For a few weeks this spring, it appeared that Mexico’s bloody drug war might be subsiding. Levels of violence in some of the worst locales, especially Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, had declined from the peak in 2009 and 2010, and stories about beheadings and mass graves were no longer daily fare in wire-service reports. But with the onset of summer, hopes about a sustained improvement are fading fast.
The news over the past few days has been especially grim, as the headlines make all too clear. “At least 41 killed as Mexico scrambles in drug war,” (AFP, July 9), “11 bodies found on outskirts of Mexico City” (AP, July 9), “At least 17 killed in northern Mexico bar massacre,” (AP, July 9), “Ten decapitated bodies left in truck in Mexico,” (Reuters, July 10).
Three aspects of the stories are particularly ominous. First, until recently, Mexico City and its suburbs were largely immune from the gruesome battles among rival cartels. The incident of 11 bodies being dumped in Chalco, just outside the national capital, though, is the latest confirmation that Mexico City’s immunity is largely a thing of the past. The reality is that violent incidents there have been on the rise since late 2010. This new atrocity should shatter what remains of the complacency among the city’s political and economic elite.
Second, the “scramble” referred to in the AP story is the decision to send another 1,800 federal agents into Michoacan, President Felipe Calderon’s home state. That move was deemed necessary because of the increased boldness of the Knights Templar, a successor group to La Familia, which had been the leading drug cartel in that state. Just last year, the Calderon government boasted that it had basically put La Familia out of business after killing the group’s principal leader. As on so many other occasions in Mexico’s drug war, that proclamation of victory was decidedly premature.
Third, the biggest contributor to the death toll of 41 was the massacre of some 20 (up from the original count of 17) people following a cartel assault on a bar in Monterrey, Mexico’s leading industrial city and a crucial component of the country’s economy. That episode continues a deteriorating trend in what was once an exceptionally peaceful city, not just in Mexico, but in all of Latin America.
Despite the brief pause this spring, the carnage of Mexico’s drug battles goes on. Indeed, even with the modest decline in the pace earlier this year, the body count since Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006 has now soared beyond 40,000.
The festering security sore on our southern frontier has not healed, and it’s not likely to do so in the foreseeable future. Instead of pursuing the fool’s errand of nation building in Afghanistan or trying to keep a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq (despite previous promises to the contrary), the president and his national security team need to pay attention to a serious problem much closer to home. And U.S. officials need to accept the reality that America’s prohibitionist strategy regarding drugs plays into the hands of the violent criminal elements that run Mexico’s cartels. Those individuals derive their profits (and their power) from the lucrative black market that prohibition creates. We need a change in policy before we wake up one day and there is a full-blown narcostate on the Rio Grande.
Comments
Ted Carpenter you missed one vital fact in your article. The United States is responsible for igniting this senseless war in the first place. It was the US that forced the Mexican government to prosecute a war against the drug cartels.So your suggestion is to escalate this drug war in Mexico in exchange for toning down the Afghanistan fiasco. You advocate escalation of a US war, that has already cost 40,000 Mexican young men their lives. How you even qualify for reprinting at AntiWar is a mystery. This is at least the third article in which you have presented a distorted pro war position that AntiWar has reprinted. Once again you have presented a racist colonial view of a Latin American country.
you are the racist how long have you been in la raza mexico is a failed narco state and the more that are victims of drug means the less will invade US stay in that hellhole mexico and fix it
the more mexicans get killed in mexico is the less mexicans that will come here
Well until the authorities learn of a new way to deal with drugs this will always happen. I feel that the best way to end the drug war is to cut the demand for drugs by forcing every known addict into a North Carolina drug rehab center or any other rehab program.
Global campaign againsts prohibited drugs must be maintained and strictly implemented. As these drugs can destroy a person's normal functioning, within himself, and towards people around him. I have heard of a news regarding Mexican drug war. Class was ended Tues in the Garita area of Acapulco, México, after Mexican police found five severed, rotting heads in a sack outside a primary school. According to BBC News, threatening notes were also discovered by authorities. It is uncertain currently whether the dismembered heads at the school - and five headless bodies found elsewhere in Garita - are connected to extortion terrors against instructors. Source of article: Severed heads found outside Mexican primary school. Incident such this is no longer a stranger to these citizens and press but still, this is not a healthy environment to live in. These innocent children's education is compromised because of incident like this.