo. It was translated, edited for clarity and reprinted with permission, but does not necessarily reflect the views of InSight Crime. See the original version in Spanish here.

According to his story, the terror began by chance in April 2018. At a bar in a southern Mexican state he does not identify, he says a stranger approached him and told him that he had run out of money and needed a ride. Francisco took him to his car. When he arrived at the destination, the stranger took money from an ATM machine and asked for his cell phone number.

“I’m going to call you. I liked you,” the man told him.

Francisco still did not know who this stranger was. He would later find out  that he was one of the children of CJNG leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho.” As promised, the man contacted Francisco soon thereafter. He wanted to offer him a job as a private security guard in Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco state. It would pay 3,500 pesos per week (around $180), in addition to covering a daily allowance and expenses. Even the four weeks of training would be paid for. Francisco accepted. They asked for his birth certificate and a bank account number to deposit his earnings.

The next day he was summoned to a bus station. “I saw a lot of people coming. There were 19 men in their 20s and 30s. There were masons, carpenters, mechanics, security guards, graduates and accountants.”

They were transferred to Mexico City where they were placed in a hotel with a spa. At 6 p.m., the person who led the expedition said “let’s go,” and they left for the Pacific coast city of Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco state. On two occasions, those in charge asked the men if they wanted to continue. “For those who get on the bus, there is no turning back.” The youngest ones said, “I’ll go. I want to work.” The others followed. When they arrived, they were put into a house where another man approached them.

“Well, you are going to be training in the mountains of Guadalajara to be security guards, right?” one of the men in charge said.

“Yes,” they all agreed.

“Well, you’re not going to be a security guard, you’re going to work for the CJNG.”

“But nobody ever told me that,” one of the men protested.

SEE ALSO: Jalisco Cartel New Generation News and Profile

“If you want to go, fine, get out of here. The only way out of here is in a body bag. Whoever wants to go with him better speak up now. We’re not here to play.”

“Then I understood, and we all understood, that we were in big trouble. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, but you have to stay quiet and very serious because they could take any movement the wrong way,” Francisco recalls.

For years, videos of dismembered bodies, shootings, decapitated heads and all types of violence attributed to the CJNG ran through his mind. “I thought a lot about my son,” Francisco says. He ultimately decided to stay.

A Powerful Cartel

The CJNG has grown to become one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico, according to analysts and security forces. The Attorney General’s Office estimates that the cartel maintains a presence in 28 of the country’s 32 states, according to local media reports. The cartel has also established alliances with local criminal groups in the states of Durango, Campeche, Coahuila and Zacatecas.

The CJNG has also expanded abroad, “with a significant presence not only in the United States and Mexico, but also in Europe, Asia and Australia,” according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The genesis of this criminal organization, according to Sam Houston State University professor Nathan P. Jones, dates back to the July 2010 death of Sinaloa Cartel boss Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, alias “Nacho Coronel.” He specialized in methamphetamine production in the region around Jalisco. When Mexican authorities killed him, his operations fragmented into several groups. One of them was led by El Mencho. He was able to take advantage of Jalisco’s geographical location near Mexico’s Pacific ports. This allowed him to increase the volume of his business thanks to the sale of methamphetamine in markets in Europe and Asia, and the sale of fentanyl in the United States. Control of the ports was key to the CJNG being able to obtain the resources that allowed them to expand territorially, to corrupt Mexican government officials and to train their assassins as an elite force.

The Training

Francisco’s training camp was in Talpa de Allende, a municipality of just over 15,000 people in western Jalisco. A group of men armed with assault rifles and portable missile launchers loaded the 19 men into luxury trucks and drove them on dirt roads out to a hidden place in the Sierra de Talpa. The first truck stopped, then someone pulled a gun out the window and shot three times, which automatically opened a gate. They all passed and, again, another three shots were fired to signal the gate to close.

Once inside, the armed men took their cell phones and stripped them. “They had some car batteries. They got us wet and made us grab the terminals. So, if you had a GPS [Global Positioning System device] hidden inside you, it would burn. The shock was so strong that I practically peed,” Francisco explained.

The local boss was a young man about 28 years old, according to Francisco. He chose a nickname to address each of them. Then the training began with instructions on how to handle short and long weapons: handguns, AK-47 rifles and rocket launchers similar to the one the CJNG used to shoot down a Mexican Army helicopter in an attack that killed seven soldiers in May 2015.

The instructors let the men know all of the cartel’s rules imposed by El Mencho. They started with those related to firearms.

“Rule number one: Your finger should always be away from the trigger. Otherwise, in front of a cartel leader or high-ranking commander, you could be considered a threat and they could kill you.”

“Rule number two: Always check the safety.”

