Talk about the state losing the monopoly on violence, from the NYT:
Gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband to death in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez over the weekend, leaving their baby wailing in the back seat of their car, the authorities said Sunday. The gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children.
The shootings appeared to be the first deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. They came during a particularly bloody weekend when nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence, including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began arriving for spring break.
The killings followed threats against American diplomats along the Mexican border and complaints from consulate workers that drug-related violence was growing untenable, American officials said. Even before the shootings, the State Department had quietly made the decision to allow consulate workers to evacuate their families across the border to the United States.
But never fear, President Obama has vowed to “work tirelessly” with Mexican law enforcement to prosecute the killers.
Good lord.
I certainly don’t have any idea what to do at this point.
Long term the obvious solution is to end the black market in recreational drugs and take that revenue away from the worst of the killers. But at this point the cartels are so entrenched, so established and so violent that they threaten to completely swamp Mexican civil society.
Don’t laugh, we’re next.
about make drugs legal here in Amerika and at the same time let every one in prison on drug bust out. It works for me but I know it would hurt business that make money from the bad laws in the US. Oh well I can dream can’t I? Yes this will be coming to border towns soon and it already a problem in towns here in Calif.
You keep saying that but how does that happen, and why? Why hasn’t it already happened? Is the violence kept south of the border because to bring it north would be bad for business? If things are so bad down there, why wouldn’t the tit-for-tat violence not spill over here yet? Or is it and we just don’t know about it? I’m not even really sure who is doing what down there or why. Is our government funding a drug business civil war to kill them all and let god sort it out? Why do the Mexican political classes go relatively unscathed? Not their fight? Too scared to take sides? In what manner can the drug cartels swamp Mexican civil society? They can’t/won’t/don’t provide any services. Don’t act, speak, quack like a government. Disrupt, yes, but at a certain point when nothing operates, it becomes bad for them too. Is the relevant precedent 1930s Chicago?
I wish someone would explain this to me. Lay it all out. Not all senseless violence is senseless. Reminds me of postwar Iraq chaos.
Rerun.
Welcome to the War on Drugs vs the Second Amendment.
Drugs kill people, bad.
Guns kill people, Good.
But, they say, guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
By that rationale, drugs are not harmful, just as guns are not harmful. That is, Drugs don’t kill people, capatalists selling drugs, people, kill people.
Oh no, drugs kill people.
Why is it that these people can hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their minds at the same time, and not even begin to comprehend their stupidity?
I had the same discussion with a retired Colonel. “Socalism bad, capitalism good, leave health care private”. He said.
“What about roads”, I asked.
“Oh they have to be public, people have to drive” he responded.
“What about rail companies, they are private?” I asked.
“Government control is bad” He said.
“What about town planning? It’s government control, central and there for must be socialist.” I said.
He shut up.
And he was one of our senior military officers. Charged with increasig our insecurity by over spending public monies and thinking the miliary increases our security. Right.
According to this article, it already has spilled over here.
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
in order
1) Why hasn’t it already happened?
Similar things have actually happened stateside, several times. The crack wars in L.A. in the late 80′s early 90′s. Similar epidemics in most of our major urban areas at some point since then. We’ve seen rural drug/violence epidemics in poor rural areas in the 1990s/2000s. It hasn’t spread beyond the most economically distressed regions of the U.S. because we’ve had other options.
Also the U.S. authorities never systematically attempted to decapitate all the major drug cartels at once, leaving a leadership vacuum. The drug violence we’ve seen has mostly been about controlling turf and making money. What’s happening in Juarez is QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT.
The cartels are apparently collapsing into utter chaos. The army’s presence in the city has disrupted the drug trade and driven many to extortion of ordinary citizens. Much of the violence serves no business purpose but is rather a marker of the social status of the killers.
2) Is the violence kept south of the border because to bring it north would be bad for business?
Not so much that (see above) but rather it’s still a happy reality that anyone who commits such flagrant mayhem in the U.S. is still rounded up fairly rapidly. The U.S. authorities are not as rotten to the bone with corruption so it’s much harder to get away with blatant slaughter.
3) I’m not even really sure who is doing what down there or why. Is our government funding a drug business civil war to kill them all and let god sort it out?
Our government is keeping the old “war on drugs” going out of inertia mostly IMO. We’ve gotten in the habit of messing with the drug trade over the last 40 years and it’s just a hard habit to break. Especially when so many agencies and private corporations have such huge budgets to play with. I don’t think the prison/military complex has a strategy beyond keeping busy and getting funded.
4) Why do the Mexican political classes go relatively unscathed? Not their fight? Too scared to take sides?
Exactly. The political classes — except the PAN — have largely opted to look the other way. The PRI would generally come to a business arrangement with the dominant cartels and encouraged regional monopolies. The first PAN administration attempted to decapitate several unfavored cartels while letting favored cartels slide. The 2nd PAN administration tried to use a dramatic escalation of the “war on drugs” to engender patriotic loyalty after coming in on a stolen election. Cardena has chosen to attempt to go after all of the major cartels at once with disastrous results.
