WAR 09/09: Drug gangs blamed for Honduras factory massacre ....."The Border Bad Lands:

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For Fair Use: Discussion

8 September 2010 23:02 ET

Drug gangs blamed for Honduras factory massacre

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11240006​

Forensic teams have scoured the scene of the massacre for clues Honduran police have blamed street gangs linked to Mexican drug cartels for the killing of at least 18 people in a shoe factory.

The massacre in the city of San Pedro Sula was connected to a dispute over territory between groups of drug traffickers, officials said.

Up to four men armed with assault rifles burst into the factory and opened fire on Tuesday.

All the victims were said to be young men. Several others were wounded.

San Pedro Sula's police chief, Hector Mejia, said the attack was part of an escalating dispute between the rival Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 gangs.

The "maras" are criminal gangs that originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s and spread through the US into Canada, Mexico and Central America.

The most famous groups - the Mara 18 (M18) and Mara Salvatrucha (MS) - count tens of thousands of members in Central America.

Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said police believe the shoe factory attack was a settling of scores.

"This area is considered a Mara 18 stronghold and the people inside (the factory) were close to the MS," he said.

Mexican cartels use Central America as a smuggling route. Local gangs receive drugs in return for helping transport narcotics, officials say.

San Pedro Sula, about 165km (100 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa, is in an area where gangs are known to refine cocaine before it is moved into the US.



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For Fair Use: Discussion

Mexican mayor gunned down inside own office

By the CNN Wire Staff
September 8, 2010 9:29 p.m. EDT
www.cnn.com​

(CNN) -- The mayor of El Naranjo, Mexico, in the central state of San Luis Potosi was gunned down and killed inside his office Wednesday, officials said.

Witnesses say that four armed and hooded men stepped out of a white truck at city hall, the San Luis Potosi government said in a statement. Two of the men posted themselves outside, and two went inside and to the top floor of the building, where they entered the mayor's office and shot him, the statement said.

The attack happened in broad daylight, at about 1:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), and was brazen even by the standards of Mexico's violent drug cartel wars.

At least seven mayors in various Mexican states have been assassinated in 2010.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned the "criminal and cowardly" killing of the mayor.

"The federal government reiterates that it will continue working for the security of the citizens, with all the available resources of the state," Calderon said.

Alexander Lopez Garcia assumed office in October of last year as a candidate for an alliance between the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), and the Ecologist Green Party.



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For Fair Use: Discussion

Mexican marines arrest 7 in cartel-linked massacre of 72 migrants

Wednesday, Sep. 08, 2010
By E. Eduardo Castillo
The Associated Press
www.star-telegram.com​

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican marines have arrested seven gunmen suspected of killing 72 Central and South American migrants in the worst drug cartel massacre to date, the government announced Wednesday.

Four of the suspects were arrested after a gunbattle Friday with marines, and the three others were captured days later, spokesman Alejandro Poire said.

Poire alleged that the seven belong to the Zetas drug gang, but he gave no further details on their identities or what led to their arrests.

Investigators believe that the migrants were kidnapped by the Zetas and killed after refusing to work for the cartel.

Marines -- alerted by an Ecuadorean who escaped the mass killing -- found the bodies of the migrants Aug. 24 at a ranch in Tamaulipas, a state that borders South Texas.

The bodies, bound and blindfolded, were found lying in a row beside a wall, some slumped on top of one another.

A total of eight suspects are in custody. Marines arrested a teenager after a shootout with gunmen at the ranch the day they found the bodies. Three gunmen were killed during that battle.

In addition, marines last week found the bodies of three other men suspected of participating in the massacre after an anonymous caller told where to find them.

Officials say they have no information on who made the call, but in the past drug gangs have handed over suspects in brutal killings that draw too much attention.

A Honduran man who also survived and is under police protection in Mexico later identified the three dead men as having been among the killers.

The Ecuadorean survivor, who has since returned to his country, told Mexican investigators that the killers identified themselves as Zetas and killed the migrants when they refused to join the gang.



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For Fair Use: Discussion

Clinton: Mexican drug war like insurgency

Published: Sept. 8, 2010 at 11:09 PM
www.upi.com​

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday likened drug cartel operations in Mexico and Central America to an insurgency.

Speaking to foreign policy experts at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Clinton said there is "an increasing threat from a well-organized network drug trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America."

While praising the efforts of Mexico's law enforcement and intelligence forces, Clinton said "it's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country, not significant parts."

