A Nation on the Brink Mexico's
July 5 Legislative Elections

Part 2 of a three part series (Part 1)

Michael Collins and Kenneth Thomas

Mexico approaches this election confronting the rise of a narcostate, growing economic chaos, social inequalities, citizen disenchantment--or worse

As Mexico approaches the July 5^th mid-term elections, the nation confronts two critical problems. An expanding an increasingly violent "war on drugs" threatens to convert Mexico into a narcostate. This will lead to the inevitable compromise of the members of all political parties. An expanding economic crisis in the wake of NAFTA and the global financial situation, threatens private companies, the Central Bank, and government programs -- as well as the income and employment of most citizens. Rising social inequality and a workforce crisis mean that many, perhaps most, Mexicans live in conditions parallel to those of sub-Saharan Africa.

Disenchantment and dismay reign. The volatile political situation foreshadows a change in the air. Close to 80% of Mexicans voted in mid-term elections in the 90's. Tomorrow, turnout is expected to be less that 50%. An attempted "no confidence" vote on the government looms. Members of the various parties engage in what has been called "fratricide." And there is talk -- talk which hearkens back to the Revolution of 1910 -- that it's time for the people to ignore the major parties and take matters into their own hands.

The Old Guard

How are the political parties responding?

PAN. After securing the Presidency in 2006, the ruling National Action Party (PAN) launched a domestic "law and order" war on Mexico's drug cartels. It is unclear that this war has achieved its stated results. Shootouts in Acapulco, jail breaks with guards acting like teamsters for jailed narco traffickers, and the occasional physical and sexual assault by out of control troops are becoming the norm. Mexico seems transformed into a Sam Peckenpah movie set but the bullets are real and the death toll is staggering. A least 15,000 have been killed since 2007, despite the government's attempts to "disappear" the casualties on all sides. Recent reports suggest that many municipal and state governments have been infiltrated during this "war." Well above half the Mexican people doubt Calderon’s campaign will have any positive effect.

As well, possibly as a result of human rights abuses by federal troops, the narcotraffickers and their political apparatus have come to enjoy a level of popular support. One message left by the cartels may express this simply: "We do not kill women and children. We have honor."

PAN's proposals for economic growth and social improvement have been couched in terms of the development of free markets under the NAFTA model and the efficiency of private sector enterprises and projects. More recently, in the face of economic crisis, President of the Republic Filipe Calderon has begun to speak in a mystical rhetoric concerning the economy and the role of the people. For example:

"El mandatario llamó a generar los acuerdos que permitan lograr el desarrollo y generar los empleos 'que tanto necesitamos', y argumentó que "pensar en México, creer en México y trabajar por México debe ser la ruta de todos, más allá de nuestras diferencias'".

"The leader called for the creation of agreements which will generate development and the jobs 'which we all need,' and asked 'that we think of Mexico, believe in Mexico and work for a Mexico which will be the path for all, greater than all our differences.'" Dec. 18, 2008

While the terms here echo -- and may be meant to undercut -- ­­the PAN’s 2006 campaign "Coalition For the Good of All," it remains unclear what constitutes real meaning for the phrases "agreements which will generate development," "believing in Mexico" or how that belief and "the path for all" will fix the economic crisis or make parties that can't even achieve internal.

However, the PAN has also recently secured multi-billion lines of credit from United States Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These will be used to bail out failed Mexican firms. In addition, as President Calderon has promised, the funds will provide for social, infrastructural, and educational projects.

According to polls, the PAN is expected to lose 35 seats in the Chamber of Deputies from its current 170.

PRD. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has a different take on the war on drugs and the economy. A key PRD leader in the Senate called for the legalization of recreational drugs that fuel the war on drugs. The party has also shied away from supporting the use of the Army in street battles with drug cartel gunmen.

PRD is the only party that has attempted to chart a broad-based, well defined socio-economic program. Before the 2006 Presidential campaign, PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador assembled a team of experts to prepare an economic operating plan for Mexico. The plan included items such as mandatory reductions in the federal budget, negotiated cutbacks in entitlement programs such as social security and pensions, and reform of PeMex, as well as a program of educational and infrastructural investments.

After losing the controversial election in 2006, PRD presidential candidate AMLO outlined his vision for Mexican development. He included input from the six month's of protests in Mexico City after the July 2006 election, and attempted to implement the project by a coalition in the Congress. A later collapse of the coalition, as well as political infighting, quashed implementation of this program and left the PRD in a tenuous position for future elections.

PRD is expected to lose forty of its 126 seats in the Chamber of Deputies

PRI. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico from 1929 through 2000. Its rule has been characterized both by socialist and leftist tendencies, and the enforcement of a command economy with heavy traces of crony capitalism and tight controls over access to media, capital, public services -- and political office. Under such a "one-party" system, the PRI typically gained 75% of the vote. During a forty year period, PRI accomplished the "Mexican Miracle," which increased economic production six fold while the population only doubled.

The PRI has frequently been criticized as "wishy washy" in the war on drugs. PRI has advocated better implementation of law and policy. At the same time, the party has criticized for possibly having deep ties to the cartels trafficking in narcotics.

