The demons dragged me from my girlfriend’s bed the other night. It was 2:30, and dark, and cold in the mountains.
I cranked my laptop and opened my email. Molly had sent me a YouTube video, via LaPolaka.com, of thugs committing mass murder in Creel. A convoy of white Suburbans took the highway at the turnoff to Divisadero, then crossed an open field to attack a house. Nine people died, including a fourteen year old girl, according to the report. The thugs then took their AK-47’s and convoyed off into the mountains, towards Cusarare, and Guachochi, and Parral. It was 6:30 in the morning on March 15.
The video was shot from a CIPOL camera mounted on a pole above the highway and driven by an at least semi-sentient being by remote control. It was broadcast by a courageous television journalist hundreds of miles away from Creel. It shows the assassins snorting cocaine, dipping pinches from a sandwich bag, shoving it up their noses like snuff. The guy offering it appears to be a leader of the mission. He is fully recognizable in the shot, clean shaven, with regular Germanic features and an intelligent face. His mother must be proud.
I’ve been to Creel, 20, or 40, or a hundred times. My first time there I got snowed in. I haven’t been back for a couple years. Life gets crowded, and you have to pick and choose where you spend your time.
The target of the attack was reportedly a businessman and his family. The house was large, and new, to me, and built in a part of town that used to be ejido, as far as I can tell and remember. I’ve slept in a in a little two-story Dogpatch cabin about a half a mile away, a property that the neighbors sold several times to several different foreigners in the likelihood that they wouldn’t all show up at the same time. Kind of a con man’s timeshare.
Though the police shot the video, they didn’t show up to stop the attack. They were undoubtedly outnumbered and outgunned, and probably making about $700 a month. It’s a good local wage, but not enough to die for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmujL0GqZkkHere’s the link
— Rich Wright
Drug War 40 
Rich: great reporting and writing!
Howard
I too have traveled to and through Creel 20, 40 or a hundred times… Probably half of those times with you, Rich. We saw some rough types and saw some heavy stuff… But never nearly as rough and heavy as it is now. Creel is the gateway to Chihuahua’s chunk of the Seirra Madre. It used to be a beautiful place and now it’s a slaughterhouse.
Pobre Mexico!
JF