"But it's going to take a combination of improved institutional capacity and better law enforcement and, where appropriate, military support for that law enforcement married to political will to be able to prevent this from spreading and to try to beat it back," she said.

Clinton said while Mexico has the capacity to fight the drug cartels, the smaller countries in Central America do not.

"So we are working to try to enhance what we have in Central America," she said.

The BBC reported a Mexican government spokesman disagreed with Clinton's assessment that the situation in Mexico has veered toward an insurgency on par with what happened in Colombia in the past.

Alejandro Poire told the British network the only common thread is the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.

Drug-related violence has claimed more than 28,000 lives in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon decided to employ the army against the cartels in 2006the BBC noted.


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For Fair Use: Discussion

Six policemen killed in Mexico

Irish Sun
Thursday 9th September, 2010
(IANS)
story.irishsun.com​

Six policemen were killed in fighting with gunmen in northeast Mexico, officials said.

The gunfight broke out around 3.00 a.m. Wednesday near Padilla town in Tamaulipas state.

The state has been hit by violent turf war between rival drug gangs this year.


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For Fair Use: Discussion

Two Mexican massacre investigators feared dead

09:53, September 09, 2010

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7134893.html​

Two Mexican investigators working on last month's massacre of 72 migrants may have been murdered, authorities said Wednesday.

Two dead bodies recently found in northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas appeared to be those of the two investigators, according to a spokesman from the state's attorney general's office (PGR).

"We are doing the forensic work to confirm their identities, but everything indicates that they are investigators," the spokesman told Xinhua by telephone.

Roberto Jaime Suzrez Vazquez, the first police investigator arriving at the scene of the massacre on Aug. 24, went missing three days later.

Vazquez's clothing and identification documents were found on one of the two dead bodies mentioned above. The second body appears to be that of Juan Carlos Suarez Sanchez, a public security secretary.

Police is conducting DNA tests to confirm the identities of the two bodies.

Source: Xinhua


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For Fair Use: Discussion

Chinese army to attend Mexico's bicentennial

11:24, September 09, 2010

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90786/7135090.html​

Invited by Mexico's Ministry of Defense, a 36-person honor guard of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China will attend the celebration parade marking the 200th anniversary of Mexico's independence on Sept. 15, according to Chinese Ministry of National Defense.

The squad will depart from Shanghai on Thursday.

More than 10 other countries, including the United States, Russia and France, will also take part in the ceremony.

This marks the first time an honor guard of the PLA has participated in such events overseas and it will serve to deepen mutual understanding and trust between China and Mexico. It also shows China's willingness to cooperate with other countries to maintain world peace.

By Zhao Chenyan, People's Daily Online



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For Fair Use: Discussion

New clashes erupt at Mexico's Cananea copper mine

By Mica Rosenberg
MEXICO CITY | Wed Sep 8, 2010 9:36pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68808P20100909?rpc=401​

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Fresh clashes erupted on Wednesday between union workers and company contractors at the massive Cananea copper mine in northern Mexico leaving several people severely injured, the local government said.

The mine, owned by major copper producer Grupo Mexico, has been the site of tension after a three-year strike ended earlier this year. The striking miners were removed from the premises by federal police but have continued to protest outside the mine gates.

Grupo Mexico, which operates mines in Mexico, Peru and the United States, began hiring contract workers to repair damages to the mine but have faced resistance from dismissed union workers. Federal police now help guard the facilities.

Cananea's local government had said in a statement one contract worker had died of bullet wounds, but it later issued an official correction saying the contract worker survived the attack but was severely injured and in a hospital.

Nine others were injured in the two-day conflict and 26 people were arrested, the corrected statement said.

Cananea, near the border with Arizona, is the largest copper mine in Mexico but has not been producing since the labor dispute began in 2007. The mine has the capacity to produce 180,000 metric tons of copper annually but the company has an ambitious expansion plan there.

Grupo Mexico says it may have some copper output at Cananea by the end of this year but most analysts estimate it will take longer for production to restart.

BLAME GAME

The union said the contract workers sparked clashes, while the company blamed union members.

"We are informing and denouncing the aggression of the union .. for attacking contract workers with rocks and bullets who work at the mine," Grupo Mexico said in a statement.

The union's leader, Napoleon Gomez, is living in Canada to avoid arrest on corruption charges in Mexico, which he denies, saying he has been unfairly targeted for his labor activism.

"They have been trying to destroy our organization and confronted with this aggression (the miners) are defending themselves," Sergio Tolano, the president Cananea's union section, told Reuters.