Economically, it is difficult to understand PRI's platform or approach. It's also hard to tell how the voters see PRI's economic policy. Historically, the PRI fell from influence during pressures for openings for foreign development of the Mexican economic system. More specifically, the party took the blame for the post-1988 failures of US-led "open market" economics. Yet PRI remains a party closely identified by many with the nation itself.

Pre election polls strongly suggest that the PRI will be the biggest apparent "winner" on Sunday, more than doubling its current 106 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

"Nullification!?!" A forth major candidate on July 5 will be "voto nulo," (null vote). Voters are urged to deliberately void their ballot to cast a vote of "no confidence." The recipients are those who run a political system that continually fails to accomplish anything. The "null" option has also been described as the best statement possible of disillusionment and distrust with the electoral system and institutions. Voto nulo is the sleeper in this election (see part 3 of this series on Election Day). It's was pegged at 11% in a poll just reported on June 30th.

Some heavy crazyness from the Glenn Beck show:

Michael Sheuer, former head of the Bin Laden unit at CIA under Clinton and Bush, appeared on Glenn Beck's show to criticize Obama's use of unarmed National Guard soldiers to police the Mexican border.

And he dropped this little gem, "the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

The right really has utterly lost it. They're openly screeching and begging for a new Islamic terror attack so they can clamp down like they did after 9/11 except even more and better. And they feel it must be done to save us from those awful awful brown-skinned hordes.

Utterly surreal.

A Three Part Series Part 1

In the wake of Felipe Calderon’s surprising electoral win over Andrés Manual Lopez-Obrador in 2006 Presidential Elections, demonstrators protesting alleged election fraud occupied the center of Mexico City from July through December. On three occasions, crowds of over one million were reported. Image: Erasmo Lopez

From World Politics Review:

Latin America is now home to some of the world's most fearsome third-generation gangs. Central American maras such as MS-13 and M-18 have tens of thousands of members spread across several countries. The First Capital Command (PCC) of Sao Paulo, with perhaps 100,000 members, dominates the slums and prisons of South America's largest city and maintains alliances with mafia groups throughout South America. In Mexico, the drug trade has given rise to groups like Los Zetas, a relatively small organization that has nonetheless carved out lucrative trafficking and distribution networks, while cultivating relations with gangs in Central America and the U.S..

Third-generation gangs in Latin America share several key characteristics. They all participate in a broad range of criminal enterprises -- among them drug trafficking, human smuggling, kidnapping, extortion, arms dealing, contract killings, and money laundering. They are well-organized, with top-level bosses overseeing multi-tiered structures that operate according to a division of labor. They are also technologically sophisticated, using Web sites for recruiting and propaganda purposes, as well as electronic surveillance to track and eliminate their rivals.

Above all, these gangs are extremely violent. They use a panoply of advanced weapons -- including rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices -- to strike with astounding brazenness and savagery. Torture, beheadings, assassinations, and even massacres of innocent civilians have become commonplace. Though often described as senseless or random, this violence, which invariably comes in response to government crackdowns on gang activity, in fact serves to intimidate the state -- and the population -- into allowing the gangs a free hand in pursuing their lucrative business dealings.

Across the region, gangs like the PCC, the maras, and the Zetas have now gone a step further, using violence to carve out geographic areas where the government is essentially powerless to intervene. In some cities, gang violence has become so intense that the authorities have effectively surrendered them to the gangs. Just as Cold War-era insurgents had their "liberated zones," the gangs now control sectors where they effectively "rule."

Along with violence, the use of corruption also plays an integral role in undermining state institutions. Latin American criminals have long used the formula of "plata o plomo" -- "money or bullets" -- to corrupt government officials. Third-generation gangs have become masters of this strategy. Confronted with the choice between an easy payout and a gruesome death, law enforcement personnel frequently opt for the former.

Consigning a market as large as recreational drugs to the black market is creating non-state actors who have the resources necessary to cut into the state's monopoly on violence. This genie is going to be a bitch to put back in the bottle.

Prohibition exponentially increased the resources of what had been relatively small time Italian and Jewish street gangs of labor sluggers, pimps and gamblers. Even after Prohibition was repealed, the gangs had enough financial resources to quickly diversify out of bootlegging and into labor racketeering on a mass scale, among other things.

The systematic corruption of the American Labor movement that began with Lepke Buchalter, Gurrah Shapiro, Tommy Lucchese arguably did as much to discredit the left as Stalinism did.

The timing was really tragic too, as American Labor only really came into its own in the 1930s after more than 50 years of crushing and violent struggle that left a string of martyrs we've since forgotten and gave the rest of us weekends, eight hour workdays, etc etc.

I shudder to think what fruit the current massive investment in criminal infrastructure will bear.

From the AP:

When Mario Anguiano successfully ran for mayor of Colima three years ago, no one much cared that his brother and cousin were in prison on drug charges.

Now that he's running for governor of Colima state, a banner appeared in the capital city mocking Anguiano's family ties by linking him to the Zetas, a gang of drug hit men:

"Welcome to Colima! Soon to be territory of our boss of bosses, Mario Anguiano Moreno. The Zetas support you, and we are with you until death."

The drug war is playing in Mexico elections like never before. Usually a taboo subject hiding in plain sight, drug-trafficking didn't figure prominently in political campaigns, even in places like the Pacific coast state of Colima, where Manzanillo port is a major transshipment point for U.S.-bound cocaine.