“Rule number three: Know how to hand over a weapon. Always pass it with the butt of the gun and not the barrel.”

The instructors imposed strict discipline. One mistake could be fatal. As was the case for one of the 19 recruits who nervously failed to put together a gun.

“In the blink of an eye, he killed him. He told us that he wasn’t useful because in a real confrontation, he would panic and put us all in danger,” Francisco said. Then began what the cartel called “the christening.” They all approached the corpse of their recently murdered companion.

“What is the first rule?” the plaza boss asked.

“If there isn’t a body, there isn’t a crime to pursue,” two of the commanders responded.

“Ok, Shaggy, come here. Cut off his hand. You don’t want to do it? Just tell me you don’t want to,” one commander said.

“You knew that if you said no, they were going to kill you,” Francisco recalls. Trembling, he began to cut off the dead man’s hand. Francisco touched his forearm. “I had to do it, you have no choice. I remember the fear, the blood.”

They were going one by one. The commanders saved the most timid group of recruits for the most difficult task: to decapitate the dead man and crush his head with a stone. When the body was severed, they were forced to eat some parts of it.

“There was one recruit who couldn’t eat it and vomited, but they picked up the piece of flesh from the dirt and forced him to eat it.”

These cannibalistic practices described by Francisco coincide with what a group of cartel hitmen arrested last June revealed. They said they did it to become insensitive. The Attorney General’s Office in Jalisco has discovered at least five camps that the cartel used as clandestine training centers and narco-laboratories. Two more have been dismantled in Veracruz and Tabasco.

For Francisco, this was only the first part of a three-month stay in captivity. What would come next would be the worst part of his training.

*This article was originally published by Sin Embargo via Telemundo It was translated, edited for clarity and reprinted with permission, but does not necessarily reflect the views of InSight Crime. See the original version in Spanish here.

'The training stays with you': the elite Mexican soldiers recruited by cartels
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/mexico-drug-cartels-soldiers-military

Last year, Mexico’s murder rate reached the highest level on record – and years of military defections are fueling the violence

Delfino was handpicked twice. At 18, he was chosen by the Mexican army to join its elite unit, the airborne special forces group known by its Spanish acronym, Gafe, where he specialized as a sniper.

Ten years later, he was recruited again – this time by the very people he’d been trained to kill.

Nowadays, the only outward sign of his military background is the camouflaged hat on his head, and the Panther .308 sniper rifle slung across his back.

Delfino belongs to what remains of a cult-like drug cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios, or the Knights Templar, whose original leaders  and claimed a mandate from God.

Once a dominant force in the rugged western state of Michoacán, the group is now locked in a bitter war for survival with rival crime factions.

But Delfino describes himself as an instrument of divine justice.

“God has his will,” he said. “But he still needs people to do his work here on Earth.”

Over the past decade, Mexico’s drug violence has undergone a dizzying escalation, claiming more than 230,000 lives and last year .

Security analysts and cartel sources agree that a key factor in the transformation of underworld rivalries into a full-throttle war has been the cartels’ recruitment of elite soldiers.

The leakage of Mexican special forces into organized crime began in the 1990s when the powerful Gulf cartel recruited a group of ex-Gafe troops to create its own paramilitary enforcement unit, known as Los Zetas.

They eventually turned on their masters, establishing the Zetas as a cartel in their own right. But other narco bosses followed suit, turning to the military for skilled recruits.

The scale of the problem remains unclear – not least because the Mexican government has been unwilling to release data, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University and author of Zetas Inc.

“It’s an inconvenient issue for the government, so they deny freedom-of-information requests. But what we do know is that special forces helped turn Mexico’s narcos into the paramilitary armed groups we see today.”

According to Mexico’s defence ministry, about 1,383 elite soldiers deserted between 1994 and 2015.

Defectors included members of units that received training in counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, interrogation and strategy from French, Israeli and US advisers, according to a 2005 FBI intelligence document.

Internal documents from Mexico’s attorney general’s office obtained by the Guardian also confirm accounts from sources in Michoacán that the Templars’ predecessor organization – known as La Familia Michoacana – sent envoys to Guatemala to recruit former special forces soldiers known as Kaibiles.

Members of the Kaibiles unit, which has received US training since the 1970s, committed some of the worst atrocities in Guatemala’s civil war, notably the 1982 slaughter of 201 civilians in Dos Erres.

Mexico’s military has also received US support: between 2006 and 2017, Washington provided just over $2.7bn in security assistance, including military and counter-narcotics support.

According to Kate Doyle, senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington DC, the US focus on military aid to the region has helped drive the militarization of Mexico’s drug conflict.

