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"America Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Kidnappings, Smell the Drug War"

By Nat Wilson Turner, on March 20th, 2010

A lot of grim Mexico news today. The headline quote comes from the sister of U.S. anti-kidnapping expert Felix Batista who was abducted by gunmen in December 2008 in the northern city of Saltillo and hasn’t been seen since. The U.S. State Department has issued a revised report showing that more U.S. citizens were murdered in Juarez in 2009 than any other Mexican city.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the people leaving Mexico’s murder capitol:

the city’s planning department estimates 116,000 homes are now abandoned. Measured against the average household size of the last census, the population who inhabited the empty homes alone could be as high as 400,000 p

That would mark one of Mexico's largest single exoduses in decades.
...
Just 2½ years ago, Juárez was one of Mexico's engines of growth, a magnet of manufacturing with an easy entry point into the U.S. The North American Free Trade Agreement had helped to expand Juárez into the base for assembly plants that accepted parts for everything from consumer electronics to plush toys, and shipped the finished products back to America tariff-free.

Since 2005, 10,600 businesses””roughly 40% of Juárez's businesses””have closed their doors, according to the country's group representing local chambers of commerce.

Now Monterrey is seeing the drug cartels directly challenging the authority of law enforcement, per the NYT:

Armed men likely linked to drug gangs blocked highways with trucks and buses in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on Friday in an apparent attempt to hamper army operations near the U.S. border.

Gunmen pulled truck and bus drivers out of their vehicles in the wealthy business city and used them to set up blockades on major four-lane highways, sometimes slashing tires to make it harder to tow them away, police and motorists said.

I’m frequently criticized for being overly apocolyptic in my writings about Mexico. Just call me Nate the Revelator I guess.

March 20th, 2010 | Category: Mexico

3 comments to "America Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Kidnappings, Smell the Drug War"

  • yogi-one
    March 21, 2010 at 12:59 am

    Let’s train more of them in guerilla tactics and sell them lots more weapons. Just make them promise us they hate Commies!

    Now there’s an idea the whole US government can get behind!

    Oh, wait…

  • Synoia
    March 21, 2010 at 6:18 pm

    And they are similar to Medieval Barons or Warlords. They control much money, and have no allegiance to the central government (The King).

    What happens when the Barons discover the King cannot enforce a peace? A civil war. There could be a bloody struggle to find a strong King, who will maintain the balance between control and restraint. Richard III, Henry VII, Plantagenet vs York, York vs Tudor, there is much history of these struggles. Bloody history, and general desire to regain the King’s peace.

    This new King, a drug Baron, could legalizes drugs against the opposition of the US. Or the current regime could come to some accommodation with the Drug Barons, make their activities legal in exchange for disarmament, and a pledge of loyalty to the central government.

    The US could respond and shut the border. That might improve things in Mexico, as the flow of Guns from the US could stop.

    The US could invade. One item on which the Mexican could agree, all 110 Million of them, is that they don’t want the US running their country, and the last thing the US would want is 110 million new enemies, some of which could become explosively discontent, living on the US’ southern border and bringing their explosive discontent to the US.

    Whatever the outcome, the US has two problems. First it has an approach to intoxication that fails, and causes violence and crime, and second it’s exporting its’ gun culture which destabilizes Mexico and threatening the US’ security.

    Mexico? It has one problem. The US.

  • Nat Wilson Turner
    March 21, 2010 at 6:47 pm

    the cartels don’t want to end the black market that birthed them anymore than Al Capone wanted prohibition to end. The Seagrams and Anheuser Busch families were the ones who profited from legal alcohol, not the mafia.

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