Mexico's drug wars rage out of control

[friendly_iconoclast]

Source: Guardian (UK)


Mexico's drug wars rage out of control
Despite crackdown by Felipe Calderón, more than 2,000 people killed this year as drug cartels vie for turf


Jo Tuckman in Mexico City and Ed Vulliamy
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 March 2010 16.30 GMT


Saturday: A shoot-out between rival cartels in the north-western state of Sinaloa leaves nine dead, including six peasant farmers caught in the crossfire.

Sunday: Gunmen burst into a wedding in a small rural town in the southern state of Guerrero, killing five.

Monday: Hitmen target two people driving in Ciudad Juárez. The scene recalls the murder of three people linked to the US consulate 10 days earlier.

Tuesday: Newspapers publish a photograph of an alleged drug dealer being arrested by marines next to pictures of a body dressed in the same clothes which was found dumped on Monday....


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/23/mexico-drug-wars-cartels

[virgogal]

1. Per JT

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so simple I just got to go
The sun's so hot I forgot to go home
Guess I'll have to go now

"Americano" got the sleepy eye
But his body's still shaking like a live wire
Sleepy "Señorita" with the eyes on fire

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low
Moon's so bright like to light up the night
Make everything all right

Baby's hungry and the money's all gone
The folks back home don't want to talk on the phone
She gets a long letter, sends back a postcard; times are hard

Oh, down in Mexico
I never really been so I don't really know
Oh, Mexico
I guess I'll have to go

Oh, Mexico
I never really been but I'd sure like to go
Oh, Mexico
I guess I'll have to go now

[Plucketeer]

2. This is really a shame.

The billions wasted on trying to keep this stuff AWAY from it's demand here in the USA. For a FRACTION of the money - not to mention NO loss of life - we could fly the stuff into distribution points in the US and hand it out to those who are stupid enough to use it. Must be 18 or 21 maybe, but it's FREE to any who want it. CERTAINLY, this would be cheaper and less consuming of innocent victims than the lunacy we're perpetrating now. :crazy:

[anarch]

3. in the future, I think many of our current policies will be seen

as crimes against humanity. I mean, that is, if we don't destroy ourselves somehow before the future gets here.

[Hulk]

4. This is really a sad situation down here....

Can't blame it all on you folks up on the other side of the Rio Grand. Corruption has been a part of Mexico since the Spanish came in 1517. These people are still suffering from their exploitation.

Along comes a way to make fast, easy money; and LOTS of it, and greed gets factored in with guns. Pretty soon, there is NO price too high to pay to get some of the action.

Calderon may not succeed, but he has to keep trying. Corruption is still a cancer to the game, but we have to keep trying. These soul-less drug cartels could care less about life. They kill each other for their action, and if innocent babies were in the way, it wouldn't matter a lick. They need to be exterminated...and it may take forever to do.

[pipoman]

7. Give the Hulk

a gold star, and thank you for speaking the truth.

[Plucketeer]

9. That would be like trying to eradicate cockroaches

from the face of the earth. Kill all in sight - tomorrow it looks like you did nothing. Only stopping the DEMAND is going to bring the supply chain to a halt!

[nyc 4 Biden]

27. how do you stop demand for drugs??

serious question.

[a la izquierda]

22. I'm not excusing the cartels, but I will play Devil's Advocate.

The cartels largely did their own thing prior to Calderon's meddling after 2006. They would kill themselves in small numbers, but they left innocent people, by and large, out of the mix. Calderon's war against the cartel's initiated a power grab among mid-level cartel leaders.
In fact, back in the late- '70s and early -'80s, the chief of police of Mexico City actively gave protection to one of the cartels. Nobody cared (yet everybody knew). And it was only after he began demanding things, changing the game, etc., that the cartels took him out. But there was no orgy of violence like that which exists today.

So, you see, you cannot absolve Calderon (and I think he is a conservative scumbag who has royally screwed Mexico). And the politics of the cartels are abhorrent, but there is often a method to the way they behave-the government knows this. When they change the rules, problems occur.