5) In what manner can the drug cartels swamp Mexican civil society? They can’t/won’t/don’t provide any services. Don’t act, speak, quack like a government. Disrupt, yes, but at a certain point when nothing operates, it becomes bad for them too.
The extortion rackets currently going on in Juarez are threatening to snuff out virtually all legitimate business activity. Of course the cartels don’t provide any services. That’s what’s so scary about this. It’s real dystopia. The Mexican border cities seem to be choking to death. Ungovernable. Not functioning. Chicago in the 1930′s WORKED. Capone et al provided booze, girls and gambling but presented no threat to the larger business class and in fact were only too happy to come to terms with the business establishment. What’s going on in Juarez is on the edge of utter madness.
Ever heard of H.P. Lovecraft’s blind idiot god Azathoth? That’s who’s in charge.
This post of Don’s linking to a piece by crime writer Chuck Bowden is the best explanation I’ve seen of what’s happening in Juarez.
In my mind it’s comparable to the kind of utterly mindless violence that went on in Sierra Leone and Liberia a little while back. There were big picture global issues going on — conflict diamonds, etc — such that the big powers preferred those countries to have no real leadership. But the expression of the violence on the ground verged on complete chaos.
Our problem has shifted from violent conflicts among nations to violent conflicts against extra-national entities, most of whom can be identified as gangs. There is the Al Qaeda gang, the Taliban gang, and they mainly want power and wealth without having to do much of anything except cause havoc. Even considering Iran we see that a gang has seized power by throwing an election and the middle classes are opposed to them and hope to be rid of them. Nation-nation conflicts are obsolete.
I suspect that we are to the point where we need very good intelligence on the activities of the gangs in the US and Mexico and then we must hit them hard to take out the leadership. Then we must find jobs for the underlings so they can build lives for themselves in civil society.
On the other end, of course, we have corporations who have, for decades, treated less developed nations with an attitude of neo-colonialists seeking to profit from human and other resources without giving anything back. That kind of behavior motivated much of the initial gang activity decades ago that is now growing out of control.
Most people, once they reach a certain age, want to live normal lives and not have to be constantly confronting the threat of violence. The top gang leaders, in the drug cartels, have amassed so much wealth that there is no normal for them. Their usual life is very luxurious where they wield a great deal of power and have great status. They will never wish to give that up so they must be taken down. That is the approach the US forces are taking toward the Taliban gang in Pakistan and Afghanistan, taking out the leaders and encouraging many in the Taliban, who were recruited and joined with reluctance or were forced by threats to their families, to slip quietly back into normal life.
That’s the strategy if we can persist and actually put up the resources to get the job done. The fly in the ointment would be US legislators at the state and federal levels who have benefited from gang activity. We don’t know how many there may be of those. For them, continued prohibition of drugs would seem essential to their continuing to receive rewards from illegal drug trade.
Channing
Ventura CA USA
I did inhale.
Over on The Exiled (http://exiledonline.com/) they have reports from a guy living on the ground in northern Mexico. Grim reading, but interesting.
–
-Geoduck
eom
I read your post several times just to make sure I got the right impression from it. Am I wrong that you decided to use the death of this couple to mock Obama? Or that you’re assuming he can wave his hands and fix the problems that lead to their deaths? Or for that matter, all the gang violence going on in Mexico?
Oh and don’t worry, at no point in reading that story or your thoughts did I even come close to laughing.
Invade Juarez?
An attack by US forces on US citizens, allegedly by some third party, to elicit some response from the US Government.
To show the death and destruction caused by a stupid policy of Prohibition.
When we know all prohibition does is to establish powerful criminal forces that are all but impossible to dislodge from society.
…Mexico City.
______________________________________________________
I got two wooden nickels and a rabbit’s foot…
Matt King
Remember the Alamo!
to continuing the failed policies of the Nixon and Reagan administrations is what killed that couple. The “war on drugs” has become so militarized that there is nothing escalation could do.
He’s rendered himself utterly impotent in the face of a direct attack on U.S. power only feet over our border.
eom
WaPo, By Mary Beth Sheridan, March 16
Dozens of officials from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. agencies joined an investigation Monday into the killings of three people tied to the U.S. Consulate in the Mexican city of Juarez, scrambling to determine whether the slayings marked an escalation in the region’s drug war or were simply cases of mistaken identity, officials said.
[...]
In a sign of how seriously the Mexican government regards the case, Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez traveled to Juarez on Monday to oversee the investigation, according to El Diario, a newspaper in the city. Mexican President Felipe Calderón and President Obama expressed indignation at the murders.
U.S. agencies, including the FBI, DEA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, are assisting Mexican authorities by providing intelligence and interviewing witnesses in the United States, Simmons said.
