Checking In With Mexico: Still Violent, Still Lawless, Still Cartel Infested

Some of the most popular posts from this blog over the past few years have had to do with the Mexican drug cartels and the dangers  and potential violence they hold for America. I have no concrete data or information that would tell me why these types of posts draw a significantly higher readership than other topics. It could be that American citizens realize how dangerous this Mexican drug cartel situation is becoming much more accurately than the political class in Washington, whose members more often than not seem to be oblivious to the world around them.

Nixon declared "war on drugs" in the late 1960s, taking the rather simpleton approach that the Federal government could stamp out the desires of millions of citizens to get high using a militarized, criminalized, and bureaucratic approach. Forty years later, that war has been lost, so much so that we are seeing that not only Mexico but many Central and South American governments are beginning to be threatened and overrun with drug cartel and drug gang money, weapons, violence, and threats.

We have not reviewed what is going on in this area for a little while so I thought it might be a good idea to check in, given the topic's popularity. Unfortunately, the latest news is not much better than the past news:

- The Week magazine reported in its July 1, 2011 issue that drug cartel gunmen executed a well know Mexican journalist, along with his wife and son, in Veracruz, Mexico. The gunmen brazenly broke into the journalist's home and gunned down his family on the spot. The journalist, Angel Lopez Velasco, wrote a regularly occurring newspaper column on drug trafficking and security issues. His son was a photographer at the same newspaper.

In the past month, a newspaper editor was kidnapped and believed to have been killed in Acapulco, a reporter was shot to death in Sonora, and another Veracruz reporter was kidnapped in March and his bullet riddled body was recently recovered.

- A July 13, 2011 Associated Press article reported that Mexican authorities had captured the top hitman for the Mexican drug cartel that goes by the name of the Knights Templar. The police believe that the captive oversaw murders for one of the top meth-trafficking gangs in Mexico.

However, the more distressing news in the article is the report that police recently seized 44 metric tons of chemicals that are used to produce illegal methamphetamine at a Mexican seaport. The 44 tons had been shipped to the seaport from Shanghai, China. I know nothing about making methamphetamine but I have to assume that 44 metric tons of chemicals would make a heck of a lot of illegal meth. 44 tons of anything would make a lot of something.

From the same article, police in the northern border town of Ciudad Juarez, which sits right on the border with the U.S., updated the kill totals from a gun fight last Tuesday. Apparently 21 people died from that one gun fight, not the 18 that had previously been reported. That made it the bloodiest drug cartel murder day in all of 2011, exceeding the 20 dead headcount from February 18, 2011.

Metric tons of illegal, drug related chemicals, and dozens of murders on a regular basis. Mexico and the American political class, we have a problem.

- An Associated Press article from July 15, 2011, summarized some of the latest drug cartel violence from Monterrey, Mexico, one of Mexico's most developed cities:

• The city's drug related murder rate is on a pace to double last year's murder pace.
• In recent weeks a teenager was hung until death over a bridge and two of the local governor's bodyguards were killed, dismembered, and dumped with messages that threatened their ex-boss, the governor.
• Last week, gunmen killed 20 people in a local bar.
• 22 more local people were killed in the two days leading up to the article's release.
• Local security officials admit that they do not know how much worse it will get but are openly not optimistic about the situation turning better anytime soon.
• The increase in violence and fear has resulted in fewer students coming to the Technology Institute of Monterrey, one of the nation's top universities.
• Local businesses secretly explained how some have to pay extortion money to the drug gangs.

Looks like the situation is not getting any better. That should not be unexpected since the American political class has done nothing to change the tide of violence and lawlessness that is sweeping across some countries that are obviously very close to the United States. This is the standard mode of operation for our politicians if you look at their history:

• Despite numerous threats and terror attacks in the 1990s on American interests, the political class did nothing until after the devastating 9-11 attacks.
• Despite the impending fiscal/debt ceiling crisis that has been brewing for well over a year, the political class has done nothing as the deadline for default draws nearer and nearer.
• Despite the oil embargo shocks of the 1970s, the political class has done nothing to give us a national, coherent energy strategy and plan.
• Despite over ten million illegal aliens in the country, the political class has done nothing to establish a sane, compassionate, and economically advantageous immigration strategy.

As you can see, we probably can expect no pre-emptive political class action on the drug cartel violence issue until it becomes either fatal or an emergency in some dramatic way. One of my new favorite sayings, from Andrew Glasow, goes as follows: "One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a  problem before it becomes an emergency." Under this definition, it has been a long time since we have had any leaders in this country.

Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would be a good start in addressing this up and coming emergency. Step 26 provides a process to take a ground up look at the root causes of the drug cartel violence, namely the drug abuse and usage situation within the United States, and provide options of what should be done to attack those root causes.

However, until we implement the many steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" that clean up our political processes to a point that these processes start generating real political leaders,  the drug abuse and other major issues of our times will continue to be addressed only after they become emergencies.




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