DONNA, TEXAS – It seems more than 30 Mexican soldiers made themselves a wrong turn a few days ago and ended up in Texas, where the locals are none too fond of invading Mexicans. It was the sort of thing that happens, apparently, more often than the general public might realize. According to Rick Pauza, spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection:

"There are times when an incident such as this occurs. CBP has established protocols in place to handle such incidents and all personnel have been processed as per those protocols. They returned to Mexico without incident."

So last Tuesday 33 Mexican soldiers in four military Humvees crossed a bridge into the U.S., something that occurs commonly enough to have established protocols in place for dealing with it, and I, for one, think that’s wicked cool!

Gangs of armed marauders, desperadoes on the run, moving without let or hindrance across the badlands where no border matters, matched by steely-eyed men of whip-cord sinew and taut frame running the international gauntlet, brandishing the sword of justice on two sides of the hot, dry frontier . . .

So then I checked up on the trans-border news over at San Diego RED, and it turns out a couple of America’s most wanted just got captured in Tijuana, a stone’s throw from the border. Needless to say, the image of these two baleen feeders dashed my ideas of border chases and wily international criminals.

 

Look at those guys! They are, at left, Oscar Olivas and at right, Peter Soto, leaders of the notorious Mongols, a U.S. motorcycle gang, rivals of the Hell’s Angels. Olivas and Soto were taken into custody on July 26 in Tijuana where they had been hiding out, presumably in a rented hangar, for several years. Neither should be mistaken for the as yet un-captured international spice gangster, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

Soto’s description at America’s Most Wanted, lists him as 6’ 4”, 375. Three-hundred-seventy-friggin’-five. How can a crime lord let himself get like that?! To even say that Soto and Olivas were ‘on the run’ is to strain credulity, they were on the lumber, at best. Imagine the scene when they went down: 

“You – put down the waffles and come out with your flippers up.”

I wish I could use a few column inches to praise the Mexican authorities for the capture of these two behemoths. After all, Pakistan can’t find a bewhiskered Scottie Pippen impersonator living up the block from its own military academy. For 16 years, U.S. authorities couldn’t find an old man in Santa Monica and they might not have found him yet without an assist from daytime television. So yeah, compared to the international standard in fugitive hunting, I’d say well done, Mexico, except seriously – how could you not find those two guys? They have their own radar signatures! You’ll get no praise from me for spotting two gangsters so grotesque Bob DeNiro won’t hang out with them.

This isn’t really a very well thought out story and since I can’t think of a way to wrap it up succinctly, here’s Dino, the Duke, Ricky Nelson and a bizarrely dubbed Walter Brennan.