Tolano said clashes, which began on Tuesday, had died down by Wednesday afternoon.

A state court granted workers an appeal to reverse their eviction in June from Cananea, but the company and Mexico's Labor Ministry says the appeal has no bearing on the mine's operations.

A separate conflict erupted recently at another Grupo Mexico facility in Sonora state after a group of miners were fired for supporting the national mining union, the United States Steelworkers said in a statement. The U.S. labor group supports the Mexican miners union.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Gary Hill)



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For Fair Use: Discussion

Weary of drug war, Mexico debates legalization

By Tim Johnson, Mcclatchy Newspapers
Wed Sep 8, 4:59 pm ET
news,yahoo.com​

MEXICO CITY — A debate about legalizing marijuana and possibly other drugs — once a taboo suggestion — is percolating in Mexico , a national exhausted by runaway violence and a deadly drug war.

The debate is only likely to grow more animated if Californians approve an initiative on Nov. 2 to legalize marijuana for recreational use in their state.

Mexicans are keeping a close eye on the vote, seeing it as a bellwether.

"If they vote 'yes' to approve the full legalization of marijuana, I think it will have a radical impact in Mexico ," said Jorge Hernandez Tinajero , a political scientist at the National Autonomous University .

Discussion about legalization flew onto the agenda last month, the outcome of President Felipe Calderon's pressing need to win more public support for waging war against criminal organizations profiting hugely from drug trafficking.

As he held a series of open forums with politicians and civic leaders about faltering security, Calderon suddenly found himself amid a groundswell of suggestions that legalization — which he described as "absurd" — should be considered.

Among those throwing their weight behind legalization was former President Vicente Fox , a member of Calderon's own conservative National Action Party .

"We should consider legalizing the production, distribution and sale of drugs," Fox wrote on his blog during the series of forums. "Legalizing in this sense does not mean that drugs are good or don't hurt those who consume. Rather, we have to see it as a strategy to strike and break the economic structure that allows the mafias to generate huge profits in their business."

Calderon immediately said Mexico couldn't act on its own to legalize.

"If drugs are not legalized in the world, or if drugs are not legalized at least in the United States , this is simply absurd, because the price of drugs is not determined in Mexico . The price of drugs is determined by consumers in Los Angeles , or in New York , or in Chicago or Texas ," he said.

Such public debate would have been largely unthinkable a few years ago. Since Calderon came to office in late 2006, however, a national gloom has descended on Mexico from unending cartel violence and a death toll topping 28,000. The grim mood has provided fertile ground for public figures who think that legalization would undercut the power of the drug cartels.

Among them are business tycoons such as billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego , who controls broadcaster TV Azteca, and retailer Grupo Elektra.

With his own pro-legalization statement, Fox aligned with another former president, Ernesto Zedillo , who suggested last year that prohibition isn't working.

Still, several analysts said debate about legalization — coming most strongly from the political left — was an attempt to needle Calderon as much as an exploration of whether legalization is feasible.


Edgardo Buscaglia , an expert on Mexico's criminal syndicates, said Mexico's government is too weak to legalize and regulate narcotics and marijuana.

"You need to have regulatory capacity in place," he said. " Mexico does not even have the capacity to regulate its pharmaceutical products."

Without a better framework, any move to take away penalties for narcotics would "amount to a subsidy to drug organizations," he said, as prices and demand remain buoyant for illegal narcotics in the U.S. and other countries.

Legislators in August 2009 quietly decriminalized the possession of less than 5 grams of marijuana, the equivalent of about four joints. Tiny amounts of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, and methamphetamine also are no longer subject to criminal penalties.

Further measures have been blocked, however, such as one before two committees of the Chamber of Deputies to permit the use of marijuana for medical purposes, as 14 U.S. states allow. Others have been put before the Senate , the legislative assembly of Mexico City and before a local congress in the state of Mexico .

Hernandez Tinajero said he thinks that Mexican society may not be ready for such moves, but that the California initiative on marijuana would impel debate further.

"Whatever the result may be, it will have a positive impact on Mexico ," he said, and give way to a "a far more serious discussion."

Experts said they can't fully weigh arguments about the impact that legalization of marijuana in California might have on this country of 111 million, or whether steps toward legalization here would weaken drug syndicates.

That's because so little is known publicly about the revenue streams of cartels, the extent of production of marijuana, crystal meth and heroin, and the range of revenue from other criminal enterprises.