Anguiano's Institutional Revolutionary Party denies any involvement with drug traffickers and accused the ruling National Action Party of hanging the banner - which it denies.

But in the July 5 midterm elections for 500 congressional seats, six governors and 565 mayors, President Felipe Calderon's party, known as the PAN, is aggressively painting opponents as soft on drugs and itself as the only party gutsy enough to take on the cartels.

Meanwhile the Christian Science Monitor does some stenography for opponents of the Obama Administration's campaign to slow the export of guns from the U.S. to Mexico:

"This is just factoid laundering of the GAO," says Dave Kopel, a fellow at the conservative Independence Institute in Golden, Colo. "Basically, because Hillary Clinton or some Mexican cabinet official says something is true, then it's officially true."

The effort by some Congressional Democrats, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to bring the issue to light, says Vizzard, is largely to placate Mexican counterparts, who are seeing a burst of violence as police attempt to tamp down drug cartels. He adds that it's also an opportunity under a Democratic US president to make an international point about America's role in the Mexico bloodshed.

"Washington has to pacify the Mexican government, and, rightfully, the Mexican government is pointing at the US saying, 'You guys keep talking about our drugs going to the US. What about your guns coming down here?' " says Vizzard, adding, "And they legitimately have a beef."

Josh Meyer | Washington | June 18

LA Times - The United States lacks a coordinated strategy to stem the flow of weapons across its southern border, a failure that has fueled the rise of powerful criminal cartels and violence in Mexico, according to a government watchdog agency report being released Thursday.

The report by the congressional Government Accountability Office represents the first federal assessment of the issue and offers blistering conclusions that likely will impact the debate over the role of U.S. weaponry as Mexican violence threatens to spill across the border.

A draft of the GAO report confirms that a growing number of increasingly lethal, U.S.-made weapons are being smuggled into Mexico and comprise more than 90% of firearms seized by authorities there.

The report also cites recent U.S. intelligence indicating that most of the weapons are being smuggled in specifically for the syndicates, and are being used not only against the Mexican government but also to help the cartels in their efforts to control drug distribution in U.S. cities.

"The U.S. government lacks a strategy to address arms trafficking to Mexico," the report says in blunt terms. "Individual U.S. agencies have undertaken a variety of activities and projects to combat arms trafficking to Mexico, but they are not part of a comprehensive U.S. government-wide strategy for addressing the problem."

I've been following this story for a few days and feel remiss for not posting on it here sooner. Only so many hours in the day. Here's the lead:

Three people, including the leader of a border watch group and an officer within that group, were arrested in connection with a May 30 home invasion that left a father and his daughter dead and the mother wounded, authorities said.
One of those arrested, Shawna Forde, is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a group out of Washington state that conducts operations along the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona. The group is not related to either the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps founded by Chris Simcox, or the Minuteman Project founded by Jim Gilchrist.
Authorities also arrested Jason Eugene Bush, 34, who serves as operations director for the Washington group, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, in connection with the shooting deaths of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia Flores, said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.

The next day this little nugget came out:

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

TalkingPointsMemo has this analysis:

No, it doesn't make sense to us either. But there's increasing evidence that something about the current climate -- the election of a pro-choice, African-American president, the economic downturn, or perhaps the ever-more unhinged flavor of even a lot of mainstream conservative rhetoric -- is prompting a greater number of confused and dangerous Americans to act out their bizarre and violent fantasies. And that's worth paying attention to, whether it makes sense or not.

I'd echo that point, but also feel compelled to point out that there is a long-standing dynamic in Latin America of right-wing paramilitaries, death squads and U.S. agents being irresistibly drawn to the lure of drug money. Left wing extremists like the FARC in Colombia and the Shining Path in Peru also have carved out their own bits of drug turf.

But its the violent right that's on the rise in the U.S., even as the legitimate right is fading. And the migration of drug war violence into the U.S. is mixing with that trend. Rest assured, as much as these people were fools and bunglers, there will be others and they won't all be caught their first time out.

June 17

BBC -

The Mexican Navy says it has seized more than a tonne of cocaine hidden inside the carcasses of frozen sharks.

Armed officers found slabs of cocaine inside more than 20 sharks aboard a freight ship in the Gulf coast port of Progreso in Yucatan state.

Correspondents say cartels are coming up with increasingly creative ways of smuggling drugs into the US.

Shipments of cocaine have also been discovered hidden inside sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture.

"We are talking about more than a tonne of cocaine that was inside the ship," said Mexican Navy Commander Eduardo Villa.

"Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

In another development on Tuesday, the Mexican Navy unveiled what it described as one of the largest methamphetamine labs ever found in the country.

When officers stumbled across the enormous holding tank in a remote part of the northern state of Sinaloa last week they thought it might be used to water a marijuana plantation.

Instead, the tank fed water into two enormous sheds where investigators found 12,905 gallons (49,640 litres) of ephedrine, a chemical used to make methamphetamine.

Just a quick round up of Mexico news.

