A Mexican man with a sun-worn face and gang-tattooed arms walked into an employment agency in Houston, Texas last week, leaving the drug business behind for brighter horizons.
Just like him, many people in the southwest are giving up the drug war for a new life and a fresh start. As the Mexican drug war continues with scores of bodies, drugs, or guns being found in various repositories around the desert, men are walking away from the drug war to pursue other enterprises.
One man from Ciudad Juarez spoke with HLS news service on conditions of anonymity because on the social stigma associated with not running drugs. “There’s good money in drugs,” he says, “but I made loco amounts of cash stealing credit cards last weekend in Dallas… Without a gun!”
Other men have been experimenting with auto theft, forgery, and counterfeiting. Also, many Home Depots have seen a spike in loitering in recent weeks, but authorities say it is unrelated.
To compensate for the loss of machismo in committing these pússy-crímes as they are called in Spanish, these would be drug runners let their anger out in yoga and spinning classes that have become recently affordable for the new middle class criminal.
Some States north of the border have thrown up their arms in the face of the drug madness. Case in point, Arizona’s aw-fuck-it-lets-just-impose-martial-law-law, has forced some Central Americans to go to Universidad or anywhere that is not Arizona. When asked for comment on this growing trend, a leading Mexican drug kingpin said, “Fuck you gringo, drugs are awesome.”
Other gangs have reached out to these drug dealer defectors with job offers. Asian, Italian, Irish and Russian gangs have picked up many of these free agents and put them to work in real money making enterprises such as racketeering, gambling, and politics. But many are sticking to the bread and butter of capitalism: Making money off stupid people.
One recent immigrant living in southern California said, “I can make mucho better money playing Mariachi to drunken suburbanites in my overpriced Mexican restaurants, and now I only put Coke up my butt when I want to.”
