Mexico: Drug cartels, violence & US involvement

[Posting a link?]

Forum Guidelines
Posting a link? Read This!

Forgot your password? Need help?
Click Here To Contact Us

Mudflats Merchandise
AKMuckraker Amazon Store
Support AKM Merchandise

Download it here!

[Forty Watt]

Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. In 2008, there were more than 6,200 drug-related murders, more than double the figure from the year before. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration.

...To many Mexicans, the rising count of gruesome drug-related murders is evidence that the government's strategy is not working. In September 2009, newspapers estimated the number of killings at more than 13,600 since Mr. Calderón took office.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html?ref=us

The killings of the three people connected with the consulate — an American Consulate employee and her husband, along with the Mexican husband of another employee — bring a new urgency to the United States’ involvement in Mexico’s drug war.

The bodies of the slain American couple, Lesley A. Enriquez and Arthur H. Redelfs, were returned to El Paso on Tuesday. The investigation is following several lines, including the possibility of mistaken identity, said Special Agent Andrea Simmons, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. field office in El Paso, which is helping Mexican investigators.

In Washington, there is increasing disenchantment with the results of the American aid, under what is known as the Mérida Initiative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/world/americas/17juarez.html

[Forty Watt]

In a related story -
Legal Briefing: Drug Cartels Used Wachovia to Launder Money

Wachovia Admits Violations, Will Pay $160 Million

Wachovia, now a subdivision of Wells Fargo (WFC), had a relationship with a Mexican "casas di cambio," or currency exchange house, which it structured so badly that $420 billion flowed out of Mexico unmonitored, in "serious and systemic" violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.

Because of the permissive arrangements, Mexican drug cartels were able to stash money in Wachovia accounts with impunity, using some of their proceeds to buy airplanes to smuggle more drugs. Prosecutors aren't claiming Wachovia knew the money was drug money; in fact, Wachovia's systems were so poorly set up the bank had no real way of knowing whose money it was.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/legal-briefing-drug-cartels-used-wachovia-to-launder-money/19404808/

[Sirenoftitan]

<snip>
And drug-related bribery is gnawing deep into US institutions, as Calderon has long alleged. Thomas Frost of the US Department of Homeland Security says that last year the department accused 839 of its own agents of corruption. In evidence to a US Senate committee this month, Kevin Perkins of the division of the FBI charged with fighting corruption within the US government said his – presumably honest – staff had deployed some 120 agents along the border. They dug up more than 400 public corruption cases that resulted in well over 100 arrests and more than 130 state and federal prosecutions.

A multiplicity of US government agencies, some of them deeply infiltrated by narcos with their deep pockets, are falling over themselves in efforts to bring order to a chaotic situation: the Department of Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The US-Mexico border: where the drugs war has soaked the ground blood red by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, The Independent on Sunday

How much more does it take before it's realised that "The War on Drugs" isn't working?

[Jaime from Wasilla]

How much more does it take before it's realised that "The War on Drugs" isn't working?

Once more I will say that the so called "War on Drugs" is working exactly as those who support it want it to work. It has never been about ending the drug problem. It has always really been about making sure the prices are high, and that the profits are flowing into the right hands.  The growers, dealers, and suppliers who get shot or arrested are those whose drug money does not flow into the pockets of the right wing.

[futurexpat?]

How much more does it take before it's realised that "The War on Drugs" isn't working?

Once more I will say that the so called "War on Drugs" is working exactly as those who support it want it to work. It has never been about ending the drug problem. It has always really been about making sure the prices are high, and that the profits are flowing into the right hands.  The growers, dealers, and suppliers who get shot or arrested are those whose drug money does not flow into the pockets of the right wing.

 

And it's the US who badgered Mexico into going this route fighting drugs. And badgered is a mild term. Given that it's common knowledge about how corrupt the government there is, one could not have expected less than this.

We were in Mexico a little over a year ago. There's more than just a little resentment against the US because of this.

[Sirenoftitan]

<snip>
The government has sent in crack units of the marines but with little obvious success. A crime reporter from Ciudad Victoria, also in Tamaulipas, told the Guardian that he was on his way to cover a shoot-out last Thursday when traffickers called his mobile phone and warned him not to publish anything. "They know everything about you. I don't know how they do, but they do," he said. "If you publish anything about them they don't like, or somebody in the government who is protecting them, then you are going to regret it, big time."