First off, the federales have been busy claiming scalps. In Tijuana they nabbed La Perra ("the bitch") aka Jose Filiberto Parra Ramos an enforcer for a rogue wing of the Arellano Felix cartel who have allied with the Sinaloa cartel against their former allies. I know that the ins and outs of which mid-level narco gets busted isn't really of global significance, but I also find the tactical stuff fascinating. One thing I've learned in 25 years of obsession with organized crime is that with a strong enforcer or #2 guy gets busted or whacked that its often a sign that someone is closing in on his boss. In this case, that's Teodoro Garcia Simental who got run out of Tijuana in April 2008 but went south and came back with new friends from Sinaloa in September and has been raising hell ever since. Losing Le Perra might be a serious blow to El Teo.

In Cancun, they've caught Juan Manuel Jurado Zarzoza, aka El Puma, a Gulf Cartel honcho who is believed to have ordered the kidnapping, torture and murder of a retired Mexican Army Brigadier General in February 2008. The General was sent in to clean up the infamously corrupt local police only to be betrayed to the narcos and sent to a horrible fate.

The same BBC story reports this little nugget about another mass arrest in Ciudad Juarez: "According to witnesses, the 25 men who were arrested there were wearing soldiers' uniforms." Presidente Calderon has sent in thousands of army troops to crack down in Juarez. Seems like the cartels are adapting to a new foe.

There's also this St. Petersburg Times report from Guatamala:

Guatemala's rise as a trafficking center is only the latest symptom of what experts call the "balloon effect." Pressure applied to other drug routes through the Caribbean to Miami, for example, forced drug lords to look to other more vulnerable transshipment points.

Guatemala is an ideal conduit for cocaine traffickers. Most of its 600 miles of border with Mexico are remote mountain and jungle, dotted with dirt airstrips. Ports on both the Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico are poorly policed.

U.S. officials estimate that 70 percent of the illegal drugs that enter the United States now pass through Central America. The Mexican cartels began moving part of their operations to Guatemala about three years ago, says Mexican security expert Alberto Islas. In part that was because of increased pressure by Mexican authorities. But they were also attracted by Guatemala's porous borders, and corruption in law enforcement, the judiciary and the banking system.

Deposits in the country's banking system have grown 20 percent annually over the last three years, despite economic troubles and falling remittances from Guatemalans abroad, Islas notes, a sign that organized crime is using local banks to launder money.

"Money from the drug trade has woven itself into the fiber of Guatemalan law enforcement and justice institutions," according to the U.S. State Department's annual narcotics report released in February.

All of this carnage is the result of an entirely elective "war on drugs" that is so obviously a failure that Nicholas Kristof is opining in the NYT about how stupid it is.

Andrew Becker | June 15

LA Times - Officers often must choose between doing drug gangs' bidding or risking death by refusing. Some who have come to the U.S. to escape the dilemma find the system unsympathetic.

Julio Ledezma had been chief of police in La Junta, a town of 8,700 in northern Mexico, for barely three months when a pair of strangers paid him a visit.

They said an aide to the mayor had sent them, and they bore gifts: a briefcase stuffed with cash and a truck for Ledezma's personal use.

In return, the new chief was to distract federal police at security checkpoints with fake calls for assistance. The diversion would allow drug traffickers to drive through the area without inspection.

Ledezma could refuse -- and be killed.

He could take the bribe -- and be owned by the Juarez cartel.

He chose to stall. He told the men he had to talk to his boss first. He approached civic leaders, trying to rally support. Word got back to the traffickers, and on Ledezma's 45th birthday, six men with military rifles surrounded his home while he was out buying steaks and jalapeños for his birthday dinner.

The gunmen told his wife that they would find him and kill him, no matter where he went in Mexico. They waited about 20 minutes, then left.

When Ledezma returned, he realized that resistance was not an option. He drove to Juarez with his wife and their 15-year-old daughter and crossed the Bridge of the Americas into El Paso. There, they asked for political asylum.

Their request will probably be rejected, because asylum is reserved for people fleeing political oppression or ethnic discrimination. Police officers who stood up to drug cartels don't necessarily qualify.

Indeed, the U.S. government is aggressively fighting Ledezma's petition on the grounds that the threat that caused him to flee is inherent to police work, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Beckett. U.S. immigration officials said they could not comment because asylum cases are confidential.

Jack Lee, a blogger I've never heard of before, but came across whilst googling for drug war news has a modest proposal. Before we get the excerpt, let me point out that he shares my nausea and outrage at what the American demand for drugs is doing to Mexico. But his opinion is pretty illustrative of the American hoi polloi:

Our new Obama government and our liberal avant-guard tell us our drug users and even petty street dealers shouldn't be locked up in our already overcrowded prisons, they deserve diversion in the form of medical help or counseling.

Okay, I'll go with that if you also take the next step and legalized drugs!

But, (you probably guessed there would be a catch), I don't want to be accountable for anyone's drug problem in any way share or form! This is a plan for fairness and for personal accountability.

If you O.D. and can't pay for life saving medical treatment, it should not automatically become the taxpayers problem. If you damage your brain to the point where you can't function, we're not carrying your dead weight for the next 40 years. If families get into trouble, we'll take their kids off their hands for adoption, but that's as far as we go. If employers want to regularly screen to keep out drug users, that's not the taxpayers problem, no unemployment to fall back on for you. Same concept applies to insurance companies, no payments if drugs are involved. If you crash your car while under the influence of anything from drugs to alcohol, your insurance coverage should be zero for you and only cover those you hurt. I don't want my insurance premiums going up because of your problem, so anything we can do to minimize your damage we should! Any crimes committed while under the influence should have some major enhancements... and why not?

