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thebajarunner
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Tijuana- "The Stench of Decay"
Brutal article in todays Times.
Start with the last paragraph, then work your way up.
Sickening!!!
From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion
Mexico's bloody drug war
The drug violence in Mexico rivals death tolls in Iraq.
By David Danelo
December 10, 2008
On Nov. 3, the day before Americans elected Barack Obama president, drug cartel henchmen murdered 58 people in Mexico. It was the highest number
killed in one day since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. By comparison, on average 26 people -- Americans and Iraqis combined
-- died daily in Iraq in 2008. Mexico's casualty list on Nov. 3 included a man beheaded in Ciudad Juarez whose bloody corpse was suspended along an
overpass for hours. No one had the courage to remove the body until dark.
The death toll from terrorist attacks in Mumbai two weeks ago, although horrible, approaches the average weekly body count in Mexico's war. Three
weeks ago in Juarez, which is just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, telephone messages and banners threatened teachers that if they failed
to pay protection money to cartels, their students would suffer brutal consequences. Local authorities responded by assigning 350 teenage police
cadets to the city's 900 schools. If organized criminals wish to extract tribute from teachers, businessmen, tourists or anyone else, there is nothing
the Mexican government can do to stop them. For its part, the United States has become numb to this norm.
As part of my ongoing research into border issues, I have visited Juarez six times over the last two years. Each time I return, I see a populace under
greater siege. Residents possess a mentality that increasingly resembles the one I witnessed as a Marine officer in Baghdad, Fallouja and Ramadi.
"The police are nothing," a forlorn cab driver told me in September. "They cannot protect anyone. We can go nowhere else. We live in fear."
An official in El Paso estimated that up to 100,000 dual U.S.-Mexican citizens, mostly upper middle class, have fled north from Juarez to his city
this year. Only those lacking means to escape remain.
At the same time, with the U.S. economy in free fall, many illegal immigrants are returning south. So illegal immigration -- the only border issue
that seems to stir the masses -- made no splash in this year's elections. Mexico's chaos never surfaced as a topic in either the foreign or domestic
policy presidential debates.
Despite the gravity of the crisis, our closest neighbor has fallen off our political radar. Heaven help you if you bring up the border violence at a
Washington dinner party. Nobody -- Republican or Democrat -- wants to approach this thorny discussion.
Mexico, our second-largest trading partner, is a fragmenting state that may spiral toward failure as the recession and drug violence worsen.
Remittances to Mexico from immigrant labor have fallen almost 20% in 2008. Following oil, tourism and remittances, drugs are the leading income stream
in the Mexican economy.
While the bottom is dropping out of the oil and tourism markets, the American street price of every narcotic has skyrocketed, in part because of
recent drug interdiction successes along the U.S. border.
Unfortunately, this toxic economic c-cktail also stuffs the cartels' coffers. Substitute tribal clans for drug cartels, and Mexico starts to look
disturbingly similar to Afghanistan, whose economy is fueled by the heroin-based poppy trade.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Obama's pick for Homeland Security director, has argued for permanently stationing National Guard troops along the
border. That response alone will do little to assuage American border citizens. To them, talk of "violence bleeding over" is political pabulum while
they watch their southern neighbors bleed.
If Napolitano wishes to stabilize the border, she will have to persuade the Pentagon and the State Department to take a greater interest in Mexico.
Despite Calderon's commendable efforts to fight both the cartels and police corruption, this struggle shows no signs of slowing. When 45,000 federal
troops are outgunned and outspent by opponents of uncertain but robust size, the state's legitimacy quickly deteriorates.
The Mexican state has not faced this grave a challenge to its authority since the Mexican revolution nearly a century ago.
If you want to see what Mexico will look like if this pattern continues, visit a border city like Tijuana, where nine beheaded bodies were discovered
in plastic bags 10 days ago. Inhale the stench of decay. Inspect the fear on the faces. And then ask yourself how the United States is prepared to
respond as Mexico's crisis increasingly becomes our own.
David J. Danelo is the author of "The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide" and "Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq."
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by thebajarunner
The Mexican state has not faced this grave a challenge to its authority since the Mexican revolution nearly a century ago.
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The dog chases it's own tail. When it finally catches up to it, the bite won't be too hard.
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standingwave
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If drugs (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, MDMA, etc. etc.) were legal in the US, would this violence be happening in Mexico?
\"I could not help concluding this man had the most supreme pleasure while he was driven so fast and so smoothly by the sea.\"
James Cook |
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Bajaboy
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Why not legalize it in Mexico, too? Why not push to legalize it around the World why you're at it?
