Stay tuned.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

What is going to happen if law and order break down? I keep playing this in my head and I keep coming to the conclusion that, at least in the Pacific NW, there will be secession and closed borders. I am worried about how Hispanic people will be treated once that happens.

Calderone? Perhaps Michael Collins means Calderón? I don't necessarily disagree with his premise, but would point out those of us in Mexico could say exactly the same thing about the U.S. after the 2000 Bush "election".

That said, in no way should Ed Vulliamy's article in the Guardian be seen as anything resembling reality. His premise that there is a large domestic market for narcotics is laughable. The percentage of addicts (let alone "users") in this society is infinitesimal compared even to countries like Brazil and Argentina and the very idea of justifying the "drug war" as a way to stem a rise in narcotics consumption in Mexico has been dismissed time and time again. Not even the Calderón (not Calderone!) Administration would make such a ridiculous claim.

There is no pattern of murders against small time drug dealers in the rest of Mexico, solely in communities border the United States, where there is a higher percentage of narcotics users than elsewhere in Mexico. While it's easy to "blame U.S. influence/money/decadence/etc. for this, it also has to be remembered that these communities are, in a very real sense, "frontier towns." Like a wild west community in the 1880s, these places are full of young, rootless and transient residents that make even census data difficult to verify. For all we know there isn't a higher percentage of drug users, just that we're undercounting the population or don't have an accurate demographic picture of these communities.

If Vullimey's book is as poorly researched as his articles, and written in the same purple prose as those articles, I'd recommend giving it a pass, unless one is teaching a "how not to" class in journalism, or writing a thesis on the survival of British racist assumptions in the 21st century. The article is garbage!

http://mexfiles.wordpress.com

reporting a dramatic increase in the domestic market for drugs in Mexico. It's still a much smaller usage rate than most countries, but the increase is dramatic by most accounts.
But it's not the Mexican domestic market they're really fighting over and I don't think Vulliamy made that claim. They're fighting over the export market to decide who controls the wholesale market in the U.S.
You're also overlooking the horrific violence we've seen in the last three years in Michoacán, Jalisco and Sinaloa.

Nate, the money quote is "The quantity of drugs smuggled across the border is now dwarfed by that to supply catastrophic domestic addiction." That's utter bullshit and even the Calderón Administration has long given up on that justification for the "war". I certainly haven't overlooked "horrific violence" in Sinola. I LIVE in Sinaloa, and some of there were four headless bodies left in an SUV down the street from me (though the crime itself was over in the rich people's neighborhood). Gross, yeah... but "horrific", not really. What do you expect when U.S. guns and money come pouring into an unregulated "free market" economy with no legal controls? And, when U.S. narcotics consumers continue to buy the shit?

Ironically, Vullimy’s over-wrought report from the heart of darkness came out the day before Malcolm Beith (formerly the business editor of the old Mexico City News) reported that the "new paradigm" being looked at is to treat gangsters as gangsters... i.e., business people with a shady business. And, as everyone left, right and center in Mexican politics has been pointing out, the murder rate is steadily dropping in this country (for the record, El Salvador is the most dangerous COUNTRY in the Americas)and has been for a decade.

Violence in Michaocán, Guerrero and most of it here in Sinaola is more a response to outside pressure on the rural economy, making meth production, marijuana and poppy farming and smuggling the only viable alternatives for survival.

But, then, Vullimy isn't talking about Michoacán, or Guerrero or Sinaloa... he's applying the unique situation of the frontier (where there is a significant population stuck in poverty within site of a glittery, consumerist culture) to the nation and culture as a whole. Then, he writes as if it were unique, that the gangsters are motivated by status and consumer goods (no shit!).

I'll admit, his admission that there may be "death squads" working the streets of Juarez, is plausible (and I'm one that believes there are... taking advantage of the "drug war", but a separate issue) but still, that's something found in a lot of countries and cities put under artificial stresses by situations out of their control... like the U.S. narcotics market.

The point is, there's nothing unique about narcotics trade violence (and, if there was some good way to classify the violence attributable to consumers, you'd probably find the rates are much higher in consumer countries) and the violence is not somehow uniquely Mexican.

http://mexfiles.wordpress.com

Corrected. Just for the record, I'm an equal opportunity critic of elections. See this on the 2004 US election: Election 2004: The Urban Legend. 2000 was even more outrageous. The structure of the Mexican election system is actually superior to ours in the U.S. The implementation was the problem in 2006.

I'm quite sure that U.S. demand is a far greater problem than Mexican demand. The business opportunity is just too great to resist for there not to be something like the Mexican cartels. The claim by Calderon that "the gloves are off" is contradicted by the reality of what, eight or nine drug lords living a lavish life. Why not go after them. But there would just be more behind them.

Obrador would have been a far superior choice but the exploiters here and in Europe wanted none of that.

I'm sorry Mexico has to suffer this. It's a wonderful culture and collection of people.

about the 2006 elections is a critical one. 2006 wasn't the first time the U.S. has turned a blind eye (or worse) to democracy when the left wins an election in Mexico.
We just won't tolerate a progressive regime north of Ecuador it seems.