Remember: With great freedom comes great responsibilities!

Think this is too tough? Not really, however I'm willing to be fair and so I offer a Plan B. Here's how it works: We completely change our philosophy about how we deal with illegal drugs, in short, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

Drug dealers will be put to death, not life on death row either, I mean death right away. If we're going to do it right and have the desired impact that means a speedy trial and the death sentence just days after the trial...then it's over and done and we can all move on to bigger and better things without you, Mr. Dope Dealer, in the way. This would take all the fun out of being a drug dealer, wouldn't it? I think so, always worrying about getting caught, you wouldn't be able to enjoy all your drug money toys thinking about getting whacked.

If you are one of those not-so-innocent users, in Plan B you're suddenly going to come face to face with the reality and responsibility of those first, second and third consequences traced directly to your drug abuse. You say it's your choice with what you do with your body and then it follows it is not my problem if you screw it up! Hey, it's your body, your choices, you take care of the consquences of your choices.

Basically here's a somewhat reasonable person whose take on the drug war is "well we haven't tried complete and total fascism yet." And his objection to recreational drug use is so violent that he views marijuana use as a moral crime so abhorrent and risky that its (legal) use would be an utter violation of the social compact.

Don't bother pointing out the billions and billions we happily spend as taxpayers on cleaning up the massive health and social consequences of alcohol and tobacco use. Those aren't "drugs".

Good NY Times story about the increasing scourge of Heroin addiction and overdoses in suburban and rural America. In this case, Columbus, Ohio. The two men described here drew 15 year sentences in American jails for their roles in a drug ring whose product resulted in overdose deaths:

The men convicted in the Eisel case told the authorities similar stories. Mr. Contreras, the dispatcher in the case, told federal authorities that he had crossed the border illegally and lived in Oregon for several years before moving to Columbus in 2007 on the promise of a job as an auto mechanic. But that job never materialized. In a letter to The New York Times, he said he had worked a variety of other jobs but had hit an unemployment streak that left him without a car or a house for his wife and two young children.

Desperate for work, he said he found an acquaintance in Columbus who promised him easy money for distributing heroin.

“Since I spoke English and Spanish, they proposed that I answer the phone only,” Mr. Contreras wrote. “I didn’t touch the drug or see it. I was only answering the phone. I was with them for three months, and that was when they caught me.”

He said he never imagined that anyone could die from the heroin, “since I have used the drug and nothing ever happened to me.”

Mr. Parra said he illegally crossed the border in 2005 and settled in California, working in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant for several months. When that work and other jobs dried up, friends suggested he come to Ohio for work. But when he arrived, Mr. Parra said, he learned that the work would be helping to distribute heroin.

And the victim's mother ends the story on this ringing note:

Prosecutors asked Mrs. Smith to go to the sentencing hearings and make a statement. She stood feet from the men accused of killing her son and listened to their words of regret.

“Part of my heart goes out to their families,” she said in a recent interview. “But something has got to be done to stop this.”

I understand that Mrs. Smith is grieving a terrible loss and agree that something must be done to stop this, but what we are doing isn't going to stop anything.

To me these are the arrests are the equivalent of arresting every minimum wage McDonald's employee at a single retail outlet and then being surprised when corporate HQ can bring in replacements and keep the store running without missing a single shift.

Its probably more analagous to breaking up a prostitution ring in the states by handing out 10 to 15 year sentences to the Ukranian girls who have been smuggled in, leaving the pimps and procurers untouched.

Two final points.

First, always remember William S. Burroughs' maxim about heroin dealers -- "they don't sell the product to the customer, they sell the customer to the product." Heroin is the only commodity in existence whose consumption is determined by the supply. Think on that. In the heroin market, supply = demand.

Second, the plague of heroin (and methamphetamine and prescription depressants) in rural America is the second act of the crack epidemic that devastated our urban cores in the 1980s and 1990s. First we abandoned the ethnic minorities in the cities, now we're abandoning the poor whites in the suburbs, exurbs and rural America.

Thanks to the massive profits in money laundering, the people profiting the most from selling our burgeoning underclass to the drug trade are many of the same banksters and usurers who have been bleeding us for so long now.

I'd love to know how many doses of heroin, meth, crack, etc have been purchased with cash advances from credit cards charging upwards of 30% interest.

The Houston Chronicle has a piece on Mexican cartels "attempting" to launder their drug money and the Houston area banksters who have to be on their toes to avoid being "victimized":

Not only is Houston a major center for Mexican cartels’ smuggling drugs and weapons, but banks and financial institutions in the nation’s fourth largest city’s also are targets for gangsters trying to hide millions of dollars in profits, according to a White House report released Wednesday.

Underworld organizations, particularly those aligned with the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, have major bases of operation in Houston and Corpus Christi, continues the report, prepared for the Obama administration by the National Drug Intelligence Center.

There are 201 international drug and money-laundering organizations in a 16-county region that stretches from Kenedy County, in deep South Texas, to just this side of the Louisiana border, according to the report.
...

With that distribution comes cash, and cartels are offered a potential means to launder the money by using traditional financial institutions and money-service businesses in Houston.
Bankers aware of risks

John Heasley, general counsel for Texas Bankers Association, said bankers are so well-trained, so closely watched, and face such severe sanctions these days that traffickers know they have to try and take their profits elsewhere.

