Mexico's Drug War - Page 35

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - In a nation wracked by drug violence, this sprawling capital city of more than 20 million has been an oasis of relative peace. But the key to that calm - an informal truce among rival gangs - may be cracking.

On a sunny afternoon this month, a group of gunmen drove into a slum in the north of Mexico City, the streets packed with shoppers and children leaving school. In plain sight, the killers lined three crack cocaine dealers against a wall and shot them in the head with AK-47 assault rifles. They then forced another two men into a black van and drove away past terrified onlookers.

The killings, allegedly carried out by the bloodthirsty La Familia cartel of the central state of Michoacan, were the latest sign that the drug violence raging across large swathes of Mexico is creeping into the capital.

The drug lords have long kept a lid on turf wars in Mexico City. But a generation of upstart gangsters has this year carried out a series of massacres and decapitations on the city edges. Cells of these newer cartels have also become more active in kidnapping and shaking down local businessmen.

In the greater Mexico City area, police have reported more than 300 gangland killings this year. The carnage includes the massacre of a family of five in the Tlalpan area, a decapitation close to the wealthy business district of Santa Fe, and two headless bodies hanged from bridge in Huixquilucan in the west of the city. The death toll is up from last year, when 260 murders in the area were blamed on rival gangs.

Mexico City includes the inner Federal District, home to almost 9 million people, and another 12 million in outer suburbs and slums governed by the State of Mexico.

"A cartel crime wave here would be catastrophic," says Luis de la Barreda, head of ICESI, a Mexican think-tank on crime. "Mexico City is not only the home of all the country's major institutions, it is an image that is constantly in everyone's minds."

WASHINGTON — American drug enforcement agents posing as money launderers secretly helped a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his principal Colombian cocaine supplier move millions in drug proceeds around the world, as part of an effort to infiltrate and dismantle the criminal organizations wreaking havoc south of the border, according to newly obtained Mexican government documents.

The documents, part of an extradition order by the Mexican Foreign Ministry against the Colombian supplier, describe American counternarcotics agents, Mexican law enforcement officials and a Colombian informant working undercover together over several months in 2007. Together, they conducted numerous wire transfers of tens of thousands of dollars at a time, smuggled millions of dollars in bulk cash — and escorted at least one large shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Dallas to Madrid.

The extradition order — obtained by the Mexican magazine emeequis and shared with The New York Times — includes testimony by a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who oversaw a covert money laundering investigation against a Colombian trafficker named Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, also known as “The Rabbit.” He is accused of having sent some 150 tons of cocaine to Mexico between 2000 and 2010. Much of that cocaine, the authorities said, was destined for the United States.

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government updated its drug war death toll on Wednesday, reporting that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels in late 2006.

The new official tally provided by the attorney general’s office included data only through September, and it showed that drug-related killings increased 11 percent, to 12,903, compared with the same nine-month period in 2010. Still, a government statement sought to find a silver lining, asserting that it was the first year since 2006 “that the homicide rate increase has been lower compared to the previous years.”

But that will hardly calm a public scared by the recent arrival of grisly violence in once-safe cities like Guadalajara, nor will Wednesday’s limited data release silence the increasingly loud call for better, more transparent government record keeping.

The Mexican government has failed to create the tracking system it needs to understand criminal trends and improve security, experts say, even as it has become more secretive with the limited information it has.

“Our frustration is that they have some information and some numbers, something that would be valuable and they are not releasing them,” said Eric Olson, a security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “And there is a whole bunch of other things that are not well defined and can lead to erroneous conclusions.”

The number of drug-related deaths is the subject of much dispute. Government officials last gave a figure — 34,612 — at the end of 2010, promising to update their tally regularly. They did not follow through. A group of Mexican and American academics, including Mr. Olson, began pleading with the Calderón administration for death figures, along with other data known to be collected, including violent episodes involving the military. But members of the group say they were ignored.

The Mexican navy says it has seized 195 tonnes of chemicals which can be used to make the drug methamphetamine. The navy found 12 shipping containers full of the precursor chemical in the Pacific coast port of Lazaro Cardenas. They said the chemical had been shipped from China and was destined for Guatemala and Nicaragua. The authorities said that Mexican drug cartels have been expanding their methamphetamine operations to Guatemala. Mexican officials said the chemical, methylamine, could be used to make the synthetic drug methamphetamine, and also to produce cocaine.

Latin America reveres its authors like nowhere else in the world, as proved by the welcome for Carlos Fuentes at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia.

The 83-year-old author was feted like a rock star, soaking up the cheers and applause from a multi-generational audience that hung on his every word.

Fuentes, Mexico's greatest writer and a former diplomat, addressed the contemporary problems of Latin American – in particular, Mexico’s drug problem.

He said: “The drug traffickers are in Mexico, they send the drugs to the US and once they get across the border what happens? We don’t know who consumes them. We can’t prosecute, we can’t defend. It’s a very difficult situation for us Mexicans. The governments of the US and Mexico have to fight drug trafficking together.”

Fuentes believes that decriminalising drugs is the only way to end the violence that in the past five years has claimed nearly 50,000 lives of gang members, security forces and innocent bystanders.