Counternarcotics officials say several Mexican cartels, particularly the Familia Michoacana, are deeply involved in marijuana production and sales in California .

Alex Kreit , an expert on drug law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego , said the fallout from Proposition 19, whichever way voters lean, might not be immediate.

Opinion polls show a near toss-up over whether voters will approve or reject it.

If the initiative passes, it would have an impact only in localities that take steps to permit the cultivation, distribution and sale of marijuana, he said.

"If this passes, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden that people who are growing marijuana in large amounts are going to be doing so legally," he said.

If the initiative loses by a large margin, Kreit said, it could "be the death knell" for legalization. If it goes the other way, it could "start to create a feeling of inevitability" in the U.S. and Mexico toward the legalization of marijuana.

"I almost view it as similar to the gay marriage issue. People's views are changing very quickly," Kreit said.

Hernandez Tinajero said any shift in U.S. public opinion would ripple south.

"The basic equation is this: If the United States is changing, why can't we change as well?" he asked


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For Fair Use: Discussion

Mexico: Capitalism’s backyard

Wednesday 08 September 2010
by Jeremy Corbyn
www.morningstaronline.co.uk​

These deaths — often in the most violent way possible by a combination of gangs, criminality, army operations, police shoot-outs and kidnapping — are appalling by any standards, but strangely seem to almost anaesthetise the local media and debate in Mexico.

For example, I was in Cuernavaca, a pleasant and historic town about 60 miles west of Mexico City on the main road to Acapulco. During the time I was there six people were executed in an apparent internal gang dispute, their decapitated bodies hung by the feet from a road bridge and left there. The authorities removed them and the army took up position on the bridge. It was reported all over the world yet, while it was news in Mexico, it was not the first thing everybody talked about the next day.

Shortly afterwards 76 bodies were discovered in a mass grave in a ranch in Tamaulipas state in the north-east near the US border at Matamoros, with the US town of Brownsville just across the river in Texas.

These bodies were all of migrants from the poorer south, from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and some from as far away as Brazil. They were discovered because one man managed to escape from the group under threat from a gang and raise the alarm.

The state instructed its public prosecutor to investigate which he duly did, but he promptly disappeared with his bodyguard. Their corpses were found a few days later.

A similar fate befell the mayor of Santiago, a small town near Monterrey, when he was abducted and murdered. Apparently he had been trying to deal with police corruption and was taken prisoner by a group presenting themselves as police officers wearing out-of-date uniforms.

Most of the victims are poor, desperate almost nameless migrants trying to escape the poverty of the central American countries or rural Mexico to gain a better life in the USA.

It is only when something truly gruesome happens or a high-profile public figure is killed that the media begin to notice.

Mexico’s greatest and most iconic president Benito Juarez famously observed “poor Mexico, so far from God and so near to the United States.”

In many ways Mexico is a victim of the USA — its wealth, its wars, its drug consumption and its greed.

Mexicans in the USA suffer from discrimination, poverty, lack of status and appalling exploitation, particularly if they lack legal status.

Like all prosperous industrial countries the hypocrisy of benefiting from cheap labour and then condemning those who are exploited as the cause of the problem is rife in the USA.

The new laws in Arizona would do credit to apartheid-era South Africa. In essence they are designed to permit the police to stop anyone of Mexican or central American appearance and demand identification and paperwork, and detain and deport them if they do not satisfy these requirements.

Sarah Palin and the Republican “Tea Party” movement support these vile laws. The administration of President Obama has challenged some aspects of them and the matter returns to court in November after the mid-term elections.

It is the plight of some of the most desperate on the planet that deserves attention. Desperate poverty in Guatemala and other countries forces people to flee on foot, bus or freight train to the Mexico border where they are met with hostility — it is almost a southern proxy for the even more forbidding border with the USA.

Once in Mexico they attempt to get to the USA and face endless checks, road blocks and military examination, all of which is supposedly used to catch drug cartels. The further north they go through this huge country the more intense the examinations and pressures become, and the dangers.

Those who died in Tamaulipas and Ciudad Juarez are the ones known about. Only history will tell us how many more have died as victims of kidnapping when their desperate families could not pay, prostitution rackets, drug running or police and army shoot-outs.

Two weeks ago several thousand police officers were dismissed for corruption and links with gangs but the suspicion that they were the lower ranking officers protecting the hierarchy remains.

The vast army, for a country without any apparent external threat, patrols streets and operates road blocks. It is disconcerting even in resort towns like Acapulco to see army patrols with automatic weapons trained over the sides of their open vehicles patrolling the streets.