“Bankers are acutely aware of the environment and realize the potential for someone to approach them and try to use their bank as a conduit,” said Heasley, who grew up on the border and was involved in past congressional efforts to strengthen money-laundering laws.

As a result, traffickers often resort to sneaking bulk cash directly to Mexico or trying to filter it though a series of businesses and then into the banking system, where they can withdraw or transfer it in what seems a legitimate transaction.

“We have truckloads of cash heading south,” Furce said. “You go out in the street and collect twenties and hundreds for dope, and you have to move that south somehow.”

A dramatic stand off in Nuevo León state between Federal and local police has made for powerful political propaganda for President Felipe Calderon in advance of the midterm legislative elections. From the WSJ:

Federal police raided several local police stations in northern Nuevo León state Tuesday, as part of a sweep to try to clean up local forces allegedly corrupted by drug-trafficking gangs, state officials said. The raids came a day after heavily armed federal police engaged in a tense standoff with local officers in Monterrey, Mexico's third-biggest city.

Several dozen federal police and scores of local police squared off for several hours Monday afternoon at a busy intersection in Monterrey, aiming at each other with semiautomatic assault weapons and threatening to kill one another. In the end, no one was hurt, but images of the two forces aiming guns at each other stunned Mexicans.
...
Monday's events show how difficult it will be to clean up local police forces. The arrests of local police angered their colleagues, who staged a protest by using their patrol cars to blockade busy city avenues, snarling traffic.

When federal police arrived to clear the intersections, local police drew their weapons and threatened to shoot.

Making matters worse, someone issued a call on the police emergency frequency saying that a local police commander had been kidnapped, and requesting local police from several municipalities to come to the scene.

The standoff ended after federal police arrested seven officers and impounded about 10 police cars used to block traffic.

State officials said there were indications that drug gangs had ordered at least some of the local police to stage the protests.

In late May I blogged about a round up of politicians from all three parties in the state of Michoacan.

World Politics Review has more on the possible partisan political angle behind the busts:

Federal officials used the word "historic" to describe the May 26 arrests of 28 local officials, including 10 mayors, in the western state of Michoacán. Those detained were allegedly linked to La Familia, a drug cartel known for running extortion rackets, producing methamphetamines and corrupting municipal governments.

Opposition politicians and some political observers, meanwhile, expressed disquiet with the arrests and questioned their timing. The sting operation -- which netted mayors from the three main parties, including a pair from President Felipe Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) -- came barely five weeks before the July 5 midterm legislative elections. Critics also noted that the arrests took place in Calderón's home state, where the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) wields power and the president and the PAN have yet to establish an electoral powerbase.

First, the violence porn -- massive four hour shootout between narcos and Mexican armed forces in tourist haven Acapulco kills sixteen. From NYT:

Three different drug organizations are struggling for control in the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. The army said Monday that one of the men killed in the shootout was believed to have been a leader of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, which is considered one of Mexico’s most dangerous drug groups. Also operating in the area are Los Zetas, a group of former Mexican soldiers, and La Familia, which sometimes portrays itself as a defender of rural families but is known for its ruthless acts, the authorities said.

The Mexican state is in danger of losing its monopoly on violence, so we are sending in a new ambassador, Carlos Pascual, the "Shock Doctor". The LA Times calls him an expert on "failed states". Naomi Klein has more about Pascual:

On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate “post conflict” plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries “at the same time,” each lasting “five to seven years.”
...
The plans Pascual’s teams have been drawing up in his little-known office in the State Department are about changing “the very social fabric of a nation,” he told CSIS. The office’s mandate is not to rebuild any old states, you see, but to create “democratic and market-oriented” ones. So, for instance (and he was just pulling this example out of his hat, no doubt), his fast-acting reconstructors might help sell off “state-owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy.” Sometimes rebuilding, he explained, means “tearing apart the old.”

Its worth noting that President Clinton sent Pascual to the Ukraine as Ambassador in 2000 and he stayed on until 2003.

Some analysis from Al Giordano in the full entry.

Ken Ellingwood | Mexico City | June 7

LAT - As if Mexican tourism needed more bad news, a weekend shootout left 18 gunmen and soldiers dead in Acapulco, the iconic if faded beach resort that has been working on a comeback in recent years.

The hours-long gunfight Saturday night took place in a seaside neighborhood of homes and cut-rate hotels that is mainly frequented by Mexicans and sits several miles from the main strip of tourist complexes. Some guests were reportedly evacuated from nearby hotels, but no tourists were known to have been caught in the crossfire.

Mexico City | June 6

AFP - At least 27 children were killed when a blaze raced through their daycare center in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, according to a state government official.

"Up to now there are 27" children killed in the fire in the state capital Hermosillo, said Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman with the local prosecutor's office.

Larrinaga warned that "more bodies are being found," and that it will likely take several hours to know the total number of victims and the cause of the fire.

There were at least 176 children in the state-run center at the time the fire broke out, and about 12 of them were rushed to local hospitals for treatment of smoke inhalation, local media reported.

The fire started at a nearby tire warehouse, according to local media.