MEXICO CITY — Latin American leaders have joined together to condemn the U.S. government for soaring drug violence in their countries, blaming the United States for the transnational cartels that have grown rich and powerful smuggling dope north and guns south.

Alongside official declarations, Latin American governments have expressed growing disgust for U.S. drug consumers — both the addict and the weekend recreational user heedless of the misery and destruction stemming from their pleasures.

“Our region is seriously threatened by organized crime, but there is very little responsibility taken by the drug-consuming countries,” Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said at a December meeting of Latin leaders in Caracas. Colom said the hemisphere was paying the price for drug consumption in the United States with “our blood, our fear and our human sacrifice.”

With transit countries facing some of the highest homicide rates in the world, so great is the frustration that the leaders are demanding that the United States and Europe consider steps toward legalization if they do not curb their appetite for drugs.

At a regional summit this month in Mexico, attended by the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, officials declared that “the authorities in consumer countries should explore all possible alternatives to eliminate exorbitant profits of criminals, including regulatory or market options.”

“Market options” is diplomatic code for decriminalization.

On January 12 2012 15:55 newron wrote:
To the (few) people in this thread who have declared all this violence is a sign that the drug war is working, that the cartels are showing how desperate they are: what kind of success includes the murder of over 47,000 people? If the Mexican government could press a big red button and remove all drug dealers from the country, what would happen? The demand for the drugs would still remain (and always will, so long as human beings enjoy pleasure), so new people would step up to the plate and fill the void. Every time a drug king pin is removed from power, or a cartel is eliminated, it creates a vacuum, and bloody conflict ensues as new would-be king pins and cartels step in to fill that void. Illegal drugs are expensive drugs (heard of supply and demand?) - just the way drug dealers like them. The truth is, the drug legalization would be the worst news for these murderous drug dealers. What happened to rum runners and Prohibition-era gangsters when we re-legalized alcohol?

Legalize drugs. End this insanity.

On February 10 2012 15:04 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
^ Yea... not gonna happen. People are always going to use narcotics.

Legalization of marijuana is a crucial first step in ending this nonsense.

On February 10 2012 15:08 Bigtony wrote:


...can you read?

Enforcing the law = "nonsense." A+ post will read again.

On February 10 2012 15:09 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:


Yea, I did. You're just wrong though.

On top of that, there will always be criminals. If you legalize drugs, that doesn't eliminate a black market. The dealers will move on to a drug that is still illegal or they will sell legal drugs at black market (tax free) prices.

Legalization has upsides, but it definitely is not a catch all miracle solution.

On February 10 2012 14:57 Bigtony wrote:
Stop buying drugs. End this insanity. Ez pz, no government intervention needed if people simply followed the law and stopped buying drugs.

On February 10 2012 14:57 Bigtony wrote:
If you legalize drugs, that doesn't eliminate a black market. The dealers will move on to a drug that is still illegal or they will sell legal drugs at black market (tax free) prices.

On February 10 2012 14:57 Bigtony wrote:
Legalization has upsides, but it definitely is not a catch all miracle solution.

On February 10 2012 16:38 freeloader625 wrote:


This is by far the most uninformed, I dare say, STUPID comment ever. You cannot stop demand by saying, "stop." You do not control supply or demand, no one individual/organization can. I love your condescending comment, as if drug users were scum of the earth, the cause of this war and they control every aspect of their lives. They're the victims.





You severely underestimate what legalization and regulation can do. The black market would not even be close to what it is today if drugs are legalized. It opens up so many possibilities with overwhelming pros and virtually no cons.

Pros:
Legalize drugs
-Peace and order through regulation
-Tax dollars earned

Intervention groups can easily locate and target the addicts.
-Effectively lowering demand
-Increasing life expectancy of users, giving them another chance at life.

Most of the drug related violence would disappear overnight.
-A lot less need for government intervention.
-Safer streets, less civilians harmed/killed in wars. More productive society.

Cons:
-Drug addicts [Not more drug addicts, legalization doesn't mean more people do it, the same way illegal doesn't mean, less people do it.] Those who were continuing to do it will continue to, and those who weren't won't.

In the end with regulation everyone wins. There is no real con. The pros are less death, less collateral, more tax revenue, higher life expectancy, lower demand and help to those who need it and overall a better more productive society through better quality of life. Citizens being alive and productive is far more important than you seem to understand.

And if you don't think this is true, think about prohibition. It did not stop alcohol consumption, it just drove prices far up and cost government much more resources. Bootleggers just continued to produce and sell on the black market. Legalization lead to a much better lifestyle, less violence, less government intervention, less collateral, more order, more revenue, intervention groups, better overall society. Where are the cons?

Please stop pretending to be a "lol-i'm-better-than-you-because-i-know-economics" kid. Your perception and economics are horribly inaccurate.

This is by far the most uninformed, I dare say, STUPID comment ever. You cannot stop demand by saying, "stop." You do not control supply or demand, no one individual/organization can. I love your condescending comment, as if drug users were scum of the earth, the cause of this war and they control every aspect of their lives. They're the victims.