[pjt7]

5. Juarez is not just about drugs

NAFTA laws let them become a world-wide corporate HQ, but some laws were changed & unemplyoment & business closings have greatly added to the mess.

[defendandprotect]

6. We should erase "War" and everything to do with it from the face of the earth!!!

[pipoman]

8. And invent cotton candy trees, and soda pop rivers...n/t

[defendandprotect]

11. As they say . . . "Peace is harder than war" . . .

We can have a continuing Disneyland understanding of a "necessity" for war and

a belief in the mythical "national security state" -- or we can begin to understand

who profits from war and the crimes done behind war.

[pipoman]

13. Who's we?

You and me? Maybe, but not everyone..ever. The aggressors are engaged in war, which necessitates the defenders engage or die. The collective, 'we', will never 'erase war'...so my suggestion has the same probability as yours.

[defendandprotect]

16. The "we" I was referring to are those who believe in the

myth of 9/11 -- terrorism -- and "national security state" --

those who still don't know that Bush lied re Iraq -- that these were simply

wars of aggression -- and illegal.

What suggestion? I'll have to go back and look --

This is a liberal nation -- no one wants war --

it is propaganda and lies which produce it -- and that has always been so.

And the "we" who wake up to the those lies!

[defendandprotect]

12. Ending the fake Drug War would also help end corruption of government ...

in America --

which also leads to faked excuses to intervene in the affairs of other

soverign nations.

[pipoman]

14. This we can come close to agreeing on...n/t

[defendandprotect]

17. ... before we become Mexico, let's hope!

[Renew Deal]

10. American junkies need their fix.

:shrug:

[timo]

15. folks dont get it

with the cartels, its not JUST drugs, its branched out into all kinds of criminal and legit enterprises, from trucking to government contracts to stolen cars, to stolen crude, they are not just a bunch of dope runners and mules, human smuggling is a big industry for them, its a two fold operation because if the person carries a couple of keys of dope across they serve 2 purposes. but still it is waaay deeper than drugs.

[defendandprotect]

18. Thanks for that essential information . . ..

however, isn't the Drug War the starting point for the corruption of government

and police enforcement? After all, the Drug War crap can't go on unless that

corruption of officials exists?

And, much of what else you mention can be seen as appendage to the Drug War ...

servicing it?

Certainly this is the right wing's Drug War ...

And, as the right rises so does the human smuggling -- enslaving women and young males

into sex trade?

Good post!

:)

[friendly_iconoclast]

19. Yes, the Drug War started it, but it is now an existential menace to Mexico

That's the thing about war as a foreign policy: Those that start them usually believe that they can control the outcome,
while history shows that idea to be a delusion.

[defendandprotect]

23. You may be misinterpreting that this isn't what those who set

foreign policy actually want -- at least those on the right.

Often for the right wing, the more destruction the better!

GOP . . . "third world America" . . . seems to be the goal.

What I'm saying is the entire concept of a Drug War is a threat to

every nation -- US included -- and to democracy/freedom.

It's a right wing concept and the left has to overturn it.

:)

[friendly_iconoclast]

20. The cartels are too powerful now to be stopped by ending Prohibition II...

...even though that is what got them started and fuelled them. The MX government can now only acquiesce or fight them.

Someone else pointed out that peoples can be forced into power politics. It is known as the Parable of the Tribes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7996403#7997401

The2ndWheel (1000+ posts) Tue Mar-23-10 02:38 PM
Response to Reply #1
12. The Parable Of The Tribes
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC07/Schmoklr.htm

"The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease. But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes. (emphasis added)

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes."

[defendandprotect]

24. US/CIA could defeat the USSR, Iraq, Afghanistan but not drug cartels...?????

The only way the drug dealers stay in business is by corruption of government --

in fact, since elites profit from the drug war -- and we gained a hint of that from

Ollie North's antics -- they are likely protecting it.