Obama's head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano continues the official administration policy of offering aggressive lip service to a more enlightened drug policy while ramping up the funding for war-on-drugs-without-end.

We have always been at war with Oceana/Drugs/Terror.

"This is not just about slowing or impeding the flow of drugs from Mexico and Central America into the United States, it's also about reducing the demand for those drugs," she said.

Napolitano wouldn't elaborate on details during an appearance here Thursday in which she announced grants of about $59 million for local law enforcement efforts to combat crime along the southwestern border.

Meanwhile Texas GOP Governor Rick Perry is proposing a more Bushian plan, involving increased militarization of the border, without providing any funding mechanism. Details on his "scheme" in the full entry.

Meanwhile the narcos are doing their part by feeding the American media plenty of alarming mayhem.

In Guatemala, the authorities are admitting that a huge cache of weaponry seized from Mexican Zetas in Guatemala City originally came from the Guatemalan army.

And someone, presumably from the Sinaloa cartel of Chapo Guzman, left 11 mutilated bodies in a car near the Arizona-Sonora border.

Sara Miller Llana | Mexico City | June 2

CSM -

New law would require officials to move street kids into schools or other programs – or face a $420-per-child fine.

Children selling gum or washing windshields in the streets of Mexico are as ubiquitous as traffic lights.

But a new proposal here would forbid the presence of street children in cities and towns across the country.

Under a proposed modification of a federal child protection law, state and municipal authorities would be required to round up kids living or working on the streets and place them in the care of social service agencies. Authorities who fail to do so would face fines.

The proposal, now being studied in congressional commissions, could be modified, and a final vote is months away. But it is already garnering a strong reaction among children's rights advocates.
Supporters of the change say it finally turns attention to society's most vulnerable, attempting to provide children a dignified life of classrooms, after-school activities, and ample playtime.

But for critics, this move to round up street children is too simplistic. It fails to address the complex roots of the problem and, at worst, is an effort to simply sweep the presence of poverty under the rug, they say.

"It's another attempt to lock children up and clean the city of a social problem, as has been tried here and in the rest of Latin America over the decades," says Dolores Munozcano Skidmore, a sociologist who studies street children at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Tracy Wilkinson | Mexico City | June 2

LA Times - Mexico's reeling economy received another jolt of bad news Monday with reports of the largest monthly decline yet in the amount of money Mexicans working abroad send home.

Remittances for the month of April totaled about $1.7 billion, 18.6% less than the $2.1 billion recorded in April 2008, Mexico's central bank said.

After oil, remittances are Mexico's largest source of income, and their decline is certain to further erode the country's economic growth. Experts cite several reasons for the drop in money sent home by the estimated 12 million Mexicans living in the U.S., including recession in the U.S. and widening unemployment among migrant workers. In addition, tighter security at the nations' shared border has deterred some Mexicans from heading north in search of increasingly scarce jobs.

Last year was the first time remittances declined overall for a 12-month period, after steady growth ever since authorities began keeping records 13 years ago.

The LA Times goes a bit more in-depth on the "it" cartel of the moment, even as the AP reports that current drug lord super-star Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is increasingly marginalized in his own cartel. From the Times:

A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing an agenda that goes beyond the usual money-only interests of drug cartels.

Whether by intimidation, purchase or direct order, drug gangs can sometimes dictate who is a candidate and who is not, and put some of their own people in races -- a perversion, critics say, of democracy itself.

Just last week it became clear how deeply embedded La Familia is. Federal authorities detained 10 mayors and 20 other local officials as part of a drug investigation, saying the organized-crime group has contaminated city halls across the state. The roundup comes at the height of the electoral season, as Michoacan and the rest of Mexico approach local and national contests July 5.

Dozens of mayors, city hall officials and politicians have been killed or abducted in Michoacan as La Familia has extended its control in the last couple of years.

When congressional candidate Gustavo Bucio Rodriguez was slain at his gasoline station last month, authorities went out of their way to convince political leaders that he was the victim of common crime, showing them a surveillance tape of the killing by a lone gunman.

A few days earlier, the message was unmistakable. Nicolas Leon, a two-time mayor of Lazaro Cardenas, site of Michoacan's huge port, was tortured and shot to death. Left on his body was a message signed "FM" (Familia Michoacana) warning that supporters of the Zetas, the enforcement arm of a rival trafficking group, would meet the same fate.

Unlike some drug syndicates, La Familia goes beyond the production and transport of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine and seeks political and social standing. It has created a cult-like mystique and developed pseudo-evangelical recruitment techniques that experts and law enforcement authorities say are unique in Mexico.
...
La Familia emerged this decade as a local partner of the so-called Gulf cartel, whose operatives were moving into the region along with their ruthless paramilitary force, the Zetas. La Familia and the Zetas gradually muscled out most of the other gangs, and La Familia announced its dominance by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall in the Michoacan city of Uruapan in September 2006. The gruesome calling card soon became all too common in areas where drug traffickers settle accounts.

Upon assuming the presidency in December of that year, Calderon launched the first of tens of thousands of troops against drug traffickers here.

Nonetheless, La Familia is stronger today than ever. It has expanded into the neighboring states of Guerrero, Queretaro and Mexico, which abuts the national capital, Mexico City, while battling remaining pockets of the Gulf cartel.