The army has a very special place in the national psyche of Mexico and is immune from civilian legal control. Any allegations — and there are many — against the army for violence, death or disappearance are conducted using military discipline codes with no public accountability. The impunity of the army is a major issue and is becoming part of the general political debate, as is the legal system.

Criminal legal processes are very slow and rely largely on written statements being presented to a judge who then makes a decision. The concept of the oral adversarial tradition is not normal in Mexico, although it is now being actively considered as a way of speeding up and improving access to justice.

There was some unusual news last week when Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, human rights and indigenous peoples activist Raul Hernandez, accused of killing an army informer in Guerero, was released by the court in Ayutla after a lot of international pressure and interest. Calls are now being made for an investigation into his prosecution and incarceration, and for him to be compensated.

While this is one case among many, it does show the power and effect of concentrated pressure to bring about justice.

In Mexico’s enormous and very well renowned Universitia Nacional Autonomo de Mexico the very vibrant student body are aware and involved in human rights issues and do mount campaigns and debates. The political debate is leading up to the presidential elections in 2012.

Poverty and unemployment, desperate migrants and forced deportations from the USA all contribute to the debate on a direction for Mexico different from market economics and the North American Free Trade Agreement agenda.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the united left candidate of 2006 who was declared the loser by the Supreme Court after three million people took to the streets in his support, has pledged to run again. His opening rally in the centre of Mexico City attracted a million people. His book La Mafia Que Se Adueno De Mexico is creating a lot of interest, as he makes the point that the rich-poor divide in Mexico is one of the biggest in the world, and the tax income from the richest among the lowest.

Mexico, while pursuing a broadly neutral and non-aligned foreign policy, nevertheless suffers from the Iraq war. Frederico Campbell Pena, an assiduous journalist, has published a book demonstrating that hundreds of Mexicans have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the US armed forces. They joined in return for the promise of a right to live in the USA if they survived. La Carroza Negra De Bush is in memory of those who did not.

Latin America has suffered from invasion, occupation and denigration of its history and civilisation. The huge cultural changes in the south, particularly in Bolivia and its neighbours, is a reassertion of the civilisations that were there long before the Europeans arrived.

Mexico is well aware and rightly very proud of its past and well-kept and maintained Maya, Aztec and many older civilisations’ ruins are well understood and supported. The sense of history and destiny is palpable, all the time.

On my journey home I stopped in Dallas, Texas. During my time there I visited the small town of Grapeville and went to the museum. An interesting array of agricultural implements and histories of missionaries and shoot-outs was on offer.

I asked who was there before the Europeans arrived and was politely and cheerfully told “we don’t learn a whole lot about that in school.” As for the US conquest of what was a major part of Mexico in the 19th century, not a mention.



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For Fair Use: Discussion

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Text size:

Attacks on Mexican media 'national crisis'

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
The Associated Press
www.ajc.com​

MONTERREY, Mexico — At least 22 Mexican journalists have been killed over the past four years, according to a U.S.-based media watchdog group that is calling on the government to respond forcefully to the dangers facing reporters who cover the country's drug war.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report released Wednesday that at least seven other journalists have gone missing and more have fled the country since President Felipe Calderon took office December 2006 and intensified the crackdown on drug trafficking by deploying thousands of troops and federal police to cartel strongholds.

Gang violence has since surged, claiming more than 28,000 lives as the splintered cartels fight with each other and stage increasingly bold attacks on security forces, government officials — and journalists.

"Violence against the press has swept the nation and destroyed Mexicans' right to freedom of expression," the report said. "This national crisis demands a full-scale federal response."

The New York-based CPJ said the attacks — and the state's failure to resolve many of them — have prompted many Mexican news outlets to stop reporting on crime and corruption, while others have abandoned investigative reporting.

Over the past decade, less than 10 percent of crimes against the news media have been successfully prosecuted, the report said.

The CPJ said it believes at least eight of the 22 journalists killed were targeted because of their reports on crime and corruption.

The organization highlighted the case of Bladimir Antuna Garcia, a top crime reporter in the northern state of Durango, who was tortured and strangled in November. A note left with his body read: "This happened to me for giving information to the military and for writing too much."

Antuna Garcia had told authorities he was receiving threats but no action was taken, the report said. His death remains unsolved.

Journalists told the CPJ that "because the killers have gone unpunished ... in-depth crime reporting has essentially stopped in Durango," the report said.