We also learned long ago that our Customs people had been seriously compromised . . .

evidently nothing has ever been done to turn around this corruption of government and

its agencies --

And, certainly our police are complicit in protecting drug dealing.


The CIA has certainly used the Drug War for its own purposes -- and many entanglements

between elites and Drug War. In fact, I imagine there is still talk of the document

which outlines that this huge source of income could not be left to any but already

powerful people. Kissinger was one of the alleged co-signers of that document.

Allen Dulles, another, I believe.


At the time of WWII, the wealthies man in the world was Chinese.

Drugs have always been a great source of wealth/power for elites.

[timo]

21. no

the corruption was there waaaaaay before the drug cartels got to where they are today, I live on the border and have traveled and worked a lot of places in Mexico, not just tourist bullshit, the corruption was always everywhere there, the drugs just added a lot more cash and stepped up the violence.
if the cartels did not have the drugs to run, they would still be doing something else illegal, smuggling people, extortion, whores, stealing loads of crude is big $ too but since the stolen crude ends up here you dont hear too much about it. if you think the drug war is responsible for corruption in Mexico you have your head in the sand and dont know what your talking about, the mordida isnt a new thing, plata r plombo (silver or lead) has been a way of life here for many many years!!

[defendandprotect]

25. Of course the Drug War added to the corruption . . . tremendously...

However, all of the crime/corruption you're talking about -- smuggling people, extortion,

prostitution, exploitation of oil prices -- is simply MAFIA-like corruption which is now

and ALWAYS dependent upon corruption government/police authority/judges/courts.

The protection for ALL of that comes from the elite.

The MAFIA/organized crime serves the elite. It exists only with their protection.

[timo]

26. closer

my point is the corruption was always prevalent the drugs made it more profitable, but they were not the root cause. in the 80's it was big money to smuggle electronics into mexico, televisions, radios, cordless phones, all that kind of stuff, they were flown in by the plane load.

The zona roja, prostitution aka boys town or whore town if you will has been in business down there since waaay before I was born, waay before marijuana became so popular....

the ejido system where the government redistributed large portions of land was full of corruption and still is to this day.


like I said, the cartels would still be in business even if you could snap your fingers and make drugs disappear they would still be fighting each other over whats left, from lowly street cops that subsidize their income by selling the "rights" to parking spots, to the old school truckers syndicato, which back in the day made teamsters look like bunny scouts, if you owned a business and didnt use syndicato trucks, they would come in and burn you down LITERALLY!!!!


I dont pretend to know what the answer to mexicos problems are, but its not just the drugs!

[defendandprotect]

28. Poverty breeds crime . . . Poverty is caused by elites/corporatism . . .

Therefore, yes, poverty has always existed --

but the Drug War was specifically put in place by Nixon to entrap and ensnare

African Americans in large part -- and to create a violent society.

Much of Americans' fears are based in Drug War thinking --

I'm not saying that the Drug War is the ROOT CAUSE of any basic crimes --

I'm saying that the Drug War has escalated crime and violence --



in the 80's it was big money to smuggle electronics into mexico, televisions, radios, cordless phones, all that kind of stuff, they were flown in by the plane load.

And how many officials had to look the other way to allow that to happen . . .

And, don't you think the pay-offs and numbers of officials having to look the other

way are even HIGHER when the "stuff" is drugs?

Prostitution of every kind -- male or female -- has always been under control of

organized crime -- and, again, they cannot exist without corruption of high government

officials. Especially right wing high government officials.

Many of the answers to Mexico's problems are tied up with America's exploitation of

Mexico. Certainly, the right wing here has been exploiting your labor -- and prevent

efforts to create jobs in Mexico. Your government is investing money in American

government in buying our debt, rather than investing in your own nation.

:)


And, of course, ending the Drug War would not end all crime in toto --

Nor all violence -- but it would end the worst of it and put us on a footing to end

more of it.