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by standingwave
If drugs (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, MDMA, etc. etc.) were legal in the US, would this violence be happening in Mexico? |
The rank and file involved in the drug trade in Mexico is beyond huge. What would happen to society if they had nothing to do? They'd find something
and it probably wouldn't be nice. The insurgency is on and requires a warlike response. Let it begin.
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flyfishinPam
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The citizens of Juarez and Tijuana need to march to Mexico City and refuse to pay any taxes until this situation can be controlled. The dual citizens
or whatever who are escaping to the other side of the border are nothing but chickenchit cowards. They need to be defending their country and the
dignity of its citizens not running away.
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ELINVESTIG8R
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Screw all of the philosophizing. The truth of the matter is that the mass murdering going on in Mexico must stop no matter the cost. The Mexican
government needs to temporarily invoke Article 29 of the Mexican constitution and suspend all civil liberties and go into a lock down of the country
establishing martial law and curfew. They need to take their entire Army Air Force Navy and Marines to include their untainted federal law enforcement
people and in one motion blanket the country from one end to the other sweeping across Mexico searching every person, every rancho, every house, every
building block by block and either capturing or killing each and every one of these sub-human bastards. This is the only way it can be stopped.
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Dave
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De facto legalization
| Quote: | Originally posted by standingwave
If drugs (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, MDMA, etc. etc.) were legal in the US, would this violence be happening in Mexico?
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In reality, they are. U.S. drug laws are a joke. Anyone wanting illegal drugs can get whatever, whenever they want and with
little fear of retribution.
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Skeet/Loreto
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Standingwave:
If all Drugs were Legal in the States, we would be in the same situtation as Mexico. Drug Addicts killing People.
Skeet/Loreto
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bajajudy
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Skeet/Loreto
Standingwave:
If all Drugs were Legal in the States, we would be in the same situtation as Mexico. Drug Addicts killing People.
Skeet/Loreto |
Skeet
These are not addicts killing people, they are suppliers killing people to remain the suppliers.
Supply and demand...if drugs were legal, the demand would be filled by the market place not the underground.
I dont have answers but I do believe that something had got to be done to stop this violence.
CNN International is running a program on Mexican Narco violence. I have not seen it but the trailers look pretty scary.
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Skeet/Loreto
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"Drug Addicts"-- Drug Dealers" The same thing when you put anything together with Drugs you get Lack of Control and Death to innocent People.
If Drugs became Leagal in the States, the Gangs would still take over and do the same as they are doing in Mexico.
To me it is still Drugs Killing People in Mexico as the States.
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Eugenio
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The way this guy (Danelo) skews statistics makes his article pretty much useless - like comparing one of the worst days in Mexico with an average day
in Iraq - pure hype - and disingenuosness. But I have to agree that things are changing in Mexico - it ain't what it was.
I've lost aquaintances to this narco stuff - and doing business in Mexico you're always about one degree of separation from someone with bad
connections - it's made me rethink my own actions.
But aholes like this author manipulating figures isn't part of the solution.
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Skeet/Loreto
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Judy:
It does appear to me that the use of Drugs is part of the eliminatation process for those that are Weak and cannot fit into the Society of the
Fitist.
In other words, the Weak are being disposed of through their use of Drugs for the benefit of P;easure and not Health.?
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DENNIS
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I realize this is old news but, what hope is there for a government to fight corruption when the government is most corrupt?
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MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- "Mexican authorities have detained the country's former drug czar on suspicion that he may have accepted $450,000 a month
in bribes from drug traffickers, Mexico's attorney general said Friday.
Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 through August of fighting organized crime in Mexico.
Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 until this August of the attorney general's office that specializes in combatting organized crime.
Ramirez is accused of meeting with members of a drug cartel while he was in office and agreeing to provide information on investigations in exchange
for the bribes, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza said at a news conference Friday.
The arrest was part of an ongoing investigation called "Operation Limpieza," or "Operation Cleanup," the attorney general said. The operation targets
officials who may have passed information to drug cartels.
The arrest was announced Thursday night, four days after the house arrest of Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas, the director for International Police Affairs
at Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency and the head of Mexico's Interpol office.
Authorities say more than 30 officials have been arrested since July in connection with the anti-corruption operation.
Don't Miss
Mexico's drug inquiry expands to ex-police official
Cartel member reportedly spied on DEA
Interpol, which is based in France, announced Wednesday it is sending a team of investigators to Mexico to investigate the possibility that its
communications systems and databases may have been compromised, a prospect raised by the arrest of Gutierrez, the top official working with the agency
in Mexico.