The following day there were five gun battles across the city, and on Saturday there were a further three. Of these, only one was referred to by the state government website that promises reliable information about the violence. Local news outlets decided against publishing government promises to improve security after warnings from the traffickers. Publishers self-censor complaints of abuses by the army for fear of angering the third force also battling for control of Tamaulipas.

Mexico's drug wars rage out of control by Jo Tuckman and Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian

[Sirenoftitan]

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged increased support for Mexico in the fight against drug gangs.  In Mexico as part of a high-level US delegation, she said more would be done to cut US demand for drugs and the flow of profits and guns into Mexico.  The gangs "are fighting against both of our governments", she said, adding that a broader effort would aim to tackle social problems fuelling the trade.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8582497.stm

[Sirenoftitan]

Mexican drug gangs have expanded their activities in the US with heroin production doubling in 2008, the US justice department says in a report.  Despite huge US funding for the war on drugs, trade in marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine also grew, according to the National Drug Threat Assessment.  The report found that Mexican groups were active in every region of the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8588509.stm

[Lani]

Yep, this war on drugs thing is working out just great, isn't it?

Just before I arrived in the islands, I'm told pakalolo growing was pretty common.  Have a little space, grow it and sell it.  Helped a lot with the cost of living here, people of all ages and backgrounds.  Then the WAR hit big time, with helicopters swooping around and swat teams rushing in and people arrested.  Some old farmers in their 70's were sent to prison for a couple of plants.  Your tax dolllars at work.  We'll show those criminals!

Electricity bills were monitored in the 1990's for increases that might mean the growing was going on inside.  If you were renting a house, and its electricity bills went up - watch out!  Someone might break down the doors. 

By the late 1990's, pakalolo has hard to find.  Yay!  War won!  Except people turned to crystal meth... which was never used before.  How's that working out?

I live next to agricultural land.  Some days those damn helicopters drive me crazy.

[Sirenoftitan]

Police in Texas have seized a cache of weapons allegedly being smuggled to drug gangs in Mexico.  The haul, in Laredo on the US-Mexico border, included assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Police say it was one of the largest weapons shipments found in recent years. Two men have been arrested.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10222433.stm

[futurexpat?]

There are lots of politicians and law enforcement officers here who say this trade isn't really going on. I wonder how they will wish this away.

[Sirenoftitan]

At least 21 people have been killed in a gunfight between two of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels near the border with the US, officials have said.  The incident occurred off a remote dirt track near the city of Nogales, in the northern state of Sonora, they said.

Nine people have been arrested, six of whom were wounded in the confrontation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/latin_america/10485228.stm

[bubbles]

Yep, this war on drugs thing is working out just great, isn't it?

Just before I arrived in the islands, I'm told pakalolo growing was pretty common.  Have a little space, grow it and sell it.  Helped a lot with the cost of living here, people of all ages and backgrounds.  Then the WAR hit big time, with helicopters swooping around and swat teams rushing in and people arrested.  Some old farmers in their 70's were sent to prison for a couple of plants.  Your tax dolllars at work.  We'll show those criminals!

Electricity bills were monitored in the 1990's for increases that might mean the growing was going on inside.  If you were renting a house, and its electricity bills went up - watch out!  Someone might break down the doors. 

By the late 1990's, pakalolo has hard to find.  Yay!  War won!  Except people turned to crystal meth... which was never used before.  How's that working out?

I live next to agricultural land.  Some days those damn helicopters drive me crazy.