La Familia also has steadily diversified into counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealerships. The group offers money or demands bribes; increasingly, people in Michoacan pay protection money to La Familia in lieu of taxes to the government.

The estimable Charles Lemos at MyDD sings the praises of Mexican President Calderon's round up of 10 mayors in his home state of Michoacán:

Mexico is quietly and valiantly attempting to stem the growing influence of the drug trade. Today in the rugged state of Michoacan, federal authorities in an unprecedented anti-corruption sweep detained 10 mayors and 18 other officials for allegedly protecting one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels, the La Familia Michoacana cartel, one of three Mexican organizations that the White House recently included on its list of suspected international drug trafficking outfits. In this, the sweep suggests a close cooperation with the American authorities.

The Christian Science Monitor elaborates on the operation:

The operation in Michoacán, which comes ahead of important mid-term elections in July, involved 200 federal agents who stormed into the state attorney general's office in Morelia, as well as mayors' offices and police stations across the state. Others arrested include a judge and a former state police chief, who serves as an aide to the state's governor, according to the federal attorney's office.

In a press conference, Michoacán Gov. Leonel Godoy pointed out that those detained hail from a variety of political parties.

It is laudable that Calderon is going after members of all political parties, even his own. But the subterranean political angle isn't played up -- every official arrested was aligned with La Familia. I'll be impressed when Calderon executes such sweeping round ups of allies of every cartel, including Chapo Guzman's Sinaloa cartel.

Morelia | May 26

Reuters - Mexican troops rounded up 10 mayors and a string of police chiefs on Tuesday suspected of links to drug gangs in a western state, one of the biggest single corruption sweeps in the government's drug war.

Soldiers burst into police stations and town halls to arrest 27 public officials in Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon and the place he launched his army-led assault on drug cartels in late 2006.

The officials included a judge and a former police chief who is an aide to the state governor. The attorney general's office said all were suspected of links to drug smugglers.

Someone is targeting candidates from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) in Guerrero state:

Gunmen in a vehicle intercepted a car carrying three PRD members Monday in the town of Arcelia, the Guerrero state Public Safety Department said in a statement. One of the gunmen opened fire, wounding all three politicians, who were hospitalized. The three included Nicanor Adame Serrano, who is running for a congressional seat in the July elections, and his campaign manager.

The body of another PRD member, Alvaro Rosas, was found in the trunk of a car Sunday in Tecpan de Galeana, a coastal town about halfway between the resort cities of Zihuatanejo and Acapulco, said Delfino Vargas, a state police officer.

Interestingly, a legendary leftist fugitive, Comandante Ramiro (Omar Guerrero Solis) of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) appeared before Mexican reporters about ten days ago and claimed that an alliance of the ruling PAN party and the narcos was behind the violence:

In comments to reporters, Comandante Ramiro accused the Calderon administration of not only staging the fight against drug trafficking, but of also protecting the interests of alleged drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The masked guerrilla commander charged Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected with the backing of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and social sectors sympathetic with the guerrilla movement, with also protecting Chapo Guzman and an alleged associate, Rogaciano Alba.

A former head of the Guerrero Regional Cattlemen’s Association, Alba also served as the mayor of the Guerrero town of Petatlan for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Gunmen associated with Alba are responsible for about 60 murders in the conflictive Tierra Caliente and Costa Grande regions of Guerrero, Comandante Ramiro said.

“The strategy of combating the narco is phony,” Comandante Ramiro charged. “Here in Guerrero, for example, the narcos participate in meetings that the army and state government hold to strike at one cartel and protect another, but essentially they are the same, because they murder, kidnap and torture,” he asserted. “Here the cartel of Chapo Guzman is serving the army, and vice-versa..”

Julie Watson | Mexico City | May 22

LA Times - Security camera footage shows that guards at a Mexican prison nonchalantly stood by as 53 dangerous inmates walked out — and didn't rush into action with their guns drawn until well after their convoy of escape vehicles had disappeared into the inky night.

The footage published by Reforma newspaper Thursday provides a rare inside look at lax security inside Mexico's prisons, a problem that makes prosecuting drug smugglers vastly more difficult. Interpol described the worst of the criminals, who escaped without firing a shot, as "a risk to the safety and security of citizens around the world."

Interpol issued an international security alert for 11 of the prisoners involved in the 2-minute-and-52-second prison break Saturday in Cieneguillas, in the northern state of Zacatecas. About a dozen of the prisoners were drug cartel suspects.

The video shows bored-looking guards watching TV before one of the prisoners opens an unlocked gate to his cell block and then orders a group of inmates to follow him into the guards' room. The guards step aside, making no moves to stop the escape, until they are shoved into the cell block by the inmates, some of them armed.

Prisoners then cover the camera with a blanket. Meanwhile, a second security camera outside the prison filmed the arrival of gunmen in police cars with flashing lights shortly before 5 a.m. Two guards run to open the front gate without questioning the drivers.

Eight gunmen wearing jackets with federal police insignia then enter the prison building and escort the inmates to the cars waiting in the prison parking lot. After they are gone, one guard with his hands bound by plastic luggage ties is seen walking calmly down an empty hall.

Only after the convoy is well out of the picture can guards be seen running toward the gate, some crouching with their guns drawn. Reforma added in a caption that the guards appeared to overacting for the cameras, "in Jim Carrey style."