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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMexican Cartel Declares War on Cheetos
Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest-growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Dont pay, and you can be threatened or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.
That corporation would be PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCos Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market were burned. The good news: No one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.
What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized, Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexicos Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. The authorities have to take forceful action.
Whats already generalized is kidnapping, carjacking and extortion of private citizens. Corporations are simply too large, too complex, and its not easy from a cartels perspective to determine who within a corporation should be threatened in an extortion attempt. (Sabritas dominates the Mexican snack food market with about 75 percent market share.) If youre looking to coerce the manager who is writing the checks, you might as well try to threaten a computer database.
Mexicos state-owned oil company, Pemex, has been subject to attacks on its oil pipelines. But this is due to theft, not extortion. Maquiladora factories the duty-free workshops that sprawl along the U.S.-Mexico border have largely been spared. So why did the cartel attack PepsiCo?
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/cartels-cheetos/
Lasher
(27,567 posts)liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)Somebody, somewhere gets outraged at some remark made by somebody else. Next thing you know Fox News will be outraged over the ethnic insensitivity of DU'ers. Unless, of course, they hear about somebody else who did the Wednesday outrage thing first. (Like maybe somebody in Poland. For instance.)
Lasher
(27,567 posts)But I am certain that there is nothing that I could do that would provoke Faux Noise to become any less Fair and Balanced.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)...corporations need to have the right to raise their own armies! Let corporate armies put an end to drug cartels. Then we'll all be safer. Can't you just imagine how safe we'd be if General Electric and Chase Bank had their own armies and Air Forces? "Hostile takeover" would sure take on a whole new meaning!
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)Mutant Chronicles I think
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)where the world's restaurants fought it out and Taco Bell won the food wars so that Taco Bell ended up being the only restaurant in the world. I don't recall the name of the film.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)and add at least another hundred billion a year to fight the narco-states we have created and to warehouse the peasants captured in this idiocy.
Year after year after year. And whenever anyone suggests that the strategy isn't working, DOUBLE DOWN.
End the war on drugs. Now.
Bucky
(53,997 posts)I guess we now know what war Romney's gonna start if he becomes president.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)I was expecting a satire story, with a title like that.