THE BORDER REPORT

Whoever did the hit cut the legs of their victims off at the knees, then decapitated the three men, leaving the bodies in a car at a busy Culiacán, Sinaloa, intersection. The salacious murders of the cartels have all the plot line of a snuff film these days; one atrocity after another, war without end. But what grabbed my interest was a note attached to one of the bodies, scrawled with a pen on crumpled piece of paper. “Here you go, Arturo Beltrán Leyva … Quit putting up those banners and leaving messages lying around; why don’t you meet me pecho a pecho.” Bingo. I’ve long wondered why this kind of showdown doesn’t happen more often; frankly it would solve most of Mexico’s national security crises and at the same time, offer up a decisive win in quien los tiene mas grande. Stroll through Colonia Las Quintas in Culiacán and $10,000 will land you a hired gun; then those guys go down and you're back where you started. Nobody particularly important goes down. It'd be interesting if, for once, someone big stepped up, in a quick-draw, Mexican standoff fashion and settled this thing. So let me be the first to propose it; a once and for all gunfight between two handpicked sicarios chingones, one from Badiraguato, one from Navolato. Winner takes Arizona. It would establish an appropriate end to an act of this narco-theatre that has played for some five years now. For the machismo of the drug trade, there can be no more satisfying conclusion; two top boss rivals, man to man. There would be an act worthy of a true narco-corrido, giving this underworld something to talk about that would rival the Pablo Acosta showdown on the Ojinaga border twenty years ago. Consider what we’re facing now: A split in the Sinaloa factions last spring left Arturo Beltrán Leyva on the outs with his old friend Joaquín Shorty Guzmán. Beltrán joined forces with the Zetas and apparently with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and is now in a pitched battle with the Sinaloans. The Sinaloans, the longest running narco-bosses in Latin America, now find themselves fighting a war with three fronts, to the north, to the east and in their hometown. Apparently, they're starting to think the same thing I am; it’s no wonder they’re offering to settle this máno a máno. The move smells of desperation, and maybe frustration. Logistically, one has to wonder how long the Sinaloans can keep this war up. Of course they’re pulling in billions from the global narcotics trade, but what about their infrastructure? Simply put, can they keep enough men on the streets and guns coming in to repel all the other cartels? Some of these fights, the Sinaloans picked themselves. Take Juárez for example. The border city war was always interesting to watch; nobody was supposed to move into Juárez, that place was essentially a gift to Vicente because of everyone’s love for Amado Carrillo. But there they came, trying to establish a new entry port in spite of the Juárez Cartel’s ownership. Before that, Nuevo Laredo, where, and some may disagree with me but, I believe they lost that corridor into Texas. To the west, the last word on Tijuana was that the Sinaloans were establishing agreements with the remnants of the Arellano Felix family to control that city. Everywhere you look, the theatre replays itself; the Sinaloans are hounded throughout the entire country. Or are they doing the hounding? “Chapo rules,” says an old friend, an agent with the U.S. Justice Department with whom I can discuss these cases like the post-Sunday football games they’ve become. “They tried to take him in Nuevo Laredo; they failed. They tried in Tijuana; they failed. They tried in Acapulco; they failed. They tried in Sonora; they failed. Then he moved into Juárez. There they go now, rolling into Juárez, and they haven’t been able to stop him yet. “Nobody’s going to stop the Sinaloans,” my guy says. He may be right, but I’m going to start arguing for a showdown because, frankly, it’s getting a little old.

-- Michel Marizco