"A war of master proportions" between authorities and narcotics traffickers and traffickers among themselves has left more than 4,300 dead so far this
year, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an independent research and information organization. By comparison, the council said in a
report this week, there were 2,700 drug-related deaths in 2007.
"Homegrown drug cartels operating from both within and outside the country are engaging in a vicious turf war to seize control of major trafficking
corridors while engaging in almost open warfare against the mobilized forces of the state," the council said about what it calls "narco-fueled crime."
Mexican leaders have been trying to tamp down the violence by tightening controls on money-laundering and cracking down on corruption among local and
municipal police forces infiltrated by drug traffickers. It may not be enough.
"Due to pervasive corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government, and the almost effortless infiltration of the porous security forces by
the cartel, an ultimate victory by the state is far from certain," the Hemispheric Council concludes.
Drug trafficking in Mexico is a $20 billion- to $50 billion-a-year industry, as much as the nation earns from tourism or remittances from Mexicans
living in the United States, said Robert Pastor, a former National Security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and now a professor of international
relations at American University in Washington. He has been studying Latin America for more than four decades.
"This is a huge industry with an extraordinary capacity to corrupt and intimidate the country. And they're doing both right now," said Pastor, also a
former director of the Carter Center's Latin American and Caribbean Program.
The drug cartels are paying some Mexican officials bribes of $150,000 to $450,000 a month, authorities have said. This in a country where the per
capita income is $12,500 a year and one of every seven Mexicans lives in poverty, according to the CIA World Factbook."
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woody with a view
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we used to spend 2-3 weeks at a time in pto escondido, oaxaca every summer in the late 80's. EVERY morning a 2 seater helicopter would leave the army
base on the hill above the beach with only the pilot, buzz the beach about 75 feet over the sand and go spray the crops growing nearby.
does this still happen? or has the cartel grown too much so the army needs apache helo's, fully armed to run the gauntlet? we used to say the 2 seater
was probably spraying a mix of water and fertilizer....maybe we were onto something!!!
god help them!
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Dave
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Agreed
| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
I realize this is old news but, what hope is there for a government to fight corruption when the government is most corrupt?
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Except it's not just the government. The corruption is pandemic.
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toneart
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We had just exhausted this topic in another string and it finally died slowly and unresolved.
The same people are sticking to their same, old, tired and ideological (illogical) stances that have been proven to no longer work.
People are dying. Violence begets violence. That goes both ways. It is a self-perpetuating, non-solution that only serves to escalate the violence.
When we talk of trying legalization, we are talking about taking away the profit motive. People who resist this idea always have a "Yes, but....."
Well, none of the "buts" are as bad or as acute as what is happening in Mexico.
Forget morality! Forget the fact that drugs kill people! Forget about the fact that addicts cause problems to society, their families and themselves!
We know all that. None of this is as acute or as deadly as the current cartel activity. None of this is as acute as the prospect of Mexico becoming a
failed state. None of this is as acute as the threat to trade relations with our neighbor. None of this is as acute as the threat to us, to abandon
our property in Baja and not being able to travel in Mexico.
This is worse than any Afghani Tribal poppy trade. This is worse than Saddam Hussein. Those are irritants within nation states. What is happening in
Mexico is an organized insurrection by killer thugs who have no national allegiance, no morality and are motivated by greed.
The cartels have escalated beyond containment. They are armed with an arsenal that Mexico cannot equal. They are emboldened by the effect they have on
people by intimidation and death. They have gone beyond any moral standard. The church and their own conscience are no longer deterrents. Greed
is their God. Greed and what it does to humanity is far worse than the drugs themselves!!!This is truly causing Hell on Earth.
My comments are made in disgust with the tipping of the balance. Mexico's people are losing. We are losing. And many of you are clinging to the same
ol', same ol'. To me, the solution to your thinking is like what we have to do with people who become so old, demented as to be irresponsible to
themselves and others; take away your keys. You guys have been in the driver's seat too long. Your judgment is impaired. We are not talking about
chronological age here. I am 71! We are talking about looking at the 21st Century with fresh eyes and evolving. Your old ways are tired and they
impact all of humanity.
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woody with a view
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well said Tony..... too bad none here can effect change regarding this topic.....
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toneart
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| Quote: | Originally posted by woody in ob
well said Tony..... too bad none here can effect change regarding this topic..... |
Yeah, I sure wish we could effect change. 
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ELINVESTIG8R
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When I wrote to President Calderon a long time ago and asked him to please get more involved in stopping the violence in Baja California, a
representative wrote me back and essentially told me to mind my own Gringo business.
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