The committee called on Calderon to make attacks against the news media a federal crime, create a government committee to protect threatened journalists, and give more autonomy to Mexico's federal special prosecutor for crimes against reporters.

There was no immediate comment from the government on the report, which comes a month after investigators from the United Nations and the Organization of American States visited Mexico to look into attacks on journalists. The investigators also called on Mexican authorities to establish a way to protect reporters.

Calderon has previously acknowledged the widespread dangers facing journalists, as well as the inadequacies of Mexico's justice system. Last month, he met with the owners and directors of Mexico's main newspapers and radio and television stations, offering federal support for journalists who have been threatened.

Apart from attacks on individual journalists, cartel gunmen struck at television stations and newspaper offices with gunfire, grenades and bombs.

Two weeks ago, a car exploded in front of the offices of the Televisa station in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern state of Tamaulipas, which has become one of Mexico's most dangerous regions amid a turf war between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas gang.

In the border city of Reynosa, also in Tamaulipas, journalists told the committee they believe the Gulf Cartel controls nearly every aspect of the local government, from law enforcement down to street vendor permits, the report said.

"That story has not been reported in the local news media, however, because the cartel also controls the press," it said.

Reynosa journalists told the committee some of their colleagues have been corrupted by the cartel and take payoffs to slant or withhold coverage. Three local journalists disappeared in March, it added.

"The more Mexico allows the news to be controlled by criminals, the more it erodes its status as a reliable global partner," the committee said.[/size]



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Thanks for posting these Dutch, I'll add your thread link to this weeks News from Mexico in MP/II.

Joann said:

Thanks for posting these Dutch, I'll add your thread link to this weeks News from Mexico in MP/II.

Click to expand...

MP/II wazzz that? Is there another discussion site I don't know about! URL Pleaz...

Dutch

The Flying Dutchman said:

MP/II wazzz that? Is there another discussion site I don't know about! URL Pleaz...

Dutch

Click to expand...

Yeah Dutch, it's on TB in the subforum MinutemenProject/Illegal Aliens:

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=131

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For Fair Use: Discussion

Mexico mayhem needs ‘law’ for outlaws

By Johann Hari
September 10, 2010
gulftoday.ae​

To many people, the “war on drugs” sounds like a metaphor, like the “war on poverty.” It is not. It is being fought with tanks and sub-machine guns and hand grenades, funded in part by your taxes, and it has killed 28,000 people under the current Mexican president alone. The death toll in Tijuana — one of the front lines of this war — is now higher than in Baghdad. This week another pile of 72 mutilated corpses was found near San Fernando — an event that no longer shocks the country.

Mexico today is a place where the severed heads of police officers are found week after week, pinned to bloody notes that tell their colleagues: “This is how you learn respect.” It is a place where hand grenades are tossed into crowds to intimidate the public into shutting up.

Licence to kill

Why? When you criminalise a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn’t disappear. The trade is simply transferred from off-licences, pharmacists and doctors to armed criminal gangs.

In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up — and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of a poor part of London or Los Angeles, where teenage gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3,000 per cent profit margins on offer.

Now imagine this process taking over an entire nation, to turn it into a massive production and supply route for the Western world’s drug hunger.

Why Mexico? Why now? In the past decade, the US has spent a fortune spraying carcinogenic chemicals over Colombia’s coca-growing areas, so the drug trade has simply shifted to Mexico. It’s known as the “balloon effect”: press down in one place, and the air rushes to another.

Today, 70 per cent of Mexicans say they are frightened to go out because of the cartels. The gangs offer Mexican police and politicians a choice: “Plata o ploma.” Silver, or lead. Take a bribe, or take a bullet. President Felipe Calderon has been leading a military crackdown on them since 2006 — yet every time he surges the military forward, the gang violence in an area massively increases.

Drug trade deeply Rooted

This might seem like a paradox, but it isn’t. If you knock out the leaders of a drug gang, you don’t eradicate demand, or supply. You simply trigger a fresh war for control of the now-vacant patch. The violence creates more violence.

There is a growing movement in Mexico to do the one thing these murderous gangs really fear — take the source of their profits, drugs, back into the legal economy. It would bankrupt them swiftly, and entirely. And, after legalisation they would be in the hands of unarmed, regulated, legal businesses, paying taxes to the state, at a time when we all need large new sources of tax revenue.

How many people have to die before we finally make a sober assessment of reality, and take the drugs trade back from murderous criminal gangs?


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