Sunday 20 January 2013

Poor Mexico



Are you American? Then you must be concerned about war. Oh, not some distant conflict, not Afghanistan. No, the war you must be concerned about – surely you must? – is the war on your southern border. Yes, it’s the war in Mexico, that unacknowledged Vietnam.

The war on terror (what a disaster that has been) is bad enough; the war on drugs has been even worse. It’s the sheer savagery of the Mexican conflict that disgusts me, the mutilations and the murderous sadism. Do you know how many people have died in the drugs war? The official estimate to date is 50,000 but those who know about this sort of thing believe that the true total is twice as many. The victims are not soldiers by and large. As Mary Wakefield writing in the Spectator said, they are young boys, babies, mothers and husbands. Severed heads and decapitated bodies are a regular sight on the streets. That's the reality of modern Mexico

Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s drug-busting former president, was a man with a mission. He came to office with a single aim in mind, a crusade, if you like. He would crack down on the big drug barons in order, he said, ‘to restore moral order.’ But the drug cartels are a bit like the Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology: cut off one head and two more appear. Kingpins were killed, yes, but their organisations simply fragmented. More and more gangs has meant more and more crime. Murder, extortion, rape and kidnapping are now pretty much part of the daily scene.

The problem, as I’ve written before, isn’t really an internal one. The anti-drugs crusade was predetermined failure simply because there are factors beyond the control of the Mexican authorities. The biggest factor of all is the insatiable demand for the produce of the cartels north of the Rio Grande. The drug war in Mexico, in other words, is fuelled by American consumers.

So much money has been wasted and so many lives have been lost in attempting, Canute-style, to hold back an inexorable tide. The American government, aware of the problem, attempted to help Mexico build a dyke. Billions was spent on supporting Calderon’s crazy crusade. American money was spent, for example, on Los Zetas.

Who are they, you may wonder? They are Mexico’s elite Special Forces squad, trained by American and Israeli specialists in such talents as intimidation, ambushing and marksmanship, all as part of the struggle against the drug lords. There is only one problem. Some years ago the organisation set up in business for itself. In what, exactly? Why, in drugs. Nobody does it better than Los Zetas, and nobody butchers children with such professionalism and aplomb. The more your tax dollars are spent on training Special Forces, the more Los Zetas benefit from fresh recruits.

There is an added irony here. Several States of the Union, Colorado and Washington leading the way, are anxious to legalise cannabis. There is Mexico, vainly struggling to contain a problem while its northern neighbour seems to be giving a green light to the cartels, over 40% of whose business is selling cannabis to gringos. When one thinks things can’t get any crazier, why, they do.

Organised crime is now the single most serious problem facing Mexico. Americans know, or should know, all about organised crime and Prohibition. Just consider your own history, consider what a leg up the gangsters were given in that brief decade last century when alcohol was banned.

Mexico has had Prohibition for decade after decade, with the results I have touched on above. The monster has grown to unimaginable proportions. Only legalisation will cut it down to size. But who has the courage to take that bold step? Alas, poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States.


12 comments:

  1. mexico is a mess, especially the areas that border the U.S., the problems are fueled by American drug consumption and greed. About sixty-percent or so of the armaments used by the savages are sold to them by Americans. Most Americans don't really care about mexico's problems as long as they stay in mexico and don't cross over the border.(Sad but True)

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    1. Yes, Anthony, that's true, but as I have said before Santa Muerte has already crossed the border. How long before the effects become obvious?

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  2. Thank goodness Mexico has strict gun control, otherwise those poor gangsters would be forced to defend themselves from the vicious population as well as their business rivals. It's so much easier to bribe the local cops and the Federals.

    At least the cartels are a-political. The last revolution in Mexico cost 1 to 2 million lives, but Europe was too busy to notice. Civil conflict in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras killed hundreds of thousands during the 80s and 90s. More forgotten wars. Things got quieter in a lot of 'trouble spots' after the Soviet Union dissolved.

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    1. Calvin, it's really quite sad that we in Europe and even you in the United States do not pay closer attention to events in Latin America. There, as you have indicated, the Cold War was anything but cold.

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  3. There is a close parallel with the effect of U.S. Prohibition on Canada. Caught up in the same abolitionist zeal as their neighbors to the South, Canada, for a time, really was "dry" - except for the distilleries forced to work overtime to supply product across the border to those wicked, thirsty Yanks. I'm sure everyone is aware how mountains of innocent Canadian bodies piled up as a result. It got so bad, that the Provinces decided to repeal their own bans a decade before the good ol' US of A surrendered to Demon Drink.

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    1. That's a dimension of Prohibition that I was completely unaware of.

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  4. Hi Ana,
    What happened in Mexico is a tragedy.
    The photo terrified me.
    How can US States want to legalize Cannabis
    while Mexico is doing everything to fight it?

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    1. Hi, Harry, great to see you!

      Yes, it doesn't really make that much sense.

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  5. As you point out prohibition is the worst possible way to tackle alcohol and drug use and even prostitution. It is not that we do not have plenty of evidence of this we do but yet again we fail to learn lessons from the teachings of history. To me the righteous, do gooders and the interfering control freaks are mankind's worst enemies. Allowing them oxygen let alone a voice in our affairs is time after time causing us considerable harm. Still like the poor they will forever be with us and there is not a damned thing we can do about it. However the poor are actually diminishing in numbers capitalism is seeing to that whilst at the same time the other group is growing to which I see no solution.

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  6. How about Fast and Furious?

    Organized crime has gotten better organized. They know to keep the severing of heads south of the border giving the US the excuse not to consider it a problem .

    I am a bit confused by your sentence

    There is Mexico, vainly struggling to contain a problem while its northern neighbour seems to be giving a green light to the cartels, over 40% of whose business is selling cannabis to gringos. When one thinks things can’t get any crazier, why, they do.


    Are you pro or cons legalization? Should both US and Mexico push for legalization? Or this would simply legalize the criminals as well?

    It could turn out to be just as legalizing prostitution ,the pimp all of a sudden becomes a businessman .



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    1. UT, let me give you the same answer that I did elsewhere:

      “Huge amounts of money, your money, have been devoted to solving this problem by force. All that has happened is that it gets worse and worse. The thing is the illegal trade in drugs, like the illegal trade in alcohol during Prohibition, carries the prospect of highly lucrative returns. Yes, there are risks but this does nothing to reduce the fact that the rewards are pure profit. For poor countries like Colombia and Mexico the attractions are overwhelming. As I say, it’s time to face reality before reality faces you.“

      Legitimate business people are subject to all sorts of controls. Al Capone is not.

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