Lani.....in 1980 my daughter was diagnosed with Vertigo. the spot was on her neck and her dermatologist gave me some ointment and told me to take her somewhere that had lots of sun. off we went to Hawaii. to Kauai and Maui.
in Maui my baby learned to swim. the people pampered us gave us love. i didn't understand why until we got to Kauai and my friend took us up the coast where we had dinner in a small restaurant owned by native people.
the restaurant had a small museum attached and it was there that saw myself in a picture. in a picture taken in the early 1900's. there were my eyes looking out at me and my mouth smiling back at me. i started to cry and the lady and her sister took me and hugged me and said welcome home. it was on then. it was a party that lasted three days. that's when i smoked the Pakalolo from her family land in the interior. boy oh boy. now i have to go to Amsterdam where the pakalolo is grown in greenhouses. it is not the same. in Kauai it tasted of pineapple, of the sun and it was blue-green like the sea. this stupid war on a plant is beyond ridiculous. it is bizarre just like the people who have ruled this country for far too long....P.S......the Vertigo left. never to return. and Hawaii is my soul's home.

[Forty Watt]

7 circles of Juarez

If Dante had ever been to Juarez he would have placed it squarely in the seventh circle of hell, the one housing "violence" and "ringed by a river of boiling blood."

The city, which lies on the Rio Grande just across from El Paso, Texas, is the murder capital of the world, claiming more than 5,500 killings since January 2008. It is responsible for one-fifth of the more than 25,000 drug-related murders that have occurred in Mexico since 2006 when President Felipe Calderon officially declared war on the country’s heavily armed drug cartels.

Read on -- it's very disheartening, I'm afraid. 

[futurexpat?]

When we went to Mexico almost two years ago, the tour left out of El Paso and crossed the border in Juarez. The tour now leaves from Tuscon, Arizona.

[Sirenoftitan]

<snip>
The atrocity last month in Torreón, an industrial city in the northern state of Coahuila, came amid headlines shocking even by the standards of Mexico's drug war. A sophisticated car bomb of a type never before seen in the country; a popular gubernatorial candidate gunned down in the highest-level political murder; and then last week the release of official figures putting the number of drug war-related murders at 28,000.

It was against this backdrop of bloody crisis that President Felipe Calderón said something which could, maybe, begin to change everything. He called for a debate on the legalisation of drugs. "It is a fundamental debate," he said. "You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides."

A statement of the obvious, but coming from Calderón it was remarkable. This is the president who declared war on drug cartels in late 2006, deployed the army, militarised the city of Juárez and promised victory even as the savagery overtook Iraq's. Calderón stressed that he personally still opposed legalisation, but his willingness to debate the idea was, for some, a resounding crack in the international drug policy edifice.

War on drugs: why the US and Latin America could be ready to end a fruitless 40-year struggle by Rory Carroll and Paul Harris, The Observer

[Sirenoftitan]

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox has called for the legalisation of drugs, arguing that prohibition has failed to curb rising drug-related violence and corruption.

Mr Fox said legalisation did not mean that drugs were good.  But he said it was a strategy that could reduce the power of the cartels.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10921975

[Sirenoftitan]

The body of an official investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants killed in a ranch in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas was found today dumped beside a nearby road alongside another unidentified victim, according to local media.

Earlier, two cars exploded outside the studios of the national TV network Televisa in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. There were no casualties, but the blasts added to a growing sense of fear in the aftermath of the worst single act of violence in the country's raging drug wars.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/mexico-massacre-investigator-migrants

[Forty Watt]

Mexico sacks 3,200 police officers

Facundo Rosas, the police commissioner, said at a news conference on Monday that the officers had failed to pass "confidence tests".

More than 450 of them are accused of committing crimes. Another 1,485 officers expected to lose their jobs in the coming weeks, Rosas said.

The commissioner's announcement is aimed at bolstering confidence in the Mexican federal police, who have taken a leading role in the country's four-year-old drug war but are widely viewed as incompetent and corrupt...

Al Jazeera's Mariana Sanchez, reporting from Mexico City, said: "There has been a sort of turning point in the last week where we have seen a massacre of 72 migrants, two car bombs in the capital - one against a television station and another against a police station - and three grenade attacks.

[futurexpat?]

There has always been a lot of corruption in the Mexican police departments, and all of this is just making it worse.

When we went to Mexico about two years ago on a tour, the guide collected "mordita" (a bribe) when we entered the country. When we left, he paid that money to the police/army officers stationed near the border. We spent twelve days in Mexico and have no stamps on our passports. And I would add this was with a very reputable tour agency. It's just the way things are done.