If a person is traveling in a car with others, one bad phone contact or chat can get the whole group kidnapped, or killed.

Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.

Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.

Then, they’ll go after everyone on that person’s contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats.

“You can’t go five minutes out of the city, … not even in daylight,” said Ismael Bojórquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. “Why? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone.”

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      • NoFuckingWaynado@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        28 days ago

        Not talking about extortion, kidnapping, murder. If an organization can become the dominant political party of an entire country with the stated goal of destroying another country or keeping girls out of school or men must have beards, then why not produce and export drugs.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          5·
          28 days ago

          So a narco state. It hasn’t happened there, because Mexico still has the semblance of a functioning government (despite mayors getting murdered within weeks of getting elected). I don’t think it’s quite there, but it could very much end up there.

          • NoFuckingWaynado@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6·
            28 days ago

            It might seem like a leap, but if you consider my country is run by a minority of people who extract the maximum amount of wealth solely for themselves, possibly destroying the habitability of the planet for all mankind. They police the entire planet to stamp out terrorism and communists which are mostly just people who want to extract wealth more equitably. How can the few go against the wishes and benefit of the many. They get them fighting each other. Convince people that destroying yourself or at least your productivity is far worse a sin than enabling slavery, genocide, and an apocalyptic future.