"Shoutout to los Chakas"

This weekend the latest Zeta interrogation/execution video appeared on the internet, in which a group of four uniformed Zetas interrogate and then hang two alleged Gulf cartel members by the neck.

During the now all too mundane interrogation the soon to die men identify themselves as Francisco Diego Goméz Guevara and Francisco Javier Reyes Cruz and admit to being members of a "golfo" cell that committed grenade attacks and hung banners in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. Both men may be the same two persons whose bodies were hung from a  Ciudad Victoria highway overpass last week.

The video begins with a text introduction that reads:

Here are these assholes that belong to the Gulf cartel who committed grenade attacks and hung their banners with the name of Los Zetas and challenging the government.

The attacks were at the office of the Ministerial police, at the Casino Magnific parking lot, and a car bomb at the prison. The banners were hung at #21 Adolfo Lopez Mateos Boulevard, another at the Colonia Las Palmas, and others at the Colegio Ateneo, the general hospital and the electrical utility office.

Stop intimidating the population, the fight is between us. We invite you to the rumble, assholes. The only thing you all can do is this shit.

Ciudad Victoria is Zeta territory

The video ends with a shout out to the gangbangers that make up Los Zetas' human resource pool, los Chakas.

Coca Victor (code for Ciudad Victoria) is all Zetaz, greetings to los Chakas.

Los Chakas are followers of a modern Mexican cultural trend that glorifies the “narco” ethos and lifestyle, and are heavily influenced by visual elements of U.S. gang culture.

A description of los Chakas in Mexican society can be found in a social critique posted by Conrado Romo, a journalist, on CriticaPura, a Mexican political analysis website.

The following is an excerpt from the post:

The Chakas are a sign of the erosion of what is left of the national identity.....They are a symptom of the danger to a society whose quintessential concept is that of a criminal, a badass (cabron), a drug trafficker.

Los Chakas are the ultimate representation of what many Mexicans consider acceptable; they are an effect of globalization on a community that is poorly educated and, in general, suffers from a poor quality of life.

They are the result of a socio-economic model defined by ignorance, a quest for wealth and hedonism, with the "fiesta" as the central structure of an entire generation's world view; an ideology of consumption by youth who face a completely tedious life with little promise and in awe before the offerings of organized crime.

And it is not only those who wear "Ed Hardy" t-shirts that accept that dynamic; a majority of the population is part of that indolence that naturally relishes the most coarse hedonism and breaks with the bonds that could lead to an impulse of positive community development. It is the most brutal and heartbreaking kind of individualization, a beginning of the end of a society.

The deficiencies of contemporary Mexican society have led to the "narco" as an icon; the social archetype that is able to overcome personal difficulties and achieve success (money, women, fine wine) is the dream of thousands of youth who fill Metroflog servers with photo poses holding handguns and imitating those with the power to corrupt governments.

Calderon's war is lost because his strategy only kills people but does not erase the example of their lives; the war is lost because the communications media continues to criminally spread these new class of values; it is a lost war because it is not creating a narrative of life that people can aspire to; it is a lost war because it is not being fought with education, but only with weapons.