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
I thought this could be the work of the Mexican army in an effort to get additonal funding for the “war on drugs”.
The more important question: Why would a drug dealer interested in making money do this and bring down the wrath of the empire upon his head?
I did inhale.
eom
______________________________________________________
I got two wooden nickels and a rabbit’s foot…
Matt King
San Antonio News
By Lynn Brezosky and Gary Martin
- Express-News
BROWNSVILLE — U.S. officials Friday downplayed the sighting of a Mexican military helicopter hovering as long as 20 minutes over a residential area on the Texas side of the border this week, saying the incursion didn’t cause alarm even though it hadn’t been cleared in advance.
U.S. agencies could offer no reports of a follow-up investigation and no indication whether a Mexican explanation had been asked for or given.
Gov. Rick Perry’s office released a statement late Friday, however, saying the state was working with Customs and Border Protection to investigate.
U.S. officials familiar with the incident, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it wasn’t a joint training exercise.
“We made the proper notifications, and the helicopter did cross back into Mexico, and that was the extent of it, really,†Laredo-based Customs and Border Protection spokesman Rick Pauza said Friday. “There really isn’t that much to it.â€
But Texas officials long have been fearful of spillover violence.
Customs officers spotted the aircraft about 5 p.m. Tuesday about a mile into U.S. airspace over Falcon Heights, a residential development on the shores of the binational Falcon Lake reservoir. The incursion was “brief,†lasting possibly “15 to 20 minutes,†Pauza said.
Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said witnesses, including Customs agents who live in the area, recognized Mexican navy insignia on it and said it appeared to be doing surveillance.
Pauza said such an operation would require advance coordination with U.S. officials and said the helicopter had crossed without a heads-up. But once it was reported to other U.S. agencies, the matter was put to rest, he said.
Pauza said Mexican military aircraft are occasionally seen along the border, but he didn’t know of other instances of aircraft actually crossing.
“It’s not something we see frequently,†he said. “We are in contact with our counterparts on the Mexican side. We work together to reduce these incidents from occurring. It’s not that big of an issue.â€
Perry’s statement said he was taking it seriously.
“It’s critically important for Texas, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement to appropriately coordinate our efforts,†Perry said, adding that Sheriff Gonzalez, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Border Patrol were “working together to gather more information†about the incident.
Gonzalez on Friday called the U.S. response a brush-off, “typical … of our government, in reality an echo of the Mexican government.â€
A spokesman for the Mexican Defense Ministry didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about the incident.
A State Department spokesman said he didn’t know of an official complaint being lodged over the incident and said no action by the department was under way.
Homeland Security Department officials in Washington referred questions to Pauza and declined further comment.
Law enforcement agencies from the U.S. and Mexico have increased the number of training exercises in recent years as they beefed up efforts to reduce the flow of U.S.-bound narcotics north and Mexico-bound weapons for drug cartels south.
The Mérida Initiative signed by Mexican President Felipe Calderón and former President George W. Bush provides U.S. assistance to Mexico to train military and law enforcement in the battle against transnational drug-smuggling organizations.
That initiative has funded five Bell-412 helicopters presented to Mexico in December for transportation and reconnaissance missions in Mexico.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border affairs, met with DHS officials to discuss the escalating violence in Mexican border cities.
The Mexican helicopter incursion was just one of several incidents discussed, including recent acts of gangland gunbattles and executions that have provoked fear in the region.
State Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, meanwhile, is planning to bring members of the state’s Select Committee on Emergency Preparedness to the Rio Grande Valley this spring for a hearing on the violence.
State Reps. Veronica Gonzales, D-McAllen, and Tommy Merritt, R-Longview, also announced plans for a hearing.
The Mexican navy has taken on a more visible role in that effort, including responses to the current surge of drug cartel violence. At least seven people were arrested during an operation involving navy helicopters in Escobedo in the state of Nuevo Leon, according to news reports Friday.
Experts on the drug war say the Mexican army is under increasing criticism after bearing the brunt of Calderón’s three-year effort to contain the cartels using military force, including accusations of human rights abuse and acceptance of bribes to leak intelligence to cartels.
“The military’s very sensitive to the criticism that’s going on, and of course they’re not trained to do police work,†narcoviolence scholar George Grayson said in a recent interview. “They’re just getting clobbered.â€
Al Jazeera, March 19
Police and FBI agents in the US state of Texas have launched a series of raids on a gang thought to have been behind the killings of three people linked to the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez.
Around 200 law enforcement officers took part in Thursday’s raids targeting suspected members of the Barrio Azteca gang in El Paso.
Officials said the goal of “Operation Knockdown” was to generate leads in the investigation into last week’s killings in Ciudad Juarez.
“We believe that major intelligence can be collected here on the US side by going after and getting these members of Barrio Azteca, and that’s what they’re doing down in El Paso,” Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, told AFP news agency.
The Barrio Azteca gang “most definitely” has ties to gangs in Mexico, he said.
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.