The drug war in Mexico seems like something out of Bosnia-Herzegovina. When we have gang fights here, one or two people get killed. In Mexico, it’s more like two or three dozen people get killed. We have a couple of funerals. They have mass graves, or even worse:
The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped Thursday in the heart of Mexico’s second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country’s two main drug cartels, Sinaloa and the Zetas.
The bodies were stuffed in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the picturesque city that hosted last month’s Pan American Games.
I don’t think the War on Drugs is working.
What was your first clue? 🙂
More seriously, it depends on what the goals of the War on Drugs have been. If it’s been to expand state power, erode civil liberties, and make a lot of money for some people, it’s worked fabulously, which is why it perseveres even as it fails spectacularly at its ostensible goal.
In Mexico, where this is happening, the goals are not to expand state power or erode civil liberties, in Mexico the goals are for the gov to look like they’re doing something without interfering with the truckloads of money being made by some and the unwillingness to ante up on the part of Mexico’s wealthy class (speaking of gap between rich and poor). it’s not all about US/ USA though easily available weapons and the huge demand for drugs in the USA are a major part
If I were a Mexican president, there’s not much I could be doing short of declaring all out war on the gangs…and considering the army has been called a few times, it’s not much of a hyperbole.
There’s nothing Mexico can really do unless we figure out a way to reduce demand for drugs…
A lot of their inequality is a direct result of this war.
unfortunately not true. they could actually tax the wealthy to generate resources to actually pay (and train) a police force. Use of the military is a cheap shortcut and doesn’t work for many reasons, but partly because they are completely external. The police don’t make a living wage from their jobs, hence most get paid by the cartels. Mexico is where the Koch bros want to take the USA – no taxes on the wealthy, no resources for infrastructure. the gov comes from the upper classes and most are unwilling to even pretend to rock the boat vis a vis making any demands on their fellow-wealthy to ante up. Kidnapping is a cottage industry, and kids of the wealthy get kidnapped for ransom and killed. you’d think they’d want to solve the rich/ poor situation, but no, having unlimited wealth is more important than the lives of their own children. taxes are on the books but not enforced. maybe you can tell you’ve touched a nerve here with me. Mexico has the richest man in the world, last I saw, Carlos Slim. the gap between rich and poor is, or was until recently, the largest in the world.
Just sayin’:
It’s a chicken/egg thing, circular if you will. How are you going to send in the police to deal with cartels that can outmatch an army? Police that have targets on their heads if they even get close to being a threat? Fear and intimidation? How are you going to attract investors with this much violence? It’s not gonna happen.
Anyway, I agree in general, all I’m saying is that we could begin to deal with inequality if we deal with drugs first. It doesn’t help that we reward right-wing governments if they are hard on drugs…no matter their human rights record or policy towards inequality.
investors? it’s not about investors. Mexico has an extremely wealthy upper class. Let them ante up for a real police force instead of paying no taxes. there’s no chicken and egg here – there is a police force, just underpaid and undertrained. also, with an inadequate public school system the police can’t recruit ppl with even a high school education. collect some taxes and start paying them. – if this sounds a little like Ohio and Wisconsin, you’re right. that’s exactly where the Koch bros et al want to take the USA.
because the army is not the way to fight drug cartels
The War on Drugs is an American creation; it seems relevant to talk about America’s goals, because until the US rethinks its policies, the biggest and most lucrative market for Mexico’s cartels will continue to grow, and the conservative Mexican leaders being propped up by the US have little choice but to go along with the interdiction strategies the US wants. (Especially if they want their kids’ student visas renewed…)
From the US perspective, the violence in Mexico is an annoyance at worst, convenient at best because a nation at war tends to retreat to the sort of politicians the US prefers. It’s catastrophic for the people of Mexico, sure. Since when did any US Drug Warrior care about that?
Bush especially colluded with the Mexican gov on this. What gets me in this kind of discussion is that ppl assume Mexico is just like the USA and that the Mexican elite are passive in what’s going on. it’s either “blame American first” which is annoying and with which I completely disagree, or proposing solutions for the drug problem in the USA for Mexico. Mexico never had a drug usage problem, the USA has a drug usage problem. Mexico has an infrastructure and an employment problem (the USA is getting there, not to worry) Mexico is the route whereby drugs enter the USA. the violence is turf wars along the route of the drugs.
Seriously addressing the drug problem in the USA? didn’t we just have this discussion on the Walmart thread?
I posted something a couple years ago:
“This is the Talibanisation of the conflict.”
I heard something about this from ppl on the ground. It’s not talked about alot but ppl know it. it plays into the electoral politics as well from what I heard.
Think ‘Prohibition’, the years between the 18th and 21st Amendments, and you’d have an apt comparison to the ‘war on Drugs’
Even if it doesn’t sound exactly the same, it’s playing the harmony off the original’s melody for sure.
You must mean USA war on drugs because it’s not pertinent to Mexico, which is where the violence is playing out. There was no drug problem in Mexico itself until recently, the past 5 years or so. Unlike the USA, Mexican youth were not interested in drugs. prohibition of drugs has nothing to do with what’s going on – and iirc small amounts of marijuana possession was decriminalized some years back
the problems in Mexico stem from re-routing of the drug traffic from Colombia to the USA through Mexico.
The USA war on drugs is international because we lean on countries to shut down suppliers (or claim we do). We know that the CIA deals in drugs, that the actions we enforce actually increase corruption both in the US and in other countries, and that US banks have laundered billions of dollars of drug money.
A part of the corruption are drug dealers expanding markets to their home countries.
Now on the demand side, folks in the US are becoming addicted to prescription drugs from the black market.
The US war on drugs is very pertinent to Mexico. And Calderon’s response has made matters worse instead of better. The other factor is loose gun laws in US states that border Mexico, making the US border town gun shops the source of most of the weapons being used in the gang wars.
yes, that’s it. USA supplies easy weapons to Mexico and Mexico supplies drugs to the USA. Bush colluded with the Mexican gov to stage a Potemkin war on drugs that hasn’t made a dent in the supplies line or the money ppl at the top are raking in. On the other hand Mexico is being decimated by the violence and the economy and what there is of a middle class is being destroyed.