“That US military training and intelligence techniques ended up in the wrong hands is far from unusual. Its lethal spillage into the contemporary criminal context is one of the legacies of US security policy in Latin America,” she said.

Rarely, however, has a soldier-turned-narco gone on the record.

As he led the way up a steep path to a sniper’s nest of volcanic stone and brush, Delfino said he had his own reasons for speaking to a reporter. “We want the world to understand what we’re doing out here: protecting the communities against the enemies that come to rape and pillage.”

Below his lookout unfolded the scrubby plains and rugged canyons of Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente – the Hot Land. It was here that the former president Felipe Calderón first deployed the country’s armed forces against the cartels in 2006.

The military crackdown was eventually extended across the country, but its initial targets were the cartels of Calderón’s home state: La Familia Michoacana and its offspring, the Knights Templar.

For a time, it seemed that the strategy was working. When the Templars finally collapsed under the joint pressure of federal forces and an armed “self-defense” movement in 2013, the government claimed victory.

But for every fallen kingpin, there was a host of would-be successors: organized crime in Michoacán shattered into a patchwork of warring fiefdoms. And though now reduced to a fraction of their former strength and cut off from vital trafficking routes, the Templars are still in the thick of it.

In a desperate bid to cling to its remaining territory, the group has joined forces with a former rival: .

Their current enemies are a group of former allies, to whom Delfino refers contemptuously as “locusts”.

Up on the hill, he eyed the enemy positions through his scope. Locusts surrounded his position on three sides and had attempted to overrun the Templars several times in recent months.

But Delfino was dismissive of his counterparts, who he said were untrained boys sent into battle doped up on crystal meth.

“The difference between them and us is that we always take precise shots,” he said.

Most of Delfino’s own fighters were barely adults, but he still claimed to abide by the principles of his military training. “The strict rules, the way they prepared me psychologically, morally and practically – that stays with you forever,” he said.

Delfino’s training began not long after he joined the army in 1996. After selection for the Gafe, he underwent months of instruction, including courses in jungle survival and amphibious combat.

After specializing as a sniper, he was deployed in counterinsurgency operations in the southern state of Chiapas, where the indigenous Zapatista guerrillas had risen up in 1994.

Later, he was moved to the Pacific port city of Lázaro Cárdenas, where he became involved for the first time in counter-narcotics: his unit was tasked to chase speedboats bringing cocaine from South America.

But off-duty, Delfino and his fellow soldiers came into contact with narco bosses in local nightclubs. Before long, he was receiving expensive bottles of Scotch – and then job offers.

“They knew exactly what they were looking for: our knowledge, our professionalism, our loyalty,” he said.

Delfino resigned from the army, and in 2006, he joined La Familia Michoacana.

The cartel presented itself as the only force able to provide stability in a region long neglected by the Mexican state.

Delfino specialized in tracking down alleged kidnappers. “I just grabbed them and handed them over – that was my job. Others would then take care of the rest,” he said.

“The rest” was La Familia’s trademark brutality: alleged wrongdoers were killed, beheaded and mutilated, their bodies then dumped with messages justifying the murder.

Vigilantism helped win some local support; it also removed criminal competitors, and by 2009, the group had become one of the most powerful in the country.

But what set the group apart was its home-brewed ideology, which blended the language of self-help with fire-and-brimstone theology.

When La Familia’s ideological leader, Nazario Moreno González, was killed in 2014, the religious aspect faded. But Delfino still claims he’s following a divine mission.

“Technically it’s not correct to take somebody’s life,” said Delfino. But then he reached for a biblical justification: “Not a leaf moves without God’s permission.”

At the height of the cartel’s power, nothing in Michoacán moved without the cartel’s permission. It monopolized crime, but it also penetrated ordinary life, using the threat of lethal violence to arbitrate anything from land disputes to marital conflicts.

That soft power was fused with strategic sophistication, thanks to the influx of former soldiers, said Correa-Cabrera. “Their rapid expansion, the way they controlled territories, used communications and armament – they were now doing it like the army,” she said.

The involvement of veterans has enabled cartel combatants across the country to organize tactical responses to the deployment of troops and paramilitary federal police. More recently, the CJNG has become notorious for a string of ambushes that have killed dozens of federal officers.

In Tierra Caliente, such head-on confrontations have given way to a constant state of low-intensity warfare. In 2017, 1,510 murders were registered in Michoacán, a state of 4.5 million inhabitants.

Delfino’s role in the bloodletting is no secret to his former brothers in arms. He remains in touch with soldiers on active duty, and even meets up to reminisce when security conditions allow, he said.

“We like each other, and they respect my decision,” he said, “but if they learn that I’m out here doing something which doesn’t square with our values – if I mess with innocent people – they will come for me. From them, there’s no hiding.”